Behind the Scenes with a Social Media Manager

Sure we're a full-service agency with a broad skill set. And no surprise, in recent years that skill set has evolved to include the use of social media for the bulk of our clients. But we still occasionally run into folks who think social media management is little more than the occasional 140-character chatter.

Check out this brilliant infographic from SocialCast. It pulls the curtain back a bit and offers some insight on the life of a social media manager.

And while we feel "refuel with java and peanut M&M's" is a glaring omission, the snapshot is mostly spot-on.

One colleague, however, did note that not all of us get a full five hours of slumber. Click here to read entire post!

Face the Nation: Who Owns Facebook?

True or False? Bono owns Facebook.

The topic of Facebook's ownership came up not long ago in water cooler conversation and, after consulting almighty Google, we were admittedly a little surprised to see the list of stakeholders.

And then along came this awesome infographic.

So who's profiting from the behemoth social networking service that boasts 600 million+ monthly active users?

Noted in this chart:

• Facebook staff: 30%
  
• Co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg: 24%
• Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz: 6%
• Co-founder Eduardo Saverin: 5%
• Napster’s Sean Parker, Founding President of Facebook: 4%
• Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment firm: ~10%
• Goldman Sachs: ~0.8%
• Goldman Sachs’ clients: ~3%
• Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm: ~1.5%
• Meritech Capital Partners: ~1.5%
• Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and Clarium Capital president: ~3%
• Elevation Partners (yep, that includes U2's Bono among others): ~1.5%
• Other investors: ~9.7%

Other stakeholders not listed include Microsoft (1.6% stake) and Hong Kong billionaire Li-Ka Shing (0.8%).

Interesting infographic. And such pretty colors. Click here to read entire post!

Let's Get Social

Check out G&A's latest promotion collateral for our social media services. We're debuting the piece at the Maui Hotel & Lodging Association annual member lunch today and wanted to float it to our blogosphere buddies as well.

Feel free to tweet it, digg it, blog about it, put it on your wall, and so on.

We love being social. Click here to read entire post!

New Study: Be Social, Make Money

Heard of Starbucks? Google? Microsoft?

A new study from ENGAGEMENT db shows a measurable correlation between higher levels of social engagement and superior financial performance. Specifically, companies that are both deeply and widely engaged in social media (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace just to name a few mediums) significantly surpass their peers in both revenues and profits.

Read another way: The most successful businesses in the world have passionately embraced social media marketing tactics.

And while it's no surprise that these thought leaders are at the marketing forefront yet again, the important thing to glean from this is that these business behemoths aren't doing anything the average company can't do.

Especially when considering more than 85% of US online consumers will be reading or interacting with social content by the end of 2009 (Forrester Research), it's challenging to find a reason not to leap into the social media sphere.

For marketing geeks like us, full PDF report "The World's Most Valuable Brands: Who's Most Engaged?" can be downloaded here.

Or if you're already a social media maven, hit the "SHARETHIS" link below and spread the gospel. Click here to read entire post!