Now, platforms like Kickstarter, Polyvore, Pinterest, Etsy, Storenvy (and the list goes on) allow consumers to put the power back in the hands of the people. Rather than just following trends, consumers are revolutionizing the industry. They can’t find what they want from the big brands, so tastemakers are creating what they (and their friends) want.

Check out this great recap of our convo below!

Gala Darling, Jessica Harlow and Angel Laws at Social Media Week NYC

Bloggers have an array of community-building tools and techniques at their disposal, but don’t forget that content is the backbone of a site’s longevity and success.

Bloggers Jessica Harlow (JessicaHarlow.com), Angel Laws (ConcreteLoop.com) and Gala Darling (GalaDarling.com) all lauded the importance of producing the content that you would want to see, yourself, during their appearance at Social Media Week’s “Creating Community Around Your Blog” event.

So when searching for your niche in the blogosphere, use yourself as your target audience. Ask yourself, “What do I want to read? What do I want to watch? What questions do I want answered?”

Hesitating or and over-analyzing every creative thought can be a hindrance to publishing the original and captivating features that will keep your audience coming back. Gala drove this point home by quoting the iconic Beat Generation poet, Allen Ginsberg:

“If the muse comes to your bedside, don’t tell her you’ll f&*$ her later!”

You can see a range of inspiration-channeled-into-content examples by checking out Jessica’s Adele Vogue cover make-up tutorial, Gala’s Thursday favorites and Angel’s coverage of A Million Hoodies March for Trayvon Martin NYC.

Deeplocal’s LikeBelt in action

You’ve probably heard this question a dozen times in the last year: “Should an agency act like a startup?” Essentially, agencies share key ingredients of agile software companies, like designers, programmers and project managers, but do they have the patience to iterate and persist throughout a profitable product’s lifespan? And is coding products in-house just a great exercise, or is a viable new business model emerging?

Google’s Allison Mooney and Ben Malbon tackled the subject with a panel of agency innovators at last year’s SXSW. Industry pubs like AdWeek, AdPulp and Fast Company pondered the question from all angles, and by June, the question had been asked so many times that Edelman’s David Armano reversed course and suggested that agencies act more like blue chips.

So is this the year that agencies start to answer the question? Digiday’s Brian Morrissey dug into the topic at Social Media Week with agency innovators who aren’t just talking shit, they’re making shit. The panel, called “AgencyWare: Agency as Maker,” featured folks from independent agencies Deeplocal and Breakfast, as well as bigger houses that support their own innovation groups, Weber Shandwick, BBH Labs and Mr. Youth.

Andrew Zolty of Breakfast, the agency behind Conan O’Brien’s check-in-able Blimp, said the key to the startup approach for agencies is experimentation. “The path to innovation is not linear,” he said, “it’s really messy.”

BBH Labs, an innovation unit of a larger agency, takes the same, agile approach to “getting shit done.” The most successful groups are able to “learn from failure on your own dime,” said BBH Lab’s Tim Nolan, “Not at the expense of the clients.”

To stay profitable and productive between client projects, these agencies pump out their own successful products. See Breakfast’s Instaprint, an Instagram-based printer whose Kickstarter has already raised $30k in 4 days. And profit isn’t the only motivator for the maker-agency. Said Mr. Youth’s Matt Britton, “Build your own cool shit to retain talent and keep your people stimulated.”

Other agency innovations represented at the panel were:

• Weber Shandwick’s FireBell, a social media crisis simulator for PR firms
• Deeplocal’s Chalkbot, a twitter-driven robot that printed encouraging messages alongside the roads of the Tour De France
• CrowdTap, a marketing platform that was started at Mr. Youth and has since spun-off into its own company

If you’re interested in this topic, and you’re headed to SXSW, be sure to catch these panels:

• Why Ad Agencies Should Act More Like Tech Startups
• We Made This, and It’s Not an Ad
• It’s Alive: Interactive Machines That Captivate

Is your agency making its own cool shit? Give us a shout.

