Podcast: Driving Awareness & Engagement with Social

One of the things I love about my job is that I get a chance to meet and interview tons of interesting people. Some are execs at big companies? Others are authors of thought provoking books. And some are just plain smart individuals who are teaching companies how to embrace the power of social networking [...]

The “Oprah-ization” of Twitter (HINT: This is a Good Thing)

A big thing happened last week in the world of social networking/lifestreaming site, Twitter. One of the largest media moguls in the world — Oprah Winfrey — decided to sign up. This came on the heels of other celebs like the NBA’s larger than life, Shaquille O’Neal, actors Jimmy Fallon, Ellen DeGeneres, Ashton Kutcher and [...]

Social Marketing ROI Report (Video)

Today is a red letter day for Powered. We’re announcing the release of our annual Social Marketing ROI report. To kick it off, we’re holding a webcast (there will be an archived version) with Bill Harvey of TRA, Brian Halligan of HubSpot and Kathy Warren of Powered (that’s us). See the video below for more [...]

It Takes a (Twitter) Village

Yesterday when I picked my daughter up from school – she’s in fourth grade – she almost sheepishly showed me a necklace I knew I’d never seen before. When I asked where she got it she said “It was on my desk”, but I knew that wasn’t the whole story. After a little carefully poking [...]

Give Before You Get [My Stump Speech]

For what it’s worth, the original title of this post was originally “Are You Smarter than a Drug Dealer?” It came out of a conversation I was having with our CEO about the fact that the business model we encourage our clients to adopt – namely, “give before you get” – in many ways is no different than that [...]

Engagement is a Means to an End – Measure the End, Not Just the Means.

Many marketers, PR reps, pundits and analysts are seeking proof that social media has a demonstrable impact on business. A Google search of “how to measure engagement” yields over 12M results with claims of “how to REALLY measure engagement,” and proposed formulas that are smart but insanely complex and still don’t answer the question regarding [...]

The Diminishing Law of Advertising

In a prior life, I spent a lot of my time focused on advertising. At least enough so that when I openly question its effectiveness, I have a leg to stand on. This may fly in the face of conventional wisdom given the fact that NBC found the demand for last Sunday’s Super Bowl spots [...]

Your Brand: The Bridge to Community

My colleagues Aaron Strout and Bill Fanning have gotten a great conversation started around the difficulty of connecting community with a brand that seems not quite as “community ready,” starting with a recent post titled “Would you join a Toothpaste Community?“
This is a question we get all the time in initial sales calls with savvy [...]

The Loyalty Effect

 
If the title of this post sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the title of a well-known book by Bain & Company fellow, Fred Reichheld. While I’m not planning on talking about Fred or his book, I do want to dig into the concept of customer loyalty – a topic that is more important to marketers now more than ever for [...]

Hubspot Keeps Delivering the Value

 Last night, I got a direct message from my friend, Mike Volpe, who is the VP of marketing at Boston based company, Hubspot. In his DM, Mike was letting me know that Hubspot would be releasing an informative report this morning on the “State of Twitter.” If you use Twitter as an individual or a business, I [...]