Sword and the Script



Marketers disagree on needs and metrics – but appear to be doubling down on social media advertising and mobile marketing. That’s according to the new 2015 State of Marketing Report which Salesforce recently published.

The company that coined the term “marketing cloud” conducted the survey online in October and November 2015 and earned responses from 5,053 marketers around the globe. The report published in January 2015 is the second annual report – which provides benchmarks for understanding shifts in perception. Read More…



Twitter made a number of advertising product (or inventory) announcements recently including a plan to sell ads on other websites. In a CMO round up, Wall Street Journal advertising reporter Steven Perlberg summed it up like this:

…Twitter has made the case that there is a large audience of people who see its content around the Web, but who aren’t actually registered to use the social media service. This is one of the arguments the company has played up to soothe the once-besotted investors worried about its growth prospects. But now, Twitter is readying plans to bring in dollars from those viewers: it wants to sell ads on the streams of tweets within other publishers’ apps and websites…

Certainly Twitter has a good case – there is undoubtedly a sizable audience that lurks on Twitter – and measuring the outcome of such visibility is challenging.  However the pursuit to “soothe the once-besotted investors” by showcasing what amounts to reach drowns out one of the things that makes Twitter so different from any other social ad option (especially Facebook):  It combines earned and paid. Read More…



The blog posts weren’t especially compelling, in fact these were a little heavy with sales messages; case studies that had been re-purposed.

However instead of the classic problem-solution-format, they featured little vignettes showcasing minor customer victories. The posts were accented with liberal subheads, short paragraphs, and spotted with lots of bulleted lists – classic web writing if such a thing exists.

These were however, solid blog posts, but just not of the epic variety…or so we thought.  While the social share counts were quite low the web analytics were displaying sizable volume of traffic.  It caused us to ask – where was the interest coming from? Read More…



It’s a question as old as the web – should you gate your content?

It appears that most marketers do and reported gating “80% of their major content marketing assets” according to a survey vetted by MarketingProfs.  The same study points out there’s some content – infographics for example – is rarely gated.

There are credible – and often very passionate – arguments on both sides of the debate but the answer that’s right for an organization probably varies. It depends on the goals across the content marketing spectrum – is the content intended to attract, convert or retain customers? Read More…



I’ll beg Dr. Barnes to forgive me the editorial liberty I’ve taken with this headline, but that’s my takeaway after finally reading the UMASS Dartmouth Study: The 2014 Fortune 500 and Social Media: LinkedIn Dominates As Use of Newer Tools Explodes.

My interpretation of the results are completely different than those of the researchers who concluded:

“The 2014 Fortune 500 has now fully embraced new communications tools that have taken so many other sectors by storm.”

“These giant corporations are demonstrating an interest in experimenting with new tools.”

“This is a group that now seems comfortable and even excited with its newfound ability to engage its vendors, partners, customers and others in ways that could not have been imagined when most of their corporations began.”

With apologies to Dr. Barnes again, I just don’t see that in the data. I see tepid interest in small pockets of consumer oriented businesses among the Fortune 500. My frame of reference is in knowing what is possible, as compared to what is demonstrated. Read More…



Market research, social engineering and a little bit of luck seemed to produce a spate of so-called “boy bands” in the late 1990s. It was a radical, if not unpalatable idea, that hit artists could be fabricated rather than discovered.

It became a formula that underscores how much closer the entertainment community is to social science than it is to art.  It wasn’t a new concept, but it was the one that turned heads the most, since a time when Levitttown first placed that oh, so perfect tree.

The Truman Show, Minority Report, the Matrix – take your pick, or perhaps take your pill, but this is our world online.  It’s given to us in the name of relevancy because your friends that liked this post, also liked this post. Read More…



Googler John Muller announced in a Google+ update that Google was ending its Authorship project. There was the usual, perhaps deserved, criticism of the search company – because it seems to dabble in products, gets users hooked and then dumps them both.

“After over two years of Google encouraging webmasters to add authorship to their pages, Google drops the feature cold,” read the subhead a Marketing Land article about the announcement.

Suffice to say, the web community, particularly digital marketers, ought to be well used to this by now.  Google has killed more than 3,000 projects according to Slate, though not all of them have had the fanfare of Wave, Buzz or Reader. Questions remain open about the viability of existing popular products including Google+, Feedburner and Blogger. Read More…



by Frank Strong

On a recent flight to visit family, I gave my 3-year-old my iPhone for entertainment.  She’s got a page on the phone devoted specifically to apps and games just for her (I highly recommend the PBS app).  She’s been able to navigate her way around the phone since she became strong enough to hold it.

She didn’t play games however and I was surprised to discover she had learned a new skill:  The art of the selfie. Instead of navigating to her game page, she turned the camera on and snapped about 50 photos just like this one in just a minute or two. Read More…



by Frank Strong

When Grant Crowell received four LinkedIn messages in a single week pitching Mark Robertson’s ReelSEO video summit, he was fed up.

It was the same message sent four different times, from three different people, including Greg Jarboe, co-founder of the marketing firm SEO-PR.

“LinkedIn is about making real connections,” he said in a message complaining to ReelSEO posted to Twitter.

The response to that complaint from the official ReelSEO Twitter handle was dismissive, “Opt out – it’s that simple.” Read More…



by Frank Strong

For every hundred fans a brand page has earned, just two will see status updates organically. Organic means those views that come naturally through the new stream, without paying Facebook to advertise content posted to a brand page.  What’s clear is there is a decline in Facebook organic reach.

For many brands, Facebook’s aggressive moves to generate advertising revenue, has reduced the value of Facebook as a platform and they feel as if it’s a bait and switch.  Jim Tobin might agree – and his company Ignite Social Media represents many large brands.

“The large corporations I talk to are very frustrated with Facebook and are re-evaluating their investments,” he noted in an “Off Topic” series interview for this blog. “It was very valuable when you had organic exposure that could be boosted with paid. As the organic evaporates, the value prop changes.” Read More…