mido

http://mashable.com/2011/11/04/social-data-management/

This article is really informative, especially for Mido because our main strategy for advertising and for gaining users is to use social media. This article gives good tips for companies who are planning on employing the social media tactic for their business. Here is an excerpt from the article:

"Obtaining the user’s social profile data is the first step. The following tips detail how to access rich social profile information, while avoiding some of the challenges associated with data gathering.

• Social profile data is complex and dynamic. Depending on the particular social network, the data can range from professional affiliations, education history, friends lists, current location and checkins.
• Social profile data is useful only if actionable. A copious amount of user data is worthless if you are unable to feed it to existing systems such as email marketing tools or content personalization engines.
• Social profile data is relevant only when combined with other data sources. Social does not have to replace what you already know about your users. The real win is augmenting existing intelligence with this new, valuable social data source.

Let’s also look at five critical considerations for collecting, storing and managing social profile data.

1. Structure and Discipline

2. Multi-Channel Support

3. Availability, Redundancy and Backup

4. “Don’t Make the User Think”

5. Third-Party Access"

I think that any business can benefit from this article because it provides in depth reasoning for what strategies to use and what to consider when you are using social media as an outlet to gain customers or simply to understand the social media outbreak.