SOCIAL MEDIA  How many articles have you read today on how to have a conversation with your colleagues, make an appropriate phone call or give the best damn handshake you can? None I hope. That's because we all know instinctively how to communicate; we've been doing it all our lives. It's part of our DNA. Making connections and building relationships is what we're all about.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  I believe 2012 will be the year that Twitter is finally recognised as a viable customer service tool for many Australian businesses. You only have to look at the increasing numbers of large and small businesses directing their customers not only to a customer service phone number or email address but also to their twitter handle e.g. @commbank, @VirginAustralia, @auspost and many more.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  I recently had a rather disturbing discussion with a gentleman who suggested his best strategy for finding a great social media person for his organisation was to find someone "young who loves Facebook - and has more than 1000 friends". Wow. No offense, sir, but that's kinda crazy!
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SOCIAL MEDIA  So, the world has finally discovered Pinterest, one of my favorite sites in the whole world (wide web), and I'm so glad for it. But marketers and agencies take note, this is not just another image bank. For starters, I'd bet it will become a major driver of traffic for many of you in the future, but also a great collaboration tool for others - and who know what else? Pinteresting times, indeed...
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SOCIAL MEDIA  As youngster I grew up idolising Shane Warne. To this two-bit spin bowler who batted at eleven and fielded at a very deep deep long on, Warne was sporting deity. The beer drinking, bake bean eating, smoking blonde could do things with a little red ball that would not be out of place in a Harry Potter movie.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  I was sent this video by a friend who said that it was a must watch. The fact that I did will all the noise on social flying around is in itself a validation of the old adage that most decisions are influence by the people around us. We all know that our strong ties influence us the most but this guy the Global Brand Experience guy at facebook explains it better than most.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  I'm a regular at Future Human events, and a few weeks ago I attended their session 'Social Animals', exploring how (and if) social networks are changing us. Interesting session for a number of reasons, but one key take away for me was around the fragmentation of social media, the idea that many factors are beginning to chip away at Facebook's monopoly leading to smaller communities and networks.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  On August 9th this year Twitter stopped relying on digital photo sharing services like Twitpic and YFrog and rolled out image galleries of its own. The good results are obvious now with Twitter soaring past Twitpic and YFrog to become a top photo sharing service.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  Most Australian politicians, state and federal, now have a presence on Facebook. But are they doing it right? Are they using the medium to its fullest potential to connect with their local communities and maximise their chances of re-election? Sadly not. Most simply use Facebook to broadcast scripted messages and post links to the latest articles they have penned or scored a mention in.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  Its been a few weeks since f8, and we have been having a play with the new timeline functionality that Facebook is planning to roll out, as well as getting used to the 'frictionless sharing' that Facebook has already rolled out with selected partners.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  We've all heard loads about all the recent and upcoming changes to Facebook - the new Timeline profile layout, the Ticker, the Open Graph app functionality etc. But what does this mean for Pages? Zuckers has been pretty quiet on this matter, and there's some mixed opinions out there. So is it good for us Page admins, or bad? Will it decrease post impressions, or help with our engagement? It's certainly not an easy question to answer, but here's the closest I could come to a conclusion.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  Lately Ive received many questions about social commerce and particularly on how to handle the 'loss' of a brand. First off, your brand was never yours to begin with. You might have been, and hopefully still are, the manager of your brand but you have never owned it 'this is why I shudder when I hear statements such as 'social commerce has changed everything'.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  I have recently finished reading the book 'The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few' by James Surowiecki and I can strongly recommend it to anyone that is interested in how opinions are conformed, and why self-organisation might be the key to success.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  On the 7th September Klout announce that 100 million people now have Klout Scores. Klout Inc. stated that this meant that there are 100 million voices effectively leveraging the social web to share their opinions, hopes and dreams and shaping the decisions of the billions of people now listening to them. It sounds like a worthy cause or is it the latest useless social media hype?
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SOCIAL MEDIA  Brand pages and personal profiles can both make a significant contribution to your social media strategy, but how do you decide whether to tweet, post and share as yourself or as your business?
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SOCIAL MEDIA  By now it is quite clear that Google+ has become the most successful social offering that the search engine company ever released. Raking up more than 25 million users in just about 4 weeks does matter! Though this is still less than 5 percent of Facebook's 750 million plus users, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg's brainchild has started to feel the heat.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  The forthcoming brand pages on Google+ represent a great opportunity for Google to tempt users away from Facebook. Here are some suggestions for how the world's newest and fastest-growing social media platform can improve on Facebook's company pages.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  There is an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of social media optimisation for the B2B segment of the business community. Most of the large business organisations do have their official websites but do they really need social media marketing and SMO?
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SOCIAL MEDIA  The practice of deleting negative comments from Facebook and other social media channels has been considered social sacrilege for a long time now. The notion that all thoughts, opinions and feedback should remain on your page for the world to see forever after, regardless of their truth or motive, has been drilled into every social media specialist the world around. Recently, however, my unwavering dedication to this principle has been challenged. I have started to believe that some negative comments deserve to be deleted, and not just the ones with foul language or offensive sentiment. So when is it OK to delete negative comments and even ban their authors? Here is my opinion.
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SOCIAL MEDIA  Most businesses recognise the need to be involved in social media by now. The problem is they are not quite sure where it should sit within their organisation. So many areas have a stake in this space - marketing, corporate communications, digital/online, customer service, IT... the list goes on. Everybody wants to drive the social strategy, so how do you decide who ultimately gets the honour? It's not always an easy decision to make, but here are some guidelines that should help.
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