The 3 Truths of Good Community Managers

In July of 2009, I started as the Director of Community at Blue Sky Factory, an email service provider. Over the past 13+ months, I’ve come to realize that it’s not enough to just be there.
Of course, it’s important to listen, engage, connect, and build relationships. Yes, it’s critical that you have a product or [...]

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9 Top Chatroulette Marketing Examples

Chatroulette is your friendly video gateway to the underbelly of the internet. Nudity, narcissism, and marketing. What’s not to like? For the uninitiated, Chatroulette.com is a video chat service that matches your video with a complete stranger. When the site got global attention back in March they became one of the most visited sites on [...]

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Social Media is Good For Consumers and Here is Why

For the last two years, social media has been the #1 online activity for US online adults and the fastest growing too. Brands have taken notice and have begun to turn their marketing investments toward the space. But, what’s in it for the consumer?
Let’s start by addressing the consumer concerns around social media marketing.
Social Spam
Naturally, [...]

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Conan O’Brien Hearts Social Media

When Conan O’Brien left NBC, the split was well-publicized: Jay Leno suddenly wanted his spot back on The Tonight Show, and Gen-X hero O’Brien was shown the door by NBC brass. Almost immediately, the Social Media echo chamber went into pro-Conan mode, birthing the #TeamCoco hashtag and some great iconic images.
For a while, O’Brien was [...]

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Facebook Places for Business – Getting Started

On August 18th, Facebook launched “Facebook Places: Who. What. When. And now where.”
So, now what?  Here’s some easy steps on how to set up your company Facebook Place, claim it and what it means for marketing.
Claiming Your Business
Your business may already be listed on Facebook Places. To search for your “place” use either the Facebook [...]

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Video Builds Business – A Gary Vaynerchuk Interview

Quality interview here with Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) of Wine Libray TV by the Viddler crew. There are 2 cool things happening in this video you should take note of.
Vaynerchuk knows how to make video work for a business. And not as an occasional investment in viral videos or internal training videos, but as a major [...]

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7 Can’t Miss Resources For Social Professionals

I get asked a lot about where I go to keep up to date and learn about SEO and social. So I thought I would turn this into a blog post and share with everyone.
Keeping up with the flow of information in the online marketing world can be rather daunting. Downright impossible if you haven’t [...]

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6 Steps To A Successful Social Media Survey

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to vet the deluge of social media surveys and studies you encounter every day for accuracy, representativeness and credibility. You now know the difference between saying “35% of Americans” and “35% of respondents to this survey.”
You also know the latter is almost always what you are [...]

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Twitter 101: The 4 Tenets of Building A Twitter Following

Twitter can be daunting for the uninitiated. Especially for brands jumping into Twitter for the first time.
How do you handle jumping into the conversation without seeming like the new kid on the block?
How do you even find people to talk to?
There’s often a lot of factors that go into maintaining an engaging and “good” Twitter [...]

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How To Post To A Facebook Page As “Yourself” When You Are A Page Administrator

Fair warning, none of the solutions below are complete answers to this issue. They are workarounds. Let’s hope Facebook is listening and bakes in this functionality in the future.
The Challenge
If you are the administrator of a Facebook page (a.k.a., a business profile), you may have experienced the frustration in not being able to write Wall [...]

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