As recent article by Flowtown on How Are Companies Leveraging Social Media sparked my interest.

Ever wonder how big businesses are leveraging social media? Burson-Martseller recently released a report highlighting the Fortune Global 100 companies and how they were using social platforms including: Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We have complied a graphic illustrating the most interesting of their findings:

This past year Apple managed to get their product placed in over 40% of the movies that enjoyed at least one weekend atop the box office, Abe Sauer at The Awl reports in a great piece about Apple’s product placement success.

Down from the year prior when it was in 50% of the top movies, but it was good enough to make it the brand with the most product placements. What’s more impressive is the brands Apple beat out such as Ford or Pepsi, which have been atop the list in many recent years. As Abe points out, it’s especially impressive to beat Ford, since it’s easy to put a taxi cab with a Ford logo in a movie.

More impressive than all those product placements over its rivals is the price Apple pays, which would be ZERO. According to the Abe,“Apple does not pay for any of this exposure.” Set decorators want their sets to look realistic, so they need computers.

The problem here: 12% of the homes in the U.S. have Apple computers, says Abe. So, there’s clearly a bias. What’s more, Apple computers managed to find their way into places that just don’t have Apple computers normally, like hospitals and government offices.

These numbers also don’t include the mountain of other films and TV shows, from Macs on Regis and Kelly and Jimmy Fallon’s desks to the Mac grotesquerie of The Office and 30 Rock. Fruity logo out front, advertisement aglow.

For one month in 2009, product placement tracking service Nielsen IAG noted 62 total “occurrences” of Apple products, more than any other brand, including AT&T (59), Coca-Cola (55) or Ford (41). Playboy, even with a whole show crafted around its brand name, logged a comparatively paltry 21 occurrences.

Apple is essentially like Hollywood itself, beautiful, expensive and not at all representative of reality. And just like disbelief is suspended when Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt portray normal people, Apple product placement is dismissed as creative license.

I’m a PC.

Facebook just expanded its performance advertising program, to include “thousands” of new cities in its self-serve advertising tool, giving advertisers the ability to target users across the United States and around the world. For small businesses already using the service, this information could potentially help boost ROI (which is what we all want in the end, right?)

As Eric Eldon explains;

Facebook isn’t giving a full list of which cities have been added, nor in which countries — so marketers, go have a look at the tool for yourself. We’ve been covering how these ads can be particularly valuable for local businesses who only need to reach people in their area. We expect this update to be especially valuable for them.

The change may not seem that big. But in our recent analysis of Facebook’s revenues for 2009 and 2010, we reported that local advertising is a significant way that Facebook is making money already, and one of the most promising areas for it to expand. Thousands more cities could have a dramatic effect.

Suggested Best Practices for Advertising on Facebook

1. Identify your advertising goals
2. Targeting
3. Keyword Targeting
4. Make your product stand out
5. Keep your ad simple
6. Use a strong call-to-action
7. Use an image
8. Landing pages
9. Keep the user experience in mind
10. Evaluate your campaign performance and make the necessary changes

Get started with your Facebook Ads here, or ask me about setting up a social media campaign for your business.

Have you been seduced by the influx of influence and power in social media? So much so, that you think it’s the magical potion needed to fix your slumping sales and turn your sinking ship around?

The reality Zimmerman points out is that social media can’t fix existing business issues, nor is it a sure-fire solution for achieving business or marketing objectives. Social media can be an enabler and an accelerator of existing core capabilities, values, attributes, and plans. It can even be a catalyst for change. But it can’t magically create what doesn’t exist.

Knowing what social media can’t do will help manage your expectations and those of your stakeholders, thereby enabling you to dig beyond the surface hype and get to the hearty matter of what is truly possible.

