I've already announced on my personal blog, the imaginatively-titled David B. Thomas, that I am leaving SAS to go to New Marketing Labs. Today is my last day here. I'm in my office right now, procrastinating, since the packing up has come down to the annoying stage: small things and
Cisco just released one of those big reports that is bound to get everybody all aflutter. The Cisco 2010 Midyear Security Report is subtitled, "The impact of global security threats and trends on the enterprise." No points for guessing that I jumped straight to the social media section, after seeing
Last night The Mrs looked over my shoulder at Tweetdeck and said, “Everybody’s talking about Old Spice.” It’s the hottest topic in social media, marketing and advertising right now. Built on the success of the video embedded above, which now has more than 13 million views on YouTube, the
Mashable.com is a great place to keep up-to-date on the happenings in social media, and their @Mashable Twitter account is my personal social media canary-in-the-coal mine. Today they're warning us about a new Facebook scam centered around a video that promises to reveal the "truth" about Coca-Cola. If you click
Chris Brogan is a well-known social media speaker and consultant. You may have seen him in the "Nuts and Bolts of Social Media" series interviews he did with Deb Orton. (Scroll down past the clip of the goofy-looking guy in glasses.) He's also an amazingly prolific blogger, sometimes posting several
I just saw a tweet from someone attacking “self-declared social media gurus.” This has been going on for a long time, to the point where people who have some professional relationship to social media would probably rather be called a shoplifter than an expert. It’s gotten a little out of
At South by Southwest this year, people were talking about location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla as the next big thing, the same way Twitter was discussed there in the past. Location-based services let you check in at a place from your mobile device, and people who you have let
New Marketing Labs does a great job with their conferences of distilling the essential information into easily understood chunks that you can take home and start, um... chunking with right away. One of the first social media conferences I attended was their Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco, way back
I've had a few conversations lately with friends and business acquaintances who expressed an interest in a job involving social media. I found myself giving all of them the same basic advice, so here it is. None of it is new or novel, and I'm not entirely sure I haven't
Seems like there are a lot of great folks writing social media books right now. Last week I learned that Amber Naslund and Jay Baer are writing a book aimed at small and medium-sized business, organizations and non-profits. I just heard on the Six Pixels of Separation podcast this morning
Here's a video interview with me, conducted by Deb Orton, where we talk about how we got social media off the ground at SAS, how to plan for some of the basic organizational issues and a bit about social media policies. It's an action-packed and fun-filled 14 minutes. Well, informative
Jeremiah Owyang led off the second day of the Ragan Cisco Social Media Summit with a talk entitled What’s Next? Social Media Trends for Corporations. I’ve seen Jeremiah speak before and I’m always impressed with the clarity of his vision. Here are my notes from his talk this morning. Jeremiah
Len Devanna, Director of Digital Strategy at EMC, gave a presentation at the Ragan Cisco Social Media Summit that hit a lot of responsive chords with me. It sounds like Len and I have faced a lot of the same challenges and come to many of the same conclusions. Considering
Michael Brito from Edelman Digital talked this morning at the Ragan Cisco Social Media Summit on the topic of “Brands Breaking Boundaries.” Michael came to Edelman from Intel and understands the issues that corporate social media communicators face. Michael, by the way, is a great guy and one of the
Jeanette Gibson, global director of social media at Cisco, kicked off the Ragan Cisco Social Media Summit with an outstanding and inspiring review of how Cisco is using social media tools including blogs, Twitter and employee-generated video. These are my more-or-less tidied up notes from her presentation. Cisco has 22
This week I'll be heading to Cisco in San Jose for the Social Media Summit, put on by Ragan Communications. I'm excited to be attending and even more so to be presenting. I attended a Ragan event at SAS about two years ago, before I took on the Social Media
I was in a meeting this morning with some of SAS’ most active social media marketers: a solid group of smart folks who understand the value of social media and are integrating social into their campaigns in practical, measurable ways that add real value. It’s always an exhilirating discussion. We’re
Our SAS blogs are getting hit hard with what I can only describe as contextual spam, or maybe intelligent spam. I've heard several other people mention it lately, including Chris Brogan in a post called "Thoughtful Blog Spammers Welcome." Basically, the comments are relevant to the content of the post
My notes from the MarketingProfs B2B panel “Driving and Measuring B2B Conversations, Leads and Sales with Social Media.” Presented by Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketing Manager, HubSpot; Kyle Flaherty, Director, Marketing, BreakingPoint Systems Kyle started out by promising that, since this session had the longest title, it would be the best.
My notes from the MarketingProfs B2B panel "Getting Strategic with Your Brand." Presented by Lois Brayfield, President, J Schmid & Associates; Susan Doctoroff Landay, President, Trainers Warehouse Lois asked us to accept three ideas: Your brand defined is the perception of your customers. Forget B2B, you’re selling to people with
One of the most valuable features of the MarketingProfs B2B forum are the One-on-One Therapy sessions, where attendees get to sit down with experts in different fields and get specific advice relevant to the challenges they’re facing. Jennifer Altimore and Joe Hirshka from Kennametal Inc. came to Boston from Latrobe,
My notes from the MarketingProfs panel "It’s Not Your Mother’s PR: New Opportunities to Influence Your Constituents" Panelists include Deirdre Breakenridge, President, PFS Marketwyse; Terri D. Andrews, Public Relations Manager, RSM McGladrey; and Donna Tocci, Director, Web/New Media, Ingersoll Rand. The moderator was Beth Harte, Senior Subject Matter Expert, Digital
I’m in Boston for MarketingProfs B2B Forum, which promises to be one of the most valuable conferences of the year for B2B marketers interested in social media. I led a workshop this morning on social media policies (which Jeff Cohen from socialmediaB2B.com has already blogged), then headed off to my
I'm really pleased and excited that my friend and colleague Alison Bolen is becoming a contributor to this blog. Alison has been one of the most dedicated, vocal and tireless advocates of the value of social media to SAS, even before I started working here. A lot of the progress
Panelists (left to right): Deb Orton, SAS, Moderator Brad Fiery, Vice President, Database Marketing and Analytics, The Lacek Group Heather Valteris, Vice President Database Marketing Center of Excellence, GE Capital – Retail Customer Finance Theresa Kushner, Director, Integrated Customer Intelligence, Cisco Systems Jim Foreman, Director of Circulation and Analytics,
Pamela Meek, Anne Milley, Mark Chaves and Katie Paine My SAS world and my social media world collided today at SAS Global Forum in Seattle. We launched SAS Social Media Analytics, a product designed for, well, people like me who are trying to monitor and measure the value of social
I’m leaving tomorrow morning for SAS Global Forum, our annual user conference, held this year in Seattle. Last year was my first Global Forum. More than three thousand people came to learn more about SAS and to hang out with other like-minded souls. It’s quite an experience. I’ve heard it
Facebook has just announced a major change, which should come as no surprise to anyone, since they seem to enjoy messing around with things. This time they're changing the process for becoming a fan of a business or person (or concept, or beverage or highway exit - there are lots
I started the social media manager job at SAS in January of 2009, and spent the first half of the year creating and communicating our social media policies (which we call our Guidelines and Recommendations, since they’re much more than just the dos and don’ts.) In the half year or
Here, not a moment too soon, is a more-or-less random recollection of the big ideas and trends I witnessed at South by Southwest Interactive. Location-based applications were predicted to have the biggest hype, and that was borne out. These are applications, primarily for mobile devices, that let you "check in"