David Armano

Several weeks ago I delivered a 16 minute TEDx talk titled "reinventing social media". Typically I like to frame topics outside of the social media bubble, but in this instance the topic itself and the purpose of the talk was designed to get us all thinking about things a bit differently. You see, businesses, brands and organizations are truly struggling with the disruptive nature of social technologies. In fact, the term "social technologies" is part of the problem—we are all fixated on the technologies and meanwhile the real action lies in harnessing the change brought about by human behavior enabled by technology.

If you haven't seen it already, the third installment of the infamous slideshow, "What The F**ck Is Social Media?" has been published over at Slideshare by Marta Kagan. Since I'm a sucker for good visual communication or any good communication for that matter, I highly recommend flipping through it as it's both informative and entertaining. And it contains a few updated stats:

Way back in 2005, I came across a blog. Not just any blog—it was called "The Social Customer Manifesto". I found it to be so interesting and compelling, that it was one of the first blogs I left a comment on (I had mostly been a passive observer prior to this).

I recently had a chance to sit down with Joseph Jaffe, author of Flip The Funnel and Chief Interruptor at Powered. Joseph and I recently teamed up to do a series of talks with Symantec (client). We discussed the role of “thought leadership”–it’s relevancy and balancing both thinking and doing. Don’t let the poolside background fool you, we’re both working very hard at helping large organizations integrate social media into the way they do business. Enjoy the chat.

Originally posted at Harvard Business Review

The digital landscape is being reshaped by the news that Facebook is opening up its social graph. Twitter, too, has made waves by acquiring companies that made third-party services for Twitter.

Some small businesses start without a business plan, finding success in a breakthrough product or service early on and building upon that success organically. However, it’s inevitable that the venture will need to have a structured business plan put in place at some point if the business is expected to scale, expand and ultimately thrive.

A "media" model composed of paid, owned and earned efforts is nothing new—however it’s useful to think about this landscape in tandem with the different ways we interact and engage which are enabled through technology. There are essentially three forms of digital engagement which can often overlap (engagement in a single initiative can include all three types) but each form can tend to dominate the experience. It’s important to remember that the type of engagement is contextual to what a participant wants to accomplish.

Originally posted on Edelman Digital

Last week Edelman hosted a strategy session with our clients and partners at eBay and I had the opportunity to pull two of eBay’s social media leads aside for a quick chat.

We're treating social media like Fantasy Football, Baseball etc. Except even those feel more like the real thing. Here are some social media fantasies vs. what I believe are the realities.