What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

Social Media CRM: What Are the Rules of Engagement? Editor's note: we offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products. Uses and gratifications theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedi Uses and gratifications theory (UGT) is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centered approach to understanding mass communication.[1] Diverging from other media effect theories that question "what does media do to people?", UGT focuses on "what do people do with media?"[2] This communication theory is positivistic in its approach, based in the socio-psychological communication tradition, and focuses on communication at the mass media scale.[3] The driving question of UGT is: Why do people use media and what do they use them for? UGT discusses how users deliberately choose media that will satisfy given needs and allow one to enhance knowledge, relaxation, social interactions/companionship, diversion, or escape.[4][5][6]

Seth's Blog: The bandwidth-sync correlation that's wor Check this out. Every once in a while a cool graph pops into my head. Here are a dozen or so forms of communication, arranged on two axes. On the horizontal, they rank from asynchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are separated in time--like a letter) and synchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are in real time proximity to each other--like a phone call). Up and down, I've charted the quality of the medium. Quality in terms of density of information exchanged.

Diffusion of innovations The diffusion of innovations according to Rogers. With successive groups of consumers adopting the new technology (shown in blue), its market share (yellow) will eventually reach the saturation level. In mathematics, the yellow curve is known as the logistic function. Five Conversations You Should Care About Do you monitor social media for mentions of your brand? Is that all you're looking for? If so, you're just getting started. You'll get more out of your listening activities if you cast a wider net.

26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog Nothing makes a blog post more eye-catching than a great header image, but not all publishers have artistic talent. And even accomplished digital creatives often crave some found material to start from or work with in a project. Luckily for all of the above, sources abound for finding a compelling photo to grab your readers' eyes and draw them in, or to locate fresh multimedia to remix. Creative Commons search You may be familiar with the Creative Commons free licenses that aim to give creators more freedom to allow sharing and remixing of their content. 5 Ways Traditional Media is Going Social Woody Lewis is a Social Media Strategist and Web Architect. He authors a blog at woodylewis.com about social media strategy for newspapers. Social media has infiltrated nearly every aspect of our public and private lives, from the White House providing access to its official photostream to a coffee shop that takes orders via Twitter. Businesses have been quick to respond, adopting new and sometimes radical processes while keeping an eye on earnings that reflect the poor economy. As faltering brands look for new strategies, and the newspaper industry desperately searches for a way to keep a portion, if not all of its print business alive, traditional media companies are using social media to engage their audiences.

- Fluid’Advance – by Brieuc Saffré Here is a very nice slideshow on « How to create advocacy and conversation ». I saw it on Paul Isakson’s blog (another great strategist even if it’s not him who did this presentation). I wanted to point out these two slides because they sound the most relevant to me. ESPN Responds to Criticism and Publishes Social Media Policy Twitter is a strange animal. One man can tweet about an official change in ESPN's Twitter policy, and the world can respond. In fact, that's what happened earlier today when we reported on Ric Bucher's tweet that ESPN was "prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN." Just a few short hours later, the situation has bubbled up to a point where ESPN has publicly responded to the situation, going so far as to share their addendum to their rules and guidelines for social networking - the memo at the center of the whole ordeal. In fact, ESPN took to Twitter to tweet their official statement to us, well me specifically, and it's not only refreshingly honest, but the method of response was certainly well received.

5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business Samir Balwani is an emerging technology strategist at Morpheus Media, a firm specializing in Social Marketing, SEM, and SEO. You can follow him on Twitter @samirbalwani and get his newsletter. One of the biggest misconceptions with online marketing is that social media is only for large brands. Truthfully, a small business that invests its time wisely can improve customer (or client) loyalty and traditional word of mouth marketing efforts. Social media is useful for almost every type of business. Cafes, retail stores, and even professional services can build their online reputation and increase trust.

7 Keys to Creating Social Media Strategy for Your Brand In the past few weeks I’ve experienced a decent amount of spam from social networking sites ranging from people marketing their books, selling “make money online” information, to promoting their personal brand. It’s indicative of the fact that individuals and businesses are viewing the space seriously as it takes on the mainstream spotlight. There are many ways to utilize social media to boost your brand. 3 Keys to Improve Your Brand in Social Marketing Many businesses continue to operate under the assumption that a website, a basic product offering or great brochure will bring profits and revenue to their bottom line. Those days are over. Brands are now crossing over into the hybrid marketing era that incorporates some form of social media. You already know the importance of product, price, placement and promotion, but none of that matters without people.

Brand vs. Brand Relationship: Let’s Not Confuse Them Last night on our weekly PR 2.0 chat on Twitter (anyone can join this weekly chat Wednesdays at 8pm EST. Search on hashtag #pr20cat and join in!), we discussed branding and PR 2.0 and why PR folks (and marketers, that's a topic on integration for another day!)