Social media requires teamwork

Social media is undoubtedly shaking up the digital landscape, but it looks to be shaking up the corporate suite as well, says Advertising Age.

As brands try to foster loyalty with Facebook pages, show innovation on blogs, and address customer concerns on Twitter, social media is threading its way through the marketing and sales, research and development, customer-service departments and more.

It's important to get all those disciplines working together. Take Ford Motor for example. The automaker saw $2.7 billion in profit for 2009 - a huge turnaround from a record loss the prior year - and it smartly used social media to help disassociate it from the bankruptcies and bailouts of its rivals. But that required breaking with custom at Ford and pooling the resources of marketing and corporate communications.

Businesses have been advised that pay per click (PPC) is an essential tool when it comes to ensuring the success of their online marketing campaign, reports Impact Media.

Shadesaver.com contributes much of its success to savvy use of PPC services, branded online stores and e-marketing.

Owner of the sunglasses retailer Andy Hortatsos says the marketing tool is an extremely important way of bringing traffic to the brand's Web site. "Folks aren't visiting brick and mortar malls. They're going online to do searches. Search tools have gotten better, which makes PPC more important," he explains.

It may have been mooted ever since the computer was invented, but according to a new report from JP Morgan the paperless office is now technically and economically feasible, states BusinessGreen.

Released last week, the report states the banking giant has helped 25 000 of its clients eliminate more than 24 million paper documents from operations in just 18 months by promoting digital processes.

The report also argues that online billing and invoice solutions, remote capture solutions for payments received, and online banking and payment systems mean firms are capable of achieving a 'zero-return' environment, where they send and receive information electronically without the use of any paper.