In a world of instant everything, food, phone, news and stock price changes, one would think that in a marketing or public relations crisis, a company or competitor would use any media at their disposal to strategically position themselves and leverage their product in a media storm. As an example, let’s look at Toyota. In the news now for weeks owing to an issue with their brake pedals, floor mats and now maybe even their automotive computer systems. Toyota reacted slowly and the media has been relentless. Consequently in January, Ford and Chevy both outsold Toyota, while Toyota sales dropped 16% (Reuters, Feb 2 2010).

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The more I work in social media, the louder the chant becomes.

It’s a chant that has the power to make any social media practitioner cringe – the befuddled mantra of social media naysayers echoing: “What’s so hard about Social Media? I can just get a college student to do it for free, right?”

Wrong.

Many feel that social media should be entrusted to a select few who play all day on Facebook and are fluent in the OMG LOL dialect. However, what many professionals who are new to social media don’t understand is the complex nature of social media and that building a social program is much like building a house. As it is in every marketing practice, social media has many levels, ranging from tactical execution and everyday maintenance to strategic planning and program evolution. When artfully crafted, these levels exist in a co-dependent state, creating a strong and resilient structure that is both simple and innately complex.

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This post was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, February 5, 2010

This weekend, the Colts and Saints will battle to determine the king of the football hill during Super Bowl XLIV. A month into 2010, there are battle lines across the search landscape that also bear watching. These battles will shape the devices, platforms and consumer experience for this year and many to come. Here’s your quick primer of the battles, the stakes and what to watch for to determine who has the upper hand.

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I was reading a post by Sarah Tillitt the other day regarding conquesting campaigns (search campaigns where companies buy the branded terms of competitors) and her entry struck a chord with me because conquesting campaigns and reputation management invariably come up during the course of any search marketer’s career.  It’s one of those sticky points where brands get really fired up about, but aren’t really sure how to respond to. I was fortunate enough where the first incident I had to handle had a three month window of time. This is most often not the case.  I was doing search for a very large pharmaceutical company whose patent for a flagship drug was coming to an end and they needed a search strategy to protect against the attack of the generics. 

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