Here we are in the run-up to Christmas and the New Year, so I thought I would jot down the things that I found amusing, noteworthy or just plain strange about the business we are in for the past year. A personal list and personal opinions...
Take this little quiz to see if your organisation is ready for a customer community or conversational marketing;

ROFL: micro-blogging on micro-blogging?
ReadWriteWeb's Guide to Online Community Management... is an interesting mashup of news, views and resources on the emerging role of Community Manager. Unfortunately not a free (open source) offering but interesting nonetheless.
I figure Community Management is one role worth keeping tabs on - afterall, we are the "least connected we will ever be" - as Don Peppers reminded several of us recently.
Forrester have published a pretty good taxonomy, based on the business objectives you have, for branded online communities. Communities can be set up for you to;
We occasionally (and happily) hear exponents of social media remind us that marketing cannot actually make up for poor products and services - (for any length of time of course), customers eventually and inevitably wake up to shonkey products. In the past, the lag between marketing claim and customers voting in mass with their wallet was often long enough for snake oil salesmen to make a good living - as long as they kept moving, negative communication was inefficient and they kept finding new customers.
They don't make markets like that anymore.
"The market for something to believe in is unlimited..." (Hugh McLeod)
And guess what, that new fangled thing - the internet and its social media offspring - just lowered the threshold on entry to that market!
