To mark the launch of its new sporty MiTo Quadrifoglio Verde, Alfa Romeo plans on not simply breaking a world record, but bursting it. Naturally, the iconic Italian auto maker is turning to “gamification” to pull off the job.

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.

As winter creeps into many parts of the world, men everywhere must steel themselves for the debilitating seasonal condition that affects an alarming number of them every year: Man Flu.

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.

Coca-Cola has ranked at or near the top in just about every measure of social engagement for some time now. It is the Lady Gaga of brands. How does it manage to keep its 34 million-plus fans sated on a daily basis? An interesting new piece of research offers some insights.

This morning we got a note from Tabjuice, the Facebook commerce-and-marketing specialists. They put together this infographic on what brands should consider if planning to take the plunge into social commerce, that $30 billion market opportunity.

For the past year or so, all the buzz was about growing your follower numbers. But today there are doubts about whether that’s such a good investment. Why? Marketers are finding that their swelling Facebook fan communities and Twitter followings are increasingly not “target-specific” and too damn fickle.

Not long ago, all the talk in digital marketing circles was the power of “Like.” Build an impressive following of people who declare they like your company, organization or product and, the thinking went, you’d have a cheap and cheerful network of brand advocates, the type who would enthusiastically follow your daily posts and tell their friends about it, too. How very naive that all seems today.

Ah, the road trip. Is there an activity more symbolic of fun and freedom than piling into a car with your favorite people and taking off to an unknown destination, listening to great tunes along the way? Hardly, and so Nissan has tapped into the psyche of road trip adventurers for a social media campaign promoting its new 2012 Versa sedan.