Savvy job seekers have turned to digital and social media tools to help them in their job searches, and now recruiters are on board with the power of social media as a recruiting tool.

LinkedIn isn’t the only social network that helps in the job search process — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+ have all been used by people to land jobs in innovative ways.

And interesting takes on the digital resume are increasingly popular, with job seekers creating infographic resumes, video resumes and other visual resumes that set them apart from other job applicants.

Employers are taking note of the importance of social media in the recruiting process, and the majority of businesses are turning to social media to find and evaluate job candidates, according to this infographic compiled by Career Enlightenment, a resource for online job seekers.

Take a look and let us know what you think of using social media to find a job.

 

Twitter continues to prove itself a valuable current affairs platform. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good for some laughs. We’ve taken a look at the lighter side of microblogging with some more hilarious spoof accounts that add some comedy to your Twitter stream.

In addition to our top fake celebrities and fictional characters, we’re here with 10 fantastic parody accounts from the worlds of tech, social media and the web.

Take a look through our tweet-tastic gallery below and let us know in the comments which figures — fake or otherwise — from the world of business you’d recommend following on Twitter.

1. Android PR

Who knew that cute little green bot had a wicked streak? If you’re a fan of the Android platform — heck, even if you’re not — then follow this account for some Google-centric fun.

2. Walt Mosspuppet

Walt Mosspuppet, a puppet comedian and apparently “the only technology journalist in the World,” is well worth a look for a funny take on tech.

3. Fake Stephen Elop

Nokia’s CEO gets lampooned in fine old style here with a seriously sarcastic perspective on the Finnish phone company.

4. Fake Carol Bartz

This account spoofs the director, president and chief executive officer of Yahoo by imagining the successful businesswoman as a foul-mouthed alcoholic.

5. Fake Facebook PR

If ever a social network was ripe for a parody, it’s got to be Julian Ass

With a surname that starts with “Ass,” WikiLeak’s Julian Assange hopefully has some thick skin. If not, well, he certainly has more pressing things to worry about.

7. AT&T Parody Relations

The underlying tone behind AT&T’s “Parody Relations” can be summed up by its bio — “Covering the USA, kind of…”

8. Peter Molyneux 2

This fake version of British video game designer Peter Molyneux amps up his overly complex thoughts to their funniest extremes.

9. Not Mark Zuckerberg

Poor old Zuckerberg. All of that money and he still has to put up with people writing amusing tweets under his (almost) name. Yeah, we’d take that deal too.

10. Google Brain

Imagine the immense power behind all Google properties is an evil, HAL-esque sentient machine. Funny, or too real?

Según una investigación realizada por la agencia de relaciones públicas estadounidense Burston-Marsteller, más de un 79% de las 100 compañías más grandes del mundo según la revista Fortune 500, tiene algún tipo de presencia oficial en redes sociales.

Del total de empresas que utilizan redes sociales, el informe revela que Twitter es la principal herramienta 2.0 que utilizan, donde dos tercios de las empresas tienen una cuenta (65%), seguido por Facebook, donde la presencia se reduce a un 54%, mayormente compuesto por fans pages.

En menor porcentaje se encuentra presencia en canales oficiales de YouTube (50%), y casi en el mismo promedio es la cantidad de blogs corporativos que poseen estas empresas.

A pesar de que aún no se ha definido cual será la estrategia comercial a seguir por parte de Twitter (se especula con publicidad contextual o cuentas Pro de pago anual), las grandes compañías lo consideran un canal con alta efectividad y buen feedback tanto para generar confianza (cuentas para responder inquietudes) o para fidelizar (concursos y premios)

La investigación realizada entre febrero de 2009 y enero de 2010 muestra además que Estados Unidos y Asia son las regiones que agrupan un 25% cada una, de las compañias con presencia en las redes sociales mencionadas.

En este link se puede ver el informe completo de Burston-Marsteller.

