Recently I wrote a post that received a lot of attention - more than I would have expected: How I use social media . At At the end of the post, I promised to write about WHAT social media I currently use. started making a list of all the social media I use.  So here it is. I

Now they have continued their innovative approaches to engagement and embraced social media. The LEGO CLICK community is a great example of the hub-and-spoke model of social media engagement . And they can suggest ideas by video by tagging on YouTube in the same manner. Image by Kaptain Kobold via Flickr LEGO is a brand that many people are very passionate about, a brand people love and we’ve written before about how they use segmentation to engage their consumer base from children to enthusiasts in an innovative way.

Courseware for Social Media Workshops COURSEWARE: Social Media PR Crisis Communication Scribd offers a YouTube style embed, Lulu offers both hardcopy and a free download service. I’m also setting up SocialWebForum for students/clients/companies to ask questions on social media and courses. I’m going to gradually, as time permits, migrate all my courseware across to the new format, offer it for free download under Creative Commons for download (lulu or scribd ), or physical colour workbooks via publish on demand Lulu ( [link] ) .

Toyota have chosen 5 or 6 agencies and have asked them to spend $15,000 each on a “social media marketing campaign”. And while traditional media pitches means war to get content into banner ads, on TV and radio, when it comes to using the same tactics in online communities, there’s damage done.  If you want a different kind of engagement than social media stunts, please retweet or comment or link or something? Think “stunt” and you have a better idea of what they are talking about.. What happened to engagement, respect, conversation,

Social Media statistics: Ever wondered how many people are blogging, uploading videos, tweeting right at this very minute ? Social Network activity measured in real time. You might want to factor that into the social media counter! Here’s a counter that displays growth of Twitter, money spent on Facebook gifts, number of SMS’s sent worldwide second by second. The next question is, what exactly are they doing? 

This week Gordon Brown made a major announcement on YouTube that totally backfired. The UK press has been right to jump on this poor use of social media as a disaster for the Prime Minister. But let’s be clear, this is an example of how not to use a social media tool, it is not an example of the tool being broken. Brown’s mistake, in this instance, was poor management and a lack of empathy. On a matter dear to the hearts of all MPs - their pay and expenses - rather than consult, he pronounced his verdict.

ProtectTheHuman.com is a social platform that asks users to carry out a range of online actions in support of Amnesty’s campaigns, and to upload video and photos and bookmark content from all over the Web. Since just before Christmas we’ve been working with Amnesty UK’s web team on a project to optimise the use of external social media services. Made by Many has worked with Amnesty UK since January ‘08, and helped them design and build ProtectTheHuman.com - their digital activism community. You can read more about it here - in Charlotte’s

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. Two years ago, a YouTube video of a technician who fell asleep on a customer's couch while on hold with Comcast became a hit - the video has been viewed 1.2 Now, amongst other improved to their customer 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.

lot of companies, governments, brands, famous people think that creating some content (in isolation) shoving it up on a social media channel and never looking at it again (unless there is a negative comment, cos y’know, we have to protect our ‘image’) is engagement . Can anyone name a corporate video on YouTube that does responds actively to comments?  This video has nearly 8,000 comments. A

The Social Media Ecosystems research study was conducted by the Online Community Research Network in April of 2009. The study was created to provide insight about how organizations leverage external online community and social media sites to support their organizational goals. We Participants represent many sectors and markets including: large software companies, large community and social media destination sites, niche community We received approximately 60 completed surveys.