Twitter, however, in a change-up that has my neurons discombobulated and my eyes crossed, has announced that the social network will be embracing the Mozilla Firefox Do-not-track feature.

Let me explain a little bit about the Do-not-track feature:

If you are using Firefox with this feature enabled, individual websites who have honored this setting will not track your browsing behavior. Typically the only side affect of this feature is less relevant advertisements here and there (but I don’t see how it could get any less relevant than a colonoscopy ad for a college graduate). Facebook does not honor this feature… and as of late, Twitter does.

How to Opt-In to the Do-not-track feature

PC People: At the top of your Firefox browser, open the Tools drop-down menu and select Options. From there, go to the Privacy tab and check the box “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked” at the top. Click OK to close the options menu.

Mac People: Head over to the Firefox button and access the Options menu. Select the Privacy tab and check the box to “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked” at the top. Click OK to close the options menu.

Although Mozilla pioneered the Do-not-track button, we don’t all have to convert to Firefox. Other browsers like Internet Explorer and Safari and surprise, surprise, Google Chrome also has an extension that allows you to opt out of tracking, HERE.

Twitter is making moves that cater to their users that could garner them long term success while a few social media Nostradamus types predict that a Facebook empire meltdown is right around the IPO corner.

What do you think about the Do Not Track feature? Comment and let us know what you think!

Social Media Results Conference: Engage. Communicate. Measure. Profit
May 22-23, 2012
Grand Connaught Rooms, London, England, United Kingdom

The Social Media Results Conference: Engage. Communicate. Measure. Profit teaches you just that. It’s everything you need to learn when dabbling in social media and more!

This year’s conference speakers include:

• Thomas Knorpp, Digital Media Manager, Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd
• Craig Hepburn, Global Director, Digital & Social Media, Nokia
• Dara Nasr, Head of Agency Sales – YouTube & Google Display, Google UK – YouTube
• Delphine Remy-Boutang, World-Wide Social Media Marketing Manager, IBM
• Jake Steadman, Head of Brand and Social Media Insight, O2
• Amanda Howard, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Boots UK
• Vaqar Khamisani, Customer & Partner Experience Manager, Microsoft UK
• Chris Howard, Head of Online Marketing, Play.com
• Tom Hall, Editorial Director, Lonely Planet Online, Lonely Planet
• Saulo Menezes de Oliveira, Social Media Officer, Birmingham City University
• Dom Dwight, Conversation Manager, Yorkshire Tea
• Emma Roffey, Director of Communications & Digital Marketing, Cisco Europe
• Tim Gentry, Head of Optimisation and Effectiveness, The Guardian
• Lisa Mané, Head of Social Media, Central Office of Information
• Colin Watkins, Digital Communications Manager, Channel 4
• John Greenway, MAG Press Office Manager, Manchester Airports Group
• Jonathan Brayshaw, Leader, Social Business, Psion PLC
• Simeen Kadi, Group Head of Marketing, The Carbon Trust
• Will Abbott, Marketing and Communications Director, Freesat
• Mark Woods, Head of Creative, Comic Relief
• Paul Madden, Head of Digital Communications, Mitchells and Butlers (owning company of Harvester Restaurants)

Learn more about:

• Social media content best practices for engagement and interaction.
• How to develop social media as a relationship building tool.
• Using data and analytics for various operational tasks.
• Evaluating the effects of social media on your brand.
• How to manage the downsides of social media and manage risks.
• How to use social media for B2B.
• How to achieve optimum engagement from appropriate communication.
• How to respond to customer comments.
• How to use social media as an external and internal tool to maximize ROI.
• Monetization and optimization.

EuraMedia 2012
May 25-27, 2012
The Liberty Hotel, Boston, MA

EuraMedia brings together Eurasian and American businesses, brands, agencies, journalists, professionals, bloggers who are focused on developing Eurasian social media and applications.

This year’s speakers include:

• Natalya Tolstaya, Life-line.ru
• Nathan Richardson, Gilt Groupe
• Anita Gigovskaya, Country Manager Conde Nast Digital
• Rio Caraeff, CEO, VEVO
• Scott Derschlager, Expedia
• Florian Heich, Director, Europe, HTC
• Anna Maria Treneva, CTC
• Mikhail Lissovik, Deutsche Bank
• Dennis Crowley, CEO, Foursquare
• Peter Oppenheimer, SVP, Apple
• Vic Gundara, Google+
• Katya Basilileva, Lookatme.ru
• Matt Williams, CEO, DIGG,
• Andrew Mason, Founder, Groupon
• Dmitrii Stepanov, Rambler & Afisha United Company
• Anna Vissens, BBC
• Brian Dunn, CEO, Best Buy

On top of these, there are also invited speakers from the world’s biggest and best companies:

• ABC
• AIG Brunswick
• Alawar
• Alfa Bank
• AT&T
• Begun
• Bookings.com
• Columbia University
• Comcast
• Digitalizm
• Dream Industries
• Dynamite Pixels
• Ebay
• Edelman
• Elbrus Capital
• Facebook.ru
• Harvard Univeristy
• ID EAST
• I-Free Intel
• KupiVIP.ru
• L2
• Lionsgate
• Manhattan Partners
• Marc Jacobson Law
• McKinsey&Co.
• Media 3
• Microsoft
• National Geographic
• NIS Glonass
• NTV
• Ozon.ru
• Proctor & Gamble
• PRWeb
• Pubmatic
• Renassaince
• Ria-Novosti
• RT
• Russia NE COC
• Samsung
• Scratch.com
• Shazamm
• Skype
• Sonoma Publications,UK
• SONY
• Time Warner
• TNT
• Troika Dialog
• Vkontakte.ru
• Walt Disney Co.
• Yandex
• ZeptoLab

If you’re like every other person out there that has a Facebook business page you’re always trying to figure out what “works” and what doesn’t work. What times of day you should post, what content you should post, how often and etc.

It’s a constant struggle for many to figure out the best things to do on their page. And honestly it changes alot. With the last round of changes to Edgerank I’ve noticed a significant decline in engagement on our Facebook page. Which really stinks because we’ve grown a good community there but now with the silly Edgerank things aren’t as active as they once were.

Facebook has been very proactive the last 6 months about helping page owners use their pages better. Afterall page owners are the ones buying ads and are what will keep Facebook afloat.

They’ve started many pages and sites to help train page owners. One of them is called Facebook Studio. They have released a study on what types of posts get more engagement. They studied 23 brands and 6 industries and came up with 3 different types of content:

Messages about the product or service- Travel brand example: Our new resort just opened! Book your trip today.

Messages related to the brand- Travel brand example: I decided to go on my first cruise because _________.

Messages unrelated to the brand- Travel brand example: Hang in there everybody. Monday will be over before you know it!

As you can see there are 3 distinctive differences in these types of posts. One lends itself more to marketing, one is trying to get engagement about the product, and the third is more to just get people talking.

They also concluded that there were different “drivers” of each type of engagement. They are as follows:

If your goal is to generate shares: *Post on topics related to the brand. *Use photos and videos.

If your goal is to general likes: *Post on topics related to the brand. * Post a clear call to action, for example “Like this if…”

If your goal is to generate comments: *Post on topics related to the brand. *Ask a question in the post

So depending on what type of engagement you are trying to get you can drive it based on the type of content you post.

It’s always good to mix it up quite a bit. If you post the same way over and over people will nod off. It’s much better to change things up.

And if you are wanting to get the most out of Edgerank I would recommend posting photos. And NEVER post links via a 3rd party app as the Facebook “share” link will not be there.

Hope this helps! If you need more training on social media be sure to become a member of our new Social Media Engine membership. Find all the details HERE.

But there are a variety of other sources to choose from when looking to get your social media news (which is why I am glad to write to you); bloggers blog on web publications who are tipped off by blogs about all happenings in social media– even network news covers social media alongside all that juicy BREAKING NEWS of Nepalese migrants dying to work, the Mormon stronghold in Washington D.C.,  Mexican drug cartel fiestas gone-wrong, and what your favorite politician thinks of sexism/texting…

Every one has a place to put their two-cents in with social media. Jon Stewart, the comedic mastermind behind The Daily Show,  also has a few things to say about social media news, from Facebook to  Instagram, Twitter, SOPA/PIPA, the cult of @LadyBigMac, and the advice of @Dogfart.

Check-out this mashup from The Daily Show, for a little Internet roast courtesy of Jon Stewart, or should I say Old Man Stewart.

Enjoy and share your thoughts about social media news.

Procter and Gamble: Social media is free to use

Procter and Gamble has recently announced that they are going to cut some of their marketing staff and keep their advertising budget in check for the year.  The reason, to put it simply and bluntly, is that it’s free to market their products on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

To add credence to this development, this was announced by the company CEO, Robert McDonald.  McDonald was the one responsible for increasing the company’s marketing budget by 24% over a span of two years.  P&G is also the world’s largest marketer, spending approximately $10 billion every year to market its products.

McDonald also revealed that it was slowly moving its marketing into the digital space, or more of it anyway.

The takeaway?  Businesses, big or small, can easily take advantage of social media platforms for their marketing.  It is proving to be equally effective, if not more effective, than traditional means of advertising and marketing.  Plus it comes at a fraction of the cost of old marketing methods.

Social media: Going beyond just customer service

In the United Kingdom, Sainsbury has also made business moves because of social media.  They have recently rebranded their tiger bread as giraffe bread.  This is because of a letter from a three-year-old girl named Lily Robinson.

In May 2011, Lily wrote the supermarket asking why their bread was called tiger bread when it looked more like a giraffe.  A customer service representative, Chris King, agreed that maybe it was not such a bad idea to call it giraffe bread, saying that it was called tiger bread because the first baker who baked it thought so.  King also attached a gift card with his reply.

Lily’s mother posted the exchange on her blog, and it was quickly picked up by friends and strangers on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and other social media networks.  It soon became apparent that people loved the idea and the exchange, prompting Sainsbury to rename its bread.

The takeaway?  Social media is a great way to give outstanding customer service, but it is also a great research tool that you could use to give your target market what it wants.  Plus it is a good way to create and maintain your brand values, while also upholding your brand’s or company’s reputation.

We are sure that you have a lot of examples about how social media is changing how business owners do business.  The best practices we learned from Coca Cola, Starbucks, McDonalds and other social media superstars, to the mistakes committed by Research-in-Motion, Domino’s Pizza and other companies, we have seen how social media works for and against companies using it.  The impact is undeniable.

From customer service to operations to marketing to customer research, more and more brands are getting onto social media because it is very effective and it reaches their intended audience and customers.  The fact that it costs less to execute a social media campaign is an added advantage.

So what are you doing to harness the power of social media and benefit from it?

People can’t stop talking about Pinterest.

It’s obviously the breakout social platform of the last 6 months. Although many reports are starting to show a decline in referred traffic from Pinterest.

But that’s not completely a bad thing. Hopefully spammy marketers won’t ruin the site (could be too late.).

This video is by Comediva and is a humorous depiction of what it would be like if we “pinned” things in the real world!

It was posted to YouTube on May 9th (my birthday!) and has about 77,000 views as of writing this.

Enjoy..

And please don’t pin your cat to the wall!

Feel free to come follow me on Pinterest and repin my pins!!!

I guess in Facebook’s attempt to be all things to all people they are now adding to Facebook groups the ability to share files. So in addition to sharing Docs you’ll be able to share any type of file you choose to upload to the group.

According to the Facebook Help Center :

Files let you share presentations, schedules, documents and many other file types with your group.

From an image reported by Mashable as seen below the maximum file size looks to be 25 MB:

Once this goes live it’s going live for ALL Facebook groups and the same permissions will apply as they do for current groups. Meaning if you have a group set to “Open” then anyone could come and download that file. So make sure your settings are accurate before  you start sharing secret resources.

There will also be a “Files” tab at the top of the group where group members can download the file.

To me this is a huge blow to sites like Box.net or Dropbox as there are fees associated with those sites and there are ZERO fees to use a Facebook group. Granted you will be limited to 25MB per upload, but there are no indications that there will be an overall storage limit for groups.

The feature should be rolling out to all groups very shortly.

Is this a useful feature? Sound off below.

This could be a great way to find an organ donor, get a ride, make a marriage proposal, or announce a birth of a baby– but it could also be misused and send users running away from the Facebook empire.

A user in Whangarei, New Zeleand discovered this feature shown in the image below:

(via Tech Crunch)

According to Facebook: “We’re constantly testing new features across the site. This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends.”

Facebook is testing different price points, including no price at all. As of now the highlight feature is running on credit card and PayPal rather than Facebook Credits.

Although this feature would boost Facebook’s revenue, it runs the risk of driving users crazy.

My Facebook page is already starting to look like spam without the help of the highlight feature. The good ol’ notification has become increasingly irrelevant to the user as stacks of junk notifications pile-up in groups, events, and apps.

Highlighted posts would spam the newsfeed and disrupt the flow of content: interesting content worth sharing is shared, and the rest sinks to the bottom.

Tech Crunch suggests that the tests for this feature could be a big show for potential IPO investors looking for a confidence boost, and the feature would work best with a frequency cap.

Comment and let us know how this feature would or would not be useful to you.

]]> http://hubze.com/2012/05/would-you-pay-to-highlight-a-facebook-post/feed/ 22 http://hubze.com/2012/05/what-to-do-when-you-accidentally-tweet-a-porn-link/ http://hubze.com/2012/05/what-to-do-when-you-accidentally-tweet-a-porn-link/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 16:54:43 +0000 Lauren Morgan http://hubze.com/?p=51220 (hubze.com) Alright, here is a warning– this sh** could get f***ing graphic.

Sh*t happens on social media. When you are diddling CTRL+ C/V, and working with shortened links, the margin of error widens into a beast resembling the Sarlacc (the tentacled desert beast in Return of the Jedi, with a gaping mouth and rows of teeth).

I may be exaggerating  just a bit; actually, I think the story about Vito Stellino, a seasoned sportswriter for the Florida Times-Union, is pretty funny– let’s see what you think:

Vito Stellino was writing about sports like he always does, if you visit his twitter, you’ll notice Stellino’s interest range from Football to Football, but that is only because the accidental tweet below was taken-off within 40 minutes of posting:

(via Awful Announcing)

It looks like a normal tweet at first glance, however, the shortened link re-directs to a porno on xHamster.com (“just porn, no bs“) rather than a sports article.

I hear yuh Vito, Football does need a minor league, free concussions for all and a side of “Hot Blonde “. The tweet went out to his thousands of followers and was retweeted only 7 times (luckily). Although I would argue that if Stellino would have left it up, he probably could have gained more followers seeing as the nature of Twitter often rewards those who are evangelically positive or extraordinarily offensive.

Since the incident, Stellino has gone on tweeting as if nothing ever happened. And one could assume that his Klout score has gone-up.

Hopefully Vito’s mistake will be a forewarning to all and now we can add another NO-NO to the list:

• Don’t tweet while driving.
• Don’t post to Facebook while on jury duty.
• Don’t tweet while watching porn.

I would hate to see Stellino lose his job after this, like I said before, Sh*t happens on social media. Comment and let us know what you think!

We looked at the leaders in Audience Growth Rate in order to predict what might be the next big thing in Social. Some of the growth leaders you’ve probably heard about in the news, others maybe not.

Social growth measures how many new connections a brand is making across the already well-established social media platforms.

In other words, how well are these new social utilities leveraging their visibility on more established social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in order to spread their name, generate buzz and sign-up new members?

Track Social’s Social Media Zone shows the Social Brand Map, which plots how social media sites are performing on social media. The color of the balls represents how quickly it is growing – with red and orange indicating hot and fast growth. This means the hottest social sites are establishing new connections with online users faster than the rest of the pack. Only 5 social media sites out of our list of 147 can claim rights to a sizzling hot ball – here’s the top 5 in social growth rate:

1. Instagram: Humans. Love. Photos.

We love taking them. Looking at them. Sharing them. And of course, digitally tweaking them so we appear to be much better photographers than we actually are.

At least that was the great insight of Instagram founders who are now a cool billion dollars richer thanks to Facebook’s recent acquisition of the uber-popular photo sharing app now downloaded by over 50 million mobile users.

So now that Instagram has officially joined with the Zuckerburg and company, how is it using Facebook to engage with fans and recruit new users?

Instagram posts on Facebook are mainly re-posts from its official Instagram blog, which offers creative thematic challenges for the community, inviting users to submit their instagram-ed photos related to specific themes.

One regular challenge, the Weekend Hashtag Project, recently invited submissions for vacant places and empty chairs. These posts highlight the usefulness and uniqueness of Instagram’s app – no wonder Instagram is on track to hitting 100 million users.

On Twitter, Instagram has managed to rack up over 3 million followers. This is largely due to Instagram’s auto-follow policy. If you use Twitter to distribute an Instagram photo, you’re essentially agreeing to “follow” Instagram. And while that might make it easier to get people signed up, keeping that audience requires facilitating engagement through fun, regular challenges the Weekend Hashtag Project.

Instagram owes a lot to Twitter for popularizing both the format and language of a “sharing community”: “Feeds” and “Followers” are common to both and this overlap helps account for the large number of users who routinely use Twitter to distribute the photos they take with Instagram – a partnership we expect will continue to grow – unless Facebook decides otherwise.

[And just for good measure, the immanently shareable Pets of Instagram.]

2. MyYearbook: Engineering Serendipity

A recent marketing piece from one of MyYearbook’s co-founders helps define this new kind of social network as an alternative to traditional online dating sites. What makes them stand out from all the other dating sites? MyYearbook stands behind the idea that people prefer to start out as friends before jumping into a romantic relationship. According to the company, MyYearbook has signed up over 33 million members since 2005 – meaning over 33 million people are also on board with this idea.

The rise of social networks and the ubiquity of mobile devices have given way to a new crop of mobile social networks – the Meeting Networks – which threatens to eat the dating industry’s $4 billion lunch by making them a subset of a larger “meet new people” space.

Notice whose lunch they are not out to eat: Facebook’s. In fact, MyYearbook offers a “one click” registration if you sign in through your Facebook account, a clear indication they’re staking out a different kind of social media territory.

Call them Meeting Networks, call them Social Discovery Sites, MyYearbook attempts to connect people through playing online games, sharing videos, and giving virtual gifts (via an online currency called “Lunch Money” – we’re not making that up).  It’s a space intended to facilitate new connections that might ultimately lead, according to satisfied customer “Mike, 33” to finding your “soulmate.” Mazel tov, Mike.

3. Pinterest: Come ye pinners.

Our number 3 seemed to have blown up overnight, so it’s no surprise that their significant audience growth has also given them office growth.

Technically, Pinterest is not just a photo-sharing site. It invites users (called pinners) to create boards where they can “pin” anything of interest they find on the web. If you’ve been living in a dark hole or haven’t noticed yet, there has been a storm of “Pin It” share button that has hit so many sites – making it easy for internet browsers to quickly pin away.

Pinners compile collections on an infinite number of topics: wedding planning, say, orrecipes. Or physics. It’s an organizer’s dream. If your users are mining the internet for cool stuff, some of those “pins” might just stir some buzz. A Dirty Dancing Page, for example, received over 13,000 LIKES on Facebook. As we stated earlier with Instgram, humans love photos.

4. Bebo: Didn’t AOL pay $850 million for this?

Sure did. After buying Bebo for $850 million in 2008, AOL unloadedthe networking site in 2010 for $10 million. Bebo may have originally been conceived as an alterative and rival to Facbook but those ambitions (delusions?) seem to have been left behind. These days, Bebo is trying to occupy the same space as MyYearbook – with a dedicated dating site attached and you guessed it – its own gaming outlet. It looks like users are looking for a space where they can combine the perks of both Facebook and MyYearbook – which steers them toward our number 4 – Bebo.

5. Scoop.it: Make your own magazine

Scoop.it is an online content curation platform allowing users to create their own blog-like spaces that allows you to pull content from all over the web and re-publish it into attractive templates. Effectively, you become the editor of your own online magazine.  It’s part of the mash-up movement the web has sparked, repurposing, remixing and re- contextualizing content into something new.

Scoop.it is promising because of the nature of their service. Just like Pinterest, Scoop.it offers users an easy way to collect and curate the things they discover online. Spotlighting some user-generated gems might be a great way to attract Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers, as well as showcasing the value of the app itself.

Rounding out our top 10 social media sites and apps with the highest growth rates are:

6. reddit
7. Buffer
8. Bit.ly
9. Draugiem.lv
10. Hacker News

Follow the stats, trends, news and updates for the entire Social Media universe at Track Social’s Social Media Zone. What shows up on today’s Leaderboard, might just be tomorrow’s most ubiquitous platform.

*The above post from Felicia Dorng of Track Social is posted here with her permission. Track Social’s Social Media Zone is a portal for assessing the activity of all Social Media Brands on the major platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

There are tons of sites out there that let you “buy” Twitter followers to gain a larger following count. Most are dummy accounts and really the following does nothing for you except give a false sense of “social proof”.

But, what if instead of buying those followers you played a game of poker for them?

That’s just what a travel agency in Columbia named Viajes Galeon did.

They gathered some of Columbia’s largest Twitter users and set up webcams to live broadcast the entire event. All the while getting the Twitter followers of these users to give input and talk to them during the event.

The prize? The winner got everyone else’s Twitter followers! Over 180,000 Twitter followers to be exact.

Now how they actually transferred those followers is a mystery to me. Because I’m not so sure Twitter will allow this.

One lucky Twitter follower got a free trip to Las Vegas for participating.

The big winner though was the travel agency as you can see in the video. Their following went through the roof!

Would you be willing to bet your Twitter followers in a game of poker? If so I’ll take that bet! (and your followers!)

Well the day has finally come! Google+ is making the Hangouts on Air available for all users!

I have been saying for a while that Google+ needed to make this feature available for everyone as it would crush alot of platforms and programs.

Basically what Hangouts on Air does is let you broadcast your Hangout via your YouTube channel for the world to see live and then recorded later! You can also embed your hangout onto your own website, which has huge ramifications.

My opinion is this changes the game yet again when it not only comes to social media but to webinar/meeting platforms.

I think this is a clear distinction between Facebook and Google+ that Facebook has yet to counter. If they do then Facebook wins as it has the users. But until then Google+ has the edge when it comes to having a cutting edge feature that no other social platform has ever had.

I also think that with this addition Google+ could crush websites like LiveStream, UStream, Spreecast, BlogTV and etc. Why pay for those services when you can use this FREE one with Google+ and not have to worry about ads showing up during your broadcasts or replays!? It will be interesting to see what those sites do to counter this new feature on Google+. I for one see no use for Livestream now at all. I kinda hated it anyway.

The other ramifications of this feature is I think it will drastically hurt many of the meeting and webinar platforms out there. Because now you can conduct an online presentation and meeting and broadcast it to everyone live on YouTube or have it playing on your own site. Granted you won’t get a built-in email optin form and autoresponder with this like you do all of the other platforms. But who cares?! I think people are reluctant to give up their emails more and more now. And in reality you could still have an optin form setup on your site for your upcoming broadcast and then shoot them the link to the Hangout On Air later.

Now I know many will say that they still need GotoWebinar, Meeting Burner, AnyMeeting or whatever other webinar platform that is out there that does live presentations. Paul Colligan told me yesterday he still needed GotoWebinar to conduct “premium” presentations. I can kinda see this need, but in reality you could simply embed this live broadcast into a page on your membership site and be done. It’s that simple. But, for those that are charging per webinar Goto or MeetingBurner will still be needed as an easy way to get paid for your presentation. Although I think that type of paid webinar is rare.. Maybe I’m wrong.

We’ve already seen a ton of creative uses for Hangouts on Google+ from cooking classes, to mastermind groups, to professors and more. With this new ability for anyone to watch your hangout on YouTube the game changes quite a bit.

Below is me playing around with Hangouts yesterday. I was the only one in the hangout as I was simply testing the features. Notice that you can share your screen in the live hangout and it shows up in the recording!

What do you think of Hangouts on Air? Will you use it? Does it change the game again? Sound off below.

Search Marketing Expo (SMX) London 2012
May 15-16, 2012
Chelsea Football Club, London, United Kingdom
If you are an experienced Internet marketer and you are looking to get more training from vendors and the experts or just looking to network with other search marketing professionals, then the Search Marketing Expo is the one for you.

This conference is divided into three tracks:

SEO & Social Media Track

• Google+ify Or Die
• Social Shares: The New Link Building
• King Content Vs. Panda: How To Survive & Thrive With The New Content Rules
• SEO & Social Media Power Tools

Paid Search & Analytics Track

• Winning The Click: Creating Great Paid Search Ads
• Winning The Conversion: Creating “Can’t Say No” Paid Search Landing Pages
• Complying And Coping In The New World Of Regulated Global Marketing Environment
• Overlooked, Underloved & Unknown Analytics

SMX Advanced Track

• The New Periodic Table Of SEO
• Life In A [Not Provided] World
• Surviving Personalization & Google
• Get Rich (Listings) Quick: Improve Content Visibility By Tapping Into Schema.org & More
• Mobile Trends: Search, Apps & Landing Pages
• Real Answers For Technical SEO Problems
• Retargeting & Remarketing: The New Behavioral Ads
• Maximizing Paid Search Campaigns With Google

As a bonus, you can also attend the International Search Summit that happens a day before the conference starts.

More information here: http://searchmarketingexpo.com/london/

iStrategy Global Digital Media Summit – London 2012
May 22-23, 2012
London, United Kingdom

iStrategy Global Digital Media Summit takes its highly successful conference to Londo. iStrategy aims to help professionals come up with a high-performing and integrated marketing strategy every single time.

Sessions for this year’s conference include:

• From Social Teams to Social Businesses
• Cranking Up the Hype Machine: Capitalising On London 2012
• Unlocking the Secrets to SEO Success
• Working with Mobile Campaigns
• Making Sense of Online Influence Algorithms
• Social Meets Video: Unlocking Advertising Potential
• Exploiting the Rise of the Social Shopper
• Winning Strategies for Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
• Using Content to Complement Your Brand
• Crisis Management In An Always-On Environment
• The Rise of the Tablet, and What It Means for Marketers
• Staying On Message: Integrated Email Marketing
• Making Behavioural Targeting Work for Your Business
• Establishing Authority: the Key to Online Branding
• Exploiting the Internet of Things
• Inverting the Norm: Bringing Sales to Your Door
• The Business of Play: Social Gaming Gets Serious
• Geolocation: In Search of Data Nirvana
• Going Viral: the Future of Online Video
• Fans, Friends & Fairytales: Monetising Social Media
• Social Media in A B2b Context
• Online Video: Great to Watch, Even Better to Share
• Track 1: the Narrative of Numbers: Web Analytics In Context
• Capitalising On the Smartphone Generation
• From Community to Kinship: Engaging to Sell More
• Achieving Successful Social Media Monitoring
• Improving Visibility Via Twitter
• Understanding Facebook
• Getting the Most Out of Linkedin
• What Youtube Can Do for Your Business
• Social Philanthropy & the Power of the Crowd

This conference combines keynote speeches, live interviews and interactive workshops to deliver knowledge to their participants.

The organizers for the event are still in the process finalizing the speakers for the 2012 event, but to give you an idea on the level of expertise you are going to learn from, previous speakers included:

• Garth Holsinger, Vp Of Sales & Business Development, Klout
• Pierre Woreczek, Svp, Chief Brand & Strategy Officer, Mcdonalds Europe
• Bertrand Bodson, Svp Global Digital Marketing, Emi Music
• Pete Blackshaw, Global Head Of Digital Marketing & Social Media, Nestle
• Alexander Koppel, Chief Commercial Officer, Red Bull Media House
• Dagmar Cholsta, Svp Global Marketing, Adidas
• Kevin Mathers, Head Of Media Solutions, Google Uk
• Laurent Delaporte, Vice President Advertising Emea, Microsoft
• Benjamin Faes, Managing Director Media & Platform Europe, Google
• Delphine Remy-Boutan, Ww Social Media Marketing Director, Ibm
• Philip Rinn, Senior Director, Advertising, Ebay
• Thomas Brown, Head Of Insights Cim, The Chartered Institue Of Marketing
• Joshua Graff, Director, Marketing Solutions Emea, Linkedin
• Christer Holloman, Author Of, ‘The Social Media Mba’
• Neal Schaffer, President & Principal Social Media Strategy Consultant, Windmill Marketing
• Mark Coyle, Editor, Bbc London 2012, Online

All eyes are on Pinterest, the social network that lets users collect and share images found on the Web by “pinning” them on virtual pinboards. The images span a variety of categories, from fashion, crafts, cooking, décor, fitness, and more. Users can follow the pinboards of friends and brands for inspiration and “repin” the images onto their own pinboards. Today, Pinterest is quickly becoming the fastest-growing social media site based on its huge popularity with women, as well as its unlimited potential as a marketing tool for businesses. “Pins” help companies promote their products, develop their brand personalities, drive tremendous referral traffic to their websites, and gain exposure among the Pinterest community. Now, MDG Advertising has produced an engaging video highlighting the facts, figures, and findings from its popular “Pin It To Win It” infographic.

The video details the social site’s demographics, growth, and potential to drive abundant traffic to company websites. Pinterest is especially popular with the most highly coveted markets—about 60 percent are female and 80 percent are in the 25 to 54 age demographic. Plus, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined.

The video goes on to cover the brands, both large and small, on board the pinboard phenomenon, such as Whole Foods, Etsy, West Elm, and Real Simple. These companies reflect the cooking, décor, and crafts interests that are prevalent among the Pinterest audience.

In addition, the video helps marketers navigate Pinterest’s features and terminology by demonstrating the “pin,” “repinning,” and “board.” It also shows how companies can leverage Pinterest for maximum response and referral traffic, whether by improving their image quality or promoting more than just a product line.

Do you use Pinterest?

“O-o-o-o-o-o, snap…” Alex Anzalone, a top-gun High School linebacker, has de-committed from Ohio State following tweets that associate him with a convicted sex offender.

During a spring game weekend, a gallant Anzalone posed for pictures with an adoring fan named Charles Eric Waugh. Little did he know, Waugh, a thirty-one year old Kentuckian, had plead guilty to five counts of possession of underage sexual content in 2008.

Waugh, a hardcore Buckeye, had been reaching out to student athletes via his personal Twitter account, tweeting ominously inspirational quotes to over 120 student atheltes between the ages of 16 and 22. As one critic of Waugh’s social media efforts puts it:

During the spring game weekend Waugh managed to get pictures with a few Buckeye recruits including the Buckeye mascot Brutus.

Anzalone (left) points at Waugh while they pose with two other recruits (Image: The Cautionary Tale of @Bdubstriviaguru)

Waugh tweeted his photo-op with Anzalone along with other photos from spring game weekend. But even before his close-up meet and greet during spring weekend, Waugh’s interaction with student athletes via Twitter was already being criticized (his history at the time, was not yet known, his behavior however was just THAT creepy).

Since that post, Anzalone is back on the market, looking for another school (preferably with background checks on all super-fans).

Alex’s father explained to the Reading Eagle: “You don’t want your son to go to a place where there’s a potential issue.”

The Buckeye Department of Athletics put out a statement stating that “proactive precautions” were made in order to alert all the Ohio State student-athletes about “this individual from Kentucky… This individual is not associated with Ohio State. He is not a booster. He has not engaged in any activities on behalf of the University.”

Aside from giving Waugh the Heisman, the statement also further warned students about the possible consequences that may manifest via social networking sites.

Shady characters like sports too, but here is where the story gets dark/weird/I understand why Anzalone de-comitted:

Waugh’s past conviction was for downloads of boys younger than 16 engaged in sexual acts. He avoided jail time because of his clean-record however was put on probation and registered as a sex offender. From that point he was sentenced to comply with stipulations that restrict sex offenders from using social networking in order to communicate with any person less than 18 years old.

Waugh, described by his mother as “a Christian boy” saved and baptized, has obviously violated his sentence. Following the spring game, Waugh injudiciously proceeded to take both an early enrollee defensive back and back-up quarterback out for a Chipotle lunch which he later thanked them for in a tweet.

So, do you agree with Anzalone’s choice to de-comitt from Ohio State? Comment and let us know what you think. 

(Feature Image: SB Nation)

With the huge success of the Avengers movie this weekend I thought it appropriate that I ran across this video today that was a mashup of a ton of different sci-fi and “super hero” movies.

I will admit I don’t recognize most of them as I’m not a movie watcher, much less a superhero/comic book movie fan. Just not my thing.

I can usually only take a few minutes of these types of films before I knod off. Which is why this video is right up my alley! Short and to the point!

The video has just under 200,000 views after about 2 weeks being on YouTube.

Check it out and hope you enjoy. Below shows you all of the characters shown in the video in order of their appearance:

0:15 Batman & Robin
0:16 Super
0:16 Kick-Ass
0:17 Captain America: The First Avenger
0:17 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
0:18 The Green Hornet
0:19 Batman Forever
0:20 Iron Man
0:20 Batman Returns
0:21 Batman & Robin
0:21 Blade: Trinity
0:22 Batman Begins
0:23 The Avengers
0:23 The Amazing Spider-Man
0:24 Megamind
0:24 Judge Dredd
0:25 Daredevil
0:26 The Punisher (2004)
0:26 Elektra
0:27 Watchmen
0:28 Hellboy
0:29 Ghost Rider
0:29 Captain America: The First Avenger
0:30 X-Men: First Class
0:31 Spider-Man 3
0:32 Iron Man
0:33 Green Lantern
0:33 Super
0:35 Batman Forever
0:36 Kick-Ass
0:36 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
0:37 Batman Forever
0:38 Spider-Man 3
0:39 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
0:41 Spawn
0:42 TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze
0:43 The Punisher (2004)
0:44 Blade
0:46 Judge Dredd
0:47 Batman Forever
0:47 The Spirit
0:48 Iron Man
0:49 The Dark Knight
0:50 Superman Returns
0:52 Iron Man 2
0:53 Kick-Ass
0:54 The Dark Knight
0:55 Punisher: War Zone
0:56 Green Lantern
0:58 LXG: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
0:59 Batman Returns
1:01 Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
1:02 The Phantom
1:03 Steel
1:05 Batman Forever
1:06 Spider-Man 3
1:08 V for Vendetta
1:10 The Amazing Spider-Man
1:11 Batman Forever
1:13 Blankman
1:16 Watchmen
1:17 Defendor
1:18 Unbreakable
1:19 The Shadow
1:21 The Dark Knight Rises
1:22 The Punisher (1989)
1:23 Black Mask
1:25 Barb Wire
1:26 The Dark Knight Rises
1:28 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
1:31 Spider-Man
1:33 X-Men: The Last Stand
1:36 The Fantastic Four
1:37 The Avengers
1:37 Superman Returns
1:39 Iron Man
1:39 Hancock
1:40 Underdog
1:41 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
1:44 Superman Returns
1:45 Ghost Rider
1:46 Dick Tracy
1:48 Punisher: War Zone
1:49 The Mask
1:49 Jonah Hex
1:50 The Green Hornet
1:51 The Crow
1:52 Hancock
1:53 Meteor Man
1:54 The Incredible Hulk
1:56 Iron Man 2
1:58 The Hulk
1:59 The Rocketeer
2:00 My Super Ex-Girlfriend
2:02 X-Men
2:05 Tank Girl
2:07 Supergirl
2:08 Elektra
2:09 X-Men
2:10 Catwoman
2:11 Mystery Men
2:12 The Powerpuff Girls Movie
2:15 Spider-Man 3
2:18 Ghost Rider
2:20 Batman Forever
2:23 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
2:25 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
2:26 X2: X-Men United
2:28 Spider-Man 2
2:30 Blade II
2:32 Daredevil
2:34 The Fantastic Four
2:38 Superman
2:41 Batman: The Movie
2:43 The Super Inframan
2:46 Condorman
2:48 The Super Inframan
2:50 Jet Jaguar
2:51 The Toxic Avenger
2:53 The Return of Captain Invincible
2:54 Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four
2:55 Ultraman
2:56 Orgazmo
2:57 The Dark Knight
2:59 X2: X-Men United
3:00 Batman Returns
3:01 Superman Returns
3:02 Daredevil
3:03 Spider-Man 2
3:04 Batman
3:05 Batman Begins
3:07 Dick Tracy
3:08 Iron Man
3:09 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
3:10 Spider-Man
3:11 Batman Returns
3:12 X2: X-Men United
3:14 The Incredible Hulk
3:15 X-Men: First Class
3:19 Batman Begins
3:21 X2: X-Men United
3:24 Spider-Man 2
3:29 Green Lantern
3:31 Superman Returns
3:34 The Fantastic Four
3:36 Spider-Man
3:39 Thor
3:41 Watchmen
3:41 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
3:42 X-Men
3:42 The Fantastic Four
3:43 Blade II
3:43 Daredevil
3:44 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
3:45 The Dark Knight
3:46 The Green Hornet
3:47 The Avengers
3:47 Kick-Ass
3:48 Superman Returns
3:49 Iron Man 2
3:50 The Avengers
3:51 Iron Man 2
3:52 The Avengers
3:54 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
3:55 The Fantastic Four
3:56 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
3:57 Chronicle
3:59 Spider-Man 2
4:01 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
4:03 The Incredibles
4:05 X2: X-Men United
4:06 Daredevil
4:07 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
4:08 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
4:09 Captain America: The First Avenger
4:11 Batman Begins
4:12 Blade
4:14 The Fantastic Four
4:15 Superman II
4:16 X-Men: The Last Stand
4:17 Watchmen
4:20 The Avengers

Last week many people on Facebook were posting that they had seen a sudden increase in their Subscriber count almost overnight. Some had gone from just a few hundred to a few 100 thousand!