Each year, when Blogads hosts #SUXORZ at Social Media Week NY, we think its the last. We naively believe that corporations, politicians and celebrities will finally learn how to do The Social Media right. Lucky for the mob of 150 social media fanatics that joined us at the Gershwin Hotel on Wednesday night, 2011 defied and our optimism and was full of spectacular social media screw-ups.

This year’s SUXORZ panel was the final panel of the Blogads Social Media Spectacular. As in prior years, Blogads’ CEO Henry Copeland was the ring leader. Henry was joined by 360i’s VP of Emerging Media David Berkowitz, creative technologist and integrated marketer BL Ochman, DigiDay Editor-in-Chief Brian Morrissey, and sex & relationship author Twanna A. Hines.

The crowd showed up early to libate up on complimentary beer and wine, then grabbed their noisemakers and popcorn and settled in to jeer the best of the worst in social media.

Want to take a peak at SUXORZ? Maybe you were there and need a new Facebook profile pic. In any case, check out our SUXORZ 2012 album.

THE DECK

Betting on the worst social media campaigns of 2011 via noisemakers? Priceless #SUXORZ #SMWNYC

— Megan Grissett (@MeganGrissett) February 16, 2012

This is corn-based crack. Srsly. RT @dberkowitz: @NickBlogads this is amazing <bleep>ing popcorn #suxorz

— Brian Slattery (@BrianSlatts) February 16, 2012

ROUND 1: #tinears

These folks proved that it’s a little too easy to click that “send” button when you THINK you have a great idea.

Winner: Ashton Kutcher tweets pro-Paterno (and anti-taste)

Runners up:

• Brazilian condom maker, Olla Condoms, sends Facebook friend request from unborn children
• Nikon pisses off customers by saying on Facebook that “a photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses” and then refusing backing off
• Jockey asks on Twitter if Tebow can win your free underpants, is only RT’ed 26 times

I agree, @bmorrissey!! Ashton is a bad thing for social media. #suxorz #smwnyc

— Elizabeth Mee (@Liz2586) February 15, 2012

Condom maker wins definitely #suxorz

— Justin Mandaro (@PeckinTheFix) February 15, 2012

ROUND 2: Don’t Mess with Bloggers

What happens when you kick a swarming nest of bloggers?

Winner: Ragu spams dad-bloggers with video making fun of them

Runners up:

• Conagra (with Ketchum) misleads bloggers by inviting them to dine with a celebrity chef, then feeds them canned food
• Yahoo! exec CCes fired bloggers on bagel brunch invite
• PR guy calls The Bloggess a “fucking bitch” (Brian Morrissey flipped the script and nominated the Bloggess for the #SUXORZ for being “overly entitled” and not letting the issue go.)

ROUND 3: Fun with hash tags

“Hey, we hear there’s something called a hash tag! Let’s try to use one!”

Winner: Durex writes a seriously offensive #DurexJoke 

Runners up:

• Amid the revolution, Kenneth Cole uses #Cairo hashtag to promote Spring collection
• Entenmann’s piggybacks Casey Anthony #notguilty trending topic to sell cookies
• Toyota spams Super Bowl tweeters to push its cars

#suxorz event is HILARIOUS… Posts re: #notguilty and #durexjoke have be rolling on the floor! (Not really though… LOL worthy for sure)

— Nikita(@Nikita_Ban) February 16, 2012

I wanna follow @entemanns and @durexsa thanks to #suxorz

— Tim Fogarty (@n0her0es) February 16, 2012

ROUND 4: Twitter Hijacking

Before choosing your brilliant hashtag or account name, make sure it’s not taken already in social media. And then make sure that people actually like you.

