Last week, a blog post by Seth Godin struck me as particularly cogent. I put the following point to a social media group discussion board on LinkedIn.

“A recent post by marketing guru Seth Godin opines that marketing is as much art as science. But social media depends heavily on metrics to prove ROI. This suggests to me that scientific approaches may be more relevant in social media marketing than in traditional marketing. I’d love to get your thoughts and ideas about this. Are metrics more important in social media marketing than in traditional marketing? Is there room for “gut” approaches in social media marketing? Here’s Seth’s article.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/is-marketing-an-art-or-a-science.html”

The LinkedIn group came up with some interesting thoughts.

Check out the discussion on LinkedIn.

According to a recent study by Knowledge Networks fewer than 5 percent of social-media users age 13-54 “regularly turn to [social media] sites for guidance on purchase decisions” in a range of common product/service categories.

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Almost halfway through the year, it’s natural to look back and see what’s unfolded over the past six months.

Michelle Goodall (@greenwellys) of Econsultancy asks on LinkedIn, “What have been the key social media/online pr trends over the past 6 months?” Here’s my answer to Michelle’s question.

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Maybe it was Obama’s victory. Maybe it was Oprah. In any case, public officials are seeing the benefits of social media: better connectivity with their audience, faster responses to problem issues and lower per unit cost of communications.

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One of Twitter’s most compelling features is its “Trending Topics,” a list of the ten most popular terms in global tweets and updated on the fly.

Users can see at a glance the zeitgeist of the day and join in the conversation.

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