Techno//Marketer - Matt Dickman on Marketing and Social Technology

Five simple guidelines for social engagement

I have talked about the importance of developing and implementing social media policies within organizations previously on this blog. These policies not only protect the company, but go a long way to educating its employees on what the implications and ramifications are of engaging in social channels.

I've seen a number of instances where seemingly harmless information is posted on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and that person was not aware of the connectivity of the medium. Soon, people find out what they said and share it. In an age when the "delete" button means nothing (everything is stored forever in most cases even if you do delete) it's crucial to have informed employees.

In college, I had a professor who suggested that when making a tough decision that we look in the mirror and see if we believe what we're saying. Here are the five guidelines that I think are the core of social engagement when you are working within a company. They are my mirror test.

Five guidelines/questions before posting:

1. Assume your Mom reads/sees everything that you post
   
2. Assume your boss reads/sees everything that you post
   
3. Assume your biggest client reads/sees everything that you post
   
4. Assume your biggest competitor reads/sees everything that you post
   
5. Assume your children will read/see everything that you post
   

I run through these filters myself when I post things as a final checklist. If something doesn't pass, then it's out the window.

What guidelines would you add to the list? How do you make content decisions?

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Matt Dickman, Social Media, Guidelines, Policies, Corporate

The cohesion of conversations; brands taking a #(pound)ing

The hashtag (aka the pound sign, #) is a ubiquitous part of social networking at this point. The purpose of the hashtag is to be able to track and lump a strong of asynchronous messages together for later review and analysis.

For example, a group of people coordinate and use the same keyword at the end of every tweet. You probably saw this at SXSW this year when people were ending their messages with #sxsw. You can use third party sites to aggregate those messages into a single string that is ordered by date to see how events unfold.

However, the hashtag is also being used to track the community's brand engagement. Situations like #motrinmoms, #dominos and #amazonfail now have a public timeline that will remain in place forever. The massive volume of similarly tagged content will make it very easy for anyone to find what happened and see how the company responded across search engines and social platforms.

An argument that people have used to avoid engagement in this space is that it's a relatively small sampling of people who engage in these networks. Regarding the Motrin Moms controversy, an Advertising Age article quoted a Lightspeed research study that stated 90% of women had not seen the Motrin ad that spawned the backlash online. Of the 10% who did, 8% said it negatively impacted their brand impression. While that is a small number, you cannot underestimate the power of small, passionate groups of people who use turbocharged platforms to connect with and influence other like minded people. Wildfires can start with a single match, right?

Internal listening is paramount

I can partially understand when companies have some hesitation in listening to the broad community and engaging. It's time consuming and you have to have a corporate culture to make it work. However, I do not understand companies that do not listen in the social space for employee engagement issues, brand perception problems and platform breakdowns. These types of issues are having an impact on Dominos and Amazon right now.

#dominos: This one is picking up steam now. For more info on what happened, go here.

#amazonfail: This ramped up a couple of days ago when a "glitch" in the Amazon system starting delisting GLBT titles. People responded to the "glitch" with the hashtag #glitchmyass. It seems to be trending down at the moment.

[Update] Here is page one of the Google search result for Dominos as of 10:30am on April 15, 2009. Notice entry #3 from YouTube, the top news story as well as the next three stories after the new results.

The bottom line is that these companies should have been listening and engaging all along, should have been prepared earlier with real, honest, personal responses and taken proactive steps to make things right with their community. Waiting a day to respond is WAY too long, waiting hours may even be too long.

Some things to think about:

• Listening is more important than ever
  
• Active listening can pick up issues before they become crises
  
• Community building is key (in advance of an issue)
  
• Events are being linked together by consumers for all to see
  
• The content of those interactions will live on forever
  
• The content also appears in search
  
• A few, passionate individuals can dramatically hurt or help a brand in its interactions online
  

Do you go back through hashtags to see conversations over time? Have you come across them in search results?

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, measurement, reputation, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, trends, hashtags

When everything becomes social, what is "social media"?

What do you think of when I say the term "social media"? Do visions of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, blogs and wikis dance through your head? If you do, I think you're selling yourself short. VERY short.

