Owner Josh Harris’s moves to rejuvenate the venerable Philadelphia 76ers provide helpful pointers for any business leader who’s taken up the charge to get a brand on track. He understands the brand and how to get fans involved with it.

Despite what some will tell you, social media takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and consistent engagement. Social media marketers are a dime a billion these days, so you must set yourself apart—or die trying! Here are my top five lies about social media.

If you can prove marketing is a justifiable investment, marketing will no longer be seen as a cost center, but as a valuable part of the organization.

You can’t be an agency anymore and just collect your commission or fee. Almost everything you used to do has been automated and commoditized, just like in other industries. Plus, you now have to be a partner with the entity formerly known as the client. Here's how to survive all the changes.

Web analytics maturity models are used as auditing mechanisms, defining strategic pillars of one’s Web or digital analytics practice. They are integral for building, benchmarking, and improving measurement and optimization strategies, and can also assist in talent acquisition.

The devel­op­ment of an advanced mar­ket­ing attri­bu­tion model can be incred­i­bly insight­ful for some retail com­pa­nies, but less so for oth­ers if they aren’t in a posi­tion to take advan­tage of it. Before going down the path of invest­ing resources in devel­op­ing it, I’d encour­age you to answer the following two questions.

We truly are in a golden era, a period of unlimited creative opportunity. So make it good because consumers no longer tune you in; they decide whether or not to tune you out.

The marketing world and the business world continue to change. Rapidly, in fact. But there are a few facts upon which we can rely. Why is there so great a desire to dispense with these foundational aspects of marketing and business?

To help you pour some more knowledge into that marketing brain of yours, this is my list of recommended reads for marketers, including books, blogs and magazines. They're framed around the four essentials "spots" of marketing: Branding, Experience, Conversation, Promotion.

For years, marketing people and PR folks wore separate hats—had different skill sets, different agendas—even though they share a common purpose. The birth of digital communications made it worse by adding another silo, but social media shows us why it is vital to string it all together.

To be frank, ethics and marketing don’t go together all that well. But I predict that in 2012 we'll see a rise in the importance of ethics, with a kind of WikiLeaks emerging to tackle the maneuverings of less-ethical brands.

Forrester's look at the biggest and best mobile marketing companies has one big problem: it looks only at the biggest and best. This enterprise-focused approach is the wrong one to take in a world where dozens of innovative startups are tackling the idea of mobile marketing with fresh ideas and eager teams.

To those who think that all brand names can be crowdsourced, I have one word: iPad. And another word: Wii. These are two of the more successful brand names of the last ten years, and I guarantee that you would not get them from a crowd.

What my research and dealings with CMOs tells me is that the job is less and less about marketing, and more and more about corporate strategy and leadership. And that the challenges in front of you as a corporate officer, rather than the head of marketing, have more to do with understanding the customer than understanding CPMs and creative.

Abusing a customer to the point where you become an Internet sensation is surely an epic fail. But it's not really a PR issue, even if it involved a PR firm.

What did we learn from the events of 2011 that might help us work smarter in the year ahead? Several things happened, but the lessons boil down to just one: Know what your brand stands for to your core customers and you’ll do the right thing.

Clear strategic thinking is essential for any manager in any setting; unfortunately, most companies think they have a strategy when they don't. The author of this article worked with Michael Porter, the world's leading authority on competition and strategy, to develop a concise, practice-oriented guide to his work--and came away with 10 new insights.

Through trial and error I think I've discovered what it takes to build and market a successful business. The following five lessons are what I think to be the most important.

Steve Jobs was not interested in selling you a computer -- computers are a "what" topic. Nor was he interested in selling you faster speeds or better graphics -- those are "how" topics. "Think Different" is a "why" topic, and as such it is far, far more powerful as a marketing tool than any other kind.

IBM just released its first Global CMO Study. In it, 71 percent of chief marketing officers reported being underprepared for the “Data Explosion.” What’s more, CMOs cite longevity as a challenge and transparency as key to success as reported on CMO.com. The irony is that today we have more data at our fingertips than ever before, yet feel starved for real information and true insight.

I'm continually amazed by what software now enables marketers to do. But in many companies, it falls into the IT-marketing gap. A new report from Forrester Research proposes a major organizational shift to address this problem.

Contrary to the old sales cycle, the modern revenue cycle includes the parts of the business that feed and foster sales: marketing, branding, PR and social media. This bigger-picture process makes it possible to take this part of the business that has long been a cost center, and transform it into a true revenue driver.

Start-ups, by their very nature of having access to limited internal resources, agency support, and historical knowledge, provide an unparalleled environment for marketers to innovate. And they provide a trio of important lessons for large organizations.

Some people believe that CIOs are leveraging the rising use of marketing automation tools within the enterprise as an opportunity to try to wrest control of these efforts and usurp power from marketing leaders.