I personally went from about 1500 Subscribers to 2200 in about 5 hours the other day on my personal profile.

Many thought this was maybe a glitch or the numbers hadn’t been updated in a while so was just something that was fixing itself.

I posted about this on my profile and my friend Robert Scoble replied that he believed it was due to Facebook integrating the number of people subscribing to an Interest List you were on with your Subscriber count.

Which makes absolute sense.

So I sought out to test this theory. What I did was add my buddy Matt Astifan to an Interest List I have created called “Social Media Resources“. It has about 450 or so Subscribers to it currently. Before adding Matt to it he had 543 Subscribers to his account. About 24 hours later his count jumped to 714 Subscribers. This tells me a few things. 1) That Facebook is now including in your Subscriber count those that Subscribe to an Interest List and 2) That about 200 of the people that had subscribed to my list were already either a friend with or Subscribed to Matt’s profile.

This is huge news that I haven’t seen Facebook mention or talk about. And it explains all of the jumps in numbers people are seeing lately.

Interest Lists are fantastic and is a great way to get your page and your profile in front of other people very quickly. Also keep in mind that those people can interact with your post and not have Liked your page yet.

What will be interesting to see is if your page Like number will change to reflect those that have Subscribed to an Interest List and haven’t Liked your page yet. Not sure how or if Facebook will do that. But it does make sense for sure.

Have you noticed an increase in your Subscribers?

Below are a few Interest Lists that I subscribe to that you might find useful:

Social Media Resources (started by me and contains pages and people that are great resources on social media)

Tech Heads (started by me and contains pages and people talking about technology)

Facebook Experts & Resources (this one was started by Mari Smith)

Marketing Avengers (started by me and contains people and pages that are doing marketing the right way!)

NFL Teams (started by Adam Schefter and contains all the NFL teams pages)

Business News (started by Vadim Lavrusik from Facebook and contains people and pages talking about business)

Mashable Staff (started by Pete Cashmore and contains all of the Mashable staff)

Facebook Designers (started by Chris Kalani. pretty self explanatory as to what it contains!)

Innovative Brands (another cool list started by Pete Cashmore)

Motivational People (started by Evan Fogel and contains well.. motivational people!)

Land’s End has a great Pinterest page that not only gives you the latest fashion for the season, but also suggests pieces and articles of clothing for you to get the look you want.  The Travel Channel creates different categories that ranges from beaches, escapes, food, travel finds and beautiful scenery.

What are the best practices of marketing on Pinterest?  Here are six things that you should do:

1. Think of your brand.  What do you stand for and what are your products? If you have a tour service, you might want to feature beautiful tourist spots on your Pinterest page, as well as places you recommend and suggestions from local people through their own Pinterest accounts.

2. Describe yourself.  As always, never leave this space blank. It’s a great way for people to get to know you better, especially if they came upon your pins through other people.

3. Lead them to your Twitter account, website or RSS feed.  More than getting people to visit your online properties, it’s a great way to get them through your door. You could also gain more followers and keep them updated regularly. At the very least, these links could also help your search engine rankings as well.

4. Be relevant.  It seems that the top brands do not just post what they want. They try to stay relevant and try to think about what their customers are looking for and gives it to them. Take a look at the Pinterest page set up by Better Homes and Gardens. They have mixed their room ideas (DIY for Your Home, Beautiful Bathroom) and fun suggestions (Color Me Fabulous, Bold Pattern, Ideas for Your Apartment) with timely pins such as Valentine Day Goodies and Harvest Inspired Goodies.

5. Use your best pictures and don’t forget to spice it up with great words to describe each!  Pinterest is highly visual, and with a lot of pictures competing with one another, you would need to make sure that each photo stands out.

More than that, however, you would need to make sure that you also leave a great description for every photograph.  You only have a few lines to make a good impression, but if done right, the descriptions might encourage your visitor to continue on to your website or follow your pins.

6. Remember it is social marketing, not selling.  Resist the urge to put everything at once.  Remember that very much like your status updates and tweets, it is a good idea to scatter your pins.  To make your pins more interesting, focus on a theme such as the best sunglasses for 2012 or yellow scarves to die for.

You simply cannot, or should not put up ALL your products on your Pinterest page.  If you want to do that, then just create a catalog and mail them out or put them on your website.

Putting prices on your pins.  Pinterest will automatically add a price banner to your photo when you put a dollar sign in your description.   Do this sparingly.

Unfortunately for the FBI, communication outlets like Facebook and Google+ are not susceptible to wire-taps. This shift in communication has rendered the old FBI wire-tap (infamous for hunting racketeers and smashing organized crime) absolutely useless. It is all a part of a growing fear within the bureau of “Going Dark,” a process by which surveillance capabilities exponentially shrink as technology advances.

The FBI has been working on a solution since the term “Going Dark,” was coined in 2008. The solution is an amendment to CALAE, Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (1994), that would place backdoors across the Internet: popular social media outlets, email providers, as well as audiovisual chat services like FaceTime, Google Hangouts and Xbox Live.

Today, without the expansion of CALAE, e-mail services and social-networking sites are required to comply with a wiretap order. These proposed backdoors for government survelliance would give the FBI full access to user data, and transform the Internet into a wire-tap friendly venue as websites that exceed a certain amount of users would be required to alter their code to include backdoors for the FBI.

An expansion of CALAE puts the “C” in complicated, especially when you consider that the Internet is a World Wide Web, and additionally, when you consider popular e-communication products like Zfone that scrambles users’ conversations or Nicholas Merill’s ISP that provides full encryption and puts users’ privacy first for only $20 a month.

In a response to CNET, TechAmerica explains that an expansion of CALAE would be “a sea change in government surveillance law, imposing significant compliance costs on both traditional (think local exchange carriers) and nontraditional (think social media) communications companies.”

To me it seems like putting backdoors into websites could make the Internet less safe and secure, seeing as hackers do enough damage without a threshold to walk-through. Comment and let us know what you think.

(Feature Image: Innovation Trail)

You pour your entire being into creating the best blog you can, and yet, you still do not have the amount of followers you wish you did. You read popular blogs day after day and wonder how they got so lucky as to have thousands of daily readers. Here are six tips on how you get your blog noticed and increase readership.

#1: Write Great Headlines

Want people to want to read your blog? Having a great headline will capture the readers attention and make your blog irresistible! For example, our post Finding Content Ideas Quickly with Google+, could have simply been titled Google+ Content Ideas. Boring! We wanted people to know right away that they could get something worthwhile from reading our post, and we wanted them to know how Quickly they could find it!

#2: Share, Share, Share and Make Your Blog Easy to Share!

Make sure you are sharing your blog post on every available social media network you can! If you aren’t promoting your post, why would anyone else? Make your blog easy to share! If people can’t share it easily, they are less likely to share it at all! We use the Digg Digg floating sidebar for our blog to make sure people can share it quickly and easily!

#3: Fill in Your Meta Data and Tags

Filling in your Meta description and title will help your blog be found by search engines. Do not skip this step! Tags are just as important, they act as keywords for your blog post. Keywords are how people find your blog when they are searching! You want people to find your blog right? We recommend you use the SEO Ultimate plugin (if you use WordPress). This is one of the best SEO plugins available.

#4: Post Great Content!

This seems like a no brainer, but you would be surprised at how many people do not know what great content is. Most blog posts should be between 300-1000 words. You want people to know you are an expert on the topic you are posting about, but you also do not want to bore them with unnecessary details. Posting tutorials, how to videos, podcasts, and webinars are also great content ideas.

#5: Comment on Other Peoples Blogs

When you comment on others blogs, you show that you are engaged. Normally, this also gives you a way to attached your blog URL to your comment. This does wonders for your SEO. Make sure you comment on posts you are passionate about, or that really strike your interest. If you feel the reader did a great job, tell them! If you think you can add something positive to the post, let it be known! Welcome comments on your own blog and you may see the people from the blogs you commented on, reciprocating!

#6: Guest Blog

Guest Blogging is a great way to show a totally new audience that you are an expert on your topic. This gives you a new audience to showcase your blog to, by linking. There are tons of sites out there right now who want you! Do not be afraid to also have people guest blog on your own blog. This gives you more posts on your blog and even more expertise!

Have more tips that made your blog successful? We would love to hear about them!

Guest Blog provided by Nina Churchill. You can connect with Nina on Twitter, Facebook and on her website http://www.freshviewconcepts.com

The infographic below from WebpageFX is a detailed account of Mark Zuckerberg’s social life based on the movie The Social Network, which came out before Timeline: Facebook’s revolutionary layout with a whole lot of image and your life story in mind.

So, naturally the makers of this infographic thought it would be a great idea to put Zuckerberg on the business end of his own creation.

Mark Zuckerberg, born in 1984…

Facebook, originally called “www.theFacebook.com” was started by Zuckerberg while he was studying computer science at Harvard (he dropped-out after Facebook got big  and joined the ranks of great college drop-outs like Steve Jobs and Jim Morrison).

But theFacebook wasn’t necessarily first. Zuckerberg created FaceMash.com when he was a sophomore at Harvard, a website that rated the hotness of the student body via images that Zuckerberg stole from the school’s database. The initial site generated 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.

Did you know Zuckerberg kept a diary? Zuckerberg turned to working on websites like Face Mash and Facebook after a girl broke-up with him (Erica Albright in the movie, Jessica Alona in his online diary), hence the phrase that started it all “Jessica Alona is a Bitch.“

The infographic below from WebpageFX is a detailed account of Mark Zuckerberg’s social life based on the movie The Social Network, which came out before Timeline: Facebook’s revolutionary layout with a whole lot of image and your life story in mind.

Click the image below for full-size and comment to let us know what you think!

Infographic by WebpageFX

NEXT Berlin 2012
May 8-9, 2012
STATION-Berlin, Berlin, Germany

NEXT Berlin is the leading European conference for professionals in the digital industry. This conference brings big brands together with the people in media, Internet, technology and advertising industries. This year, register for Next Berlin and learn more about Fashion, Creative, Start-ups, Mobile, Experience, Technology. Aside from these tracks, there are also workshops for everybody.

Sessions in NEXT Berlin are curated by:

• Monique van Dusseldorp, Owner, Van Dusseldorp BV
• Igor Schwarzmann, Co-Founder, Third Wave
• Holger Blank, Managing Director, SinnerSchrader
• Elisabeth Stangl, 99 FACES
• Min-Kin Mak, New Business & Partnering, Deutsche Telekom AG
• Anitra Eggler, Internet Pioneer & Communications Expert
• Peter Bihr, Co-Founder, Third Wave
• Jörg Jelden, Trend & Transformation Consultant

CMS Expo 2012
May 8-10, 2012
Hotel Orrington, Evanston, IL, United States

The CMS Expo 2012 brings together the leading content management systems available today and the people behind them.

Speakers at the event includes:

• Robert Rose, co-author, Managing Content Marketing
• Kristina Halvorson, CEO and Founder, Brain Traffic
• Liz Strauss, CEO and Founder, SOBCon Business Conference
• Shaun Walker, Co-Founder & CTO, DotNetNuke Corp
• Benni Mack, TYPO3 core team member
• Ryan Thrash, Co-founder and President, MODX CMS
• Michael Uzquiano, Founder, Cloud CMS
• Merav Knafo, Founder, iJoomla.com and UsabilityTesting.tv
• Phil Sturgeon, Founder, PyroCMS
• Nick Martinelli, Sourcebooks, Inc.
• Jake DiMare, Senior Project Manager, ISITE Design
• Tom Canavan, cyber security author
• Irina Guseva, Analyst, The Real Story Group
• Scott Liewehr, Host, CMS Connected
• Cheryl McKinnon, Vice President of Marketing, AIIM Association.
• Jeff Eaton
• Kendall Cabe, Owner, Times Two Technology
• Ric Dragon, author, The Online Marketing Manual, and Dragonsearch.
• Jen Kramer, President and Senior Interface Developer, 4Web Inc
• Seth Gottlieb, Founder, Content Here
• Rafael Corral, Lead Programmer, corePHP
• Jonathan Shroyer, Co-Founder, corePHP
• Dr. Daniel Mittleman, Associate Professor, School of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University
• Avery Cohen
• Robert Jacobi, President, Arc Technology Group
• Matthew Lechleider, Chicago Drupal Meet Up Group
• Jenna Ryan, Co-Founder, TheMarketingShop.com
• Tony White, Founder, Ars Logica
• John Eckman, Digital Strategist, iSITE
• Emma Jane Hogbin, Author, Front-End Drupal
• Rick Blalock, Engineer, Appcelerator
• Justin Kerr, President, Prototaph Interactive

So if you can’t attract a Gaga-sized followership as a business, how can you amplify your Twitter exposure?

Retweets.

The Value of a Retweet

Savvy consumers are often wary of brands spamming across the social media platforms. But they’re increasingly open to receiving content from people they know. That’s why Retweeting – in which a Twitter follower forwards someone else’s Tweet to his or her own set of Twitter followers – is so potentially valuable for brands.

It is also valuable because your Tweet can get Retweeted by one of your followers, then any of their followers can Retweet your original Tweet, and so there is the potential for a cavalcade of viral messaging that turns your brand into the next @AngiesRightLeg.

Not only does it mean your content gets self-distributed to an exponentially wider audience, but your messaging is being delivered to consumers by people they trust, making them significantly more likely to engage with content.

The concept of sharing is embedded in all social networks, and much of the internet, however in Twitter it is far more implicit to the very concept of the platform.

Who’s Getting Retweeted?

Track Social has dug deep into its Twitter analytics to find out just which Twitter accounts see the most Retweet action per day. Lo and behold the Retweet Leaderboard:

Retweets Per Day For Brands

Joyce Meyer Ministries
ESPN
Joel Osteen Ministries
Miami Heat
Breaking News
NBA
CNN Breaking News
Los Angeles Lakers
Chicago Bulls
BBC Breaking News
At First Glance: Sports dominate this leaderboard.

[Note: Track Social tracks Brands only, not individuals. For more Track Social Leaderboards go here]

Twitter is all about spreading the latest news, fast. That’s why Twitter’s up-to-the-minute headline stream is the perfect medium for sports and news. No surprise then that of our top ten (non-celebrity) brands on Twitter, five were sports-related, and ESPN, the leading sports news cable network, came in at number two.

Play-by-Play

Engaging with media-addicted sports fans is perfectly suited to Twitter’s format. Besides offering an instant portal to ESPN content through headline links, photos and video posts, ESPN makes sure to generate fan interaction – and get the Retweets flowing – by regularly asking followers to jump into the conversation. Not such a difficult task given that participation is written into sports fans’ DNA.

ESPN’s Tweets run the gamut from the sublime: “He’s 5’9 and DUNKS over anything” to, yes, the ridiculous: “What would make for the best #OfficeCombine drill? Reply with the hashtag #OfficeCombine. We’ll RT (retweet) our favorites.”

Keeping fans close to the action – with scores, plays, trades, and highlights – is what Twitter does best. NBA team Miami Heat came it at number 4 while the Chicago Bulls showed up at number 9. Both teams post upwards of 15-25 posts per day and load them up with pictures and player videos: “Joakim Noah dunks to record his 1st career triple double http://bit.ly/btvpotw.”

Extra! Extra! Tweet All About It!

In just the past few years, Twitter has stolen the thunder from radio stations and television news broadcasters to become everyone’s primary go-to place for the most current events. Where do you think most people found out about Whitney Houston’s death? That’s right – Twitter. Three news organizations on the Leaderboard – Breaking News (an aggregate of many different news feed sources), CNN, and BBC Breaking News rank in at numbers 5, 7, and 10 respectively. These sources tend to rely more on the content of the stories themselves to motivate Retweeting, allowing followers to share with their followers, and more often than not, allowing these Tweets to become trending topics.

Lady Gaga, meet Joyce Meyer

But perhaps the most surprising entry in our top ten comes in at number one: Joyce Meyer Ministries is the evangelical preaching and publishing organization of Fenton, Missouri-based preacher Joyce Meyer.

Catering to a largely female following, the posts (about four to six per day) range from cautionary wisdom: “The sooner you learn that feelings are fickle, the better off you’ll be” to motivational exhortation: “If you’re too busy for God then it’s time to change your schedule.” They also include the occasional Bible verse and update on where Joyce will be appearing next.

Given the lack of proprietary content coming through her feed (there’s nothing particularly exclusive about the Psalms), the success of Meyers’ Twitter strategy tells us something about the attraction of social media platforms like Twitter. The real power of this technology is to allow a personality (who would otherwise never be able to engage with one of “the masses”) to speak directly into a person’s daily life.

And that should tell us something about the power of social media platforms like Twitter to erase the distance between “us” and “them.” We’re increasingly comfortable with, and, indeed, increasingly demand a level of personalized interaction. Not just from our preachers, or our celebrities, but from our brands as well. Because the goal of all this technology really is to connect – not just to ideas or entertainment or “content” but to other people – in a meaningful way.

Make the connection – and the Retweets will follow.

*Guest post by Felicia Dorng of Track Social. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

After a job interview, a date, or grabbing the interest of a prospective client, you might be Googled. According to BrandYourself, 75% of HR departments are Googling prospective employees.

Have you ever wanted to get to know your Googlers? With BrandYourself, you can.

Since its launch in March, the core of BrandYourself has been a resource for demystifying SEO and empowering individuals to control what appears in their search results. BrandYourself knows that, “bad results happen to good people.” With this website, an Ivy League professor whose search results lead to false accusations of shoplifting, was able to bury bad results from the Googling eyes of his colleagues and students.

On Tuesday BrandYourself added a new feature that allows users to see who is Googling them.

(image source: Mashable)

Here is how it works:

First you will have to sign-up for BrandYourself. From here you have access to their free SEO resources and a BrandYourself profile. This profile is optimized to show-up in those coveted first place results, “80% show up on the first two pages in 2 weeks.” So make your profile look as good, if not better than the CEO’s profile.

Then you can sit-back and screen-gaze at the results. BrandYourself will show you (as best they can) who is searching for you with not only Google but other search engines and websites as well.

Comment and let us know if you’ve ever encountered some bad personal search results. You may have googled my name and found that I am a viral YouTube singing sensation– just a girl and her guitar. 

(Feature Image: Buzzow)

We all know that Pinterest is the new “it” social platform. Seems everyone and their dog have jumped on the photo sharing site and now reports are it’s over 50 million users.

I’m still not a big fan of Pinterest, but do pin things every once in a while. It’s just not a destination site for me yet.

But, I will say the clean layout of Pinterest is very appealing and many love it purely for that. So it didn’t take long for some creative app developers to create a Facebook app that lets you view your Facebook Timeline and everything else on Facebook as if you were on Pinterest!

And that app is called Pinview. To get the app just click on the link to the left. You will need to give it permissions to access your info, that’s pretty standard.

Once you’re done you get the option of many different views to look at. You can view “The Pinview”, which is basically your newsfeed as shown below:

Or you can view “Friends”, “Photos”, or “Videos”. All in a very Pinterest-like fashion. Below is what the “Photos” view looks like:

The great thing too is you can Like, Comment and Share right from the app. But do know that if you hit Share it will show “via Pinview” on that post. So keep that in mind.

Overall I dig this app, but wouldn’t use it all the time to view my newsfeed, but I might use it to quickly view photos posted in my network and videos.

]]> http://hubze.com/2012/05/turn-facebook-into-pinterest/feed/ 2 http://hubze.com/2012/04/marketing-monday-market-your-products-via-an-e-book-part-2/ http://hubze.com/2012/04/marketing-monday-market-your-products-via-an-e-book-part-2/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:00:58 +0000 David Foster http://hubze.com/?p=50040 (hubze.com)

In a previous post, the hubze squad has given you four pointers on how to write and then market an e-book that your customers would love to download. Your customers would also need to see you as a credible source of information and tips so that they would feel the desire to download your e-book, or even trust what you have to say on the matter.

Let’s continue.

5. Get a database up for your current customers and prospects.

Another advantage of publishing an e-book is that it could help you build a database of your customers , in addition to engaging them. When you put out your e-book, remember that it would be best for you to create a landing page where they could download your e-book.

Consider getting personal data from them such as their names, contact numbers, e-mail address, previous purchases with you or any planned purchases they might have, along with other information about their behavior. You could have your customers fill out a short form in exchange for the e-book that they want.

Further, you could also encourage them to share your landing page with their friends either via Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, or they just enter their friend’s e-mail address and have the system notify their friends about your e-book.

This way, you get to maximize your marketing by having your customers serve as your brand ambassador to their friends, while you get the contact details and consumer behavior patterns from the new people who download your e-book (your customers’ friends!).

6. Pricing matters: Consider giving away your e-book for free.

Unlike traditional books where you have to pay for publishing, printing and shipping costs, there are actually not much financial investment in coming up with an e-book. Price it low or give it away for free to make it very attractive to your customers. This would ensure that people would not think twice about downloading your e-book if they see the need for it. What’s more, it is very difficult to resist a free and useful item!

7. Adapt all formats.

The good news is that there are now more screens on which your customers could read your e-books. They could read it on their desktop computers, or laptops. They could download it to their smartphones, e-book readers or tablets.

Because your e-book is only effective when somebody downloads it and hopefully shares it with their friends, it might help to make your e-book available in the format that your customers are going to use it. Create your e-book in different formats such as ePub, PDF or Kindle formats to see .

Your e-book is a great way for your customers to get to know your business, products and service a little bit better, while also helping you get their minds open for other products that you might have to sell. This is because a well-written e-book will always entertain, educate or inform people . It would be something that people are scrambling to buy or get. Do not limit response by neglecting not making it compatible to different device screens.

For those who regularly use or >.<, the emoticon might just be another punctuation mark that stands side by side with the exclamation point and the question mark. I have a feeling that I am never going to know exactly what means.

So as a part of Skype’s new marketing campaign that asks “When did LOL replace the sound of laughter?” Skype is touting their service to be a “one-way-ticket back to humanity,” where you can “upgrade from a wall post to a first class conversation.”

So naturally, Skype has decided to re-vamp the emoticon, and it’s alive, it’s alive!

The image above can be viewed in its entirety as a gif here on Facebook; check-out this guy’s devil.

They are called humoticons and you can make your own via the Skype Facebook app, here. You can make gif or static emoticons  (via webcam photos or existing photos) using your own beautiful face. If you try it out, share a link to your humoticon in the comments, “because nothing can replace the look on your face.”

Do you prefer to communicate via Skype or another resource: Twitter, Facebook, Cellphone, Email, Letters (are there any letter writers out there?)…  are you using emoticons?

(feature image: PopSop)

]]> http://hubze.com/2012/04/show-how-you-really-feel-with-skypes-humoticons/feed/ 2 http://hubze.com/2012/04/inspiring-design-in-social-media-create-a-giant-poster-like-image-using-timelines-highlight-feature/ http://hubze.com/2012/04/inspiring-design-in-social-media-create-a-giant-poster-like-image-using-timelines-highlight-feature/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:34:52 +0000 Kevin Tomasso http://hubze.com/?p=51142 This week Kevin shows you an awesome trick to pimp out your Timline using the Highlight and post-date feature.

For a step-by-step video tutorial of how this is done, sign up for SME+

The latest example of Facebook parenting comes from mother, Denise Abbott, who in addition from revoking Facebook and cellphone privileges, has given her daughter’s Facebook account a total redesign with punishment in mind.

After mouthing-off and airing her drama over Facebook, 13-year old Ava probably didn’t even see her mother’s Facebook parenting coming. The tech savvy mom made her daughter a new Timeline cover photo that includes a portrait of her daughter with a big “X” over her mouth and this message:

I do not know how to keep my (mouth shut). I am no longer allowed on Facebook or my phone. Please ask why. My mom says I have to answer everyone that asks.

According to Denise Abbott, the punishment fits the crime, the social media generation, and her daughter’s personality. She told a local NBC affiliate:

When you put everything on Facebook you have to realize there is a consequence for all of your actions.

AllFacebook featured Ava’s response. Here is the email to WKYC-TV with her thoughts on the punishment:

I feel like I deserved it because I was mean to my mom and spoke disrespectful to her in front of my friends. Facebook is a big part of my social life, and it’s how me and my friends find out what is going on and making plans and about school work and projects. It made me realize that I didn’t want my picture on there like that because all of my friends were asking me what happened and what I did. I told the people that asked me and my mom why that I spoke to my mom mean when she was doing nice stuff for me and my friends. I know my mom always makes sure I don’t get away with stuff like that and I was sorry. Thank you, Ava.

Do you think this is a creative punishment for a new generation of social media babies or vindictive retaliation?

I know usually I’m posting videos that have gone viral on YouTube that are humorous, make you laugh, involve creativity or someone getting nailed in the balls.

But, today I have to share this video with you.

And I’ll be completely upfront here. While typing this and watching this video I am utterly disgusted and have tears in my eyes. As a parent I can’t fathom a teacher treating a kid this way. Especially children with special needs.

I’m beyond livid right now after watching this. I don’t know why any adult would talk to a child this way. They deserve to be fired and never have the ability to work with children again.

The anger this dad has is very real and is so moving.

Please share this video with others so more awareness is made.

Also, go sign the petition here: http://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-new-jersey-legislature-and-congress-pass-legislation-so-that-teachers-who-bully-children-are-immediately-fired

The video has gotten 3.5 million views in just one week and I’m sure will grow even more. Below is the description on the video so you have a back story.

My name is Stuart Chaifetz, and my son, Akian, is a ten-year old boy who has Autism. Akian has always been a sweet and non-violent child, and that is why it was so distressing when notes started coming home from his school, Horace Mann Elementary in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, saying that he was having violent outbursts, including him hitting his teacher and aide.

I could not understand why this was happening. I had never witnessed Akian hit anyone, nor could I dream of him lashing out as had been described to me. In October, I had a meeting with the IEP team (the teacher, school social worker, occupational therapist and speech teacher) to try to figure out what was going on. From that meeting, a behaviorist was called in who wrote a report. I sat down with the behaviorist on February 8, 2012 to review the findings.

It was pointless; even though the behaviorist was in the classroom a number of times, not only had he never witnessed any violent event, but when he tried to create a scenario that would cause one to happen, he failed.

Something was terribly wrong. I felt I was beginning to lose my son — that these outbursts were changing his very nature. The teacher and school social worker tried to downplay it, to the point of almost mocking me for my concern. But I knew my son. I knew this wasn’t him. And I knew I had to find out what was happening in his class that was having such a dramatic impact on him.

On the morning of Friday, February 17, 2012, I wired my son and sent him to school. That night, when I listened to the audio my life forever changed, for I heard my son being bullied by his teacher and aide.

Again, please share this if you are as disgusted by this as I am.. My heart aches for this child.

We know that the government is monitoring social media; the Department of Homeland Security released a list of social media monitoring terms earlier this year. But in the case of individual schools, its a total free for all. The administrators find out about student’s social media bad behavior via parents, other students, and in some cases demand access to students’ accounts because of rumors.

Below are three examples of how students are using (abusing?) Social Media, and the actions that administrators have taken.

Mean Girls

In Indiana, three eight-graders were suspended and later expelled from school because of a discussion on Facebook regarding which of their “ugly” classmates they would like to kill, along with how they would do it. The 2-hour posting party (after school from the girls’ personal devices) followed a status update about one girl’s first-world problem: “I hate when I’m shaving my legs and I get he tinyest, microscopic, little (expletive)cut and it bleeds so much and makes me lose like 1/3 of the blood in my body – _ -“

The school found out about the comments after a classmate’s mother alerted school administrators, who quickly found the girls in violation of the school’s policy against bullying, harassment and intimidation.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana filed a lawsuit on behalf of the three 14-year-old girls, claiming that Griffith Public Schools violated the students’ free-speech rights. You can read more about the incident, on the Northwest Indiana Times, HERE.

One Big Fat Invasion of Privacy

Recently there has been a lot of controversy surrounding employers demanding access to future/current employee’s Facebook profiles.

I came across a blog written by a concerned mother who described a situation in which school administrators were demanding access to student accounts; an incident which she found to be a major “violation of [her] daughter’s privacy.”

Apparently administrators called her daughter in to discuss rumors that were circulating– “unrelated to school and nothing against the law.” Eventually they demanded to see the student’s Facebook account, which administrator’s kept open until the mother (who was out of town) was able to come to the school and read through her daughter’s private messages, which the mother described as “equivalent to my teachers going through my diary when I was in grade school.”

Of course, you could expect that it took a toll on the student, “who ended up crying through most of the day and therefore missed most of her classes.”

Following the incident the mother clashed with administrators (you can read the real nitty-gritty here). However her daughter informed her that the school administration is “regularly taking kids into the counselor’s office and telling them they cannot leave until they open up their Facebook accounts.”

Garrett High School Gives a F—

Last month in Indiana, 17 year-old High School senior, Austin Carroll, was expelled before graduation for a lot of F—king profanity on his Twitter account.

Here is a little taste of High School humor: “F— is one of those F—ing words you can f—ing put anywhere in a f—ing sentence and it still f—ing make sense.”

Although his tweets are considerably profane, they are posted on his own time, outside of school, on his own personal devices. Innocent enough, right? 

The school sure didn’t think so, and many school’s across the country are adopting strict social media policies.

According to the Huffington Post, a bill is advancing in Indiana that would punish students for off-campus activities that may interfere with school purposes. In West Virginia an anti-bullying policy has been adopted that makes students punishable by detention or suspension “for posting inapropriate, threatening, harassing, racist, biased, derogatory, disparaing or bullying comments,” on “any website.”

Comment and share your experiences with us, do you think schools have the right to punish students for their activity on social media?

Some interesting things in social media to talk about today.

Updates to Twitter and LinkedIn apps, Google+ Hangout tactics, Youtube turns 7 and more.

Also will give some insight and commentary on how what you say on social media can come back to bite you!

LISTEN NOW!

Download audio file (squadcast35.mp3)

*SOURCES:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/26/linkedin-ipad-app-now-available_n_1457041.html?ref=technology

http://allthingsd.com/20120426/walmart-com-lets-you-pay-with-cash-when-shopping-online/

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/26/twitter-updates-iphone-and-android-apps-improves-discover-tab-search-push-notifications/

Tinfoil hat guy

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-google-hangouts-for-your-business/

http://hubze.com/2012/04/catch-22-facebook-offers-users-with-more-protection/

http://mashable.com/2012/04/26/marine-discharged-obama-facebook/

]]> http://hubze.com/2012/04/squadcast-35-social-media-news-update/feed/ 2 http://hubze.com/2012/04/no-klout-no-job-how-your-klout-score-factors-into-2012/ http://hubze.com/2012/04/no-klout-no-job-how-your-klout-score-factors-into-2012/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:10:09 +0000 Lauren Morgan http://hubze.com/?p=51093 (hubze.com) Whether or not you have any interest in your Klout score– brands and potential employers  are using Klout in order to gauge who is worth paying attention to.

In a post on Wired, “What Your Klout Score Really Means,” Seth Stevenson focuses on the ups and downs of Klout and where it all came from.

Klout is a great way to get free stuff, and extra special attention. But on the other-hand, what I found really interesting was that the post mentions a scenario of how a low Klout score cost one poor guy a job.

Sam Fiorella was at a job interview for a VP position at a marketing agency, “with 15 years of experience consulting for major brands like AOL, Ford and Kraft.” Fiorella seemed like the right man for the job until the interviewer asked for his Klout score.

Fiorella didn’t even know what a Klout score was; he scored a modest 34 (pretty good for not knowing anything about Klout). Nevertheless, “They hired a guy whose score was 67.”

Fifteen years of accomplishments weren’t as important as that score.

At once Fiorella worked on his Klout score and it grew to 72– as a result, doors were opening for Fiorella and he saw an increase in job offers.

Klout measures users’ online influence from 1-100. Everyone has a Klout score although you can choose to opt out of the site.

A high Klout score can earn you free goodies from Klout.com (Klout Perks are gifts from brands looking for a good time with you and your social media presence), but it doesn’t stop there…

Did you know that the Palms in Las Vegas rewards guests with higher Klout scores with instant room upgrades. As a result the Palms has increased their social media presence, and their Klout score– climbing to the third most popular casino on Facebook.

Stevenson also mentions a service that allows companies to get a good look at customer’s Klout scores which allows them to gauge who is worth paying more attention to in terms of compliments and complaints.

The big idea for Klout came from Joe Fernandez, who actually resorted to social media to communicate with family and friends while his jaw was wired shut for three months; “Fernandez began to envision social media as an unprecedented eruption of opinions and micro-influence,” and voilà: Klout.

Since then Klout has become the sensation it is today that earns some people a new Audi for a weekend– just a little test-drive in exchange for a tweet.

“I didn’t think about the ego component of having a number next to your name,” Fernandez says. When we see ourselves ranked, “we’re trained to want to grow that score.”

I recommend you check-out the full article HERE on Wired, it ‘s pretty fascinating what a little Klout can do.

Comment and let us know how Klout is factoring into your life; have you ever won/lost something on account of your Klout score?

