The early tally is in. Despite the doom-and-gloom economic predictions, the 2011 holiday shopping season has gotten off to a record start. Online shopping and, dare we say it, the nascent social shopping sector is a major factor in what is shaping up to be a record holiday season.

The silly season is back. This Friday starts the annual countdown to make-or-break-dom for retailers. Already I’m seeing plenty of #BlackFriday chatter, with Best Buy paying out handsomely for the most sought-after hashtag of the year. Days later, it will be #CyberMonday.

Last week I was asked to deliver a presentation on social SEO and what Google’s search formula tweaks now mean for brands and organizations looking to boost their visibility. This is a rapidly evolving issue, but there are some enduring points here that all organizations (and journalists too!) should keep in mind. Hopefully this guide will help you.

That’s right. The banking industry just may be one of the most anti-social of all consumer-facing sectors, a new piece of research shows.

If you are not yet familiar with the story of 22-year-old Molly Katchpole, you’d better listen up. Peeved about a new $5 monthly bank fee imposed by Bank of America, Katchpole logged on to Change.org a few weeks ago to start an online petition urging the bank to back off. That’s when things got interesting.

The numbers are trending nicely for social media. A new piece of research out this week estimates the global social network ad spend will top $8 billion next year and approach $10 billion the year after. There’s another social media figure on the rise too: despite the increased investment in social, companies are getting blindsided by the social media-fueled PR crisis, as our recent research into this shows. Here then are a few important tips to consider for integrating social media into your crisis communications plan.

Mere hours after Muammar Gaddafi was killed in southern Libya last week, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), Admiral James Stavridis took to his Twitter feed and to his Facebook page to announce an end to military operations. People from around the world used the forum to thank him personally for NATO’s efforts in ousting Libya’s strong man. Another 43 re-Tweeted the message. As of the time of writing it was “Liked” 269 times and shared another 146 times. To the victor goes the Tweets, I guess.

Major companies and organizations are investing in social media monitoring to protect their brand’s reputation. After all, nobody wants a customer gripe to go unnoticed and turn into a viral PR nightmare. It’s sound planning, a smart investment. But social media monitoring software is no panacea. Reputation monitoring, or e-reputation if you will, very much requires the human touch.

I’ve only twice ever turned to Twitter to clear up a vexing customer service glitch. The results were deeply gratifying: I got a helpful response in a fairly timely manner resolving my ongoing feuds problems with Groupon Italia and Bank of America. Turns out I’m not alone in thinking this is the future of attentive customer service, as new research shows.

I was recently asked by a very frustrated marketer why it was that sometimes she could spend half her morning coming up with a post idea, writing it, and then despairing afterwards when nobody commented on it or clicked “Like.” Equally baffling, some of her breeziest posts were getting a great response.