Social Media

How a Bad Review Can Be Good for Your Business

Bad reviews! Ugh. The Internet. That’s how most business owners respond when a bad review lights up their computer screen. I deal with bad reviews from both sides. As a business and marketing consultant, I help my clients build their reputation and grow their social proof online (and that usually includes reviews). One of the…
Hevetica perfume

When You Need More Helvetica

This—Helvetica Perfume—shouldn’t surprise me that Helvetica could become a perfume when we see it in every other facet of our lives. This is almost as good as when I generated a promotional piece from a client that requested I use the typeface, “Hel-teef-a.” This is one gag gift item that I had to share as…

Email, Organic Search Outperforms Social Media for Selling Online

A fascinating article on Wired revealed that organic search results and email trumped Twitter, Facebook and affiliate banner ads when it comes to attracting buying customers on online retail sites. The report, published by marketing data provider Custora, analyzed data from 72 million customers shopping on 86 different retail sites. The study tracked customers from their…

How Social Tools Enable Great Customer Service

When I see a company doing something right, I always want to write about it. Of course, it’s pretty fun to write about those who get it wrong too! But I’ll save that for another post 🙂 My Experience I recently experienced excellent customer service from Brabantia, who makes our cool and beautiful Touch Bin.…

Over 90% of Employers Use Social Recruiting

We often hear from company leaders asking how and why their company should use social media in their business. With employee recruitment and turnover costs reaching beyond $3000 on average (according to the Wall Street Journal), recruiting talented employees through social media is a no-brainer. In fact, we’ve been saddened that so many companies have…

Business Lessons from the Bus Monitor Viral Video

I was researching social media trends the other day. The most interesting thing I read was about 24,000 people donating $541,000 to send a bullied bus monitor grandma in NY on vacation. We’ve all seen viral videos and enjoyed many of them, like the dog talking and the baby laughing. But most of those videos…

Great Article: Top 10 Facebook Privacy Settings

With all the brouhaha recently about the Facebook user agreement, many started thinking about their privacy and their information on social networking sites. Thanks to Twitter, I came across this excellent summary on “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know” on AllFacebook.com.  I thought it was very helpful, and since I’ve recommended it to…

Linkedin: Why You (or Your Group) Should Use It

I’ve been on Linkedin for a long time, and at first, I thought it was going to just be a resume posting site. I knew it had potential, but it seemed to be lacking something. In the past 4 months, Linkedin has really started taking off. I think it’s starting to reach critical mass: everyone…

Linkedin Now Has Events: Great for Associations and Local Networking Groups

Business networking website Linkedin.com now has an events function, which is a great step to really becoming a competitor to Facebook. For all of us who have ever worked in associations, this feature makes the pulse jump a tad! You can add an event and then link your participation to it, as a speaker, organizer…

10 Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals & Journalists

Every once in a while I come across a post on the web that is so valuable that I have this urge to print it and save it somewhere in a vault of “important informaton.” However, these days, I am retraining myself to save the link or if I must print it, print it to…

Promote Your Event with No Marketing Budget

I recently read an article in the ASAE Communications Section Newsletter about an association offering a new conference… one hitch: they had no marketing budget. What did they do? According to Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, his association used new media to inexpensively and effectively promote their conference. Della…