Winner:  Netflix launches Qwikster without checking out @Qwikster, a king stoner, first 

Runners up:

• To magazine’s chagrin, fake Cat Fancy Twitter account tweets awful things about cats
• #McDStories aren’t all positive
• #QantasLuxury backfires miserably

PALETTE CLEANSER: Well-Played

The #SUXORZ panel isn’t completely focused on failure. Here are some social media wins from the last year:

• American Airlines bashes back at bully Alec Baldwin on Facebook
• Heinz rebounds from e-commerce bottleneck, gives away LOTS of free catsup
• Freshdesk goes to war with bully Zendesk
• Tucker Max punks Izea

ROUND 5: Trying too hard

If you don’t really get social media, you really shouldn’t use it.

Winner: Woody Harrelson goes on Reddit, refuses to answer “anything” in an AMA (ask me anything) forum

Runners up:

• On Facebook’s behalf, Burson-Marsteller urges bloggers to write anti-Google op-eds
• LG (with Ogilvy) tries to hire covert blogger “brand ambassadors”
• Kayak pulls ads from “All-American Muslim,” calls show terrible, says “we’re not bigots…”

“If you don’t know what reddit is, they don’t even want you there.” -@dberkowitz #suxorz

— Jared Currier (@JaredCurrier) February 16, 2012

well it was only a matter of time until @reddit made its presence known – yikes. #IAmAfail #SUXORZ #smwnyc

— LBi US (@LBiNewYork) February 16, 2012

ROUND 6: Politics

Because politicians need to show how relatable they are, they manage to hash up social media, too.

Winner: Anthony Weiner… need we say more?

Runners up:

• Rick Perry shoots homophobic video in Brokeback jacket
• Pets don’t support Newt, no matter what his site says
• Dmitry Medvedev joins Facebook, gets bashed by Russian Facebookers

“Blow your horns for (Anthony) Weiner”. Learning so much about bad social media usage at #suxorz #SMWNYC

— Tory Marlin (@vlmarlin) February 16, 2012

“Medvedev is the Ashton Kutcher of authoritarians” says @bmorrisey for his off-brand move to Facebook #suxorz #SMWNYC

— Susan Halligan (@srhalligan) February 16, 2012

ROUND 7: Shut up!

Forgetting that social media is, y’know, social, these folks didn’t want to hear from their customers.

Winner: Boners BBQ tells Yelping customer to go play “hide and go f*ck yourself.” 

Runners up:

• Chapstick deletes Facebook comments related to its ad featuring girl’s posterior
• Dr. Pepper starts a battle of the sexes on Facebook
• SapientNitro makes silly music video touting its expertise, deletes negative Facebook comments

Boners BBQ lol! #suxorz

— Audy Kramer (@audrickkramer) February 16, 2012

“Who the fuck drinks Dr. Pepper?” @funkybrownchick#SUXORZ

— Blogads (@Blogads) February 16, 2012

ROUND 8: Audience Choice

We asked the #SUXORZ mob what their favorite social media #FAIL of the last year was.

Winner: JetBlue places QR codes in subway, where no one has Internet access.

FINAL ROUND: DUREX VS WEINER

In softball tournament fashion, we split our nominees into two groups and had the audience vote via noisemaker, as they had done all night. Then we pitted the two round-robin winners against each other. After all was said and done, Durex was named the most unforgivable social screw-up of the year.

So durex is the wiener, sorry winner #suxorz twitpic.com/8kh0an

— aurore quercy (@auroreinthecity) February 16, 2012

So durex is the wiener, sorry winner #suxorz twitpic.com/8kh0an

— aurore quercy (@auroreinthecity) February 16, 2012

MORE REACTIONS FROM THE #SUXORZ MOB

We had another great turnout this year. Here are some more of the night’s best tweets.

