How to Game YouTube and Go Viral

Dan Ackerman Greenberg’s guest post on TechCrunch sparked heated discussion about the ethics of gaming YouTube to get more views. I am not a fan of gaming the system with fake comments and trickery like changing titles, tags and thumbnails, but there is no doubt that many “viral video specialists” use these tactics to get…More

Web Culture 101 via South Park

If I am going to open a conversation on social media and community building on this blog, we are going to have to discuss Web culture from time to time. Hence, a new category! Want to know what makes a video go viral? Just look at the history. Here’s a quick Web culture test to…More

Help A Reporter Out!

Although it’s gotten its fair share of blog posts and media hits in NY Times, Marketing Sherpa and MarketingProfs over the last several days, Peter Shankman‘s Help A Reporter Out project deserves a mention here as well for those of you who don’t have your finger on the pulse of the marketing infostream. Help A…More

Pluckers built reputation on personal service

There’s a wing joint that dominates the city of Austin and has started its migration across Texas. Started by two former University of Texas students, Pluckers has become the name that defines Buffalo wings in the state capital. The chain was recently featured in The Alcalde [Note that the article on Pluckers is not available…More

I am a slave to my Google Reader–efficiency is simple ignorance

It started as such an innocent tool. In my love of Gmail, I stumbled upon the powerful Google Reader (reader.google.com) and begin to fill it with RSS feeds from my favorite Web destinations. Instantly, my reader became the fastest way to skim through the gaming blogs, tech news and business musings of the talking heads…More

The Moneyball Method of Marketing

I know that this post by Steve Rubel was posted last year, but in mining my RSS feeds from Google Reader today, I came across this post on the movement towards Moneyball Marketing as marketers look to online and had to talk about it because of how much I enjoyed Moneyball. In Michael Lewis’ Moneyball,…More

Is Community Management the future of marketing?

There’s a reason that I want to integrate a role as a community manager into my normal public relations duties. As more and more marketers profess the equal ground that social networks create between marketers and consumers, marketers have to redefine themselves. Jeremiah Owyang answered his own question on how marketers could stay relevant in…More

Understand what public relations can do for you

TalentZoo.com featured a great set of 18 PR Tips for Startups from Brian Solis in a recent email. His tips feature a few pet peeves of mine about some people’s concept of public relations. Often, folks can doubt the power of PR. 2. Don’t undervalue PR. PR, when done right, is extremely valuable to company…More

Monitoring the Web: Where in the Google are you?

I’ll take your Seth Godin, and I’ll raise you one. I suggest a tip I got a long while back from Scott Ginsberg, “The Nametag Guy,” about tracking your presence on the Web: Set up a Google Alert for your name. Really, go do it now. By setting up a Google Alert for your name,…More

Why do all successful people have to be assholes?

Note: I apologize if the word “asshole” offends you, but for the purpose of this post, I am going to have to use the word quite a bit. Earmuffs please. I got into a little debate over at On Moneymaking tonight about whether you have to be an asshole to be successful. Jon’s post there…More