It seems like everyone and their mother has a blog. My mother doesn’t have one, but if she did, it would be called “Gretta’s Corner” and the content would consist of ghost-written posts from my dog.

I came across a disturbing blog post, encouraging us to “scratch ‘marketing’ from our social-media vocabulary.” Huh? Isn’t social media just another key tool in our Unified Marketing toolbox?

While the latest social media obsession changes from week to week, the simple truth is that a well run blog should be at the foundation of most well-rounded social media strategies. Blogs don't get too much attention from the buzz-crazed social media industry anymore, but there is still tons of value in digital marketing through blogs, especially in B2B. Search engines love them, they are a great crisis-communications management tool, they can be great at aggregating your various social media activities across Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and are a simple way to build visitor engagement into your website. 

Building and executing digital media strategies for highly regulated financial and healthcare companies inherently creates two competing forces. As general “social media consultants” we must be constantly aware of the latest Web 2.0 tools, Facebook advertising targeting features, trending Twitter topics and Wordpress plug-ins. The list is endless. Battling against that requirement are the extremely rigid restrictions that the healthcare and financial industries place on our clients, but also the internal barriers that our clients create for themselves. As a marketing agency, we are constantly faced with new limitations on what new marketing tactics can actually be executed on our client’s behalf.

By now, you've probably seen updates from your friends posting their Foursquare check-ins on Twitter and Facebook to announce that they are now the "Mayor" of a coffee shop or local pizza place.