I recently interviewed Brian Solis, author of the new book, Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web. He is also coauthor of the book, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.

During this interview, you’ll gain some great social media insight, discover some key mistakes businesses make, and learn which corporations are excelling with social media.

Mike: In your book, you made the following statement: “We are forever students of new media. We should never strive to master something that evolves much faster than our ability to grasp its lessons.”

Can you elaborate on what you meant?

Brian: Yes. We can’t rest on our laurels based on the successes of others, because this medium, the processes, the techniques, the cultures of social networks are evolving quickly.  So applying templates to them or assuming confidence in past experiences don’t last long enough for them to be promising for the future.

Mike: What you’re really saying is that you should constantly make sure you are experimenting and studying what others are doing to ensure that you’re on the edge?

Brian: Yes, but not just on the edge.  You must be able to bring what’s on the edge back to the center. In the process, you actually contribute to the evolution of the industry.

Mike: I know you’re a big advocate of blogging for business. Can you give us some of the biggest mistakes you see corporate bloggers making and why you think they’re making them?

Brian: The biggest mistake I see is they’re not blogging. The secondary mistake is that they’re using blogs as just extensions of every other push medium they have in operation today, whether that’s a marketing sheet or a website.

A lot of times I’ll read corporate blogs and they’re very self-serving or they’re very shallow, or they’re just done because you’re told you need to do it and you’re supposed to introduce or inject passion into it.

If you look at some of the blogs like 37signals, their blog ultimately became a book in terms of the lessons they share there. It’s just a value-added resource. You go there as a destination so that you can learn, and you can walk away with direction and empowerment and inspiration.

Mike: Let’s talk about a big company or two that you feel are doing social media right. What are they doing?

Brian: One is Starbucks because they’re experimenting. It goes back to the part where we were discussing being a student of new media.

You see what they’re doing on Facebook and Twitter. They’re absolutely engaging. They’re rhythmic. They have a programming or editorial calendar in place and every day there is something new. There are comments, questions, and polls. There are things that are offered in terms of incentives or rewards.

But they’re also doing things that show they’re trying to actively grow by going to where people are specifically. For example, Starbucks did something very interesting with a company called Klout that didn’t get much fanfare, but it’s really interesting in terms of what’s to come in social media.

Klout is a service that allows you to identify influencers on Twitter. Influencers are people who can move the needle around certain topics. Starbucks decided to test it.

They went to Klout to find all of the influencers around coffee, those people who have the ability to drive activity.

They went out and rewarded all those influencers with free samples of their Pike’s Peak coffee. What better way to reward somebody for their level of influence that they’ve attained and maybe earn some relationships in the process, or at least attention?

Mike: In addition to Starbucks, can you talk about one other well-known company that you think is doing social media well?

Brian: Dell.  Here’s one of the reasons I find them to be so fascinating. This again is a lesson that is taught in the book. There is a whole chapter about this idea.

One of the things that works against any champion of social media is the culture of the company. But really where the potential of social media is realized is in your ability to learn from engagement and adapt accordingly, and to introduce or evolve new products and services that are more meaningful to the communities or the marketplaces where you’re trying to earn greater market- and mindshare.

Dell has demonstrated that their organizational culture gets it. It’s from the bottom up, it’s from the outside in, and it’s from the top down. Michael Dell believes in this so much that he spends weekends and evenings working with his teams to figure out ways they could be more relevant. Plus, the team gets motivated by it.

One such example that I don’t necessarily see or read about is how they attack issues that are basically emerging problems. Dell says, “Let’s monitor for things that are about to go wrong or that are just going wrong now and nip them in the bud.  We pay attention to driver issues or hardware issues as one, two, three, four, or five people start to mention these issues. The minute it hits a certain point, we put a team on it, find a fix, and introduce the solution to the marketplace before it becomes a real problem, before it makes blogs, before it makes the press.”

Mike: What are your views about Facebook fan pages? How important do you think they are today and how important will they be two years from now?

Brian: I was speaking at a conference recently and said something that turned out to spark a massive debate afterwards. That was, “By this time next year, brands will be spending more time on their Facebook brand pages than they will be on Twitter.”

That just sent everybody into a riot. Twitter is beloved. Twitter really puts the “me” in social media, because we bring a little bit of ourselves to that. Even though we do so with Facebook, there is something a little bit special or personal with Twitter.

