What does your email response time say about you? And how can Twitter’s new features transform your company’s online presence? Two of Lavin’s top internet speakers explain.

Amber MacArthur

When Twitter announced the ability to upload a new Facebook-esque header image, among other tweaks, MacArthur was one of the first early adopters to make use of the new features. “What this new [Twitter] design does well,” she writes in a recent Fast Company article, “is to give brands a better opportunity to market their products and services.” In the article, she gives three suggestions for using Twitter to your brand’s fullest potential which include: updating your profile picture, creating a new header image, and making an effort to upload more photos and videos that correspond with your tweets. “Your profile page is your bona fide business card in the social media world,” she adds, noting that “sprucing up your page” can do wonders for your brand. In her keynotes, she keeps companies ahead of the curve; helping audiences cut through the media clutter and dig up the best tactics to enhance their online strategy.

Alexandra Samuel

In a recent blog post, Samuel confesses that she “[uses] email response time as an indicator of someone’s intrinsic worthiness as a human being.” The unfortunate truth is that you don’t want to be too fast, or too slow. “Non-responders are rude and unreliable,” says Samuel, whereas “instant responders are clearly people with too much time on their hands.” While it may not seem like it, your online activity is inextricably linked to your offline life. Samuel’s opinions on the delicate balance that exists between your online and offline life can be found in her blog posts for The Atlantic, The Harvard Business Review and Oprah.com. She helps companies in all industries learn how to manage their online presence in her keynotes and in her popular TEDx Talks.

In this interview, internet speaker and Yahoo! News correspondent Virginia Heffernan argues that companies need to take their social media and online content management seriously—and that means hiring someone based on their merit and experience in the field, rather than simply handing off the task to the newest or youngest team member.

In the wake of the Facebook privacy leaks, it’s important to think not just about corporate responsibility—but personal responsibility. In this video, social media speaker Rahaf Harfoush discusses the delicate balancing act of participation vs. discretion in social media.

Open technology speaker David Eaves argues that the Internet brings us together and also tears us apart—and that’s a good thing. In his recent Vancouver Sun opinion article he says that the communities which form online can act as both positive and negative agents of socialization.

“We are in the midst of an exciting era for community building,” he says, “we just need to focus our attention on ensuring that those who are in desperate need of community have access to the tools that help foster them.

Neuroscience speaker David Eagleman, in an article in CNN.

(Source: CNN)

Internet speaker Alexandra Samuel’s TEDx talk, “Ten Reasons to Stop Apologizing for your Online Life”, is an impassioned argument for the value of online activities. It even inspired a teacher in Singapore to teach her advice in class. While many criticize the internet as a ‘distraction’, or as ‘not real’, Samuel makes the case that the internet is as real as the physical world and that the internet is not something separate from our ‘real’ lives—it’s now an inextricable part of us.

One of the best Internet/Art/Branding/Storytelling projects in recent years is coming out in book form: Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things, by Joshua Glenn and Lavin speaker Rob Walker is due this summer. We can’t wait!

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Lavin speaker Jared Diamond, speaking at The Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.

Even though it’s known as the world wide web, the internet has a decidedly American and English-language bias, says Virginia Heffernan. Filmed at The Lavin Agency offices in New York City. (Virginia, formerly of The New York Times, is now Yahoo’s new National Correspondent!)

Channeling her inner McLuhan, Virginia Heffernan tells us that, for companies, user-generated content is hard work—you have to “scaffold the experience for the user so intensely.”