Mashable recently published an article highlighting research done by a social media management firm called Virtue, which looked at the value of a Facebook fan. According to its research, a fan was worth US$3.60 per year. Bear with me as I get mathematical.

So, we got what we expected from the Super City logo competition: a rather staid, traditional, old fashioned, unimaginative mark that looks like the old Regional Parks emblem. From the Super City I wanted a logo that expresses the modern, dynamic, diverse, creative, vibrant, commercial city that is Auckland. And I don’t get that from this.

The use of social media as a business tool is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are just some of the websites used to promote businesses and products, as well as being excellent tools for interacting directly with customers and associates. But there can be risks associated with publishing too much information online, particularly in relation to your intellectual property. So what steps can you take to ensure that you are getting the best exposure possible without jeopardising it?

A senior, seasoned technology client quipped to me the other day that the growth of so called ‘social media experts’ reminded him of the rise and rise of the dotcom gurus who sprouted like mushrooms in the late nineties. But you know what? Not only does the prevalence of social media seem familiar, for someone like me (and those of my vintage), it’s actually reassuringly old fashioned.

What is it that you would like to achieve with social media? “Oh, umm, it’s just a space our company should be in”. Unfortunately, this is an all too common response to the first question I ask. If you don’t know what you want to achieve, how would you ever know if your campaign was a success?

Spencer Willis of Brand Spanking attended a few events over summer and lamented some of the insipid youth marketing efforts in this story. So who better to offer up six top tips on engaging youth audiences than Lil Cameron, a writer with 25 years experience in, well, growing up.

There are many online marketing tactics you can employ to drive traffic to your website or brand profile, but you can’t underestimate the importance of keywords.

It’s been a long summer. And thank God it’s officially over, because I now don’t have to attend another event where Midnight Youth are playing. Talking of God, the big man’s disciples have been out in force during this summer of 09/10, with one of the big marketing revelations being the Parachute festival.

There’s a lot of buzz around social media at present. And it’s a space that every company feels it should be in. But, first things first, what exactly is it?

So I’m 32, I’ve been an advertising creative for almost a decade and I’m beginning to feel old. Worse still, I’m running scared. It’s the ‘kids these days’. Seems like they can do anything.

In this installment of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: Classified advertising was hit hard last year. How long before newspapers give it up? All change in the New Zealand movie business. And will 3D advertising change the game? US publishers are adding online readers to total circulation and charging advertisers for all of them. So is that likely to happen here?

This week in eBuzz from Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: The Ozzie’s obsession with online videos: ipredict top of the pollsters

Last week I was lucky enough to spend a day soaking up the latest digital wizardry at Webstock 2010. My plan was to get a better understanding of all things digital to help us do even better digital work.

This week in eBuzz from Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: The iPad and The Customer Dilemma: The New Zeal of the Music Industry

Here at StopPress we get our fair share of disgruntled murmurings about, well, lots of things really. Just recently someone approached us about some alleged dodgy online advertising practices and our ears pricked up. The source wished to remain anonymous but claims online media agencies are placing ads on websites that are not necessarily being viewed and accessed by the target demographic for those ads, yet clients are still paying for these ‘foreign eyeballs’.