Here are some ways to match social media to your business objectives and resources. In my mind, it’s really about helping marketers choose among the ever-increasing media options available today and in the future. won’t go into the details of the presentation, but thought I’d share this chart for selecting among social media. The chart makes two major points: - different social media meet different business objectives. As the chart indicates, most social media can in fact serve more than one objective. MORE >>

Summary: Alterian's purchase of Techrigy marks the first integration of serious social media management with marketing automation. Marketing automation vendor Alterian yesterday announced its acquisition of social media monitoring company Techrigy. Even though the Techgrity deal is the first direct acquisition I recall of a social media monitoring system by a marketing automation vendor, it strikes me as an obvious step. What really impresses me is that Techrigy is a serious social media monitoring solution. Others are sure to follow. MORE >>

I caught an all-star panel on social CRM today at the CRMEvolution conference in New York. Yet my final impression was that social CRM is a problem in search of a solution. Maybe it was because the speakers kept emphasizing the need to define strategy and goals for any social CRM project. Of course this is sound advice, for social CRM or anything else. But that the speakers kept repeating it suggests pretty strongly that they’ve seen lots of people deploy social CRM without that sort of planning. social media monitoring crmevolution social crm MORE >>

Summary: Acxiom's new social media marketing tool gathers public data about social media links and uses it to segment email lists. It's a different, and arguably more practical, approach to helping marketers take advantage of social media. Acxiom last week released a new “social media marketing” solution called Relevance-X Social. The key point here is that Acxiom is using social media to execute traditional database marketing. Tags: acxiom marketing measurement social media MORE >>

In concrete terms, it involves blogging, search engine optimization of Websites, and social media messages. This involves strengthening its “middle of the funnel” tools for more powerful email, better segmentation and content selection, and enhancing lead profiles with data from social media. Indeed, CTO Dharmesh Shah said their goal is to “leapfrog” current marketing automation vendors by replacing their focus on email marketing with a focus on social media. But all other marketing automation vendors are also adding social media capabilities. MORE >>