Twitter has even said this. It’s less of a social network than an interest or themed network where individuals are forming relationships around context or interests.

The Facebook fan page, or the “brand page” as I call it, is a hub that can guide and drive experiences, but also can define them. By “define,” I mean it’s one thing to have interactions on the wall. It’s one thing to respond to comments. It’s another thing to be able to customize those tabs.

If you think about it, FBML, that language that you’re able to use to customize these tabs, allows you to do some really fascinating things. Not too many people understand that you can actually install Google Analytics on a tab in Facebook so you can start to measure the activity—almost like you can with your website analytics, to get intelligence necessary to improve the experiences.

So, Facebook is probably, in my opinion, one of the most underutilized networks out there from a programming standpoint and from an engagement standpoint. I’m bullish on it, if you can’t tell.

Mike: I honestly do believe that’s where it’s at right now. I actually tweeted recently, “I can’t believe I’m actually enjoying Facebook more than Twitter.” I almost had to cringe when I said it.

Speaking of Facebook, on our fan page, we posted that I was going to be doing this interview and asked our fans to chime in with their questions. Mari Smith asked, “What is your daily routine and what tools do you use to keep on top of everything?”

Brian: I call it the attention dashboard. Facebook is like an attention hub. I’ve created an attention dashboard that pulls in content from all different types of sources across multiple networks into one place based on keywords of interest tied to levels of influence so I can at least get the skinny on certain things.

Mike: Is this a custom thing, or do you use a public tool?

Brian: It’s a custom thing.

Mike: You’re going to have to release that as a product.

Brian: I released part of it as a product with the help of Christopher Peri. It’s a product called FriendFilter. It added this level of intelligence to surfacing the people who are following you on Twitter, for example, but only showing you the ones who might be of interest to you so that you could consider following them back.

Mike: So the attention dashboard is how you keep up on the hottest and latest trends in the industry and that’s how you decide to write content for your blog? Is that correct?

Brian: No, that’s how I stay smart. I write on the things that move me at an emotional or intellectual level, or if there is something incredibly important that I need to share with people, to get them to move in a particular direction.

Mike: Where do you see social media headed in the next few years? Give me the mile-high view.

Brian: About a year ago, I talked about the idea of syndication and aggregation, meaning that we were going to be subjected to multiple networks to which we’d have to pay attention, as well as mobile networks to which we would also have to pay attention using other devices.

At some point, all of these things are going to have to aggregate in some way, shape or form, where we could have a strategic presence. Look at services like Check.in, where you can immediately broadcast your presence. Let’s say I show up at the Westin Hotel in San Francisco—I would use a service like Check.in to broadcast or syndicate my presence to Foursquare, Gowalla, etc.

Those are all temporary bandages to address a bigger issue. That is, how are you going to manage your strategic presence online? And also, how are you going to stay connected to those who matter to you without having to be across multiple networks at the same time?

What the future holds, I believe, is this idea of semantic intelligence and filtering that are going to allow a lot of this to work for you without you having to do everything manually.

We see tastes of this on the horizon even now with companies like my6sense. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that company. You run your Twitter feed through it, and through that, it’s able to learn how you interact with the feed. As it learns more about you—and this learning is very rapid—it only feeds you the tweets, or at least at the top-line tweets, it feels would be most appropriate for you regardless of when they were published, earlier today or at the moment.

It learns and it gets better as you interact with it. If you follow thousands of people, imagine how wonderful it would work for you over time. Imagine applying that same technology across multiple networks into one stream or into one river of relevance, if you will.

Mike: Brian, where can folks learn more about you?

Brian: They can learn more about me at BrianSolis.com, on Facebook, Twitter which is @BrianSolis, or they can pick up the book Engage!, which is hopefully at a bookstore near them or definitely on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Mike: Brian, I just want to thank you very much for taking time out of your day. You’ve been a great fountain of knowledge. I’m looking forward to seeing some great things from you.

Brian: Thanks so much. I do really appreciate it. Congratulations on all your success as well.

Listen to the rest of this interview below…

What do you think about Brian Solis and his recommendations? Leave your comments below.

In this video I interview Michael Brito, a former social media manager at Intel (he is now a VP at Edelman Digital).  Michael shares how Intel uses Twitter and video to connect with consumers.

