Cielo Lutino

Cielo Lutino is a writer and producer for Econsultancy and other organizations. Her writing has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Portland Monthly, Artcards, and the L and Brooklyn magazines, among other publications. She has literary nonfiction forthcoming from Cold Mountain Review and was recently awarded writing residencies from Mustarinda and Signal Fire. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

Sandwiches, soda, and sports climb the Social Business Index

As if anticipating items we'll find on coffee tables in living rooms across the country this Super Bowl Sunday, last week's Social Business Index featured climbs from sandwich, soda, and sports brands: Subway, Dr. Pepper, and the NHL.

The index, produced by The Dachis Group, offers a real-time performance ranking of 30,000+ multinationals in social. Each week we take a look at the top twenty listings and call out those that made moves worth noting.

by Cielo Lutino 28 January 2013 16:04pm 0 comments

How community managers can leverage what they've built: free report for #CMAD

By now you've probably heard that it's Community Manager Appreciation Day, but did you forget to get them something? We understand. You're probably still in the sugar trough from Chocolate Cake Day on January 27.

So now that you're thinking about it, doesn’t it make sense to reward that patient colleague who responds to the company’s Twitter devotees, comes up with sweetly snarky posts that attract thousand of “Likes,” and gently mollifies cranky YouTube commenters...and does the hard work of analytics around social?

We honor the social media mavens among us by offering Leveraging the Community, the last in a four-part series we call Online Communities. It’s free, it’s short, and it’s good — the perfect gift for your favorite social media expert.

by Cielo Lutino 28 January 2013 16:53pm 3 comments

The Littles vs. The Bigs: the “more level” playing field of mobile apps

“The field isn’t level, but it’s more level than other playing fields,” said Erin Rackelman, CMO and cofounder of Portland-based Night & Day Studios, last week.

She was talking about the app marketplace, which offers more than 700,000 products in the Apple store alone and where previously unheard-of companies like Zynga and PopCap have bested more established brands with their sales volume.

Part of their success can be attributed to the newness of the mobile market, less than a decade old and forced to address constant technological change in that time.

by Cielo Lutino 24 January 2013 18:15pm 2 comments

Alcohol and autos drive to the top of the Social Business Index

Last week brands in the spirits and auto industries moved up in The Dachis Group's Social Business Index, a real-time ranking of 30,000+ multinationals' performance in social.

We take a look at the top twenty listings and focus on those brands that performed especially well: Chrysler, Carlsberg, and Diageo, fine purveyor of libations.

by Cielo Lutino 23 January 2013 17:16pm 2 comments

KPMG makes the World Economic Forum a better place for social media

Following the NFL championship games via Twitter on Sunday was a lot like trying to match the cherries on a slot machine that never stops spinning. It hurt the eyes, those rapid-fire tweets.

Now imagine that experience replicated on a global scale when the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Summit begins tomorrow, and international leaders in business, politics, and education, as well as top journalists, touch down in Davos, Switzerland. Imagine the social media frenzy.

by Cielo Lutino 22 January 2013 16:35pm 1 comment

Pitney Bowes talks segmentation, trends, and data

Mailrooms are quickly becoming anachronistic features of corporate offices, but in their prime, they featured postage meters and beeping, blinking copy and fax machines bearing the Pitney Bowes logo. The company did very, very well.

But as physical communication methods became more digital, Pitney Bowes’ profits fell. Between 2008 and 2011, revenues slipped to $5.3 billion, a billion-dollar drop as US and European economies, its key markets, softened.

Competitors like Kodak went bust and Xerox nearly filed Chapter 11, but Pitney Bowes sought to evolve with the times by adding a robust suite of digital marketing products for B2B clientele intent on reaching audiences through email, social, and mobile channels.

by Cielo Lutino 16 January 2013 16:27pm 2 comments

Carnival Corporation sails away with social stats

Our weekly showcase of The Dachis Group's Social Business Index highlights brands in a range of verticals from publishing and retail to travel, with the Dacchis team focusing on National Geographic, Hollister, and the Carnival Corporation.

We also survey the top twenty listings of the Social Business Index, a real-time ranking of 30,000+ multinationals' performance in social.

by Cielo Lutino 14 January 2013 17:52pm 0 comments

The ghost of social networks past

Friendster, Bebo, Tribe, Vox—we’ve missed you of late. As today is supposed to mark the end of the world, the virtual social worlds of years past have been much on our mind.

Where have they gone? Why did they go? Do we even care?

It’s hard to answer those questions without first marveling at what now falls under “social.” A decade ago, blogs and sites like Friends Reunited or Classmates.com were peripheral to our daily digital lives. Today online sociability is the norm: We turn to Yelp reviews when deciding about a restaurant or, when that fails, post on our Facebook walls—“Hey, where can I find good Thai in Philly?” We laugh at cat videos all day long, and we add our IMHO to a long list of responses to ire-inducing blog posts.

by Cielo Lutino 21 December 2012 15:25pm 9 comments

Using numbers on numbers: Ad optimization meets math

Much of the talk about data is vague - a list of "cans," "wills" and "shoulds." Econsultancy offers a new report today - Increased ROI - A Statistical Examination of Ad Optimization - that deals in hard figures.

Does display ad optimization work? If it does, what volume is required to balance out the time and trouble? This report, from Digital Vision Winner Julia Nalven, answers those questions in detailed but straightforward language.

by Cielo Lutino 04 October 2012 16:28pm 1 comment

Growing pains: Pfizer tackles social media

The minute we’re born, we begin to age. This was apparently the number one concern occupying respondents of a 2011 Gallup survey commissioned by pharma giant Pfizer and the finding upon which the company has based its Get Old social media campaign.

In a press release announcing the multi-year initiative that began last month, Pfizer tied it to the company’s larger mission of improving the health of all people at every stage of life.

PR platitudes aside, the initiative also marks Pfizer’s lengthening social media shadow, cast, in part, by CEO Ian Read, who has criticized the industry for being “slow to adapt” to today’s more open society. Pharma’s hesitation no doubt informs Edelman’s 2011 Trust Barometer, which found public confidence in businesses, governments, and, in a new development, NGOs slipping at a noticeable rate.

When that focus was narrowed to Pfizer alone, the results were no better: About 45 percent of respondents described the drugmaker as unethical and not credible. Not acceptable, according to Read.

by Cielo Lutino 30 July 2012 15:30pm 0 comments