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Becoming a social business isn’t easy. It takes planning, organization and teamwork. But when established and executed well, social businesses find ways to drive business results, and win the loyalty of social users. If you’re looking for inspiration on how to lead the social brand pace, the following 16 brands embody the best of the best – broken down by social area of excellence.... 
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In an attempt to deliver more tangible returns from their social media investments, brands are falling back on tried and tested methods of 'pushing the needle', most often using the familiar tools of advertising.
This partly stems from the misuse of 'proxy' measures in determining social ROI, such as followers, likes, shares and fans. None of these deliver value and are easily abused - with many marketers seeing them as just another contact list.
However, advertising and social media are like oil and water and should never be mixed, here's three reasons why....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Good read and guidance for advertisers, marketers and PR.
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![Nearly 1 Out Of 4 Big Companies Are Still Ignoring Twitter [STUDY] - AllTwitter | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/TcwO4Ei6cL1P-_ZmkqNXfTl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
At the end of 2012, the University of Massachusetts presented their annual survey of the digital presence of the Fortune 500.
Among their findings were the following: 28% of the Fortune 500 companies had blogs, 62% had a YouTube account, and (here’s the shocker) an incredible 23% of Fortune 500 firms had neither a Twitter nor a Facebook account at the end of 2012.
Not only that. As we reported, according to the 2012 Fortune 500 Social CEO Index report from CEO.com, only 19 CEOs from the world’s top 500 companies use Twitter (or have someone use it on their behalf) – and only 9 of these are active.
Like… seriously?...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Slow to adopt social means slow to compete, gain profile and benefit.
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Working in social media, I am often asked by coworkers and peers who I find to be an inspiration or company just crushing it in the space.
While Ford and Dell might immediately jump to mind, I really just see them as a constant rather than someone to glean some inspiration from, instead I find myself noting or looking to the following brands for brain cookies....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Great list and lessons from Planters, White Castle, Oreo, Chobani, Frank's Red Hot and Sesame Street.
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Social marketing is often thought of as elusive or it’s over simplified. Venture adviser and marketing strategist Andy Smith, and noted brand researcher and author Jennifer Aaker, have used extensive data and their collecting insights to break it down to a straight forward formula that midsized business can use to deeply impact their marketing and even make a difference in the world.
The Dragonfly Effect looks at the most effective campaigns in modern history and attributes their success to social media. They note that by 2009 that 94% of consumers didn’t believe the claims that advertisers made. However, people are influenced by colleagues and friends. Traditional media may not be dead, but unless you are including a healthy mix of social marketing your days are numbered....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
The Dragonfly Effect is an interesting structure for your strategic social marketing program.
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... Yes, you read that right: A big-time movie producer just validated brand storytelling in an extraordinary way. He’s so compelled by its versatility that he wants to split time between marketing and Hollywood. Details are still sketchy on Howard’s next move, but it looks like he’s actively looking for his first client. What his direct impact on content marketing and advertising will be remains to be seen. In the meantime, think about what we can learn from this prolific storyteller that we can use to our advantage as content marketers. Below, you’ll find seven milestone projects in Ron Howard’s career, the lessons we can take from them, and practical examples of those lessons in action....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Content marketers gear up for Hollywood competition...
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I got a real surprise on Monday during the workshop I was leading on using content to attract qualified leads at the Online Marketing Summit. When I asked the audience, "Have you experienced unexpected results for your brand from a particular social network?” I wasn’t prepared for the digital strategy head of a top 5 accounting firm who told me that Pinterest is a significant referrer of traffic for their financial services and hedge fund strategy content. Apparently, among the juggernaut of dream wedding pictures and fantastically decadent fashion and food, a good infographic about the hedge fund business can gain real traction....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Even accountants see a return on their investment from social media and Pinterest.
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Learn about the new purchase loop, and how it aligns with inbound marketing.
In 1898, Elias St. Elmo Lewis developed the Purchase Funnel, the now familiar pathway customers travel from consideration to purchase. There are four steps in the process that have always been integral to every CMO's approach to marketing: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Valuable insight into how social media channels impact inbound marketing. Important information for marketers and social media pros.