Link: Las principales compañías del mundo se enganchan en las redes sociales (DirCom)

Hoy 6 de marzo, desde las 16:30  hora de Argentina,  se realizará el  primer encuentro de Patagonia Valley, desde Comodoro Rivadavia (Chubut, Argentina),  el cual será  el punto de partida para las nuevas relaciones, proyectos, ideas y  soluciones que se darán en la Patagonia.

Patagonia Valley es uno de los Valley´s de la región y siendo este el primer encuentro han decidido transmitirlo en vivo.

Para que se animen a verlo, deben saber que se hablará sobre eEmprendedorismo, comunicación, marketing, social media y derecho informático.  Para ello están como invitados Jonathan Baldovino de Doppler, Juan Pittau de Google AdWords y Gaby Menta, fundador de varios emprendimientos en la Web.

Además, se contará con la presentación de algunos Elevator Pitches.

Patagonia Valley en Twitter y en Facebook.

Trackur, a bootstrapped startup founded by Internet marketing consultant and writer Andy Beal, up until now offered only paid versions of its online reputation management and social media monitoring tools, albeit with free trial periods.

Today, the fledgling company is introducing an entirely gratis version of the Web-based software suite, giving marketers and small business owners a compelling reason to want to check it out and see why basic Google Alerts simply may not be cutting it anymore.

When you enter a keyword in Trackur’s search system, the service will look for mentions in both ‘mainstream’ and social media, tweets, videos, images, tags and so on. You’ll get a nice overview of where that keyword – which would generally be a company, brand or product name – has been mentioned along with some graphs tracking such mentions over time. You can save a search, which means Trackur will run it automatically every 30 minutes and notify you of new mentions across all of the media it tracks.

With any of the paid versions of Trackur, you can save multiple search keywords to your personal dashboard, but the free version will only allow you to do that for one. For a lot of small business owners or marketers, that will actually be sufficient, although the startup evidently hopes they’ll be tempted to pay for an upgrade at some point.

Alternatives to Trackur are plenty and include services offered by companies like Radian6, Visible Technologies and Attentio.

Trackur is self-funded by Beal, who says he currently serves about 15,000+ users, a mixture of people benefiting from free trials and those who are effectively paying for the product. Beal declined to break down those numbers, but says his 3-person startup, which was founded early 2008, has been operating profitably since day one. He also told me he’s been approached by venture capitalists in the past who’ve offered to invest, but that he told most of them that he wouldn’t even know what to do with $100,000 if it were given to him.

God, I love bootstrapped ventures.

Escribir para la web es un arte vinculado con la experiencia de crear contenido de calidad, que sea atractivo para el lector pero también un arte que debe difundirse en todos los medios que en la actualidad utilizamos para comunicarnos; escribimos un post que luego promovemos a través de las redes sociales porque sabemos que son las vías adecuadas para llegar al público que nos interesa, pero la tarea no es sencilla.

Los blogs siguen siendo la plataforma más fácil para gestionar contenido, pero algo que definitivamente ha cambiado es la manera en la que se consume ese contenido publicado en el blog. Resulta que ahora debemos escribir pensando no sólo en el lector del blog que esta suscrito a través de RSS, también es necesario incluir en cada entrada las opciones sociales para promover, compartir el contenido y hasta en los diversos dispositivos móviles de acceso.

Elementos sociales vinculados al contenido

Este ejemplo de Social Media Stats diseñado por Josh Hallett y publicado en Voce Communications nos permite visualizar los elementos sociales vinculados al contenido que generamos en cada entrada de nuestro blog. El ejemplo fue aplicado a la promoción de un evento, pero también podemos aplicar mucho de los vínculos al contenido de un post de nuestro blog.

En la gráfica se observa que al crear una entrada en un blog es importante pensar en los vínculos que tendrá con las redes sociales, tomando en cuenta que cada una tiene acciones diferentes de distrubución de contenido. Vicular los servicios sociales y hacer que nuestro blog sea amigable para los mismos, permitirá que tengamos acceso a mayor información en el comportamiento estadístico de la distrubución del contenido y analizar las tendencias de consumo.

