@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Social Media Topics

TED – Ideas Worth Spreading

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One of the great things the internet has to offer is the ability to facilitate sharing of knowledge and ideas. The different Wiki’s (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikileaks) are proof positive that people want to share what they know for the benefit of all.

Another great thing the internet has spawned is TED – Ideas Worth Spreading.

It all started in 1984 in a conference of experts from three fields: Technology, Entertainment and Design. They gathered to share ideas, delivered in short speeches, at a conference. It was so innovative and successful that it continues strongly today with two Annual TED conferences. One in Long Beach/Palm springs in the spring and TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, UK in the summer.

The goal of TED, which is owned by a private nonprofit foundation and curated by Chris Anderson, is to foster the spread of great ideas. It aims to enable the great thinkers, the greatest visionaries and most inspiring teachers of the world, spread their ideas by providing them with a platform.

In the desire to create a better future, today’s TED invites the most interesting speakers, no matter what their field, to present the “Talk of Their Life” in 18 minutes or less. Those talks are photographed and released free online so millions of people around the world would be able to gain a better understanding of the issues facing the world.

Whether it is a talk by Sir Ken Robinson, who spoke about education in 2006 and said that schools are killing creativity,  (and 300 million people viewed it online), or Shai Agassi, the driving force behind a bold plan for an electric car, or Randy Pausch’s last speech at Carnegie Mellon University, when he knew he has only 3-6 months to live. The speakers are always fascinating. TEDTalks proved so popular that a new website had to be constructed in 2007 to accommodate all the traffic.

Over the years, speakers have included Jane Goodall, Al Gore, Billy Graham, Frank Gehry, Bill Gates, Bono, Annie Lennox, Quincy Jones and many more interesting people. All that information is available on their website for free viewing.

TED has also established TEDPrize which grants the winner $100,000 and “One Wish to Change the World” using TED’s powerful network. Past winner include Bill Clinton, Bono and Jamie Oliver.

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Tumblr Becomes More Sociable with Launch of the New Share Button

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The publishing platform known as Tumblr has officially joined the social networking class of tools alongside more popular Facebook and Twitter options. While the Tumblr button is very similar to other bookmarking buttons offered by a large variety of services, it does offer a significantly more advanced options for the display posted.

Customized Tumblr Display Flexibility

Tumblr developers have provided a short set of coding that is easily copy-pasted into any content that you would like to promote through their micro-blogging service. The difference is in the results. The new Tumblr button gives users total authority over how their content is displayed when shared via Tumbler.

Users can decide if their link appears as:

  • Videos
  • Links
  • Quotes
  • Photos

Further user customization includes attributions, pre-filled descriptions, and even specific selections of text if desired. Buttons can meet configuration standards for Ruby, JavaScript, or PHP.

Add the Tumblr Share Button Bookmarklet

Head to the Tumblr website and log into your account. Go to the Goodies Section, and you will see the new Tumblr share button. Drag it over to your toolbar. Now each time you see an interesting item worth linking, just click on the Tumblr bookmarklet and publish it.

Tumblr Improvements

The Tumblr site is undeniably showing improvements in GUI as well as functionality. Customization options give users immense control over how their shared content is displayed, even offering an improvement in blogging systems.

Tumblr Users

Tumblr’s site has achieved an overall traffic ranking of 50 on Alexa, with a US traffic ranking of 25. Users do show an extended amount of time at around seven minutes. Predominantly users tend to be childless females between the ages of 18 and 34 who enjoy browsing Tumblr’s site from work or college.

Overall improvements of the Tumblr site including the social bookmark sharing tool addition is likely to bring Tumblr just what they were looking for with this upgrade, an increased share of social bookmarking users who enjoy and benefit from their available services.

 

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The PR State of Facebook

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In a few days in Silicon Valley there were some rather unusual ideas, stories, and news articles, pitched that insinuated that Google was invading their users’ privacy. PR agency Burson-Marsteller, even offered to assist a highly influential blogger write an Anti-Google op-ed, promising him it would be posted in places like The Huffington Post or The Washington Post.

