Want to killer your brand really, really quickly? Try killing endangered species like orangutans, and then don't do anything to address it in the social media sphere. That's what happened to the Nestle brand, when advocacy groups such as Greenpeace began protesting Nestle's deforestation of the Indonesian rain forest, according to Social Media Insider Summit "Game Show" panelist and Organic Executive Director Anna Banks. The publicity grew so bad for the candy brand that  protesters created a faux Nestle Killer logo (see below) and began distributing it virally via social media, especially on Facebook. "It turns out …

That's the way Social Media Insider Summit "Game Show" panelist Eric Forst of  Visible Technologies characterized wifi router maker Linksys' social media efforts. That's a little ironic, when you think about it, because Linksys is owned by Cisco, which fundamentally is the backbone for the Internet. But Linksys' presence in social media is really poor. Forst showed examples of poor, one-way social media interactions, including Linksys' corporate blog, which was somewhat less than dynamic, and showed no personality, no user comments, and not much of anything. "I want to see a guy with a propeller on …

The "Game Show" panel at the Social Media Insider Summit got off with a game-change: The disclosure that there would be a "mystery brand" that would get a social media makeover in the audience here in Tahoe; and a mystery missing panelist. That didn't stop the unflappable moderator/game show host, Mike Bloxham of Ball State University, who proceeded, and let the games begin. And just to make it interesting, Bloxham offered a cash prize -- a $20 bill -- to the winner. "I had thought about giving away the MailChimp hat that I've been wearing the past …

To illustrate the power of various influencers, Rally's Dave Rogal provided an obligatory X/Y axis chart plotting the extremely influential Arianna Huffington on the extreme right-hand side. In the middle, he had SocialVibe founder and Online Spin columnist Joe Marchese. On the extreme left, Rogal had a picture of "Steve." No last name was provided, but Rogal said Steve was an old friend of his, whom is an extremely influential tech buff with a small group of friends, including Rogal. "There's all kinds of different influencers and it's incumbent on us to understand who they are," Rogal explained. …

Rally's Dave Rogal is giving Social Media Insider Summit attendees a great tutorial on what "influence" and "influencers" are? Sure, we all think we understand that – implicitly – but he's making it fairly explicit. And as an industry currency, or at least a denominator, he says that "influence is the new engagement." By that, Rogal means that the concept of influence has picked up where the long-waged industry debate around "engagement" left off. Rogal noted that a few years back, when he was on the publisher side, he spent much of his time developing "indices" to …

"How many people know what Rally is," Social Media Insider Summit chair Cathy Taylor asked attendees this morning. "Show of hands." Only a couple went up. "The reason you don't know, is it's a brand new agency start-up within Universal McCann," she said, explaining why morning keynoter, Dave Rogal, VP, Social Media Analytics & Operations at Rally, was going to be a relevant way to start the day. Rogal