Comprender el ecosistema social

Entonces conectar nuestro contenido a las redes sociales o distribuirlo a través de ellas no solo es mandar a través de nuestra cuenta de Twitter o Facebook el link al nuevo post. En realidad se requiere más que eso, debemos conocer el ecosistema social, comprender cómo se dialoga con quienes consumen contenido y los canales en que se consume ahora la información.

Un aspecto importante es no caer en la dinámica de Spam en donde utilizas los medios sociales para mandar links de forma masiva, porque eso no es saludable. También debes brindar opciones sociales dentro de tu blog para que sea incluso el mismo usuario quien se encargue de promover tu contenido utilizando las herramientas sociales.

Stephanie Falla Aroche para Maestros del Web.
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Data intelligence and research company Semiocast conducted a study, based on 2.8 million tweets gathered over a period of 48 hours in February, which showed that only half of messages on Twitter are in English.

To identify the languages, Semiocast used technology that can identify the language in which short messages are written, differentiating between 41 languages in all major writing systems.

Besides English, which accounts for some 50% of all messages on Twitter, the other most prominent languages on Twitter are Japanese (14% of messages), Portuguese (9%), Malay (6%) and Spanish (4%). Looking even further, Italian, Dutch and German each account for 1% – 2% of all messages on Twitter.

The folks at Semiocast claim that English had a two-third share on Twitter back in the first half of 2009, which points out to strong international growth for Twitter in the last six or so months. It’s good news for Twitter, which has lately been struggling to retain its high growth rates from 2008.

Tags: social media, social networking, twitter

Breve reseña de porque vemos la Fail Whale tantas veces; y por más que vengan @ev o todos a decirme que esto era lo que esperaban al lanzar Twitter, no se los voy a creer.

“En 2007 estabamos teniendo 5.000 veces por día. En 2008, ese número era 300.000 y en 2009 había crecido a 2.5 millones por día. Los tweets creciendo 1.400% el último año a 35 millones por día. Hoy estamos viendo 50 millones de tweets por día, lo que es un promedio de 600 tweets por segundo“

Los datos son oficiales y vienen del Blog oficial de Twitter… y si a esto le pusieran datos de los lugares donde se generan los tweets, yo comprobaría mi teoría de que están buscando ser un protocolo más que una plataforma

(CC) mariano for Denken Über, 2010. |
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Post tags: estadisticas, Social Media, twitter

Amazingly, it seems like there’s more social media tools than Jonas brothers, with the gap growing every day.

I don’t feel the need to experiment with every new piece of software that emerges from its chrysalis, but I do feel a responsibility to you and my clients to have some idea of what’s out there and what’s worthwhile.

Also, at my social media speaking engagements hither and yon I’m often asked what tools I use. So, I took a personal inventory and created this overview of the 39 social media tools I use daily.

Twitter

Tweetdeck
I use Tweetdeck for serious twitter sessions. I find it to be especially valuable and hassle-free for updating Twitter, Facebook, and LInkedin simultaneously. I do this only occasionally, however, as my friends/followers on each site don’t have much overlap.

Tweetie
This extremely intuitive Mac-only app is my hour-to-hour choice for Twitter. It doesn’t have the advanced functionality of Tweetdeck (such as cross-posting to Facebook), but it’s so easy-to-use that it’s my favorite Twitter app. It takes up a lot less screen real estate that Tweetdeck, and I always use Tweetie when conducting my live, Twitter 20 interviews.

Objective Marketer
This power-user Twitter app is the preferred vehicle for Guy Kawasaki. I use Objective Marketer for all of my in-advance Tweets, and when I want to engage in some headline and/or time of day testing. Lifetime statistics, cross-posting, multiple accounts, etc. If you’re serious about Twitter, this is a great app. It’s a good choice for agencies, too. (Disclosure: Objective Marketer gave me a free account)

Note: There are thousands of Twitter apps (literally). If you really want to roll around in the possibilities, spend some time over at Laura Fitton’s (@pistachio) One Forty, the app store for Twitter.

