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…)

Earlier today, Bernie Freytag, our creative director asked me if I had watched the President’s speech regarding Afghanistan last night. He noted that none of his friends on Facebook nor followers on Twitter had made any comments on it. I had to admit, though I too had watched it, I hadn’t seen a single word from my friends or followers as well. A few posts by a couple news sources but none of the actual humans I keep in my circle had uttered a word pro or against.

Since both Bernie and I were surprised that there was so little internet chatter about it, I immediately thought again to the liberal nature of Social Media. I assumed then that the President’s speech put liberal minded folks in a hard spot. That the usual banter that would follow a speech about an escalation of war had been stifled, not unlike how the Democrats in Congress have been forced to bite their tongues. On the one hand, many of them are anti-war. But they are also pro-Obama. So like me and many of my social network, we’re stuck. We want to support and believe in our President, but aren’t really sure sending more troops into that war zone is the answer. So we’re silent, or at least that’s what I thought. (more…)

It seems like every site on the web now has some form of “Web 2.0″ or social features integrated with them. Whether that’s an official Twitter account, company blog, a Ning group or Facebook fan page, social media has created a new channel for businesses to use for customer service, marketing, and community building.

This past week Google launched a new product as part of their Google Toolbar that every website owner should be aware of.  Google SideWiki is a huge way to annotate the web. Think of it as seeing comments, additional links, and Wikipedia style annotations alongside every webpage you visit. According to Google’s Video, you can link up additional text on the page to point to your annotation, or leave a comment on the page as a whole. Don’t want to leave your mark? You can still view everyone else’s comments and rate whether they’re useful or not, or share a comment via Twitter or Facebook. (more…)

When local news station WKTV was working on a story about how non-profits are using social networks, they also contacted our agency and talked with Ryan Miller who is our Online Strategist. We’re believers in the power of community and are helping businesses and organizations connect with customers and participate in the conversations that are happening online through social media. Here’s an embed of the story.

Bernie’s back – guest blogging again for Karen-Goldfarb.com about our campaigns with JAY-K, a local home improvement retailer.  We’ve been helping them take on the big box stores successfully for several years now by highlighting the expertise of their employees as well as using some very unconventional branding in the form of Jack O’ Trade.

You can read the full post at Karen’s site by clicking here.  Don’t forget to check out our latest campaign with Jack and JAY-K at www.BetterAskJack.com, where anyone can write in with questions about anything from home improvement to life improvement.