“What’s going to be the next Facebook?&#. love debating the implications of social media trends with my students and this question comes up a lot.   . My short answer is “There isn’t going to be one&# … a response which always results in surprised and confused faces! Facebook going to be entrenched as the king of social networking sites because the cost of switching to something else — for most people — will be too high. . In our tech-addicted society of hyper-change, we’ve become conditioned to expect the next big thing. It’s a lifestyle. MORE >>

Despite all the viral marketing success stories, there is still an embarrassing number of amateur mistakes made in the average viral marketing campaign. In this post you will find five anti-tips that will help you in better planning and executing a successful viral marketing campaign. Viral marketing viral marketing word-of-mouth marketing MORE >>

Summary: HubSpot has continued to grow its customer base and expand its product. It's looking more like a conventional small-business marketing automation system every day. You have to admire a company that defines a clear strategy and methodically executes it. HubSpot has always aimed to provide small businesses with one easy-to-use system for all their marketing needs. The company began with search engine optimization to attract traffic, and added landing pages, blogging, Web hosting, lead scoring, and Salesforce.com integration. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they changed their minds. MORE >>

I had a chance to attend the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and hear from some of the business leaders of the new Internet, including the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Twitter. Here are five key insights I took away. Make Marketing a Service to Customers - I didn’t write down who said this, but the comment stuck with me long after the conference was over. The traditional role of marketing has been to create an image or deliver a message. Service had little to do with it. It’s the only way to get prospects to pay attention. This doesn’t mean PCs are going away. MORE >>

Last week I authored a post suggesting that social scoring – determining your influence based on numbers of followers and other criteria — may have a growing impact on your personal effectiveness, your career, and how companies treat you as a customer in the future.  It seems that this development may now also be an emerging element in search engine results. Bing: We do look at the so cial authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. MORE >>