I’ve been working hard and not communicating online. Not a good choice for a social media consultant, and certainly not the advice I give to my clients. The hard work has been with a candidate in a primary campaign in a small state. There are five candidates for the same position so the small pie is being cut into very thin slices, and just edging out the other opponents is all that is needed. There is no requirement for a real majority.

I have a candidate who is a natural for social media. He genuinely engages with people, listens to them and remembers what they say. Facebook, especially, has been a strong means of communications for him. The mobile upload of pictures from meet-and-greets in towns around the state and his personal comments keep him in touch with his Facebook friends, and keep his  supporters not only engaged with him, but also with other supporters. We’re on the final stretch of the campaign with Election Day coming up on June 1st.

As someone who has a background in marketing to the financial services industry, and who is also social media consultant, I have been watching, with interest, some of the forays into the social web by companies like Vanguard and Fidelity. I have also noticed that many who profess to be holding back on entering into social media actually have most of their registered reps active on LinkedIn and Facebook, but have no real policies in place to guide and support their reps.

Financial Services & Social Media White Paper

I remember that there was a lag time between when email and the Web 1.0 world began to dominate how companies communicated, and when FINRA (the financial...

Social capital is to social media what a Google page ranking is to search engine optimization. The difference is that a high Google page ranking means that – if people are looking for a company that does what you do – your company can be found. It infers a level of popularity and increases the chance that people will check your company out. This is fine, and if your company website makes a good first impression, you then increase the likelihood of someone making direct contact with you.

However, we know that personal referrals and networking are how most business is done. This is where social media excels. In the social media, your company (and its employees) can build those connections that can ultimately turn into business relationships or referral sources.

This is where the concept of “social capital” comes in. It is not a new concept – sociologists were using this term long before social media came into being. It refers to the...

The Big Money published a list of the top 50 companies on Facebook the other day. They measured both the number of fans and the amount of fan interaction. They did not include pages run by fans – though the company in the top spot (Coca-Cola) has a site that was founded by a fan who continues to run that page with Coca-Cola’s support.

It would have been nice to have some more analysis from The Big Money so – over the next few days – I will try and drill down and provide some additional thoughts.

Facebook ads seem to work. This should be good news for Facebook since, from my outsider’s vantage, old-school advertising is their only real revenue potential at this time. The Big Money reported that JC Penney purchased Facebook ads for the back-to-school...