I have been in talks with a few companies lately about their social media efforts especially when it comes to supporting customers using social media ( the topic of my new book ). At the highest level there is really 2 ways to organize your social media efforts: Centralized or Decentralized. Do you have a team that is very loosely coupled with no clear leader that coordinates your social activity and it feels strained or hard to hold together? But the big difference between them and more successful ones at social media is the lightening rod. Enterprise 2.0 MORE >>

think one of the issues here is the inflation of language so pervasive in social networking. On the home page of its regular web site is a link titled Community Hub , which leads to the company’s blog as well as providing links to its Facebook , Twitter and YouTube accounts. You have a Web site, maybe a blog, perhaps a Twitter account and a few other social media vehicles. While Facebook pages reside within Facebook, they should be thought of as simply Web sites when it comes to attracting and retaining visitors. Web Business Fan Pages MORE >>

Now what if we applied these to the world of social media? Semi-truth #1: Our infatuation with the next, new, shiny, thing in social media depreciates as soon as we realize that it’s just another engagement, aggregator, application, thingy requiring more time, increased effort, permission to access, another profile creation etc., To him, Twitter is what Twitter is- But the basic tenets of good business like customer service and doing the job right, go further for him than “some web app&#   that takes up too much of his precious client time. His take? Great news! MORE >>

How much information are you willing to make public in order to improve your social networking experience? What capabilities might the next social networks  have to “improve&# our intimacy with our online friends? Creddy is a social network that makes your FICO credit score available to all of your social network friends. Pollygraf, as its name implies, is the truthful social network. Doxx plans to add polling this summer, so that network friends can vote on diagnoses and help choose courses of treatment. MORE >>

Social Media is currently being touted as the answer to life, the universe, and everything online, but there is a lot more to it than just hitching a ride. Lets take a look at some of the things you need to think about before you even contemplate a social media marketing strategy. With social media marketing, whilst many items are difficult to determine, if you start out without specific goals, you may well be wasting resources. Social media is just that… social – if your motive for getting involved is purely for personal gain, you are wasting your time. MORE >>