Last year the SAPPHIRE NOW audience (physical and virtual) was extremely active as over 20,000 tweets were sent out related to the event.  This year we are expecting the social media buzz to be even greater as the pre-event conversations are gaining momentum as we focus on engaging with our audience.

Below is a look at the top 100 Tweeters based on the number of SAPPHIRE NOW tweets they have sent out.

Top 5 Most Active Non-SAP Participants on Twitter

As mentioned above, we have been focusing on engagement and as a result 87% of all SAPPHIRE NOW social mentions have come from non-SAP employees or accounts.  Below is a look at the top 5 most active non-SAP participants.  If it were not for individuals like this our events would lack a true sense of community.

• Tridip Chakraborthy (@tridipchakra) – SAP Mentor and subject matter expert in the SAP Procurement and Supplier Relationship space.
• Mico Yuk (@MicoYuk) – SAP Mentor, Founder of EverythingXcelsius.com and Business Intelligence Thought Leader.
• Tammy Powlas (@tpowlas)- SAP Mentor, ASUG volunteer and project management professional.
• Martin Gillet (@mgillet) – SAP Mentor and freelance SAP HCM consultant and trainer.
• Jarret Pazahanikc (@SAP_Jarret) – SAP Mentor, SAP HCM consultant and SCN moderator and blogger.

In addition, below is a look at some of the other individuals worth following and the hashtags that you should know.

SAPPHIRE NOW Social Media Ambassadors

For those unable to attend the event live, these individuals will be your eyes and ears; providing updates on their specific topic areas.

• Erin McGee (SAP Brand) – @SAP
• Maria Squicciarini (SAP Partner Advocate)- @SAPPartnerEdge
• Eric Lai (SAP Mobility)- @ericylai
• Neetin Datar (SAP Run Better) – @neetin_datar
• Paul Clark (SAP Analytics) – @tawoo
• Carolyn Brock (SAP Cloud) – @SAPcloud
• Dorothea Sieber (SAP Database & Technology) – @D_Sieber
• Sylvia Santelli  (SAP RDS & Services)- @SAPservices
• Paula Araneo (SAP Latin America) – @SAPLatinAmerica

Also don’t forgot to follow @SAPPHIRENOW and @ASUG365 on Twitter, “like” SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG 365 on Facebook and subscribe to the SAPPHIRE NOW blog.  As an added bonus, mark your calendar for a special SAPPHIRE NOW Tweet Chat featuring SAP CIO, Oliver Bussmann on May 16^th at 1pm EST – use the hashtag #SAPChat to ask question or make a comment.

Top SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Hashtags to Follow

Below is a look at the most common hashtags that will be associated with this event (all tweets should contain #SAPPHIRENOW).

#SAPPHIRENOW – the official event hashtag, stay up to date with the latest news from SAPPHIRE NOW and connect with others.

#SAP – the official brand hashtag, stay up to date with all the latest news from SAP.

#Mobile – follow the conversations surrounding the SAP Mobility Campus and any related announcements.

#RunBetter – follow the conversations surrounding the SAP Run Better Campus and any related announcements.

#Analytics – follow the conversations surrounding the SAP Analytics Campus and any related announcements.

#Cloud – follow the conversations surrounding the SAP Cloud Campus and any related announcements.

#Database – follow the conversations surrounding the SAP Database & Technology Campus and any related announcements.

#SAPServices – follow the conversations surrounding SAP Services and any related announcements.

#SAPChat – the official SAP Tweet Chat hashtag, join us May 16^th at 1pm EST for a live conversation with SAP CIO, Oliver Bussmann.

#ASUG2012 or #ASUG – follow the conversations surrounding ASUG and any related announcements.

Top SAP and ASUG Executives to Follow on Twitter

SAP’s commitment to social media is felt throughout the entire organization and it all begins at the top, below is a list of the executives you should follow.

• Jonathan Becher (@jbecher)  – SAP’s Chief Marketing Officer  and one of the top 100 social CMO’s on Twitter.
• Oliver Bussmann (@sapcio) – SAP’s Chief Information Officer and the top social CIO in the Fortune 250.
• Vishal Sikka (@vsikka) – SAP’s Head of Technology and Innovation and the lead engineer behind HANA.
• Bridgette Chambers (@BChambersASUG) – CEO for the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG).

In addition, there are Twitter lists consisting of the SAP Partners that will be exhibiting and our SAP Mentors for those looking to connect with experts in their respective field.

Finally, if you are unable to attend live I would encourage you to register for the virtual event so that you do not miss out on any of the news and content.

SAP “Run Like Never Before”

How To Create A Hashtag Strategy

Do:

• Keep it simple and short (remember your entire tweet is limited to 140 characters)
• Make it memorable and brand consistent
• Make sure it does not have an alternative meaning (search Twitter or Hashtag.org  to make sure it is not already in use for something unrelated)
• Leverage popular industry hashtags

Don’t

• Overuse hashtags (no more than 3 hashtags in a single tweet)
• SPAM established industry hashtags with unrelated messages

In addition to developing a strong hashtag strategy, it is important to also consider the keywords that will be core to your messaging.  Below is a look at some helpful tips for creating an effective keyword strategy.

How to Create A Keyword Strategy

Do:

• Consider your target audience
• Use the language your audience
• Use keyword variations (ie. “CRM” and “Customer Relationship Management” or “BI” and “Business Intelligence”)

Don’t

• Focus on generic keywords

NOTE: Be sure to incorporate your hashtag / keywords throughout all of your messaging.

If you are interested in reading more about the power of hashtags, check out this post from Chip Rodgers.

Does Your Brand Need A Little Of Santa's Magic?

Santa Claus is one of the most beloved brands off all-time so as we inch closer to Christmas, I thought it would be fun to examine how Santa Claus became so successful.  If your brand is looking for some of Santa’s magic, these five tips will help you create a brand people love.

5 Tips For Creating Brands People Love

1. Deliver Value: Just as Santa spreads Christmas cheer year after year (what could be more valuable than that?), your brand must not only deliver a valuable product, service or experience but do so in a consistent manner. 

2. Know Who You Are: Do you think Santa sits around worrying that the Easter Bunny is cuter than he is? Of course not!  Throughout history Santa has stayed true to who he really is and while his image may be updated from time to time his core characteristics and values have remained the same.  For your brand to be successful, you must understand the characteristics and values that define who you are.

3. Differentiate From Your Competition: What sets Santa apart from other “magical” brands such as the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy, is that he listens to his “customers” and then fulfills their needs.  Not only must you identify what differentiates you from your competition but you must ensure that this differentiation matters to your customers and prospects (i.e. simply offering a blue car because your competition sells a red car does not matter if no one wants to purchase a blue car).

4. Have A Voice And Personality: Everyone can identify with Santa’s jolly “Ho Ho Ho” attitude and it is because of this that people are drawn to him.  People want to connect with other people not companies, so incorporate an authentic voice and personality into everything that you do and engage your competitors and prospects.

5. Build A Strong Identity: Santa is clever, he knows that by consistently delivering value, understanding who he is, differentiating himself from the competition and having a positive voice and personality that he is building a strong identity that will last forever.

If your brand can consistently deliver on these principles, then you will be on your way towards building a brand that is loved forever.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucanrt/3128539332/

1. Anthony Weiner (aka Weinergate) – New York politician Anthony Weiner knows firsthand that a social media misstep can be just as embarrassing as getting caught with your pants down (especially when you are tweeting photos of yourself with your pants down).  This resulted in him resigning from the House of Representatives after 12 years in office.
2. Motor City #Fail – An employee at New Media Strategies mistakenly tweeted out “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive” from @ChryslerAutos.   This resulted in the employee being fired and Chrysler announcing that it would not renew the agency’s contract.
3. Kenneth Cole Creates Uproar – During the uproar in Cairo that was felt throughout social media, Kenneth Cole tried to capitalize on this phenomenon via this tweet: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.”  This resulted in tons of negative press and the company quickly apologized and deleted the tweet.
4. Comedian Proves Not All Jokes Are Funny – After a devastating tsunami struck Japan, comedian Gilbert Gottfried tweeted out several insensitive “jokes” such as “Japan called me. They said, “Maybe those jokes are a hit in the U.S., but over here they’re all sinking.” This resulted in Aflac terminating their agreement with Gilbert Gottfried.
5.  Twitter Contest “Grounded” – Australian airline Qantas launched a Twitter contest in November asking followers to share their dream luxury in-flight experience using #QantasLuxury.  Unfortunately customers angry from the prior month’s grounded flights hijacked the contest’s hashtag by tweeting out thousands of angry responses.
6. GoDaddy Finds  Itself Staring At The End Of A Barrel – After GoDaddy’s CEO Bob Parsons tweeted a video link of himself shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe, the company found itself in hot water.  This resulted in the Ethical Treatment of Animals calling for a boycott and competitors offering discounted transfer rates.
7. Netflix Fails Faster Than You Can Stream A DVD – Everything that could go wrong, did for Netflix as it tried to spin-off its DVD rental service into a separate site called Qwikster.  In addition to the poor communication to its customers, the company failed to obtain the Twitter handle @Qwikster which was owned by an incoherent male tweeter.  Ultimately Netflix killed Qwikster and ended up with over 800,000 subscribers cancelling their memberships in the 3^rd quarter.
8. Ashton Kutcher “Punks” Himself – While news was circulating about sexual abuse charges at Penn State, Ashton Kutcher showed his support of Penn State Head Football Coach Joe Paterno by tweeting: “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #no class as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.”  This resulted in Ashton Kutcher apologizing and announcing that his Twitter account would be managed by his management team.
9. Miami Heat Owner “Takes His Talents To Twitter” – During the NBA lockout NBA Commissioner David Stern made it clear that owners were not to publicly discuss the lockout with anyone.  This however did not stop from Miami Heat owner Micky Arison from responding on Twitter to a user accusing the owners of greed.  His response resulted in a $500,000 fine.
10. Ragu Stirs The Wrong Pot – In an effort to create a “viral” campaign for Ragu, Unilever created a video of moms complaining about the helplessness of their husbands in the kitchen and distribute it to high-profile dad bloggers on Twitter.  Unfortunately the campaign did not include the right ingredients and failed to stir up the desired results as the dad bloggers denounced the company.

Examining these ten social media blunders, the first thing that sticks out is that all of them occurred on Twitter (I wonder if people learned from last year’s biggest mistake on Facebook at the hands of Nestle).  Additionally seven of these mistakes could have been easily avoided if the user would have used discretion and the rest could have been prevented if the brand in question didn’t try to own earned media.  This brings me to the two biggest lessons we can learn from these ten social media mistakes.

Top Lessons Learned From This Year’s Biggest Social Media Failures

1. Think Before You Tweet – This should be a no-brainer however the nature of Twitter’s fast moving conversations can result in users tweeting out messages they later regret.  If you are going to participate in Twitter be sure to review these best practices.
2. Brands Don’t Own Earned Media – The call it “earned media” for a reason and it is very difficult for brands to try and control this especially on Twitter.  Several brands have seen their attempts to create earn media via hashtag contests and promoted tweets spiral out of
   control (just look at McDonald’s failed attempted).  If you are looking to leverage earned media check out these tips.

What other examples and lessons learned can you think of?  Please share them in the comment section below.

1. Alexis Kingsbury, Global Marketing Director at Spidergap

Marketing efforts will increasingly be focused on demonstrating results. Marketing teams will look to identify and analyze the gaps between customers’ experiences of a company and their expectations. By focusing investment on addressing these gaps and on measuring improvement, marketing will demonstrate better return on investment (ROI).

Cross-department and channel collaboration will become more prevalent as marketing coordinates its research, analysis, activities and reporting with other parts of the business.

2. Andrew Baird, Chief Freedom Officer at Amazing Business

The future of marketing lies in engaging your customers (and potential customers) to be truly interested in your messages – and perceive them as useful, not simply as marketing. Ignoring ads is at an all-time high and the key to successful marketing lies in marketing that flies under the radar and preferably is shared and commented by colleagues and peers on social media.  Referrals will also be a much higher percentage of successful business marketing because it’s much easier to either recommend or knock companies online using social media and have your message shared. Now more than ever a consistent online presence is crucial to your business success.

3. Ian Aronovich, CEO of GovernmentAuctions.org

Mobile advertising is right now in its infancy, but it projected to grow exponentially because companies can reach millions and even billions of unique mobile web users. More and more people are doing away with their bulky desktops or laptops and simply using their smartphones to operate many daily web functions. When you advertise on a mobile platform, you will be casting an increasingly wider net in the future. Therefore, the growth of mobile adverting is the future of marketing.