Social media is a fad. All media will be social.

For the past year, I have included a slide in my presentation decks that says "Social media is a fad. All media will be social". We're already seeing instances of this in mainstream media. Just look at the Facebook/CNN partnership for the inauguration. It nearly crippled business networks around the world as people chatted with their Facebook friends while watching broadcast TV online.

This is an experience that has been taking place through divergent platforms for more than a decade (IM + TV), but is now becoming integrated into a single user experience. Just open Twitter during prime time TV and see what dominates the conversation. It's people talking together around a common topic enabled by whatever show is on.

Current showed us another example of the integration of TV with social technology as it flowed in real-time messages from Twitter during broadcast. This is a clunky solution for now until cable platforms integrate these services into the broadcast or they focus more on online delivery of content.

In-person events are even taking advantage of social technology to make the event even more engaging. Speakers (including myself) take questions on Twitter and engage people beyond the four walls of the room. Live streaming of video allows a global audience to participate in a local event.

Social technology is allowing radio broadcasts to expand their conversations as people engage online while listening or even while not listening. Smart stations are engaging with their audiences through multiple platforms. Each morning I listen to the BBC's Radio 1 on my drive to work. The Chris Moyles Show uses multiple platforms including Twitter, Facebook, email and SMS to engage the audience in real time. The hosts are savvy and the technology is simple and fast.

Mobile device experiences will become increasingly more social. You're seeing the start of this now with applications like Loopt and FourSquare, but you will see social interactions around news content via iPhone apps or any other platform that brings people together.

Does news become more relevant when discussed with my peer group? Absolutely. Once of the main problems with most social content is that the group of people commenting/creating are not relevant to my interests (see YouTube comments for example). If I can select who I have conversations with on certain topics, it's very valuable to me. I'm not saying we should censor people, but the technology allows for added relevance that we should be taking advantage of.

Even outdoor ads have started to become vaguely social. Mini Cooper took the lead on this a few years ago by using RFID technology to display custom messages to their customers as they drove by.

So, instead of taking a narrow, short-term view of "social media", we need to step back, look at all media and see what the social technology potential is and look at how to take advantage of that to deliver more relevant experiences.

How does this notion that all media will become social change your view of media? Is TV/radio dying? What about magazines? Do these have to be digital to be social?

Let's hear what you have to say!

Note: If you're interested in having me speak to your group or organization, check out my speaking page to get in touch with me.

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: advertising, Community, conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, trends

Launched: Skittles.com

Launched is a series that I am renewing to highlight practitioners who are using social media in consumer and B2B campaigns. The goal here is to cut out the theory and rhetoric and focus on real world examples of social media in action.

** Let's cut the BS on this one. I've seen a lot of people pontificate on if this launch is good or bad. Honestly, that is up to Skittles and their agency who are the keepers of the campaign objectives and analytics.

Now, on with the post. There has been a lot of buzz around the new launch of the Skittles.com website. Long story short, Skittles launched a site that uses third-party social media outlets as the base for their content. That means load up the site, you see a small Skittles widget on top of either Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr or Wikipedia. Take a look at the video to see what I mean.

[Feed readers click through to the post to see the video.]

It has certainly created a lot of initial buzz, but that seems to be quickly tailing off.

Twitter Buzz:

Blog Buzz:

What I have not seen, and this may be more telling about their overall approach, is engagement from the brand. No outreach, commentary or other follow up. That is a huge loss for the brand in extending the conversation to an even broader audience.

As I mentioned in the video, the age verification "restrics access" to the content (even though it is wide open if you go directly) if you are under 13. Via Quantcast (not 100% accurate, but picks up trends) around 16-26% of their total visitors are under 13. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Pros:

• Very open and transparent
  
• Bold move for a consumer brand (I wonder what legal said)
  
• Provides easy access for customers to engage on their own platforms
  
• Created buzz online (was it all echo chamber rhetoric?)
  

Cons:

• Not what you would expect at Skittles.com (games, Flash video, etc.)
  
