I had definitely changed my tune by the end of the lecture, and am actually now considering the NHS as a possibility for the future.  Karl paced the lecture well, telling five stories with tips and advice mixed in with his comical method of presenting. I was surprised to hear that NHS Leeds is the biggest single communications employer in Yorkshire and particularly interested to learn of the personal and emotional strength required to be a part of the NHS communications team. 

It seems to be a job with lots of ups and downs; one minute you're the hero, and the next the latest villain! Working in the public sector had always seemed like the boring route and had never appealed to me before, but now I've heard about it first hand, I've been swayed!

There was one thing that confused me though.  During the questions at the end one student asked how the NHS was planning to involve social media in new campaigns.  Karl replied that they currently had no definite plans to use social media as they were unsure of the results (based on the older target audience).  Wolfstar are currently running a social marketing team for NHS Kirklees (part of NHS Yorkshire and Humber) which includes lots of social media- are there no more plans for this? And if so, why not? Social media can really help to reach publics that might not respond to traditional advertising.  I really hope NHS Yorkshire and Humber aim to embrace social media, bringing the public service into the modern day and helping give the public a way of communicating with the people behind the service.

Image by .chourmo. via Flickr

I'm a snob.

You may have known this already, but it has come as a revelation to me.  What I've been a snob about is Ning, a super-simple social network in a can.

I have unkindly described it as "stupid-proof" and "social networking for the technologically intimidated." Then I put on my fortune teller's hat and decreed that it's neither "robust nor intelligent enough to meet all our needs over the long-term."

Geesh. What a snot I can be.

Ning is exactly what it promises to be -- so easy to use that anybody can build an online community with it in about 20 minutes and so open that folks with the know-how can tweak it to be more than what it started as.

We have, in fact, launched The Fan Zone, the community component of IowaPrepSports.com, on Ning. I actually like that it's easy to use and that it can be tweaked. I'm already asking developers here for more stuff, like the ability for users to flag comments for moderation and a place to put the forum code of conduct.

So why did I say such mean things about Ning? It never did anything mean to me. My best guess is that I'm really dissing on an online community I met that was built on Ning. It was my first encounter with Ning many months ago, and I was turned off by the people I encountered there. Some real stuffed shirts.

So, in the name of self-awareness and self-improvement, I'm casting off my snobbish gloom and admitting that Ning is alright.

Don't believe me? Check out The Fan Zone, or see Beth Kanter's blog post in which she interviews a non-profit Ning user/fan.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ning Embraces OpenSocial
• Ning passes 200,000 social networks

That itself is a massive boost for SEO, with the incorporation of the channel as a mainstream marketing activity continues. This year in particular has been a particularly good for SEO, with many advertisers shifting budgets into search engine optimisation. Part of this can be put down to marketeers and budget decision makers comfort with SEO, and the 'disassociation' from its black art days. I would also suggest the further integration of paid search into many marketing budgets, is another of the reasons behind this pickup in SEO - as many studies by organisations such as Google and Yahoo have highlighted the benefits of utilising a double facing/doubleplay tactic on key terms. Lee also highlights the considerable exploitation of Social Media and the integration of Search Engine Optimisation into many of these technologies.

There were however a couple of interesting stats.

• Affiliate Marketing came into just 11% of respondants. Now this could be dependant on the background of many of the respondants however given the current economic climate, I was suprised to see Affiliate Marketing so low down in this poll
• Video Marketing - Interesting I said not suprising. Certainly I have to say I am not suprised this is down at the bottom. Video Marketing does not have the same direct response ability of other channels such as SEO, Paid Search and Affiliate Marketing. Certainly in times where marketing spends are more flexible I am sure this will significantly increase, however in the meantime, the use of high end video advertising is likely to stay subdued for the forseable future.

Whilst this was just a smallish study, it certainly raises some interesting questions

This basically means that I will be helping the team with all things related to social media engagement and online content creation.

This is a brand new position for the Red Wings as well, so I'll be working with the team's marketing and public relations departments to bring Hockeytown to the fans like never before; no matter where they happen to live.

