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My fellow inbound marketer Sam Mallikarjunan is an internet and social media junkie -- always connected, always checking in, always tweeting, always emailing. He went on a cruise with no internet for a week, and had to leave his cell phone and computer at home. Here's how it went. Me: Hey Sam! Thanks for talking with me. You just got back from a vacation, so I know you're probably quite busy catching up on stuff. Where'd you go? Sam: Hey Corey! Took a cruise to the Bahamas. I needed the laws of physics to separate me from my phone. Me: Haha yeah, sooo, that's the reason I wanted to talk to you today. I've known you for about a year and a half, but it only takes like ... a day ... to know you are a social media/internet junkie. How much anxiety did you have over leaving the internet behind for a week? Sam: A fair bit. Actually, a lot. I've jumped out of airplanes with less anxiety. Me: What made you so anxious? Sam: Mostly just worry/concern. For example, I wasn't able to confirm with my parents that they understood I was going to be unreachable (they take AGES to answer text messages -- like 24 whole hours can pass). But also, I didn't want to miss anything interesting. I follow some awesome people on Twitter. I get a lot of emails. It's just been a long time since I've completely separated myself from my phone. Me: So some of the anxiety was around FOMO (a term I just learned, "Fear of Missing Out")? Sam: Heh, that's an interesting acronym. That's definitely part of it. I think it's also partially that the user interfaces of social media play on the innate addictions we're all prone to. Not to go too sciencey, but we all get just a tiny bit of excitement when someone sends us a tweet or we see that little red number on Facebook. It's a frequent but small trigger that creates a dopamine response; that is what makes it so addictive. It's why playing slots can be more addictive than the lottery -- there are frequent small rewards that bring us a bit of happiness. Ironically, as someone who knows about how user interfaces are built for this, I'm incredibly succeptible to it. Me: No by all means, get sciencey. You're right. And people are starting to profit off this stuff, too. Did you know there's some camp out in ... somewhere I can't remember right now ... but they charge like 10K for people to go there for FOUR DAYS and just ... not be on the internet. That's the whole business model. It's like internet rehab. So maybe you could consider internet rehab? Sam: Haha well that's a bit much. I think for that amount I could just toss my laptop and phone into The Charles for some catharsis and buy a new one. Me: Which did you have more anxiety over leaving -- email, or social media? Sam: Email I think. People on social media don't usually send me anything work related so it's rarely SUPER urgent. Although resisting the urge to check my Facebook notifications was tough, too. Me: Interesting. Kinda expected you to say social media. Sam: Why? Me: Because I know for you, your social media presence kind of IS your work to an extent. You got your job here largely through social media and your ability to garner attention there using inbound tactics. Kind of a good tie in for us at HubSpot. Plus you have a personal brand you've built up through social media -- I mean, you even get free samosas through social media. Sam: Haha yeah. I love social media, so that's hard, too. Don't get me wrong. I was worried about Twitter because I try REALLY hard to answer every single tweet I get and I didn't want people to think I was ignoring them. Me: Well let's talk about why email was harder to leave behind. Were you concerned you'd get back to work and just be really behind, or was it more concern about losing ground and missing out on opportunities? Sam: It was FOMO. Fear of missing out. For example, we launched our new social inbox tool while I was gone and I didn't have the resources to deploy my campaign around it, so I promoted it to our ecommerc

Social media is a vast, intricate, many-layered field with infinite tools, networks, and apps to help you leverage content and engage fans and followers. The days of the dynamic duo – Facebook and Twitter – are long gone. These days, new platforms pop up daily, and best practices change for each by the minute. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a cleanly-laid-out map that takes a bird’s-eye view of all the social platforms at your fingertips? continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In less than a decade, social media has empowered businesses of all shapes and sizes across almost every industry worldwide to attract and engage with fans and customers to raise awareness, drive website football and boost sales, but it’s a relationship that, by definition, has to work both ways. Accordingly, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have made it increasingly difficult for brands to maintain control of their online reputation, with these (and other) channels also empowering customers to proactively voice their opinion and share their experiences about these companies (and their products and services). Which, of course, is fantastic when everybody is happy, but let’s return to the real world for a moment: what do you do when things go wrong? continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past but are also more proactively taking steps to better manage their privacy, reveals the latest report from Pew Internet. In their Teens, Social Media, and Privacy analysis, Pew discovered that while 91 percent of teens have shared a photo of themselves, 53 percent have posted their email address and one in five (20 percent) have shared their cellphone number on a social networking site, 60 percent of Facebook-using teens have their profiles set to display to only friends and family, and almost one-quarter (24 percent) have a protected profile on Twitter. