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I always tell clients that it is no longer enough to be beautiful when it comes to marketing online. The Internet has become more like an Oscar after-party than it is like the airport Ramada. Online, you’re never the lone beauty in the hotel lounge. Online, you’re surrounded by equal or greater beauties. What’s more, the most successful online social media barflies are aggressive in addition to gorgeous. Too many companies that have invested vast resources in social have Pretty Boy/Girl Syndrome. A symptom of this disease is an expectation that others will go out of their way to pursue you.

I have been a professional marketer to online communities since way before Facebook and Twitter existed.

The problem with most social media marketing agencies is that we’re fickle. We tend to keep rushing into the future, adopting anything and everything hot and new and overlooking the rest. In our constant hunger for the latest and greatest, we have mostly abandoned working-class heroes like forums and message boards, preferring exciting new money to boring old money. But isn’t any kind of money good?

I’ve run a social media marketing agency since Autumn 2006. In that time, we’ve learned quite a lot. One of my biggest learnings is that you can’t always get a direct bead on your demographic target–and that’s OK. We’ve worked for a broad spectrum in these five years, from health care and pharma to huge radio astronomy projects; from global non-profits to very specific public affairs campaigns. Social media marketing and blogger outreach and activation can be effective for everything, though it isn’t always clear how. B2B seems to be the least confident that social can help them but I believe we have really sorted it out: What I’ve learned is that if you cannot target your dream customer directly, you can target everyone around him.

Most social media marketing strategies are like my mum and me in Genova: we were supremely blissed-out happy with our experience of the authentic, delicious, "to the tooth" spaghetti al pesto. A proper online brand management and social media marketing campaign demands a multi-course meal of more than just spaghetti al Twitter, pasta a la Facebook, and lasagna al Instagram.

There are thousands of people online this very moment who are working hard on sorting out how to make the most of a life that has been affected by illness and disease — their own or as caregivers. Tens of thousands. Being a caregiver isn’t easy and walking into the brick wall known as diagnosis is even harder and more life-changing.

Online reputation is a marathon and not a sprint.

Social media rewards consistency, persistence, and attention, even if it isn't super-service or if you take a full 24-hours to respond to a query or concern.

The worst thing about the internet has been the commodification of friendship

When I have a client that needs something launched in a big way I go at it with guns-blazing.