• In Facebook Patent Lawsuit, Yahoo Fails To See The Big Picture
    Among the things I didn't do this week is avail myself of a homeless person 's hot spot. Primarily, this was because I didn't go to SXSWi, but it's also because the idea didn't exactly go viral, though chatter about it certainly did. I'm not quite sure what BBH intended to get out of that whole gambit, but I do know this: The agency wasn't expecting what it got. My ain't-going-nowhere state of affairs left me tethered to the Netgear router in my home office, with some quality time to ponder another bit of digital-era peculiarity: the decision by Yahoo …
  • What SXSW Attendees Need The Most
    As I'm starting to write this column at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), I'm wrapping up lunch with two marketers from a global brand. One is on her iPhone, and the other is on his BlackBerry. While we've sat here, I received a group text update on GroupMe from someone at this table. Something is very, very wrong in Austin. How did this become an acceptable approach to social interaction?
  • Facebook's Elusive ROI
    There's more to Facebook than "likes," and there's more to the measurement of social media than fans. While expanding a social audience with fans and likes is important, it doesn't help marketers understand how engaged their social audience is. Who is engaging? Why are they engaging? What are they engaging with? To answer these essential questions, it's time to start examining new metrics that assess social media performance. You can do this by moving away from page-centric metrics that focus solely on the number of users toward metrics that provide more valuable insights regarding audience behavior. T
  • Once Upon A Time: Ready To Tell a Good Story About Your Brand?
    Those of you who know the Cathy Taylor version of the Social Media Insider know all too well that, unlike my partner-in-crime David Berkowitz, I am mired in the past. Last week's column -- about Facebook's first-ever Marketing Conference -- telegraphed that loud and clear. Who else who wrote about it spent half a column talking about what AOL and MSN were doing in 2002? Get over it, Taylor. Or maybe I shouldn't. Because as I was listening last week to the Facebook-envisioned shift in the marketing business from mere ads to stories, it occurred to me that I'm not …
  • Fave The Whale -- Or, a Trip Inside Facebook's New Advertising Products
    For reasons both personal and not-so-personal, my voyage to yesterday's first fMC (Facebook Marketing Conference) at the American Museum of Natural History was both a trip into the wayback machine and a look at the future.
  • Social Media Silly Season, When Nothing Really Makes Much Sense
    Here, during winter vacation, with hours to go before I head off with the kids for a few days, I find myself in the midst of what, I guess, is the obvious hangover to Social Media Week: Social Media Silly Season.
  • Your Brand Is Batman
    "People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy... As a man, I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol, I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting." - Bruce Wayne, "Batman Begins" Bruce Wayne understands brands better than anyone. A brand is different from the sum of the people working for a company. A brand, as Wayne noted, can be everlasting.
  • Thank You For Your Pinterest, But I Don't Know What To Post
    This is an open letter to my 72 followers on Pinterest, including my friend, Sue, who stood next to me in line on the high school cheerleading squad; my sorority Big Sister; Mobile Marketing Association CEO Greg Stuart, fellow Social Media Insider David Berkowitz, and that guy I worked with way, way long ago at Ogilvy & Mather. Here's what I want to tell you: I'm sorry that my pinning is so sporadic, and so, well, lame. Three weeks in, I have no earthly idea what I should do with this thing, so I'm throwing it out to all of …
  • 52 Ways Social Media Week Is Every Week
    A lot has changed since last year, when I wrote about why Social Media Week should be every week. That feels so quaint. By now, Social Media Week really is every week. In case you're not convinced, here are 52 reasons why:
  • The Most Important Social Media Story of the Week Was Not the Facebook IPO
    If you look back on the past week, which was the more important social media story? 1) The filing of Facebook's IPO. 2) The social media firestorm resulting from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation's decision to defund Planned Parenthood's breast-cancer screening initiatives. (You must know by now that this decision was later rescinded.) OK. You probably know where I'm going with this, but to me, the answer is no. 2.
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