There are a slew of things to take into account when adding or creating a game-like environment for your site or its content. I'm going to assume that I don't need to tell you that, before any of you determine your goals, you should do a deep competitive analysis and determine the mindset of your demographic prior to spending any real money in this direction. This topic is a bit more than 101 when it comes to the new-world marketer, as it's making rapid changes and not a lot of it has been truly tested...

I go ballistic every time I read another blog post from someone who provides this frothy bit of advice: "Have a crisis-management plan in place." Gee thanks. That's it? How about a little help with the plan, pal. Otherwise it's like giving someone a smoke detector, but not telling them they need to take it out of the box, install a battery and mount it in the hallway. You've given them a great tool but they're still going to burn.

I still hear people say 'well I'm not sure if my social media efforts are creating enough traffic to my website.' To that, let me say this: Stop worrying about having every friend, fan and follower use your website as some epicenter of truth. This is ineffective thinking from today forward. Social media is not a direct connect to sales. It's not "buy now." It's "have you heard?" and the thing that people seem to forget is that while pushing product is fine, loyalty to that product/brand/service is going to maintain a long-term customer and make you more money over time.

I'm not going to lie – building your social empire takes time. It's a marathon and not sprint. But as with all things there are things you can do right and wrong. Why take the time to make the mistakes I've already made, when I can give you some quick tips to get you started!

Clients will talk a good game about wanting to be cutting-edge with their thinking, how they want their new campaign to be something that people will remember and be 'award winning' but when it comes right down to it, most clients are too risk-adverse in a depleted economy to push the envelope because of fear--

In a day and age where more content is generated in a minute on Facebook than a year virtually a decade ago, I see publishing a book as tired mediocre into the foray of 'perceived credibility'. Much like the psychological phenomena of 'social proof,' it seems that you're only invited to the big-boy table if you cranked out a few boxes of dead trees...