If you aren’t familiar with F8, its Facebook’s annual developer conference where they announce any big changes they’ve scheduled for release this year. Well, they just held F8 today, and they announced some MAJOR changes rolling out in the next couple weeks that will surely change the Facebook experience as we know it.
Over the past week Facebook has released some changes you’ve probably already noticed, like the ability to sort friends into groups, a real time ticker, and the subscribe button. If you thought those were big changes you’re in for a treat when we tell you about the new “Timeline” feature they are rolling out.
The new “Timeline” is a revamped version of your Facebook profile that provides everything you’ve done since your “birth” into the Facebook universe. The timeline is a real-time stream that showcases all of your events, posts, and pictures all with a stylish new redesign. It will also connect to any apps you may have on Facebook like Netflix, Spotify, and Nike +.
Take a look at this video to learn a little more about the new Timeline:
You can find even more info about the new Facebook timeline here.
As of right now we can’t be too sure of what this holds for Marketing efforts in the future, but stay tuned for more info on how to best utilize the new changes to Facebook once these features get rolled out to the masses!
It hasn’t even been a month since I started interning here at EIM, yet I feel like I’ve already learned so much. Prior to arriving at EIM, most of my experience with digital media involved managing social media accounts for various local events and businesses and maintaining my own personal blog. As a recent college graduate who studied media and communications for four years, I felt very much aware of the power of social media and how sites like Twitter and Facebook have been reshaping our lives and the way we do business.
But while social media channels can certainly play a great role in things like brand management and customer engagement, it is really just a piece of the marketing puzzle. It’s not enough to just make a Facebook and Twitter page for your business and wait for fans and followers to roll in. It is very important to make sure your social media efforts line up with your overall marketing strategy. It’s also useful to find ways to integrate your social media pages into other channels such as your website, newsletters, mobile apps, print ads, and even TV commercials (see: American Express)
As social media strategist Jay Baer puts it, “Social media is not a solo act. It’s best as part of a jazz combo.” And one very important player in that combo that I knew very little about before coming here was “search marketing.” While working closely with the Web Marketing Team here at EIM, I’m really starting to recognize the importance of search marketing. SEO, SEM, paid search, and search engines in general all play huge parts in gaining traffic to your company website and reaching your marketing goals, whether that means increasing product sales or raising brand awareness. read the full story...
With FourSquare hitting the 10,000,000 user mark this past week it’s time you do more than just claiming your business? You could go play real FourSquare with the hipsters in the park or you could start taking advantage of all the different features that FourSquare has to offer your business for free!
Create a FourSquare Special
When a FourSquare user checks-in, they are often times rewarded with some type of special. There are seven different types of specials including: read the full story...
Swarm Special:
If 43 people check-in at your bar, everyone whom checked in will get 10% off of their bar tab
Can limit the frequency that this occurs and what number makes a swarm
Friends Special:
Check-in with four friends and receive a free appetizer
FourSquare allows the number of friends that must be checked-in to be awarded the special
Flash Special:
First 50 people into the store starting at 10:00 AM receive a coupon for $25.00 off of their purchase of $100.00 or more
Gives an incentive for individuals to come to your store at a specific time and specifically spend a certain amount of money
Newbie Special:
On your first check-in, receive a free pedicure with the purchase of a manicure
Establish that relationship and hopefully gain a devoted customer
Check-in Special:
A special every time a customer checks-in to your place of business
Loyalty Special:
Every third check-in, receive a free desert with your dinner
Same concept as the Subway stamp card, reward your loyal customers for their loyalty
Mayor Special:
If you are the mayor as of election day 2012, receive a free hour long party for you and 15 friends. All check-ins while mayor will be rewarded with 20% off of your bill.
Running your first social media contest? Should you even be running a social media contest? What are your goals of the contest? These are all questions and concerns you should be having before running your first social media contest.
After running a few social media contests and reading other social media experts thoughts and experiences with their contests, I have compiled some thoughts on what I think is most important to consider when running your contest:
1) Why are you running the contest in the first place?
