A quick look at Ezeesocial (Infographic)

Social media is increasingly becoming a large of any businesses activity. There are a variety of platforms in which businesses can engage with other businesses and consumers in an instant. Ezeesocial lets you manage, monitor and engage on all your connected networks from one 'ezee' place.

Below is an infographic, detailing the main features of the social media tool. Be sure to try the 30 day free trial, and harness the power of Ezeesocial.

Let us know your thoughts on this social media tool.

7 Social Media Tips - What NOT To Do

"You can't put stuff on the Internet that isn't true... isn't it against the law?"

I actually overheard that recently at a family function. Granted, the person making the proclamation was 12 years old, but I am reasonably certain that there are people of all ages who labor under that delusion. Truth is that not everything you find on the Internet is trustworthy. Between the erroneous news stories, ill-conceived recipes, and historical inaccuracies floating around on the web, you must be selective in what you accept as good, solid information... and what you dismiss as bunk.

Which brings me to advice from the "experts"... in this case, advice about how to use social media for the benefit of your business. There has been a great deal of advice on how to maximize the benefits of social media, but not all of it is worth heeding. Here are some of the "more awful" bits of social media wisdom that I recommend you avoid:

• Get on every social media site you can find! Yes, there are a lot of great sites out there, and more pop up all the time... but not every one of them is the right place to showcase your business. Take, for example, Pinterest... a successful social media site, to be sure! But if your business isn't the type that would translate well to Pinterest, or if your demographic doesn't use that platform, then what is the point of channeling your energy that way? Find out where your customers are... and go there!


• Strategy? Not necessary. Just keep in people's faces! When you begin your social media campaign, you need to have a plan in place, otherwise your posts will be random or pointless. Decide from the beginning what it is you want to accomplish with your social media postings.


• The more posts, the better! No one will follow you, stay your "friend", or click on you if you bombard them constantly. Concentrate on good posts with meaningful content, and post them at regular intervals, such as daily or just on weekdays... consider, also, the times of day that your targeted audience will see and respond to them.


• Your social media page is self-promoting. Not true! Don't assume that people will simply figure out that you have a Facebook page or a Twitter account! You need to plug these accounts with links from your website and reminders about these accounts on your cards, literature, and your receipts.


• You're busy. It's best to outsource the social media job. This should be a way to connect with your customers. That personal connection is really best made with your own "voice." Who would know better about the challenges and trends of your business better than you would? You are the expert. Your content will be more meaningful if it is coming from you.


• Now that you have social media, email is unnecessary. First, don't assume that because many of your customers are using these platforms, that all of them are. There are plenty of holdouts, and chances are good that some of them are your customers. Why alienate them? For me, email is a necessity, and certainly has not gone the way of the dinosaur. Also, don't forget that usually one of the first steps in starting a social media account is to enter your email address!


• Disable comments to avoid unfavorable posts. This is highly unadvisable. First, you have to accept that people are going to have something to say about your business, whether it's on your Facebook page or elsewhere. Isn't it better to allow it in a place where you have some control over the direction the conversation takes, particularly if the comments are negative? Also, disallowing comments may create the impression that you're hiding something or that you're not transparent. This can result in your social marketing campaign actually working against your business, rather than for it.

No doubt there are many other pieces of "sage wisdom" out there about social media marketing that would do you far more harm than good. Tread carefully and consider your sources!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7899367

The Social Media Frontiers Tweetionary

Due to the 140 character constraint put on tweets, users have to be imaginative with their wording when composing their messages. The easiest way to edit down a tweet is by using shorthand for any words you use. Twitter users have created their own recognised shorthand so that composing tweets can be quicker and easy but, for the uninitiated, it can sometimes be hard to follow. For those relatively new to Twitter here’s our Tweetionary, giving you a few useful definitions so that you can better follow the conversation.

@: The ‘@’ symbol is used before a user’s name when they are mentioned them in a tweet. Clicking on the name will then bring up their profile.

#: The hashtag symbol is used to highlight specific words or phrases that are part of a larger conversation.

^: The caret sign is placed before the initials of a tweet sender if the tweet is sent from a company account, showing users which individual actually sent the message.