(image: socialfresh)

Here are a few upgrades to your security as announced in a blog post today from the Facebook Security Team:

• Facebook’s URL blacklist system will incorporate databases of Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec: “Our URL blacklist system, which scans trillions of clicks per day, will now incorporate the malicious URL databases from these security companies to augment our existing level of protection.”
• Anti-Virus Marketplace provides free anti-virus downloads: “we are excited to announce the new AV Marketplace for all Facebook users…people will be able to select a free download from one of our anti-virus partners…The AV Marketplace enables people to download six-month licenses to full versions of anti-virus software at no charge from Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, or Symantec.”
• And when your six months of free anti-virus software are up, you can fend for yourself and follow the Facebook Security Blog: “we are excited to welcome these companies to the Facebook Security Blog, where they will provide important educational materials to help those who use our site keep themselves, and their data, safe.”

However concerned Facebook is with defending user’s private information from the onslaught of scammers, this vivid (as you can see below in the infographic provided by Facebook) maneuver to protect user’s privacy comes at a time when Facebook is being criticized for their support of CISPA, a bill that undermines privacy policies and opens the door for an abuse of personal information via vague bureaucratic drivel.

After the six month free trial, it would seem that the Anti-Virus Marketplace would begin to operate on Facebook Credits. Although Facebook is essentially providing users with more protection, it looks like a catch-22 to me.

Comment and let me know what you think about Facebook Security these days.

 (feature image: Miguel Almeida)

Digital Kids Conference
April 25-26, 2012
Pasadena Convention Center, Pasadena, CA, United States

The Digital Kids Conference, formerly Engage! 2012, provides companies and professionals with the information they need to reach and engage youth and kids online.

Divided into five tracks, Content, Business, Safety, Operations and Market Research, learn more about the following topics:

Content

• Connected play across different media
• Meta-games
• Social gaming for good
• Branded Products
• Social media best practices
• Cloud environments
• Licensing best practices
• Case studies
• Localization

• Business
• Raising capital
• Making money while engaging your audience
• The best delivery channels
• Legal topics on gaming, social media, mobile and virtual worlds
• Monetization

Safety

• Moderating and filtering online communities and virtual worlds
• Online safety for kids
• Parental control
• Knowing what is kid-appropriate
• Privacy and safety with mobile apps

Operations

• Knowing what your users are doing
• Technology for scaling and tools
• Scaling your human infrastructure
• Community management

Market Research

• Latest industry statistics and research
• Understanding parents
• The state and trends of the mobile market
• What are kids playing?

The conference has a panel of experts, including:

• Craig Sims, VP Global Licensing, Spin Master Ltd
• Stephanie Azzarone, President, Child’s Play Communications
• Ryan Bettencourt, President, Zui.com
• Beth Blecherman, Founder/Editor & Chief Technology Mom (CTM)echnology Mom (CTM)ER/EDITOR & CHIEF TECHNOLOGY MOM (CTM), TechMamas.com
• Jess Brallier, SVP and Publisher, Poptropica and Funbrain, Pearson
• Eric Brassard, Chief Executive Officer, Woozworld
• Jon Paul Buchmeyer, VP, Digital Engagement, Metaverse Mod Squad
• Yuanzhe (Michael) Cai, VP of Research, Games and Technology, Interpret LLC
• Linda “Brasse” Carlson, Director, Global Community Relations, Sony Online Entertainment
• Tim Chang, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund
• Jorian (Jori) Clarke, CEO, Circle 1 Network
• Anne Collier, Executive Director, Net Family News
• Matt Cullen, Marketing Manager, National Football League
• Hilary DeCesare, CEO and Co-Founder, Everloop
• Noemie Dupuy, Partner / VP Business Development & Marketing, Budge Studios
• Dan Ferguson, VP of Creative Services/Co-Founder, Blockdot
• Darran Garnham, Chief Business Development Officer and Chief Licensing Officer, Mind Candy
• Anastasia Goodstein, Director of Digital Programs, Reachout.com
• Mike Goslin, GM Rebel Entertainment Company, Rebel Entertainment, an IAC Company
• Adam Hildreth, Founder and CEO, Crisp Thinking
• Stephane Jankowski, Producer, Ubisoft
• Travis LeBlanc, Head of eCrimes Unit, State of California Attourney General’s office
• Ed Lewis, Founder and CEO, Media Chaparone
• Larry Magid, CBS News Technology Analyst and Co-Director, ConnectSafely.org
• Stacey Matthias, Founder, Insight Research Group and Insight Kids , Insight Research Group
• Wanda Meloni, Founder/Senior Analyst, M2 Research
• Marian Merritt, Norton Internet Safety Advocate, Symantec
• Nic Mitham, Founder and CEO, KZero Ltd.
• Izzy Neis, Vice President of User Engagement, Everloop
• Matt Palmer, Chief Strategy Officer, Sweety High
• Joi Podgorny, Director of Community Engagement, National Geographic’s AnimalJam.com
• Amy Pritchard, CEO, Metaverse Mod Squad
• Asra Rasheed, CEO, RRKidz
• Chris Rettstatt, Director, Digital Content, Highlights for Children
• Tiffany Richison, Premium Account Manager/Moderation Manager, Gazillion Entertainment
• Richard Rowan, Executive Producer, The Amazing Society
• Shai Samet, CIPP, JD Founder and President, kidSAFE® Seal Program
• Kiersten Samwell, Community Relations & Social Media Manager, KingsIsle Entertainment (Wizard101)
• Nathan Sawatzky, Director, Player Support, Tiny Speck, Inc.
• Ian Swanson, Vice President Serve Enterprises, American Express
• Toper Taylor, Chief Operating Officer and President, Cookie Jar Entertainment
• Matthew Warenford, Chief-Technical-Officer, Dubit
• Jo Webber, CEO, Virtual Piggy
• Renee Weber, VP, Consumer Strategy and Research, The Marketing Store
• Dan Wilmer, SVP of Digital Media, KIDZBOP
• Jake Witherell, Chief Operating Officer, Schell Games

CISPA allows private information to be shared between companies and the government in order to maintain cybersecurity. If CISPA were to pass, decades of Privacy Policies and other consumer privacy protections would be farted-on and disintegrate. You can read the whole bill here. Check-out the headline of the billl:

To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.

What does “for other purposes,” mean anyway? Today, a few months from now– what will it mean in 2023?

The video below has been popping-up across the Internet community, you can watch it below or re-direct to YouTube and read the conversation about CISPA in the comments.

Both Facebook and Microsoft support CISPA, but Ron Paul is against it. You can listen to his “Texas straight talk” here on YouTube.

There is very little time to speak-up. It will only take a few minutes, here is how you can help:

• Check-out this article from Digital Trends that provides you with talking points to hit with your representative.
• Find the name of your representative HERE and write to them (you can find their fax numbers HERE).
• Try your hand at #Slacktivism and tweet your TMI (Too Much Information) to representatives in order to bury them with your juiciest personal information via Fight for the Future.
• And there are a few petitions going around: Demand Progress, Change.org (3,350/5,000 + my signature = your turn), Avaaz is almost up to 1 million signatures!

I have participated in everything above, and realize that in order to protect my private information, I have enthusiastically pumped my phone number, address, name and e-mail address into both government and slacktivist websites. At the end of the day, I hope giving a hunk of my private information to new and exciting websites like Avaaz and Demand Progress, along with official government websites doesn’t come back to bite me in the butt with spam e-mails, phone-calls, campaign leaflets and/or some new form of torture.

Comment and let me know what you think about the fight against CISPA.

Marketing via e-books is very similar to social media marketing in that selling your products and services is only a secondary objective.  Your main aim is to educate, inform and entertain your customers.

This does not mean that you should write your e-book in such a way that you neglect your products, services, or brand altogether.  You should be able to create a demand for what you are selling via your e-book.

As such, you would need a clear idea of just what your company, products or services have to offer your customers.

So how do you launch a successful e-book marketing campaign?  Here’s a step-by-step guide to doing just that:

1. Writing the e-book: Know what your audience is asking.

As a business owner, you have already answered a lot of questions about your business, products and services to know what the problem areas are. For example, if you run a DIY craft shop, you might be asked about colors a lot.  So why not write an e-book detailing the various ways to get complementary and matching colors for different DIY projects?  Upsell paint kits, colored fabrics and multi-colored buttons in the process by suggesting easy ways to add color to an otherwise bland DIY project!

2. Writing the e-book: Spell out and then flaunt the benefits.

Just what do you customers stand to gain from reading your e-book?  What value can they get from it?  Make sure that this is very clear to everyone so that you can keep an eye on these benefits when you are writing your e-book and deliver it to your readers.  Remember that this is what sells your e-book, and subsequently sells your products and services as well.

3. Marketing your e-book: Advertise and create a great landing page.

Once your e-book is finished, upload it to your site and tell your customers about it.  You could put a prominent link on your website that announces the e-book to your visitors.  You could run a contest on Facebook and Twitter whereupon ten of your biggest and most active fans and followers get an advanced copy of your free e-book, or win a free copy of an e-book you have for sale.  You could also use online bookstores to help advertise your e-book.

You could also do the old way of marketing your e-book, which means you could put up signs all over your store.  You could also e-mail your customers and inform them that the e-book is up for download.

No matter what you do, you should be able to direct them to a well-crafted landing page that explicitly tells them what your e-book is about and what they can gain from. This way, you are making sure that you and your customers are on the same page.

4. Marketing your e-book: Use your blog to help promote your e-book and yourself.

Remember that in the age of the Internet, anybody could come up with an e-book, an article, or a blog post on just about anything.  What differentiates you from them is your credibility and authority.  This is where your blog would come in.

If you are a restaurant owner and have published an e-book featuring ten of your most favorite recipes, the fact that you have a restaurant alone is not enough.  You have to show people that you do know your stuff by putting up blog posts discussing the recipes you have featured.  For instance, you could write a post about how you perfected the squid ink pasta recipe you included, or how to pick out the right chicken parts for all the chicken dishes you have.

At the time it seemed like Apple and it’s first generation was a tech-cult of a few frenzied Steve Jobs groupies, “Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.”

This Summer, the “re-heated” iPhone 5 is coming-out with a brand spankin’ new operating system (rumored to be fire proof?), and yes, Matthew Lynn, everyone is throwing-down for a “fancy new handset just so [they] can listen to Eminem on [their] way to a business meeting…”

iPhone sales outpace the human population, 

According to an infographic, A Day in the Internet, there are more iPhones sold each day than there are babies born.

The cost is not standing in the way of smartphone fever. Despite the global economic recession in 2008, everyone manages to fit an iPhone into the budget. A new iPhone 4S will run anywhere between $200 and $600 dollars depending on how much personal data you want (plus Uncle Sam’s allowance, a monthly data plan and an activation fee).

Why is everyone willing to make the investment?

In “The Power of Money,” Karl Marx presents the idea that the purchasing power of money is used to attain qualities an individual does not inherently posses. For example, if I own six horses, do I not posses the strength of twenty-four legs? In the case of smart phones, money has the power to turn “idiocy into intelligence.” In the language of Marx: I am of an average human intelligence, but I can buy for myself the most intelligent of devices. Therefore I am not of an average human intelligence.

I would venture to say that the iPhone has become omnipresent in the processes of our daily lives and an extension of the human brain. Think about everything you do on your phone (5 minute Bejeweled break, check Facebook, press the fart button, check the weather before you step outside and experience it for yourself). It’s an iBrain; the word “phone” is going to be dropped as Alexander Grahm Bell’s creation gets thrown in the attic along with the arrowheads, typewriter, and your old cotton gin.

We take pictures with our iPhones rather than with our own memory; arguably a picture is no longer worth a thousand words but a byte of memory. The Google Translate app gives you mastery of  60 different languages. There is an increasing dependency on smartphones as they become a ubiquitous device stuck to palm of our hands.

Losing a smartphone can be the equivalent of losing a piece of yourself. We store photos, videos, contacts, directions and high scores in our shiny handhelds. Imagine all the lost, helpless people out there in the world without an address book and no idea how to call their own mothers– every 3.5 seconds, someone loses a smartphone which amounts to $7 million worth of smartphones lost each day (source: World of Lost Smartphones).

With a computer at your fingertips 24/7, you are essentially in possession of all the faculties of a computer and all the artificial intelligence you could ask for (at least until Google Glasses come out to the public).

Nevermind the consequences, Comment and let me know what you think.

(images: mobile attack)

A couple of them, however, have gotten particularly creative with their cover photos, and combined their profile image with the cover to form a “mashup” effect that can really set your page apart from the rest. For a great example of this, check out the Fanta page.

After I created my own version of this effect for my Cover Photo Do’s and Don’ts episode, I got a few people asking me how this was done. To answer these questions, I wrote the following tutorial, and have even provided a Photoshop template that you can use to easily create your own!

Become an SME+ Member to see a video version of this tutorial!

Before we start, it’s important to point out that the current size for the profile image is 125px X 125px. As of a few days ago, Facebook has confirmed that they will be increasing that size to 160px X 160px. Currently most personal profiles have already been switched, so until the brand pages switch happens on April 26, keep in mind that this will only work with personal pages. Nothing like being ahead of the game!

Ok, let’s get started…

Step 1 – Download psd template.

Step 2 – Open file with Photoshop and view the sample layers.

Check out all the layers to familiarize yourself with the file. You may want to hide and unhide them one at a time to get a feel for what each does.

If you do not see the guides on the screen, I suggest you go to View>Show>Guides. We will rely on these guides heavily in future steps.

Step 3 – Open your desired source image in Photoshop

You’ll need to pick out a good image that you want to use for your combined cover photo and profile image. For this tutorial, I’ve picked out an image of a golden field with a man walking toward the left side of the photo. Our goal is to put the man in the profile image box, and have the rest of the field display on the cover photo.

Step 4 – Drag the layer into your template canvas

Simply drag the layer from the source image onto the template canvas to add the image to the template.

If necessary, move the layer to just above the layer marked “sample cover image.”

Step 5 – Resize and move the source layer to the desired location.

Chances are the image you selected will not fit exactly where you want it within the frame. To adjust the size of your image, it may be easier to zoom out and select Edit>Free Transform to see the total size of your image.

Resize the image by grabbing one of the handles on the corner of your image while holding the SHIFT key. Holding SHIFT will keep the aspect ratio of the image intact, which we definitely want to do.

Place the image how you want it to display on your Timeline, and commit the changes by double clicking or hitting return.

Step 6 – Slice your cover photo image

Once your image is in place, it’s time to hide the “show profile header” layer and grab your Slice tool.

From the top left corner, click and drag your mouse all the way across your image, stopping vertically at the guide just above the white box.

Step 7 – Save your cover image

Go to File>Save for Web and Devices (or Save for Web depending on your version).

Choose your file type from the menu on the right. For photographs, use JPEG at 100% Quality (there’s no need to compress the file, as Facebook will do this for us) and for illustrations or line art use PNG-24.

Step 8 – Slice your profile image

With the Slice tool still selected, click on the area you just saved and hit the DELETE key to delete the slice (this will prevent a possible saving issues later).

Once deleted, find the innermost guides along the profile image area and click and drag a new square selection.

Step 9 – Save your profile image.

Just like before, save your profile image by going to File>Save for Web and Devices.

Step 10 – Resize your profile image.

Here’s where things get weird.

We know that the profile image is 160px X 160px, yet if we try to upload this image to Facebook, we’ll get an error telling us that our profile image must be at least 180px wide. The reason for this, I don’t know, but I trust that Facebook has a good enough rationale for this quirk, so let’s not waste our time worrying about it.

To solve this issue, we must open the profile image you just saved, with Photoshop, and go to Image>Image Size. From here, simply change the dimensions to 180×180 and hit go to File>Save (if saved as a JPEG, a quality of 10 is fine).

Step 11 – Upload your cover image to your Facebook page

Now it’s time to see your images in action! Navigate to your Facebook page, and hover over your cover image until you see the “Change Cover” button. Click this to reveal the options and select “Upload Photo”.

Find your cover image file in your file explorer and upload. Once uploaded you will see an option to “Drag and Reposition Cover.” If you saved our image correctly, you will not be able to do this, because your image is the exact size necessary.

Step 12 – Upload your profile image

Just like the cover photo, hover over the profile image to reveal the “Edit Profile Image” button. Find the upload option and upload your saved profile image.

When your image is finished uploading, you should see a near-perfect seam between your cover photo and profile image. Great job, now go brag to your friends!

Finished!

Notes:

• If you do not have Photoshop, don’t fret. There are a few options you can still use to pull off this look.The first we recommend is using the Aviary suite.They offer a free web-based editor that shares many of the same features as Photoshop. You can even upload the PSD template we provided directly into it.For a video tutorial walking you through this process with Aviary, become an SME+ member!A secondary option for Image editing is a desktop application called Gimp. Gimp is an open source kin to Photoshop, and can also achieve many of the same effects. The functionality won’t be exactly the same, but apply your knowledge from the tutorial above, and I’m sure you can figure it out.
• If you’re wondering how to get rid of that 4px border that surrounds the profile image, forget it. There’s no way to remove this, so you’ll simply have to embrace it. Personally, I like it as I think it keeps consistency but allows for creativity.
• If you get an error telling you that your cover photo must be at least 399px wide, and you know FOR A FACT that it is, try changing the filename of the photo uploading again. This tends to happen if you try to upload your photo multiple times.

Hope you enjoyed. Cheers!

Are you using LinkedIn yet for your business?

If not, you need to get …er… linked in.

In the past week, LinkedIn has rolled out two brand new tools for businesses: Targeted Updates and Follower Statistics.

With Targeted Updates, businesses now have the opportunity to deliver relevant content to the right audience. This means targeting posts to users based on specific criteria: company size, industry, function, seniority, or geography. Follower statistics allow businesses to review their follower’s demographics, insights, and engagement. Find brand evangelists. Expand your demographics.

Even with these new tools, are you still not convinced?

Why your business should interact on a network such as LinkedIn:
• Value Alignment: Find partnerships that match your own values. It is nice to get to know one another other before signing a contract.
• Future Employment: An excellent method of keeping an eye out for potential employees.
• Sharing of Knowledge: Do you know something others are interested in? The simple sharing of knowledge is an excellent foot in the door to many businesses.
• Professionalism: Because you don’t want your posts to be stuck between Nana’s birthday photos and a Youtube clip of some guy getting kicked in the groin (goo.gl/KpVej). LinkedIn is business oriented, it is not the place for irrelevant “status updates.”

Linked in currently has over 150 million users worldwide. This is not a resource you should continue to ignore. Businesses following you on LinkedIn could all be potential clients or partners. If your employees are using LinkedIn, your company is in the database. Why not make your presence known?

What do you think of the new tools? If you haven’t yet – will you give LinkedIn a try in the future?

*Guest blog post by Andrew Harasewych of SocializeMe. You can follow him on Twitter @socializations and on Facebook.

When it comes to social networks, which are typically free services, advertising is one of the few ways that a company can monetize. Even Google’s main source of revenue is AdWords, which is why you shouldn’t be surprised if your Google Glasses look like THIS one day.

Unfortunately, Tumblr (which has remained ad free up until now) has turned to advertising to pick up their slacking revenue; according to a post on Ars Technica: paid advertisements are coming to Tumblr.

Tumblr CEO and founder, David Karp, announced at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York yesterday that Tumblr is going to integrate paid advertisements as a “last resort,” even though, “It really turns [their] stomachs.” Apparently the speech lasted for 7 minutes out of the half-hour allotted to the 25 year-old for the conference’s closing keynote speech.

Advertising with Tumblr is coming in May; it would be great to see some ads that cater to the younger Tumblr demographic– pass the GIF., please!

Sponsored posts will begin appearing in the Dashboard, much like sponsored stories and promotional Tweets.

Before the Tumblr community goes on geeing-and-hawing about Ads, remember that the company’s only source of revenue up until now has been is their cut of custom blog themes and user highlighted posts that run $1 each.

The cost of a free service is always going to be advertisements. I wonder when Pinterest will get their fair share of advertisements.

Comment and let us know what you think about advertisements on Tumblr.

(image: Gigagom)

Watch as Kevin walks you through 3 different tricks to use to get over the discontinuation of the Default Landing Tab.

Local Search Association Conference 2012: Search Starts Here
April 21-24, 2012
Boca Raton Resort & Club, Boca Raton, FL, United States

Local Search Association Conference 2012 meeting is bringing together experts from every part of the globe and would teach you everything you need about local search, as well as give you a bird’s eye view on the local search industry.  This year’s speakers include:

• Mike Boland, Analyst, BIA/Kelsey
• Matt Booth, Senior VP, BIA/Kelsey
• Brad Carson, VP Operations, Local Search Association
• Robert Hawthorne, President, Hawthorne Executive Search
• Stephanie Hobbs, VP of Communications, Local Search Association
• Charles Laughlin, Senior VP, BIA/Kelsey
• Bobbi Loy-Luster, Senior VP, BIA/Kelsey
• Peter McDonald, Chief Executive Officer, SuperMedia, Chairman, Local Search Association
• Stacy McWhorter, Senior VP Client Services, Burke Research
• Neg Norton, President, Local Search Association
• Eric Owen, VP Digital Strategy and Partnerships, The Berry Company
• Krishna Pillai, COO and Founder, Convergent Mobile
• Bob Sanders, President and COO, AXIOM Sales Force Development
• Will Scott, Owner, Search Influence
• Michael Taylor, Director of Business Development, BIA/Kelsey
• Ursula Worth, Head of Directories and Web Hosting Partnerships, Google
• Natalie Wuchenich,
• Director, Research, Local Search Association

Sessions include:

• Reinventing the Directory Organization
• Thought Leaders Roundtable
• The Local Mobile Ecosystem — Where Are the Dollars?
• Lightning Round Demos: Industry Innovators
• Local Search Association Industry Research Update
• The View From the Trenches — Sales Associate Research Project
• The Evolution of Pay per Call
• Making Money From Social Media
• BIA/Kelsey’s Global Yellow Pages Outlook and Forecast
• Sales Coaching: The Single Best Tool to Improve Sales Performance
• Strategic Exchange Sessions
• In 2017: A Retrospective View of the Future of Local Search

eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Toronto 2012
April 23-26, 2012
Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Toronto 2012 is for digital strategy and marketing professionals who want to broaden their knowledge on social media, website design and maintenance, web intelligence, audience research, measurement, data strategy.  Speakers for this year’s event include:

• Christopher Berry, Vice President, Research, Syncapse
• Shaina Boone, Vice President of Marketing Science, Critical Mass
• Angie Brown, Web Analyst, IBM
• Jim Cain, Founder & President, Napkyn
• Jonathan Carrigan, Senior Manager, Product Development, CBC
• Louise Clements, SVP, MacLaren McCann
• David Coletti (Invited), VP, Digital Media Research & Analytics, ESPN
• Andrew Consky, Director, Research, AOL Canada
• Scot Cottick, Senior Manager, Nissan Brand Interactive, Nissan North America
• Mark Dykeman, Research Manager, CBC
• Brian Flanagan, Director, Product and Retail, Expedia Canada & LATAM
• Dave Hamel, Product Manager for Web Analytics and Google Search, CBC
• Stéphane Hamel, Director, Strategic Services, Cardinal Path
• Chris Hopkins, Manager of Digital Strategy-Broadcast, Shaw Media
• Jean-Paul Isson, Vice President of Global BI & Predictive Analytics, Monster Worldwide
• Ross Jenkins, Vice President of Analytics, Rapp Collins Worldwide
• Alan K’necht, Founding Partner, Digital Always Media Inc.
• June Li, Founder and Managing Director, ClickInsight
• David McBride, Director, Business Intelligence, Comcast
• Emeline Mellow, Business Relationship Manager, Johnson & Johnson
• Zoe Morawetz, Research Officer, CBC Toronto
• Ryan Morin, Business Account Manager, GSK
• Pat A. Pellegrini, VP Content & Product Management, The Weather Network / Pelmorex Media Inc.
• Virginia Pino, VP Market & Consumer Intelligence, MediaCom Canada
• Jim Sterne, Founder, eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
• Jacques Warren, CEO, PDG, WAO Marketing Inc.

Learn more about:

• The basics of Web analytics.
• Online analytics success.
• How to use Web analytics.
• The future of analytics.
• Audience measurement.
• Video measurement.
• Sharable content.
• e-Metrics marketing labs.
• Audience segmentation.
• Management of analytics.
• How to deal with fragmentation.
• Social media analytics.
• Testing and targeting for optimization.
• Conversion optimization.
• Social media metrics.
• Consumer engagement models.
• SEO.

Register here: http://www.emetrics.org/toronto/register/

You gave in. You set up a twitter account for your business and have been posting religiously for the past few months. You start to notice that all your hard work does not seem to be paying off. Your followers are not growing and you are not getting any extra business from your all those tweets you worked so hard to put together. Here are a few reasons why it might be you.

The 80/20 Rule. The 80/20 rule is basically a guideline to follow to keep your followers interested and ways to get new followers. This is having 80% related and relevant content posted on your twitter feed and 20% company promotion. If you are instead tweeting 20/80, your followers will get bored with hearing nothing but product or company promotion from you and will more than likely stop following you. If a potential follower looks at your feed and seeing nothing but “20% off” and “come in and buy something”, they probably will not see the value in following you. Make sure when you tweet, you deliver things that you believe your followers would be interested in reading and participating in.

Links and Hashtags. It is important to add links and hashtags to your tweets because this makes them interesting and interactive. When you provide a link, it adds perceived value to your tweet and, in turn, people will click on the link, and remember that they received something relevant from your tweet. They will look at your tweets more often to find the same relevant content in the future. Hashtags are a great way to get involved in an establish conversation or start your own! These hashtags show that you are involved in the twitterverse and that you care about involving your followers. Try following hashtags in your industry and retweet relevant information back to your followers.

Saying Thank You. If someone retweets one of your tweets or mentions your product or service in a good way, say Thank You! This is an extremely important step! People want to know you are listening and that you care that they took the time to share your content. The more you participate in with your followers, the more positive results you will see. Do not let people go ignored; that will only seal your mediocre state. It is also good practice to make sure and give proper credit when you retweet. This will tend to start conversations as well when the person also says thank you. People like to know that the content they put out is being seen!

Don’t be a promoter! Your business is about more than just getting sales. Show your knowledge of your industry and wow your followers with relevant content and they will keep coming back for more (and they will bring their friends along too!).

Guest Blog provided by Nina Churchill. You can connect with Nina on Twitter, Facebook and on her website http://www.freshviewconcepts.com

Watch this week as Kevin walks you through some of the new TImeline Cover Photo rules, answers some common questions about what is and isn’t allowed, and shows how to get over the fact that there’s no more default landing tabs.

A must see. Enjoy!

What if you could simply walk up to an item, location, person or place and connect to it and “Like” it without even touching your phone?

Enter the Like Belt…

If you can get past the hip thrusts directed at your friends and businesses this is THE handsfree solution to connecting with things on Facebook. No more fumbling for your phone to do these difficult tasks..

Just press your crotch against them and BOOM you’ve LIKED that page!

This is an actual working protype built by the guys at DeepLocal.

You can even build your own Like Belt and can get instructions HERE.

As odd as this video is it only has like 100 views so far even after being up for a few months. Creative video, but poor marketing.

Saroo imediately jumped on the train in front of him, thinking his brother would be on it– unfortunately he was being taken on a 14-hour ride to Calcutta, one of India’s largest and poorest cities, “I don’t think any mother or father would like to have their five year old wandering alone in the slums and train stations of Calcutta.”

When he got off at the train station in Calcutta, he had no idea where he was, “I was absolutely scared… I just started to look for people and ask them questions.”

Saroo, then illiterate, became a beggar with other children in a similar situation, fending for themselves. He was later taken in by an orphanage and adopted by a couple from Tasmania.

That was in 1986. Fast-forward to present time, Saroo, now thirty, has found his way back home using the fascinating exploration tool, Google Earth. ”It was just like being Superman. You are able to go over and take a photo mentally and ask, ‘Does this match?’ And when you say, ‘No’, you keep on going and going and going.”

Typically Google Earth is used for time-travel (via Google Earth historical maps), space-travel (Google Earth includes maps of all planetary and celestial bodies), or just every-day directions…

Check-out the Google Earth image below, Saroo was able to locate his birthplace by multiplying the time he was on the train by the average speed of indian trains in order to come up with a rough distance travelled on that fateful night.

The waterfall labeled above was a marker for Saroo, who remembered playing there as a child. His rudimentary estimates combined with childhood memories, verified by tools like street view, allowed Saroo to pinpoint Khandwa as his childhood home.

He traveled to Khandwa to find what was left of his family. There he reunited with his mother, much different than the 34-year old woman he remembered– “She grabbed my hand and took me to her house. She could not say anything to me. I think she was as numb as I was. She had a bit of trouble grasping that her son, after 25 years, had just reappeared like a ghost.”

And what about the brother he lost long ago? Unfortunately, he had been found in two pieces on a railroad track. The cause of his death remains a mystery.

(Feature image: The Telegraph) and (image: CNET)

Lots to talk about in today’s podcast related to social media news.

We’ll cover Twitter lawsuits, more on the Instagram purchase, KONY 2012 part 2, MACs can get viruses, CISPA and more.

Give it a listen!

Download audio file (squadcast34.mp3)

*Sources:

MAN WITHOUT A FACEBOOK

http://allfacebook.com/facebook-credits-alert_b85948?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allfacebook+%28Facebook+Blog%29

http://mashable.com/2012/04/16/another-mac-trojan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

http://mashable.com/2012/04/16/kony-sequel-traffic/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

http://mashable.com/2012/04/16/facebook-supports-cispa/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/04/13/facebook-acquires-mobile-loyalty-startup-tagtile/

http://hubze.com/2012/04/google-facebook-and-apple-are-the-enemies-of-internet-freedom/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hubze+%28The+hubze+Blog%29

This video was posted on YouTube in July of 2011 so it’s not exactly new. But, I felt it deserved some loving today!

It’s a parody of the Mel Gibson film “The Man Without a Face“, which was a great move btw. You should go see it!

The video shows what it might be like for someone in today’s society if they didn’t have a Facebook account.

It’s quite ridiculous honestly, which is why I like it so much!

Also it was just nominated for a Webby Award and that’s why I just found it! Go vote for them : http://pv.webbyawards.com/ballot/101

Since this time, companies have migrated with the flood of users, and conversely patented Internet technology like pop-up windows (shame on that guy), messaging, backing up online data, and personal profiles. These patents are often less than groundbreaking and redundant seeing as 30% of patents are for things that already exist (source: This American Life). Today we have patent wars like Yahoo vs. Facebook.

Additionally, the government is teaming up with big business to regulate and censor the Internet. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) considers embedding a video to be copyright infringement (source: ars technica). Bills like SOPA and PIPA, if enacted, would have hypocritically mirrored Internet Censorship policies implemented by countries like Iran (“the filternet“) and China (“the great firewall of China”).

Globally, ACTA is an anti-piracy agreement between the United States and 29 other countries that would disrupt the free flow of information on the Internet.

These are only a few of the forces persistently threatening Internet Freedom. Apparently Facebook is one of them.

In an interview with the Guardian, Google co-founder Sergey Brin warned about these “powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world.” And, frankly, “It’s scary.”

According to Brin, additional threats are posed by Facebook and Apple, both “walled gardens” that keep their user data under lock and key (you can export all your Google information with Google Takeout). Brin has a beef with Facebook; “You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive.”

Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. “You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive,” he said. “The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.”

But maybe Sergey is afraid because Facebook is about to file a $100 Billion dollar IPO and honing-in on search.

However, in light of Facebook’s open support for CISPA, another attempt in the government’s legislative blitzkrieg on the Internet, Sergey Brin is definitely not wrong in saying that Facebook is a threat to Internet Freedom as they bite at the users hands that feed them (ad-click data, app data, personal data, what you “like”… nom, nom, burp).

You can read the whole interview with Sergey Brin, “Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google’s Sergey Brin” is HERE on the Guardian, a part of their “Battle for the internet” series.

Comment and let us know what you think!

(feature image: Ali Spagnola’s free gallery)

The Agency package now comes with an invoicing system for you to use unlimited for your business!

Watch the video on how you can use this Agency package not only to create stunning Facebook Fan pages for your Timeline but also to run your business right inside our system.

Grab this package now at a HUGE discount!

New Customers can sign up for just $197! Go here: http://eng.fanpageengine.com

Existing Developer Members can upgrade to Agency for just $97!

Go here:http://eng.fanpageengine.com/a_upgrade.php

Rely on your trusted employees.  Like every business process that you have, social media could easily be delegated to your staff.  To make it a success, make sure that you:

1. Create a plan.

If you have not created a plan for your social media campaigns, now is the best time to translate your ideas onto paper.  This social media plan can help you communicate what you want to get out of your social media efforts and can very well define the boundaries of what your employees can and should do on your Twitter account or Facebook page.

2. Choose from your employees.

You can easily identify the best people for the job.  Be sure to select those who know how to use the social media platforms that you have, are not afraid of technology, and are very able communicators.  Choose those who are trustworthy and reliable.

When you tap employees to do your company’s social media campaigns, be clear about what you want them to do, what you plan to achieve and all the whys and hows of doing it.

3. Train your employees.

Be sure to train your employees on how to do your social media campaigns.  Do not take it for granted that they have their own personal Twitter accounts or Facebook profile.

The training should cover these as well:

a. Purpose.  What exactly do you want to achieve on Facebook and Twitter?  Is it to build relationships with your customers?  Highlight new products?  Give out deals?

b. Frequency.  How often should your company update your social media properties?  Would it follow a fixed schedule?  How many posts in a day?  Or in a week?

c. Content.  What does your company have to say on Twitter or Facebook?  Remember that the best posts aim to entertain, educate and empower.

d. Engagement vs. Selling.  All successful brand pages on Facebook and brand accounts on Twitter do not just sell there, but they engage their customers as well.  On the other hand, a social media campaign would certainly be judged by the conversions and its contribution and its ROI.  What should be the mix between engagement and selling?  Do more of engagement-related tasks and less of selling, the ratio could be 80-20, where 80% of all you do on social media is geared towards engaging your customers.

4. Empower your employees.

There is no sense in delegating your work if you constantly nitpick on everything.  Give your employees total leeway on how they handle your social media accounts.  It would be best to give your selected employees admin access to change anything on your profile.

5. Come up with social media guidelines.

More than anything, you should have a guide on what your employees could and could not do on social media.  Make sure that every one of your employees responsible for manning your social media accounts have read and signed the guidelines to make sure that they know how to act when representing your brand and company.

Angry Birds Space continues to be a successful addition to the Rovio Empire, following the popular release that saw 10 million downloads in three days. Rovio warned in a blog post earlier this week, to look out for phony apps “as you get ready to pop pigs in zero gravity.”

The malicious App functions just like Angry Birds Space, however it is trojanized, meaning it can gain access to your phone  and direct it to any website as well as download additional malware. According to Naked Security:

SophosLabs recently encountered malware-infected editions of the “Angry Birds Space” game which have been placed in unofficial Android app stores. Please note: The version of “Angry Birds Space” in the official Android market (recently renamed “Google Play”) is *not* affected.

