As Michael Brito put it, in his post: In social media, listening is only half the battle : Listening and responding are only half the battle when engaging with consumers online. Now, amongst other improved to their customer service offering, Comcast has also set up teams of employees who are encouraged to click around social networks or online forums. Chapman noticed a blemish It’s really helpful to look at what some good examples of what companies are doing with their listening skills: deflecting customer anger, researching new products, or correcting mis-information.

Wal-Mart have a chaquered history with social media (the infamous Wal-Marting Across America campaign, for example), but they are doing some great things at the moment. This site, launched in early 2008, has a simple community concept - you can submit an idea to Starbucks, comment on existing ideas or vote for them. Starbucks identified that they wanted to create a feeling that customers For the second in our series of Online Community Examples , we move on to look at online communities in the retail industry. Online communities in the retail industry

There are some great examples of brands using social media that we use a lot at FreshNetworks . The cases of Dell, Starbucks, Nike and others are great stories and there is much that we can learn. The study gives each of these Top 100 brands a score based on their engagement across more than ten social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums. Image by communista_unicorn via Flickr Not because they necessarily get everything right, but because they show what works for them and why, and they help to give ideas

guess there is a point in using (temp) interns – they are young, presumably social media savvy, cheap, and bring a wealth of customer service, sales and pr experience with them. Starbucks’ (SBUX) Twitter feed isn’t manned by an executive but a former barista, who has presumably developed a good sense of what its customers are seeking. Anyway, staff are on social Two companies with very different results use Twinterns – interns who Twitter. I

Many of my readers have a fairly 'meh' approach to old media - they'll read the Metro if they find it on their bus/tube seat, they may enjoy the weekend deforestation editions as an excuse to lounge at the weekends - they're mostly too connected to actually just chew over their toast & stare into the distance - and fill up their recycling boxes. Her early work tracked the presence of fakesters on Friendster , drawing attention to the blurring between the authentic-inauthentic-constructed lines fakester accounts throw non-fakester accounts into, the way that fakester accounts challenged

At FreshNetworks we aim to bring you the best posts in social media, online communities and customer engagement online. Social networks and online communities more popular than email Social networks and online communities are now visited more often online than email. In case you missed them, find below our most popular posts in March. 1.

Welcome to eModeration's round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social media snippets, follow her on @emodkate - or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams. This week: Facebook No to IPO; Twitter's brand ambivalence; and Simon Cowell's antisocial behaviour. ON FACEBOOK ... ON TWITTER ... ON YOUTUBE ... ON MOBILE ... BRANDS GET SOCIAL It came up again in a Wall Street Journal interview last week and - again – the answer was "No IPO in 2-Oh-1-Oh." Intriguingly, however,

Dell’s Vida Killian and Starbucks’s Mathew Guiste make it clear and down-to-earth, which comes from direct, hands-on experience. Once quickly past the software design issues (and it’s really a very simple idea, with literally dozens of vendors crowding the market with copycats) both speakers explain the business drivers, the project development, the social media strategy context, the changes and processes created to support crowdsourcing, the results. This one is coming a close second on the week’s selection of webcasts, and indeed may be a nose ahead of Lithium’s.

This has a significant impact on the dynamics of the social network; elevating content over just personal connections and allowing you to distribute it further and more easily. Sometimes that includes referencing friends, groups or even events they are attending — for instance, posting “Grabbing lunch with Meredith Chin” or “I’m heading to Starbucks Coffee Company — anyone want some coffee?” Image via Wikipedia People often describe Twitter as “Facebook reduced only to the status update”.

It’s a quite convincing attempt to measure and categorise the levels of engagement in social media by the top 100 global brands, and correlate that to their recent profitability. Social media pays off – or at least, would appear to: While much has been written questioning the value of social media, this landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. I’ve finally made some time to read properly an interesting report from the Wetpaint/Altimeter Group ENGAGEMENTdb , which had been hammering at my inbox from various sources.