Facebook

I don’t use a lot of apps for Facebook, preferring to play it pretty close to the vest there – for now. (I’m working on a Fan Page that will be launching next month). Meanwhile, however, I do very much like Facebook Lite, which strips down a lot of the shiny distractions, and gives you a threaded News Feed, birthdays, and events – and that’s about it. I think Facebook Lite makes Facebook engagement easier – maybe you will too?

Blog Comments

(The blog is on WordPress)
Disqus
This is what I use to manage comments here at Convince & Convert. There are some elements of Disqus I don’t like, especially that it doesn’t always play nice with other plug-ins, but it does make commenting easier and faster for most of you who already have a Disqus account. I’ve seen my average number of comments increase since I moved to Disqus.

ChatCatcher
This is a nice little tool that finds Tweets about your blog posts, and automatically adds them as comments. This is one of the plug-ins that doesn’t sync well with Disqus, so it’s not working as well as it used to, pre-Disqus. Also, some bloggers (including Ari Herzog and Valeria Maltoni) don’t favor including tweets as comments, since they are not true “comments.” But, if you want to organize and harvest the tweets about your posts, this is the plug-in you want.

Virality & Search

Topsy
One part virality tool, one part tracking mechanism, one part social listening post, Topsy is becoming one of new favorites. I’ve moved from Tweetmeme to Topsy on my embedded tweeting, due to improved metrics, and Topsy’s competitive intelligence capabilities are impressive. Find a tweet your competitor sent, and see how many times it was retweeted, by whom, which among them are influencers, etc. It works like bit.ly, but incorporates all URL shorteners into the data mix.

Sexy Bookmarks Plug-in
My friend Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner (where I guest post monthly), turned me on to this excellent plug-in that improves upon the social sharing user interface. See an example at the bottom of this post (the little squares that animate when you put your cursor over them).

What Would Seth Godin Do
Technically, I don’t use this plug-in any longer, as my apres-post appeals are now hard-coded, but this is an excellent little nugget that not enough people utilize. Use WWSGD to include a little message before or after each of your posts, asking readers to subscribe to your RSS feed (or buy you a drink). The genius of this plug-in (and the reason it’s named after Seth Godin) is that you can set one message for first-time visitors, and a second message for repeat visitors. Smart.

All In One SEO Pack
Like many bloggers, I utilize the excellent All in One SEO Pack plug-in to optimize posts for search engine rankings. This nifty piece of software allows you to specify page title, description, and keywords for each post. A must.

Photos

Apture
Although I don’t use it all the time, I find myself turning to it with increased frequency. Apture is a handy plug-in that finds photos, videos, links and related content that you can embed or link to within your posts with a single click. Extremely handy for locating and adding links to specific Web pages (see link to Seth Godin above).

Flickr Creative Commons Search
This is my go-to source for photos for the blog and presentations. Using Flickr’s advanced search, you can browse photos that are specifically made available under a Creative Commons license, allowing you to use them with attribution in blog posts, etc.

Shutterstock
When I want a slightly higher grade of photo, or more precise searching, I utilize Shutterstock. This robust source for inexpensive stock photography is my secret lair of images for my presentations and workshops. Pricing is very reasonable, as you can download and use 60 images a year for just $229.

Skitch
I’m no Photoshop wizard. In fact, I’m basically illiterate at photo manipulation. That’s why I use Skitch, an incredibly intuitive image grabber and cropper (for Mac) that has the very attractive added benefit of being free.

