In a few short years, millennials—consumers currently ages 18 to 34—will account for a sizeable portion of US purchase decision-makers. Yet Bazaarvoice found these digital natives are already using and creating online content to recommend or dissuade friends, family and anonymous site-visitors from a brand, product or service.

They might be called cross-platform stories, transmedia projects, branded entertainment, or even alternate reality games, but, whatever you call them, at the heart of these new forms of entertainment is engagement across platforms. It’s hard to believe that the earliest “extended” experiences are now at least a decade old, and it can be difficult getting a handle on the full scope of what’s already come in the world of transmedia storytelling.

People are making 500 billion influence impressions on one another about products and services every year. Reach the three types of influencers: Social Broadcasters, Potential Influencers and Mass Influencers

What appears at first to be a spin-free, grass-roots marketplace of opinions and recommendations is rapidly turning into a hotly contested battleground where public relations firms and a new breed of imagemakers help businesses counter negative online comments and manage their online reputations -- even giving people free products in hopes of generating positive comments.

Ok, so what is the difference between “search” and “social media” marketing? It takes so little lately to make me feel like a dinosaur. I vaguely get this: people are bouncing around between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google to find everything from a job to a date to a product—but I wasn’t really sure how this could be used to market anything, at least market in some systematic, strategic way.