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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

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

We’re having a one day sale on our summer social media networking events, AllTwitter Marketing Conference and AllFacebook Marketing Conference, June 4 and 5 in San Francisco. Today only, you’ll save $100 off your ticket to either event or $200 off a Combo Pass to attend both. Just use the code ONEDAY when you register! continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

No matter your profession, age, gender, socioeconomic status, geographic location, interests, or hobbies, surely you occasionally seek advice. Whether it’s the optimal place to launch your startup, the best Italian restaurant in your neighborhood, legal advice, or tips for finding a better work/life balance, everyone finds themselves at one point searching for advice. But where do you start? continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you're drinking the inbound marketing Kool-Aid and regularly publishing content online, there's a good chance you may have experienced content theft at one point or another. Many of us are all too familiar with the feelings that follow the discovery of content thievery: your stomach drops, quickly followed by thoughts of "Why me?" Then the anger sets in. You’ve spent hours (or even days) creating content you think your buyer personas would love, only to have someone else reap the benefits on their own site? Not cool. At your core, it feels very wrong to have someone benefit from your creativity and hard work. To help combat the internet thieves of the world, you’ve got to be prepared. You need to know how to find out whether your content has been stolen, have a good understanding of the laws, and determine if it’s worth your time to pursue -- and that’s only the beginning. Then, you have to know which steps to take to get the thief to remove your content removed, and how to prevent it from getting stolen again in the future. This definitely isn't something you want to deal with every day. After all, you signed up to be a marketer -- not the content police. To help, this post will show you how to evaluate your particular stolen content situation and craft a plan to fight back (or not). If you're looking for a quick overview of the process, check out our SlideShare below: Are People Stealing Your Content? How (and When) to Fight Back from HubSpot All-in-one Marketing Software Use Technology to Your Advantage: How Do You Know When Someone Steals Your Content? First things first: You’ve got to discover that your content has been taken without your explicit permission and determine whether it violates the fair use copyright clause (more on that later). With the ever-expanding number of websites in the world, tracking down stolen content isn’t always easy. Here are a couple ways to find it: Copyscape: Simply plug your page’s URL into the search box, and voila! Copyscape locates where your content appears elsewhere online. In the free version, you can only see the top 10 results. If you want a more robust report, you can sign up for the premium paid version. That being said, most of us won’t need the supercharged results unless we’re hunting down stolen content full time. Referral Traffic: Dive into your marketing analytics to see which sites are sending you traffic. See traffic spike from a specific source, or just a source you don’t recognize? Take a peek to see if your content appears there. Pingbacks: Depending on your content management system, you may have the ability to be notified whenever a site links back to a post. If someone straight up copies your content and pastes it on his or her site, this is a really easy way to be notified -- no analytics necessary. Google Alerts, Topsy, and HubSpot Social Inbox: Whichever tool you prefer, you can set up alerts to ping you when someone mentions your content online. Keep in mind that you'll need to use a combination to stay on top of your content across the web: While Google Alerts used to be the be-all-end-all for marketers looking to monitor their brand or content online, it's recently been returning fewer and fewer results. To make sure you're covering all your bases, you can use Google Alerts to pull information from websites and blogs, Topsy to monitor Google+ and Twitter conversations, and HubSpot Social Inbox to see who from your Contact Lists is mentioning your brand or keywords on Twitter. (Bonus Tip: Some companies track a specific phrase at the bottom of each piece of published content, which can be more effective than trying to monitor a different phrase for each piece of content they produce.) Manual Searches: You also have the option of manually searching for your content. For written content, search for a long-tail phrase -- whether it be the specific one you include at the bottom of every post or just an excerpt from the body text -- to find your content mor

If you’re a parent, you will flip for this Twitter account. If you’re not, you will flip for this Twitter account – and decide to push back your child-rearing timeline by a few years. @HonestToddler, a Twitter account-turned-book, illustrates the detailed daily inner thoughts of a toddler. And the results are pretty hilarious. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The way people shop and make purchase decisions has changed dramatically with the advent of social media. Indeed, not only does e-commerce account for 8% of all retail sales in the U.S., online retail is expected to outpace sales growth at physical stores over the next 5 years, reaching an incredible $370 billion by 2017. And it’s not just e-commerce websites that these numbers are credited to: sales of physical goods through social networks are pegged to grow to $14 billion of U.S. sales by 2015. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Digital marketers know that marketing to Europeans requires different tactics and messaging, if only slightly, than marketing to Americans, or people anywhere else. And when 20% of the world’s Internet users are European – when Europeans only make up 12% of the world’s population – getting educated on where and what Europeans are doing online is vital. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.