With the buzz out there, it’s easy to see why brand owners, marketers and of course the hotly contested social media experts, are extremely amped up about social, social, social but just because social is right in front of us … Continue reading →

As our sites go from 10 reviews per item to 1,000s, it’s no longer enough to say each product has freeform comments and a 1-5 rating. Instead marketers [and their review vendors] need to adjust for value, time and price before we sell ourselves down… and sell our customers the wrong level of solution. This means pulling price, features out from review details and summarizing them up to quantify a $5,000 amp versus a $500 one so that consumers aren’t just seeing what’s most popular, they’re seeing what’s most respected in the category of value they are looking for. Continue reading →

As articles continue to popup like Tory Burch’s win of $165 million against counterfeit selling sites, it’s clear just how big of a problem fakes from China and other developing nations are becoming but what’s not being discussed is the … Continue reading →

While I’ve expressed my concerns on deal sites many times, I can’t help but wonder if the businesses buying into deals themselves are getting a free pass in the equation. Today I’m asking a simple question: After the deal gets signed and the customer influx starts up, are daily deal businesses doing anything to insure their own success or merely blaming their marketing partner for a bad deal? Continue reading →

From mega tradeshows CES, IFA, E3, Comic Con to niche & industry shows DEMA, IRCE, NAMM, and many more that I’ve since thrown away the badge from, I’ve made it to a lot of tradeshows in the past few years and every show I tell myself I’m going to create a killer post about the great uses of social media I see yet after every show I walk away empty handed.

Most campaigns start – and stop at a QR code and a contest which, let’s face it, is no more social than a lead gen form. But with a campaign that goes the distance to bring people in and aggregate content out, social media offers the opportunity to not just sell more, but give your tradeshow a whole new type of ROI by letting the investment live long after the booth comes down. Continue reading →

So it’s only been a few hours since my post on Delta Airlines snafu with a group of soldier’s over baggage fees which turned into a viral / pr crises in just a few hours. Not only is the issue all over Twitter, Facebook and news sites but the video from the soldier’s has passed 200,000 views at last count. So while my first post was really about empowering your ground-level employees to avoid bad customer experiences, whether they go viral or not, Delta has turned this into a great example of how you should handle social incidents. Continue reading →

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 →