When contributing writer Carol Tice wrote about the ROI of networking online, comments from readers revealed their uncertainty over the value of sites like Twitter and Facebook. So when LinkedIn--a site specifically designed for networking purposes--changed its user policy to limit the number of connections a person could have to 30,000, Entrepreneur.com investigated its potential effect on small-business owners and entrepreneurs.

Can LinkedIn's recent cap hurt entrepreneurs? Pick a side.
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Time to muddy the waters a bit. Three new reports surfaced this week, each offering a different point of view on how business owners and executives value social networking for business. If you're considering adding social media to your marketing mix, you may find this interesting. If you're already sold--or feel like you were sold down the river--on the benefits of social networking for business, this applies to you as well.

First up, there's the "2009 Tribalization of Business Survey," which evaluated the perceived potential of online communities and identifies how businesses both large and small believe they may better leverage them. According to the survey, conducted by Deloitte, Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research, 94 percent of respondents indicated that they plan to maintain or increase investment in their online community activities, while six percent plan to decrease theirs. However, the survey points out, while businesses are effectively using social media platforms and tools to engage with customers, partners and employees for brand discussions and idea generation, organizations admittedly struggle with harnessing social media's full potential. Of the 400 or so companies surveyed, the majority shared that increasing word-of-mouth, customer loyalty, and brand awareness are the top business objectives of their social networking activities, followed by idea generation from listening in, and improved customer support by engaging. read more...

For the last year or so, I've been warning my clients that the Federal Trade Commission is becoming more involved in regulating online commerce, specifically in terms of disclosures relating to online content. In particular, I've been telling companies that the FTC is likely to implement new guidelines that will bring blogs, Internet forums, message boards, word-of-mouth marketing, social media marketing, social commerce, and other forms of electronic and viral marketing in line with fair advertising practices that have not been updated in more than 25 years.

Well, earlier today, in a highly anticipated move, the FTC did just that. By a vote of 4-0, the Commission has approved new rules requiring bloggers and social media users to disclose payments they receive from companies for reviewing their products. The rules, which go into effect Dec. 1, give clear guidance to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act (warning: link takes you to a pdf file, not a Web page). read more...

Social media isn't just the massive sites that are discussed endlessly--Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn. In some industries, powerful industry-specific sites--known as industry verticals--are being created to help industry players connect with each other and with customers.

An example is LocalDirt.com, a new portal that connects farmers with customers nearby. The site debuted at the Fall 2009 DEMO technology conference in San Diego last week, pitching its concept to conference producers along with 70 other tech firms. Local Dirt won a DEMOgod award, given out at the event to exceptional companies, and was also picked by innovation and venture-capital newsmag VentureBeat as one of the 10 best companies at DEMO. read more...

Feeling shorthanded these days? Wondering if your business is truly meeting your customers' needs? If you answered yes to either of those questions, have you asked all your customers to help you?

Increasingly, companies big and small are doing just that. It's called crowdsourcing--enlisting the help of a large group of people to do company work or shape the company agenda, rather than delegating tasks to an employee or two, or perhaps an ad agency.

The growth of social media has enabled crowdsourcing, making it easy for companies to connect with huge mobs of customers. A couple of the key benefits: saving money and making customers feel more connected to your company.

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We've all received e-mail promotions with a "forward this message to a friend" call-to-action, but hardly any of us ever does. According to Richard Evans, Senior Product Marketing Manager at email marketing automation firm Silverpop, "social e-mail" has the potential to be the new viral, but only if you tap into the right resources.

Richard spoke yesterday afternoon at the Lift Summit in Atlanta--a two-day conference presented by OfficeArrow and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, where real-world examples of social commerce strategies and tactics were on display--about social media integration into e-mail marketing. While Evans' message was simple--as use of social networks/media continues to gain mass adoption, integrating e-mail marketing and social media through social sharing links should be a "must include" feature in marketers' e-mail programs--it's one that's often overlooked by entrepreneurs and marketing professionals alike.

Evans and I sat down after his presentation to discuss his presentation and Silverpop's new benchmark study on social e-mail, "E-mails Gone Viral: Measuring 'Share-to-Social' Performance" in more detail. Here are three key takeaways when considering how to make your email marketing campaigns shareworthy: read more...

The emergence of social media as a crucial paradigm in virtually all sectors of the economy has led to countless assumptions and new ideas about consumer behavior and marketing activities. Yet many of these concepts, when implemented and examined closely, have led to surprising conclusions--many of which contradict the validity and relevance of these ideas in the first place and have been examined previously for decades.

While we are now living in what some call the "golden age of data," this is not the dawn of a new age of related theory. "Many social commerce problems have been addressed previously, and massive amounts of data will not change the continuing need for the understanding of basic and primitive customer behavior which provides the correct lens to view social media data," says Eric T. Bradlow, co-director of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Interactive Media Initiative. read more...