Chris Brogan asked an interesting question the other day on Twitter, and it got me thinking. He asked "Why do you try to acquire followers? Meaning vs just building relationships?" It's a great question because we've all seen people on Twitter aggressively trying to acquire new followers. Past about 500, it's virtually impossible to have a meaningful relationship. Peter Kim wrote a great piece on this a while ago, that describes it as an "Ego Trap". link] But then, the underlying question is; why does that even work. It's an interesting dynamic with interesting effects. reduction in numbers. MORE >>

Time 27:53. The problem with many companies trying to get PR and media coverage is they think like a company. They need to think like a news organization about themselves, their industry, and the communities in which they play. In the first Marketing Edge episode for 2009 we talk with Kevin Dugan, co-author of the Bad Pitch Blog. The Bad Pitch Blog is a must read for any PR or corporate communications professional , and more importantly, clients of PR organizations. Why clients? Because you don’t want to put your organization or your firm in a situation where the pitch becomes the news. MORE >>

I enjoyed my little presentation on BrightTalk last Wednesday, which you can still view by clicking here. If that doesn’t work, go to the BrightTalk site and key my name into the site search function. This will also bring up a roundtable discussion from Tuesday, which I think was interesting as well.) The BrightTalk platform itself worked nicely and was about as simple as possible. They offer a limited version for free (one 30 minute Webinar per month), which is worth considering if you’d like to dip your toe into this sort of thing. But I digress. Step 1: Gather Data. Step 2: Design Campaign. MORE >>

Welcome to the first post in the official Best of 2008 series, which will summarize and link to some of the best blog posts and online articles about SEO, social media, online marketing strategy and more. In this inaugural post, you can find out what prominent figures like Matt Cutts and Aaron Wall have to say about the future of SEO, how to perform a website health checkup, where to find the best SEO and online marketing videos produced last year, the truth about common SEO myths, the merits of microsites and more. Not her best stuff perhaps, but still interesting. MORE >>

Five Tips for Effective Lead Nurturing. Like most companies, you have probably built a significant database of prospective customers. It’s not uncommon to have 100,000s of contacts, or even millions, in a B2B company’s contact database. That database is a significant asset that gets undervalued at most companies. Think about it: if your average cost per new contact is even just $20 (a low assumption) and you have a modest database of 250,000 contacts, then your house database is a $5 million asset. Do you treat as such? How many other assets of that size do you have in your company? MORE >>