Facebook, Richard Clarke, and Kids Today

I'm catching up on a lot of blog posts, videos and news that happened while I was away (see my post on Alaska). I think it is important to take time off once in a while mainly as it gives you a fresh set of eyes on your industry and it trends. Here are a couple of links I'm finding compelling today...

The reviews are coming in for "The Social Network" by Aaron Sorkin about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sounds like its a good movie and going to be a big hit. Here is a roundup of reviews so far...

Levis is putting its $100 million dollar advertising account up for review. The goal?

According to people familiar with the situation, the review is an effort by the marketer to consolidate the nearly 20 media agencies it works with around the world to one or two agencies.

Is this consolidation a one-off event or evidence of a general trend? My guess is the latter.

In interesting talk by Richard Clark on the keys to cyber security



More M&A transactions that spotlight the importance of marketing dashboards powered by sophisticated analytical engines. "IBM to acquire analytics provider Netezza"

Should alcohol ads be allowed in college newspapers? The kids at UVA and Virginia Tech sure think so. They are suing the State of Virginia in order to overturn a ban...and the Supreme Court is looking at the case. How would you feel if your biggest possible advertiser was prohibited from buying space in your publication? Does Jagermeister really need to advertise in order to convince their best customers to have a shot tonight?

Seven Best Things To Do in Alaska

I returned from a 12 day holiday in Alaska yesterday. If you haven't visited the "Last Frontier" yet, I highly recommend it. It's beautiful, mostly wilderness and there is tons of stuff to do.

I recommend:

1. Deep sea fishing in the Gulf of Alaska for halibut and lingcod- use Pro-Fish-N-Sea out of Seward.

2. A day cruise along the Kenai peninsula fjords to the see the massive glaciers that drop into the ocean.

3. Short 2-3 hour hikes into any number of national and state parks, like Exit Glacier Park.

4. A flightseeing trip to Denali National Park- I used Talkeetna Air Taxi based in, yes, Talkeetna. And pick the glacier landing option. Yes, you get to land on a glacier. And your flight might be delayed due to a moose on the runway.

5. A day long bus tour into Denali National Park to view moose, caribou, bears, wolves and lynx- as well as spectacular mountain scenery.

6. The northern lights in Fairbanks. Amazing! (but impossible to shoot with a mobile phone...)

7. A stay in Girdwood, just south of Anchorage.

10,000 Enormous Trends in Social Media Right Now (Not Really)

I've been catching up on a lot of reading today- perusing the marketing social media blogs- and I've found a lot of good stuff. One thing I noticed is that it seems that the only format people write in now is "top ten lists."

• Top Ten Muskrat Flavored Social Media Popsicles
• 27 Must Have Twitter Followers in the California Penal System
• Three Key Techniques for Spamming Anonymous Strangers in the Vain Hope of Getting More Facebook Fans
• Four Absolutely Critical Hello Kitty iPhone Accessories

The other popular way to write a blog these days is the "How to" or "Where do I find" types

• How Do I Get Hot Girls to Follow Me on Twitter? (Now available in seven easy installments of $199 each!)
• How Can I Get To Be Mayor Of Yankee Stadium When I Don't Leave The House?
• Which Social Media Network is Best for the Buying and Selling of Monkeys?
• How Do I Grow Revenue at My Failing Business Using Social Media but With No Budget, Time, Effort or Creativity?

Anyway! Here are some of the really good articles I read this week:

5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now (Mashable)

They are:
1. Social Scanning
2. QA and Intelligent Information Discovery
3. Group Buying
4. Mobile Meets Loyalty
5. Checking-In to Entertainment


Questioning the Prominence of B2B Search (Strategic Guy)
Is SEO really that important to B2B marketers?

A good friend and long-standing client pointed me to a BtoB Magazine article about a recent survey entitled "The Impact of Social Media on Search." The nearly 500 marketers queried reported their most important goals for social media marketing as the following:

-Building brand awareness (81%)
-Increasing traffic to a Web site (77%)
-Generating leads (67%)
-Providing deeper engagement with customers (66%)
-Improving search results (57%)

Maybe not...

Lastly ReadWriteWeb has a cool flowchart on How to Evaluate New Twitter Followers

Dog Days of August

August is always a bit of a slow month...given that, I've had some time to catch up on the neverending firehose of news, media, content and social media interactions aimed at me. :)

Here are a couple of stories that caught my eye:

Chris Brogan has an interesting post about the tension of real world friendships and "ambient connectivity" in "Is a Social Crash Coming?"

Rohit Bhargava updates his famous 2006 post on social media optimization (SMO) with lessons learned over the past four years: "The 5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization"

AdAge has a very interesting story about how the Steve Slater situation is causing JetBlue problems with their social media and branding efforts, and how they are dealing with it: "How Steve Slater Is Stifling JetBlue's Social-Media Strategy"

The Social Times showcases Pete Warden, the founder of OpenHeatMap. Pretty cool stuff...

Lastly, my agency, Strategic Communications Group, is having a busy summer as we've added two new clients so far: TerraGo Technologies and Whitney, Bradley and Brown.

New BlogTalkRadio podcast with Robert Johnson, CEO of Cimcor

I'm excited to have had the opportunity to sit down and record Straight to the Point podcasts with a large number of marketing and business experts over the years. Some folks I've gotten to know pretty well after their session. But there are literally hundreds of people I respect and I've known for years that haven't yet appeared on STTP, for whatever reason. My latest podcast is with just such a person- Robert Johnson, founder of IT security vendor Cimcor Technologies.

Imagine the power of a self healing enterprise network. A corporate or government environment where hacks, attacks and other security risks would be more than merely detected. The network would automatically take corrective response…in near real time. In this new podcast Robert does more than ask you to imagine. He discusses the self-healing capabilities of networks…today.

Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio...

or just click play...

Listen to internet radio with JeffMajka on Blog Talk Radio