DIGITAL INFLUENCE BLOG — Last week, I attended a webinar from WOMMA where WOMMA General Counsel Tony DiResta discussed the importance of disclosure across social media. This conversation normally focuses on brand-blogger relationships but the same best practices and government guidelines may also affect your Facebook Page. Here are five things to keep in mind about your brand and disclosure on Facebook...

DIGITAL INFLUENCE BLOG — How can brands leverage social media to drive sales and lead generation? While social media spending is on the rise for both B2B and B2C companies, many brands are still realizing the full potential of online engagement for business development and lead generation. Next week, I’ll be presenting ideas to the Silicon Valley Capital Club on how brands can best leverage the social web to drive word of mouth buzz and, ultimately, sales opportunities. Below, I’ve provided a sneak peek into the insights I plan to cover, however, I’d welcome your feedback and stories as to where your organization experiences the greatest online business development success...

DIGITAL INFLUENCE BLOG — The title of this post might make you shudder since commenting policies and risk mitigation seem like heavy subjects for something as fun as Facebook; but setting simple, straight-forward guidelines should be an essential part of your Facebook strategy. These guidelines (which you can post or link to on your Info tab) are part of facilitating an open sharing environment and have the added benefit of coaxing you to figure out exactly how you want to use your Facebook brand page. These guidelines are going to unique to your brand and your objectives but here are the basics elements to include...

DIGITAL INFLUENCE BLOG — We are a company of communicators. We embraced social media years ago as a new way to communicate for ourselves and, also, for our clients to push their business forward in new ways.We have always had a social media policy to help our staff use social media productively. The recent decision by Forrester to restrict their analyst/bloggers to publishing within the Forrester blog domain (vs. allowing them to publish personal blogs outside of Forrester and grow their personal brands that way), has kicked up a dust storm of opinions...

DIGITAL INFLUENCE BLOG — 2009, defined by the deep recession, forced consumer brands to do more with much less. However, this stressful environment drove marketers to try non-traditional and less expensive channels, fostering the development of some unique engagement programs in social media. In this series of posts, I’ll revisit a few of the more interesting campaigns from the past year and explain how these programs can guide our 2010 engagement strategies...