Visibility

What Could Be Better Than a Weekend in Vegas? A Free Weekend in Vegas @Palms

July 13, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

How about a weekend in Vegas that you do not have to pay for? Usually I am a firm believer in ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is,’ but not this time, not at Palms Casino and Resort in Las Vegas. In opposition of those many ideas that were in fact, too good to be true, Palms has determined that tapping out a Tweet or sharing Palms offers with your friends may make this a very legit opportunity to reap huge rewards for very little effort.

Of course, if Facebook sharing or Twitter usage is too much work for you, this may not be the ideal opportunity either, but if it sounds doable, continue on.

Easy Registration

Users simply visit the Palms Social Rewards site and enter their email address, along with a chosen password. The next page offers quick click integration with the users Twitter account, and they are off and running. Once signing into the social rewards page, users will then be able to see their current Klout scores, along with available points, and account profile options. On the right-hand side, there will be many offers and opportunities that can be Tweeted, re-Tweeted, or even Facebook shared.

While users get points for each offer they Tweet or share, they also receive the added benefit of bonus points if their Tweet or Share leads to a purchase of one of the advertised opportunities.

Rewards Vs Effort

Aside from the primitive reward of getting something spectacular for very little effort, are the rewards that Palms generously doles out to those who help spread their word on social media networking sites.

Free Deluxe Room
Free Fantasy Tower Room
2 Tickets to a Playboy Comedy
Palms VIP Passes
Dinner for Two at Simon – Little Buddha
Free Drinks

These are fairly hefty rewards considering that they entail everything you require for a fun weekend in Vegas, all the way down to your room and drinks. Meanwhile, users are building their Klout score which in the future may help them reap even further rewards once reaching the check-in desk at the Palms.

Maloof just gets it…

The Palms is a Maloof Company, and clearly they get it…

AdrienneMaloof seems to be the one carrying the Klout in the social aspect of the business, but with Klout adding LinkedIn and soon Foursquare, the Klout social influence may have a new look.

The Maloof Companies owns and operates hotels and casinos. It also engages in banking, food and beverage, and transportation businesses in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. In addition, the company operates gaming properties; owns interests in NBA basketball team Sacramento Kings and the WNBA basketball team Sacramento Monarchs, as well as ARCO Arena; and distributes beer and liquor in New Mexico. The company is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Disclosure: I recently was a guest at Palms Casino & Resort in Las Vegas, however I was not paid or compensated for this publication in any form. The research for this article came about as a follow up to a previous set of articles.

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ReferralKey Can Help to Grow Your Business

July 12, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Tapping into the largest referral network available, ReferralKey has previously been described as a skillful collaboration of Angie’s List and LinkedIn, the social business network.

This system of referring business owners, among business owners and consumers allows users to build a network of contacts while building list of reputable businesses with reliable contractors and other professionals.

ReferralKey focuses on one prime element: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It also relies a bit on depending on others to have as much net etiquette as you do. While users build a network of contacts, they also refer those they know. Hopefully, those who get referrals will be kind enough or happy enough to promote you in your industry in return. In this manner, everyone is able to enjoy the benefits of this simple but valuable exchange.

Sign Up for ReferralKey

Signing up for ReferralKey is easy and requires no more than the basics. Once signed in users are brought swiftly to their dashboard where they can make decisions on elements of ReferralKey such as:

Profile Creation
Adding Colleagues
Setting Rewards for Referrals

When first visiting the dashboard users should select their settings options and choose how to receive alerts, as well as profile and other privacy options.

Users can also advertise their businesses, by location and industry on ReferralKey. Doing so will also register your listing with several search engines. This will also increase the odds of other consumers finding the listing.

Although users can create their own free profiles and accounts, users are only allowed to receive three referrals before they are prompted and required to purchase a paid account. There are different plans depending on user choice.

The light plan, referred to as the Silver Key, is $10 USD per month, the Gold Key plan cost $20 USD per month. Users should study the difference in plans before making an educated decision about which would be best for their small or growing business.

This service can be solid and quite successful if the referrals help a user’s business to generate a lucrative amount of revenue. With the easy-to-navigate and use site, while providing a great deal of helpful information regarding your own contacts and in your industry.

