Thursday, October 24, 2013

Forbes Human Resource Management article focusing on technology that is driving the marketplace

This Forbes article is about Human Resource Management rather than Marketing, but the technology discussed is driving the marketplace for products and services as well as people. 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2013/10/21/the-9-hottest-trends-in-hr-technology-and-many-are-disruptive/2/

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Search Engine Land's "The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors"

Thank you to Dr. Terry Holmes for bringing Search Engine Land's "The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors" to my attention.  It is really quite good if you are trying to understand what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about. 
http://searchengineland.com/seotable?goback=.gde_62352_member_5797923280497160195#!

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Adweek article about "the millennial male"

This Adweek article is about "the millennial male."  While it is not about new media per se, millennial males are an important part of that ecosystem and a target market for many new media efforts. 
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/millennial-male-not-who-you-think-he-152929?page=1

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

The future of social media and the social media manager position

This is an interesting article on the future of social media and the social media manager position: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/10/01/social-media-manager/

Since this is a link blog, I don't usually provide commentary, but I think I'll make an exception in this case.

This article can be taken several ways.  It talks about the death of the social media manager.  But, it also says the growth in social media manager positions has slowed to 50%... that’s still pretty good.  It also says that social media is now becoming everyone’s responsibility and “Compared to a year ago, there are 13 times as many jobs on Indeed that involve the use of social media in some way.”  Also, according to the article, “Last year, IBM (IBM) saw a 400% surge in sales after implementing a social selling program, and 61% of U.S. marketers now use social media to generate new business.”
 
Maybe the key is in the quote  by William Ward -- "’Business requires people with the skills and understanding on how to use ... social media professionally in an integrated and strategic way,’"  I think I agree that social media manager positions may tend to fade as the media becomes more integrated into every aspect of business life … and that’s probably the way it should be.

To me, the bigger issue is about interpersonal influence and ways to stimulate it, often by creatively engaging customers and often through the use of social media.  Social media is just a set of tools that enable us to do that more and better than ever before.  As the 2008 book Groundswell pointed out, the social media technologies come last.  People, objectives, and strategy come before. 

For me, the big question is “What does this mean in terms of teaching and research?”

How to get customers to talk about your brand

This is a great Entrepreneur.com article on how to get customers to talk about your brand:
http://m.entrepreneur.com/article/227997