Not ignorant of their own share of privacy or security shortcomings, they were likely none-too-happy when Burson’s offer fell apart as the blogger turned him down, then publicly posted the emails in which Burton had asked him for assistance in publicly maligning Google. Subsequently, this failure to communicate was compounded as USA Today latched onto the story and accused Burton of launching a “whisper campaign” about Google on the behalf of a client that was unnamed.

In a world of instant coverage on any type of event, those very elements on which Facebook thrives upon, it is quite difficult to understand how anyone at Facebook thought that it would be a remotely good idea, or one that was kept a tight secret. Is this a sure sign that Facebook executives are worried about recent Google social marketing elements such as the +1 system? Will their willingness to execute black hat behaviors cost them enough users to matter? Unlikely, but it has likely done irreparable damage to their reputation, at least for now.

Google?

Since many users may actually have seen or suffered from privacy issues from Google themselves. As usual, in most situations, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle of both sides. The problem is, Google has said very little about the incident and as of yet has made no public comment about the failed campaign. In a way, this could also lend the some weight to the original plan by bringing Google privacy issues even more into the public eye.

The real problem is that now that Facebook has made such an irrational and hasty decision that will likely cause them to suffer from some form of back lash, and any real issues that Google may need to address, could have been brought to light a bit more properly, will fall to the wayside as most publicity outlets and news releases will report it and spin it as the story in which Facebook failed in an underhanded campaign to publicly bash another company.

Love-Hate Relationship

Facebook’s most recent PR plan to smear Google was an embarrassment and failure on more than a public relations scale.

In the internet advertising world, Facebook seems to be on the losing end in effective marketing and product branding. If you monitor Facebook regularly, you know it is not uncommon to see someone ranting, raving, and railing at Facebook for some imagined, or even a realistic slight. A week or two later they are back, having forgiven and forgotten their source of displeasure, or at least enough to continue to use Facebook.

As Facebook has begun to integrate itself into everything from daily deal websites to major retail chain, we have largely come to depend on it as our go-to log-in integration of choice. This is predominately because Facebook integration sites will auto-complete most of the information that will commonly be required to complete a new registration for a website’s products or services. Users would certainly be frustrated and disappointed if Facebooks PR flog affected their Facebook experience.

Will Users Boycott Facebook?

Many groups openly boycott websites that make immoral or illegal decisions. However, just as many points above prove, it would be quite difficult to boycott a large interactive element of our social media usage, most certainly Facebook that so many now use for advertising, entertainment, social network, or even just chatting with long distance relatives.

 Of course there are a few obvious boycotting methods, anything from ceasing to use Facebook, refusal to integrate other programs and remove already integrated applications from your Facebook account, and even simply deleting your account.

PR on Facebook

Facebook has already proven to be an effective method of PR for a few businesses.

  • AT&T
  • Microsoft
  • WordPress
  • Coca-Cola
  • The New York Times

Although likely the best representation of the shortlist, many other smaller businesses have also found great advantage to applying Facebook capabilities for better consumer interaction.

Business Promotion

Facebook has proven a very handy tool in managing membership relationships for fans of your products, or even groups related to your business. This is a very cost effective tool for group, member, or fan management that will allow users to create events calendars, or even just supply other leads and information that could provide additional networking benefits for those same consumers.

Facebook Connect

Adding this handy tool allows users to quickly register with your website by allowing them to approve Facebook integration. This easy option is highly encouraging for those who may not want to spend time filling out many fields, even those who have interest in your brand.

Brand Affinity

One of the most important public relations elements that can be satisfied via Facebook. If you have a product or service that directly, or even indirectly meets a need and connects a user to their Facebook presence. With the text and visuals you have the ability to provide for easy viewing, this can be a great beginning in building the brand awareness that can be invaluable to your business.

 

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TweetStats Real-Time Twitter Statistics

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There seems to be an entire industry devoted to creating Twitter tools. Some are highly effective and worth the few moments it may take to register or login to their respective systems. Others tend to make a quick debut, likely via Twitter or another social media, and then quickly fade into the background as a victim of not enough features, or too complicated or spammy of a registration process.

