Why I Worry About "Social Media Strategy"

I'm a little worried at how I've seen the term "social media strategy" thrown about recently. I'm starting to overhear things like, "we're also working on a social media strategy." I worry about this. A lot. I think I worried aloud about it four or five times during my 20-minute session at Talk ...

By Dave Fleet • Nov. 19, 2007

MarketingSherpa Interview

Sean over at MarketingSherpa pinged me last week to chat about best practices for adding social functions to a Web site. We talked for quite a while and he distilled my ramblings down into a great article. Here's the quick review of the 5 core steps we talked about: Tip #1. Choose where to allo...

By Jake McKee • Nov. 19, 2007

Ugly

OK, OK, I get it... it's the Future of Reading. It will change the world. Yet it's undeniable: it's ugly. "This isn't a device, it's a service." True, this is a much more compelling package than the Sony Reader was, but at least that other, "dumber" device had style. I can't help but comp...

By Zoli Erdos • Nov. 19, 2007

Acronyms soup ... A pain in the -aas

I wanted to echo an excellent post from ZDNet's Phil Wainewright about the over-used '2.0', '-aaS' and '-oriented' monikers. clipped from blogs.zdnet.com The tendency to slap '-as-a-service' on the end of anything that's offered as a shared service is now starting to rival the over-used '2.0...

By Christian Smagg • Nov. 18, 2007

Social Glass » Semantic Web vs. Participation [del.icio.us]

"We want knowledge workers to impose their own structures, perhaps with minimal guidance through the use of patterns like scaffolding."Link to original post

By Stewart Mader • Nov. 18, 2007

Five questions for social computing strategy

Can Paixano Originally uploaded by Pete Kim. I had "dinner" at Can Paixano last night - talk about being social! During the day, there was a lot of talk about social computing initiatives and we tweeted quite a bit of it. As I hear about different brands, industries, and technologies, s...

By Peter Kim • Nov. 18, 2007

Quarterlife moves from Web to TV

There were rumours even before the U.S. writers strike started that it might lead to one of the networks picking up Quarterlife, the new Web drama about twentysomethings created by Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, the team behind Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, and now it appears that th...

By Mathew Ingram • Nov. 17, 2007

WOM: What will $3.7 billion do to WOMMA?

This year's Word of Mouth Marketing Summit brought together leaders from across the space - brands, agencies, technology companies, individuals - in what will be probably the last intimate WOM lovefest. The last lovefest?There was a funny moment onstage during the WOMMIE awards when Peter Waldh...

By John Bell • Nov. 17, 2007

Wine Tasting Exposed: How Our Expectations Rule our Senses

I recently heard from the Free Range Gnomes that Andrew Sullivan provided an interesting summary of a wine tasting study. Andrew quoted the following from the blog, The Frontal Cortex. "In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experim...

By Bill Ives • Nov. 17, 2007

links for 2007-11-17

You can handle the web without an adviser A skeptical response to social media hype. Summarized, "so what?" (tags: socialmedia pr)Link to original post

By Nathan Gilliatt • Nov. 17, 2007

Social Media Basics for Marketers

When you spend most of your time immersed in the Social Media/Social Networking "scene", discussing where things are going with other social media proponents, it's often easy to forget that most companies are still trying to determine what this phenomenon is, and whether or not they should par...

By Eric Weaver • Nov. 16, 2007

Fishing Where The Fish Are

In a very smart article about the advent of social media, AdWeek's Brian Morrissey eulogizes the death of the campaign microsite. More and more businesses are looking for ways to connect with consumers where ever they go. The growth of social media is causing marketers to realize they canno...

By Mike Prosceno • Nov. 16, 2007

links for 2007-11-16

Mathemagenic: learning and KM insights - 14 November 2007 Lilia on Beyond Blogging Lessons Learnt - "Information overload exists, but mainly inside our heads. The world have changed from information scarcity to information abundance, but our habits and information strategies still have to adju...

