[flickr style="float: right"]photo:2052055757[/flickr]September 14, 2007 — yes, just a year ago this week — was the date of the first blog post on Social Media Explorer. At that point, very few people in the social media world knew who Jason Falls was. My grand idea for a public relations blog fizzled but my passion for blogging, social media and introducing those concepts to the clients we work with at Doe-Anderson led me here. While I have a healthy ego, I’m not one to tout my own accomplishments, but there are sites, listings and rankings from around the web that say this little blog of mine serves as a relevant voice in the worlds of social media, public relations, marketing and communications. I owe a great deal of that success to all of you — without traffic, the comments or the inbound links, the site doesn’t even make the radar, much less the list.
If you work at a large company or brand there’s a pretty good chance you have a Facebook group. Perhaps it was started by someone at your company. Chances are it wasn’t.
Canadian Club's Brand Page On Facebook
In the vast majority of cases, these groups are positive and simply serve as connecting points for people who like your brand. Most aren’t hurting the brands they talk about. That’s not always the case, of course. At their worst, groups are started to express frustration or even hate for a product. At their best, I would guess the vast majority of groups are at least using the logo, product imagery or other brand copyrights without official permission.