If you own a blog, I want you to do the following three things for me right now, prior to reading this post. Go to one of your blog posts. Find the button on your blog post page that allows users to retweet your posts. Click on that button. If any of the following four things happened… You couldn’t find your retweet button because you don’t have one. The message sent only had a URL link to your post. The message sent had the full URL link to your post. The message sent did not have your Twitter username in it. Then you need to continue reading this post and take some action! MORE >>

I’ve been wrestling with whether the topic of Friending Over 50 (aka baby boomers and social media) is a book idea - or just a fascinating phenomenon (links to Pew Internet report on Older Adults and Social Media ) as well as a great subject for a five-minute Ignite talk. I’ve pretty much decided that it’s not the right idea for a full-length book. At least for me. Here’s why. Ageism is alive and well. As I said in a recent post, ageism is rampant in today’s society. Ageism is defined as "discrimination based on chronological age, especially old age." MORE >>

I recently received three direct messages from people after I followed them on Twitter: 1. Thanks for following. try to mostly tweet interesting stuff I find. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting as well. Thanks for following! do check my messages daily, so be sure to DM me if you ever need anything in blogging & social media! Thanks for following. look forward to your tweets! Direct messages are private messages that can only seen by the sender and receiver. You can only DM me if I follow you. If I follow you and you don’t follow me, I can’t DM you back. Been busy? MORE >>

ustomer engagement is the the all-encompassing term that refers to when customers engage with one another or with a company. Marketing has changed; it’s not always company to customer (traditional “push” marketing). With the advent of new media (i.e. social), marketing is becoming more “pull” where customers seek us out usually as a result of information they’ve gleaned from one another MORE >>

Social media represents a system of communications unleashed to the entire human network. However the “system” cannot be optimized for maximum performance or outcomes unless all the “parts” are connected.  Current usage of social media illustrates attempts to optimize the “parts” without connecting them to the whole. There is a clearly a lack of systemic thinking about social media. Systems thinking  is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. Attempts to communicate improvement in one area of a system can adversely affect another area of the system. MORE >>