Zappos is one of those companies that gets thrown around whenever social media case studies come up. If you have followed the industry over the last 2 years you have undoubtedly seen them come up in PowerPoint presentations and various speeches on the topic of ‘who’s doing it right’ in social media. And, for good reason.  Zappos [...]

Last week, I wrote a guest post on the Social Media Examiner about real time search and it’s affect on businesses. Now that Google and other search engines are displaying real time feeds from Twitter and Facebook in the search results, brands need to understand the implications. I would suggest reading the full article; but [...]

Every year closes with summaries of the top stories as well the predictions for the year ahead. Heading into Twenty-Ten, I contributed to several prediction roundups including Junta42, ContactCenterWorld, ZDNet, among others. What I didn’t do however, is write about the endless predictions for the future of marketing, media, business, et al. While there were [...]

Forrester recently released a new report tracking the future of US interactive marketing through 2014. Authored by Shar VanBoskirk, with Christine Spivey Overby, Niki Scevak, and Angie Polanco, Forrester predicts that interactive marketing is poised to grow at a 16% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

The $500bn global marketing industry is driven by metrics. TVRs, GRs, OTS, TGI, ABC, BARB, CPC, CPA, PI, CPM, frequency, benchmarking, response, reach, hits – the range of measurement systems has exploded as the complexity of marketing continues to increase. Which has led to a gaming mentality among some parts of the industry, where almost [...]

Anyone who is a member of of our community likely knows that I am a fan of Cartman. It all comes down to Cartman’s understanding of marketing principals:
Being perceived as a trusted authority is a powerful marketing tool for many reasons. Here are a few examples…

Everyone has been watching Facebook to see if it can monetize its enormous traffic to become a going business. And the focal point of that monetization effort is advertising, just like Google’s. And you’ve probably read about Facebook ads, or perhaps even tried them yourself. And maybe you’ve decided that they just don’t work. You [...]