MarCom Professional

But traditional media is in turmoil: ad revenue is at an all time low thanks to the recession and the internet has reduced the cost of publication and distribution to almost zero.

The rise of social networks has led consumers to fundamentally change their media consumption habits. Consumers are becoming contributors.

The impact on the PR profession has been dramatic. Command and control media relations no longer works and increasing brands are building direct relationships with their audiences using compelling content and story telling. More...

Faceboook recently overtook Yahoo as the second most visited site in the United States. And in doing so, Facebook along with other social networks set the stage for a confluence of social and search that fundamentally changes who we, as a society, discover and share information, and in turn, where our attention is directed and driven.

Source: Mashable

Make no mistake, attention is shifting away from traditional destination sites and instead, it is fixated on personalized attention dashboards that funnel social feeds, the activity and focus of social graphs into one clickable view. It is, for all intents and purposes, changing how we discover and share information. More...

This post has been prompted by some research by recruitment firm Major Players covered by Revolution Magazine that claims online marketing growth “may be stunted by a sheer lack of social media knowledge in the talent pool.”

I’m not suggesting that we need to have a “Head of Social Media” AND a “Head of Marketing Communications”, because marketing leaders of the future will need to be multi skilled and be able to utilise all available channels – old and new. More...

eMarketer reports that U.S. small and medium businesses (SMBs) are adopting social media marketing in greater numbers, according to a market study by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland.

Social media usage increased to 24 percent, from 12 percent the year before.

It's interesting to note that the most common usage of social media among small business was a company page on a social networking site, followed by posting status updates.

SMB expectations of social media are in line with their experiences, although they are not quite as successful as they had hoped. More...

What follows is the unedited version of my latest post at AllThingsDigital…

The Altimeter Group is no stranger to disruption. The incredibly savvy and influential team lead by Charlene Li are redefining the role and purpose of industry analysts by placing research into action – essentially bringing trends from the edge to the center to help businesses employ the technologies and strategies that will help them compete for the future, today.

Industry analysts, at least in the case of the Altimeter Group, are ultimately becoming market catalysts.

With today’s news, this is of course, only fortified. More...

Social capital: the new currency of the social economy?