Just when you thought it was safe to fire up your company blog and reap the highly touted social business dividends, the marketplace seems to be sending mixed signals. Recent posts by social media influencers have challenged a University of Massachusetts study showing a decline in corporate blogging by rhetorically asking whether it’s possibly time to rethink your company’s blogging strategy, or even forget about it altogether. The marketing industry and businesses with a vested interest in the growth and success of the blogosphere have naturally assumed a bit of defensive posturing concerning the long-term outlook for blogging as a marketing …
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This monthly Social Business Trends column is contributed by Joel Don. Joel is principal of Comm Strategies, a public relations, social media and content engineering consultancy. He was formally trained as a journalist, working for newspapers and magazines throughout the country. Before starting his own business, Joel worked for several agencies, served as a public information officer at UCLA and UC Irvine and directed business and financial communications at a Fortune 500 computer manufacturer. Joel also started a company that developed a digital solution for measuring the readership of company news prior to the advent of today’s link-tracking systems. Joel on Google+
Joel Don's Posts
Businesses come and go. But your personal name, that’s another matter altogether. In the social business world, your name can be leveraged as your personal identifier across myriad social media sites as well as your monetized business brand. In creating a new business or online presence, one of the toughest decisions you may make is whether to establish your social business brand by your personal name or a fictitious “DBA” identity, such as a catchy word, phrase or slogan. It’s hardly a trivial decision, especially considering your online identity eventually will sprout hundreds if not thousands of backlinks which will …
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I have a confession to make. I don’t usually share this sordid obsession, but I feel it’s long overdue. A cathartic moment is good for the soul, and it doesn’t hurt one’s Google page view rankings either. So please let me unburden myself, step into my tawdry, secret pixelated world. I am a hoarder. I collect things. Lots of things. But please do not let your imagination run amok with claustrophobic images of a decrepit, insidious lifestyle. I’m not making a veiled cry for help, or a pitch to be the next celebrity profile on A&E’s voyeuristic Hoarders show. Let …
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Business was so much easier during the Middle Ages. Establish your fiefdom, keep the serfs happy, collect taxes and fend off the occasional barbarian hoard or the jealous younger sibling. Oftentimes a monarch with a large domain to protect couldn’t afford a standing army or a well-stocked armory. Thus was born just-in-time defense and the invention of the “freelance”— knights expert in the art of war who would sell their battlefield prowess to any lord or baron with enough gold, precious stones or land to render payment. So what does this WayBack Machine story have to do with social media? …
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