The Red Wings aren't just any team, they're champions, and they're one of the most beloved teams of any sport in the world. I am beyond excited about the prospect of bringing fans closer to the action through blogs, social networks, streaming video and events.

The rich history of the Red Wings and the team's dedication to excellence make it a privilege to be considered part of this organization.

Thanks for letting me share my good news, and tell me, what would you do if you were in my position? How would you use the internet to make Hockeytown more engaging and accessible to fans?

Disclaimer: BRASSmedia and Dean Owen do not endorse any of the broadcasters mentioned. Don't forget - broadcasters tend to put a spin on the news for many (and whatever) reasons. That's why social media and the new web are a great thing - you can get many different takes on news events. Remember to listen carefully, question what you hear and see, support citizen journalism and make up your own mind.

The CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation) has been encouraging viewers to send in content to Canada Votes - Your View.  Primarily a blog encouraging viewer comments and answers to questions. BTW: the CBC has embraced social media and social networking in a big way to publish their content via News to Go. All the way from eMail news alerts to Twitter Tweets and podcasts. Viewers can also submit content such as breaking news via the CBC's Your Voice site. They also feature news stories on how candidates and citizens are making use of blogs and social networks to share their messages and points of view. Not bad for a broadcaster who is typically associated with classical music and Hockey Night In Canada.

CNN has embraced the web for a few years now so it is no surprise that they jumped into social media with both feet. Podcasts and blogs from Larry King, iReport - content from viewers, Anderson Cooper's 360 Blog and there are many more instances. One of the examples that makes the most use of social media (all at once) is Rick Sanchez. He made use of Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and eMail all at the same time while carrying on a news show and interviewing guests. Talk about multi-tasking! I wonder why CNN has gotten involved so quickly with social media while other broadcasters and news providers are struggling with their online presence? Good for CNN.

Including audience participation on television via modern technology is not new. A few years ago I stumbled upon a Much Music show targeting early teens in which they showed viewer text based comments and shout-outs to their buddies. Yes the digital natives, the text messaging generation, the young and early adopters all got into this years ago. Now the rest of us are catching up.

Dean

This week I'm covering marketing basics in my business management class.  The curriculum developed by the college is very general, and I  have a lot of leeway on what marketing topics I cover in class.  With that being said, I normally structure the week that I cover marketing by first discussing  the basics of marketing such as: the 4 P's, product life cycle, and traditional marketing collateral. But, the world of marketing is has been disrupted by the emergence of social media marketing (SMM) - Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

These "marketing additives" are the center of discussion in many businesses and no definitive answers have eveloed as to adoption and integration into enteprise marketing strategies.  I do feel SMM is too big to gloss over, but I have yet to pinpoint a definitive model of what SMM looks like from an enterprise standpoint.

Peter Kim posted a thought-provoking blog today - Defining Social Media Marketing.  Peter defines SMM it as:

"Interaction between a company and individual via [digital] delivery channels, intended to share commercial content that will lead to a sale and/or be passed along to others."

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject.  What is the definition of Social Media? What should I cover in my class?

I have just come accross this blog (in English). Looks like Gazeta.pl and Warsaw University are organising conference about textual changes happening on the web, history of the lanaguage up until it apeared and reality of current language used on blogs, forums and in social networks. The posts mentioning content of several speaches are extrelemy interesting! I hope the materials will be available on-line too, and in English:)

So my question is, given that this is the 21st Century and the topic is Social Media is ranking influencers by gender really relevant ? The people that influence me most online are both male and female.  I am not influenced by their gender but by their ability to comment, observe, and help me make sense of the online (and in some cases the offline) world.

When it comes to networking, the assumption has always been that women are better equipped to build and maintain networks.  They are, after all, natural nurturers.  So the extension of that is Social Networking as part of Social Media would be driven and led by women.  Is that the case? 

Think about which blog writers you follow, which twitter users you follow.  If I were to list my top 5 there is a mix of male and female.  Chris Brogan (www.chrisbrogan.com , @chrisbrogan), Tawny Press (http://blog.einnoventions.com/ , @tawnypress), Ann Hadley (www.marketingprofs.com , @marketingprofs), Robert Scoble ( http://scobleizer.com , @scobleizer), Jeremiah Owyang (http://web-strategist.com/blog , @jowyang).  That list of course can change on a daily basis, though those particular individuals are always in the top 5 in some order.