4. Darren Negraeff, Marketing Director at Zafin Labs

In order to make predictions like this I think you need to consider both a long term horizon (say, 10 years) and work backwards from there, while at the same time considering observations from the world around you. So when I think about the longer term future, one of the big trends that I see unfolding is the true customization of offers to individuals. Presently that is manifesting itself as the group-offer phenomenon – Groupon, LivingSocial, and the like. But that is really just a passing state. With all the rich, granular data that we as marketers have access to (particularly mobile data), there is no fundamental technical reason why we can’t make discriminating offers to the right people in the right place at the right time, and that is what the future holds.

And of course this conforms to one of the fundamental truths about how we view the impact of technological change – in the short run, we tend to overestimate the value and change that new technology brings (ie. Groupon), while simultaneously underestimating the long term value of the greater trend (using data to customize limited time offers). Consider the case of Amazon – when it first starting selling books online, everyone said it was a revolution – then a year or so later, we had the dot-com bubble burst, and everyone thought buying through the internet was dead. 15 or so years later, do you even know anyone that hasn’t bought something from Amazon?

It’s completely normal. That is what is going to happen to offer customization in the long term, and what we’ll see next year will be some increase in the ability to discriminate more effectively as to who should receive those offers.

5. Jeremy Glennon, Owner of Local Dime

In 2012, social media will continue to grow strongly. This will especially be true in a world of increasing uncertainty in which there may be an increasing need for connecting with others for reasons of spirituality, unity, or comfort.  However, as social media marketing (like gaining friends, followers, views, and similar consumer interactions) matures, business owners will begin demanding that these interactions increase their business’s bottom line. Therefore, there will be a push to better understand and measure results from these interactions.

6. Chris Wise, Director of Marketing at Guideline Central

Customer data will become more important than ever. Tapping into Facebook’s social graph will allow businesses to access an incredible amount of information about (not just their customers) but all of their website visitors. This will be used to take marketing personalization to a whole new level.

7. Drew Stevens Ph.D., President of Stevens Consulting Group

Consumers will continually control the brand. This will require marketers conducting more activities that illustrate value and allow clients to become marketing avatars.  With the higher costs of advertising and the noise marketers will be forced to using the complete cadre of IMC processes to create enough messages for visibility and community.

8. David Amerland, Founder of HelpMySEO

Traditional marketing with its top-down, one-way approach is dying and the companies which persist to use it are dying with it. In recent months we had classic examples with Netflix and RIM (owners of the Blackberry brand) to name but two. What works best is a humanization of marketing with brands and companies acquiring and successfully projecting a personality in their marketing. This is no mean feat, it requires a complete change in the way marketing is traditionally handled at company level, from a compartmentalized process-driven activity to a more organic interaction with potential clients through social media for which every member of a company, at every level, is responsible for contributing to. When that happens we will see a much more transparent way of marketing with brands and companies creating the loyalty, in their customers, which they have always sought and which they have been so bad at proving that they deserve.

9. Maggie Nemser, Founder / Editor-in-Chief of BlackboardEats.com

With the social media space growing more crowded by the minute, getting airtime is no longer as simple as a tweet. In fact, spending too much time on social media when you could be improving your product can be detrimental. The best way to market in 2012 is to focus on mobile sharing and apps coupled with refining your product and empowering your users to spread the literal word. There is a return to the power of the actual WORD of mouth because we are growing weary of “friends” hidden behind social media icons and quicker to question the integrity of a share. An in-person referral still maintains the most organic weight and if you focus on getting exponential conversations going in person, you’re ducking from the social media shitstorm and have a chance of getting a point across.

10.  Mani Iyer, CEO of Kwanzoo

With the proliferation of marketing channels from the traditional websites, email and display to newer channels such as social, re-targeting and mobile, businesses need to engage their prospects wherever they are. The rapid growth of these new channels requires a new mindset to campaign execution from single channel to multi-channel.

Marketers need to think about how different channels connect with each other for users (such as email and social, display and mobile) and enable seamless extension of the user experience from one channel into another.

11. Greg Maka, Managing Director at 24-7 Marketing LLC

Video will continue to play an important role in the marketing mix. Marketers will have to abide by the standard – “Content is King”. By using video to sell their services or products, smart companies will also find clever ways to direct prospects to their videos.

Direct mail will make a comeback as marketers already see the benefits of this powerful medium during this recession. So many companies trimmed their direct mail budgets and that leaves an opportunity for others to stand out.

A major research company recently reported that the average consumer sees 5,000 ad impressions a day so the need break through the clutter is so important. Progressive marketers will use more online tools as well as traditional media to stand out in the crowd.

12. Eugene Farber, Founder and Content Strategy Consultant of Content Strategy Hub

There will be two keys to good marketing in 2012: Conversation and Education.  With the infusion of social media and mobile devices into almost every aspect of individual lives, there is more opportunity than ever before to converse with potential customers and build brand identity.

The ability to educate will also be huge in 2012. With the current costs of the education system, there is more opportunity to jump in and inform through the internet. Information has always been the lifeblood of the internet. And with the exponential growth of sub-par content, valuable content becomes that much more effective.

13.  Jeremy Gregg, Executive Director at The PLAN Fund

The future of marketing will be turning your customers into your salesforce. The initial foray into this area has begun with retailers offering discounts to customers who can prove that they “checked in” to their store on Facebook, Foursquare, etc. We are also seeing more and more campaigns that provide incentives for connecting to a company’s social media presence.

This trend will continue, and possibly extend into the “rewards card” programs; customers could be rewarded over a long-term basis by attracting
other customers who use these cards; many grocers have been doing this for years with their nonprofit partners (i.e. donating 1% of purchases to a charity whose donors register their rewards cards with that charity’s number).

Webinars as an educational and marketing platform saw a huge rise in popularity in 2011, and will continue to grow in popularity in 2012.

14. Ryan Turner, Co-Owner of 3PRIME, LLC

We are betting that business will need to come to rely on a standard reporting tool for daily reports via email that measures and consolidates the currently used social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, as well as whatever comes next. We are building a tool to do that. We also predict that businesses will make a massive movement towards catering to mobile website guests and are investing in our MobileSpringer service to provide a solution to that need as well. In general, advertising will continue to move online with a growing Local space providing the first real competition to Google in years.

15. Carlos Vazquez, Co-founder and CEO of Rowdy Marketing

The use of mobile devices to drive consumer’s purchasing research will continue to grow in 2012. More and more brands will begin adopting mobile marketing approaches that leverage this technology. Social media will no longer be just about having a presence and building awareness, tracking will become mainstream with a focus on ROI. For small and more local businesses, the adoption of real time push-notifications through mobile applications or text messages will continue to grow.

16. Ed Nash, President of Altius Management

Technological advances have allowed us to target market more than ever. In regards to the entertainment business, consumers are able to pinpoint their tastes more specifically than ever, and the scope of available product has never been so large or more convenient. In 2012, we will see a continued rise in “on-demand” capabilities for all manner of media, and we will begin to utilize cloud-based services more and more. Marketing will allow less on wide shotgun blast approaches, and more on targeted, concentrated efforts.

We will have an enormous amount of data at our fingertips. However, we shouldn’t expect the cost of marketing to go down because of the increased targeting; rather, the detailed data and analytics will become more valuable, and that side of the equation will likely go up in cost. It is an exciting time for sure.

17. Katrina Pfannkuch, Owner, Creative Consultant, Content Strategist and Head Writer at Buzzword Communications, LLC

In 2012 I see individuals and businesses creating more authentic, short term collaborations for projects, events, seminars, ebooks and more in order to take the lead the marketing space. When you have two people or businesses that are just starting out and want to “get known”, combining knowledge, clout and opt-in lists can get things cooking faster. On the flip side, when two people or businesses that are already well-known individually combine “star power”, it breathes new life into an established brand and simultaneously cements awareness in new minds.

18. Craig Cooke, CEO of Rhythm Interactive

2012 will continue to accelerate the shift in marketing budgets from traditional to digital media. Look for big pops in popular social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Emerging media in the form of apps for smart phones, tablets and desktops will continue to explode creating new and innovative media buys. However despite all the hype in social and mobile, look for search and email to be top consistent performers in ROI.

19. Bobby Zafarnia, President of Praecere Interactive

Look for smarter integration between disciplines — marketing, PR, legal, and other professional services. Too many major players fail to have these teams communicate, or let them fall into costly turf wars. Rapid-fire marketing strategies require buy-in across these disciplines to ensure transparency, reduce errors, avoid offending audiences, and navigate many more pitfalls.

20. Jon Glick, Senior Vice President of SEO and Product Management at Become Inc.

Today performance marketing focuses on either the user (behavioral targeting) or the content (SEM and contextual ads). Starting in 2012 you will start to see systems that blend and balance both of these approaches to engage the user in a more intelligent, situational relevant manner. Irrelevant ads that historically gained wide distribution at low CPMs will fade precipitously as improved targeting/relevance pushes up publisher rates.

21. Mark Grondin, SVP of Marketing at Shopatron

Marketing efforts will lose steam in 2012 if companies don’t make it a priority to be available to customers across all channels. To be successful, businesses should have a strong physical presence, online presence, mobile presence and social presence. And once these channels are established, they must be fully integrated with one another. With this in hand, the marketing opportunities are unlimited and powerful because you reach customers through their preferred channel and they can find you everywhere they are.

22. Marla Bace, Chief Marketing Officer at Brinton Eaton

Social Media will start to be viewed and measured the same way brand is by relevance and not just by quantity. Those who are out there retweeting and just stating what they are up to are going to become far less relevant than folks who participate less frequently but add value to followers and listeners. This is no different than how consumers currently evaluate the brands they want to engage in – personal brands included.

23. George Bilbrey, President at Return Path

Marketers need to make one of their 2012 New Year’s resolutions to be proactive about protecting their company’s brand reputation. Over 260 million emails are sent every day by phishers targeting high-profile brands and their customers, pretending to be from trusted companies in an attempt to get customers to download malware or gain private account information. These phishing attacks destroy a company’s brand reputation and shake consumer confidence. Instead of just reacting to phishing attacks – the time is now for marketers to have a proactive plan in place and to implement solutions that prevent their brand from being hijacked in the first place. With a proactive stance, marketers will be able to mitigate risk, minimize revenue loss and brand damage costs while maintaining customer trust in email communications. It’s 2012 – is your brand protected?

24. Stephen Powers, President and Founder of Rightlook Creative

A quickly evolving element of modern marketing is the use of video content online.  Recent years have shown us that customers have a much stronger reaction to a video of product or brand than to static text or images, and 2012 is sure to reveal expansion in the use of online video marketing.

Many large brands already implement successful video marketing campaigns today and, as digital platforms like YouTube make it easier and affordable to produce high quality video content, more and more businesses will find it effective to engage and sell with their own online marketing videos rather than with static content. The importance of viral and shareable content will drive companies and brands to become more creative with their content, replacing the predictable sales pitch with more informative or entertaining material, making the 2012 browsing experience less like opening pages, and more like changing channels.

25. Andrew Gazdecki, CEO of Bizness Apps

I predict that mobile apps will be the future of marketing. Never before has information been so readily available for customers. Businesses now have the opportunity for customers to literally download their business into their customers’ pocket.

26. Sara Schoonover, Vice President of TicketKick

I believe the future of marketing will exist even more heavily in social media.  Nothing beats word-of-mouth and direct referrals, and social media is the platform in which marketers will use to get on ground level with the social chit-chatters, not in a spammy kind of way, but more interactively.

27. Gerard Boucher, Founder of Boucher + Co.

Marketing is moving away from targeting generalized audiences, and will increasingly target specific individuals with specific interests.

Though this shift is already evident, it will become commonplace over the next three to five years, as advertising firms take advantage of large amounts of customer data plus increasingly mobile platforms to deliver their message.

Soon, personalized marketing will become ubiquitous. When it does, we’ll be more spooked than pleased with the lack of privacy surrounding our daily lives.

28. Sarah Welle, Co-Founder of Rocware

In the future of marketing there will be a shift towards using social media to connect customers directly with the product lines they’re interested in. Customers, an example would be a small gift shop retailer, will want to opt in to “follow” product lines & manufacturers they’re interested in so they can hear about new products first, get special pricing deals directly from the manufacturer, etc.

