Back in June, Timberlake led a group of investors to purchase the ill fated social networking site from Fox for a reported $35 million dollars. Until the initial announcement was made the tech community hadn’t heard a whisper about the pop stars apparent interest in Myspace.

Last month at CES Timberlake spoke on reinvigorating Myspace with a focus on music. According to the new Myspace they have a library of over 42 million free songs, making it the largest freemusic library in the world.

With Google+ catching on like wildfire and Facebook continuing to report more and more users, for a while MySpace had stunted their growth. Myspace has reported that they are seeing 40,000 new sign ups per day and added 1 million new users last month.

“The numbers tell an amazing story of strong momentum and dramatic change for Myspace,” said Tim Vanderhook, CEO, Myspace said in a statement, “and the one million-plus new user accounts we’ve seen in the last 30 days validates our approach. Myspace is building meaningful social entertainment experience around content, where consumers can share and discover the music they love. Consumers are getting excited about Myspace again – a testament to a great music product.”

MySpace has been focusing almost entirely on it’s new music player and a lot less on the social network it was for many years. The music player offers unlimited, on-demand listening, personalized radio and a sophisticated recommendation engine. Myspace also offers easy integration with Facebook, the site that was essentially the downfall to the original Myspace.

http://thedroidguy.com/2012/02/did-justin-timberlake-just-bring-myspace-back/

That question may be on your mind, too.

In fact, if I were to guess, I’d say you probably understand the theory of social media and even embrace the strategic importance of social media. But you may still be asking, “What should I do today to improve my social media programtomorrow?”

In How to Make Money with Social Media, the book I co-authored with Dr. Reshma Shah, I provide a checklist of 59 steps you should take to set-up, launch and run a social media campaign. I’ve blogged about these steps before, but since this is one of the more popular posts (and since it’s one of the more popular chapters in the book), I thought I’d provide them for you again below.

I hope you find the checklist helpful. And please feel free to let me know if I’ve missed any steps you think should be added.

Here goes:

The Preliminaries:

• I’ve conducted a review of my company’s business and understand its mission, goals and objectives
• I’ve conducted a review of my company’s sales program and understand how a prospect is brought into the sales funnel and converted into a customer
• I’ve conducted a review of my company’s marketing program and understand what role the marketing program plays in the overall success of the company
• I’ve conducted a review of the strategies, tactics and tools involved in a social media campaign and understand what role each of those strategies, tactics and tools plays in a well-run social media program
• After doing all of this, I’ve asked myself (again), “Is social media right for my company?” If I’ve concluded that it is, I’ve moved on to the next steps

The Competitive Landscape:

• I’ve reviewed the overall strengths and weaknesses of my company’s top 5 competitors
• I’ve reviewed the sales and marketing efforts of my top 5 competitors
• I’ve analyzed the specific social media campaigns being conducted by my top 5 competitors
• I’ve created a list of social media strategies and tactics that my competitors are using that appear to be effective
• I’ve created a list of social media strategies and tactics that my competitors are using that appear to be ineffective
• I’ve joined my competitor’s LinkedIn groups, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, Twitter accounts and other social media member sites my competitors are running
• I’ve set up Google Web Alerts and Blog Alerts to send me notifications any time my competitor, my industry or my company is mentioned in blogs or articles online

Your Internal Management Team:

• I’ve asked the social media proponents in my organization to be advocates for my program. I’ve asked them to be engaged in any way they can to help my social media program succeed
• I’ve identified people within my organization who might not be social media advocates and have begun a program to help them understand the value a well-run social media program can bring to our company
• I’ve assembled a team to help me set-up, run and manage the social media program for my company
• I’ve asked each team member to buy How to Make Money with Social Media to ensure we’re all working from the same play book. (That’s a joke. Kind of.)

