Mashable published a superb Infographic created by PostRocket. It’s the best summary of how the Facebook Edge Rank algorithm works that I’ve seen so far. Three key highlights for you:

• 96% of fans do NOT go back to a brand’s Facebook page after they “like” it
• On average, only 16% of your fans will see your posts, and
• In the United States, people spend more time on the Facebook news feed than on the Huffington Post, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News and Yahoo! News COMBINED

The bottom line is that you have to look for ways to optimize your news feed. How do you do that?

• Be visual – Facebook is a visual medium and images and videos carry the greatest weight
• Be brief – Posts that are between 100 – 200 characters get 60% more likes and shares than longer posts
• Be active – If 96% of your fans never come back to your page, you have to post frequently to connect with them.

Here’s a link to the infographic. Enjoy

I have always loved TweetDeck. And when Twitter acquired TweetDeck for $40 million back in 2011, I became very worried. I was worried that they would mess with the beautifully elegant Adobe Air application that sat on my desktop. And mess they did. The new web-based TweetDeck never seemed to work as well. And then just a few weeks ago, Twitter announced that it was killing off it’s Air app for the desktop, iPhone and Android.

What would I do?

Well, I finally broke down and installed TweetDeck for Chrome last night and a funny thing happened. Me likey. Me likey a lot!

It has all of the features that the original Adobe Air desktop app had. It allows you to schedule tweets, manage multiple accounts and social networks, search for and organize content, and much more. I’m still playing around with the content filter features that allow you to organize content in columns and lets you restrict tweets appearing to only those with images, videos, any media, links, or matching certain keywords. There is a lot there and although it is not as beautiful as the original Air app, it is blazing fast. If you download the app, make sure that you also download and install the TweetDeck for Chrome launcher. This places a application launch icon right onto the Chrome toolbar. I’m not sure why that needs to be separate. But, it makes launching the app super-easy.

So, it’s all good. Life will move on after TweetDeck passes at the end of the month. And it looks like we’ll have something even better.

Back in the day, not that long ago really . . . Twitter was a social media utopia. People would follow everybody. It was, “You follow me, I’ll follow you.” That all changed as Twitter gradually morphed into a network of D-list celebrities, spammers and skeevy Internet marketers.

There are still many reasons for brands to develop a strong presence on Twitter. The infographic above provides some of the ways in which you can do that. In the end, it’s all about having a point of view, great content and a reason for being there.

Once again we are happy to announce that we won a mess of awards at last nights big shindig! Thanks to national Geographic, Lindsay Automotive, WANADA, and Think Food Group for sharing the joy of great work. What makes us the proudest of all this is that year after year we seem to pull it off.  The work last night was fantastic, the highlight of the evening was seeing great work happening in D.C. Innovative smart work ruled the day. That’s always refreshing to see.  All in all we had 17 pieces selected and won Ten Awards, 3 Golds and the rest Silver.

Gold Local TV Lindsay for Campaign

Gold Local Tv Lindsay For Dog

Gold For Natinal Geographic Museum Newspaper Samurai

Silver for Lindsay individual local TV

Silver for Think Food Group é Restaurant in Las Vegas Outdoor

Silver for 2102 WANDA DC car show TV

Amazing copy, click on the link or the image to read it all.

When I die, I hope that someone writes such an amazing obit for me. This is like an amazing pizza or hamburger. It’s such a simple premise, yet so hard to do well. This particular obit is so well written we want to hire this writer to make great things happen for other things out there. What a joy to read such a sad thing. Harry I am sure is exceedingly proud of  his daughter for writing this. Amazing. There is hope out there for us all. You can read it all here.

It’s the oldest privately-owned company in the United States. They have been making products since 1623. That’s not a typo – since 1623. 390 years! And they dominate the market, owning more than 50 percent of the world market share for their products.

