Every week, advertising publication Creativity Online delivers a weekly round-up of the top 20 latest and greatest creative marketing campaigns. This week, Creativity Online released its current AdCritic Top 20 list with the Gap “Born to Fit” campaign situated at number one: http://borntofit.com. The Facebook hub for Gap’s “Born to Fit” 1969 premium jeans, the website provides an excellent example of how to execute an effective Facebook Page to promote a product or service.

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We all know that social web matters to businesses, but many companies are struggling to find ways to jump in and figure out who is going to manage it.  The social web allows businesses to engage and develop relationships with customers – to share opionions, feedback, knowledge, and hold conversations.  But immediacy is at the heart of the social web, especially when it comes to defusing any negative buzz in the online space.  It’s imperative to find and/or hire people who are willing to make participating in the social networks one of their number one priorities.  Here are some helpful skills that a social marketing manager must have:

1) Understand how people interact, network and talk in the social space

2) Strategically build optimized profiles on key, appropriate sites

3) Know where the brand’s customer hangs out, and how to speak with them depending on the channel

4) Listen more than s/he talks.  It’s about tracking and learning from the conversational flow.

5) Be alert to opportunities, ideas and suggestions that can lead to desirable new products or innovative changes to current ones.

EDU Interactive recently attended PR Newswire’s panel discussion: “Industries in Flux: Media and Public Relations and the Impact of Social Media.”  Here is a brief overview of some of the important discussions:

* Social Media should not be considered a campaign, but a strategy to build relationships.

* The level of engagement should be the true measure of success, not simply the number of fans, members, or followers.  It’s the time spent, level of interaction, intimacy, and influence.

* Social media should not be used to outright promote a company or product.  Instead it should be used to share expertise, build relationships, create a conversation, and/or be more human.  What is your ultimate goal?

* 60% of people online use social media.  93% believe companies should have a presence in social media.  85% want to interact with select companies and/or brands and 56% feel closer to a brand when they have the opportunity to interact.

Are you interested in raising money for your favorite charity?  Consider getting your message out on one or more social media sites.  Many charity websites reach only those affected by or interested in a particular issue.  They “preach to the choir.”  But social networking sites reach out to everyone, and messages spread quickly.

As noted in the article “Can Twitter and Facebook Help Fight Breast Cancer?” , one of the reasons that social networking posts are so effective in soliciting charitable contributions is that posts are short and sweet.  Readers from all walks of life are more apt to read messages on Twitter or Facebook than other websites because space is limited and messages are “to-the-point.”  Readers are gently “nudged” into making small donations within the framework of their day-to-day lives. 

Many of us are looking for ways to support causes that are especially meaningful to us or to others in our social circles.  Getting the word out on broad social media sites gives more and more people the opportunity to answer the call to give.

Is it a meaningless marketing buzzword? Or is it the new conventional wisdom? The term has become so widespread that some people use it, with no real understanding of just what it means. Perhaps that is because there isn’t an official definition for “Web 2.0” and it can mean radically different things to different people.

Here’s Wikipedia’s definition for the term: “Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services–such as social-networking sites, blogs, and social bookmarking— which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web.”
So what does this mean? And what started the “Web 2.0” revolution?

The concept of “Web 2.0” was born during a conference in 2004 with O’Reilly Media and Media Live International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O’Reilly VP, noted that the dot-com collapse in 2001, had marked a turning point for the web. There were more and more new and exciting applications and sites popping up every day, such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, social software, web application programming interfaces (API’s) and online web services (ie. eBay). Most of all, the way people were using the web had changed significantly. These websites take advantage of web application technologies and give web users the ability to collaborate and share their experiences, views, opinions and interests while they surf the web.
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