Carrot’s President Mike Germano weighed in on the AdAge article “The Right Way to Make Your Social-Media Mea Culpa“, giving brands a few pointers to effectively apologize to customers and turn a potential headache into a winning display of customer service, served up social-media style.

“Advertising gave brands a voice, but social media gave brands a personality,” said Mike Germano, president and creative director of new-media marketing agency Carrot Creative. “So crafting the tone of the message is very important.”

Read more and see the article on here on AdAge’s site.

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With more than 500,000 small businesses in the tri-state area, The New York Enterprise Report is once again honoring those who are among the most innovative. Carrot Creative has been nominated as a finalist in the Human Resources & Leadership category.

Companies were chosen based on their ability to demonstrate the use of a best practice to generate competitive advantages, revenue profits and/or long-term value. Twenty-seven companies, based in the NY metro area, were selected as finalists out of dozens of qualified applicants for each category and will be recognized at the event.

Mike Germano, Carrot Creative’s President and Creative Director, will be in attendance at this year’s event on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City, NY.

We’re honored to be included amongst a list of top small businesses doing great things within the New York area and look forward to a great event to meet others in the industry. This will be a great opportunity for Carrot Creative to show off our unique working environment and all of the exciting projects and clients we’ve been working with.

Are you attending? Let us know!

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While del.icio.us is the standard for tagging articles, we still wanted to put emphasis on what we were getting out of the news. Posting that you liked an article or thought it was interesting is a plus for research and reference. But, the extra two cents YOU put into the story is what really makes things work. Just think about recent articles or blog posts you’ve read. Half of the comments on them are more interesting than the actual article!

So, is there a new solution to doing this? Enter Amplify, a service from the creators of Clipmarks. I met with  Eric Goldstein, one of the creators last week to talk about what they’re doing and how this can change the way people check out news on the web. Amplify, as it says on the website, “is a service for sharing clips from articles, blog posts or anything else you read on the web with your friends on Twitter.”

That’s really it. The easy interface (once you add the Amplify add-on to your Firefox browser) lets you clip parts of the articles you like onto a clog in a few simple clicks. Once you’ve sent the clip to your clog, you can comment on it, share with across the web and keep a conversation about your post write there. You receive notifications when others respond (a bonus) and get to interact with like minded users willing to provide feedback.  I’ve been a fan and some of the Carrot Crew has already picked up on it as well. Check out Jeff’s clog.

We’re going to use a group clog for Carrot Creative to start sharing what we’re reading on a daily basis and provide commentary. We’ll still of course blog here, but check out the Carrot Creative clog here.

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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.

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As Social Technologies Become Pervasive, Prepare Your Company
Jeremiah Owyang discusses the implications of social technologies in business. He goes through the different vendors that have entered the space and explains some of the changes they’re facing. He also offers some great advice for brands as they get more immersed in social media and embrace the social web. A good read for anyone running a business.

Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.
Google Wave was announced last week at the Google I/O conference. If you haven’t heard the buzz yet, check out the articles below. This could be the next big thing – at least, that’s what Google is planning.

• Google Wave: A Complete Guide
• 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave
• Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal

Bing Opens Up. Is It Good? It’s Too Early To Tell.
Microsoft’s new search “decision engine” recently launched aiming to provide the best results in a more organized way.

Is Social Media Making Corporate Websites Irrelevant?
Kristin covered this article on the Carrot Blog last week. Definitely a must read.

Top 20 YouTube and Video Memes of All Time
The title speaks for itself. The top 20 viral video sensations! Quite entertaining.

comScore Announces Media Metrix 360
Yesterday, comScore announced Media Metrix 360, a ‘panel-centric hybrid’ solution to digital audience measurement. Fred Wilson posted his thoughts on the launch, saying it’s a great opportunity for smaller web services. Official release here.

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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.

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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.

This article is copyright © 2012