Stop wondering about Social Media Marketing for your business…

Explore: A Social Media Explorer Event A social media explorer event Explore Digital Marketing Conference
What is ESM?

Social Media Explorer presents Explore – a series of one-day, intensive seminar and workshop events designed to help YOU, understand, embrace and begin deploying social media marketing in your business efforts. Sign up now! Event crowd

2012 Cities & Dates

  • Minneapolis – Aug. 16-17th
  • Portland – Oct. 19th
  • Irvine – Nov. 16th
Upcoming Event
Explore Minneapolis
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If you joined DJ Waldow and me today for our 22-minute webinar on five secrets to email marketing, you learned that one of the secrets was that he and I have written a book. I’m proud to tell all of you that The Rebel’s Guide To Email Marketing is now available for pre-order on Amazon and will be in your local book stores late this summer.

Jason Falls

About the author

Jason Falls is the founder and editor of Social Media Explorer and its companion learning community Exploring Social Media. He is a leading thinker, educator, speaker and consultant in the world of social media marketing, public relations, digital marketing and communications. Please connect with him on Twitter (@JasonFalls).

Social Media Sucks for Businesses and Here’s Why

by · May 16, 2012

Let’s just get straight to the point… social media sucks. Plain and simple. For years it’s been “business as usual” and then suddenly everyone is bouncing around words like “social”, “engage”, “community” and all kinds of other blather. Some of the biggest companies in the world such as Ford, Starbucks, Dell, American Express and many others have fallen for the trap. I’m here to warn you before you do anything stupid. Social media sucks and here’s a few reasons why …

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Choosing and Weaving Social Within a Multichannel Marketing Program

by · May 15, 2012

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is of the guest variety and offered up by my friends Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston. Their new book, Marketing in the Round, is out and available. They are smart. It is good. Pay attention.

The world of marketing in small and large businesses is a siloed one. Companies have ad campaigns, PR plans, social media strategies, and websites built independently and bolted together in a haphazard manner. It’s surprising how rarely these disciplines work together to achieve corporate objectives like establishing a second vertical for a product, or increasing website sales by 30 percent year-over-year.

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The Irony Of Measuring Marketing Now

by · May 14, 2012

I once provided counsel for a company that had little confidence in social media marketing. It begrudgingly decided it would hire a consultant, go through some strategic exercises and probably prove that social media was bullshit and it would be better off sticking with its traditional guns.

The brand’s insistence with my work, as is with most clients I’ve dealt with, was that we measure everything as infinitely as possible. Skeptics are like that. They want to know how many clicks, how many re-tweets, how many milliseconds the time-on-site number increases each month, even if none of those measures really matter. Social Media Explorer has always been more partial to sales and lead conversion or at least metrics that match the client’s business goals. We reported those as well and met the client’s expectations.

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How To Engage In Online Forums For Your Brand

by · May 11, 2012

Editor’s Note: In light of our recent affirmation that forums and message boards are a bountiful home for consumer interaction and engagement around brands and products, I thought it appropriate to invite some solid expertise here to help advise us on how to proceed in exploring online forums for marketing purposes. Today’s guest post is by the person I regard as the foremost expert on managing online forums in the U.S., if not the world, Patrick O’Keefe.

I regularly find myself in the position of having to defend online forums, without actually wanting to be put into that position.

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Honing Twitter’s Power to Improve Healthcare Communication

by · May 10, 2012

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Brian S. McGowan, PhD, is a research scientist and author of the forthcoming fall 2012 release of #SOCIALQI: Simple Solutions for Improving Your Healthcare.

Healthcare in the U.S. is provided across a frighteningly broken and fragmented system of providers and institutions. As a result, the quality of American healthcare is consistently ranked among the worst in the developed world, and costs incurred per patient are 2-5 times higher than in comparable countries. Our problem isn’t that we’re incapable of providing high-quality care – in pockets throughout the country, we provide the most effective care in the world. Our problem is that for every five-star healthcare system we support, there are a dozen systems struggling to stay up-to-date.

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The Business of Writing Books

by · May 9, 2012

A number of my friends either are, or plan to soon be, writing their first books. I’m really excited for them. I was in their shoes a year ago, plowing through writes, rewrites and edits, putting thoughts on paper and hoping someone out there would think the topic was interesting enough to plop down $24 for a book about it.

All of the folks I’m referring to, in addition to several others, have asked me if writing a book is worth it. While there are few thrills for someone who classifies themselves as a writer more pleasing than seeing your name on a real, hard-bound piece of literature on the shelves of a real bookstore, I thought it appropriate to share a few thoughts with you on the value of writing a book.

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Spruce Up Your Social With Spredfast’s Webinar Series

by · May 8, 2012

Next Tuesday I’ll help Spredfast kick off a neat webinar series that is focused on helping you “Spruce up your Social This Spring.” The social media management solution provider has gathered myself, Michael Brito, Jeremiah Owyang, Kristen Sussman of Social Distillery, Amy Kalm from Intuit and Tom Carusona of Aramark, along with Spredfast’s awesome team of social strategists and marketers to help you learn more about three key topics over the course of the next five weeks.

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People Buy The Why, Not What

by · May 8, 2012

We have been working on a couple of interesting start-up ideas at Urbane Media that have mushroomed into companies. The idea stage is much safer, in that we can vacillate for hours on end about this and that. It makes us feel good. It is exciting to talk about our ideas. Actually launching your idea is a bit scarier because the stakes are higher. It is no longer just verbal masturbation, you have likely plunked down some dough to get started, either yours or someone else’s.

Must Do

One of our Must Do Exercises with our companies that we own and operate is to create a new value curve. We spend a lot of time on the following four questions:

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