It is important to download popular games like Angry Birds from official markets because hype is a hot red Ferrari for scammers. If you downloaded the app from an official market, you have nothing to worry about.  Android is especially vulnerable because becoming a developer is easy-peezy.

Bottom-Line: If you downloaded the app from an official market, you have nothing to fear. If you downloaded the app from a third-party app store, check to see that you have the right version of Angry Birds, if you are a victim of malware you should consider backing up whatever data  you need and wiping your phone clean.

Comment and let us know if you or anyone you know has been effected by malware.

I would like to introduce you to the latest piece of legislation straining to get a hold of the wild wild Internet: CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act).

Both SOPA and PIPA were met by public outrage, and big companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter were active in fighting legislation. CISPA isn’t getting the same attention. In fact it is supported by a handful of Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, IBM, and AT&T. You can read what the rich guys are saying, and the bill, HERE.

Even Facebook supports CISPA; the question is why?

CISPA is different from SOPA in that it doesn’t directly attack companies and users over bloated intellectual property rights. Facebook was against SOPA and PIPA because those bills held companies accountable for user generated content (Zuckerberg tweeted against SOPA).

CISPA allows private information to be shared between companies and the U.S. government. Information is only  shared when it is considered a cyber security threat. The problem is that the definition of a cyber security threat, is a vague word game that dumps privacy settings and policies into a legislative blackhole.

CISPA may be great for billionaires, but it stops there– the everyday Internet user is the one who takes the hit.

Check-out this Infographic by Lumin to get the full picture:

Infographic designed by Lumin Consulting

(feature image: CISPA: Worse than SOPA?)

The arcade, which includes a claw machine and a security system, was created by 9 year old Caine Monroy.

“I met Caine randomly. I had to get a door handle for my 96′ Corolla, so I pulled into this Auto Parts store and I came across this elaborate cardboard Arcade…”

Nirvan Mullick didn’t just buy a door handle, he also bought a fun pass, which is 500 turns worth of fun. He had so much fun that he decided to make a movie about Caine and his fantastic arcade. In addition to this short film, which you can view below (it makes grown men cry), he launched a social media campaign in order to spread the word about Caine and his cardboard enterprise.

Check-out this viral video from Mullick’s Channel on Vimeo:

Caine’s Arcade is a sensational social media success– there have been over a million views in less three days! Caine’s Arcade Faceebook page has over 50K likes, and on top of that, Caine now has a scholarship fund that has reached over 122K !

The social media strategy was simple, SHARE:

First there was a Public Facebook event: Flash Mob Caine’s Arcade!

Then this event was shared on a popular Facebook page, Hidden L.A.:

Word spread to popular bookmarking site, Reddit, and Caine’s Arcade got over 357 up-votes (up-votes move a post up a list of contributions to the site which are ordered according to volume of interest):

It is not surprising that the combination of a triple-threat social media strategy and ADORABLE generated enough attention to launch Caine and his arcade into the viral hall of fame. Comment and let us know what you think of the video, and I encourage you to share Caine’s Arcade.

You can follow Nirvan Mullick on Twitter or  Caine’s Dad, George Monroy on Twitter for updates (apparently Caine has built a new game).

Or visit the official Caine’s Arcade website, to donate to his scholarship fund or buy a Caine’s Arcade t-Shirt.

Yesterday I talked about what Edgerank was in layman’s terms. In case you forgot go check out the post I made yesterday. But, in short Edgerank is what determines whether or not your posts from your Facebook page show up to your fans or not. Most don’t realize that not every fan sees every post. So there is a bit of a game and strategy to it.

So let me share some ways that have been found to increase your Facebook Page’s Edgerank. (in no particular order).

1. Post photos- People love sharing and commenting on photos and photos carry a higher weight than status updates and links. Sometimes on our Facebook page I’ll simply post a random humorous photo I find and it goes nuts! Don’t post too many photos though. I would recommend every 7-8th post be a photo.

2. Short Posts- I’m guilty of breaking this one but the experts say a post of less than 80 characters will get more shares, likes and comments.

3. Consistency- You gotta post at least once per day if you expect results. Posting once per week then complaining about no engagement is like griping about being fat while eating a double cheeseburger! I recommend posting 2-3 times per day. More if you have the engagement to back it up.

4. Ask for the Like- It may sound dumb but giving people some direction pays off. Tell people to “Like this post”, “share” and “comment”. Sometimes people need some direction.

5. Post Videos- Just like with photos videos get shared and commented on very fast. I have a page that I posted the video once on the Facebook Page and within 3 weeks it had been viewed over 1 million times and the fan count grew by 8000 fans from that one post!

6. Timing- Figure out the best time of day to post on your page. For most the optimal days seem to be Tuesday, Wednesday and on weekends. And many find that before 9am EST and after 9pm EST gets more engagement. You gotta remember that most people aren’t on Facebook except when they are off of work and the kids are in bed!

7. Ask Questions- Questions gets us alot of comments. And usually open ended ones to. Things like “Where would you be without Facebook?” or “What did you have for lunch?”. Post questions that get people wanting to add a comment and a question that can be answered briefly by them.

8. Ads- I know many don’t like ads on Facebook, but they are proven to get you the most targeted fans that could be interested in your product or service. I would recommend Sponsored stories as those are posts from your page that appear more natural and less like an ad.

9. Be Helpful- Post links and information that help people. Our rule at hubze is the 90/10 rule. 90% of our posts are information that help people or make them laugh then 10% of our posts are about our products. Don’t always be selling. Build a community and they will want to buy from you without you having to force it.

10. AVOID 3RD PARTY APPS- I’ve said this before and I know it’s highly debated, but in my opinion posting from a 3rd party app as your primary means of posting is hurting your page. Post directly on your page to avoid any possible penalties that Facebook might be giving 3rd party apps. Some say there is no penalty, some say there is. Who knows. But for me I’ve always seen better results when posting on the page. Now, I also know that you can’t sit on Facebook 24 hours per day like me. So maybe you schedule your posts that are early in the day and late at night using an app but the rest are posted manually. Mix it up to ensure you are getting the exposure you want.

That’s it. There are 10 ways to help you increase your Edgerank on your Facebook page. The key is mixing things up and not always posting the same type of stuff in the same manner over and over.

Follow this advice and I’m sure you’ll see more engagement!

The redesign puts an emphasis on customization, for example Google+ profile pages will now include timeline-esque cover photos.

But that’s not the only thing that is starting to look like Facebook.

There is now going to be a chat list like on Facebook, so your friends can follow you everywhere across the site.

The tagline of this redesign seems to be “An updated profile to help tell your story online.” Facebook’s Timeline tagline was “Tell your life story with a new kind of profile.” So I guess social networks are doing this cheesy thing to make us all authors of our lives. Powerful, yes…

The Google+ experience will now be increasingly visual, with larger photos. There is a social networking movement to visual experiences; Pinterest is a picture playground (their redesign looked a lot like Facebook, in a bad way) and even Twitter has made moves in the past to give images more dominance in the tweeting experience.

Furthermore, Google+ is also showcasing some first-class Google innovation. The redesign makes Google+ look a lot easier to navigate, not only with the prominent friend list but also with the customizable navigation ribbon on the left hand side that allows users to push the apps around into whatever order their hearts desire.

WATCH:

An interesting twist is the unique G+ pointer, an illusory blue orb that comes and goes according to your clicking.

In addition to the pointer is a new Explore page that posts what ever is trending across Google+. I could see it turning out to be as valuable a source of real-time information, laughs, and images, as bookmarking sites like Reddit or Digg.

And while I have drawn a few parallels to Facebook, it looks like Google+ is only taking the best of their enemy and leaving behind the stagnate clutter of page notifications, app notifications, group notifications, event notifications, page activity notifications and messages/other messages.

Check-out another video encompassing the redesign and comment to let us know what you think.

You might consider deleting your Facebook for good.

7th Annual Internal Branding and Employee Engagement 2012
April 17-18, 2012
Miami, Florida, USA

Marcus Evans presents the 7th Annual Internal Branding and Employee Engagement 2012 conference, bringing together a select panel of experts including:

• Katherine Stinson, Executive Vice President, Internal Communications, Avaya
• Eric Wesley, Manager, Communications & Recognition, Greyhound Lines
• Trish Sarno, Director, Brand Standards, ING
• Kelly McNeff, Senior Director of Internal Communications, Kimberly-Clark Corporation
• Peter Ternes, Director, Internal Communications, GM
• Clarissa Felts, Vice President of Integrated Workforce Experience, Lowe’s Companies
• Stacey Clark Ohara, Senior Director of Employee Communications, Juniper Networks
• Wendy Arnott, Vice President, Social Media and Digital Communication, TD Bank
• Gina Valenti, Vice President, Hampton Brand Culture & Internal Communications, Hilton Worldwide
• Lisa Gick, Vice President, Employee Relations, HR Policy, Communication, Macy’s Inc
• Julia Carcamo, Vice President, Brand Marketing, Isle Of Capri Casinos
• Jim White, Vice President, Guest Satisfaction, Isle of Capri Casinos
• Erin Robinson-Lis, Director of Employee Communications, American Express
• Michelle Pokorny, Solution Vice President, Employee Engagement & Recognition, Maritz Loyalty & Motivation
• Paula Erickson, Vice President, Communications & PR, Beam
• Brian Ames, Director Internal & CEO Communications, Boeing
• Angelo Iofredda, Senior Director, Employee Communications & Recognition, NII Holdings

And learn more about:

• Extensive brand engagement that would encompass employees, customers, management, senior leadership and partners.
• How to increase connection, awareness and engagement using internal social and mobile platforms.
• How to use gamification and crowdsourcing to enhance and communicate employee motivations.
• How to create an internal brand message.
• How to launch a social engagement campaign.

The conference costs US$2,495.  Register here:
http://www.marcusevans.com/marcusevans-conferences-event-bookingoption.asp?eventID=18842&sectorID=51&enquiry=brochure

Social Media Strategies Summit Chicago 2012
April 18-19, 2012
Renaissance Blackstone Chicago Hotel, Chicago, IL

The Social Media Strategies Summit Chicago 2012 uses workshops, case studies and various sessions to help you take your social media campaigns to the next level.  Learn from the distinguished panel of speakers, including:

• Jeff Davis, President and CEO, Orabrush Inc.
• Marcy Massura, Digital Community Manager, Weber Shandwick
• Peter Shankman, Entrepreneur/Vocus Small Business Evangelist, HARO
• Matt LeMay, Platform Manager, bitly
• Ekaterina Walter, Social Media Strategist, Intel Corporation
• Michael Pranikoff, Global Director, Emerging Media, PR Newswire
• Linda Gangeri, Manager, National Advertising, Volvo N.A.
• Erica Swallow, Tech and Lifestyle Writer, Mashable & American Express Open Forum
• Baochi Nguyen, PR and Social Media Manager, Boingo
• Simon Heseltine, Director, AOL Inc.
• Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead Bio, Google
• Ramon de Leon, Marketing Mind of Six Domino’s Pizza Stores in Chicago, Domino’s Pizza
• Jessica Gioglio, PR and Social Media Manager, Dunkin’ Donuts
• Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager, Bing
• David F. Giannetto, CEO, The Telos Group
• Rick Wion, Director of Social Media, McDonald’s USA
• Stephanie Chaparro, Social Media Strategist, Wildfire Interactive
• Carisa Miklusak, CEO, tMedia
• Mark Stein, Partner, Higer Lichter & Givner
• Mike Nabasny, Director of MidWest Sales, Wildfire Interactive
• Justyn Howard, Founder & CEO, Sprout Social
• Terra Spero, Principle, Realtime Marketing Group
• Jennifer Cohen, President, Something Creative, LLC
• Meaghan Edelstein, Vice President of Social Media, GSMI

Sessions include:

• The “Reverse Marketing Model:” How Social Media Marketing is Disrupting Traditional Business Methods
• The Next Revolution Will Occur in Your Pocket
• Winning the Economy of Human Interest: What Big Data Can Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Audiences
• Tips and Tricks of Effective Facebook Engagement to Grow Your Fan Base
• How Brands are Using Google +
• Twitter’s Role in the Future of B2B
• How Manage through Issues and Crisis
• Social Media as a Business Tool: Beyond Branding
• Building and Launching Social Media Marketing Campaigns
• SEO & Social – How they Interact, How to Manage, Leverage Social to Impact Search
• Superfan: a Brand’s Best Marketing Asset-Case Study
• Deadly Internet Sins
• Google+, the +1 button, and Social Relevance in Google Search
• America Runs on Dunkin’, DD Social Media Runs on You
• Engage The World By Trusting Your Instincts
• Integrating Social Media and Organic Search
• Driving Consumer Engagement through Mobile Media Integration

Workshops include:

• Facebook Advertising… Maintaining and Optimizing Engagement
• Drive Results: Using Social Media to Sell
• The Keys to a Successful Social Promotion
• Social Media 101 Back to the Basics

Many, many things have changed regarding our Facebook pages over the past month. Not only did we all get the Timeline for our pages many have also noticed that their posts aren’t showing up to their fans nearly as much as they once were. Some are blaming Timeline for this, but this was happening way before the design switch occurred.

Some studies I’ve read are showing that only about 15-20% of your fans are seeing the posts by your Facebook page. (Also keep in mind that every study you see about Facebook engagement is arbitrary. Meaning each page is different, each set of fans is different and etc.). But, with such a low number seeing your posts you need to make sure you are doing your best to get your posts seen by more.

Facebook has an algorithm called “EdgeRank” that I’ve talked about a few times before that determines what users see in their newsfeed. Personally I think the EdgeRank is garbage and should be trashed. It is probably the one thing I hate about Facebook. Twitter wins out on this feature as it is all reverse chronological order. Come on Facebook!!!

But, since it is here you need to know about it.

Edgerank is made up of 3 elements: Affinity, Weight and Time Decay.

So what the heck does that mean you might be asking?

In layman’s terms:

Affinity is how often fans interact with your page.

Weight is the Shares, Likes and Comments.

Time Decay is how old a post is basically.

*FACT MOST DON’T KNOW: Photos carry more Weight than Links and Links more Weight than Status Updates! So make sure you post plenty of pics! But not too many!

Also the actions on your page have a different Weight. If it were a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors it would look like this: Share beats Comments, Comments beats Likes, Likes beats Clicks.

As you can see simply just posting something on your page doesn’t guarantee that your fans will see your post. Which is very frustrating for page owners. Especially those of us running small businesses with lots of other better things to do than spend hours posting on our pages.

So how do you ensure your posts show up on the most newsfeeds? There are some tactics you can take to try and get them to show up more.

Come back tomorrow and I’ll give you 10 surefire tips to get your posts showing up in the newsfeed of your fans more than they are now!

*What do you think about Edgerank?

Marketing on Twitter is going to be fruitless if you do not have any followers.

So how do you get people to follow you?  The rule of paying it forward applies.  So follow them first, and most likely, they’d return the favor and follow you back.

Search for people who interest you, people who are movers in your industry, and those who are relevant to you or your business.  If you have a database of customers, you can search their Twitter user names or their e-mail addresses and follow them.

Now you have to make the first move.  Your customers will only know you’re there if you break the ice and tweet first.  Of course, there are a lot of suggestions on what to tweet, according to your goal on Twitter.  To get more followers, know what your goals are, especially in terms of increasing your follower count.

Here are some tweet suggestions for the most common goals on Twitter that could help you increase your follower count.

1. Socializing: tweet about current events and personal news.  You could also use entertainment and local news.

2. Networking: You could break the ice by asking about common friends and sending other friendly messages.  You could also ask for help.

3. Informing about a certain topic: Read about a particular topic and share information.  You could also create your own interpretations and put it out on Twitter.

4. Gain influence: Research and process your information in such as way that you get to own it.  Make bold statements about it and encourage discussions.

5. Causes: If you have a cause that you would want to activate on Twitter, you can ask for people’s help or appeal to their passions.

6. Entertainment: Share a video, a photo or a link.  Or you could just share a joke.

7. Promote your blog or products: Publish your article’s headline or write an effective teaser.

Power tips from the hubze squad:

1. Listen first.  Do not jump into any Twitter conversation without first reading that person’s tweets and knowing what they care about.  This would give you the bigger picture and a common ground, which you could use to connect with them.  Your first tweet would carry more substance that way!

2. Don’t overwhelm yourself.  It is very easy to just follow dozens or hundreds of people at once.  But resist the temptation.  Start with a few people or the main movers in your industry and work from there.

3. Start conversations.  In social media, it does not pay to overmarket yourself.  Instead of coming up to another Twitter user and selling your products, start conversations.

4. Share.  Articles, news stories and other stuff that are of interest to other people can easily increase your follow count, share what you read and share what you know and get those followers coming.

5. Don’t buy followers.  It is tempting to be able to add 500 followers with just $30.  But remember that these followers do nothing to add value to your account.

6. Auto DMs for your new followers might not be a good idea.  There are tools that allow you to send an automated DM for new followers.  While this is a good way to direct them to your store or website, it might be better to personally thank new followers with a personalized tweet.

7. Reply.  Always make it a point to reply to every mention or tweet that you receive.  It is just the polite thing to do, and it could help start conversations with your followers.

Deactivation is one thing, and it is nice that you can excommunicate yourself for a holiday and come back to all your photos, comments, and friends. However deactivation always has provoked a bit of skepticism, seeing as a lot of information could be retained by Facebook, “to the extent permitted by our policies.” <vague party of one>

You could keep your account deactivated until kingdom come. Maybe one day you will change your mind– especially after reading Facebook’s manipulative last words upon your deactivation, “(insert friend’s name here) will miss you,” “(insert your third cousin twice removed here) will miss you,” “(insert that one night stand here) will miss you”…

Deleting your account is a whole different level of hating Facebook.

How to Delete Your Facebook Account:

1. Go to Facebook’s Help Center
2. Search for “delete account”
3. Send your request to delete your account, and don’t be phased by the barriers.
4. It takes Facebook 14 days to delete the account, during which time you can cancel your request.

If you survive these final 14 days and successfully delete your account, Facebook will release all of your information from its titanium data grip. Have you or anyone you  know taken their dislike of Facebook to the extreme and deleted an account? I have only deactivated by Facebook account for 2-3 month periods on two occasions. Comment and let us know what you think about deleting your Facebook account, is it necessary or is deactivation more agreeable?

(feature image: Edudemic)

Facebook continues to completely dominate our digital life and today is no exception with the announcement that they are acquiring Instagram!

The buyout is said to be $1 Billion in cash and stock in Facebook,

The interesting thing is Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement with a status update on his Facebook Timeline, not an official press conference or release. A sure sign of our current times!

According to the announcement Facebook will keep Instagram functioning as it is now, meaning you can still use it as a stand alone app and choose what social network to post to or not post to, including Facebook. This is a bit different from the other apps Facebook bought out like Gowalla. Gowalla was quickly eliminated from the stratosphere after being bought out. Instagram though has a very strong user base so it makes sense that Facebook keeps it in tact, but brings over the staff to develop more for Facebook.

Below is the full announcement from Zuckerberg:

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

What do you think of this latest buyout by Facebook?

1. Schedule your blog posts.

Try to write your posts well in advance and have enough to cover the length of your trip.  If you are going to be away for two weeks and you have a daily blog, then make sure that you have at least 10 posts written beforehand and schedule them accordingly.

Make sure also that you use tools that would allow you to post on your social media sites.  Tools such as Hootsuite for Twitter and Facebook posts.

If you have new posts while on vacation, you can bump your pre-written posts to a much later date.  This way, you would not feel pressured every day to find an Internet cafe or a reliable connection to keep your customers updated.

2. Update popular posts.

If you have a well-established blog and are looking for blog post ideas, it might help to go back to your most popular posts and update them.  Say one of your most widely read blog posts was about Google’s Panda update, then try to recap your previous post and then add your updates at the bottom.  You could also include your readers’ comments and respond to them in the updated post.

3. Provide for Wi-Fi access.

If you are travelling, you might want to consider whether the hotel that you are going to stay in provides Wi-Fi access in their rooms.  Or if you are on a tight budget, try asking if they have free Wi-Fi access in the lobby or in the bar.

This would ensure that you have a reliable Internet connection when you need it.  You could also check out a local McDonald’s or Starbucks outlet and see if you could use their Wi-Fi connection.

4. Use Word or Notepad.

While travelling, it might help to save your thoughts on a program that resides in your laptop.  Microsoft Word or even a text editor such as Notepad can help you collect your thoughts and even write blog posts and not worry about losing it later due to intermittent Internet connection.

When you get on the Internet, you can easily cut and paste what you have written.  This would also save you money from paying too much Internet hours at a cafe.

5. Get on Twitter.

You can use your blog for a recap of the day’s events, but for smaller updates and up-to-the-minute news, get on Twitter.

It would also help if you have a Twitter widget on your site or blog so that your readers can read all about it as it happens.  Plus seeing your updates going live could make them feel less neglected.

Twitter does not require you to have a fast Internet connection.  In fact, you could probably tweet successfully even if you have intermittent and slow connections!

6. Get the apps and the gadgets.

We live in a connected world where we could easily write a blog post and update the sites we have by using our mobile phones and other mobile devices.  Bring a smartphone with you or an iPad.  Then make sure that you have all the necessary apps installed.

If you run a WordPress blog, there is a WordPress app that allows you to write and update your blog via your mobile phone.

7. Get help.

If you have a news site, then it would make sense if you could get a freelance writer who could write your blog posts for you and post it on your site. Of course, this would take months in planning and getting to trust the person, but it’s a good thing to have someone man the ship even while you’re away.

Not sure how this week is over already! Been a crazy one for us at Hubze and even crazier for me personally.

It’s 1am where I am in here in Texas and today was quite the long day. Full of errands, soccer practice for my 5 year old and a neighborhood glow in the dark Easter egg hunt! And gotta be at the soccer fields at 8am tomorrow for games by our 4 year old and 5 year old!!! I’m tired already!

But, I did record this podcast earlier today talking about some of the top news stories in Social Media.

There were some interesting topics dealing with Facebook pages, Timeline, SOPA, Pinterest and etc.

So give a listen to the podcast and let me know your thoughts.

Download audio file (squadcast33.mp3)

*Podcast brought to you buy the lovely Mari Smith. Click the link to check out her new training!

Think back a minute, before you got on the blog, where were you… Facebook, Twitter– or Reddit no doubt. Maybe you were checking your Email, I don’t know, I’m not your secret admirer (Facebook stalker) or anything.

The campaign is boldly ironic for fun’s sake but it is only funny because it is true.

Although the point of social networking and the world wide web is to connect and communicate with people, there is something robotic and blah about the whole ordeal. The nature of social networking makes emotionally charged and naturally irrational messages comical, for example: “woo ! i found a pair of clean gym shorts. that buys me one more day of not having to do laundry!” or “well he’s feeling rather empty rite no.wishes he had someone who LOVED me for me!dnt comment if u dnt mean it,plz only comment if u do love or care about me!!!!!!“

Social Networking, bookmarking sites, and Email, is a virtual playground where you can “reply” to someone or “retweet”/”share” what someone else told you, “poke” the girl you like, and play show and tell (sites like Reddit, Digg, Stumble Upon, tumblr, and Pinterest are all virtual show-and-tell-athons).

(Source: Adweek)

90% of communication is non-verbal: facial expression, tone, and physical interaction among other things make-up the social cues that both strengthen and weaken our emotional connections to one another. It is no secret that when “LOL” is typed, no one is laughing, or even flinching for that matter. And even if you were “ROFL,” this laughter is one that’s contagion is blocked by your computer screen.

Skype’s new campaign, “It’s time for Skype,” boasts that “Skype can help us all share our hearts, voices, gestures, and expressions.” In a way, Skype does bridge the gap left by Facebook messenger and Gmail, however, it is all still tethered to a plain of virtual realism. You might not be able to get your interactive AV fix on Twitter, but you can also journey to Facebook video-calling and Google Hangouts. I prefer Google Hangouts because on special occasions, like last Christmas, you can attach reindeer horns and noses to your face.

Mashable released a list of the Skype Ads which will be coming to the U.S. within the next few months (the U.K. gets everything first…):

“When did LOL replace the sound of laughter?”
“When did it become okay to text mum happy birthday?”
“Humans were made to look, listen and feel.”
“140 characters doesn’t equal staying in touch.”
“Your one-way ticket back to humanity.”
“Upgrade from a wall post to a first class conversation.”
“No delays on human conversation.”

These one-liners are designed into bold Ads that look like both the images above and below…

(source: Adweek)

Comment and let us know what you think about Skype’s Ad campaign!

Google’s latest attempt at keeping you on Google is the product of “Project Glass,” you can follow the progress of the initiative on Google+. Their take on these glasses is that technology should be convenient and ready for you when you need it.

Google Glasses are revolutionary, now you don’t have to reach in your pocket to take a picture, or type with those stupid tiny little buttons (there is a SIRI-like feature), or think!

Apparently they have this wild idea that wearing a Google Device over your eyes means “putting you back in the moment.” 

It seems to me, however, that WALL-E was more than a Pixar movie and the only thing missing from”Project Glass” is a La-Z-Boy hover chair with a big fat Google bumper sticker slapped across the back. You can make the comparison for yourself:

The image above is a sampling of Google Glasses vision, you can watch the whole video HERE on YouTube. The idea of Google Maps navigating you through a bookstore with Google Glasses is outrageous– with Google Books there is no need for bookstores or libraries.

The technology includes the head-set and a pair of contact lenses with pixels all over it.

There are positives and negatives to all technology– I’d like to know what other people think about these ugly Oakley knock-offs that have Google’s eerie too good to be true vibe all-over them. Consider the fact that Google AdWords are Google’s main source of revenue… Google vision could turn-out to look something like this:

(image: submitted by CoffeeBiscuit to Reddit)

Ever since Facebook launched in 2004, it has become an increasing threat to Google. In 2008, Facebook’s monthly growth skyrocketed to 178.38%! I guess you could call that a wake-up call, and Google answered the call (eventually) with what was evangelized into a holier-than-thou social network: Google+.

There are currently around 100 million users of Google+, this however pales in comparison to Facebook’s userbase of about 850 million. And Facebook may be a waste of time (users spend an average of 405 minutes a month on Facebook), but Google+ is plain boring (users spend an average of 3 minutes a month on Google+)– source Bits NY Times.

But I don’t want to be harsh with Google Plus, the my real beef with Google is the fact that the age of ‘don’t be evil’ (an old informal Google motto) is over and creeping privacy concerns are mounting. The old CEO, Eric Schmidt, (who was more like a regent in between Page’s term) ousted Google plus as an identity service. Thanks to the eerie new privacy policy, your social data, your Google Checkout billing information, your phone number, your email, your search queries, Android’s real-time location features (latitude users), and your real name– are all in one place. I guess it’s really up to you, whether or not your anonymity is near and dear to your heart (or not).

According to the Huffington Post, Larry Page celebrated his one-year anniversary as chief executive at Google this Wednesday. Google is still hustling to keep up with and challenge Facebook, a task that Eric Schmidt failed to do and admittedly described it “as one of his biggest blunders.”

This is why Google is afraid of Facebook:

Holy-Guacamole, Facebook is making a Search Engine… Facebook has a wimpy Search Engine already, and when I say wimpy, I mean that according to Bloomberg, people did less searches on Facebook for the month of February 2012 than they did on Ask and AOL. But Facebook Search is about to get a lot better: there are two dozen Facebook Engineers with a Google ex-patriot at the helm, working on an optimized search that integrates all of the social data that makes Larry Page’s skin crawl. There is no doubt that Google’s Search is far superior than anything Facebook could fancy in the near future,  but the Zuckerbergians are well on there way to an improved search that will bring Facebook one-giant-leap closer to the $15 billion search advertising market.

Facebook IPO raises the roof and lights it on fire… so this IPO is expected to raise five-billion dollars (and I put my Dr. Evil pinky down, now). Not only is Facebook about to get boo-koo bucks, but they are also getting a tone of free publicity that is bound to reach the older, more mature crowd. Facebook’s range of potential users is narrowing, babies can’t be born fast enough (or can they), somehow Facebook needs to catch the attention of the lost generation and beyond, and this IPO stuff might be the trick. According to the Huffington Post, “the IPO will likely eclipse Google’s 2004 stock market debut as the biggest for a U.S. Internet company.” Although, the taste of victory, won’t be so sweet if ACTA pushes its way into the picture.

Feel free to comment and let us know what you think, Facebook has the userbase to try all-kinds of weird new things on, like a dating site or some kind of online shopping experience, anything to keep you on Facebook. On the lighter-side, Google has a tradition of making April Fools Day jokes, have you seen their latest?

(image: Larry Page’s Original Business Card from DoobyBrain)

Social Media For Internal Communications 2012: How to Engage Employees, Drive Internal Collaboration, Increase Productivity and Improve Your Bottlom Line Using the Latest Enterprise 2.0 Technologies
April 16-19, 2012
New York, NY

Social media is becoming very vital to the success of organizations.  This conference aims to help you get to know the different tools and strategies that can get you to use social media to your advantage.

Learn how to:

• Build support for your social media programs from senior management .
• Decide where it fits into your company.
• Engage your organization in using social media tools to increase productivity and maximize effectiveness.
• Use social media as an internal communications and knowledge management tool.
• Demonstrate the return of investment of your social media campaigns.
• Get the involvement and participation in new tools.
• Get the right tools for employees.
• Create a social media policy and strategy.
• Understand social media and how it affects every facet of your organization.
• Measure the value of your social media efforts
• Use your internal network to build a brand culture
• Develop online communications to meet the internal needs of your organization.

What’s more,  there are pre- and post-conference sessions that you should not miss touching on:

• Using internal communications to help advance your brand from within your organization out to your customers.
• Using crowdsourcing to get better input from your employees.
• Using traditional communications and social media to engage your employees.
• Understanding mobile and tablet apps.

Register now and hear these experts tell you their experiences and what they learned from them:

Dr. Adam Wootton, Director of New Media and Social Media
TOWERS WATSON

Karen Trewin, Manager, Institutional Communications and Community Relations
MAYO CLINIC

Jim Trinka, PhD, Director, Air Traffic Organization Training & Development
FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

Anjali Reddy, Director, Internal Communications
GRAINGER

David Siroty, Vice President, North American Communications
COLDWELL BANKER REAL ESTATE

Chuck Gose, Director, Business Development & Social Media
MEDIATILE

Jenna Rowell, Internal Communication Strategy Manager
HONEYWELL AEROSPACE

Monica Lin-Meyer, Director, Internal Communications & Employee Engagement
WAGGENER EDSTROM WORLDWIDE

Sarah Lane, Director of New Media
WASHINGTON STATE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

Hunter Hoffmann, Head of US Communications
HISCOX

Howie Morgasen, Senior Vice President Collaboration & Social Networking Technology
CITIGROUP

Edward Ford, Enterprise Community Manager
THE MCGRAW-HILL COMPANIES

Renny Monaghan, VP of Solutions
SALESFORCE.COM

Susan Fraysse Russ, Vice President of Global Communications
READER’S DIGEST ASSOCIATION

Low-Cost Digital Engagement Conference 2012: Fundraise, Campaign, Communicate
April 17, 2012
Royal National Hotel, London, United Kingdom

The Low-Cost Digital Engagement Conference 2012: Fundraise, Campaign, Communicate conference was created for those who work in not-for-profit organizations, the public sector and other low-budget organizations that are looking to learn more about social media and digital marketing.

Topics include:

• Get social media engagement by creating genuine interactions and conversations.
• Demonstrate return on investment and results.
• Recruit and activate supporters online.
• Harness advocacy, activism and awareness online.
• Optimize your website.
• Evaluate smartphone campaigns.
• Create and executive e-mail campaigns.

Speakers include:

• Kenny Macdonald, Head of HSE Online, Health and Safety Executive
• Owen Valentine Pringle, Director of Digital Communications, Amnesty International
• Linda Quinn, Director of Communications & Marketing, Big Lottery Fund
• Kat Brown, Commercial Projects Editor, The Times and The Sunday Times
• David Barker, Director of Communications, Breakthrough Breast Cancer
• Jenny Ricks, Head of Campaigns, ActionAid UK
• Ben Holt, Digital Content Manager, Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders)
• Caroline Parr, Head of Digital & Corporate Communications, Action for Children
• Andrew Barton, Head of Relationship Marketing, Oxfam GB
• Louise Kyme, Brand & Design Manager, British Heart Foundation
• Emma Harrison, Director of Public Engagement, Action on Hearing Loss
• Sophie Relf, Formerly Head of Marketing Strategy, Guardian Jobs
• Amanda Neylon, Head of Digital, Macmillan Cancer Support
• Paul Hetherington, Head of Public Relations, The Woodland Trust
• Tony Jenkin-Jones, Senior Community Relations Executive, E.ON UK
• James Blake, Publications & Digital Manager, Cats Protection
• Helen Setchell, Head of Web & New Media, University of Reading

Have you ever thought about what it would be like if we had Facebook back in the 1990′s? In the days of Saved by the Bell, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, every guy had a mullet, the Dallas Cowboys dominated the NFL and etc..

I remember getting on the internet for the first time in probably 1994-ish at community college. It was amazing… Amazingly slow! But we didn’t know any better back then!

So the guys at Squirrel Monkey are making a series of videos based on if sites were around back in the old days and made this one about what if Facebook existed in the 90s.

The video is full of bad hair and many jokes about Facebook in general. I love how when they switch to Timeline it makes a fart sound!

If only we knew what social media was back then! Seinfeld quotes would have gone viral even faster! SERENITY NOW!

If you’re anything like me sometimes just trying to keep up with everything going on in social media can be a 40 hour per week day job!

So many sites to monitor and keep up with. I try my best to stay on top of things, but I fail miserably most days at it.

Let me share in the squadcast some of the hottest topics currently being talked about in social media.

We’ll cover the resignation of Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra, some changes to Facebook Groups, Facebook iPad is Timeline-less and more.

Download audio file (squadcast32.mp3)

Make sure to check out the webinar where Mari Smith almost gets hit in the head by a stage light!

Twitter is a great marketing tool and you are already on it, but there might be some simple things that you are missing out on.  Here are some of the things you can do to help you expand on your Twitter activities.

1. Amp up your profile.

Your Twitter profile is the single best advertisement you have on Twitter.  More than your user name, you should have your business name, location, a short description of what you do and your website URL on it.

Anybody can see your profile and should see all these information, so take time to write it compellingly and completely.

Further, you should also have a call to action on your bio or description.  Tell people to call you or visit your website or subscribe to your e-mail newsletter.

2. Hashtags.

Hashtags are great in organizing your Tweets into topics you would like to be known for.  If you have an event or are passionate about a certain topic, then by all means use a hashtag for it.

For example, when tweeting something about marketing on social media, you can always add hashtags such as #marketing or #smm.  Find more popular hashtags and make your tweet more discoverable!

3. Consider using some tools.

The best thing about Twitter is that you have a wide array of tools that can make your tweeting a lot easier.  Check out some of these tools to see if they can help you achieve your Twitter goals:

a. Social Ooomph.  Social Ooomph can help reduce your Twitter time significantly, giving you more time to focus on other things.  You can set it up in such a way that it would send out an automatic message to any new followers you have.  You can thank your new followers, while also directing them to your blog or website or having them call you.