You’ll learn Michael’s unique technique of leveraging his personal and company Twitter accounts.

Be sure to see the other takeaways below.

Here are some key takeaways:

• Intel was an early adopter on Twitter.
• Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence filters Twitter chatter and dispatches tweets to the right experts within Intel.
• Following the viral success of the Ajay Bhatt (co-inventer of the USB) “Our rockstars aren’t like your rockstars” YouTube video, Intel made up some special Ajay Bhatt T-shirts to give away in a contest.  And this helped Intel’s Twitter account grow.

Finally, Michael recommends you spend  time to listen to the social web, take it slow to see where your audience is, but you will need a strategic plan at some point.

Be sure to check out Michael’s blog Britopian and also his private Twitter account @Britopian.

Please share your thoughts and comments below.

In this video I interview Greg Piche, Social Media Architect for Clorox. Greg shares insights into how the company’s new social media site Clorox Connects helps Clorox connect with partners and consumers to generate new ideas.

You’ll also hear how the 100-plus year old Clorox rolled out its social media community.

Be sure to read the other takeaways below.

In this video you’ll find out how Clorox:

• Drives social media engagement with a point system
  
• Offers a reward system through visibility on their social media site
• Uses social media to come up with ideas for new products
• Uses their Facebook business page
• Identifies people to partner with

Clorox has not been active in social media for very long and faced a certain number of challenges to get their social media strategy in place.  Greg’s advice is to start small, start low key, pilot the program, get a little funding, show there’s some value and then roll it out enterprise wide.

And his biggest lesson is:  it’s important to recognize the mind share battle to try to get people to come in.

How does the story of Clorox Connects inspire you for your business?  Please leave your comments below.

In this video I interview Jay Berkowitz, author of The Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Workbook.

Jay shares an innovative way to beat your competition using special social channels and critical tips on how to improve your social media marketing.

Be sure to check below for the other takeaways.

In this video you’ll also learn:

• Why you should listen first to monitor what’s happening then go out and make friends
• How the 3 “E”s help improve your social participation
• Why the first Golden Rule is there are no rules
• How his podcast only has 30 direct competitors (compared to his blog with millions)
• How to get experts on podcasts using Technorati and WeFollow
• Where social media is going

Jay’s busy with his Internet Marketing Club which is free to join. Be sure to check out Jay’s website Ten Golden Rules and the Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing podcast.

Want to find out more about video?  Read these Social Media Examiner articles with tips on video marketing and YouTube marketing secrets.

What do you think?  Do you like Jay’s ideas?  Please comment below…

Have you built a loyal following on Twitter but question the value of Facebook for business?  Have you tried and abandoned your Facebook account?

If so, I can relate.  I was there.  My first attempt at using Facebook for business was a big flop.  For the longest time I focused most of my social media marketing efforts on Twitter.

But now my tune has changed. Facebook offers far more opportunities for businesses.  I predict that in the near future, businesses of all stripes will soon declare Facebook as their number-one social media target.

In this article I’ll demonstrate why your business needs to invest heavily in Facebook.

My First Facebook Experience: A Waste of My Time

I got my social media start on Twitter, not Facebook.  Twitter is an amazing social media tool.  In fact, I invested countless hours growing and nurturing my 24,000+ followers. I was pretty convinced I could just use Twitter for business.

Then someone I respected introduced me to Facebook.  I recall the email.  My friend Ann Handley from MarketingProfs asked me, “Are you on Facebook?”

I thought it was just for college kids.  But since Ann was there, I quickly signed up.  To my great surprise, many of my personal friends were there. It was cool to connect with old college buddies and get a sneak peek into their lives.

But immediately I ran into a problem. I wanted to use Facebook for business and my personal friends wanted nothing to do with my business. Facebook was fun for personal reasons, but I struggled with the business side of things.

So I set up a Facebook fan page to promote my book.  I started rejecting friend requests on my personal profile from strangers and asked them to become fans of my Facebook page I had for my book.

It quickly became a pain to manage a personal profile and a fan page. In fact, some pretty high-profile people (like Darren Rowse) were dumping their Facebook personal accounts because of this very conflict.

I decided to simply feed my Twitter updates into my personal Facebook profile and my fan page.  I went back to using Twitter as my primary tool.

