​For brands and individuals that can’t (or don’t) pay for third-party Twitter analytics tools like Twitalyzer, TweetReach and Followerwonk, this is good news — but we can’t imagine the people behind the apps in question are very happy. Twitter Analytics offers pretty much everything third-party analytics tools do, including:

• Number of impressions per Tweet
• Engagement rate over time
• Number of favorites, retweets and replies
• Graph showing number of followers
• Follower breakdown by interest, location, age, and gender

by Mary C. Long

It seems as if there is no end in sight to the competition between two popular video-sharing social media platforms — and their parents. Instagram (Facebook’s adorable toddler) and Vine (Twitter’s unruly teenager) have been neck and neck with updating their platforms and adding new features constantly. 

You can read about Instagram’s latest and greatest, futuristically named Hyperlapse, here, but let’s see how Vine measures up.

Many agencies that commonly allow Twitter feeds to run unfettered, allowing the near instantaneous dissemination of information, were handcuffed when a Pro-ISIS group began posting pictures of coffins with American Flags and other threats against America, all under the Napa Earthquake hashtag. 

Social media coordinators were forced to monitor posts and tweets coming out on Facebook and Twitter in order to filter out the hate-filled screeds. 

The above post referred to missing journalist Steven Sotloff. The terrorist social media campaign features the hashtag #StevensHeadinObamasHands, however as a means of spreading their message across as many media platforms as possible they have co-opted the various Napa earthquake handles, as well as teen YouTuber Ricky Dillon's #askricky hashtag. 

by: Mary C. Long & Kim Niemi

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a shift taking place – one that not only requires CMOs and CIOs to work together in new ways, but one that may leave the CIO feeling a bit . . . threatened.

In the past, the chief information officer was responsible for anything that fell under the umbrella of technology, and the chief marketing officer dealt with all things “message.”  Both execs would manage teams of their own, most often in typical silo fashion, where never the twain shall meet.

But thanks to the Internet, digital and mobile, technology is no longer separate from marketing – they’re moving closer together all the time, due to the need for personalized advertising and the big data that informs it all. Brands can no longer afford to segregate their top experts in these fields and expect to compete. CIOs that partner with CMOs will do best for their brands – and those that don’t, may be struggling to reinvent themselves.

by Kim Niemi

There’s a vicious scourge spreading across the land, robbing its victims of common sense, and the ability to reason logically and think independently. It transmits from person to person, sometimes instantaneously, without prejudice. And everyone should be very afraid.

by Kristin van Vloten, Writer, Editor, Ghostwriter, Producer at Salvo Communications

W.D. Wetherell defines admiration as an emotion that ”expands our sense of possibility.” As a ghostwriter, I know that allowing my client to tap into this emotion is the most powerful service I can provide. 

If you can help a client to speak like the person that she aspires to be, then that experience of self-confidence and expanded possibility will make you an indispensable part of her entrepreneurial and personal development. Here's how.