SOCIAL MEDIA EXAMINER — It’s the Holy Grail of interactive marketing: getting "social media influencers" -- the ones with the voice and the reach, the ones to whom everyone else listens -- to endorse and promote what you’re doing. Recently, my company managed to inspire 60 such influencers to participate in our event, called The Influencer Project, and they even took it upon themselves to help spread the word. People like Social Media Examiner’s own Michael Stelzner, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, David Meerman Scott, and others all signed on. We were grateful beyond belief. Some of the brightest minds in social media spoke at The Influencer Project. Why’d they come on board? And how’d we do it?...

GIGAOM — You may have already experienced social media meltdown: a rapid derailment of your previously neat and tidy social media marketing efforts. Because social media cannot be “controlled,” the very thought of putting marketing messages out into the social web strikes fear in the hearts of many. Without control, how do you avert or manage a crisis that bubbles over and could explode on Twitter, Facebook and the like? I’ve blogged about social media crisis communications previously; the very first step in social media crisis management is to be prepared. In addition to a good social media marketing plan you also need a strong crisis communications plan that incorporates  monitoring and application. Here are six things to consider before you encounter a seemingly out-of-control situation in your social media channels...

MARKETING PILGRIM — ChannelAdvisors’ 2010 Consumer Shopping Habits Survey is out just in time for the holiday season. The free report provides valuable insights for anyone in the ecommerce, B2C space. So, what jumped out at me? Well, it wasn’t so much that 59% of those surveyed start their gift search at a search engine –- with 28% heading straight to a marketplace such as eBay or Amazon –- but what did intrigue me were the starts on just how inconsequential brand recognition is...

IMEDIA CONNECTION — In a challenging economy, the instinct to reach for the marketing option with the lowest impact on your budget can be strong, especially for small businesses. And with the range of online services and social media sites growing larger by the day, it's tempting to want to choose between powerful options like email marketing and social media marketing. But it should not be a choice of one over the other. In fact, it's the two working together that will result in the strongest and most productive connections with your most passionate customers...

ATTENTIO BLOG — My god, its sexy. Gatorade (part of the Pepsi empire) have a beautiful social media command centre. It’s in Chicago and has a bunch of screens (6 main screens) and room for 5 analysts or community managers. Now I love this stuff. It’s a visual metaphor of social media monitoring and easier to sell internally. "Look Brad, you can see how the brand is performing and respond immediately and there are loads of screens." Now with all sales, the size of investment is what counts, i.e. will this generate a return commensurate with our spend? Well lets see?...