Social media strategies are a key part of almost every brands success today. Consistent, transparent and hopefully friendly representation should always form the basis of your brands responses and comments, but how do you decide who executes that voice?

Today’s social media strategy is sometimes created in-house, other times through an agency. Most often it goes through several hands and departments including PR, marketing, advertising, customer service and management. With all those people how do you decide who does the talking?

Here are a few important characteristics of any social media representative: (more…)

The Internet grows in terms of users everyday. By the hundreds, thousands and even billions platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare are being seen by more people as useful ways to consume and share media. However, this social media craze isn’t just for the kids anymore.

A new study from Pew Internet found that between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking site usage grew 88 per cent among participants aged 55-64, and that the 65 and older group’s social networking presence grew 100 per cent in the same time frame. (more…)

It seems that not only is social media becoming a more important aspect of the marketing function, however more executives are planning for the landscape with a social media strategy according to a new survey by King Fish Media, HubSpot and Junta42.

In June 2010, 457 marketers and managers were surveyed by the three companies and over 50 per cent were in the publishing, media, advertising and marketing industry. And, 72 per cent of U.S. companies said they had devised a social media strategy. (more…)

Location-based sharing is becoming larger and more valuable to brand marketers. While 2009 saw the prediction of geo-social expanding and becoming a greater influence, marketers may not have anticipated its exact function and what would and wouldn’t work. (more…)

Early this week saw famous coffee and donut shop Dunkin’ Donuts hit hard in the social media space as spammers took the brands Facebook page for an X-rated, wild ride flooding it with adult links and images, which just kept popping up.

The incident raises the obvious “who’s in charge?” questions, however perhaps more importantly: Do brands still think they can do this alone? Speed, competence and continuity are all important skills when it comes to staying on top of the content posted to your brand’s social spaces - and if you can’t offer all three on your own, you clearly need help. (more…)

The social media space changes so quickly that it is often hard for marketers to stay at the front of the pack. While social media is no longer new, its trends develop with the blink of an eye and that isn’t even counting the endless list of start-ups, mergers, acquisitions and failures.

“Marketing has always been a field with a constant learning curve, but the shifts taking place today are occurring more quickly, making it especially challenging to keep pace,” said Donna Farrugia, executive director of The Creative Group. (more…)

When Apple announced that it would not be adopting Adobe Flash into any of its products - ever, companies everywhere had to make a choice to have a website that worked with flash, HTML5 or both.

Both Google, and more recently Yahoo released HTML5-optimized versions of their sites. ICUC Moderation Services went for both, because we want our clients to be able to access us from anywhere, but what should other companies keep in mind when optimizing for mobile?

Eighty per cent of businesses across a range of industries said they plan to or already have developed mobile websites in the next year, according to a new survey by Adobe Systems. (more…)

A huge part of marketing success is based on the consumers ability to trust a brand. With the influx of social media use by today’s marketer, that trust has now taken an entirely new form where a company’s trustworthiness must be proven day after day, after day.

A study put out by research firm Invoke Solutions found that overall, people trust people they know much more than brands or service-based companies, the platform that brands used, be it Facebook or a blog, did not make a significant difference in how trustworthy they were perceived. (more…)

We all love our social media tools; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. They allow us to communicate, network, listen and learn from a diverse and far-reaching, global community. However, we all have our pet peeves when it comes to manners and that includes the social media sphere.

Here are a list of the top five social media pet peeves and how to avoid being seen as a chaotic annoyance in the face of your peers. (more…)

BrandWeek recently published an article regarding the use of social media by marketers of alcoholic beverage brands. With so many alcoholic brands stepping into the space, and so few restrictions and regulations what is absolutely clear is the drastic need for moderation - not just monitoring.

The article referenced an upcoming report being put out by the FTC expected in early 2011, regarding the number of times minors get passed age restrictions on such sites. “Facebook has some age barriers that are easily gotten around,” said Michele Simon, research and policy director of the Marin Institute. The institute is calling for the removal of all promotional content posted on Facebook by such alcoholic companies. (more…)