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The poor folks in Oklahoma have lost so much over the past couple of days and we bet they’re on your mind. If you’d like to help them, but didn’t know how, we have a pretty simple way. You can send them food, something they’re in desperate need of, and it’s as easy as sending a tweet. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Shel Israel writes The Social Beat blog column at Forbes.com and has authored four books about digital media's impact on business. He's now working on his fifth book, The Age of Context: How it Will Change Your Work and Life with Robert Scoble, due to be published in October. I got a chance to catch up with Israel to talk about the latest trends in marketing: context, personalization, and the debate over tracking cookies. Here's what he said. Q. Can you tell us a bit about your upcoming book, The Age of Context? What are some examples of "context" we already see around us? A. We look at five converging technology forces: mobile, social media, data, sensors, and location. As we see it, they are creating a huge contextual superforce in which technology becomes far more personal and capable of predicting what we want even before we ask. The book has more than 100 examples, even though we are only at the dawn of this new age. We talk about how sensors will adjust traffic lights in real-time response to accidents or events like concerts, and how first responders can wear Google Glass or another smart eyewear device so that they understand where injured people or hazardous material is located in a burning building. We write about how retailers will use sensors and data to offer real-time rewards when a shopper touches an item, and talk about a new personalized guide that will select programs, movies, and sports events based on your preference and the channels in your cable plan. We also discuss how the New England Patriots are leading the NFL into an era when contextual technology allows in-stadium fans to have cold beers waiting for them at the moment they need them in the nearest concession stand. We explore avenues such as business, health, education, and a great deal more that shows how the life and work of almost everyone is about to change -- hopefully for the better. Q. The debate over third-party cookies is getting kind of heated. I understand why people want to shut off cookies and get rid of annoying advertising. But I wonder if we might go too far, and if perhaps we'll lose the ability to deliver useful, relevant, targeted and contextual content. What do you think? A. Cookies are definitely a trade-off. They allow businesses to do all sorts of good stuff by knowing about each user. But they feel sneaky and make users very nervous about the data being collected. Take that anxiety and combine it with the frustration that the advertising is most often irrelevant to our interests, and it makes sense why people vilify cookies today. I think you are right. If we just turn cookies off, we'll lose something. Still, I think users should have the right to opt in whenever they possibly can -- it's very different from opting out. Users may make the wrong choice, but it's their wrong choice to make. Q. Some people are saying that cookies are old-fashioned and will die off, and then we'll find new ways to track users and deliver better content. What are your thoughts along those lines? A. All technologies age, and right now it's happening at an accelerated pace. I don't know of anything that can replace cookies today, but I'd be happy to see a less insidious technology. That being said, trying to ban cookies and stop tracking users altogether isn't going to happen. Cookie-haters who try to win the fight this way are like people standing on a beach and trying to stop a tsunami rolling in. First, there's no way you'll succeed, and second, you'll be in very deep and troubling waters really quickly. As far as better advertising, I have a mere glimmer of hope that contextual technologies can make a difference. Cookies tell advertisers what we want at a time when we need it. But there is no technology to get them to stop when we no longer need something -- nor is there a financial incentive. For example, one Sunday afternoon in January, I shopped around online for a hotel on Cape Cod in June. I made my selection a couple of hours later

