blogging

I had an inane exchange with a social media consultant on his blog last week that reminded me of a truism: just as the rule for understanding politics is to follow the money, an important quality of social media experience is revealed when you consider the role of the megaphone owner...or, in this case, the guy who operates the guillotine.

Guest Post by: Maria Pergolino

At my previous company my success was measured by number of leads. If I hit the right number, I was in the clear. If the total lead count was high, I was awesome. If I was short of my lead goal, I had some explaining to do. Makes sense, right? More leads equals more won deals. Management could understand these metrics. It was easy for the VP of Sales to see my results via a dashboard in the CRM system. Life was good. Well, that is unless you were a sales rep. (Don’t worry. I learned the right way fast, becoming a demand generation machine!)

This week we have been looking at social media for small businesses. Ways in which they can use the social media tools that exist to build their brand, engage their customers and learn about their brand, market and competitors. It is as important for small businesses as it is for large brands to build a social media strategy. And there are many different ways that you can start to use social media to get these benefits.

We’ve written before about the ways in which politicians are using social media, from US President Barack Obama, to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. These politicians, like many others, are using social media as a way of engaging directly with the public. They often use they use these tools as a way of focusing on specific topics or issues that are of interest to them.

This year, I think, is finally the year we can stop talking about whether blogging is as good as “real” journalism. At its best, it’s as good as anything out there. And, with blogging’s ability to micro-segment, you can find in a few search engine clicks an expert on the overheated mortgage market or music industry royalties who is far more informed and authoritative than anyone writing for a newspaper. The tipping point has been reached.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

With the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") pondering adapting its archaic advertising regulations to cover blogs, I chanced upon some blatant commercial content posing as a blog post on one my favorite sites, Boing Boing.

by: Nancy Baym

The New York Times has an article about shifting goals for musicians playing SXSW which, for reasons that aren’t quite clear, uses most of its words addressing the role of the internet. They begin by affirming the importance of blogs, but shift quickly to the “the internet is fickle” meme that was fairly common  a year or two ago. They focus in particular on the band Crocodiles:

by: Nancy Baym

In a post that appeared remarkably soon after my last post in which I noted that I am easier to find on Twitter than on Online Fandom these days, Rob Walker of Murketing and Buying In fame, expressed “Nostalgia for Blogs” and lamented:

by: Gary Hayes

I don’t know what is in the blogosphere water at the moment but every day for the last 6 months or so we seem to get a new list or top 10/20/25/50. They seem to fall into 1 of 4 categories.

by: Eliane Alhadeff

Via: maniaTV

Brian Crecente, managing editor at Kotaku.com and respected gaming authority, appears on the latest edition of The War Room from maniaTV to weigh in some heavily debated topics including the future of the gaming industry, the rise of gaming Blogs, and publishing ethics when dealing with game sponsors.