Weak products will disappear quickly from the market, and advertising won’t be able to save them. Our range of options for buying and selling products and services will expand by orders of magnitude thanks to global connectivity. This is the time of year when a lot of people make predictions. ll resist that urge, though, and instead present a plea: Let’s make 2011 the year we stop talking about “social media.”. It’s not that social media is no longer important. On the contrary, today there’s almost no media today that isn’t social. Stunning. Barnum, BTW). IMDB has an app for that. MORE >>

Intel’s Facebook welcome page features product promotions, a gateway to its international pages, jobs, discounts and even a Twitter feed. For inspiration, you could do worse than look at Constant Contact’s Facebook wall , where the company constantly seeks input on everything from new product ideas to the choice of band at a celebration party. Most small businesses are terrible at marketing in general and online marketing in particular. That’s understandable: The founders are usually more passionate about what they do than about promoting themselves. Tip #5: Measure. MORE >>

” In the process, they learned the skills that have redefined office productivity. The disconnect between CIOs and the emerging world of social business became clear to me at a conference I attended about two years ago. entered the room late, but figured I could quickly catch up on the proceedings by checking the Twitter stream of attendees. With an estimated 300 senior IT executives in the room, I expected there would be plenty of chatter going on. To my surprise, not a single tweet had been logged during the past hour. Same Old Song and Dance. Playing pays off. MORE >>

Its namesake product is a sophisticated systems management suite for small and medium businesses (SMB) that it gives away for free. The SMB market is coveted by technology firms, and many of them pay Spiceworks for the chance to interact with the audience of over one million IT professionals for activities ranging from market research to product design. IT pros swap tips and tricks, review products and upload video tutorials. Members have posted more than 15,000 product reviews and created hundreds of discussion groups. Is it appropriate to a B2B setting? MORE >>

Gizmo’s Freeware – Why pay for commercial software when products of equal or greater value are available for free? In the weeks leading up to the Direct Marketing Association annual conference in Boston this week, exhibitors were out strutting their best stuff. Last week I got two letters in the mail that appeared to be personally addressed to me in a feminine hand (right). Both turned out to be promotions for companies exhibiting at the conference. One employs people to hand-address envelopes so that they appear to come from a friend. They fooled me good. Dump the Junk. MORE >>