CX: Shorthand for ‘correction’.

DM: Shorthand for ‘Direct Message’.

Fail Whale: A whale carried by little birds posted on Twitter when the site is down.

FF: Shorthand for ‘Follow Friday’, a weekly event where people encourage other users to follow them by following them in return.

MRT: ‘Modified Retweet’, a retweet that has been changed slightly, generally to fit within the 140 character limit.

OH: ‘Overheard’ a way of retweeting without giving credit to the original tweeter.

RT: Shorthand for ‘Retweet’.

TFTF: ‘Thanks For The Follow’.

TT: ‘Translated Tweet’, used to denote a retweet that is not in its original language.

Twaffic: Twitter traffic.

Tweeps/Tweeple: Twitter users, often used to refer to someone’s followers.

Tweeter: A person who tweets.

Twittersphere: Everything in the Twitter universe.

Is there anything we’ve missed? What would you add to the SMF Tweetionary.

Should Facebook Tell Users Who Has Seen Their Posts?

Last week, an article by Buzzfeed’s Charlie Warzel started an interesting debate. The question: should Facebook show users how many of their friends see their posts, as well as how many likes and comments these posts get?

Motivated by a Stanford University study entitled “Quantifying the Invisible Audience in Social Networks”, which revealed that Facebook users were “reaching 35% of their friends with each post and 61% of their friends over the course of a month”, Warzel opined that it might be beneficial to users if they had access to their posts’ reach stats, just as page manager’s and advertisers do.

He also theorised why Facebook didn’t reveal these stats, based on two passages from the Stanford University study which speculated as to why the 220,000 users involved in the study thought that a lower percentage of their friends were seeing their posts that the actual 61%. The first passage:

Why do people underestimate their audience size in social media? One possible explanation is that, in order to reduce cognitive dissonance, users may lower their estimates for posts that receive few likes or comments. A necessary consequence of users underestimating their audience is that they must be overestimating the probability that each audience member will choose to like or comment on the post. For these posts without feedback, it might be more comfortable to believe that nobody saw it than to believe that many saw it but nobody liked it.
The second passage:

Some measure of social translucence and plausible deniability seems helpful: audience members might not want to admit they saw each piece of content, and sharers might be disappointed to know that many people saw the post but nobody commented or “Liked”. 

Warzel reasoned that it is probably in Facebook’s interest to keep reach stats from users, so that they aren’t disappointed by the fact that their friends will often see their posts but won’t engage with them, which might in turn cause them to post on Facebook less. In the article, however, Warzel did not definitively say whether Facebook should make reach stats available to users or not, instead concluding that Facebook kept the vast majority of statistics hidden from the average user – a fact that Warzel didn’t say outright was a bad thing, but did imply as such with the overall tone of his article.

Thirteen hours ago, Facebook engineer Lars Backstrom posted a response to Warzel’s article on Facebook. He wrote that the main premise of Warzel’s opinion piece – “that everyone wants to know how many friends see each of their posts and Facebook doesn't want to tell them” – is incorrect, revealing that, in fact, Facebook had built and tested a similar feature internally but concluded that there wasn’t any real demand for it:

[People] are way more interested in seeing *who* liked their posts, rather than just the number of people who saw it. In fact, in all of the thousands of pieces of feedback we receive about News Feed each month, virtually no one has asked to see this information. 

Backstrom took umbrage at Warzel’s implication that Facebook’s engineers “have lots of ulterior motives when [they] make decisions about News Feed”. In the case of users seeing reach stats, for example, Backstrom said the time it took to implement the feature “isn't worth the space it would take up on the screen”.

TechCrunch’s Josh Constine drew Warzel’s attention to Backstrom’s rebuttal, asking for his opinion via Twitter. On Twitter, Warzel clarified his position on the main question “should Facebook tell users who has seen their posts?” He argued that users should be able to see how many people have viewed their posts, but not who these people are.


Warzel went on to say that he thinks it strange that Facebook encourages users to connect, but then doesn’t reveal how much users are actually connecting through posts and comments, saying that he finds it “hard to believe [that] those looking to 'share' with 'friends' don't care at all about actually reaching them” asking “why do it then?” A question Constine answered, saying that posting adds “another competitive element” to Facebook and people are actually sharing “for themselves”.

