SocialDreamium

I decided to take a minute to highlight my latest endeavor, joining the team at SocialDreamium. SocialDreamium is a privately-held Milwaukee-based company committed to building strong web-based communities centered around a companies products and services.  Started in October of last year by my brother Ryan Graves, and quickly expanding. I jumped on board a little [...]

User Friendly Simplicity

Have you ever noticed that the best things in life are usually the most simple?
While watching the chargers game a few weeks back (the last game of the regular season that led us to the play offs, woo-hoo!) we started talking about the simple things in life that.. simply.. can’t be beat. Apple products  are [...]

Action

I watched this video of CD Vann of SOHO Magazine and SOHObiztube.com on ActionsTalk.com, and had to share it with you. I especially appreciate the beginning of the interview when CD explains how she started her magazine, SOHO Magazine out of Milwaukee.  For those of you who aren’t familiar, ActionsTalk is a site that helps [...]

New Years Resolutions – Think Big This Year!

I’ve been thinking a lot about new years resolutions lately (obviously), and trying to find the time to write an amazing post about the new years resolutions we all make and break each January. I wanted to develop some thoughts on how we actually accomplish our goals this year- and make resolutions we can stick [...]

Community…not to be confused with Social Media.

Social Media can help foster communities, but it isn’t a community in and of itself.  Social media simply allows conversation around certain content. For example – if multiple people post comments about the new Verizon – Blackberry Storm, to say what they do and do like about the phone – this is conversation centered around [...]

Why Not Exploring Social Media Marketing for Your Company is a Mistake

Jim Tobin, who heads Ignite Social Media in Cary, N.C. said of social media,  “There are tons of studies that say word-of-mouth is more effective than any other marketing, and this is essentially word-of-mouth on-line.” He also wrote a book called Social Media is  Cocktail Party.  (I haven’t read it, but I just ordered it [...]

Smile, and The Whole World Smiles With You

According to a recent article on Yahoo! Finance by Laura Rowley The study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of California San Diego found that happiness is contagious: A friend who lives within a mile and becomes happy increases the probability that you’ll become happy by 25 percent; a next-door neighbor’s joy raises [...]

Unveil your ideas, be ready to act on them.

I don’t normally buy into fortune cookies or any of that jazz, but last week I received a fortune that I now count as one of my life motto’s.  (True story: the fortune is tucked on the dash in my car, and has been for weeks). The fortune read, “Unveil your ideas, be ready to [...]

Online Profiling: Speaking to One vs. Many

There has been a shift in the methods that defines on-line marketing on customer outreach.  Today the efforts are not so much like using megaphone and getting your message out there as loudly and as noticeably as you can –  so that as many people as possible hear what you have to say and know [...]

Corporate Blogs and Twittering

I have heard arguments both for and against blogging or twittering on behalf of a corporation. According to MediaWeek for the last several years, new marketing experts have implored corporations to “join the conversation,” namely through blogging. The problem being is that currently, several years into the blogging phenomenon, not many consumers trust these corporate [...]