Guest blogging is one of the most efficient, yet misunderstood, social media marketing tactics. It’s not new. In fact, it’s almost as old as blogging itself.  It started becoming a standout tactic just a few years ago. This post answers one of the most frequently asked questions: Is guest blogging good for “big guys?” By the way, “guest blogging, the time waster” is one of the myths I busted in my previous post for Social Media Examiner. Today’s article is one more argument in favor of guest bl...  show all text

posted by friends:  (2)

posted by friends of friends:  (8)

Even if you haven’t ever visited popular visual bookmarking site Pinterest, you might recognize its design elements — which have been popping up everywhere since the startup burst onto the mainstream scene in 2011. The site doesn’t use traditional web building blocks. “It’s almost like a window-shopping mode,” says Khoi Vinh, the former design director for NYTimes.com. “It puts the ball back in the user’s court,” muses Andrew Beck, a web designer at Blue Fountain Media. “It flattens the informa...  show all text

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (0)

Big TV events are becoming an increasingly popular catalyst of activity on social media, with sporting events being at the top of the list. Many of us can no longer enjoy a Super Bowl without checking Twitter every three seconds. Last year, there were several moments during the Super Bowl that set records for the most tweets per second during a sporting event, with a high of 4,064 TPS. The highs during the Super Bowl were no match for New Years Eve 2011 in Japan, which saw 6,939 tweets per seco...  show all text

posted by friends:  (2)

posted by friends of friends:  (8)

Facebook has announced what will likely be the tech industry's biggest Initial Public Offering of stock ever. What do practitioners of feminism, a philosophy centered in the experiences of women, have to say about the political economy of the world's biggest social technology company? They've raised a number of interesting questions so far. It seems that everyone has an opinion about Facebook's stated goal of being a force for good in the world. Feminists online have also raised questions about...  show all text

posted by friends:  (3)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)

Justin Connor and I recently published an article for Association of Corporate Counsel: Ten Action Steps When the Government Shows Up At...

posted by friends:  (3)

posted by friends of friends:  (0)

The 54th Grammy Awards ceremony is only eight days away and the Recording Academy is kicking off the next phase of its digital and social campaign. Under the heading of “We Are Music” the Academy and its partners are harnessing the power of social, mobile and digital to make the award show more modern than ever. The Recording Academy made the decision to invest in social and digital media several years ago (you can read Mashable’s past coverage of the 2010 and 2011 campaigns) and the organizati...  show all text

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (4)

Excitement about goals is often diminished by our fear of failure or the drudgery of work. If you’re short on passion, it might be because your goals are too small or the fear is too big. Do a job for a long time and achieve what you set out to achieve, and suddenly, the dream job becomes a trudge instead. The job hasn't changed--your dreams have. Mostly, though, it's about our fear. Fear is the dream killer, the silent voice that pushes us to lose our passion in a vain attempt to seek safety....  show all text

posted by friends:  (3)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)

Mr. Gazzara’s long acting career included playing Brick in the original “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway and roles in influential films by John Cassavetes.

posted by friends:  (2)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)

UPDATE, 12:32 p.m.Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, said during a Friday conference call that her understanding of Komen's announcement is that it's a complete reversal of the decision to bar funding to her group. "It's quite clear that Planned Parenthood and our health centers and our doctors are eligible now to work with Komen foundation again," Richards said, before adding that she hasn't actually talked to Komen leaders about the decision. "I certainly take them at their wor...  show all text

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (6)

Google has been busy documenting how the 2012 Republican primary affects search results. Newt Gringrich, for instance, experienced a huge surge in searches before winning in South Carolina. Stephen Colbert search traffic jumped ahead of all candidates after he announced his exploratory committee. And before the Iowa caucus, Iowans were searching for Ron Paul more than any other candidate. All of this has been brought to our attention by Google’s new elections dashboard and its politics blog. On...  show all text

posted by friends:  (2)

posted by friends of friends:  (4)

Warning: self-promotional Blog post to follow... I am very excited to announce that the name of my next book is: CTRL ALT DEL - Reboot  Your Business (and Yourself) in a Connected World. The official press release went out this morning via my publisher, Business Plus (an imprint of Grand Central Publishing - Hachette Book Group USA). This is the same publisher as my first book, Six Pixels of Separation, who had the option to pick-up my sophomore business book effort, and I am really (and sincer...  show all text

posted by friends:  (1)

posted by friends of friends:  (6)

Pinterest now beats YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for percentage of total referral traffic in January.

posted by friends:  (5)

posted by friends of friends:  (6)

