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Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop Learning

Adam Katzenback — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:08:50 +0000

Carrot Blog

As they say, the only constant is change; a statement that can’t be more true in our industry. Everyday we are on the pursuit of awesome and figuring out how we can bring that awesome to our clients. From whosits to whatsits applications to social networks, we need to have our ears to the ground and be able to react quickly for our clients. Aside from the usual suspects—Mashable, Techcrunch, PSFK, Hacker News, Adage, and Agency Spy—here’s a quick taste of blogs, agencies, and people that I follow regularly to get inspired and stay on top of my game.

BBH Labs

Twitter: @BBHLabs
Website: BBH-Labs.com

Bud Caddell, Independent Strategy Consultant

Twitter: @Bud_Caddell
Website: WhatConsumesMe.comtwitter.tw

Faris Yakob, Chief Innovation Officer of MDC Partners

Twitter: @Faris
Website: Farisyakob.typepad.com

Brand Flakes for Breakfast, by Humongo

Website: BrandFlakesforBreakfast.com

Conrad Lisco, Head of Community Experience at Co:

Twitter: @Conradlisco
Website: ProseandConrad.com

Made by Many

Twitter: @MadebyMany
Website: Madebymany.com/blog

R/GA

Twitter: @Rga (Kudos to whoever does their tweeting. Solid balance of humor and information.)

Tangerine (a talent agency that posts awesome 10 question interviews with industry talent)

Website: Blog.tangerine-ny.com/

Good Reads from Carrot Creative – Week of June 8, 2009

Carrot Creative — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:42:42 +0000

Carrot Blog

Each week the Carrot crew comes across a few articles that are worth more than just retweeting. Internally, we find, share, and discuss them. We strategize around the latest news and develop the best ways to positively impact the interwebs as we know it. Below you’ll find a list of news stories and breakthroughs we thought were important, monumental, surprising, and thought provoking.

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live
TIME’s cover story on Twitter by Stephen Johnson, a must-read.

10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business
This slide show takes us through 10 ways using Twitter might become profitable for businesses. Hyper-local marketing, consumer data mining, and micropayments are a few of the topics covered.

Twitter craze is rapidly changing the face of sports
SI.com presents an in-depth look at athletes who tweet and how Twitter is having a big impact on sports.

Apps Boom as Companies Seek a Place on Your Phone
More and more companies are setting their sights on the mobile industry for sustained revenue, and this gives developers a chance to not only just sell their apps in the App Store, but also sell their company. This NYTimes article by Jenna Wortham discusses the opportunity on the table.

Good Reads from Carrot Creative – Week of May 18, 2009

Carrot Creative — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:01:12 +0000

Carrot Blog

Each week the Carrot crew comes across a few articles that are worth more than just retweeting. Internally, we find, share, and discuss them. We strategize around the latest news and develop the best ways to positively impact the interwebs as we know it. Below you’ll find a list of those news stories and breakthroughs we thought were important, monumental, surprising, and thought provoking this week.

The Rise Of Social Distribution Networks
John Borthwick, CEO of Betaworks, addresses the rapid shift in social distribution online and how he believes this represents an important change in how people discover and use information. “Today there seems to be a new distribution model that is emerging. One that is based on people’s ability to publicly syndicate and distribute messages — aka content — in an open manner.” This is a must read.

Twitter for Business: Four Ways Companies Use Microblogging
CIO writer C.G. Lynch discusses four distinct ways businesses tend to use Twitter: product pushing, community outreach, how-to and service questions, and humanizing the head honcho. He highlights the importance of being real, personable, and relationship-oriented.

Don’t Fight The Stream: Facebook And FriendFeed Redesigns Are Paying Off
Discussion of how Facebook’s recent adoption of real-time activity streaming as its primary UI was the right decision. Since the redesign unique visitors have increased considerably month-over-month.

Google Launches Search Options, Declares Real-Time Search Biggest Challenge
Explanation of Google’s new “search options” feature and its capabilities. The hardest unsolved problems in search are also discussed: finding the most recent info, assessing which results are best, etc.

