the Social Media Advertising Council seeks to set the bar

Poor SEO is becoming the hillbilly cousin when it comes to the path for legitimacy. Seems the SMM peeps are forging their own set - or maybe not. Today I cam across this press release concerning the Social Media Advertising Council

They’re mandate is apparently to;

“…create a common vocabulary, standard buying units and uniform measurement methods for marketing within social media. As social network advertising revenues hit an estimated $1.825 billion in 2009, out of a total online advertising market of $30 billion in the U.S. (eMarketer, May 2008,) there is an urgent need among social media buyers and their clients to understand how to quantify and value engagement and exposure on social networks.”

Now I am not one to be petty… or maybe I am… but last I checked not only are engagement metrics a fuzzy proposition, but branding activities themselves are often hard to track effectively. They did address it some with;

" We now need standard buying units, methods of measurement, and a common understanding of what we mean when we say engagement on sites like Facebook, Myspace and Gather, For example, a brand's engagement might include 500 conversations featuring one product, which in turn cascades to close to a million impressions through friend feeds. How do we measure and value that for our advertisers? How do we talk about that kind of engagement?” said Tom Gerace, CEO of Gather & Founding Chairman of SMAC.

Social news networking? Talk about a mash-up

Just a quick note mention SocialMedian – a news aggregate, social voting and networking mish-mash that I am playing with (hat-tip to Nick Wilsdon)…. As always I am at; theGypsy -

Not much to report at this time other than the fact I started a few groups where I will post news (and has RSS feeds imported). So far we have;

The Search World – which obiously will be covering all things search engine marketing related

Collective Thoughts – created on behalf of the gang and has not only the CT feed, but each of the team member’s blog feeds and added favs from around the web.

5 reasons why you should be using Plurk - by Samir Balwani

Lately, there's been a lot of buzz about a new Twitter competitor called Plurk. In my opinion this new micro-blogging platform has taken the conversation to a whole new level. But along with all the talk about how great Plurk is, people have begun to question its usefulness. In response, I've compiled a list of reasons why Plurk should be an integral part of every Internet Marketer's toolbox.

Branding:

A smart Plurker will use this platform as a way to effectively strengthen their brand. Just by watching avatars and names pass by on my timeline, I've grown to recognize newer brands.

Want to maximize this effect?

Use an avatar you want people to remember, or the one you use everywhere else. Also, don't forget that at 40.00 Karma you're able to change your Plurk Name. My suggestion is to use either your real name, or your brand.

Some thoughts on my days in the Plurk-o-verse

Weren’t we just talking about trademarks, standards and linkbait? …. Naaww.… this week there's a new buzz -

The latest kid in the corral –Plurk. As one person alluded to, half jokingly, its twitter on meth essentially. Granted many new services that come out experience some initial geek surge, but even this Gypsy was on about FriendFeed (and it’s Rooms) recently – this one is different.

 For starters it has a strange snow ball effect going on as you seem to spiral out of control. It is like having an interactive, multimedia enabled forum that Plurked and instant messenger client. You’ll be lucky to not be talking in the third person in no time.

Beyond that I met some folks that gave help and others that made tools for the community to benefit from. Once rolling it is interesting to not only interact but add flavour with images and graphics… You can also start private groups called *cliques* that help one segment their messages once your friend lists get longer.

Some Goodies

Ok, you can get round one of the community – How to post
You can also get the FireFox extension
Or get hooked up to the Desktop client

Import Twitter friends to Plurk with this tool
and there is even a Plurk Bookmarlet
Also you can find Plurkers from around the world

Video - I use my Multimedia tab in the Ol iGoogle Homepage; and post the URL

Images - Same gig… Google is your friend - and you can simply paste in a URL to a given image to have it show up in the thread you are in.