Marketing Pilgrim

There are many great reasons why you should set up some kind of social media monitoring dashboard. One such reason is to listen to the complaints received by your competitors and adapt your marketing messaging to capitalize on their weaknesses.

Well, score one to Motorola and Verizon. Their latest print ad for the Droid X includes the following statement:

And most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like…

So smart!

Of course, they didn’t exactly need to actively monitor iPhone’s apparent flaws–you can’t go online without practically tripping over customer complaints–but it serves as a reminder that you should keep an eye not just on your reputation, but your competition’s.

While the headline may not entirely tell the story it does tell most of it. In a world that wants everything right now it sure is interesting how some people like to slap the hands of those that provide that kind of service and do it better than anyone else.

The French competition authority is claiming that Google is being discriminatory in how they allow or disallow Adwords customers to use the syatem. The Wall Street Journal reports

France’s competition authority Wednesday said that Google Inc.’s online ad service discriminated against a client, a decision that comes amid the country’s growing concern over Google’s dominance of the lucrative French search market.

In a preliminary ruling, the Authorité de la Concurrence said that Google’s Adwords system, which prompts ads to appear alongside search results, lacked transparency and “resulted in discriminatory treatment.”

At first look this kind of an announcement should followed by a sarcastic comment of “Really? I would have never guessed.” It only makes sense that colleges would be using social media since there is little question as to how involved their target market it. What is interesting is how their adoption outpaces that of the business world, especially the larger companies.

The study titled, Social Media and College Admissions: Higher-Ed Beats Business in Adoption of New Tools for Third Year was performed by Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Eric Mattson CEO, Financial Insite (hat tip to @chuckhester for the alert this AM via Twitter). The following chart may raise some eyebrows if it is indeed accurate.