When it comes to Google+, it seems like you either love it or hate it. Some people have really embraced it and others have totally ignored it or took it for a spin and never came back.

Source: socialmouths.com → | ∞ Permalink

Want your link to get the most traction on Twitter? Post it on a Monday between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images See Also Mark Zuckerberg Will Personally Sell ~$1 Billion Worth Of Facebook Shares At IPO REVEALED: How To Build Apps For Facebook How To Control Facebook's Confusing, 'Labyrinthian' Privacy Settings Facebook just filed an amended S-1 revealing that it intends to& make available 337 million shares at an expected IPO price between $28 and $35. Facebook is selling 180 million of the shares, which would let the company raise between $4.9 billion and $6.3 billion. Other shareholders, including Mark Zuckerberg, are selling the remaining 157 million shares.

Source: businessinsider.com → | ∞ Permalink

A group of e-commerce start-ups, backed by some of the tech world's most pedigreed financiers, are betting that Facebook Inc can become an e-commerce powerhouse to rival Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

Source: moneycontrol.com → | ∞ Permalink

Sephora is getting a little more digital. Today the beauty chain rolled out a completely updated website with Pinterest and Instagram integration, an updated mobile site, and officially launched a program that will bring iPads to the store’s sales counters and put iPod touch point-of-sale devices in the hands of many of its sales associates.

Source: shareist.com → | ∞ Permalink

Marketers spent 16% more on search budgets in Q1 in the U.S. and 3% in the U.K. compared with the year-ago quarter, according to a report published Monday.

Source: mediapost.com → | ∞ Permalink

Brands on Facebook have some work to do in helping fans understand their message on the new Timeline brand pages. Users find some elements confusing, such as unexpanded apps and the “See More” breaks in content. Others, like cover images, may not be as important as you would think.

Source: searchenginewatch.com → | ∞ Permalink

It’s fashionable to feign indifference to your&Klout&score, which measures online influence. Some professionals think it’s uncool to seem too interested in their rankings; others believe all you need to worry about is creating good content. Not so fast, says Alex Lightman, author of&Brave New Unwired World: The Digital Big Bang and the Infinite Internet. Klout, he argues, is an indispensable way to showcase your expertise in a fast-changing marketplace – and a powerful egalitarian force that privileges know-how over who you know.

Source: forbes.com → | ∞ Permalink

Online video has moved to the mainstream: 81% of senior marketing executives now use online video content in their marketing programs, up from the 70% who did so a year earlier, according to a report by the Web Video Marketing Council (WVMC) and Flimp Media.The new quarterly report is based on a poll of seasoned, senior marketing executives, conducted via the WVMC website and related media channels.

Source: marketingprofs.com → | ∞ Permalink

As a small-business owner, if you decide there's good reason to develop your own mobile app, there are several ways to do it.

Source: entrepreneur.com → | ∞ Permalink

Marketing guru Seth Godin said that “small is the new big” a few years ago before Facebook and Twitter became tools for marketers. Godin says that SMEs are more deemed to be successful than big companies. A “small” could gradually become scalable than a “big” which carries a few liabilities already. This couldn’t be more true in the world of social marketing.

Source: socialmediatoday.com → | ∞ Permalink

On the 21st of March 2006, Jack Dorsey sent the first public tweet into the world (“just setting up my twttr”). Can you believe that was 6 years ago today? Dorsey was evidently one of the key people in the early days of Twitter, and today he still serves as the company’s executive chairman and product lead, combining the job with his role as CEO of Square (another company he co-founded). His ‘twttr’ tweet was the first of several billions, and counting. Fun facts: it took Twitter 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to reach the first billion tweets, and it took about 18 months for the first 500,000 users to sign up.

