In the all-too-thin file of “Thing Facebook has Done Right Lately”, we find a quiet app launch that greatly eases the lives of community managers everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Facebook Mobile Page Manager.

Equal parts “hooray” and “finally!”, page managers everywhere no longer have to make a dash to a PC whenever they want to moderate a comment thread, post an update, or pull up some insights on the fly. The full feature set includes:

• Post new updates and photos
• Get notified about new activity when it happens
• Respond, post and comment as your page from your mobile
• Manage all of your pages from the app
• View your latest page insights

The catch? It’s currently only available on iPhone, so all you android users are still relegated to your PC’s. Oh, Facebook…

We’ve seen numerous activations like these in the press lately, with a cool activation for AXE Australia being the latest to make the news. Hyper-localized, one-time or one-place events, with big-yet-personalized special effects, and some guy filming everyone’s reaction. Check it out below:

It’s a cool idea, for sure, and right on brand. (If your brand is AXE and your persona is sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.) The question marketers are asking themselves is, what does it do for the brand? The video’s great, and since it arrived via link in my email, I’ll likely pass it on to a few of my closest peers and maybe even post it on FB. But that’s a lot of work and $$$ for a viral video.

So what else can this do for a brand? While you’re contemplating this, check out one more fresh example – this time from Nike, and try to get Hall of the Mountain King out of your head after it’s done. I dare you.

While not every activation has to have a direct path to a brand’s bottom line (in this case, sales), they should all be part of a vague journey in that direction. It’s interesting to get into the mind of the consumer at this point – certainly in Nike and AXE’s case, the brands have made a formidable impression on those participating with the events directly. But what about the rest of us?

The Nike project in particular is getting a lot of accolades online, but a cursory search shows that much of the coverage is limited to the marketing industry. So who is this press most valuable for? A brand looking to expand awareness and drive sales of its new free-form running shoe, or the marketing company behind the concept of twisting a giant building as somebody holds said shoe?

Do you think activations like these hold widespread, long-lasting value for the brands involved?

From players putting Twitter handles on jerseys to the instant supersaturation of “Linsanity”, it’s apparent that social media has been playing an increasingly large role in the world of sports. 80% of home viewers and 63% of spectators at live events check social media channels to gain insights during the game. The NFL draft will never be the same, and Missisippi State just put a hashtag in their end-zone. So how do players, clubs, and sponsors alike get the most out of the technology, while at the same time minimizing risk?

Some teams and clubs have embraced it – MLB saw a 36% jump in All-Star ballots cast after launching an aggressive Twitter campaign – while others shy away, like the Danish national soccer team, who put a total ban on players interacting with friends and fans via social media for fear of giving away strategies ahead of the UEFA EURO 2012 tournament.

For what it’s worth, despite the fact that the 2012 Olympics are being touted as the “world’s first social media Olympics”, the officials there are cracking down hard with stringent policies restricting athlete, sponsor, and even spectator social media use – demonstrating that once again, policy-makers are lagging when compared to real-world social media use.

What are some factors that have come into play as you’ve pitched, planned, and executed campaigns centered around a sports brand or sponsor? Were the brand executives risk-takers, eagerly embracing new technologies and techniques, or were they cautious, following “tried and true” methods and learning from others’ mistakes?

Pinterest is a classic case of a site you’ve never heard of, and then all of a sudden it’s everywhere. You hear the word “Pinterest” 3x a day. It infiltrates your Facebook newsfeed, your email fills up with invite requests, and your mom asks you if you’ve seen her latest crochet pinboard and wants to know why you’re not following her. And then 5 months after that happens, your clients want to be on it, and you need a strategy.

A couple of interesting digressions, and then we’ll get to the meat (food pun!) of Mashable‘s smart and simple best practices guidelines. First: as it currently stands, Pinterest’s terms of use allow only for “noncommercial” use of the site. This hasn’t prevented major brands and retailers from forging ahead on the platform, but it’s one more reason to consult with a lawyer familiar with the space.

The second digression  – food lovers were among the first mass group to embrace and utilize Pinterest as a daily habit. Food photography and a tendency to collect recipes found a natural fit with Pinterest’s basic design and function, and today some of the top brands leveraging the platform are, as a result, food-related. Whole Foods, Cooking Light, and individual products brands like Panera and Choboni are cooking up an appetizing (food pun!) experience for users and there’s no reason why RocketXL’s food brands shouldn’t be doing the same.

Mashable outlined 8 “Best Practices” for food brands using Pinterest. Some of them are no-brainers, and others offer fresh (food pun!) angles perfect for dropping into a stale strategy deck. Most importantly, many of these can be adapted and expanded beyond “food brands” and applied to any of our clients looking to set up on the site:

1. Add Value: Bring something to the table (food pun!) – whether it’s food prep tips or useful recipe ideas, give your fans something they can USE.
2. Tell Stories: Find something to share beyond recipes – give followers a “through our eyes” look at your brand’s world.
3. Host a Contest: Kind of a no-brainer, but definitely consult a lawyer to ensure execution is legally air-tight.
4. Curate Core Values: Showcase the lifestyle your brand represents. (Whole Foods has boards titled “We’re Used to Recycling” and “How Does Your Garden Grow”.
5. Collaborate: Create boards that allow external “Pinners” to contribute to. Sending out a new product for review? Ask selected bloggers to post their recipes/photos here.
6. Engage and Intersect: Find fun and unexpected ways to incorporate news and events outside of your brand into your boards – your followers will feel you’re on the same wavelength as they are.
7. Leverage Offline Events: Looking for a place to put photo and video footage? Look no further!
8. Be Pinnable: Make sure you have quality visual material to pin. Websites built in all Flash are unpinnable. Make sure you install “Pin It” and “Follow Me” buttons next to the rest of your social media plugins, and find ways to cross-promote your Pinterest at all channels.

These aren’t the be-all and end-all of good Pinterest strategy, but they’re a solid place to start. The “Food and Drink” Category is the largest and most active on the site (heck, I have a board devoted entirely to Oreos alone!) and there’s rarely been an audience so ripe (food pun!) for brand engagement.

While the purchasing power of U.S. Latinos is not a new concept to RXL  (Hello, Jarritos, Mundet, Cholula!), it’s always good to have our knowledge spelled out for us in a solid way. Not to mention how useful this is to pass onto our clients!

The conversation around so-called Latino “buying power” is one that’s fast expanding beyond traditional Hispanic products as more and more brands are tuning into this trillion-dollar potential. Resources like http://latinobrandingpower.com/ and http://www.hispanicprblog.com/ offer a wealth of knowledge and news relating to Hispanic marketing and should be added into our daily diet of Advergising Age, Mashable, and other broader marketing news sources.

How does this all come back to us? Behold, a similar infographic displaying Latino activity in social media! While the link between social media usage and purchasing/revenue is always an elusive one, we should be consistently leveraging these insights to better serve our brands.