Cocktail Hour: January 27, 2012

Did you thank your Community Manager on Monday? The third celebration of Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD) acted as a reminder of how important the person behind the scenes is. Whether you employ your own community managers on behalf of your brand or agency, or you participate in any communities online, you know there is a real person behind a lot of conversation. Cheers to you, community managers!

Aside from this appreciation, here’s five great reads from the past week:

Content Marketing Boot Camp: Everything You Wanted To Know in One Post (Contently): Set aside a good chunk of time for this behemoth collection of awesome. Whether you’re an experienced copywriter or just starting out, each article contained within here is a valuable lesson (or reminder!) on how to use your words effectively.

How to Deliver Exceptional Client Service (Smashing Magazine): People love personalization. More importantly, so do clients. None of us want to feel like a number or an automated routine. This absolutely applies to client service. As you’ve seen on here before, going the extra mile in your client relationships goes a long way. Make an effort, provide value and potentially gain new projects. All a win-win.

Google+ Prepares to Revolutionize the Local Landscape (Ad Age): While also in the news this week for its changes in privacy policy, the integration taking place between Google+ and Google Places will make location-based marketing even simpler. Through simply looking up an address, Google will hand-deliver extra detailed information through the Google+ page. Will this encourage more businesses to get onboard with Google+?

Nurturing the Future of Advertising (Talent Zoo): Everything is changing. Yes, this is frequently applied to technologies and platforms, but it’s also in the way that we do our jobs day-to-day. Experience and abilities are also evolving, and it’s important to realize that we need to effectively nurture and encourage advertising professionals to stay with it. Past hiring practices may not carry into the future. How can we positively change this?

Follow the State of the Union on Twitter (Twitter): The yearly State of the Union address was on Tuesday, and as usual, the social world took notice. Twitter compiled this handy guide to users prior to the speech, and produced an infographic explaining how the Twitterverse reacted to the speech. Needless to say, #SOTU had legs. This truly goes to show the power of tracking analytics and how leveraging social conversation can directly affect public policy. Will Twitter be hand-delivering this to our leaders in Washington? Could be worth it.

What have you been reading this week?