Klout says I’m a Klout Addict because I have visited Klout only seven times. And they want me to believe anything else they have to say after that? 

Woo Hoo.

Klout says I have a score of 49, that I am a specialist and influence 2,000 regarding 13 topics. Top of the list? Analytics. OK, good. But #4 is the New York Times. If 2,000 people look to me for information about the NY Times, the world is going to Hell in a hand basket much faster than previously projected.

Klout says I am influenced by a bunch of people, some of whom I don’t recognize at all. 

I’ve been added to 25 Lists, my Amplification score is 13 and I’ve received 100 +K’s. This feels a lot like when the doctor tells me my cholesterol numbers, “Is that OK?”...

Marketing in the world of social media is about engaging your customers and non-customers. In a broad sense, it closely relates to branding, PR, sales, and customer support. In short, you have to create relevant and compelling content so that you can attract attention; no matter what kind of activities you want to engage customers with in your next steps. You want your customers to talk with you – by leaving message, posting on your blog, following your company tweets, etc.

Figure 1: Touch-point Experience across the Customer Lifecycle - Engaging

I love to write about social media...

In the beginning, the IT department created the Web server and the server log. And darkness was upon the face of the marketing department.

And the spirit of the home page moved upon the face of the marketing department and the marketing department said, “Let there be reports.” And the marketing department saw the reports. And it was good

And the marketing department divided the hits from the visits and called the hits pageviews, and the visits they called sessions. And the marketing department said, “Let the reports be gathered together unto one place, and let the PowerPoint graphs appear that we may know the full power and glory of our Web site.” And it was so.

Or so they thought.

For over a span of time the statistics poured forth, the results were displayed, and kaleidoscopic charts were abundant, resplendent in their brilliance and reassuring in that all lines proceeded in their inexorable elevation up and to the right. And the marketing department...

Do people respond better to an offer that promises lower price, higher quality or instant delivery? Yes they do. And that’s why we all need segmentation.

When it comes to segmenting customers by behavior, Bernard Berelson pretty much nailed it in his “Human Behavior: An Inventory of Scientific Findings” (1964) where he said:

• Some do and some don’t.
• The differences aren’t that great.
• It’s more complicated than that.

Granted, people fit nicely into specific categories and any categories will be more appropriate for some markets than for your goods or services. But segmentation is the key to success and here’s another lock it can open: Media mix.

You want to use all the data you can get your hands on to validate your ads and make them more memorable, your links more clickable, your landing pages more actionable and your Net Promoter Scores higher. You also want to tie sales results to marketing spend so you can figure out what...