YO - hanging with the JD in CB!

Checking out Amazon Associates

Just heard that Blogger has integrated Amazon Associates and I'm trying to test it out.

It is good timing I suppose with X'mas around the corner. Here's my wish list:

Stephen Wiltshire: The Human Camera

LECTURE: Eric Schmidt at the Michael Hammer Memorial

Thoughtful lecture at the memorial for Dr. Michael Hammer.

client content

Social Media Landscape in July 2009

Juliette Powell, John Perry Barlow and Paul Krugman talk about the social media landscape in 2009. From commercial brands to big business, all eyes are on Facebook, Twitter, and the digital generations.

Working on a Saturday - sigh!

But getting my Farmville on first - I'm all about the essentials...

How To Track Twitter Follower Growth? Twitter Counter!

If you're starting to get really addicted to Twitter and want to track the growth of your followers, TwitterCounter.com is the application to do it with.


It helps you track the growth of who's following you on Twitter, who you're following, and also your Tweet frequency. Below is a look at my stats:


I still need to figure out how to post the widget as it doesn't seem to want to work for me right now.

I'm also waiting for someone to develop an application that can roll this data in with actual Tweets data and who followed you when to see what is driving your growth. That would be worth more to me than my pimped out Honda monster-truck civic.

Pete Blackshaw: Defending Against Negative Blogs

Nielsen executive, book author and Ad Age columnist Pete Blackshaw is astounded by the number of brand managers who still have no coherent strategy for dealing with negative blog posts. For brands that may look to defend themselves when bloggers get their hands on something potentially damaging, the most important question that Blackshaw believes you should be asking yourself is "what are we doing to empower the influencers to get your side of the story out"?

In fact, this is a recycling of the old adage that I still hold dear to my heart, "content is king". Thus, if you don't have content on your site that addresses some of the negative claims about your brand circulating the web, don't expect bloggers to be creating it for you. Do your homework, find out what it is about your brand they're negatively buzzing about, and determine the validity of the buzz. The tricky part is dealing with situations where the negative buzz is valid and you don't have a plan in place to correct the issue; at that point it's a more serious product/marketing issue that needs to be brought to senior leadership for review.

Twitter 101 for Businesses

Twitter takes a while to get your head wrapped around, but if you're interested on behalf of your business, a great place to start is Twitter 101. In case you've been stuck under a rock for the past year, Twitter is a real-time communication platform that enables businesses to stay connected to their customers. Businesses can quickly share information with prospective clients/employees, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company.

Download the deck and discuss it with your boss; it's good stuff.

Ogilvy's Rory Sutherland: Life Lessons from an Ad Man

Great talk regarding advertising, value-creation and persuasion as a whole. Generally speaking, advertising adds value to a product by altering it's perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider real value.

Learn more about Rory Sutherland.

Who's driving the Social Media bus in the Enterprise Space?

Interesting clip by Olivier Blanchard discussing the evolution of social media, as well as who's been jumping on the social media band wagon. Many agencies especially have been largely unsuccessfully because of lack of true understanding around how to do it in a scalable fashion. He observes after reading a post by @jowyang that the Big 4 firms are moving in as well but wondering how they intend to actually do this effectively. At the same time, how will they address issues of strategy, implementation, execution and measurement.

Good Morning Marketers: Intro to Social Media Strategy

Why Hoteliers / Travel Companies Should Use Social Media

The Travel industry is no stranger to online marketing, and many are now starting to consider integrating social media into their marketing strategies.

Steve's 5 Starter Steps for Twitter

Great video from Steve Isaacs on 5 tips he wishes he knew when he was just getting started. Hope you find it useful as well!

Marketing a Start-up

Donna Novitsky discusses marketing strategies for start-ups. She addresses the importance of competitive positioning, as well as early client selection.

Hootsuite Video Tutorial

Hootsuite is the professional platform for professional Twitter clients and it is UNBELIEVABLY useful. Not only does it let you schedule future updates, it also allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts and even provides you with statistics. What else do you need?

Twitter Tips for Newbies

Great video by Chad where he explains how to use Twitter in a simple and easy-to-understand fashion.

Here are the quick take-aways:

1.) Define your purpose - what are you hoping to use Twitter for?

2.) Start following people, because many of them will follow you back.

3.) Start tweeting immediately - the sooner the better - but don't overdo it!

4.) Use the @Reply function to engage in conversations.

5.) Don't send spammy messages.

Twitter Raises $100b to Install Gold-encrusted Toilet Bowls.

Just joking. Twitter announced that it's raising $100b USD to fund the next phase of its development. By all accounts, the micro-blogging platform has had an excellent year with massive growth in the months of April (+ 13 million uniques, ~70% m/m) and June (+ 7 million uniques, ~20% m/m).

An interesting detail is that news worthy events (often times violent or shocking) typically spur user signup and usage, as the application becomes a crucial source of real-time information sharing as events are unfolding. Twitter saw spikes in usage and signup following the tragic Delhi bombings in September of last year as well as the June elections in Iran. As more of the world's population comes online to use social media to share what's happening in their lives, it will change the way we experience events (both good or bad).

Bwana.TV on Ping.fm

Bwana discusses using Ping.fm, a nifty little platform that lets you update to multiple networks simultaneously, which can save you LOTS of time especially if you're on all these networks.