Businesses will again chase the promise of gains in practices using all this social stuff as the new method. However they will likely fail miserably if they don’t change how they relate to the people first. The Warning Label says: Don’t install this technology unless you can relate to people. Get it?

When people discuss all this “social stuff” it sounds like a different language to a lot of other people. The virtual world has a language all of its own. Learning a new language takes time, practice and understanding. Business leaders don’t typically have a lot of extra time to practice and understand a new language. [...]

The rise of social media has proven an amazing opportunity for marketers who have leveraged new technology to build their personal and professional network. There are some who have grown to social media fame through their ability to leverage this new technology - iJustine at Tastyblogsnack.com is a great example. Using the network [...]

Search engine visibility is the lifeblood of doing business online. Social media, blogging, and RSS - the buzzword trifecta - improve search engine visibility.  Social media sites provide high-ranking links back to your site, and it’s under your control.  However, buying decisions online are no longer the sole domain of search engines.  “Shopping” continues to [...]

At an e-commerce conference recently, I was speaking with an online marketing director for a mid-sized retailer. They are purely online (no brick-and-mortar presence,) and I was surprised to hear him refer to social media as being on the way down. He seemed convinced that, by the end of the year, there would [...]

Myspace finally decided to break their design, in a move that is sure to make a huge improvement and likely lead to an increase in adoption from people still on the fringe. Why is this relevant to businesses? Good question. Myspace finally getting around to doing a redesign means they could reach [...]

Joining social networks or other types of social media sites doesn’t mean you will automagically start getting valuable web traffic and possibly new customers. Like television advertising and radio advertising, there is a science to good messaging and finding the right audience (does anyone still advertise on the radio?) Since Twitter doesn’t allow [...]

There is no shortage of news and information about social media which can typically be placed into two camps: buzz and confusion.  I read an article today by Mark Walsh that got me thinking about why I believe in social media, and how to help keep people from feeling blinded by the buzz.
Let me start [...]

I’ve heard marketers express frustration with building their brands online, saying that effective branding strategies conflict with effective SEO strategies.  We’ve all seen sites that are heavily optimized that look ridiculous, like a giant page of keywords, while beautiful sites (some) struggle to make the important first few pages on Google.  Enter social media sites [...]