Groupon Now – an interesting evolution of social purchasing

Over the last couple of years I have been following the “social purchasing” space and have written a number of posts on this topic. Most of them have been about Groupon and have been pessimistic about their long-term leadership position. While Groupon has grown tremendously fast and have gotten astronomical valuations, they were the innovator that defined the space. Today they officially launched a...

3 Reasons Hootsuite Is A Must For Corporate Social Media Teams

When evaluating social media engagement and analytics tools, Hootsuite needs to be in the conversation for 3 main reasons: 1. Secure Social Profiles Hootsuite’s recent launched of Secure Social Profiles is a fantastic new capability that can help prevent “brainless engagement”. Here is how they describe the update: “HootSuite’s new Secure Profiles feature prevents accidental updates by team...

Big 4 Social Media networks suck the oxygen from all the others

When discussing social media marketing $$$ with clients, I am finding that increasingly the Big 4 Social Media Networks (ie. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn) are the ones clients are choosing to focus on. Their rational is simple: Invest in the channels that have the critical mass and get the highest ROI possible. The Big 4 have the critical mass.  While this is probably not the most incredibly insight you...

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...

The answer to Twitter overload: Paper.li

I came across the term “Twitter overload” the other day and immediately understood the reference. Twitter is a great channel for following thought leaders and culling insights from social media leaders. Unfortunately, with a very busy schedule, it is difficult to catch the nuggets of information within the stream of info flowing through Twitter. The answer is Paper.li a fantastic aggregator of your...