Killin’ it. This is the best $20 I’ve spent in ages. RT @brianslatts: “hashtags are the new emoticon apparently.” – @bmorrissey #suxorz

— Sarah (@cicutoface) February 15, 2012

For reals winning the crowd addition #SUXORZ on my disdain for QR codes has me giddy. Thanks @hc @dberkowitz

— Don Steele (@donsteele) February 16, 2012

ton of paparazzi here – feeling both flattered and self conscious #usemygoodside #SUXORZ #smwnyc

— LBi US (@LBiNewYork) February 15, 2012

Thanks for the laughter and tears. #SUXORZ

— Amanda McCormick (@AmandaMcCormick) February 16, 2012

Check out Heidi Cohen’s blow-by-blow coverage over at SmartBlog on Social Media and Susan J Campbell’s wrap-up on her Copywriting Solutions blog.

Do you have your own favorite terrible social media blunder? Submit it to the SUXORZ Facebook group, and maybe we’ll trash it next year.

As blogs have expanded on the web in scope and size, so have the ways that blog writers can interact with readers. Jessica Harlow (JessicaHarlow.com), Angel Laws (ConcreteLoop.com), and Gala Darling (GalaDarling.com) sat down with Paul Steketee (@steketee), Head of Social Marketing at Rapp, to discuss how they interact with the communities that they have built. The panelists shared their experiences in an open conversation with the audience at our panel, “Creating Community Around Your Blog,” part of the Blogads Social Media Spectacular at Social Media Week in New York.

 The first step of building a community is producing great content

Gala, who posts 3-4 times per week about fashion and style, invoked Allen Ginsberg’s quote “If the muse comes to your bedside, don’t tell her you’ll f&*$ her later!” If you feel inspiration, stop what you’re doing and write it down! ”Don’t spend too much time reading everything online,” she recommended, “You are living your life, and your content can be so much better when you are original and you do your own thing.”

Jessica makes beauty tutorial videos a few times a week. “I started out using a dinky camera, and now I use a nice SLR camera,” she said. “Readers want a clean and concise video; 3-5 minutes is more than enough.” Angel attaches a microphone to her iPad, and filmed all of her Grammy red carpet interviews with this simple, but high-quality set-up. She updates hourly in order to cover the latest entertainment news. Angel blogged solo for her first 2 years, and then brought in friends to focus on expanding music and fashion content.

So you created a blog… what next? Promote and grow your community

Angel, who recently published the book “Angel’s Laws of Blogging,” recommends looking at yourself and your blog as a brand. “I also try to keep it organic and stay true to myself and what I’m interested in,” she added.

When Gala began blogging, she wrote a lot of “how-to” posts. “This is really sharable content that doesn’t expire. ‘How to dress like Edie Sedgwick’ will be relevant  and get shared for a long time.” Gala also spoke about seeking media exposure in other realms – including events, television, and magazines.

Jessica recommends using your friends and family to share and to help out. Jessica has also seen success with product giveaways as a way to reward readers for promoting her content among like-minded friends. Angel pointed out that most of the blogging community is pretty cool and that you can always email people. “If there are people that you are inspired by, tweet at them! They could help you, and at the end of the day, you could even become friends,” added Jessica.

How you communicate with your readers is up to you…as long as you’re listening

The comment area of Concrete Loop is Angel’s community, and it’s where people come together to have a conversation. “There is always a heated debate about entertainers,” she laughed. Her intern handles comment moderation, but having people sign in with Twitter or Facebook IDs can also improve comment quality. Hearing feedback from her readers is important, and she often uses polls to engage her community.

Jessica engages the most on Twitter and Facebook. The majority of her content is on Youtube, where comments can get overwhelming. “Re-tweeting is also a quick way to make people feel heard. Even if you don’t post on your blog for a little while, stay involved in the conversation” Sometimes people argue, but Jessica values the passion behind conflicts.

Gala used to obsessively check her comments, and she didn’t like the feeling of needing validation for her content. A fellow blogger turned her comments off, and told Gala that it felt like 30,000 people left her living room.  She turned her comments off for her 26^th birthday. “It was the best thing ever,” said Gala. Most of her conversations now take place on Twitter and Facebook, but she also created the Radical Self Love Bootcamp – a private, password-protected forum to which fans purchase memberships.

