9 social media topics that need to die
This Ragan.com guest post by Amber Naslund from Radian6 debunks nine  ideas in social media that we’ve all heard repeated – and that at one time were practically touted as gospel. The post provides a nice wake-up call for those still new to the social media space.

Attacks Exploit Growing Use of Social Media
Michael Cheek highlights findings from the “Blue Coat Web Security Report for 2009” which shows that cyber criminals are migrating to social networks as fast as the rest of us.

Dating Advice for PR Pros
This post on Jeremy Porter’s Journalistics blog provides an entertaining read that compares media relations to the process of dating. Don’t miss this one!

What Makes Videos Go Viral – And Should Marketers Even Care?
While there’s no magic formula for creating a successful viral video, the most popular ones do share a few common characteristics. This MarketingVox post shares some of those as well as the success that Coca-Cola had with their recent vending machine viral campaign.

- Artwork: Chip Taylor

Someone mocking you on Twitter? Here are 5 steps you can take to minimize the damage
The ability to create a Twitter account in order to impersonate someone else is trivial. It happens all the time to both celebrities and major brands. But, what if it happens to you? This PR Junkie post by Michael Sebastian on Ragan.com gives some advice on how to extinguish a Twitter antagonist.

What the Zhu Zhu Pet Issue Teaches Us About Crisis Communications
At first glance, this week’s news that one of the hottest Christmas presents of the year might contain small amounts of dangerous chemicals seems to be a potential PR nightmare. Joe Ciarallo from PRNewser explains how it was more like a test in crisis communications.

Social Middleware to Block Social Networking On-the-job!
Employees of Enterprise organizations who are still having a tough time obtaining social media “buy-in” might find themselves hitting a brick wall in 2010 with the invention of “social middleware.”

Why B2B publishers can no longer shun digital
Underscore Marketing President, Tom Hespos share his take on why B2B organizations can no longer avoid the digital space.

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.

I’m an advocate of social media – I enjoy it personally and I get very excited about its application for businesses. But one question that kept popping up was “How do you balance the personal side with the business side?”

I have thoughts and advice on this – watch for more news about our upcoming Social Media Bootcamp program to find out more. In the meantime, let’s start with Facebook. I personally find it one of the most challenging communities for balancing. I have both friends, family and business connections there – and for me, that can get interesting.

So how do you use Facebook? Please take our poll and let us know – we’ll be writing more on this topic, and sharing the results, soon.

Video: Social Media in Plain English
Lee Lefever and his Common Craft videos continue to educate and entertain while breaking down topics in a way that anyone can understand.

Authors@Google: Garr Reynolds
Garr Reynolds, author of the excellent book Presentation Zen, recently spoke at the Google campus. The session has been posted on YouTube for all to enjoy.

Are you LinkedIn?
This week I had the opportunity to contribute some content to MyRaganTV.com. In this segment, I talk about how PR Pros can utilize LinkedIn as a valuable tool for both internal and client work.