Homework for My Social Media Students

As many of you know, I sometimes teach social media seminars through the local community education program (as well I do private social media “tutoring.”  I have classes coming up in 2011 in Twitter and using social media to promote your blog.)  Many people benefit enormously from seeing someone else doing it and explaining it, [...]

How Others See Us

When was the last time you Googled yourself?  Or took a walk through your own online profiles?  Or went through your own website?  Maybe it is time.

Mass Innovation Nights and Twitter

As you probably know, Dan Englander and I started Mass Innovation Nights about 18 months ago.  What you might not know is that Mass Innovation Nights is more than just a monthly event to launch new products.  It has been a sandbox in which we frequently experiment with new social media marketing and online marketing [...]

Is the Retweet Button Killing Twitter?

The auto-retweet button on Twitter could be killing the very thing that Twitter is known for — commentary and an open interchange of ideas. 

PageRank for Dummies: 9 Deceptively Easy SEO Tricks

This week I’ve been busy putting together various marketing plans for 2010.  My simple nine-step action plan for increasing PageRank for one site is a lot more work than it sounds like.  Can you spot the steps that will require practically full-time resources?  Morale of the story: SEO, it’s real work.

Ford Tweetup – Lessons Learned

This week Jeff Cutler (@jeffcutler) and Christine Koh (@bostonmamas) were the oh-so-gracious hosts for the Boston #fordtaurus Tweetup (see the new Ford Taurus SHO and drive it!)  The local event was part of a grand tour (The Summer of Taurus) for the new cars, pairing the vehicles in different cities with local Twitterati/bloggers and a [...]

Un-natural Acts: Pumping up the Volume on Social Networks

I was reading Chris Brogan’s Blog — always highly recommended — and one of his recent posts, Quid Pro No, got me thinking about how some social networking websites are un-naturally inflating their user numbers by creating an environment where reciprocal friending is de rigueur.  Everything from address scraping to spammy auto-tweeting when your friends [...]

I Hug Complete Strangers

Except they aren’t really strangers.  I “know” them from social media.

It’s 1994 all over again

I have a deep and abiding sense of deja vu.  I’ve been here before. Today, it’s Twitter; in 1994, it was the Web.

What is Mass Innovation Nights?

I’m now further sub-dividing my time on this planet and I have to blame it all on being a bad board member.