When Whitey Bulger, the reputed Boston mob boss found in suburban Los Angeles last month, appeared in court in Boston for the first time, he was represented by a court-appointed lawyer. That lawyer happened to be someone I grew up with decades ago. When my Aunt Pat turned 80 years old in April, she received a special video birthday wish...
Read more
Category Archives: Trends
Stop the Twitter Tease – Tell People What Your Link Is About
By Bill Halldin When it comes to Twitter, it sometimes seems like it’s all about the clicks – and teasing people into clicking. We’ve all seen the tweets – “This is unbelievable,” “I’ve never seen this before,” “You’ve got to check this out.” Those are the obvious ones. Others essentially deliver the same theme, with different words: “Some sense remains,”...
Read more
Social Etiquette for Social Media
Everyone has that friend who is, to put it simply, annoying, rude or just plain embarrassing. Just like every other networking community, social media evolve around relationships and etiquette. Here are some tips and guidelines for managing your online reputation: Spam and Scheduled Tweets Chris Brogan said it perfectly when he called for “No Robot Behavior on Twitter.” Social...
Read more
Disaster and Survival in Japan: When Social Media Become the Vital Links
When an 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Japan on March 11, a massive tsunami wiped out the majority of the country’s phone lines, radio signals, cellular connection and electricity. Ten years ago, survivors would have been left in a so-called “information void” for hours, not knowing what events were unfolding around them. The Internet has changed all of that. We now...
Read more
Online News Readership Overtakes Newspapers
In an event that many have been expecting, more people are reading their news online than in print, according to a report called “The State of the News Media” by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The report also noted that online advertising revenue in the U.S. is projected to overtake print newspaper ad revenue this year....
Read more
The New Oxford American Dictionary Announces Its Top Words of 2010
I think we can all agree that after drafting press release after press release for our clients, keeping the messages fresh and exciting can be a challenge. Certainly there are words we need to purge from our vocabularies – Ragan.com listed some of the most overused, incorrectly used or meaningless words/phrases in a recent blog, including “groundbreaking,” “synergy,” “leverage” and...
Read more
How Social Media is Changing TV News
The folks at Fox 4 in Dallas decided to show us how social is changing traditional media…in a very funny way. And it’s gone viral…...
Read more
How Social Media is Perceived at Budget Time
Marketing Sherpa asked more than 2,300 marketers to describe how social media was perceived by their organizations at budget time…here’s the breakdown: Also, Marketing Sherpa notes that despite social media being at a very early stage in its lifecycle, a 7% confidence rating indicating it is producing measurable ROI and should be funded liberally is outstanding. And conservative budget increases...
Read more
Social Media Roundtable: How Biz Benefits from Twitter, Facebook
Recently, the Sacramento Business Journal asked a number of Northern California social media experts to gather together and discuss how business can use social media. Here are some of the major takeaways from the roundtable: Businesses of every shade must manage social media - your customers and clients are talking about you already online…ignorance is not bliss. Businesses must have...
Read more
Boss, When Is Nap Time?
photo credit: wamdé This question will either be your last as an employee, or what Tony Shwatrz believes is the path to being two or three times more productive and feeling restored all the way through the long afternoon. Harvard and UC Berkley have conducted studies showing that by napping in the mid-afternoon you increase your memory and learning capabilities...
Read more