Mediaboss Marketing

By Ryan Holmes, contributor

FORTUNE -- "Overall, the higher education system is failing to prepare students with the needed digital and social skill set in any meaningful way," says Dr. William Ward of Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. "Higher education, like business, needs a culture shift."

Ward teaches COM 400, Social Media U Need 2 Know, and COM 600, Social Media Theory and Practice at Syracuse. His offerings are among only a handful of credit-bearing social media courses offered at leading universities today. For Ward, who goes by the handle @DR4WARD on Twitter and has nearly 10,000 followers, the imperative for more courses is clear. "Students with social media certification are getting better jobs and internships," he says. "Those who harness social communications are in high demand and have an advantage."

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The numbers back him up. While U.S. unemployment hovers around 8%, job postings requiring social media skills rose 87% from 2011 to 2012, topping 13,000 in one month alone earlier this year. Among Fortune 500 companies, 73% now have company Twitter accounts and 66% have Facebook Pages (FB). Corporate America is racing to apply social tools to everything from building customer relationships to connecting teams of employees around the world. Analysts estimate that $1.3 trillion in value stands to be unlocked by new social technologies.

But while businesses are hungry to tap social media, they lack the expertise to do so. Among 2,100 companies surveyed by Harvard Business Review, a meagre 12% of those using social media feel they use it effectively. The result is an exceptional demand for social media professionals who can boost the bottom line. "Social communication done well increases productivity, saves money and time, and improves engagement and satisfaction," Ward says. "[It's] a part of a larger culture shift changing how work gets done."

Higher ed, however, has been painfully slow to step up and fill the knowledge gap. While many universities use social media to recruit students -- Harvard alone has 1.6 million fans on Facebook-- few have brought it into the classroom itself. When courses on social media are offered, they tend to be stand-alones or electives rather than integrated into a larger curriculum. "Digital and social skills can be applied across majors and discipline, not just in a social media class," Ward says. "Faculty must change how they research, learn, communicate, and collaborate and model this behavior in all their classes and for their students."

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At Syracuse, Ward's students are already "social natives," having grown up with Twitter and Facebook. But his courses like COM 400, Social Media U Need 2 Know, elevate social networking to cold, hard science, with an emphasis on practical business applications and measuring return on investment. Assignments include 20 weekly tweets and posts, tracked with a dedicated class hashtag. Influence meters like Klout measure reach and effectiveness of messages. Meanwhile, class lectures and online seminars and videos dissect how to cultivate a following on Twitter, LinkedIn (LNKD) and Google+ (GOOG).

Other elite universities have started to follow this lead. NYU, Columbia and the University of Washington, among others, have introduced extensive undergraduate coursework on social networking, marketing and learning. Columbia Business School and Harvard Business School offer social media marketing courses. New England College even offers a comprehensive social media MBA. "I think because it's such a specialized field, you couldn't just give two courses and say, 'Here you go,'" explains New England College dean of admissions Diane Raymond, defending social media education in a recent U.S. News report. "There [are] just too many trends, too many elements."

Read more from the original source:
Universities are failing at teaching social media

Wretch 32 has said that he would be up for collaborating with Sir Tom Jones, if his mother insisted on it.

The Traktor rapper will be performing alongside the Welsh crooner and VV Brown at the Arthur's Day celebration in London, which will be held in the capital for the first time at Senate House on September 27.

The 27-year-old, whose real name is Jermaine Scott, has no plans to duet with Tom as yet, but joked: "My mum is a big fan of Sir Tom. He's a legend, so I'll do a duet with him only for her sake."

Wretch promised to liven up the Arthur's Day stage for the UK show.

"I'll bring a lot of energy on stage with my band," he said.

"Arthur's Day coming to London reminds me of the whole Olympics spirit. It's been quite a eventful year for London and Arthur's Day adds to how special it is. I'm definitely looking forward to it and I can't wait."

The grime artist is also looking forward to joining Cheryl Cole on stage as a surprise guest on their single, S**** You.

"I find it fun and exciting, popping out as a surprise guest. No one knows where or when I'm going to be coming out," he said.

"I want people to be shocked - it's not The X Factor or the Wretch Factor, but the shock factor."

