The Hammock Blog

Social media and marketing rockstar Chris Brogan invited Rex for a recent Skype interview about Google+, publishing, customer loyalty and the topic of "Helpability," something we'll be sharing more with you about on Hammock.com in the coming weeks.

Elsewhere, Rex has said he's corrected the location of his webcam so that he won't appear so gigantic next time he's interviewed. However, we like the whole 1984 look. From the many positive comments on Chris's blog, it appears there are others who enjoy Rex's passion for new media and marketing advances:

A few of the gazillion
Twitter apps and clients

But to better understand Twitter, and why it is so important, you must think of it as more than a website. Indeed, there are millions of Twitter users who rarely, if ever, visit the Twitter website.

Twitter is a great tool to expand the reach of your message beyond your website, enewsletter or blog. But you can't measure your reach solely by the number of followers you have—you have to look beyond and consider the user who follows your followers.

Yes, we knew all that about Rex. We're just glad more Twitter users are now catching on.

One of the things that I always find most valuable at such gatherings is the questions people ask. They give you a little window into understanding the association audience they serve.

I found myself asking "How would we answer that at Hammock?" since we are using all types of social media tools as part of our content marketing strategies every day. Instead of blurting out answers there, I circulated the questions to our Internet marketing team and here's what they said.

Tweeters at Hammock Inc. share their favorite apps

You probably already know that we love Twitter! So last week when the conversation turned to what tools use to tweet, there were several votes for favorites.

Social media surprises from our mothers

It wasn't until I was in high school that I really started to recognize my mom had an identity beyond being putting a healthy, home-made meal on the table every night, making sure we understood our homework, and offering encouraging words or a forgiving smile when we needed it the most.

Now, I always knew she was a cool lady, but recently I've been starting to see where I must have gotten the Internet-nerd gene from in the family. Over the last couple years, my mom has started to get into social media: She uses Bloglines to read RSS feeds (she's got mine in there!), we chat more over IM than we do on the phone, and a few months ago she asked me how hard I thought learning Dreamweaver, a website-building application, would be for her (my answer: Go for it!). Oh, and although she doesn't have an account yet, she knows what Twitter is. I can't even say that for most of my friends.

Since we're all very passionate about social media here at Hammock, I figured I wasn't the only one whose mom was starting to warm up to the new media bandwagon. Read on to find out whose moms have embraced this new technology and whose might still be a bit leery.

Hammock created and hosts
this pre-conference community for the
Society of National Association Publications.

To generate interest in the event and provide a place online for attendees to set up user profiles, discuss the agenda, interact with speakers and network, Hammock has created a pre-event online conference community for SNAP. The site, which launched this month, is managed and hosted by members of Hammock's social media team.

A number of us here at Hammock are real political junkies. We're all over the spectrum, politically, but we share a love of politics, media, and the crazy things that happen during campaigns and elections.

For true political geeks, today's the best day of the year. We'll be glued to the computer, cell phone and TV til the wee morning hours. Best of all, growing media use of social networking tools means you can follow the action wherever you are. Rex is keeping a running tally of fun election tools over at the Rexblog.

Hammock Inc. runs SmallBusiness.com, a wiki-based site designed to connect small business owners and their expertise with others. The site covers any topic related to running a small business, and the wiki format lets small business owners contribute their knowledge to the community, as well as learn from the expertise of others.

A long-time feature of SmallBusiness.com has taken on renewed importance recently. We've had a small business news wire on the site for some time -- we tag the day's biggest headlines for small business and pull them onto the site. It makes SmallBusiness.com a one-stop shop for small business news and information.

We also offer those headlines via Twitter and RSS. Recently, as businesses large and small have focused intently on the daily economic news, the SmallBusiness.com News Wire has given small business owners an easy way to keep up with the latest financial events that may affect their businesses.