Constine then wrote an article about the conversation himself, determining that Backstrom is probably telling the truth:

[The] missing view counts stems not from some malicious fight to keep users in the dark, but from Facebook’s philosophy of trying to only build things that are useful for a wide audience.

Personally, I agree with Constine and Backstrom, I don’t think that the average user really wants or needs to see their posts’ reach stats. It would benefit me more, in fact, if the engagement stat became available, as I post videos and articles more often than statuses. It would be interesting to see how many people engaged with my embedded content, even if they didn't like or share it themselves, just to see what sort of things my friends were interested in.

In reality, though, I would prefer things to stay as they are, with just likes and comments, as they’re the only two positive options I have ever really needed (I say positive because a ‘disapprove’ button would also come in useful, but would never become a reality).

Do you think Facebook users should be able to see the reach of their posts?       

How to Get More From Your LinkedIn Profile

When you think about professional social networking, you immediately think about LinkedIn.
Today it is the favoured hunting ground for recruiters, so how can you make sure your profile makes you stand out from the crowd?
It all comes down to maximising your profile so you get noticed - and here's how.

7 Simple Steps to Boost Your LinkedIn Profile
To get the most of your profile it's essential the following 7 elements are maximised.

1. Headline
You already know how important the headline is when it comes to putting together your own sales literature, well, the headline of your profile is just as important.
It must clearly and concisely show:

• Who you are
• Who you can help
• How you can help them

That will give the reader everything they need to know when making the decision about whether to continue reading or not.

2. Don't be fake
Business doesn't mean boring.
Some would argue that frippery should be left for other social media sites, but if you are naturally flamboyant, out going and generally a fun-loving kind of guy or girl, let that side of your personality shine through.
It's important they get to know the real you, so in your summary tell them about your goals, what you enjoy doing etc. These personal insights help make a connection at a personal level and make you more memorable.

3. Spelling
Proofreading your profile is essential. One miss spelt word could make a world of difference, so check and double-check your spelling and grammar before publishing.

4. Call to action
Is a call to action really necessary on your LinkedIn profile?
Yes it is. It's something that you automatically place in your marketing copy, so why not add one here too?
That way, once they've read your profile you can direct them to your website, phone number or email address so they can get in touch with you.

5. Proof
Although your profile is the place to shout about what you have done and can do, it's important that all your claims are backed up.
Make sure the section on education, awards won and recommendations is completed and kept up to date.

6. SEO
Search engine optimisation gets everywhere, even in your LinkedIn profile.
Make sure your keywords (i.e. terms associated with your profession) are in your:

• Headline
• Current work experience
• Past work experience
• Summary
• Specialities

7. Stand out
The last thing you should do is read through the profiles of other people in your field.
You want your profile to be unique so don't stick to the normal conventions, just write and make yourself come across in a memorable way.
LinkedIn is a powerful, but often under used tool. By following these simple steps you'll make yourself stand out from the crowd.
Review your profile today and make yourself memorable.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7816754

Facebook Updates Page Insights, Allows Image Posting In Comments

After listening to feedback, Facebook has updated the Page Insights tool, adding new metrics and improving the insights that were already available. A select group of Page admins have been invited to preview the updates. Facebook has also started rolling out the ability to attach images in the comment section of posts.

People Talking About This, or PTAT, has been separated into elements, so admins can now see Page Likes, Page tags and mentions, and Page checkins individually, as well as general engagement overall. The Virality metric has been renamed ‘engagement rate’, which now includes clicks.

Each post’s performance, engagement and reach can be seen on a post-specific scorecard (such as the one seen above), which collates negative and positive feedback so that the impact of each post can be more easily measured. Page admins can then identify what content garners the most interaction, helping them to develop strategies to improve page performance.

Also, insights now breaks down not only who a post has reached by age, gender, location etc., but also who has engaged with the post.

The updates were announced on Wednesday, to roll out gradually. However, Facebook has assured admins that:

The existing Page Insights will still be available for all other Page admins until later this summer, at which point we'll make the updates to Page Insights available to all marketers. At this time, we will not make changes to the Page Insights export or API. 

