Dan Carlson
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Posts by Dan Carlson
Recalibrating Your Social Strategy
May 10, 2012
Social media is far from ‘all grown up’ – but it’s ready to pay the rent. If you expect it to drive leads and revenue, you have to start hitting the right targets.
Most companies don’t. And they don’t know who’s saying what, either, or where their targets are logging social time. How do we know? It’s what we discover, with practically every social audit (and we’ve been doing them for more than 4 years.) The best audits are surprisingly easy to execute – and almost always yield at least a few unexpected insights.
Check out our new market brief: Social Audits: Five Steps for Improving Your More >
Lighten Up (Lessons from Microsoft IE9)
April 13, 2012
It might be in a blog post, on Twitter, or in a forum, but somebody is almost certainly poking fun at your business. A little fun at your company’s expense might sting your ego, but the blunt, raw feedback, no matter how provocative or irreverent, can expose some of the truest sentiments from your customers.
Loud, brutally honest criticism has long made companies pull 180s on big initiatives (see: Qwikster, The Gap). But what if, instead of a quiet and shameful about-face, companies openly and enthusiastically embraced the mud slung their way?
That’s what Microsoft is doing with its Internet More >
Ranking the GOP Twitter Feeds
January 19, 2012
Just like businesses, presidential campaigns can rely on Twitter to connect with fans and turn positive sentiment into a selling tool, ultimately driving traffic to the website and bringing in more revenue (or donations).
So which GOP candidate has the best Twitter strategy?
I’ve looked at the remaining candidates’ Twitter accounts, and ranked them, based on:
- Who’s engaging users the most
- Who’s promoting valuable content, including relevant articles and video
- Whose tweets are most dynamic – using hashtags, mentions, and links
I also reviewed the candidates’ official campaign accounts More >
Four Mobile Apps for PR Pros (Beyond Twitter)
November 23, 2011
Like everybody, PR pros and marketers are spending more time on the road. Like everybody, we’re usually glued to our Blackberrys smartphones and tablets.
We certainly love our Twitter, RSS, and Evernote apps for helping us stay connected and organized, but here are a few more mobile apps that can help PR pros be even more productive on the road.
CardMunch If conferences were Super Mario Bros., business cards would be the coins – not the biggest goal, but a pretty good indicator of success.
Unfortunately, they’re also likely to end up in a desk drawer or briefcase.
With CardMunch, you can More >
PR Lessons From the Red Sox (It’s Not All Bad)
October 18, 2011
The Red Sox are a train wreck, and sports writers, bloggers, and radio show-callers are having a field day.
Quite the PR headache, isn’t it?
Maybe not. Are there positive PR lessons to be learned from the Red Sox’ mess? If you cut through the vitriol and angst, you’ll see a sliver of PR done right:
- The Red Sox woke up its customers: While the Sox’ approach to, umm, ‘inspiring’ the fan base (i.e. complete alienation) isn’t advisable, the fans are, after years of ho-hum complacency, fired up again. Passionate customers are the best customers.