Setting Yourself Up for Success:

• I’ve assembled a social media team to help me execute my program. (Your team can be as small as 1 or as large as 100+)
• I’ve set Specific Measurable Actionable Realistic and Timebound Goals (S.M.A.R.T. Goals) for my social media campaign
• I’ve reviewed my S.M.A.R.T. goals with my team and encouraged feedback and input
• I’ve done an in-depth analysis of my target market and have a genuine understanding of who they are and what makes them tick
• I’ve set-up my social media campaign so that it can be measured
• I’ve conducted a review of each of the three categories of social media platforms – networking platforms, promotion platforms and sharing platforms
• I’ve developed a strategic framework for my social media campaign that will help me accomplish my overall business goals
• I’ve developed a tactical framework for my social media campaign that will help me accomplish my strategic goals
• I’ve developed an executional framework for my social media program that will help me accomplish my tactical goals
• I’ve aligned my social media campaign with my overall branding campaign so that they’re essentially one-and-the-same

The Days Prior to Launch:

• I understand that a social media campaign is an ongoing process and can’t be executed in “5 minutes a day.” As such, I’ve allocated a realistic and reasonable amount of time to execute my program.

• In an effort to get started quickly, I’ve completed the following tasks:
  • I’ve updated my company’s LinkedIn profile
  • I’ve joined several LinkedIn Groups within my industry
  • I’ve created a Facebook business page
  • I’ve set up a Twitter account
  • I’ve followed several hundred other people on Twitter who are in my industry or have similar interests
  • I’ve incorporated a blog into my website
  • I’ve created a YouTube channel
  • I’ve created a MySpace page
  • I’ve created an eNewsletter for my customers and prospects using ConstantContact, ExactTarget or iContact
  • I’ve updated our company profile on Wikipedia
  • I’ve opened accounts on Flickr, SmugMug and Picassa
  • I’ve uploaded content to Slideshare, Scribd and Slideo
  • I’ve added Feedback, Uservoice or Get Statisfaction to my website
  • I’ve investigated and incorporated accounts on other social media platforms including hi5, Xanga, Plaxo, Xing, Ning and Friendster

The First 30 Days:

• I’ve committed myself to the following goals for the first 30 days of my social media campaign:

• • I’ll update my company’s LinkedIn profile once every 2 weeks with news and information about my company
  • I’ll visit LinkedIn.com/Answers and answer 1 to 5 questions each day
  • I’ll update my Facebook business page several times a week (at a minimum)
  • I’ll send out helpful, interesting Tweets anywhere from 10 to 20 times a day
  • I’ll write 2 to 3 blog posts a week (none of which will be about our company Holiday party or our CEO’s trip to the convention)
  • I’ll comment on 5 blog posts a week with a relevant, insightful comment
  • I’ll upload a series of YouTube videos designed to provide value to our customers and prospects
  • I’ll update my company’s MySpace page with relevant posts and content that will help build awareness for my company’s product or service
  • I’ll upload photographs on Flickr, SmugMug and Picassa that are business-oriented and that help sell my product or service (no summer party photos, please).
  • I’ll upload content to Slideshare, Scribd or Slideo once or twice a month during the launch of the campaign
  • I’ll respond to the Feedback, Uservoice or Get Statisfaction comments left on my site within 24 hours of receipt

Measuring Your Success:

• I understand that social media can help me with customer retention and customer acquisition
• I’ve installed Google Analytics, Adobe Online Marketing Suite or CoreMetrics on my website so I can track inbound traffic and analyze when and how a prospect converts to a customer
• I’m prepared to generate weekly and monthly reports that highlight the success of our social media program
• I’m continuously testing my social media program so that I can improve the results and generate an increasingly robust return on investment

This checklist should give you a roadmap for setting up, launching and running a social media campaign. If you want to learn more about this topic, please feel free to visit Barnes & Noble, Borders, 800CEORead or Amazon and ask for How to Make Money with Social Media.

Posted by: Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response

The sad truth is that social media doesn’t work for the majority of companies that fall into the “you can do social media in 10 minutes a day” trap.

Trying to do social media in 10 minutes a day and ignoring it for the other 23 hours and 50 minutes a day is like trying to have a successful relationship with your spouse while ignoring him or her for 23 hours and 50 minutes a day.