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A look at how important Twitter is to customer service: Palms Casino, Las Vegas

July 7, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

I will be leaving for Las Vegas on Friday morning July 8, 2011. As part of any trip you start to pack, and then check your details. This trip to Vegas for me is one that has me excited, joining college friends to celebrate a close friend soon to be wed.

As we got closer to the trip, I did a tweet or two about heading to Las Vegas for the first time. Clearly people are listening because I received responses from a few places and promoters about events, VIP options etc. The most notable was my Hotel, @PalmsLasVegas, not only did they respond but they engaged a little themselves.

I had happened to do an article unknowingly about Klout and its Klout Perks, they shared some info and thoughts as time went on.

Just before the trip to Las Vegas, I tossed out another tweet about looking forward to the trip, an epic win again for @PalmsLasVegas who responded again in short order… “travel safely! Look forward to having you here on property!”

Now critiques of Social Media and Twitter in particular would argue that this casual interaction doesn’t provide any real value, but it does and just when ultimately everything went wrong it undisputedly proved that it (social media) did (provide real value)!

Today (Thursday July 7, 2011) less then 24hrs before heading to Las Vegas one of the people in our group told us about a $15 Fee (per day) we would get on this trip, the first reaction in a chain of emails was heavily negative. The group quickly noticed that the Palms website was down, then others including myself could not reach anyone at the front desk. As I had had previous success with tweeting I turned to @PalmsLasVegas for answers.

As you can see in the screen snap shots @PalmsLasVegas quickly works through a few different things, they clarified the fee, apologized, then turned to the issue with the website.

Remember this all started with the casual interaction that made me comfortable with the Palms Casino because of the twitter account @PalmsLasVegas. The concern that had been raised could not be resolved by traditional means via the phone and dare I also call the website a traditional means as well. The engagement using social media, twitter in particular allowed me to get the info I needed, or wanted. This, with the apology quickly resolved the concerns and negative association I was having with the Palms.

If you remember this entire resolve came from the website being down and the phones busy. When I took the next step and told @PalmsLasVegas that the website was down, they did not even know that there was an issue… here lies the undisputable ROI.

The social media team at the Palms shared that they are having issues finding any problem because the website is working on location, then they ask about what browser I am using. I quickly run the gauntlet using Chrome, IE and Firefox to confirm it’s not a browser issue, then after contacting several others at different locations and confirmed to @PalmsLasVegas the issue is not isolated or browser related. Within a few minutes the Palms website is live again and confirmed that they did have an issue and they “appreciated” the info.

What @PalmsLasVegas did with Social Media

Created a welcome place for a casual conversation
Provided a source of communication when others failed
Provided information and eased the concern of clients or customers (15 of them)
Discovered a larger issue of brand visibility (palms.com)
Won a influential twitter fan for life in @BasilPuglisi

In this case the choice for the Palms Casino and Resort in Las Vegas to engage in social media using twitter to provide some casual conversation and great customer service created an epic win. I for one, can’t even remember why it was I was originally concerned, can you?

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*** NOTE *** On Sunday July 11, 2011 the Palms aquired @Palms and switched from @PalmsLasVegas to @Palms.

5 Top-Notch Marketing Conferences

July 5, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

A great marketing conference will offer one-of-a-kind perspectives on trending insider information in traditional and digital marketing. Speakers will help to lead and enhance expert learning sessions for a great full-bodied conference program that should focus on marketing strategies, business and consumer relations management, and other vital elements of your company’s marketing campaigns that is carried on, offline.

Marketing Conferences 2011

There are quite a few marketing conferences that can benefit anyone from the smallest business owner to a well-known public brand.

