We have our last guest blog for this month's social media theme. Brian Bolton, Co-Founder and President of Digaboom discusses how social can power collaboration and teamwork. Interested in guest blogging? E-mail taylor[at]mitx[dot]org.

Brian Bolton is a 20 year digital marketing professional and the co-founder and President of Digaboom. Digaboom is a collaborative community marketplace platform for digital marketing, design and technology talent to network and virtually work together on projects for companies needing their expertise. Connect with Brian on Twitter @brianbolton.

Continuing on with our social media theme this month we have a guest post from Lyle Stevens, co-founder and CEO at Mavrck. Lyle discusses how to leverage various types of social influence. 

Lyle Stevens, co-founder and CEO, Mavrck, an influence marketing platform that powers premier consumer brands to drive more sales on social. Lyle drives product operations for the company, delivering value to numerous Fortune 500 consumer brands. @thelylestevens

We have a special blog for you today from one of our eCommerce Summit Advisory Board Members! Leading up to the summit we're giving you a taste of some of the insightful content that will be presented at the summit. This post, written by Rob Schmults, VP, eCommerce at Talbots, dives into the store associate side of omnichannel strategy. 

Rob Schmults is Vice President, eCommerce at Talbots where he oversees online marketing and mobile in addition to eCommerce. Previously, Rob held a number of roles as a retailer and as a solution provider to retailers. Most recently he was SVP at Intent Media, a company that uses predictive analytics to enable retailers to generate advertising revenue to augment their online product sales. Before that he was Chief Marketing Officer for Smart Destinations, a retailer and platform provider for activity, tour, and sight ticketing. At GSI Commerce, Rob oversaw the teams responsible for 30 partners, including adidas, Bath & Body Works, Dick's Sporting Goods, iRobot, and Major League Baseball. 

As we are getting the ball rolling on 2015 we have some great social media guest blogs to share with you. Christian Habermann, Founder of Auctus Marketing provides insight into how various social media tools can be used for research. Interested in guest blogging, e-mail taylor[at]mitx[dot]org.

Christian Habermann is the founder of Auctus Marketing and is a leader and innovator in the online marketing world. He is very involved in the local start up scene here in Boston. He co-founded ConsumerUnited.com, now Goji.com, which is one of the fastest growing online insurance companies and has made the Inc. 500 List the past 3 years.  He loves to help companies of all sizes, from start ups to Fortune 500s, embrace the online marketing world to grow their business. He is the author of "SEO for 2014” and holds and MBA in marketing from Vanderbilt.