Do you want to increase the amount of “Likes” on your Facebook page
Increase the number of followers to your twitter account
Launch a new product or brand
Add emails to your email list
Choose what type of contest to run:
2) Figure out the best type of contest to engage your audience, but also to achieve your overall goalThe easier the contest (sweepstakes, “Like” a Facebook page, Retweet a tweet), the more people will enter, but the less engagement the consumer will have with your brand
On the reverse side, the more engagement it takes to enter a contest (submitting photos or videos, scavenger hunts) the less people will actually join the contest, but the contestants that do join will engage more with your brand
The most important aspect of the contest is that it is easy to enter and easy for people to share
Well, Twitter, congratulations are in order. You’ve got founder Jack Dorsey is back as Executive Chairman, you’re now five years old, and the world is your oyster. An oyster filled with 140 characters-worth of pearls. You win.
Twitter zealously is a familiar story: internet user learns about Twitter, says, “I’d never use that,” decides to sign up for whatever reason, ends up hooked. Yes, that was me. But here’s why: read the full story...
We talked last week about the 5 year anniversary of Twitter and the crazy growth it’s seen and will continue to see. The numbers don’t lie–people are on Twitter, and no matter what you may think, those people aren’t just the gum-smacking tween types. While the adolescents are certainly out there in the Twittersphere, the biggest estimated group on Twitter right now is in their 20s and 30s, and there’s a strong representation of users in their 40s. So whatever your target audience, it’s a good chance they’re hanging out on Twitter and that this is a social media platform that needs to be monitored and considered in your business’s web marketing plans.
One challenge of Twitter is maintenance. While it doesn’t seem so bad to share a few 140-character thoughts every once in awhile, building relationships and making connections on Twitter requires relatively regular monitoring. And building relationships is really what you want to be doing on Twitter. It’s a tool that will give back what you put into it. So with that in mind, here are some thoughts on how to make the most of Twitter and to build your loyal network, even if you don’t have a ton of extra time: read the full story...
Know what your fans and potential customers are interested in. Follow conversations on Twitter about topics important to you. Search for tweets about products you sell, services you offer, the industry you work in, etc. You can make decisions–both on and off Twitter–about your business based on this information.
This is a simple one: know who’s talking about YOU. Do regular searches on your own brand and misspellings of your brand name. If you find people referencing you, talk to them! And follow them! Don’t be shy…but DO, of course, stay sensitive to what it is they’re saying.
5 years ago a small team of people started working on a service that is now known by the world as Twitter. As a matter of fact, the first tweet EVER was posted by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey 5 years and 5 days ago from today, on March 21, 2006. From the first tweet and the launch of the service came a world to follow with an ever-growing fan base that’s constantly continuing to rise at exponential numbers. Two days ago, Twitter released some mind-blowing numbers on their blog that could be the cause for some additional celebration (and show some major growth for them in 2011).
Here are some of the numbers:
#tweets
It took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the billionth tweet. (Now there are 1 billion tweets a week)
A year ago, 50 million tweets occurred each day. (The daily average this month is 140 million)
@accounts
This month, Twitter has received an average of 460,000 new accounts each day
Over the past year, mobile users on Twitter have increased by 182%
Those are some great numbers to back Twitter up for their 5th year anniversary, and it’s impressive to see how much the numbers have been growing this year (especially). Not only have the amount of users increased, but the activity has increased three-fold.
It goes to show that Twitter should be used in everyone’s social media efforts (only using Facebook isn’t enough). So, make sure that with your next social media push (or ongoing efforts), you keep saying to yourself “let me tweet that”, and utilize said social network to maximize your campaign’s growth, reach, and overall success.
Oreo came up with a brilliant social media campaign on Feb 15th 2011 to rally up their 16 million plus fans to set the Guinness record for the most Facebook ‘likes’ in a 24-hour period, and ultimately make Oreo the world’s most “liked” cookie. They set the bar at 50,000 ‘likes’, and were able to accomplish that feat with a staggering 114,619 likes in a 24-hour period. Guinness World Records then confirmed today at 9am EST that Oreo now holds the record for the for the most ‘likes’ on a Facebook post in 24 hours- But for how long?
It seems that Lil Wayne caught wind of Oreo’s social media push, and decided to make an attempt at the record as well (4 hours later). Within an hour he accumulated a whopping 194,092 ‘likes’, and eventually ended the 24-hour period at an astonishing 588,905 ‘likes’ to ultimately stomp Oreo’s existing record into proverbial cookie crumbs.
