Word-of-mouth recommendations can move consumers to make a purchase. Word-of-blog, on the other hand, is far less persuasive. According to Mintel, 34% of US Internet users who bought a product or service based on a recommendation got that tip from a friend or relative, while one-quarter bought based on advice from a spouse or domestic partner...

Companies who don’t have iconic brands with millions of adoring fans, often have to resort to other ways to get the attention of the market. This isn’t evil, nor is it uncommon, it’s just business, and was here before the web, and will be afterwards. Don’t get mad or emotional about it, let’s break it down to understand how it’s going to work, if you’re a concerned user, use this post to figure out how to beat it. If you’re a marketer, figure out what works –and throw away what doesn’t. As a result, we’re seeing some of the same method applied to the web and email as to the social space. Here’s three examples (again in outline form) that I saw this week...

With maturing strategy models, assessment methods and new reporting and analytic tools, businesses look differently at social media compared to just one year ago. Clearly marketing was the early adopter of social media, created campaigns and explored ways to capture the attention of customers and prospects. It is less expensive than traditional advertising and at the same time more effective in getting new customer attention. But at the end the successful companies started elsewhere...

This is the second post in our three-part blog series with Rebecca Lieb, Econsultancy’s Vice President of North America. Econsultancy, the UK’s leading source of insight on digital marketing and e-commerce, has been a partner and resource to Bazaarvoice in the UK for over two years and is now launching its US office in New York City. Here, Rebecca shares her thoughts on monetizing Twitter and social media. Read the first post on growing the new US office, and keep an eye out for the next post in this series...

Over the past 4 years I have been thinking about how to get individuals involved with and participating within a community. It is not an easy thing to get a group of individuals comfortable with your site and each other to the point of participating and caring when they become a true community. While I will continue to learn, I wanted to share what I see as the phases to the development into a community and their participation. The core concept of the model is pretty simple. People need to build their trust and loyalty with a community before they will actively engage and care about it. This model proceeds through phases building on trust where interactions gradually increase in their threshold of interactivity. The five stages of the community engagement model are...

Analyst firm Next Up Research has published an extensive report on Linden Lab, the San Francisco company behind virtual world Second Life. The research is based on aggregate data and is available on SharesPost, a site set up to trade shares of privately held companies (if you register, you can download the report for free from that page, or you can find other valuation reports on companies like Facebook and LinkedIn). The report goes rather deep into the valuation of the Linden Lab, which it pegs at somewhere between $658 million and 700 million. More on that later...

It's hard to get tangible results from social media. Giants from Coca-Cola to Wal-Mart Stores have set up Web sites where customers can share their interest in the brand. But many of these sites don't attract enough visitors to form a real community or have been slammed by critics, as was the case at schoolyourway.walmart.com. The retailer killed it in 2006 after just three months. Unlike many other companies, however, Intuit seems to have figured out a way to benefit from social media...