Scratch that, if you hit and run, you shouldn’t tweet about it at ALL, but tweeting they deserved it is just all kinds of crazy. And it seems this Twitter user is just that. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Yahoo has gone through with its rumored acquisition of Tumblr, a popular blogging platform. Reuters reports that Yahoo paids $1.1 billion for Tumblr. Tumblr calls Yahoo the "original Internet company" in its post about the acquisition. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer boasts about Tumblr's size in her post about the acquisition. She notes Tumblr has 50 billion blog posts and adds 75 million each day. She also notes Tumblr has 300 million monthly unique visitors. There are over 100 million blogs on Tumblr. This means Yahoo paid about $3.6 per visitor or $11 per blog to acquire Tumblr. Traffic is still what drives ad dollars on the Internet and the acquisition gives Yahoo a lot of traffic. The Onion jokes about who is behind all the Tumblr traffic with a fake news article titled, Yahoo Back On Top After Purchasing Millions Of 13-Year-Old Girls' Blogs. Tumblr CEO David Karp said in a statement, "Our team isn't changing. Our roadmap isn't changing. And our mission - to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve - certainly isn't changing. But we're elated to have the support of Yahoo! and their team who share our dream to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas. Tumblr gets better faster with more resources to draw from." Image: Yahoo Permalink | Recent Headlines | Facebook | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

You’re all over Twitter every day and you know all about it, right? Well, maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but (most likely) you don’t have “everything Twitter” at the tip of your tongue every second of the day, particularly if you’re a Twitter marketer and not an app developer. Either way, we have a quick list for your reference. It’s full of Twittery things you either didn’t know about or heard of before and forgot they existed (like diphthongs). Take a scan so you don’t send out foolish tweets or say something silly the next time you’re “talking Twitter” with the masses. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The top of your fundraising pyramid is just that -- a small, concentrated piece of your whole universe, made up of older, rich donors who, though important, won't be able to add to the strong foundation of your future fundraising efforts. While they’re reliable for contributing large sums of money to help you reach your yearly goal, they are high risk, high reward from an investment of time and resources perspective. The question to ask yourself, your team, and those at the top of your organization is, “Do we have the base (occasional donors), and more importantly, the reliable core (recurring donors) in our fundraising pyramid to sustain our nonprofit for long-term growth?” More specifically, the question to ask in terms of your current strategy is, “Are we marketing to and nurturing these individuals to eventually move them up the pyramid and become major donors?” If the answer to both of these questions is no, then your organization needs to do some soul searching, and you need to adjust your current strategy so the answers are unanimously yes. But, have no fear! Here are a few suggestions for how you can shift your focus and turn those shameful "no's" into loud, confident "yeses." How to Shift Your Nonprofit's Fundraising Focus Strengthen and grow your core. No, I’m not talking about doing more crunches at the gym. I’m talking about the core of your fundraising pyramid -- recurring and annual donors -- consisting mostly of the Millennial (20-35) and Gen-X (36-50) generations. This is the most important part of your fundraising pyramid to focus on to guarantee sustainability for your organization in the long run. These recurring donors are providing the most consistency and security for your nonprofit. They are giving often and in larger amounts than the bottom of the pyramid, your base, or occasional donors. Your core is showing commitment to your organization, and as they get older, their wealth will grow along with their donation amounts. "How do I do this?" you ask? In the same way you’re cultivating and nurturing your major donors. I’m not saying to take every recurring donor out to dinner every month or write 1,000 handwritten thank-you letters. But there are ways to engage this audience effectively in the one-to-many fashion. The key is to be personal and creative, and here are some ideas to get you started ... Start a tiered incentives program for your core. Based on how much they pledge each month or year, these incentives are a way to say thank you to your core constituents. They can be anything from a direct thank you on Facebook or Twitter, to free tickets to your annual gala, to a trip to a project site in the field. Giving them something they can boast about is even better, because their friends and family will want to get involved as well, growing your network through theirs. Communicate and share impact on a consistent basis. The number one thing donors say nonprofits do poorly is to show and communicate the impact of their donations. By sharing exactly where the money they are giving is going, you’re able to engage your donors consistently over their lifetime. Keep them updated on your fundraising initiatives and share pictures of projects in progress or recent endurance event results. Send them an email with this information that corresponds to when they make their recurring donation (monthly, quarterly, yearly). This can easily be done with any email service provider, a well managed donor list, and some writing skills. Ask them for something other than money. That’s right! Ask your donors for something else besides another donation. While a majority of these individuals don’t have that much time to physically volunteer, they could have professional skills, whether its public relations, accounting, or design, that your organization could use for upcoming marketing and fundraising campaigns. Who wouldn’t want to do what they do best for a good cause? Its great for a young professional’s resume, and it’s g