29. King Hill, Senior Vice President of Marcus Thomas

Ubiquity is the keyword for the future of marketing. No longer will brands have the option of cherry-picking communications channels or technologies; they¹ll need to be everywhere all the time.  Specifically, mobile and social will step up from optional tactics to required strategies at the brand and activation levels. All of this will challenge brand managers to maintain focus at the goal-setting level and require their agencies to embrace, understand and deliver sound counsel in this integrated landscape.

30. Chad Rueffert, President of Braintree Marketing, Inc.

Over the next few years, the practice of “risk-reversal” will be more prevalent among small and mid-sized business. Consumers with less disposable income will need incentives, discounts and guarantees in order to try something new, change brand loyalty, or choose between entertainment options. Removing the risk of paying for a bad experience or a product that doesn’t fulfill promises with an initial free offering will attract new customers. And while it may mean a higher initial customer acquisition cost, when combined with a customer loyalty and long-term relationship marketing strategy it can mean new, lifetime customers.

31. Bob Batchelor, Assistant Professor & Director at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Kent State University

In 2012, the marriage of marketing and public relations will become a reality in the form of content marketing. The demise of traditional journalism and rise of netizens necessitates that organizations communicate with audiences like never before. Content remains king! Organizations that understand how great content turns audiences into mini-brand ambassadors will focus on storytelling and narrative as a catalyst for this change.

32. Ryan Allis, CEO of iContact

Social media will be given increased importance in 2012. According to a recent iContact survey polling small-to-medium business owners, three-fourths reported they find “tremendous value” in social media.  More SMBs will incorporate social media into their email marketing campaigns, which will allow them to market products and services through new, viral methods. Additionally, SMBs will look to create more meaningful social media interactions with their customers and constituents. More SMBs will turn to social media analytics to measure the reach of their posts on Facebook and Twitter, as well as track message engagement, identify interested customers or clients, and create targeted content.

33. Nelson Bruton, President of Interchanges

Companies are going to realize more than ever they must start closely measuring key performance indicators on both the marketing funnel and during the sales process. As the economic pressures continue to build, many companies are realizing they need to optimize their processes. In order to change the results, you must track the results and you further you must have metric in place to monitor the inputs as well as the outputs.

34. Kimberly Deas, Chief Marketing Officer at MyPromozilla.com

Small business marketing will change. Due to the slow economy and heavy global competition, small business owners have to get smarter about their marketing.  We are seeing many take time to learn more about marketing with the many online marketing tools available. For the first time, business owners can effectively do their own marketing. With a checklist of what to do and access to hundreds of powerful online marketing ideas, they can compete with large advertising firms. The internet has opened more door than ever before.

35. Charles E Gaudet II, Founder & CEO of PredictableProfits.com

Gone are the days where you can send someone directly to a sales letter and expect them to buy without first proving yourself as the most trusted provider of your product or service. More than ever before, with all the options available to your clients, both offline and online, your customers are actively researching you and your competition to determine whose product or service is most likely to give them the greatest advantage, benefit, value or profit. For companies looking for a competitive advantage, this starts with understanding your customers’ problems, giving them a preview of how you intend to help them and focusing on the relationship with your prospects . rather than pushing for the sale right away. Master this and your competition won’t be able to touch you.

36. Daniel Weinbach, President of The Weinbach Group, Inc.

As economic pressures continue, marketers will be increasingly pressed to find the most efficient and demonstrable methods to market products and services, which will likely translate into the continued trend toward increased use of online marketing and a trend away from print. For many, social media will become a growing component of their marketing programs; however, the most sophisticated marketers will apply more advanced methods of measuring social media’s ROI ? including calculating the opportunity cost of labor. Perhaps most unsettling, the increased focus on tactical results will likely mean less emphasis on integrated approaches, including diminished value for brand-building.

37. Kristin Marquet, President of Marquet Media, LLC

As a publicist and reputation manager, I see social media sites and web platforms such as Twitter.com, PeerIndex.com, and Klout.com gaining more traction in 2012. In this era of transparency, business owners will be able to control their reputations and build their brands more effectively because they will be able to understand how their audiences perceive them. Essentially, these platforms will enable business owners to A) track and monitor their reputations; and B) communicate and listen to their audiences more effectively.

38. Thomas B. Christel, CMO at Yooplus srl

Internal or Business Social Networking will become the next communication and collaboration channel for global organizations, augmenting email, and replacing the phone with online conferencing or VOIP technologies built-in. This paves the way for Enterprise Social Networking platforms to reduce costs, increase productivity and provide continuous transparency, both inside and outside the organization. You will bring your partners and customers into your networks, creating closer relationships as they become part of your product development, customer support and a real-time gauge and input to your business success.

39. Kathleen Turpel, Owner of Imaginal Marketing Group

Social and mobile technology will continue to grow in importance. Email marketing will become less important as social media becomes the primary channel to communicate to customers and offer buying opportunities for consumers. Sharing will be redefined as group activities become the new way of hanging out. Facebook will continue to dominate social media, but the GEN Y and Z will start to explore Google+ which will create healthy competition and result in both networks offering more to the consumers. Mobile marketing will take center stage both for organic and paid search. Mobile commerce will be a new revenue stream and more “in the moment” purchase transactions will take place as a result. QR codes will be become more main stream for impulse purchasing and product education.

40. Professor Scott R. Hamula, Chair, Department of Strategic Communication at Ithaca College Roy H. Park School of Communications

Get ready for an increase in one-to-one marketing, mass customization, entrepreneurship, and personal branding. With more celebrities branding their own lines of products, awareness and interest is heightened. As communication and manufacturing technology continues to evolve, along with increasing interest to work for oneself resulting from tough economic conditions and generational interests, more opportunities will be available for the private individuals to create their own clothing, perfumes, accessories, food, etc., to use as well as to market to others. This will all be further facilitated as more individuals will use online, social, and mobile technology to transform themselves into living brands.

41. Joe Librizzi, Director of Marketing Operations at Institute for International Research

The tools necessary for leveraging social media’s massive amount of data will continue to become more accessible.  This will widen the gap between providers within verticals as some commit to finding insight in the data while others remain content with measuring their number of “likes”. Those committing to analytical maturity will deliver customers a more personalized and enriching experience.

42. Mike Essex, Online Marketing Manager at Koozai

The main change in the online space will be a movement away from the traditional methods of tracking a website (search rankings and traffic) to more important metrics of revenue and value added. This will be forced change due to recent changes by Google – who have started to hide organic keyword data – and also a growing trend from marketers to get a better understanding of the ROI of online. This move will also push more big businesses to use SEO, as they start to see the prospective returns, and fight back against smaller brands that have made a good showing online.

43. Isha Edwards, Brand Marketing Consultant at EPiC Measures, LLC

The future of marketing in 2012 will entail uncommon marketing tactics in increasingly uncommon economic times. In an effort to vie for consumer dollars, the marketplace will be oversaturated with products and messages that hinge on the shocking, absurd, and the profane. Enterprising marketers who take the “path less travelled by”; those who learn from the fashion industry and make the old; timeless looks, features, services, etc. new again, will not only stand out, but excel. This concept will apply across platforms-namely social media.

44. Tony Zambito, President and CEO of Goal Centric

Marketing will be influenced by an overall movement from purely data-driven to insight-driven marketing that can best be summarized as:

• Understanding buyer behaviors qualitatively versus only by analytics will take on a higher priority as companies seek better ways to connect with buyers and to separate themselves from competitors.
• The rise of the social buyer will continue to challenge many marketing organizations as they seek to adapt to more complex buyer ecosystems and buying processes.
• There will be a migration taking place from content creation to experience creation as companies seek to help buyers navigate information overload and to make better informed purchase decisions.

Optimizing the buyer experience seamlessly across all interaction points will become a priority for organizations as they find differentiating from competitors increasingly harder and more complex.

45. David Uribe, VP, Creative Director at Interaktiva Digital Marketing

First, the integration of devices and touch points (integrating digital life with “real life”) will play a key roll in companies that want to effectively reach their customers. Brands must be everywhere their customers are: smartphones, tablets and social media. But it is not just about being everywhere – it is about solving real life problems in digital spaces, with integrated solutions.

Second, relevance will be king. Look at what Facebook is doing with the timeline and news feeds. To reach their consumers, brands must be relevant – sit at your customers’ “tables,” listen to what they are talking about, gather all the information and link it to your products and services.

Third, retail stores will need to evolve their digital commerce platforms.  Technology is giving people the power to do everything from their phones and digital devices, and this trend is gaining momentum. People don’t want to leave their couches – so retailers must find a way to go to their customer’s couches.

Lastly, the battle in the technology market will escalate – with Steve Job’s passing, there is an open window for tech companies to regain market share and increase visibility. As an analogy, when the Formula 1 regulations changed, suddenly Ferrari experience a lot more competition from other top notch car manufacturers, and was no longer “king” of the racing world. Now the question is – who will be the next tech market leader? Will any other company match Job’s distinctive advertising campaigns?

46. Wendy Gibson, Chief Marketing Officer at Telligent

The times of putting your messaging on one mass media outlet and being able to reach your entire audience is dead. Instead we have entered into a world that revolves around the web, and specifically, as of recently, social media.  Therefore many company’s marketing departments are starting to restructure to incorporate content marketing into their organizational formation. However the key aspect of this that I see becoming popular is that companies will no longer just be publishing content on their own website, but they will also be publishing off-domain. This is a vital shift because if you want a certain audience to receive your content you must bring the content to where the customer is going on the web.

Customers are the core of any business, so there should be very little doubt that your customers are your number one asset when it comes to marketing. From customer success stories to customers posting comments on your social media site, these are all ways that the voice of the customer helps to steer marketing for your organization while helping to provide prospects with positive reinforcement. As this continues to pick up in momentum, I foresee many organizations doing some very creative things with customer driven marketing in the future.

What do you think?  Please share your predictions on the future of marketing in the comment section below.

1. Jim Spinello, Senior Vice President, Marketing Communications at rEvolution

The integration of a credible and relevant social media presence will finally be viewed as strategy, rather than tactic. Because if you (brands) are not fully embracing social in all its forms, you will have missed the bullet train and you probably won’t be able to get back on.

2. Andria Trivisonno, Director of Digital Marketing of Cult Marketing

Engagement is going to be a key performance indicator and main focus point with so many platforms that users can “belong to.” Brands will have to engage users in different, fresh ways to sustain them.  Google+ will be launching brand pages at some point, and that will force brands to refocus social efforts and designate which platforms support their initiatives. Companies will need to create one universal social strategy for multiple platforms that will serve a core marketing purpose.

Transparency will become more of a theme. People are starting to become more comfortable with sharing opinions, likes and information and less concerned with protecting information.  Most importantly, business and personal lives will continue to cross and eventually become one.

3. Ian Aronovich, Co-Founder of GovernmentAuctions.org

We predict that the future holds more integration between social media and technology. For example on the new iPhone update you can post to twitter through your text or photo menu. This kind of ideal will get streamlined and be more available across other services in the future. When it comes to social media there is always something on the bleeding edge that will make an impact and we have no doubt that something major is being worked on that will blow our notions of social media out of the water.

4. Mike Hanbery, Director of New Media Strategies at www.webolutions.com

We will see a convergence of social media, online comments and search engine optimization. Currently, searches for a particular business, location, etc., return links and online reviews. By the close of 2012, the results will highlight reviews by our social media connections.

5. Matt Roche, co-CEO and co-founder of BO.LT

With everyone able to play a part in content creation, the future of social media involves the continued triumph of immediately consumable short-form content and the birth of emerging forms of storytelling. It is in bringing all the little pieces together, creating powerful narratives from scraps of participation and content that are scattered throughout the various social outlets. The future of social is about sharing, discovering and relating through cohesive collections of short-form content.

6. Heather Lopez, owner of The Mom Entrepreneur

I believe that the future of social media is social commerce. Studies show that people don’t like to be directly marketed to and respond better to personal posts. Brands will learn how to put the personal before the profit, and in turn will actually generate a profit via social media. Entrepreneurs will learn how to share their whole person to attract more clients, as the line of business and personal gets blurred. Social media will facilitate the expansion of WOM (word of mouth marketing), as people will see recommendations from their friends and family right where there are looking to make a purchase.

7. Manny Otiko, VP, social and new media at Desmond & Louis

I think there will be more pressure from social media users to ask for a share of the revenue. Chime.in, a new social media platform is promising to share advertising revenue with its users. YouTube is already sharing revenue with prolific users.  Social media is already being used heavily for marketing and we will see more companies forgo having a traditional website, and go strictly with a Facebook page.

