Dan Soschin

Email Etiquette Revisted

I seem to encounter many email fouls in my business happenings, having to couch employees and colleagues on proper email etiquette which often seems to me as obvious, yet to others a yet to be refined skill. I even observe these problems in senior executives from time to time – so writing a quality (and successful) email with proper etiquette doesn’t just challenge new employees coming out of school. In fact, I’m not sure etiquette is taught at the undergraduate level with the exception of a few select/niche programs.

Here’s a great article written by Tim Berry at SmallBizTrends.com:
http://smallbiztrends.com/2011/01/3-simple-rules-for-better-business-emails.html

Pay close attention to points #6, 8 and 9. These are rarely recognized by inexperienced staff. As a result, you should be defensive when sending emails to staff that disregard these points. In other words, be careful what you send these people as they may send your mail to others or infer from it incorrectly.
Measuring Social Media – Moving Beyond “Fans” and “Friends”

A long time ago, businesses used to measure the success of their website by the number of hits. Of course, we’ve evolved quite a bit to look at a wealth of metrics, including time on site, conversions, ecommerce, clicks-to-conversion, bounce rates and more.

Similarly, until very recently, we used to measure social media’s affects on our business by counting the number of friends/fans we had on our Facebook page and followers of our Tweeter feed.

However, these numbers, by themselves, mean very little to us. Instead, focus on the number of meaningful conversations you have via these medium, the number of comments you have, and so much more.

I use a number of tools to do this – Google Analytics, Radian6, traditional dashboards and a bunch of other widgets and gizmos…

Jay Baer at Convince and Convert writes a great post on measuring social media’s impact on your business. You can check it out here: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-roi/6-critically-undervalued-social-media-success-metrics/
Google’s Share of Total Search Queries Grows in December

Google’s share of the US domestic search market continues to grow based upon the latest numbers from Experian Hitwise as reported by MediaPost.com.

The combo of Yahoo+Bing follows in 2nd place by a very wide margin.

Google is at nearly 70% of US domestic queries. However, the query-to-click ratio continues to lag at Google compared to Yahoo+Bing by about 1600 basis points (81% versus 65%). This gap may be due to Google’s dominance in capturing search queries more so than inaccuracy in delivering results (in my opinion). Read the full article at MedaiPost: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=142972&nid=122671#
Twitter 101
On Friday, January 14, I gave a presentation entitled, “Twitter 101” that covered the basics of setting up an account and how to use the tool. I focused on how educators can use Twitter as a tool for researching, teaching, communicating, engaging and sharing. We discussed policy issues, common sense and the ins and outs of following others. I hope to post the recording of the webcast, along with the slide deck and companion guides here shortly. Special thanks to my co-host, Nicole Endres.

I will be following this presentation up with others (in a similar “101” format) on the following topics:
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- YouTube
- Blogging
Ravens & Patriots

Well, I was rooting for my adopted home team, the Baltimore Ravens… and really thought they were going to move on… instead, it looks like vacation starts tomorrow.

Well, there’s always my true #1 team, the New England Patriots. I’ve been a Pats fan for almost a decade, and I really think they are going all the way this year. Go Brady!

Email Etiquette Revisted

Measuring Social Media – Moving Beyond “Fans” and “Friends”

Google’s Share of Total Search Queries Grows in December

Twitter 101

Ravens & Patriots