Upcoming changes to Facebook to prepare for in the new year

Embracing social media is getting more complex as changes are being made to all the main platforms. Some changes on LinkedIn and Twitter have not required big changes to strategy or process, but Facebook will be making changes in 2010 that will require some thought. For companies who have been struggling with using Facebook effectively, the changes may actually lead to better marketing strategies.

Do LinkedIn discussion groups have a value?

I recently joined a new group on Linked In – VERB: The power of language & brands. Of course the name of it is what made me give it a whirl. One of my contacts joined it, so what the heck? My verdict is still out on this one as some discussions have been interesting, but I have yet to really engage in it myself. Discussion groups only appear to be useful if you invest some time in participating. Is the time spent worth it? Is it just me or is it full of folks only trying to sell me something?

Instead of adding a poll on LinkedIn, I’d like to invite comments and/or stories of how using a discussion group proved useful. Did you target a LinkedIn group as part of a social media plan? What was your strategy and how did it play out?

Social media planning: first why not just listen

Lately if feels that everyone is trying to develop a social media plan or rather launch a few tactics in search of a strategy. Of course it does help to put a toe in the water before one jumps in entirely, but I have a growing unease that the only tangible result of all this experimentation is a growing proliferation of one-way Tweets and postings that lead to no where. The Internet is becoming clogged with information and a victim of our best intentions!

I think that more communicators are seeing that social media is not a panacea

SocialOomph is keeping me sane

I have tried my share of applications to help manage my use of Twitter – Tweetdeck, Twitteriffic, Hootsuite – the list goes on and on. Social Oomph, what was TweetLater is a keeper. I had signed up months ago and stopped using it as I chased the next great tool. When a colleague mentioned how the tool was improving her effectiveness, it made me find my password and explore it a bit more.

The SocialOomph keyword digest service is great.  You decide how often to receive emails of Tweets on topics of interest to you and your clients.  Extremely easy to set up and change, I find I get the information I need and

Mommy blog-ola update: FTC new guidelines

In July, I mentioned the dust up that NPR reported about within the Mom blogosphere: Mom’s providing product endorsements without telling their readers that they received any compensation or free products.

The FTC has updated its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising for the first time since 1980, and among the changes, a requirement that “bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.” Fines for violating the new rule will run up to $11,000 per post.

Read more on the FTC site.

Finally, bloggers are held to the same standards as journalists. I hope the fines are stiff enough to make a difference.

Social media planning: don’t let the tools get in the way

In the seemingly never-ending work to keep up with all the social media and network tools out there, it is evident that too many of us let the new tech “toys” take up too much of our time and attention. Worse, the end result is a social media plan that is nothing more than a list of tactics, having no link to business objectives.

A social media strategy that is aligned with business objectives is one that

Just when you thought you could moderate online conversations…

….Google launches Sidewiki and all things change for marketers. On September 23, Google released Sidewiki a Google Toolbar-based plug-in that allows anyone to add her own shared side notes to any (yes, any) Web page. The basic idea is that every page on your site now comes with a publicly accessible discussion board that cannot be moderated.

Google has some controls built in, but it may be some time before any of us know how well they work. Through some algorithm, they determine what comments are more “relevant” and move those to the top of the sidebar. Anything that requires an algorithm is sure to make some CMOs get heartburn.

Listening is the new marketing

I have been spending a fair amount of time reading from “the experts” on social media marketing. At times so much of this seems to be generated by a group of early adopters who essentially are talking amongst themselves. I have run across two very different papers that may be of interest if you and your company are struggling to figure out how to embrace social media. The first may inspire action or ideas. The second provides real data to justify the course of action.

Rethinking vendor relationships?

The economy may be justification to rethink your company’s marketing function, but it seems the impact of social media and the shift to internet advertising may become the driving force for many. The structure of many in-house marketing, communications and PR functions has more to do with the media mix of yesterday than today’s changing information-sharing tools, shrinking newspapers and fragmented blogosphere.

The venerable quest to find an all-purpose pronoun

You may not be aware of recent discussions online to find a pronoun that is neither masculine or feminine, singular or plural. As authors Patricia O’Connor and Stewart Kellerman pointed out in an article in the New York Times a few weeks back, the Twitterati are looking for an out to using his and her, he and she and taking up valuable characters. Imagine the awful suggestions that may come out of such a drive: his and her into hiser, and he and she into s/he or he/she or shhe. The grammar police are cringing.

If you missed the article it is worth the read. Did you know for centuries the universal pronoun was “they” and it was used for singular and plural, masculine and feminine? Just how did we get where we are today?