It’s no secret that I’m an advocate for the voice of the employee and for the necessity of emergent collaboration in the workplace. I don’t like it when my friends or acquaintances (or anyone else for that matter) tell me that they don’t like their jobs, that their bosses hate them, that they don’t feel inspired, or that work takes up so much of their time that they can’t do anything else. I genuinely feel bad when people tell me these things, it’s sad. However, I’m still grounded in reality (or I like to think I am). MORE >>

From Friendster to Charlie Sheen, social media has experienced more ups and downs in the last decade than most would believe imaginable. At times, it seems as if we’re just going through the motions and repeating the same things over and over again. Then, every now and then, something comes along that’s… different. That’s one of the takeaways from this infographic by Edelman Digital. The overall motif may be a little busy to our liking, but that might be exactly what’s necessary to represent the turmoil of social media. It’s available for download here. MORE >>

Tweet In the UK this morning many commuters would have read a piece in The Metro about whether Pinterest is the next Facebook. This is not the first article or blog post about this, and I fear that it will not be the last. The short answer to this is ‘no’ And the longer answer is ‘no, because they are fundamentally different, non-competitive things’ But the fact that the question is asked and written about is a reminder that there is still a misconception that ‘social media’ is a single type of thing rather than a set of different, often complementary tools. MORE >>

Does your social media program include foreign language requirements? Even if your company does business in only one country, you might need multiple languages. The question is, how much capability do you need to check off the language box? An email from a vendor contact in Tokyo reminded me of a conversation at the Tech@State conference a few weeks ago. We were talking about monitoring Arabic-language social media, and someone pointed out that their analysts know Arabic. They don't need translation; they just need to collect the content for their analysts to read. Filter content by language. MORE >>

T here’s a decades old saying in advertising that bears repeating: “People don’t read ads – they read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.” ” The man behind those words – Howard Gossage – was right. Sometimes it is an ad.  Sometimes. Every other time, it’s content. Sure, we all fell in love with the Old Spice guy , and the Most Interesting Man in the World campaign has played on giddy repeat for years. We dig the Visa ads telling heroic stories of athletes overcoming great odds to succeed. It useful and/or entertaining. MORE >>