More local advertisers are now moving towards the internet, taking away from local and more traditional advertising efforts. Within this new budgeting, the businesses are focusing on searches, consumer review sites, and social networking sites.

It's obvious now that more people are noticing the power of the internet and are reacting accordingly. The fact that local, traditional ways of advertising is slowly becoming outdated, like the hit print media is feeling now.

For the full length article, clickhere.

Good article on the do's and dont's of social media for the college aged students.

This article has to do with brands that have decided to entirely use social media as their form of brand marketing. It's a short little article in which the author, someone who's career mainly focuses on the benefits of social media, criticizes marketers that have decided to go for budget-cutting social media marketing strategies entirely. Some businesses have decided that they can accomplish everything with social media, however, by cutting out the rest of the marketing mix, they cannot gain new customers and quickly go out of business.

Read the full article here.

This article focuses on a leverage point that many companies have not yet realized, and that is their employees. Their employees are the face of the company itself. The author states that for a staff of twenty people, that almost equates to 2 million connections. Thus, if given the opportunity, it very likely that the company establishes a "social brand," where there are real people talking to real customers. He uses Starbucks as a classic example, referring to them as one of the leaders on employees and branding. As employees start speaking well on behalf of Starbucks, on top of good customer relations, it also creates a socialized image of the company because their employees are social, and therefore the company and brand is associated with being social and real. He states in the next few years, business is going to see a new focus: hospitality.

I think the author makes a very valid point, as I personally love to go into a store and have a friendly conversation with the person behind the counter. At Starbucks, I have never experienced someone who was unfriendly, and it is a genuine friendly, not the " Hi, welcome to Taco Bell..." that is mumbled and sounds like part of a script. If companies become more aware of the employees and how they feel about their employer, they could either use it and advance themselves, or the company can ignore it and get left behind.

Whole Article

The National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) has begun using social media by engaging the employees first. Most of the company is actively engaged in Twitter and Facebook. They are also using services like Foursquare to engage people when they are out in nature. They can be updated on what wildlife to look for and what they should check out while they are there.

They are also geocaching to connect everyone with nature no matter where they are. In addition they have added something called nature find, which can be found on their website. It works with Google Maps to help people find local parks, museums, planetariums, campground, and more.

Check out what else they're using to get you involved here: 4 Ways the NWF is Using Location to Increase Engagement

This article is about a web promotions company called uSocial.net that creates a variety of services to help companies make online profit. The company has already generated a client list with all different size companies including the Korean Department of Tourism and several Fortune 500 companies.

This article primarily deals with facebook users' ignorance towards the advertisements that are targeted at them. It evaluates why users ignore advertisements in the first place and what would be ideal in garnering their attention in a positive light. People must have interest in an ad to even consider it, and so companies must do their very best job to target the optimal market at an optimal time. This requires a great deal of time and research, however, without it, advertisements will be rendered useless.


read this to learn more! :-)

Yelp is a well-known review site on restaurants and other businesses. However, recently, they have been sued and other allegations have been flying around this online website. Business owners are accusing Yelp of extortion, in which pressuring business owners to pay to suppress bad reviews, like buy membership or some type of advertising/marketing. In response to this, Yelp has changed policies since they have no other choice. Should they be shut down? I was surprised and also not surprised at the same time.

Here are several links to stories on the issue:
Yelp's Extortion Attempts: Buy Advertising or Get Negative Reviews, Lawsuit Alleges
Yelp Faces Extortion Claims in Cash-for-Ratings Scandal
Yelp Hit With Second Extortion Lawsuit, CEO Responds

Now that you are a big boy or girl you should be noticing a lot of changes in yourself and your peers. I'm sure you have seen profiles pictures on the Internet from that person who seems to be having too much "fun". I am sure that we can all agree that we do not want potential employers to get the wrong impression of our personal brand, so here are some simple ways to avoid this situation.

• Keep all social media clean – this means no incriminating photos, videos, or any other kind of posts that you would not want your mother to see.

• Stay on top of your rank – make sure to use search engine optimization techniques to ensure employers can find you easily. This can also be done by use of passports, which are essentially multiple social media accounts, if you have many sites where you have uploaded content then recognition of your personal brand will be increased.

• Be creative – if you add new and interesting content on a regular basis, then Google will crawl your site more often.

• Stay social – it is called social media for a reason, more interaction can open many doors for you, so leave comments on blog posts, and even ask questions from time to time.

• Traditional personal branding – most importantly brush up on your face to face techniques, get some business cars, spruce up your image with some professional attire, be well groomed, and work on your body language.

If you use at least three of these tips you can be guaranteed to build some equity on your personal brand, and you might just score that job interview after all.

Click here to read the entire article

Twitter has finally come up with a new revenue source, promoted tweets. This change is sure to affect the advertising world, along with the rest of us. Madison Avenue as ignored advertising on blogs and social media sites up until now because of the small budgets involved. Most ads in the media like TV and even just banner ads are general and unspecified but now advertisers are realizing that the new trend is relevancy. Promoted Tweets will use a "Resonance Model" which will combine earned and paid media using a multiple axis of engagement using many different measurements.