Contagious: The Science of Word-of-Mouth Marketing Conference is held on June 30^th, 2011 in NY, New York. This unique marketing conference provides industry expertise about findings into what really influences consumer decisions and how to use the old fashioned method of word-of-mouth advertising to build a larger audience.
The PRSA 2011 will be held in Orlando, Florida on Sunday October 16^th. This conference with the intriguing title of Bringing Sexy Back to Marketing is focused on show-and-tell presentations that are loaded with real case study information on maintaining great offline marketing campaigns as well as integrating online and offline efforts for greater possibilities.
The American Management Association produces many conferences and seminars all around the U.S. regularly. One of their most vital seminars is the Fundamentals of Marketing: Your Action Plan for Success course. This course takes those new to marketing and gives them a thorough overview of exactly what they need to know, the most basic fundamentals behind successful marketing campaigns. Important marketing skill development begins here. Since these are covered in cities in the U.S. at various times it is best to check there schedule for this program.
The Direct Marketing Conference is held October 1st through 6th in 2011 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston, Massachusetts. This global event focuses on learning how to effectively develop successfully integrated marketing campaigns. Increasing the understanding of how to leverage data and other attributions. Networking with many peers from over 50+ countries can be quite an experience for any visiting this conference.
The International Professional Communications Conference is an incredibly beneficial tool to any offline marketing campaign. This yearly conference held on the University of Cincinnati campus October 17^th through October 19^th can be an imperative element in training your entire marketing department on how to communicate effectively, and proactively with your possible consumers.

Over 90% of retail sales and word-of-mouth referrals still happen offline. It may be a dire mistake to put all of your marketing eggs into one digital basket with statistics like this still lingering around.

More than 93 percent of retail sales and 90 percent of word-of-mouth referrals happen offline. Yet, brands seem obsessed with using the latest and greatest social media tools to build customer loyalty. It is time to bring sexy back to word-of-mouth marketing and implement communications plans that fully engage customers, both online and offline.

Experience a show-and-tell presentation loaded with case studies and actionable best practice advice on how to engage and encourage customers to tell others about the brands they find talk-able.
Uncover the importance of investing in a strategy that engages employees and customers first, before you think about your technology plan.
Learn the importance of integrating online and offline programs, and tips for implementing both.

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Why Online Videos are Important to Your Business?

July 1, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Videos are increasingly attracting huge audiences online. People love to share online video content, especially young people. They post them on social networking sites or spread them through e mails. Marketing people say that if you are not using video in your marketing campaign, you might soon be behind the crowd.

Why is that?

Think about this simple fact: 1 minute of video equals 1.8 million words, as demonstrated by Dr. James McQuivey of Forester Research. The amount of information contained in one single frame can take 3 pages to describe. The mood, the colors, the message is seen immediately. It is a known fact that people engage more when they watch a video and tend to stay watching it. They are also happy to pass it along.

Since e commerce has become so impersonal, a video that shows the business owner, the business itself and the products makes it more personal and human. There is now a face behind the business. The choice of music in the background makes the experience fun and uplifting, retaining the audience.

How big will online video be in a marketing campaign? It will be huge the experts say. Statistics done by Cisco.com and Invodo.com reveals some amazing facts:

In their estimation video will be about 90% of all internet traffic in 2013.
64% of retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer in average compared to a site that does not contain video. In the e commerce world, the longer a visitor stays on the site, the greater the chances of him turning into a buyer.
Between January 2010 and January 2011 viewing time of videos grew by an amazing 44.5%.
Video in e mail marketing has been shown to increase click through by 96%!
With the right optimization, video increases the chances of a front-page Google search result by 53 times.
Internet retailers report that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy the product than visitors who do not look at videos.

With these kinds of numbers, no wonder many experts turn to video in an attempt to get to the first page of the search engines.

Studies reveal the need for engagement from the viewers, and videos provide this kind of engagement. Just like comments and reviews on product pages, YouTube looks at the number of comments to a video when it decides which video should be on their front page. It’s more than just broadcasting, videos engage audiences and sends them to your site if the video is insightful, funny, gives information, educates and talks about people – how your product can help others to be more… what they want to be.

Where do most of those videos originate? On Google, 82% of video originate from YouTube, 3% from DailyMotion, 2% from MetaCafe, 1% from Google video and 10% from other sites which support self-hosted videos.

On Bing, 38% of the videos come from YouTube, 37% from Bing, 9% from Vevo, 4% from Fox News, 3% from CNN and other news organizations. The others, about 5%, come from different sites.

Does it mean we all need to become film makers? Not necessarily. There are many ways to create sales and promotions video; telling a story (which is the most complicated), using a simple camera and following the owner around, using screen shots, animation or just captions with music in the background to explain a complicated point. The big companies have been doing so for some years now but with modern technology, cheap cameras and free software, everyone can do it too.

