When used correctly, social Media can be an extremely powerful way to form relationships with your audience and spread possitive word of mouth. When used incorrectly, it can really piss people off. We've all heard about failures like the Wal-Marting Across America fiasco, not to mention Target's faux pas, Rounders, oops!

So is there a secret formula for success in social media marketing? We know some things that don't work: lack of or false transparency, "invasion" of social networks, SPAM, rushing into SNs without understanding them and thereby breaking etiquette. When launching a social media campaign, there are different combinations of tactics and strategies that will work best for each combination of brand and audience.

Some tips:

Guess I've been busy, since JANUARY!!! No excuse for that. Big news, Heavybag Media now has an office in Los Angeles, in addition to our New Haven office, which is still fully staffed and humming along wonderfully.

We have been doing a lot of work with some of our clients in the social and professional networking space. It's really an interesting space to be in. Each online community has it's own set of rules, both official and unofficial, and there are new ones popping up all the time. I personally am now on Facebook, bebo, Ning, MySpace, YouTube, Mashable, Twitter, LinkedIn, plus I run this blog. Our company is represented on Ning, MySpace and soon to be Facebook. Though all of these sites are different in their own way, one common thread is the human factor.