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A list of 38 fantastic marketing blogs any marketer should add to their reading list. In August 2011, we did a round-up of the 23 best inbound marketing blogs on the internet. But that was soooo two years ago, and it's high time we gave that list a refresh, don't you think?
I spend a lot of time reading these bad boys, and so do my colleagues here at HubSpot. But I'm always looking for new reading material! So read through this list -- keeping in mind these are not ranked in order of awesomeness, but in order of alphabeticalness -- and let me know if there are some other amazing blogs we should consider for next year's list! I hope this gives you some new reading material to enjoy with your morning coffee....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Here's an excellent resource for marketing, content and PR pros.
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...Instead, a marketer's best friend is a theory by the name "disruptive hustle." By painstakingly forging one-to-one relationships, a brand can effectively separate themselves from competition. Social users love lodging complaints. According to a recent study, 47% of social media users now actively seek customer service through social media.
Furthermore, 83% of Twitter users and 71% of Facebook users expect a response within a day, and 50% expect that response within two hours.
Those numbers mean one thing - customers take social media very, very seriously. Purchasing decisions are heavily influenced and discussed on social networks. Buying and discussing products has always been a personal activity. If customers aren't happy with your performance, they'll be more than happy to tell you.
Your customers take to social media to address problems. Therefore, so should you....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
The challenge is clear. "Old" marketing doesn't work anymore. But social media will require social businesses to monitor, listen, talk with customers, and.... well, hustle.
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Are you looking to get started with social media marketing?
Do you want to reexamine how you’ve been using social networks?
In this post, I’ll cover 26 tips, an A-Z guide, to help you understand the backbone of successful social media strategies....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Debbie Hemley offers an excellent, practical blueprint for those looking at jumping into social media marketing.
wanderingsalsero's comment,
January 26, 2013 7:39 AM
I think the danger with social media is that people with nothing of substance to offer are learning how to tell people about (how little they really have to offer). Facebook, supposedly the pinnacle of social media, is a perfect example. It become a difficult to learn, difficult to keep up with, big pile in mostly worthless content junk.
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Six trends that are changing the way we use social media in marketing and sales.
We’ve been at this social game for a while now, you and me. We saw it grow up from a minor phenomenon to a mainstream communication channel. And we were there for the emergence of “pinning” (no longer just a wrestling term), the broad use of Twitter in crisis reporting, and seemingly countless redesigns of the Facebook Wall, err ... Timeline. In such a rapidly changing space, it’s hard not to get pulled into an ongoing analysis of where we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re headed next. In this most recent round of reassessment, a handful of trends have caught my attention. And, unlike the loss of LinkedIn Answers, I’m feeling pretty good about them. So let's take a closer look at how social media is changing ... for the better....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Meghan Keaney Anderson shares a good overview of social business evolution and development...
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...allSocial media" remains a source of profound confusion and challenge to brands around the globe, resulting in siloed marketing departments and social campaigns that suffer from a lack of support and the increased awareness guaranteed by traditional media. But the golden rules of social media--be transparent, honest, and consistent; listen, respond and be respectful--aren't foreign concepts to any communications expert (or, that being said, any socially balanced individual). Many people proudly declare, "I don’t understand social media." Specialist agencies, "digital ninjas," and the social platforms themselves have succeeded in generating a digital snowstorm of confusion, leading the marketing world into the belief that theirs is a totally new universe of communication....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
A quick but thoughtful reminder that it's the communications and not the channel that count most. I particularly liked the three case studies cited.
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It’s been nearly impossible to consume any kind of media in the last few weeks without hearing about Netflix’s new original series “House of Cards.” With a massive budget and 13 episodes that were released simultaneously to enable binge viewing, the David Fincher-directed series has everyone talking about what it means for the future of the TV industry.
What hasn’t been discussed is what this move means for content marketers. Yes, you read that correctly. Netflix’s strategy has some important lessons for the content marketing industry. As a company with plenty to lose and an all-too-recent history of spoiling its goodwill with a once fiercely loyal subscriber base, Netflix has plenty on the line. And it all begins with how successful they are at engaging their customers....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Great insight and useful marketing lessons.
