ZDNET — When one thinks of Cirque du Soleil, beautiful imagery and athleticism come to mind long before the nitty gritty business operations. The team at Cirque du Soleil works hard to maintain these images and the mystique that go with every one of its shows. However, just as many businesses are these days, the company is using a mix of blogger relations and social network outreach to help grow attendance for all of its home and traveling shows...

BRANDSAVANT — I’ve gotten a ton of response to yesterday’s piece on the hidden bias of sentiment analysis (thank you!) with a lot of folks chiming in one way or the other on the current state of automated sentiment analysis. Some of you, quite correctly, sent me messages that went something like: "OK, smarty-pants, how would YOU do it?" I can’t give you the smarty-pants answer to this, but I CAN give you one alternative to tackle the problem today...

RADIAN6 BLOG — The social phone. It seems like a fairly simple concept, right? That’s essentially what a phone is, a tool or channel that allows people to connect to one another. We look at social media as the social phone – it’s the place where people can "call up" the brands and companies they want to talk to, to chat customer service and much, much more. And right now, it’s the responsibility of brands and companies to answer the social phone and talk with their customers over the channels they choose to use to communicate. The good folks at The Social Customer put together a comprehensive ebook that hones in on the essence of customer service and the idea of answering the social phone, and we’re glad we could be a part of its creation...

PR 2.0 — Perhaps the most difficult aspects of Social Media to embrace are the changes in our behavior and overall philosophy it necessitates in order to earn relevance and ultimately prominence in consumer hearts, minds, and markets. Simply put, Social Media makes us vulnerable and officially ends an era of perceived control threaded by the illusion of invincibility. Everything we thought we knew and valued is now in dire need of reassessment. We are entering into a time when we are affected by voiced sentiment in the public spotlight and backchannels of the social Web. What we hear, see and observe can and should touch us...

TOP RANK ONLINE MARKETING BLOG — If you run an ecommerce business, chances are your customers – regardless of their age, gender or economic status – are active on social networks and social media sharing sites. Just consider the statistics from social media monitoring site Pingdom...