The ongoing antics of Nestle as it continually trips itself up in all forms of social media (Facebook, viral Greenpeace videos) have led me to ask if some companies should just stay out altogether. Even Satan or Lex Luthor would have a better time on social media than Nestle. There are legions of people wanting to embrace evil. Nestle Killer-Asesino Facebook page, one of many opened in response to... 

Jed: How old are you this year? Me: I’m 27. Jed: Oh thank goodness. You’ve been 24 for 15 years now. Glad to see you’ve decided to move on. Me: I have not. I’ve been 27 for a while. I embrace my age. Jed: Yes. Yes you do. Especially when your daughter is catching up with you. Me: I could totally have given birth at 9. That happened in China or something. It’s because... 

Mass media (and some mom bloggers) would like to lump all mom bloggers into the same shoebox. As a result, it’s hard for marketers to navigate these waters without recognizing the differences between bloggers in the space. Just as there are different types of magazines and newspapers, so there are different types of mom blogs. I’ve been researching the sphere of mom blogs for more than... 

The hot thing at SXSW is location-based anything. (I’m so cool, I don’t even need to be there to know this.) But I’ll bet every single geek pushing a location-based app at SXSW is missing the point. You should sign up for location-based social media. So cool people can avoid you. Here’s the deal – there are some people I’d rather not see. (Oh come on, don’t... 

Dear SXSW attendees: I know you’re all excited. You’re going to spend a whole heap of time being all geeky and fun, and drinking and stuff. Talking about startups, design, innovation, music… ooh I’ll bet you’re all tingly. My husband is one of you. He’s kid-at-Christmas excited. He loves Texas and had a ball there last year. As a startup geek guy, he can’t... 

An American woman named Angie Jackson has decided it was a good idea to share her experience of aborting her pregnancy with the world, via YouTube and Twitter. A mother of a four-year-old who goes to the trouble of outlining the reasons why she decided on an abortion with RU486, Angie says her social media posts are her attempt to “demistify” the process, and let everyone know that for... 

Company A says, “Let’s create an event, sponsor some bloggers, and they’ll create a hashtag around it and we’ll give out some prizes. It will be great, Twitter will be buzzing with our company’s name.” Or a group of bloggers might come up with: “Every week we’ll be ‘meeting’ on twitter, using this hashtag.” Sound like good ideas? Sure.... 

There were so many amazing aspects to the Mom 2.0 Summit in Houston, Texas this last weekend that it’s hard to really pinpoint the essence of just one takeaway. There is a great range of posts coming together about the event and you can sort of lose your entire day surf them all through this great link list by Misty Khan. But read this first, right? Come back to the top after you’re done.... 

Word of Mouth has always been a double-edged sword for small business. I remember the saying  a local fish and chip shop had on their wall. “If you like our food, tell your friends. If you don’t like it, tell us!” Once upon a time, the worst that could happen would be a letter to the editor of the local paper. With a 24 hour news cycle, the bad news would pass and your business... 

If you are unfamiliar with the Nestle Family incident on social media last year, there are myriad blog posts about it, as well as a single piece of mainstream traditional media coverage. In a snapshot, Nestle brought a number of bloggers to the company’s headquarters in California from September 30-October 1, 2009, showing them the full range of its products, and using them as a focus group... 

I’m very excited to be attending the Mom 2.0 Summit in Houston, Texas from February 18-20. The schedule of events is chock full of sessions that I want to learn from. I think this conference is one which really does enlighten all parties – marketers and ‘moms’ –  on how the other operates. I regularly hear complaints from both sides – it seems there are as  many... 

“Twitter’s a fad.” “The young kids use Twitter because they don’t want to have a real conversation.” “Twitter is destroying society.” “How do you know they’re real?” “I really don’t care that much about what you’re doing all day.” I’ve heard it all. From all types of people. The only people who truly understand... 

Disney really has wrapped up every part of entertainment. Everywhere, the Disney organization has a presence. Even in this horrid economy, Disney reported an 18% increase in profit for the fourth quarter this year. The brand resonance of Disney is nothing short of amazing. Older women remember their favorite Disney princess, and still buy pyjamas, t-shirts and lots of other merchandise. Feld Family... 