Videos are an Information Experience:

Here is a law firm talking about the importantce of video, almost as if the lawyer is selling the product he just bought!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t2RmvrfV7k]

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Some of the Best Social Media Conferences

June 30, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com 3 Comments

You can’t have social media without the social. Although the internet produced what we now refer to as social media, this form of networking doesn’t live solely on the world wide web. Social media and social networking can also require face time. Especially for those who want to stay ahead of the trends and those who want to be on the leading edge of the capabilities that social media allots them.

There are a large collection of varying social media events held around the world every year. In fact, there is even a designated Social Media Week that will be celebrated by social networking enthusiast and experts from all over the map. The Second Social Media Week for 2011 runs from September 19th through the 23rd in locales such as Los Angeles, Berlin, Moscow, Milan, and many more places around the globe.

Social Media Conferences

Important social media conferences occur all throughout the year.

The SXSW interactive festival was celebrated from March 9^th through the 13^th of 2011. Five days of riveting presentations performed by some of the brightest minds in social media technology such as CEO and Founder of ScrollMotion, Josh Koppel.
The Social Media Strategies Summit was held from February 8^ththrough the 10^th in San Francisco, California. This fantastic conference gave many the chance to learn from some of the top leaders in social media marketing. Representatives from Dunkin Donuts, Discovery Channel, Paypal and other big name brands were on hand to answer questions about their successful strategies. Social Media Strategies Summit or SMSS is coming to Boston Sept 20-22, 2011 and London Oct 25-27, 2011. During this 3 day summit attendee’s will learn how to best utilize and integrate the myriad social media platforms to engage customers directly at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. Through the intelligent use of social media marketing you can, in house, have continuous direct contact with your customers.
The 140 characters, or #140conf, 2011 conference was lauded to be the largest global gathering of those interested in how social media and the internet effected both businesses and people. Adam Ostrow, the Editor-in-Chief at Mashable, joined a long list of knowledgeable speakers at the #140c on June 15^thand 16^th.
Another area in which social media marketing is beginning to bloom and boom is in the travel industry. For this reason the Social Media Strategies for Travel conference held on March 25th and 26th of 2011 was a superb opportunity for travel industry leaders to learn how to communicate, via social media formats, with their customers.
The Search Exchange Internet Marketing Conference held on May 17^th through 19^th2011, offered a helpful variety of educational possibilities by the collaborative efforts of hundreds of entrepreneurs and business professionals who shared the most vital keynotes and discussions on social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, web analytics, and search engine optimization.
The Content Marketing World Conference of 2011 will be held from September 6^th through September 8^th in Cleveland, Ohio. This conference has a direct goal of helping to transform your businesses marketing department into a compelling factory for storytelling. Learning techniques to help engage prospects and current customers with the best messages through formats such as mobile, email, online, social, and face-to-face interaction can assist any marketing department in becoming content marketing experts by providing them with valuable education and vital tools.
The WOMMA Summit, also known as the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, will be held from November 16^th through November 18^th, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. This innovative way of marketing the oldest and most effective promotion helps attendees to understand how better to research and measure the integration of online social media with offline communications. New practices in word of mouth, coupled with social media marketing, provides the latest in trends to help give any business a great boost.
Social Media Week: Global. Social Media Week’s mission is to explore how local and regional societies, cultures, and economies are becoming more integrated & empowered through a global network of communication. The Feb 2011 was a big success and the September 19-23, 2011 is looking to be just as big. It takes place in cities around the world.
Blogworld & New Media Expo, While you might have missed NY in May 2011, the Social Media Summit for the Blogworld Expo will be in Los Angeles Nov 3-5. Topics Include: Content Creation, Distribution, Monetization, Networking and more.

One of the most vital elements of any education is the regular development and renewal of that very same education. What you may be 100% sure of today about an aspect of social media marketing, indeed, you may even be right, but that very element may have an entirely different focus depending on the whims of search engines and the ebb and flow of human communication, tomorrow. As long as you stay in tune with news and trends in any industry, you have the best chance for true success as is possible.

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Google Throws Down the Gauntlet at Facebook in Social Network Struggle

June 29, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Google’s last two shots at storming the social networks, Google Buzz and Google Wave, met an early, and not entirely unexpected, demise. However, +1 may contain a few vital elements that make it far less likely to go unnoticed.

