Persuasive Picks for week of 5/14/12

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Social media breaks the mold of traditional marketing where you measured success against a balance sheet. Forbes contributor Todd Wilms explains Why Social Media is the Ultimate “Pay-it-Forward” for Marketing and provides steps to get you started.

In today’s business world, it is impossible to compete without a strong web presence to support you. Author Steve Nicholls offers 10 Essential Social Media Tips for Senior Executives in order to effectively implement social media into their businesses via IndustryWeek.

Measuring the return on investment of your social media strategy is something that still frustrates a lot of brands and marketers. Shea Bennett posts Is Social Media ROI A Reality (Or A Myth)? [INFOGRAPHIC] that takes a closer look at how we are slowly but surely getting to the ROI of social media. via AllTwitter.

Social media platforms are crucial to building customer engagement, but the vast majority of marketers haven’t incorporated that reality into their daily workflow. Marketing consultant Ernan Roman writes that Failure to Engage with Social Media Will Reduce Revenue and Increase Risk on The Huffington Post.

Persuasive Picks for week of 4/30/12

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Women Are More Social – When It Comes to Social Media, That Is writes Entrepreneur’s Mikal E. Belicove reporting the results of Nielsen’s latest State of The Media report that shows women are the alpha players on the social media playground.

In How Products Participate In Social Media, expert blogger Matt Compton explains that the evolution of the Internet and smart devices has created an amazing fabric of connected lives and now weaves together people’s connections with things, and brands are starting to “participate” in new and meaningful ways. – via FastCompany.

Freelance writer Michael Estrin says there’s no longer a question whether a brand should have a YouTube channel. Instead, the question is, what should a brand do with its YouTube channel? Here’s his 6 lessons in launching a branded YouTube Channel on iMediaConnection.

Many businesses see their social media following as a list, without acknowledging there’s a human being on the other end. James Debono at SocialMediaToday thinks that they just aren’t “getting it” and gives 10 guidelines for Marketing with Social Media – Grow A Loyal Community by Increasing Your Worth.

Persuasive Picks for week of 4/16/12

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When Deborah Sweeney, CEO of MyCorporation, started to run her own business, she never would have guessed that a day would come when she’d be expected to update the internet on her life in 140 characters or less. To help CEO’s aspiring to join the Twitter-sphere, Deborah posts her advice on Becoming a “Corporate Executive Tweeter” on SocialMediaToday.

A strong referral network is imperative for small businesses. Thanks to social networking, businesses can now connect directly with customers, enabling them to market in new more cost-effective ways. MarketingProfs guest blogger Pamela Springer provides some tips to Build a Strong Referral Network to Boost Your Business and parlay those social networks into business opportunities.

Pinterest isn’t only for women – despite its heavy concentration on all things girlie, it’s for guys, too! Pinterest has a growing audience of men who like the site – for many of the same reasons women do explains Jennifer Waters in her latest MarketWatch article Why men like social-media site Pinterest.

Doug Schumacher takes a look at some numbers around Facebook content and what kind is the most shared, and finds that video and photo posts are far more likely to be shared than status updates or links. Find out more of What consumers share on Facebook – and why in his iMediaConnection post.

Persuasive Picks for week of 4/9/12

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Relatively few brands have used Tumblr in their marketing initiatives, and only a handful have done it particularly well. Michael Estrin explains that despite its lack of traction with brands, Tumblr has a solid following with agency folks, especially creatives in Why digital marketers can’t ignore Tumblr via iMediaConnection.

Peter Himler recounts on The Flack some highlights from a recent panel of senior new graphics decisionmakers – from CNNMoney, Huffington Post, Mashable and The Associated Press – who discussed the ins and outs of the increasingly important communications paradigm of information graphics in The Rise of Infographics.

Social Media isn’t Magic – It’s about Staying Human on the Internet posts Isra Garcia on SocialMediaToday. He writes about building a process that’s aligned with business strategy and is a means of expression that makes possible for customers, communities and brands to connect and establish relationships – that is to say “staying human”.

MarketingProfs‘ Patrick Dorsey provides lessons on building successful social customer relationship management practices and explains why Social CRM offers a new way of doing business in Social Media Is Not Social CRM, but It Can Be With These Five Steps.

Persuasive Picks for week of 4/2/12

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Bored with your boards? Jennifer Van Grove of VentureBeat reviews one of the most requested features as Pinterest introduces customizable board covers – offering “pinners” the ability to choose a pin to be the cover for each board.

