I have a great story to tell you. It’s one of fantastic customer service from a brand we all know and love: Starbucks. Most of you know I had a craaaaazy summer. was on the road for 25 weeks straight. To say I was exhausted is putting it mildly. When I’m home, Mr. D comes into my office and announces, “I’m going to go hunt for coffee,” as if we’re living in the wilderness and he’s hunting for the family’s daily meal. always get a tall, nonfat latte. took a picture of it and uploaded to Facebook, but thought that was the end of that. MORE >>

There is a lot written online about the importance of ‘future proofing your SEO’. What’s meant by this of course is protecting your SEO practices against potential future changes to Google’s algorithms, and of course this comes in the wake of the recent big changes Google has made that go by the Penguin and Panda handles respectively. But though all this is very important, future proofing your SEO isn’t all you should be concerned with. If you run a blog or a website then you work in the tech industry, and that’s an industry that is notoriously fast moving. Devices. Fashion. Content. MORE >>

A recent Piper Jaffray survey of American teens revealed that Facebook is still the most popular social network among this age group – but Twitter is following close behind. Teens were asked to rank social networks in order of preference (from 1 to 3) from a list including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and LinkedIn. Out of the 7,700 teens surveyed: Facebook was first choice for 3,280. Twitter was first choice for 2,118. Instagram came in 1st for 928 teens. Google+ was 1st for 430 teens. LinkedIn was listed as first choice by just 5 teens. What do you think? MORE >>

Lots of people will tell you  ”Social Media Influencers” are the  key to social media marketing  but what does that really mean? Is influence based on number of connections? Klout , Peer Index or Kred score? combination of all of the above? How do you identify them and what do you do with that information once you think you know who they are? The short answer is all and none of the above. Refine this as finely as possible so you don’t have to filter though too many false leads in broad categories. Did they only write one post that is relevant or do they have several? MORE >>

How many of you have ever referred to something historical in a news release? know we have. It helps you tell a story about something that might otherwise be boring. That’s what AT&T (then doing business as Cingular Wireless) did when they issued a news release about their MACH 1 and MACH 2 command centers that allow them to quickly respond to natural disasters so their customers aren’t without service for very long. They mentioned how Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and achieved MACH 1 in a news release that was distributed via PR Newswire. Seems harmless. Wrong. MORE >>