Any Way It’s Sliced, Appeal of Social Media Grows

9 things I’ll never do again with social media
The Orange County Register’s Jon Lansner asked nine friends to share something that they’ll never do on their social networks any time soon. Some of the responses are entertaining, but they also provide some basic practical advice.

Five easy ways to maximize your social media content
Sometimes the simplest ways to boost the impact of your online social efforts can fall by the wayside. James Gurd from the eConsultancy blog provides five easy things you can (and should) do to help maximize your efforts.

Social Media Makes National Pancake Day Huge for IHOP
Chris Crum from WebProNews shares a look into IHOP’s (International House of Pancakes) use of social media techniques to promote this year’s National Pancake Day.

Digital Marketing Guide: Social Media
David Berkowitz from Advertising Age created this Q&A based social media guide that provides great answers to many common and current questions.

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.