I had determined that:

• Facebook is mostly for personal connections: My wife found enormous value sharing pictures of our kids and updates of our whereabouts with friends.  But I couldn’t do that because I had a bunch of business peers (and some strangers) as friends.
• Facebook is a time suck: I spent a lot of time on Facebook and frankly accomplished little.  At least on Twitter I knew I could strictly talk business.
• Everyone who mattered to me focused primarily on Twitter: I knew it was wise to keep investing my time in Twitter.  My growth of followers was steady and my traffic from Twitter was great.

Then I Saw the ‘List’ Light

The strength of Facebook is its amazing breadth of capabilities.  The weakness of Facebook is ALSO its amazing breadth of capabilities.  There are so many options and settings that most people don’t realize what Facebook can do.  Count me among the former clueless.

My turning point came when Mari Smith introduced me to two little features that rocked my world: friend lists and privacy settings.

Facebook allows you to set up an unlimited number of lists.  But it gets better.  You can decide precisely what people in lists can and cannot see with a few privacy settings.

For example, I set up lists called college, personal, church, business, fans and so on.  Then I went into the privacy settings and made sure the ‘fans’ list had no access to photos of my kids, my personal contact details, etc.

Here’s how this works…

You can go under your privacy settings (click on ‘custom settings’) and declare specific personal items only be viewed by certain lists (see below images).

Here I chose custom privacy for displaying family.

Then I selected my "Specific People," typed in the name of my personal list and clicked "Save Settings."

The result is my family is now only seen by people who are on my personal list.

When I get new friend requests, I can classify people to one or more lists (see below).

Here I have assigned a person to my 'Fans' group.

This was huge.  Not only could I restrict what people had access to, I could also selectively share with specific lists.  For example, I could let my friends know I was on an airplane to New Jersey crafting this very blog post (with my new iPad), and know with confidence that strangers had no clue I was out of town.

Here is an example of a post only my close personal friends saw.

Facebook Page Redux: Getting it Right the Second Time Around

All along I was treating my Facebook page like Twitter.  I thought that by simply posting updates I would build a loyal following.

I was wrong.

When we launched the Social Media Examiner Facebook page, I was determined to push the envelope and see what Facebook could do.

This time around, we created a custom landing tab with a welcome video from me.  I asked people to become fans in the video and encouraged them to comment on our wall.

Here's our welcome tab…

We set up a tab introducing our Facebook team.  Yes, we have a team managing our Facebook page.

We put together an editorial guide.  It included some clear guidelines such as:

• EVERY single wall comment gets a reply.
• Break news or discuss controversial industry changes.
• Delete anything that is self-promotional.
• Post an interesting link to someone else’s article each day.
• Make sure to post a link to our daily articles AFTER our email updates go out (to ensure email folks get the news first).
• Regularly ask interesting (and sometimes fun) poll questions to get our fans engaged.
• And a LOT more.

The response from our readers was immediate and it was incredible.  In the first few days we had 1000 fans.  After just a few months we exceeded 9000 fans.

And these folks are active.  They post questions, support each other, reply to our questions and promote our articles.  A vibrant community was building right before my eyes.

Almost overnight, Facebook became the number-one source of traffic on Social Media Examiner.

Why Facebook Over Twitter?

#1: Facebook is communal.

Unlike Twitter, Facebook makes it very easy for group discussions.  Twitter is primarily a one-to-one or one-to-everyone tool.  With Twitter you can’t easily interact with two or three people at once, for instance.  And you certainly can’t easily see what others have had to say about a post.

But Facebook has grown to over 500 million active users for a reason.  They make it really easy for people to connect at a human level.  And Facebook knows what its fans are interested in.

For example, if you frequent a fan page, Facebook knows you care about that page and shows you popular posts and discussions from that fan page in your live feed, above others.  If done right, this is marketing gold!

When your Facebook page shows up in the live feed of your fans, it encourages rapid discussions and a chain reaction.  When your fans engage in those discussions, it shows up on their walls.  Their friends discover your page and your following grows.

In this regard, Facebook is like blog comments on steroids.  When people interact with your brand, you are building community.  This moves people from passive observers to advocates.  And that’s a powerful marketing weapon.

#2: Facebook pulls people to its site OFTEN.

