If I wanted to impress upon you the fact that texting and driving are dangerous, I could tell you this: In 2011, at least 23% of auto collisions involved cell phones. That's 1.3 million crashes, in which 3331 people were killed. Texting while driving makes it 23 times more likely that you'll be in a car accident. Or I could tell you a story.

Where were you on July 22, 2013? Hopefully not among the 2% of marketers who waited for Google to automatically migrate your accounts to Enhanced Campaigns. Otherwise, that was probably a pretty stressful day (if you even realized your campaigns had changed)! Indeed, it's been one year since the forced transition to Enhanced Campaigns, and somehow we've managed to avoid the apocalypse.

A few weeks ago, I was tuning in to the Seattle Mariners TV broadcast and heard the announcer state that the backup catcher had been released from the team. Immediately, I wanted a bunch of details: news of the transaction, commentary and the reaction of other fans like me. I searched for "John Buck" on Twitter and found all three in a matter of moments.I'm also looking for a real estate agent, and in addition to combing through Zillow for neighborhood experts, I found myself searching Facebook as I recalled a friend endorsing an agent that he really loved. Problem …

One of the things that always frustrated me in my professional experience was my difficulty in switching from tactical to strategic thinking. For many years, I served on a board that was responsible for the strategic direction of an organization. A friend of mine, Andy Freed, served as an advisor to the board. He constantly lectured us on the difference between strategy and tactics: "Strategy is your job. Tactics are mine. Stick to your job and I'll stick to mine." Despite this constant reminder, our discussions always seemed to quickly spiral down to the tactical level. We all caught ourselves …

Last week, I talked about the maturity continuum of social media. This week, I'd like to recap and look at the business model implications of each phase.

Google+ launched in June of 2011 to such an overwhelming response that it had to shut down to handle the demand. This past March, Forrester Research compared its popularity to Twitter and said every marketer should use it. But this is widely debated, with the New York Times pronouncing it a ghost town and Forbes suggesting that it was dead. We can speculate all day about the future of Google+, but we know for sure that it's ingrained in local search. Even Google agrees. Unfortunately, local search is incredibly complicated, having to address both Google Places and Google+ Local. There's …

The folks at LeadTail have just released a comprehensive report on how SEM professionals use Twitter. First off, this report is not just a popularity report, e.g., who has the most followers or who gets the most retweets; instead, it is a report on who has the most influence on SEM professionals on Twitter. In other words, it's sort of an "inside baseball" report: Who do search nerds follow and retweet on Twitter?

Social channels will come and go. Why are we still surprised by this? Just last week, Catharine Taylor talked about the ennui that's threatening to silence Twitter. Frankly, the only thing surprising about this is that Twitter has had that long a run. Let's face it. If every there was a social media one-trick pony, it's Twitter.

In my last two columns, I've looked at how technology may be making us intellectually lazy. The human brain tends to follow the path of least resistance and technology's goal is to eliminate resistance. Last week, I cautioned that this may end up making us both more shallow in our thinking and more fickle in our social ties. We may become an attention-deficit society, skipping across the surface of the world. But this doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

In 2010, I wrote a book called "Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google." The last chapter focused on "Future-Proofing," where I talked about how connected devices and apps are changing consumer behavior and providing new opportunities for brands to reach their audiences. More specifically, I discussed how Google would be well-positioned in this new world of "app-sisstants" with its investment in Android. Now here we are four years later and Android commands more than 80% global market share for smartphone operating systems. And Google's investment in connected devices and apps extends well beyond phones and tablets (and …