“The issue we have with navigational search is that… it completely obliterates the value we’re creating from other digital marketing we’re doing… The idea that search is this magical fountain of customer acquisition—In many cases it’s not.”

Young-Bean Song
Microsoft
(via ClickZ)

“Why do Websites for magazines and newspapers always make you click through multiple pages to read one article online? Why does the publishing industry do this?  It’s simply about pumping more banner ads and offers into your face. Nothing more, nothing less…

Is it possible that those two extra clicks of the mouse generate enough page impressions and banner ads served that it’s worth the frustration to their readers? The answer must be yes.”

Mitch Joel

“The Social Economy is defined by the exchange of ideas and information online, and in the real world, and is indexed by the dividends earned through new opportunities and alliances.

Relationships are the new currency of the Social Economy as they fuel and extend interaction, insight, and loyalty, and in turn, contribute to the social capital of the individuals who actively invest in their personal branding portfolio.”

Brian Solis

“With increasingly rapid cycle times in technology, competitive benchmarking is becoming less useful. If none of your competitors has made a tough decision to reorganize a department, shift financial resources to new ways of doing things in marketing or customer service, how can you improve via benchmarking? Stated a different way, if your process is broken and all of your competitor’s processes are broken, you can’t possibly create market leadership by benchmarking. You have to hire the best and most brilliant people who hold little if any limiting beliefs and give them the authority to innovate based on what customers want.

Serving those needs in the Peter Drucker fashion is the only way to create true market leadership. This does not mean that competitive analysis is dead. It does mean that the benchmarks you need to pay attention to are the breakthroughs regardless of industry.”

David Dalka
Marketing Strategy Consultant

“... Social media is just a fancy name for online communities, and they have been around since the Internet’s infancy… So for anyone who thinks that social media or the use of it for business purposes is new, please think again! The thing about social media that seems to escape many people is that it works best as a lead generator or a way to get links only when it’s used first and foremost for true social purposes. If you are using it because you think you have to, or as a duty, you’ll never discover its full impact.”

Jill Whalen
(via Nick Wilsdon)

“In the past, we interacted with the Internet, which is to say a bunch of static information.  Now the aim is interact with each other through the Internet.  Not to use it as a way to avoid each other but as a way to engage and deepen ones connection.”

Joel Ordesky
Executive Networking & Technology Group
(ExecTec of LA)