Source: thenextweb.com → | ∞ Permalink

Rick Bakas is the Founder of Bakas Media, a new media relations firm in San Francisco working with brands such as wine.com, ABC’s Bachelor Ben Flajnik, British Airways and Portalupi Winery. Rick is also VP of Marketing for mobile payments provider, Press Pay.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

By Matt McKenzie, Contributing Editor What defines a successful marketing automation initiative? When it comes to lead generation, it's largely a matter of focusing on quality over quantity, according to a new study from Gleanster Research. Gleanster's Gleansight Marketing Automation report surveyed more than 300 companies that have adopted marketing automation technology. Within that group, Gleanster analysts then identified top-performing companies, based on year-over-year improvements in three key areas: reductions in per-lead costs, increased customer acquisition rates, and increased return on marketing investments.

Source: demandgenreport.com → | ∞ Permalink

Facebook's analytics tool Insights will soon begin showing Page performance data in real-time or near real-time rather than on average 48 hour delay, according to our sources. Work on preparing for the switch to real-time reporting is apparently the cause of recent atypically long delays of 4 days or more, chronicled by one-off website WhyIsFacebookInsightsNotWorking.com. Impressions, reach, negative feedback, "people talking about this", and demographics of engagers could all start showing up live in the graphical Insights interface as well as the API. Real-time data reporting in Insights could give businesses the understanding necessary to drive higher ROI, which could attract more brands and advertisers to Facebook in the lead up to its IPO.

Source: techcrunch.com → | ∞ Permalink

Moving on to slippery ground, let’s talk about measuring social media ROI. While it’s not easy to measure ROI on social media, it really is not impossible either. Social media engagement involves interaction with a largely floating, geographically diverse population. The best way to do that is to measure ROI from the unique social media engagement perspective. Here, I suggest three ways of doing that.

Source: forbes.com → | ∞ Permalink

Scary thought, yes. But some trends do indeed prove timeless.

Source: marketingprofs.com → | ∞ Permalink

Earlier this month, the NYTimes took a deeper dive into the idea of “good attention vs. bad attention.” I wanted to keep the ball rolling on this idea, as it’s fundamental to thinking about social engagement with (and as) customers.

Source: customerthink.com → | ∞ Permalink

Scott leads Innosight’s Asian operations. His fourth book on innovation, The Little Black Book of Innovation, will be released in early 2012. Follow him on Twitter at @ScottDAnthony.

Source: blogs.hbr.org → | ∞ Permalink

Home › iMedia Connection Blog › Opinions One of the first steps in purchasing a new software system is buyer education. When it comes to marketing software, there is some confusion between email marketing software and marketing automation software. Many buyers see the two as synonymous, but in reality, the systems are very different, with a varied feature set designed for different types of buyers. First, let’s just break down the features: From the feature list comparison, you can see that while there is functional parity in some areas, marketing automation is far more sophisticated. While email marketing systems are designed to track interactions related to email campaigns, marketing automation systems track the chain of interactions across multiple channels and can then make intelligent decisions based on the buyer’s behaviors.

Source: blogs.imediaconnection.com → | ∞ Permalink

New Signs at Logan Airport Countdown When the Next Silver Line Buses Arrive TechStars Boston Startup Raises $1.4 Million Before Program Starts Cold, Snowy, Icy Boston Actually Ranks #1 Most Biked Walked City Over the last couple weeks we’ve seen an absolute frenzy of media activity around Google+ regarding implications for search, massive spikes in traffic and users late in 2011, and more. All that said, if you’ve been spending a lot of time on Google+ lately (it’s OK, I know you probably haven’t been… you want to say you have, but you haven’t) you may have noticed something completely uninteresting – the content. I suppose I have nobody to blame but myself, after all I specifically asked for all this lame content – I asked for all the updates I could ever want from my “favorite” brands, SEO optimization posts, the latest and greatest social media measurement strategies, pictures of donuts (Dunkin is pretty active), two million updates from CES, Pete Cashmore’s giant face… the list goes on.

Source: bostinno.com → | ∞ Permalink

Mobile - Some 89.6 million Americans used their mobile phone to access email for work or personal purposes during the three-month period ended November 2011, up 28% (19.5 million) from the 70.1&...