Tara Meehan writes that properly regulating social media shouldn’t be viewed as a negative. In fact, a compliant social media strategy can strengthen your messaging, build better relationships with existing clients and make you more attractive to potential clients. Here’s 4 Reasons Why All Companies Should Be Social Media Compliant via iMediaConnection.

Want Real Business Results From Facebook? Run a Social Campaign writes Mark Schmulen in this MarketingProfs post that provides examples of effective social media marketing via Facebook; as well as, explains how Facebook social campaigns can drive business results.

Businesses are getting more sophisticated in their use of social networking, so too are the metrics by which they measure social business ROI. As your business gets more social-savvy, Debra Donston-Miller of InformationWeek provides 5 Social Media Metrics That Matter Now that will help strengthen your metrics strategy.

Persuasive Picks for week of 3/19/12

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Pinterest released a new page design for profile pages this week – Danielle Leitch of SocialMediaToday discusses the improved functionality and advantages the new design will provide for both “pinners” and businesses alike in her post Pinterest has a New Design.

This week also brought the announcement of the integration of social media into Google Analytics, bridging the gap between social media and the metrics businesses care about. Frank Reed, Managing Editor at Marketing Pilgrim, asks Was Analytics Google’s REAL Social Media Missing Link? in his latest post that predicts marketers will be looking more closely at more social media channels and see the value of being in even more places.

As Twitter celebrated it’s sixth birthday this week, Nancy Scola set out on a quest for the origins of a hashtag and came up empty handed. In her latest post Our social-media amnesia, she discusses the access and value of archival tweets – via Reuters.

Speaking of hashtags, Todd Wasserman of Mashable focuses on 6 Successful Twitter Hashtag Campaigns that effectively harnessed Twitter in a way that provoked positive discussion and action.

Persuasive Picks for week of 3/12/12

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Does social media affect how you spend money? You betcha. Drew Olanoff of TheNextWeb says that it isn’t whether social services influence how we spend money, but how they affect our habits – and gives readers a closer look at three ways social media is doing this: influence, information, and indiscretion (yes, indiscretion).

Lisa Evans gives some expert advice on How Small Businesses Can Integrate SEO Into Their Social Media Efforts. She writes that optimizing your social media efforts so that both search engines and social community members can find your content is essential, and provides some helpful tips to integrate into your social media strategy – via ClickZ

Jason Blount posted on SocialMediaToday that Facebook Is No Longer Just Social Media – rather it has evolved into a personal representation of a user’s self and pretty soon almost every application that you use on a regular basis will integrate directly with your Timeline.

A recent report published on MarketingProfs, LinkedIn Use by Professionals in Industrial Sector Surges, shows that the use of LinkedIn among engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals continues to rise; and sites that keeping up to date with the latest business and product news and technologies is the most popular use of social networking within the tech/industrial sectors.

Persuasive Picks for week of 3/5/12

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Forbes contributor Anthony Kosner breaks down the success of YouTube’s recently Most Popular video KONY 2012, a poignant 30 minute video with over 50 million views that begs the question; can the power of social media do what foreign policy cannot?  Kosner’s piece provides  12 Lessons from KONY 2012 from Social Media Power Users including be positive, get their attention and make it personal.

Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post looks at the impact of  Social Media in the media. Has the viral nature of news accomplished anything? Read more in her piece Virality Uber Alles: What the Fetishization of Social Media Is Costing Us All

This week also brings us a creative picture painting of  The Beauty of Social Media, an infographic posted by Shea Bennett that takes a closer look at how the beauty industry has embraced Social Media, and the innovative ways the top brands are using Social Media channels in this post by AllTwitter.

For most, Social Media brings to mind Facebook or Twitter. Krista Neher points out that there are more opportunities beyond the obvious to grow brand presence in her recent post 6 Effective but Ignored Social Media Marketing Sites on ClickZ.

Persuasive Picks for week of 2/13/12

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Stephanie Shkolnik takes a look at the components critical to long-term success as you plan your social strategy in How social actually impacts your bottom line via iMediaConnection.

Social media amateur aficionado Dr Layla McCay attends five Social Media Week events and brings back Five Social Media Lessons From the Cutting Edge for The Huffington Post.

MarketingProfs‘ Chris Chariton explains why marketers should focus on content creation, online marketing, and technology in the article Five Trends B2B Marketers Need to Understand to Succeed in 2012.

Adam Vincenzini rounds up some of the latest tools and apps that are generating some buzz online in This week’s most useful new social media tools via TheNextWeb.