By Dina Mehta • Nov. 16, 2007

Word of Mouth Tops Advertising: Empirical Evidence

The Nielsen Company did a study in October 2007 of 24,486 Internet users and asked them to rate what types of advertising they trust. This is an excellent sample size. The findings aren't terribly surprising: People trust recommendations from friends more than any type of advertising. Does thi...

By Jim Tobin • Nov. 16, 2007

Talk Is Cheap - A Stunning Success

Last night I attended the Talk Is Cheap social media unconference hosted by Gary Schlee and his students at Centennial College in Toronto (I presented too, but more on that in a later post). In my view, the event was a rousing success. Over 200 people registered (about 25% more than the organize...

By Dave Fleet • Nov. 16, 2007

New Game: Match the personal brand to the product brand

For all of you that have been following my blog and have played Brand Autopsy before, I have invented a brand new game for you (no pun intended). This game will have no winners or losers, but will surely create conversation. The game is called "brand matchup." As my readers, you get to choose ...

By Daniel Schawbel • Nov. 16, 2007

Media Control

Rather than properly preparing their executive to deal with the most expected of questions, the Starbucks-fueled Apple PR staff swarms on the unassuming British TV reporter, with cameras still rolling, to demand a journalistic detour under the snarky threat of postponing the interview altogethe...

By Peter Himler • Nov. 16, 2007

How Band Fans are Innovating WOM: Sister Hazel

Ted Wright - Fizz Corp, our faithless moderator (Great moderator!)Andy Levine - SixthMan (former manager of the band)Ken Block - Sister Hazel lead vocalistMark Pruitt - Hazelnut (and journalist) "No fan, no band" is the operational slogan for Sister Hazel. "We wanted to create a community," said...

By John Bell • Nov. 15, 2007

Papa Johns: Order Pizza by Text Message

Ok, quick post, but this is cool. Just got an email from Papa John's saying you can order pizza via text message. Basically, store up to 4 of your frequent orders online with your credit card #, text them, pick which of your orders you want and bang, pizza shows up. Very cool. More and more ...

By Jim Tobin • Nov. 15, 2007

SMPR to the power of 7 squared

Today I'm delivering a presentation as part of a PR News Online webinar on social media public relations. My portion of the program, entitled "Social Media to the Power of 7 Squared", focuses on the basics of blogger outreach and some simple ways to use social media channels and tools to conne...

By Greg Verdino • Nov. 15, 2007

LinkedIn Growing Faster than Facebook and MySpace

According to Nielsen NetRatings MySpace had more unique users in October than the other social nets, but LinkedIn grew the fastest. BizReport curiously reports that Facebook had the highest growth rate at 125%, so I guess they don't consider LinkedIn in the same category even though it grew by ...

By Shawn Sires • Nov. 15, 2007

Signs that this is the end of the PR world as we know it.

How social media is changing our lives Social Media is indeed making changes in our lives. Even Time Magazine, a bastion of old media, hailed user generated content as the single most influential change in 2006. I caught Katie Paine's session at Executing Social Media in Atlanta yesterday - he...

By Sally Falkow • Nov. 15, 2007

The rise of social media marketing

Into their 28 pages report called The End of Advertising as we know it, IBM is ''forecasting greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50''. Starting with an image taken from the report, here's what this reality means for... Advertiser...

By Nicolas Cossette • Nov. 15, 2007

Email is Still Not Dead

Yet-another-email-is-dead-article, this time from at Slate. It's the same old argument: teenagers using IM, or increasingly SMS, and most recently Facebook instead of email which they find cumbersome, slow and unreliable - hence email usage will decline. I beg to disagree. Sure, I also get frus...

By Zoli Erdos • Nov. 15, 2007

Microsoft Aligns with Facebook and Google Strikes Back.

You have probably seen these stories. First there was Microsoft Buys Stake in Facebook, and then a few days later, Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook. Another move and counter move in the computer arms race. Microsoft paid $240 million for only 1.6% of Facebook. That put the estimated ove...

By Bill Ives • Nov. 15, 2007