Facebook are also currently rolling out the ability to post images in comments. A tiny camera icon will appear on the right-hand side of the comment box, allowing users to attach a photo or picture from their device.

What do you think about the updates to the Page Insight Tool? Are you pleased that you can post images in the comments section?       

Is Your Private Information Safe on Social Media?

 

More than 12 million Americans were victims of identity fraud in the past year, according to a recent study. Twelve million. I was one of them. Against my better judgment, I curiously clicked on a questionable direct message from a friend, and like that, my Twitter account was phished. Luckily, I changed my passwords and implemented damage control before things got out of hand.

What I learned from that experience, and the growing cybersecurity problems gobbling up news headlines, is whether you're a multinational company or a middle school teacher, we all need to do a better job of protecting our private information. And often, social media is the tool used to compromise our data.

 

With social media as the battleground, it's up to us to protect a valuable commodity: our personal information. To help in the effort is an infographic, below, from NextAdvisor detailing which states have the most identity fraud complaints, the most popular strategies used by thieves, and some simple ways to protect yourself.
 

Image courtesy of Flickr, Horia Varlan

Twitter Has Retired API v1

Today, Twitter finally retired version 1 of its Application Programming Interface, replacing it with version 1.1.

A number of Twitter apps will become obsolete due to the update, including a few that are Twitter owned, such as TweetDeck.

Most Twitter app developers have already moved onto version 1.1 of the API, which was released in September last year. However, a number of smaller apps have been unable to make the transition due to usage restrictions imposed on them.

A small set of clients, who were “replicating the core Twitter experience” (according to a post on the Twitter Developers blog), were limited to 100,000 user tokens, making monetization almost impossible.

Twitter actually originally announced that version 1 would be shut down in May, but they extended by just over a month to ensure that version 1.1 was ready.

The update to version 1.1 is unlikely to affect any major Twitter apps.

Does this update affect you?

Twitter Updates Apps And Increases List Maximum Size

Twitter has updated its iPhone and Android apps, making tweeting an “easier and more seamless experience”, according to the announcement post on Twitter’s blog. Twitter has also increased the maximum number of lists a user can have from 20 to 1,000.

It is now easier to add photos to tweets thanks to a number of improvements Twitter has made: users can now share photos by simply clicking on the photo icon to the bottom right of the tweet. Also, when a user adds a photo to a tweet, it will be visible in its entirety, not just in cropped view. Twitter extols the impact of the improvement in their post:

“With fewer steps needed to share photos, you can more easily share what’s going on in your life and quickly return to marveling over that gorgeous sunset.”

When a user composes a tweet, their username and avatar will appear, just as it would when the tweet has been posted. It’s also easier to switch between accounts now, by simply tapping on the corresponding avatar.

Twitter has listened to the requests of Android users and made notifications “richer”: Android users will now see more information about their interactions within the Notification Drawer. iPhone users, meanwhile, will notice that there are no borders around their timelines.

Twitter has also greatly increased the number of lists that users can have, from 20 to 1,000. Each list, meanwhile, can contain 5,000 separate accounts, up from 500. Twitter announced the update in an @TwitterForNews tweet yesterday.

Twitter lists are a brilliant tool for any business, as they allow users to categorise and easily track conversations, or even secretly monitor the competition.

What do you think of Twitter’s app and list improvements? were you hoping Twitter would increase the list size?       

10 Tips On How To Use Twitter For Your Online Business

Apart from Facebook, there are very few other social media networks that are as popular or more popular than Twitter, and with its 500 million users, it is of extreme importance to your online business. Twitter is a lot more than just witty tweets, it is a very powerful tool that you can use in boosting your business if you make use of the following tips:

1. Building your brand on Twitter. When learning on how to start an online business, one of the things that you need to bear in mind about Twitter is that it is a very efficient tool for building your own brand. Open an account and put your brand logo or image as your profile and build up a strong followership in no time with superb tweets.
2. Marketing campaigns. By making a very good use of a social media platform like Twitter for your online business, you can monitor the success or otherwise of the marketing strategies that you are using. Using Twitter analytics is the best way to do this.
3. Making instant announcements about your online businesses. One thing with is that once you make a tweet, it is instantly seen in real time by all your followers. It is not like some other forms of conventional advertising in which you have to wait before announcements or notices of your online business are published.
4. Organizing contests: As stated earlier on, Twitter goes way beyond just tweeting. You can also organize Twitter contests about your online business. In doing so, you get positive reviews and third parties assist in spreading the message.
5. Answering customers' questions. Do not just use the hashtags for nothing. Make use of your corporate Twitter account to attend to your customers.
6. Networking. While on Twitter, you can leverage it to your benefit by networking with others in your online business, especially those who have recorded great successes.
7. In order to achieve all of the above, you need to ensure that your tweets are catchy, relevant and beneficial. Do not make tweets that are totally irrelevant or even clearly unrelated to the service or product you are offering.
8. Also, to get the kind of results you want for your business by making use of Twitter, follow all the rules of conduct that have been stipulated by Twitter. Do not post beyond the daily limit or engage in activities that can get your account closed.
9. Building your identity. One very good thing that comes with Twitter is that if you follow all the steps that have been outlined above carefully, you end up building a very good identity for yourself and your products.
10. Follow the right people. No one will take you serious if all the people you are following are nothing but misfits, gangsters and others who connote nothing but negativity in the society. Remember that a business is all about integrity. Follow people who are responsible role models in the society. That will be a plus for your online business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7745029

Twitter Amplify Promotes Brands Across Multiple Screens

Hot on the heels of the micro-blogging site’s most recent marketing tool, the lead generation card, Twitter has introduced another new feature to help brands advertise online: Twitter Amplify. Twitter Amplify takes advantage of the multi-screen viewing activity of many Twitter users by showing commercials before sporting clips posted in real-time during tournaments, games and events.

Real-time multi-screen promotional content has featured simultaneously on Twitter and television channels for some time, ever since it was revealed that, as Glenn Brown affirms in the announcement post on Twitter’s advertising blog, the “vast majority of the online public conversation around TV currently happens on Twitter – 95 per cent”. In fact, a number of studies have shed light on the correlation between television viewing figures and Twitter conversation, including one conducted by Nielsen earlier this year.

Brands have quickly realised that by coordinating their advertising across both television and social media channels, they make customer and fan engagement far more likely. Brands have identified that the least intrusive way to advertise across multiple screens is by promoting popular content:

ESPN and Ford Fusion led the way, bringing football fans Instant Replays in Tweets during every college football bowl game. During March Madness, Turner Sports, the NCAA, AT&T and Coke Zero followed suit, offering fans Real-Time Highlights of hoops action throughout the tournament. And now, during the home stretch through the 2013 Finals, the NBA is pushing the best Rapid Replays from TV, through a Tweet, to your mobile phone thanks to Sony Pictures, Sprint and Taco Bell. 

Sports fans often turn to Twitter to catch what they might have missed, or talk with other tweeters about what they are watching. Twitter Amplify helps brands become part of the experience, and perhaps even part of the conversation. The commercials are only ever a few seconds long, similar in length to a Vine in fact, but there is extra promotional content – banners, calls to action excetera – bordering the main video clip to ensure that the promotion’s message gets through.

Twitter has been testing Twitter Amplify with a number of its partners for a month or so, but primarily with sports broadcasters. Now, Twitter has partnered up with other broadcasting companies in an attempt to increase the scope of Twitter Amplify, such as BBC America, FOX, Fuse and The Weather Channel.

Twitter believes that the new partnerships will improve what is already a great feature:

We think these types of two-screen sponsorships are a win-win-win. Users receive spectacular, timely content that rounds out their TV experience or reminds them to tune in. Powered by Promoted Tweets, broadcasters reach new audiences and open up new business lines. Brand advertisers get, for the first time, an integrated cross-platform tool for reaching the social conversation wherever it happens. 

There is a full list of Amplify partners in the announcement post. If you want to partner up with Twitter and get a piece of the Amplify action, contact the company at amp@twitter.com.

Will Twitter Amplify make you engage with branded content more?