I am not decrying any of the individuals on the list, nor Ron's effort in putting the list together.  All of the people on the list deserve to be recognized as powerful and influential in the realms of Social Media. I got some great new people to follow both as a reader and as a twitter user from the list.  Its the gender part I am still not getting past.  Now that could of course be a cultural thing, we don't have pageants in the UK anymore, so maybe its that in the US its still the norm to rank people by gender.  The Academy Awards do it, so why not Social Media. Except that, isn't social media meant to be on the edge?  Changing perceptions of how we do business? Enabling a new dynamic in the conversation about how we trade with each other?  If thats the case then my original question stands, Should Social Media Rankings be Gender Specific?

What are your thoughts?

Found it on the Wieden + Kennedy London Blog

When the client moans and sighs
Make his logo twice the size
If the client still proves refractory
Show a picture of the factory
Only in the gravest cases
Should you show the clients' faces

And the 2.008 version..... even more fun. I've done this a lot in meetings I must confess!

If the ads have gone to pot
Mention blogging quite a lot

If you want to dazzle them
Drop in terms like CRM

To make your clients think you're sage
Give campaigns a myspace page

To make them think you're clever chaps
Make references to Google Maps

If accused of strategic shirking
Bang on about social networking

If they still think the work is crap

You must present an iPhone app

And we all do these day :)

Jerry Silfwer - den numer kände PR-konsulten på Springtime tillika Dr Spinn-bloggaren - har startat en PR-community till alla inblandades stora glädje. "PR of Sweden" heter den. Och bygger på Ning's sociala nätverkstjänster. Smidigt.

Nätverket öppnade upp igår. Och när jag registrerade mig så hade 63 entusiaster hunnit före. Men några minuter efter min entré var medlemsantalet uppe i närmare 70. Och diskussionen i full gång. Dessutom hade en hel del "grupper" skapats. Vilket inspirerade mig att snabbt starta en för Newsdesk.

Jerry skriver i sin blogg:

"Som kommunikationsrådgivare och PR-konsult är det min fasta övertygelse att alla har ett ansvar mot sig själva att påverka sin omgivning."

Bra, Jerry. Du lever sannerligen som du lär ;-) Ser fram emot en fortsättning i linje med det.

Andra bloggar om: community, pr, media, web 2.0, pr 2.0,

Según El Mundo, el sitio aún funcionará un tiempo, pero la despedida está clara: "Después reproducir vuestros vídeos cerca de 200.000.000 de veces, tenemos que parar".

A mi estas cosas me hace realmente plantearme hasta qué punto los social media pueden ayudarnos a adaptar nuestras inversiones a la crisis y seguir obteniendo resulados, cuando algunos ni siquiera han aprendido todavía a encontrar la rentabilidad a su negocio (como el caso de facebook) y otros, que no son tan grandes como para aguartar encontrarla, caen sin salvavidas (como Eyespot). Se supone que estamos sufriendo una serie de cambios en la concepción de marketing online donde tenemos mucho aún que aprender, experimentar y probar. Tengo la sensación de que estamos ante una etapa de "testeo" de algo tan nuevo, que nadie nos garantiza que realmente nuestras estrategias vayan a ser rentables, precísamente en una época en la que se necesitan garantías de rentabilidad y hacer que suene la caja.

Y siguiendo con los "experimentos" social media, aquí tenéis un ejemplo curioso de cómo intentar aprovechar el tirón, el caso de Lois. Una iniciativa de participación social donde se nos invita desde un grupo en Facebook y una web a aportar soluciones e ideas para ayudar a rescatar a esta marca que también nos acaba de anunciar su cierre. ¿Funcionará?

