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19-03-2012 16:40 http://www.socialbytes.com Social Bytz 2500 Ebenezer, Rock Hill, SC 29732 888-681-9059 Social Marketing Harness the Power of Social Media You're probably using social media to keep in touch with your family and friends, did you know that you can use social media as part of your companies marketing plan? Let us show you the benefits of using social media as part of your marketing plan. Topic Social Marketing

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SALT LAKE CITY -- Adobe Systems (Nasdaq:ADBE) has today introduced Adobe Social, a new product to simplify social marketing for digital media professionals.

Adobe announced the product at its Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2012 here. The new product is part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite. Adobe Social combines social publishing and engagement with monitoring, social ad buying and analytics that can attribute social activity to business results.

Adobe is giving those with social marketing responsibilities digital marketers, community managers, customer service, public relations, ad buyers, analysts, and others a single platform to align and collaborate around the management, measurement and optimization of their social media strategies, and does so in the context of all other digital marketing efforts, the company said.

The sheer scale of word-of-mouth that can be accomplished on social media can become a powerful boost or tragic descent for any company and is best managed if a companys social marketers are in lock-step, said Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Marketing Business, Adobe, in a statement. Adobe Social brings to social marketing the control and accountability expected across other digital channels. The ultimate aim is to help social media as a marketing channel mature and prove its worth alongside other digital marketing investments.

Adobe Social builds on the social media management technology Adobe acquired earlier this year as part of the Context Optional/Efficient Frontier acquisition, as well as the social media monitoring and analytics of Adobe SocialAnalytics. Adobe Social will expand this year with additional social marketing features as well as integrations with other products within the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite.

With Adobe Social, digital marketers can now accomplish the following with a single product:

Streamline and centralize publishing across social platforms

Automate targeting and personalization of content and experiences in social applications and across social platforms

Seamlessly integrate Sponsored Story ad creation within the publishing workflow to maximize the reach of important content and campaigns

Monitor and moderate conversations both within your communities and anywhere it happens on the social web

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Adobe Simplifies Social Marketing With New Adobe Social Offering

Censorship has been a topic that has received a great deal of attention in the technology and internet sector simply because there are markets that do experience a great deal of censorship. My article on Friday, for example, discussed the Pakistani filtering request and potential implications that it would have on future censorship in that country. China, however, receives the most attention for the censorship that is experienced in the country with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others all being blocked. Now, with a fresh censoring episode in China of the term "Ferrari," new issues are raised regarding how censoring can negatively impact a specific company and its business.

On Sunday, a Ferrari 458 carrying two women and an unidentified third crashed in the Haidian district of Beijing. The two women sustained potentially serious injuries while the unidentified driver was killed. According to various international sources, reports of the crash in China as well as the term "Ferrari" have been deleted from websites in the country to apparently reduce the information available regarding the crash. Further, online searches of the term "Ferrari" have been blocked. This activity has brought forth media speculation of the driver's identity and the potential for it to be someone of particular importance. Regardless of the reason for the censorship in the form of deletions and blockings, there are potentially harmful effects to Ferrari in that market. The harm is specifically in relation to a restriction of their online presence and their resulting diminished search engine optimization.

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Lessons for Internet MarketersFerrari, the company, did not do anything controversial or put out any message related to restricted or sensitive topics in the Chinese market (which largely characterizes the reason for others being censored). Instead, the company was unfortunately brought into this situation by the circumstances of the crash. Thus, this case illustrates the volatile nature of conducting business and having an online presence in a market that experiences internet censorship; at any time, your online presence can be restricted or simply eliminated for any length of time.

Ferrari could experience this disruption to their online presence for a number of weeks, months, or potentially longer. In dealing with censorship, it is hard to predict the length of such disruptions. Thus, companies operating in markets that experience censorship should not rely solely on their internet presence for their business, this makes ecommerce sites especially vulnerable.

