You’ve got yourself all set up with a Facebook fan page. The value of this marketing strategy is undeniable and you have easily sold your theory to executives and CEOs. The engagement and reach that Facebook offers is insane, so where are all your fans?

While so many brands are focusing their efforts inside Facebook they are still struggling to bring their customer base into this social hub and getting them to “Like” them once they arrive.

Facebook fans are certainly not the only measure of success in this platform, or even the most important, however fans definitely play a role into the overall reach of your brand and your messaging - so they are certainly a part of it. (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…)

More and more brand websites are being replaced or out-done by their Facebook fan pages. So how is it that some companies are still holding up their brand websites while others are slowly losing traction?

According to DBM/SCAN U.S. web traffic to brand websites rarely exceeds six figures, however it can already count 37 branded Facebook pages with at least a million fans just among consumer packaged goods, retail, pharmaceutical and fast-food marketers. (more…)

Video is certainly becoming one of the strongest platforms for communication for brands, as proven by Facebook’s recent launch of the new Facebook Live channel. More companies are beginning to integrate live video streaming into their business model to better engage and interact with their online customers. (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…)

As companies move more into the social realm, and promote their Twitter handles, Facebook fan pages and YouTube accounts many marketers are asking themselves where does that leave the company website.

For years we worried about ownership and collecting all the domain names associated with our businesses. Today, more campaigns are centered around social networks leaving websites with an entirely new role.

Brand websites are not going anywhere, their purpose has just changed. Marketers need to start thinking of this hub as the brain. (more…)

If there was any question about Twitter’s move toward advertising, the micro-blogging service has now started to build out a sales team starting with two new hires: Facebook veteran Dan Coughlin and Yelp’s first salesperson, Amanda Levy. (more…)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given big pharma companies a little more insight into what they can and cannot do in the social media sphere with a new violation warning to Novartis Pharmaceuticals late last month. (more…)