The 10 Best Blog Posts of Week 20

Social media is massive now, we get it. You don't need me to tell you that Facebook's 1 billion monthly active users and Pinterest's meteoric rise mean big business (and big bucks) to savvy companies. But with this rise comes a boom in business for self-proclaimed social media gurus, and I should know.

My friend Carrie Harper is a full time visual artist that just opened her own creative hub called #heARTschool by converting unused office space into a beautiful space for creating art, making music and teaching. As a matter of fact, I had the honour of teaching the first workshop "Social Media for Artists" there.

Sometimes you just want to insert a gallery of images into your WordPress post or page post.

Influencer marketing is becoming a larger industry every year with a growing number of agencies, brands and marketers entering into it. Recent data shows an increase in spending on influencer marketing and suggests that 65% of brands have participated in influencer-based marketing.

As someone who is in the process of overhauling a website (which is itself quite a process) - I really enjoyed this infographic. Of course it's less style and more substance, maybe more appropriately called an flowchart-graphic. In any case, a lot of the points that they make are salient to me and should be [...]

May Day, May Day! Small businesses are drowning when it comes to social media. Research by Constant Contact shows that almost 60% of small businesses need help with social media marketing. Includes four tips to help small businesses create content. Source: Heidi Cohen's Actionable Marketing Blog

Part Two. An edited excerpt of What's the Future of Business, Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences In Part 1 of this series, The First Mile: The Broken Link of Social Media Customer Service, we reviewed the opportunities and challenges that face any business seeking to engage customers in social networks.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 12 () - To mark the Cinco de Mayo holiday this year, Domino's Pizza festooned its page with a string of posts, including an image of a Mexican-themed guacamole pizza that garnered over 2,000 "likes". But visitors to Domino's companion Google+ page on that day found less festive fare: The most recent post was from October 2012.

You're smart. You know you need to be helpful on your blog in order to grow your audience. You share useful tips. You give away free tutorials. But somehow you're not connecting with your readers. Your blog seems a little quiet. Sure, you're getting some traffic. But a certain spark is missing.

I'm not a broken record, at least I'm not trying to be. It seems that I've covered this topic from different angles a lot lately, but it's simply that important to understand. In business in general and in automotive marketing in particular, getting more Facebook fans is a very low priority compared to reaching more people.