November 13, 2007 3 Comments

Budgets on the rise for Conversational Marketing

I came across this interesting article about the growth projections of social media and conversational marketing over the next 5 years. According to the study, 81% of marketers said in five years, they will be spending as much or more on conversational marketing vs. traditional marketing initiatives. And, while conversational marketing still represents a small [...]

Filed Under: Conversational Marketing, Social Media
October 31, 2007 6 Comments

Thinking Strategically about Social Media

I recently wrote an article, A Strategic Approach to Social Media that listed some key elements that marketers must consider when dealing with social media: defining a target audience, speaking in authentic voice, monetizing the conversations and keeping the conversations fresh and alive. I was criticized (well, not really), but challenged by a marketer friend [...]

Filed Under: Social Media
September 17, 2007 4 Comments

Conversational marketing explored

Conversational marketing is a commonly used term in the Web 2.0 / social media world. A few weeks ago, I attended the Conversational Marketing Summit hosted by John Battelle. One of the main messages I took from the summit was that “conversational marketing cannot be dictated or controlled, only joined” and – which I totally [...]

Filed Under: Conversational Marketing, Social Media
July 3, 2007 7 Comments

Social Media in Politics: Fred Thompson and team embrace Social Media

If you have ever watched Law & Order, then you know who Fred Thompson is. He is also running for the GOP Presidential Nomination. Thompson and team are the first Republicans that have fully embraced the concept of social media. Let’s see, he has a Myspace and Facebook profile with about 2,500 friends each; and [...]

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Media Optimization, Viral Marketing
May 9, 2007 3 Comments

Social Media Marketing: Rules of Engagement

A few days ago, Lee Odden wrote about the Five Blunders of Social News and Bookmarking and the noise associated with social media marketing. These blunders, while probably not a comprehensive list, are things that I see daily as I read various blogs and frequent a handful of social media properties. They are the following: [...]

Filed Under: Social Media
April 10, 2007 12 Comments

Accidental SEO

I own/maintain several websites dating back to 8 years or so. With some of my sites, like this one, I daily monitor my web stats (unique visitors, referring domains, etc.) I’m obsessed with data! With some of my other sites, I rarely, if ever, look at the actual web site much less the stats.  However, [...]

Filed Under: Google, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization
March 29, 2007 Leave a Comment

Marketers Embrace Social Media

As I mentioned in a previous post, social media adoption is growing exponentially.  According to Ad Age, citing a report by Brian Haven of Forrester, marketers are increasingly adopting social media into their overall marketing plans.  Over the last 12 months, social media has grown to the point where 40% of marketers are using or [...]

Filed Under: Social Media
March 21, 2007 17 Comments

Communities Create Viral Marketing

  I attended a session at the New Communications Forum a few weeks ago called “Viral Marketing – It’s the message, not the Media” facilitated by Susan Getgood and a few others.  Susan’s message intrigued me the most as she discussed the 5 C’s of Viral Marketing: community, compelling, comedy, charity, and contest.  Of course, [...]

Filed Under: Social Media, Viral Marketing