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Most event marketers are trying to find the best way to maximize the power of social media at their events. But that can be hard to do if Facebook and Twitter are the only tools in their bag of tricks. With new and more targeted platforms popping up daily, it can be just as challenging to keep up with which ones are relevant and useful for the event industry. EM narrowed the field to eight of the most interesting social media tools, sites and platforms fit for events.

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Executives eager to avoid getting involved in the whole social media thing frequently cite lack of clear return on investment as a shortcoming. It's time to put that misperception to bed.
The Internet is the most measurable medium ever invented, and anything that can be measured can be used to calculate ROI. The first thing you need to know is the value of a customer. If you don't know that, get your CFO to figure it out. It takes about two hours. Then you need solid customer relationship management practices and decent Web analytics. Here's how it works.

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Virgin America Airlines moved from commercial software to free, open source software, but it didn’t do so to save a buck.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, saving money isn’t the only reason to go open source, according to Ravi Simhambhatla, CIO for Virgin America, who spoke at LinuxCon 2010 here last week.

Though he was preaching to the converted at the show, Simhambhatla said he had his work cut out for him convincing Virgin America executives to ditch Microsoft Windows, Sharepoint and other commercially supported products in favor of open source software.

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As we climb out of the recession, most organizations face two major challenges: growth (preferably sustained) and differentiation. For some, like those in the financial industry, the focus is on repositioning and reestablishing trust. For others, like value-based retailers, this represents a new day dawning, and an opportunity to completely reinvigorate their brand and perhaps even disrupt the category.

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Networking, marketing, and leadership experts lay out what makes an effective business card, business card style taboos, and the importance of design versus delivery.

The necessity and relevance of business cards is waning in the digital age, but since no single alternative has gained enough momentum to replace them, you should still keep a supply in your wallet and make sure they look good.

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If your business depends on the success of your website you’re probably utilizing analytical tools to measure its performance. Traditionally this performance has revolved around analyzing visitor traffic, search patterns and the movement of good or services from your site. Until recently the performance of a businesses call activity has been rather forgotten or under utilized as a source of power sales lead generation analytics.

For many business success is usually measured by having the phone ring to generate leads.

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Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2010-03-03 11:46