Article: How to Opt-out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization

I see a lot of people already know about Facebook's "Like" button that will now be available on various websites across the web to increase customization and whatnot. However, what people do not realize is, people who are NOT your friends will have access to the information on your profile page. In fact, it is yet another privacy leak that came to my attention (from a friend that told me) which led me to this article. This "Instant personalization" option is automatically checked so that you will be sharing information with partner websites. While there may be some benefits that appeal to people, this seems like another occurrence of Beacon. If you don't wish to share your information so publicly, here is how to disable this:
1. Go to Privacy Settings in your Account menu.
2. Click on Applications and Settings.
3. Click on "edit setting" for Instant Personalization.
4. Uncheck the box below the picture and click Confirm afterwards.

For more information about this "new" feature, read the rest of the article in the posted link above.

Keeping you personal brand in tact and under control are extremely important. Here are a few easy ways to ensure you don't sabotage your digital self.

1. Keep an eye on the web through any and all social networks and Google yourself! Sign up for something simple like Google Alert to do the work for you.
2. Keep your membership down. Try not to be a member of everything! It becomes more difficult to track what is going on. Use ping.fm or hellotxt.com to update everything in one place.
3. Be aware of your audience. Sometimes it is helpful to make two pages on Facebook, one for friends and the other for coworkers and managers.
4. It's not all about YOU. Self promoting is good, but too much can be bad. Try to promote others as well which will shine more positively on you.
5. You are the brand so keep it consistent. Having the same photo, color and font scheme, and general message will help build recognition and familiarity.
   

The article gave interesting percentages about girl bloggers verus boy bloggers. All in all girls blog more than teen boys. Girls also put up more pictures than boys. But teen boys put up more videos than teen girls. Teens like to blog and with them putting up content it creates a creative output, they are participating in conversations, and getting other peoples interests.

To view the full article click here.

Startup businesses are notoriously low on cash, but need to employ successful marketing strategies in order to be successful. Social media exists as a low cost, highly effective means of marketing and communication for such businesses. Social media is essentially free, and allows startups to use money that would traditionally be allocated to promotion for other, necessary costs like production, research and development. Here are four ways that startups can use social media as a cost saver successfully:

1. Customer service - customers can receive a response in real time with social media
2. Building Community - Providing encouragement and invites to events
3. Product Marketing - Allows journalists and potential customers to have immediate and easy access to product information
4. Staying Organized - Streamlines work flow and creates an "online office environment" between employees who work from home

Find out more about how startups can effectively use social media here.

The article that I read stated that social media is a partner, not a threat, to e-mail marketing because it provides new avenues for sharing and engaging customers and prospects. By maximizing the e-mail and social media connections the two channels help each other by offering the opportunity for marketers to create deeper connections. Ten businesses were surveyed in a study for the article and it found that about four businesses that integrated e-mail and social media was one of their most important initiatives for 2010, just after improving e-mail performance and targeting and growing opt-in lists. The survey also found that one fourth of the businesses had already implemented an integrated strategy. Another survey that was conducted said social media helped to expand the reach of their e-mail content and 78% said social media helped to increase brand awareness.

To view article click here .

Article: Read full article
Source: http://www.gather.com/


Facebook is in the process of implementing a web-based Email system that (is rumored) to have the potential to have a great effect on email marketing as it is today. They are calling it "Project Titan". It is said it will be a major competitor to popular email services today, like Google's Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. The article provides some perspective of the changes it will have on how email marketing is done and how, if used correctly, will help enhance your email marketing campaigns. However, I feel the hype about Facebook's Titan project is just that: hype. The article goes a bit far, in my opinion, as to say that it has the potential to make users drop services like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail. It seems more Apple's iPad: people were more excited cause of the hype rather than the actual product, which turned out to be a much bigger version of the iPhone. What do you think?

Though many may believe that the rise of social media will be the end of email marketing MarketSherpa's 2010 email marketing benchmark report shows that not only has email marketing not decreased but is increasing along with social media.

Ajay Goel's article shows us that the best strategy is not one or the other, but to combine the two. He lists a number of ways we can improve relations with our customers in terms of social media and email marketing. The list includes showing personality though email by having them signed by real people, emphasizing community over product, listening to their feed back and keeping their online social community alive.

For more information check out the article here.

Macy's and Sears have decided to use social media to better reach out to their target market for prom. Sears is doing this in order to "make a more personal connection with [them]," said Sears rep Tom Aiello.

Macy's has added a Prom 2010 page to their Facebook fan page and set up a Twitter hasttag, #prom2010, so that customers can tweet about the in-store promotions. Sears a microsite called "The Ultimate Prom Experience" that can serve as a one stop shop for girls to want to pull the perfect look together for prom. Visitors to the site have to option to link their findings to Facebook and/or Twitter.

Social media is the way to go when majority of their target market are on these sites longer than do on their homework. The constant exposure to these brands would increase the likely hood of these teen girls to shop at those department stores instead of the others ones out there.

To read the full article click here.

A study of 1,000 online users shows the responses of those younger/older than age 25 and their experiences with Facebook and Twitter. Almost half of the responders admitted to checking their Fbook or Twitter during the night or as soon as they wake up in the morning. Also a factor, Iphones. When asked if users check Fbook or Twitter before they leave their bed, 28% of Iphone users responded with 'yes,' which is a 10% increase over those less than age 25 and a 20% increase over those who are older than 25.

Teachers at schools such as the University of Texas and Purdue are using Twitter to get their lecture classes more involved. When class sizes are large, less people seem to participate. Twitter is changing that. Instead of the teacher standing in front of a large lecture hall for 50 minutes, students are encouraged to supplement the discussion with Tweets from their laptops or cell phones. The screen will update live for the teacher to address and talk about further.