Marketing - Social

OPTIMIZATION -- that fancy word for making a selling process more relevant and engaging for your customer --could be said to have four major approaches that have critical value for marketers: experimentation, targeting, behavioral and social.

Coremetrics announced the results of its Second Annual ‘Face of the New Marketer’ survey. This poll of marketing professionals, drawn from the country’s top eCommerce and online media/content companies, found that social media marketing is quickly gaining popularity as a way to gain competitive edge. However, the survey also revealed that time and budget allocations are not yet reflective of this trend.

JupiterResearch has found that, although nearly one-quarter of all online adults are considered influential brand advocates, they actually spend more time online researching and purchasing than spreading the word.

Good news: The pool of influencers is growing.

'I tried it and... '

More and more, consumers are relying on advice from friends, family and even strangers to make purchase decisions, select physicians, choose travel destinations and pick politicians to vote for.

This weekend I picked up a great Harvard Business Review article outlining a clear overinvestment by corporate America in "destination Web sites" that are failing to return on investment because (according to the executive summary) "most consumer product companies don't provide enough value or dy

It's hard to hold conversations when everyone who's talking has varying views on the definitions of key vocabulary. Yet our entire industry is talking about social media -- and I defy you to find two people that define social media the same way. Determined to solve this problem for the industry single-handedly... I looked up the term on Wikipedia (which, incidentally, cites itself as an example of social media). What I found was not only woefully incomplete (first time this has happened to me on Wikipedia), but there are a couple of areas where I would differ with the entry entirely.