Zooppa’s community of over 50,000 creative minds and consumers make, share and interact with advertising and creative content for leading brands. With over $500,000 in prizes awarded to date, the company has teamed up with CMO Council’s Pause to Support a Cause and some of the industries leading minds on marketing and social media.

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is “dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries.” (more…)

Since being acquired by MSNBC this August, the hyperlocal news service EveryBlock has watched the overwhelming growth of citizen reporting and is now taking its business a step further with the launch of a new microlocal notification service, Notify Your Neighbor. (more…)

Vitrue released its second annual ranking of the most social brands, The Vitrue 100. With the overwhelming adoption of social media among marketing professionals this list helps to establish and bring credibility to this emerging space and provide the industry with overall trends that highlight the most social brands and help demonstrate the value of social media marketing. (more…)

MTV launched a youth education campaign in a new series of on-air, online and real world initiatives including integration in its top rated programming called A Thin Line. The series is described as a news special focused on how to empower America’s youth to identify, respond to and stop all forms of digital abuse. (more…)

A set of guidelines, funded by UNESCO and commissioned by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) have recently been published on how broadcasters around the world can encourage better quality user-generated content (UGC) and improve media and information literacy.

The basis of the report is to provide guidance on how to encourage a greater diversity of material from a wider range of voices. Content that can not only fill the commercial needs of broadcasters, however the viewing needs of the public audience as well. (more…)

Being social is nothing new to non-profit organizations like GuluWalk. Online fundraising is of growing importance to charities of all sizes as it has the ability to turn supporters into fundraisers. (more…)

Once upon a time companies and brands simply being in the social media space was considered a surprising feature or nice-to-have. Today’s consumers have higher expectations and are looking for more defined forms of engagement.

The majority of new media participants believe that brands should have a presence in the space, interacting with consumers as needed or by request only according to a development supported by research from Cone, a strategy and communications agency engaged in building brand trust.

While actual contact with brands is still mainly focused through more traditional channels such as email and websites compared to social networks, the split is not as big as it used to be. (more…)

Social Media Today reported late last month that the gap between the average male and female salary of those working in social media has widened - even though the statistics show women’s presence online is growing. (more…)

Acquisition and Retention via Online Communities EMarketer recently published research into interactive ROI, and concluded that the primary objectives of online marketers are to acquire and retain new customers. Now it’s the fall and little has changed. There are a number of projects, technologies and tactics that can be deployed to drive customer acquisition and retention, and I will be focusing on how publishers and brands can apply their online community platform for this purpose. While the explicit definition of the terms ‘customer’, ‘acquired’ and ‘retained’ vary across organizations, I consider a new registered website user to be acquired, and a returning registered website participant to be retained. (more…)

Casual dining chain Red Robin is taking advantage of its Facebook fans through a new application called GoRecommend by Empathica to help drive social media buzz by asking consumers to post recommendations on their profile page.

While brand marketers may be working hard to attract fans online, referrals seem to be the best way to drive traffic and get people into stores. The latest issue seems to be how to turn passive fans into real brand ambassadors. (more…)