Bernie and Ryan share 5 big ideas reinforced at the SXSW interactive conference.

This past week I had the chance to sit down with Rick Short, director of Marketing / Communications at Indium Corp. Rick has been blogging and using social media to help Indium build contacts and grow its business well before social was on the map. The conversation was so good, we had to break it up into parts. You can also connect with Rick by visiting his blog or following him on Twitter.

This will be the first in a series of interviews we’ll be conducting this year with folks who are leveraging the power of social networks as a part of their overall marketing strategy. Enjoy the videos. (more…)

image from Toothpaste for Dinner

Everyone keeps talking about Twitter. Love it or hate it, it’s a really powerful tool to connect to people around the world.  And like lots of new technologies it has its spammers, its haters, and a huge group of people who just don’t understand how it can connect them to the global conversation that’s happening in 140 character chunks.

I was reading an article from Leonard Pitts whose columns I usually really enjoy. Except for this one. Here’s a quick excerpt:

“In the ’90s, you often heard people complain of how memoir writers and afternoon talk shows had turned our public spaces into a communal confessional, intimate secrets once necessary for whispering now shouted into the ether like an order at a fast-food joint. Ten years later, we are not just sharing secrets; we are sharing lives. And not the good parts, either, but the banal, the mundane, the everyday. I’m darned if I can see the fascination.  I mean, I’m not surprised that technology allows this. But I am surprised that people — by the thousands — buy in to it.” (more…)

Boston artist Ryan Montbleau (who is in heavy rotation on our office sound system) has taken an innovative approach to booking a small house concert tour. Combining social marketing, e-mail blasts, and eBay, he’s giving his fans the chance to bid up for a series of private shows…

More info:

Official Ryan Montbleau Site

E-bay Auction Page

We’ve always prided ourselves on embracing the latest in communications tools and strategies, and finding ways to reach more people more effectively for our clients. We’ve been helping them market themselves for over 35 years, and online since 1996, back when the only profitable websites featured gambling or pornography. Fortunately things have changed, and we’re also reaching larger audiences by engaging them interactively through social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. Customers spend more time online (poker players notwithstanding) and put more of their trust in the information they find there, and we’re guiding our clients to control the conversation more effectively as active participants. As we continue to grow our clients’ and our own online business, we are proud to welcome Ryan Miller, an experienced social media specialist, to our team. (more…)