Author Alex Erasmus

News
Personal vs professional: where do you draw the line online?
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After skipping last week’s #markchat due to the Pike River memorial, the Twitter stream will once again be flowing freely at 12:30pm today, with the topic being ‘personal authenticity vs professional brand – where do they meet and diverge?’ Also, for all those unable to ‘attend’ the chat, we’ll choose the five most salient/interesting comments made during #markchat and a link to the summary blog post.

Opinion
Conference call: Social Media Junction 2 in review
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Six international speakers and a range of local big brains from varied marketing and communication backgrounds came together in Auckland this week for the second edition of Social Media Junction and  presented their perspectives on acheiving ROI from social media activity. But ROI is perhaps the wrong phrase to describe what was discussed. With the benefit of hindsight, it was more about content marketing: you’re on social media platforms, but what are you saying, how are you saying it, when are you saying it and are the customers listening and then actually buying or recommending to someone else who buys? Anyway, enough with the questions, here’s what the speakers had to say.

News
From the few to the many: a quest for social media buy-in
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Like any new form of marketing, there was plenty of trepidation when social media began to go mainstream. And some senior executives still feel the jury is out when it comes to investing large chunks of budget in it. They want to know how it’s going to feed back into the business, and rightly so. So while the first phase of social media—the one where people jump online and create profiles—has already happened, companies are still figuring out how to make the central theory behind social media (conversation, not broadcast) relevant to the entire business.

Opinion
Finding the viral Holy Grail: dumb luck or good management?
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Online video has been an integral part of marketing campaigns for years, and a video going gangbusters on YouTube and other video sites is like the Holy Grail of marketing. Support, content, timing and knowing your audience are all elements that have to be included in the mix. But what’s often glossed over is the above-the-line support that is typically needed to get the ball rolling.

Opinion
Facebook: it’s about money, not privacy
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There have been lots of conversations recently about privacy, specifically in social media. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and head-honcho at Facebook, got very sweaty when discussing the topic recently. So if Mark Zuckerberg, one of the pioneers of the share everything world we live in, is getting sweaty about ongoing privacy concerns, then perhaps we should all be worrying.

News
Social Media in Retail
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Auckland’s Social Media Club, which had its first event last month featuring Jayson Bryant of Wine Vault TV, is set to welcome gelato and sorbet store Giapo, on March 9.

News
Social media gurus go clubbing
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Around 50 social media practitioners, digital natives and sneezers gathered together in meatspace last night for the inaugural Auckland Social Media Club event at the 42Below Bar on Commerce St and, with online video set to be a key topic in media circles in the coming months, Jayson Bryant of Wine Vault TV took the floor to speak about how incorporating video blogging into his business has helped drive extra revenue.

Opinion
Measuring success
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Nobody has the definitive solution for how to measure the success of Social Media. At least not yet.

Sure, you can talk about online ‘buzz’ created by how many blog posts, tweets, videos, status updates etc. that occurred for a certain brand, person or topic, but what’s ‘buzz’?