Social Media Marketing

Incorporating social media strategies into your marketing plan is no cut-and-paste job. You've got to know your clientele and what appeals to them, and you have to engage them in a conversation rather than simply spew offers at them. In fact, if you don't have the desire to commit yourself to social...

A lot of folks look down their noses at the prospect of Facebook penetrating the corporate world in a meaningful fashion. In fact, many people believe that the IT community will do everything possible to resist this prospect because of the security, privacy and compliance issues surrounding the soci...

It had to happen sooner or later; the only question in my mind is why it has taken so long. It appears that the backlash against social media is beginning. All I can say is, yippee! With trends like social media -- or almost any trend -- we tend to over-imbue the idea or offering with our own expe...

Social media strategies are not just for consumer-focused companies anymore. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and their ilk are finding their way into business-to-business firms. Solid waste service provider Waste Management, for example, has set up a Web 2.0 shop. Interactivity is key, and social media...

With more than 60 million users, Twitter clearly is a successful social media platform. However, the question of whether it also can be a successful business has yet to be answered. On Monday, Twitter proved that it's serious about making an effort to become a profitable enterprise when it banned th...

Was it only four years ago that the anti-Facebook crowd was backlashing against the concept of the News Feed? Time sure flies when you're accusing the world's biggest social network of invading its users' privacy. Forget about the current spasm of criticism; hating on Facebook has been the default s...

The new Main Street exists anywhere thumbs can hit keys or scroll across a touchscreen. So what does your online presence say about what you have to offer those virtually strolling by? Customers regularly seek feedback on future purchases from their social circle. Conversations about your brand are ...

Accountability is essential for any company that wants to be successful. Without it, there is no way to know whether what you're doing is working or could be done better. In the competitive world of Internet retailing, razor-thin margins and fickle consumers make it even more important to ensure ...

New research from Harvard Business School and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project give new perspective to the social media and social CRM phenomenon and raise a yellow flag for all those people proclaiming social media the second coming. First: Harvard. The Economist ran o...

Mobile marketing has at last emerged as an important part of the marketing mix. Through a confluence of technologies and standards related to mobile devices, including 3G networks and data packages, the mobile channel can now enable large-scale marketing activities capable of engaging consumers in u...