Social media has exploded as an industry and changed the way businesses interact with their customers. Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are drawing millions of people into active participation—and when you find millions of engaged people, you’ll find plenty of businesses trying to convince them to part with their money. For all the altruistic talk of companies connecting with human beings (that’s the social) the endgame is always going to be revenue (that’s the marketing).

Sometimes, however, the marketing and the social aspects fail in colossal fashion. And when that happens, we can all learn from and laugh at their mistakes. Here are six of the biggest crash-and-burns in the last 10 years of social media marketing.

Continue reading 6 Household Brands That Got The Taste of Social Media Backlash

Posted in Social media

As marketers we often get excited about any way we can generate more exposure, interest and visibility to our messages. No surprise then that the social bookmarking services have been rushed by an influx of commercial messages, “gaming” and reciprocal voting.

Of course the services have reacted with their algorithms and measures to counter marketing tactics. Could your account get caught up in the crossfire?

Continue reading Are Your Social Bookmarking Efforts Backfiring?

Posted in Social media

Small businesses have the most to gain by using social media because

1. They tend to have smaller advertising budgets
2. The owner tends to be more engaged in the business
3. Larger companies are moving slowly and have more bureaucracy

With this in mind I can only think the main thing holding small business back is either fear of the unknown or lack of ideas for what to do. Fact is social media need not take up a great deal of resources if you are careful. Here are some social media tactics anyone can do in an hour or less …

Continue reading Quick Social Media Tactics for Small Business

Posted in Social media

Social Media is a growing business fascination, and determining a strategy is fast becoming a critical element of any marketing  plan. I am in favor of strategy as much as the next person. In fact, helping people with their social media strategy is one of the ways I make a living. Problem is, much of the time I feel focusing on “Social Media” is missing the point, could it be we are elevating a tactic higher than it should go?

Continue reading Is Social Media Strategy Missing the Point?

Posted in Social media

A few months ago, you probably heard rumblings about what I like to call The Great Twitter Authority Debate, in which bloggers from all spheres argued everything from the merits of an authority-based search to even what “authority” means.

I haven’t come across a more divisive marketing issue in a long time.

And I won’t lie. It’s been entertaining.

But mostly, it’s been interesting.

Continue reading Twitter and The Great Authority Debate

Posted in Social media

Thank you for all of last week’s twitter contest 2009 entries. The winners will be announced on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009. And for all of those who did not get a chance to enter last week, no worries, because this week you have an opportunity to win more great prizes including a 1 month FREE membership to SEOBook training program, an iPod Touch, and Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide. You have until January 30th to enter this phase of the contest:

How to Enter:

1. Follow either @khalidh or @ayat.

2. Tweet the best business decision YOU MADE in 2008 with hashtag #best08.

3. Tweet this contest to others, because the more entries we get, the more prizes will be added (last week mid way through the contest we added a guest post from Chris Garrett on a winners blog and 1 month free membership to the SEOBook training program).

Continue reading TWITTER CONTEST#2: YOUR Best Decision of 2008

Posted in Social media

It’s been a month since I’ve taken initiative to become an active member of the twitter community; otherwise known as twitterville or tweeplevilee, or whatever else you’ve dubbed it.

A few revelations:

Continue reading twittercapades2: Revelations

Posted in Social media

Wow, it’s crazy to think how long it’s been since I’ve written a decent post. Well a lot has been going on with work so I’ve been swamped with no time to scratch my head and reveal my gems of wisdom to y’all. It’s not a slow day today, but I’m burnt out and I need an outlet, so I figure blogging may help (especially before I have to head home and enter the grind of kids, cooking, and the likes).

First off, I’ve been twittering regularly now. I hesitated to start a few months back, but have been inspired to take it on. I wanted to share with you a few things I noticed:

Continue reading twittercapades

Posted in Social media

“Why am I not getting any traffic from stumbleupon?”

I hear this a lot, and most urgently from people who were previously doing very well with StumbleUpon traffic. So what is the answer?

Continue reading The StumbleUpon Law of Diminishing Returns

Posted in Social media

Its about that time we talk a little about using Social Media to our benefit, not with help from somebody else but with our own efforts. In this series I will as usual talk about the 3 major social media contenders : Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. I would love to talk about Mixx as well but as of this point Mixx just doesn’t convert the time and effort into meaningful results. However, follow some of the tips that you will find here and integrate it with Mixx and I am sure it will work.

The approach to building a social media profile is pretty much the same, its just a different platform and different way of handling what comes your way. I have been using the 3 top social media services for a while and am labeled as a “power user” on all of them.

Continue reading 5 Naughty Tips To Boost Your Digg Profile – Part I

Posted in Social media