Forrester Recommends Caution with LBS
Mike Schneider challenges Forrester‘s stance on Location Based Services they published in a recent report, and he provides an alternate point of view that should definitely be considered.

B-Schools All A-Twitter Over Social Media
Brace youself for a new wave of Social Media experts. This Bloomberg Business post from Sommer Saadi explores the new trend where business schools are starting to offer MBA courses on Internet Marketing and Social Media Strategy.

Altimeter Report Provides Facebook Page Guidelines, Benchmarks
Dave Fleet provides a brief overview and commentary on the Altimeter Group’s free report entitled The 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing.

To Block or Not to Block Facebook and Social Media in the Workplace
Klint Finley shares highlights from Cisco’s Mid-Year Security Report that recommends “better security education and social media policies in the work place instead of technical restrictions” based on its findings on end-users accessing social media tools at work.

Coming Soon (tonight!): Facebook Usernames Coming soon really means coming this weekend. Prepare for the mad dash as like-named people around the world vie for their own Facebook “vanity URLs.”

10 steps to stop identity hijackers
Theft of brand identity on social networks is nothing new. There have been numerous accounts of it on Facebook and Twitter alone. In this post on Ragan.com, David Berkowitz shares 10 steps you can take that will help reduce the chance it might happen to your company’s brand(s).

Twitter to roll out ‘Verified Accounts’ this summer
Twitter will be rolling out a new identity verification process to help combat the aforementioned brand hijacking. This post from Leslie Katz, senior editor of CNET’s Crave, gives the lowdown.

Content Marketing Strategy with a Side of Social
As a PR agency that’s been entrenched in social media over the last few years – from training, to messaging and strategy, to digital content production and other tactics – we constantly refer back to the “basics” of how it all fits into our clients’ (and our) overall online marketing strategy. This post on TopRank’s Online Marketing blog falls nicely into that level of thinking.

Five Levels Of Social Media Responses
Continuing on the theme of social media basics, Dave Fleet shares “five levels of approach to online listening and responding” to help gauge how effective you are at true and active online engagement.

ROI (Results on Insights) of Online Communities
Beth Kanter consistently offers up excellent information on her social media blog for non-profits. This post includes several perspectives and great links to additional supporting posts around the topic of ROI and Online Communities.

8 Questions to Ask Your “Social Media Expert”
Using a product or service doesn’t instantly make you an expert. How do you differentiate between the knowledgeable folks and the snake-oil salesmen in the social media space? Dave Fleet offers up 8 questions to ask any “Social Media Experts” you might be considering doing business with. Be sure to browse the comments for additional advice and opinions.

The Importance of a Social Media Support System
Are you the sole evangelist for deploying a social media strategy in your organization? Have you given much thought to how much support you’ll get from the rest of the organization? This post from marketer Jacob Morgan provides some food for thought in that area.

B2B Social Media Marketing: Why should you start?
Kate Brodock from the Other Side Group highlights last week’s post B2B social media marketing post from MarketingProfs and expand on it in the areas of brand outreach and thought leadership.