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This week we look at six recent stories and how they affect marketing decisions.

First up is the sale of Gawker to another media property and closing down of its main website. Here is Nick Denton’s last post and Peter Thiel’s op/ed piece in the NY Times. Even if you agree that what Gawker does is despicable, you should give them props for being allowed to report on public figures such as Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan. Clearly, the Gawker personal attacks decided its legal fate, although this piece is a good example of covering both sides of the issue by one of Gawker’s contributors. However, the results of the lawsuit do set a uncomfortable precedent and it has some spillover for online privacy expectations, even for private citizens.

Our second piece is a survey out of the Duke business school which shows an interesting trend in how social media spending is going up, even though people’s future expectations on that spend is going down. This could be caused by a bandwagon effect, or diminished expectations, or the natural evolution of social media interest as folks are moving on to other technologies and techniques.

Our next story is about how Google warns it will crack down on “intrusive interstitials” next January. Having lots of ad pollution, especially over mobile searches and websites, is annoying more than just users, and Google is taking more of a leadership role in trying to stem this terrible tide and do the right thing.

Our fourth item is to call attention to a feature film that was released earlier this summer by Martin guitars. Called The Ballad of the Marin Dreadnought, it features major recording music stars from rock, jazz and country who have used their guitars. The Dreadnought has been around for 100 years. This is a great example of how companies can use their history and create content to help build and promote their brands. The movie shows off how this instrument has played a key role in their customers’ lives.

Next up is a question from one of our listeners, who writes: “I’ve lost faith that Twitter is the right channel for our B2B efforts, and yet I can’t bring myself to shut it down. What say you?” We both agree that you shouldn’t stick with a platform just because everyone else is using it. But you also shouldn’t shut it down either since that can raise questions about the health of the company. Use Twitter as a conversation channel or to recognize and celebrate customer and employee successes or simply as a fast, low-cost bonus delivery channel for company news.

Our final piece is this story about how CMOs Fail To Go Beyond Brand Awareness On LinkedIn. The author noted that most of the sales and marketing leaders were using LinkedIn for message delivery, applying old media thinking to LinkedIn. But there are better reasons than focusing on lead generation that could be more productive. For example, you could look at ways to engage an audience with LinkedIn Groups and its blog-like posts and add content to other places on the site. These activities could help you find find potential customers who care about what you have to say.

About David Strom

David Strom is a former editor-in-chief of Network Computing and Tom's Hardware who has written two computer networking books and thousands of articles about B2B IT.

About Paul Gillin

Paul Gillin, host of FIR B2B, is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. Full bio