Part of the brilliance of Facebook is how it taps into some of our innate human desires.  Every time someone posts something on your wall, tags you in a picture or tags your wall, you are notified in some way.  For most people, this is an email with topic like “Joe Smith commented about a picture of you.”  Or it’s a little red number at the top left of the screen when you are in Facebook.

These little mechanisms are intentional ways to get you into Facebook and interacting.  It’s almost impossible to ignore these cues.  If you’re like me, you’ve been conditioned to check Facebook almost as often as you check email.

Twitter doesn’t have the same systems to pull people back.

This is a huge advantage of Facebook and a primary reason you need to be there.  The more people connect with others on Facebook, the more this grows.  The upside is huge.  This is why Alexa ranks Facebook as the second most frequented destination in the world, just behind Google.

Your customers, prospects and fans are already there A LOT.  And when they arrive, they’ll likely see your page updates if you’ve figured out a way to get them to engage with your Facebook page updates.

#3: Facebook reveals powerful social proof.

This one is a brilliant move.  If you click the Like button on an article (inside or outside of Facebook), something amazing happens.  The next time one of your friends goes to that page, your name is displayed as someone who likes the page.

This is powerful.  “If John Doe (whom I respect) likes this page, then maybe I should take another look?” is the thought that might go through the mind of a reader.

But wait, it gets better.

If you use the “Like Box” feature on your website, Facebook displays the pictures of familiar faces that are also fans of a page.  For example, if some of your Facebook friends are fans of Social Media Examiner, you’ll see their pictures if you scroll up and look to the right of this page.

This is amazing social proof because it only shows people you know.  That increases the likelihood you too will become a fan.

So What’s the Business Advantage?

Now let me connect the dots.  With 500 million people on Facebook, chances are more of your customers are active on Facebook than any other network.

Remember the benefits early movers had with Twitter?  Think of Comcast, Ford, and Zappos and the early mover advantages they gained.

Now think about Facebook.  Businesses are just now figuring out how to use Facebook. This is your chance to connect with your customers and prospects in a totally new way and build powerful advocates.

Investing in Facebook now is the equivalent of purchasing real estate in downtown New York just before all the other businesses move into town.

Facebook is also investing in helping businesses succeed.  Beyond their powerful and granular advertising, they’re extending the Facebook experience off of their site with features such as the Like Box and the Like Button.  This is just the beginning of what’s to come from Facebook.

So what are you waiting for?

Your Action Plan

Here are a few simple things you should do right now…

• Customize your Facebook page using Static FBML.
• Leverage creative ways to grow your Facebook fan base.
• Work on engaging your fans.

Has Facebook become your new favorite social media site? Are you using it for business?  Do you have any tips to share?  Do you disagree?  Let’s talk.  Leave your comment in the box below.

In this video I interview Jesse Stay, co-author of I’m On Facebook Now What? and founder of SocialToo. Jesse talks about Facebook and how Facebook Connect can help you build a stronger online community.

You’ll also hear about Jesse’s Twitter strategy using multiple Twitter accounts and the tools he uses to stay on top of social media. Be sure to read the takeaways below.

Here are some key points Jesse talks about in this video:

What Jesse Likes About Facebook

• Facebook Connect enables you to embed simple html right on your own website.
• One example of good use of Facebook Connect is the Huffington Post where you can log in with Facebook Connect to see what your friends are doing there.
• Another example with Facebook Connect is Digg. When you log in to Digg with Facebook your friends on Facebook automatically become your friends on Digg
• Jesse like the Us Weekly Facebook Fan Page
• FBML for Fan page administrators to add custom fields on Facebook. You can learn more about FBML in Jesse’s book, FBML Essentials.

Biggest Facebook Mistake

• Mixing business with personal by not using privacy controls. You must set your privacy settings to control what is seen by the different audiences you have.

Jesse’s Twitter Strategy

Jesse has three Twitter accounts for the “niche-ation” of conversations:

• @Jesse is his public “me” account with mostly peer content, no public replies but an occasional DM
• @JessesLinks is his “you” account focused on to sharing other people’s links and content
• @JesseStay is his private “we” account. You’ll need to request to follow Jesse to show you’re a real person. This is where he connects and creates relationships with people. Jesse follows back the people who communicate with him on this account.

How Jesse Stays Up To Date

• RSS via Google Reader
• Friendfeed to search through the feeds he subscribes to
• Tweetbeep sends him emails of tweets based on certain keywords

What’s Next For Jesse?

