Posted by Jean-Marie Bonthous Defining the best way to measure the value of your infographic content can be an adventure in semantics. Your objectives, the organizational culture you operate in, and your definition of return on investment (ROI) all contribute to how, or even if, you measure the business performance of infographics. ROI is calculated as follows: (Gain from an [...]

How often have you heard recently: “The relationship of power between buyers and sellers has been transformed?” Yet, for many marketing and sales teams, this truism still has to sink in. Sales teams used to have access to prospects early on, and be able to steer them. Buyers these days conduct their own research, and turn to peers for [...]

                        Sheena Iyengar, author of The Art of Choosing, recently gave a presentation at the TED conference where she explained how people value either the individual or the group more depending on the culture to which they belong. Some of what Iyengar says has interesting implications for how [...]

    There has been a lot of debate about the merits and shortcomings of Klout and PeerIndex–two tools for assessing the influence of account holders on Twitter, Facebook, and now LinkedIn. Klout claims to be “The Standard for Influence” while PeerIndex’s slogan is “Understand Your Social Capital.” In a recent post, I have provided more insights about the [...]

    Having a clean reputation online is important in order to assert your influence and thought leadership. If you intend to become a social business, you need to be able to show a trail of positive comments by your customers. If you are looking for innovative ways to keep your online feedback in good standing, here are two [...]

    I love Klout. When I look at my score it reminds me to become more involved in meaningful conversations online. Also, the imperfections in Klout force me to ask myself questions about the true nature of influence, about whether Klout is flawed, and about what a better influence measurement would be–all questions which I otherwise may not [...]

  Photo by DonnaGrayson, on Flickr Customers now expect service where they are, at the time they choose, in the format they choose. And they want to have a say in what is offered to them. The tremendous potential that social networking offers to meet this challenge has become clear to most financial advisors. However regulatory hurdles in the financial [...]

Nicola Millard, customer experience futurologist for BT Global Services, shares some insights about what service providers in telecom have to do to beat out not only other telco brands, but all other brands of competitors, whether retail, banking, social networks, financial services, entertainment or any other verticals that touch customers day to day. Neuroscience, she says, shows that 90 percent [...]

According to Peter Krainik, forward-thinking CMOs are looking across their global digital branding and engagement platforms and applying the same traditional vs. community trends internally. Every marketer should look at their digital programs and platforms and take a hard look at all the “traditional content/push” approaches they have within these platforms and make them more engaging, etc. Having one-way web-based [...]

Conversations about military service invariably involve influencers and those they influence, positively or negatively, and the influence dynamics play a huge role in the outcome of the decision. This dynamics was the inspiration for LifeAsAMarine.com, a site created for the Marine Corps and the first site to leverage functionality used in social networks to engage visitors and encourage participation. The [...]