MARKETINGPROFS — Social media monitoring is all the rage. You’d think that it’s a just cool, trendy thing to have as a marketer, right? Wrong. Social media monitoring (SMM) is a serious tool that shouldn’t be taken lightly, alas it might just become shelfware (you know, the stuff that sits on a shelf and gets all dusty after people bore of it.). As Steve Farnsworth points out in his recent blog post, most social media monitoring software becomes shelfware due to the "lack of vision, and understanding of smart practices around implementation and adaptation." How then is a marketer to prepare themselves?...

THE BRANDBUILDER BLOG — From Linda Zimmerman, in response to Is Your Social Media Director Qualified? "One point you made in the video I’d like to highlight. You mentioned Frank at Comcast who has taken his knowledge of customer service and social media and meshed them together. This is key. EVERY professional needs to understand social media in their own context so they can *interpret* it into their profession and job. This by the way should be part of a social media director’s job – educating..."

MACK COLLIER.COM — One of the most frequent questions I get about social media is the cost. What will launching a blog/Facebook fan page/Twitter presence cost me? What will a social media strategy cost? The answer is never clear-cut and depends on several factors, including...

ADWEEK — The rise of social media has been met with thousands claiming expertise in the area. The skepticism this engenders in longtime marketing pros is best captured in a popular animated video called "The Social Media Guru." The clip shows a know-it-all, lightly credentialed "expert" dispensing little more than buzzwords and common sense to a bemused client. Despite the easy laughs at the expense of self-proclaimed experts, big brands are on the hunt for help in figuring out their approaches to connecting with consumers on Facebook, providing service on Twitter and instituting internal social media guidelines. Because it can touch everything from communications to marketing to customer service to product development, social media has created a muddied playing field that some see as ripe for creating agency opportunities...

SOCIAL MEDIA GROUP BLOG — We at Social Media Group know how hard it is to find a good match between client needs and provider capabilities. Especially for marketers new to social media, it can be very difficult to know what the right questions are and qualify potential social media professional services companies. So we have developed a comprehensive Social Media Request for Proposal (SMRFP) template to make things easier for companies looking for the right social media partner. The questions cover company background, strategy, reputation management, measurement, monitoring and more. The template asks many tough questions, but a competent social media partner should be able to answer most of them...