After months in beta, MySpace finally officially rolled out the MyAds program, allowing for self serve ad creation and targeted placement throughout all of MySpace. For the record, this is the same program that larger advertisers had access to for some time ("hyper-targeted ads"), but now  the program is available to the advertising masses...a la Google and more directly Facebook. Personally, I think this will be embraced by small advertisers in droves. While not a pull medium like search, the ability to specifically target consumers based on relevant interest is powerful, albeit I do not think that MySpace's program, is anywhere as powerful as Facebook's Social Ads platform.

The roll out was timed to ride the momentum of the recent launch of  MySpace Music, a platform that allows independent artists & bands to market and sell their music to a rather large and appropriate audience. The ad creation tool makes it easy for any advertiser to create IAB standard 728x90 or 300x250 ads. It's a little restrictive, but for the Photoshop adverse, it works - upload an image or two, add text, done. The tool even includes a built in compression tool - you can upload an image up to 600k, not too shabby.

Here's an example of a test ad I created for my underwater photography website.

Although you cannot target based on user-defined keywords like you can on Facebook, I was able to target those interested in photography & scuba diving - again, not shabby at all. But this won't be the rifle shot case for every advertiser in every category.

Unlike Facebook, which currently stands alone as an independent, Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp / Fox Interactive empire can always leverage the eventual base of small advertisers in the future, possibly including many local advertisers, by running ads created through this system across other Newscorp properties.

MySpace was selling over $700million in ads annually without this program. The top four search engines have over 500,000 advertisers. Can MySpace tap into that pool? Only time will tell, but I think the long term answer is yes.

Brooks Jordan discusses trends, for instance, Twitter and why and how some things are successful, when some are not. In the digital age there is so much growth. How does one keep up with it all and who gets left behind?

(In my own experience it's more challenging to keep up with questions/comments on LinkedIn, and questions/comments in business blogs I follow, than it is to keep up with Twitter updates -- but that's probably just me. Also, I find Malcolm Gladwell the most illuminating regarding tipping points -- his ideas are summarized in this Tipping Point wikipedia entry.)

Anyway, after the long excerpt from Jordan, Shandi says,

Everyone needs to realize that the digital world will go on whether we learn to change with it or not. Might as well, roll up our sleeves and stop sniveling and get down to business.

Statistics on consumer expectations regarding business participation in social media seem to support the idea that marketers need to roll up their sleeves and get cracking. Cone's 2008 Business in Social Media Study Fact Sheet says that sixty percent of Americans use social media, and of those, 59 percent interact with companies on social media Web sites. One in four interacts more than once per week.

Cone defines social media as

Technology facilitated dialogue among individuals or groups, such as blogs/microblogs, forums

According to the survey, 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. Here's one of their charts:

Meeting social media users' expectations poses a challenge on the business side.

For example, as Peter Kim has pointed out in "Social media marketing's scalability problem," while social media technologies seem to scale ok, "the programs - especially those with a labor-intensive component - don't."

There's no real shortcut when it comes to holding authentic personal dialogues. That's the point of authentic personal dialogues, right?!

Again, I recommend the thread on this topic at http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/08/social-media-ma.html

To Shandi's point: yes, let's roll up sleeves and get cracking. After all, what's the alternative? Not striving to keep up? That would be like deciding not to use email anymore because I get alot of it. 

On the bright side

If you would like to tone your business-participation-in-social-media networking muscles, feel free to meet me in these forums:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/b2bcommunicate

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/b2bcommunications

Red On Marketing Blog: http://blog.b2bcommunications.com/

10 People From Your Past Who Will Haunt You On Facebook

By Chab Gassie

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

The article explains how Andy Martin started a "cyberwhisper campaign" to spread this lie and that the Internet has empowered him in ways that would never have been possible in the past. 

Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Professor Allen's assertion that the Internet has made it easier today for lies to be spread by clearly shady sources has some truth to it.  What is said in cyberspace doesn't always stay in cyberspace.  One person -- devoid of credibility yet armed with a blog or an e-mail account -- can launch a smear campaign with the simple strike of the word "Publish."  

But that's the cyber-glass half empty.  The beauty of social media is this:  for every cynical, manipulative jackass launching a smear campaign online, there can -- and must be -- an army of those committed to setting the record straight. 

