What We're Reading - Week of April 30, 2012

Metrics Jen van der Meer: The Cost of Being Human (presentation) We've been back from SXSW for nearly two months, but this presentation by Jen van der Meer, a former Wall St. executive turned analytics guru, has us continuing to applaud. Statistics, logic, reason, pictures of kittens...all to explain how we should be shifting our approach to social media metrics. Facebook Mashable: How automating social media marketing could hurt Facebook Tools to help us automate the process of posting content to social media platforms are becoming more prevalent. At what point do they take the "social" out of social media and start hurting platforms like Facebook? FourSquare Open Forum: Businesses that are driving profits with FourSquare We hear a lot about how location-based networks "don't matter," but don't tell that to these four businesses. FourSquare, a SmartPhone app that allows customers to check in at locations worldwide, and similar platforms have the potential to drive business for certain brands - if you're using them correctly. Pinterest Cision Blog: Tips to help drive traffic to your site Pinterest, a virtual pinboard, only has 7% of the membership that Twitter has, yet it drives nearly as much referral traffic. Cision, a tool used by GFM to monitor media and connect with reporters, explains a few simple steps you can take to drive even more traffic to your site from Pinterest. Social Media Issues Management Open Forum: How to handle a Yelp attack Most people know that you need to respond to negative reviews, but how can you minimize the damage with a well-written response? While this article is specific to the popular online review site Yelp, the principles apply across platforms. ~ GFM's Social Media team