The Virtual Handshake Blog

Archive for March, 2009

5 Reasons You Need LOTS of Twitter Followers NOW

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

By most people's standards, I'm doing very well on Twitter. TwitterGrader currently gives me a score of 100% and has me ranked #265 out of nearly 2 million users it has analyzed.

I'm adding an average of a little over 30 followers per day, and have had days where I've added almost 100 Read More...

The More You Say, the Less You Leave for Others to Say

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Back when I was blogging for b5media, we were having a discussion at one point about how to get more comments on our blogs. Blogger extraordinaire Liz Strauss shared her experience that she deliberately left posts "open-ended", even "incomplete". She pointed out that if you say everything there is to say on a subject, you Read More...

Nonprofit Fundraising in a Bad Economy

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

 
I had lunch yesterday with the founder and CEO of a successful, technology-savvy nonprofit.  Unsurprisingly, he was very concerned about reaching his fundraising goals for 2009 (and thereafter).  We brainstormed about ways that some of the concepts in The Virtual Handshake could be used to help in his situation.
One of his challenges is that donors Read More...

How NOT to Launch a Social Media Marketing Agency

Friday, March 27th, 2009

I'm not in the practice of being overly critical, and certainly not mean or snarky. But sometimes someone does something so completely, utterly incompetent or misguided that it's worth pointing out, for their own good as well as being an example for the general public.
That happened yesterday. Short version of the story: an established PR Read More...

Notes on Liminal Group’s 2009 Sales & Marketing Symposium

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Following are my notes on Liminal Group's 2009 Sales & Marketing Symposium, which took place Wednesday.
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First speaker: Paul Greenberg,
author, CRM at the Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century, President, The 56 Group, LLC; founding partner of CRM training company, BPT Partners, LLC. At the end of 2007, he was the Read More...

Apr. 7 MIT Enterprise Forum NY event: Collaborative Investing Startups

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

I look forward to attending a MIT Enterprise Forum of New York panel on April 7, 5-8pm, titled, “The Smart Money of Crowds: Collaborative Investing Startups”. We are fortunate to have as our moderator Roger Ehrenber of http://informationarbitrage.com .  Our speakers are the CEOs or managers of SumZero, Financial Times Alphaville/Long Room , StockTwits, and Covestor. Incidentally, SumZero was Read More...

What The Virtual Handshake Is All About – Media, Business, People

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Following a random link on Twitter, I discovered this cool visualization tool called Wordle. We've all seen tag clouds by this point. This just adds a nice artistic element to it. I ran The Virtual Handshake Blog through it and loved what it came up with:

Click the image to see a larger view or Read More...

Grouply closes series A round, including $2m in new money

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

I’m happy to report exclusively that Grouply, the innovative ‘group reader’ startup I previously profiled, just closed a Series A round, including $2 million in new money.  They now support over 1.3 million groups and 700,000 users.  (Disclosure: I am on their Advisory Board).
The round was led by O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.  It was oversubscribed, i.e., Read More...

Power and Impact of New Media: Coping with the Economic Crisis

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

 I enjoyed last night's panel on Power and Impact of New Media: Coping with the Economic Crisis at the Harvard Business School Club of New York. My notes follow. 
 
Biographies of the panel participants:
Harris Diamond is CEO of Constituency Management Group (Interpublic Group of Companies (NYSE: IPG.). The group includes IPG companies in the areas of public relations, public Read More...

Free Pass for 2009 Sales & Marketing Symposium: Winning Customers in the Era of Social Media

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

I look forward to attending Liminal Group's 2009 Sales & Marketing Symposium, a half-day morning taking place next Wednesday, March 25, 2009 from 9am to 12pm, at Asia Society, 725 Park, NY. I have one complimentary pass provided by Liminal Group ---if you’d like it, write in the comments (preferred) or mail me to Read More...