And so, here is my message.  If a coward and a liar uses social media to spew hate, we must answer that message with MORE social media to spread the truth.  Please join me.  Send this message (or your own) to shine the light on Mr. Martin's lies.  Use every social media tool at your fingertips to isolate the liar and demonstrate the positive power of social media.

http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/09/ive-been-thinki.html

Keep this link in your back pocket...

My thanks to John Elsasser, Tactics Editor In Chief, for the opportunity to write this piece, and the following friends and social media experts who appear in the article: Paul Greenberg, Scott Nelson, Brent Leary, Laura Fitton and Aly Saxe.

My sidebar article “Social media skills – They got’em, and You can get’em!” also references some social media and communications experts that many people follow on Twitter including Chris Brogan, Charlene Li, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, and Brandon Zeuner – my personal pick-to-click regarding someone you should be following on Twitter.

Also, special thanks to Chris Brogan for introducing me to Laura Fitton. As he suggested, Laura contributed a great amount of insight – more than I could include in the piece.

Finally, thanks to a couple of my local Arizona faves, Aly Saxe and Brandon Zeuner. Aly provided some examples of practical PR applications for Twitter in the article, and Brandon has been a social media influencer ever since I started using Twitter and learning immensely from it.

Link to the article and sidebar: http://www.prsa.org/supportfiles/news/viewNews.cfm?pNewsID=842347614

Last week, MorganSullivan,  published the results of its survey of more than 30,000 Construction and Real Estate professionals. The survey asked for their views on social media. Click here to view the results:

Survey participants were entered into a drawing to win a digital camera as our way to say "Thank You" for participating. The winner will be announced on Friday, October 17, 2008.

photo: penmachine

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digg: diigo: twitter:

Twitter especially. All I did was tweet into the void about how otherinbox, tumblr, and mindmeister didn't work and the developers themselves would tweet back to help me out. That's some transparency, and a lot of effort on their part to reply to people who don't even follow them. It's become a tool for businesses to reach out to their consumers and have a real dialogue where the rubber meets the road -- and that's real globalization right there, to have a CEO of a startup make a connection with someone all the way from the Philippines like me. None of that impersonal bureaucratic fluff. It shows me that these people sincerely want to improve their product the way Richard Branson installed leather seats on his planes.

Everyone else has moved on to Plurk but I think that speaks oodles about what kind of social media consumer Filipinos really are. Twitter is the first micro-blogging service out there but Plurk by far has the most bells and whistles that keep my roommates stuck to it for up to hours at a time (like people keep the television on in the background).

I'm also pretty sure of the fact that many of you have heard how Multiply had gone on server overload the day after Christmas because of the one or two million photographs uploaded by Filipinos. I think that's the real people power now. That's people power that can also generate a lot of money. (On a sidenote, I think Customs has a lot of nerve and a lot less brains to hold up imports that, you know -- keep businesses running. Seriously the hoops that you have to jump through for them is so degrading and infuriating.)

One thing I've observed however is an utter lack of bloggers tackling social media in the Philippines. A lot of the old-timer probloggers are still stuck on technology-related posts that keep their blogs stuck in a niche. Pete Cashmore, the really handsome founder of Mashable.com owns the tenth highest-ranked blog in the world. And precisely, his blog is all about social media and related startups. I'm tempted to think that this is just because he's really handsome, but not really.

So this is my attempt to start blogging about Philippine social media and social networking. I think social media is going to be big especially because it is a cultural characteristic for Filipinos to be social. There's a lot of potential still left untapped.

In the world of analysts and Web 2.0, there has been an interesting disconnect. Many of the same analysts who have been passionately advocating the benefits of social computing had generally been silent on the web. Hey! I'm not knocking anybody, because research firms face some of the same challenges that other industries have already faced and still face with new technology. Newspaper publishing, music distribution, retail and financial services come to mind, among others. Some affected negatively and some positively, but all affected. Companies pay them for their copyrighted research in addition to advice and consulting, so how do you embrace the web without hurting part of the business?