8. Kristin Swartzlander, Social Media, Public Relations and Marketing Consultant

We are already seeing a move towards better content filters and propagating of the most relevant content, and I believe that we will see much more of that.  We’ll see more products and services like Klout, and the existing tools will become more highly regarded in both the business community and to consumers.   Tools that were previously only relevant to a small sector of social media users, again, like Klout, will become more mainstream in hopes of streamlining content and providing only what is most useful and relevant to the user.

9. Elias Roman, CEO and co-founder of Songza

First, the easy prediction: more and more of the information we consume on a daily basis (from news to product reviews to entertainment) will come via the social media channels we have opted into and, more specifically, from the information filters we have chosen to subscribe to in those channels. Net: In the short term, more information will come from more sources delivered through fewer channels.

Second: increasing adoption of and participation in social media will lead to a worsening of the signal-to-noise ratio both for ‘social’ information and ‘other’ (professional, or interest-based, or globally relevant) information. Net: What once felt efficient and real-time will start to feel crowded and blurry.

Third: in response to worsening of the signal-to-noise ratio, we will see significant innovation in filtering and curating technologies that allow us to: a) better separate ‘social’ information and identities from ‘other’ information and identities and b) access personalized digests of what are effectively already digests of what is happening around us. This will address the symptoms but not necessarily the root cause of the problem. Net: Expect more ‘stream management’ solutions to make your radar.

Finally: the importance (and reach) of vetted information filters (those people we follow, whether or not we know them personally, because we trust in their ability to pass on the most relevant information to us) will grow exponentially, as people realize that managing their information streams requires pruning down to only the most impactful and relevant filters. Net: In the long term, more information will come from fewer sources delivered through fewer channels. These sources will be more thoroughly (and more democratically) vetted than ever before.

10.  Ryan Hart, Chief Creative Officer at Million Dollar Earth

With non-captive media outlets, people have the freedom to opt-out and abort the message mid-stream. Social media in particular is opt-in and holds brands/people accountable and puts a burden on the message to be intelligent, interesting, and say something that matters. Brands must honestly evaluate if they can hold their own with a non-captive audience, or if they should stick to traditional TV/radio/billboard mediums.

11. Jenny Vance, President of LeadJen

The view many companies have of social media is going to shift in 2012 from focusing on content creation and publication to monitoring and measuring response. The goal will be to engage that unique audience that isn’t lucky enough to find that one piece of content in the moment they are expressing a need in social media. Companies will begin to focus on engaging with customers and prospects in social media with nearly
real-time response and companies will begin to look for quality partners who can provide credible labor to convert leads.

12. Loren McDonald, VP of Industry Relations at Silverpop

The convergence of mobile, social, local and email, or “mocial,” is forcing marketers to change the way they interact with customers and prospects to ensure that they are where their customers and prospects are, all the time. In 2012 and beyond, savvy marketers will need to cross promote between all channels – growing an email database through social and mobile, for example.  Campaigns centered around sharing will also be critical; creating content that is shareworthy and delivering strong calls to action at a point that makes sense rather than asking people to share something before they consume it will encourage sharing. Drive Twitter followers to your blog with teaser tweets, blog about exclusive SMS promotions and use email to grow followers, fans or explain the benefits of a local check-in program—integrating mocial efforts wherever possible is key.

13. Uzair Dada, CEO of Iron Horse Interactive

2012 will be a transformational year for how social media is leveraged by brands to reach prospects, with the focus shifting from awareness building to driving sales and revenue. For last two years we’ve seen brand marketers leverage social media as a platform to build awareness for their brands, establish an identity with their customers online, and drive eyeballs to their social media pages. Going forward we believe brands will focus more on leveraging social media to increase transactional behavior from prospects. More interactive strategies and direct engagement tactics will be implemented to usher in this change, such as behavioral targeting, social gaming, rewards for action/referrals, coupons, and
more.

14. Aliza Earnshaw, Director of Sales & Marketing at AboutUs Inc.

Google and other search engines will keep adjusting their algorithms to take account of content shared on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and other social platforms. This means it’s more critical than ever for small business to jump into the social pool and start creating a real identity by sharing information your customers care about. Bonus: companies also get the chance to address customer issues in real time, and show they really do care. Risk: Do it wrong and your bad rep will reverberate all over the Internet.

15. Tony Ellison, CEO of Shoplet.com

I see the ultimate purpose of social media as becoming an omnipresent source of all relevant information. When Google joined the web, it quickly became our source of information, yet, it lacked a personal touch. Google could very effectively collect relevant information, but only from impersonal sources (i.e. Business websites and unknown experts). Social media can insert the missing human touch and allow mankind tap into the full potential of the internet. Because of this, it is going to transform eCommerce as we know it. Social media allows customers to leverage one another to gain the feedback they value most when making a purchasing decision. eTailers like Shoplet, that are leveraging social media, will continue to benefit from rates of customer engagement that previously were not possible. In addition, eTailers like Shoplet will benefit from better conversion rates, gaining access to millions of customer’s friends from recommendations, and higher customer satisfaction.

16. Max Silver, Social Media Specialist at 451 Marketing

2012 will be the year of location based services (LBS) – but not in terms of how people think of them now with small loyalty rewards and badges. Instead, with services like Google Wallet and Levelup entering the mobile wallet industry, we will see integration of mobile payments and Near Field Communications (NFC) with LBS rewards through more passive check-ins. This integration will allow for you to check-in simply by paying with your mobile wallet while also making location sharing easier and making rewards simpler to redeem for people and merchants because they will be tacked on after payment as discounts. The simplification of location sharing and the ability to more easily redeem rewards – especially on the merchant side – should push LBS more into the mainstream over the next 1-3 years.

17. Martha McCarthy, The Social Lights

Shopping will become an increasingly social experience from start to finish. From researching products prior to purchase (comparing prices, reviewing ratings, checking availability, coupon/sale searching) to making an assessment and announcing your verdict post-purchase (leaving positive or negative feedback, tagging items on Facebook, photographing new products to share with your network…and so on). Brands themselves will be encouraging more of this follow-up activity through QR code integration on packaging, online contests, video demos/tutorials and calls for user-generated content.

Couponing and customer loyalty programs will also become increasingly social. The move to digital has begun, and will only accelerate as brands see the inherent benefits in tracking and monitoring their couponing campaigns and loyalty programs in real-time. Groupon, Living Social, daily deals and flash sale sites will continue to proliferate – but brands of a certain size and digital competency level will get creative and begin executing their own deep-discount campaigns.  Realizing the greater return on executing such sales and promotions in house (and not wanting tarnished reputations or devaluations of their brand), this route will become much more attractive in 2012.

New apps and programs are spurring up to aid in the delivery of these new digital campaigns, making it even easier to forgo the industry leaders and differentiate from the competition. Additionally, location-based/check-in rewards and loyalty deals will increase as other below-the-line promotions diminish.

Facebook Timeline and Google + brand pages will open up new avenues for brands to connect with consumers, and it will be interesting to see how the transition occurs. That being said, it is highly probable that the brands and companies that gain first-mover advantage in these territories will be glad they did (just as the first to set up Facebook fan pages benefitted from increased fans bases).

18. Alanna Francis, Marketing Manager at Blue Fountain Media

2012 is the year that will bring your real life and your online social life into even greater unison. Get ready to start seeing songs you listen to, articles you read, and videos you watch crop up in your new Facebook Timeline in real-time. The ability to discover new things directly through friends’ profiles and the enhanced integration of all online media consumption with Facebook accounts will change the way we interact with social media in 2012.

19. Matthew Doyle, Broadcastr

The two major forces we expect to impact the world of social media in 2012 are cloud storage and privacy issues. Cloud storage will become widespread, enabling more social media usage and rich media consumption on mobile devices, and causing a major strain on cell carriers. The demand for faster networks and more consistent data-transfer will become paramount, and the sore spot for consumers will be data transfer limits, spotty service, and data usage charges. Privacy concerns will also continue to build, as users become more aware, and more wary, of the collection, analysis, and dissemination of their data.

20. Brenna Johnson, Product Marketing eBusiness at Endeca

Social Media will continue to be a great marketing tool to engage and retain customers, but in 2012, online businesses will harness the power of data from Facebook behind the scenes of their Web and mobile environments to drive everything from targeted content and promotions to how merchandise is displayed to each user. Information mined from social media combined with information from across the Web will provide marketers with a more holistic view of their customers, and enable them to create a unique and personalized experience for each and every person, no matter which website they visit.

21. Alex Wall, Social Media Strategist at We Do Web Content

2012 is going to see continued growth of smartphone and tablet users, and so mobile content sharing features and the market for native social networking apps are going to expand.

Along with that, social gaming, a tighter integration of digital commerce and social networks (such as being able to buy something through your Facebook account on your phone), and location-based applications will become more prevalent and more refined.

Search, information, and news media will become more social – for instance, Google Reader is being integrated into Google+, and we are more likely to see developments that curate prioritized newsfeeds according to what our connections are reading or think is important.

Finally, and perhaps the most important development, we’re going to see stabilization in ROI measurement for social media marketing. Now that the fanfare of acquiring the most friends and followers has died down, companies are beginning to realize the sort of clear-cut objectives they need, and more attention is finally being paid to how to analyze the progression towards these goals and ultimately towards brand expansion and conversion.

22. Richard Kelleher, Marketing Sociologist

Companies will wake up to 21st Century marketing. That “social media” is not push marketing like advertising on television, but building societies. In 2006, I was thrown out of forward thinking marketers’ offices for saying, “You need a MySpace and YouTube presence.” They wanted press releases.

Today I am thrown out of forward thinking marketers’ offices for saying, “You need QR codes and mobile sites.” Today those forward thinking marketers want SEO. SEO? That’d be like wanting press releases in 2006.  Social media will be the major way to build brands – but that was 2008.  Marketers will wake up to that around 2014.

23. Jennifer Giusti, Director of Social Media Director at Adeo Media

As more businesses bring their online shopping experience to their social pages more users will do their online shopping via social media sites. From e-commerce to social-commerce, this shift will create a setting in which users will utilize social sites in a more centralized way-users will email, shop, research, and connect without ever having to click to another website.

24. Eric Harr, Founder & President of Resonate Social Media

Social media will continue its jaw-dropping growth because it’s not a media; it’s a human relationship — and connecting and communicating are not wants; they’re needs. It’s woven into our very genetic code. Humans have waited Millennia for this – and they’ll not soon give up their newly-empowered voices. More businesses will flood in, wild-eyed, without proper strategy and become quickly disillusioned by the lack of results. The smart ones will use social media strategically to drive key business objectives and measure financial impact. Globally, social media will continue to foment revolutions as these tools become more pervasive; people are tasting freedom.  And, I passionately hope that social media will start to live up to its potential to help heal our world by defending dignity and fighting poverty.

25. Karina Alvela, PRForSmallBusinesses.com

In 2012, social media will continue to integrate into people’s lives. Social media will become a component of television, where show hosts and guests will be live tweeting to audiences. As reported by Facebook HQ, Dateline NBC did a live chat with Chris Hansen while the show was airing; creating a social experience in which both the host and the viewers were able to chat with one another during the segment.

Online shopping and payments will take place directly on Facebook and Google+. Rather than liking a pair of shoes and sharing the link or pictures with your friends, you soon will be able to buy them, recommend/review them and more. eBay and Facebook are joining forces and it is possible that we will be able to use Facebook Credits on eBay or PayPal on Facebook, when making a purchase.

Tablets and other mobile devices will take over computers as the main way to access social media.  The average tablet owner spends 55 minutes per day on his or her device, with 24 minutes dedicated to social media access, gaming and search. (source: Knowledge Networks) Brafton reported last month that tablet shipments are expected to increase to 250 million worldwide by 2015, paving the way for mobile devices to become the primary constant access point for the web.

26. Judith Cohen, Founder and CCO of FreshBuzz Media

Google+ has huge potential – and yet, I do not see Google+ taking off, breaking all the records and surpassing Facebook as the choice network as everyone is so myopically focused on. Sure, Google’s vast integration and search potential is extraordinary, yet Facebook will hold its ground and Google will simply have to be happy to share the ground with them. Facebook has and will remain nimble and the ones at top advantage with this race (no matter the platform) are the consumers (fans), the brands and the marketers — in terms of growth, functionality and usefulness. Competition is GOOD thing.

