Yesterday I received the following email with the following subject line: “Email is Dead: Embrace Social Media”

Hi Craig,

Social media, despite its centrality in our daily lives, still causes most businesses to tremble with fear. They fear liability over what employees may post in their official capacity. They fear embarrassing information posted by employees, both current and potential, in their off hours. They conduct social media “background checks” to ferret out anything that might reflect poorly on the business. Such is this fear that social media sites are discouraged or outright blocked at many workplaces.

As modes of business communication, social media channels are treated as loudspeakers, with messages painstakingly cleared through legal and public relations, polished to perfect sheen and void of real meaning. Meanwhile, email remains the central trusted tool of business communications. Used internally, it is the official channel for directives, meeting planning and document-sharing. It is the central way to communicate anything that matters both within your organization and to any collaborators. For external communications, email lists are built, maintained and bombarded. Huge marketing dollars are spent formulating email segmentation strategies, word-smithing, and tracking open rates.

All of this is entirely backwards.

To learn why, check out the link here: http://www.txchnologist.com/volumes/advanced-manufacturing/to-corporate-america-subject-email-is-dead-embrace-social-media-by-jacob-kramer-duffield

We’d love it if you could share this story with your readers. You may link to the story, run part of the story with a link back or share the story on your social networking sites.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

To which I responded:

Thanks for reaching out – which, ironically, has taken place via email and not social media. Thoughts on that?

I’ll update this post if/when I get a response.

UPDATE: Please be sure to check out the comments for this post.

The other day I figured out how to add Netflix streaming to my tablet. Reminded me of this commercial which aired about a decade ago. We’re not too far off from this becoming a reality.

Today, Social Media Examiner (a terrific site, by the way) posts a list of 13 Facebook marketing tips. They’re all good, and you should read the article and take all 13 to heart. But I’m adding one more:

#14 With Facebook, you’re one of a bazillion pages, so remember that you’re amplifying your message to your current audience and implementing a slow-growth strategy for expanding that audience.

Too many people are approaching Facebook marketing by thinking, “Oh, great, everyone in the world is on Facebook, so if I create my awesome branded page, everyone will check it out and I’ll increase my audience by a factor of a ton!”

No, not so much. The realistic way to approach Facebook marketing is to look at it as a way of amplifying your messaging to your current audience, and giving that current audience the tools to carry your message to their networks … which is something that happens slowly over time, not immediately over a day or two.

Remember, too, that your Facebook presence needs to be integrated with all your other marketing messaging. Just because you build it does not mean they will come; you have to guide them there.

Takeaway for marketers: Facebook is not a magic marketing bullet, and you shouldn’t look at it as such. It’s one more tool in your overall communications strategy.

No, that arrow isn’t pointing to Rihanna’s butt (no, not much it isn’t) — it’s pointing to the Social Snap Tag on the cover of this month’s Glamour magazine.

What’s a Social Snap Tag? Well, as Social Times reports, “using either a free Android or iPhone app to scan these images takes the phone’s user to the advertising company’s Twitter or Facebook stream for more interaction which can include more information, special offers and even the possibility to win prizes like free shipping for life or travel.”

Are these the next big thing?

Well, I don’t know … were QC codes in ads the next big thing? Sorta. Were :CueCat barcodes the next big thing? Hardly. Will Social Snap Tags be valuable to brands? Probably more so for the few earliest adopters — like Glamour — who use them and grab some earned media out of the deal.

Did you know that the first web site was published 20 years ago yesterday? Wired explains.