@Publish

Whoever invented the term "social media" didn't do the world a favor because, while that's the accepted term now, it's completely wrong, and I believe it's part of what drives this disconnect. Social media is not really media. I think of it as a channel, more like a telephone than a TV commercial. And when's the last time a CEO asked, "How are we monetizing the telephone?" And has a CEO ever threatened to not invest in phones because the company can't make money off of them?

Truth is, companies monetize the telephone quite well, and if you don't think so, take away your company's phones and see what happens to your top and bottom lines. Likewise, companies can monetize social media, but they have to stop thinking about it as a way to market products and start thinking about it as a way to communicate and build a brand.

Formal research typically takes months and requires healthy investment and long planning cycles. Smart companies are trading in highly rigorous research for quick, nearly scientific data collected through social media platforms.

By such orchestrated interplay of all media, whole cultures could now be programed in order to improve and stabilize their emotional climate, just as we are beginning to learn how to maintain equilibrium among the world's competing economies

I'm not advocating anything; I'm merely probing and predicting trends. Even if I opposed them or thought them disastrous, I couldn't stop them, so why waste my time lamenting?

Resenting a new technology will not halt its progress.

Often when innovation is the goal, there’s pressure to create an original product with an unusual name. But sometimes following a completely obvious path is an effective, albeit counterintuitive, way to achieve a design that is easy to use and ultimately popular. Take, for instance, Facebook’s design approach. On Facebook.com, which will likely soon have one billion global users, all of the company’s successful features -- “Photos,” the “Like” button -- have names that are less about clever and more about direct, descriptive utility. And doing the obvious is not just what Facebook does in the arena of naming and branding. The company has been working on bringing real-world human actions and interactions in an online social context. People share photos in real life. They tell their friends what they like. They share information. Facebook is simply creating software and interface design that replicate these aspects and then naming them in the clearest way possible, almost to the point of where they don’t seem named at all. The result is proven usability and immense popularity.

Understanding the unarticulated needs of a product user, anyone interacting with a service, or even a team that converges in a space to collaborate and solve problems, enables solutions that inspire, surprise, and surpass expectations.

“social media” refers not to platforms, but to what those applications enable: social interaction.

Instead of touting Twitter in general, instead emphasize the importance of reaching new and savvy stakeholders using the platform. Instead of evangelizing for a blog, show how blogging can generate leads. Instead of pointing to videos gone viral, explore video tools that will help your client develop a brand identity.

collective intelligence is not as dependent on individual intelligence as first thought. Having more women in a group improves the collective intelligence, because it raises the level of "social sensitivity." Another important factor is letting everyone talk equally, rather than having the loudest or most opinionated people dominate the conversation.

Just as a tissue is a new, bigger level of organization for a bunch of individual cells, these new social structures are a new bigger level for individual humans. And in both cases the new level breeds emergence. New behaviors emerge from the new level that were impossible at the lower level. Tissue can do things that cells can't.

optimizing groups with more women and more democratic discussion is just as important as casting your crowdsourcing net far and wide.

“widespread unrest does not arise from long-standing political failings of the system,” the authors wrote, “but rather from its sudden perceived failure to provide essential security to the population.”

If current trends continue, the authors note, prices will permanently cross that barrier as early as next July. Prepare for a lot of angry people.

the relationship between income elasticity and the price (in-)elasticity of food means that “quite modest increases in global income will drive food prices up alarmingly unless matched by increases in supply.”

melhoria em todos os indicadores do sector, quando comparados com Junho do ano passado: o preço médio por quarto ocupado aumentou 4,82 por cento, o preço médio por quarto disponível subiu 17,67 por cento e a taxa de ocupação por quarto cresceu 12,27 por cento.

Parte do mercado nacional que costuma viajar optou este ano por fazer ferias ca dentro, beneficiando a hotelaria. Mas o país também teve um aumento das dormidas de estrangeiro, alguns porque desistiram que ferias no Médio Oriente e outros oriundos do Brasil e Inglaterra, mercados para os quais se fizeram campanhas turísticas

When I ask participants why they’ve chosen to receive emails from a particular source, read a specific blogger, or follow a certain Twitter user, they give me a variation on the same answer: “Because I like their unique point of view.” Readers will only listen to you if you’re giving them something they can’t find anywhere else.