• There are some usability challenges that detract from the concept
  
• It has been done before (although not at the brand level)
  
• Social media is susceptible to attack/fraud/defamation and, while transparent, could be of concern for a lot of companies
  

Key Takeaways:

• We need to know the goals of the campaign to judge this fairly
  
• Buzz has definitely picked up, I wonder if they'll be as open with their sales trend data to show results
  
• Good embrace of social media (especially with a younger audience)
  
• The total lack of any control is a little scary, why not pull in all of this content into a branded site? Does this form factor add or detract?
  
• You need a VERY open legal team to let something like this through, with Skittles they are young, open and it may not concern them at all
  

What say you? Take the following poll and let me know. Is this smart, dumb or are you waiting to see?

For my complete library of my videos for marketers, click here.

---

To help you stay on top of what is happening in digital marketing and social media subscribe to the Techno//Marketer podcast on iTunes. Stay informed and get access to new videos first.

 If you use another podcatcher you can grab my podcast RSS feed here.

---

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, reputation management, social media, transparency, web2.0, Skittles

Inside//Out: Radian6

If you are at all involved in social media, either on the client side or the agency side, you have heard of Radian6. This Canadian-based company has used its own tools to grow their influence and broaden their customer base. Post nearly anything about the company or its employees and you will have someone stop by your site to leave a comment or lend a hand. (Disclosure: Radian6 is a partner of Fleishman-Hillard, my employer.)

Just this past weekend, Radian6 released an updated version with a new set of features. If you remember in my post 'Executing a listening plan' there are three layers to doing this well. Radian6 handles the social media/forum/micromedia data very well and helps coordinate the people layer. It does not include print news, TV or radio.

Radian's new release adds more team monitoring elements to enable multiple people to coordinate. The new release also tracks comments by integrating BackType into the system.

I think it's time to give you a tour of the product, show what it is capable of and discuss how it may fit into your listening plan (current or future).

[Feed readers please click through to the post for the video.]

I am going to do more of these videos on other measurement tools to show you what the landscape looks like. If you have a suggestion or recommendation for a future video here on Techno//Marketer, drop me an email!

For my complete library of my videos for marketers, click here.

---

To help you stay on top of what is happening in digital marketing and social media subscribe to the Techno//Marketer podcast on iTunes. Stay informed and get access to new videos first.

 If you use another podcatcher you can grab my podcast RSS feed here.

---

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, sentiment, social media, Techno//Marketer, video, Radian6

Facebook finally learns from its mistakes (or did they?)

After a few weeks of controversy over a change in their terms of service (TOS) agreement, Facebook today has announced it has apparently learned from its mistakes and will open this process up to the users. It is hard for me to fathom why this has taken such a long time given that this is what social media is all about. Why has it taken five years for the world's fastest growing social network to start listening and engaging its community?

Why has it taken five years for the world's fastest growing social network to start listening and engaging its community?

Facebook is opening up two documents for discussion. The first is basically a user's bill or rights called the Facebook Principles. The second document is a replacement to the TOS called the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Both documents are housed in separate groups that invite conversation and engagement. Once that dialogue happens, the community will vote for and against changes a la Wikipedia.

They're still keeping a nice big loophole open.

All of this is great, but the wording in Mark Zuckerberg's post about this topic is very interesting. He talks about innovation and "disruptive technologies" that "will not be subject to the notice and comment or voting requirement". So they're still keeping a nice big loophole open.

The overall management of the operation is what I see being the largest problem. Facebook's Groups are not good at handling a large conversation. It's a glorified message board. When 10,000 people respond, how do you ensure people are heard? How do you filter down the hot items? Who does that filtering? Sounds like a big hurdle that could backfire.

A couple of thoughts and questions on this move:

• The command and control approach Facebook has taken in the past seems to be dying off
  
• Still unclear what happens if something is enacted that impacts Facebook's business if they will adopt it
  
• In Facebook's five year existence, it's hard to imagine why this hasn't happened sooner
  
• How can they effectively manage thousands of points of feedback and narrow it down? Who does the narrowing?
  
• Does the loophole I note above make this futile?
  
