Is Your Social Media Strategy Stalling Because You’re Not Doing This One Thing?
HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella shares some interesting stats and advice on boosting engagement of your content through clear and concise calls to action, in this guest post on CopyBlogger.com.

Can Social Media Improve Your Workers’ Productivity?
Contrary to the opinions of many corporate execs, social media can be leveraged to make employee time more productive and less of a time waster. Find out how via this Business Insider post from Ramon Ray & the Smallbiztechnology.com Team.

Take the Grunt Work Out of Monitoring Social Media with mBlast
Take a peek at Diana Huff‘s review of a pretty cool looking tool for taking care of your social media monitoring tasks. I’m definitely looking forward to kicking the tires on this one.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR
Personal Branding Expert Dan Schawbel interviews author David Meerman Scott about the release of the third edition of his best selling book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

After reading the book, I have a lot more respect for what she’s been able to build at People’s Revolution, given her early struggles with both her personal life and her career. In my opinion, Kelly’s most important lessons aren’t just about PR – they are about life and what we expect our lives to be. She talks a lot about discovering yourself and having a chance to transform your ideals time and time again, before you can become successful.

There are some valuable business lessons here we can all learn from, no matter which end of the PR spectrum, industry or stage of your career.

• Awaken your soul: You shouldn’t expect that if you do everything your parents/the media/your friends tell you to do you will be happy. You have to listen to your inner voice and find out your own desires within your soul; without any outside expectations for who you should be and what should make you happiest in life.
• Life is unpredictable: You need a strong foundation to support the twists in the road and need to be able to adjust your plan accordingly. Kelly credits her “tribe” with helping her get to where she is today. She went from nursing student to training nurses for NutriSystem, to publicist, to homeless and unemployed, to tarot card reader and musician, among other things, before achieving her current position on top of a very successful fashion PR business.
• Know your place in the pack (no matter what business you are in): Leaders steer the direction and protect the pack, teachers teach, hunters hunt, etc. “Knowing your place in the pack doesn’t mean restricting your contributions; it just means keeping your entitlement in check,”  My takeaway is that we are all part of a bigger team aiming to reach a common goal; we all have to pull our weight, and if every manager explained business teams and org charts this way to fresh faced interns or new employees, they may take more advantage of the lessons others in “the pack” could teach them. And in turn, worry less about entitlement and more about achieving success for their own future potential.
• Develop your own personal brand -- and be who you truly are: Kelly is dressed in all black all the time, and this is how she is most comfortable in her own skin. She has made this and her no-nonsense approach to client service, her personal brand. She knows that if clients are looking for something other than what she offers, they will go somewhere else to find representation, and that’s ok with her. If you try to be someone or something you are not, you will fail. Decide what your personal brand is and what you can offer your clients that is unique and refreshing and stick to that.
• Use the phone: Kelly reiterates what we all already know. In today’s digitally-inclined, socially-networked world, too much time is spent detaching ourselves from real relationships and emotions. We are obsessed with apps and devices that are supposed to make us feel more connected when in reality, they are making us more isolated from forming real relationships. We need to spend more time on the phone, not less, to show our human side and make more human contact, not less.
• If you have to cry go outside: This isn’t just about showing over-the-top emotions in the workplace, but rather a lesson on balance. We all need to realize that work isn’t life, and you need to have a sense of balance in life outside of your job to put that into perspective. You learn this as you progress through life experiences, overcome challenges and manage a crisis – or 12 or a hundred. You gain the experience needed to improve your place in the pack and handle the situation no matter how tough it is.

Did you read the book? What did you think? What was your top takeaway from it that you will apply to your career? Please share your comments and any other lessons learned below.

Still not convinced of the business value of Twitter? Forbes understands your concern and did some research for you – canvassing scads of businesses and pricey social-networking gurus looking for honest answers on how to make money – if you can make money – with the microblogging service. Their answers may surprise you, as they share 21 ways Twitter can have an impact, and not just as a marginal marketing tool.

College Optional?

Larry Cheng, Partner at Fidelity Ventures wonders aloud if college is necessary for a true entrepreneur. “Sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher every day for four years in so many ways is exactly the opposite of what someone with an entrepreneurial DNA should want to do.” In this post, he outlines what he sees as a “blueprint to success” for those with no degree. First lesson? Take $1.00 and turn into $1.10 by this time next week.

Use Teamwork to Tackle Problems

Of course you know that teamwork is important, but in this Marketing Profs Daily Fix post, Paul Williams outlines in detail – complete with instruction template – how to create a GroupChallenge. Beyond basic brainstorming, a GroupChallenge is a simple and inexpensive way to―on an ongoing basis―inspire creativity and teamwork to generate ideas and solve problems.

Group Challenge Setup - Image from Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Why Waltham Doesn’t Matter

For those on the East Coast, this piece by Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe has created quite a stir. Will it be the new turf war? Kirsner claims, “The new core of Boston venture capital has moved in closer to the city, toward Copley Square and Harvard Square,” and that “as a group, they [Waltham venture capitalists] represent the worst of the old-school business culture.” He has some great viewpoints on risk taking, the innovation economy and what he terms “the vibrant new culture of entrepreneurship.”

Should PR Professionals Use Social Media to Build Their Personal Brand?

PR Week takes a look at two opinions on one of the hottest debated topics in our office. How do you balance personal brand with your corporate brand? Should you? Two PR professionals weigh in.

Turning your feed reader into a powerful monitoring dashboard
I’m a big fan of using Google Reader to aid in some of my social media/brand monitoring efforts. Mack Collier from the Viral Garden blog shares some tips and techniques on how he uses it in conjunction with Bloglines.

5 Ways To Find & Acquire Customers On Twitter
These days, the economy forces businesses to get creative when trying to finding new clients. Brian Norgard writes this guest post on the ShoeMoney blog to share five ways you can use Twitter for finding new business.

Twitterville Notebook: Jeremiah Owyang
Shel Israel continues his Twitterville series of posts by interviewing Jeremiah Owyang on the topic of personal brand.

Do You Have the ‘Four As’ To Be a Thought Leader?
Dana Vanden Heuvel writes this guest post on Marketing Prof’s Daily Fix to share the four “A’s” you might need to be a thought leader in your industry.

What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer?
Tamar Weinberg gathers responses from some of the top names in social media, blogging, marketing and SEO to help define the essential skills required for todays social media consultants.

Social Media is not Community
Rachel Happe, of The Social Organization blog and new employee at Mzinga (PerkettPR client) helps clear up the confusion with the differences between “social media” and “community.”

Personal Brand Equity for Rent
Valeria Maltoni discusses how companies will need to adapt to handle employees who are continuing to grow powerful personal brands.

Nine Signs of an Effective Blog Post
Problogger.net guest writer, Dustin M. Wax offers up nine tips to to help maximize the success of every blog post you write.

Google Analytics Help: Questions, Answers, Tips, Ideas, Suggestions
Google Analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik answers analytics questions and give tons of tips and help in the monster blog post.