SocialToo will continue to help businesses use social media platforms and plans on improving the user experience. And on his blog, StayN’Alive, Jesse is building a stronger community experience.

What was your favorite takeaway from this video? Please share your comments below.

In this video I interview Scott McIlnay, commander in the US Navy and Director of Emerging Media Integration. Scott shares how the US Navy uses social media at the enterprise level.

You’ll hear how they grew their Facebook page rapidly to over 70,000 fans. And Scott also highlights how the US Navy uses each of their social media platforms for a different purpose. Be sure to check out the other takeaways below.

You’ll also hear how:

• Social media is a relatively new initiative for the US Navy at a departmental level.
• But they used what they had learned from previous decentralized social media activities to integrate social media on a larger scale.
• You need to have a social media presence up now. Sooner rather than later.

Here are the other places where you can find the US Navy

• Website: Navy.mil: for most of their content can be found.
• Twitter: @NavyNews: for interesting stories and to provide information when topical events occur.
• YouTube:  for pre-packaged video content produced by their internal branch, and also for a lot of imagery from the Navy video news channel.
• Flickr: for still imagery.
• SlideShare: for analysis and resources to others in the Navy and the general public.

What does this inspire for you?  Please leave your comments below.

In this video I interview Alex Wheeler, Director of Digital Strategy at Starbucks. Alex shares how Starbucks built a Facebook community of over 7 million fans by asking their community to help them build their official Facebook page.

Alex gives you some useful tips on engaging customers on social media. And you’ll hear details of how Starbucks uses video marketing on different social media channels.You’ll also find out what Alex refers to as their “scrappy” approach to social media.

Be sure to check out some more takeaways below.

Here are some more takeaways:

• When launching their new instant coffee, Starbucks Via, through social media, Starbucks used social media primarily to listen to what their customers had to say.
• Starbucks creates brand story videos to share on social media and engage with their customers.
• Videos were used in their Haiti outreach campaign as a tool to engage customers and let them know about this option to contribute to Haiti relief program.
• Starbucks has different roles for videos when publishing them on YouTube or Facebook.
• Alex says you need to listen holistically and understand how things fit into the big picture, and then balance this with what’s right for the social media channels you use.

Find out more about Starbucks here: Twitter, YouTube, and be sure to look at the Starbucks Around The World tab on their Facebook page.

Are you a Starbucks fan? What do you think about their social media strategy? Please share your comments below.

In this video I interview Jay Baer of Convince And Convert. Jay provides social media consulting to leading businesses.

In this video, Jay offers social media tips to help businesses succeed.

You’ll learn why Jay talks of “Noah’s ark” in social media and why Twitter and Facebook are not a social media strategy. He shares a wealth of information. Be sure to see the other takeaways below.

Some key takeaways:

• Twitter is a “tools strategy” not a “social media strategy”
• You need to “be social” and not “do social”
• Build a social media playbook with key players in your company
• Figure out what is being said about you and where
• Creating content is the future (especially video), bypassing traditional media
• Location-based social media will be hot in next 18 months
• Yelp has added checkin’s to their app for authenticity
• Facebook metrics can be better than Google Analytics
• Facebook should be part of your sales funnel
• Email can have a social component

Be sure to check out Jay’s content ladder to help you to create a strong social media content strategy. Want to hear more? Jay does 60 or 70 speaking gigs a year and may be coming near you.

Please share your thoughts and comments below.

In this video I interview Merritt Colaizzi, publisher of SmartBrief, a media company that aggregates content in more than 150 daily business publications covering 23 industries (including social media). We work with SmartBrief to help us promote our events.

In this interview, Merritt talks about how social media is changing the world of publishing and how social media will continue to change the publishing world. And you’ll also get an inside look at SmartBrief’s publishing model.

Some of the takeaways in this video are:

• Blogs enable everyone to become a publisher
• Twitter is the best publishing platform to develop your personal brand
• Businesses are interested in learning more about mobile strategy and content aggregation

SmartBrief tests different tactics with their social media readers and is finding new ways to integrate reader input and develop their community further. This is why Merritt predicts audiences will get even more involved in the creation of the content they consume in the future.

What do you think about the future of publishing? Any comments? Please add your voice in the box below.