• What are the legal implications of the community dictating policy? What if there is a conflict?
  
• Should businesses look at adopting this approach to their online engagement?
  

So, what are your thoughts on this? Are you satisfied with the new process? Do you feel they've learned from their mistakes? Let me know!

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: conversations, Facebook, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, trends, trust, Legal

The two hour minumum

I am sure that if you are in an agency, on the client side or an individual in the social media space, the following question has popped up.

How much time do I need to spend in social media each day?

I hear this being asked in meetings, presentations and see it pop up across the web. To be truthful, there is no set rule here. However, I have come up with the guideline that I'll talk about in this post for engaging clients in new work, managing existing campaigns, talking to up-and-coming bloggers, etc.

It's the two hour minimum per day.

Why two hours?

The two hour minimum comes from my experience here on the blog as well as in the agency environment. I've given this a lot of thought, but at the end of the day, I've tried different formulas to arrive here.

To give you an example, I spend around 5 hours a day personally on this blog and in my networks. This is on top of my workload and personal commitments. I've found that if I spend around two hours I can stay above water. As soon as I dip below that, my community suffers. That's what I am trying to avoid. I've backed this up through client work where that number seems to fit with our internal teams as well as client-side teams.

Two hours is the absolute minimum amount of time that a company/individual needs to spend EVERY DAY in this space.

What do you do with two hours?

Oh, trust me. Once you start engaging, two hours goes by like a speeding bullet. The following items are a good foundation on how to spend the time each day.

Listen - Check your feed reader, check your Google alerts, monitor Tweetdeck, do a Twitter search (unless you've added them into your reader), check Technorati (you never know), look at your commenting service (co.Comment/Backtype/etc.) to see who has replied to you. This isn't a one-time thing, set a schedule through the day and check back for 5 minutes.

Engage - Monitor those conversations through the day and reply as close to realtime as you can. Overnight delays are common and (I think) accepted in most cases. During the workday, however, you can make more impact by replying within 2-4 hours. If you have a blog, write a post or at least brainstorm new ideas based on what you're seeing.

Discover - Another part of the day should spawn from the listening and engagement phases. You should constantly look for new blogs, people on Twitter to follow, new relevant posts to comment on, etc.

This sounds like a lot to do in two hours, eh? It is. Remember I said this is a minimum starting point for entry into the space. The commitment will grow over time.

*Variables: Note that the complexity of your business/industry will weigh on this minimum requirement. If you have 5-10 brands, you may need to spend an hour each. This is not set in stone, just a guideline to get you thinking and talking.

What next?

Scale is important to be aware of in social media. The more success you have, the more time it will take to grow to new successes. The more you monitor, the more conversations, the more people you meet, the more time you spend.

Be aware of this and scale your two hours up to 3, 4, 5 to a full time person to a team of people. Richard Binhammer at Dell (@richardatdell) could probably teach a class on this.

Advancing from two hours

As you grow, it's crucial to maintain your level of engagement. This is a financial commitment for your client/company and needs to have accountability.

Some situations that can tell you when to scale:

• When your response time is slipping due to volume
  
• When your discovery portion of the time you're spending is limited due to listening and engaging
  
• When your customers ask you to ramp up
  

These are good problems to have by the way. It means your community is starting to embrace you and your team. The goal is to grow steadily over time for maximum results. Quick wins are few and far between. It takes real effort and dedication.

How much time do you spend each day? Please weigh in on the poll below.

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: branding, conversations, listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, research, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer

Executing a listening plan

Last week I wrote a post on the lack of listening that is taking place among top marketing executives. In my opinion, most of the problem with listening stems a lack of the right tools and a lack of an action plan for what to do with the information.

Two of my top key takeaways from that post got me thinking.

1. You have to have humans involved
   
2. You have to have an escalation plan
   

I'm a visual person, so I wanted to come up with a construct that could frame this challenge in the enterprise for further discussion. Here is what I cam up with, let me know what you think:

[Click to enlarge image.]

The data layer

The data layer has been getting a lot of attention lately. Many companies are very active in this space and provide great solutions. However, data without human filtering is useless. The key to the data layer is that you're listening to the spaces that matter and that it spans media types.

