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 […]
Location-based Social Media for Good
While reading the Boston Sunday Globe, I was struck by an article about the lack of maps of the handicapped parking spaces in Boston and Cambridge. Anything location-oriented seems like a problem that could be solved by one of the location-based social media tools. Hey, SCVNGR or FourSquare — what do you think? I would think you could enlist your users to mark all those spots and offer a digital map. Show us you are about more than just games.
How Others See Us
Who Are Your People?
Local entrepreneur and innovator Bill Warner is an important resource for startups in the Boston market. He blogs, tweets and speaks on topics of interest to the young startups. One of Bill Warner’s queries from his presentation about How to Build Your Startup from the Heart has taken on new meaning for me lately. One of the questions he asks is “Who are your people — the people for whom you invent or create?”
Testing, Grading and Analyzing Your Website
I am responsible for multiple websites. Some of these are my own properties, and other are client sites. Rarely do I have the luxury of building a website from the ground up — usually I am dealt a website and a budget (low to non-existent) and have to figure out how to reach my goals with these tools and constraints. I end up using a lot of different tools to measure my websites’ effectiveness and help me make the sites […]
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?).
Summertime, and the Living is Easy?
Smart Marketing Campaign
Yesterday morning, I was a guest at the Waltham IBM Innovation Center for their 15th Anniversary. (Full disclosure, Joe Perry and the Waltham IBM Innovation Center team have provided Mass Innovation Nights with a free site for our monthly product launch events.) The IBM Smarter Planet program was a highlight and a feature of the day’s program and I was glad to take a deep dive into it as an example of a well-done corporate strategy program.
What Happens in Vegas
What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas if you choose to share all the gory details. There’s been plenty written on maintaining a professional image online. Dozens, probably hundreds, of articles urge young people to think about how their social media profile stacks up when a potential employer looks at what’s available online. But what if you are hiring people to represent your company online through social media?