The role of social media is critical because it helps to spread cognitive dissonance by connecting thought leaders and activists to ordinary citizens rapidly expanding the network of people who become willing to take action. Brian Solis describes this process as creating the necessary “density” of connections, writing “If unity is the effect, density is the cause.”

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Exactly what role did social media play in the Egyptian revolution?

It’s that time of week again… here’s all the news that’s fit to tweet from the social web, a lot of which has to do with Google… and also some silly stuff that we thought was funny.

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Social Media Roundup for Feb 11, 2011

We’ve all been there, you get an email from a company but are not exactly sure why.

Excerpt from:
Social Marketing: You Have to Message on Relevance

If you are reading this post you probably make a living through digital marketing or are apart of the masses that love social media. As marketers, have we ever stopped and asked ourselves how big the “masses” are? Of course, we have heard that Facebook has 600-million users. And the marketing maxim of fish where the fishes are seems to make sense. But how many of those 600-million know how to use Facebook? It sounds like a dumb question, but have you ever had to explain a Facebook function or new feature to someone?

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Social Media: Connections at a Personal Level

I spent the better part of January looking at every social media listening, monitoring, analytics, intelligence and insights firm I could get my hands on. I looked at dozens of dashboards, and reams of reports. In reality there must be hundreds of firms out there doing social media analysis in some form or another but I tried to hit the most popular ones with the single-minded goal of finding a firm that could deliver the most strategic value from the 2+ years of social media data that’s out there.

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Monitoring vs Analytics [Infographic]

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10 Tips to Inspire Your Audience to Take Action in Social Media

While we are what we say in our Tweets, our bios also reveal a telling side of who we really are. In this study we reviewed the complete bios of 50,000 of the top @Starbucks followers to learn a bit more about how they present their life story as well as their interests, opinions, and preferences.

Originally posted here:
The Interest Graph on Twitter is Alive: Studying Starbucks Top Followers

To many entrepreneurs, becoming active on social networks is an after-the-fact strategy.

A busy online community has been a remarkably effective engine of growth. By enabling customers to freely exchange experiences, CareOne helps shatter suspicions that dissuade people in debt from seeking professional help. In fact, the conversion rate of prospects who have signed in to the CareOne Community is a remarkable seven times higher than that of non-members.

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CareOne Cashes In On Community

TV

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Groupon in the Red Zone

Is it really possible to measure the impact and quantify the

One of the more fascinating sessions was the first, which touched on how social media is offering a continuous feedback loop for organizations, particularly when it comes to customer service. As Pete Blackshaw (@pblackshaw), formerly of NM Incite but recently (as in Friday) named Nestle’s Global Digital Chief, said: "Customer service is THE #1 driver of organizational external communication.” The audience couldn’t seem to agree more.

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Bridging the Marketing/Customer Care Divide - Thoughts from #C32011

As a marketer I get most frustrated when I see missed opportunity. In my opinion the ads of the Super Bowl were filled with missed opportunity. From social networking, accurate representation of the charities they support, to emotionally connecting with an audience. These in my humble opinion are big misses. Intentional or not, they were missed.

Originally posted here:
Super Bowl Ads 2011: Missed Opportunity to Connect & Inspire

So while I may have been the only dork at the party watching the ads so closely, the moment I hopped on Twitter I found hundreds of other nerds like me watching and commenting on the ads. They were barely watching the game and picking apart every ad…. I’ve never been so happy to see a Twitter feed!

The rest is here:
The Groupon Debacle, Twitter Nerds, and Who Was Missing From The Superbowl.