Source: marketingprofs.com → | ∞ Permalink

Social CRM Is Coming -- Are You Ready? - 01/04/2012

Source: mediapost.com → | ∞ Permalink

Now that 2012 is upon us, we wanted to share what marketing thought leaders and practitioners have identified as some of the biggest B2B opportunities for the upcoming year. If you’re familiar with MarketingSherpa research, I must warn you that, in this case, the data gathering was completely unscientific. MECLABS A/V Specialist Luke Thorpe and I simply wandered around the networking event at MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2011 in San Francisco, and thrust a microphone and camera into the face of every willing participant.

Source: sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com → | ∞ Permalink

Technology exploded in 2011. With the increased number of smartphones, iPhones becoming available in Verizon Stores, and iPads, Nooks, ebooks Tablets becoming more known and popular, social media also increased. As we say good-bye to 2011, we look forward to what’s to come in 2012.

Source: socialmediatoday.com → | ∞ Permalink

People who share an interest in music and movies are most likely to friend each other, new research finds. But books have no influence.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

Michael Maoz VP Distinguished Analyst 13 years at Gartner 26 years IT industry Michael Maoz is a research vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research. His research focuses on CRM and customer-centric Web strategies. Mr. Maoz is the research leader for both the customer service and support strategies area and customer-centric Web… Read Full Bio Coverage Areas: by Michael Maoz &|& December 7, 2011 &|& 3 Comments We’ve published the updated “Concise Social CRM Vendor Guide, 2012,” and if you are a client you can find it here: http://www.gartner.com/resId=1867115 . If you are not a client, here is the scoop: we are tracking over 100 vendors in the space. The loudest hype around social CRM is over, and now organizations are rolling up their sleeves. Those who wanted to ‘listen’ to Tweets and posts and forum answers have done it. Those organizations left the hype of social media monitoring behind two years ago.

Source: blogs.gartner.com → | ∞ Permalink

A Google doodle gave Mark Twain a warm birthday salute on Wednesday. But Facebook would have given Mark Twain a hard time. It's company policy, Mr. Clemens.

Source: csmonitor.com → | ∞ Permalink

Michael Maoz VP Distinguished Analyst 13 years at Gartner 26 years IT industry Michael Maoz is a research vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research. His research focuses on CRM and customer-centric Web strategies. Mr. Maoz is the research leader for both the customer service and support strategies area and customer-centric Web… Read Full Bio Coverage Areas: by Michael Maoz  |  November 17, 2011  |  Submit a Comment Name a three letter business acronym with more negative associations than CRM. Only ERP rivals CRM for the concept of failure, frustration, cost and unfulfilled promise. ERP is the discipline of managing your stuff, while CRM is about managing relationships with customers. Why is there so much rancor about CRM? We have been hearing the litany of derision for a decade: you can’t manage the customer. Correct, but where in the definition does it say you are managing the customer? The aspiration, which requires perspiration, is to manage the relationship.

Source: blogs.gartner.com → | ∞ Permalink

Business bloggers at Harvard Business Review discuss a variety of business topics including managing people, innovation, leadership, and more.

Source: blogs.hbr.org → | ∞ Permalink

Image Viral marketing. Is it worth your time, money, and effort? It can be. If you have the right Content, Community, and Catch. Or, as we call them, the 3 C’s. Content:

Source: socialmediatoday.com → | ∞ Permalink

Advice for steering your business clear of the most common blunders that can kill your entire marketing strategy.

Source: entrepreneur.com → | ∞ Permalink

Getting closer to customers is a top priority for every businesses. Today’s businesses are fervently building social media programs to do just this. But are customers as enthusiastic? Actually, most do not engage with companies via social media simply to feel connected. It turns out, customers are far more pragmatic. To successfully exploit the potential of social media, companies need to design experiences that deliver tangible value in return for customers’ time, attention, endorsement and...

Source: delphineremyboutang.wordpress.com → | ∞ Permalink