You’ve created a community! Now let’s monetize

Jessica made about $200 a month at first on Youtube. Eventually, as the views started growing, the money grew as well, and so did the opportunities to work with top beauty brands. Angel pointed out that making money doesn’t happen over night, and that you have to be consistent, motivated, and organized. With Google Adsense, the money does add up, but it takes time.

Giveaways and contests for your readers are often pitched by brands, but there are often legal ramifications that come with a good contest. Angel recommends Googling for legal contract templates, but you may choose to only work with a brand that pay your legal fees “At some point, you need a good team of people that support you and that you can trust,” Angel said.

Gala said that Blogads has been good to her, and she was innovative with her pricing structure. She sold 75 ads a day by offering small, very affordable spaces. “It’s good to have lots of entry points for advertising, because that money adds up!” said Gala.

Gala also recommends creating your own products. “I wrote a book. I did a chapter a month by subscription. I did 12 chapters total, and that was one of the most successful things I’ve ever done.,” Gala said. “It’s really easy to develop your own products. Get a graphic designer, or use one of the thousands of online tools to publish or create things yourself.”

Community tools for Bloggers recommended by panelists:

• Choopa (web hosting)
• Facebook Groups
• Google analytics
• Disqus (commenting plugin)
• iMovie (video editing)
• Ning
• Pinterest
• PollDaddy
• Twitter
• WordPress
• Zazzle.com (custom merch)

Behind every agency Twitter account lurks an actual human. Four such tweetsmiths joined me in the first panel of yesterday’s Blogads Social Media Spectacular, “The voice behind the curtain: Agency tweeters revealed!”

Here are some of the best stories and reactions from the Twitter-crazy crowd that gathered at the Gershwin Hotel.

The panelists and the tweets
Unfortunately, writing tweets isn’t a full time job for everyone. Here’s who the panelists are, what they do in an official capacity, and some exemplary tweets from their agency’s accounts.

Jon Accarrino:  Director of Social Media, Definition 6

See your life flash before your eyes, but not in a scary way! Timeline Movie Maker cot.ag/zpD6aX /via @technorati

— Definition 6 (@Definition6) February 4, 2012

Sam Weston: Director, Communication, Huge

iPad games for cats will never amuse them as much as sitting on it when you’ve got work to do. huge.is/wHLNsR

— Huge (@hugeinc) February 14, 2012

Chapin Clark: EVP, Managing Director, Copy, R/GA

Tubas are cool (I’d add “again” but that wouldn’t be accurate) and people are stealing them: nyti.ms/yDyXSl

— R/GA (@RGA) February 10, 2012

Evan Shumeyko: Director, Connections, Ogilvy & Mather

Jobs doll cancelled out of respect to his family via @latimes #apple #stevejobs #nocreepydollslatimes.com/business/la-fi…

— Ogilvy Digital (@ogilvydigital) January 17, 2012

Do their colleagues contribute to the Twitter feed? Do their colleagues tell them how to tweet?

Jon: People in the office will say “take a picture and tweet it” and he says, “YOU take the picture and maybe I’ll tweet it if it’s good.”

Sam: Huge’s tweets are written by a committee of copywriters, and Sam has the final say of what goes out. Sometimes people will send ideas to him, but most of the time people leave him alone — although sometimes senior management tells him he’s “doing it wrong”

Chapin: He’ll talk to colleagues about their specialty since they know what they are talking about more than he does. They don’t feel comfortable tweeting, so they will feed something to him.

Evan: People used to be afraid to tweet. He was the first one to jump into it, so now it’s his job.

Sam: People should be more afraid to tweet.

Biggest twitter reactions from our audience.