With so many social media marketers standing up to take notice of every rise and dip in statistics, many may use a variety of tools to gauge how their marketing efforts may be influencing their brand awareness and subsequent sales.

There Be Fairies Furnishing ur XML

Along with a rather unique loading message, TweetStats supplies one of the first third-party Twitter applications to those who wish to find out basic statistics about their account including:

  • Tweets per month
  • Tweets per selected day
  • Tweet density
  • Aggregate hourly and daily tweets
  • Interface statistics

Users can even check out their Tweet Clouds to see which words are most frequently used by them or in reply to users tweets.

Monitor the TweetStats of Other Users

TweetStats can also be used to monitor the status of other Twitter accounts as well. Users can check on the stats of their favorite brands, closest competitors, and up-and-coming companies they may have an interest in.  It can be used as a highly effective tool for those who may want a birds-eye view of their toughest rivals’ social media campaigns.

Who Uses TweetStats?

Alexa says most users spend around a minute on page views and around four minutes on site examining their Twitter statistics. With a page rank of 14,884 in the U.S. statistics show that most users are Hispanic, highly educated, childless females, ages 25 – 34 who tend to browse from work. An unusual stat for TweetStats shows that in the city of Königstein, Germany, TweetStats page ranking is at #31. Lifetime TweetStats statistics show a lifetime steady growth in popularity for this social media tool.

FEATURED USERS!!!

This is an impressive affordable way to increase your twitter followers, it uses banner advertising on the tweetstats site to allow you do twitter follwer advertising for as little as $40. The system will generat an impression count, a banner from your twitter account and then pay with Credit Card or PayPal and your campaign is underway. This is a wonderful little feature that can help you increase your twitter followers and because it’s tied to tweet stats, you can count onthe fact that they are quality followers.


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Main Stream Social Media: Foursquare, Twitter and the NYC Mayor

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If you needed proof to how much social media is becoming the mainstream media, here’s a little tale:

Mayor Bloomberg, of New York City, made April 16 the official “Foursquare Day” in the city of New York.

Foursquare.com, a location based application that offers its subscribers the ability to “check in” through their smartphones and text messages, into an establishment to tell their friends where they are at the moment. By doing so users get prizes, collect virtual badges and redeem them for free stuff. They can also meet other users whom they don’t personally know but are at the location at the same time, and, as they say, let serendipity take its course. Foursquare has more than 8 million users.

So Mayor Bloomberg visited the Manhattan office of Foursquare, a social media platform, and made a proclamation through Twitter: “I’ve officially declared 4/16 @Foursquare Day in NYC #4sqday,” he tweeted and posted on Facebook as well. Together he reached at least 100,000 followers (70,680 on Twitter and 30,660 on Facebook).

Why this date? 4/16 – four squared. And the company is trying to get other cities around the world to declare it so for next year.

What a way for a mayor to boost his city’s economy.

A day later we learned the results: 3 million people checked -in in New York City alone and a lot of activity in charities they support. Foursquare events collected food, donated money to Japan disaster victims, supported the Red Cross, Humane society and more. On their blog they write “We love the fact that 4sqday helped contribute to these causes in a spontaneous, grassroots way” Mayor Bloomberg.

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How Online Customer Preferences and Feedback Has Changed

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It has only been a couple of years since integrated log-ins began to creep into our everyday tasks online. Although it began on a smaller scale, such as the 2008 integration of Yahoo and Google ID’s with Zoho, from this small test in integration preferences, an entirely new beast grew.

Logging in via third party is no longer a delightful surprise in most cases, indeed, the lack of integrated log in can actually deter visitors from signing up, or logging into your site, especially when there are like options elsewhere that have the nifty one-click integration option. This type of log in integration is referred to as a type of social log-in service. Although Google came out strongly by quickly adding early integration for all of their available applications, it seems that the wind in Google’s social log-in services sails may have shifted.

