Email is a thing of the past, according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.  Although this might be wishful thinking on the Facebook side, I have been hearing a lot lately regarding this question:  will email be supplanted by social networking platforms?

 For sales and marketing professionals, this is an important question, and one that shouldn't be dismissed without understanding the changing communication preferences of our audiences.  The experience of dealing with a sales rep through Facebook is different from one who uses email and telephone exclusively, and this difference has to affect customer perceptions and eventual sales outcomes.

Do you use Facebook in your professional life?  Respond to this poll and see the results here.

I was asked the other day whether or not I would turn a potential client away if I wasn't an expert in the field I was being asked to write in.  It's an interesting question, because it goes right to the reason why so many outsourced communication projects are only marginally successful at best, particularly in more complex industries.

I recently ran across a talk from Oglive One's Brian Featherstonhaugh and was impressed with his take on the traditional (and some might say outmoded) "4 P's of Marketing".