The November 8th edition of The Economist has an article that asks us “Will Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites transform advertising?”

In truth, the article is poorly written. It asks the wrong question, it’s lazily researched, and it provides little actual theory or empirical evidence to justify the premise they are trying to suppose. Perhaps the reason for this is that The Economist is a general news publication – one that I respect – and that the article was intended for a mainstream readership that’s likely mostly interested in reading about general trends and not deeper analysis. But nevertheless…

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Flugpo, an SNS that’s a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll — and one of our favorite clients, just launched its new blog, Flugpo.com, a blog on your favorite classifieds site!

Creating a corporate blog as a place to both inform your user base as well as to promote your brand is essential. Why? Well, because blogs are more textually-rich and topically-focused than social networks. Why? Well, because Social Networks are not about their own brand, they’re an agnostic platform dedicated to the glory of the users.

Flugpo.com has been too selfless and its nice to see them launch a blog that is all about them. Luckily, it is also all about us at AHLLC, too, because they blogged about us, Marketing Conversation Gives Rave Reviews!, in response to the article that Kevin Donlan wrote for us, Flugpo Brings Community to the Social Network.

Check out the article in last Thursday’s Times, Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics, that addresses how to handle consumers who develop a personal vendetta against your company. Well, you could send lawyers but legal cease-and-desists generally just make the customer madder than hell and it isn’t hard to just start yet another attack site.

I hate to say it, sucking less always helps. Start with treating your customers better. Also, be sure to register lots of domain names and work on your online reputation aggressively before it becomes a problem.

Online, the best defense is a good offense and an ounce of online promotion is worth a pound of cure. Here are some great commented-by-me excerpts from the article, Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics, so you can get a gist:

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I am too deep in online brand promotion. When I read a story in the Wall Street Journal about a professional basketball player dissing his yet unreleased signature shoe on his blog, all I can think is that this sort of antisocial behavior is an amazing stealth marketing strategy. From “I hate this ballerina shoe” to check out my cool shoe in no time! Coincidence? I think not!

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