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Social Marketing Resources I Trust

by Keith on May 13, 2012 in Recommendations,Social Media

A good friend recently asked me about Social Media Skill Building and Social Marketing training so I decided to compile a list of books, people, and blogs that I’ve found to be an invaluable educational resource.

Purists will be quick to point out that there is no such thing as Social Marketing, just marketing applied to new ways well this list isn’t intended to replace University degrees in marketing and communications but if you learn from the best, adapt, fail fast, and learn you will grow. Stay true and tell the truth… and you will succeed.

Everything I know about Social Marketing: Be kind, Be Helpful, Be Useful.

Or as my friend @BryanJones put it…

The Resources I Trust

Here are a few books, blogs and people that will take you beyond the hype. If you are looking for a foundational understanding of how we arrived here and how you can use connecting points and influence to ethically and authentically further your goals… this where I started.

Books

Social Media theory and marketing books are being printed on a daily basis. Some are certainly good but many are attempting to educated on topics that have already been masterly covered. These books are not simply practical guides. They are the theory and history of the rise of social networking and then based on that framework build conclusions and applications. Start with the Why then move to How.

Social Marketers

This is by no means a comprehensive list. I’m sure I’ve omitted some that just don’t come to mind at the moment. The people listed below are practitioners, authors, and bloggers. Follow them, Subscribe to their blogs, buy their books. IMHO they know where of they speak.

@JasonFalls / Socialmediaexplorer.com
@BrianSolis / Briansolis.com
@jowyang / Web-strategist.com/blog
@missrogue / tarahunt.com
@markwschaefer / businessesgrow.com/blog

Sites

Hubspot has a wealth of free information and tools. I found their eBooks to be very educational and shortcut intros to areas I was unfamiliar with. You’d be wise to avail yourself of these resources.
OpenForum – An AmEx site that is geared toward empowering Small Business. You’ll find articles on managing and sales but they also have a healthy backlog of social marketing information. It’s quick reading and very focused content. I highly recommend this blog if you operate in the SMB arena.

Your Turn

As I said this list isn’t comprehensive and I’d appreciate your input. What sites, blogs, or people do you learn from? Share them in the comments.

2 Startups Look to Ease Address Book Woes

by Keith on March 25, 2012 in Tips,Web

address_book While the tech world was busy watching the latest “find your friends” app I’ve actually found 2 startups looking to solve some real world issues. Namely contacts.

Keep Contact Info Updated

First you have to check out WriteThat.Name

This is an idea so good and so simple you’ll wonder why it hasn’t been around for years. WriteThat.Name looks at the email signatures and updates your contact info.

That’s it. Simple and Brilliant.

So if John Doe has a new phone number in his email signature it will automatically update your address book.

It currently only works with Gmail and Google Apps but they say an Outlook plugin is on the way. Premium accounts are $20 per year but the free accounts will update 40 contacts per month.

Easily share your Contact Info

There are no shortage of sites looking to help you build a landing page that links to your contact info and social accounts (about.me, zerpl.ly, and jumpscan to name a few) so why would you even consider another service? Because most of them have forgotten that contact info is best when downloaded and how many regular folks even know what a .vcf file is?

This my friends is why ContactMonkey just leapfrogged past the rest. Does your landing page do this?

It can now. (example profile)

The service is free for individuals and they offer a white-label service for brands.

They even nailed engineered a mobile site to overcome the inexplicable restriction that keeps iPhones from opening contact info from the web. Apple only allows this function via email so they invite a visitor to enter their email and they will send your contact info to them.

It may not be as pretty as some of their competition but it is a lot more useful.

Sign-up at ContactMonkey.com

PS: I keep wondering if this is a skunkworks project of MailChimp. If not it would make for a good acquisition.

Closing thoughts

I keep wondering why in 2012 address books are still disconnected. When you consider how email subscription lists allow subscribers to update their contact info why aren’t we seeing the major webmail providers doing this. Facebook or Google+ could do this with their eyes closed.

Perhaps we’ll be better off if startups get it done without the giants looking over their shoulders. Standards and APIs might build an open system that would circumvent the walled gardens of the major players.

We’ll see. In the meantime let us be thankful for startups that are building useful tools. Now can we just get someone to build a better Tungle.me?

Hat tip to @joel_hughes and @Zee for bringing these to my attention.

Remove yourself from Unwanted Business emails

March 22, 2012

I think it happens to everyone. Some salesperson or rep finds our email one time and decides to occasionally send us product updates or sales pitches. However, they never asked you to opt-in or subscribe and they don’t provide a clear method for unsubscribing. Note: I’m not talking about real spam (the viagra and casino [...]

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Google Earth IP Addresses

March 22, 2012

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Take Note (with an iPad)

March 17, 2012

As I prepared for a recent conference I decided it was time to find out if my iPad could really handle note taking. What I Needed I love outlines and it is how I organize thoughts and take notes. For 10 years I’ve used a laptop at conferences to take notes at 73 wpm but [...]

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Make Reading the Web Easier

March 1, 2012

Spend enough time reading on your iPhone/iPad and you’ll realize every web browser should have a “Reader” button. — Keith Crawford (@tsudo) March 1, 2012 I posted the tweet above last night and until the major browsers include a distraction free reading mode here are a couple of good options in the meantime. A quick [...]

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Tips to Secure and Customize your USB Flash Drive

February 15, 2012

No sexy headlines or social insights today just tweaking out our ubiquitous USB flash drives. I use mine on a near daily basis and here are the tips I use to make my drive more useful and more secure. If you want to skip the work and get the goods, scroll to the bottom. Customize [...]

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If I could only have 10 iPhone apps

February 14, 2012

The challenge – You can have 10 apps but only 10 apps. From someone that’s downloaded 350+ apps and currently have around 100 installed this is a bit of a challenge but here’s my list. [Updated /14/2012] Evernote – The ultimate notepad app. Capture photos, audio notes, and store documents straight to your phone. Data [...]

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