EMARKETER — Marketers and other corporate communications professionals may sometimes feel they have a thankless task: carefully craft messages about their company’s thought leadership, social responsibility efforts and new product or service launches, only to find those messages distorted as they’re disseminated through the media. PR and communications firm Burson-Marsteller analyzed more than 150 messages sent out by companies in the Financial Times Global 100 list of firms and discovered a large gap between the messages that went out and how they were covered on blogs...

EMARKETER — A key element that makes earned media trustworthy for many consumers is that it can’t be bought -- it represents someone’s sincere opinion. The authenticity of word-of-mouth has been scaled up by social media and other online tools, but it appears many social content publishers are willing to form relationships with marketers that would move their endorsements from the "earned" to the "paid" column. Social media advertising company IZEA surveyed Twitter users, blog writers and other social media publishers about their openness to sponsorship of their social content...

MARKETINGPROFS — Content marketing is now a well-established, core marketing strategy in the B2B marketplace, with B2B marketers considering content integral to their marketing mix: 9 in 10 organizations say they market with content, according to a new study from MarketingProfs and Junta42 titled B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends. B2B marketers are committing time, resources, and budget to the discipline of content marketing, the study finds:...

EMARKETER — Several studies have shown that while social brand followers are interested in deals, they have other reasons to connect. Many also want to stay up on the latest news or show their friends which products they support. ExactTarget’s "Subscribers, Fans and Followers" report found Facebook users who "like" brands are even more likely to place importance on showing off their brand choices to friends than brand followers on Twitter or subscribers to opt-in marketing emails...

NIELSEN WIRE — Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. "Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie," said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin...