The Social 6: Key Stories of The Last 24 hours, 8/8/12
#6 The Pitfalls of the Unmanaged Customer Experience
What makes your brand, ultimately, is the experience you give to your customers, not just the product you actually sell them. Yes, we all know this. No, most companies still don’t adhere to this somewhat important rule. Malcolm Carlow writes for E-Commerce Times, and provides some nice, high-level advice on customer service.
#5 Bingo! Facebook Gambles On Games Using Real Money, Not Credits, To Engage Users
Facebook hasn’t had such a good time in the news lately, as I’m sure you’re aware. However, Facebook is rolling out something that could be minor game-changer. Ingrid Lunden, writing for TechCrunch, says not only is this a new way to interact with people but you can win real money! It’s only in the UK for now, but it will be interesting to follow this and see how much traction this gets.
#4 Instagram & foursquare Photo Contest Boosts Engagement Across Social-Mobile Platforms
Interesting case study: Barney’s Beanery ran a two-week photo contest across all its locations and offered prizes such as $100 gift cards and much more. According to Moment Feed writer Joergan Aaboe, Barney’s Beanery sees 66 percent increase in photos taken and tagged to their locations relative to Facebook and foursquare check-ins.
#3 FAQ: Why did Google buy these companies?
Jon Gold, writing for NetworkWorld, gives a rundown about Google's history of acquisitions, and how each one has fit into the company’s strategy. Overall, I'd say Google has acquired pretty intelligently, acquiring expertise where they were lacking.
#2 Why Apple Should Buy Foursquare
Do you believe Foursquare is just another app? At the moment it doesn't have much room to grow, according to many; even though I’m a big fan of the app, usage is nowhere near some other social platforms. However Jon Mitchell writes for ReadWriteWeb and says Foursquare would be a perfect fit to be purchased and embedded into Apple’s iOS strategy.
#1 Facebook Introduces Mobile Ad Unit to Promote Apps
Mobile is becoming an increasingly important part of going social, and Facebook simply won’t be competitive if it can’t find a way to monetize mobile media. Given that, only a few weeks after the debut of its first-ever ad unit for mobile, Facebook is releasing a new mobile unit in beta, so that app developers can better promote their apps.
Guys, read my lips, this is the start of something pretty major.
The Social 6: Key Stories of The Last 24 hours, 8/7/12
#6 Underemployed? Social Networking Can Help
Most people agree that having a job is better than not having a job. Social networking can actually be of great assistance for those among us who are underemployed. In this helpful Mashable piece, Sudy Bharadwaj outlines how social networking can help.
#5 ShoeDazzle Steps Up Fashion E-Commerce Competition, Adds 1M Users In July And Now Has 13M
According to Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch, ShoeDazzle picked up 1 million new users in the month of July, bringing the total number of members up to 13 million. Kim Kardashian is one of the backers of this trendy website. Expect to hear more from ShoeDazzle over coming months; their strategy is sound, and their brand is clearly resonating with consumers.
#4 I Want To Be Like Mitt; So I Bought Thousands Of Twitter Followers
John Talty reports, in a well-written International Business Times article, that Mitt Romney had been averaging 3,000 to 4,000 new Twitter followers per day for much of July, but in one three-day period -- July 21-23 -- he Romney amassed more than 130,000 fans, strongly indicating that his handlers are purchasing followers. The question the Romney campaign needs to ask itself is, are purchasing followers who might not ever support the candidate in November worth it?
#3 So you think you're an early adopter? Find out just how "early" with this site
Have you ever wondered how early you joined a social platform in relation to other users? It’s kind of cool to find out if you were one of the early adopters that helped popularize a site and made it a big deal. Drew Olanoff (one of my favorite tech reporters) writes for The Next Web about a new tool that will help you figure out how much of an early adopter you really are.
#2 Be A Bitch On Email, Or Be Email's Bitch
Do you ever get over 100 emails a day? If you’re one of these people, you must hate emails. Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with them. This TechCrunch article (by Jordan Crook) argues for a more efficient world when it comes to email in this piece.
#1 Why people hate Klout, and how to fix it
A lot of you found this piece interesting: Klout, the leading tool for measuring influence, has often been criticized for its lack of transparency and accuracy. In this Econsultancy piece, Sam Dwyer offers up some ideas how Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex can fix their business models.
The Social 6: Key Stories from This Past Weekend, 8/6/12
As you may know, I’m a pretty voracious reader and generally share a bunch of news & reviews via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).
