95% brands of Facebook don't respond to posts

Brand proliferation on Facebook is a fact of online life nowadays. Practically every company out there has a Facebook page, and many spend thousands of dollars in advertising trying to get customers to visit them.

Obviously, the reason for any corporate Facebook page is to elicit some form of engagement with your audience and key customer base.

However, according to a recent survey from Socialbakers, 95% of wall posts from users on brand pages go unanswered. 

It's a staggering statistic, and frankly an egregious error on the companies that are guilty of this. Engagement is the currency that dring ives social media, especially on a brand identity level. Ignoring that engagement is practically like shunning a customer who walks into your store with a handful of cash.

I find it interesting that while these companies spend so much time and money hiring social media teams and creating various SM channels and pages, the basic principles of social engagement get lost in the shuffle.

The takeaway here is that Facebook marketing is more than just creating a page and populating it with content, you also need to monitor and respond to your fans when they engage you.

Free Microsoft phones try to capitalize on iOS and RIM woes

The two biggest stories in the smartphone world right now revolve around RIM and Apple. RIM is suffering from outages for millions of Blackberry users all over the world. Apple, on the other hand, released its massive iOS 5 update yesterday, only to see millions of users experience problems with the update.

Amid all of this drama, Microsoft has been relatively quiet. But in an attempt to capitalize on the frustrations of RIM and Apple users, one Microsoft Evangelist is giving away 25 free Windows phones to people who tweet his Twitter account.

It's an interesting move by Microsoft, and while I doubt they will woo Apple fans away from their iPhones, there is some legitimate growth opportunity with Blackberry users.

The truth is, RIM has garnered as many users as it has due to its heavy presence in the corporate sector. Businesses have used Blackberrys (Blackberries?) as their go-to phone to issue to employees, thus exposing them to the Blackberry ecosystem.

Business that have stuck with RIM will not jump to Apple, due to the proprietary nature of their different devices, not to mention the lack of compatibility with PC services. They also aren't likely to move to Android, because it is so open-source that there is little standardization from phone to phone when compared to other operating systems.

This leaves Microsoft's Windows OS, which is most likely the most-appealing option out of the 4 operating systems. And given the recent struggles of RIM, it wouldn't surprise me to see a few Blackberry users rethink their phone choice.

Social TV Is a Success for Discovery

Social TV has gone mainstream, and there is no better example than The Discovery Channel. With iconic shows like Shark Week, Man vs. Wild and Deadliest Catch, Discovery Communications has had tremendous success in their social media space. They are focused and deliberate in their social media strategy, and it's definitely showing. Shark Week alone was #1 on Trendrr's social TV ranking for that week. There were more than 750,000 tweets mentioning Shark Week, and their Facebook Page increased by 30,000 fans in a single day (116,000 fans throughout the week).

Gayle Weiswaser, VP of social media communications at Discovery Communications, let's us in on her strategy.

“Our philosophy on social media is to use it as a platform that enhances the viewing experience and the relationship with the viewers.”

They have 4 primary goals for their social media plan:

• Build relationships and engage with fans
• Personalize the brand
• Strengthen fan-talent relations
• Drive tune-in rate

After looking more in-depth at their social media objectives, it's easy to see that there are 2 main things that Discovery is doing especially well: content integration and content relevancy. Not only do they have an exciting mix of content throughout Facebook and Twitter, but also individual show pages, network pages, vertical pages and blogs. These are not treated as separate entities, but all of their platforms are integrated. For example, many of their Facebook and Twitter links go directly to original content on Discovery.com. Their holistic approach treats them all as one unit with many parts that build on and enhance the others.

Content relevancy is how Discovery excels at keeping their conversations going. "We serve as a curator of topics for our fans," says Weiswasser. Content may not directly relate to the show, but it still is relevant to the topic, which makes it interesting and engaging. For example, on the What Not To Wear page, you'll find links to the fall's top fashion trends. This keeps fans and followers in the conversation, and offers itself as not just an entertainment site, but a resource for related information.

All in all, it's most important to remember that content quality is top priority. More people should follow Weisman as she says, "We want the content to speak for itself. If it's compelling, people will want it-that's how we got this footprint." Stop obsessing about hitting a certain number of likes or followers and make sure your content is still king.

One small click for man, one giant leap backwards for PR/blogger relations

One of the biggest shifts we've seen in public relations over the last couple of years has been the rise of blogs and bloggers, and the more prominent role they now play in a brand's online reputation.

But with change comes controversy, and bloggers have faced a lot of criticism over their journalistic credibility. However, companies need to realize that just because bloggers aren't journalists in the traditional sense, that doesn't mean they can be treated as less worthy or less important.

Case in point: on Friday the Internet was buzzing over a blogger who was insulted by the VP of a PR firm. I won't get into the specifics, but it started when a VP accidentally clicked "reply all" to an email about the blogger, who had refused to review a product the brand represented. In the email, he referred to her by a less-than-flattering term (to say the least).

However, as with every juicy PR blunder, the story doesn't end there. After being called out by the insulted blogger, the VP replied that the blogger should just feel lucky that she was pitched at all.

From a PR perspective, that is more damaging than the name-calling. Sure, there may have been a time when the PR firms had the leverage, but the blogger community has evolved and PR needs to reflect that. The journalist/blogger paradigm is outdated, and we can't continue to just look at bloggers through the journalistic lens.

Bloggers don't serve the same purpose as traditional journalists...and that's okay! Bloggers and journalists are two separate entities, which require two separate strategies when approaching them. More importantly, we need to keep in mind that, while different, they are equally important and need to be treated as such.

Will Quora Hit Another Growth Spurt?

It's been quite a while since the Q&A site Quora was making headlines. After becoming a media darling in late 2010, the site saw a massive spike in new users.

But then things got quiet for Quora.

In a classic "middle child" scenario, Quora struggled to steal attention away from the successful older brother (Facebook) and the new baby sister (Google Plus). The latter two continued to horde the social media spotlight in 2011, with launches and updates throughout the spring and summer.

Quora's look-at-me moment came last week with the release of an official iOS app. The app itself has been received quite well actually, taking full advantage of a new "shuffle" feature that pulls up random questions from the site.

It's a great StumbleUpon-like time waster, and should lead to a lot more time spent on the site...if users can find it.

Not only was the feature itself not heavily promoted on Quora's end, but they buried it far down on the bottom of both their app and their website. Hopefully they can remedy this soon to avoid losing momentum.

Regardless, its good to see the site making strides and trying to stand out in the ever-growing social media family.