Submit Blog Ideas to Ignite’s 2008 Editorial Calendar
January 8, 2008 | 6 Comments
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Hi Everyone!
Since I’ve been out for the holidays to recharge (and then most recently to assume a role as a maid of honor) I’m really just now getting back in the social media groove of reading, writing, and participating.
With that being said, in light of the new year and in our promise to continue a discussion on social media marketing that interesting and insightful, I’m attempting to develop no small feat: a blog editorial calendar for Ignite for 2008.
First, I must state that as a social media agency, we always do these for clients with blogs- to make sure we have fresh, interesting content and that it is on strategy with our clients goals and objectives. However, as we have gained clients - we have forgotten that our own most important client is Ignite. The result? Falling into a “what am I writing today” approach from the day to day. If you write a blog for your company on a regular basis, I assume you have done this more than once or twice.
Not only is this approach against our mantra, but it guides us further away from our audience. Instead of writing what we feel like writing (or what is easiest for that day) - we should take the approach we use for our clients: to develop content with the purpose of achieving audience participation and business objectives.
Therefore - I’m reaching out to you, our readers. If you have a social media marketing question you need answered, a topic you want covered, or a review on a particular social media campaign - you name it- please submit it in the comments below. After that, I’ll try to incorporate it into our 2008 calendar (giving flexibility to cover topics or discussions that are time sensitive) and we’ll work on covering it (and give you a little shout-out in return).
With your input, and our clear plan of action, we hope to grow even more for 2008 
Ready for 2008, the Year of the Social Media Agency?
January 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
It’s January 2nd. It’s cold, even here in North Carolina. But we’re rested and ready for a great 2008. Are you?
I personally believe that 2008 will be the year of the social media agency. Not everyone will have one (probably until about 2010), but it will become commonplace among the thought leaders. That’s both my prediction and my hope (as well as my resolution).
Welcome back to you. Fire up Snitter, check your Facebook requests and get back at it…
Thanks for a Great 2007, See you in 2008
December 22, 2007 | 2 Comments
We won’t be actively posting anymore in 2007, as Lisa and I are off re-charging batteries. Gene is keeping our site and the client sites up (and quietly improving them as our holiday gifts to you). Comments are, of course, always always welcome.
A lot of companies say that 2007 was their best year ever. It’s true for Ignite. Of course, it’s our only year ever, so that really helps.
But launching a social media agency and defining what a social media agency is and does has been great. Thanks for our clients, thanks to our readers, thanks to you.
Looking forward to a great 2008 with all of you.
~Jim
Ignite is Hiring!
December 19, 2007 | 5 Comments
We’re staying quite busy over here at Ignite as our client base is expanding rapidly. Because of this, we are keeping our eye out for qualified candidates that enjoy/understand social media and would be interested in joining us in our craziness.
While we have a lot of needs (ex. Jim’s need for more Facebook friends) - the following are our current highest areas of need:
1) Content Developers: In social media, frequent, valuable content is king. That’s why we are looking for strong writers in variety of styles and voices who could apply this talent to blogging, twittering - and many other social media applications that we may apply for our clients.
On the production side of content development, we also are looking for audio/visual producers who have talent in the filming, recording, and editing of videos and podcasts.
2) SEO/SMO Gurus - We need social media gurus who have a solid understanding of both SEO and SMO. Do you know how to leverage organic links and how to promote and optimize social media efforts to increase search results? If so, we’d like to speak.
Hey, we know job descriptions are vague - especially in the newly evolving space of social media, so if you are interested in the above possibilities please send an email cover letter and resume to jim *at* ignitesocialmedia.com and we’ll go from there. While a lack of formal education in social media isn’t a problem (because, really, who has it?), a lack of experience in the area either professionally or as a hobby/passion is.
25 Social Media Buzzwords.. Continued from Crain’s Detroit
December 18, 2007 | 7 Comments
(UPDATE (3/08): We’ve now defined all of these buzzwords in a new post. Read it here.)
In the 2008 Crain’s Book of Lists, Ignite contributed to an ad placed by its associated agency, Brogan and Partners. This particular ad included a list of “Social media buzzwords to make you sound really, really smart”, which was quite a fun list for us to compile.
While the ad covered the first ten, we’ve listed the complete list of 25 Social Media Buzzwords below (in no particular order).
Enjoy - and as always feel free to add some of your own
- “Social Graph”
- Semantic Web
- Wiki
- Widget
- KickApps
- Tumblr
- del.icio.us
- Enterprise 2.0
- Social Media Optimization
- Meme
- Mash-Up
- Social Media Monitoring
- User-Generated Content
- Web 2.0
- Social Networks
- “Blogosphere”
- Viral Marketing
- Ruby on Rails
- Social Media Press Release
- Vlogging
- Micro-Blogging
- Transparency and Authenticity
- “White Label”
December Social Media Breakfast
December 17, 2007 | 3 Comments
Hi all you Triangle social media clubbers!
