A view of Volcán Tupungato. Not too shabby.

In our business, success is team effort. It takes talented staff members who work hard day in and day out, week after week. It takes loyal clients who believe in our work. It takes reliable allies who contribute their expertise. And it takes patient family and friends who support us through thick and thin.

Thinkso wouldn’t be the company it is without you. We are so grateful.

A special thanks to our clients:

Altegris Investments
Baylor College of Medicine
Credibly
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP
Common Ground
Expeditionary Learning
Kate Tempesta’s Urban Golf Academy
LCH.Clearnet
Matthew Septimus Photography
Mandy Gresh
Ma’yan
Dr. Morrison
Mohawk Fine Papers
New York Eleven
New York Jets
Nathan
Read Alliance
Reich & Paolella LLP
Ripco Real Estate
Pure Relevance
Stadion Money Management
S’well Bottle
Tabb Group
UBS
Waglee

..and our allies:

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Balance
Christa Bianchi
Erica Freudenstein
Finlay (with a special shout-out to Rich Kaplan)
Four Kitchens
Matthew Septimus
mPress
Premier (especially Peter Poser)
Standard Press

I rescued five starfish one afternoon, but this guy was my favorite.

As a social media marketer, I spend a lot of time creating metrics reports so that I can see how well our strategies are working. A big return on the investment in social media is an increase of web traffic to your site…which will turn into better name recognition and trust…which will (hopefully) turn into new business and sales. If your metrics reports are not impressing you each month, you should take a closer look at your social media optimization (SMO). More…

An integrated brand strategy for a new UBS trading algorithm made one of the bank’s most successful products.

Lorna Boucher Morgan credits design as an important marketing tool for her work at UBS Investment Bank.

I’m a news junkie. Always have been. I used to read the standards (WaPo, NYT, and WSJ) cover to cover. Now that I don’t read them in print anymore, the idea of “cover to cover” is outmoded. And the range of sites I visit has increased tenfold; I still scan the homepage of the Times but then I hop around sites sporadically throughout the day, seeking out the best coverage of topics that interest me.

Often, I’m dropped in the middle of a site, having followed some intriguing link on Twitter. Because the name of the source isn’t always indicated, it’s a bit like following someone blindfolded — you have no idea where you might end up after you click. More…

A couple of weeks ago, Maria Popova published a review of books dedicated to street art on Brain Pickings. I’m hoping someone will buy one of them for me for Christmas (hint, hint).

Street art is one of my favorite things to photograph when I travel. Here’s my first snapshot, taken in San Franscisco’s Mission District.

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I was invited to teach a workshop on Facebook marketing for students at the Touro College Graduate School of Business in New York City. Since I’m still in teacher mode, here’s an overview of the fundamental strategies I presented: More…

Natalia Oberti Noguera used branding to help clarify her mission when she launched the Pipeline Fellowship.

Last year, one of my friends started a Mix Tape Club. We agreed to update the format (CDs instead of tapes) — but not too much (no iTunes playlists because it’s more fun to get something in the mail). Another friend, Paul Boucher, designed the logo because what’s more official than a logo?

And so it began. On or around the first of the month, one of us mailed a CD to the other eleven members. What fun it was to get a package in the mail on a regular basis! More…

Photo by lucybyhet

Six months after Drupalcon Chicago, Todd Nienkerk and I headed to Drupalcon London for a repeat performance of our Don’t design web sites. Design web systems talk and to generally geek out with our colleagues and peers.

Yes, it’s been 3 weeks since then – an eternity in Internet Standard Time. But there’s a benefit to thinking back over that kind of distance: I can be sure that the speakers, sessions and ideas that are still fresh in my mind, are the ones that really made an impression. Here they are, in no particular order: More…

Have you read Part I, Part II, and Part III of our social media series? If so, you are ready to launch your campaign and track its success. To take this last step, you will need tools that will keep your accounts organized, up to date, and consistent. Checking these metrics will help you map the success of your campaign and evaluate if your strategies are delivering results. Has your web traffic gone up? What types of content are generating the most responses? What platform is the least active? Tracking these numbers can help you address problems quickly and evolve your social media strategy based on the rates of response.
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After working at established brands like Travelzoo, Mandy Gresh discusses the new set of challenges with her start-up Waglee.com, a website designed for urban dog owners.

In this series, we reviewed how to lay a solid foundation for a social media campaign. If you have been reading along, you know how to set long-term and short-term goals and how to perform a situational analysis. Now it’s time to put that knowledge to work and come up with creative strategies to use during your campaign. More…

In Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, there are gorillas and there is mist. The foreground gorilla is a mother holding a newborn baby. More…

As the founder of Broadbridge International Group, Elizabeth Howard explains how to design, implement, and measure a successful branding strategy.

It is important to develop a strategic plan before starting a social media campaign. As I explained in my earlier post, the first step is to make a list of both long-term and short-term goals that you’d like to achieve. The second step is to take a hard look at your current situation online and perform a situational analysis.

This exercise helps you evaluate the effectiveness of all your online materials including any blogs you may be running, any social media platforms you have started, and even your website. It will show you what strategies worked in the past, what you need to change, and where you need to be focusing your social media efforts to achieve your goals.

Break this process down into two parts. The first evaluates search engine optimization (SEO), the back-end strategy for becoming more visible online. The second is an analysis of any and all social media platforms. More…

Lili Brown, the Chief Advancement Officer at Expeditionary Learning, tells us about her experience rebranding the organization after 17 years.

Before you start tweeting, sharing, commenting, and posting, it is important to have a solid social media strategy in place. Whether you’re a start-up, a non-profit, or a household name, a solid strategy will focus your campaign and help you to achieve your communications goals. More…