The need to balance your social media mix

In 2010, industry experts predicted Facebook to see exponential growth in the years to come; and rightly so. Facebook saw its active user base (outside the US) grow by over 19 million in just four months (October 2010-February 2011), signaling that the networking giant was clearly the king of social media. Predictions for Twitter indicate that it will have a steady 2011, while LinkedIn is expected to witness strong growth in the next five years. According to eMarketer, in 2012, 88% companies in the US will use social media tools for marketing purposes. This brings us to the question of what social media tools are ... Read more...

This week's hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

• Social Strategy: Why You Aren't Getting What You Need Out Of Social Media Monitoring... Yet.
• Open Social: Why Hide your Social Media Presence?
• How-to: Integrating Twitter and Facebook Marketing in your Business.
• Social Budget: Giant Social Media Red Flag: Is Your CMO Tuned Out?
• Flashback: 6 Painful Social Media Screwups.

• Functionality: How Google Instant's Autocomplete Suggestions Work.
• Balancing Act: ... Read more...

A growing number of companies are jumping on to the social media bandwagon, with Facebook Pages and Twitter streams helping them reach out to worldwide markets and supplementing traditional blogs and media handouts, with a community of followers that can be reached quickly and cost-effectively. Companies are also discovering the risks of outsourcing the "engagement" bit of their social media strategy.



There are several pitfalls to be avoided with social media, and we will cover them in detail soon. When it comes to engagement, however, with social media usage being a relatively recently phenomenon, it is clear ... Read more...

By Rajiv Parikh, CEO, Position²

Thanks to the group that filled our Ask-the-Experts Roundtable session at DMA 2010. Given the placement of the sessions, I was a little concerned that I wouldn't get to share our new presentation and new Social Media ROI analysis for addressing unresolved issues and engaging to drive new leads. Instead, we had a great session with companies from around the world. While much of the examples in my deck were B2C, many of the questions were B2B. I was happy to share our experiences and learn from the group. If anyone is interested in a copy of our deck, please write to us.

The DMA 2010 conference has evolved from discussing the ... Read more...