Pinterest Adds More Info To Pins And “Pin It” Button To Certain Apps

Pinterest has partnered with a number of brands to add more information to certain pins. Product, movie and recipe pins pinned from certain sites will display more information about their subjects to save users having to search off-site for it. Also, certain apps now have a “Pin It” button to make pinning on mobile devices easier.

These new, more informative pins are called “rich pins”. Any brand can apply to make all their future pins into rich pins on the Pinterest for business site. However, Pinterest advises brands who want to add rich pins to “prep [their] website with meta tags” and “test out [their] rich pins” before applying “to get them on Pinterest.”

Product pins from retail partners display pricing, availability and location information. Recipe pins from chosen pinners display ingredients, cooking time and serving suggestions. Movie pins from Flixster, Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes contain ratings, reviews and a cast list.

Rich pins are identifiable in the stream thanks to the source logo at the bottom left of the pin and, in some cases, a preview of some of the extra information they contain. The logo must belong to one of Pinterest’s partners. Software Engineer Anna Majkowska lists all the partners in the announcement post on the Pinterest blog:

For clothes, furniture, gifts and products:
Anthropologie, Asos, BHLDN, eBay, Etsy, Free People, Home Depot, Modcloth, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Overstock, REI, Sephora, Shopify shops, Shop Terrain, Sony, Target,Urban Outfitters, Walmart, Wayfair, Zulily 

 
For mouth-watering recipes:
101 Cookbooks, Better Homes and Gardens, Bon Appetit, Chobani, Country Living, Delish,Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Leite’s Culinaria, Martha Stewart Living, MyRecipes,Naturally Ella, Nestlé Very Best Baking, Real Simple, Simply Recipes, Skinny Taste, The Girl Who Ate Everything, The Kitchn,What’s Gaby Cooking, Whole Foods Market, Woman’s Day

All the information displayed in rich pins is updated automatically on Pinterest when updated on the parent site. “Right now,” says Pinterest, “there are three types of rich pins: movie, recipe and product”, suggesting that Pinterest intend to introduce new types of rich pins in the future. In the announcement post, in fact, Majkowska asks users to suggest which pin category should be improved next. 

To make pinning easier on mobile devices, certain apps now have a “Pin It” button alongside other share widgets. Users can pin directly from the following sites using the new Pin It button:

Behance, Brit+Co, Etsy, Fotopedia, Jetsetter, Modcloth, Snapguide, TED, The North Face, and Zulily The new “rich pins” feature is one of a number of updates that Pinterest has made in the last week, first adding notifications and mentions to the app and then allowing users to send pins on-site, as they continue to improve the site’s and app’s appearance and functionality.

What do you think of rich pins?     

Pinterest App Update Adds Notifications And Mentions

Pinterest has updated its mobile app services for Android and iOS devices. Pinterest for Android version 1.5 and Pinterest for iOS version 2.4 now include notifications, allow users to mention others and have improved search capabilities, with suggested results appearing as users type.

With the updates installed, users will receive notifications informing them when someone comments on their pin or mentions them. Pinterest has also introduced push notifications so that users can stay abreast of what’s happening while the Pinterest app is not open. If a user wishes to mention their friends on the go, they can. All a user needs to do to draw a friend’s or follower’s attention to a pin is include an ‘@’ symbol followed the person’s name in a comment.

Suggested searches will appear when users type into the search bar at the top off the app. Users will also be able to see previous searches they have made, even those on other devices. According to the announcement post on Pinterest’s blog, these searches can be deleted in the settings tab.

Pinterest has been relatively slow to adapt to the mobile trend when compared to Facebook and Twitter, both of which have fully embraced mobile. Facebook, for example, recently released Facebook Home: an Android mobile-specific user interface. Twitter’s SMS-like micro-messaging core principle, meanwhile, has always leant itself to mobile usage.

It could be argued that Pinterest will never be as user friendly on mobile devices as it is on desktop devices and laptops: certainly, due to its layout, it will never be as easily navigated on a phone as it is on a monitor. However, if users can stay abreast of notifications and quick-respond to messages on the go – as made possible by the new updates – they are far more likely to use the app frequently.

If the Pinterest app did have all the features that are available on Pinterest.com, quick browsing through three columns of content would be the only thing users would miss. However, if they set up their notifications correctly, they could receive all the content they require direct to their app notifications tab, without needing to search for it. Of course, on Pinterest, browsing and discovering something is half the fun.