Custom Filtering

Being able to filter your contacts into groups and determine who can and cannot see your specific +1 preferences provides users with a bit more privacy than a Facebook ‘Like’ since Facebook currently only offers very basic privacy options, Friends or Everyone.

Huddles and Hangouts

Group instant messaging and multi-users video conferencing could make Google quite the competitor in more than just the social network industry. Users who have long bemoaned some of Skype’s capabilities, or lack of, may find themselves fans of Google Hangouts soon. Huddle can also be used on mobile devices via an app for the Android platform.

Google +1 Limited

The current version of the Google +1 system has only been released to a limited number of users but Google reps have stated that it hopes to make the entire scale of social network options available to the millions of consumers who use many of their other features every day.

Google denies that plus is a competitor with Facebook and emphasizes in so many words that they are not ‘out to get’ Zuckerberg’s social network, but rather focusing on what their users need to ease any element of their digital requirements, one of which has definitely become social networking.

Google +1 Goes Live with Adwords

June 29, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Google Experimental Labs has been testing its +1 feature, similar to a Facebook “Like” for a few months now. For those participating in the experiment, a +1 box at the end of each website’s title on a search engine query display allowed them to give their digital stamp of approval to sites they enjoy.

So far, the Google +1 experiment has fared reasonably well during its beta term. When participating in the experiment any user viewing a search engine query display can see where anyone in their network has given their virtual thumbs up on a site.

Adwords +1

Now however, Google has plans to add the +1 feature to their Adwords advertisements. This means that if your business has an Adwords campaign, any viewing this ad can choose to give it their approval with a +1 click. This also means that anyone in that persons network who sees the same ad, will see that their friend has also given the ad their approval.

How could this be beneficial to your business? If, for instance, you are in the travel business and are using a Google Adwords campaign to advertise your seaside hotel in Florida, and a group of office workers in Illinois are planning a visit to your area, likely many will take to the net.

If office worker A’s daughter took a trip to the same area last year, loved your resort, and gave the Adwords display a +1 click to show her approval, perhaps office worker A, will also give it a click, check into your resorts amenities, and decide upon you for their impending stay.

This worker also likely has their co-workers in their network, so as their co-workers do their own searches, and see your ad, they could see the same ad, +1’d by their trusty co-workers, and now you have several who are on the way to your resort as quickly as they can get there.

+1 Your Landing Page

Business owners will now also want to take advantage of adding the Google +1 option to their landing pages, right next Twitter and Facebook most likely. Adding this will give viewers the ability to +1 your site from the inside, and not just from their displayed search engine results.

This gives those who are fans of your website the ability to share with their friends without intrusive interaction. They will simply be able to see whether or not any of their friends connections would choose your site out of a list of sites, or advertisements, when queried.

Early critiques attack the need to be logged into a google account to particiapte or see the results, but prticiaption issues exist with facebook too. Even more intereting is that the latest trend in sharing seems to be LinkedIn. While the +1 has done well in the early beta stages, only time will tell how google’s answer to the facebook “like” will playout over time.

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Social Media Trends in Europe and Russia

June 29, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com 5 Comments

The use of social media is certainly not limited to the United States alone. In fact, for some internet users, social media networks may have been their first experience in connecting to someone outside of their own local, state, or even country.

Russia has a significantly different social media audience in the simple fact that in comparison to the U.S. it is extremely small. The total online population of Russia is just under 60,000 and only 42% of that population is using online capabilities at all.

Russian Demographics

According to eMarketer, 61.9 million people in Russia will use the internet by 2013. This would be a significant jump from 2009 where the number rested at 45.8 million. Although the minor numbers may seemingly indicate otherwise, Russians are actually the most arduous social networkers when it comes the length of time spent on social media sites per user.

Odnoklassniki, Russia’s main social network has a reported user-base of around 30 million. The site helps to connect classmates in Russia and the Ukraine and has over 8 million visitors per day. Nearly 75% of the online population of Russia visited at least one social networking site during the month of the study in August of 2010.

Russians are spending more than double the worldwide average time of 4.5 hours on social networking sites. This makes it rank high at #1 among all countries with reported social networking statistics and open social media option engagement. Following Russia is Israel with an average of just over 9 hours per visitor. Israel is followed by Turkey with 7.6 hours per user spent on social networking websites.

