This post has been brewing for sometime but it appears I waited too long to be the first. The Huffington Post wrote about this issue and linked to the Consumerist story of the same kind. I would like to give a first hand user's point of view. I am hoping we can all learn something about email marketing, customer service, social media, and the impact of a bad idea on all of those. OKCupid Email First, I want you to see the actual email I was ...

In a global and Internet-based economy, they [brands] build trust and reinforce value. - Strategy: A View from the Top Are brands dead? Have we killed traditional marketing? Are newspapers dead? Will television ads die? In a simple answer: No. I wish I could say that this topic has been beaten to death (it has, really) but people keep bringing it up. With the influx of buzz around new media (read: social media and online marketing) there is ...

At an American Marketing Association meeting in Austin a number of years ago, I heard a man speak on the change in the communication world. Do I remember his name? Sadly enough ... no. But if someone knows the guy, let me know. I will give him credit for this great idea and link to him of course. Okay, ethics done. (Kidding) The Circle of Life His major point was that communication has come full circle. Like almost everything else in life, how ...

There has been a theory floating around for a long time: Google hates SEOs. That is just one article from Bruce Clay former writer Lisa Barone, referencing something from Jill Whalen. Matt Cutts responded with what we all know: Google doesn't hate SEOs, just the bad ones that give us all bad names. It's like lawyers ... yes I just went there. But now there seems to be a trend (and it could be because I live in my little hole called SEO) ...

I have been noticing a trend on my twitter account @katemorris. I get new followers on a fairly regular basis, but most are spam, so I don't pay the emails any mind. So why not turn off the notification emails you ask? Do I just like to see my follower number go up? Nope. (No really!) There are sometimes that people/businesses follow me that I know and want to follow when I see their names. Just the other day, someone I thought I was ...

Twitter is a favorite place of mine to hang out and talk to friends. I always say I talk a LOT - and I proved that when I hit 10,000 tweets yesterday. I have friends that are more powerful and influential (and talkative), but this was a milestone I caught and wanted to celebrate. Twitter has allowed me to meet and converse with some awesome people in the past year. My life will never be the same, and I can't begin to thank the people I have ...

My good friends at NMLab.com asked me to host one of the Social Media Blog Carnivals, so I am honored to present this week's best post submissions. This week saw a wide variety of submissions, but I have narrowed the best down to three. So in true countdown fashion, here are the best from June 1-7, 2009 3. 42 Sites Where To Submit Your Tutorials PCHacks.com gives a good list of where you can get good traffic for that tutorial you just built. ...

About this time last year, I signed up for the networking system of SMX Advanced. I came across another Austinite and decided to meet up with him for coffee. I had spent the year before at SMX meeting very few people, so this year that was going to change. Jeremy Bencken and I met up at Starbucks and he told me the story of this new idea he was exploring, and I was floored. It was an idea that no one had come up with yet, but it was so ...

Note: Sorry about the mixup earlier, I wasn't done with this post yet. Was going to wait to post it, but everyone is asking about it now. Stupid feedburner. ;) We've all heard it. Ashton did this. Miley got coffee. Oprah tweeted. All of a sudden all of our friends and family, and the mass public is on twitter. Our little world isn't our little world anymore. Once Oprah talks about something ... the world does it. I worked at a bookstore ...

No, this blog has not been hacked.  I do hereby solemnly swear, that I, Kristy Bolsinger, do have consent from one Kate Morris to be waxing poetic on her site. [yes she does, and welcome to any time she wants to! - Kate] Today was the first of the two day eMarketing Summit put on by Innotech in Portland, Oregon.  As hard as I tried to talk Kate into visiting me so she could cover it herself, I just couldn't tear her away from her beloved ...