Is your site optimized for pinning?

The proliferation of Pinterest-like sites tells me that Pinterest has tapped into something basic, a desire to share images more easily and with more focused purpose than the traditional photo-sharing sites. Since Pinterest has become the social service du jour, a number of other sites that duplicate the fundamental idea—collections of large easy-to-share images—have sprung up.

I’m regularly directed to Gentlemint, described as “Pinterest for men,” despite the fact that a growing number of men now have a Pinterest presence. Chill is a video bookmarking site that lets you create pinboard-like views of the videos you want to share; a… Read More »

Work in PR? In Europe? This is THE 2012 social media conference for you

European conferences that focus on the role of social media in public relations aren’t terribly common and those that are scheduled tend to be pricey. The Social Media World Forum is coming up next month in London, but its focus is broader than public relations and a ticket for the entire event will set you back US $920. There’s a marketing-focused conference, M2C, in Hamburg next month; admission is over US $2,500.

If you’re based in Europe and work in PR or organizational communications, your best bet is likely to be the 2012 International Social Media & PR Summit, scheduled for April 11-12 at ING House—a pretty amazing looking… Read More »

Does every tactic need to be baked into a strategic marketing plan?

You can’t open your browser these days without being bombarded with posts about Pinterest, the social-visual-bookmarking-scrapbooking site. Still in invitation-only beta, Pinterest is attracting women in droves and driving more traffic to retail sites than Facebook. All this is driving bloggers to write posts with headlines like 8 ways to use Pinterest for nonprofits and Six steps to driving traffic from Pinterest.

(Think I’m overstating the case? Scroll through the 50 million-plus Google Blogsearch results for Pinterest.)

Inevitably, the naysayers have been close on the heels of the enthusiasts. Forrester analyst Darika Ahrens was… Read More »

Leadership involvement is vital to social intranet success

Evidence continues to mount that social intranets have the potential to produce big results for organizations. The ongoing McKinsey & Company study points to outcomes ranging from increased market share to reduced time to market, along with a host of other positive results. Studies from MIT and Aberdeen Group show productivity gains among employees using social intranets.

Yet a recent study from IABC and Prescient Digital Media suggests that 39% of companies don’t have any social components on their intranets (the number is as high as 49% in other research), and a substantial number of those that do have only one (like a wiki or a… Read More »

Rejoice! Employee use of social networks has tripled!

Palo Alto Networks is out with its annual numbers on employee work time spent on social networks. The company’s conclusions are based on analyzing raw data from 1,600-plus companies for a seven-month period last year. Their press release on the study confirms something we already suspected: “explosive growth in global social networking and browser-based file sharing on corporate networks, with a 300 percent increase in active social networking. (e.g., posting, applications) compared with activity during the same period in the latter half of 2010.”

The press release quotes the company’s CMO, René Bonvanie, saying “Whether or not… Read More »

FIR Interview: Walgreens Social Media Director Adam Kmiec

FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz interview Adam Kmiec, director of social media for Walgreens, the largest drug store chain in the U.S. and a Fortune 50 company. Walgreens has engaged in the last 10 days or so in a social media-focused effort to build awareness among customers of alternatives to Express Scripts, the prescription benefit manager through which hundreds of thousands of people pay for the prescription medications. Unable to reach an agreement to renew their contract, Walgreens no longer accepts Express Scripts but using mechanisms like Prescription Savings Club membership (left) to retain customers.

The… Read More »

Page 1 of 59 pages  1 2 3 >  Last ›