Do brands need to respond when consumers make comments on social media?

When Liz Shows was introduced for the last panel of the Social Media Insider Summit as a "deep ocean exploration expert," my first thought was, "Oh no, not another ridiculous new example of digital hyperbabble. But then I found out she is genuinely involved in actual ocean exploration, not the sea of Internet content. Shows, who is manager of corporate communications at Odyssey Marine Exploration, is a panelist on the "Should Social Responsibility Come With Social Media Marketing" panel, and she seems to believe it does. In an era when everyone has a digital publishing platform in their pocket, she …

It's a pretty big multiple, according to Brian Madden, Executive Director of Audience Development and Social Media, Hearst Digital, and the opening keynoter on Day Three of the Social Media Insider Summit on Captiva Island. Madden showed an example of a Hearst initiative asking users to post and share images of some interesting takes on hot dogs. Madden said the feature generated "20 shares," which in turn, "generated 52,000 referrals on our site." "It just goes to show the power of a share," he said, adding that Hearst currently generates only 2% to 3% of its audience from social sharing, …

As ironic as that might sound, it was an important point raised by Tumblr panel moderator David Rollo, Chief Strategy Officer of BLiNQ Media, at the Social Media Insider Summit. Rollo was referring to the ironically named advertising model on Tumblr, which the social blogging platform doesn't seem to want to promote much. Panelist Dave Surgan said that is simply because, unlike Facebook, Tumblr cares more about their users' experience, than their advertisers'.

That's more or less how Marshall Wright, head of social at spunky Austin-based digital shop T3, described what the essence of Tumblr really is during a panel on Day Three of the Social Media Insider Summit on Captiva Island. "I like to refer to it as a virtual bedroom wall," he explained, likening Tumblr users to the kind of people who grew up in the 70s pinning posters of Farah Fawcett or Nike "Just Do It" ads on their bedroom walls. "That's what the audiences of Tumblr are doing right now." Hmmm, that description makes me wonder what the difference …

Questions concerning the future of data science came from the audience at the Social Media Insider Summit -- specifically with jobs. By 2014, there will be 150,000 data science jobs needed, according to one attendee.  "There is a lack of investment in data science," agrees Fahad Khan, Founder and CEO, One Public. "But there is risk involved because typically to get really good at the deep analytical level you have to invest a lot of time in implementation." Khan says you have to decide, for example, "what you think positive sentiment …

No, they're not magicians, but they work magic, Engauge's Teresa Caro said during the custom analytics panel at the Social Media Insider Summit. "These marketingmaticians -- marketing mathematicians -- are becoming incredibly important to people," she said, proving that mathematics and algorithms aren't going away anytime soon.

In the interest of scale, agencies would kill for a one-size-fits-all approach to social media marketing. Alas, according to Teresa Caro, VP of Social Marketing at Engauge, that's just not possible. At Engauge, they still take a "go slow to go fast approach," because most brands are at different stages of their social marketing strategies, Caro told attendees of MediaPost's Social Media Insider Summit on Tuesday. "Some are still very focus on organic targeting ... some are working on more advanced forms of targeting," she said. For every new client, said Caro, "We're going to define [the] current state, and …

Eric Berkowitz, head of product innovation at Tracx, told Social Media Insider Summit attendees that he believes the trend in social media analytics is "moving away from dashboards and platforms and [people] just wanting to look at data." Speaking on the custom analytics panel, Berkowitz said the big push is integrating the data "into their everyday business processes" so that the date doesn't need to be analyzed, per se, but just informs a process or system people use in their course of business. One of the big issues the panel addressed was what the underlying metric is that people are …

What does a like mean on Facebook? Not much. Should there be a dislike button? What's valuable on Facebook? If they have a good story to share, I'll read it, according to one student. Early access and a sneak peak works. The student participating in the Social Insider Summit panel never click on an ad. Surprise! They don't pay attention to ads in Twitter either.