Now you also have to be responsible for Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Yelp and Flickr and Quora and blogging and Foursquare. So, before you determine how and if you should include the social web in your communication, marketing, advertising, HR, customer service, and sales strategies, first figure out where it makes sense to do so. You import the database and it shows you, by percentage, where your customers and prospects have social accounts. There is a lot of discussion around the ROI with the social web. This first ran over at The Whale Hunters. Oh wait. MORE >>

EyeforTravel published their 2011 Trends and their number one pick is the increasing need to integrate social content and activity on your corporate website. As budget freezes start to thaw, it’s time for them (companies) to consider how to integrate social media functionality, for example, incorporating the power of Facebook comment boxes on site to provide a feedback loop for consumers. Sites will become a hub to aggregate and explain activity on social networks, and add long-form value. How do you integrate social content and activity on your site?  MORE >>

How DO you measure your social media ROI?  With marketers spending almost two billion dollars on social media last year, it’s understandable that all of us don’t just “want”, but *need*, to accurately measure the return – the ROI – of our investments in social marketing.  My usual disclaimer before we start – all opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my experience running social marketing campaigns, managing social marketing teams, and advising social marketing clients. DearKen Mobile Social Media MORE >>

Image by Anas Ahmad via Flickr. Social media marketing budgets are set to rise for40% of firms across Europe in 2011 and budget for social media marketing is an issue for only 18% of brands. These findings come from Meltwater Group ’s Future of Content report, a survey of with marketing and social media decision makers from 450 brands across the world, including the US, UK, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Singapore and Australia. But that’s the subject of another post in this informal series of predictions for 2011. MORE >>

While giving a webinar, Managing the Risks of Social Media , for Higher Logic , I got an unexpected question:  “Why do we need a social media policy?” Of course you need a social media policy. The structure and need for social media policies or guidelines have gotten a lot of press and more is written every day. Every social media practitioner ( Maddie, Lindy , and me to name a few) will tell you that you need one. co-authored a white paper with SocialFish about social media policies. Risk and Social Media MORE >>