If you pay attention, you can begin to see Facebook’s ad sales strategy coming together. The announcement that Facebook is buying Atlas from Microsoft comes on the heels of Facebook’s announcement of big data alliances. The pieces of Facebook’s future advertising juggernaut are emerging.
There’s a lot of talk about social CRM but much less action. The idea of mining social media to develop one-to-one relationships, curry favor with customers and prospects and develop loyalty is a seductive illusion. The reality is that very few companies have a clear understanding of what social CRM is, why they need it or why they should invest in the time, energy or technology to make it happen.
Community managers are in great demand; even though the job description changes from brand to brand and agency-to-agency. Ideally a great community manager is a flexible, curious, literate people person with a minor case of OCD.
Content is king. Content is media. Content is the new black. Social marketers are scrambling to produce content that will engage friends and followers and prompt viral sharing. There is a land rush mentality toward social content. Too many marketers are filling the content box with tired old crap or me-too materials.
Social listening, once a new amazing vector into the public psyche, has become a standard tool for brands and online marketers. But it has yet to truly become the radar, the barometer or the Rorschach test of popular sentiment. Instead it’s a tool set in search of refinement and a new mission which includes the need to leverage machine learning and automate a labor intense process to yield deep insights into consumer attitudes, behavior or sensibilities.