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...

Yes, Social Media is fun. If what you are doing is not fun then why do it.  Same goes for Social Media. If you want to promote your business through social media and business networking, but still have your doubts on it, then I suggest you drop it. Like I said earlier, if what you are doing is not fun then don’t do it at all. Promoting your business through the social media sites can prove to be very beneficial to your business and bring in a high ROI. We often hear people say that promoting your business has to be taken seriously.  That is true, but who said that serious cannot be fun. When businesses drop their feelings and hide behind their logos ... Read more...