LinkedIn’s Publisher Platform is the user-facing component to what has become a robust media arm at LinkedIn, largely propelled by its acquisition of news-reading app Pulse, and its content often feeds into daily news aggregator LinkedIn Today.  The platform, which allows users to connect and share content with others, is part of LinkedIn’s strategy to grow the frequency with which users interact on the website. The staged roll-out will provide access for roughly 25,000 users on LinkedIn, with the goal of a global roll-out within a few months.

Arising primarily from social media, they represent snippets—not streams—of information and can help companies to figure out what customers want and to spot looming industry and market disruptions before competitors do. Sometimes, companies notice them during data-analytics number-crunching exercises.

potting weak signals is more likely when companies can marshal dispersed networks of people who have a deep understanding of the business and act as listening posts

Nordstrom, for example, took an early interest in the possibilities of Pinterest, the digital-scrapbooking site where users “pin” images they like on virtual boards and share them with a larger community. Displayed on Pinterest, the retailer’s products generate significant interest: the company currently has more than four million followers on the site.

The question was fielded among consumers who have accessed a social networking website, asking them how likely they would be to make any type of purchase on such a site in the following 12 months. Overall, 18% of respondents said they would be very likely (9%) or likely (9%) to do so. Interestingly, only 15% were neutral on the subject, with a solid majority unlikely (12%) or very unlikely (55%) to do so.

While women appear to be the more active gender on social media, it’s men who are more interested in shopping on the platforms, according to the Javelin survey results. In fact, 23% of male respondents reported being at least likely to make a purchase directly through a social network this year, compared to 14% of female respondents.

Google +1s are more highly correlated with search rankings than any other social factor, including Facebook likes/shares and Tweets.

“We have a lot of our clients whose titles are actually changing from SEO Manager to Content Strategist,” Dotterer said. “Search engine optimization sounds like you’re doing something to the engines themselves, but what you’re really doing is optimizing online content. You optimize it by changing the content you’ve already created to better fit the voice of the consumer. You also optimize by finding the gaps in the content so we can create more.”

The importance of content creation has encouraged more companies to get their SEO, social and creative teams more involved in content strategy,

acebook has known for a while that the things its users talk about are supremely interesting and relevant for advertisers. Twitter proved that basing an advertising model around brand mentions really works; Facebook is bound to follow suit. Already, we are seeing Facebook taking steps into Twitter’s territory by showcasing which topics and brands are trending in users’ News Feeds, and by aggregating hashtagged terms

Offline conversion for retailers. Speaking of consumers’ path-to-purchase on Facebook, the ability for retailers to track offline sales conversions from ads viewed on Facebook is another critical step Facebook is taking to give advertisers deeper insight into how their ads actually drive some type of consumer action.