Tweet After reading Max Kalehoff’s column on MediaPost “Are Social-Media Experts Snake-Oil Salesmen?” (playing off of Business Week’s article “Beware Social Media Snake Oil”) you may wonder where the hype ends and the reality begins for social media marketing. A few weeks back, I had the chance to see Sally Falkow of Proactive Report present “Social Media: Moving Beyond Trial and Error” at the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center. Of all of the self-proclaimed “social media experts” (e.g. snake-oil salesmen), Sally brings seriousness to the

Tweet Scott Monty gave an insightful keynote presentation at the OMMA conference last week about how Ford uses social media to listen and respond to its customers.  Check out his presentation below and their Fiesta Movement social media site where 100 “agents” document their 6-month trial of a Ford Fiesta via Flickr, Twitter, blogs, etc. Zero to 60: Social Media Strategy via Ford [Keynote - OMMA Global 2009] View more presentations from Scott Monty.

Tweet Interesting news in Acento‘s email newsletter today from Steve Roth, their director of business development. Back in February 2008, Facebook tapped its own user base to translate the social network’s interface into Spanish. That project is a great case study on how to leverage the power of social media to enhance a brand and build a user base. At the time Facebook had about 2.3 million active users in Spanish-speaking countries. Fewer than six months later, Facebook reached 2.5 million active users in Chile

Tweet My friend David Berkowitz told me about a new white paper that his agency – 360i – recently launched: 2009 Social Marketing Playbook. It highlights four questions that all marketers should ask when putting together a social marketing campaign: 1) Does the opportunity meet your brand’s objectives? 2) Does the opportunity leverage your brand’s existing arsenal of assets? 3) Does the opportunity abide by the social media rules of the road? 4) Does it provide significant value exchange? In addition, the playbook features social

Tweet What will Obama’s online success story of using online and social media to build his voter base mean for countries outside of the U.S.? I hadn’t thought about it until having lunch with Mauricio Vazquez and Martha Carrasco from Havas Digital in Mexico City.  Mexico will have its first post-Obama election in 2012 when Felipe Calderon’s 6-year term comes to an end.  And the digital agencies are already fielding questions from the political parties interested in how to replicate Obama’s success. Note Obama’s interactive

Tweet Well here is a Catch-22 of social media.  AdAge reported that Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at P&G, questioned Facebook‘s potential as a marketing platform saying “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?” And also this week, the Mommy mini-bloggers of Twitter criticized Motrin’s new marketing message so harshly that McNeil Consumer Healthcare pulled the entire media campaign because of the criticism on the mini-blogging site. So,