27. Joey Price, CEO of Jumpstart:HR

By this time next year, a majority of companies will find ways to utilize social media as their primary place to conduct business online.  Social media levels out the playing field and allows companies of all sizes to reach the same target market with a relatively equal chance of success. As more companies recognize the low barrier of entry into the social media marketplace, expect more creative ways for businesses to offer discounts, interact with customers and compete with other companies in order to win customer loyalty.

28. Dave Evans, VP of Social Strategy at Social Dynamx

2012 will mark the formal adoption of social technology across the enterprise, and in particular for customer service applications at large-business scale. The classic consumer touchpoints–marketing, advertising and in-store promotion–along with the actual product or service experience will be joined by the experiences created in and by customer service as primary drivers of advocacy and evangelism. Already, a leading source of conversations on the social web about brands, products and services is the customer experience when assistance is required. 2012 will see the adoption of enterprise-grade tools, processes and policies that capitalize on this fundamental shift.

29. Megan Monplaisir, Director of Social Media at Nology Media

Social media will be more influential in how consumers make decisions. The impact of Facebook Open Graph and how brands can more specifically target their audience via social media will be more evident in 2012.

There will continue to be a heavy emphasis on blogs and bloggers as people of influence especially regarding geo-targeted news. On a national level, AOL is addressing this trend with Patch; on a more local level, the West Seattle blog, http://westseattleblog.com/ is where you go to get news versus KING 5 TV.

The merging of offline with online (and vice versa) will continue – trade shows and conferences being live-streamed, in-person trainings being webcast and tweet-ups instead of meetings.

30. Justin Fogarty, Online Community Manager for Ariba

LinkedIn Fulfills its Promise – 2012 is the year that LinkedIn usage patterns become more mainstream. The network will be more about general engagement, not just about finding jobs. Specifically, people will use the service more to post tips, comment on industry news and seek answers to business and personal-related questions. The tools have been around for a while, but the usage will change next year.

Google+, LinkedIn Gain on Facebook for Enterprise Promotion – Facebook refuses to cave in to public pressure to change back its UIs, leaving many businesses unclear about how effectively their messages are presented and communicated on the network. This opens the door for more adoption of Google+ and LinkedIn as viable social platforms for businesses.

Social Communities’ Reputations Improve – In other words, they will be seen as vehicles to help people get out of – rather than get into – trouble. The dominant theme for 2012 will be how social communities help people improve their lives by providing resources to solve business and personal issues. Many have thought about the perceived negatives on social media usage, but next year, companies will see how social media can proactively offer a positive impact on business reputation.

More Direct Engagement – Online platforms will contain integrated widgets to communicate directly with communities, allowing users to ask questions and seek feedback live while engaging in a web-related activity. Similar to what’s done at TurboTax, the online experience of software will be collaborative, real-time and impactful on a person’s user experience.

31. Zubin Mowlavi, President and CEO of Lucid Fusion

Social media is going to continue to shatter the boundaries of social networking sites and impact every facet of our digital way of life. The way we consume media and make decisions is going to become a completely social process in the upcoming year. This has already occurred for photos with Instagram, music with Spotify and Facebook, and dining with Yelp.   In the next year, we will see this extend to every medium, such as the shows we watch on television, the movies we frequent, and the products we purchase online.

32. Blake Cahill, President of Banyan Branch

Don’t dismiss Google+ just yet. When brand pages launch, the “hang-out” feature will be an amazing opportunity for brand advocates to connect with spokespeople, experts and other advocates. I’m not sure if it will take off, but I think we will see a similar initial spike in the brand pages to what we saw in the initial Google+ public interest.

The continued expansion of smartphones will drive interactions in all channels because more people will be accessing social from their phones. Location-based services may get a bump in activity from this trend too.

Common retailers will finally see the value of social and integrate it into their marketing plans; it seems commonplace for many already, but non-tech industries such as retail always lag behind tech advances by a few years. While a few big brands have tech-savvy marketing teams, you’ll see check-ins and social store promotions instead of brands simply saying “join us on social network X.” They’ll create advocates and target users with focused messages to increase their revenue.

33. Jonathan Yagel, LifeKraze

Over the next year, social media will become increasingly segmented into niche networks and apps that allow individuals to share particular elements of their lives with specific others. People are looking for more personalized, direct connection and the larger, more generalized networks have become cluttered and noisy. They will continue to serve a function—wide broadcasting of some elements—but will slowly decline as the primary point of contact and input.

34. Justin Premick, Director of Education Marketing at AWeber

Over the last 1-2 years, businesses have rushed to incorporate social media and email without much thought about the role each medium should play. What many businesses are finding is that social media best complements email when it spreads the news about their email content and gets more people to sign up to their list. In 2012, more businesses will pick up on this. You’ll see a concentrated focus on creating valuable content that subscribers are eager to share with their networks, and encouraging people who discover them through social media to join their email lists.

35. David Bradfield, Director of Marketing Strategy and Analysis at SapientNitro

Context will drive the greatest equity in social in 2012. The evolution and integration of mobile is profound and will further amplify the significance of the “here and now.”  Adopting gaming dynamics to impact customer behavior will continue to drive brand addiction, and shared experiences and co-viewing will redefine sports, entertainment and politics. Social shopping will establish greater confidence and satisfaction among consumers beyond reviews and deals, with the in-store experience and contextual offers delivering a social return.

36. Mitchell Reichgut, Founder and CEO of Jun Group

The impact of social media will ‘socialize’ traditional media. Beyond ‘follow us on Twitter or Facebook,’ traditional media will embrace and innovate thanks to social media and several of its trends. Notably, the popularity of social games and virtual currency, which will lead to “gamifying’ media. The socialization will impact advertising through hybrid campaigns tying online to offline and vice versa, and extend not only from one screen to two and even to three through mobile.

37. Ryan Allis, CEO of iContact

Social media will be part of all businesses (large or small).  Few small businesses have grasped the concept of a need to interact with users through forums or social channels, like customer service-focused Twitter handles. By viewing social media as an externally-facing communication channel, businesses will be able to resolve customer service issues in a timely manner. On the other hand, they will also be held more accountable for the way they conduct their customer service since transparency is essential when communicating via social channels. On the upside, good customer service habits can earn businesses kudos and even new customers in some cases.

38.  Parker Williams, Founder / Owner of http://www.start-up-a-small-business.com

By this time next year, many advertisers will be looking for more “grown up” ways to participate in social media.  Right now, many of the popular social media websites, including Twitter and Facebook, are too thick with kids. Kids who don’t usually equate to targeted buyers.  Either social media websites like Twitter will break off to create more grown up ways of participating or new sites will pop up like LinkedIn but with a more Twitter or Facebook-like feel.

Please share your predictions in the comment section below.

Another major change in the world is the emergence of social media, so I thought it would be fun to channel my inner Beavis & Butthead and look at some of the conversations they would have regarding this worldwide phenomenon.

Beavis & Butthead on Twitter

Butthead:  Beavis, that chick just said go tweet her, huhhh huhh huh. Do it Beavis, do it now!”

Beavis:  I am the great Tweetholio, I need some RTs for my Twit-hole.

Beavis & Butthead on Facebook

Beavis:   Dammit Butthead, accept my friend request.

Butthead:  No way Beavis – you “Like” Kenny G.

Beavis & Butthead on Groupon

Butthead:  Check out it, 50% off Jim’s Hamburger Shack.

Beavis:  That place sucks!  Burn it down – Fire, Fire, Fire!

Beavis & Butthead on MySpace

Beavis:  Butthead, check it out.  This chick wants to chat on MySpace.

Butthead:  You dumbass – the only people left on MySpace are perverts and Dane Cook, huhhh huhh huh.

Beavis & Butthead on Klout

Beavis:  Woah, my Klout score dropped 10 points.

Butthead:  Who cares?  I have the high score on Angry Birds.

Beavis & Butthead on Foursquare

Beavis:  I am now the Mayor of this couch, give me the remote.

Butthead:  *SLAP* (Beavis gets hit upside the head with the remote)

So there you have it – hopefully it was worth a chuckle and please share your inner Beavis & Butthead in the comment section below.

In addition to being knowledgeable and extremely personable, the following 35 individuals (in no particular order) have the “networking gene” that triggers their ability to bring people together.

1. Sam Fiorella = @samfiorella
2. Peggy Fitzpatrick = @PegFitzpatrick
3. Paul Biedermann = @PaulBiedermann
4. Bonnie Richards = @BonRichs
5. Dan Schawbel = @DanSchawbel
6. Sarah Goodall = @tribalimpact
7. Glen Gilmore = @GlenGilmore
8. Chris Abraham = @chrisabraham
9. Cheryl K. Burgess = @ckburgess
10. Tom Pick = @TomPick
11. Steve Farnsworth = @Steveology
12. Michael Brito = @Britopian
13. Andrew Hunt = @InboundSales
14. Tony Zambito = @TonyZambito
15. Heidi Cohen = @heidicohen
16. Joe Pulizzi = @juntajoe
17. Pam Moore = @PamMktgNut
18. Mack Collier = @MackCollier
19. Gavin Heaton = @servantofchaos
20. Kristina Allen = @allenkristina
21. Neal Schaffer = @NealSchaffer
22. Lisa Petrilli = @LisaPetrilli
23. Marjorie Clayman = @MargieClayman
24. Drew McLellan = @DrewMcLellan
25. Steve Olenski = @steveolenski
26. Olivier Blanchard = @thebrandbuilder
27. Mark Schaefer = @markwschaefer
28. Janet Fouts = @jfouts
29. Sharon Hayes = @SharonHayes
30. Mari Smith = @MariSmith
31. Jay Baer = @jaybaer
32. Nick Robinson = @socialrobinson
33. Chad H. Pollitt = @CPollittIU
34. John McTigue = @jmctigue
35. Roman Kniahynyckyj = @kniahynyckyj

It has been a pleasure getting to know each and every one of the individuals on this list and I thank them all for their support.  In the spirit of #FollowFriday (#FF), I highly encourage you to follow and get to know this fantastic group of people.

Please share the names and Twitter handles of the individuals that have helped you network on Twitter, in the comment section below.

How To Get Buy-In For Your Social Media Strategy

Sandyha Kolachina from BASF helped set the tone for this discussion by identifying that executive buy-in cannot be achieved in isolation.  In order to successfully gain executive buy-in the following elements must be in alignment:

• Your organization must thrive on innovation.
• Your organization must foster a culture of trust.
• Your organization must be proactive in regards to global trends.
• Your social media strategy must be aligned with your communication strategy, corporate brand promise and organizational strategic guidelines.

Once you have executive buy-in for your social media strategy below is a look at some of the areas to focus on in order to achieve success as shared by Alexandra Tyler and Lore Feldman from Citi.

• Be an internal evangelist.
• Commit to creating and sharing valuable content.
• Don’t mistake tactics for strategy.
• Tell don’t sell … it’s all about trust.
• Focus on the needs of the customers and the buying cycle.

For those looking to go beyond just integrating social media into their marketing mix and transforming their organization into a Social Business, Sandy Carter from IBM laid out this “A-G-E-N-D-A” for adopting social throughout your business.

A = align your organizational goals and culture

G = gain social trust

E = engage through experiences

N = network your business process

D = design for reputation and risk management

A = analyze the data

For those that like there information to be “tweetable”, here are some of the most popular tweets shared during the event (#CSMB2B)

• When B2B blogging, start with a customer problem or question. It makes for more interesting reading (and also better SEO) #csmb2b via @MartinWeinberg
• @dorasmith “We don’t do anything in social that isn’t based on some listening data or research.” #csmb2b via @ckenton
• @dorasmith: “If we’ve seen any success, it’s been with the listening-led programs.” <Big lesson> #CSMB2B via @neilglassman
• @dorasmith 500 people who want to hear your msg are more valuable than 5M people who don’t care. (paraphrased) #csmb2b via @ckenton
• Re: social media “if it’s a one-to-many approach then you’re doing it wrong.” #CSMB2B via @katlen
• This is a must see/read for anyone in social media: http://bit.ly/pTXGwJ Comscore quantifies power of like. #CSMb2B via @DrewNeisser

Finally, here is a fun video that was shared by Kat Tillman from Microsoft that proves that you can apply metrics to anything (even a child’s birthday party with a Pink Pony theme).

Thinking back on the presentations, the major takeaway from the event was “you are not alone”. While everyone at the event is certainly doing very interesting things within social media, none of us have it all completely figured out. Social media is ever-evolving and as such it is a journey (not a race) that requires flexibility, testing and shared learnings.