Data alone without human filtering is useless.

Aggregating news, TV, radio, blogs, micromedia, message boards, etc into a single location is becoming a necessity. People are doing this now, but the information is rarely synchronized and shared in a coordinated manner. Good filtering in the data layer can help to eliminate work in the human layer, but it's a fine line to make sure that emerging trends aren't excluded. The solutions that exist in this space at the current time are not adequate for major global brands.

The human layer

This, in my mind, is the key to success. No matter how good the data layer, you still need a human looking at it who knows the business, challenges and processes. You need to spot trends across media, uncover new innovations, and listen to what is happening with internal department responsibilities in mind.

The humans in this layer should span media formats, look for trends and spot emerging issues to flag for appropriate follow up. Within a company, these flags will need to be communicated to the right department at the right level. That's where the action level takes over.

The action layer

Listening without action is a waste of money and is one of the reasons I think more companies are not engaging. Companies are huge, siloed beasts that eat disorganization for lunch. Rolling out a listening plan is a challenge, but not one that can't be overcome.

The humans who review data need to know the structure of the organization and the people involved. In other words, these people need to be 100% integrated in the company's culture/process. They need to know the legalities of the business, HR issues, communications opportunities, brand/product feedback, how employees are engaging and representing the company and what is being said about the companies media properties.

In a company that is fully engaged in social media, this structure is VERY flat and responsive to even the smallest issues/opportunities.

Within each layer there needs to be an escalation plan. I didn't show that in this diagram, because each department will be different. You need to think about how the business operates and look at the possible issues that could arise. For each possible issue, determine who needs to know what and how fast they need to know it.

Here is an example for a consumer product company:

1. Issue is detected. What is the issue?
   
2. It's a product safety problem. How serious is it?
   
3. Lives could potentially be threatened.
   
4. Alert all heads of departments by SMS/email as well as key contacts within each department
   
5. Schedule call as soon as possible
   

A cross-functional team needs to sit across all related departments to bind this process together and ensure success. They determine alerting protocol and responses. In a company that is fully engaged in social media, this structure is VERY flat and responsive to even the smallest issues/opportunities.

Listening as step one

If you remember my post from late September "Should your company blog?" (it applies to your company/CEO/VP/or yourself), the first step in the process is listening. The more companies that take this first step and listen are on their way to a solid foundation in customer engagement. You can't start truly engaging with a strategic insight until you listen. What's stopping you?

How would you improve this? What am I missing? I'd love to have your feedback.

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: brands, listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, reputation, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, trends

You suck at listening!

Well, not you personally (I hope). A recent CMO Council study, however showed that only 16% of 400 executives they surveyed have an online listening plan in place. 56% have no plan to track of drive word-of-mouth and only 30% thought they had the ability to resolve complaints quickly. Why such a low percentage? What is stopping these CMOs from implementing a plan?

Personally, I think that creating a listening plan is pretty easy. It's what you do with the information that you are collecting that is the hard part. This is where these marketing executives are falling down.

What you do with that information once you have it? How do you get all of the other departments to commit to the initiative? How do you execute on it without losing productivity? It really comes down to creating a customer service culture, where the customer is the priority. This is not how a lot of companies operate, however.

From my post earlier in January, here are three keys to listening online:

1. Find your customer and spend your time there. While Twitter is great for some brands, you will find that message boards, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, etc. may hold the majority of your customers. If you're listening in the wrong place you're not doing any good.

2. Use technology to speed the process. Instead of watching Twitter for 12 hours a day, subscribe to the RSS feed for your keywords on Twitter Search. Do the same with keywords on Google and your Technorati page. Check this a couple of times a day. On top of that, you can overlay that information on top of the monitoring tools.

   Big tip, I've seen monitoring companies sell their services as the end-all of this area and they are not. This requires a human being who knows the industry and company to make it worth while.

3. Create your active listening plan. Listening is a good first step, but a lifetime of listening without action is not going to move the needles that you need to move for your business. Creating an plan for what to do with the information you learn is key.

