While blogs and social networks seem to get most of the attention when it comes to social media talk, podcasts and videos also remain viable channels to reach and connect with an audience. CC Chapman should know, as he's been active in the blogosphere and social networking spaces for years, but ... more

Hewlett-Packard simply handed over a $5,000+ computer prize package to each of 31 bloggers, asking them to give away the prizes to their readers in any way they saw fit. HP trusted the bloggers' influence over the market it wanted to reach—and had faith in their creativity. Turned out, that ... more

Back in 2006, a group of friends decided to play a practical joke on a colleague obsessed with his Jaguar—they covered the S-Type sedan with thousands of colorful Post-it notes. Scott Ableman uploaded photos of the prank to Flickr, where they became a viral phenomenon. This clip of an ABC ... more

In a recent article at MarketingProfs, Mike Volpe of HubSpot likens search engine optimization to a gigantic onion. There's no end to the number of layers you can peel back in your quest for a higher rank among your target market's search results. But the good news is you don't ... more

It's mid-afternoon and you learn—a little too late—that a blog post badmouthing your company has just gone viral. Rohit Bhargava offers a five-step plan for dousing the flames of these online wildfires: Identify the players. Says Bhargava, "Every blog crisis has three categories of participants: the source, the commenters and the ... more

Nine months after launching the HDX Dragon, Hewlitt-Packard faced a quandary: Sales of the feature-packed laptop were underwhelming. The company took action by partnering with Buzz Corps to create a social media campaign that targeted 31 influential bloggers. Dubbed 31 Days of the Dragon, it gave each blogger the opportunity ... more

If you dropped everything and followed the leader every time a social media tool went live, you'd never have time to do real work. Right? Not this time. Chin up: the social media gods have smiled upon you. While your rivals fought for the title of Early Adopter—taxing both their ... more

Love 'em or hate 'em, politicians are some of the most effective marketers out there. Let's break down how they achieve their ends, and how we marketers can cop their best moves to win the vote—for our products and services. more

Social marketing techniques such as blogging, wikis, podcasts, twitter, and virtual worlds have given marketers an extraordinary range of opportunities to reach out to audiences. But do these techniques really pay off—or are they just trendy alternatives that offer no measurable return on marketing investment? more

Companies have been scrambling to figure out how to leverage Web. 2.0 applications, but are they doing so for all the wrong reasons? With all the buzz about blogs, wikis, widgets, and other forms of user-driven Web interactions, the question your business needs to answer is, "Is this what our ... more

Wiggly Wigglers is a natural-gardening retail company set in the countryside between England and Wales. Its products are not high-tech, but its marketing certainly is. Here's how the company abandoned traditional marketing and instead took up a podcast, a blog, a wiki, and more... and then reaped the results. more

Kodak has invested people, energy, and two years of dedicated effort into building its social media program, and has met with great success. Here, Amber Naslund talks to the people behind Kodak's efforts to find out why their social media program is so valuable to their business, and how they've ... more

There's a new kid on the social media block that's starting to garner a lot of attention from companies. Microblogging sites, such as Twitter, are increasingly becoming a companion to an existing blog—or a standalone strategy for businesses that are using social media to connect with their customers. But many companies aren't ... more

Sharp Electronics may have led the LCD revolution, but consumers don't view it as an agent of change. As part of a multichannel campaign to change consumers' minds, Sharp turned to an innovative effort on Facebook. more

As it becomes easier than ever to produce and distribute online videos, you probably see how the medium can serve as a key marketing tool. And in a guest post at HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog, Eric Guerin explains how to give your DIY efforts the competitive edge: Start with a ... more

Rohit Bhargava is a well-respected marketer and blogger and frequent speaker at conferences, including the upcoming MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer. Here, he shares advice on how to get the most from the conference experience and discusses where social media is headed, as well as how businesses can make the most ... more

The top 10 challenges facing the interactive marketing community are very much the same as those facing the entire marketing community... in that almost every marketing professional must address the interactive/online marketing medium. When they are asked about top challenges, many marketers say things like "social media" or "search engine optimization" ... more

Last month in Beijing, Lenovo leveraged its Olympic sponsorship to develop global brand awareness. Unique to its approach was its use of new media, which fortified its traditional marketing and created a new level of athlete and fan interaction. more

John McCain got people talking when he aired an ad that compared Barack Obama to style-over-substance celebrities like Paris Hilton; but the conversation really picked up when Hilton shot back with an entertaining rebuttal at the comedic website Funny or Die. Reclined on a chaise lounge—and attired in high heels ... more

OK, you're supposed to be in-the-know about Social Media and B-to-B outreach. You can define "mashup," and report how it can best serve your clients, in 25 words or less, right? Yeah. Thought so. Here's a short list of terms, from a recent E-Commerce Times article, that might help. Hide it ... more

"Are you listening [to your customers]?" asks Todd Defren in a post at the PR Squared blog. "Great. But are you also empowered to act effectively on [their] behalf?" In other words, any company worth its salt can listen to its customers—what you do with the information is what sets ... more

In a Web 2.0 world packed with online voting/referral tools like Digg and Sphinn, DJ Francis of the Online Marketer Blog has decided that there's one he likes best: StumbleUpon. Though he acknowledges the quality of the traffic isn't always the greatest, the volume more than makes up for ... more

In a post at her Conversation Agent blog, Valeria Maltoni praises a fun YouTube video created by EA Sports as a response to one posted by a gamer called Levinator 25, who discovered an unexpected, and likely unintended, feature in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08. Dubbed "Jesus Shot," his brief, ... more

There's probably no better case study on how a business leverages social media to connect with customers and grow itself than Gary Vaynerchuk's Wine Library. Here, Gary shares the reasons your company should pay attention to social media, and what impact these tools will have in the years to come. more

"Twitter has become an essential tool for PR, and has relevance for almost every type of business," says Sandra Fathi, president of Affect Strategies. Here are only a few of the ways Fathi recommends using the new software to your advantage: Seek and create media opportunities. Twitter can help you ... more