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Contextual marketing can pay off far more than shooting for the star. Find out basic information from your audience, and market to them.
...So how do companies then identify their audience before sending a message? Fortunately, many in the mobile world make it easy to identify themselves. Smartphone, tablet and mobile devices users seem to be generally comfortable to handing their information, likes and dislikes over to third-party platform operators, whether it be social media or app makers. Once a company connects with one of these platforms then, and obtains the operator’s information gained from users, the audience involved becomes easily identifiable. The universe also becomes easily categorized by age, likes, gender, location and even income in some cases. All of these factors become critical identifiers in providing the context of an audience.
There are other ways to identify an audience context as well...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Helpful insight into contextual marketing and how it can pay big results.
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Pinterest just raised $200 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. But if the company seriously starts to monetize what marketers like Sephora are finding in the social shopping platform, two and a half billion dollars is too cheap.
Far too cheap.
Beauty products retailer and digital trailblazer Sephora says that per-capita, its Pinterest followers spend more money than its Facebook followers, and not just a little bit more. In fact, Pinterest users spend 15 times more on Sephora products than Facebook followers, Sephora’s head of digital Julie Bornstein told me this morning....
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The presence of brand ambassadors is not just a matter of encouraging happy customers to write reviews. Reviews are great and extremely important, but there’s no real “skin in the game” when they post to these sites. They’re one within a group. If a company has 100 Google Local reviews, what’s one more added to the mix, at least from a customer’s perspective. It’s not a personal thing when someone posts to review sites.
Social media, on the other hand, is a personal thing. Those who take their social media seriously are much less likely to say something good about a brand. When they do, it actually means something. Their friends and family who already have an opinion about the person will take their recommendations on social media more seriously. This isn’t even taking into account Facebook Graph Search which has the potential to amplify this even more (we’ll see). This is simply looking at the state of social media today. If someone’s willing to say that they love your brand, product, or service on social media in general and Facebook in particular, it’s the most powerful review anyone can give you....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Skin in the game makes the difference writes JD Rucker.
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...Incorporating a “content readiness” workstream at the front end of a project can yield tremendous long-term business benefits. The planning stage for content is critical to move forward with an experience that exceeds user expectations and moves the business closer to its goals. That means understanding existing content, identifying missing ingredients, and building a new data model. This is the Holy Grail for content today. How can we plan for the presentation of content if we do not know on what device it might be rendered? Removing the presentation layer leaves some teams dumbfounded. We’ve been dependent on visualizing and formatting content to a singular or two-dimensional form for so long that thinking about it any other way is daunting. But the reality is we are already living in a platform agnostic world. And we’re behind our own evolution....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Nice content marketing reality check...
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The rise of spontaneous social ads means the end of the ad campaign as we know it. fascinating thing happened at the Super Bowl this year. Typically, Super Bowl advertisers meticulously plan every aspect of their presence months in advance of the big game.
But this time, Coca-Cola, Audi, and Oreo didn't just limit themselves to pre-packaged creative — they also had in place rapid response teams that adapted to events as they happened. So when the rest of America was reacting to the power outage in the stadium, the brands were, too — appropriately and in their own brand voice.
Recently, the Wharton Future of Advertising Program asked more than 175 industry leaders to describe their vision of what advertising would be like in the year 2020. Based on our analysis of the responses to the 2020 Project, the Super Bowl case isn't just a once-a-year stunt — it's a preview of a model that will scale and become a foundational characteristic of major brand advertising. The industry experts had a varied take, but a remarkably consistent theme emerged: the rigid campaign-based model of advertising, perfected over decades of one-way mass media, is headed for extinction....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
This is valuable reading for PR, marketing and advertising people. It offers great insight into the disruption to business that is underway and caused by social media
Leonie vander Westhuizen's curator insight,
February 17, 2013 1:22 AM
I like the example of Audi, Coca Cola and Oreo that shows how advertising differs. In teaching PR it is important for students to know that the way you as PRO work is challenging 
Casey Strachan's curator insight,
February 17, 2013 1:59 PM
In case you are still thinking otherwise, the rigid campaign-based model of advertising, in one-way mass media, is headed for extinction.... 
