You hear a lot of social media commentators calling for brands to do good, myself included. Image: Miss-Social.com. So does that make us naive, idealistic or unrealistic? Nothing could be further from the truth. No one expects companies to turn over a new leaf or be any less self interested than they have been. Their first responsibility is still to their shareholders. Rather, I exhort brands to do good not just because it’s well intended but because it’s well-received. Social media has enabled consumers to dialogue with brands. This is not conjecture or wishful thinking. In MORE >>

It would manifest itself as discomfort with receiving negative comments or an uncertainty towards how to begin dialoguing in general. Last week I had the great pleasure of catching up with a social media thought leader I really admire, Charlene Li. Founder of the Altimeter Group and author of Groundswell and Open Leadership , she’s been educating and inspiring the business world to use social technologies since they first emerged. SM: What inspired you to write about Openness? How open do you need to be? How open should you be to be successful? CL: Absolutely. It’s called work. MORE >>

One such post got 15,630 likes, 1,592 comments, and 231 shares. With so much understandable anxiety over budget allocation and concrete ROI, especially is you’re a small company, it’s valuable to study the best practices of those brands that have earned their way into the likability Hall of Fame. So here’s ten brands that are each among the most liked and a unique strategy they employ to achieve this: 1. HERITAGE: Burberry has done a masterful job of leveraging their heritage to engage loyal fans and to win new ones. Advertising Brands Facebook Social media branding MORE >>

It’s this context which makes the recent comments by pre-IPO Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, so interesting. When Image: Nellie’s blog. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, just gave a facsinating interview that strikes at the heart of debates around the purpose of social media. Ever since Facebook purchased Instagram to shore up its mobile credentials in anticipation of its  IPO , debate has raged as to the true intentions of such founders and whether their powerful platforms were pure profit plays or launch pads for positive change. MORE >>

” So while some commentators bemoan the appearance of Facebook social ads, such BTIG analyst, Rich Greenfield, who describes them as “unexciting ,” what they fail to realize is that they are not being designed around what the advertisers want but rather what Facebook users want. Over the last two years we have seen a steady shift from Google Search to Social Search as consumers, faced with an overwhelming amount of choices and information, are turning to their peers within social networks for trusted recommendations as to what to buy. Image: Marin Software. MORE >>