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“But the question a smart manager has to ask is, can I afford not to do this? Can I really afford not to engage with my readers? Am I willing to let the news conversation happen without my newsroom involved in it?”

- Jeff Sonderman, Digital Media Fellow at the Poynter Institute, “To Bot or To Tweet, That Is The Question” from ReadWriteWeb

Automation and social media can be a dangerous combination. With the multitude of shiny new social management tools available, it’s never been easier to “set it and forget it” across an entire digital ecosystem. Many times, after a brand sets up its initial social media presence, the tendency is to have all content sent to all channels using the least amount of resources.

Up until recently this was the approach of the New York Times. The Times has now implemented a team of social media editors in order to more directly participate in the ongoing online news conversation. This conversation extends into every business niche and major industry online. It’s unlikely that avoiding the conversation can, in any way, improve a business.

Not having any social presence is one way to avoid that conversation. Another way is having a branded presence and automating the content. There is a reason that so few of the world’s biggest brands have automated streams on Facebook and Twitter. Usually, when a social media strategy is a bot strategy, it’s going to attract bots. If a brand wants more human followers, it needs to behave like one in the social channels.

Over time, interacting actively and engaging in the space will bring more business and provide a better return on the social investment.

“It’s not ten years, not five years away, it’s a couple years away–tops–where social is literally so imbued into the experience that it’s just another ranking factor like anything else.”

- Stefan Weitz, director at Bing, “Bing’s Social Search Won’t Always Rely On Facebook ‘Likes’” from Fast Company.

This week Bing announced that it would begin to allow Facebook factors to integrate and influence its search results even more heavily than before. The move is an effort to better filter search results based on two main approval factors: friends (Facebook Likes) and the majority (“Collective IQ”). Bing’s is making social more of a integral part of its search results, rather than just an additional layer.

It’s been said that the web doesn’t have a problem of information overload, but a problem of filter failure. Both Bing and Google have recently subscribed to the philosophy of improving that filter with social data. The news is further evidence of the growing trend in helping filter the internet’s information based on the approval of experts, majorities and friends.

Digital marketing experts are often divided about directing resources towards social instead of search. If the hundreds of millions of social media users weren’t reason enough for a brand to carefully consider social, the effects those users are beginning to have on search should be. Social is quickly becoming synonymous with search. Which leads us to believe that brands that want to succeed digitally, a social strategy is no longer a question or an option, it is now essential.

“Depending on how mentions are used, there may even be an expectation that the person tagged in a comment comes and leaves a reply of their own (in other words, you can call people out).”

- Jason Kincaid, “Disqus Brings @Mentions To Comment Threads” from Techcrunch

Comments have been one of the slowest components of Web 2.0 to evolve. For what felt like forever, you had to register (often times exposing yourself to unsolicited emails) to leave a comment (for approval) that you would eventually forget about. Even the notification system of an email when someone commented on your comment, seemed roundabout.

Recently, the two largest social networks on the web have been leveraged to take comments to the level they should have been at years ago. Both Facebook’s “Comments” social plugin and Disqus (which now includes a more robust Twitter integration, including @mentions) have improved comment systems by leaps and bounds to offer social commenting.

Not only are these new improvements to the comment sphere great for marketers looking to make (tasteful) product or service plugs, but they also present a greater opportunity to unearth true influencers.

Gone are the days of counting Twitter followers and deeming someone an expert. Places like Quora and the recent comment platform improvements reveal not only who engages with the latest news or opinion bits on the web, but who now becomes an ongoing participant in a discussion and can offers insights. Consider it an additional (or even more heavily weighed) metric for the ongoing influencer algorithm. Vocal topic enthusiasts can often be the first to become vocal brand enthusiasts after they are introduced to a product or service give the stamp of approval.

Discussions online are becoming more authentic and more useful everyday. Brands should begin to consider combing comment threads as a community management best practice and use them as a place for marketing outreach and influencer discovery.

The question that everyone we talk to in our business conversations wants an answer to: “How do I measure social media ROI?” Well, it looks like the social media marketing world is starting to mature a little as we see start to see case studies and high profile stories of success. BarnRaisers is on a quest to compile 100 case studies that prove social media ROI. They’ve taken a cut at 34 in this recent post and have some interesting examples to dig into:

These 34 case studies cover B2C, B2B, profit and non-profit areas.  They include businesses big and small.  They prove social media ROI based on:

• Sales
• Shorter Sales Cycles
• New Leads
• Improved company operations
• Innovations that resulted in a better way to do business

Conclusion: Significant results are proven to occur in social media where low out-of-pocket investments lead to high ROI’s when businesses: 1) Have a clear business strategy, 2) Aren’t afraid to jump in 3) Use their imagination to make the most out of social channels, customer engagement and brand relationship.

