Moe Tamani's Internet Marketing and SEO Blog, Articles and Search Engine Optimization Tips » Social Media News Articles

Facebook Creates Individual Pages About You and Your Friends

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:01:56 +0000

Facebook Creates Individual Pages About You and Your Friends

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Facebook announced the launch of new "Friendship Pages". These contain the public Wall posts and commetns between two friends, photos in which they’re both tagged, events they’ve both RSVP’d for, etc.

These pages will be visible to others if they are friends with one of the people, and have permission to view both people’s profiles.

"When it’s between two people who share a lot, the page really starts to reflect their friendship," says Facebook engineer Wayne Kao. "You can find a friendship page from links under relevant Wall posts, under relationship stories and under the main photo on a friend’s profile page."

"For those of us who have worked on it, the best part is the human side of these pages," adds Kao. "They can bring back memories, conversations and times spent together. Browsing just a few friendship pages, I was reminded of a long Saturday when a friend and I made a pie together, a memorable trip to Disneyland where I got dizzy riding a teacup, and the elaborate birthday party my friend threw for his dog–streamers, candles and all."

While a lot of people will no doubt be happy about the feature, it is already drawing some criticism from users. Here are a few sample comments under the announcement:

Leigh Ann Dillon says, "Facebook: making it easier to stalk people since 2004."

Arizona Dennizen says, "So I’m a crank… will block this as soon as i get it… how do we block?"

Ef Rodriguez says, "My friend George is going to flip his wig over this mess! Yay!"

I guess if nothing else, it will be a good way to see which friends you’re neglecting. If you don’t have that much content on your "Friendship page", just how good of friends are you?

Your Social Strategy May Lack Key Elements for Increasing Conversions

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:01:49 +0000

Your Social Strategy May Lack Key Elements for Increasing Conversions

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

More WebProNews Videos

As a business, it’s great to get out there and engage with customers. It’s great to use a variety of social media channels to open up communication and spread your marketing message, but what a lot of business decision makers might not realize is that it can be the combination of tactics that work much better than any one strategy.

Social media marketing can be broken down into three categories: earned media, paid media, and owned media. This is how Maggie Fox, CEO of Social Media Group presents it. Social Media Group, by the way, counts brands like SAP, Ford, Yamaha, ING Direct, CNN, and Thomson Reuters (to name a few) among its clients.

Do you you use a combination of earned, paid, and owned media? Let us know.

"In the simplest possible words, earned media is when someone says something about you rather than you saying it yourself," Fox tells WebProNews. "Paid media is when you then pay to place your content on a third-party channel, and then owned media would be your own channel, so when we’re talking about social, there are social components to all of these things, that would be something like Twitter or Facebook, or you know, your own social website."

"You can take earned media, for example, it’s very expensive to generate, particularly when we’re talking social, it doesn’t have a huge reach," she says. "If you do, say, a blogger outreach program, you know, perhaps you might reach a couple hundred thousand people. They might consume your content, and realistically for a big brand, that’s not enough to move the needle. You need hundreds of millions of impressions, but you’re just not going to get it through earned social, so then what you can do is take it and amplify it through paid, so there are paid opportunities on places like Digg, Outbrain, StumbleUpon…things like that, where you can actually amplify that content to a much larger audience and get the benefit of it."

"And then you can also syndicate it through your own channels, so there are…most companies have multiple channels, so you might have something on Facebook, you might have Twitter, you might have YouTube, you might have Flickr," she continues. "You have all these different places you can publish content and work them together in a very concerted, sort of orchestrated fashion to get a lot of people consuming content that’s very favorable to you. So it’s really about orchestration. How do they all work together?"

Orchestration That Increases Clickthroughs and Conversions

Finding the right mix of these three types of media may just net you a significant increase in conversions. The way Fox describes it, it almost seems like it should be automatic.

"We certainly see with paid social that we typically will see a clickthrough or conversion rate of about half a percent against…a program we recently did for a large publishing company…we saw a conversion rate of .55%, so when you compare that to typical display, which is (being very generous) often around .09%, the results are obvious," she says. "There’s an obvious reason why you would choose to leverage some of these platforms, so what we often see people doing is rather than using marketing materials and these paid places again…you take that earned media and take people saying good things about you, as opposed to you saying good things about yourself, and get it to a broader audience."

Still, a lot of businesses don’t seem to be latching onto the three-prong approach Fox describes. Many are just after the earned media, which can be great, but it’s not necessarily going to maximize a campaign’s effectiveness.

"I think there are a couple of reasons. I think the primary reason is that they’re unaware of it," says Fox. "That’s changing though, because we certainly see large advertising networks establishing groups to kind of crack the nuts of emerging paid platforms. They recognize that the effectiveness of existing platforms largely is starting to diminish…that advertisers are demanding more results, and so there are emerging places and ways to get the .55% instead of the .09%, so they’ve gotta figure it out."

"In terms of the ways people aren’t using it, it’s largely that knowledge," she adds. "It’s the knowledge of ‘how do I do this? What do I do?’ and then the other part of it is, interestingly, services. We see the ratio of media to services to do this properly – to get those results – actually being quite high compared to what you would see from traditional creative, but the results are so much better, so for example, just to…give some data points, we recently did a project for a client where we saw four and a half times the clickthrough rates of what you would see from a display campaign using the same amount of media in the same time frame."

On using social media in general, Fox says, "At the end of the day, it all comes back to a simple thing, and that’s fishing where the fish are. The primary business reason is 70% of people who are online spend time on social platforms, so go where they are."

There’s an interesting study making the rounds today, looking at when Facebook users are most active. It may also help to go where they are, when they are there.

Does Urgency Matter More in Email Than in Social Media?

admin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:07:31 +0000

Does Urgency Matter More in Email Than in Social Media?

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Flock, creator of the social web browser, sent WebProNews some interesting findings about the social media habits of consumers. One finding we found particularly interesting was that based on responses to a survey from the company, 74% say they feel pressure to respond to emails within a day, while only 52% feel the same about Facebook postings. Even more interesting is that only 26% feel that way about responding to personal tweets on Twitter.

Here are the findings the company shared:

- 93% feel their relationships with others have stayed the same or improved because of their interaction with friends and family through social media.

- The majority of respondents feel pressure to "keep up" with their online communications, particularly with email where 74% stated they should respond that day while 52% felt the need to reply immediately to Facebook postings. Surprisingly, only 26% saw any need to reply to personal tweets on Twitter.

- 64% of respondents feel stressed at some point to keep up with online social media

- 60% said they do most of their communicating on social sites from their home while just 17% accessed social media at work. Teachers do not have to worry as only 2% said they tweet or post from school.

- 89% have signed up to one-ten social networks/apps with 11% interacting with more than ten.

- 28% have over 500 contacts with 31% spending 11-20 hours a week communicating with their friends and family. 9% spend over 60 hours per week on social media.

- 49% of respondents use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and social applications like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Shopkick (excluding email) to communicate with others more than 50% of their time.

- Social media is on the rise in business with 72% stating that they use it for communications with business contacts.

What you do with this information is up to you, but it’s clear social media is becoming an increasingly popular avenue of communication, not just among consumers, but among businesses (not to mention between consumers and businesses). However, at this point, if you have messages that require timely responses, it’s looking like your best bet is still communicating through email.

Of course this will certainly depend on the person you’re communicating with. Still, I think it’s safe to say that most people, particularly in business, will still be checking their email fairly regularly. From a business perspective, I’d make a habit out of timely communication no matter what the channel.

Why do you think people place such a lesser amount of emphasis on timeliness when it comes to Twitter? Share your thoughts here.

Using Social Media As A PR Tool For Your Business

admin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:07:28 +0000

Using Social Media As A PR Tool For Your Business

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

If you want to promote your product, brand or business you need to branch out from just using traditional public realtions tools such as press releases.

Coverage of SES Chicago will continue. Stay with WebProNews for more notes from the event this week.

In the session “Search, PR, and the Social Butterfly” the focus was how to use social media along with traditional PR tools.

Lisa Buyer, President & CEO of The Buyer Group, said social media is creating more opportunities for PR people and marketers, “it’s not killing PR.”

Customers are search and socially savvy. “Facebook is becoming a search engine,” said Buyer. With the Facebook and Bing integration, search is becoming more social.
The media is also search and socially savvy. More news outlets are using Facebook and Twitter.

Social media is influencing stories and news. 89 % of reporters arre turning to blogs. 65 % of journalist use social media. Google is used by 100% of journalists. Get your content in Google.

“Social media provides a wealth of information for journalists,” Buyer said.

Optimize
Press releases
Blogs
Videoss
Images
Posts
Tweets

Use keywordss in your tweet and titles.

Publize via distribution and socail media. PR strategy should be social via tweets, posts, status updates, blogs, and foursquare.

Have a content strategy and then break it down to daily, weekly and monthly updates.

Comments matter for all social media and your business. Comments can drive traffic to your blog. Integrate all your social tools…Facebook…Twitter…Foursquare, video.
Add social media links to all press releases. Press releases need to be in HTML format.

Have sharing tools for company news, Twitter, Facebook etc.

SEO, PR and social media need to be BFFs.

Peter Liefer, President, Primeview, talked about a case study for a client where they took pictures of a product before launch and sent them to select bloggers to get a pre-buzz.

Target bloggers in your industry. Do a press release about an upcoming product to get exposure and crediablity.

Hire influential bloggers to write about a press release. It builds a buzz and use social media. People can write comments about a product via social media. More comments more buzz.

Use all the social bookmarking sites to bookmark blog posts and press releases about the product.

Use a variety of Twitter accounts, Google indexes tweets immediately. Good way to get exposure for a product or brand.
Distribute press releases via all social media.

Twitter Intros Redesign, Expands Beyond 140 Characters

admin — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:00:23 +0000

Twitter Intros Redesign, Expands Beyond 140 Characters

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Twitter has introduced a new redesign of Twitter.com with a two-pane format aimed at providing a richer user experience, and you can easily tell by looking at it that it does just that.

"Twitter has always been about getting a lot in a little," writes CEO Evan Williams. "The constraint of 140 characters drives conciseness and lets you quickly discover and share what’s happening. Yet, we’ve learned something since starting Twitter—life doesn’t always fit into 140 characters or less."

Twitter has partnered with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube to make tweeted content more useful directly from Twitter.com itself. Users will have less reason to click away from the site.

The first pane is essentially the single pane from today’s Twitter – the timeline. In the second pane, referred to as the "details pane", users will see additional info related to the author or subject of a tweet, when clicked. This pane will also display things like @replies, other tweets from that user, maps, videos, photos, etc. Users can click the @username to see profiles from the same page.

The changes will be rolling out over the next several weeks as a preview. During this period, users will be able to switch back and forth between the new design and the old one, though frankly I can’t see any advantage to using the old one.

Redesigns typically get some amount of user backlash, and this will be probably fall in line with that tradition, but this particular redesign has some advantages. For one, many Twitter users are already using apps rather than Twitter.com anyway. Secondly, Twitter has left a lot of people wondering what the point of the service is. This has been a problem since it launched. This will help people understand its value more.

What do you think of the new Twitter? Share your thoughts here.

Share Private Picasa Web Albums Privately with Buzz Followers

admin — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:00:17 +0000

Share Private Picasa Web Albums Privately with Buzz Followers

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Google Buzz now lets you share private Picasa Web Albums privately. When you create a private album, the people you choose to share with will see a notification in Google Buzz.

"It used to be all or nothing when it came to sharing a new Picasa Web Album in Buzz," says Jonathan Sposato of Google’s Photos Team. "If you created a public album in Picasa Web Albums, it created a public Google Buzz post. That was great for when you wanted to share your photos broadly. But for those times when you wanted to share with a smaller circle — no Buzz."

Now that’s changed.

"Just make sure you have Picasa Web Album as one of your connected sites in Buzz to take advantage of this easy way to share your albums," he says.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made comments this week at the company’s Zeitgeist event, indicating that Google would be adding more social layers to more of its core products. He may not have specifically had this feature in mind, but it still has to be considered an example of this philosophy, and of the further integration among Google products that turns Google itself into that much more of a full featured social network.

More Opportunities To Gain Traffic From Facebook Likes

admin — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:01:14 +0000

More Opportunities To Gain Traffic From Facebook Likes

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Facebook continues to make changes that have implications for benefiting businesses and driving traffic. They have now launched three new updates to its Like button social plugin. First is the ability to like canvas URLs for Facebook apps that represent things like causes, movies, or other real world objects. Second is the ability to link a Like button to a Facebook Page. Third is the "box count" layout that displays the total number of likes above the button.

Do you consider Facebook likes important to your online marketing strategy? Let us know.

"Since we launched social plugins in April, we’ve been listening to user feedback and working with developers to optimize the Like button to make it as seamless as possible for people to like content around the web and share it with their friends," says Facebook Platform engineer Jerry Cain.

The ability to like canvas URLs in apps means that app users can like pages from within an app. This will then place a like in the user’s newsfeed, linking to the app. This could help app growth tremendously.

Page owners now have the option to either use the Like button or the Like box to encourage user engagement, with like buttons linked to Facebook Pages.

As far as the box count format for the like button, Cain says, "This layout provides another option to suit different website designs. To determine which Like button is most effective at driving referral traffic for your site, use our ref attribute for tracking."

Some Other Things to Keep in Mind

1. Consumers want to interact with brands on Facebook (and Twitter for that matter). WebProNews reported earlier this week on a study from ExactTarget, which found this to be the case.

"Consumers don’t isolate their communications to email, Facebook or Twitter and expect brands to communicate consistently across the channels," says ExactTarget’s Jeff Rohrs.

The study found that 93% of online consumers subscribe to email marketing messages, 38% are fans of brands on Facebook and 5% follow brands on Twitter.

2. Facebook has been testing a feature that would make it much more valuable for search. The feature has Facebook showing all liked articles in its search results. The results, as AllFacebook describes, show content based on the number of likes and the number of friends who liked that object.

"The search results have now become dramatically more relevant with the inclusion of recent news articles, something that previously wasn’t accessible via Facebook’s open graph search results," says AllFacebook’s Nick O’Neill. "Currently, the search results only appear within the drop down from Facebook’s search box, however I’d assume that this will eventually shift to Facebook’s search area, which has yet to undergo a significant overhaul."

3. Facebook is also testing subscriptions, which would let users "subscribe" to others. This means they would get notifications when a new status update is made. You can clearly see the advantages of this from the brand standpoint, no doubt.

Facebook likes have quickly become an integral part of online content marketing and driving traffic/engagement. It is good that Facebook continues to add options around its social plugins, and the company will likely increase those options has time goes on.

Which feature that Facebook has launched or is testing do you think has the most potential to help you get more traffic? Share your thoughts.

Privacy Issues All Over the Place This Week

admin — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:01:02 +0000

Privacy Issues All Over the Place This Week

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

There has been a lot of discussion about privacy in the news this past week, and surprisingly, not a whole lot of it has had to do with Facebook. Is the Facebook privacy concern fading? Feel free to discuss your concerns with that in the comments.

To be fair, there is at least one current story that is related to Facebook privacy, and that is the upcoming release of Diaspora. This has been billed as an open alternative to Facebook, that would protect the privacy of users. There is naturally a great deal of skepticism about the idea that this will be a significant threat to Facebook, but it has managed to generate a fair amount of hype. It’s scheduled to debut next week (Sept. 15).

Do you think Diaspora has the potential to put a dent in Facebook’s user base? Let us know.

One of the biggest stories of the web this past week has been the release of Google Instant, Google’s new feature, which provides search results as you type your query. This has generated a mix of positive and negative reactions, and some have been concerned with privacy issues related to the feature.

Google uses personal information to deliver you search results, but it has done that for some time. The company maintains that it does nothing different in this regard, when it comes to Google Instant. Still, another issue has been raised, related to this feature.

Maureen O’Connor at Valleywag writes, "The new Google Instant guesses what you’re searching for while you’re typing, and retrieves results before you finish. It’s the T-9 of search engines. And it means buying an "erector set" will make everyone think you have ‘erectile dysfunction.’"

If you do attempt to search for "erector set" and and pause long enough in the middle of typing to where erectile dysfunction results appear long enough, a SERP for erectile dysfunction can appear in your browser history. I’ve seen it. I’ve actually emailed Google inquiring about this (I suspect it goes by the 3 second rule that the ad impressions do), but I haven’t heard back yet. I will explore this further after I get more info.

Google updated its privacy policy last week, though the update was more in the language than practice.

Are you worried about Google Instant from the privacy perspective? Comment here.

This past week, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that federal law allows judges the discretion to require that the government obtain a probable cause search warrant before accessing cell phone location data, according to a report from the EFF.

Thoughts on this? Let us know.

Also this past week, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed a lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s policy allowing border agents to search laptops or other electronic devices at the border without reasonable suspicion.

"These days, almost everybody carries a cell phone or laptop when traveling, and almost everyone stores information they wouldn’t want to share with government officials – from financial records to love letters to family photos," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

Something to say about this subject? Go ahead.

PCWorld reports that e-commerce trade group NetChoice is saying proposals in Congress that would create new rules for sites collecting personal data would "cripple the online advertising and publishing industries."

The group maintains that one proposal would allow individual Internet users to sue some sites and ad networks if they fail to comply with the legislation’s rules on getting permission for collecting personal data.

Discuss this topic here.

Finally, Time reports that sheriffs in North Carolina are looking to be able to access state computer records that identify people who have prescriptions for painkillers and other drugs. Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns.

Should the police be able to access this info? Let us know what you think.

Privacy Issues All Over the Place This Week

admin — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:00:06 +0000

Privacy Issues All Over the Place This Week

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Do you think Diaspora has the potential to put a dent in Facebook’s user base? Let us know.

Google updated its privacy policy last week, though the update was more in the language than practice.

Are you worried about Google Instant from the privacy perspective? Comment here.

Thoughts on this? Let us know.

Something to say about this subject? Go ahead.

Discuss this topic here.

Should the police be able to access this info? Let us know what you think.

GMC Partners With NFL For Online Contest

admin — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 04:00:15 +0000

GMC Partners With NFL For Online Contest

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

GMC has launched the “GMC Never Say Never Moment of the Week,” in partnership with the NFL and ESPN that allows football fans to vote on the best moment or play of the week that represents determination at nfl.com/gmc.

Each week fans will be able to vote on three "Never Say Never Moments," and they can also enter for a chance to win a weekly prize of a trip for two to Super Bowl XLV in Arlington, Texas. At the end of the season fans will have the chance to choose the “GMC Never Say Never Moment of the Year,” from the 17 weekly winners. In addition, one grand prize winner will receive the new 2011 GMC Sierra Denali.

Fan voting will begin 45 minutes after the end of the each Monday Night Football game and will close at noon on Friday of that week. The winning moment will be announced on Friday during the NFL Network’s "Around the League" show.

Fans will be able to view all the moments on nfl.com/gmc and on GMC’s Facebook Fan page. Fans can also watch the three nominated "Never Say Never Moments of the Week" on the NFL Network’s "Around the League" that airs on Wednesday and Friday and on ESPN’s "SportsCenter" that airs on Tuesday.

Moe Tamani's Internet Marketing and SEO Blog, Articles and Search Engine Optimization Tips » Social Media News Articles

Facebook Creates Individual Pages About You and Your Friends

Most Commented Posts

Your Social Strategy May Lack Key Elements for Increasing Conversions

Most Commented Posts

Does Urgency Matter More in Email Than in Social Media?

Most Commented Posts

Using Social Media As A PR Tool For Your Business

Most Commented Posts

Twitter Intros Redesign, Expands Beyond 140 Characters

Most Commented Posts

Share Private Picasa Web Albums Privately with Buzz Followers

Most Commented Posts

More Opportunities To Gain Traffic From Facebook Likes

Most Commented Posts

Privacy Issues All Over the Place This Week

Most Commented Posts

Privacy Issues All Over the Place This Week

Most Commented Posts

GMC Partners With NFL For Online Contest

Most Commented Posts