From The Clubhouse

Submitted by Francine Hardaway on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 5:00am

To my great chagrin, I find I am as guilty as anyone of drawing shallow conclusions about the role and value or social media in a marketing plan. I read this article in Ad Age about an Australian study whose research proved that no more than 1% of fans actually engage with brands on Facebook. In other words, fans may "like" your page, but it's pretty meaningless, because they don't talk about you.

So, I concluded, why spend a lot of time on Facebook, especially if you are a small business with limited resources. And I wrote that on Google+, home of the serious conversation.

Submitted by Katy Bailey on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 5:00am

Everyone loves the Super Bowl. Even if you’re not crazy about watching football, you can stick around the watch clever advertising at its best. But you probably noticed that Super Bowl XLVI was a little different from its predecessors. Social media helped brands change the rules of Super Bowl ads.

On average, a 30 second spot during the game of the year put a company back about $3.5 million so it makes sense that they would want to get as much value as possible from this enormous expense. This year, brands came up with creative tactics to get plenty of bang for their buck(s).

“Accidentally” Leaking the Ads

Submitted by Pam Sahota on Mon, 02/06/2012 - 5:00am

There are so many shiny new toys in the social media sphere…sometimes we can’t keep up. Google has a tendency to test out new ideas (remember Google Buzz?) and this time around they have spun out Google Plus Hangouts. It’s an opportunity for individuals or businesses to utilize this virtual “hangout” to communicate with others in their community or business via video. The only disadvantage that appears right away is the restriction of 10 people per hangout. However, when it comes to meetings and having the chance to build a deeper relationship among community members sometimes fewer can be beneficial.

Submitted by Social Media Club Reporter on Fri, 02/03/2012 - 11:01am

FEBRUARY BOOK CLUB: THE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIST

We're proud to feature great titles in 2012 with monthly reviews and complimentary webinars hosting some of the social media industry's most innovative authors. We received a lot of great feedback last year and want to thank you for supporting the Book Club, our publishing partners and the authors.

Submitted by Anders Sporring on Fri, 02/03/2012 - 7:07am

All of us that are active in some respect on social networks will sooner or later end up in a situation where we don't know if we should publish an update or not, so did I, back in September.

Submitted by Caitlin Muir on Thu, 02/02/2012 - 4:00am

The world of social media regularly changes in a nanosecond. As managers, we’re expected to analyze data, interpret the data to improve relationships, and engage people over multiple platforms. All at the same time.

It can be exhausting. We’re almost always in a hurry.

Our Brains Are Changing

The Millennials have been called the first truly digital generation. We don’t know of a life without computers. The Dewey Decimal system, Encyclopedia Brittanica, and long-hand multiplication are things that we learned when we were children but abandoned once smartphones came on the scene.

Submitted by Social Media Club Reporter on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 5:00am

The first week of every month, we recap what made waves in blogging and online videos for the previous month.

January 2012 did not disappoint with some sad and exciting blogs across the globe, sharing the world's current events.

Submitted by Social Media Club Reporter on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 5:00am

We are excited to introduce our Social Media Club February Book of the Month, The Social Media Strategist by Christopher Barger.

Christopher Barger, the award-winning former social media director at General Motors and IBM’s former ‘blogger-in-chief,’ describes all the challenges particular to getting a comprehensive social media program off the ground in a large firm. The Social Media Strategist teaches you how to:

Submitted by Anders Abrahamsson on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 10:01pm

”The next revolution – World War III – will be waged inside your head. It will be a guerrilla information war fought, not in the sky or on the streets, not in the forests or even around the scarce resources of the earth, but in newspapers and magazines, on the radio, TV and in ’cyberspace’.

It will be a dirty, no-holds-barred propaganda war of competing world views and alternative visions of the future.”
Marshall McLuhan, Culture is our Business, 1970

Submitted by Chrissie Scelsi on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 5:00am

Happy new year, Social Media Club members. Given the recent protest over the SOPA and PIPA acts via web blackouts of sites like Wikipedia, 2012 is looking to be another banner year of interesting issues at the intersection of the law and social media. I thought it would be fitting to offer my predictions as to 5 topics to watch in 2012 in social media law.