Have you ever looked at a competitor and thought, “I’m better than this person. I’m smarter. I provide a better service. Why does this guy get more customers than I?”? It’s boggling sometimes to see someone you know is a clearly inferior professional who clearly makes more money and possibly makes less.

Because it is meant to look fun, putting together a social media campaign – or integrating one into a larger online initiative – can be surprisingly difficult. There are many challenges to capturing and engaging user interests online – starting with finding the right person to lead that effort, says Andrew Ballenthin, president of Sol Solutions.

That point was driven home last December when Ballenthin put together Blog-Off II, a 12-day, seven-judge contest to test participants’ qualitative and quantitative effectiveness in social media marketing fundamentals.

ShareIn a recent AP-GFK poll, 72% of Americans said they’re optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country. That’s a dramatic difference from their same poll answer where almost 75% of them thought 2009 was a bad year for the country.
Despite the recent earthquake tragedy in Haiti (and who knows what [...]

A good test of the success of a business’s ‘green’ initiatives is employee buy-in. Do employees feel connected to the company’s eco-friendly endeavors? Do they actually talk about it and participate?
When I worked at The Wall Street Journal, our Top Small Workplaces project featured several small companies that had developed strategies for engaging their employees [...]