Links for 2011-04-18

SlideShare.net is the world’s largest online community for sharing presentations with more than 50 million monthly visitors, helping to make it rank amongst the 250 most visited websites in the world.

But, it is more than just a simple presentation sharing portal, with a number of additional features including video hosting and virtual meeting software also on offer.

Engaging shoppers with videos, photos and special offers seems to be enticing consumers to Like Victoria’s Secret and its Pink brand for young women. The two were the most Liked retail brands on Facebook in March with 12.1 million and 8.4 million followers, respectively, according to the ChannelAdvisor Facebook Commerce Index.

It’s easy to see why marketers would be interested in geolocation: You can effectively target customers at the most important point in the consideration cycle – standing right in front of you. Digital marketing has historically been tasked with either an awareness/brand-building role, or – more frequently – a direct response role, driving customers right into the ecommerce funnel.

Most consumers read online reviews before making purchases, but those shoppers turn more often to e-commerce and review sites, and search engines, than to online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, suggest survey data released this week by Lightspeed Research.

Social media is not new.  At this point, you don’t need a social media expert, you just need a good marketer (all marketers should understand social media by now).  The term – once meaningful – has been overused to the point it has become nothing more than a buzzword in the hands of most.  Social is simply what the web does, and as a net native who has watched the abuse of the term social media over the years, I’ve slowly become adverse to its use at all.