Twitter Passes NYT, WSJ in Unique Visitors
Twitter is useful, fun and a little addicting. When you start getting your news from it, game over. “While there’s a lot of reasons to visit Twitter online, it’s essentially a place to learn about what’s going on in your world.”

Beyond Clicks And CPMs: A Look At ‘Engagement’-Based Ad Deals
A look at what engagement-based ad deals may entail and why they are big deal for brands trying to connect with consumers in the social web. “Time Spent” will play a big role in standardizing measurements for engagement, as the more time a user is on a page, the longer they are seeing and possibly interacting with a brand’s image.

The Top 10 Sites and Browsers for Kids and Teens
“With child safety being an important parental concern for online activity and the potential for massive marketing to kids and teens, a plethora of sites, browsers, software and tools have emerged.” This article lists the top sites and browsers out there for kids and teens – a great resource for any brand attempting to target the audience.

5 Lessons Celebrities Can Teach Us About Facebook Pages
The recent redesign of Facebook Pages has enabled celebrities and brands to better engage their fanbase and build out virally. This article takes us through 5 lessons we can learn from celebrities who are currently leveraging Facebook to build their personal brands up and increase their following. In the eyes of the >carrot crew, this piece is spot-on – the celebrities have seen great results following our similar guidelines.

Good Reads from Carrot Creative-Week of May 11, 2009

Carrot Creative — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:13:33 +0000

Carrot Blog

Each week the Carrot crew comes across a few articles that are worth more than just retweeting. Internally, we find, share, and discuss them. We strategize around the latest news and develop the best ways to positively impact the interwebs as we know it. Below you’ll find a list of those news stories and breakthroughs we thought were important, monumental, surprising, and thought provoking.

In the coming weeks we’ll highlight articles every Monday – stay tuned and let us know if you come across anything we should be aware of! Be sure to send us good links on Twitter too! @carrotcreative

HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service
With the connectivity made possible by social media, companies have found a new way to engage their customers, solve their problems, and build goodwill for their brands: Twitter.” This article by Ben Parr discusses the value companies can get from devoting time to cultivating relationships on Twitter and helps explain why Twitter can be such a useful customer service and listening platform.

Twitter Search to dive deeper, rank results
Social Media: SEO for Twitter Search Set to Boom with Upcoming Changes
Twitter announced some big news regarding Search last week. Twitter will begin to crawl the links included in tweets and not just the content of the tweets themselves, and word is they are building an algorithm to take reputation into account. These articles explain the situation in-depth and discusses the implications of “reputation ranking”.

Firefox Could Be the Real Facebook Challenger
A great read. Jeff covered this article in a blog post last week.

Now that jocks can talk to us directly, the press is boxed out
Bill Simmons (The Sports Guy) discusses how we’re going to see the landscape of sports reporting change even more, and fans are inevitably going to have direct access to their favorite players. Says Simmons, “Today’s technology means athletes don’t need a middleman anymore.”

YouTube vs. Hulu: Which is the Future of Online Video?
A brief overview on the future of online video. A comparison of the YouTube and Hulu models: user-generated video vs. premium content vs. live video.

Forrester: Social Technology is Like Sex
George Colony (CEO of Forrester), says you can’t understand the hot new media tools and technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and blogging without diving in. In order to learn, you have to participate.

Get Glue Enters Into The Era of Social Colonization
Jeremiah Owyang discusses Glue, a social network the Carrot Crew is pretty fond of. Bottom line: Jeremiah says Glue is an early example of the Era of Social Colonization – a time when every product, service and object will have social reviews by people you know.

A Look at Twitter Demographics
With an estimated 12 million people adopting Twitter in 2009, figures released by Nielsen Online suggest that Twitter’s retention rate is only 40%. This blog post by David Wilson highlights the key user demographics and proposes a few thought-provoking questions for anyone involved with internet strategy.