I vs We: As the person who writes most of the tweets for the @Blogads account, I was curious, do you tweet as “I” or “We” when you are speaking as the agency?

Gd ques: if you’re tweeting for an agency, is it an “I” or “we”? #agencytweets

— Tina Yip (@tina_yip) February 15, 2012

Good question… We like saying “we.” RT @Liz2586 To use ‘I’ or ‘we’ when tweeting for your company? what do you think? #smw12 #agencytweets

— Carousel30 (@Carousel30) February 15, 2012

Should brand tweets be from “we” or “I”? Interesting question about whether you reveal self Twitter handle in brand’s bio. #agencytweets

— Kate Childs (@kate_childs) February 15, 2012

Tweeting for an agency or org: “I” or “we”? Finding that voice can be tough. #agencytweets #SMWNYC

— Dan Klamm (@DanKlamm) February 15, 2012

For @rga @chapinc it’s more of an “I,” for @ogilvydigital @shumeyko it’s more of a “we.” #agencytweets

— Rebecca Prettyman (@tangelo212) February 15, 2012

For @rga @chapinc it’s more of an “I,” for @ogilvydigital @shumeyko it’s more of a “we.” #agencytweets

— Rebecca Prettyman (@tangelo212) February 15, 2012

Spontaneity: Do you schedule your tweets in advance, or write them as they come to you?

Do you schedule tweets? Compare @accarrino who schedules yrs in advance VS @Chapinc and @shumeyko who do it real-time. #agencytweets

— Jennifer J Choi (@jennjchoi) February 15, 2012

I don’t schedule tweets. Nothing worse than having breaking news & seeing a tweet that’s completely irrelevant @shumeyko #agencytweets

— SkillPreneurs (@SkillPreneur) February 15, 2012

#agencytweets panel on scheduling: @accarrino scheduled #Valentine ‘s tweet 2yrs ago.How would u know what’s relevant so far in advance?!

— Beatrice Frey (@BeaFrey) February 15, 2012

Twitter is an art, but also a science. You can schedule when it should go out to maximize audience – @Definition6 @accarrino #agencytweets

— SkillPreneurs (@SkillPreneur) February 15, 2012

Other cool stories from behind the curtain.

Sometimes the Twitter accounts are used to promote cool projects that the agencies are working on. Sometimes the Twitter accounts are part of the cool projects themselves.

Last year, as Hurricane Irene moved up the East Coast, worried Twitter users began to tweet at @Irene, perhaps hoping to talk the storm out of coming ashore. When the geniuses at Huge realized that the account was owned by a Huge employee named Irene, they talked her into surrendering her account to their copywriters. As the hurricane advanced along the Eastern Seaboard, @Irene tweeted out storm-related witticisms, peppered with real public service announcments for people who thought she might be the real hurricane.

Other cools stories included R/GA’s #OfficeCupid, which tweeted out Valentines on behalf of office crushers, Definition 6’s use of Puppy Tweets to promote a dog-friendly office environment, and what it’s like for Evan to tweet in the voice of a 60-year-old British man.

Interesting topics at the @blogads #agencytweets panel. Other tips I learned today: Drink more rum and tweet with a British accent. Got it!

— Christine Nguyen (@xtini) February 15, 2012

Twitres?

Each panel at the Social Media Spectacular featured a Tetris-like board that filled up with Twitter profile pics as the crowds tweeted out the panels’ hashtags.

Something I haven’t seen before: live tweets from #agencytweets panel go up on screen in Tetris-style box. twitter.com/kate_childs/st…

— Kate Childs (@kate_childs) February 15, 2012

Thank you so much to our panelists and to the audience who asked some awesome question while keeping the Tweetris board alive. If you were at our panel, we might have taken a photo of you, so check out our Social Media Spectacular Facebook album and tag yourself if you see yourself!

