A great thing happening around Social Media is that people can get with ease a lot of information about their interests.  In the Social Media era, people can -finally- get rid of all the Noise and grab the Signal.

One of the most interesting uses of social networks such as Facebook or Twitter is the approach given by the sector of Arts and Culture.  It is still quite impressive how many digital marketing or social media agencies have not realized this great opportunity, and are letting Museums or Galleries go by their own in the use of social networks.

Browsing across the Internet I found an interesting blog, called “Museum Marketing“, written by Jim Richardson, who posted an interesting article about how Museums can start working on Twitter.

Despite the specific objective of teaching Museums how to start using the social network, the tips might be useful for companies or organizations too.  So, if you are running a museum, or a company, who wants to start with Social Media, you should first read this.

If you have a Facebook fan page I am sure that you want to have some statistics and metrics about it.  To add Google Analytics to your fan page you just have to follow these steps:

1. Setup Google Analytics Account.
2. Create your custom img tag for each of your pages you like to track. For that purpose you can use this tool.
3. Add the custom image html tag to the bottom of each page that you need to track.

If you need additional information or want the solution for advanced users, then you should definitely read the WebDigi blog.

A recent study by Semiocast revealed that just 4% of all the messages on Twitter are in Spanish:

• English – 50%
• Japanese  – 14%
• Portuguese – 9%
• Malay – 6%
• Spanish – 4%
• Others – 17% (less than 2% each)

Read the full story at Online Media Gazzete

Is there something PR professionals can learn from dating sites? Sure! Those websites have been very successful because they commit to transparency and simplicity, in other words, users get what the site is offering, in a clear an expedited way.

This week Conversation Agent posted around this topic and highlighted 8 things PR people can learn from dating sites:

1. Clarity of intent – Dating sites are efficient and honest.
2. It is about people, not numbers – There is no “follower” count.
3. Simplicity rules – There are no complications, just easy steps.

For the rest, click here.

So you have done everything but your Social Media Marketing is still not working? Maybe:

1. You Chose the Wrong Channels
2. You Used the Wrong People
3. Your Content Sucked
4. Your Team Didn’t Believe in the Project

For knowing what else you might did wrong click here, you will even find how to fix it.

Google recently announced  “Sidewiki“, a new feature that lets users leave comments about any website they visit. With this feature, of course, you will also be able to read the comments other people have left before you.

“The impacts are far reaching, now every web page on the internet is social and can have consumer opinion –both positive and negative.”

Read the full article at WebStrategist

• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
• New York has the most Twitters users
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day

Want more?  Read this.

Via Econsultancy

If Twitter was a Village formed by 100 people,  5 of them would be known as loud mouths who create 75% of all the Twitter conversations. Twenty people would be dead because they have not tweeted at all, and 50 users would be lazy, whereby they have not tweeted at all in the past week.

Moreover, from the average 100 tweets, 40% would be pointless babble…

See the full study at Information is Beautiful

Via CMSWire

ComScore released last month results over an interesting study to identify the “Top 20 Highest Engagement Social Networking Country Audiences“.  With 6.6 hours and 1307 pages per visitor per month, it was surprising that Russia has the most engaged audience, followed by Brazil and Canada.   Mexico is ranked #11, with 4 hours and 488 pages per visitor per month.

Read the Press Release.

Juan, a friend from Avatar, sent me this file, which was developed by Espresso.  Great introduction to Social Media for those companies wanting to start a conversation.

I’m sure you have already heard about the Mayan prophecy regarding the supposed end of the World on December 21^st, 2012. Despite of the veracity of this interpretation, there is already a trailer of a movie about this subject.  It is interesting to notice that at the end of the trailer, instead of giving a URL for a website, they suggest you to Google: 2012.

The results, as Daniel reports on his post, are a set of different websites and content even on social networks to start making buzz around the movie. As you have noticed, this is a completely new way of introducing a movie, and yes, it is viral.

For details read Adverblog

A lot has been said about how to incorporate social media to the business.  Some companies had taken the path of creating profiles for their brands and products as if they were real people and start interacting with others.

On the other hand there are real executives from companies that had just jumped into the social media to start a face-to-face real conversation with consumers. 

Springwise brings us another example: A restaurant that has incorporated Twitter to its business model.

Kogi Korean BBQ takes the taste of Korean barbecue and melds it with the portability of Mexican tacos and burritos. The company sells its food primarily through two trucks that are always on the go to new locations in the Los Angeles area—to know where to find them, customers must follow Kogi on Twitter (and more than 7,000 already do).

More on Springwise.

I just saw an interesting diagram posted by Todd Defren at PR-squared that shows the evolution of advertising vs. public relations in this Social Media era.

“As you can see, PR is becoming increasingly interpersonal: there is a daily flow of interaction, responsiveness and adaptation going on amongst PR people and their ever-expanding publics. [...] Meanwhile, the advertising folks are coming to embrace more and more user-generated content, but as PAID media (versus EARNED media).

Advertising’s intrinsic, long-term value to the corporate brand is declining in the Social Media era. And the PR industry is the happy beneficiary.”

The diagram is really insightful and yes, I agree with Todd, but the counterpart of this is that nowadays in Latin America (for example), there are no agencies that can advice corporations on a complete Digital PR strategy.

Of course, you will find the traditional PR agencies that will offer some kind of “exercises” on the digital world, like including the posting of a video on YouTube or creating a “fan group” or a profile of your product at Facebook. On the other hand you will find also Online Marketing agencies that will offer the inclusion of  “social” into the online marketing campaign… all good ideas but, all of those are just tactics…what about the REAL strategy?

Companies must first be clear on what they want to achieve when they are going online, nevertheless if the effort is conducted by marketing or PR, and this is a great opportunity for agencies to make interesting proposals.  Companies need answers to questions like: What is the best approach FOR US to go online?,  Are we prepared to make a conversation?,  Do we really want to make a conversation?,  What we need?,  How is the roadmap-to-digitalPR or digitalMKT traced?

All of those tough, but really necessary questions to be answered prior to jumping online…  What do you think?

Le Monde has published an interesting chart showing the top social networks around the World…

For more visit LeMonde.fr