Lifehacker Pack for Mac: Our List of the Best Free Mac Downloads

Facebook Grows Up

Time spent on social media [by country]

There Are No More Blind Dates

The socially powered Web has become the tool of choice to find business and personal information about the people, products, services, and companies we are considering doing business with. Because people know they can do a quick bit of research and often discover additional information before making purchase decisions, it’s become a standard part of the process for both buyer and seller.

This creates tremendous opportunity while raising the bar for anyone that sells a product or service.

I’m presenting to a group of sales teams at a major technology conference later this summer and here’s what I plan to tell them.

There are no more blind dates. Your prospects can know more about you, your products, your company and your solutions than you with very little work. And the same holds true – you can and should know all about a prospect’s challenges, strategies, peers, and constraints before you ever pick up the phone to call them.

Social media and search have irreversibly merged the worlds of sales and marketing. Where the marketing message and the sales relationship building tactics begin and end is a moving target and you must adopt a new set of marketing related behaviors to thrive in this new order.

This isn’t a policy announcement — it’s a fact of internet life!

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

The Social Media Style Guide: 8 Steps to Creating a Brand Persona

Cosmic Spectators Train Their Sights on South Africa

What would Todd do? I have a friend from church who has a blog about missions in South Africa. He’s also interested in soccer. If I were him, I’d view all of the World Cup activity as a gift from God and use the ‘e1evation workflow’ of ‘consume, create, communicate’ to grab as much traffic-driving content as I could to bring visitors to my message. What would you do?

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

Activity on Facebook by Age

The Island of Apple-Banished Toys

Marketing In Twenty Minutes (Or Less)

Let’s face it, when it comes to getting things done, most people want to do it either quick or easy (ok, sometimes both).

If you have a strategy in place and take the time to build some semblance of (loyalty) – and yes, that can be either online, offline or both – you can push your marketing to be cheap and easy (sort of). The truth is (and there’s no big insight here) that the best brands have built up enough equity within their audience that a lot of the tactical execution can become cheap, easy and effective to boot. Remember, cheap and easy doesn’t mean annoying and bad.

A Blog does this very well.

No, you can’t build your entire Marketing portfolio by simply starting a Blog, but Blogging and many of the other Social Media tools, channels and platforms do allow you to market on-the-fly. I recently sat down with some fairly senior marketing executives and when the topic of Blogs and Blogging came up, many of them reverted back to the old, “I simply don’t have enough time in the day to get to Blogging,” chestnut. Many of the other Marketing folks who were still updating their Blogs on a fairly frequent basis complained that they still need to allocate a chunk of time to get the Blogging done.

…and cheap! [quick, easy, AND cheap…]

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

Why Small Businesses Shouldn’t Take Social Media for Granted

It seems like social media is everywhere these days. But the 2010 Business Monitor United States report — commissioned by UPS — shows that when it comes to small- and medium-sized businesses, social media is still a missed opportunity. A mere 24% of respondents said they’ve received sales leads from social media, with just 1% citing it as a factor for business growth.

The data would appear to indicate that in spite of all the positive press that social media gets, and all the use cases we’ve seen emerge over the past few years, small business owners are taking social media for granted. When done right, social media can be a valuable source for customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction. Here a few reasons to help drive the value home.

Follow the ‘via’ link for more…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

Which Way the Wind Blows

Ahhh. One of my favorite 2nd Chapter songs. Rough video, but good….

Easter Song

The best live recording I could find. If you’ve never heard it “How the West was One” with 2nd Chapter of Acts and Phil Keaggy is one of the finest Christian concert albums I have ever heard. It’s still available on Amazon.com…

The impact of the 2nd Chapter of Acts

They were among the very first contemporary worship groups there ever were. And there’s a great deal of emphasis on worship these days. They weren’t just performers. They were bringing a state of worship that was what people’s hearts were longing for because we had already had our fill of all kinds of music for the ’60’s and the ’70’s.

I think they just caused people’s hearts to rise and they caused our eyes to look heavenward. You’d find yourself looking at them and then at the end of the night your heart would just about burst with joy and love for God, you know. I saw that happen to many people in the audience. And I remember that happening to me. I remember sitting in the auditorium when the group would do a few songs without the band. I would just be captivated by it. It was very special time.

