Is your brand’s social media driven by marketing materials, products, or promotions? Could the content of your social media conversation be copied and pasted from flash banners?  Yes? Then your social strategy isn’t enhancing the perception of your brand or fostering interaction, engagement and relationships. 

We know mobile devices are much more than phones. They’re increasingly used to occupy every moment of free time. Riding on a train? Waiting in line? Have five minutes in between meetings? Your phone is probably in your hands, and you’re probably refreshing your newsfeed, tweeting what you had for lunch, and catching up on the latest news.

Mobile is not the next big thing; it’s the now big thing. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found a whopping 91% of American adults have a cellphone, more than half of which are smartphones (just two years ago, only 35% of cellphones were smartphones). 

Nate Silver is a genius. I'm pretty sure that this 35 year old could solve most of the world's problems, or at least tell other people how to, through some intense analysis. And perhaps a little time locked in a room with some Cheetos.

He had flowcharts. He talked us through a chess match, and the data behind the computer making the moves. He went from baseball to Bieber in three moves. 

After the thrill of seeing Seth Godin speak, and on top of that, the engaging, inspiring and amazing nature of that speech, I'll admit that I was less psyched to see Arianna Huffington. I was intrigued, because she's obviously a leader in her field who has worked hard and achieved a lot. But honestly, to me she seems cold. Like Martha Stewart with an accent.

When a friend of mine mentioned they had a discount code for the Hubspot Inbound marketing conference a couple months back, I was interested but not jumping out of my skin.

Last week, Facebook announced a series of changes to its News Feed algorithm that will alter how and when stories appear to users, marking the company’s first efforts to pull back the curtain. They've dubbed the two major additions “Story Bumping” and “Last Actor.” The first aims to bump engaging content a user may have missed to the top of the News Feed later in the day, and the second analyzes the last 50 actions of a user and works to rank stories accordingly. 

Energy efficiency is a hard idea to wrap your head around. It sounds unattainable, and pricey. So when National Grid asked us to help launch their home audit program in Rhode Island to help customers improve on energy efficiency, we knew we had to go beyond explaining the program's benefits. We had to craft an original, memorable, and ownable way of telling customers what the program is all about. 

In the world of marketing, "The consumer is in charge" is a popular phrase. It's something that we, as consumers, like to believe. It's also not that simple.

Sure, we can Yelp about a curry chicken burrito that didn't blow our minds, and we can determine how many stars we want to give the Dawson's Creek dinner sets we bought on Amazon.* We can price compare 'til we're numb to find the best deals and discounts on everything from curry chicken burritos to Dawson's Creek dinner sets. Which are perfect compliments, by the way. 

What’s the latest news from Facebook? The network is now rolling out a highly anticipated feature, embedded posts, which allows individuals and brands to repost their most compelling public Facebook content on external blogs and websites. Posts can include images and videos, and support Facebook’s recent hashtag integration. The most notable feature for brands: users will be able to like and share directly from an embedded post. 

Television has long commanded the lion share of ad dollars, and will continue to due to its domination of primetime, but advertisers are about to have a new video opportunity to consider. Facebook has announced “Newsfeed Video Ads,” which will begin playing video and audio without the need for user initiation.

This is a big deal for several reasons.