3 Reasons Groupon turning down $6B was a bad move

Recently the Groupon team turned down a $6b acquisition offer from Google. Waaaay bad move. The Groupon team should have taken the $$$ and jetted to Tahiti for some R&R. A quick background: Groupon is a couponing or target direct marketing  / advertising program and so far they have done a good job. So such a good job, that there are a lot of copycats popping up all over the place….some new companies...

Tracking Social Media with Google Analytics and Hootsuite

Hootsuite just added a new capability that allows users to create custom URL Parameters for analytics tracking.  This is very powerful and has been on my Hootsuite “wishlist” for quite a while. Here’s why:  one of the issues with social media contributions  is that tracking outcomes and associating them to Social Media Objectives is quite difficult (though definitely not impossible). This new...

Top 5 Tools For Getting Started In Social Media

Earlier today I had a conversation with a group of PR pros about social media metrics and the best tools to track and aggregate those metrics.  Type  “Social Media Tools” into Google and you get 136m results, so selecting the best ones to get started can be a daunting task. So, if you need a set of very functional and powerful tools at a great price (most are free), here is a list of my favorites: 1....

Do It Pro Bono in 2010

About two years ago I started volunteering with the Taproot Foundation as an Account Director. If you are unfamiliar with Taproot Foundation, they are a non-profit organization that recruits marketing professionals to assist other non-profits with their marketing programs. As a volunteer or non-profit, it is a fantastic organization and I highly recommend working with them. They also do a tremendous job of using...

2010 Social Media Marketing budgets to increase between 43% and 79%

Marketing Sherpa just released results on Social Media budget trends for 2010. Not surprisingly, companies will be allocating a whole lot more $ to Social Media Marketing in 2010 than they did in 2009. Given the justifiable hype around Social Media, I anticipate a lot more companies implementing their Social Media Frameworks in 2010. Here is the link to their chart: “Social marketing budgets to grow in...