Toyota is the just the most recently visible company to fall behind in the battle for Customer Love on Twitter.

Toyota, and other manufacturers, have survived recalls before.  It's the PR and CRM damage that takes them down from their pedestals.

Toyota's tardy and uninformative responses winds up making them looking greedy, calculating, deceitful and clueless when their public is spreading information, disinformation, opinions, speculations and lies at the nanosecond speed of interthought via twitter, facebook, blogs and other social media.

As the Big Money reports,

Anyone with access to the Internet is now a micro-Nader, an antlike information-gathering-and-broadcasting agent who can contribute his experiences and interpretations to the data stream.

Is Toyota big enough to survive in internet time, or will a million tweets come home to roost?

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Companies and professionals have tried to spread their social networking presence across hundreds of different websites and services. For some, particularly the superhuman ones, it seems to work out. However, for most, keeping up with hundreds of news feeds, inbound messages, and status updates is an absolutely Herculean task. It comes as no surprise that most companies new to social networks look for a thin, wide spread rather than a thick, concentrated social media presence.

The problem with spreading yourself too thin on social media is that it is almost always ineffective. Social media influence does not come with 100 accounts each connecting with 100 people -- almost all of whom will be duplicated connections. True social media influence comes from one account, a single social media reference point, that connects with other 10,000 people on its own. It is concentration, not spread, that results in a wide social media influence.

For companies and brands that value real, measurable influence, there is only one way to succeed: create a manageable presence. These five tips will help you design a social media presence that is low maintenance, easily manageable, and scalable to your business.

1) Do not make promises that you can't keep.

If you can't connect with users every day, do not ever tell them that you can. In the online social world, managing expectations is just as important as being there all the time. When your audience knows that you are only available during certain parts of the week, they will be much more forgiving and flexible. However, if you claim to be around all the time, your audience will quickly grow disappointed when they can't contact you.

2) If necessary, outsource parts of your customer contact.

Hiring assistants for simple tasks like message responses and customer service is inexpensive and convenient, both for customers and your business. When you force yourself to answer each and every social media question, you lose time to create real online influence. If your audience is happy to get a response from an assistant or representative, do not be afraid to use them to control and manage your networking media accounts.

3) Connect infrequently, but always bring quality.

One great blog post a week is worth much more than six poor ones. When you are promoting your own work, it is best to value infrequent, high quality content above all else. Your followers will always be grateful for quality, but will quickly grow tired of low quality content, no matter how frequently you push it.

4) Establish behavioral patterns that build a reputation.

When your audience is used to once-weekly status update, they will come to expect them. Again, when your audience is used to once-daily updates, you are in for trouble if you want to take a week off. Establish patterns that allow you room to breathe and live your own life. For example, in the weeks preceding a vacation, slowly lower your update frequency until your audience grows to expect infrequent updates.

5) Be direct, honest, and upfront.

In the online world, everything you've ever said is archived, blogged, and available to all. If something catches you or your audience off guard, it is best to be completely transparent and upfront about it. Lies travel fast online, especially when they are something that can bring your reputation apart. Focus on transparency, and be completely honest when communicating with your audience.

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Selected by Goviral as the most interesting and innovative Viral videos in October 2009...

1. Volkswagen - The Fun Theory
2. Google Wave Cinema - Pulp Fiction
3. FIFA 2010 - How big can football get?
4. Rio de Janeiro - Olympic Games 2016
5. Diesel - Quique The Head
6. Canal+ - A Great Story
7. ReThink Breast Cancer - BoobyBall
8. Paul Smith for Evian  -  More than a bottle
9. Sony Ericsson - Hopper Invasion
10. Cadbury - Zingolo feat.

The videos on the list - which reflect North American, European, African and South American locales and an global cadre of agency creators - use a variety of approaches to hold viewers’ attention - including off-beat, cheeky humor, bizarre events, memorable music, anticipation of the unexpected and recollections of movie scenes.

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If you’re in real estate and you’re trying to understand what Social Media Marketing can do for you, then you need to grab a copy of Real SMM. This is for Realtors, Real Estate investors, appraisers, home inspectors, mortgage professionals, and anyone involved with residential real estate; looks particularly useful for Commercial Real Estate professionals, too.

This is just some of what you'll learn in this new book:

• What growing social networks have made serious noise in the past few months – and how to use them to connect with buyers
• What one simple tool – available for pennies a year – can get your real estate business out in front of thousands of local home buyers
• How to showcase your website – without ANY listing inventory – so that you’re top ranked
• What rapidly growing social media site has Google scared – and how you can master it
• Why the Virtual Tour Companies are dying, and what $65 solution has them freaking out

Get more info on Real SMM here or Purchase the Book here

p.s. Imagine how great your 2010 will look when those personal connections you make through Social Media Marketing start paying dividends with more sales!

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Users were almost three times as likely to search after seeing influenced social media plus paid search, compared with paid search ads alone.

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