As the company website explains , the TOMS concept emerged after a powerful and authentic experience – Mycoskie’s travels in Argentina during which he saw and met countless barefoot children. But by mirroring the TOM’s concept so blatantly, Skechers not only showed a lack of creativity and originality, but they left themselves wide open to accusations of disingenuous social concern. At least Skechers had the good sense to take down their BOBS promotion as soon as the issue erupted. Image Credit: GOOD magazine. Even the shoes were the same. MORE >>

This is a guest post by Kami Watson Huyse, CEO of Zoetica Media  and editor of the Communications Overtones blog. The considerable political and media prowess of Planned Parenthood, and some past concerns with Komen sealed the deal. There are other ways you can look at the organizational issues that may have occurred. One is the concept of Founder’s Syndrome, which was outlined elegantly in this post by Nell Edgington on Social Velocity. Komen, like so many organizations, used social media as a channel to deliver messages. Enjoy. Photo by WeNews. MORE >>

Situation: Microsoft was facing severe customer issues.  Their partner base had ballooned to 180,000 and they were facing support and satisfaction issues.  Action: They decided to take the conversation to where their partners and customers were; social media.  They used social to allow for questions and comments, creating an environment where there could be a free exchange of information and rich dialogues. Twitter was a big hit; they used deep links to drop their support customers directly into actual answers to common questions and issues.  MORE >>

With the amount of helpful content about social media marketing growing faster than Facebook’s user base or Lindsay Lohan’s court appearances, it’s tough to keep up. Here’s a modest contribution to help with that effort; more than six dozen of the best, most bookmark-able articles and blog posts about social media tactics, tools and strategies written so far this year, by leading writers like John Jantsch , Lori Dicker , Lee Odden , Lisa Barone , Jay Baer and many more. Social Media Marketing Tips, Tactics and Guides. 5 stars. MORE >>

I wrote last week about ‘ Broadcasting Social Media ‘, and how many conferences are a contradiction in terms when their content is about Social Media, but they have no social interaction or discourse – just speakers broadcasting a social message. If you can broadcast social , then that says something about the channel that is used, and the content that is delivered through the channel. Is it the case, then, that you can have social content delivered through a social channel ? Social is multiway. MORE >>