Trust me, it doesn’t work.

The Secret to Social Media is to Use Social Media. When I make speeches on social media, one of the first questions I’m often asked is, “How much time should I devote to my social media campaign?”

The answer I give people is very specific. If you’re a small business with fewer than 10 people, you’ll need to devote 25% to 35% of a full-time employee’s efforts to social media.

If you’re a company with 11 to 100 people, you’ll need to devote 35% to 75% of a full-time employee’s efforts to social media.

And if you have 100 or more people in your company, you’ll need about 1 full-time employee devoted to social media for every 100 employees in the company.

Does All This Make Sense? You’ll probably agree that social media isn’t a playground for summer interns any more. It’s a real, viable marketing tool that’s every bit as important to your bottom line as your accounting department or sales department is.

If you’d like to take a deeper dive into social media metrics and measurement, you might enjoy reading How to Calculate the ROI of a Social Media Campaign (which I wrote for Mashable) or Setting Up a Social Media Campaign (which I wrote for the 60 Second Marketer).

http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2012/02/03/social-media-doesnt-work/

Having a large social media following is only part of the equation though. The other part is making sure those followers are active; that they engage with your brand and are actually talking about your business.

Herein lies the difficulty of social media; how do you grow your social media following without losing the quality of your community?

Embed The Facebook Widget

Businesses that have a Facebook presence and website should use the Facebook widget to convert users that are already interested in the business (they’re reading your website after all).

The widget is embedded on the business’ website and allows readers to easily fan the Facebook page without ever leaving the site.

Click below to continue reading

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-simple-ways-to-explore-your-social-media-following/39312/

Read on, and you’ll learn about 20 inspiring ways hospitals are using social media, from crisis communication to customer service.

1. Mayo Clinic

The Mayo Clinic has long been an online resource for medical information, with a website that offers advice and expertise from more than 3,300 medical professionals for free, so it’s not at all surprising that the medical group has been successful in social media. In an interview with Med City News, the Mayo Clinic was named the “poster child for healthcare social media” with social media chief Lee Aase at the helm. The Mayo Clinic has its own social media network where patients can connect, several health promotion campaigns, including “Know Your Numbers,” which promotes heart health, and a healthy presence on just about every social media outlet available, including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Even Mayo Clinic doctors are encouraged to take part in social media. The clinic has been so successful in social media, in fact, that they are the hosts of the Health Care Social Media Summit, most recently held in October 2011 with 375 attendees and a buzz reaching about 100 tweets per hour. Click below to continue reading.

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/10655.aspx

Marketers are afraid of making social media mistakes. Even worse, they’re concerned their social media faux pas will balloon into a public relations nightmare. Get over it! In today’s always-on, connected world, issues can arise whether you’re participating in social media or not. So be a part of the conversation and engage, because when you have a problem, it’s too late to build your base. (And of course make sure that you have PR crisis plan ready!)

Here are seven common social media mistakes marketers make and how to fix them.

1. Fail to show respect for others on social media. Take a lesson from the Godfatherbecause social media runs on old-fashioned good manners. Just because you work for a large company doesn’t mean that social media participants will automatically listen to you. Remember they’re thinking WII-FM (What’s in it for me?). Further, just enticing them with a special offer may not cause them to stay longer than necessary to make the purchase.

Actionable social media marketing fix: Listen to what your customers and the public are saying on social media platforms and respond where appropriate. To this end, it’s helpful to use social media monitoring products and to have customer service representatives prepared to respond via these channels.

2. Use sanitized corporate-speak on social media platforms. Social media requires a human presence. The absence of anything sounding remotely human, such as in one-way, one-to-many message broadcasting, hurts your organization. It means you’re only talking about your company and products. This me, me, me syndrome is how marketers miss the boat on social media.