#6 I Respect Your Social Media Community- Do You Respect Mine?
“You can’t just go head first and sell into a community you don’t know,” writes Pam Moore, one of my favorite writers and marketers. This piece is full of thought-provoking questions that will help anyone interested in going social, from a novice marketer to a senior executive. Read Pam’s piece. Really.
#5 Why A/B testing is essential to your startup's campaigns
Companies live and die by how alert they are and how they’re meeting the requests of their customers. But the age-old question is, “How do I know what customers want?” If you’re Steve Jobs, you can make bold statements such as, “It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want,” but for the rest of us, there’s A/B testing. In this The Next Web piece, Dan Taylor, writes that if you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing. As a huge, huge proponent of A/B testing, this is a must-read.
#4 5 Things Your Digital Agency Isn't Telling You
Delivering sound, successful communications strategies to clients is your 100% focus if you are a digital firm. Jessica Payne argues that, as part of any valued relationship, they should be providing you — the client — with counsel that may not always be easy to swallow.
#3 Will Facebook Ever Let You Edit Posts? Here's Why it Should
Emily Banks of Mashable asks if Facebook will one day give you the ability to edit your status updates. She believes it most likely will, and in the near future. After all, comments can already be edited. Personally, I think this change is long overdue, and I expect to see it implemented before 2012 is over.
#2 McDonald's is answering tough, sometimes bizarre customer questions
McDonald's in Canada has launched a new social media campaign that has been pretty buzzworthy. This FoxNews.com piece reports that since June, McDonald's employees has been answering all kind of questions on its website, “Our Food. Your Questions.” Some of the questions are incredibly bizarre, such as “Does your Egg McMuffin use real eggs?” – but yet McDonald’s is answering them in a transparent, engaging manner. I highly recommend you check out this campaign – it’s a pretty great one.
#1 What will Facebook look like in 2022?
If you study the history of digital powerhouses such as Google, Yahoo, and even Amazon, it’s pretty clear that Facebook will have to reinvent itself on an ongoing basis the Internet landscape changes. Allen Gannett delivers a thoughtful piece on The Next Web exploring what the future may hold for Facebook.
The Social 6: Key Stories of The Last 24 hours, 8/4/12
As you may know, I’m a pretty voracious reader and generally share a bunch of news & reviews via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).
#6 Do You Remember All the Cool Things Your CRM App Can Do?
Christopher Bucholtz, in this E-Commerce Times piece, argues that the average enterprise isn't taking advantage of many of the features that come baked into their CRM implementation. As someone who's advised many companies in getting the most out of their CRM investment, I can attest to the problem. Scheduling features are the biggest opportunity for companies to easily extract more value out of CRM, as Mr. Bucholtz outlines in this piece.
#5 Facebook Photos Get Blurry With This Privacy Plug-In
This fall, you may see a lot of blurred photos on Facebook. McAfee will be making it a little safer to share your photos on the social platform thanks to Social Protection, a new product that will allow users better control over their, and prevents people from downloading those pictures to view anywhere else. This sounds more like McAfee looking for a saleable product than it is solving a real need, but maybe I'm in the minority? Emily Price reports more in this Mashable piece.
#4 Social Media Is Becoming Useful, Finally
Contrary to the headline of this article, it's not a rant about how social media has largely been a productivity waster. Instead, it's a piece about Clipboard, a privately beta-launched at the end of 2011 and available to the public since May, is looking to make social media more productivity for everyone. Gustavo Razzetti has more detail on Clipboard in this Clickz piece, and how it could be a bit of a game-changer.
#3 Google Plus Comes to Blogger, Brings Both Communities Together
Google rolled out a brand new feature in Blogger this past Monday that ties directly into Google Plus. In this Business 2 Community piece, Andrew Glasscock explains all of the benefits the new functionality offers for Blogger users. If you're a Blogger user, this is A) a must-read and B) something you should look more into!
#2 Kanye West Is Advising NYC Startup The Fancy on the Future of Commerce
This week, Kanye West payed a visit to one of my favorite NYC startups. The Fancy - which is is one of his favorites as well. Kanye stopped by to give advice to The Fancy CEO Joe Einhorn, who reportedly "looks up to Kanye the way most tech folks idolize Steve Jobs." Hey, whatever works for you. Key takeaway here: The Fancy is becoming a favorite of quite a few celebrities, not just 'Ye.
#1 A Real Dad Won't Save You if You're 'Taken' [VIDEO]
I think a lot of you were interested in winding down yesterday; that's probably the #1 reason so many of you clicked on this parody of the Movie Taken, the 2008 thriller about an American girl kidnapped by human traffickers in Paris. Pretty fun video of how a dad less capable than Liam Neeson's Taken character would react to his child's abduction.
The Social 6: Key Stories of The Last 24 hours, 8/3/12
As you may know, I’m a pretty voracious reader and generally share a bunch of news & reviews via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).
#6 Image Ad Startup Cortica Raises $7M From Li Ka-Shing's Horizons Ventures And Ynon Kreiz
Cortica announced that they have raised $7 million in funds. The company's image recognition technology helps serve up incredibly relevant ads; just take a look at the example inside this article. TechCrunch blogger, Anthony Ha, says the money comes from Horizons Ventures, the firm owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, and from Ynon Kreiz, the former chairman and CEO of the Endemol Group, the world’s largest independent TV production company.
#5 Sign and Send Contracts From Your iPhone For Free With HelloSign
Not quite a social story, but bear with me - this is a pretty big productivity booster! HelloFax, the company that allows you to send and receive digital faxes, has spun off its digital signature service into a new product called HelloSign. Emily Price, writer for Mashable, says documents can be signed and securely returned to their sender from both the web and the company’s new iPhone application. Unlike other services and apps that are already out there, digital signatures using the service are free and unlimited so you can send and receive just a few documents with no cost.
#4 Why Is Great Service So Rare?
Great service is something that every customer wishes to have at all times. Everyone loves a customer-friendly brands like Zappos, and gets weak in the knees when a customer service rep actually treat us to great service. Who couldn't agree with that? But besides the obvious business advantages, outstanding service remains frustratingly mysterious, as contributor Dorie Clark outlines in this Forbes piece.
#3 Is Social Media Destroying Real-World Relationships? [INFOGRAPHIC]
It's no secret that social media allows us to organize our real-world relationships.It allows you to meet new people outside the digital realm — both of which can be great, life-enhancing things. Sam Laird writes on Mashable asking if social networking could have an adverse effect on our quality of life? After all, 24% of respondents to a recent survey indicated that they had missed out on participating in a major event in person because they were too busy documenting their life online. Pretty useful infographic included in this piece, too.
#2 Rumor: Google Puts A Hold On New Google+ Acquisitions
Frederic Lardinois and Alexia Tsotsis report for TechCrunch that Google may be putting a stop to all acquisitions related to Google+, at least until the end of this year. Google is cautious of both growing the Google+ team right now and providing the product with any more resources until January. It will be interesting to see if Google+ marketing spend goes down in the short-term. Is Google looking to see if Google+ can continue its forward momentum without as much of a concentrated push on their part? Could be. At a certain point, Google+ has to succeed or not on its own merits.
#1 8.7% of Facebook accounts are fake? Still, that leaves 872m bona fide users.
According to Paul Sawers, writer for The Next Web, 8.7% of Facebook accounts are fake, as CNET noted earlier today. That means about 83m users, if we’re using the 955m figure announced by Facebook recently. While this obviously leaves Facebook with a pretty significant number of worldwide adoptees, the amount of accounts purported to be fake is pretty staggering.
The Social 6: Key Stories from The Last 24 hours, 8/2/12
As you may know, I’m a pretty voracious reader and generally share a bunch of news & reviews via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).
#6 5 Ways to Get Email Overload Under Control
Email's still one of the top ways that people are going social on a daily basis, but "email hell" is an issue for many of us. I'll confess, email is a pretty significant weakness of mine - which you may know if you've ever emailed me. Dmitri Leonov of Mashable says the only good news is that you’re not alone and that the average person gets more than one hundred emails per day. This piece has a number of great suggestions to keep email at bay, including but not limited to the super-useful Inbox Zero philosophy.
#5 13 Tumblrs to Satisfy Your Olympic Appetite
Are you a big Olympic follower and are waiting for the next big Olympic event? Well, I'm not. I could just never get into the Olympics the way it seems 95% of my colleagues do. That said, Tumblr has plenty fan-made sites that will keep you entertained and on top of all the latest Olympic developments. Christine Erickson of Mashable uses this piece to highlight some of the best.
#4 Pinterest adds new categories and is rolling out a redesigned repinning process
Pinterest has just added new categories, which could have a pretty big impact in terms of what types of content people curate onto Pinterest. The new categories include Quotes, Tattoos, and Weddings. Given how specific these categories are, we’ll probably see more appear as long as the site continues to grow in popularity. Plus, this piece has more on Pinterest's reported upcoming redesign of its popular repinning feature.
#2 Pinfluencer Gets Around the Pinterest Analytics Problem
More Pinterest news! Pinterest hasn’t been very friendly to people who try to use its site for commercial purposes. Liz Gannes of AllThingsD says the site flags short URLs and strips tracking codes, both of which are standard practice for brands in social media. Pinfluencer sits on top of Pinterest, rather than helping with any kind of tracking into user pinning and repinning activity.
#2 Psst. Facebook Turned On Its App Center Worldwide Overnight [Updated]
Facebook continues to make efforts into furthering its dominance as a social platform. Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch reports that the company has now made its App Center, the storefront for Facebook desktop and mobile applications, available across most of the world. The App center went global overnight between 7/31 and 8/1, reportedly. It had already been overnight in most of the English-speaking world and a few other key markets - but the global rollout means that Facebook is doubling down on pushing itself as the dominant social platform across all devices and form factors.
#1 Google Buying Social Media Startup Wildfire
Here's a small piece I shared about Google's acquisition of Wildfire from Time's Techland section. Wildfire, one of the leading social media marketing companies, is now joining the Google empire - just like Salesforce purchased Buddy Media and Oracle acquired Vitrue. Not only does this show how the bigger players are looking to add social media marketing for business to their repertoire, but it also shows a concerted effort for these companies to have some ability to "keep tabs" on Facebook, by acquiring firms that leverage Facebook as their primary marketing channel.
The Social 6: Key Stories from The Last 24 hours, 8/1/12
As you may know, I’m a pretty voracious reader and generally share a bunch of news & reviews via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).
#6 Twitter Launches Clickable Stock Symbols, StockTwits' Howard Lindzon Says "Hey, We Already Do That!"
Twitter quietly rolled out another new feature. This may seem simple and straightforward at first but could actually have big issues. Rip Epson of TechCrunch reports on how Twitter via its very own Twitter account announced users can now click on stock (or “ticker”) symbols in any tweet to view search results for those stocks and companies - and what kind of impact this will have.
#5 [Review] Eloqua's Grande Guide to Community Management
Eloqua has published another on of their Guides! This one revolved around Community Management. Robyn Tippins of ReadWriteWeb says she was able to get a copy on Thursday and wanted to share her review now that it’s available. The writers of ebook is written by great people who are loved in the community management and content strategy sphere, Brett Petersel (Co-Founder of The Community Manager) and Jesse Noyes (Managing Editor at Eloqua) wrote the bulk of the document with contributions from Nate McGee, Alan Belniak and Lauren Harper.
#4 Bizzabo adds a social and mobile twist to business events, raises $1.5m
Robin Wauter of TNW says Bizzabo, the Israeli maker of a smartphone app that helps professionals network with peers at conferences and tradeshows, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. The money comes from a group of investors and investment firms, including Jeff Pulver, former 888 Holdings CEO Gigi Levy, among others.
#3 Who's That Girl? Chick-fil-A's Social Media Blunder
By now, the Chick-fil-A PR disaster has made huge headlines, and put the chain in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. As you may know, Jim Henson’s company recently severed their ties with Chick-fil-A due to their stance on gay marriage, and the fast food giant blundered their response, to put it mildly. This a great example on why your business needs to tread carefully when it comes to sensitive topics. Good read!
#2 Goodbye, Gmail Video Chat. Hello Google+ Hangouts
Gmail has had video chat since 2008. But its time for something newer and better so wave your last goodbyes to your buddy list. Chris Taylor of Mashable reports that Google will be be replacing Gmail video chat with Google+ Hangouts. The differences between the two is the old video chat was based on peer-to-peer technology. Now hangouts, utilize will the power of Google’s network to deliver higher reliability and enhanced quality.
#1 Ah, so that's Twitter's strategy: A "clickable" world
Does Twitter have a secret strategy to become more of a "starting point" for all your digital browsing activity? Now that “Cashtags” (clickable stock symbols) are becoming a clickable part of Twitter became popular, it's interesting to see where Twitter might take this strategy. Drew Olanoff of TNW thinks this could include making bits and pieces of data clickable, leading you to a full stream of context around a topic or item.