David Binkowski.com

I'm having a lot of emotions about what took place in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend. None of them are good or positive for the direction of the United States. The GOP rode a media whore, a second rate TV "star", and lifelong con artist to the White House to help advance their agenda -- of which they have no idea how to implement.

The biggest problem is, Trump is a well documented racist that tries to help legitimize FOX News and Alex Jones and every racist thing in between. What these media properties all know is that a) division works and b) some people of faith will believe anything. Trump pushed the Obama birther theory, he declined housing to African Americans and he employs employed a racist in former Breitbart employee Steve Bannon. I'm not going to get into his circus of racists on staff including Gorka and Miller, because they aren't worth the words.
I have a lot of conservative friends that voted DRUMPF with hopes he'd bust up Washington. An…

Recently Facebook took the search world by storm launched GraphSearch, their supposed answer to Google's search dominance. You know, your friends know better than a collection of experts on a topic, right?

 Facebook's GraphSearch has been, in a word, abysmal. The results are irrelevant or non-existent and, even worse, they can't find basic Facebook-specific content which forces you to Google it and then click back to find Facebook content.

 But, GraphSearch launched not too long ago -- so why the change? Even with its poor performance, it must have turned people off -- or worse, they're flat out not using it. Today Facebook changed the search box to be a more prominent white instead of the blue bar that used to sit at the top of your browser. See for yourself here:



 Will it pay off? Does it matter? Honestly it doesn't. Facebook won't win in search, and GraphSearch will eventually land in a long list of me-too products that the company felt okay throwing in to …

I submit to the jury:

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, I've seen brands doing Like or retweeting promotions whereby they'll donate money to the Red Cross et al for each action followers and fans take.

Don't. Please, don't.

I'm calling this distasteful phenomenon "socialteering".

Damaging your brand by trying to capitalize on a tragedy is tasteless. Just donate the damn money and tell your fans that you did. You'll gain respect, or at least not lose it, for doing the right thing and not acting like complete marketing douchebag.

Updated at 8:44 PM: Chrysler's RAM Trucks brand posted this on Facebook and it's the perfect example of HOW TO GIVE -- not by forcing people into gimmicky Pinning, RTs or Likes. Do the right thing and your customers will remember why they buy and talk about you!

This post originally appeared on the Large Media blog.


There's been a lot of talk about Twitter followers lately, including both presidential candidates, celebrities, musicians and the like utilizing services to game their numbers. Specifically, a lot of the "Top 10" have been found to have a substantial amount of fake followers, in some case to the point where 70% of their following is either bots or inactive profiles. Most articles and infographics on the subject are telling, however with a little digging you can find out that there are also social media "experts" utilizing the service to give the appearance of bloated numbers. Intrigued, and given our rare propensity to tweet as an agency, we wanted to see what the fuss was about.

So we gave it a try.

Discovery

In August we saw some ads on a third party Twitter "profile checker" site  saying they can send a thousand followers your way for $9. The process is pretty simple: select how many followers yo…

I can't believe I'm writing this post in 2012 but as recent events have come to light apparently some advice about ethical blogger relations needed to be published as a reminder of what it means work with bloggers the right way. And by "right way", I'm not even going to touch myriad of "Don't call me a Mommy" or ignoring Dads or other issues that come from not knowing the people or space you're pitching. This is about general, ethical blogger relations and two specific examples of big agencies that are doing it wrong.

Case 1: Yes, You Can Pay Bloggers

The first example I want to discuss comes from a blogger who sent me a pitch that she received for a product review. The response from the blogger was that she ultimately had a fee schedule;  it costs money if you would like her to write about your product. It wasn't a lot of money -- especially given the hourly rates large agencies charge -- but ultimately she wanted to be compensated. Oh, and i…