A couple weeks ago I reached out through email to all of you and have heard mixed responses regarding whether or not to have a December meeting. Sorry for the delay in announcement - lately things are “heating up” over here at Ignite 
So in light of the mixed reactions, I wanted to throw a date and time for some of us who can meet to have a little breakfast, and talk a little social media. After all, lets save our families by getting “social media talk” out of our systems before the holidays…
So here’s the details:
Date: This Thursday, December 20th (yes, that soon)
Time: 7:30 am (ouch that’s early!)
Where: Cafe Carolina in Cary (off Harrison Ave.)
If you can’t make it to this meeting, we WILL be having a social media club event in January, which will be a Podcasting discussion led by Kipp Bodnar. Should be a great discussion.
A Little Ignite Milestone
December 12, 2007 | 4 Comments
When you do social media marketing, and when you’re building a social media agency using the tools that you preach about, you spend an awful lot of time checking the analytics, looking at the growth in subscribers, checking inbound links to you, etc. We regularly shout these things around the office at one another.
For a while, we’ve been watching our Technorati authority numbers to see how many people are linking to us and how we rank against other blogs. Today we broke into the top 100,000 blogs in the world when our authority hit 72.
Now, being ranked 99,658th in something is usually not much of a milestone, but we were just realizing that when there are over 112,800,000 blogs being tracked by Technorati, that means that the Ignite Social Media blog ranks ahead of 99.91% of all the blogs in the world.
I guess that’s something to be proud of, particularly for a site that went live only 5 months ago.
It also makes me want to bow down to higher ranked sites that link to us like TopRankBlog (authority 3,195. Lee, are you KIDDING me? You’re the man.), WebProNews (582), PRSquared (396), and many more. While we’re proud of the start we’ve got here, we learn a LOT from you guys (and the whole social media marketing community) every day. We recognize that there’s a long way to go for this little company.
So thanks for reading, thanks for honoring us with your links. The social media marketing community is such a great, open group of people sharing. We all have lots of work left to do as we re-invent corporate communications with these tools! Onward.
(P.S. If you’re wondering, Engadget is currently the blog with the highest authority–with 31,314 inbound links–because it’s a great source for tech info.)
Video Snippets from Triangle Social Media Club Debut
November 26, 2007 | 2 Comments
We held the initial meeting of the Social Media Club of the Triangle in our offices back on November 14. Of course, it took me until I had some down time to upload the video and cut it up a bit. I’ll admit, I was more than a bit lazy with my editing (hey, I ate a lot of turkey this weekend, so sue me…), but at least you can get a sense of the event.
Thanks to all who attended. Watch for updates for future meetings here or, if you wanted to be added to the list to get them by email, just leave us a comment.
A Social Media Thanksgiving List
November 21, 2007 | 4 Comments
In the spirit of the season - we’ve compiled a few things we are thankful for around here at Ignite.
As always, feel free to add to the list
Enjoy!
- The “music genome project” Pandora. Without it, Lisa’s musical taste would suffer more than it already does.
- We are all thankful for Gene’s glorious dreds, being able to capture this picture, and his fluency in coding languages.
- Jim is thankful for people over 40 who join Facebook, people who don’t giggle when he says Twitter, and his small but growing number of Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers and followees, Plaxo connections, Digg fans, and most of all, people who link back to us. (On a side note - Lisa is amazed at how unabashedly Jim has started shilling for new online friends with link lists like this and will be thankful when he gets stalkers.)
- Common Craft, who consistently break things down in creative, comprehensible ways and for creating helpful videos like this.
- Feedburner and Google Analytics. These have provided us with hours of free entertainment.
- Clients who “get” it, or come to us in order to “get it”.
- Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger for writing Cluetrain Manifesto.
- A good Technorati “Authority” rating, that puts the Ignite blog ahead of 99.825039% of all blogs in the world. (Not that we’re counting or anything….)
- Blogs like ExperienceCurve, Glen Allsopp over at at ViperChill, and Enterprise 2.0’s FastForwardBlog.
- Blendtec. For being brave enough to blend an iphone, a rake, and a can of Easy Cheese - and for proving the power of social media marketing.
On a final note, we’d like to thank all of you for reading, commenting, linking, and doing what you do. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Ignite Featured in Crain’s Detroit Business
November 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Ignite Social Media was the only social media agency featured this week in a Crain’s Detroit Business story on corporate blogging. You can read the whole story by clicking here, although only subscribers get to see my smiling picture. (I know! Recent enough to subscribe, right?)
The essence of the article is how corporate blogging is starting to take off. Among my quotes:
“The whole idea behind social media is it’s the first time people can talk back. You give up a measure of control, but they will go out and talk about you.”
Ok, in that part I wasn’t really talking about blogging per se, but close enough. Thanks to Bill Shea at Crain’s for including us.