Author: JD Rucker

Next to computers, tablets, and smartphones, our cars are often the most technologically-challenging item that we deal with on a daily basis. Every model year brings out new gadgets and gizmos that are designed to enhance, adapt, and often-times engage with other technologies that we carry with us. Tablets are used as owners’ manuals. MP3 players have become our stereos. Speakers and mics interact with our phones for hands-free driving. These are the common examples. Today’s cars can do so much more. The advertising on the OEM level often focuses on technology. Why do so few dealers do the same?…

For the past several years, content has been a component of search engine and social media marketing that fell far below the tricks and techniques that helped achieve business goals. It was possible to be successful with limited or low-quality content. In fact, there are those who were able to succeed with no content at all, fooling the search engines and social media sites with methods that proved to be more fruitful than actually creating content that the audience wanted. Those days are finally behind us. It has been a long time coming, but now that search engines, social media sites, and people…

Abomination: A thing that causes disgust or hatred. A feeling of hatred. In the world of geekness, there are few things held at higher levels in fiction than Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. To butcher a couple of the most important lines and the characters normally associated with them is a true abomination. Here’s the other: …

Imagine a search engine that truly knew you. No, not in the way that Google or Bing personalize their search results based upon your history and preferences – what if a search engine could take the information that you give about yourself as well as the information that your friends and family put in and cater your search results around your most likely goals and desires from the search? Would you use it? If Marissa Mayer, CEO at Yahoo, has her way, that may be exactly what we see in the future. The plot for the social media giant to work very closely with the former search giant is a combination that should…

Purists will say that using apps and dashboards like Hootsuite or Buffer take away the fundamental interpersonal relationships that are built through social media. By scheduling posts or sending them through these tools, users won’t be able to see the person behind the message, they say. Marketers find other reasons to avoid dashboards, particularly with Facebook. The posts often do not carry as much weight as ones posted directly through Facebook, making it convenient but less effective to use tools. Both purists and marketers may be correct, but there’s one major advantage that dashboards…

There is no longer a need to argue that governments, the US government in particular, have been attempting to gain information about individuals through official requests to internet companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter. As the internet and social media continue to expand and the amount of information people willingly and unwillingly put only grows exponentially, the value of this data is unquestionable. Businesses want it. Other internet companies want it. Sharing has become normal in our society and that data is extremely valuable. When governments increase their interest…

Nokia has been sliding dangerously close to oblivion for some time now. The former king of mobile phones underestimated the rapid rise of smartphones and bet too high, too long on feature phones. Now, they’re scrambling to catch up but their flagship Lumia line of phones has not been doing well. In an effort to improve their footprint and expand the datasets available to power their new Here map application, Nokia is going to offer them to iOS users. After the disastrous launch of Apple maps on iOS 6, Nokia tried to cash in a bit by comparing their maps to the maps of the two current kings of smartphones,…

It’s every marketing company’s dream to create a viral video for their clients. In the world of online and social media marketing, there’s really nothing more difficult than to expose a brand to millions of people who really aren’t wanting to see a marketing message. Samsung and the agency they hired to promote their solid state drives, The Viral Factory, committed an atrocious and taboo act by making a “viral” video centered around Laina Walker, a.k.a. Overly Attached Girlfriend. Attempting to piggy-back off of a meme like this is bad form. First, it’s only known by the small (but growing) portion…

Despite the rise of social signals and the continued prominence of content as primary search engine optimization tools, high-quality inbound links remain one of the three big components in improving rankings. The automated processes have been devalued; low-quality posts, footer links, and sidebar links are a thing of the past and in excess can actually hurt a website. Strong, contextual links are still valid. In fact, some have shown that they’re more important than ever. In this infographic by Digital Net Agency, which comes to us via Honda Dealers San Jose, they examine the two different…

The art of saying as much (or as little) as possible on Twitter with the 140-character restraint is challenging to master. Some of us still prefer to use proper English and regular spelling of words (archaic, I know) when texting or posting to social media, so getting the full message across appropriately is difficult. One technique that works well is to punctuate with a hashtag at the end of your Tweet. Think of it like the opening scene to every CSI:Miami episode. The main character, Horatio Caine, walks onto a crime scene and is giving a quick debrief. He then gets his trademark stoic, contemplative…