Actionable social media marketing fix: Before pushing out your business-focused messages, listen to the conversation and realize it’s multidirectional, including many-to-many at the same time. Inwardly focused messages about your organization tend not to be where the interest and power are on social media platforms. Instead actively participate. The bottom line is you need to be and sound human! Consider what you can do for others. Click below to continue

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2012/02/02/7-common-social-media-mistakes-how-to-fix-them/

Within minutes, the hashtag was trending on Twitter. Reporters picked up on it, sending out their own Twitter posts and writing their own articles. The result: for at least one news cycle, the Romney campaign had stamped a virtual “grandiose” on Mr. Gingrich’s forehead.

If the 2008 presidential race embraced a 24/7 news cycle, four years later politicos are finding themselves in the middle of an election most starkly defined by Twitter, complete with 24-second news cycles and pithy bursts.  Click below to continue reading.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/us/politics/twitter-is-a-critical-tool-in-republican-campaigns.html?hp

1. Explain to your followers what retweeting is and encourage them to retweet your links. Retweeting pushes your @username into foreign social graphs, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Track your retweets using retweetist.
2. Fill out your bio. Your latest tweets and @replies don’t mean much to someone that doesn’t know you. Your bio is the only place you have to tell people who you are. Also, your bio is displayed on Twitter’s Suggested Users page. Leaving it blank or non-descriptive doesn’t encourage people to add you.
3. As @garyvee says, “link it up.” Put links to your Twitter profile everywhere. Link it on your Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, blog, email signature, and everywhere else you live online. Also, check out the great feedburner-like badges from TwitterCounter for your blog.
4. Tweet about your passions in life and #hash tag them. Quality content coupled with an easy way to find it never fails. If others enjoy your content, they’ll add you. Learn more about #hash tagging here.
5. Bring your twitter account into the physical world. Every time I give a talk, speak on a panel, shoot a podcast, present slides, or hand out business cards, I figure out a way to broadcast or display my twitter account.
6. Take pictures. Pictures are heavily retweeted/spread around. This one from US Airways Flight 1549 has been viewed 350,000+ times. For mobile pics use iPhone apps such as Tweetie or Twitterific, both which support on the go uploading.
7. Start a contest. @jasoncalacanis offered a free macbook air if he reached the #1 most followed spot. That never happened, but Jason added thousands of followers…brilliant.
8. Follow the top twitter users and watch what they tweet. Pay attention to the type of content they sent out and how they address their audiences.
9. Reply to/get involved in #hash tag memes. search.twitter.com lists the hot ‘trending topics. Look for the #hash topics and jump in on the conversation (see #4 for links to #hash instructions).
10. Track your results. TwitterCounter will show you how many new users you’re adding per day and Qwitter will email you when someone unfollows you after a tweet.
If you enjoy this content, add me at twitter.com/kevinrose, thank you.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/25/kevin-rose-10-ways-to-increase-your-twitter-followers/

No, it’s not the N-Control Avenger PR Disaster that rounded out 2011. Nor was it the FedEx foul-up.

Let’s say you own a BBQ joint and a customer comes in, one of the only ones and orders a meal. You can tell she’s not happy and it’s verified by a well-written and factual review on Yelp.

So what do you do to make it right?

A) Get in touch with her and offer a meal for free to make it up?

B) Respond to the Yelp review by apologizing and explaining the issues

C) Call her a bitch and post her pic on Facebook

If you picked C, then you may have a new fave BBQ joint to hang out at!

Here we go, ready? Buckle up your brisket:

(All pictures are linked to their file, so if you’re on a phone and they’re tough to read, just click it)

1. Stephanie and her husband go to Boners BBQ in Atlanta for a meal after grabbing a $10 off coupon from Scoutmob.

2. They leave and she posts her review on Yelp. One of the better written reviews on the site to be honest. She lists the things she liked and didn’t like, with reasons why. Not an all-caps “ZOMG!! THIS PLACE IS HORRIBLE!”

3. After seeing the Yelp review and being told she didn’t tip the server, the person who runs Boners BBQ Facebook page decides to put her in her place by posting her picture (censoring by me, they put the unedited photo up):

Click link to continue reading http://www.unmarketing.com/2012/01/10/worst-use-of-social-media-of-2012-boners-bbq/