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Angela Brown, Marketing Manager

On Tuesday, agencyQ co-sponsored a Web Content Mavens event on content strategy and CMS implementation. The topic was a great fit for us both as a sponsor and as our first outing with the Mavens, so I headed over to the offices of the National Trust for Historic Preservation with one of our project managers. The purpose of the meeting was to define content strategy and execution within a content management framework, and each topic had its own speaker. Harry Chauss of Content Strategy DC represented the strategists and F’Lynne Didenko offered war stories from her role as WCMS Product Manager at Sallie Mae, Inc.

After giving the audience the scoop on Q during the sponsor intros, I spent the remainder of the evening Evernoting away during the presentation (I hope no one thought I was rudely replying to emails instead). Here’s what I came away with.

1. Why you must keep track of your online profile
by Dan Griliopoulos on Techradar

By now we’ve all heard plenty about the importance of monitoring your company’s brand online. Understanding your advocates and detractors and the conversations around your business online are of critical importance in the digital age. But what about your personal brand?

Takeaway: You are just as much a brand as the company your work for, the college you graduate from or the toothpaste you use. You’ve undoubtedly seen the frequent articles and blog posts warning job seekers to play it safe with their online footprints, but managing your personal brand online goes much deeper than that. Whether you’re a new graduate looking for that first job or a veteran marketer pitching a client, online reputation management requires long-term diligence. Make sure you know what’s out there and that you are careful with the information you can control.  You never know who is searching for you or watching your social network profiles. To paraphrase and old rule of thumb, if you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see it, you probably shouldn’t post it online.

1. Facebook Places: What It Is, What It Isn’t, And Why It May Change The World
By Augie Ray with Forrester

On August 18 Facebook announced its long-anticipated geolocation offering called “Places,” and the Internet went crazy. In what was the most popular post we tweeted this week, Forrester’s Augie Ray argues that “the most important contribution Facebook is making to the geolocation social space is not in form but scale.”

Takeaway: First of all, Places is neither evolutionary nor new. Foursquare and Gowalla beat them to the punch eons ago in tech time. While foursquare counts around 2.5 million users in its base, Facebook has 500 million. This means that Facebook is positioned to introduce the benefits of location sharing to a new and much wider audience. But the rub is in the very first paragraph of Ray’s post – while the popular Foursquare counts around 2.5 million users in its base, Facebook has 500 million, meaning Facebook is now positioned to introduce the benefits of location-sharing to a new and much wider audience. Facebook has an opportunity to change the way people approach social networking without even creating something new. How this will play out has yet to be seen, but the potential significance of this new feature is undeniable.

Have you given Places a try yet? Let us know what you think in the comments.

1. What Nonprofits Can Teach Brands About Social
on eMarketer

Even though corporate marketers have made a great deal of progress with their adoption of social media tools, they still have a long way to go. This post explores the success of social media adoption in the nonprofit sector and what corporate marketers can stand to gain from nonprofit marketers’ social media efforts.

Takeaway: As of 2009, 97% of large charitable organizations were using some form of social media. In contrast, 80% of companies in the Inc. 500—a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US—used social media marketing in 2009, and the Fortune 500 were even further behind. How counter intuitive that the companies most likely to have the human and financial resources to run an effective social media program are sitting on the sidelines while nonprofits are running about the field.

The issue at hand here isn’t so much quality as it is quantity – it doesn’t tell us how effective nonprofits’ social media efforts are, it only tell us that they are trying harder than their corporate counterparts. But this is still an important point. In 2010, very few businesses can afford to ignore social media all together. And while the results may be mixed, nonprofits are blazing the trail by embracing social media as a marketing tool worth employing. Have you taken the plunge yet?

1. The Coupon Network: Everything You Need To Know About The Web’s Hottest Business Model
By Alexia Tsotsis on TechCrunch

With the growth of deal sites like Groupon and Livingsocial the white-hot popularity of online couponing is undeniable. In this post, TechCrunch walks businesses looking to get in on the action through the most important points to consider for this business model.

Takeaway: This article is all about takeaways so we’ll stick to the most significant. One of the most important points here is that customization is key. No blanket approach can be taken here. Consumer targeting, a 360-degree marketing approach and a thoughtful user experience (avoid point-of-purchase hassles) are also critical.