Tracking

Google Analytics
No surprise, this is my primary statistical source for Convince & Convert. Despite being free, Google keeps adding functionality to Google Analytics. I have a few goals set up, including visits to my speaking page; visits to my consulting page; time spent on the site, etc.

bit.ly
The dominant URL shortener is also the best – in my opinion – at tracking and analytics. I implement bit.ly URLs whenever possible, and make liberal use of their “+” feature. Add “+” at the end of any bit.ly URL to see how many times it’s been clicked on, and by whom. Try it yourself. Excellent for down-and-dirty competitive analysis.

Swix
This is a slick new social media dashboard program that I’ve been trying. I’m planning to write a full post about it soon, but the real genius of Swix is that it allows you to easily create a unified scoreboard of all your key social media metrics like blog traffic, subscribers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, YouTube subscribers, and much more.

Authority Labs
By far my favorite tool for tracking search engine positioning, Authority Labs shows you at a glance whether you’re #4 or #40 in Google, Bing and Yahoo! for whatever search terms are important to you and your business. Owned by my friend Chase Granberry in Arizona, Authority Labs gave me a free account.

Content Creation

Cameras
For still photos, I typically use my iPhone 3GS or Panasonic Lumix TZ5. I use the Panasonic a ton with my family, as I find it to have the best combination of zoom and wide angle capabilities.

For videos, I recently got a Kodak ZI-8 which I prefer to my old Flip because it has an external microphone jack. This is an important advantage, as I bought a $30 lavalier microphone and can now grab good audio even at crowded conferences, etc. The one downside is Kodak’s built-in video software pales in comparison to Flip’s, forcing me to use iMovie on the Mac, which I can barely tolerate.

TubeMogul
For video upload and syndication, I often use TubeMogul, which allows you to upload a single video clip to dozens of video sites – not just YouTube. The real advantage of TubeMogul, however, is that you can get comparative statistics. For example, how many views did your video get on each site, and how long on average did viewers watch your clip on each site? It’s a great tool for moving beyond video upload to strategic video optimization.

SlideShare
I upload most of my presentations to SlideShare, and find it to be a valuable resource for growing an audience. My presenation “7 Ways to Build Stunning Business and Personal Brands in Social Media” was originally given in person to 35 people. Since I uploaded it to Slideshare, it’s been viewed 12,360 times. That’s the magnifying power of Slideshare – which also now allows you to upload audio tracks to accompany your presentations.

Listening

Twazzup
For quick Twitter searches, I prefer Twazzup, due to its straightforward interface, and overall speed.

SocialMention
For more comprehensive social media searching, I use SocialMention, which indexes blogs, tweets, message board posts, and a lot more. See my post on How to Create a Share of Voice Report for a free worksheet that uses SocialMention.

Google Alerts
Like most marketing professionals, I have several Google Alerts set up for my name, my company name, and topics of interest to me. This is invaluable for finding bloggers that have linked to my posts, so I can go to their blog and thank you in the comments – a practice I highly recommend.

Radian6
For advanced social media listening, I often recommend my friends at Radian6, who have – in my opinion – the most robust feature set and product development roadmap of all the widely available social listening platforms.

Email

ExactTarget
To produce, send, and track my free, twice-monthly email newsletter “The Social Media Messenger” (sign up here if you don’t receive it yet), I use my friends at ExactTarget. Given the simplicity of my newsletter, sending it via ExactTarget is like flying on a jet plane to go get a quart of milk, but it’s nice to know that massively advanced functionality is available if I need it. (disclosure: ExactTarget is a client, and I have worked with them for more than six years)

Feedburner
To power my RSS feed and to send daily emails whenever I write a new post, I use Google’s Feedburner service. It’s not perfect, but it’s free and easy to implement. Note that nearly 40% of all subscribers to this blog are via email, not RSS. Are you pushing email subscriptions to your blog hard enough?

Flowtown
As mentioned in my post last week, this is my favorite new tool. Flowtown allows you to take email addresses (like the people subscribed to my newsletter) and determine in which social networks they are active. This is especially handy when you need to segment your audience. For example, when I’m ready to invite people to my new Facebook Fan Page, I can use Flowtown to determine which of you are active on Facebook, and send an email only to that group. Nifty.