Press Association

Originally posted here:
Mum's the word for Wretch 32 duet

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

uberVU, a proven social monitoring and engagement system for the enterprise, today announced Version 2.0 of its social marketing platform, with unprecedented insights that enable social marketers to work smarter not harder. The uberVU platform now provides a complete and intelligent loop for multitasking social marketers going beyond staid practices of simple listening, mention captures and spike identification. With over 100 new features and enhancements, uberVU changes the face of social media engagement and monitoring with a fresh new way of interpreting data and actionable information.

Social media monitoring has reached a tipping point: marketers need better solutions not solely just to capture brand mentions, field customer service complaints or leverage company kudos they need a lightning-speed process to identify which of the thousands of detected social updates is most crucial, needs immediate action or affects a brands holistic marketing strategy. Early social monitoring solutions were tactically focused, and usually clunky and challenging for the user. They may have helped marketers capture mentions and create lists, but lacked a synergistic flow that provided a dynamic information highway toward meaning and the priority of insightful data. uberVU eliminates archaic manual practices that once solely involved filtering key words and deciphering meaning to create or modify strategy; its sophisticated technology is now a trilogy: filtering, deciphering meaning, and executing strategy on a constant, actionable loop provided by a socially friendly interface thats intuitive, fun to use and fast.

Zach Hofer-Shall, Senior Analyst with Forrester Research, Inc. writes in his June 2012 report, How To Make Social Media Data Actionable, "Although many professionals understand the value of social media data, far fewer are able to transform it into customer insight that drives better marketing strategy.

uberVU is making that process faster and much simpler. Businesses no longer doubt that social media is a crucial mix in their marketing, but they are still searching for the validity of allocating time and resources as part of an effective brand strategy. uberVU makes it easier than ever to integrate social into what should be an everyday conversation, and to ensure that strategy returns value to the organization, said Mark Pascarella, CEO of uberVU.

uberVUs new features include:

1. Immediate Insights provides a complete picture in seconds rather than hours or days. Many providers claim real time data delivery; uberVU is one of the few that actually does it.

2. Ease of Use a robust solution delivering enterprise-class functionality but designed from a consumer point of view.

3. Context suggests appropriate actions based on whether a social media event is about your company, competitors, market, etc.

4. Actionability enhanced uberVU SignalsTM - with spikes, influencers, stories and mentions delivered automatically.

Read this article:
uberVU Expands Insightful Monitoring for #SmarterSocial; Helps Marketers Work Smarter, Not Harder

AOL has focused, almost pathologically, on local news over the past few years. The center piece of that strategy has been Patch, which is now getting a makeover. The new look focuses on social networking, and according to paidContent it will debut on five Long Island Patch sites, and slowly roll out to more - and that Patch CEO Jon Brod says the site is focusing on "content, conversation, and commerce."

Apparently, the social layout is designed to accommodate groups, created by editors and users alike. It's unclear what this means. What does belonging to specific group mean? Is it like Google+'s circles?

There are a few problems with AO'sL social networking aspirations. The company may want to learn a lesson from Google, and stop trying to beat Facebook at its own game. One thing is for sure, the only way to compete with Facebook is to offer something different and then integrate with the social networking behemoth (like Pinterest did). But local news sites are also notorious for problems with commenters. Neighborhood feuds and petty grievances have threatened to shut down more than one local site, and Patch will need to find a way to keep these kinds of incidents from turning its site into a gossip mill.

(www.patch.com)

Here is the original post:
AOL Gives Patch a Social Makeover

Calcutta News.Net Tuesday 25th September, 2012

LONDON Facebook has termed as false a rumour that users' private messages were appearing on public timelines even as the social network's managers were summoned by the French government to explain claims that some users' privacy had been breached.

Users, mostly in France, reported that "private messages" sent between 2007-2009 were suddenly public.

Facebook told the BBC: "[The] messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users' profile pages.

Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg and the junior minister for the digital economy, Fleur Pellerin, said Facebook managers had been summoned before France's CNIL data watchdog to explain the rumours.

"Clear and transparent explanations must be given without delay," they said.

"This incident underlines once again the importance of protecting personal data in the digital world and the lack of transparency in handling them," reports AFP.

A meeting was held between Facebook managers and CNIL officials.

A source at the company told the BBC that engineers said there was "no way" the two areas of data could get mixed up.

The source said that "no mechanism" had ever been created that would allow a private message to be published onto a user's wall or timeline.

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Social networking site Facebook denies private messages becoming public