This first quote actually was found due to a tweet from Chris Brogan and can be attributed to Rachel Rubin who was guest posting on Kyle James’s blog, did you follow that?

One of my biggest professional challenges is to find a credible, valuable way to assess the effectiveness of our electronic media. Using Web Analytics and calculated ROI for certain projects are great starts, but I think there’s more to it.

Joseph Jaffe goes off on the Big 3

Bottom line, they did not join the conversation. I can’t put it any differently. They never listened to their customers; they never listened to the market; they never listened to the industry.

Kyle Flaherty tells you what we’ve been saying for a while on Twitter and elsewhere, in this guest post on Jennifer Leggio’s ZDNet Blog:

Do NOT ask “How will the economy affect social media?”
DO ask “How can I prove and then improve how social media affects my business?”

Chris Brogan

it’s water…

Read this wonderful article by John Kotter in The Harvard Business Review

Real urgency is a belief that, yes, there are big hazards and big opportunities out there (not just the former). More importantly, true urgency is a set of emotions, a gut-level feeling that we need to get up every single day with total determination to do something to deal with those hazards and opportunities and make some progress, no matter how modest, and do so today.

Toby Bloomberg asks a very simple question:

In this overwhelming world what One – 1 – I thing would you just do?

We focus a lot on personal brands and Frank Martin writes a lively piece titled Personal Brands(again) in which he says:

You HAVE to focus on adding value first, not your shine

Fred Wilson “rocks it” on this blog post which asks, “Do you do any real work”?. Check out this blurb then go read it!

And that’s one of the main reasons I keep writing, commenting, discussing, and participating in blogs, tumblr, twitter, disqus, and the social media world at large. Its about the “realest” work I do

OK folks,  read them,share them and retweet them…