journalist by training, I have worked in publishing as a graphic artist for 30 years—good basic credentials. I started to study to be a better blogger, following the advice of Social Media Examiner , Hubspot and veteran bloggers. Two common denominators — the predominant use of English and the Internet — have placed mission work directly in the hands of congregations. Judith Gotwald owns and operates Gotwald Creation , a communications design company in Philadelphia. 'A few weeks ago I offered the opportunity to write a guest post (among other prizes!) MORE >>

But that’s a bit like saying that most Americans exercise regularly; it’s probably true, but there is a big difference between walking the dog around the block a couple of times per week and training for a triathlon. And just as there are significant differences in the results one will obtain from an intense training regimen vs. the occasional stroll, the MarketingProfs study points out that the “best in class” B2B social media performers are producing more than three times the number of leads from this channel than are “laggard” firms. Measure. MORE >>

Whether you’ve a selection team working on this or the entire project has been delegated to you, here are nine critical considerations to keep in mind as you review and evaluate your options. Support and training. Even with advanced UI design, more sophisticated tools are fundamentally more challenging to use. Be sure to get clarity on what kind of training is offered upfront, how much personalized assistance is offered as part of the package, how to get questions answered and how robust the internal help system is for ongoing use. But how do you choose one? MORE >>

This year, colleague Cheryl Burgess and I changed things up a bit, opening the award to nominations but focusing specifically on outstanding men and women who work for technology companies and are active on social media. Austin, Texas-based Susan Beebe works in Corporate Communications – Social Media Management at Dell. She currently lives in Newport Beach (been there), once worked for a pizza company (done that) and is a graduate of San Diego State University (love that town). She previously worked in marketing roles at Nortel, DataMirror Corporation and IBM. MORE >>

The Effective Marketer Effectiveness is a discipline and it can be learned Home About the Effective Marketer Books Speaking How Everybody Wins with HubSpot’s Funding As everyone in the marketing industry surely knows by now, HubSpot raised $32 million in additional funding. This means that is time to update my previous charts on marketing automation funding (see below) and the funding timeline, because HubSpot just surpassed Marketo as the highest funded marketing software vendor to date. Everyone Wins But it also means something else. Like Be the first to like this post. MORE >>