Salesforce.com 's acquisition of Radian6 yesterday was quite the news yesterday. This was especially interesting following their recent investments in Hubspot and Seesmic and the acquisition of Jigsaw last year. Social media is becoming a key building block for a successful brand management and customer engagement strategies. With social media companies can join conversations about their brands and stay connected to their customers and prospects. This acquisition will further break down the silos between lead management and social media. MORE >>

Many of our customers, prospective customers and business partners may be wondering what this move means for Marketo, since we are a leader in the marketing software space and so many salesforce.com customers also choose Marketo as their marketing automation platform. This means marketers must fundamentally change how they engage with prospects and customers. Our comprehensive solution includes great email capabilities, but goes much deeper to include enterprise-class marketing automation, social marketing, marketing financial management, and revenue cycle analytics. MORE >>

Even as analysts are still sorting through the implications of last week’s acquisition of Omniture by Adobe , the industry saw two additional important announcements this week: Omniture combining its data with comScore to help measure Web advertising audiences , and Nielsen working with Facebook to poll consumers on advertising impact. Both announcements share several interesting features: they don't rely on traditional Web analytics (tracking page views); they involve vendors who report data from consumer panels; and they relate to measuring advertising measurement. MORE >>

Marketers have known for years that it is imperative to understand which customers their product or service appeals to. The fact is, many of those traditional, tried-and-true methods of profiling and enhancing customer information in order to gain a more complete, descriptive view of your customers are still valid today. The challenge we often see is that the customer, household and market has fragmented, and often can render traditional, static segments obsolete. Myth Busting – Strategic Customer Segments Tell the Story. Bill Harriss. iPads, smartphones, etc., MORE >>

So for example, the same leaderboard in a competition would be displayed wherever customers access the site. VHM provides an easy tool for setting up the competitions and great analytics to monitor results.  like Voices Heard Media as an affordable social media tool that connects the dots between social engagement and customer metrics. What other applications have you come across that allow you to engage your customer in interactive competitions wherever they are on the web? By Ian Cleary, Contributing {grow} Columnist. We’d love to hear your feedback. MORE >>