Like death and taxes,

every year marketing bloggers love to share tiny doses of their infinite wisdom with us mortals, hoping to sell more books and consulting deals. Frankly, most of it is regurgitation in some form or another, however, every now and then something pretty good shows up. Below is a short list of notable morsels acquired from readings, blogs and other marketing tomfoolery that have crossed my desk recently:

Old School: Spend resources crafting key messages and controlling the spokespeople that deliver them.
What to do: Search for accidental spokespeople (employees & customers) and give them ways to amplify their voice.

Old School: Relegate responsibility for social media to interns and “younger” employees.
What to do: Democratize the social media role throughout an organization, drawing upon the most passionate voices from all departments, roles and hierarchical levels.

Old School: Commission focus groups and expensive consumer research to find out what people think.
What to do: Implement listening programs among digital meduims to get real time authentic knowledge that is actionable.

Old School: Reach out to the biggest bloggers they could find and tried to sell a message using traditional PR tactics.
What to do: Target the most relevant bloggers for a campaign, offer them something of value and build relationships.

Old School: Measure success with traditional metrics such as impressions, clicks, brand recall and unique views.
What to do: Measure with customer service metrics like retention, satisfaction & social media metrics like engagement.