The following article was previously published on Thinking Aloud.
Through the eyes of a marketer who sees the foundations of success starting with A, B, C…
In a world where social media has freed the reins of expression and hugely democratized it, and technology and mobility has put the power to express with a click in the hands of millions and millions of people, a question topmost in the minds of marketers is how they can ensure the success of their [...]

As the dust settles over the debate about whether social media is indeed worth all the hype, the medical fraternity has been slowly pointing the needle (pun intended) towards a yes.
The lure of social media notwithstanding, the medical community has been apprehensive about using it. Lack of clear knowledge of usage and value, skeptical response and industry regulations have combined to turn social media into a Pandora’s Box in the minds of many who have taken the Hippocratic Oath.
Times have [...]

Walking into the Time Warner Center for Adweek’s Social Media Strategies Conference recently (the conference was held Oct. 13-14) was a lot like entering a professional sporting event. I put my bag through a metal detector, got my ticket and then entered a room with several large projection screens—though instead of jumbotrons displaying fans in the stadium, we were seeing live streams of tweets.
And, really, it was fitting, considering that this was the Olympics of social media, with key [...]

Consider the facts: Your staff, your clients, your competitors, your investors, your advocates and your detractors are all socially engaged. They all have voices.
Some have created a “personal brand.” Others are speaking with association to a company’s brand. This rise of the unofficial spokesperson has significant potential repercussions.
These voices, in the physical world, are mostly weak. In the social world, they can be powerful and influential. In the social world, there is noise and signal. Noise is retweeted, thoughtless, unconnected [...]

Because Hillevi Lausten did a fantastic job this summer, she will keep on writing “The Week in Social Media,” while I’ll develop a social media–related topic every week. So let me introduce you to the spinoff of “The Week in Social Media,” called “Social Media Focus.” Have a good read!
“The next wave of communication and brand creation and building is all about location. This is what will make the ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds come together and it will be lots [...]

Time for more social media and Internet news! This time, we’ve got a mixture of links from Baptiste Limb and me.

Privacy setting, regulations, do’s and don’ts—they’re all things you normally don’t like to think about when talking about social media, because social media needs to be quick and efficient. But these topics are becoming more and more important to Internet [...]

“Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.” – Denis Diderot (French philosopher, 1713-1784)
Among all social media platforms, Facebook is clearly the one that currently leads the game. Despite privacy concerns, the popularity of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation is constantly growing, with a movie about him and the beginnings of Facebook coming up next October. Let’s first take [...]

It’s a truism that hardly bears repeating that technology and the infinite choice it has fostered have turned the old one-to-many communications model on its head. That’s a fact for advertising, where it’s laughable to imagine businesses being able to survive simply by broadcasting their brand messages to captive audiences. It’s a fact for pop culture, as a generation that all grew up watching “Seinfeld” and “Friends” together realizes that their children will have no such shared, universal touchstones.
And it’s [...]

Social media isn’t just a way for friends to stay in touch—smart PR professionals and marketers know that SoMe can be the answer to their prayers. Though beauty is the rare—and lucky—industry that may have bucked the trend of dwindling budgets (because women want to look good no matter how much the economy is suffering!), it still benefits resourceful pros to understand how employing social media in their strategies can have a great impact with a small budget.
We at Euro [...]

As marketers work around the clock to leverage the newest social media platform, I can’t help but reflect on my first uses of social media. I’m a firm believer that you can’t evolve or grow without knowing your roots and learning from your past—and I realize now that in my past, I was engaged in social media before there was such a thing as “social media.”
It was about 13 years ago when I created my first site—a “Power Rangers” fan [...]