My numbers-based research has confirmed the importance of uniqueness and novelty. The data shows that novelty is contagious; ordinariness is not.

Tweets with uncommon words get Retweeted more often than the usual things we see every day. Having a unique way of expressing yourself will earn you more Retweets.

Only 4% of these consumers use branded apps. Eighty-seven percent prefer to use websites and mobile sites

The average news feed post by a Facebook Page receives Likes and comments for 3 hours after being published. To maximize the engagement, impressions, and traffic driven by the news feed, Facebook Page owners should wait at least 3 hours between posts.

The study found that the average post lifetime was 3 hours and 7 minutes, while the median post lifetime is 2 hours and 56 minutes. After a post’s death, it only receive a trickle of engagement and there’s little lost by posting again.

To be clear, the 3 hour average post lifetime does not mean Page owners should post every 3 hours. 8 posts a day would likely force them to churn out low quality content and annoy their fans. Optimal post frequency is a separate question depending on a Page’s audience, content production skills, its post lifetime but also other factors.

weak ties have the greatest potential to expose their friends to information that they would not have otherwise discovered,” states the study.

And the reason you see more of that diverse information from weak-tie friends: More of your friends are likely weak ties.

Facebook does provide good reach and its audience of loyal fans is good for market research and word-of-mouth advocacy.

If there's an overall caution, it's against, in the words of Ms. Nelson-Field, "putting a disproportionate amount of effort into engagement and strategies to get people to talk about a brand, when you should be spending more time getting more light buyers."

the percentage of People Talking About to overall fans to be 1.3%. If you subtract new likes, which only requires a click and in the minds of the researchers are akin to TV ratings, and isolate for more engaged forms of interaction, you're left within an even smaller number: 0.45%. That means less than half a percent of people who identify themselves as like a brand actually bother to create any content around it.

Psychology and economics professor George Loewenstein conducted an in-depth study and discovered that the peak combination for triggering a high level of curiosity included: Violating the right expectations Tickling the “information gap” Knowing when to stop

In both headlines there is something readers may not expect. As a result, disorder is created, which requires investigation to restore sense and meaning. Curiosity headlines are some of the hardest to write, because simply turning something on its head usually isn’t enough to encourage your reader to take action. To create a real desire for your reader to click, read, or sign up, you have to violate the right expectations. Loewenstein discovered that curiosity increased when you highlighted a gap in someone’s knowledge, particularly when it related to a topic that interested them.

It’s not enough to create disorder. You have to stop your reader from thinking, “Oh, that’s probably going to be about X, Y and Z — I bet I already know that.” To sustain curiosity, Loewenstein suggests using feedback to quash this thought before it arises. Tests revealed that most people assume they know more than they actually do, so you definitely want to make sure you’re not losing readers who “think” they know what you’re going to tell them.

These days, developing a successful online presence requires approaching traditional digital efforts like link-building, web traffic, lead generation, and sales from a decidedly more editorial, content-rich approach: a hybrid marketing and storytelling strategy that drives customer actions by creating, documenting, distributing, and optimizing content. Some companies have created their own internal content development departments or are working with agencies to create everything from infographics to documentaries that highlight where the values, interests, and personality of brand and customer overlap. Coca Cola believes so strongly in the power of content that they are relying on this approach to help them double the size of their business by 2020.

While your office probably looks a lot different than a newsroom, approaching content strategy by thinking like a magazine publisher or a television producer is an effective way to approach content development and promotion. Utilizing influential voices to develop and promote content can help ensure that you meet the first requirement of securing readership and viewers--be interesting.

The people who already create for you: We often hear “write about what you know” because it comes easiest. Identify the talented storytellers within your own walls. Those with an intimate knowledge of company activities are primed to create impactful content, even on a tight deadline. Identify employees who are weekend filmmakers, amateur photographers, poets, and guitar players and invite them to bring these talents to the table.