This morning I caught a post on the Huffington Post about how a group of soldiers who had come from Afghanistan and just come off an 18 hour layover had been charged $2800 in excess baggage fees [including one guy's weapon case] by Delta Airlines. Writing this post now it’s grown to be the Huff Pro’s homepage and the YouTube video of the soldier’s interactions [yes, they filmed it] now has over 170,000 listed views. It’s a rough day to be in Delta’s PR room.

But this isn’t just about Delta. It’s about how we as “corporate” set policies that potentially lock thousands of our employees into a position where they are forced to do things that get our brand to the front page of major news outlets in a social media disaster. Continue reading →

Last week I wrote about engaging on community forums to reach influencers and build up brand conversation. Ideas are good but real world is better and today I stumbled across a seeding program by Gunnar OPTIKS on the Alienware Gaming forums that shows exactly why every brand should be looking at forums as a part of their social arsenal. Let’s take a look… Continue reading →

Yesterday it was Twitter follow; today it’s Google +1. Add that to Facebook Like & Send, Tweet, LinkedIn Share and throw a basic email icon in for “old school” users and RSS for power ones and that’s 8 different options … Continue reading →

As the original social network, forums dominated the web for since the early days and have grown along the way. Often started as a hobby or network between friends, these small sites can reach hundreds of thousands, even millions of users and unlike the big networks, the topics can be very focused from Frequent Fliers to Disneyland Tricks to Headphones. But just as the close-knit community built and user to user focus of forums give them huge reputation power, it makes entering into them tricky to say the least. Continue reading →

Right now it’s around 2:30pm pacific time and about 45 minutes ago I caught wind of an escalating crises the apparel brand Urban Outfitters is now facing. Updated comments now appear at the end of the post. The background As … Continue reading →

In the first part of my post I explained how Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to help users see the posts they are most connected too. While intended to help end users, this system can kill as much as 70% of the visibility of a page, I even mentioned a client I’m working with who has seen their views go down despite a 5x growth in fans. So now that we’re agreed on the importance of having a good EdgeRank score, it’s time to discuss the Do’s & Don’ts to get there. Continue reading →

Pageviews, visitors, time on site have all been eclipsed by fans as the go to metrics for digital engagement. For most digital / social managers, management is looking at one thing and one thing alone to gauge success: how many fans do we have on Facebook?! But if pageviews were a misleading indicator for websites, fan counts could be a killer robbing your company of a chance to succeed in the social space due to a little system known as EdgeRank that at this very minute is reducing the impact of your every post! Continue reading →

So much emphasis is being placed on driving Facebook “likes”, Twitter followers, YouTube subscribers these days that we seem to be forgetting the user in the drive to grow, grow, grow. In the earl[ier] days of social networking it was fairly novel just to have a brand page that you promoted, regularly posted too, and *gasp* replied on. Now that’s the norm. That and a lot more. So standing out requires doing more than raising your hand and saying “I’m here”.

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Disclosures up front:  I’m not a financial analyst, mind reader or anything resembling a stock broker and as I didn’t buy in to LNKD at market open I’m just a bystander in this game. Normally I wouldn’t touch an IPO … Continue reading →

A couple of weeks ago a client who runs marketing for a mid-sized retailer called for some advice on staffing up her social team. I’ve been helping her to find a social lead but that takes time and she’s been … Continue reading →