Facebook Takes the Lead

Janrain, a web company that tracks social web data, states that since the first time they began reporting on these statistics in January 2010, Google has been overtaken. During the first quarter of 2011, 35% of users chose to use Facebook as a log-in option over all others. In the last quarter of 2010, the number hung around 27%.

However, this may not be indicative of overall users. When given the option on 350,000 different sites, users will choose not to integrate their Facebook account, but will choose other methods, or manual log-in instead, at a rate of 65%.

How is This Changing the Consumer Voice for Business

It may be difficult to determine who benefits the most, even though this new aspect of social media marketing seems to have perks for all. Social log-ins are appealing to businesses as they can help to personalize content, interactions, and brand awareness. Social log-ins are an attractive option for users who seem to love the feel of interacting with those of whom they make regular, or significant purchases from.

While Urban city guide sites like Yelp give consumers the ability to review products or services of any company on site, it seems most users these days prefer to simply Facebook ‘Like’ a fan page to show their loyalty to brands they enjoy, as well as to gain benefit by keeping more up-to-date on sales, or enjoy social chatter on the latest in the industry.

A recent study showed that while 20% of people claim they prefer to click a Facebook Fan pages ‘Like’ button to show their preference for local businesses, only 13% report being willing to write a review for the same business.

Turning the Tide

Although this may indeed turn the tide a bit on how users will begin to review local businesses, this is certainly not now nor likely to be the end all spot to find all of the pertinent information that users may be searching for.

The same study also showed that 52% of adult users under 35 will still check three or more websites when researching products or services locally or online. The main site still searched is Google at 63%.

At this point, the type of business will still rank high on the users list of what sites need to be searched. While those considering larger purchases may prefer the interaction that Facebook provides, users who may just want to check out how good a restaurants’ dishes are may still prefer the detailed review style of Yelp.

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Small Business Solutions: YellowBot

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YellowBot.com, a company formed in 2006 by Erron Silverstein out of Burbank, CA., aims to connect local businesses with local shoppers. It is a form of free advertisement businesses might want to look into.

Not only can potential customers find businesses in their area, they can read customers’ feedbacks and experiences. It is a peer referral information site, that some say is a combination of Yellow Pages and Yelp.

Their idea is as follows: Let’s not forget, with all the technological advancements, that we still live in the real world. That is where our homes are, where we work and where we shop. Dry cleaner, Veterinarian, car mechanic, smog check station – we want all those to be as close to one another as possible so we can save time. The site helps you pull it all together and share it with the world. When there are enough stories about a place, a clearer picture of the business emerges.

The site is free for searchers and businesses, and it joins a crowded field of similar local web portals, but offers elegant and quick search features and enables the use of Google maps and driving directions. The site has a mobile version as well, so no information has to be written down, the address is on your phone. They have forums oir ideas, announcements and discussions.

There were rumors in May 2010 that they are about to launch a Reputation Tool. Except for one blogger who posted an article about it (including screen shots) there is not much information. They do not mention the Tool on their website and their blog went dormant in June 2010.

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Small Business Solutions: Sponsored Reviews

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Statistic shows that the first page on Google search results brings about 40% click through rate. The sponsored links bring about 50% of the remaining clicks. It is said that most people will change their keyword search rather than go to the second page of the search results.

So, it is very important to try and rank on the first page of Google. One of the methods used to get a higher ranking is the SEO, having articles and posts posted on the internet that contain the keywords you are aiming for, to create more links and rank higher.

Since the Social Media has become a major player in influencing the ranking on Google, many have been searching for a way to increase their presence. One of the ways is to be mentioned on blogs and other social media platforms, but you can’t do it all yourself and sometimes help is available in places you haven’t thought about.

One of the newest trends are companies that will connect you with blog owners so you can pay them to write a review about your product or service, and link back to your site.

One such company is Buyblogreviews.Com which “brings advertisers and bloggers together for reviews on products and services”. They offer to connect the business owner with blog owners that specialize in that niche and get reviewed by professionals, semi-professionals and ordinary bloggers. The connection with the bloggers is done through their site and the bloggers bid for the opportunity to review the product. The site charges 30% of the deal.

