Great Social Media Quotes - The Hall of Flattering Mirrors

from Jonathan Franzen: 'Twitter is the ultimate irresponsible medium'

"Very probably, you're sick to death of hearing social media disrespected by cranky 51-year-olds." But last year he also criticised Facebook, where, he said, "we star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery. And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don't have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It's all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors."

from Socially Irresponsible

"To be truly effective, social media requires a different mindset entirely to traditional 'push marketing'," Penton says. "Brands haven't factored this into their thinking when using social media. With correct foresight and planning, social media can be a wonderfully effective and cost-efficient way of developing relationships with end users and achieving bottom-line returns."

The majority of marketers believe that 'doing' social media is more important than listening when engaging on social media platforms, according to CIM's research.

One of the biggest benefits in social media is the ability to see what large amounts of consumers think about a brand, and listening on social media platforms is a vital way of knowing what consumers want. The fact that most marketers think listening on social media platforms is unimportant shows that large businesses have a long way to go in terms of understanding how to leverage these new channels.

"Social media is like teenage sex - everyone wants to do it. When they do they're a bit disappointed, but they practice and it gets much better," says LinkedIn's EMEA marketing solutions director, Josh Graff, in response to the research released by the CIM.