Time for a brain dump. I have just completed reading work coming from Mor Naaman, Jeffrey Boase and Chih-Hui Lai at Rutgers, slated for CSCW 2010, on the content of messages in what they’ve decided to call “social awareness streams.” And right there I have an issue. I’m lumping it together with the term “weak ties” which found prominence in the 1940s (well before... 

Usually, I don’t consciously pay for content. I say ‘consciously’ because if I click on a link and there’s a paywall, I won’t do it. I also don’t subscribe to any newspapers or magazines (online or in ‘dead tree’ format). Basically, the quality of the content I’m seeing doesn’t make me want to pay for more of it. Mr Murdoch does have the... 

This week I was happily invited to join some other Colorado-based bloggers for a few adult snacks, refreshments and the opportunity to build a basket of goodies to take home. It was a great evening, put on by Glade’s parent company, S. C. Johnson’s wonderful PR team from Edelman in Chicago, to promote their Sense & Spray product. This event demonstrated Edelman actively identifies... 

I have a great amount of data from the recent NestleFamily twitterstorm. Luckily, I was able to see the storm coming. As a few of the attendees began tweeting about meeting up a few days prior to the start of #NestleFamily, I could see that there was going to be some fallout. My interest had been piqued a few months earlier with the Nestle “What’s for Dinner” junket that received... 

To be influential in social media takes effort. It doesn’t just happen. You can’t buy it. It’s not advertising. So if that’s what it’s not, how can organizations and people get to be really influential? Here are the steps to influence. When you and your brand get it right, that’s when you get to influence others. Find Relevance Your first mission is to produce content... 

This pre-internet installation was and remains a vital consideration in the future of media. It has been supposed for a long time that communication and media technologies allowed people who already knew each other to improve existing relationships. Alternatively, broadcast media were used to send corporate-owned messages to the ‘masses’. There has been very little in the understanding of communities... 

I am fortunate enough to have been invited to attend IMSI, the Invitational Masters Student Invitational, to be held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, the weekend of October 16-18. Given Rutgers received over 100 applications, to be one of the 25 students invited to discuss their current research and proposed dissertation topic with Rutgers faculty, existing doctoral candidates, and other invitees... 

The new buzzword in social media appears to be Influence. According to conferences, some marketers it’s what people want. To influence others. This is a mistake. It demonstrates a very shallow, one-sided view. (cartoon from xkcd.com) Talk to most people in social media for example, and they’ll tell you the truth. What they’re doing is looking for, and responding to resonance,... 

Let’s confirm who professional journalists are: People (trained or not), paid to produce content under the mastheads of traditional news outlets. Let’s confirm what they’re supposed to do: This is a tricky one. No matter how many times I have asked, and how many people, across Australia, the USA and the UK, nobody can give me a core definition of journalism. Maybe it’s a secret. A magician’s... 

I’m writing for the online news site, Examiner.com as the Boulder Startup Examiner. Why? Am I insane? Don’t I have enough to do? I felt compelled to do it. Boulder is a wonderful town, with a fantastic tech community of people. It’s a really big community, for a small town. It’s exciting, vibrant and smart. It’s full of incredible people. And they’re all doing their... 

Sometimes I get reminded why I’m doing this. There’s so much going on right now. I’m exhausted a lot of the time. I have no idea how Jed keeps this relentless pace up. No wonder I’ve called him robot boy for so long. Today I managed to squeeze in coffee with my good friend, Mark (@soctechnologist) after my first meeting for the day, and before I came home to hit more screen... 

By now even your grandma knows about the race to a million. Ashton Kutcher, old-media celebrity turned digital insider with various multimedia projects and Twitter groover challenged CNN to a race to a million followers on Twitter. And after a nice little campaign, last night he won. It was really fun to see the video of him crossing the victory line. He was really, truly excited. That’s impressive. What’s... 

There are some very interesting psychological theories used in Marketing and Business which explain why people behave the way they do. Put simply, people buy different brands and products to fulfill external and internal needs. These needs reflect their sense of self. And people can generally be placed in one of three categories: 1. Affiliation needs – people who primarily want to ‘belong’....