Sales, marketing, branding and ROI drive much of today’s conversation about how to use social, content marketing and interactive. Yet it’s a missed opportunity when companies and nonprofits don’t use their sites to learn more about their stakeholders. Surveying customers, harnessing data, and determining topical interests can help organizations better understand their customers, serve them with better information, and in turn, increase many desired marketing key performance indicators. Lower cost technologies make learning easier today, whether that’s using interstitial survey technologies, CRM tracking tools, or analytics. I talked recently with Everyday Health VP of Market Research Carolina Petrini about how they are using Crowd Science to learn more about their stakeholders. They wanted to go beyond knowing that their readers …

Updated 3/14 at 10:30 a.m.: WE MADE IT! We have raised $5125. Thank you to the more than 100 donors! As some of you know, I have a close relative came down with cancer last year (he chooses to remain unnamed, but his cancer is now in remission). It turns out that my Cousin Paula (photo below) also came down with breast cancer last year, too (also in remission). That’s why I have decided to donate a little piece of my body to fundraise for cancer research with the Lance Armstrong Foundation. If I successfully raise $5,000 by midnight on Sunday, I will literally get the LIVESTRONG brand tattooed on my body in Austin at SxSW on Monday. Here’s the …