With 1 of every 5 online minutes being spent on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, ad agencies and marketers are scrambling to get their brands into the social party. While some of us are pushing our way in by employing the same 1-way mass tactics used...

Google took a big step toward becoming a social branding channel by launching Google Plus Pages for Business this week. Will they succeed in attracting brands to set up their own identities and getting consumers to engage? Here are 3 reasons why it would be tough to bet...

Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry, hasn't had much fun lately. Its stock is down 60% from its 52-week high, its Playbook tablet is facing poor reviews and recalls, employees are saying all kinds of nasty things in public, and its developer community is upset. Meanwhile

Full-service advertising agencies are challenged with integrating digital capabilities into their traditional media mix. Technology in the past 10 years moved advertising beyond interruptive one-way push messaging into a two-way participative context. To agencies this represents more than just a wealth of new media options; it requires an entirely new...

Building a global brand presence is one of the hottest topics in social marketing among the world's largest marketers today. With 380 million active Facebook users living outside the United States -- that's over 70% of the total Facebook population -- marketers are recognizing the opportunity to target campaigns toward...

By the end of this year the advertising industry will have lost 10% of its worldwide revenue, compared to normal annual growth rates of 5 or 6%. Agencies who haven’t yet embraced interactive – the only media type predicted to grow – are clamoring for a spot at...

The interactive marketing business has gone through some constructive battles in its first 10 years.  Here are the big three and what they mean to marketers and agencies today.

Interactive vs Traditional: Earning a Seat at the Table

Since the early days of internet marketing in the ‘90s, traditional advertising...

He isn’t on Twitter, he has no official Facebook fan page, and his website is a Flash disaster stuck in the ‘90s.  So what can Neil Young teach celebrities today about social marketing?  Canada’s legendary mutton-chopped musician was leveraging 5 key principles of social marketing decades before the...

Last month, Canadian musician Dave Carroll gave United Airlines a gift.  After battling with their complaints department for 9 months he gathered his band and created a catchy video entitled "United Breaks Guitars." It was an instant YouTube hit, attracting over 5.2 million views.  For perspective that’s more...

United Breaks Guitars, the sudden viral hit produced by distraught United Airways passenger Dave Carroll and his band, broke 1M views a mere 4 days after he posted it on YouTube.

According to his blog, Carroll decided to write the song after his guitar was broken in...

To commemorate the Cluetrain Manifesto's 10th anniversary, social media executive Keith McArthur challenged bloggers worldwide to pick 1 of the 95 theses in the book and reflect on its current relevance. This is my contribution.

Ten years ago today, a hopefully prophetic obituary for the pre-internet business power structure...

"The old guard has passed and the new guard is here. And the new guard likes to ding dong ditch people just for fun." - Ashton Kutcher in his victory speech after beating CNN to the million follower mark.

At 2:13am EDT Friday, Ashton Kutcher took the crown in...

"I just think its amazing that 1 voice can now be as powerful at [sic] an entire media network. thank you twitter!" -Ashton Kutcher on Twitter, April 13, 2009.

After only 3 months, actor Ashton Kutcher is nearing his goal of amassing 1 million Twitter followers. Of the

On the heels of his impressive web marketing campaign and a subsequent 4-week quiet period in communications, Barack Obama has launched his presidential transition website: Change.gov - The Office of the President-Elect.

It's buggy but that hasn't stopped over 3,000 people from responding to the Transition Team's first...

The McCain campaign continues to drown in stunning negativity. A search on YouTube for the term "John McCain" yields a results page filled with McCain-bashing videos including:

• McCain's YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare
• David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign
•

A few quick searches on Technorati confirms it: We're not all talking about Palin.

The Obama machine continues to dominate the web, with mentions of his name in 1.7 million blog posts. McCain has just over half that number. The surprise here is Palin: For every blog mentioning...

In the three weeks since the Obama "Yes We Can" music video was posted, 11 million people have seen it. Or maybe a few thousand hard-core supporters watched it non-stop since then, on continuous loop, 5000 times each. Either way, 11 million views represents one insanely successful viral marketing...

Eight weeks ago, Facebook took their boldest step yet: they went live with the Facebook Platform, giving unprecedented access to developers. On May 24 Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg declared to techies worldwide, "We want you to be able to build a business and make money with your applications....

Boring, and a bit greasy. That's my reaction to the viral video attempt I just watched, this one for Cisco Systems. I'm still not sure what they're pitching but after six days and some expensive advertising placements their grand total of only 22,000 views might mean others agree.

Ah,...