This first ran on Dec. 29, but we’re re-running because most of us didn’t work much that week!

Guest post by Andy Donovan, founder and president of Donovan Group Inc. and a proud Canadian.

I consider myself a bit of a story teller. And conversely, I enjoy other story tellers. This is why, as a communicator, I enjoy what I do for my clients, as I see every opportunity to tell their story a chance to capture the attention and imagination of a new or existing audience.

With the advances in technology now available to us, being able to tell a story has never been easier, or more challenging to sift through the amount of noise online. Second, it would give me a chance to share details on a tool that I absolutely adore in terms of telling stories – social media releases. And third, for purely selfish reasons, I also get to share details on how I use social media releases for professional as well as personal reasons.

A social media release can help bring your standard press release (or overall message, for that matter) to life by incorporating print, audio, video, and interactive assets into one dynamic and engaging web page. For more than three years, I have enjoyed the privilege of creating these pages for my clients that have helped to enhance their traditional and online footprint with media and the general public. Continue Reading »

Here at Spin Sucks, we make a habit of giving our content away for free. We pride ourselves in offering some of the best and most frequent posts on entrepreneurship, marketing, PR, and social media at no cost to our readers.

Yes, we’re really nice people. And, yes, we enjoy sharing with our friends. But I don’t think it will come as a shock to anyone that we’re not doing all of this for our health. We’re true believers in content marketing, and Spin Sucks is our best attempt at leveraging great content to build our business as a digital marketing agency.

So it’s only natural that when we were approached by Social Media Informer about making our content available on their social media content aggregation website, it was a no-brainer. Be included as part of “the best content about social media for business”? Share editorial space with the likes of Simon Mainwaring, Dave Fleet, and Erik Qualman? Why would we say no to an opportunity like that? Continue Reading »

As a former journalist and current manager of Spin Sucks, a proud outpost of branded content, many of my old colleagues would probably say that I’ve gone over to the dark side.

When I was a cub reporter at a small newspaper on the central coast of California nearly a decade ago, a respected veteran reporter on staff, upon resigning from her post, left me a note saying she was certain I would run a publication one day. Continue Reading »

Is your social media marketing strategy geared toward growing your sales or building your brand? Or are you trying to achieve both?

Previous posts of mine about getting more comments on your blog and content versus conversation have engendered debate in the form of blog posts and comments regarding the value of conversation and community in comparison to lead generation and bottom line outcomes.

While I’m proudly a touchy-feely “community” guy (my job title is community manager, after all), I can’t deny there won’t be an opportunity to build a community around a business if there aren’t enough sales to keep its doors open. Continue Reading »

Catherine Novak over at WordSpring wrote a great post Tuesday on the merits of content versus conversation. As the word count on the comment I began to leave for her continued to grow, I realized I just might have a blog post of my own on my hands.

In her post, Catherine quotes Cory Doctorow (via Clay Shirky): “Conversation is King, content is just something to talk about.”

When I blog, my primary goal is to strike a conversation. Some people write for catharsis. Some to preach. Some to sell. I write for conversation.

“But this very post is published on a business blog,” you might be thinking. “Isn’t the point of a business blog to sell?”

And it would be difficult to argue with you – or with Joe Pulizzi, who wrote a solid post of his own on Tuesday entitled “Sales Is the Reason Your Content Exists.” But, wait, hear me out. Continue Reading »

Well, I’m three weeks into my job here as community manager of Spin Sucks. It’s an exciting position that brings new interactions with different people every day. It’s so much fun playing in the sandbox with you all that it doesn’t feel like a job at all!

As I continue to wrap my head around what exactly it means to “manage” an online community and what/who Spin Sucks’ community consists of, I’ve looked at many other sites for comparison and contrast. Continue Reading »

I am super excited to introduce you to Dan Hindin, the new community manager at Arment Dietrich! While Dan is with us for only three months while he finishes his master’s degree in integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University, we’re all hoping he decides to join us full-time after he graduates. In today’s vlog, I ask Dan the one thing he wants to accomplish by the end of August and what it’s really like to work here.