Earlier this week I had the opportunity to participate in Dell’s Boston Think Tank for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses (#smallbizboston) at the Cambridge Innovation Center. Dell billed the session as a chance for business owners, startups and others to come … Continue reading →

After 20 years, IBM has transformed its Lotusphere user conference into IBM Connect. This evolution has been in the making since IBM introduced its vision of “social business” a few years ago. During this time, IBM has added to its … Continue reading →

SMB businesses are increasing their adoption of social media solutions year over year–rising from 44% to 53% in small business (1-99 employees) and 52% to 63% in medium business (100-999 employees). But what business functions are SMBs using social media … Continue reading →

The SMB Group’s latest survey, 2012 Small and Medium Social Business Study, examines how and why small and medium businesses (SMB) are using social media in their businesses today. The study also provides trending analysis based on comparison with SMB … Continue reading →

If you’re in the IT industry, tweeting has probably become a regular part of your day, like brushing your teeth. I know it has for me, as an industry analyst and researcher. But, since joining the Twitterverse in 2008, I’ve … Continue reading →

Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff is a great visionary with a big appetite for change. From packaged software to the cloud, from CRM to platform-as-a-service, he’s painted a color by number picture for businesses to emulate. But does his latest work, “the … Continue reading →

This year, Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event–with a record-setting 45,000 attendees–got me thinking about the early days before the cloud was the cloud, how far its come, and how perfectly poised it is to ride the waves now driving technology adoption–mobile and … Continue reading →

Originally published in Small Business Computing, 8-29-11. Recently, a client asked me for some tips about how to get the maximum mileage out of Twitter event hashtags. Creating Twitter hashtags for your business events is a great way to multiply … Continue reading →

Today I had the pleasure of joining David Alston from Radian6 and the legendary Brent Leary of CRM Essentials for a webinar live from CRM Evolution. We had a lively conversation about some of the key social business findings that … Continue reading →

Kevin Casey, intrepid journalist for InformationWeek, rang me up this week for input on his article, “Do Nonsocial SMBs Know Something We Don’t?” In the article, Kevin’s ponders whether SMBs that haven’t bought into social media have good reasons to … Continue reading →