Salespeople Who Use Social Media Outpace Non-Users

The results from a recent survey of 551 sales professionals are in: 78.3% of the sales force that responded uses social media. 72.6% of salespeople using social media outperformed their peers in 2012. 41% of respondents said they had closed more than one deal because of social media in the past year. LinkedIn easily beat… more »

Find a Book with Google Goggles, One Page at a Time

I’m slow to the party. I’m slow to lots of parties. I’ve had the Google Search app on my phone for a while. And I use it. But not ’til today did I notice that little camera icon that says “Goggles” under it. Thanks to my friend smays.com, via Google+, I’ve been clued in. I… more »

“Warren is in the House” Tweets the Oracle of Omaha

Last week, he did it. Eighty-two year old billionaire investor/philanthropist Warren Buffet opened a Twitter account and tweeted “Warren is in the house.” A week later, he’s shot up to 416,000 followers. And his first tweet has been retweeted 42,000 times and favorited nearly 13,000 times. Not surprising. Like Merrill Lynch (at one time), when… more »

Wanna Stay in School? Get Active on Facebook

Another major hurdle in my family has been cleared. My daughter has been admitted to a college she likes, the “money situation” is in front of us in black and white, and she’s made her choice. She’s on her way. It’s a great school. I’m very happy. She was determined to make this happen. And… more »

Link to Your Contacts When You Mention Them in LinkedIn Updates

I’ve been using LinkedIn, with varying degrees of success, to promote conferences and other events my company produces. It’s been frustrating to me that when I’ve wanted to specifically mention a speaker or conference partner who is one of my LinkedIn contacts that I’ve had to use the URL of that person’s LinkedIn page in… more »

Two Billion Facebook Connections with Local Business

“Everyone’s doing it.” Is that reason enough for your small business to be using social media? Manta reported results last week from its annual small business survey indicating that 49% of small businesses increased the time they spent on social media activity since last year. Based on other results reported in the Manta survey, I expected small… more »

Facebook Gives You Just What You Need: Emoticons and Tags

I commented last week that I was in a foul mood because Facebook has been teasing me with Graph Search, but not delivering. Update:  I still don’t have it. Facebook has done me a favor, though. Now I can get the word out to my Friends that I’m upset about Graph Search by using Facebook’s… more »

How to Use Facebook Graph Search to Find Amazing Stuff…NOT!

By now you know that Facebook has implemented a powerful search feature that lets you explore in some pretty amazing ways what’s going on in your circle of friends (and their circles, too). It’s been dubbed the “ultimate personalized discovery engine.” Who wouldn’t want one of those? So I thought I’d take some time today… more »

Average Facebook Use on Smartphone, 14 Times Per Day

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the Facebook-Smartphone combination is a powerful way to engage with your circle of friends continuously throughout the day. In a research paper titled “Always Connected” released earlier this week, IDC reports that Americans check their Facebook account an average of 14 times each day. The report was… more »

A Dream Come True? An iPhone With No Case!

I’m dreaming of the day my iPhone doesn’t require a case. Apparently, others are too. Thanks to inventors Nicholas King and Fletcher Rothkopf, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just published an Apple Patent application for a device that will sense when the phone (or laptop, tablet, digital music player, etc.) is in free-fall and… more »