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 [...]

Social media is ____________.
Absolutely social. Becoming antisocial media. A great tool that needs to be handled carefully. A connector that allows people to become more sociable. Strongly linked to the media itself. Showing, shouting and bragging. Invading every generation.
Euro RSCG executives around the globe used those words when talking about the state of social media today. You’ll have your own opinion depending on where you live, what you do for a living, how old you are, how you use social [...]

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 [...]

“A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man … His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.” – Niccolo Machiavelli (Italian philosopher and writer, 1469-1527)
No matter times or places, “influence” has always been the Holy Grail. The social media revolution raised this notion to a new level: Almost everything [...]

Getting “iced”…It sounds illicit, slightly illegal and definitely uncomfortable. Actually, it is the most recent viral interactive phenomenon sweeping the nation’s post-grads.
Icing is the alcoholic equivalent to putting a whoopee cushion on somebody’s chair. I have heard tales of both friends and strangers getting iced. It runs so rampant among my circle that I can expect at least one person to get iced per gathering. The inspiration for this blog post came as I [...]

“[Brands] need to realize that the conversation will extend beyond their control, so they should have a strong point of view and good, engaging content.” –Russ Lidstone, CEO of Euro RSCG London, in an article on UTalkMarketing
All the changes social media is bringing about now are accelerating, creating new ways for consumers and brands to interact with each other, based on these key characteristics: trust, transparency and humility.

“How Consumers Interact with Brands on Social Networks” on eMarketer
“Fickle [...]

It’s Internet Week NYC! (Dates are officially June 7-14, 2010.) So of course I had to check out the Mashable Media Summit on Tues., June 8. The summit had amazing speakers, ranging from executives from Yahoo!, Motorola and foursquare to recognizable personalities like Dr. Sanjay Gupta and actor Edward Norton, who may be most famous for his role in Fight Club (“The first rule of Mashable Media Summit is you don’t talk about Mashable Media Summit”…wonder how many times he’s [...]

A lot happened this week: Facebook became the most visited website in the U.S., surpassing Google; Twitter announced its At Platform; Foursquare is becoming a phenomenon, gaining 100,000 new users (I bet it will be 200,000 per week in no time). All this said, let’s take these facts and try to understand what’s happening on a larger scale. That’s what my links are about this week.
  

“Social Media Is Not About Conversations…It’s About Something Much More Amazing” on Silicon Valley Watcher
 
 This [...]

My first three links this week are about the new way to communicate, and how we can be creative and relevant as marketers. These days we are focused on being respectful of the customer and what he has to say. Yesterday we were asking people to buy something; today, we’re telling them what the product is and why it’s good, and they tell us if they agree or not. If they don’t, we’ve got improvements to make. If they do: [...]