Further, Ferrari could not have predicted such an event and subsequent blocking of their name from internet searches. However, there are measures that they can take now to recover (and can be taken by other companies to minimize harm if experiencing a similar situation). This measure is that of diversifying the internet marketing that your company engages in and implementing a coordinated effort containing search engine optimization, paid search, and social media, among others. This way, if one aspect of your strategy cannot function (like a social platform gets banned or your organic search is blocked like Ferrari) then you can fall back on the other facets of your overall strategy. In the end, it is case specific as different companies use their online presence for different purposes. For example, it is likely Ferrari does not try to drive conversions online as that is not the way they make sales, however, their online presence is valuable and they use it to engage with their wider audience.

Contact me directly at rbuddenhagen@webimax.com if you have any questions regarding how your business can navigate such a scenario or how your company can develop a proactive strategy if operating in markets where such disruptions are possible.

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When Censorship Hurts Businesses' SEO; The Curious Blocking of Ferrari in China

20 March 2012 Last updated at 20:39 ET By Rami Ruhayem BBC News, Baghdad

For several weeks, Iraq has been gripped by a most gruesome rumour.

Iraqi teenagers who dress in tight black clothes, the rumour goes, are being picked up by extremists who then crush their skulls with blocks of cement.

The victims are referred to as "emos", a term originally used in the West to describe youths who listen to a melodic style of rock music, and dress in alternative clothing.

But in Iraq, it has come to mean any man with long hair or a slightly feminine appearance. Emos have also been described alternatively as Satanists, vampires, gays, masons, or all of the above.

Some Iraqi media have said dozens of them, perhaps more than 70, have been killed recently.

Soon enough, almost every media organisation in the country was scrambling to put together its own report about the unexpected phenomenon, and the accompanying terror.

The only problem is that little of it has been verified.

According to the authorities, none of this has happened. A spokesman for Iraq's police said that some young people do dress "strangely", and they have been "dealt with" through peaceful guidance. Alaa Jassem said the media blew the whole thing out of proportion.

He mentioned the case of a "delicate" 17-year-old man named Saif who was killed, but added that it was "just a tribal killing" that had nothing to do with his appearance.

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Iraq's Emo killings: A horror story out of control?

Among the last known images of Osama bin Laden is a video seized at his compound the night he was killed, which shows the al-Qaeda leader hunched before a television screen studying a video of himself. Its testimony to bin Ladens obsession with the media side of his war against the United States.

This modern face of bin Ladens jihad comes through clearly in a 21-page letter from his media adviser, an American-born jihadist named Adam Gadahn. The letter is undated, but it appears to have been written after November 2010, in the last six months of bin Ladens life.

David Ignatius

Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

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Gadahn wrote much as if he were a media planner corresponding with a client. He included suggestions about the timing of video appearances after the 2010 U.S. midterm elections and use of high-definition video, and made snarky evaluations of major American networks.

As I wrote last week, Gadahn hated Fox News (falls into the abyss); he liked MSNBC but complained about the firing of Keith Olbermann; he had mixed feelings about CNN (better in Arabic than in English) and made flattering comments about CBS and ABC. Basically, he wanted to play them all off to al-Qaedas best advantage. He also mentioned print journalists, most prominently Robert Fisk of The Independent of Britain. He cites three Americans (Brian Russ, Simon Hirsh and Jerry Van Dyke), though its uncertain whom he meant.

The media guidance was among the documents taken from bin Ladens compound the night of May 2. It was made available to me, along with a small sample of other documents in the cache, by a senior Obama administration official.

Gadahns memo shows an organization struggling to stay on the media offensive despite devastating American attacks. Its partly aspirational, with dreams of jihad, but theres a core of sharp self-criticism that makes clear that Gadahn, like his boss, understood that al-Qaeda was losing its war.

Gadahn even worried that al-Qaedas reversals in Iraq and elsewhere represented punishment by God on us because of our sins and injustices. Like bin Laden, he was deeply upset that al-Qaedas affiliates had killed so many Muslims and listed 13 operations that showed the tragedy of tolerating the spilling of (Muslim) blood.

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How al-Qaeda tried to control the media