In today’s competitive business climate, it’s vital for companies to have a strong brand presence, — and increasingly that means far more than merely having a static website, according to participants in the “Developing Your Brand for Online and Mobile Audiences” panel at the Milken Global Conference this week in Los Angeles.
Mike “Zappy” Zapolin, author [...]

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Twitter is expected to announce its advertising model today. The site will begin running ads known as “Promoted Tweets” in Twitter searches for keywords. Eventually, the ads may also appear in users’ Twitter streams. These ads will be labeled as such, but unlike regular tweets, they will not move down a user’s feed over [...]

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The 5 most-clicked links in SmartBrief on Social Media this past week:

Top business schools add social-marketing classes
5 shortcuts to social mediocrity
Is social marketing stuck in ad-agency limbo?
5 secrets to getting your company hooked on social media
Philly frets over flash-mob phenomenon

Study: Consumers less likely to trust their friends

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PepsiCo recently announced it would forgo running a traditional broadcast advertisement during this year’s Super Bowl — choosing instead to focus on a large-scale social media and philanthropy campaign: the Pepsi Refresh Project. The project will give away more than $20 million this year. Rather than simply pick a handful of causes to support, however, [...]

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MasterCard and Amazon are teaming up for a holiday promotion that will ostensibly help customers buy gifts targeted toward their friends on social networks. The plan is being well-promoted and even comes bundled with incentives. But Douglas A. McIntyre sees one pretty big hole in the plan. “Most shoppers just want to go to a store [...]

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Last week, SmartBrief received about 438 mentions on Twitter, 112 shares on Facebook and 45 links on LinkedIn. Great, right? Well, not if we don’t know what to do with that information.
At an Ad:Tech session on Thursday titled, “Social Media Analysis: Real-time insights for your brand,” a diverse panel of researchers and practitioners shared strategies [...]

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Ford posted almost $1 billion in profits for its third quarter. While many analysts have attributed Ford’s good fortune to cost-cutting and a government stimulus program, Rachel Sklar posits that the company’s strong social-media presence also may be a factor. Ford has launched several popular social-media pushes over the past year, which may have helped [...]

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Today’s keynote at TWTRCON DC was an interview of Craig Newmark of Craigslist by Alan Murray from The Wall Street Journal. Like Twitter itself and everything at the conference (the TWTRCON “program” is, literally a bookmark), it was short and sweet. Since that’s SmartBrief’s mission too (we aim to save you time, keep you smart), [...]

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