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Study Shows Social Media Slowly Replacing Face-to-Face Customer Interaction
May 23, 2012: IBM sat down to talk one-on-one with 1,700 CEO’s in 64 countries to discuss changes in how they do business. First, let’s marvel at the logistics behind that. All those busy people. All those languages. All that data. Seriously, I don’t think we appreciate the effort that goes into these things. Now, let’s move on to the results. To the right you see a chart with a surprising message. The CEO’s were asked how they engage with their customers. The top line represents where they are today, the bottom line where they expect to be in 3 to 5 years. Right now, social media came in dead last but it’s expected to climb to the second spot in the coming years. At a glance, I would say that these results relate to B2B companies, but the report doesn’t say one way or the other. I understand B2B being heavily face-to-face. I don’t see it in business to consumer. But again, the study doesn’t specify one or the other so I have to assume it’s a mix. Technology in general came up as the aspect most likely to impact business in the coming year. Their second choice was “People Skills.” It’s not well defined in the report, but I’m sure old school CEO’s are worried that technology is erasing our ability to connect one-on-one.

5 Essential Components of Localized Marketing Strategy for National Brands
May 23, 2012: A whopping 90 percent of consumers now use search engines when researching products or services in their local area, according to BIA/Kelsey. Google began more aggressively serving local results in October 2010 due to the shift and growth in local search commerce by consumers and advertisers. Advertisers in turn have boosted their local marketing investment. Borrell Associates forecasts local advertising will grow to reach $19.9 billion in 2012. Some national brands have already come to realize online visibility has become the most important ingredient in their local marketing mix. Scalable, automated technology can help them overcome slower national competitors and smaller local competitors who lack marketing support, but whether they leverage automation or manually support local stores and offices, national brands should make sure to consider at least five initiatives in any local marketing effort.

Everything You Need to Know About Content Strategy, You Learned From Children’s Books
May 23, 2012: Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Molly Niendorf, content and social media manager for Emma email marketing software. If you work in content, you know that your job involves a lot more than the content you produce. If you write a blog post or publish a webinar or post a YouTube video without a coordinated content strategy in place, your content is no more than the sum of its parts. In fact, it’s probably less. Author of Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson defines content strategy as the practice of planning for the creation, delivery and governance of useful, usable content. It’s a helpful definition, and it’s worth exploring. Useful: does your content support a business objective? Usable: does it actually help a user complete a task or solve a problem? Even just focusing on those two goals goes a long way toward effective content. (By the way, If you haven’t read Content Strategy for the Web, get your hands on it. The second edition just came out. Yay!) You may have a pitch-perfect content strategy in place and a well-oiled content machine (with dutiful content worker bees who deliver the content honey on call) and no competing departmental needs to navigate. (If you do, please call me from utopia.) If your company is on earth, you probably have a working strategy, lots of contingencies to manage and a changing product schedule — and the need to reassess and reformulate your plans often.

For AOL, a Costly Gamble On Local News Draws Trouble
May 23, 2012: Patch.com, a network of small-town news sites owned by AOL Inc., has emerged at the center of a tug of war over the Internet company's future. The high cost of running the local-news sites has fueled a campaign by dissident investor Starboard Value LP against AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong's strategy of investing heavily in online content. Starboard, which is waging a proxy battle to win several seats on AOL's board at next month's annual meeting, says that Patch should be closed, sold or put into a joint venture, with a partner sharing the cost. Inside AOL, Patch is also a flash point. Arianna Huffington, who took charge of Patch and AOL's other news and entertainment sites after AOL acquired her Huffington Post last year, distanced herself from the business after disagreements over how it should be run. "They wouldn't let Arianna fix it, so she walked away from it," said one media executive familiar with the matter.

Facebook, Zuckerberg sued over IPO
May 23, 2012: Facebook shareholders have filed a lawsuit against the social network, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a number of banks, alleging that crucial information was concealed ahead of Facebook's IPO. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan this morning, charges the defendants with failing to disclose in the critical days leading up to Friday's initial public offering "a severe and pronounced reduction" in forecasts for Facebook's revenue growth, according to Reuters, which cited a law firm for the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs charge that the changes to the forecast by several underwriters of the IPO were only "selectively disclosed" to a small group of preferred investors and not to the investment community at large. "The value of Facebook common stock has declined substantially and plaintiffs and the class have sustained damages as a result," the complaint says, per the Reuters report. Facebook's stock opened Friday priced at $38 and, aside from a slight uptick right at the start, has been trading lower since then. It closed at $31 last night. At the moment, in early trading today, shares are up slightly to around $31.70. A report from well-known Wall Street watcher Henry Blodget, citing a source, posits that a Facebook executive was responsible for telling institutional investors, but not smaller investors, about the reduction in revenue estimates. Speaking on CBS This Morning today, Blodget described the sequence of events regarding the estimates and the failure to fully share material information. "The fact that it was only distributed verbally to a handful of institutions as opposed to all investors is a problem." More to come