So why’d Lil Wayne do this to Oreo? According to Mashable.com, Mazy Kazerooni, Lil Wayne’s digital manager, says that the idea was to show the star’s social media prowess. “I want people to think ‘Bieber, Gaga and Lil Wayne.’ The traffic we do is ridiculous and no one really knows,” Kazerooni says.
Although, Lil Wayne consumed Oreo’s world record like an after dinner snack (with a dip in milk first, of course ), this battle for the record has turned to drive a huge amount of publicity for both Lil Wayne and Oreo, more than both parties could have possibly imagined. It just goes to show the power that Facebook and other social media outlets hold these days, and the opportunity for a small campaign such as this to go viral and grow into a beast of it’s own. read the full story...
So, you’ve been told 2011 is all about local. As well as mobile. And social. And video. And reviews. And probably a number of other important elements of the online world. So what the heck do you focus on? Well…when it comes to getting your site found on search engines: all of them.
But! Fear not. Don’t freak out. This doesn’t require elaborate marketing campaigns combining all of these mediums. (In fact, avoid that.) And you don’t need to have the next “Old Spice Guy” idea for social media to have an impact. This just means getting your presence into a healthy mix of all of these mediums, which really comes down to providing great service and engaging with your customers. In other words, do good business. And use these online elements in a natural way.
Here’s an example of how you might integrate them into your everyday business process: read the full story...
Let’s say you have a special 3-day only deal for your retail website. Assuming you have your Google Places page claimed and optimized, you post the deal there on Monday (the start of the sale–one of your slowest days).
You also tweet about it and share it on Facebook, thanking your existing customers for being loyal fans
An hour later, you notice several retweets of your deal and thank those followers for sharing the love
Another friend of one of the retweeters sees the message, but wants to learn more about you first, so they search for you on their mobile phone. Luckily, you have a well-optimized mobile site, so this person quickly finds you and has easy access to exactly the information they needed (maybe info like what your company does, some testimonials, products, etc.).
A few weeks ago, we covered two important points of blogging, now here are some hints to driving more traffic to your company blog, writing and presenting content, and making your posts work harder for you.
Titles matter.
You may think of a clever pun or quippy quip for your title, but consider the subject of your post. Remember, both humans and bots are going to read your post. Think about relevant keywords in your post and use them in the post title. It’s just some simple SEO, basic common sense. For those who subscribe to your blog, your title may be used in the email subject line—so make sure it’s always clear and to the point.
Use your links.
Speaking of SEO: drop in useful and relevant links to other sites and blogs. Drop in links to other posts you wrote in the past, as necessary. And speaking of useful links…
Give credit, and be credible.
Your blog is a relationship tool, so be sincere and honest. Always, always cite your sources, be it a picture or a news article you’re commenting on. If you set up trackbacking when citing another blog post, well, there’s another crosslinking opportunity.
Connect to your social media sites.
Take advantage of all those other points of entry by putting your blog on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you want, set up your blog to automatically post to these channels. Remember, this isn’t a strategy for getting your blog read—it’s a practice.
Write like you.
People like company blogs that let them connect with the humans working behind the curtain. That said, there’s some wiggle room for human error and less-than-perfect grammar. So, it’s not the end of the world if your grammar isn’t perfect or you don’t particularly care about paragraphs, but remember that these things can make your posts easier to read. Write like yourself, and write about the things your readers care about—ignore the robots here. Again, your blog’s a relationship tool, so use it to start and sustain relationships.
Bonus tip:
Blog readers love numbers.
Titles with numbers and lists (e.g., “Top 10 SEO benefits of top 10 lists”) always get more click-throughs. Remember, before people read anything online, they scan. Breaking content into little digestible nuggets will make things easier for your readers. And if you make things easy for your readers? They’ll come back for more.
Keep your eyes peeled for our “driving action” series tips on using social networks! read the full story...
), this battle for the record has turned to drive a huge amount of publicity for both Lil Wayne and Oreo, more than both parties could have possibly imagined. It just goes to show the power that Facebook and other social media outlets hold these days, and the opportunity for a small campaign such as this to go viral and grow into a beast of it’s own. 