Another company is Payperpost.com, which is owned by IZEA Innovation. “Think of it like eBay for sponsored blog posts” they say on their website. Advertisers offer opportunities for blog owners to connect with you, write a review and post it in their blog.

PayU2blog.com is yet another company that offers the same service. Theirs in the only site that says positive reviews are not guaranteed.

Socialspark.com offers an array of services, from connecting the advertiser with the blogger, set link the advertiser wants embedded in the post, choose which blog they want it posted on and measure the effectiveness of the campaign. They work with some Fortune 500 companies as GoDaddy.com, Overstock.com, AmericanGreetings.com and will create a whole campaign for the advertiser around the subject he want to enhance.

A new survey conducted by BlogHer and Ketchum.com found that 20% of women who used social media are motivated to try products bloggers wrote about and 53% of them have bought a product based on blog recommendation. The top three typed of products people look for personal recommendations are consumer electronics, computer hardware and software and movies. Almost half of blog readers read blogs to find new trends or ideas.

Is it legal? Yes. Is it Ethical? Yes, as long as the bloggers posts at the top of the article that this is a sponsored post and the opinions of the blogger are 100% his.

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Loopt: A Social Location Tool

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Let’s say you step out of class or a business meeting or a long day at work, and you wonder; where are my friends right now and what are they up to? What fun activity am I missing?

Loopt, a mobile application, helps you see a clear picture of your social circle, without making a round of calls or texts. This virtual social application is meant to be a facilitator of the real social world.

Founded in 2005 and launched in 2008 as an iPhone app, Loopt is growing and incorporating other social media platforms. In January 2011 the site came up with a 4.0 update that changed the look, added new features and is applicable on all smart phones. At the moment, Loopt has more than 4 million users and have partnerships with Google Maps, Facebook Places and Twitter, among others.

Their application lets you see at a glance and in real time where your friends are hanging out. It will show you who is at a nearby place and wants company. It will show you where is this new place everyone is talking about and who’s there. You can text your friends and get a map how to get there.

Another service they provide are recommendations to places you have never been before. If you are on a business trip, in a new city, wouldn’t you want to get first hand recommendations about places to eat or hang out? Again, you might meet a tall dark stranger who is on your network of virtual friends.

In the latest update, out in April 2011, you can get at-a-glance recommendations about a place. Let’s face it, say the makers of Loopt. Most of the remarks are either very good – people loved it enough to write about it, or very bad – they were really unhappy with something. Who has the time to go through all those posts? Their Loopt Q, lets you see it in a graph form. Good reviews vs. bad ones. You don’t have to stand outside a restaurant for half an hour and read all the posts. This service is now available only in San Francisco, with a plan to roll it soon to other cities as well.

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YouTube founders Gets Delicious

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The top and leading social bookmarking service, Delicious, has been sold by Yahoo to co-founders of YouTube, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. Begun in 2003, Yahoo acquired the service in 2005. Delicious claims a worldwide community of loyal users. Delicious is also a part of AVOS, a relatively new internet company in San Mateo, California.

Although Yahoo will continue to operate the bookmarking site until July, when the transition period ends, all data will be moved to the new Delicious servers. This means that the next time users sign into Delicious, they will be asked for permission for approval in moving your currently saved bookmarks to their new location.

Do Not Forget to Approve Your Bookmark Change Over

Members should have also received a message that provides notification and how to move the bookmarks, as well as what will happen if they do not.

Highly aware that this news has come as a surprise to its many users, Delicious execs also provided all the imperative information to their users today in a fresh press release from AVOS, as well as an explanatory blog in addition to the email sent out to each member.

Good News for Delicious Users

In the end, users should not be worried as AVOS does plan to continue the widely used service and therefore have taken the many necessary steps to ensure that all users know of the impending changeover and have plenty of time to approve their own bookmarks transfer to the new Delicious servers.

Developers and execs are well aware that there will be a period of adjustment as AVOS launches Delicious on their own, but they also have shared that their intentions for Delicious are to continually grow and improve on the services currently offered.

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