Top 10 Banned Books of All-Time

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell
10. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

Interestingly enough, this list could easily also represent the 10 greatest books of all-time.  If being banned helped gain exposure for these  amazing books, maybe the same could happen if we “banned” the following books on social media.  The following 10 books represent some of the  most engaging and thought provoking books on social media and are a must read for anyone interested in the subject matter.

10 Social Media Books That Should Be “Banned” Forever

1. Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition – Michael A. Stelzner

Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition reveals a new way to grow a business that involves focusing on the needs of others, giving gifts, working with outsiders, and restraining marketing messages. These principles are precisely the opposite of traditional marketing. Yet they work. Stelzner teaches how to market great content, capture names to grow a following, build partnerships, relationships, and sell better – to help launch any business. Michael Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner a popular website dedicated to social media. You can find Michael on Twitter @smexaminer.

2. The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social – Jay Baer and Amber Naslund

This book isn’t about how to “do” social media but rather helps to outline how you must retool your organization to make real-time business work for you rather than against you. Jay and Amber discuss the seven shifts that will help you make your company faster, smarter, and more social. Together they provide guidance on making the changes you need, and how to harness the potential of this new communication era.

3. Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies – Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies will teach you to evaluate new social technologies as they emerge, determine how different groups of consumers are participating in social technology arenas, apply a four-step process for formulating your future strategy and build social technologies into your business. This book should be required reading for any executive seeking to protect and  strengthen their company’s public image. Charlene Li is the founder of Altimeter Group and one of the foremost experts on social media and
technologies. Josh Bernoff is senior vice president, idea development at Forrester Research, and is responsible for identifying, developing, and promoting some of the company’s most influential and forward-looking ideas.

4. Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business – Erik Qualman

This book explores how the concept of Socialnomics is changing the way companies produce, market and sell. The book provides examples of have businesses are connecting/engaging with consumers through social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. It is an essential book for any individual who wants to understand the power of social media.

5. Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web – Brian Solis

Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web is the ultimate guide to branding and building your business in the era of the Social Web. The book thoroughly examines the social media landscape and how to effectively use social media to succeed in business – one network and one tool at a time. It leads you through the detailed and specific steps required for conceptualizing, implementing, managing, and measuring a social media program. The result is the ability to increase visibility, build communities of loyal brand enthusiasts, and increase profits. Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group a research-based advisory firm. In addition, he is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media.

6. The Whuffle Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business – Tara Hunt

This book details the importance of earning social capital (“whuffie”) in the Web 2.0 landscape. Tara does an excellent job of validating her social media strategies and concept through the use of specific case studies such as the Obama Presidential Campaign, Zappos.com and many more. Be sure to read Tara Hunt’s blog for more insights.

7. Poke the Box – Seth Godin

Poke the Box is a manifesto by bestselling author Seth Godin that just might make you uncomfortable. It’s a call to action about the initiative you’re taking-– in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organizations (and most careers)-– the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.” Poke the Box just may be the kick in the pants you need to shake up your life.

8. Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions – Guy Kawasaki

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions is the 10^th book from Guy Kawasaki and in it, he explains how to influence what people will do while maintaining the highest standards of ethics. The book explains when and why enchantment is necessary and then the pillars of enchantment: likability, trustworthiness, and a great cause. Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures.

9. The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time – Mark W. Schaefer

The Tao of Twitter is written by one of the most approachable social media thought leaders on Twitter. In this book, Mark demonstrates how Twitter can change your business and life forever. The book is perfect for marketers who do not have the time to spend hours in experimentation and research trying to find success. By the end of the book, you will know enough strategies, tactics, and time-savers to create an effective presence on Twitter that will result in meaningful and measurable benefits.

10. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust – Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

This book focus on showing individuals have to build networks of influence through social media tools. It explores the concept of using trust as a means for creating positive online reputations. The book also includes actionable steps and case studies that showcase the positive impact social media can have on your business. For more great information from the authors be sure to check out Chris Brogan’s and Julien Smiths’ blog.

Happy reading!

Society has changed in the following significant ways in the 20+ years since I began my first day of school:

• More families are having fewer children (according to the 2010 U.S. Census)
• More families are moving out of the area in which they grew up
• More families have two working parents

These societal changes, plus a weakened economy and increased competition from for-profit schools with large advertising budgets, have directly impacted enrollment at Catholic schools across the country.  Traditionally, word-of-mouth from within the community is the strongest marketing initiative for Catholic schools. This is declining as members are under increased pressure to balance work and life, which leaves less time for community participation and ultimately less “buzz.”  Additionally, communities have begun to move online and, in general, educational institutions have been slow to adapt.  While many schools have websites, they are typically used as online brochures and fail to foster a sense of community or generate discussions.

So what are Catholic schools supposed to do?  My recommendation is, “shift your focus, connect your community online and tell your story via social media.”  Does this mean just creating a Twitter or Facebook account? No. What I am suggesting is a fully integrated online experience that connects the school, parish and local community as one.

In order to achieve this, there must be a central hub that is regularly updated and provides valuable content that is easily shared and causes people to interact and come back. In this scenario, an optimized website with two spokes (school and parish) will act as the backbone and aim to bring in the local community. Below is a look at the potential content that would be maintained in each of the spokes.

Spoke #1 (School)

• About/History/Mission/Faculty/Events/Contact Info – these are obvious carryovers from your original website; however, increase the personality of this content by providing a video welcome message from the Principal and Pastor as well as a virtual tour of the school.
• Faculty/Classroom Blog – what better way to communicate your value than to hear directly from the educators who are shaping children’s lives? This would include highlights from the classroom such as individual/group projects, performances/assemblies and field trips.  For example, instead of just hanging projects outside in the hallways and on classroom bulletin boards, take photos and bring them online so that parents can easily share them on Facebook, Twitter or email with their friends and family.  You could also record class plays or concerts and make them available online for parents unable to attend or so that they can be shared as well.
• School Newspaper – Help bring social media into the classroom by taking your school newspaper online and teaching students how to blog.  Allow parents to subscribe to the online newspaper via email and make all posts easily shareable to help extend the reach into the larger community.  Be sure to highlight additional groups such as CYO sporting events.  Additional items to feature include interviews with alum (a great way to show the children the success of those who came before them and to gain testimonials on the value of the education received) as well as interviews with local business owners who are a part of the parish community.
• Discussion Board – give students, parents and faculty a place to communicate with one another and ask questions or share information.

Spoke #2 (Parish)

• About/History/Mission/Staff/Events/Contact Info – these are obvious carryovers from your original website; however, increase the personality of this content by providing a video welcome message from the Pastor as well as a virtual tour of the church.
• Blog – encourage the priests and staff to blog, which could include items such as “the prayer of the day,” a transcript of the past week’s Homily or points to reflect on.
• Mass – bring the Mass online and feature video of the past week’s 1^st and 2^nd Readings and Gospel/Homily, plus musical performances from the choir.
• Community – feature news and stories from community service and charitable activities as well as fundraisers and events.
• Discussion Board – give the parish members and staff a place to communicate with one another and ask questions or share information.

Additional Considerations

• The use of “house” banner ads to drive lead generation for the school or charitable donations for the parish.
• Adding the ability for parishioners to make charitable donations securely online.

While this will require an overall cultural change and social media training for key staff members, the following items would be required:

• Website Domain Name / Hosting
• WordPress Account
• Flickr Account
• YouTube Account
• Facebook Fan Page

The benefits of this integrated online experience would include an increased sense of community and overall awareness which should help to increase interest/enrollment in the school.

What do you think?  Is this an achievable plan?  What changes would you make to this plan?  Has your school already implemented some of these ideas?  Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

1. Listening Reaps Rewards – One of the first things my wife and I did when we got our dog, Daisy was to house train and teach her new tricks.  Very quickly, she learned that by listening she would receive a treat.  The same holds true in social media, I have written before that a failure to listen is the biggest mistake that marketers make when it comes to social media – don’t miss out on this opportunity.  The insights that you can gain from listening to your prospects, customers, partners and competitors are invaluable “treats” (insights) that can drive improvements in your campaigns.

2. It Feels Good When Someone Rubs Your Belly – There is nothing our dog loves more than having her belly rubbed and being acknowledged by one of us.  The same holds true for those that actively participate in social media.  By far some of the most popular blog posts that I have written were focused on highlighting the great work of others (i.e.  The 40 Most Approachable Social Media A-listers on Twitter).  The next time you are suffering from writers block or looking for something to tweet about, consider taking the time to “rub the belly” of those that you admire.

3. Loyalty Counts – Our dog is extremely loyal to our family and that loyalty grows stronger as trust is built via us taking care of one another.  The same theory is in full effect throughout varying social media communities as those that consistently provide value and support to the community at large are rewarded for their loyalty. 

4. If You Bark; Others Will Bark Back At You Even Louder – Our little dog has a tendency to bark at  other dogs (especially bigger dogs) and always regrets that decision when they bark back louder and longer.  While it is easy to quickly “bark” (attack) at someone via social media, it is important to remember that your actions will cause a chain reaction that you may not have anticipated.  It is always better to think before you “bark” (publish).

What other social media tips can you think of?

On paper a blog post that has 100 +1s would appear to be more relevant than a blog post on a similar topic that only had 10 +1s.  However what if those 100 +1s came from users that were in 0-5 circles and the 10 +1s came from users in 1,000+ circles, would that impact the value?   Now, one could argue that this scenario is unlikely because if the blog post was +1ed by someone in thousands of circles that it would most likely receive a percentage of +1s from their large connection base.  However there is no guarantee that this will happen, as this occurs on Twitter rather frequently where someone with thousands of followers retweets a blog post and it does not yield any subsequent retweets. 

The concept of providing authority scores to Google+ users would be no different than Google assigning Page Rank to websites.  In terms of SEO, ever blogger would rather have a “follow link” from a site such as Mashable than 10 links from PR1 sites.  The same could be said for receiving a +1, for example would you rather receive a +1 from Chris Brogan or from “Joe Somebody”? 

Assuming Google does decide to assign a Google+ authority ranking for its users, it would be interesting to see if Google included a user’s participation/following in other social channels (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc) in their calculation.  Personally, I would find this fascinating and would love to see that ranking based on some weighted combination of the following:

• Google+ connections
• Google+ circles
• Google+ user activity/frequency
• Google Page Rank for user’s blog
• Gmail contacts
• Activity/followers on other social channels (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc)

What do you think?  Would you like to see Google create a social profile ranking system for individuals?  If so, what factors would you like to see included?

Examples of How Gavin DeGraw, Train and Maroon 5 Incorporated Social Media Into Their Performances

• During their performance the lead singer of Train, Patrick Monahan, took photos of the crowd and posted them on Twitter. 
• In addition, Adam Levine of Maroon 5 made several references to Twitter during their set encouraging fans to follow them. 
• More impressive was Gavin DeGraw who took time after his performance to interact with all of those that “@ mentioned” him during his opening performance.  So while none of my tweets directed at Train or Maroon 5 yielded any responses, Gavin DeGraw was very quick to say thanks (see below).

Below are some photos that I took on my phone during the concert.

Below is a look at the music video for Gavin DeGraw’s new song “Not Over You”.

Please share your experiences with interacting with celebrities on Twitter, in the comment section below.

The Ultimate Travel Challenge Dashboard gives you three and a half minutes to plan a group trip with a set budget and an agenda to fill.   As the clock ticks down you are given a series of options to consider in regards to your travel accommodations, transportation, social activities and luxury items.  To maximize your score and position on the leader board you must avoid going broke but spend as much of your budget as possible. Below is a look at the mission that I was given to complete.

Trying to be practical I selected the Bahamas as my travel destination of choice.

Since I didn’t want to blow the rest of my budget by staying in a mansion, I took the middle of the road package and selected the Penthouse suite.

Finally, after selecting my mode of transportation (an exotic rental car) and social activity (helicopter tour), I was left with roughly $81,000 to spend on a luxury item so I decided to splurge on a Rolex.  Once completed, the dashboard provides guidance on your spending and it accurately pointed out my erratic habits as I went from being conservative to “big spender” in a matter of moments.

You can also view your results, ranking and enter a Sweepstakes* for a chance to win one of two $500 Visa® gift cards drawn monthly by clicking the “View Result/Enter Sweepstakes” button.  The system will then generate your personal game result for you to share with your friends.  For every Tweet and LinkedIn Share that you get, you will get one additional entry to the sweepstakes. You can also see your game profile and how you rank comparing to others.

If you are interested in participating in The Ultimate Travel Challenge, you can do so for free here.  If you are interested in learning more about SAP Crystal Solutions for developers, IT and business professionals you can visit the SAP Crystal Solutions 2011 information page.  You can also get a free trial of SAP Crystal Dashboard Design here.