You can also rotate your tweets automatically.  Like if you have some tweets that you would like to send out once a month for three years, or if you would like to repeatedly send 6 different tweets on the same topic over the course of the month, you can set it up on Social Ooomph and not worry about it.

You can also have an extended profile and access to a lot of statistics.

b. TweetAdder.  TweetAdder is basically a great automation tool, helping you add new followers, remove those who don’t follow you, send out tweets automatically either by scheduling it or linking it with your RSS feeds, and a lot of other tasks.

4. Promote your blog posts.

A great way to extend the life of your blog posts is to use it to connect with your followers.  Always announce your new blog posts on Twitter, and schedule your old blog posts to go out on Twitter at some point in the future.

Write a short overview of what your blog post is about on Twitter, then add the link and the hashtag.

5. Get new business on Twitter.

Twitter has an advanced search function that can help you find new customers.

For example, if you sell blue widgets, you can always search for something like “need blue widgets.”  You would need to get in touch and engage with the person who tweeted about it!

I’ve been using Pinterest to surf through the latest iconographics (try searching something on Pinterest, anything), and I came upon this gem, “The Business & Nutrition of Girl Scout Cookies.” I throw nutrition to the wind during cookie season and let my belt down a little– so I was not surprised or disturbed to see that the only thing that can outpace stellar cookie sales, is the calorie count.

Back in the day, in 1917, the first Girl Scout cookie drive went down in a Muskogee, Oklahoma at a high school cafeteria. Since then, mediocre cookies have never been the same; cookie season changes people. Did you know that there is a an official Cookie Finder App that promises to show you where the Girl Scout cookies are hiding. Depending on the season, you might need to make a road-trip.

The humble beginnings of Girl Scout cookie are a long ways in the past. I went to the Library late at night to study, when I came upon a hush-hush Girl Scout Cookies operation, headed by a Library staff member who was selling thousands of boxes for “her girls” who were hoping to visit Washington, D.C.– again (or Europe). When I was a Girl Scout, I never came close to any kind of cookie empire (despite the Salesman/woman that coursing through my veins), we didnt take credit card and I’m pretty sure all I got was an honorary giraffe plushie for selling a few boxes to my immediate family– but enough of my successes…

Check-out the infographic below and let us know what you think. What’s your favorite Girl Scout Cookie?

(Feature Image: The Inquisitr, Infographic via Top Business Degrees)

While we have blogged about Pinterest quite a bit here and talked about it on our Facebook page I have been very open and have said that by the Fall of 2012 Pinterest would be a distant memory.

I don’t think I’m far off on that hypothesis either.

Today it is being reported by multiple sources that co-founder of Pinterest Paul Sciarra is leaving the company. No reason has been reported yet but it is said that the departure will happen within a week or so.

Paul was at one time the president of Pinterest but was replaced by Ben Silbermann a few months back. The 2 of them founded Cold Brew Labs while at Yale.

Maybe Sciarra is realizing that the site is just becoming a spammy link farm for shady internet marketers (most internet marketers are shady btw). Or perhaps he’s getting out after more and more realize the holes in their user Terms of Service or the copyright issues with using the site. Or maybe he’s just taking on a new role within the company.

But, I think all of this uncertainty and problems with the site are adding to the reasons why I’m not a big fan of it and why I think it won’t last.

Heck.. Maybe Facebook will buy out Pinterest and make the whole site mute anyway like they did Gowalla and others!

Or maybe this is just an April Fool’s Day joke leftover!

Do you use Pinterest? What is your thought about it? Sound off below. And feel free to follow MY PINS.

*Sources:

http://www.webpronews.com/pinterest-co-founder-paul-sciarra-resigns-2012-04

http://startupgrind.com/2012/04/exclusive-pinterest-co-founder-paul-sciarra-is-leaving-the-company/

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/pinterest-co-founder-paul-sciarra-leaves-ben-silberman-officially-takes-on-ceo-role/

Time is running-out and decisions are being finalized; news has spread that there are only 10 more weeks before ACTA is agreed upon and put into action.

10 weeks…

ACTA has yet to be ratified by the European Parliament, and it is actually opposed by a handful of European countries. Protests in Europe provoked a decision to have the European Court of Justice review ACTA. This process would have tacked at least another year onto the ACTA campaign. However, this initial response has been ignored and ACTA is straight on its way to European Parliament. The decision as to whether or not ACTA is ratified (if it is not ratified, ACTA is dead) should be in by June, and the 10 week countdown begins…

The Anti-Counterfiting Trade Agreement (you can read it in full, here) is the brainchild of Japan and the United States; a multitude of different countries have since jumped onto the agreement, including Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, along with 22 out of the 27 countries within the European Union.

ACTA is a worldwide SOPA (among other things), it would hold Internet Service and Access Providers legally responsible user’s online activities, effectively transforming them into into censor hounds/copyright police.

ACTA is essentially a lethal weapon against human rights:

“The EU should reject ACTA in its current form – implementing the agreement could open a Pandora’s box of potential human rights violations.” – Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International urging the European Union to reject ACTA.

As governments continue to look out for the interests of corporations rather than the interests of the people (because the corporate structure is so fragile in comparsion to visceral power-house that is the human body?), I continue to ask why. ACTA! What is it good for, absolutely nothing, sing it again y’all.

Even worse is the nature of an International agreement that binds our representatives from changing anything. According to U.S. Represenative Darrell Issa, in a discussion at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland,

“It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.”

But there is good news… SOPA/PIPA were stopped, there is a good chance that ACTA will be stopped. Although we are facing the interests of globalized corporations, alternatively, these corporations are facing the interests of a global community of Internet users.

Here are some resources:

• If you are interested in learning more about ACTA, Timothy B. Lee wrote a great article HERE on Ars Technica separating ACTA fact from fiction.
• To get involved, and view multimedia resources, check-out STOPACTA.
• And last but not least, TWEET ABOUT IT!

Recently, James Cameron released the first-ever videos from the bottom of the earth– documenting his record-breaking solo dive to the Hadel Depths of the Marianna Trench in the Pacific Ocean. The sequence of videos documenting this deep sea saga were free for the world to view on YouTube. Bills like ACTA could take videos like this off the internet because James Cameron is wearing Rolex…

Comment and let us know what you think!

(image: VentureVillage)

Now how do you do it right?  Here are the best practices when commenting.

1. Read a few of the blog entries before commenting.  If this is the first time that you are joining the blog site that you want to comment on, it helps to read some of the blog entries that have been posted previously but without commenting on any first.  This will give you a chance to get to know the author and his or her position on issues.  It will also give you insights on how the author thinks, as well as your fellow readers.  This will further help prepare you to leave good comments.

2. Do not just comment based on the blog entry that you have read.  If you are ready to post your comment, it would help to read the previous comments that have already been posted.  Somebody else might have already said what you wanted to say.  You can make your point more effectively if you leave an original comment or if you quote others who had the same ideas and opinions as you do and add in something completely your own.

3. The length of your comment should not rival the length of the original blog article.  Nor should it be too short to be of any substance.  Leave around two to three paragraphs of comment.

4. If you are going to link to your own content, do so sparingly.  Always remember that a link that goes to your own site should be relevant to the topic being discussed.  It should serve to add something to the discussion, and not just an incoming link to your own blog.

5. Do not spam.  If you run your own blog and made all comments moderated, you might have come across comments such as “Great blog post.  I really like to commend you for writing something about this topic.”  Then it goes to leave a link behind an obvious keyword, such as Generic Viagra or UGG Boots.  Having these links in your comments when they are not relevant would guarantee that your comment would not be approved and that your IP will be tagged as a spammer.

Bonus tip: For some blogging platforms, you would need to create a profile before you are allowed to comment.  If this is the case, then be sure that you make use of that profile to link to your own site or blog.  This way, you would not feel the need to drop an unnecessary link in your comments.

6. Be honest.  You are there to market your site or boost your search engine rankings, but this is no reason to think that the blog owner should just ban you outright.  Make a contribution to the blog posts by being genuinely interested in the topics discussed.  Do not hide that you own a related blog, or that you’re hoping to get some backlinks to the site.

7. Be sure to use your real name and include a photo if the comment form allows it.  This will help establish you as a legitimate community member, instead of a spammer.

8. Advertise your comment.  If you left a comment, then be sure to advertise it on your Facebook page or Twitter account.  A simple message such as “I left a comment at the hubze blog,” then a link to the post would suffice.

*Disclaimer- I know little to nothing about skateboarding and can’t even stand on one for 1 second before falling on my ass. But I do know that this stunt is pretty dang sick!

On Monday, March 26, 2012 12 year old Tom Schaar lands the first ever recorded 1080 aerial maneuver. For those like me that have no idea what that means it’s basically 3 rotations in mid-air!

And is a stunt not even Tony Hawk and other professional skateboarders have been able to pull off.

Evidently this little guy has pulled off some other big stunts and on only his 5th try pulled off the most elusive move in the sport!   And just for grins he went back the next day and did it again!

I’m sure the endorsement deals will come rolling in for this kid within the week if they haven’t already! Pretty amazing.

This video has nearly 100,000 views on YouTube as of this morning. Not sure if it’s the “official” video for the jump as many YouTube accounts are showing the video. If you do a search for Tom Schaar on YouTube you’ll also find tons of other videos of him doing amazing tricks. Some as young as 8 years of age!

So are you ready for timeline? I mean really ready? Some people are freaking out and I have to say there really is no reason to. I think the people who are freaking out the most are the people who were creating fake lead gathering accounts that were totally dependent on the default landing tab, however if you just embrace this change, you will see that you can actually be AHEAD of the game because even some big brands have not made the needed changes to be ready.

So don’t fret…just get busy and get your pages ready!

You may have heard about this update, as it addressed the issue of employers demanding the Facebook passwords of prospective employees. But that’s not the only update– you can see the revised Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, HERE.

The latest update has to do with the usage of Facebook copyrights and/or trademarks, user:

• “Facebook”
• “the Facebook”
• F logos
• “FB”
• “Poke”
• “Book”
• “Wall”
• “Face”

Words like, wait a minute, “like,” “Facebook” make sense– however it is bizarre that Facebook has legal ownership of general words like “wall” and “book”… and even “face” are a bit general to provoke legal liability.

Check-it out:

Every time you log-in, you agree to Facebook’s lengthy  Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

According to the article, Facebook does not have an official trademark registration on “book.” However, Facebook has filed an application to officially trademark “Book” in the European Union. It is insane that “face” and “wall” already belong to Facebook.

What does all this legalese mean for the Facebook night club in Brazil!?

Who knew intellectual property laws would go this far… especially since Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who created the world wide web, or rather– combined hypertext with the Internet, refused to patent his technology so it would be available to everyone.

Did you know that Yahoo is suing Facebook? If it works out in Yahoo’s favor, you might not have to cope with Timeline for long…

Comment and let us know what you think, should Facebook have rights to the words “Book” or “Wall”?

(image: EgoBook)

That’s why instead of creating this training and charging you like everyone else is doing we decided we would give it away!

Our gift to you for being loyal fans!

To get access to this FREE training on Timeline CLICK HERE and we will give you IMMEDIATE access!

British student, Liam Stacey, is partaking in the festivities, watching the Bolton Wanderers take on a rival soccer team when suddenly one of the Bolton Wanderers’ star footballers, Fabrice Muamba, collapses on the field suffering cardiac arrest. The twenty-one year old Stacey, sounds-off:

LOL, F___ Muamba. He’s dead!!! HAHA,

Following the initial tweet above, the subsequent commentary from Stacey and other users quickly devolved into a racially charged tweetathon… 24 hours later Liam Stacey was arrested under a “public order offense” and has since plead guilty to inciting racial hatred, been suspended from his university, as well as sentenced to 56 days in jail for tweeting racially offensive comments.

This case reminds me of the arrests after the London Riots, in which citizens were arrested/jailed for their activity on social networks and RIM.

Now, there is Freedom of Speech in the United Kingdom… there is even “Freedom of Speech” in the People’s Republic of China (keep in mind that the Chinese are blocked by “the great firewall of China” from sites like Facebook and Twitter, and participate in similar social networks that are provided and censored by their gallant government).

However, Freedom of Speech in the United Kingdom stops where racism and incitement to violence begins, as I said before, the London Riots are a perfect example… which lead the UK to consider banning social media all together. Freedom of Speech in the United States, on the other hand, allows pretty much all the offensive and violent comments under the star-spangled sunshine that you could fit in Lady Liberty’s colossal draws– not to brag.

So, Liam Stacey is now a criminal for tweeting. I don’t agree with anything he said. However, this case is specifically interesting because it deals with Freedom of Speech within Social Networking.

Social Networking is a new entity, Twitter may have started-off at SXSW in Austin, but nowadays, the Japanese are breaking tweet per second records. Social networking has proven to be powerful (in the case of the Arab Spring) and it has proven to be trivial (have you looked at Chris Brown’s Twitter lately?).

My point is that social networking is a global entity, a collective out-pouring of individual voices. The platforms may be the same country to country but rights to Freedom of Speech, unfortunately, are not.

Did you know that Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and WordPress (along with a huge chunk of the Internet aka “filternet”) is banned in Iran… and there are 17 million Facebook users in Iran.

There is a privilege in the United States to say whatever is on your mind, even if your mind drowning in green-beer and hyped on fan-fever.

I’d appreciate gaining some of your insight into the incident with Liam Stacey, as well as the state of Freedom of Speech across social networking platforms. Comment and let us know what you think!

(image: 20poorandfabulous)

Unless you’re living under a rock you know that Timeline for Facebook pages is coming March 30th (tomorrow).

So many people are panicking about it and all bent out of shape about it.

Everyone is fearful of this change and acting like the world is coming to the end…

Calm down people! Get off the ledge and take it easy…

Let’s talk about Timeline and about change in general. I also will talk about dealing with change in general and about how those of you that are in the social media niche need to do more learning and less griping.. Enjoy.

Download audio file (squadcast31.mp3)

Join me for this LIVE webinar as I walk you through all the changes tomorrow: REGISTER HERE

*This podcast is brought to you by our good friend Mari Smith. Go check out the reply of her webinar where she almost gets nailed by a falling studio light!

Well.. Tomorrow is Doomsday for many..

Gone is the old Facebook page layout and in is the newly minted Timeline.

For me this is not Doomsday at all. For me, and many others, this change to Timeline is exactly what we have been waiting for.

So many amazing things have been added to our pages now and I’m excited everything I go look at our Timeline!

But, I also understand that not every sits at their desk staring at Facebook 18 hours per day like I do!

So I want to offer some assistance in understanding the changes.

Let’s go over together the top 10 Things you Need to know about Timeline.

1. Gone are the 5 random images, in is a fantastic, large, cover photo.

2. Your profile image has changed sizes.

3. Your apps (sometimes called tabs) have moved and less show by default.

4. You no longer have a “default landing tab”.

5………

To find out the rest of the Top 10 and to discuss the mentioned 4 items instead of me listing them out here and you scanning over them join me for a LIVE walk-thru of these changes March 30th at 1pm Eastern Time!

I will discuss these 10 changes and show them to you live and then take Q&A for as long as people have questions.

Our last event talking about Timeline was amazing and a ton of fun, so let’s do it again!

YOU CAN REGISTER HERE FOR THE FREE WEBINAR.

See ya on the webinar!

I’ve been a little light on the viral videos lately with all the changes to Facebook my attention has been there.

But, I ran across this ridiculous video last night and couldn’t wait to share it with you!

The video was posted on February 21,2012 and has 688k views so far.

I’ll admit I don’t get the whole dubstep thing or what it evens means. But this is funny!

Social media is big around the world, so it follows that big and notable conferences are coming out for different parts of the world, too.  This week, we take a look at social media conferences happening in China and Germany.

SES Shanghai 2012
April 16-18, 2012
InterContinental Shanghai Puxi, Shanghai, China

The SES Shanghai 2012 conference brings together digital marketing and advertising practitioners in China, the second time in the long history of the SES.

Listen to these distinguished panel of speakers, including:

• Louise Au, Managing Director, Hoola
• Roberto Edoardo Bellipanni, Operations Manager and Customer Services, Park Hyatt
• Amy Chan, Interactive Marketing Director, Coca-Cola China
• Herbert Chia, Principle Business Intelligence Officer, Senior Director, Alipay
• Eddie Choi, SES Advisory Board; Founding Partner, Frontiers Digital
• Sherman Chu, Head of Marketing, Sephora
• Mark Downing, Global SEO Manager, Dell
• Sam Flemming, Founder and Chairman, CIC
• Alvin Foo, Head of Mobile, Greater China, Google
• George Godula, Co-Founder, Web2Asia
• T.R. Harrington, Chief Operating Officer, Darwin Marketing
• Brian Hui, Director, Head of Marketing, Amazon.cn
• Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist, Google
• Adaline Lau, Editor, ClickZ Asia
• Yao Lei, eMarketing Manager, Land Rover
• Donna Li, GM, Strategic Marketing & Media Planning, RenRen.com
• Linda Liang, Vice President, Business Development, Umeng
• David Liu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Jiepang
• Chris Maier, Director, Digital and Media, Greater China, Millward Brown International
• Dominic Penaloza, Co-founder and CEO, Ushi
• Cai Pengshen, Business Analysis Supervisor, Air China
• Tracy Ren, Head of Marketing, Pricing and Customer Analytics, Standard Chartered Bank
• Jacob Tang, Digital Marketing Manager, Volkswagen
• Gemme van Hasselt, Founder and COO, Dataotuan.com/ Holaba.com.cn
• Allen Wang, CEO, BabyTree
• Willy Yang, Chief Executive Officer, MediaV
• Ai Yong, Director of Strategy and Sales, Sina
• Lily Yu, Director of Wireless Application Department, Yihaodian

Learn more about social media, SEO and other forms of marketing, including:

• Display advertising in China
• Content management and domain strategy implementation
• Social, location and mobile marketing
• SEO
• Social analytics
• Lead generation
• CRM integration
• Using data for better marketing performance
• E-mail marketing
• PPC
• Video marketing
• Content marketing

AllFacebook Marketing Conference Munich 2012
April 16, 2012
Leonardo Royal Hotel Munich, Germany

The AllFacebook Marketing Conference focuses especially on marketing on the giant social media platform.  If you want to learn more about the various tricks and tips on Facebook Pages, Facebook Ads and creating Facebook applications, then this is the conference for you.

Learn more about:

• How Vodafone turns customers into fans by managing its brand and talking to customers on Facebook
• How Burger King rolls out its social campaigns
• How to use Facebook for B2B marketing
• How to run successful contests on Facebook
• How to optimize and measure ROI
• Top predictions for Facebook in 2012

from Germany’s best speakers on the topic:

• Daniel Backhaus, Social Media Manager & Coach
• Christian Buggisch, Head Of Online Communications, Datev G
• Christian Clawien, Interone
• Simon Harlinghausen, Managing Director, Akom360 Gmbh
• Thomas Hutter, Owner / Manager, Hutter Consult Gmbh
• Thomas Langenberg, Founder / Ceo, Halalati
• Daniel Panto, Manager Digital, Endemol Germany Gmbh
• Mark Piesch, Head Of Online, Rtl2
• Rebecca Quinn, Director Of European Strategy And Operations, Wildfirce Interactive Inc.
• Marco Rinne, Social Media Marketing Manager, Microsoft Germany Gmbh
• Stefan Spiegel, Head Of Travel & Tourism, Ray Sono Ag
• Florian Steps, Head Of Direct & Digital, Vodafone
• Stephanie Weigand, Associate Marketing Manager, Burger King Beteiligungs Gmbh
• Scott Woods, Facebook Germany Gmbh

Now THAT is a freaky little one-liner from the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology (breathe), Republican Representative Greg Walden who hails from the beaver state (Oregon).

Walden’s thought provoking, pithy, statement was made in response to the Facebook Protection Amendment that would allow the FCC to lay down the law and ban employers from gaining access to the passwords and accounts of both prospective and current employees.

In case you haven’t heard (it is not an urban legend): Facebook has acknowledged reports that employers are intruding on the privacy of employees by demanding access to their social networking profiles, and in some cases, demanding passwords. This practice not only violates the privacy of the individual user but everyone in their social network as well.

This ludicrous trend is a violation of privacy, and as Catherine Crumb of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) stated: “people are entitled to their private lives.”

However according to a report by MSNBC, certain colleges like the University of North Carolina mandate that student athletes “friend” a coach and/or compliance officer, so that they may babysit and see “friends-only” posts on the student’s wall. In another case reported by MSNBC, prospective employees of Maryland’s Department of Corrections were asked to log-on to their accounts during interviews.

What’s being done to stop it?

Facebook did what they could by making the act of sharing or soliciting a Facebook passwords a violation of their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Last week I wrote that Sen. Richard Blumenthal was at work on an Anti-Snooping bill that would limit employers to information that is publicly available.

However, the motion I am mentioning here is an amendment to an FCC process reform act.

As Representative Perlmutter (D, Colorado) states in the hearing, social media users have an expectation of privacy, “an expectation that their right to free speech, or their right to free religion, will be respected.”

The 9 line amendment titled “Mind Your Own Business On Passwords” was shot down by the house, with only one Republican vote in favor.

Why? That’s a good question, I’d like to know what you all think. 

The aforementioned Rep. Walden spoke out against the amendment, calling the provision virtually useless. He is quoted by the Huffington Post in saying that “this is a real issue that we all share, and that is protecting privacy.” The motion (here again) according to Walden “doesn’t do that.”

Maybe the FCC reform act wasn’t the place for this motion (seeing as the FCC is being reproached for inefficiency and lack of transparency), hopefully, Senator Blumenthal can get something substantial going that can keep privacy sacred. Somebody has got to step-up…

The fact that such an overwhelming majority shot down the motion, gives the impression that lawmakers are less concerned about the rights of citizens (“consumers”) and are more concerned about protecting and strengthening both the industry and bureaucracy that continues to consume them.

You should never share your Facebook password, it is yours, and yours alone. Comment and let us know what you think! 

SCENE: The Pacific’s Mariana Trench is the deepest gash in the earth’s surface; it is actually deep enough to submerge Mt. Everest… and then some. The bottom-most plain and the creatures that live there, thrive beneath 1000x the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. It is the product of two tectonic plates converging– one swallowing the other and magnanimously sending it straight to a twinkling crystalline crust: the Earth’s mantle.

The descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench took approximately 90 minutes. The footage, documenting a “new age of underwater exploration,” explores 36,070 ft. below the earth’s surface– also known as the Hadel Depths. Sunlight is unable to permeate the great blue ocean waters at about 3,330 ft. The Titanic’s final resting place is 4x that depth at 12,467 ft, and nearly 7 miles below the earth’s surface, lies the last frontier, the least well known place on the earth, practically alien to man– until now.

LOOK:

The footage of the record-breaking adventure was released for free by National Geographic. You can find the entire saga on their Youtube channel or, well, practically anywhere on the Internet. And if you are really interested, you can learn more about the dive HERE.

Much of National Geographic’s resources are available via YouTube, right along side the very viral “Sh*T people say” videos and Conan’s latest announcement that is “pushing the envelope,” yet again.

A major success of social media and the greater Internet, has been the availability and spread of free information. Social Media isn’t limited to liking your friends status or re-tweeting celebrities.

In fact, social media is also responsible for the viral spread of information via the simple plug-ins that you see on virtually every media resource, like the tweet button and the pin-it button. There are also sub-Reddits devoted to topics like Politics and Science.

Unfortunately there are bills forged by our own lawmakers like SOPA and PIPA, that potentially threaten the right to spread free information, which is ultimately an extension of free speech. There are even bigger forces at work, that ubiquitously spans across nations: ACTA is a global anti-piracy bill that has good intentions but stunts the spread of free information and opens the door to worldwide internet censorship.

Comment and let us know what you think, either about James Cameron’s adventure or anti-piracy bills that could take videos like this off the internet because James Cameron is wearing Rolex…

 (image: National Geographic)

Engaging your followers should be your first order of the day on Twitter.  And you simply can’t engage your followers by trying to sell them things.  Conversation and joining the discussions would be a much better bet if you want to engage your followers.

But you simply cannot know what your followers are interested in all the time, or at least there are times when you just feel uninspired to come up with a conversation topic or that subject to write about for your next blog post.  This is where trending topics come in.  Trending topics work two ways:

1. It helps you get to know what would interest your followers.

2. It would help you get exposed to a potentially huge audience.

Trending topics are hot.  These are the discussions that matter to people on Twitter.  If a topic is popular, more people would want to participate in the discussion .  More people would be able to relate to it.  What’s more, trending topics are promoted by Twitter itself, so there is a chance that a huge number of people would be able to see your tweet for any trending topic that you have.  But how do you actually take advantage of this?  Here’s how:

1. Know what the trending topic is all about.  Sometimes, trending topics can be very cryptic.  For example, the hoax #RIPJackieChan would be attached to tweets discussing the (fake) death of Jackie Chan.  While Asian Directioners became a trending topic because fans of One Directions wanted them to do a tour across Asia.  How do you decipher trending topics on Twitter?  Head on to this site http://www.whatthetrend.com/ or do a Google search on that particular trending topic.

2. Relevance is key.  It is helpful to veer away from talking about your business some times, but do not do it too much that you lose your brand values.  Remember that you should always keep your branding and brand values in mind even on social media.

3. If you can’t find a trending topic that’s relevant to your business, do not fret.  You can SEARCH for hash tags and trends that you can relate to.  Go to http://trendspottr.com and type in a query that’s related to your business.  For example, searching for SEO yields #seo, #marketing, #job, “magic think less”, “follow relevant links.”  These would provide you with a good start on getting relevant tweets out.

4. Be creative but do not try too hard as to make it look like you are riding the issues.  For example, if “presidential elections” became a trending topic and you run an SEO company, there really is not much you could with it.  But by being creative, you could write a blog on how SEO could help candidates win more votes.  Share that blog post on Twitter and join the conversation on presidential elections.  For some, however, there really is nothing that you can do but let it go.  Like One Directions or Justin Bieber (unless you can prove that the Bieb does some SEO for his website).

The latest addition to the most popular game in the universe, with merchandise ranging from pillows, to cookies, shirts and slippers, has been the most popular release yet!

Rovio tweeted this morning that the game has seen 10 million downloads in only three days. According to Mashable, the last Angry Birds release, Angry Birds Rio, saw just as many downloads in 10 days.

Maybe Angry Birds Space is so hot because Rovio teamed up with National Geographic and NASA in making the game out of this world.

Actually, Angry Birds Space has the FIRST ever game announcement and gameplay footage from space. NASA scientist Don Petit gives an Angry Birds Physics lesson in the brief promotional video below:

Rovio is successfully using Angry Birds to become a super brand. There is an Angry Birds novelty for everyone, and it is very affordable:

Miniature Yellow Angry Bird Painting $5.95

Angry Birds Converse $19.90

Did you know that there is an Angry Birds cookbook dedicated to pigging-out and cooking “egg-cellence”. Earlier this month, Bad Piggies’ Egg Recipies won “Best first cookbook in the world” at the Gourmand Cookbook Awards. You can check-it out, shakes, sammys, and eggs, HERE.

“Zynga is a game company. We stopped looking at ourselves as a game company. We sold 25 million plush toys last year. For us, it’s about making Angry Birds available everywhere,” Vesterbacka said.

But how do you come up with a great landing page?  Here are some tips:

1. Highly relevant landing pages are key to conversion.  When it comes to landing pages, one size does not really fit all.  This may sound like a lot of work, but you really only have to tweak some of your content to do this.  The overall layout is also very important when it comes to landing pages.

A potential customer who came to your site through an e-mail you sent should be shown a landing page that sort of continues where that e-mail left off.  If you e-mailed your customers to tell them about a discount you are giving your old customers for their loyalty, then the landing page they see should reflect this.

What’s more, your landing page should also differentiate as to the kind of customer you are directing to it.  If you are directing new prospects, then you would need to explain more about your products and company.  If you are directing possibly returning customers, you can focus more on your deal or discount, rather than talk about what they already know, such as your product or company.

2. Eye-catching headlines.  An eye-catching headline should hook your reader.  The ad you used or the status update you posted should be relevant to your headline, or else it would seem like you are tricking people to visit your site.

Make sure that your headlines are clear and direct to the point.  It should intrigue your reader to continue reading and see what you have to offer.

3. Proofread your content.  More than knowing what to say, it is important to also say it right.  Impeccable grammar and sentence construction present a professional feel to your readers.

4. Build trust.  Especially for new prospects, try to build trust by citing authorities and previous customers.  Include testimonials from customers, even certification from the BBB or any other third party guarantees.

5. Don’t neglect your call to action button.  Your call to action button should tell your readers what you want them to do, and how to do it (press the call to action button!) As such, it would need to be very prominent on your landing page without having to scroll down to find it.  Add an arrow to direct people’s attention to your call to action button, or give it a different color that grabs attention, such as orange or yellow.

It would also help if you do not confuse the reader about your call to action.  Ideally, you should only include one call to action for every landing page. In the event that you need to have two call to action buttons, highlight the one that is most preferable to you. For example, highlight the SUBSCRIBE NOW call to action button by doing it in a bright color, while also offering a FREE TRIAL button done in a muted tone.

6. Don’t insert too many links. If you let your readers wander away from your landing page by providing links, then you would have lost a conversion. Include links sparingly.

7. All of these important elements should be above the fold.  This is the area of your landing page that people can see without having to scroll down.

8. Test out at least two versions of your landing page.  Ideally, you should create two versions of your landing page and test it.  See which one works better, or what worked well for both and incorporate these into a new landing page and test it again.  You could also play around with the design and layout to see what works better.

Women = Social Media success: We know that women make-up the majority of Pinterest, 90%, which is very similar to the most popular social network in the world: Facebook.  A majority of Facebook users are women, 55% (source: checkfacebook.com).

And women tend to be the most engaged in social networking. I’m talking about mommy bloggers who are passing along good deals and good information to everyone in their social network. Did you know that 92% of women pass along information about deals or finds to others, in fact according to she-conomy, women represent the majority of the ever-growing online market.

Google+ got a lot of hype, I’ll admit– even I was hyped. Regardless, Google+ is in the shadows, and has turned out to be a fad (considering the massive decline in media interest and relevance within current events). Why? Blame it on the boys– 75% of Google+ users are men (source: NetworkWorld). Check-out the Squadcast, has Google+ lost momentum?

Despite the fact that women live longer, I’ll admit that what is necessary for long term social media success, there needs to be a balance between men and women. The real blockade for Pinterest will be catering to the male audience, seeing as all that is good in this world is a balance. Good luck Ben Silbermann… hooking a few hundred thousand dudes into online shopping, home decor, baking, and/or pets– doesn’t sound easy.

I rest my case.

Take a gander at the flow chart below (courtesy of Intuit) and, keeping in mind what I said about Pinterest, consider whether or not Pinterest is right for your business. Comment and let us know what you think!

Getting started is easy as adding a pin-it button to your site. If you are looking to add the pin-it button, or block pinning entirely, here is how.

via: Should Your Business Be on Pinterest? Find Out [INFOGRAPHIC]

Lots of things covered in this episode of HubzeTV.

Android vs Iphone
21 Jump Street
Yahoo vs Facebook
Nespresso Design
More Facebook Changes

Don’t forget to share and comment! Shananigans and Things we Like will return on episode 14!

**This week’s episode is brought to you by Mari Smith. Make sure to go register for the new webinar her and Guy Kawaski are conducting this week! Gonna be killer. REGISTER HERE.

It is no secret that Employers scour the online behaviour of their employees across e-mail and social networks. Just this year a prison guard at the Lebanon Correctional Institution in Ohio was terminated after posting a threat about the Ohio Governor to his Facebook page: “Ok we got Bin Laden … let’s go get Kasich next. Who’s with me?”

In a less threatnening case between a pierogi and Pittsburgh Pirates team owner/manager, Andrew Kurtz (pierogi and Pittsburgh Pirates mascot) was fired for posting a critique of the team’s management to his Facebook wall: “Coonelly extended the contracts of Russell and Huntington through the 2011 season. That means a 19-straight losing streak. Way to go Pirates.”

Sister Maria Jesus Galan aka ‘Sister Internet,’ a nun at the Santo Domingo el Real convent in Toledo, was fired for spending too much time on Facebook.

The issue Facebook is referring to, however, has gone beyond monitoring the online activity of employees. According to an official post by Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, Erin Egan, there has been an “increase in reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people’s Facebook profiles or private information.”

Apparently, it has become a common practice for employers to demand the Facebook passwords of  prospective employees. Employers use these Facebook passwords to snoop around and invade the private lives of prospective employees, effectively sizing them up in all the wrong ways.

Not only does this practice violate the privacy of the user, but it also a violation of privacy for the friends and contacts of the user. Additionally, any violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service, is in fact, a federal crime. As Egan explains, a privacy violation such as seeking an employee’s Facebook password, “potentially exposes the employer who seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability.”

For example, if an employer sees on Facebook that someone is a member of a protected group (e.g. over a certain age, etc.) that employer may open themselves up to claims of discrimination if they don’t hire that person.

In response to the increase of these privacy infringements between employers and employees, Facebook has made the act of sharing or soliciting a Facebook password a violation of their lengthy Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

With the job market on the skids, and employment hard to come by, it is clear why many people would feel pressured to forfeit their privacy. Unfortunately some employers are taking advantage of vocational insecurity.

Fortunately, however, Sen. Richard Blumenthal is at work on an Anti-Snooping bill that would limit employers to information that is publicly available.

You can find the official Facebook statement, HERE.

Remember that you should never share your password under any circumstance. You have the right to your privacy, and so do your friends.

Comment and let us know what you think. Have you had a similar situation happen to you?

(image: technotab)

I had some very lengthy discussions today about whether or not Google+ was losing steam and was relevant any longer. To me it has lost some of it’s original allure as Facebook has stolen the headlines. Listen in as a give my opinion on where it is and where it should go.

I also talk about Facebook and patents as well as an odd new feature where  you can hide posts from your friends..

Give it a listen!:

Download audio file (squadcast30.mp3)

**Today’s Squadcast is brought to you by Mari Smith. Make sure to go register for the upcoming webinar on March 28th with Mari and Guy Kawasaki!!

I know many of you dislike many of the changes to Facebook pages and Timeline. I get that.

I for one love the changes. Gets me excited and invigorated. I get bored so quickly that I thrive off of change.

One of the new features that I think is really cool that Facebook added is called Interest Lists. I talked about them on this SQUADCAST recently and how it has changed how I post on my personal profile. But, I wanted to show you in the video above how to create an Interest and talk about what it means to you and your page.

Many are saying that getting your page added to an Interest List can be a boost to your Edgerank, so you will definitely want to leverage these. Social Fresh wrote an excellent article on this you should check out as well.

Check out the video and let me know what you think about Interest Lists.

Also feel free to Subscribe to 2 of the lists I have created linked below:

Social Media Resources

Tech Heads

Recently Facebook made a change to Facebook pages removing the default landing tab as an option for page owners. This was used by many to direct non-fans to their custom app and now many people are freaking out. Lots of pages and marketers have based their whole page around this feature.

While it was a neat feature, it wasn’t fool proof, and shouldn’t have been the backbone of your marketing campaign with your Facebook page.

I like that I won’t get duped by a new page I go to now but instead land right on their full brand identity, and that is their Timeline.