Jeff Domansky's comment,
February 17, 2013 3:27 PM
Appreciate the comments Leonie and Casey. Agree it is critical to stay ahead of this disruption!
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It's shameful so many brands still ask social media to deliver likes, fans, followers, views and channel performance indicators, not real business results.
It's 2013. Social media is no longer new. It's a mature medium, one that has been woven into the fabric of consumer life online. So why are brands still determined to act like naive tourists, blundering around a foreign land and upsetting the natives? It's time to take back control. Brands have been lectured for the last few years on the need to let go of the vice-like grip on their brand, to hand over control to their customers in social media. And it's true that social media has ushered in a new age of transparency, where customers want a far greater stake in any brand they interact with....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Let's make sure our social media marketing programs deliver what really matters.
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In your list of links, is an infographic that you are proud of. Whether it’s your own brain child or the brain child that you paid someone a lot of money to create— you want to introduce it to the world! It’s been my experience that infographics tend to rank higher and generate traffic faster than your standard blog posts.
With that said, your infographic has a lot of potential and power. Are you ready to pitch it hard enough so that your visual message is heard all over the web? Based on what I’ve done in the past, here are some tips so that your awesome infographic doesn’t go unnoticed!...
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More than half of U.S. business to business (B2B) marketers plan to increase spending on their social media budget in 2013, reveals a new study.
56 percent of respondents to BtoB Magazine‘s 2013 Outlook: Marketing Priorities And Plans survey said that their marketing spend on channels such as Twitter and Facebook will rise this year, with social media being favoured above both search (52.5 percent) and mobile (a surprisingly low 35.5 percent).
Website development (70.1 percent) and the ever-reliable email marketing (61.9 percent) were the top digital marketing priorities....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
I agree it's a surprise that marketers are not all over mobile. They'd better get mobile fast because their customers are way ahead!
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From the history of beer to what to do with an empty, these infographics will provide you with a whole variety of knowledge about one of man’s most loved drinks: beer.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Where would we be without beer? You'll learn some amazing facts about beer in these 10 infographics. Here's just a taste ;-) - Egyptian children were sometimes baptized with beer - in the 1600s, midwives created ultra-strong beer to ease the pain of childbirth - in 1773, the Sons of liberty gathered at the Green Dragon Tavern, had a few beers, and agreed to start a revolution - annual beer consumption in the US is 22 gallons per person - in the US today there are 1,482 craft breweries operating - 9,000 BC Neolithic humans evolved from hunter gatherers to farmers. Was it the bread or the beer? - 2,400 BC Sumerians invent the straw to avoid sediments in the bottom of beer - Plato said: "He was a wise man who invented beer." - takes 18 minutes to burn off the calories from a regular beer compared to 15 minutes for a pint of Guinness. Go figure.
I could go on but that would just make me thirsty for more. Just enjoy these 10 awesome infographics. Cheers!
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With the proliferation of new platforms, expanded content needs and related marketing support, marketers can find social media overwhelming. The reality is that, done effectively, social media success can be achieved in an easy, straightforward manner.
Instead of spending time and resources developing an elaborate plan, start small and build your social media engagement slowly. The beauty of taking this approach is that it keeps your social media on track to achieve your business objectives without abandoning your process as soon as other activities and projects take priority. 9 easy steps for social media success in 2013 The objective is block your social media activity into bite size chunks so you don’t feel swamped....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
This is a must-read blueprint for social marketing success. Heidi Cohen says keep it simple and try out a few social media channels to see what works.
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A concrete method for measuring return on investment for social media remains elusive, but recent research initiatives may be bringing such an answer within range. In one recent study scheduled to appear in a journal titled Information Systems Research, researchers from the University at Buffalo School of Management, Aalto University and Texas A&M University were able to correlate social media engagement with increased purchases for a large specialty firm in the northeast U.S.
According to co-author Ram Bezawada, assistant professor of marketing in the School of Management at the University at Buffalo, “Our results show that when customers engage with a business through social media they contribute about 5.6 percent more to the firm’s bottom line than customers who do not.”...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Still more research required but marketers should be encouraged by the potential for social media to impact purchasing.
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Really useful social business insight. Must-read for PR, marketing, social biz pros.