Four tactics to take corporate social media to the next level

Social media and the corporation

In most companies, social media lives in marketing and/or corporate communications. That’s fine for brand and corporate efforts, but if your company’s social media activities are restricted to just those two functions, you’re not getting everything out of social media that you could be. Companies should think about social media at two levels: The brand [...]

Why you should have multiple email accounts

I have a confession to make: I’ve had something on my to-do list for several months now that I’ve been procrastinating on. “Record all email accounts and passwords in one place.” Over the last few months I have been using Clipperz to store my passwords for various accounts. I spend a lot of time online, [...]

Why you should attend ConvergeSouth

Blogs and social media are great, but you can often learn more, meet more people and have a richer experience attending conferences, seminars and other events in person. There’s a big difference between skimming a blog post in your RSS reader and the immersive, interactive experience of a conference. That’s why, if you’re interested in [...]

Six tips for getting more out of conferences

I recently attended Ragan’s Social Media for Communicators conference in Atlanta (which was excellent — the folks at Ragan did a great job finding speakers and putting on a great event). For 2½ days about 500 of us met at Coca-Cola headquarters and heard first-hand how some of the country’s best known companies are using [...]

Four things readers want

What do readers want? And not just readers, but viewers, listeners – audiences for all media. If creating content is part of your marketing strategy then you’ve got to figure out what content your audience wants. What kind of blog posts, ebooks, podcasts or videos will attract the most people, get shared most often and [...]

Why you should stop trying new social media sites

Google Wave. Google Buzz. Farmville. Foursquare. Gowalla. Yelp. The list goes on and on. There are more social media sites, social media apps and cool online things that people are talking about than I will ever have time to fully explore. Even though I make my living in part by helping companies use social media, [...]

30 content ideas for an email newsletter

One day your boss comes into your office and announces that he wants to publish an email newsletter about your department, company or organization. And then he gives you the job of actually producing it. He gives you a deadline and says “I look forward to seeing a draft of the first edition next week.” [...]

Five mistakes newbie bloggers make

I’ve been blogging for about 10 years now. Along the way I’ve learned a lot. I’ve also made a lot of mistakes. A lot. So, if you’re new to blogging and determined to be successful at it, here are five mistakes to avoid. Mistake #1: Not sticking with it. Some bloggers see a lot of [...]

How to use personas in blogging

Many marketers use personas to help them better understand their customers and design products and marketing campaigns that will be attractive to those customers. You can use them to improve your blog or other content marketing efforts — podcasts, videos, white papers and so forth. What is a persona? A persona is a fictional character [...]

Why you (or others) should make time for social media

Have you heard these lines? “There’s so much noise and clutter out there, it seems as though social media hasn’t really matured enough to be a useful tool.” “Social media’s fine for some industries, but not ours.” “I just don’t have time for social media.” Or perhaps the line is some variation on one these. [...]