So no you cannot force non-fans to your custom app which likely has a like gate or opt-in form on it anymore. But big deal. There are many ways around this. And these ways will be more effective in garnering Likes, emails and happy fans.

Let’s go over a few of them.

1. Facebook Ads

Bottom line ads on Facebook are the BEST way to get targeted and interested buyers to your Fan Page. And with ads you CAN direct them to your custom Timeline ready app. This app can contain Like gates, opt-in forms and etc just like before. If you’re in business, which if you have a Facebook page you are, you’re going to have to put some skin in the game and spend money to market. Relying on “free” traffic and Likes is foolish. If you want to really get new fans that are wanting to buy from you and want to get them on your email list use a Facebook ad and direct them to your fancy custom app.

As you can see these are just 7 tactics you could use to overcome no longer having a default landing tab on your Facebook page with Timeline. It does require you to think outside the box a bit and not be so focused on what might have “worked” in the past.

Moving forward Facebook pages are really geared towards having a solid brand on the site. Not just a page that is an email gathering farm. Alot of internet marketers are panicking now because they have created pages on Facebook in 1000 different niches purely just to gather email leads with their “viral” scripts and default landing pages. This tactic was and is foolish and reckless. It’s not what pages on Facebook were meant to be. But as always internet marketers are crafty and always try to leverage things and take advantage of the system. Sometimes for good, sometimes not. If you don’t have a LEGIT business my bet is your page won’t do as well with Timeline because now you will be exposed if you have no activity on your page or if you are just marketing with every post.

I for one am ok with that. I’d love to see less garbage pages and more legit business pages on Facebook.

So gear up, get ready and prepare for the changes that Timeline brings to our Facebook pages!

The PRSA 2012 Digital Impact Conference
April 2-3, 2012
Sentry Center Midtown East, New York, NY
Those who are looking to get insights and inspiration for their social media campaigns should attend the Public Relations Society of America 2012 Digital Impact Conference on April 2 and 3, 2012.

This digital public relations and social media conference will bring together the most respected experts in the industry.  Keynotes are being presented by

• Caryn Marooney, Facebook’s Director of Technology Communications
• Timothy Jordan, Google’s Developer Advocate
• Matthias Lüfkens, Burson-Marsteller’s Managing Director for Digital EMEA
• Richard Binhammer, Dell’s Director of Social Media and Community

Learn about:

• Thriving in a connected world
• Data-driven communications
• B2B community building online
• What PR professionals can learn from the NSA and CIA
• How to become a leader in influencer communication
• How to leverage digital media
• Multimedia consumers’ social media habits
• Seven traits of successful bloggers
• Content marketing and PR
• Managing your social media campaigns
• Running online contests
• Combining traditional PR with Mobile and Social PR
• Trademark and copyright law
• Avoiding social media fatigue
• Connecting employees to consumers
• Using Wikipedia for PR
• Managing various content streams

O’Reilly Where Conference 2012
April 2-4, 2012
San Francisco Marriott Marquis, San Francisco, CA

If you want to put the lid on location and location technologies, the O’Reilly Where Conference 2012 is for you.

This three-day conference allows you to choose your own schedule based on four different tracks: mobile development, location marketing bootcamp, marketing and workshops.  This way, you can maximize your learning just by attending the events you need to learn!

Hear from renowned speakers and panelists such as:

• Leah Busque, TaskRabbit, Founder
• Bruce Daniel, Cartifact, Executive Vice President
• Deborah Estrin, UCLA, Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, Computer Science Department
• Eric Fischer, Google
• Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz, CEO
• Brady Forrest, O’Reilly Media, Inc., Tech Evangelist
• Thomas Goetz, Wired Magazine, Executive Editor
• Adam Greenfield, Urbanscale, Managing Director
• Eric Gundersen, MapBox, Product Development
• Noah Iliinsky, Complex Diagrams, Visualization Consultant
• Leila Janah, Samasource, CEO
• Scott Kveton, Urban Airship, Inc., CEO
• Charlene Li, Altimeter Group, Founder, Thought Leader
• Mathew Lippincott, Public Laboratory for Open Technology & Science, Co-Founder & Director of Production
• Stewart Long, Public Laboratory for Open Technology & Science, Co-Founder, Director of Geography & Data
• Tom MacWright, MapBox, Developer
• Brian McClendon, Google, VP of Engineering
• Ben Milne, Dwolla, Founder and builder
• Robert Munro, Ibidon, Computational Linguist
• Steve Russell, Prism Skylabs, CEO and Founder
• Jer Thorp, The New York Times, Data Artist in Residence
• Will Wright, Stupid Fun Club, C/O
• Adel Youssef, Wireless Stars Inc., CEO
• Jack Abraham, eBay Local
• Thomas Alt, metaio GmbH
• Jesper Andersen, Bloom Studios
• Sean Askay, Google, Inc.
• Vijay Bangaru, MapQuest
• Michael Bauer, Brilliant Arc
• David Bausola, Philter Phactory
• Tyler Bell, Factual
• Anne Bezancon, Placecast
• Matt Biddulph, Product Club
• Peter Birch, Google
• Margot Bloomstein, Appropriate, Inc.
• Michael Boland, BIA/Kelsey,
• Curtis Chambers, Uber
• Kate Chapman, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
• Dave Cole, MapBox
• Harold Cooper, Hunch / eBay
• Catherine Crump, American Civil Liberties Union
• Bill Davenhall, Esri
• Javier de la Torre, Vizzuality
• Sebastian Delmont, StreetEasy.com
• Ellen Dunne, Lumatic Inc.
• Adam DuVander, ProgrammableWeb
• Arne Ekstrom, University of California, Davis
• Schuyler Erle, SimpleGeo
• Vladimir Ermakov, University of Carnegie Mellon
• Deborah Estrin, UCLA

And although I can not see to it that you make it out of this week alive (that is your iPhone’s job), I can link some fun your way.

I stumbled, or tumbled (Tumblr), upon this video of a woman’s hip-hop performance to Usher.

Okay, I will admit that she is not my Grandma (my Grandma is a roller-skating, ex-rodeo queen). And she may be old (check-out that tie-dye) but she has more moves than most people my age who would argue that dancing means backing-up into someone and rubbing your booty against them as if you have a killer itch.

She jumps into the air from her seat at 0:26 and you may want to incorporate her move at 0:40 into your repertoire of moves– if you can pull it off.  

The juxtaposition of YouTube and older generations usually gets pretty funny. Do you remember the viral video of the “Happy Huffmans” who thought they were taking a picture with their new Mac, and the world got this YouTube video instead?

Social Media is new and big and it just keeps getting bigger… with that said, younger people are pretty much on board already. Social Networks like Facebook, who have gobbled up Generation X and the Millennials, are looking to the baby boomers and their parents, for new users. Social Media is a great way to stay connected, both with people and whats going on with the world. Facebook IS the morning paper. The real hassle is getting to know the new technology. It looks like this video was directed by a tech-savvy granddaughter.

Check-out the video below and have a great day! Comment and let us know what you think, maybe you could link us to a video of your best dance moves…really lay it on us– if that’s not asking too much (iPhone Video has a button that will send your video straight to YouTube).

Join me at 1pm EST today as I show you how to create an amazing custom Facebook page that is Timeline ready using the Fan Page Engine.

This will be a start to finish demo on how to build a page in a matter of minutes!

I will also take Q&A about our platform and tell you how I would leverage our new platform to make some money!

*Update: The replay of the webinar is below:

I’ve been a little light on the podcasts the last week or so as I dealt with our 4 year old having pnuemonia and then Thurs-Sun took the family down to Port Aransas, Tx to play on the beach. (and I got sunburned of course!)

Lots of things to talk about in the world of social media and it’s always so hard to keep up with them all I admit.

Whether it’s a change to Facebook pages, Timeline, Twitter, Youtube or etc. Something is always changing it seems.

So I attempt to cover 6-7 hot topics in social media in this podcast. Give it a listen and check out the links below the audio for references to the headlines.

Download audio file (squadcast29.mp3)

*The podcast is brought to you by Mari Smith. Make sure to check out the new webinar with Mari and Guy Kawasaki coming up.

SOURCES:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/20/facebook-patents-developing-a-lawsuit-from-mitel-more-patent-applications-from-aol-others/

http://hubze.com/2012/03/yahoo-sues-facebook-timeline-messages-ads/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-events-enhanced-this-week-in-social-media/

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/20/twitter-expands-promoted-tweets-on-mobile-will-allow-brands-to-target-by-interest-device/

http://www.allfacebook.com/light-blue-background-2012-03

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-aggregated-tags-2012-03

Everywhere you look right now it seems people are all the rage about Pinterest. Pin this, pin that, repin this.. blah. blah. blah.

I’ll admit I have a Pinterest account, but rarely use it. Sometimes I think about pinning something from our blog and do it. But that’s about it. I still don’t get the appeal personally. But, I get that others are excited about it. My prediction is still that by the end of 2012 we will all have forgotten about Pinterest. Much like we have Chime.In, CircleMe and etc.

Below though is a cool infographic from MaxyMiser on “The Who, What, Where & When of Pinterest”. It’s designed for eTailer and Content Marketers and has some pretty revealing information about Pinterest. It was interesting to me to see that 2.2 million people are actively using the site each day. Not bad. Check it out and let me know if you use Pinterest and what you think about it.. Oh.. And feel free to PIN this post!

Twitter can help you expand your readership while also keeping your current blog readers informed.  This is how you use Twitter to:

1. Make your blog posts easy to share.  Each and every blog post that you write should have a very prominent set of sharing buttons not just to Twitter, but also to other social media sites such as Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google +1 and others.

2. Make it easy for anyone to follow you on Twitter.  Consider putting a Follow Us On Twitter icon or link on every page of your website.

3. If you are going to proactively look for followers, then do not buy followers from some shady service.  Remember that being on Twitter means that you will only be successful by the quality of followers you have.  Having a high number of followers is useless if these followers do not actively read your blog posts or share them, which is what you are going to get if you buy followers.

4. If you can, do not automate your blog post announcement on Twitter.  If you have the time to manually tweet about your blog posts, then do it yourself.  This is because automating tools usually just take the title of the post and append a link to it.  Take time to tweet interesting bits of the blog post instead of just the title.

If you are too busy, then take time to always have a catchy title that would be used by your Twitter tool so that it would make people click and share it.

5. Always have a goal.  Be sure to identify why you are on Twitter in the first place and never lose sight of it.  Whether you want to drive people to your blog or use Twitter for customer service, having a goal would help you come up with a strategy on how to achieve just that.

6. Track, measure and analyze.  When you first come into Twitter, it is okay to experiment with some things. What times of the day get the most retweets?  What types of blog posts are the most popular for your readers and audience?  Do you tweet statistics or interesting facts, and which one of these get the most clicks?

If you track, measure and analyze everything you do on Twitter using various tools you find online, then you can fine-tune your efforts and make sure that you are optimizing your Twitter efforts.  This also helps you ensure that your blog posts get the maximum visibility and reach.  Plus, you also get an idea on how close you are to achieving your goals!

7. Other tips.

• Use your keywords and hash tags when you tweet your blog posts.
• Interact with your followers even when you are not tweeting about your blog posts.  Ask questions and respond to their tweets as they come.  This is the only way that you could engage them enough to keep them coming back.
• Avoid the temptation to sensationalize your tweets just to gain attention.  Be honest with your tweet.
• Try to avoid tweeting too much.  Make sure that when you do tweet, people would sit up and take notice.  Make every tweet count.

Research has shown that Twitter is harder to resist than alcohol, caffeine, or even sex– which isn’t surprising since tweeting about your waffle sandwich requires a lot less effort than giving an orgasm.

And on that note, there are 100 million active users tweeting 250 million times a day. When the birth of Blue Ivy (the super baby of Beyonce and Jay-Z) was announced, the Twitterverse was quick to sound-off 250 million times about some other kid named Ivy Blue, with trending topics like #namesbetterthanIvyBlue… (that’s a fail whale, I suppose Twitter can’t always be the most valuable source of real-time information).

What is a fail whale? If Twitter is overloaded, you will see the whale flying above the ocean with the help of a graceful flock of birds.

Twitter is even propelling the @ symbol and other text messages shorthand further into the English language. Some Twitter addicts may find Twitter speak in their home:

So, are you addicted to Twitter? The first step to dealing with your Twitter addiction is to recognize that you cannot control the compulsion to tweet: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Check-out the infographic below for the big picture on The 140 Character Fix, from OnlineSchools.com– let us know what you think!

(Infographic courtesy of: Online Schools and Image courtesy of my kind of phone)

However, before Pinterest, there was Tumblr.  The hubze squad thinks that you should not ignore Tumblr when you are doing social media.  In fact, if you are currently doing your marketing campaign on Pinterest, there is no reason that you should leave Tumblr out.

Why?

With more than 30 million blogs on the platform, Tumblr is a great way to reach your customers in a way that you could not do with Facebook or Twitter.  You could leverage Tumblr’s highly visual format for your marketing while also using the same pictures you have on your blog, on your Pinterest account and other social media site for Tumblr.  Take Bergdorf Goodman for instance.  Bergdorf Goodman has a great blog where it posts a lot of pictures along with great articles about the fashion world, but it also keeps a Tumblr account where you could find pictures for quick fashion inspirations, along with other fun things.  In effect, the company is able to direct their customers’ focus to the pictures of their products and other related things that strengthen their brand on Tumblr.

So how do you use Tumblr for your business?

1. Set up your account.  Setting up your account on Tumblr is easy and intuitive.  After you get an account, be sure to tinker with the settings by clicking on the Settings link and selecting “Customize your blog.” Put in your blog’s name and description, and choose your preferred theme.  You could also use custom CSS and HTML for your blog and add Google Analytics code for tracking and measurement.

2. Post content.  As with any social media initiative, you should know just what to post and when to post on Tumblr.  Take a look at the times when your customers are online, and post during these times.  This means that you should make trial posts at different times to see which ones are viewed most.

As for what to post, images are Tumblr’s domain, with a lot more images being viewed on the site. But of course, you could also post text and other content.

Bonus Tip: Tag your posts using the popular tags on Tumblr to ensure that you get extra mileage for your content.

3. Like others on Tumblr.  This is a great way to get known in your community.  When you like something on Tumblr, your name and link are appended to that post, leading people to your own Tumblr page.  Plus, this exercise would help you get to know what your own customers want.  Take it further by reblogging the post that you like, this way your “comment” would become more prominent on that original post’s page.

4. Tag your content.  The trick to getting more mileage on Tumblr is to tag your content.  For example, if you have posted a photo of your restaurant’s chili dish, then tag it as chili, food, restaurant and bestsellers. Just make sure that your tag is relevant to your post.  This makes sure that your content gets posted on all the tag streams you selected.

5. Running out of content? No problem.  You can feature a quote from your blog, a comment on your Facebook page or repurpose a great tweet. This would ensure that you won’t run out of things to post on your Tumblr account, even if you do not have time to create a new post or snap a new picture.

Redesigning for Facebook users is one-thing, redesigning for the Pinterest crowd: a bunch of aesthetically charming wedding planners, smart shoppers, hipsters and daughters…. is a totally different cat walk.

Silbermann poised Pinners for a profile that could be an alternative to Timeline, and naturally, twice as beautiful.

Redesign is necessary for keeping up with your user-base. However, under the pressure of new found fame and fad-ittude, Pinterest slipped and yanked Facebook’s little blue and white dress off; what I mean to say is that Pinterest totally ripped off Timeline.

And it’s not exactly twice as beautiful– definitely not an alternative to Timeline.

At first glance the top is supremely awkward and empty, it’s essentially a giant business card with no information on it.

Nevertheless the content is fantastically arranged in off kilter columns, and comments are fully visible.

LOOK:

An ipad app and the ability to pin from Vimeo, Hulu, and Netflix is on its way. Comment and let us know what you think about the redesign…

The hubze squad has hoped that business owners would be able to get some ideas on what works on Facebook and what doesn’t by reading our guides and tips.  But if you are ready to give up or throw in the towel, read on so you may change your mind.  These are the four things that are necessary to get your Facebook presence up and running.

1. Remember that you are going for a conversation, not an advertisement.

If you are planning to use Facebook as a way to let people know about your products, there really is nothing wrong with that.  But you have to make sure that your Facebook page is not becoming an advertisement channel for your business.

You can still let your fans know about your newest product or your best-selling ones by being creative.  Instead of just broadcasting that your tuna burger is the best selling item on your menu, run a poll.  Not only will you get the chance to showcase your products, but you also get to invite people to participate and you just might learn a few things while you’re at it.

You could also make your customers the star of your page.  Look at how Dunkin’ Donuts does it.  They select a different customer each week to highlight. For now, they are featuring the fan with the most interesting photograph.

2. Remember the four rules of engagement.

Every business needs to understand that Facebook marketing is not just about having a Facebook page up and nothing more.  Facebook has its own algorithm in determining what items they would show people on their timelines.  Meaning if Facebook sees that your fans are not interacting with you, they will effectively hide you from your customers’ timelines.

But what are the rules of engagement?

a. Know when to post.  When are your customers most likely to be online and on Facebook?

b. Know what to post.  Do you post a status update, a poll, or an image? What drives the most number of responses for your business?

c. Know what to post, again.  Are your updates interactive? Or do they merely sell something?

d. Know how often you should post.  Be sure that you post updates enough for you to show up on their timelines but not too frequent enough to annoy them.

Be sure to check out your Facebook Insights to see if you are doing it right, and change what needs to be changed. You should also see how successful brands such as Starbucks and Coke are doing it.

3. Focus on getting liked first.

For sure you would like to see your Facebook fans buying something from Facebook, or have them sign up for your e-mail newsletter, give you their e-mail address and other things that you would like them to do.

It is normal for any business to want to convert their leads, and Facebook fans are no exception.

But instead of focusing on too many things at a time, make sure that you get them into the door first.  Focus on how to get your customers to like you on Facebook.  Conversion should come second.

4. Keep yourself updated.

Because Facebook is always changing, be sure to be on top of changes as they happen.  This would give you a head start when it comes to learning and using new features.  For example, it used to be that tagging photos were limited to individuals.  Brands who were the first to know about photo tagging were able to get more interactions simply by telling their customers about the new feature.

Right now, a lot of people are talking about Facebook’s Open Graph and how to leverage it for your business.

It is easy to forget that Yahoo! was once a cornerstone of the Internet, they even had commercials once; do you remember the yahoo yodel?

Anyway, Yahoo! is making a comeback… and there are no new features, no retro commercials, no yahoo yell/yodel/yip, and definitely no social network (same ol’ chat-rooms: food, romance, Christianity).

Actually, Yahoo! is sueing Facebook over 10 patent infringements. Spring is in the air and everyone is suing everyone; even Apple is being sued. 

And– this isnt your average patent infringement suit because, it is quite literally David (Facebook with 20 patents) vs. Goliath (Yahoo! with 1,000+ patents). To further complicate the issue, Facebook has a friend/investor: Microsoft, who, might I add, holds over 20,000 patents. Maybe you’ve seen Facebook data in your Bing search results (that one time when you accidentally used Bing).

And it is Microsoft who holds a patent sharing agreement with Yahoo! until 2013. According to Business Insider, this patent agreement provides that “Microsoft had the right to cross-license some of Yahoo’s more general patents for online services and sublicense them to third parties — like Facebook.”

Although most patent cases are setteled before litigation has to take place, this case clearly is not  so corporate cut and dry. And if the suit goes into litigation, both Facebook and Yahoo! could be in for a lot of trouble. Patents could be completely invalidated, or Yahoo! could be found in infringement on Facebook’s Patents (or vice versa). Not to mention employee testimonies could set loose those secret company Christmas party shenanigans.

According to AllFacebook, there are 10 patents that Yahoo! is suing Facebook over:

• Yahoo! has a claim on “online playback system with community bias, filed in 2001, issued in 2008: An online music station curated by fans and based on preferences expressed by other fans.” And I’m just a girl “listening to Tears For Fears on Spotify.“
• Another patent “enables users to preview content as it would be seen by other users that content is shared with,” one of the most valuable features in previewing your own grasp of Facebook’s privacy features.
• Yahoo! holds a “dynamic page generator” patent that allows users to “create customized homepages with content including news, stock quotes, sports scores, weather, and other content.” TIMELINE, TIMELINE, TIMELINE, ROGER, ROGER.
• Even though Yahoo! doesn’t have a social network, they do have a handful of “social networking patents,” one of which is a patent for “world modeling using a relationship network with communication channels to entities…such as people, places, businesses, communities, events, or thoughts…”
• Facebook Messenger is under siege, U.S. Patent 7406501 is for a “system and method for instant messaging using an email protocol.”
• And Facebook learned how to advertise from sites like Yahoo! who holds a patent for “optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage” which allow users to engage these advertisements and the data from such engagement to be tracked and farmed.
• Yahoo! is after Facebook for their “system and method” for weeding-out the spammers and the fakers.
• Finally, Yahoo! is the original news-feeder, or at least, patented a “method and system”  for customizing what users see first based on what the data says they want to see first, such as best friends and boy/girl friends.

Patents were provided in the US Constitution in order to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts,”  but the system seems to have devolved from patenting brilliant innovations, like the light bulb, to pop-up windows and allowing users to communicate to one another via messaging.

Tech companies are brawling over patents in a geeky drag show, and ultimately profiteering.

FYI Inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, had the know-how to combine hypertext and with the Internet, which spawned the World Wide Web as we know it. Fortunately, he refused to patent his technology so it would be available to everyone

Comment and let us know your insight into the lawsuit between Yahoo! and Facebook.

(image: gizmodo)

The goodies keep coming in from Facebook and the new addition to Timeline for our Facebook pages.

I know many are not fans of the new layout and they voice their opinions quite loudly.

I for one am a HUGE fan of Timeline and love what it has done for Facebook pages.

It’s time to either embrace the changes or go play on MySpace!

One of the things that Timeline has for profiles and pages is something called “Milestones”. Which basically means you can create a post and date it back to when it happened. Originally all you had was “Founded, Born and Started”.

Today though Facebook has added “Opened, Created and Launched” to the verbs you can add as a milestone!

Which is a really cool feature when you have products and want to make a record of when they were launched or created.

Some say business pages don’t have or need a listing of their history, but I say they do. Social is the new economy and you either embrace it or get run over by those that do!

Check out the screenshot of the new feature below. Let us know in the comments what you Launched and when  you did it!

Two weeks ago Facebook rocked everyone’s world and made the announcement that Facebook pages would be converting to the new version Timeline layout that profiles have been getting for the past 6 months.

While we all pretty much knew this change would occur I think what most of us didn’t think would happen is that we only had a month to get our ducks in a row and get things organized to make the change.

We have been teaching and talking alot about Timeline and I hope it has helped. Below though is a cool infographic detailing all the changes to the layout and gives you a quick guide on what you need to do to get ready.

Hope it helps!

If you need more training on Timeline make sure to catch some of our webinars.

BlogWell San Francisco 2012
March 27, 2012
Golden Gate Club at the Presidio, San Francisco, CA, United States

With Blogwell, you would learn how the world’s top companies are doing their social media campaigns, how it ties with their overall marketing plan and how they deal with crisis situations, among others. Hear the following representatives as they talk about social media best practices they employ:

• Ryon Harms, Director of Social Media, Farmers Insurance Group
• Sharon Crost, Global Online Marketing / Social Media Manager, Hitachi Data Systems
• Joe Curry, Social Media Manager, Target
• Kerry Lange, Director, Social Media, Yahoo!
• Laurie Shook, Portfolio Leader – Verizon Telecom/Business, Verizon
• Keith McArthur, Vice President, Social Media, Rogers Communications
• Daniel Zucker, Social Media Manager, Marketing, Autodesk
• Shanee Ben-Zur, Social Media Manager, NVIDIA

Aside from these, catch SocialMediaOrg CEO, Andy Sernovitz, talk about social media ethics and how to stay out of trouble.

Register for this one day event at http://www.socialmedia.org/blogwell/register/

SocialTech 2012: B2B Social Media Marketing Distilled
March 29-30, 2012
Red Lion Hotel on Fifth Avenue Seattle, Seattle, WA, United States

SocialTech is an social media conference with an emphasis on B2B marketing. Simply put, this is a conference on social media marketing for B2B marketers. Learn more about:

• Selling your brand, yourself on social media in as little as nine seconds.
• Facebook for B2B marketing professionals.
• Engaging on social media
• Crisis management on social media
• Global social media challenges and how to overcome them.
• How to develop your social media strategy.
• Social and mobile integration.
• Gamification.
• Social media for highly regulated industries.
• Case studies for content and measurement.

If you think that one day is not enough, the organizers have included two pre-conference workshops that you could attend: Social Media Measurement and Content Marketing.

This year’s program advisory committee include:

Shashi Bellamkonda
Social Media Swami
Network Solutions

Michael Brenner
Director, Foundational Marketing
SAP America

Michael Brito
SVP, Social Business
Edelman Digital

Frank Days
VP, Marketing
Correlsense

Tatyana Kanzaveli
Head of Marketing
Deloitte

Marti Konstant
VP, Marketing
Open Kernal Labs

Ross Levanto
Senior Vice President
Schwartz MSL

Stephanie Marx
Social Media Manager
Cisco Systems

Mike O’Toole
President
PJA Agency + Marketing

Jane Price
Executive Coach and Marketing Consultant

David B. Thomas
Director of Social Strategy
Radian6

Ekaterina Walter
Social Media Strategist
Intel Corporation

Barbara Williams
Mobile Marketing Global Practice Lead
Microsoft Corporation

Steve Woodruff
President at Impactiviti
Connection Agent

ILM East 2012 (Interactive Local Media East)
March 26-28, 2012
Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, MA, United States

The Interactive Local Media series is the definitive conference on all topics of local digital marketing and advertising.

The ILM East Conference will feature:

• The BIA/Kelsey Interviews
• Local online advertising and commerce
• Local money
• Daily deals revolution
• Insights into ILM
• Mobile local targeting
• Local social media
• Agencies and ILM
• Affiliate marketing and local sites.

Speakers for this year include:

Merrill Brown
Principal, MMB Media LLC

Jason Calacanis
Founder and CEO, Mahalo

Dave Galvan
President, Schedulicity

Jay Herratti
CEO, CityGrid Media

Charlie Kim
Founder and CEO, Next Jump

Ted Leonsis
Groupon Vice Chair; American Express Board Member; Owner, Monumental Sports and Entertainment

John McIntyre
CEO, Pixelfish

Michael Silberman
GM, Digital New York Magazine

Michael Zimbalist
VP, Research and Development Operations, The New York Times Co.

A frustrated Brooklyn man sued Apple for false advertising. Frank Fazio purchased an iPhone 4S  last fall after being impressed by the Siri commercials. He soon realized that Siri doesn’t work like he expected. Here is the newest Siri commercial:

Fazio is arguing that Apple’s commercials are overpromising what Siri can do to potential iPhone 4S buyers. Fazio’s complaint states: “Promptly after the purchase of his iPhone 4S, [Fazio] realized that Siri was not performing as advertised. For instance, when [Fazio] asked Siri for directions to a certain place, or to locate a store, Siri either did not understand what Plaintiff was asking, or after a very long wait time, responded with the wrong answer.”

Many of you will agree with this statement but the suit also says: “Notwithstanding Apple’s extensive multi-million dollar advertising campaign showcasing the Siri feature, and the fact that the iPhone 4S is more expensive than the iPhone4, the iPhone 4S’s Siri feature does not perform as advertised, rendering the iPhone 4S merely a more expensive iPhone 4.”

This statement is not true. The iPhone 4S has a dual-core processor, better camera and more storage. However, if you agree with Fazio on Siri, you can be a part of the suit since he filed his suit as a class action. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

What do you think about this lawsuit? Do you think Apple should pay for false advertising?

There is a solution for this, or maybe it is just something that may help significantly, it is to make a plan and break up the days into different types of posts. This plan, or schedule, will make it so you only have to write a couple of good posts per week that would require you to sit down and come up with something thoughtful to discuss.

Two times per week, rather than every day, takes lots of stress away. Having a plan, makes it that much more manageable. It will even allow you to take hands off all the other posts and delegate them to others. So lets take a look at what other types of posts you can include on all the other days that you don’t have to be involved in.

1. YouTube Videos

Browse YouTube searching for related keywords and find videos that are interesting and are worth talking about. Post the video on the blog and write up a short commentary.

2. Guest Posts

It is easy to find guest posters for your blog, if your blog has been around for a little while and has a pagerank. You can also ask your readers to submit their articles. Search for guest posters on various forums and on MyBlogGuest.com

3. Archive of Best-Of Posts

Go through your old posts and look through the web stats to find the more popular posts in any one category. Write up a small summary  and a commentary about them and add links with short descriptions to each of them.

4. Commentary on Someone Else’s Popular Posts

Find popular posts within your topic category on other blogs and write a commentary about it, linking to the article. Comment on the original article that you write about and let the writer know you wrote this commentary, this may get them to write a follow-up about it and get you a good link from their blog.

5. Rewritten Industry News

Search through the news and find interesting stuff going on within your industry. Write a blog post rewording the news and adding your own comments about it.

6. An Off-Topic Rant

We all need a place to go on a tangent about something off-topic. Creating these “rants” will show that there is a personality behind the blog. This will either make the readers closer to you or may push them completely away so be wise

7. Product Promotion Or News

Have a new product launching or want to highlight an existing one? Write up a short promo about it and add some of your own recommendation to it so it is not all sales letter and no personality. Talk about it like you would if you were telling your friend about it.

These are some of the things you can fill up your blog with and not spend much time getting it all written up. You can even sit down one day and write all these up and schedule them in to go live on specific days. Any other employee or an outsourced writer can take care of most of these without you having to take time to do it your self.

Schedule, Schedule, Schedule!

Create a schedule that will work for you. Figure out two days a week when it is your most convenient time when you can sit down and produce a 500- to 800-word post and work around that. Build your other types of posts around those more quality ones.

If you have time on Fridays to write freely, write then and schedule them to come out on the following Tuesday and then Thursday, filling in the Monday, Wednesday and Friday with one of the filler posts.

I do not blog on Saturdays and Sundays, but others do. There is no requirement to blog on weekends but some like to keep their readers reading fresh content every day so that is something you will need to decide for your self.

Use WordPress

Conveniently, WordPress has an awesome schedule feature for the posts where you can set a date and time when you want your post to go live and it will do it without your further interaction. I have seen bloggers that have posts scheduled a month ahead so they do not have the pressure from making sure to get something written for today or tomorrow. They have a day in a week when they do nothing else but write blog posts. 5 to 10, and schedule them for future dates. I my self have not tried this, simply because I have not found time to sit down and spit out 5 to 10 posts in one day. It is something that is on my to-do list though and maybe one day I will get to do that.

So get your schedule created and start taking blogging seriously. There is countless benefits from it that I will not be going into in this post as it is getting mighty long as it is. But remember, there is no reason to stress out about it.

Great men, like Mel Gibson, Jerry Seinfeld, and Don Draper have had a go at answering the question. Now, Social Media is stepping-up to tackle the question.

The infographic below is from NetBase, a social media monitoring company hailed with the ability to measure passion. According to BrainYard, NetBase is making a point “to distinguish between liking and loving, mildly disliking and intensely loathing.” The unique ability of NetBase to measure passion, has won them major business with Coca-Cola and Kraft. And when the video of a McDonald’s customer being assaulted at a Baltimore location went viral on YouTube, NetBase was measuring brand sentiment preceding the company’s twitter response.

But back to business, What do women want? NetBase searched their “social intelligence warehouse filled with billions of social web conversations” for a simple phrase, “I want (object).” NetBase then pinned a gender identifier functionality onto this search in order to sort the data and clearly illustrate what women AND men want.

According to the Infographic below, What Women Want!:

• Women and men want the same thing: FOOD. Pizza, car, ice cream, cake, cookie, and phone top the Social Wants List; check-out the infographic below to see in what order who wants what.
• While men want BACON, women want CHOCOLATE.
• Men are tweeting about cars: “cars are better than women”
• Women are tweeting about ice cream: “ice cream is better than sex”

Check-out the infographic below, from NetBase, for more social insight into What Women Want! Comment and let us know what you think…

You have seen them practically everywhere from billboards to posters, to packaging, to table napkins and even restaurant tables.  They take you to any kind of online content and help you do anything.  A QR code can bring people to a mobile site where they could learn more about a product or service.  It could show them a video about the same.  Or it could give customers exclusive deals and discounts.

The main selling point of QR codes is that they are basically very fast and easy to create, and also makes it very easy for you to control your costs. Not to mention the fact that it is very flexible too.

So why not use QR codes to get more customers to follow you on Twitter?  How do you do this?

1. Get your Twitter URL.  It’s basically https://twitter.com/<yourusername>.  This URL will take you to your Twitter feed.

2. Create your QR codes.  There are a lot of free services that help you create a QR code easily and for free.  We recommend BeQRious.  Just input your Twitter URL and create your free QR code.

If you want more eye-catching and attractive QR codes consider using a customized QR code.

3. Test your QR code.  Print out your code and try to scan it using different smartphones and different QR code scanning apps.  This would help make sure that your QR code is successfully read and decoded by anyone who is scanning it and that it takes users to where you want them to go (your Twitter feed).

4. Design your poster.  If everything is ok, it is time to design your poster.

a. Put in instructions.  Always give instructions on what to do with your QR code.  You really do not have to wrack your brains over this.  It could be as simple as “Scan this QR code to follow us on Twitter.”

b. Tell them where to get a scanner.  You might also want to include instructions on where to get a QR code scanner or what scanner apps you would recommend for them.

c. Benefits!  Always flaunt the benefits of scanning the code and of following you on Twitter.  You have to think of ways on how to make it worthwhile for your customers to scan the code.  Say something like “follow us on Twitter to get exclusive Twitter-only deals and discounts” or “Get exclusive information on new products and services!”

d. Graphics help.  Sometimes an eye-catching graphic can help people take notice of your poster and encourage them to scan your QR code. Include a relevant and attractive graphic to your poster, but make sure that you do not crowd out your QR code.  There should be a white space around your QR code to make sure that it can be successfully scanned.

5. Find a place for your QR coded poster.  Look around your store to find the most visible places for your poster.  The cash register is a great place to start because your customers go here to pay, and they could snap your QR code while waiting in line.  You could also place your poster on shopping windows or just outside your door.  If you run a restaurant, why not place a poster on every table?

FACEBOOK! FACEBOOK! FACEBOOK!!

Sorry had to do get that out of my system!

When Facebook starts to make changes it seems they add as many as they can at once. Almost like stuffing medicine down one of my kids when they don’t want it. Just get it in there and hope some of it goes down!

Well, Facebook has done it again with a new feature called Interest Lists. And man I love them! Listen to the podcast below:

Download audio file (squadcast28.mp3)

But, with these new lists also come some new challenges for pages and profiles that are placed into these lists. Should you post different things to your Timeline or Facebook Page? Should you post only about a particular topic? Should you remove people from a list if they aren’t posting about the topic you started the listed for? All of those questions are things people are asking now.

I have created 2 lists so far one called “Social Media Resources” and one called “Tech Heads“. Feel free to click on the links and subscribe to them.

Fan Page Engine is now TIMELINE ready!!! WOOHOO!!!

