A SHEL OF MY FORMER SELF — Augie Ray speaks with FIR co-host Shel Holtz about "The ROI of Social Media Marketing," a new research report that goes beyond the financial measures to address a variety of ways to assess the impact of companies’ social media efforts. According to Forrester, "Social media marketing delivers a wide range of benefits to organizations that are beneficial in the short term and long term in ways both quantitative and qualitative. To properly value the impact of their social media marketing investments, interactive marketers must align their objectives, metrics, targets, and strategies across four perspectives -- the financial perspective, the digital perspective, the brand perspective, and the risk management perspective"...

A SHEL OF MY FORMER SELF — In yesterday’s post, I took issue with critics of a marketing campaign that directed those who saw the ads to the company’s Facebook page. If the company knew what they were doing -- that is, they were being strategic -- and the campaign achieved its goals, then it was a smart move...

A SHEL OF MY FORMER SELF — Despite a flood of recommendations to create one, there are still a lot of companies without policies that let employees know their obligations when engaging in social media. One survey from last August found that one in three lacked policies. A Deloitte survey from just a few months earlier pegged the number at half. And just this month, according to a study from Cisco Systems, only one in 5 companies have formal policies. It doesn’t matter whose numbers are most accurate. Any way you look at it, a lot of companies are without policies. The reasons to have a policy are just common sense...

A SHEL OF MY FORMER SELF — Chris Brogan is a well-known name in the social media world through his prolific blogging and speaking, his involvement with organizations like and now with the book he has co-authored, “Trust Agents.” On the eve of the launch of “Trust Agents”, blogger Leah Jones questioned Brogan’s trustworthiness after he accepted a consulting assignment from Sony, a client with which he first made contact at the Consumer Electronics Show, which he was visiting as part of a blogger outreach campaign marketing firm crayon managed for its client, Panasonic. In this interview, Chris discusses the issue and talks about the book...

A SHEL OF MY FORMER SELF — If your reading was restricted to social media purists, you’d think that PR and marketing had no role left to play, that the rise of the trusted peer has so marginalized the communications profession that agencies everywhere should just fold up their tents and encourage their employees to learn a new trade. The purists are right, but only if marketing and PR counselors ply their trade exactly as their predecessors did 30 years ago. Most don’t...