Herding Cats

Preface

According to a recent poll of marketing executives and academics, one of the top marketing challenges for 2014 included the ability to better understand social media and execute social media campaigns. Indeed, keeping track of the latest social media platforms can seem like herding cats (to be honest, we’ve never herded a cat; yet we can imagine the challenges involved in such a process). This is because the social media ecosystem has evolved significantly over the past 10 years. In 2004, it was Facebook. Twitter came along in 2006. In 2010, it was Instagram and Pinterest, with Snapchat and Vine following close behind in 2011 and 2012, respectively. As we write this, Instagram’s new video-sharing feature and Facebook’s Paper platform ...