Our developers have been busting their butts to get this done and it’s not ready to go.

I have played around with it for 2 days with the new width and it looks fantastic. Go to our Facebook page and look at all of the apps on it. All built by me and with Fan Page Engine. (And I know NOTHING about code!)

There are 4 opportunities this week to join me live as I show you how to use the new version of Fan Page Engine. Please register and attend!

Tuesday, March 13th at 1pm EDT- REGISTER HERE

Wednesday, March 14th at 1pm EDT- REGISTER HERE

Thursday, March 15th at 1pm EDT- REGISTER HERE

Replay recording of Tuesday’s LIVE training:

Replay of Wednesday’s training:

Seeing as iPhone sales outpace the human population, it should come as no surprise that there have been over 100 million drawings created to this day via Draw Something, the Pictionary of iOS and Android.

Wherever I look these days, people have their heads down and their drawing fingers up, squiggling their renditions of Elvis, the Lorax, Britney Spears, sea sick, a mustache, and/or Obama.

There is a paid version, and it is on special for 99 cents, but the free version is oodles of fun. Words with Friends doesn’t really add up to anything in the Free version, and if repping the title of word master means blowing your own mother out of the water with three letter words, game after game, then, well, I don’t want it! With Draw Something, each turn gives you coins that you can save up to expand your color palette, in order to fully render your dream “bay” or “wedding” ceremony. There is also a Leaderboard that serves to heighten the competition among you and your friends.

Game Play

• You an either invite your friends from Facebook /Twitter, or play with random people.
• Choose between three words/phrases to illustrate (the free version allows you to use the primary colors and black) each varying in difficulty, one being the easiest (1 coin rewarded for words like “meatball” or “cat”), three being the most difficult and worth the greatest reward (3 coins).
• Once you’ve completed your drawing (unlimited time), it is sent-off to your opponent, who decodes your doodle while they watch the video of your drawing which I’m sure looks like THIS.
• Stumped? THROW A BOMB and get a new word.
•  Winning comes down to your ability to interpret your opponent’s drawing and unscramble the letters on the bottom of the screen that precisely identify the image

Check-out this video below and let us know what you think. I tend to use my pointer finger for drawing, but I have seen a handfull of thumb artists and a few pinky picassos, which finger are you using?

Granted that these suggestions do not show up on every search query, it would be great to be featured in that Plus box.

Google has made it clear in their help pages how one could show up in this box:

• Fill out your Google profile and upload a high quality photo, leaving no fields blank, especially your interests (this is where your keywords go).
• Comment on and share the topics that you care about.
• Once you’ve done this, you would be ELIGIBLE for inclusion in the Plus box.

That’s great information, but what do you do to better your chances of showing up on the Plus box?

Here are six ideas:

1. Post away.  It seems that the plus box algorithm puts a premium on active profiles.  By active profiles we mean those that have new posts coming in within a 24-hour to 72-hour time period.  This means that you should update your Google+ account at least once a day to show up consistently on the plus box.

2. Consider creating a business page on Google+.  Unless you are some kind of pseudo celebrity for your niche, a business page might do better in showing up in a plus box suggestion than a personal profile.

3. Get more members.  It would also seem that Google is playing the numbers game with its Plus box suggestions.  The more people you have in your circles, the better the chances of your page or profile ending up in the box.

4. Engage your circles.  This is probably a cardinal rule when it comes to social media campaigns, but if you want to be number 1 in the Plus box, then make sure that you are able to engage your circles better than your competitors.

This means that you should let your visitors and blog readers +1 your blog posts or websites.  +1s are used as a signal of engagement.

5. Post a lot.  If you have a lot of quality content that are relevant to what you do or to the keywords you are targeting, then by all means post it on Google+.  Strike a balance between oversharing and non-activity.  The more you post, the better the chances of showing up in that Plus box.

6. The old tricks still stand. If you have been optimizing your site for better search engine rankings on Google, then optimizing your Google+ page should be easy for you.  You should keep in mind that Google still goes for these factors when ranking your Google+ page or profile to show up in the Plus box:

• Relevance.  Google aims to deliver the most relevant results to every search.  It seems that the Plus box follows the same rule.
• Local matters.  If you are a charter bus company in New Jersey, you have a better chance at showing up in the Plus box than a similar company in Wyoming if the searcher comes from New Jersey.
• Target the right keywords.  You should get the right keywords for your page or profile to show up, and use these keywords in your updates.
• Social media signals.  Google’s Panda update made it clear for everyone that social media signals matter for their ranking.  This means that the more retweets, shares, likes and comments your posts get, the better the chances of it showing up high on search results.  For now, it is very obvious that the more +1s you get, the better chances that you have showing up on the Plus box search.

Timeline! Timeline! Timeline!

That’s all we’re hearing about lately and pretty much all we’ve been talking about on our Facebook page and on our blog.

When Facebook makes such a drastic change it’s natural for people to freak out. We get that.

So we want to help you understand those changes and have conducted many webinars and made many videos on the matter.

There is another chance to join us next week to talk about the changes to your Facebook page and how to leverage it.

Here are the details:

Tuesday, March 13 at 03:00 PM EST

LIVE training teaching you the ins and outs of the FANTASTIC new version of Facebook pages called Timeline! The game has CHANGED!

So join David Foster and the hubze squad and let us help you! You can REGISTER HERE

*Go HERE for recordings of other webinars we have been conducting and to see other upcoming trainings.

**UPDATE** The video above is the replay of the webinar itself. thanks for all those that joined! If you are an EXISTING customer and want to take advantage of the upgrade to the new Agency plan during the pre-sell time frame go HERE. This offer is only good until Friday March 16th. If you are NOT a Fan Page Engine customer yet you will need to purchase another plan before upgrading to Agency.

Some people are very upset about not being able to set their default landing tabs on their Facebook page, and yes this is a bit annoying to us all…believe me! We loved that feature because it took our conversions WAY up. But we are being positive and learning how we can use the new layout to our advantage.

Please join me Tuesday for a FREE webinar where  I will be going over some of these things. Just CLICK HERE to register and remember space is limited, so register and show up early!

Thanks and see you next week! PLEASE let us know what you think in the comments below, and if YOU have an awesome design on your new timeline page, please share it below and Kevin may feature it in an episode!

With the sweeping changes to Facebook pages and the move to Timeline many are scrambling to figure things out.

We have been offering free webinars walking you through how to use Timeline and I encourage you to sign up for the next one David is doing called “Timeline for Pages“

What has been interesting to me is seeing Facebook adding more and more training and tutorials on using the new Timeline. In the past they would just make a change, throw up an FAQ page and move on. Basically leaving you and I to figure it out on our own, or find someone to teach it to you.

But, I’m seeing Facebook add more videos like the one above teaching us how to use the Facebook page platform. I for one LOVE this!

Check out the video and also go to the new website by Facebook called “Learn Facebook Pages” as well. Great online course Facebook put together to educate people.

I also did a 90 minute run down of some changes to Facebook and Timeline yesterday. GO HERE to see it.

(hubze.com)  Is your Facebook page getting a lot of attention from your fans, or are your updates being largely ignored?  The latter may be because you are posting your updates during times when nobody is listening or when people are too busy to give your post the time and attention it deserves.  This is one good reason why you should schedule your Facebook updates so that you could reach more people.

What’s more, scheduling your Facebook updates would guarantee better visibility for your most important announcements.  Think about it, if you announce your new products during a time when most of your customers are asleep, it would be a waste of your time.  This is because your updates often stays visible on a user’s timeline for only hours or even less than that time.

Here are the things you need to know when scheduling your Facebook status updates.

1. Get more likes for your posts and even for your business page.

You could time your Facebook updates so that you could reach more people when they are on Facebook.  Check out your previous shares to see which ones garnered the most likes and when these likes took place.  You will soon find a pattern if you have been posting long enough.

If you have not, then you can try out these tips:

a. Post on weekends.  This is a great time to connect with your customers because they are not too busy with work and other stuff, and are on Facebook on their free time.

b. Post during the middle of the week.  Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday would be the time when your fans are not too busy to be on Facebook.

Of course, timing your Facebook shares would not guarantee you likes.  But great content would.  Use a great image that would make your followers laugh or cry.  Cute photos are also great.

You should also keep your narrative short, preferably less than 80 characters.

Lastly, you should tell your fans what to do.  Include something like “Click Like if you find this cute”.

2. What time zone should you follow?

A majority of Americans are in the Central and Eastern time zone.  In fact, only 20% are in other time zones.

3. Clickthrough rates.

If you want to know what time is the best for your updates, take a look at your other marketing activities as well.  What time range do you get the most retweets?  What times of the day do you often have somebody click on an e-mail you send?

4. If your fans think that you are a spammer, it is easy to unlike you.

Sending out too many status updates in an hour is the best way to turn off your fans, and they will show you they are annoyed by unliking your page.  At most, update your status up to 4 times an hour, and make these updates far apart from each other.

5. Use the tools.

The best thing about scheduling your Facebook status updates is that you could use tools to do it for you.  That means that you really do not have to sit in front of your computer all day long to send out status updates at good intervals.  There are a lot of scheduling tools available, such as Hootsuite and Buffer, that could take care of posting your updates.  Just choose one that fits your needs, budget, and all the other social media postings you need to do.

Crime doesn’t pay and it really doesn’t pay to post about your crimes on Facebook!

The Infographic below shows a study done by Criminal Justic Degrees Guide about crimes committed in the UK that were solved by using Facebook.

The one story I thought was pretty crazy was the one woman arrested for poking someone. Which they courts determined was a violation of a restraining order!

Via: Criminal Justice Degrees Guide Blog

The campaign is dead set on making Kony the most famous man in the United States, maybe you’ve seen his name in red, white, and blue, posted up next to that handsome mug on Mitt Romney. Whether or not you’ve seen the groundwork of Invisible Children, you ought to check out this video below which is banking on the virality of social media in order to raise awareness and effectively influence U.S. foreign policy.

Joseph Kony has been in the warlord business for 26 years, over which time he has made his way to the top of the International Criminal Court’s list as the world’s #1 criminal on account of the perversity and number of his crimes.

In fact, General Kony is credited with over 30,000 child abductions, and is responsible for transforming these victims into drug-addicted child G.I’s, and sex slaves, “he is not fighting for any cause, but only to maintain his power.”

Despite his notoriety, would you believe it that 99% of the population doesn’t know anything about Kony and therefore he isn’t exactly beaming on America’s foreign policy radar. Kony isn’t a threat to our national security or foreign policy...Vietnam takes a picnic in the Ugandan bush? I digress and slay all conspiracy theory.

According to Invisible Children, in order to find Kony and vanquish the LRA, the Ugandan military needs the technology and training to find Kony and they need our government’s help, but it doesn’t seem like Kony is that hard to find, LOOK. Vanquishing the LRA on the other hand, might be a bigger operation.

So, the Invisible Children have launched the tried and true secret weapon: YouTube and Facebook. Can a YouTube Video stop a warlord? What about a Facebook Page?

Some may call this social media #slacktivism but do you remember when the Internet stopped SOPA? Remember the Arab Spring?

We are living in a “Facebook World” and millions of people are sharing ideas. Millions of individuals are uniting into one BIG voice via social networking platforms. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world, behind China and India.vgh

There are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago.

The video below has gone viral, targeting 12 policy makers who decide if Ugandan advisers stay or leave, and 20 cultural makers (celebrities, athletes, artists and billionaires) to influence the American people to do something about Kony.

There are a few ways you can do something:

• sign the petition online with an email address and zip/postal code
• donate to Invisible Children
• SHARE the video
• buy Invisible Children merchandise (t-shirts, Kony 2012 Action Kit, etc…)
• learn more about Kony, the LRA, and Invisible Children’s mission

But before you do-- there is a curious load  of money, and marketing going into this video. And, hey, it calls for the American people to fight Kony with bracelets. Even George Clooney wants to catch Kony; can somebody say first world circle jerk. The Kony 2012 campaign has been condemned by Visible Children (CLICK AND READ-UP especially if you plan on donating) which notes that Invisible Children spends extravagantly “on awareness and filmmaking” not “on supporting African militias.  Additionally Visible Children states:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces… Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting,

Check-out the video below, “Invisible Children and Kony 2012: Avoiding Scams and Irresponsible Donations“ in which not the mission, but the means by which their mission is accomplished is heavily scrutinized. Invisible Children, as a not-for-profit, is obligated to post their budget however it is in the form of a vague bloated infographic that shows only 37.14% of profits go to Central Africa programs. The majority of their profits are spent on salaries, awareness programs/products, media, and fundraising.

The video below recommends that people who are considering donating look at Charity Navigator in order to judge the transparency of Invisible Children, Inc.

Nevertheless this campaign could set a precedent for other International criminals and International justice, so that no war criminal’s crimes go unnoticed or unpunished. And the social marketing is classic awesome, its a call to action with a deadline, 2012 is the year to get Kony (even though I’m pretty sure Uganda would have appreciated a few years earlier).

The light at the end of the tunnel for me, is that you can simply message policy makers and skip the glamor activism, Invisible Children’s website makes that very easy.

What is Formspring?

Formspring.me is simply a social way to ask questions.  You basically set up a profile on Formspring and follow people.  This allows you to ask them questions, and it will be published on your profile along with your connection’s answers.

The Formspring app helps you do everything you can do on the site, even when you are on the go.  You could ask questions, you could send photos from any source, and you could get responses related to these.  You can even respond to questions with a photo or a text.

Using Formspring for business

At first glance, the Formspring questions might sound juvenile.  What’s your favorite childhood memory?  What is the product you wish were never taken off the shelves?  A lot of the responses are in that spirit too.  Formspring is a place to have fun and ask people just about anything.  But you could use it for your business too.

1. Why should you even bother?  At last count, people have estimated that there are 25 million to 28 million users on Formspring.  And most of these are in the United States.

2. The most obvious way to use Formspring for your business is for market research.  If you want to know what the market is thinking, then you could easily go to Formspring and know the answers for free.  The site is also a good way to know what to expect.  Say you have a new product that you are going to launch and you want a more formal survey for it, you could use Formspring to get preliminary or initial data for your study.

3. Enhance communication.  If you put up your business on Formspring, you might be able to come up with a frequently asked questions list and you can make this available on your website.  You could also come up with a lot of different content just by using your Formspring account.  For example, if you sell DIY crafts and materials and you get a lot of questions on Formspring about how to assemble furniture that you sell, you might want to come up with a video tutorial for this.

4. Get suggestions. Formspring is a great venue to get suggestions from your customers.  But more than this, you could also get suggestions from your employees.  Users could send an anonymous suggestion, making them feel at ease.  So your employees could freely give their input without having to worry about retribution or getting on the boss’ bad side.

5. Be fun and engage much more easily.  Unlike on your Facebook page or Twitter account, you might find that the lighter atmosphere on Formspring creates a better opportunity for you to engage your customers easily.  Just by answering and asking questions, you are being given another way to interact with your connections.  This makes it easier to interact with your customers.  You can then drive them to your Facebook business page or Twitter account.

If ever there were an example of a video going viral this is it!

After being uploaded to YouTube on March 5th the video already has over 32 million views as of writing this! From about 4pm yesterday to today it has increased by 25 million!

I’ve never seen anything like this.

Regardless if you agree with the movement or substance of the video you have to give them props for getting so many views so fast.

I personally agree with what they are attempting in trying to get the message out about Kony and have no problem sharing it to get the word out about this atrocity.

It will be interesting to see if the movement leads to the capture of this animal or not. And it will be interesting to see  how many views this video ends up with. With the way it’s moving it should hit 100 million views by Saturday! Pretty insane!

So the day in the life of the Internet has begun; iPhones are selling, babies named Apple and iCarly are tossing and turning into the world which we live in and connect with via the the world wide web aka cyberspace aka the Internet.

According to the infographic below, from MBA Online (there are a lot of cool infographics on their website, if you have the time and a knack for spatial learning):

• It would take the U.S. Postal Service two years to process one day of emails: 294 BILLION. Who says email is dead? I didn’t say that… (I might have said that).
  
• There are enough blog posts a day to fill Time magazine for 770 years, that’s 40,040 issues!
• 4.7 billion minutes are spent on Facebook as users await the spark of genius that provokes a status; 532 million status updates a day. I wonder how many of those are food related…
• 35 million apps are downloaded a day.
• iPhones make it ridiculously easy to push media, videos can be instantly uploaded to YouTube. The world is taking advantage of the situation and uploading 864,000 hours of video to YouTube a day.

Our Internet best-friend is why data centers look like missile silos and space stations.

On special days like Black Friday, people are skipping the BestBuy camp-outs and Walmart weenie roasts in exchange for the simple slipper luxury of home that only the Internet (and girl-scouts) can provide. The Friday after thanksgiving sent e-commerce booming– Amazon.com was selling 32 items a second.

To get the big picture of “A Day In The Internet,” check-out the infographic below and let us know what you think.

Created by: MBA Online

Sometimes a company comes along and posts a video or ad campaign that just blows things up!

(Literally and figuratively!)

Well I came across this video today by DollarShaveClub.com and in the vain of the Old Spice commercials comes this one.

The premise is a better shave by just paying a monthly fee for a new razor instead of buying them from the store. But the video pulls off some live action type feel humor and is uber creative!

Kudos to them! The video was posted on March 5th and already has over 600,000 views.

I’d send you to their Facebook Page but they don’t seem to have one.

I may become a member now too!

2012 Custom Content Conference
March 21-23, 2012
Hotel Monaco, Washington DC, United States

Content has always been heralded as king of anything online.  From SEO to getting a proper website to building your brand, you are always advised to work on your content.  In fact, no matter which channel you choose — digital, print, video, social media or mobile — you would always have to provide good content.

The 2012 Custom Content Conference will bring together speakers from different industries to discuss how to:

• Market your content
• Use design to help your content marketing
• What the current trends are in marketing
• Debates: Print is dying, ROI is overrated, Giving content away, Google+

Speakers include:

• Dennis J. Jacobe, Ph.D., Chief Economist & Public Opinion Research Director, Gallup
• Rob Tait, Founding Partner, Fresh Baked Entertainment
• Luke Hayman, Partner, Pentagram
• Knight Kiplinger, Editor-in-Chief, Kiplinger Publications

Borrell Local Online Advertising Conference 2012
March 21-22, 2012
Grand Hyatt New York, New York, United States

The Borrell Local Online Advertising Conference is the largest annual gathering of local online marketers.

By participating in in-depth workshops and conferences, you will learn more about:

• The trends and future of mobile.
• Positioning your business for more revenues.
• Zero Moment of Truth.
• Digital media planning for 2012.
• Best practices via eight different in-depth case studies and 10 short buzz case studies.
• Local media.
• Staffing issues.
• Mobile revenues.
• Video advertising.
• Deals.
• Sales training and telemarketing.
• Metrics.

This year they are having a pre-conference worksho on mobile ad sales, touching on various related topics such as the marketplace, mobile as a business and as a channel, selling tools, selling mobile ad packages, integration with other media, sales management, revenues.

The speakers for the 2012 Borrell Local Online Advertising Conference include:

• Bob Garfield, Columnist, Ad Age
• Maryam Banikarim, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Gannett Co., Inc.
• John Arnold, Director of Education, Mobile Marketing Association
• Gordon Borrell, CEO, Borrell Associates
• Mike Braun, VP of Digital Sales, Gray Television
• Peter Conti Jr., Executive Vice President, Borrell Associates
• Court Cunningham, CEO, Yodle
• Clark Gilbert, CEO, Deseret Media
• Chris Hendricks, Vice President of Interactive Media, The McClatchy Co.
• David Krantz, CEO, AT&T Interactive
• Ezra Kurcharz, President, CBS Local
• Mark Lane, Vice President of Sales, Morris Publishing Group, LLC
• Jim Lecinski, Vice President U.S. Sales & Service; and Chief ZMOT Evangelist, Google, Inc.
• Dave Morgan, CEO, Simulmedia
• Shawn Riegsecker, CEO, Centro
• Greg Stuart, Global Director, Mobile Marketing Association

The Local Online Advertising Conference charges a full fee of $1,495, with a $995 one-day pass option.  Still not convinced on whether to go? Take a look at some of the conference’s previous attendees:

• ABC
• ACM Chesapeake
• American Eagle Media
• AT&T Interactive
• AT&T Mobility
• Barclays Capital
• Best of the Web
• BizBuzz Search
• Boston.com
• Canvas Technology
• Cars.com
• CBS Radio
• Christian Broadcasting Network
• Citi
• Clear Channel Radio
• Columbia University
• Comcast Spotlight
• Corus Quebec
• Cox Media Group
• Dial Global Programming
• Dow Jones Local Media Group
• eBay Inc.
• ESPN, Inc
• Facebook
• Fisher Communications, Inc.
• Gannett Co. Inc
• GateHouse Media, Inc.
• Google
• Granite Broadcasting
• Groupon
• Harvard Business School
• HopStop
• Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Ltd
• Jingle Networks
• KHOU-TV
• Local.com
• Localeze
• LocalLeadGeneration.com
• LocalSplash.com
• Maine Today Media
• MapQuest, Inc.
• Matrix Solutions
• Max Media
• McGraw-Hill Broadcasting
• Media General
• Meredith Broadcasting
• Microsoft
• Mobile Marketing Association
• Monster Worldwide
• MyConnecticutkids.com
• New York Times Regional Media Group
• NewOrleans.com
• Newsday Media Group
• Oklahoma Publishing Company
• Opus Research
• Radio-One, Columbus
• San Jose Mercury News
• Sense Networks, Inc.
• Silicon Valley Bank
• Swift Communications, Inc.
• Television Bureau of Advertising
• The Buffalo News
• The Columbian
• The Dallas Morning News
• The Florida Times-Union
• The Journal Register Company
• Time Warner Cable
• Tribune Broadcasting
• Tribune Company
• Tribune Digital
• Washington Post Digital
• WBIR
• WBOC Interactive/Draper Digital Media
• WCAX
• WCHL
• Weather Central
• WFMJ-TV21
• WGN TV
• WHA Publications Limited
• Wilkes-Barre Publishing Company
• Wireless Developer Agency
• WKYC
• WKYT / WYMT
• WRAL.com
• Yahoo! Inc.
• Yellow Pages
• Ziplocal

Well, this is kind of like one of those moments. Friendsheet is an app that will transform your Facebook page into Pinterest! It’s the perfect app for photo hungry users. It also makes it a lot easier to look through the bulk of your newsfeed, an iceberg with 75 percent of content below the surface.

Friendsheet will take the photos from your newsfeed and re-order them into a Pinterest(esque) layout that shines just as bright as any Pinboard.

The app even allows you to hide photo captions and comments so you can down media at high speeds.

So, what about Zuckerberg? Turns out Zuckerberg must have been dressing-up his Facebook page like Pinterest on lunch breaks, because recently, Zuckerberg gave Friendsheet one big thumb up. It has taken a few months for the app to be noticed by Zuckerhunk (the app launched in Jaunary around the outbreak of mainstream Pinterest fever), but with the most popular man on Facebook as Friendsheet’s newest fan, the app is coming-on up just fine.

Lady Gaga launched her social network, Little Monsters, in the photo-heavy style of Pinterest.

You can get the Friendsheet app HERE or get the Google Chrome app HERE.

WARNING: Maybe I’m the only one here with weird Facebook friends but I activated Friendsheet and was blessed with the image of a sleeping newborn sandwiched between a group barfing photo and, well, this picture:

I like the app because it makes the newsfeed a lot easier to run through especially since it’s not all packed down and stacked on top of each other. Check-it out:

Comment and let us know what you think about Friendsheet. If you could dress-up one social network in the style of another, tit for tat, what would it be? Facebook into Pinterest, Google+ into Facebook, maybe….or would you consider yourself a social networking purist?

It should be no surprise to anyone that in the year 2012 the internet can sometimes be a bit unsafe.

Everyone knows someone who knows someone that has had a credit card number stolen, password to their Facebook account stolen and etc.

But, some of the stats shown below might startle you.

The fact that 8.1 million people fall victim to identity theft each year is staggering to me.. Never realized it was so high.

I also really value and love the tip about your password and what types are alot less hacked. Check out below and BE SAFE!

Created by: OnlineMarketingDegree.com

Man Oh Freaking Man! Since Facebook announced the changes to pages last week introducing Timeline people have been losing their ever loving minds!

I don’t think I’ve looked at anything else or talked about anything else online besides Facebook in over a week because of it.

Many are claiming that because of losing the ability to have a default landing tab that pages are dead.. So far from the truth.. If anything pages are 100 times better now.

You just have to re-think some things. Listen to the podcast and sound off on your opinion about Timeline for pages, my opinion about the problems with Facebook I mention on the podcast and etc… (I kinda rant about some problems in internet marketing on it.. )

Download audio file (squadcast27.mp3)

*Surf report. Go check out MySocialStrand and by doing so spread some awareness about bone marrow disease.. Awesome site.

The Surf Report is brought to you by the lovely Mari Smith!

As soon as you convert to the Timeline for pages you’re gonna want to do some re-organizing. One of the first things you’re going to want to do is change the order of the apps on your page.

Facebook is allowing you to showcase 4 apps above the fold, with one of them being the Photo app that you cannot move or even rename. So you get 3 app thumbnails shown on your Timeline once someone lands on your Facebook page.

You can have more on there, people will just have to click the arrow to the right of the 4th app to see them.

So following the video above you can see it’s pretty easy to move them around. Just expand your full selection of Favorites, hover on the pencil and then “Swap”…

That’s it! Make sure to come like our newly minted Timeline!

Press releases are a great way to disseminate information about the latest happenings at your company.  Have a new product out?  Excited about a new partnership?  Tell the world about it.

However, with the advent of social media, it seems that press release writing and distribution is on the way out.  Why not?  With users having direct access to companies and celebrities, it would be easier for them to get the news on Twitter or Facebook.

Why write a full-fledge PR when you can basically say the same thing in 140 characters or less?  Let’s say Major Co. hires A.B. See as its new marketing head.  Before, people would learn about it via a press release.  Not anymore.  Now, people would just get on Twitter and see something like: RT @MajorCo welcoming @TheRealABSee to its fold.

But then, press releases are still a good way to get the information out, and it is much more formal and has little room for mistakes and misinterpretation.  It is always a good idea to write a press release and then just use Twitter to help it gain more exposure.

How?  Here are some tips.

1. Make the press release available on your own site and then use a URL shortener to link it to your tweets.

2. Get four to five salient points from your press release and use these as “bait” for your followers to click on your link.  For example a press release detailing the results of your Twitter study can give you five different tweets highlighting the different results of your study.

3. Make sure that you indicate that the link is a press release so as not to turn off your followers.  This is to minimize the confusion that they will be opening a press release instead of the study you mentioned or any other content.  A simple PRESS RELEASE: at the the start of the tweet would suffice.

4. Schedule your tweets throughout the day or in two days.  It might be exciting news for you but you can’t expect your followers to feel the same.

Also, this will ensure that you can get more exposure for your press release as you reach more people when they are most active on Twitter.

5. Avoid misspelled words and truncating your words.  It is on Twitter and it is understandable, but you should make sure that your press release tweets are readable by everyone.

6. Don’t just focus on Twitter.  Remember that you should only use Twitter as a way to get more exposure for your PR, we do not advocate ignoring and bypassing traditional press release submission sites.  Twitter should be an additional distribution channel, and not a replacement!

Other than all the buzz about Facebook pages getting the new Timeline everyone is a buzz about the announcement or potential announcement about the iPad 3.

We’ve seen many photos of supposedly leaked versions of the iPad3, which some are saying will be called the “iPad HD”.

We’re also hearing about features as well. Some say it will have Siri on it, because let’s face it we all want to walk around talking to a 10 inch piece of metal!

But… I have some exclusive features I want to share with you and you’ll only hear it on Hubze.com… Ready?

The iPad 3 will come with…..

• A screen
• A power button
• A box
• A power cord

There! You heard it here first!!!

GOTCHA!

Like it or not Timeline for pages is here, and it’s not going anywhere. So you can either climb into a cave of denial or learn how to use the new features.

One of my favorite new features is the ability to Highlight a post. As you can see in the video what this does is let you make a status update, photo or video take up the full width of  your page!

This is great news for brands as this allows you to really showcase something that is important to you.

It will be important for you to take advantage of this new feature on your Facebook page to make important posts really stand out!

Have you highlighted a post yet?

We have made a MASSIVE overhaul of Fan Page Engine after launching version 4.0 last week.

I want to help you learn the system and learn how to leverage it for your business. So, I will be conducting regular training sessions to help you learn how to use it and answer any questions you have about Fan Page Engine.

To get us started listed below are the training sessions for this week. Feel free to register for any and all of them you want!

My goal is to do these on Monday-Wednesday-Friday every week at 1pm EST. (Next week there will be none as it is Spring Break and I’m taking my kiddos down to one of the Texas beaches (yes we have beaches!))

Check back often to our blog to register for the up and coming LIVE training

• Tuesday, March 6th at 1pm EST: REGISTER HERE
• Wednesday, March 7th at 1pm EST: REGISTER HERE
• Friday, March 9th at 1pm EST: REGISTER HERE

Here is the Replay of the training on Tuesday, March 6th:

Here is the Replay of the training from March 7, 2012

YouTube’s Sanketh Shetty wrote in a blog post that they were looking at how a comment was written, based on the emphasis made by the commenter:

1. Capitalization – HAHA is funnier than haha?
2. Elongation - HHHHHHAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAA is funnier than haha?
3. Repetition – Hahahahahahahaha is funnier than haha?
4. Exclamation – Haha!!! is funnier than haha?
5. Combinations thereof – HAHAHA!!!HAHAHA!!!HAHAHAHAHAHA! is funnier than haha?

From this, the good people at YouTube created an algorithm that ranked videos according to the emphasis used, checked by humans, text and audiovisual cues.

Note that YouTube researchers have observed that humor videos have some audiovisual patterns in common:

• Audible laughter in the video.
• Shaky camera and moving shots.

Text patterns included comments that indicated laughter (hahah, jejeje, kekeke), acronyms (LOL, ROFL, LMAO), the word funny and all its synonyms and emoticons (XP, , ).

Mind you, this is not the first time that YouTube has come up with observations for its algorithm.  It has previously tweaked algorithms for its music-related videos by using technical attributes — such as timbre, tempo and mood.  YouTube has previously sought to make sure that acoustic videos showcasing real talent get more mileage on their search results.  Here’s what they found out about homemade music videos:

• ambient indoor lighting,
• single dominant voice, accompanied by a few instruments
• videos often show only the head and shoulders of the person singing,
• fixed camera view.

Then it tried to analyze which of these videos are actually good by taking together the music elements of mood, timbre and tempo.  They also took into consideration the ratings and comments received by the video.

So what can video marketers learn from these exercises?

1. It’s no longer about the number of views.  The key takeaway of this exercise is that we now know that viewcount is not the only thing that is important when ranking videos.  This is because viewcount can skew towards older videos.  The longer the video has been on YouTube, the more people are bound to see it than a newer video.  This means that YouTube has leveled the playing field by taking away unnecessary biases towards older videos.

2. But still, you should take time to optimize your videos so that they could be found by most people.  Keywords and proper categorization is still important because it drives people to find your video when they search for it and it makes the video show up as a related video on those being watched.

3. This is important because it also drives up your comments.  The more people watch and like your video, the more comments and ratings you can have.  Comments, ratings and votes are the lifeblood of your video getting higher rankings.  If you have a funny video with a lot of up votes and positive comments, it is more likely that this would come up in searches.

4. You cannot fake great content. Continue to come up with great video content to share on YouTube.  While others may fake comments on their videos to influence and get better rankings, a really funny, entertaining and educational video will get its due credit from the community.

5. Cues in the video itself is important.  It would seem that YouTube can now distinguish various audio and visual cues to help it quantify different videos upload to the site daily.  Be sure that you take a look at several related videos that are similar to what you have in mind to make sure that you include some of these visual and auditory cues in your own video.  As mentioned above, audible laughter in the video is a cue that it is a humor-related video.

6. Encourage people to comment or vote comments up!

Do you feel like the title of this blog suggests and are asking “Are Fan Pages Dead?”

You’re not alone! We are all having to figure out the changes to Facebook business pages. While I may not have figured it all out join me in this LIVE webinar as we discuss what you should do to prepare for the change to the new Facebook Timeline for your Facebook page.

Info below:

Description: OH NO!! Facebook changes things again! Does this mean our pages are dead?! What am I going to do without a default landing tab?! How do I brand my page? How do I get people to click my apps? Sound familar? Let’s meet and discuss these issues in a LIVE webinar! Invite your friends!

Date & Time: Thursday, March 8th, 2012 at 1:00 pm EST

Please register for the above meeting by visiting this link: http://fanpageengine.enterthemeeting.com/m/RIT2IRUX

Once you have registered, we will send you the information you need to join the webinar.

*BELOW IS THE RECORDING OF THIS WEBINAR. WE HAD A GREAT TIME ON IT TALKING ABOUT ALL OF THE CHANGES TO FACEBOOK PAGES AND TIMELINE

TIMELINE:

There are so many cool things you can do now. What have you been doing? Show us all of your ideas in the comments below!

TAYLOR:

You can follow Taylor @TaylorRoyale

REEL TALK:

Just Chad yammering on and on about the award show…ok so we get it…it was boring! I happen to think Chad needs to host it next year! Who agrees?

SPONSOR:

Mari Smith is an expert when it comes to social networks and marketing. Visit hubze.com/Mari to learn how she can show you the social media ropes. We happen to love Mari here at hubze. She has really been an inspiration to us!

Let us know your thoughts about Timeline and where you see it going for businesses. Are you happy or mad about it? Going to stay on Facebook or exit?

The new policy doesn’t change any existing privacy settings or how any personal information is shared outside of Google. We aren’t collecting any new or additional information about users. We won’t be selling your personal data. And we will continue to employ industry-leading security to keep your information safe.

What You Need to Know

Although it is nothing new, Google collects loads of personal information. You may even share more information on Google than you do with Facebook or Twitter, seeing as services like Google check-out require your credit card number and Google Voice requires your phone number.

In addition to the personal information you give them, Google is also collecting information about which services you are using, and how you are using them, “like when you visit a website that uses our advertising services or you view and interact with our ads and content.”

But that’s not it– Google knows about the device you are using like the hardware model and operating system. Google also explains that they may store “Log information” consisting of your search queries, your IP address, cookies and all the data on your phone like duration of calls, times and dates, forwarding numbers. Google stores data of crashes too, in order to better understand system bugs.

How does Google use your data? Maybe you’ve noticed that Google’s advertising and search is tailored to you, “For example, if you search for golf, are you looking to work on your drive or drive a Volkswagen? If you previously searched for information about a caddy, we can take this as a hint that you mean the sport, not the car, and we can show you the most relevant results.”

While Google does not share your personal data, they do collect large quantities of anonymized data which is shared publicly with partners, advertisers, and connected sites. This data is used to better understand trends and so they can update their products accordingly.

Overall, the new Privacy Policy emphasizes the cross-platform experience and the sharing that comes with it; Google seeks to “combine personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other Google services — for example, to make it easier to share things with people you know,” and if you don’t like it, its all opt-in or opt-out, totally up to you.

Just remember that all this information will be stored indefinitely…

Timeline! Timeline! Timeline!

