Tapping into social networking is an idea that brands love, they want to network with their consumers but how do you do it?
Well I interviewed Pettrina Keogh of Gurgle.com on The Engaging Brand Podcast which you can find here,  to find out

Why use social networking to build a brand
Is the site to connect readers to readers or brand to readers?
How the site is seen as a hub of information rather than a website
How you attract people to the community
Why is social networking so important in brand engagement
Are there different strategies for different social media tools?
How to protect yourself legally on …read more

Did you know that virtual gifts is already a $1.6 Billion market…and growing over 38% year over year ? Wow, I had no idea that the virtual gift market had grown so much. In fact 12% of Americans have bought a virtual gift in the last 12 months.
Interesting for brands is that purchasers said they prefer sending branded items 10 to 1 according to Nir Eyal from AdNectar. I was speaking to Nir last night and will post a podcast later this month but I was hit by

The impact of brand engagement through the sending of gifts. Your friends know …read more

An engagement report has just been released which shows and explains how brands are increasing engagement on the web. It is worth checking out, the summary explains key learnings on brand engagement

Engagement via social media IS important — and we CAN quantify it.
The ENGAGEMENTdb quantitatively demonstrates a statistically significant correlation between social media engagement and the two most meaningful financial performance metrics – revenue and profit. Emphasize quality, not just quantity.
What’s in it for me? The ENGAGEMENTdb quantitatively demonstrates a statistically significant correlation between social media engagement and the two most meaningful financial performance metrics – revenue and profit.
Emphasize quality, …read more

Social networking is growing in importance within the business world. Emarketer has published social networking research showing that a third of CEO’s are on Facebook, almost a third also see it as important as are using it to build their brands.

There are risks with social networking though as the research shows. Social networking can be bad for your brands health! But I think this happens when companies ignore rather than embrace social networks, when they ban people from using them rather than educating people on the power of the networks on their brands, when companies don’t realise that brand engagement …read more