NutshellMail
See tomorrow’s post for a deeper look at this tool, but NutshellMail brings your social media activity to you via email, instead of you having to surf around and use tools to see what’s happening. Extremely handy while traveling, I also highly recommend Nutshell for casual social media users.

iPhone

Just about anyone that builds a social media audience partially does so because they create a lot of content, and are responsive. Mobile access to the social Web is a virtual requirement to do it well.

Tweetie 2
I’ve used at least six iPhone apps for Twitter, but for now I prefer Tweetie 2, which makes the best use of the iPhone’s swipe features. You can do more in less time with Tweetie 2 on the iPhone, and it’s super fast and bug-free.

Facebook
The original Facebook app on iPhone was just okay, but it’s been massively improved, to the point that Facebook access via mobile might actually be easier than on a computer. (100 million people use Facebook mobile every month, by the way). The single best aspect is photo and video upload and captioning, which is integrated so tightly with iPhone that it truly is better than laptop or desktop uploading.

Linkedin
Similarly, the Linkedin iPhone app has made major strides, and I find myself rarely using Linkedin via a computer any longer.

Gowalla
For presence-based status updates, I use Gowalla. I’ve tried Foursquare, too. But for me, more of my three-dimensional friends who are close enough geographically that I care what restaurant they are at are using Gowalla. I push Gowalla updates to my Facebook friends, but not to Twitter where I figure my geographic status is less illuminating.

WordPress
The WordPress iPhone app is slick. You can write, edit, update posts; add photos; and approve comments (although not with Disqus). Great little app for on-the-fly blog management.

Analytics
For basic stats tracking, this app is better and faster than Google Analytics on the computer. It also includes a handy “today” reports that shows you what’s happened on your blog since last night – a report that Google Analytics still doesn’t offer.

Print n Share
For true device-agnostic types, this is a great app that allows you to print from your iPhone to any printer. You probably won’t use it every day, but when you need to print a boarding pass or slide handouts from your iPhone, you’ll be delighted you have this one.

Zenbe
This is a no-frills to-do list app that syncs between the Web and iPhone. Indispensable for me, and I’m constantly checking it to see what projects I have due, what posts I need to write, etc.

Bonus: DirecTV
If you have an iPhone and DirecTV, this is uber-handy. If you forget to tape a show, or just want to tape some super crazy show remotely to freak out your spouse when he/she looks at your playlist, this is a must-have.

I’m sure you have your own ideas about tools I’ve overlooked, or things you use that readers (and me) could benefit from. Please leave a comment and let’s discuss.

Brian Solis is a principal at new media agency FutureWorks, and author of the upcoming book, Engage. You can connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.

One of the greatest challenges I encounter today is not the willingness of a brand to engage, but its ability to create. When blueprinting a social media strategy, enthusiasm and support typically derails when examining the resources and commitment required to produce regular content.

Indeed, we are programing the social web around our brand hub, which requires a consistent flow of engaging and relevant social objects. Social objects are the catalysts for conversations — online and in real life — and they affect behavior within their respective societies.

They are our tweets, our Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Facebook updates and events, Delicious links, FourSquare check-ins, and blog posts.

But once we introduce a social object, we must be ready to back it up with additional relevant content, and create a publishing calendar programmed specifically for each network on which we maintain a presence.

Brands Become Their Media

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There’s a saying in theater: A big part of acting is reacting. This is especially true when we consider how many individuals, brands, and organizations engage on the web today. Instead of seeking inspiration and direction from those around us however, we simply react to activity, which may or may not benefit us in the long run.

The democratization of publishing and the equalization of influence allows us to create and connect with a wider reach. Everything starts with a mission, and is fortified by the content we create.

Among the most valuable resources we procure through dedicated publishing is good will, social capital, and influence. It comes at a price however: The cost of production, distribution, and support. In the end, you get out what you put in. The investment represents time, money, creativity, and passion.

