Earlier this week I published the findings of the ForeSee Results 2010 Social Media Report. Kevin Ertell who is Vice President of Retail Strategy for ForeSee Results and author of the report kindly agreed to answer my question about the report.
I found the results of the report really interesting Kevin. What one or two things from the Social Media Report jumped out to you
I was surprised to see how many people wanted to hear about new products and promotions from retailers they friended on Facebook. I find it encouraging that retailers’ best customer are eager to hear marketing messages in a forum that has been widely believed to be personal “no marketing zone” space.
Read more...(415 words, 1 image, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)
Evan Carmichael just came out with his Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year and our post on Don’t Forget Search made his list. Certainly an honour considering some of the other great posts that Evan has on the list.
For those of you not familiar with this site here are some details:
EvanCarmichael.com is the Internet’s #1 resource for small business motivation and strategies. With over 450,000 monthly visitors, 4,650 contributing authors, and 78,000 pages of content no website shares more profiles of famous entrepreneurs and inspires more small business owners than EvanCarmichael.com.
The Top 15 Brands as decided by Interbrands and they then looked at the level of presence of each of these brands on the two main social media channels: Twitter and Facebook. From the chart below, it appears that brands are really focusing on either Twitter or Facebook, but few brands are taking advantage of their brand power on both networks.
Consider how you want to introduce yourself to people. Take a moment to fill out your profile and let people know something about you. You don’t have to tell Twitter everything, but you do want to make an introduction. Read more...(905 words, 1 image, estimated 3:37 mins reading time)
Had an interesting conversation last week about the news industry and social media specifically about how mainstream media is using Twitter.
At the most basic level, Twitter is a two-way conversation. Follow most people’s Twitter stream and you will see a number of retweets and pieces of conversation back and forth.
That is not how the media is using Twitter and I think it is part of the reason why they are not being successful with social media. Read more...(345 words, 1 image, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)
Over the weekend I reread Rohit Bhargava’s original article on Social Media Optimization (SMO). Rohit wrote that:
The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.
Rohit’s original 5 rules/guidelines for SMO was expanded to 16 rules:
Increase your linkability
Make tagging and bookmarking easy
Reward inbound links
Help your content travel
Encourage the mashup
Read more...(262 words, 1 image, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)
I opened up the Nashua Telegraph last week and was surprised to find an article about how two Nashua restaurants are using Facebook and Twitter to offer deals and keep in touch with customers.
One of those restaurants is Axel’s Food and Ice Cream (@eatataxels) in Merrimack NH. Axel’s has a web site, a Facebook profile and Twitter page. Through its new Web presence, Axel’s has been running special promotions for Twitter followers and will start providing coupons via Twitter in the near future. Read more...(525 words, 1 image, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)
Stealing mySpace by Julia Angwinn is an interesting look behind the scenes at the history of MySpace. While Facebook gets all the media attention MySpace is still by far the second largest social networking site in the world. The book looks at the astounding rise of MySpace, which went from a Friendster competitor designed to save a flagging department at eUniverse, an Internet company best known for hawking dubious diet pills and downloadable cursors packaged with spy ware, to being sold for close to one billion dollars to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Read more...(412 words, 2 images, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)
I read this book a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to write a review of it. The official title of the book is The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff by Clara Shih.
Clara works for Salesforce.com and while the book at times reads like a sales manual for Salesforce.com that does not detract from the useful information in the book. Read more...(159 words, 2 images, estimated 38 secs reading time)
Stealing mySpace by Julia Angwinn is an interesting look behind the scenes at the history of MySpace. While Facebook gets all the media attention MySpace is still by far the second largest social networking site in the world. The book looks at the astounding rise of MySpace, which went from a Friendster competitor designed to save a flagging department at eUniverse, an Internet company best known for hawking dubious diet pills and downloadable cursors packaged with spy ware, to being sold for close to one billion dollars to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. 
I read this book a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to write a review of it. The official title of the book is The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff by Clara Shih.
