I take a perverse pleasure in reading my Twitter DMs, 99% of which are of the automated variety, looking for the heartfelt sentiment that goes out to me and thousands of other close personal friends every day from people I’ve started following. try to imagine the impulses that motivate the writers behind these parsimonious hanging chads of fake individualized attention. Technology is wonderful isn’t it? It allows us to divide the equivalent of a single “Have a nice day” into thousands of infinitesimally smaller investments of effort and goodwill. hope you enjoy that.”. What do you do?” MORE >>

There are two rivers of content at conferences. One is the river of planned content—the conference theme, the presentations, etc.; the other is the river of conversation that flows through the event at breaks, meals and receptions. This is where you get the dope on the shared challenges of the attendees. We just wrapped up our ITSMA Annual Marketing Conference this week and the strongest current driving the river of conversation was social media. Specifically, frustration over how to use social media to reach the C-suite. CEOs Use Social Media More than Other Buyers. What do you think? MORE >>

This post is from a real query I received from a client this week. The questions display a healthy distrust for accepted wisdom, which I like, and provide a good test of the thinking behind thought leadership marketing. See what you think of my answers: How did thought leadership initiatives in companies begin? Thought leadership marketing is based on the academic research publishing model, in which academics created journals built around a peer review process. The journals have boards made up of top academics in a given field. Is it only focused in knowledge intensive industries? MORE >>

Here’s a list of things I wish we would stop doing and thinking as of December 31 st : Social media. Social media cause people to waste time at work. Companies have a long and pointless history of resisting new forms of communication. From Facebook to email to putting telephones on employees’ desks (remember, the telephone started as a “consumer” communication technology, too), companies think that every new wave is going to lead to gajillions in lost productivity. Dude, this stuff isn’t heroin, okay? Guess what companies, people wasted time at work long before Facebook came along. don’t. MORE >>

As social media becomes more prevalent in marketing, we’re going to have to rethink how we gather information from prospects. We’re starting to see social media have a positive impact on driving traffic to websites and on lead generation. In our recent Web 2.0 survey, (all ITSMA clients can download this executive summary ), we found that “increased web traffic&# was the most frequently cited benefit of Web 2.0 efforts so far (by 67% of respondents). Increased lead generation” was farther down the list—24% are seeing it. for at least that long. think the inherently casual (social!) MORE >>