The much-heralded Google+ Pages are here for brands, organisations and others. After the launch yesterday, everybody can now set up pages and brands have been rushing to grab their name. It’s certainly easy to do , and easy to start to add and curate content. But should it be part of your brand’s social media mix and if so how. These five questions should help you decide if you need a Google+ page for your brand, and how to make the most of one if you do. Should you claim your name to build social credibility? You need to build social credibility. Is your audience using Google+? MORE >>

image from Men's Morning News. Well it certainly looks like things are going to be exciting in 2012. Look at everything happening with the #Occupy movement (which encompasses everything from camping and yoga to rape and assaulting old women ) and the financial crises in Europe. This has all the appearances of being a very interesting year. With that in mind I am going to spend some time this month and next setting out some goals and priorities for the coming year. If this sounds unreasonably pessimistic, well, better to be safe than sorry. Only by working together can we make this work. MORE >>

Today’s guest post is written by Brian Meeks. Throughout the land a strange fog settled in. It sapped the strength of all who took notice. Those who ignored the fog were unaffected and their delusions of grandeur continued unabated. In fact, most people thought the Klout menace was nothing but a distraction, and yet they still looked upon it with fascination. On this day, the Klout was in a foul mood and deemed its followers unworthy. They stared with disbelief at its cruel proclamation that they were much less powerful than even a day earlier. digress. cents per unit or $1.89 MORE >>

What’s the purpose of the reward? What will be different after you issue the reward? good reward scheme identifies a desired outcome and creates a reward, based upon human motivation, which changes an individual’s behaviour over the long-term. bad reward scheme will do neither. bad reward scheme will find things that the organization has in abundance (free t-shirts, old products) and offer them to top members for their contributions.   There are three questions with rewards schemes.    1) Who do you reward?   2) Why do you reward them?   3) How do you reward them? MORE >>

Vocus and Cision are both powerful and popular PR monitoring and management systems. Both provide PR and social media professionals with extensive capabilities for tracking and growing media coverage of their organizations or clients. Among their features: • An extensive database of professional journalists and social media influencers, with biographical information. Ability to monitor media coverage and brand mentions across a very wide range of sources. Capability to set up monitoring profiles for multiple keywords, topics, companies and products. Online news release distribution. MORE >>