Social media, as a tool to sell books, is here to stay. Yesterday, @blogads’ Henry Copeland was joined by panelists Guinevere de la Mare from @chroniclebooks, Ryan Chapman from @fsg_books, Emily Lyman from @crownpublishing, and Miriam Parker from @littlebrown to delve into best and worst practices for publishers using social media during a panel we called “Innovative Ways of Creating Community Around Books.”

Here are some of the key take-aways from the panel.

Why social media for publishers?
Create a long tail following and build buzz over time to sell books.

How to rock social media for publishers:

• “Approach everything as an experiment. Test and measure like crazy and then fine tune,” said Guinevere de la Mare.
• Mix content up over different platforms
• Know your audience and your brand (ex. Google+ doesn’t make sense for Chronicle because it’s male skewed where as many of their books’ audiences are women)

• Every day should be different. Focus your energy on where things are happening, and where the right audience is for that day
• There is no dashboard for use across all networks and there shouldn’t be because then you lose the authenticity
• Search for niche platforms within different interest groups
• Make sure your timing is right
• Stand out from the crowd (ex. everyone was doing Movember photo contests in November, so Chronicle had trouble promoting its beard book)
• Relate your social media to book sales (ex. The author for the book I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, invented a bong guitar, and created a video playing it. He got 400,000 views on YouTube but didn’t move the needle on sales)

There’s no real difference in doing social media campaigns for different formats of books, yet…

A book is a book is a book is…a book. Until it becomes an iPad app. #smwbooks

— Sonya Safro (@ssafro) February 15, 2012

Social Media Channels being used by Publishers:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Tumblr
• Pinterest
• goodreads
• Google+
• YouTube
• USTREAM
• Small Demons

How to find great content for social marketing:

• Sign up for newsletters
• Set up an rss feed of great blogs and websites
• Downloads apps
• Call up marketers and let them know if there’s anything they come across that fits into your books or reading to let you know about it
• Accept tips from bloggers and your community

Ways to Measure Results:

• Explain successes and failures with annotations
• Google Analytics
• Facebook Insights
• Look at retweets & engagement on Twitter
• Numbers from bitly links
• Neilsen reportings
• Email Marketing numbers, open-rates (Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, etc)

One “just pre-ordered!” comment outweighs 5K page views – engagement matters most to conversion. @chapmanchapman/@fsg_books #smwbooks

— Sharon Pelletier (@sharongracepjs) February 15, 2012

Here are a couple of specific success stories from the panel:

* Cake Pops became the #1 best-selling cookbook of 2011:
The Bakerella, the blogger behind the book, used her own brand to push the title forward. Chronicle filmed Bakerella creating cake pops in a kitchen, and then shared the video on Youtube. It went on to garner over 600,000 views — their 2nd-most-viewed video ever. Beyond that, she tweeted, blogged, and posted to Instagram throughout her tour.

*Lawrence Block  became a NY Times Bestselling Author:
Despite being 73 years old, Lawrence readily adopted social media and quickly built up his Facebook fans to 5,000 in just 3-4 months by being himself, regularly updating and sharing his writing tips.

*Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle became a NY Times Bestseller:
 Crown Publishing  created a Pinterest board based on the lifestyle from within the book.

Thank you to our panelists, and everyone who joined us! We’ve got plenty of photos from the panel, so if you can find yourself in our Facebook album, please tag yourself!

If you’d like to provide any feedback about the panel or ideas for next year, please drop us a line or tweet at @megsterr.

Ad agencies, staffed with creative geniuses and social media experts, better have a darn good social media presence themselves. Here are some of the best tweets from the last 24 hours on my ad agency Twitter list.

Join me on February 15 at Social Media Week for “The voice behind the curtain: Agency tweeters revealed!” Meet the real people behind your favorite agency twitter accounts: @RGA, @Ogilvydigital, @HugeInc and @Defintion6. Space is limited, so sign up now.

This panel is part of Blogads’ Social Media Spectacular. Step right up for all the social media thrills you can fit under one roof.