Or, if you’re a Republican: “What the hell just happened?!” The election was supposed to be close. Regardless of your party affiliation, you heard that for months: Maybe an electoral tie. Certainly with one candidate winning the electoral college and the other the popular vote. We wouldn’t know for days after November 6th… Oops. The [...]

Optimize Your New LinkedIn Company Page in 7 Steps
LinkedIn has finally rolled out the new company pages to everyone. Along with a bunch of little changes, there are a few major ones: The redesign itself, cover images, and the fact that company pages are now visible through the LinkedIn mobile and iPad apps. These hip new LinkedIn company pages are sort of like [...]

Social media politics: Portent goes primetime on KOMO 4 News
For folks who wanted to see a video of my KOMO 4 Primetime appearance: You can’t even tell that, as the camera came on, I was whispering “don’t say um or like don’t say um or like don’t say um or like.” You can see our report on the topic in this blog post. And [...]

How to Optimize Social Networks for Local SEO
When it comes to optimizing your local business for search, you know that directories play a significant role in building authority for a company. But we know you’re cooler than that. You want more from your local search optimization strategy. You want to get SOCIAL!!! Why You Can’t Ignore Social Optimization You can’t afford not [...]

Best Practices: New Twitter Headers and Mobile Updates
Twitter rolled out a slew of changes today. The big conversation piece: The addition of profile “header” images. These images are just like Facebook and Google Plus headers. But on Twitter, the new header section also houses your all-important profile picture, name, handle, bio, location, and website. This update affects both Twitter’s web client and [...]

Why I Hate the Twitter Follow Limit
We wanted to flip the tables on internet marketing this week and take a look at one of the limitations of Twitter from a user perspective. You may not know this yet, but there is a limit to how many of your fellow tweeters you can follow. I found out the hard way. As a [...]

6 reasons to ignore Facebook search (for now)
I’m ready to party like it’s 1999! The bubble is back. Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook may build a search engine. We all hyperventilate and swoon. Facebook shares go up 7.7% so fast the line chart breaks: Batten down the hatches, Google! The big bad Facebook has set its sights on you! Or not. Take a [...]
Possibilities of Pinterest Webinar SlideDeck
I’m presenting my webinar about the Possibilities of Pinterest on Thursday, August 30, 2012 from 11:00 AM to 12:15 PM PDT. If this blog post reaches you in time, you can sign up for the webinar here. You can check out my slidedeck below. I’ll add a link to the recorded version of my presentation [...]

Are You Making the Right First Impression on Twitter?
First impressions are important. I remember when I was younger; I met a girl on a cruise that was high class and a lot wealthier than I was. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have given me a second glance, but after I saved her from an ill-advised swim, we fell in love almost immediately, even though she [...]
Mariners Social Media Night
Since moving downtown to the Smith Tower, Portent has been getting a lot more social in Seattle. So when we saw that the Mariners were hosting a Social Media Night on August 1st, we grabbed our smart phones and headed over. Social Media Night Many sports organizations have been early adopters of social media, and [...]

