A year ago, I cautioned people that if we aren’t careful, Twitter was going to eventually be a bunch of PR people talking to a bunch of PR people. Then, last week, I boldly predicted that I think Twitter is going to die if they don’t quickly figure out how to make money. So I was anxious to hear the big advertising announcement by Twitter earlier this week…hoping they’ve figured out how to monetize, and balance the professions who participate in, my favorite social platform.

Um, not so much. Continue Reading »

I’ve had a ton of people ask me why I’m not at SxSW and, rather than repeating myself via direct message, I figure I talk about transparency all the time so I should tell you why I’m not there.

I run a business. Granted, it’s a small business, but I have employees, I have payroll to cut, I have checks to sign, I have clients to answer to, and I have goals to achieve. So, just like any other business expense, I have to weigh the pros and cons of the return on investment, not just on the out-of-pocket costs to attend, but also on the time lost that I could be working with clients (i.e. making money). Continue Reading »

I  published this on Associated Content last week and thought it is a good post for Spin Sucks, as well. Enjoy!

By now, everyone has heard about Kevin Smith throwing a fit, and telling his more than one and a half million Twitter followers about his experience with Southwest Airlines.

Two weeks ago, the filmmaker was flying from Oakland to Burbank on Southwest Airlines. Smith is a big guy. So big, in fact, that he always books two seats when he flies. On this occasion though, there was only one seat available on the stand-by flight, so he took that, which is where the problems began.

Because I’m a communication professional, I’ll not go into why I think his getting stand-by on an earlier flight, and not having two seats available (which he purchased on the later flight), is the reason he was asked to leave the plane. Nor will I discuss whether or not he was profiled for being “fat”. Instead I’ll focus on what Southwest did really well, and what they could have done better, from a communication perspective. Continue Reading »

I would love to say that I was riding my bike (still stuck inside on the trainer and put in 200 miles last week…so I have A LOT of thinking time) and I came up with this brilliant idea to let you pimp your blog here, but I cannot take credit.

A couple of weeks ago, Toronto HAPPO champion, Danny Brown, invited his blog readers to pimp their blogs in the comments of his blog. You should go check it out – An Invite to Pimp Your Blog – because there are a myriad of blogs on there, which surprised me. I thought it would be all PR, social media, or marketing blogs. When, in fact, those are in the minority. Continue Reading »

Spending as much time as I do speaking, writing, and counseling clients on the shift in how we communicate, Twitter invariably comes up at least once a day (if not more). People don’t understand why they’d want to read about what someone had for lunch. Or, sometimes, someone will tell me they HAVE to get on Twitter because it’s all everyone talks about and they need to have a new way to sell their wares because the old ways are no longer working.

So rather than listen to me talk about how Twitter is not a sales tool or say that, yes, some people talk about what they had for lunch, I thought I’d pull some of my favorite case studies to show how you can use Twitter for your business. By now it’s pretty easy to understand the consumer implications so, instead, I’m going to show you how businesses that work with other businesses use Twitter to generate leads (and revenue).

Caution – this is  really long post, so scan through the case study that is closely aligned with what your business does. Continue Reading »

I was catching up on my Google reader and subscribed blogs and came across Jeff Bullas, a blogger in Sydney. His blog, JeffBullas.com, discusses ideas and tips for better Internet marketing, including using the social networks as part of your overall strategy.

The blog post that caught my eye, however, is one that has 30 tips for making your blog rock. As I started to comment, I realized I had 10 additional ideas, which I share with you here (but make sure you also read his blog post…then you’ll have 40 ideas).

1. Ask your readers what they want you to write about

2. Let your readers pimp their own blogs in your comments section

3. Ask questions

4. Create contests (which goes along with the poll/survey idea)

5. Install the SEO All In One pack on your WordPress blog

6. Use StumbleUpon and AllTop to increase your readership

7. Create content for Associated Content by republishing your blog posts there (it helps with readership and news outlets will republish your content on their sites)

8. Comment on other blogs and news articles to show your thinking/expertise, but also link people back to your blog

9. Make sure, when you use Twitter to promote your blog post, that you’re tweeting about it more than once a day

10. Subscribe to SmartBrief newsletters, RSS feeds, and Google alerts in order to find ideas for new content

What do you do to make your blogs rock?

This post is guest blogged by Molli Megasko, an account executive with Arment Dietrich. Molli started her career with us and has been integral in how we’ve moved our business model in the past 18 months. She is our Facebook guru and is here to talk to you about creating a fan page, engaging with your fans, and developing creative ideas for posts and photos.

Yesterday every person wanted to be on Facebook and today every company wants a fan page.  When working with clients I begin with the same five tips and we work from there.  If you can master these five, the fun strategic stuff (contests, crowdsourcing, and word-of-mouth) comes easy.  And don’t forget, I get paid to do this, so I would pay attention! Continue Reading »

The tagline contest started on my personal Facebook page when one of my crazy friends suggested we have a slogan such as Arment Dietrich: Better than Sex. As you can imagine, it created a fun little conversation, which got me thinking, “What if we practiced what we preach and crowdsource a new tagline?”

So we started the conversation on Facebook and then we moved it here. All in, we had 206 entries, which we narrowed down to our top 20 favorites. Then we let you vote here for your favorite (or, in some cases, favorites because we do, after all, live in Chicago – vote early, vote often). We then took the top five and we asked our clients to vote on their favorite. Continue Reading »

In all of my years working with Web guys, I’ve never found someone as good at search engine optimization (SEO) as Nick Harrison at Dashal. Watching him work SEO is like watching a carefully choreographed ballet. Everything he does has a part and, when it all comes together, you suddenly own not just the first couple of listings, you own the entire first page. I asked him to share his wisdom here…SEO for bloggers.

When asked about SEO, most people will tell you they have no clue how it is achieved, even after reading everything they can find. In fact, most people don’t realize they can do things on their own to improve their site’s SEO with nominal effort and knowledge.

But I’m not going to lie to you, SEO isn’t easy. There is a lot to know and most of that knowledge is obtained by doing it, rather than reading about it. A true SEO professional spends a lot of his time learning how the search engine spider thinks, what it likes to eat, and what makes it feel warm fuzziness. So, I am not going to write a 300 page blog post and teach you every intricate detail about SEO. What I do share is that you can improve your blog’s SEO without being an expert coder or reading five books to understand only about a third.

Here are five key points and tips that will help increase your blog’s SEO as soon as you start: Continue Reading »

I spend a lot of time of time on the road speaking to Vistage groups, doing keynotes, providing workshops, and sitting on panels. The topic?  Social media for executives. The one thing all of my audiences have in common is they all are business leaders and they don’t understand how to translate social media to their companies. Continue Reading »