This means that in spite of Facebook’s worldwide powerful command in social networking sites, in an overall majority of this specific internet market, Facebook actually ranks fifth in Russia with just over 4.5 million users. However, recent years have seen increasing growth in Russian internet users who utilize Facebook as a social network option. This is causing Facebook to quickly outpace the other five top social networking sites.

European Social Media Statistics

Currently, the top ten countries for social networking are ranked by the time spent per visitor. The current worldwide average time for visitors spent on social networking websites is 4.5 hours. In a 2009 Rapleaf study, it was shown that females are far more active in social media than men. However, this study was focused on the U.S. A newer study from Comscore showed that the same rang true for European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. It should be no great surprise that the younger set of females ages 15 to 24 spend the most time of all age groups on social sites than their male counterparts at a generous 8.4 hours each month. What may be a bit more astonishing is that the next age group on social media time consumption lists isn’t the 25 to 34 year olds, but the older group in the 45 to 54 year olds. The studies actually showed that the 45 to 54 year olds spent more than double the amount of time on social networking sites than the males of the same age group.

The short top ten list of countries leading in social networking capabilities are:

Russia
Israel
Turkey
UK
Philippines
Canada
Indonesia
Finland
Spain
Puerto Rico

Many European countries utilize social media websites that are not commonly used by U.S. internet users.

Friendster is relatively popular in Russia, while Hi 5 is frequented visited by users in Spain and Italy more often. Netlog is also highly popular in Spain and an unfamiliar sight for U.S social media users known as Studvyiz, is Germany’s most popular social media outside of Facebook and Myspace.

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Transparency & Social Media

June 27, 2011 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Embracing social media 100% may be the best investment, you as a business owner, can make for your company and brand. However, businesses already renowned in the social media world, can also be considered pioneers of this method of advertising and marketing.

Although many have heard of the benefits, fear of possible damage may have kept them at bay long enough that they are just now dipping a toe in the proverbial social media pool. Some of these businesses may be ultimately considered about the meaning behind the transparency of social media as well as the implementation of.

Social media marketers speak about social media transparency and the importance of being open, authentic, and honest about their company’s brands or opportunities. However, keeping in mind that it is all about the people, and little of the product, that is the most important element of maintaining a balance in social media transparency.

What is Social Media Transparency?

Commonly, this phrase is used in reference with news media to inform the public why and how the business gathers information from a variety of sources. This is really no different than providing the name of which reliable source told you what. We already regularly do this in our daily rumor mills. The discussion of odd or unusual details may illicit a “who told you that?” Social media transparency only makes this a proactive measure. “This is what I heard, and here are the reliable sources that support that notion.”

As a business, sometimes your only role is to provide those details, the who as important as the why, and for many companies, being a reliable source of sources is just as important to their visibility. Regardless of the stepping stones of sources, the point is to lend credibility to your message, and build trust with your consumers.

As an individual we check-in and tweet with data, photos and more, so if we are transparent, we expect business to do the same right?

Transparency in Digital Media

When considering this element in relation to social media and most certainly when it comes to covering or reviewing products, or social business blogging, the main focus is to be open and honest in all elements of what you share. Are you doing a review for the new iPad? Share right away with your viewers that you received an iPad to research and blog about their product. As long as it breaches no contract, it is also good to share if you may not have received a free device to do your review, but that your review was paid or sponsored by another source.

It can also be used as a simple means of saying “Hey, I heard about this idea from a post at www.referencedsource.com and thought I’d share my opinion, thoughts, or review of this idea.” Not only is this the transparency that should be focused on, it is also good netiquette. It is the acknowledgement that while your post or blog is not created by a specific expert in a field, it is based on one, and here is the person who wrote the material that inspired your own.

If your business or brand is highly followed on Twitter for a specific reason. Perhaps because you are the go-to company who helps to determine the safest toys for children. Advertising a toy as ‘safe’ because you were paid to do so, without sharing that you were paid to do so, is not only misleading, but can be the beginning of the end of your brand and every consumer who values its sources.

Can You Trust Me?

Although not all reasons behind transparency can present such dire consequences as the reference to children’s toys, the lack of transparency can indeed cause a shining company to fail simply due to lack of disclosure.

Social media is no doubt, a double-edged sword. The same format that can make your company’s brand a vital one, can also hammer away at it until transparency transforms into invisibility.

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