This week’s top conversational marketing stories:

The Sweet Opportunity of Choosing Your Customer – on Chris Brogan Blog

In this blog post with more than 470 social reactions, Chris Brogan discusses some best practices when selecting a customer to work with. From the post, “Hold on there, Brogan. It’s a barely recovering economy and my kids have to eat. Why should I choose who my customers are? Why should I go out of my way to disqualify potential buyers? Because customers that aren’t a fit create friction.” He goes on to explain that a lack of relationship or motivation to work with a customer could in fact be more detrimental than money can disguise. Having a poor relationship with a client that you are just in it for the money with will cause procrastination, lack of motivation and in turn, will detract time from other clients you may have positive relationships with. Having one bad egg in the bunch could spoil them all in this case, so it is very important to work with customers you are able to maintain  a strong working relationship with to deliver the best results for them as well as your own company.

Leading Brands Becoming Active on Instagram – on MarketingProfs

“The world's leading companies are becoming more active on Instagram, according to a new study by Simply Measured: Among the brands listed on the Interbrand Top 100, 40 percent now have an Instagram profile. That penetration level is far behind that of Facebook (98 percent) and Twitter (94 percent), but it is still impressive considering Instagram is much newer and mobile-only, and it has no administrative or brand management features.” This post with more than 360 social reactions looks deeper into the numbers of this study and examines top 100 brands’ activity on this social channel. This outlet could eventually be successful for marketers in all industries as it continues to develop; it is a positive sign that these top brands are seeing so much success through marketing with images.

Why Blogging Is Even More Critical In the Age of Social – by John Jantsch on Duct Tape Marketing  

This with more than 310 social reactions investigates the inquiry that blogging may be turning into an outdated tactic with the emergence and proliferation of social networks. Yes, social networks may be simple and are very interaction friendly, but the bottom line is, housing content on a site using a blog is the simplest and most effective SEO strategy available to users. From the post, “Using blogging software is not a trend or tool or even a behavior, it’s the single most important marketing element of your Total Online Presence and attempting to build a business today without using blogging software as your foundation is simply indefensible. No matter what the excuse – we don’t have the time, we don’t know what to write, we tried it once, our customers don’t read blogs, our dog ate it – the cost of not actively creating and housing valuable content online is too high and you are absolutely kidding yourself if you think engaging prospects on Google+ with the occasional profound bit of banter is enough.” This post includes some sub-headings such as “Blogging is the stablest form of SEO,” “Blogging builds your email list,” “Blogging drives point of view” and “Blogging creates other options.” Read into this post to see why blogging remains vital for your brand, especially SEO efforts.

Let's keep the conversation moving forward! Do you ensure a solid working relationship before signing a client? Is your brand active on Instagram? And how important is blogging to your company?