There are some analysts out there who have their own blog sites, but entire firms have been missing. Until now. A few weeks ago, Gartner launched its new analyst blog with around 40 phase 1 analysts contributing, including Daryl Plummer, Frank Kenney, Andrew White, Anthony Bradley, Gene Alvarez, just to name a few. To be fair, Daryl was the first to post, so I just had to list him ahead of Frank. Don't think I won't catch a supreme amount of flack with Frank at Symposium next week in Orlando.

And according to Sage Circle (an Analyst Relations consulting firm and solution provider), there are now more than 200 analysts that are evaluating Twitter. Great! Now I get to write tweets! Gatrell will be sooo proud!

The great news here is that more people can engage in conversation with some of these analysts. Now to be fair, Sage Circle posted a few updates on Gartner's copyright policy, so please check that out along with a Q&A video on the New Gartner Blog Network. Kudos to Gartner for listening to their analysts and embracing this new model. It shows their vision and conviction in the future of the web and their business. I think the more open dialogue with a broader online community only makes them more informed and opens more people to the research that is available from Gartner for companies of any size.

Nuestras emociones caminan diariamente por millones de conexiones capilares que fabrican una nueva realidad a la que estamos conectados sin diferenciarla ya prácticamente de nuestra realidad física tradicional. Evolucionamos, sentimos y vivimos la red cada vez de una manera más intensa y con experiencias más completas que nos hacen participar de un nuevo mundo al alcance de un solo click.

En este entorno y con la irrupción imparable de los medios sociales como Facebook, Myspace, Youtube o Twitter, hablar de virtualidad o de que internet es un simple canal más de comunicación empieza a ser como mínimo cuestionable.

Podría decirse, aproximándose a la terminología física que, nos enfrentamos al descubrimiento de una verdadera "Quinta Dimensión" que no puede ser representada ni completamente explicada en su totalidad por la longitud, la anchura, la profundidad o el tiempo.

Descarga gratuita del libro

A lot.

That's what companies are discovering as they continue to adjust to the changing digital landscape.

Proper social media management is much more than just publishing a blog post or checking a Facebook page once in a while. It's a relationship building process.
It takes time.

Beth Kanter did a great post in early October on the topic and posted the graphic below with explanations of each identified stage.

It's not just listening and monitoring or dumping all of your budget into a video and hoping it will go viral. It's participation, engagement and long-term focus on making connections and strategically building your online community.

The good news is that most companies are also realizing that social media management has evolved into a primary role as opposed to a secondary task. Social Media Manager or Community Manager positions typically fit into communications or marketing departments. Social media is now part of the overall plan and communications strategy as opposed to a last minute add-on or reactionary move.

Conveying a thorough understanding of this time commitment and the overall demands of social media can be a tough sell to a potential client or your own boss unless they are already actively engaged in social media themselves. Bloggers know it can take a lot of time to draft a solid blog post and also realize that posting is just one step alongside active reading and commenting on other blogs. The same is true with other tools and communities where engagement with the community can be a very time-consuming, but ultimately worthwhile endeavor.

How much time do you spend on social media each week?

-Scott

Heavy users of Twitter tend to forget that only a very small amount of the population are actually on the service right now.  Twitter directory, TwitDir, pegs the current number of users at approximately 3.1 million.  For everyone else who is not using it yet or does not understand Twitter, take a minute to watch this video from Common Craft:

Recently the team at EpicFu helped explain Twitter as well as many of the available tools and resources:

Many businesses tend not to understand Twitter, or social media in general, so they don't realize that whether or not they utilize the service, that there are millions of people (and growing rapidly) who could be talking about their company and/or products/services.  Not too long ago, social media expert Chris Brogan explored the 50 ways on using Twitter for business.

I'm curious to know the ways in which you utilize Twitter and other social media.  If you aren't on Twitter, and/or shy away from other social media platforms, I'd also like to know your thoughts in the comments section.