• Social media can’t substitute for marketing strategy. – Without a marketing strategy and objectives, there can be no real measurement for results that support and advance your business goals.
• Social media can’t succeed without a genuine focus on your customers. – Social media is about listening, engaging, and responding to your customers. If you are not truly focused on your customer, you will not succeed — period.
• Social media can’t be a one-off project. – A successful social media initiative is not a one-and-done deal.
• Social media can’t work without organization alignment. – There needs to be an understood process for communication when “stuff” happens, as well as consistency in messaging.
• Social media can’t change the inherent popularity, appeal, or success of your brand. – Really cool, fun, and even memorable marketing can’t save a bad product, service, or something that no one really needs or wants. If your product is broken, even the greatest social media strategy or program can’t fix it.
• Social media can’t replace experienced digital marketing expertise. – A successful social media effort integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital, and PR.
• Social media can’t be successful without a realistic level of investment. - It incorporates a host of tools, technology applications, design, and so forth. Strategy development, socially interactive websites, mobile apps, Facebook pages, monitoring tools, analysis, not to mention the time and effort to maintain these elements on an ongoing basis.

Social Media Marketing takes a lot of hard work, creativity, experience, and substance.

Threadsy is an aggregation tool that pulls email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and IMAP as well) together.

Threadsy also aggregates your Facebook Inbox as well as Twitter. One of the nice usability features was that it did manage to aggregate accounts nicely and order them in the proper fashion.

A TC50 startup and runner-up in 2009: Threadsy is a fresh online communication experience that lets you discover more about people while exchanging messages.

It pulls together your existing accounts and enhances them with relevant information from social networks and the public web. The effect is a brand new flavor of communication harmony.

Threadsy is free and works right in your web browser, there’s no need to download anything ever. It works with your existing email addresses, Facebook, and Twitter.

• manage all your messages in one place
• pull your accounts together into a fresh, enjoyable experience
• focus on the people
• discover more about people you exchange messages with

So what does it look like once you’ve setup your accounts? – A nice clean, consolidated inbox:

My experience Threadsy has been good so far and would recommend it to moderate/heavy email/social users looking to consolidate accounts and manage their valuable time more efficiently.

I have 10 invites to join their private beta: be quick! http://bit.ly/d8rzaN and let me know your experience.

With the economy and spending in decline small businesses are flocking to adopt social media marketing strategies to level the playing field in the local markets. With SMB’s social media usage increasing from 12% last year to 24% this year, common usage of social media among small business was a company page on a social networking site, followed by posting status updates.

As eMarketer explains: Most small businesses say they are just breaking even with their current usage of social media, but a solid one-fifth find it profitable already. Businesses are positive about the potential as well: Nearly one-half believe it will make them money in the next 12 months, and another 39% think they will break even on it. Just 9% think social marketing will continue to be a losing proposition.

Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service.

Overall, more than half of all respondents felt that social media lived up to their expectations. One-half felt it took up more time than they realized, but only 6% claimed negative comments on social media had hurt their business.

How has social media affected your small business?

Using Plain Language to Increase Profits

“Plain language is the use of proven writing and design strategies that make it easy for your intended audience to understand and use your information.” – Deborah S. Bosley

After attending a recent Big Council meeting, Deborah S. Bosley, Ph.D., and Principal in The Plain Language Group, presented a variety of strategies for decreasing “communication confusion” by creating/displaying written information in plain language. This concept, basic at its core, is ever-so important in this socially responsible era where brands need to be clear in their messaging. Plain language makes it easy for people to do business with you — directly resulting in increased profits and trust in your company.

Using Plain Language in your Marketing Message

How does language affect your bottom line? Stated plainly: people are 84% more likely to trust companies that use jargon-free language. In the world of Internet Marketing acronyms are common jargon. From CPC to PPC to SMM to SEO, we sometimes forget that our readers do not always know what you know (content), understand words/vocabulary (define), know what to do (process), or feel comfortable (emotionally) especially with new information.

Direct Benefits for your Marketing Materials:

• improves communication
• builds trust
• saves time & money
• more likely to be read / responded to
• clarifies issues / fewer questions
• tells readers what they want to know

Memorable quotes:

Complex writing makes smart people look dumb.

No one ever complained that a company’s information was too easy to understand!

Sell customers what they need, not what you want them to buy.

Communicate unto others as they would communicate to themselves.

As Stuart Foster states; established and recognized brands have pre-existing beliefs, feelings and ideas around them. After all, they’ve spent millions of dollars pushing their message on consumers to think a certain way about their company.

