I have had the unique opportunity to provide consulting services to a relationship company, helping them improve their communications. As part of the process I’ve learned a lot about their first meeting they hold with their clients, during this meeting they give first date suggestions, including:

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The Right Way to Make a First Impression: Social, Mobile, & Email

When Robert Keane launched Vistaprint in 1995, he never could have envisioned it would become the world’s leading provider of printing services to small businesses. What are those printing services? For many, it’s all about the low-cost business cards Vistaprint has become synonymous for. But it’s much, much more than that. The company recently launched branded apparel to add it to its extensive list of offerings for small businesses. Moreover, for the 2011 fiscal year, global revenue is expected to net around $785-$800 million, with business cards only estimated to be 1/3 of that figure, according to Keane.

Originally posted here:
Vistaprint CEO Robert Keane on Small Business Success, Globalization, New Age Digital Marketing and the Future of the Business Card

Philip Calvert is a professional speaker on Social Media and the Founder of IFA Life - the social networking site for financial planners, IFAs and professional financial advisers.

Original post:
Are you kidding yourself that Social Media is working in your business?

Over the past year there has been an increased interest placed on local search and location based advertising. Sites like Yelp, Google Places and Citysearch, just to name a few, have continuously made strides in the local search market and local businesses have jumped on the wave. But no one ever talks about what happens once you have joined these directories, You’ve added your business but now what? Are you going back to check on the progress of your business? How are you measuring success?

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Beyond Local: Have You Taken Control of Your Online Reputation Yet?

Twitter has a vibrant ecosystem of companies using its API. The problem for Twitter, however, is how to manage and generate revenue at a time when some companies are enjoyed major success.

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Is a Twitter vs. the Ecosystem Row Brewing?

Bumi replies by saying "Listen to me, Aang. There are options in fighting, called jing. It's a choice of how you direct your energy...". He goes on to explain that there are three types of Jing: Positive, Negative, and Neutral. Positive Jing is when you are attacking and on the offensive, Negative Jing is when you are retreating and you are on the defensive, and Neutral Jing is when you seemingly do nothing. This, however, is not the case as Neutral Jing, in reality, is waiting so you can watch, and listen to your opponent waiting for the exact right moment to attack.

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The Jing of Social Media

Twitter followers and Facebook fans are often labeled with a price tag, but are the added numbers really worth it?

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Do Purchased Twitter Followers Provide Real Value?

The social media practitioner is constantly playing catch-up, and never fully delivering on the client’s key needs. Let’s try to understand the users first before we tackle down the ‘reason’ for engagement. Social intelligence technology has come a long way in the past few years, go out and try to learn more about the space. Culturally and Contextually.

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Best Social Media Strategist Doesn’t Look at Social Media as Social Media

Before I met Elisa Camahort Page, I had thought that BlogHer was an initiative that was more closely allied with the idealistic (“hippy”) roots of social media.

When I think how much has happened since October 2008 [note: that's before Simple Marketing Now for me], the perspectives below make me appreciate how timeless the topic is and how particularly suited the tools of social media are to building relationships and developing loyalty with customers. That's why I'm sharing with you all eight of the video clips in Becky's series and hope you will watch each one.

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Customer Loyalty & Social Media: Customers Rock Video Series

Short answer: their business models were not based on direct sales of “published” content, i.e. in the case of the Grateful Dead, on their record sales.

Yesterday I was privileged to attend the Toronto launch of the Canadian results of Edelman’s 2011 Trust Barometer survey with my employer, Richard Edelman. This year, even more than in recent years, I find the results of the survey fascinating from both traditional and digital communications standpoints

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Edelman Trust Barometer Reveals Need For Mature Social Media

This one is a classic and offers the fundamentals on what metrics to look at first for your email marketing program.

The rest is here:
Five Clicks to Track for your Email Program

I and every other marketing and business blogger have written so much about the disruption social media has had, and continues to have, on newspapers that I don’t feel the need to go into that any further.

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Newspapers, Dictators And Pimps Are All Being Disrupted By Social Media