As a digital marketing agency, we’ve always relied on the power of SEO as a star in the constellation of our service offering to help us execute successful campaigns. No matter the client or the size of the engagement, putting our clients at the top of results pages, whether organic search, paid search or social media has always been a benchmark of our collective success.

Mashable has a good article on the Facebook and Bing announced last week that allows Microsoft’s search engine to return results based on the Facebook “Likes” of the searcher’s friends. Additionally, Google recently began including Twitter updates in its search returns and has some interesting insights into how digital agencies and SEO can be leveraged to tap into results tailored to the searcher’s existing social footprint.

Of course, as with any complex question about a dynamically evolving industry, there is a caveat. While the Bing-Facebook agreement and the recent updates to Google will change elements of how we do our business, the fundamentals will remain the same. As much as innovation shapes the day-to-day processes of optimization, the core foundations of the industry remain unchanged.

For years now, successful SEO firms have not been focusing their efforts strictly on organic search results. They’ve been steadily evolving along with changes in search engines: new Google algorithms, the emergence of Bing, the development of Google Local, instant searches, paid search, and searchable Twitter feeds. At my company, we believe that to be successful, SEO firms need to become something more advanced…

brandchannel has a nice summary of the key messages that Seth Godin has been advocating recently: Savvy consumers are over-saturated with the glut of brand advertising and “no longer want to be spammed with information about a product, service, or experience; they want to feel a connection to it,” as Emily Molitor reports.

The job of CMO today, added Godin, should stand for “chief movement officer” and not chief marketing officer. In short: don’t market — inspire, lead, tap into your brand’s passions and you’ll tap into consumers’ passions and build a small and committed following that will scale through word-of-mouth.

Ford has partnered with Pandora to create a new cause-marketing campaign that allows Pandora visitors to use the platform’s social share feature to share a “mixtape” from playlists compiled by artists such as Jewel and John Legend. When a song is shared, Ford and Pandora will make a donation to the artist’s charity of choice.

Cause-based marketing campaign have sprung up all over the web this this year. From the high profile Pepsi Refresh Project to the non-profits like Feeding America, cause-based marketing campaigns have come into their own despite the lagging economy. Adweek has a good overview on some recent consumer research that suggest that consumers’ interest in corporate support for worthy causes has not succumbed to the downturn of the past several years:

Assuming companies are attuned to consumers’ attitudes in this regard, does this limit their own interest in supporting causes and making a point of letting the public know about it? “Not at all,” says Alison DaSilva, evp, knowledge leadership and insights at Cone. “Cause marketing provides a competitive advantage, not a license to increase prices. And when it does come to opting for a more expensive brand, we are still talking about one in five customers who would be willing to pay more — and even more moms and 18-to-24-year-olds. If you promised a brand manager that one out of every five potential customers would consider his or her brand, even though it was a bit more expensive than the competitive set, I think they would ask where to sign.”

Well, for starters they spend nearly a third of their time online on social networking sites and playing games.

“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.

At the Social Venture Network conference there were lots questions floating around about social media, but the one that seemed to keep coming up was: “how do I get new fans and keep them interested?” One of the successful method in the race for engagement on Twitter and Facebook has been to develop fun, creative and relevant viral tools for your fan community. This could be an application, widget, survey, poll or quiz. A great start would be to conduct the low impact exercise in developing your first Facebook quiz or poll with Quiz Creator or PollDaddy.

Just remember to ask yourself several questions before jumping in: How does this fit in with your content strategy and your brand? Who do you want to reach? What information do you want to share? What information do you want your fans to share? What can you do to encourage them to share it with their friends? Remember: It has to be fun, authentic and on brand.

NYTimes Gadgetwise: How to Create a Facebook Quiz
Quiz Creator makers LOLApps help with the instructions and we’re taking the liberty of reprinting them here:

STEP 1: Login to your Facebook account. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Click the Applications tab in the lower left corner. On the menu that pops up, click Browse More Applications at the bottom.

STEP 2: On the page of apps, there’s a Search Apps box near the upper left corner. Use that the box to search for the app Quiz Creator. I picked Quiz Creator because it’s simple to figure out and has fewer steps than some of the other quiz creators.

STEP 3: Click the Quiz Creator application. On the next page that appears, click the button Go To Application in the upper left corner. Another page will appear to ask you to allow the application to access your personal data. Click Allow. Finally, you’ll get to the page where you start creating the quiz.

STEP 4: On the first page, you’ll be asked to enter some basic information about your quiz. Follow the prompts and enter your quiz name — for example, “What kind of dog are you?” Fill in a short description of the quiz. Upload a picture from your computer to illustrate your quiz.

STEP 5: Enter the results of your quiz — golden retriever, Labrador retriever, German shepherd, French bulldog — as well as the descriptions the quiz taker will see along with their results. Follow the prompts to upload a picture to accompany each result.