Who are they? They are Zildjian, a family-owned business based in Norwell, MA. They make the finest cymbals in the world – used by orchestras, bands and rock stars all over. The business has stayed in the family for 15 generations. Here’s a little bit about them, from their website:

Avedis Zildjian I (the first) was an Armenian alchemist in the city of Constantinople in the early seventeenth century. While attempting to create gold by combining base metals, he discovered an alloy of copper, tin, and traces of silver with unique sound qualities. In 1618, Avedis used his secret alloy to create cymbals of spectacular clarity and power. The sound of the instruments was so extraordinary that the Sultan invited Avedis to live at court (Topkapi Palace) to make cymbals for the Sultan’s elite Janissary Bands. As Avedis’ reputation grew, the Sultan gave him the name “Zildjian” in Armenian (Zilciyan in Turkish), a word meaning “son of cymbal maker.”

In 1623, Avedis was granted permission to leave the palace in order to start his own business in a suburb of Constantinople named Psamatia. That same business is now nearly four centuries old and has been passed down to Zildjian heirs for fifteen generations. Relocating to America in 1929, Avedis III moved the Zildjian factory to Quincy, MA and then to its current location in Norwell, MA for Zildjian’s 350th Anniversary. The business passed to Avedis’ son, Armand in 1977 and then to Armand’s daughter, Craigie, in 1999. Currently, Craigie and her sister Debbie continue the family tradition in what is recognized as the oldest family-owned business in America.

There has never been a layoff. If a job on the production line is automated by a machine, the employee who use to perform that job is retrained for another job at equivalent pay. And they have never outsourced a job overseas. Never. They believe that quality is more than just a slogan.

“The notion of sending your quality, outsourcing your quality halfway around the world,” CEO, Craigie Zlidjian says, “is unthinkable.”

This is a company that really understands its brand. Their model has outlasted empires, survived depressions and recessions and has stayed true to itself. They don’t do things the easy way. They do things the right way. And that is why they are the greatest company in America.

Learn more about Zildjian here.

Clients often ask me when this social media fad will blow over. I tell them, it won’t. It will evolve and somewhere in the world the next Mark Zuckerberg is creating the next Facebook, or Google, or eBay.

I was blown away by the infographic above. Every 60 seconds on the Internet,

• 695,000 Facebook status updates are made
• 98,000 Tweets are tweeted
• 3,600 Photos are uploaded to Instagram
• 100 New LinkedIn accounts are opened
• 60 New Blogs are created
• 320 New Twitter accounts are registered

Oh, and I’ve been saying that email marketing still has a lot of life left in it, when it is down properly. Every 60 seconds there are 168 million emails sent. That’s freakin’ amazing.

If you have been here in the past 8 months you have no doubt met Oreo. She greets everyone here with a wag and a smile; something she has learned from Ruby her older sister from day one. Ruby runs HR. Oreo is the receptionist and is learning the tricks of the trade when it comes to helping folks concept and deal with the day-to-day dealings of deadlines and drama. I just saw that there was a study indicating that dogs relieve stress at work, so now we have proof. But it all depends on the dog, just like it depends on the human co-worker. If you have a high strung human co-worker it can be horrible. Dogs are no different. This is why we are so proud of Oreo for learning the craft of working in an ad agency. She never barks. NEVER. And she is always happy. Never craps on the work (or the floor), and she’s very dependable. Here at the agency we are all about team work and getting along…and attacking cool creative projects like a pack of dogs. So here’s to Oreo. Congrats on a job well done.

Technology and innovation happens so quickly these days that people often forget that at some point, things have to be done for the first time. And the cinematic innovations of Petro Vlahos, who died on February 10 definitely fall into that category. He created the blue and green-screen and composite photographic techniques that are still used to this day and have influenced every film from the Oscar-winning Ben Hur in 1956, Mary Poppins (1964) and the entire “Star Wars” saga.

Bill Taylor, co-founder of Illusion Arts and special effects supervisor on films such as Lawless, Bruce Almighty, Public Enemies and Milk had this to say about Vlahos.

“He created the whole of composite photography as we know it at this time. Whenever you se Mary Poppins dancing with penguins, when you see Pi in a boat in the middle of the ocean (referring to the recent film “Life of Pi), you are seeing Vlahos’ genius at work.”

Back in the 1950′s, he laid the technical groundwork for the modern blockbuster. And here we are, nearly 60 years later still using his techniques. These days, technology turns over very fast – unless you invent the cinematic equivalent of the wheel, which is exactly what Petro Vlahos did.