Calling foul on bogus Social Media experts. Again.

Part 1: Return on Incompetence Here’s a flash of obvious: When most of us don’t know how to do something, we typically know that we don’t know how to do it. Let me illustrate: As much as I would love to be an F-18 pilot, I don’t know how to fly an F-18 (or any [...]

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Don’t let rigid “branding” kill your brand

Words of genius from Damon Dimmick, over at UX Magazine: “When corporate marketing departments dream of brand design, they only dream as far as they need. The expensive and time consuming process of extending the brand into an interactive concept is usually pushed off until it becomes absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, by the time some serious [...]

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Words of wisdom from the trenches of Social Media – Episode 1

I get really great comments on a regular basis, but rarely showcase them in my posts for some reason. That changes today as I share with you three discussion threads that caught my eye earlier this week. They are timely, worth bringing forward, and most importantly worth discussing further. 1. On the subject of hiring [...]

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Jacob Morgan, Josh Peters, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis and I get Twittfaced!

Just because I am still a few months away from the completion of my very own super top secret book project doesn’t mean I can’t start lending my thoughts to a few other companion pieces written by and for pretty smart people. Case in point: Jacob Morgan and Josh Peters’ Twittfaced (due out in October) [...]

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Mister Blanchard goes to England.

I am pretty excited to announce that I will be speaking at the Like Minds Conference on October 16th in Exeter, England. The conference is the brainchild of Scott Gould, Trey Pennington, and Andrew Ellis who… presumably got the idea for this event while holding on to a pint or two. (At least I hope [...]

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Shredding some misconceptions about Social Media – Part 1

It occurred to me while participating in Social Media Club Greenville’s September panel  yesterday that there are still MANY questions and misconceptions in the business world about Social Media. So without wasting any time, let’s cover a few obvious ones here today: 1. Misconception: Social Media only works for some companies. That’s a lot like [...]

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Remembering 9.11.01

I haven’t forgotten.

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Saying “no” to corporate fossilization

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of spending an hour at Clemson University (go Tigers!) to chat with Bobby Rettew’s business writing class about blogs. The session was intended to focus on the hows and whys of business blogging, but one of the topics I found myself touching on was corporate resistance to blogging [...]

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How to Build a Lovebrand

Remember that being best in class isn’t about making grand declarations of intent. It’s really about the small decisions you choose to make throughout the day, every day, and the foundations upon which you build your business, your organization or your brand. Before I go over the short list, it’s probably best that I go [...]

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Why R.O.I. Best Practices for Social Media might just save the world as you know it.

Let’s go over a few things: 1. Social Media is good for you, you know it, and you know why. 2. Social Media alone can’t save your business, but you know that your business can no longer be a market leader without an effective presence in Social Media. 3. Without resources to put behind a [...]

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