You can't choose to sit back and hope conversations will just happen organically about your brand. If you want to win the marketing race, you must unleash the power of word of mouth.

Thought leadership isn't about an ivy league degree or wealth. It is about having the best and most relevant answers to your customers’ biggest questions.

But while marketing automation can make your teams' job a whole lot easier, there's no getting around the fact that you need to produce valuable and engaging content. Without strong content your social media efforts will fall flat.

There’s a reason why people love social media — well, let’s be honest, there’s a million reasons why  people love social media — but the one factor that remains the same is conversation.

Conversation and social media open doors to people that have previously been closed, locked, and barred shut.

There are many types of great marketing. Billboards, TV spots, social media campaigns- these can all be effective. But there’s no denying that word-of-mouth advertising is the most effective form of marketing.

For you blissfully unaware, ad-blocking providers like AdBloc let users remove all of the ads shown on every web page they visit. Tech Crunch reports, "a whopping 200 million people worldwide use ad-blockers when surfing the web."

It sounds like something out of a strange dystopian novel. From here on out, all speech will be limited to 140 characters. Doesn’t matter who you are, either. Not even the president can exceed that length.

Crises come in all shapes and sizes. Recalls, national emergencies, weather anomalies, political strife and the list goes on and on. In case you’ve been living under a rock the past week, though, a major freeze front has gripped the U.S. and hasn’t let go. It’s real life Frozen out there, people, and it’s a crisis.