Mark Traphagen

"@seraphim 1. Krauss isn't making a claim. He's refuting Metaxes' claim that life is necessarily unique and rare. Metaxes can't make such a claim so emphatically when their remains the possibility that life can arise by multiple means. 2. True, we don't yet know exactly how life begins. But it is also true that the plausible theories for the possibility that it arises spontaneously, inevitably, and possibly more than once given the right conditions are increasing. See for example: http://www.sciencedump.com/con... Again, keep in mind here that Metaxes has made a bold claim that life has been "proven" by science to be extremely unlikely. If credible scientists are saying the opposite, than his claim is invalid. 3. Your statement here makes no sense to me. Life on earth has been "exposed" to the environment of earth. Krauss' point is simply that we have the life we have (on earth) because it evolved to the conditions of earth. Therefore, life on earth has the appearance of having been..." - Mark Traphagen

"Physicist Lawrence Krauss's critique of Metaxes's editorial is worth repeating: 1) While scientists know the factors that led to life on Earth, life on other planets could be based upon a different set of factors. 2) The odds of life on other planets have increased, not decreased with greater scientific evidence. 3) Life is fine-tuned for the universe rather than the universe being fine-tuned for life. 4) The appearance of design in life on Earth is due to the "remarkable efficiency of natural selection." He submitted it as a response to the WSJ, but they declined to publish it. You can read his full response at https://richarddawkins.net/201..." - Mark Traphagen

"That's what we do Jay. Disclaiming every post sharing our own content seems over the top, and I don't seen any major players doing it (yet)." - Mark Traphagen

"Were certain article types excluded? Our article on the end of Google Authorship on your site had over 13K social shares." - Mark Traphagen

"For example, I know Jay Baer regularly shares content from this blog on his personal Twitter without including "#ad" or "My company has..."" - Mark Traphagen

"So wait....you're saying that even if I just share a link to content on my company's site I have to disclose in the tweet? I can assure you nobody is doing that. it would make Twitter absurd. I share from my personal account a rotation of about 20 tweets per week that are links to content produced by my company. If I have to use up a quarter of my tweet to say "My company has..." in front of each one, I'll quit Twitter first." - Mark Traphagen

"Hi Amy. If your main purpose for Facebook is "connect with family and join interest groups," then departing Facebook is going to be difficult for you. Most likely your friends and family are going to remain on Facebook, even with the coming changes. My experience has been that it is almost impossible to draw enough of them to another network to make it worthwhile. Like it or not, Facebook has become the defacto personal social network, and is likely to remain so for some time to come. On the other hand, if you're looking for special interest groups, you can probably find those on most any thriving social network. You just have to be willing to make new connections." - Mark Traphagen

"Way to plagiarize. So very Christian of you." - Mark Traphagen

"MassCentral, yes you can cross post to Facebook and Twitter, but people who aren't logged in to a Tsu account then get a gate requiring them to sign in or create a Tsu account to view your linked content. Is that the kind of experience you want to give your followers on those networks? Not me." - Mark Traphagen

"Interesting addendum posted on Search Engine Land today: according to data by Shareaholic social media surpassed search for site referral traffic for the second time this year: http://marketingland.com/socia..." - Mark Traphagen

"You seem to assume that I'm somehow opposed to brand building. Far from it! Just because that wasn't the focus of his article doesn't mean I don't think it's important. One of the reasons I'm proud to represent Stone Temple Consulting, the digital marketing agency I represent, is that it truly brings a superior product (its consulting services and expertise) to the marketplace. We're insanely proud of the Fortune 500 clients we have who year after year increase their budgets with us because they are so pleased with our results. But we want to continue to grow. And not everyone knows about us yet. So we produce superior, expert-level content, publish regularly, and are active on social media. All of that has helped grow and spread our reputation, and has led to actual new business. Unlike an e-commerce site, we can actually know and track that, because we can interview new clients to find out the journey they took to coming to trust their business with us. And for most, it started with..." - Mark Traphagen