Thus, we not only become our media — through production and engagement, we can become influential.

Productive Social Media Must Be Earned

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While establishing a presence is elementary, captivating audiences is artful. In the near future, brands and organizations will create new or augment existing roles for editors and publishers to create timely, relevant, and captivating content on all social media channels. This work is in addition to the other reactive and proactive social media campaigns that are already in progress. A strategic editorial calendar should blend video, audio, imagery, text, updates, and other social objects and networks to reach, inspire, and galvanize communities.

Earned, Paid, and Owned Media

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In media, there are several channels that populate and shape perception — earned, paid, and owned media. Each requires a dedicated management system that actively creates, monitors and stimulates strategic movement.

Recently, Sean Corcoran, an analyst at Forrester Research, published a detailed post that describes the differences between earned, paid and owned. He clarifies the roles for brands who undertake the responsibility of embracing new media. Dave Fleet, a thought leader in new media and public relations, also visualized Corcoran’s thoughts through a series of graphics that represent the social media ecosystem.

As Corcoran points out in his recent report:

“Increasingly, interactive marketers are being asked to manage a wide range of paid and unpaid marketing communication —- despite the fact that many marketing departments are still organized around traditional paid marketing channels. All types of online media (whether ‘earned,’ ‘owned,’ or ‘paid’) can play specific roles in meeting marketers’ objectives —- especially when seamlessly working together. To find the right balance between these types of media, marketers should take stock of their resources, listen for the impact of earned media, look for opportunities to shift short-term paid media to the role of catalyst, and begin to build out a solar system of long-term owned media touchpoints.”

In other words, paid, earned and owned media require thoughtful programming and targeted distribution and must be linked to a systematic review of behavior and activity that surrounds each object. And, the analysis of activity and ultimately the end result should play a monumental role in the creation of future publishing and social activation.

Corcoran uses the word “touchpoint,” which by standard definition, refers to any point of contact between a buyer and a seller. Touchpoint is part of the greater opportunity here. But more importantly, these touchpoints require direction and the establishment of a path that offers a complete experience — a beginning, a middle, an end, and a reward.

These experiences are definable by paid, earned, and owned media.

New media necessitates a collaboration between all teams involved in creating and distributing content, including advertising, interactive, communications, brand, and marketing — with an editorial role connecting the dots. We are competing for attention and our success is dependent on our ability to not compete against each other. Producing content and lobbing it over the firewall to an “audience” will only confuse communities. Therefore, we are obligated to build pipelines that carry strategic communications, each with calculated intents, targets and outcomes.

If we examine the differences between earned, owned, and paid, we can visualize necessary programming and dedicated channels for each.

Owned media is essentially that which we control. If we designed the object, we own the content within the object. Most likely, we also own (or lease) the distribution channels that present these objects to our target communities. We do not however, control the impression and perception of our objects. We lose that control at the point of distribution.

For example, in addition to standard web pages, social media presences contribute to our portfolio of owned media including Twitter accounts, Facebook Fan Pages, Blogs, YouTube channels, etc. By creating presences in the communities where our customers, prospects, partners, and influencers congregate and collaborate, we can lay the foundation to contribute “earned” social objects of value.

Social hubs are also gaining prominence in social media plans as brands weigh options for directing traffic. The creation of strategic landing pages can extend the rich, interactive experience within social networks (channels which we partially own) to pages we do own. This shapes the experience in a way that maintains interactivity and targeted options for action. I’m not necessarily recommending the creation of microsites, unless it’s warranted in the overall program. But a bridge that connects the social experience to a valuable destination is important.

Forrester’s Corcoran recommends that brands create a “solar system” of owned media. However, I suggest that brands instead create a focused ecosystem of media that establishes presences where their communities are already active — a brand or organization-specific social media ecosystem. This requires research. In the process, we uncover not only locations that require our engagement, but also how, where, when and to what extent to participate. We just may find that the given locations for social profiles represent only part of the many opportunities rife within the Conversation Prism.

