An interesting story was uncovered by a NYT reporter regarding Google, and their organic search results. You really should read the full story here, but in a very brief summary, the reporter found that JC Penney, a US retailer, was ranked very highly in organic results for terms like “black dress” and “Samsonite carry on luggage”. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that JC Penney had over 2,000 links pointing to its website from “irrelevant” [...]

I’ve added a new resource here that I think is quite nifty: the 2011 Social Media Calendar. It lists dozens (hundreds?) of social media conferences and trade shows from around the world. Really useful if you want to expand your horizons and attend some events. The calendar is available for free download by clicking here, or you can read it below (thanks to Scribd.com). 2011 Social Media Calendar

While I was researching my book, Social Media Case Studies, it became obvious very quickly that Facebook and Twitter are the most essential tools for almost all social media campaigns, and everything else is an “add-on”. That’s not surprising, of course, given the popularity of both services, but it does beg the question of “How do we do it best?“. If everyone is using Facebook Pages, then you have to try really hard to stand [...]