Escargo-ing Viral

As a firm that specializes in understanding social media, we at CPRM get thrown for a loop sometimes. Recently, with a foot of snow on the ground and newscasters reporting traffic snarls on the roads around Boston, I decided to work from home. My college student daughter was home for spring break and watching TV as I worked in the next room. In the afternoon, I had a conference call. In the middle of the call with my boss, a […]

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, more than reading a book or any of the numerous blogs out there — but there are wonderful books and blogs out there.  This blog […]

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 techniques, especially Twitter techniques (Twechniques?). 

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 (semi-random) Ford executive.  (Boston’s event brought Corporate Counsel David Leitch out from Detroit.)  There were lots of interesting PR, Social Media, events and business lessons […]

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 sign up, to old-fashioned guilt is used to get you to sign-up for sites you never intend to visit again.