Are you wondering how to add social media to your email communications? Email and social media marketing go together like Batman and Robin. They both can be effective on their own; however, when combined, their (super) powers can save the city and exceed your marketing goals. Is Email Dead? In this article I’ll show you how to combine email marketing with your social media efforts. In a recent StrongMail survey, ”More than two-thirds of business leaders (68%) say they plan to integrate social m...  show all text

posted by friends:  (3)

posted by friends of friends:  (6)

Reality appears to have finally arrived at Procter & Gamble, the world's largest marketer, whose $10 billion annual ad budget has hurt the company's margins. P&G said it would lay off 1,600 staffers, including marketers, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. More interestingly, CEO Robert McDonald finally seems to have woken up to the fact that he cannot keep increasing P&G's ad budget forever, regardless of what happens to its sales. He told Wall Street analysts that he would have to "moderate"  show all text

posted by friends:  (7)

posted by friends of friends:  (1)

Planning to make a joke on Twitter about bombing something? You might want to reconsider: according to a report from Britain, two British tourists were detained and then denied entry into the U.S. recently after they joked about destroying America and digging up Marilyn Monroe. The fact that the Department of Homeland Security and other authorities — including the FBI — are monitoring social media like Twitter and Facebook isn’t that surprising. But the fact that Homeland Security is willing to...  show all text

posted by friends:  (3)

posted by friends of friends:  (4)

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)

posted by friends:  (6)

posted by friends of friends:  (8)

Editor’s note: Guest author Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of newly funded just.me. He was a co-founder of TechCrunch. Like millions of other people, I got an email from Google this morning. It was entitled “Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service”. The first sentence describes the intent of the changes as shortening 60 policies into one, and improving their readability. Then there is a longer explanation captured in the graphic above. The ...  show all text

posted by friends:  (5)

posted by friends of friends:  (3)

Let’s face it: Apple is rich. So rich it could send a crowd of people to the moon to build a luxury hotel and hang out there for a few years. Here’s what else it could do, according to our friends at The Joy of Tech. It’s not surprising Apple is so deeply awash in cash, especially after its spectacular first-quarter earnings announced this week. You can see the details of Apple’s unbelievable numbers here, but will give you a highlight: the company’s revenues for the quarter were higher than its  show all text

posted by friends:  (3)

posted by friends of friends:  (4)

Yesterday’s announcement that Twitter would be selectively censoring tweets based on country was not well-received. But part of that announcement was the assurance that the process would at least be transparent. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. They also mentioned that they were working with Chilling Effects to make notices and orders sent to Twitter publicly available. At the time of the post yesterday, the site wasn’t up yet, but you can now browse it at chillingeffects.org/twi...  show all text

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (4)

Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission have been trying to crack down on online product reviews that do not disclose the connection between a merchant and the person doling out the praise.

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (1)

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

posted by friends:  (5)

posted by friends of friends:  (0)

posted by friends:  (3)

posted by friends of friends:  (0)

WhiteHouse.gov presents your portal to the 2012 State of the Union Address. Watch, Discuss, and Engage all week long

posted by friends:  (0)

posted by friends of friends:  (10)

Practice law, for one thing. Failing that, U.S. News & World Report has cranked out a new list of suggested jobs in which law school grads can leverage their degree. Journalism Real estate Nonprofit management Entrepreneurship The Arts Check out the U.S. News link for a bunch of names of law school grads who have made it big in areas other than law. Law Blog invites LBers to compile their own lists of jobs that benefit from a law degree. Or just tell us what you think of the U.S. News suggestion  show all text

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (1)

Businesses spend billions each year beefing up security, but they rarely consider the vulnerability of their videoconferencing equipment.

posted by friends:  (7)

posted by friends of friends:  (2)

Editor’s note: Mark Hendrickson is the founder and CEO of Plancast, a social site for planning events, which he has decided to stop working on full-time. In this guest post, Hendrickson takes us through a detailed analysis of why it never took off and what he learned. He is also a former TechCrunch writer. Nearly three years ago, I left my position at TechCrunch to start my own Internet business, with the idea of creating a web application that’d help people get together in real-life rather than  show all text

posted by friends:  (3)

posted by friends of friends:  (12)

Apple once bragged that its products were made in America. But it has since shifted its immense manufacturing work overseas, posing questions about what corporate America owes Americans.

posted by friends:  (4)

posted by friends of friends:  (12)

Twitter made an interesting acquisition on Thursday, when it bought a young Canadian startup called Summify, a company whose service (as its name implies) was designed to cut through the noise of all those social-media streams and summarize the content that matters. More than anything, this is perhaps the single biggest hole that exists not just in Twitter but Facebook and other services as well: the need to give users more ways of filtering the massive amounts of information that keep flooding...  show all text

posted by friends:  (5)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)