A few weeks ago I interviewed Alan Gregerman on The Engaging Brand podcast and we explored his idea that we need strangers in our life for all kinds of reasons. During the interview he made me realize that we often lose touch with ourselves, we often get derailed from our dreams. Brian Sheehan is the author of Loveworks a great book that talks of the emotional commitment your customers and employees need to feel to belong to a group that love your brand. Are you loved? Find out how to be a well loved brand. LinkedIn is an amazing social media platform to help marketers and salespeople alike find and engage with prospects. For high performance sellers, they use LinkedIn more for introductions, get more referrals from customers, use LinkedIn to identify contacts, and create targeted contact lists. It has become the Post-Turkey Apocalypse. My fridge is exploding with left-overs and all I can think about is food. Soooo…. in honor of my poorly abused stomach, here goes a fun (albeit silly) little bedtime tale. Whilst there are many articles out there talking about the way managers can look to improve employee engagement, this one is going to instead look at how it can be measured. I believe there are some clear similarities between how engagement amongst employees is measured with that of customers. Are you thinking about diving into the world of online communities, but not sure where to begin? Here are some key considerations to think about when starting your own bespoke online community, be it a customer community or an internal social network. Women launch businesses at 1.5 times the national rate, according to data gathered in the 2010 census. That’s an incredible number, but it’s accompanied by some less thrilling news: the same data shows that companies founded by women are less likely to break $1 million in revenues. Walmart began its fight for Black Friday supremacy last week, when the world's largest retailer decided to match some of Target and Best Buy’s top Black Friday bargains. The company managed to drive shoppers' interest not only using traditional marketing and PR strategies, but also engaging them via social media, like never before. If you’re reading this, you probably had little doubt about the power of the populace – armed with social media – to profoundly impact the behavior of companies. But, if you had even a scintilla of suspicion that it wasn’t true, it should have evaporated this week based on these two events. We’ve been attacked by Black Friday ads and deals for the past few weeks. It’s insane, there are deals everywhere! You can try busting out the Black Friday flyers and circling what you want but that will end in an unorganized mess. It’s the 21st century people! The best way to shop on Black Friday is with technology, specifically with mobile apps. Letting employees loose as amateur spokespeople opens risks that they may utter spontaneous and compromising statements and share inappropriate content. Given the number of recent social media ‘fails’ initiated by rogue employee tweets or videos, this fear is well founded. Can it be managed? Yes. Twitter and shopping go hand in hand. Now I know what you might be thinking: “who says?” or “that’s not what nearly every other study that has looked at Twitter’s impact on shopping reports.” To answer your first question: Twitter says so. To answer your second question, who are you going to believe, Twitter or everyone else? Don’t be such a skeptic. WordPress is one of the best creations for bloggers, developers, small business owners, and virtually anyone who wants to put their views, products, or information on the web for the masses. If you own a WordPress account, you know exactly how hard it can be to keep up with it and your SEO presence. Many companies are starting to make the leap into social customer service. The tipping point from listening to engagement is reaching a critical mass. But how to make the move less of a leap into the unknown? Firstly put in steps between monitoring, engagement and customer service. Give yourself a smoother transition. Customer retention is a company job. People often think that customer acquisition is a marketing function while retention belongs in the service department. Both of those functions are interchangeable because a company that does a good job retaining customers finds it easier to acquire them. With the holiday season in full swing and 2013 winding to a close, it's a good time to reflect on the year in social and look ahead to what might be the next big thing in 2014. While Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest reign supreme, there are some new, unique and niched social networks poised to make a big splash. A Texas PR firm, aptly named Wiki PR, has received a cease and desist letter from Wikipedia because it’s been discovered they have created fake accounts for the sole purpose of adding their clients to the online encyclopedia. The letter accuses the firm of sockpuppetry, which undermines the principles of objectivity and neutrality of the site. Learn how you can apply social media marketing techniques to strengthen your freelance music teacher lessons. From everything from how to send out attractive tips to reminding students of their sessions, you can better maintain and grow your student pool. Social media success requires the right combination of marketing, service, and technology. Creating a dream team with members from each department may be challenging but the rewards justify the effort. Here are some tips to get you started. Black Friday has become symbolic for marketers and advertisers across the land as it signals the start of what they hope will be a very fruitful and beneficial holiday shopping season. But as more consumers spread their holiday shopping over more days, retailers need to adjust accordingly. Over 135 million people go out to shop on Black Friday every year. According to USA Today, an estimated 70% of their readers (97M) say they will be out shopping this Black Friday 2013. And according to Ignition One, consumers will spend 11% more than they did last year in 2012. With consumer attention spans continually on the decline, marketers and brands must communicate the what, why, and how without information overload. Research has found that presentations with words and images are 50% more effective when the words are communicated verbally. For many people, the holidays also mean dollar signs and lots of them! Recently, CNN Money published the results of a poll they conducted where they asked readers to estimate how much money they planned on spending on holiday gifts this year. Over 64% of the poll’s participants estimated that they would spend between $400 and $1000 on gifts. The iPad Mini with Retina display was released last week. Oh – you didn’t know? As it turns out, there’s a reason. There are a number of ways that Apple’s release of the iPad Mini Retina has been quieter than the usual exciting announcement. I’m a strong believer in the power of influence marketing and content marketing. Just like sex, content marketing has a lot of give and take, and proper communication will always make it better. Find out what tickles your clients’ fancy, and incorporate it into your content marketing to reap the benefits, and score!