* For details on how to enter including eligibility requirements, see Official Rules.

Disclosure: I am a paid employee of SAP and this article represents only my personal views. This site, Business 2 Community has no affiliation with SAP and received no compensation for the article.

A = Alltop – an online magazine rack of all the best blogs on the web.

B = Blogging – a great way to share your thoughts and read the opinions of others

C = Community – find others with similar interests and build relationships based on trust

D = Digg – before you could “like” or retweet, people were “digging” content they found interesting

E = Engagement – social media is not a one way street, listen to and communicate with others

F = Facbook – with more than 750 million users, there is no need for a description

G = Groupon – helping businesses small and large, by offering daily group deals to their members

H = Hashtag – created by Twitter users to help categorize tweets

I = “iEverything” – where would we be without the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad

J = JibJab – creators of viral videos and customized animated eCards

K = Klout – measuring how influential you are since 2008

L = LinkedIn – who needs a business card, when we can connect and network online

M = Monitor – before jumping head first into social media, that the time to monitor/listen

N = News – we are all now publishers of the news

O = Omniture – provider of web and social analytics

P = Plus – as in Google+ which aims to make people forget about the failure of Google Wave

Q = Quora – is a collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by users

R = Reddit – a one stop shop for community curated niche content

S = Slideshare – a great resource for sharing or looking for PowerPoint presentations

T = Twitter – who knew you could say so much with only 140 characters

U = uStream – broadcast yourself live across the web

V = Video – as in 35 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube every minute

W = Wikipedia – this worldwide online encyclopedia is maintained by users across the globe

X = Xanga – is a blog network with about 40 million members worldwide

Y = Yammer – is an enterprise microblogging platform used by over 80,000 companies

Z = Zynga – is the company behind popular social games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars and Frontierville

Which Came First? The Content Or The Audience?

The answer to this question is the key to determining if content still reigns supreme.  After much thought, the answer became clear to me – content is not king, your audience is.  Consider this – your audience dictates everything about your content: what you create, how you create it, where you create it, etc.  This is true in all scenarios whether you are a magazine publisher or a Fortune 500 company.  Why would you spend time creating content that your audience was not interested in – you wouldn’t! 

So if content is not king, what is it?  I think content can be classified as both “the court jester” (it entertains and engages) and as a “knight at the round table” (it’s informative and helpful).  However not all content is created equal – simply having tons of content does not guarantee success.  You need content that motivates your audience to take action.  Those actions could be as simple as sharing the content or commenting to more complex actions such as submitting a request form or making a purchase.  Regardless, if your main goal is simply more traffic than as Mark Schaefer said, “you’ve picked the wrong goal”. 

How to Create Great Content

A great place to start is by taking a look at this post from Suzanne Vara in which she describes the four characteristics of good content.  The post recommends that your content should provoke thought, entertain, educate and inform.    I would add that in addition, content should be authentic and create trust.  The best way of going about this is to listen first, don’t fall victim to the biggest mistake that marketers make by failing to listen.  By listening first, you can help answer these important questions.

6 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Creating Content

• What does my audience want/need? 
• What are their interests? 
• What are their pain points?
• What type of content does my audience want?  (blog, whitepaper, webcast, video, etc)
• Where does my audience want to consume it? (online, offline, mobile, etc)
• How frequently does my audience want to be updated?

Once you have begun creating the type of content that your audience desires, the next step is measuring and optimizing.  By looking at metrics such as time on site, repeat visitors, social shares, comments and conversions you can begin to understand what type of content performs well and what stage of the buying cycle your audience is in.  This information will help you understand your audience better and drive results.

Content is no longer king – long live your audience!

So what does all of this have to do with social media?  Well, I have noticed an increase in discussions around measuring social media success and I decided I would try to mashup this song with social media to bring some humor to the conversation.  The result was “the greatest and best social media campaign in the world” (lyrics below).

This is the greatest and best social media campaign in the world…Tribute

Long time ago me and my team here,

We was brainstormin’ in a dark and cold conference room.

All of a sudden, there shined a customer…in the middle…of the room

And the customer said:

“Create the best social media campaign in the world, or I’ll bash your brand.”

Well me and the team, we looked at each other,

and we each said…”Okay”

And we created the first thing that came to our heads,

Just so happened to be,

The Best Social Media Campaign in the Word, it was The Best Social Media Campaign in the World.

Look at our Twitter account and it’s easy to see

One and one tweets make two, two and one tweets make three,

It was destiny.

Needless to say, the customer was stunned.

Whip-click went his computer mouse,

And just like that, he became a Twitter follower.

The customer asked: “Be you social media experts?”

And we said, “Nay, we are but marketers.”

Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh-ah-ah,

Ohhh, whoah, ah-whoah-oh!

This is not The Greatest Social Media Campaign in the World, no.

This is just a tribute.

The question remains though on how to measure the success of a social media campaign and verify its “greatness”.  First, there appears to be two common themes surrounding those that are struggling with measurement – they lack a strategy with clear objectives and/or do not properly define the metrics for success.  How many times have you heard a conversation like this?

To avoid this scenario, the first step is defining your objectives (these should line up with your business goals).  Once this is completed, you will want to ensure that there are clear definitions across your organization for the metrics used to measure success. For example, if you asked 10 people to define engagement, clicks, impressions, or sentiment as it relates to social media you might find yourself with 10 different responses.  Below are some questions to consider when defining your social media metrics.

Questions When Defining Your Social Media Metrics

Engagement

• What user actions are considered a part of engagement? A comment, “like”, ReTweet, @ mention, direct message, registration, etc, all of the above?
• What percentage of your engagement was with your target audience?  How will you filter out employees, partners, etc that are participating in the chatter as well?

Clicks

• How will you measure clicks? Shortened URL (i.e. Bit.ly), Google Analytics, Omniture, etc?  NOTE: For any option, you will need to understand the limitations of having 100% accuracy.  For example, Bit.ly click totals are inflated because it will include the counts from redirects and site analytics such as Google Analytics and Omniture will count clicks from services like TweetDeck as “direct” and not attribute them to Twitter.

Impressions

• How will you define an impression?  One follower equals one impression, one fan equals one impression, etc?  Will you measure unique or total impressions? 

Sentiment

• Will you manually adjust sentiment to take into consideration posts that are inaccurately labeled due to language restrictions or slang?  NOTE: Only about 10% of all posts have any sentiment (positive or negative) and most tools are about 65-70% accurate.

Hopefully this helps provide some food for thought around social media measurement.  I would love to hear what you think in the comment section below.  What other items do you take into consideration when defining your social media metrics?

Social Media Personalities Based on Winnie the Pooh Characters

Winnie the Pooh – the friendly honey-loving main character is the epitome of everyday social media practitioners who strive for making real connections and enjoying their very own pot of honey (or in this case a pot of authentic and respectful communication). 

Piglet – one of Winnie the Pooh’s best friends.  Piglet is a small and quite timid, but with Winnie the Pooh by his side, he can overcome his fears.  If you find yourself sitting on the sidelines of social media because you are overwhelmed with the idea putting yourself out there, follow in Piglet’s footsteps and find a partner to help support you.  This article goes into the importance of having a blogging buddy. 

Eeyore – is Winnie the Pooh’s donkey friend that always seems to be followed by a cloud of gloom.  He never fully enjoys himself as he spends the majority of his time focused on the negative.  If you find yourself thinking that social media is going to cause the collapse of mankind or spend time trolling around and posting negative comments than you may have several things in common with Eeyore.   

Rabbit – believes that he is the cleverest animal in the Hundred Acre Woods and fits the profile perfectly of those that claim to be “social media experts” without proof of results or experience. 

Tigger - is Winnie the Pooh’s bouncy, exuberant and troublemaking tiger friend.  While he means well, Tigger lacks focus and control.   If Tigger was on Twitter, he would tweet before thinking; share everything going on in his life and “bounce” from social network to social network without providing any real value.

Owl – acts as a teacher and is the cleverest animal in the woods.  Owl is the equivalent of the true social media thought leaders who have built their reputation on experience and results.

So which Winnie the Pooh character best describes you?

10 Amazing Blogs That Have Cultivated Strong Communities

1. Copyblogger – founded in 2006 by Brian Clark, this blog has become a powerful blogging resource for novices, veterans and everyone in between.  Reading and participating in this community will result in you walking away with a greater sense of how to create engaging content.  You can follow Brian Clark on Twitter @Copyblogger.
2. ChrisBrogan.com – Chris Brogan is synonymous with social media.  His blog is one of the top five blogs on AdAge’s Power150 list and his writing consistently sparks thoughtful discussions.  In addition, he is a sought after speaker and the co-author of Trust Agents (it made my must read list).  You can follow Chris Brogan on Twitter @ChrisBrogan.
3. Social Media Examiner – founded by Michael Stelzner the author of the new book Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition, Social Media Examiner focuses on helping businesses understand how to be use social media to find leads, increase sales and generate more brand awareness.  Their contributors do a fantastic job of breaking down the intricacies of social media marketing and explaining how to use the tools required for success.  For more you can follow Social Media Examiner on Twitter @smexaminer.
4. HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog – founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot aims to help small businesses turn their websites into lead and revenue generating machines.   At HubSpot, they practice what they preach and the end result is one of the best written online marketing blogs on the web.  If you want to learn from others about website design, SEO, landing page testing, etc. than HubSpot is a must read.  You can follow HubSpot on Twitter @HubSpot. 
5. Convince & Convert – founded by Jay Baer, a self-described “tequila-loving, hype-free social media strategy consultant, speaker and co-author of The NOW Revolution”, Convince & Convert is the perfect destination for exploring social media topics such as measurement, engagement and campaign strategy.  You can follow Jay Baer on Twitter @JayBaer.
6. Duct Tape Marketing – don’t let the name confuse you, Duct Tape Marketing founded by John Jantsch is held together by a whole lot more than just duct tape.  The focus of this blog is creating a strong foundation for small businesses so they can understand and implement practical and successful marketing campaigns.  You can follow John Jantsch on Twitter @ducttape.
7. Marketing Profs Daily Fix – enhance your knowledge of marketing by letting the contributors of Marketing Profs “teach” you how to market your products and services both smarter and better.  While the majority of their content is free, Marketing Profs does offer paid content that many businesses, small and large, subscribe to in order to stay ahead of the curve.  You can follow Marketing Profs on Twitter @MarketingProfs.
8. {grow} – created by Mark Schaefer the author of The Tao of Twitter, Mark’s writing frequently causes me to pause and say “wow, I wish I wrote that”.  Based on the interactions (social shares, comments, etc.) on this blog it is evident that this community is continually {grow}ing in the right direction.  You can follow Mark Schaefer on Twitter @MarkWSchaefer. 
9. Mashable – founded in 2005 by Pete Cashmore, Mashable has become one of the top sources for news in social media.  With more than 40 million monthly pageviews, this blog is one of the most read sites on the web.  Even as the blog continues to grow, they have found a way to energize their readers and cultivate active discussions.  You can follow Mashable on Twitter @Mashable.
10. Content Marketing Institute – created by the content marketing experts at Junta42 which was started by Joe Puilzzi (one of the most approachable people on Twitter) this blog provides the “how to of content marketing”.  If your organization is not actively incorporating content marketing into your mix, than you are not fully utilizing your website’s full potential.  You can follow Joe Puilzzi on Twitter @JuntaJoe. 

These blogs share the following two characteristics which I believe are essential for creating a social media community:

1. Their creators understand the power of social media and the need for respectful, transparent, and authentic two-way communication.
2. They consistently create and share/promote fantastic content which becomes the launch pad for discussions.

What do you think?  Please share any additional blogs that you believe have created a wonderful community of contributors and readers in the comment section below.  If you are interested in being a part of Business 2 Community, I would love to hear from you (contribute@business2community.com).

The vast majority of these companies all have my date of birth information as well as the last time I purchased from them so it wouldn’t be difficult to tie together a “Happy Birthday” campaign for not just me but all of their customers.  The interesting thing is that several of these companies have programs in place where you can provide your email address and receive notification of a special off on your birthday – great idea but none of them executed on it.  So this brings me back to Redbox (a DVD rental kiosk located in fast food, restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stories and convenience stores across the country), and the email they sent yesterday morning (see below).

