By now you have heard that Angelina Jolie has joined Twitter but has no intention of tweeting.  She just doesn’t want anyone else doing it with her name. Smart reputation management and, assuming for a moment that Angelina is as intelligent as this makes her sound, she has correctly identified the two illusions that social [...]

Imagine a future without business cards. No more fumbling through your purse or wallet searching for that plumber your sister’s friend recommended. No more exclamations of grief after finding a crumpled up wad of paper in the dryer that was once a potential client’s calling card. No more having to carry a separate wallet just [...]

I’m a stickler for following Associated Press Style when I write, so I’m thrilled the 2010 AP Stylebook includes a new Social Media Guidelines section. The new book, released June 2, gives writers guidelines for using social media like Facebook and Twitter as professional tools. It also features 42 entries on terms like app, friend [...]

I am by no means a Foursquare expert. In this way, I’m a lot like many Fortune 500 brands. Currently, the Foursquare landscape is dominated largely by small businesses—mostly restaurants, hotels and other local service-related businesses. There’s no reason why national brands of all sizes can’t utilize the service and create meaningful and ultimately profitable [...]

Facebook is no stranger to negative feedback. Nearly every advancing step of Facebook’s social platform has been met with an equal push back from users. The most recent batch of changes, announced at the Facebook Developer’s conference last month, have been no exception. They’ve incited backlash from both users and the media, and raised serious [...]

As I laughed along to the new Saturday Night Live episode that ran on May 8, it struck me how my enjoyment that evening, fueled by the hosting skills of Betty White and a bevy of the series’ most popular female cast members, was made possible by the sheer power of social media. The idea [...]

Social media has revolutionized the way companies and customers interact.  It’s provided an exposed platform for consumers to voice their opinions about brands and products—a terrifying thought for most, if not all companies. In an interview entitled Customer Service is the New Marketing (see video) Lane Becker provides insight on the power of building relationships [...]

In 2009, Ashton Kutcher set out to be the first in the twitterverse to obtain one million followers. These days it’s not uncommon for celebrities and popular brands to hit one million. In fact, many have soared beyond two, three, and even four million followers. Brands like Zappos, Southwest Airlines, and WholeFoods have all passed [...]

OK Go danced across the Internet in 2006 with the music video “Here It Goes Again”— a video the band filmed for about $5 and featured them doing a choreographed dance routine on treadmills. Millions of people shared it over the Internet, which launched the song into the Billboard 100 and earned the group a [...]

I recently came across a discussion in a Social Media Marketing group on LinkedIn entitled, “How Many Social Media Profiles Do You Actively Manage?”  The moderator was interested in just how many social media accounts the average consumer logs into at least once a week. The discussion garnered over 650 comments from social media nerds [...]