Something interesting happened in the news this morning. The papers and websites reported that David Letterman had slept with a number of his employees. Typically the source for such information would be the women in question, or other concerned parties. The source this time? Letterman himself, who announced it on the air Thursday night.

In this case Letterman was avoiding an extortion attempt from somebody who had all the information. But it raises an interesting point: more and more, privacy and secrecy are becoming a thing of the past. And in response, more people and companies are recognizing honesty as a viable policy.

The book “Tactical Transparency,” by Shel Holtz and John C. Havens has helped popularize this point and helps marketers consider transparency as part of their strategic planning.

In particular, social media is becoming the de facto platform for open and honest conversation with your customers. Your brand’s social media strategy and particularly your Facebook strategy should be based on this model.

Many brands want to play the games of the past. Customers are complaining about your product? Bury the evidence. Scandal in the boardroom? Ignore it and it’ll blow over. Quality issues? Just advertise more and nobody will notice.

The fact is that in today’s world consumers have massive amounts of information available at their fingertips. And with the advent of social media marketing, consumers expect to hear from you as much as they hear about you. And they expect to ask you questions and get answers.

Because so many companies are still avoiding this open conversation with their customers, those who take advantage now have a unique opportunity to inspire amazing levels of brand loyalty.

AlterSeekers is a brand promotions agency in New York focusing on promotions consulting and planning, web strategy, social media marketing (including Facebook strategy), go to market strategy, and overall strategic planning. For more information see AlterSeekers.com.

Hopefully, you enjoyed my presentation at the Wedding MBA in Las Vegas and are here to download the materials that were promised. I’d love to hear your feedback on the presentation. If you weren’t able to attend, you can watch the presentaion now.

First, this is an example of the AlterSeekers Facebook Fan box. Please click the “Become a Fan” button below and see that your Facebook profile image immediately displays inside of the box. This is an easy widget that you can plug into your website from your Facebook Fan Page:

To show you that the voicemail trick worked, I’m posting it here.

You could also link it to a picture of your client.

You can also download the full presentation.

And, if you’d like to discuss any of the content that was presented, please feel free to contact Bill Carmody at (646) 867-2252 or email me at bill@alterseekers.com. Thanks!

For those of us who are swept up in the wave of Facebook’s exponential growth, it’s easy to think of MySpace as a thing of the past. But has MySpace truly jumped the shark, or does it still have some bite left in it? And more importantly, should your social media strategy including spending on MySpace?

According to a March ’09 Nielsen study, Facebook’s year over year change in active reach as of December 2008 was 168%, while MySpace’s was -3%. So clearly Facebook has momentum on its side. But is MySpace done? The answer is a resounding “probably not.” With a global unique audience of 81 million to Facebook’s 108 million, MySpace is no small player. And MySpace’s 2008 ad revenue was $1 billion, crushing Facebook’s $300 million. So it seems that marketers are not giving up on MySpace just yet. MySpace can still be an important component of a comprehensive online promotion strategy.

Part of the large ad spend on MySpace is due to MySpace historically offering better ad targeting capabilities. Also, MySpace’s users skew younger than Facebook’s, and are more focused on music and entertainment when using MySpace. This means that if you’re doing a campaign or promotion targeting younger audiences, or if you’re doing anything in the entertainment sector, you can’t ignore MySpace.

So don’t leave MySpace out of your promotions planning without first considering it in the context of your go to market strategy. Are you targeting a younger audience? Is your product or service related to music, movies, or other areas of the entertainment sector? Does your brand or company already have a following on MySpace? If so, you should consider MySpace as an important tool. If not, keep an eye on MySpace and remember: it’s not dead yet!

It seems like every few years, something new comes along and changes the promotional marketing landscape. Today, I’d like to discuss the evolution of Sweepstakes, Contests and Games. I’ve worked in this industry for over 20 years and it’s been an amazing run. When I started my career in the promotion industry, the Internet was primarily for education and government workers. And I can remember doing some of the first online promotions for AOL & Prodigy in the early 90’s.

But what’s most exciting to me is the most recent evolution of Sweepstakes, Contests and Games that are happening on Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media sites. The promotion has once again evolved and I’m excited to be talking about that evolution today.

Let’s start with Online Promotions. If you haven’t read Bill Carmody’s book on the subject, you really should. It’s the only book out there on the topic and you can get it at 50% off if you become a fan of AlterSeekers.

This is important because in order to see the future of promotions, you need to understand where we started – both online and in retail. With tools such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, you don’t even need traditional back end databases and other scripting technology in order to launch a sweepstakes, contest or game.

AlterSeekers Fan Page

Facebook Fan Page promotions, for example, can really take off because of the viral nature of Facebook. With the right prizes and the right hypertargeting, you can easily launch promotions that drive awareness, downloads and ultimately incent people to buy your product or service.

Likewise, Twitter creates a sense of urgency within your promotions. Rather than having one 6 to 8 week promotion, you can have an hourly or daily promotion that gets people to pay closer attention to your Tweets. AlterSeekers has continued to stay on top of these evolutions in Brand Promotions – especially in the social media space. It’s where your sales are headed if they’re not there already. The idea of social commerce is no longer a foreign concept to most of us.

AlterSeekers Twitter Page

For more information on Social Marketing, please download our Free Webinar on Monetizing Social Media: How Do You Make Money with Facebook and Twitter.

I’m truly enjoying playing with the Facebook Fan Box:

What I like about it is that so many of our clients are looking for innovative ways to easily add fans to their Facebook pages. So much of traditional media is focused on driving people to the fan page, but with this simple tool, you can get existing Facebook users become a fan without leaving the page that they were on in the first place.

I know that this is all part of the Facebook Connect initiative and that there’s all sorts of other cool things you can do with Facebook Connect, but this very simple JavaScript widget is going to change the way many of our clients are promoting their fan pages. It’s simple, clean and elegant. Just what our clients are looking for.

If you haven’t played around with it, try it now. Just by clicking on the “Become a Fan” button above, you will become a fan of the Trend Micro Fearless Web and be entered to win weekly prizes. One click and you instantly see your picture show up on the row of 10 fans. I love it.