"On organic reach: you're assuming that I'm depending on organic reach in social media. I'm not (not entirely). But before we kick organic out the door, there is a kind of organic that isn't dependent on platforms or algorithms, and that's audience building. Brands that are successful on social media have worked hard to earn the ears and eyes of their followers. If their content is good enough, useful enough, or entertaining enough, fans seek it out (or subscribe to it) and share it with their friends. How you build such an audience is a subject larger than can be expressed here, but I highly recommend the book Audience by Jeffrey Rohrs. Another organic technique that still works quite well is using tools to listen for and find relevant conversations and becoming a relevant, useful, and enjoyable part of those conversations. Coke's Hub Network and Denny's Restaurants do this with extreme skill. You can read how in my Marketing Land article from last week. By the way, Denny's credits..." - Mark Traphagen

"Active Hub, very interesting to hear your take from the Chinese perspective. Though I didn't state it in this article, I completely agree that an important factor in social media marketing is understanding the culture in which you operate and how it uses social media. Given your statements about traditional Chinese trust in peers and superiors for recommendations, you might be interested in my latest article for Moz, which is all about the power of brands using real people to represent them in content and social media: http://moz.com/blog/personal-b..." - Mark Traphagen

"Thanks for the pushback, Augie. I obviously disagree with your original post and its conclusions, and am no more persuaded after your comment here. As I tried to make clear, I think your reliance on only direct ROI metrics is so limiting that I would be tempted to call it not marketing. Do you have Forrester studies showing that TV ads, billboards, newspaper ads, public relations, getting your brand in news stories, etc. all should be cast aside because there are no numbers (and of course, there can't be) showing that these lead directly to sales or lead acquisitions? I'd like to see your post boldly proclaiming that the only marketing that has any validity is that which occurs right at the bottom of the funnel. And then I'd like you to explain how you keep filling the funnel, which needs to be done if there is going to be enough anybodies at the bottom for you to sell to. Of course social media can be done ineffectively. Of course content can be done ineffectively. But so can..." - Mark Traphagen

"intouchcrm yes that's so important. If people get no other takeaway from this post other than that they need to fit social into an overall marketing strategy (instead of just "doing social") then it was worth my effort." - Mark Traphagen

"Hi, I'm the author of this column. I'd love to hear your questions and comments, and I promise to respond!" - Mark Traphagen

"Some good points, Sean. I didn't mention it in my article, but during the Q&A at SMX one of the Denny's reps mentioned that the increasing amount of social activities, especially among younger people, that take place on private or anonymous networks is indeed a challenge. He noted that it is still a very small part of their landscape, but is growing. The question will be whether teens will retain their same privacy concerns as they grow older. Sure 60% of teens on Facebook may have private accounts now, but that's understandable as they want to keep their activities hidden from parents and predators. But once they grow up and have families, will they become more public?" - Mark Traphagen

"Sean, actually, while I don't have any data at hand, it would be my guess that the vast majority of users do NOT lock down their social accounts, nor do they do things like block cookies on websites. Most of them don't even know how or that they can do those things." - Mark Traphagen

"Hi! I'm the author of this article. Thanks for reading it. I welcome your questions or comments and will respond to them here." - Mark Traphagen

"Well THAT was the Oversimplification of the Year. I think I've got my next article topic: a refutation of the gaping assumption in the conclusion of this analysis of the data." - Mark Traphagen

"Comment flagged as Tsu link spam." - Mark Traphagen

"Thanks, Arthur, that is helpful. I think it's always a good idea to include the methodology and/or criteria with any data presentation. Without some understanding of why someone was ranked higher the information is next to meaningless. So you used only tweets that had the hashtag #contentmarketing? I don't always hashtag my tweets, especially with such a long tag that takes up a huge amount of a tweet. If I had tagged more of my relevant posts (provided they were getting engagement) could that have increased my chances of ranking higher in this study?" - Mark Traphagen

"Where is the methodology? By what criteria were these rankings done? What is your "PageRank" formula and what factors into it? Can't find that here or in your downloadable report. Without some knowledge of that it's hard to interpret the value of this report." - Mark Traphagen

"A reminder that any comments containing a link to your Tsu account to try to gain downstream income providers are being flagged by me and removed by Marketing Land." - Mark Traphagen