Privacy Experts Weigh In on Whether There Is a Cure for “Creepy” (Video)
May 23, 2012: Sometimes the Internet is a creepy place. There are identity thieves, stalkers and people generally trying to take advantage of you. At least that was one of the things that I took away from a privacy conference last week in Seattle, where the word “creepy” slipped into the conversation as a description of everything from location-based services to more cutting edge Internet businesses. But advocates argued that the cure for creepy was to make services relevant and useful — not spammy and invasive. In other words, consumers are willing to share their information — age, gender, location — if there’s a benefit to them.

Google AdWords Auction Insights Reveals Who You're Competing Against
May 22, 2012: Google has announced a new AdWords feature promising to provide advertisers with more transparency into the ad auction. The ad auction is the process by which Google determines the cost per click (CPC) amount an advertiser will pay for a click on their ad. Every time a query is made on Google, they run an auction. This auction determines the ads that will appear, the ad’s position, and the CPC that is paid. For years advertisers have struggled to understand how the auction process works and have asked for more insights into the auction to help optimize for better performance. Currently Google provides competitive reports at category level (in the Opportunities tab) and impression share data, but now they will offer information to show how advertisers are performing in comparison to other advertisers who compete in the same set of auctions. The new Auction Insights report answers the question about who competes in a given auction. It shows the display URL domain of the advertiser who is your competitor in that auction. The report provides data at the keyword-level and, for now, can only be generated for a single keyword at one time. Data is also only available for keywords that meet a minimum threshold of activity for the specified time period. It provides five different statistics: impression share, average position, overlap rate, position above rate, and top of page percent.

Time Warner Cable Head Sides With TV Networks Over Ad-Erasing Technology
May 22, 2012: BOSTON — The head of one of the country’s biggest cable companies voiced his disapproval of the Dish Network’s ad-erasing technology on Monday, aligning himself with television networks that are trying to squash the technology, called Auto Hop. Glenn Britt, the chief executive of Time Warner Cable, said Monday that something like Auto Hop could damage the existing ecosystem of television programming and distribution, which depends in part on advertising revenues and in part on subscriber revenues. “I don’t think we want to destroy one of those revenue streams,” Mr. Britt said at a cable industry conference here.

TV Embraces Its Dark Side
May 22, 2012: In a promotional trailer for ABC's coming drama "666 Park Avenue" set in a Manhattan apartment building, walls swallow people, bright red blood swirls down a sink drain and at one point a terrified looking woman who has just moved in asks her boyfriend: "Are we going to be ok here?" That's a question TV executives may be asking themselves after broadcast networks unveiled a total of about a half dozen similarly dark-tinged dramas last week at the annual TV "upfront" sales presentations for advertisers. Such shows have thrived on cable channels like AMC and FX lately (think "The Walking Dead"). But there is no guarantee the mass audiences that tune into broadcast networks—or their advertisers—will be as enthusiastic. "There is a huge risk in drama," admits Jennifer Salke, president of NBC Entertainment. Three of its 12 new scripted series scheduled for next season possess a kind of eeriness, including "Do No Harm," about a good-looking doctor with a violent alter ego and "Hannibal," about a serial killer. Having lagged behind the other three networks—Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, News Corp .'s Fox and CBS Corp.'s CBS—in recent years, Ms. Salke said NBC was willing to take more chances. "How do you make an original cop or hospital show?" she said. "That's why you find yourself leaning into big ideas that are often complex and dark." But Comcast Corp.'s NBC isn't alone. With the exception of ratings leader CBS, all three major broadcast networks showed up with one or more new dramas bearing a similar sensibility—a roiling human terror that is sometimes uncomfortable, and at other times thrilling.

Guardian's n0tice launches open journalism toolkit
May 22, 2012: The Guardian's online noticeboard project n0tice has today launched an open journalism toolkit. The site has opened its API and content posted on n0tice can now be integrated into a digital news organisation's content management system. The free toolkit promises a host of features that can be utilised by news sites, including the ability to create crowdmaps based on information posted on n0tice. The Guardian has already done this by using n0tice to crowdmap the Olympic torch relay. There are several other examples, including Britain's best bike rides.