Do you want to know the fastest way to alienate your customers? Ignore them. Just ask Trader Joe’s. Or maybe not—because they’re not listening. There was an interesting article recently that looked at the grocery chain’s complete absence from social media: "Trader...
I've talked before about social customers, sales cycles, and megaphones. This matters. But it’s also the (relatively) easy part for social brands to tackle—and for social businesses. What’s harder is understanding how to respond to the fact that, as customers, we are...
You can’t talk about social business without first talking about social customers. Because we, as consumers, find ourselves with the global equivalent of a megaphone in our hands. Or, more precisely, a mouse click or touchscreen away. But what is a social customer? A...
The great Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa once told my mother that the most important thing that ever happened to him happened when he was a little boy. He learned to read. Yup, that resonated with me. October 16 is Blog Action Day, and the theme for this year is...
Apparently Twitter has decided to form an all-white, all-male board as its first public act as a soon-to-be public company. Really, we have to have this conversation again? This isn’t about leaning in, or leaning out, or leaning sideways. It’s not about feminism, the...
Chances are you wouldn't walk into a showroom and buy a car without doing some research first. Or pick out a TV, order a kitchen appliance, or purchase a shiny new laptop without reading reviews, asking friends for advice, and otherwise becoming an informed buyer....
Voyager 1 has left the solar system. It’s the first man-made object to reach interstellar space. While you’re still absorbing that (admit it--WOW), let me tell you what makes this even more amazing: Voyager 1 has less computing power than the original IBM personal...
You might have seen the periodic mass unfollow on Twitter. It typically comes from someone who built up a large network and wakes up one day drowning in noise—a stream of tweets from thousands of people they don’t know and never interact with. Not to mention a lot of...
Next month I'm hosting a party -- and you're invited. My friend Tom Martin asked me to co-host an event as part of a 10-day, 10-city tour to promote his new book and raise money for local charities. And he said co-host Melissa Case and I could select the charity for...
At a conference recently, a speaker asked the audience for the most important factor in developing a data app. My response: Context. It was thus with great interest that I dove into Age of Context. Shel Israel and Robert Scoble's new book looks at the impact of...