Paid media represents the visibility we purchase, such as display ads, paid search, and sponsorships. When paired with owned and earned media programs, paid media can complement, reinforce, and polish a brand’s voice, directives, mission, and stature. While many argue over the future and fate of advertising, what’s clear is that online paid presences can benefit initiatives where action and experiences are defined and promoted through the click path. Current trends reflect a shift away from branding programs and place emphasis on sparking desired activity, empowering viewers and their social graph to share in the experience all in ways that measure the cost per action.

Earned media is the result of our owned, paid, and participatory media programs and is reflected in the blog posts, tweets, status updates, comments, and ultimately actions of our consumers, peers, and influencers. Earned media is linked to owned media campaigns as well as proactive initiatives that attempt to incite viral and word-of-mouth activity. Garnered visibility is also tied to communications and public relations programs as they continually seek to gain the attention of reporters, bloggers, analysts, and influencers who can drive awareness and behavior.

This isn’t a one way street however. Success is absolutely conditional on the techniques and methodologies that inspire dedicated programs focused on outreach, relations, and hopefully the engendering of productive and mutually beneficial relationships. Crowd-powered visibility also merits an official and devoted listening and response initiative to ensure that each respective community aligns with the mission.

Participatory media is an extension of earned and owned media. It takes the shape of a hosted hub where brand representatives and our communities can interact and collaborate. Good examples of this are Dell’s IdeaStorm and Starbucks’ “My Idea” network, which resemble branded wikis designed to elicit responses and establish community-focused governances. Participatory media equalizes the balance of power, providing a dedicated platform the gives voice to the consumer and a channel for their ideas.

Sponsored media is a new category that fuses owned, paid, and earned media. Sponsored media is championed by companies like Izea, Ad.ly, and Twittad, among others, and is creating a new medium for packaging messages through trusted voices within highly visible and social channels. Sponsored media can take the form of paid tweets, blog posts, appearances, and featured objects on targeted profiles. And, whether you agree or disagree with the idea, the reality is that it works, and seems to benefit all parties involved, from the brand, to the paid affiliates, to their communities. In fact, Forrester’s Josh Bernoff and Sean Corcoran shared their thoughts on why sponsored media is worthy of consideration.

Sponsored objects fuse earned, paid, and owned media, as technically: 1) The messages are owned; 2) The voices are paid, and; 3) With more thoughtful approaches, the responses within targeted communities can inspire a positive wave of earned media.

Disclosure: My company works with Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO of izea.com.

Influence

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As media, brands earn prominence and hopefully influence as rewards for contributing meaningful content. On Twitter, brands can earn legions of loyal and responsive followers, who in turn become brand advocates and ambassadors, extending the messages, mission and purpose of the brand to their followers as well. On Facebook, brands can cultivate vibrant and dedicated communities where interaction inspires increased responses — each reverberating across new social graphs. On Ustream and YouTube, we can earn global audiences of viewers who tune in to watch our programming and interact with brand representatives in a live community that spills over other social networks. And of course, our blog is more important than we may realize. Through our posts, we can establish a strong alliance of subscribers who hope to learn new things and participate in the discussion of a brand’s future.

As Tom Foremski points out, we have the ability to earn noteworthy, equal, and in some cases, greater influence than those authorities whom we’ve relied on over the years to help us reach greater audiences and communities. As influence is equalized, our ability to earn presence and relationships is derived from how we program, manage, and participate in all forms of media. And, it is through a balance of media and engagement that we also establish the foundation for affinity. People align with movements they can believe in, and it is the human, intellectual, and financial investment in genuine content that defines experiences, and hopefully one day earns the significance your brand deserves.

More business resources from Mashable:

- The Maturation of Social Media ROI
– The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
– HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs
– HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
– 9 Great Document Collaboration Tools for Teams
– HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
– 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, cogal, YanC, Juanmonino

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