Now a buzzword that’s been kicking around for a while now as the ‘next big thing’ online is Social Commerce and these updates from Google and Bing could dramatically influence where customers now choose to shop online.

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Are Social Search Updates About to Change How We Shop Online?

Personas are making a comeback in strategic planning. As the social Internet fragments audiences understanding the coherent behaviors of the increasing number of audiences segments is becoming the critical first step in account planning. The modern use of personas as far as my research found, dates to the 1980s. Angus Jenkinson began to use them to develop the first CRM strategies as the CEO of a database marketing firm in the UK, and they were adopted by OgilvyOne as the centerpiece of their strategy development.

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Personas Are Back In Style

I’ve said it fifty times and I’ll say it again… Social media is one big relationship fueled by conversation. Conversation involves people. Real people. People that inspire, connect, talk and engage. Knowing and understanding your audience is required to truly inspire them to further engage and connect with you.

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8 Things You Must Know About Your Audience to Inspire & Connect In Social Media

Consider this question: If 60% of your emails went directly to the Spam folder, would you expect significant sales from your email? Of course the answer is no. So why do we expect sales to come from our Facebook Fan relationships? Consumers are not visiting fanpages with great frequency. Most of the traffic occurs when the brand promotes their Facebook page on their website, emails, blog and other vehicles.

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How to Ensure That Your Facebook Wall Posts are SEEN (Edgerank)

Trying to build a social shopping site outside of Facebook would be an expensive, slow and risky challenge. Not only do you have to attract users in their millions, but you also have to persuade them to start spending as much time on the site as they do on Facebook.

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Why Facebook Could Dominate the Next Generation of Ecommerce

Many people adopt the “just try it” mindset, and create an account, start posting, build a following, …and then wonder where to go from there (the classic Fire, Aim, Ready approach). That’s fine if your goal for social media is just to be social. But if you’re intending to market your business through Social Media, you should take a more deliberate approach. I call it finding your voice. Here are some practical tips for how to get there.

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Finding Your Social Media Voice

Businesses are advised every day to be transparent in social media about everything they do. This includes who is tweeting and posting, why they are doing it, and what the followers should expect. Some even call for companies to declare their intentions as if people didn’t know they wanted to sell their products and services

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Does Social Media Transparency Matter in the "Real" World?

Loyalty programs used to be a relatively simple thing. Buy a certain amount of widgets, visit a store so many times, hole punch or swipe a card, earn points, win stuff. Sure there was a bit more strategy behind those programs but I was still young enough back then to spend my Saturday mornings eating Captain Crunch and watching cartoons. (Well, some things never change…).

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Facebook: The New Loyalty Juggernaut

If you had to pick between getting tons of traffic or having a high conversion rate, which one would you pick? Most marketers churn out content for SEO rankings, build backlinks for offsite optimization and may even invest in PPC at some point. Whether your objective is to get people to buy, opt in to your list or download your content, you need to understand the significance of both.

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3 Steps to Getting More Traffic and Higher Conversions

Over the past year there has been an increased interest placed on local search and location based advertising. Sites like Yelp, Google Places and Citysearch, just to name a few, have continuously made strides in the local search market and local businesses have jumped on the wave. But no one ever talks about what happens once you have joined these directories, You’ve added your business but now what? Are you going back to check on the progress of your business? How are you measuring success?

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Beyond Local: Have You Taken Control of Your Online Reputation Yet?

You take out full page ads in major newspapers for what was surely a hefty sum trying to explain your side of the story... You then decide to give away your food, for all intents and purposes... This is wrong on so many levels it scares me... You do not under any circumstances try and "buy" back your customers' trust. This is NOT what Social Media is all about. It's about engaging your customers and the general consumer. It's about being open and honest with them at ALL times, i.e. the Red Cross.

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Red Cross And Taco Bell - A Social Media Dichotomy

According to Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang, social CRM will give businesses a way to really focus on listening to what their customers want and still have time to do business. In it’s most basic form the concept is to allow you to cross reference what your customers are saying in social media circles as individuals and as a group with what you know about them from a business standpoint.

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What’s a Social CRM Going to Do for My Business?

A recent research by ExactTarget-CoTweet states reasons why users get out of email lists, Twitter or Facebook. The US study shows that extensive messaging and little relevancy are major reasons why consumers leave Facebook pages and Twitter feed, or unsubscribes to e-mail list.

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Email, Facebook, Twitter – Why Consumers “UNLIKE” Brands

Social capital refers to a person’s access to resources and know-how through social ties on social networks. Weak ties (i.e. a casual acquaintance or friend of a friend) – not necessarily our friends – can be our greatest source of ideas and information. This post discusses three obstacles to building social capital effectively. It also provides three rules for mastering these challenges intelligently, and finally, gives two practical tips for improving your social capital ROI (return on investment).

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3 Golden Rules for Building Social Capital

Recently I had the privilege of meeting Social Media Today's co-founder and CEO Robin Carey - we were on a panel together at Opus Research's Conversational Commerce conference in San Francisco. As our panel discussed social media and customer care, Robin asked me a great question about the role of social media in rigid, regulated verticals like government and health care. The question was a good one, and got me thinking more broadly about companies that might be more "traditional", silo'd, less open, less transparent just by their heritage, their culture, or their industry. What's the role for social media in these organizations? Where to start? How to progress?

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Social Media & Rock Slides