For the people who never got to see them live and there’s a great many of them today, who are into Christian music who don’t know who 2nd Chapter of Acts were, I think they ought to go back and listen to The 2nd Chapter Of Acts. It’s like reading about the founding fathers. We should know some of this history.

It’s because they were a part of a rootsy thing. And you know they’re music was born out of their fellowship in God and their family. And that came out as early as ’71 when they started really making music. They already had an amazing sound back then.

The first person who ever told me about 2nd Chapter of Acts was Scott Ross. He was my pastor. Scott Ross founded “Love In” a community in upstate New York. He was secular disc jockey from New York City, close friends with Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. In fact his wife Nedra was one of the Ronnettes. Famed “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You” and those songs. He said, “There’s this group, two sisters and a brother that you won’t believe!” And then he started playing “Easter Song” on the radio and I taped it and played it for everyone.

We used to hold Bible studies in our home in Warren, Ohio. And I would say, “hey listen to this everybody” and we’d listen to it and listen to it again and again. It was wonderful. It’s amazing how you hear something and then you have a dream and say, “boy I’d love to meet these people”.

I was blessed to see 2nd Chapter of Acts 4 times in concert. Never experienced anything like it since then…

Posted via web from Todd’s posterous

The BoDeans perform at Walleye Weekend

I saw the BoDeans open for U2 at the Oakland Coliseum in 1987. Now they’re a headliner for ‘Walleye Weekend’. How the mighty have fallen? Maybe this is the gig they always dreamed of…

Posted via web from Todd’s posterous

‘All my accomplishments are classified’

Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer

Baby boomers have long been considered the generation that did not want to grow up, perpetual adolescents even as they become eligible for Social Security. Now, a growing body of research shows that the real Peter Pans are not the boomers, but the generations that have followed. For many, by choice or circumstance, independence no longer begins at 21.

Posted via web from Todd’s posterous

Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer

Baby boomers have long been considered the generation that did not want to grow up, perpetual adolescents even as they become eligible for Social Security. Now, a growing body of research shows that the real Peter Pans are not the boomers, but the generations that have followed. For many, by choice or circumstance, independence no longer begins at 21.

Posted via web from Todd’s posterous

Facebook Fans Spend More Money

A social media marketing company called Syncapse surveyed [PDF link] 4,000 people who have “Liked” the top 20 brands that have pages on Facebook and figured out exactly how valuable those “fans” are.

The study (“The Value of a Facebook Fan: An Empirical Review”) estimates that someone who has Liked a brand will spend an average of $71.84 more each year on that brand’s products or services than will someone who has not Liked it on Facebook, for a total average annualized value of $136.38.

This method is very different than the one employed by Vitrue in another fan value study a month ago. Vitrue’s method valued fans by figuring out how much it would cost to buy advertising on a website to reach the same people.

Product spending was only one of six fan benefits that Syncapse studied. The others were loyalty, propensity to recommend, brand affinity (“perception and recall”), media value (efficiency of Facebook vs. other ways to reach consumers) and acquisition cost.

In most cases, the average fan was more valuable to the brand than the average non-fan, though results varied widely on an individual basis. For example, some fans spent no money at all on a brand and never recommend it to friends.

Note that this was just demonstrated as a correlation, nothing more.

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

Chattertree – A Social Network For Your Family

This looks like an interesting tool, however, I’d be looking to accomplish most of this with a Facebook page. Why? Most of the functionality is already built in to a Facebook page and most of the people you want to connect are already there…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

52 Questions To Ask When Hiring A Social Media Company

Follow the ‘via’ link to get the goods…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

10 Effective Ways To Monetize Your Blog

Every day people ask me how they can make money with their blog, so today I wanted to go thru my top ways to make money.

First thing you should know is if you want to make money  with your blog long term , then you will need more then one way to monetize your blog..You know the old saying mom used to say “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” lol who knew moms advise [sic] would come in handy with my blog and making money.

Understand that “blogging” alone will not make you money, but using some or all of the ways I share below will help.

My list includes some fast to start ways and some long term with a little effort ways to make money. So regardless of your efforts, you can make money with your blog.

Follow the ‘via’ link to go to the source…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

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