CMO.com

CMOs live under a lot of stress, and they're constantly pushed to turn around flagging campaigns in days or weeks. It makes them do some, er, quirky things.

Different brands will want to engage with the conversations they discover online in different ways. The following are three great ways for any brand to engage with these conversations.

A new report documents the rapid growth in online reputation monitoring and breaks down the kinds of tools businesses are using for the purpose.

What is the biggest challenge for marketers? A survey by Aprimo and the Argyle Executive Forum suggests accountability and measurement is keeping marketers on their toes as they try to justify marketing activities to the powers that be.

Merging multiple channels enables brand advertisers to extend the impact of a TV advertising campaign well beyond its airtime.

A comparison of social media monitoring tools and human analysts suggests that automated sentiment analysis cannot be trusted to accurately reflect and report on the sentiment of conversations online.

CMOs in the past were typically lumped into one of two categories: creative or numbers people. This is an antiquated notion that is best left behind. Here are four qualities that future CMOs need to have to remain relevant and effective.

Don Bartholomew, vice president of digital research at Fleishman Hillard, shares some of his thoughts, and his firm's approach to measuring social media and public relations. Fleishman has a different way of looking at metrics for communications and makes a pretty interesting argument for their points.

Over the past couple of months, the marketing world has become obsessed with fan counts -- but because a fan count is something that can be measured. But to paraphrase Albert Einstein, not all things that can be measured matter. With that said, would you "like" Facebook's new policy on fan acquisition?

Marketers in the digital age need data and content, and there are lots of innovative tools coming out to organize the vast amount of stuff that’s out there. Here are four search engines that will be making huge waves in search by 2012.

Most companies are not in the publishing business. In order to achieve longevity for an optimized content marketing effort, it's important to outline the resources available to implement including: content, people, processes. Read more from TopRank's Online Marketing Blog.

Companies that utilize social media tools effectively in their industries will have an enormous strategic advantage over their competitors. Ted Shelton, CEO at the Conversations Group, provides both clarity and insight into the future of all things social.

Everyone is wondering: How do you determine the ROI of social media? The MarketingExperiments Blog explores evidence from MarketingSherpa's "Social Media Benchmark Guide" that sheds a more realistic light on the social media craze and how to unearth value from your marketing efforts.

Companies monitoring and participating in conversations about their brands--in real time--tend to pull in customers and build their advocacy base because they demonstrate real transparency; they are authentic and credible.

Can marketing dashboards really track digital performance and feed the information into a spot where from you can "drive" your marketing? Not according to Futurelab's Jonathan Salem Baskin, who says marketing dashboards aren't really dashboards.

Like the content business, the impact of advertising messaging needs to be measured—but we cannot lose sight of the nonlinear and often irrational process of creating brilliant advertising that works.

Marketers spending more than 10% of their display media budget on audience targeting responded that they believe audience-targeted display advertising is as effective at meeting branding objectives as it is for meeting direct-response objectives.

Digital marketing obviously means understanding an array of digital media, but with social networking it means knowledge of social dynamics, not merely customer behavior. Here are four essential elements for expanding your marketing mix.

Marketers across the globe are finding use with social media. But if you want the rest of your organization to take it seriously and to invest more in the channel, you should learn as much about its impact as possible. The data talks.

Can Twitter's influence really be measured? Not solely through metrics, says journalist John Battelle. Twitter's more valuable measurements are its engagement and resonance - or how a meme travels through the Twitter ecosystem of influencers, retweets and co-incidence. To learn more about the value of Twitter metrics, read on.

The results of the 2009 Sales Lead Management Study reinforce the struggles marketers face trying to obtain decent ROI. Nearly 65% of b-to-b marketers cannot track return on investment (ROI), according to the study, which was released by The Velos Group. Read more to learn about its findings.

Twitter data is capturing the long-elusive "water cooler" chatter that so many media companies and marketers are trying to influence. Are we seeing the beginning of what will be an enormous, Web-service-fueled disruption in the measurement of media and marketing?

What were the most tweeted conversations in January? Obama, Tiger Woods, Avatar and Haiti were top on the list.

Until board members, C-level executives or other high-level managers begin to see how BI and social media can intersect, social media will likely remain the purview of the marketing folks.