It is such a simple message and as soon as I got it, I told my wife that it looks like we are getting a Redbox movie this weekend.  This isn’t the first time that Redbox has created a smart marketing campaign – last year they gave away a free movie rental to celebrate the first day of summer.  With news that Netflix is raising the price of their service, Redbox is sitting pretty as they solidify their customer base through the execution of strong loyalty marketing campaigns.

Please share in the comment section below any companies/brands that you have seen do an excellent job with their loyalty marketing efforts.

Upper Main Line YMCA – This was my first job in high school and was a great introduction to the lesson that you have to work your way up from the ground floor.  I was paid a whopping $5.05 an hour to greet and handle gym member questions as well as my personal “favorite” (and I use that term loosely) washing and folding towels.  Besides the obvious that working is “hard work”, I learned the importance of strong customer service.  Families paid a premium to be members of the YMCA and the best way to show their value and differentiate themselves was to provide amazing customer service and care.  I was honored to be named “Employee of the Year” during my second year working there. 

Video a la Mode – When you are making $5.05 an hour working at the local YMCA it is extremely hard to save money for your first car and future college education so the only option is getting a second job (nothing like working one shift in the morning at job “A: and then going to an evening shift at job “B” during the summer).  Video a la Mode combined two of my favorites – movies and ice cream.  On one side was a family owned video store and on the other the same family operated a Baskin & Robbins franchise.  As a video store clerk, the job was easy and the perk of free movie rentals was a major plus.  In its heyday, both businesses did well however as ice cream prices rose and Blockbuster started moving into the area the businesses started to falter.  At this point the owners decided to reduce the size of the video store and add a toy store which brings me to the lesson that I learned in my three years working there – you can’t be all things to all people.  The addition of the toy store caused consumer confusion – are you a video store, an ice cream shop or a toy store?  It also resulted in an increase in damaged goods as it was nearly impossible to prevent children with ice cream all over themselves from touching the toys.  The new business model was doomed from the start and months after I left, the stores ultimately closed for good.

Heidrick & Struggles – During college, I was very fortunate to have an amazing year and a half internship in Philadelphia at one of the premiere executive search firms.  My time spent there was focused on doing ad hoc research for the firm’s partners and conducting background checks on potential job candidates.  The biggest lesson I learned was the importance of networking and building a strong personal brand as it relates to growing your career.  This was back in the days prior to the rise of social media networking so there was a significantly greater emphasis on personal interaction and more one on one connections.    

Lexis-Nexis: Mealey’s Group – My first job out of college was working for a small division within Lexis-Nexis as a Marketing Assistant.  Besides getting hands on experience implementing direct marketing campaigns, my boss at the time Lex Daniele taught me the importance of job prioritization and focusing on the critical paths to success.  Since it was my first full-time job, I was eager to please which resulted in my trying to finish as many tasks as possible each day.  One day Lex pulled me aside and said that while he appreciated the speed and accuracy of me completing smaller jobs that he would prefer I focus my time and efforts on tasks that made a larger impact on the business and complete the smaller and less significant tasks last – great coaching and advice.

Lasko Products – Right around the time I completed the MBA program at Saint Joseph’s University, I decided that I wanted to work on my analytical skillset to help further my career.  Working as a Sales & Marketing Analyst at LASKO Products let me do just that as I analyzed sales, marketing, and manufacturing data for some of the company’s largest accounts.  I had the pleasure of visiting the headquarters of Target, Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart to see firsthand how these large retailers optimize their supply chains.  The biggest lesson that I learned here was that numbers never lie and when analyzed properly they provide invaluable insights that will help drive growth. 

Unreal Marketing – When I interned at Heidrick & Struggles, one of the major commonalities I saw in the resumes of individuals that held executive marketing positions was that they spent some amount of time working at an advertising agency.  Hoping one day that I would be able to follow the same path, I took one step back in my career so that I could take two steps forward in the future by starting at the bottom at this online ad agency.  Everything I heard about life at an ad agency was true – long hours, fast pace, ever changing client demands, etc.  In my time at the ad agency, I was able to work my way up to the point where I managed my own team and client list and it was then that I learned that the key to success in an ad agency is putting yourself in the mindset of your clients.  You need to feel like you are not only working for them but also with them.  You need to understand the ins and outs of their business and always ask yourself, what would I do if I were an employee of that company?   While I got to work with a large variety of brands, my favorite client of all-time was White Flower Farm as their small team knew more about their industry and the levers to pull that drove revenue than any other client I ever worked with – they were true integrated marketing professionals.

GREENandSAVE LLC – Working for a startup company is a rollercoaster of emotions and a crash course on the topic of building and implementing a business plan.  The original business model was simple -build an online resource for consumers that focused on the cost savings of making environmentally friendly home improvements – think of it as www.HomeRemodeling.com and www.DoItYourself.com with an eco-twist.  Early on, good progress was made but a lack of resources, ever emerging competitors and a change in focus led to the company’s ultimate struggles.  While there are tons of lessons that I learned from an entrepreneurial perspective (one day I will find time to explore all of those), the biggest lesson learned was that there are no short cuts to success and even a good idea can fail if it lacks resources and focus. 

SAP – First off, I don’t think I would be fortunate enough to have my current job if I hadn’t obtained all the experience outlined prior to this stage in my career.  I am at a point now, where I love what I do, am challenged by my work and am surrounded with intelligent people.  While I am still learning (and I don’t intend to stop), the biggest lesson I have learned so far is that innovation and superior execution is the key to long term growth.  There is a lot of focus placed on pushing innovation to the next level within the company and the organization does a superb job in providing an environment in which innovation can be fostered and achieved. 

BONUS: I can’t talk about career lessons without sharing the best piece of advice that I ever received.  At an early age my grandfather instilled the notion that the key to success is to constantly be learning.  He emphasized that the best way to become indispensible was to understand the jobs of all those around you and work within your role to help them achieve success.    

So there you have it – I would love to hear the lessons that you have learned from your own career in the comment section below.

Could I have been a construction worker?  At a young age (3-5 years old) there was nothing more I wanted to do than to operate construction equipment.  I can remember my parents driving around and stopping the car so that I could get up close to those amazing machines.  However, I was not blessed with any natural “handyman” skills and thus a career in construction was never destined to be.  Highlight: Fond memories of a childhood where I was encouraged to explore my interests. 

Could I have been an NBA player? My jump shot was good enough but a lack of height, strength, quickness and a tiny heart murmur killed my NBA career before it even started.  However as a result, my competitiveness turned from the basketball court to the books which helped fully enhance my academic career.  I never would have had the chance to present my paper on the impact of globalization on the American economy in front of the Organization of American States if I hadn’t of shifted my focus.  So, my future children will just have to be impressed with stories of me hitting four 3-pointers in the final 96 seconds of my high school team’s Christmas Tournament as we won by 1 point or the summer league game in which I scored 38 points against Tim Thomas (I should mention that he had 40-something points and dunk on me at will but he was about 7 inches taller and at least 50 pounds stronger than me)   Highlight: Receiving an excellent education and graduating a semester early and in the top 1% of my class.

Could I have been a Physical Therapist?  When I realized that playing in the NBA was not in my future, I began exploring careers that would keep me actively involved in sports.  I decided to attend Cabrini College and major in Sports Science with the ultimate goal of working one day as a Physical Therapist.  However as a freshman, I was unable to sign-up for any classes that were within my major so I enrolled in Marketing Principles 101 and a handful of other classes.  At 8:15am on my first day of college, I was blown away by the passion of Professor Ruby Remley and literally changed my major to Marketing right after that first class.  There was something about the message that marketing exists in everything we do – from what we wear, to how we talk and even in the way we make decisions – that was too irresistible to ignore.  Highlight: I eventually married a Physical Therapist and to this day Mrs. Remley is still a great friend and mentor – her original recommendation helped me get my first job, she helped me get my first teaching job this past semester at Cabrini College and is always a great sounding board for ideas.

Could I have been (fill in the blank)?  As mentioned above, I was fortunate to be raised by loving parents and an extended built-in support group (influential grandparents and two younger brothers) that to this day still make me feel like I can achieve anything (add in a  loving and supportive  wife and there are no limitations on success).

So while people may say that nothing in life is certain besides death and taxes, I would add that it is guaranteed that you will be presented choices throughout your life.  The decisions you make (even the small ones) will profoundly shape your life both personally and professional and at the end of the day, the only measurement for success is looking yourself in the mirror and being happy with who you are.  This morning I woke up and saw a smile looking right back at me in the mirror – thanks to everyone that has made an impression on my life.

BONUS: Below is a look at the Dave Matthews Band performing Dancing Nancies live in Central Park.

I would love to hear you stories in the comment section below.

I have written before about how much I value individuals that have a different view than my own as they either help solidify my point of view or open me up to a new perspective (its all about learning).   There have been several occasions where commenters have let me know how much they disagree agree with me or any of the other amazing contributors to this blog.  However this specific comment added zero value to the conversation and was submitted with hurtful intentions that lacked any facts.  Yesterday, I shared my personal list of some of the most approachable and knowledgable people on Twitter and it achieved exactly what I set out to do, which was shine a bright light on these peope and expose them to new groups of individuals.  As one would expect, the comments that came in where all positive EXCEPT for one via Hoochfly.  Below is the comment that he/she left that in response to the post.

Seriously?? Social Media “a-listers.” In the reality, these people are just a bunch of unemployed wannabe marketing people that like to talk about “engagement.”

Please.

I thought long and hard about whether or not to allow this to go through and ultimately decided that it should be removed since it added zero value to the conversation, their claims weren’t based on any facts and it only would have brought in negativity.  If they would have said, “I disagree with this list because of XYZ and think you should have included ABC” then there wouldn’t be any issuses.  This community will always welcome new readers and contributors who bring varying opinions and expertise to the table but this can only be successful with RESPECT.

I would love to hear your thoughts?  How do you handle comments on your blg?  Have you had a similar situation?

Maybe it is just me, but the same holds true in the world of social media – who doesn’t get excited when a social media A-lister responds to your tweet?  Since there has been a lot of talk recently about how difficult it is to truly engage with A-listers on social media (I am not talking about Lady Gaga), it got me thinking about who are the most approachable social media A-listers on Twitter.  As a result, I came up with the following list of fantastic and engaging thought leaders on Twitter.  If you are new to Twitter or have become disenchanted with social media, then following and interacting with these individuals is a MUST!

The 40 Most Approachable Social Media A-listers on Twitter

• Mark W. Schaefer  = @MarkWSchaefer
• Margie Clayman = @MargieClayman
• Suzanne Vara = @SuzanneVara
• Jason Falls = @JasonFalls
• Lisa Petrilli = @LisaPetrilli
• Pam Moore = @PamMKTGNut
• Jay Baer = @JayBaer
• Heidi Cohen = @HeidiCohen
• Michael Brenner = @BrennerMichael
• Glen Gilmore = @GlenGilmore
• Tom Pick = @TomPick
• Cheryl Burgess = @ckburgess
• Steve Farnsworth = @Steveology
• Michael Brito = @Britopian
• Andrew Hunt = @InboundSales
• Simon Mainwaring = @simonmainwaring
• Joe Chernov = @jchernov
• Danny Brown = @DannyBrown
• Frank Strong = @Frank_Strong
• Ardath Albee = @Ardath421
• Stephanie Tilton = @StephanieTilton
• Joe Pulizzi = @juntajoe
• Kyle Lacy = @KylePLacy
• Joan Stewart = @PublicityHound
• Chris Herbert = @b2bspecialist
• Andrew Spoeth = @AndrewSpoeth
• Chad H. Pollitt = @CPollittIU
• Sima Dahl = @SimaSays
• Mack Collier = @MackCollier
• Gavin Heaton = @servantofchaos
• Janet Fouts = @jfouts
• Kristina Allen = @AllenKristina
• John McTigue = @jmctigue
• Neal Schaffer = @NealSchaffer
• Scott Monty = @ScottMonty
• Drew McLellan = @DrewMcLellan
• Erik Qualman = @equalman
• Jason Yormark = @JasonYormark
• Chris Abraham = @ChrisAbraham
• Deepak Gupta = @dgupta5150

These 40 individuals have several things in common:

1. They are all leaders in their respective fields.
2. They regularly create and share invaluable content.
3. They all understand the importance of making new connections and value the social media communities in which they participate.
4. None of them would ever call themselves an A-lister (they are too humble)

NOTE: This list was compiled by considering individuals who have at least 1,000 followers, regularly maintain their accounts, are highly respected and from my own personal experience are extremely responsive.

I would love to hear your recommendations for additional individuals to follow and interact with on Twitter in the comment section below.