That’s all everyone is buzzing and talking about right now! Our Facebook Page is insanely busy talking about it and we want to make sure everyone learns the right way to use the new features.

Shortly I will be posting an announcement about live webinars to show you how to leverage and use the new Facebook Timeline for pages features.

In this post I wanted to show you how to Pin a post on your page.

The pin feature might be the best thing Facebook added to our Timeline. With it you can have a static post from your page always remain at the top of your page! We’ve never had this ability before.

In the past once you made a post a day or so later it was lost in the abyss. Now though you can pin any post you’ve ever made and anyone that comes to your Timeline will see it before seeing any other post!

Thank You Facebook!!!

Look for more videos like this coming soon from us. And make sure to Subscribe to our blog to get the latest news about Facebook and training we offer.

All of these came before Facebook existed.  Now Friendster runs a social gaming site, while another social network, Multiply, caters to online shoppers in Asia.  Others mentioned above still exist, but Facebook’s sheer number of users has eclipsed them — Windows Live Profile, StudiVZ, Orkut and Hyves.

With Facebook’s close to 1 billion users, it is safe to say that the social networking giant connects the whole world.  In fact, half of the United States use Facebook.  It is also getting wide adoption in Europe and has a growing user base in various countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, India, and South Korea.

Not bad for a site that is barely eight years old.

Now just how impressive is 1 billion users?  Well, if you take all the social media users all around the world, it would total to 1.2 billion, according to data from comScore.  That’s only 82% of the total number of people around the world who are online.

What accounts for Facebook’s success?

1. It speaks your language.  Facebook took time to develop a platform that allowed its users to translate its pages and soon made the site available in the local tongue.  This is a great plus for those in non-English speaking countries such as those in Latin America, Japan and South Korea, among others.

2. It is there everywhere you go.  Facebook churns out the best mobile apps, and it is not limited to smartphones.  With its 2011 acquisition of mobile tech company Snaptu,  Facebook became available to feature phones!  That means that even if you do not own a smartphone, you can still access Facebook on your handset.  This makes Facebook much more accessible than other social networking sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn, both dependent on smartphones or mobile web browsing, which could be a pain to do on a mobile phone.

3. A change of attitude on the part of the users.  People nowadays are more connected.   They have friends who have migrated to another country and they make friends with people online, no matter where they are from.   This makes Facebook even more popular, because it is borderless.

The Network Effect

If you are a business, it really does not matter whether you are global or local in your focus.  Get a Facebook page for your business because, to put it simply, it is where your customers are, or will be.  This is because of what is called the network effect.  The network effect holds that as more and more people join Facebook and any other social networking site, the more value it has on its users.  As the site increases in value, the more people would be encouraged to join it, creating a bandwagon effect.

(hubze.com) … And I feel fine!!! (to finish of the lyrics of the title!)

So yesterday was a crazy day in the world of Facebook and social media!

I don’t know about you but my day went by super fast, but I had a blast doing it!

Facebook rolled out a complete revamp of Facebook Pages and introduced Timeline to Facebook pages.

And once that happen the panic began!

I did a 90 live walkthru yesterday as we converted our Facebook page over to the Timeline. You can check it out HERE.

Everyone is freaking out, but I see no need in doing so.. Put down  your mouse and listen to the podcast as I go over some of the changes to your Facebook page. Enjoy! (Oh and share, like and comment!)

*Go here to see the new Cover Photo Guidelines for pages.

*Go here to see how to change the thumbnail for apps on your Facebook page

Squadcast is brought to you by the new training from Mari Smith. Check it out!

Lots of new features to learn about regarding Timeline for Pages on Facebook.

One really cool feature we discovered yesterday from a user named John Wilder is that you can now change the thumbnail of ANY app installed on your Facebook page Timeline!

Huge implications with this. The dimensions need to be 111 pixels wide by 74 pixes tall. So make sure you use that space wisely.

You can install an app from any 3rd party provider and then change the thumbnail to fit your page. Maybe you put in a call to action on the image or a creative image that gets people’s attention and gets them to click on it..

This is a change that Facebook has given us that I feel is HUGE!! And I embrace it and am happy they did this for us! Check out the video on how to do it..

Also, this does not change the small icon, which is only seen once on an app. Just changes the thumbnail.

The hubze squad has also included NFC technology as one of the trends to watch this year.  Mobile payments is going to be big in 2012 due to the participation of Google Wallet and other big name retailers, payment systems, banks and financial institutions.  Read more here: http://blog.hubze.com/2012/01/marketing-monday-upcoming-trends-that-you-should-know/

Technology Helps NFC Become More Mainstream

But why are we discussing NFC again today?  It is because of recent advances that might help convince you that NFC is not just another technological fad.  One of the biggest hindrances of near-field communication is that there are very few devices that are now equipped with the technology.  In fact, even the most popular smartphone of all, the iPhone, does not have an NFC chip embedded in it.

With the low number of devices that are NFC-enabled, it would follow that a lot of people would be left out of the NFC bandwagon, even if they wanted to experience the convenience of paying wirelessly and without cash.  This is also the reason why marketers are not too keen on adopting NFC strategies for their marketing, but instead are more focused on traditional ways of giving out their URLs, such as writing it down or using vanity URLs to make it easier for people to remember.  Some marketers make use of QR codes to help people along.

But the truth is, if you find QR codes helpful in your marketing, then NFC should not be any different.  NFC actually functions similarly to a QR code!

SIM-Based NFC Technology

The good news is that there is a way to upgrade your current phone and turn it into an NFC-enabled device.  One good way is to use a SIM that incorporates NFC into it.  You just change your SIM to one that has SIM-based NFC and you would be able to pay wirelessly using your phone and use it for other NFC-related tasks.

The GSM Association, a consortium of global mobile operators and telecommunication companies, pushes this kind of technology and has recently announced that more than 40 of their members will be implemented SIM-based NFC solutions.

Moneto

Moreover, DeviceFidelity and Spring Card Systems have recently come up with an alternative to SIM-based NFCs.  They call their creation Moneto and it too can help turn your mobile phone into an NFC device.

Moneto comes in two versions.  For the iPhone, you can use the Moneto case to make your iPhone NFC capable.  If you have smartphones that run on Android — whether it’s Samsung, LG, Nokia or any other brand — you can still use Moneto’s customize microSD to make it into an NFC device. All you have to do is to insert the microSD NFC card into the slot, put a special sticker to boost the signal and, voila, instant NFC-enabled phone!

Wow! What an exciting day we had yesterday! I have been working all day getting things ready for the big changes and I am very excited with where I think things are going. I am already starting to do some tests with the new platform, and am so far pleased with what I am finding. Please try to relax and stay tuned because as always we are here to help you. We will make sure you know exactly what is going on, and how you are going to be able to use the new Timeline to better brand your pages as well as engage with your customers.

We totally understand that change can be scary at first, but generally once you embrace it you start to see the new benefits. If you are however NOT ready to just dive in we are recommending to people that they do NOT turn on their timelines just yet. Wait until we can get more information for you, and as with any changes it’s going to take a few days for us to soak it all in!

The FanPageEngine itself is almost ready for the changes for you. We will be supporting both 520 and 800 widths. Facebook is going to 810, however we are going to go with 800 so there is a nice buffer there. We will keep you posted as to when this will happen, but if you are a current customer, we HIGHLY recommend you wait and leave your pages at the 520 wide version until we make it so you can customize.

What do you think of the changes, and what are your thoughts on the future of Facebook pages?

Lots of changes announced today for Facebook pages!!

We’re still learning all of them to communicate them to you properly…

We’ll also highlight some of the key changes that affect you right now. And how to leverage some of the changes as well.

Watch the replay and enjoy.. More to come…

You could recognize a Google logo, abstracted into an interactive mobile sculpture of red, blue, yellow and green, or, strung up like a Les Paul, or under alien attack.

What we know as the Google Doodle  evolved from a stick figure. Back in 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders) attended the Burning Man Festival, a desert bacchanalia that inspired the two to place a stick figure behind the second “o” in the logo, to inform search engine users that they were ‘out of the office’.

Since the first Google Doodle in 1998, there have been over a thousand doodles. And while you may be looking at a Google Doodle honoring the Justin Beiber of Opera (today’s Google Doodle honor’s Gioachino Rossini), a Japanese or French user is probably looking at an entirely different Google Doodle. If you’re interested, the Google Doodle emporium is HERE.

And you can rest assured that Larry Page and Sergey Brin are not paid big CEO bucks to churn out the doodles. Now the Google Logo is at the mercy of a team of illustrators (aka doodlers) and engineers as well as the occasional freelance artist.

Did you know that you can suggest topics for Google Doodles? Just send an email to proposals@google.com.

Check-out this video below and meet the artists on the Google Doodle team. The video, “Doodle 4 Google 2012: Behind the Scenes with the Doodle Team” is a sort of promotional video to encourage young artists to participate in the annual Doodle 4 Google contest. The National finalist is in for a featured Google Doodle, $30,000 college scholarship, a trip to New York, a Google Chromebook, a Wacom digital design tablet, and a t-shirt of their Doodle– ah, to be twelve again…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Comment and let us know your favorite Google Doodle, and if you know any kids participating in the Doodle 4 Google challenge.

SES New York 2012
Mar 19-23, 2012
Hilton New York, New York, United States

SES is the leading social marketing and search conference.  SES New York draws an average of 3,500 to 4,000 participants every year, and it is easy to see why.

This year, the three-day conference is jam-packed with sessions such as:

• Business optimization
• SEO Metrics
• Enterprise level SEO
• SEO tools
• Search on mobile devices
• Competitive analysis for paid search
• Smart mobile marketing
• Duplicate content
• Paid search topics
• SEM 101
• When to do it in-house or with the help of an agency
• PPC
• Paid search analytics
• Landing page optimization
• Paid search tools
• Tablet advertising
• SEO Basics
• Local + Social
• Working with a budget
• Reputation management
• Marketing automation
• Paid search for beginners
• Measuring social media success
• Legal considerations in social marketing and search
• Ad optimization
• Social commerce
• Link building
• Content marketing optimization
• Remarketing or retargeting
• Advertising tactics
• Advanced Keyword Modeling
• Quality score and ads
• Website migration and SEO
• Local 2.0
• Advanced paid search tactics
• Youtube marketing
• Analytics

Speakers for the 2012 conference include:

• Matthew Bailey, SES Advisory Board; President, Site Logic Marketing
• Stephanie Bailey, Client Manager, Adlucent
• Thomas Bindl, SES Advisory Board; Founder & CEO, Refined Labs GmbH
• Jessica Bowman, CEO, SEOinhouse.com
• Mikel Chertudi, SES Advisory Board; Senior Director of Marketing, Adobe
• Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Louis Cohen, Search & Affiliate Marketing, Citibank, NA Marketing
• Thom Craver, Web and Database Specialist, Saunders College (RIT)
• Mitchell Cross, Director of Search Marketing, Communication Media, Inc.
• Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board; NYTimes Bestselling Author, bryaneisenberg.com
• Ulrich Gilot, VP, Search Marketing (SEO), Citi, NA Marketing
• Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board; President, Page Zero Media
• Dax Hamman, Chief Revenue Officer, Chango
• Simon Heseltine, Director of SEO, AOL Inc.
• Bill Hunt, SES Advisory Board; President, Back Azimuth Consulting
• Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR
• Dixon Jones, Marketing Director, MajesticSEO
• Kristopher Jones, President & CEO, KBJ Interactive
• Ron Jones, President/CEO, Symetri Internet Marketing
• Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist, Google
• Joseph Kerschbaum, Vice President, Clix Marketing
• Kevin Lee, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Didit
• Daniel Lemin, Consultant & Analyst, Social Studio
• Sarah Lockwood, VP, Creative, Booyah Advertising
• Debra Mastaler, President, Alliance-Link
• Krista Neher, CEO, Boot Camp Digital
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board; CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
• Frost Prioleau, CEO, Simpl.fi
• Lisa Raehsler, Founder, SEM Strategy Consultant, Big Click Co.
• Mark Robertson, Founder, ReelSEO
• Jennifer Rouillard, Managing Director, Epic Search Partners
• Marcus Tandler, CEO/Partner, Tandler.Doerje
• Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
• Marcus Tober, CTO, SearchMetrics Inc.
• Peter van der Graaf, Search Strategist, Search Specialist
• Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster

Other conferences you might be interested in:

Digital Media and Learning Conference 2012 (DML2012)
http://dml2012.dmlcentral.net/
March 1-3, 2012
Parc 55 Wyndham San Francisco – Union Square, San Francisco, California, United States

The Digital Media and Learning Conference 2012 is an inclusive gathering of practitioners and scholars in the field of digital media.

6th Annual Mobile VAS Summit 2012
http://www.mobilevasasia.com/Event.aspx?id=627826&MAC=CHC
March 14-15, 2012
Prince Hotel & Residence Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The 6th Annual Mobile VAS Summit 2012 will gather together industry experts and leaders from the handset manufacturing, operating system and telecom industries.  Learn more about how to generate more revenues from mobile social media, cloud-based apps, app stores, and mobile commerce.

Well I go to sleep at 4am and 3 hours later Facebook turned on Timeline for pages! Figures…

Lots of changes to come for page admins to be aware of.

I’ll cover more after Facebook makes their official announcement today but wanted to touch on the changes to the Cover Photo first.

Cover Photo for pages: Must be at least 399 pixels wide and up to 850 pixels wide. Height looks like 315 pixels.

The Cover Photo cannot contain

• Price or purchase information (such as 40% off or Download it on our site.)
• Contact info such as web address, email, mailing address or info for the About section.
• References to user interface elements, such as Like and Share.
• Calls to action, such as “Get it Now” or “Tell Your Friends”

All cover images are public, which means anyone visiting your Page will be able to see the image you choose. Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property. You may not encourage or incentivize people to upload your cover image to their personal timelines.

Fan Page Engine 4.0 is LIVE!!!!

With that comes a few challenges for us as a squad.

Our version 3.0 has issues and in order to make everyone happy who has purchased from us in the past we had to come up with a way to fulfill the account levels purchased.

So watch the video and enjoy Version 4.0.

You will now only be able to access created pages done inside version 3.0. You will NOT be able to add new pages using it. As Version 4.0 is now the default creation tool. All previous Pro members will get 47 total tab credits, Developers will get 100 tab credits. More than enough and fulfills what you previously purchased. Purchase MUST have been done BEFORE Monday February 27, 2012 to get the additional tab credits. And have already been given to you. Moving forward we will have packs that Developers and Agency members can purchase should you need more tab credits.

As of writing this Version 3.0 will remain inside our dashboard to access and edit only. We will not offer ANY support on it moving forward as Version 4.0 is our new default. Come midnight May 31st, 2012 Version 3.0 will no longer be accessible.

So please act accordingly. And enjoy the new system!

We have tons of things in store for this new version with tons of themes, modules, add-ons and more. As well as more training on how to make money using our platform. And there might even be a way for you to make money on our platform! Details to come later!

From the entire Hubze Squad THANK YOU!.

We were worried when social networks like Facebook were selling our profile information, but they are now selling our content we put on our pages. If you were concerned with the amount of advertisement on social networks, you should be more concerned now since advertisers know more than your basic profile information. They now have access to what you do and think. I’m somewhat okay with companies knowing that I’m a student at FSU but I don’t feel comfortable with them knowing that I like Gatorade and that I got into a car accident two weeks ago. It would be so creepy if I start seeing frozen yogurt advertisement after tweeting “will give a sheet of paper 2 someone who will bring frozen yogurt.”

Social networks have been saying that they are using information the users put up on the sites for free and it seems like there isn’t much to do to protect your privacy except deleting your old tweets.

According to the founder of DataSift, DataSift goes beyond what many social media monitoring companies do. ’Instead of just searching on keywords such as ‘Nike’, DataSift can search on all the people, products, and links associated with the company, then slice and dice the data for different departments such as marketing, product and the like,’ says founder Nick Halstead.

Justin Basini, CEO of of Allow, a data privacy company: ‘Marketers will stop at nothing to get hold of your data. This move shows that all those throwaway tweets have suddenly become a rich new revenue stream for twitter, much in the same way that Facebook has monetised it’s offering.’

‘It has taken a stream of consciousness, analysed it, bottled it and sold it for a profit. And the worst thing is, you never knew it was going to happen.’

The same guys who nabbed the “Tweeter” terrorists, are monitoring social media for “social media.“

The words quoted in italics are hot off a list of DHS Media Monitoring Terms that have surfaced following an awfully bureaucratic hearing, here, featuring the Department of Homeland Security subcommittee and the Department of Homeland Security social media monitoring team, big-wigs were questioned by big-shots about what EXACTLY sets the DHS off when it comes to monitoring the tweets and status updates of both citizens and non-citizens.

According to the head of the social media monitoring team, who doesn’t actually monitor social media (a third-party company does that), attested to a list of terms that specifically piques the interest of the DHS…mysterious.

Well, the jig is up and the list is out! Since the time we announced that the DHS is monitoring social media, and unveiled how much money they are spending to do it, you have been wondering what turns them on, and well, here it is– a complete and highly official list of DHS Media Monitoring Terms from EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center):

DHS & Other Agencies

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• Coast Guard (USCG)
• Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
• Border Patrol
• Secret Service (USSS)
• National Operations Center (NOC)
• Homeland Defense
• Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)
• Agent
• Task Force
• Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
• Fusion Center
• Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
• Secure Border Initiative (SBI)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS)
• Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS)
• Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
• Air Marshal
• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
• National Guard
• Red Cross
• United Nations (UN)

Domestic Security

• Assassination
• Attack
• Domestic security
• Drill
• Exercise
• Cops
• Law enforcement
• Authorities
• Disaster assistance
• Disaster management
• DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office)
• National preparedness
• Mitigation
• Prevention
• Response
• Recovery
• Dirty Bomb
• Domestic nuclear detection
• Emergency management
• Emergency response
• First responder
• Homeland security
• Maritime domain awareness (MDA)
• National preparedness initiative
• Militia
• Shooting
• Shots fired
• Evacuation
• Deaths
• Hostage
• Explosion (explosive)
• Police
• Disaster medical assistance team (DMAT)
• Organized crime
• Gangs
• National security
• State of emergency
• Security
• Breach
• Threat
• Standoff
• SWAT
• Screening
• Lockdown
• Bomb (squad or threat)
• Crash
• Looting
• Riot
• Emergency Landing
• Pipe bomb
• Incident
• Facility

HAZMAT & Nuclear

• Hazmat
• Nuclear
• Chemical Spill
• Suspicious package/device
• Toxic
• National laboratory
• Nuclear facility
• Nuclear threat
• Cloud
• Plume
• Radiation
• Radioactive
• Leak
• Biological infection (or event)
• Chemical
• Chemical burn
• Biological
• Epidemic
• Hazardous
• Hazardous material incident
• Industrial spill
• Infection
• Powder (white)
• Gas
• Spillover
• Anthrax
• Blister agent
• Exposure
• Burn
• Nerve agent
• Ricin
• Sarin
• North Korea

Health Concern + H1N1

• Outbreak
• Contamination
• Exposure
• Virus
• Evacuation
• Bacteria
• Recall
• Ebola
• Food Poisoning
• Foot and Mouth (FMD)
• H5N1
• Avian
• Flu
• Salmonella
• Small Pox
• Plague
• Human to human
• Human to ANIMAL
• Influenza
• Center for Disease Control (CDC)
• Drug Administration (FDA)
• Public Health
• Toxic
• Agro Terror
• Tuberculosis (TB)
• Agriculture
• Listeria
• Symptoms
• Mutation
• Resistant
• Antiviral
• Wave
• Pandemic
• Infection
• Water/air borne
• Sick
• Swine
• Pork
• Strain
• Quarantine
• H1N1
• Vaccine
• Tamiflu
• Norvo Virus
• Epidemic
• World Health Organization (WHO and components)
• Viral Hemorrhagic Fever
• E. Coli

Infrastructure Security

• Infrastructure security
• Airport
• CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources)
• AMTRAK
• Collapse
• Computer infrastructure
• Communications infrastructure
• Telecommunications
• Critical infrastructure
• National infrastructure
• Metro
• WMATA
• Airplane (and derivatives)
• Chemical fire
• Subway
• BART
• MARTA
• Port Authority
• NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center)
• Transportation security
• Grid
• Power
• Smart
• Body scanner
• Electric
• Failure or outage
• Black out
• Brown out
• Port
• Dock
• Bridge
• Canceled
• Delays
• Service disruption
• Power lines

Southwest Border Violence

• Drug cartel
• Violence
• Gang
• Drug
• Narcotics
• Cocaine
• Marijuana
• Heroin
• Border
• Mexico
• Cartel
• Southwest
• Juarez
• Sinaloa
• Tijuana
• Torreon
• Yuma
• Tucson
• Decapitated
• U.S. Consulate
• Consular
• El Paso
• Fort Hancock
• San Diego
• Ciudad Juarez
• Nogales
• Sonora
• Colombia
• Mara salvatrucha
• MS13 or MS-13
• Drug war
• Mexican army
• Methamphetamine
• Cartel de Golfo
• Gulf Cartel
• La Familia
• Reynose
• Nuevo Leon
• Narcos
• Narco banners (Spanish equivalents)
• Los Zetas
• Shootout
• Execution
• Gunfight
• Trafficking
• Kidnap
• Calderon
• Reyosa
• Bust
• Tamaulipas
• Meth Lab
• Drug trade
• Illegal immigrants
• Smuggling (smugglers)
• Matamoros
• Michoacana
• Guzman
• Arellano-Felix
• Beltran-Leyva
• Barrio Azteca
• Artistics Assassins
• Mexicles
• New Federation

Terrorism

• Terrorism
• Al Queda (all spellings)
• Terror
• Attack
• Iraq
• Afghanistan
• Iran
• Pakistan
• Agro
• Environmental terrorist
• Eco terrorism
• Conventional weapon
• Target
• Weapons grade
• Dirty bomb
• Enriched
• Nuclear
• Chemical weapon
• Biological weapon
• Ammonium nitrate
• Improvised explosive device
• IED (Improvised Explosive Device)
• Abu Sayyaf
• Hamas
• FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia)
• IRA (Irish Republican Army)
• ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna)
• Basque Separatists
• Hezbollah
• Tamil Tiger
• PLF (Palestine Liberation Front)
• PLO (Palestine Libration Organization)
• Car bomb
• Jihad
• Taliban
• Weapons cache
• Suicide bomber
• Suicide attack
• Suspicious substance
• AQAP (Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula)
• AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb)
• TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan)
• Yemen
• Pirates
• Extremism
• Somalia
• Nigeria
• Radicals
• Al-Shabaab
• Home grown
• Plot
• Nationalist
• Recruitment
• Fundamentalism
• Islamist

Weather/Disaster/Emergency

• Emergency
• Hurricane
• Tornado
• Twister
• Tsunami
• Earthquake
• Tremor
• Flood
• Storm
• Crest
• Temblor
• Extreme weather
• Forest fire
• Brush fire
• Ice
• Stranded/Stuck
• Help
• Hail
• Wildfire
• Tsunami Warning Center
• Magnitude
• Avalanche
• Typhoon
• Shelter-in-place
• Disaster
• Snow
• Blizzard
• Sleet
• Mud slide or Mudslide
• Erosion
• Power outage
• Brown out
• Warning
• Watch
• Lightening
• Aid
• Relief
• Closure
• Interstate
• Burst
• Emergency Broadcast System

Cyber Security

• Cyber security
• Botnet
• DDOS (dedicated denial of service)
• Denial of service
• Malware
• Virus
• Trojan
• Keylogger
• Cyber Command
• 2600
• Spammer
• Phishing
• Rootkit
• Phreaking
• Cain and abel
• Brute forcing
• Mysql injection
• Cyber attack
• Cyber terror
• Hacker
• China
• Conficker
• Worm
• Scammers
• Social media

I’m “phreaking” out about this list and all my past “meth lab” Breaking Bad commentary. I’m done.

If you are uber interested in the complete guide to social media monitoring via the DHS (the FBI and the CIA are also monitoring social media), you can check-it out HERE– there is a Direct TV full channel list towards the bottom…

Comment and let us know what you think, and if you’re up for the challenge: compose the most dangerous tweet from list above– hit me with your best shot.

(list via ANIMAL)

1. Make sure that your team knows how to handle complaints.

Your mindset should be that every member of your social media staff should be able to handle complaints, questions and suggestions with ease and confidence.  You and everybody manning your Twitter account should know your products and services thoroughly enough to give people a helpful answer or assist them in any way.

Always have a plan on how to respond to negative feedback by setting up sample scenarios that you and your team could refer to in case it, or something like it, actually happens.  This way, you would not be scurrying around finding a solution when you need one quick.

2. Monitor what is being said about you on Twitter.

Make sure that you have somebody who is constantly monitoring Twitter for anything that is said about your company, good or bad.

Most businesses think that people will come to them if they have complaints.  Business owners think that people would try and look for their Facebook page, e-mail address, Twitter account and even call them if they should ever have a complaint.  This is wrong.  Most people would actually use their own Twitter account or Facebook profile to rant about you to their friends.  If you do not proactively monitor Twitter, there will be a lot of feedback that would pass by you undetected.

Do away with the thinking that if they do not come to you with their complaints, then it never happened.  You will lose at least one customer this way, and you will potentially lose the business of their friends as well.

3. Respond promptly.

When you do get a negative feedback, always respond to it and be on time.  This paints the picture that you as a business welcomes the input and is genuinely trying to help them.

A study conducted by Maritz Research has found that 7 out of 10 companies do not take the time to respond to negative criticism.

They also asked close to 1,300 consumers who tweet frequently and have complained about a company on the microblogging site, and found that:

• Half of them expected the company to know about or read their tweeted complaints.
• 83% of those who received a response from the company “liked” or “loved” the fact that the company took time to respond to them.
• 86% of those who did not receive a response would have liked it better if the company had replied.

Bonus Tip: It might help to be able to respond to complaints within 2 to 3 hours after you read about it on Twitter.

4. Know when to DM.

While Twitter is a very public outlet, you will want others to know that you are listening.   Tweet a public reply to the person who complained, but use direct messaging to handle private and sensitive matters.

A good tweet would be something like:
“@complainant We apologize for the convenience, and rest assured that we are looking into it.  Sending you a DM now to see how we can correct it for you.”

This will show other people that you are addressing the complaint, while the complainant’s private and confidential data is not shown to the public.

5. Check to see if there are recurring patterns.

Once you have been handling customer complaints for a long time, you can get valuable information from all the complaints, suggestions and feedback that you get on Twitter.  Check to see if there are patterns, recurring complaints and try to see how you could proactively address these.

LinkedIn is getting the gist of Facebook and Twitter (it’s a social learning curve). The ‘Follow Company’ button was cool– it allowed you to receive real-time updates, but it was all limited within the LinkedIn network. Previously you had to search for a company on LinkedIn, now you can follow a company via their website.

LinkedIn company pages have been in the background compared to Facebook and Twitter brand pages, which are always getting dolled-up and prancing around the world wide web for everyone to see… hussies. Before Monday, you had to look through the annals of LinkedIn to find a company and follow them. Now it’s all “click-click” like we like it.

The ‘Follow Company’ button will appear shoulder to shoulder with the “Like” button and “Tweet” button. Essentially, with this plug-in, LinkedIn is coming-out… on big sites like American Express OPEN, Sony Electronics, Starbucks, and AT&T.

According to a LinkedIn blog post announcing the embeddable ‘Follow Company’ button, “LinkedIn has over 2 million companies in its network – representing all industries, company sizes, and geographies.” Maybe with this plug-in, people will start giving this plethora of Companies on LinkedIn a little more traffic and engage (business-casually).

If a user is logged-in, they can follow the company without further ado. And no worries if they aren’t logged-in, it shouldn’t be too hard to enter your LinkedIn information into a pop-up…unless you are a real joker, recklessly adding random companies to your friend’s/arch nemesis’/child’s profile. Companies of your choice will send status updates to your page from their Company Page on LinkedIn.

What’s the use? LinkedIn is making it easier to keep track of what is going on with companies you want to know about; maybe you want to know about job openings, maybe, you want to know about industry trends and insights.

Although the embeddable ‘Follow Company’ button is a bit redundant, it should be a great addition to the LinkedIn “Share” button and get LinkedIn (and your company’s LinkedIn profile) a little more face-time on the web.

If you want one of these buttons now, here it is, and for those of you on the fence, check-out this video from LinkedIn promoting their new feature:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don’t forget to comment and let us know what you think about the ‘Follow Company’ button, is this useful for your website?

1. Know the Google+ audience and differentiate your messages.

Google+ generally has a different audience than Facebook. Facebook feels more like a cross-section of your neighborhood, community or world. Google+, at the moment, seems to have more techies as users. As a business, you might find that your connections on Facebook and Google+ might be different in characteristics from one another. As such, you would need a different way of conversing on each platform.

For example, if you sell gadgets, your discussions on Facebook might go like what products look cool, which colors are the best, while conversations on Google+ might focus more on GPS capability, screen resolutions and technical features included into the product.

It may look like more work for you, but think about it, Google+ is Google. What you have put up on Google+, technical specifications about the products, photos, tutorial videos, product information, eventually ends up on search, so creating content specifically geared for Google+ would not be a waste of effort.

2. Advertise your Google+ page.

Google+ users see the Add to Circles button when they get to your page. It’s difficult to miss and very tempting to click. But you would also need to take your visitors to your Google+ page first. As with your other social media accounts, you need to advertise your Google+ page to the world.

Do what you did to increase your Facebook and Twitter following, such as putting a Google+ badge on your site, asking your employees to add your page to their circles, etc. You could also ask your Facebook fans and Twitter followers to add you to their circles.

3. Easily segment your followers by using circles.

You could come up with levels and segments for your followers. For example, frequent customers, one-time customers, potential customers. This is important if you want to make sure that you give your followers relevant content, so that you are able to engage them easily by giving them what they want.

4. Use Google+’s features.

It would be a great idea to use the features that Google+ included into its social network. For example, you could host a hang out to chat with your customers about anything. If you own a restaurant, try hosting a cooking show inside a hangout. Or you could show them how you bake your bestselling bread.

You should also use other Google products in conjunction with your Google+ efforts. Create videos on YouTube, share documents on Google Docs or even create an event in Google Calendar. Make sure that you connect each and every Google product to your Google+ account.

Lastly, add Google +1 to your website, blog posts and articles. When somebody +1′s your content, that content will show up on that user’s Circle.

The key to any social media campaign is to test out the tips, tricks and best practices that you come across.  See what worked for others and try to replicate them.  At the same time, try to avoid what others did wrong.  With Google+ you would need to test out your campaign time and again to find out just what works for you.  You would also need to be patient because as more and more people get into Google+ and subsequently into your Circle, things are going to change.  This means that if it worked this month, it does not necessarily mean that it will continue to work next month.  This goes the same for the type of conversation you are going to have on Google+.

Our Oscar predictions. Things we Like. Taylor’s take on Instagram. David talks social.. And more..

Taylor!: instagr.am/p/HXsWs5Elzy/

Of course Twitter will kindly let us know which movies or actors are trending, but there’s an easy way to view the top 15 most-buzzed terms across social networking sites. This Mashable mRank is updated frequently and will let you know what is trending and where it is going viral. Conversation on social networks has become just as important, if not more, than the conversation in real life. I’m glad that people are starting to recognize the need to collect and organize what people are talking about online. It’s about time for this kind of data journalism!

So here are my picks for the Oscars this year. What are your Oscars picks and predictions?

Best picture: Midnight in Paris.

Actor in a Leading Role: Gary Oldman

Actress in a Leading Role: Rooney Mara

Directing: The Tree of Life

“Generation C” is a generation of digital consumers, a new term coined by Nielsen, who has corralled Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 into their new category of digitally literate and dependent consumers. The “C” stands for “connected.”

The age range is a little ridiculous seeing as this generation is characterized by those who consume media, socialize, and share via Android, iOS, PC, and all the gadgets in between. My grandma is on Facebook via iPhone, and she follows Shaq’s Touts!

But listen to this:

The latest Census reports that Americans 18-34 make up 23 percent of the U.S. population, yet they represent an outsized portion of consumers watching online video (27%), visiting social networking/blog sites (27%), owning tablets (33%) and using a smartphone (39%).

Generation C is forcing marketers to change the way they do business, providing challenges and opportunities. In a previous blog post I mentioned a social vending machine from Pepsi that encourages consumers to send a cola as a “Random Act of Refreshment.”

One thing is for sure, Generation C is ridiculously easy to get in touch with– the real challenge is breaking through the noise.

The Nielsen graphic below is interesting because it reveals that “Tablets are the only digital category where males make up the majority.” For a while I was under the impression that males dominate YouTube and Vimeo as online video viewers, but I guess women have them beat on that too…we do live longer.

And it’s obvious that the Young Turks popping pimples under their parent’s roof are the crazy social networkers with their fingers on all the apps but– Nielsen found that females between the ages of 35-49 dominate social networks/blogosphere.

Take a look below (you can click to enlarge the image) at Nielsen’s latest graphic, “An In Depth Look at the U.S. Digital Consumer” and let us know what you think. Are you a part of Nielsen’s Generation C?

(Source: Nielsen)

In a previous post, we have talked about five lesser known tips that could boost your Facebook marketing efforts.  To wit, we suggested:

a. To lure your customers to action by posting interesting content.
b. Make sure your status updates get more than 4 likes or comments for it to show on the Top News section of your customers’ news feeds.
c. Add a human element to your page using photos and videos.
d. Show your customers your product using photos and videos.
e. Send an update to fans.

Need more? Here are four additional lesser-known tips on how to do Facebook marketing better.

1. Trust your fans.  One of the biggest ways to get brand ambassadors is by selecting one from your fans.  See which customer is the most active on your Facebook page, and reward him or her.  You could make him or her an administrator of your page, and see how he or she turns from just a fan to a brand ambassador.

If you are not ready to relinquish control, then find other ways to reward your fans.  A great idea would be to copy foursquare’s mayor-only discounts and deals for your Facebook efforts.  For example, you could find out who talks about your products often, or shares your status updates most often and reward them with a special discount.

2. Partner with other pages and companies in your industry.  Your page has a Likes section that features other pages you like. You can use this to forge partnerships with companies within your industry.  For example, if you have a Web design business, you might want to feature a content provider’s page in this section.

3. Take a look at what your competitors are doing. You can always take a cue from your competitors. Check out the things that make them successful and apply them. You can also learn from their mistakes and avoid it!  The thing is that you can easily check out a competitor’s page, so why not see what they are doing and replicate what works?

4. Use apps!  There are a lot of ways that you could use an app for to market your business.   Just remember your branding.   For example, a dating company could come up with a compatibility quiz, telling customers which zodiac sign they should go for when searching for their potentials mates.  Or you could design a game that would provide a great way for your customers to always remember you.  If you can add gamification to your customers’ experience, then the better you would be able to engage them and have them coming back to your page.

5. Get a custom landing page.  When people first stumble into your page, they should see something that would persuade them to like your page.  This is where custom landing pages come in handy.  With images, videos and pretty layouts, you can convince your page’s visitors to hit that like button.  If you cannot design a simple html page or do CSS, you can always choose from the Facebook templates that you can find from template sellers.