Thought Labs Blog

At the New Marketing Summit yesterday, someone said "Social Media is a commitment, not a campaign". This has been said over and over again in books like Groundswell, at conferences, and in countless blog posts. But the majority of businesses still act as if they can dip their toe in the water and then leave if they don't get results right away.

Part of the commitment is building trust between a brand and its consumers. Consumers want to know that the brand is sincere and will be active before they will invest their time. If brands prove this to them with consistent action and dedicated resources, consumers will give back tenfold.

For example, Start Up Blog posted a recent article entitled "On Social Networks, Give and You Shall Receive". They detail the case of Train Signal, an IT training company. Iman Jalali, Train Signal's director of sales and marketing, said "I really feel like a company blog should be treated as its own living, breathing entity, rather than a chore. It should make you feel like you walked into the company's office and you now have a personal connection with that company." Because of this, they have a very active blog, with customers contributing new topics daily. Train Signal also follows the same process on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Consumers want to get involved with brands. Businesses who commit to developing relationships with those consumers will be the ones who are successful in the world of Social Media.

Tags: Blogs, Social Media, Twitter

Facebook reported yesterday that they are new Events API calls that will

"...allow applications to create, modify, and cancel events, as well as submit a user's RSVP to any event that the application created.

With an active session and the appropriate extended permissions, your application can manage your users' schedules for any events created through your application. These events appear on their profiles alongside all their other events, so they can easily keep track of what's coming up as well as invite more friends. Applications that could take advantage of this include those that manage personal events and those that host events."

They've also updated the events APIs to be sessionless as well.

Tags: Facebook

Techcrunch is reporting that sometime tonight Facebook will be offering users more filters for their newsfeed. It remains to be seen how this will affect viral channels. Currently there are only a few filters available so this will open it up some. It may also make it more difficult for applications.

Tags: Facebook