Spearfish Labs

No messing around this week, just straight in with our top six.

1. iStrategy 2010 – Moving Away From Campaigns To Constant Engagement – Sean Colgon

Sean Colgon shares this article and presentation from the iStrategy 2010 event in Berlin. Coca-Cola have recently been ousted by Google as the top brand in the world, but they do social media as well as anyone, which is saying something given they are as corporate as they come. Their Fans First approach to community engagement is a good benchamark for any organization grappling with how to move away from the campaign mindset to one of constant engagement and brand building. Good to see.

2. UK retailers missing a trick with social media – Net imperative

From the good to the bad. Apparently only two in five retailers in the UK have a presence in social media. It doesn’t cover whether they monitor what is being said about them (which may raise the number a bit), but if you are in the service or retail game then the corner stone of your business should be customer service…social media is pretty good at helping with that so we found that surprising.

3. The Secrets of YouTube Marketing Revealed – Ruth M Shipley

Social media Examiner does as good a job as any blog in explain social media and its possibilities in laymans terms. We like that! Here Ruth Shipley covers an area we have been looking at lately with how important Youtube is as a marketing channel for businesses. “400 million people worldwide actively seeking information on an estimated 6 million to 9 million YouTube channels every month” is hard to ignore.

4. Scorecard: Does Your Agency Fondle The Hammer? – Jeremiah Owyang

Fondling the Hammer you ask? That’s focusing on the shiny new technology tools and not business needs. Some very sound advice here on how not tying social media programs to business objectives and simply jumping from one platform strategy to another will confuse the hell out of your customers. Your agency partner should be helping you develop a long term customer engagement strategy not a short term marketing one.

5. SOCIAL MEDIA: The power of influencer marketing – Meg De Jong

A good (long) analysis of the art of influencer marketing. Influencers for your specific market or industry won’t be your customers, they will hang out on the sidelines…but will have the ear of your market and their opinion matters. The post covers finding them and keeping their attention – check it out.

6. Ustream Pairs Live Video With Simultaneous Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace Chat – Adam Ostrow

There a lots of live chat options available now…which we like! For fan or customer engagement and authenticity there really is nothing better so we thought Ustream’s new Social Stream feature which lets you login to all of the above and ping content out to them as well as the Ustream chat box is very cool.

On that note , have a good weekend.