What makes you think you can change perception without a conversation strategy and creative concepts acting on behaviors?

Solution: Simplify your messaging, offerings and marketing. If someone can’t grasp the basic concept of what your brand stands for in 140 characters? It’s time to get out some scissors.

Expect your content to be remixed, just make sure it doesn’t lose its meaning and power.

How do you use language in your marketing materials? What businesses use plain language well?

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil – Truman Capote

With the first traffic reports of 2010 going live on compete today, we get a clear picture of engagement activities online with no surprise that Facebook is now the number two most popular site in the U.S., drawing nearly 134 Million Unique Visitors in January, 2010. At the current pace of adoption and engagement, it should pass Google within the year, but I still have faith that Buzz will gain momentum in the space over the next few months.

While eyeballs are newsworthy, the real story is engagement, especially in the ongoing battle for those coveted big brand dollars. On this front, Facebook is second to none. Check out how monthly Attention (Time spent on Facebook.com as a percentage of all time spent online each month) ramps over the past year for Facebook, while both Yahoo and Google show a decrease. In January, 11.6% of all time spent online was spent on Facebook (compared to 4.25% for Yahoo and 4.1% for Google).

It’s interesting that people are migrating to their personal networks for information and online entertainment. How has this affected your site traffic and/or relationships with friends and clients whom your connected with on Facebook?

With the tremendous amount of user generated content, twitter is a gold mine for raw data and the ability to track emerging trends. As I watched the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver last night, it was interesting to watch this major events trend on twitter as the graph illustrates.

From web applications to iPhone apps the availability to track everything from hashtags to keyword specific niches. This data is invaluable for targeting customers in the now and long into future.

1. Twitter Search (Duh!)  - This is the easiest way to track trends – in fact it’s the official spot!
2. TweetGrid - Allows you to create a search dashboard along with the ability to view a trending 3×3 dashboard.
3. TwitScoop – It’s “Hot Trends” List allows you to search and follow what’s buzzing on twitter in real-time.
4. TwitURLy – Displays twitter’s hottest memes in a Digg-like style (Tweets = Votes).
5. Trendistic – A visual interface allows you to see trends in twitter
6. Tweetmeme – The epicenter for link sharing on twitter.
7. Monitter – One of the best ways to track trends in real-time.
8. Hashtags – As the names states; track’em and graph’em here.
9. Twubs – Twitter groups built around content aggregated from #hashtags.
10. DailyRT – The most popular retweets on the web presented for experts and novices.

Everyday you are almost guaranteed to find someone talking about the smallest niche. With over a million tweets generated an hour I’m interested in hearing how you track twitter trends?

One of the biggest concerns in social media is TRUST.

As social media scams continue to plague networks, it relates to identity theft, brand hijacking, privacy issues, and the opportunity social media creates for criminals to “friend” their potential victims in order to create a false sense of trust and use that against their victims in phishing or other scams.

Do you trust the link on that tweet or short URL?

A recent post from TechRadar points out that:

Some startling web-based statistics have been unearthed in a new report, which shines a light on just how corrupt parts of the internet are. According to Websence Security Labs the majority of what we see online and receive through email has links to spam and contains malicious code. In fact, 95 per cent of user generated content is generally spam or dangerous links and 85 per cent of emails sent are no more than 419 scams cunningly disguised – or not so cunning if they begin: “dear friend”.

Stat attack

In the findings, it was also noted that 71 per cent of websites which contain malicious material are legit sites which have been compromised. And of those attacks, 35 per cent will have a data-stealing code embedded.

There’s definitely a significant rise in compromised websites, with Websence Security Labs reporting that there has been a 225% rise in dangerous websites, when comparing the second half of 2009 to the second half of 2008.

Friends; David Kyle of Planet Search exposed the iJango Scam early last year, and Keith Schilling of On Top Results exposed LocalAdLink as a scam as well.

A website I found recently to do a quick search on a company/service is simply: “Is this a scam?”

• If you are wondering if an ad, email, or miracle cure is a scam? Ask them and see the results.

Do you have any sites or horror stories of social media scams? Please leave a comment.