Etc.

If I look back at articles I wrote in 2009, “Twitter Better for Nonsense than Business Sense” may have to be my favorite. It wasn’t just because it was a hot topic - one that may define the year in marketing - but because of the comments it received.

Simply put, everyone seemed to be an expert on social media (and you could sense that in some of the comments), and at the same time have no clue how to use social media. Twitter, like many other social media channels that because household names in 2009, was treated like the great unknown. And as a result many so-called gurus threw the fundamental elements of marketing out the window and overtweeted to death. more

Public Relations people are getting smart… or I should say Google Savvy. Now instead of pitching their press releases, article ideas, and clients for interview to targeted publications, they are pitching ideas via Google search results.

Which, really, is just annoying to this writer/editor.

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DRTV lost Billy Mays yesterday, and I didn’t even know who he was. I knew - and trusted - the face, and I bought the products because I saw them on TV.

But when a bunch of different people came up to me at a party yesterday and asked if I heard about Billy Mays, I thought they were talking about the Say Hey Kid. Or Willie Mays Hayes (American Express - don’t steal home without it!).

Anyway - here’s a link for you to kick off your Monday. It’s one man’s opinion on the Top 10 Billy Mays infomercials of all time. Check them out and tell me what you think.

Nothing really alarming here (except a lot of people may not know that Circuit City was acquired and re-launched as a Web-only venture by Systemax).

The key here is that Circuit City has launched a page on Facebook, and are not censoring the voice of its fans. more

Just a quick post to say Ilana Rabinowitz, vice president of Lion Brand Yarn, hit the nail on the head here at IRCE.

The reason merchants need to stake their social media claim: Because people buy from other people, not from corporations.

It’s worked for Lion Brand, and I’ll write about this later for Multichannel Merchant. Consumers once thought they were a large brand because they sold to big box stores. Now they are a familiar face to the knitting and crocheting community.

Kinetic Marketing president Kim Painley is an expert when it comes to helping catalog retailers define their pay-per-click strategies, and she did a bang-up job talking with me about it Monday on MCM Radio (download or listen to the podcast here).

Now, one thing I asked her at the end was about the banner ads that pop up on my Yahoo Mail page. If I go to, say, Williams-Sonoma, for some research like I did today for an article we posted about its rough first quarter, I have to look at that company’s banner ad the rest of the day. Or at least until another merchant drops a cookie on my computer. more