Oh, by the way, for anyone not following me on Twitter...you can find me @justinlevy :)

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Breve post de lunes para compartir con Uds. Un importante hallazgo. Se trata del blog Social Media Today, aunque visto bien, no es estrictamente un blog, sino un blog de blogs.  Este pequeño banner explica la naturaleza del sitio:

Robin Carey, fundadora y CEO del blog (¿No suena raro eso de que un blog tenga CEO?) dice en una entrevista que Social Media Today es a la vez un destino web y un “playground” para cualquiera que esté interesado o le apasione el social media. Concretamente, el sitio te invita a participar en una comunidad de bloggers interesados en la relación entre el Social Media y el mundo de los negocios. A mi particularmente me gusta esa idea de playground, porque supone justamente un intercambio no muy sistemático de opiniones de diversos bloggers interesados en el tema. Compartir, nuevamente, es la premisa fundamental y lo que hace a este sitio tan atractivo. Echando un ojo rápido al blog se puede ver una importante lista de autores y de post todos relativos al social media y su relación con el mundo del mercadeo. Como todo en el mundo de la web 2.0, la gente escribe post y estos adquieren relevancia conforme se van leyendo y comentando. Se puede, por lo tanto, ir teniendo una idea de cuáles han sido los post más valiosos, pero sobretodo, se puede ir conociendo a personas con ideas interesantes que están dispuestas a conectarse directamente para compartir información y generar valor agregado.

Para muestra un botón: lo que sigue es un post que encontré en mi visita rápida y que me pareció interesante. Lleva por título “The 6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media” y fue escrito por Jason Baer. 

You may have heard of social media. There’s been a bit of news about it recently. However, a lot of people making that news have created expectations and beliefs about social media that aren’t true.

 

1. Social Media is Inexpensive

False. As Charlene Li said recently, social media trades media cost for labor cost. Done correctly, social media - even a simple reputation monitoring program - is a time intensive proposition that requires daily vigilance. 

2. Social Media is Fast

False. Social media is by definition slow. Done correctly, social media is about developing meaningful relationships with customers and prospective customers in their natural habitat. That’s not a “wave the magic wand” scenario. You have to create content, be part of many communities, and proceed incrementally. Many successful social media programs take months (or even more than a year) to really germinate.

3. Social Media is “Viral Marketing”

False, in the same way that a square is also a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square. Can a social media program go viral? Absolutely. But if you’re engaged in a social media program in an effort to go “viral” you’re not really engaged in social media at all. You’re engaged in an advertising and marketing campaign that uses the Web as its distribution platform.  

4. Social Media results can’t be measured

False. Especially in comparison to many other communication programs like traditional PR, TV advertising, outdoor advertising and others, social media actually offers pretty solid metrics. Many social media software packages (great ebook analysis of them here) can provide highly detailed reports on the impact of social media programs. Can those results be tied back directly to sales, and therefore ROI? Probably not yet, but other than search and email (and maybe banners) where CAN you do that?

5. Social Media is optional

It doesn’t matter what the demographics of your customers are. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Your customers and prospects are talking about you online. Your company needs to be part of that conversation. Today. Online is where many people do their talking, so that’s where you need to be. If barber shops were still driving consumer sentiment, I’d be writing this post about barber shop marketing. Be where your customers are. 

6. Social media is hard

False. It’s not hard, it’s complicated. And that’s only because of the alphabet soup of social networks, lifestreams, sharing sites, etc. Social media is not about Facebook or MySpace or Flickr or Twitter or blogs or YouTube. It’s about having a strategy for making your company or organization more like a person and less like a machine. It’s about humanization.

If your customers and prospects feel like your company is more human and actually cares about them, they’ll want to be part of it. That’s the brand engagement holy grail that we’re all seeking. Too often, the humanization part gets overlooked in an effort to create a “user-generated video contest widget that we’ll launch on Facebook with support from Ustream.” Whatever. Use technology to be yourself, and don’t overthink it. 

Fabuloso el post de Jason, sobretodo porque ilustra los errores comunes que la gente en mercadeo hace cuando piensa en Social Media (por ejemplo, el común "hazme una campaña pa´l facebook"). 

Échenle un ojo a este blog de blogs, promete mucho contenido interesante. Incluso pueden animarse a contribuir uds mismos con algunos insights sobre el Social Media en nuestro país. Yo ya lo agregué a mi lector RSS y pienso dedicarle buena parte de mis madrugadas en la oficina a leerlo y comentarlo.