   I wrote this post in February of 2007 on active listening and it still holds true today. This quote sums it up:
   

   "Agile marketing companies are leveraging new technology to create real, one-to-many and many-to-many conversations. They are using the outcome from that interaction to make meaningful, remarkable, relationship-enhancing changes that impact their clients in a positive manner. Are you listening?"

   
   

Key Takeaways

• You have to have humans involved. This is often overlooked with all of the technology that we have out there, but humans can spot trends, flag issues that matter and ignore ones that don't. Whatever automation you employ, make sure you have a smart person reviewing it.
• Have an escalation plan. Don't just listen for listening's sake. You need to know what to do when you hear something. Set action alerts when a certain criteria is met, set a clear path for issues to be escalated through and assign a person to follow up and make sure they're resolved.
• Use the community to improve your ideas. Just like the examples I mentioned in this post listening can give you insights into your customers that would otherwise cost you millions in testing and research. Listen hard and act on what you hear.

At the end of the day, listening is easy. Setting up the systems and processes that take what you hear and turn it into a business resource is the hard part. What steps would you take if you were in their shoes?

2/3/09 - IMPORTANT UPDATE: I think that it's important to note that 75% of journalists get story ideas from blogs. How can you not be monitoring the space that has this much influence over the editors who cover you? This single reason alone should be enough to get people off of their butts and starting to plan their strategy.

Also, check out Jon Burg's great follow up post "10 reasons CEOs need social insights and 6 steps to setting this up".

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, PR, reputation management, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, trends

Marketing imperatives for 2009 (free eBook)

My good friend and blogging role model Valeria Maltoni has done it again. Valeria has created a free eBook written by 12 marketers (myself included) about our execution imperatives for 2009. There are some new voices and fresh thinking inside and is absolutely worth a read.

Here are some quotes from the book and links my fellow co-authors:

• "Basic metrics you can initially use to match up before, during and after sales deltas are frequency, reach, and yield"
  - Olivier Blanchard, The Brand Builder, @thebrandbuilder
  
• "There are three imperatives for execution programs in 2009 - start with measurement, create content for the open Web and for mobility"
  - Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, @MattDickman
  
• "The foundation and core of what social media is, consists of the five C's. Conversation, community, commenting, collaboration and contribution"
  - Mike Fruchter, My Thoughts on Social Media, @Fruchter
  
• "With social media as a platform for participation, people can behave the way they were hardwired to behave in the first place - humanly, tribally"
  - Fancois Gossieaux, Emergence Marketing, @fgossieaux
  
• "Social media enhances marketing efforts as an additional indirect communication channel"
  - Beth Harte, The Harte of Marketing, @BethHarte
  
• "Companies with greater social intelligence have stronger bonds with employees and customers, and that translates into revenue"
  - Lois Kelly, Beeline Labs, @LoisKelly
  
• "Change ensures our own livelihoods - new opportunities and trends to capitalize upon, unique products and profit centers that merit development, robust innovation to leverage"
  - Christina Kerley, CK Epiphany, @ckepiphany
  
• "Social media interaction allows us to have… well, interaction with our customers. It lets us see them as people instead of statistics and it lets us hear their voices"
  - Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide, @JenniferLaycock
  
• "Goals absolutely must be built on business objectives"
  - Amber Naslund, Altitude Branding, @AmberCadabra
  
• "A proper social media education is more than just learning new tools. The most important lesson we can impart is the necessity to think 'humans'"
  - Connie Reece, Every Dot Connects, @ConnieReece
  
• "Social media isn't causing problems, but it is revealing them. And the problems aren't new; they've been around for a while"
  - Mike Wagner, Own Your Brand!, @bigwags
  
• "The secret of success in social media is a product or a service that people actually like and use"
  - Alan Wolk, The Toad Stool, @awolk
  

Take a read and let me know your thoughts. What are your execution imperatives for 2009?

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to the Techno//Marketer RSS feed in your reader or sign up to get updates FREE by email.

Technorati Tags: branding, conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, measurement, social media, Techno//Marketer, tips, trends, Valeria Maltoni