Tools to gain more Twitter followers.

Gaining Twitter followers is no easy task. Well, for some anyways. There are many articles on the subject of gaining Twitter followers, but in this article I've boiled down the 3 best tools and services to jumpstart your Twitter marketing efforts and gain a following fast.[read more]

Social CRM.

There is a shift occurring in the way that business is being conducted. The traditional forms of marketing and sales are slowly being phased out for an increasingly social and interactive approach. New business models have formed from this rapidly evolving sales environment and it is important for businesses to stay on top of this alternative paradigm.[read more]

Research-backed ways to get more followers.

Follower count is often considered one of the vainest of vanity metrics. I can relate. I've had my fair share of ego tied to that golden number on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn---pointing out my follower growth to a friend one day and archiving emails just as fast as I could when growth doesn't come.[read more]

Bad customer service.

As a small business owner I'm grateful for those occasions when I experience poor customer service. Unfortunately, they happen way too often. But I'm grateful for those occasions nonetheless because, when I'm on the receiving end of poor service, it serves as a strong reminder of why each and every customer needs to receive first class care![read more]

Effective content marketing.

Content marketing is its own kind of beast. Dependent on strong creative writing abilities and a fine knack for business; it is a profession that is fast-paced and in huge demand throughout the globe. Every business depends on content marketers to establish strong marketing campaigns, provide creative insight and help shape a company’s public perception.[read more]

Launch a content marketing campaign.

Make no mistake: If you just start posting company Facebook updates without any kind of formal planning, your content marketing efforts are unlikely to bear any fruit. Better to take the time to fully prepare yourself and your team, following the steps below.[read more]

Strong arm tactics to monetize Facebook.

Have we become too reliant upon Facebook? It is a valid question to ask, but is it too late to consider it? Not for Facebook. Creating a culture of reliance upon their gratis offerings, Facebook has long been the “enabler”. People build, attract and grow communities within the Facebook network, all the while each new user, group, interaction helps in the data mining and focus of the Facebook marketing machine.[read more]

Whisper campaigns.

We recently had a client ask us to do something unethical. He’s a great client and we’ve worked together for years. He had no idea what he was asking was wrong…because he’s seen his peers do it in other circumstances. When I put my foot down, he was embarrassed and, though he teased me about our strict ethics a bit, he was appreciative of our telling him no and explaining why.[read more]

Secure your social media accounts.

Everyone on this site loves to have good long talks about what you can do to make your social media account more successful, and that’s great. But it also makes you a target. Hackers love stealing popular social media accounts as unpopular ones are no good to them, read on and I’ll help you keep that popular social media account under your control![read more]

Beyond Engagement

Does employee advocacy work for B2B companies? The short answer is “Yes.” It works just fine, but let’s take a closer look to discover why. In this article, we’ll focus on sales campaigns, but the principles for brand promotion or recruitment programs are the same.[read more]

A day in the life of the social web.

There are over 7 billion people in the world, many of whom regularly use the social web in meaningful ways. Think you understand the scope of the online world? Think again. Here is an infographic from our pals at Uberflip visualizing what everyone is up to.[read more]

Is this Panda coming for you? / shutterstock

Apparently, Google doesn’t plan to stop pulling rabbits out of its white hat anytime soon. Over the past weekend, Google has started rolling out a brand-new algorithm update, Panda 4.0, designed to win the battle with spam, in all its forms. What's going to separate the winners from the losers?[read more]

Facebook metrics / shutterstock

With social media, we can now collect customer data from reporting tools like Facebook Insights. We sifted through Insights to find the easiest ways to convert this information to boost your bottom line. Here are our top three metrics to watch.[read more]

Henry Ford.

The first, and arguably most common, definition sees innovation as the creation of truly unique things. These groundbreaking discoveries are indeed incredibly valuable, but they’re also pretty rare. Much more common is a recombination of already existing things in new ways.[read more]

marketing and customer service

Social Customer Service seems to have finally reached a tipping point and is slowly being embraced by traditional customer service staff. It's increasingly a part of the contact center environment and often sits alongside voice, webchat and email. Yet, social media requires a very different approach to traditional customer service.[read more]

Future proof.

US adults now spend more time with dig­i­tal media—primarily mobile—than with their tele­vi­sions. Recent Nielsen data shows that con­sumers pre­fer mobile apps, spend­ing “89 per­cent of media time in mobile” using social net­work­ing, email, and con­tent apps.[read more]

Blair Christie, Chief Marketing Officer of Cisco.

Blair discusses in this 20-minute interview how to find the perfect balance between both the art and science of marketing. As a numbers driven marketer, she shares her insights on sales teams and how they can become more efficient with the help of big data.[read more]

Community manager interview series.

Over at Speakeasy, our own Taisa Veras has interviewed a slew of awesome community managers from organizations like PSFK, Spartan Race and Vitamin T to get their insights on reaching their audiences, earning engagement, developing new campaigns and more. In this round up, we’re sharing some their best tips.[read more]

Who's this connected customer? (shutterstock)

Meet your new customers…Generation-C. You may in fact already be part of this movement. Generation C is not identifiable by demographics or generic personas. Generation C is a lifestyle…it’s everyone who lives a digital life. They’re connected and they’re in control.[read more]

This cost someone $80K.

Every organization needs to think about and be prepared to manage the risks associated with operating in the Digital Era. It doesn’t matter how large the organization is, whether it’s for-profit, BtoB or BtoC, or which industry or sector it operates in. To put it simply: If you employ people, you should have a social media policy – and more![read more]