STEP 6: Enter the questions for your quiz, and pair the answers with the desired result. For example:
Questions: What is your favorite food?
Answer: Anything – Labrador retriever
Answer: Caviar – poodle
Answer: Steak – German shepherd
Answer: Kibble – golden retriever

STEP 7: Click Next. This takes you to a page with a giant button: Install the Developer App. That pops open a new page. Click Allow. This is where the going gets tricky. Facebook requires lots of clicks to create the actual quiz application.

STEP 8: Go back to the previous page, where there’s another giant button: YES, I have the Developer App. Click that.

STEP 9: Take a deep breath. Exhale. You’re going to need to follow a bunch of instructions to pop up a bunch of windows. Some of them will direct you to yet other windows. The goal is to get some long, gibberish-to-you but important-to-the-computer text strings from one window, and paste them into another. Why do you even have to do that? I don’t know. Facebook isn’t the greatest at user interfaces, and it suffers as a result. Many people will abandon the process here rather than hang in there. You’re a Gadgetwise reader, though, so make me proud and curse this multi-window authentication process even as you complete it. But after a half dozen windows with instructions written by a software developer, asking you to please be patient type this into that window, you’ll suddenly have a page with your quiz displayed on it.

STEP 10: The final step in the quiz creation process requires you to invite one or more Facebook friends to try your quiz. Now you know why you get so many of them.

Using Our Powers for Good
The Social Venture Network’s Fall 2009 Conference in La Jolla this past weekend was a truly remarkable experience that seemed filled with the potential for world changing collaborations to happen and where words turned to action. It was was an amazing experience. Seeing Amy Goodman from Democracy Now engage with Arianna Huffington from The Huffington Post. Eric Utne from Utner Reader making himself  available to give me notes on love and life. Seeing venture capital firms and investors alike measuring organizations not just on their balance sheets, but on their socially responsible activities as well was refreshing.

Some of the brightest, hardest working and most passionate entrepreneurs trying to make a difference in the world today were there this weekend. They had important things to say. They are fighting for causes we all care about, that affect our lives and the lives of billions around the world. The Responsible Endowments Coalition for example, works to shift billions of dollars in university endowment funds into socially conscious and responsible investments. The Genocide Intervention Network, which empowers individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide around the world. Lots of for-profit businesses doing significant work for our environment, local communities and others in need discussed collaboration and ways to make more of an impact.

Successful companies like Seventh Generation and Birkenstock spoke on the evolution of businesses and profitability through sustainability, diversity, philanthropy, and transparent business practices. SVN is truly a place where people do business with their heads and with their hearts. Yet, it also was never more apparent to me that social media is a quickly evolving beast that remains out the grasp of many ambitious entreprenuers.

It seemed to be one of the prevailing topics quietly discussed over the weekend: how to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the online channel, attract fans and promote awareness. I was amazed to hear about the struggles these unbelievable organizations have to go through to generate engagement and activate people to join their cause even as they are do incredible work for the world.

I attended my first SVN Conference last October and came back completely energized and ready to take action, to make the business green and looking for new clients who embodied similar ideals. Since then, we’ve worked on the Barack Obama campaign with great success to spread important content to voters under 30 in the swing states utilizing social media. We worked to mobilize street teams and potential fans to see the Sundance Award winning movie FUEL by building their social media platform. Currently we are working with the non-profit Conscious Alliance, an organization that runs food drives at major festivals and concerts to donate to Native American reservations. The list is growing and I could go on and on about the impact that SVN had on me and the business.

Once again I’m completely renergized from the conference this year and see some very actionable ways that we can help our community. We here at GMS are digital channel experts and have spent substantial time researching, building, and anticipating the future of digital marketing and social media. We are further along in our thinking and experience than much of our competition and believe that our ideas, tools and processes should be used for the power of good. Couple that with the goals and objectives that SVN members are striving to achieve, we feel like we can do some amazing things together.

The SVN Fall 2009 Conference this year opened my eyes to the impact I can have on others businesses in the socially responsiblity space. Especially for non-profits looking to grow their donor lists and boost the average donation without a serious increase in infrastructure. The beautiful thing about social media is that there is huge potential to grow marketing programs with accountability, efficiency and effectiveness. To make that magical combination happen, the mission, goals,  ideas, efforts, essentially the brand, need to translate into a content strategy, get it out there and share it. Listen to what the digital inclined have to say about it and build from there. Match up those things with our tools and best practices, and the technology suddenly becomes less daunting.

We’ve been developing a social media toolkit for SVN memebers and non-profits. We’ve been building this toolkit and best practices to be easily implemented into your current marketing efforts. This subset of the GMS digital marketing platform will give a big boost to your marketing and communications efforts. Reach out and let us know how we can help you make this happen.

We will be posting more strategies, tools and tips here with you in mind. Stay tuned.