What do you think of the new Pinterest app?

Facebook Rolls Out “Promoted Page Likes” Globally

Facebook has released “Promoted Page Likes”, a feature which has been available to U.S. page owners in beta since December. Promoted Page Likes are like Promoted Posts, allowing page owners to buy adverts based on a predetermined budget. However, unlike Promoted Posts, Promoted Page Likes bypass the complicated ad dashboard.

Promoted Page Likes, which are accessible to any page owner whose page has a profile picture and a listed location, ask administrators to decide on a daily advertising budget based on their advert’s reach. Administrators are also asked whether they want to target users by city, state/area or country.

Buying Promoted Page Likes creates three distinct advert types: sidebar ads, Page Like ads, which appear in the news feeds of both mobile and desktop devices, and Sponsored Stories, which again appear in news feeds across all devices.

Whereas Promoted Posts notify existing page fans of new content and updates posted to a page, Promoted Page Likes simply feature a page’s name, photo, description and a like button to tempt new fans to the page.

Unlike other ad features on Facebook, Promoted Page Likes need to be stopped by an administrator, otherwise they will run indefinitely.

How successful do you think Promoted Page Likes will be?

Retwact May Solve Twitter's Misinformation Problem

Even worse than the pornbots and trolls, one of Twitter's enduring drawbacks is that there's no reliable way to issue corrections with the service. The flaw drew a truckload of attention in the wake of the Boston bombings as self-appointed detectives — fueled by Reddit — made all kinds of invalid allegations on social media. But the tragedy involving the Tsarnaev brothers is simply the most extreme case of what's a very ordinary problem. Virtually all reporting has become an iterative process, subject to revisions in real time as new knowledge becomes available.

Some journalists have called for Twitter to build a corrections function involving the same code it uses for retweets and favorites. So far, Twitter has given no indication that it plans to do so, which has led one independent developer to build his own solution. And until something more polished comes along, it's not a bad option.

The tool is called Retweet Retract — or Retwact, for short. Built as a side project by Stonly Baptiste, a software developer at the Pennsylvania-based company independenceIT, Retwact tries to contain the damage (and shame) that comes along with spreading information that later turns out to be untrue.
Here's how it works. Once you've given it permission to look at your account, the app culls your five most recent tweets that have garnered retweets.

Click on one of them, and a little green radio button fills in. Down below, you can tap out a hand-written apology or send the correction as-is. When you publish the notice, it goes from your account to all your followers. Meanwhile, Retwact's own Twitter account (@Retwact) reaches out with an @-mention to the first 100 people who retweeted your (incorrect) tweet.

The link above takes you to a side-by-side comparison showing both the older, incorrect tweet as well as the newer, corrected one.

Baptiste told me he hacked the tool together in a "sleepless" 48-hour session, using resources he'd never worked with before such as OAuth and the Twitter API. That was after he'd posted the idea to the social news aggregator Hacker News, where it got promoted to the front page within an hour and received upwards of 1,500 requests for Retwact to be built. (Twitter, are you listening?)

Retwact isn't perfect. If you tweet often, you can only use the service to correct something you tweeted minutes rather than hours ago. And Retwact can't detect manual retweets of misinformation — just the ones produced when you click Twitter's own retweet button.

Baptiste said he plans to keep working. He's considering adding a feature that will delete the original, misinformed tweet altogether while still preserving the text on the correction page. That means there'll still be a record of the mistake, but other users will no longer be able to spread it around.

Baptiste promises to improve the app until "A) People stop using it, or B) Twitter (or someone else) offers me a lot of money for it."

Mashable composite, images courtesy of Flickr, NASA and Twitter

It's Time for Truth on Social Media

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” I heard those words early in my journalism career. Reporters are trained to verify information they receive by confirming with a trusted source, but the media landscape has changed, even since I first heard that adage.

With social networks like Facebook and Twitter, news flows faster than ever. And the news is no longer centrally controlled, making it potentially less trustworthy. Reporters have more access to information through social media, but it’s no longer just journalists delivering that information. The power of information-sharing now rests in the hands of everyday people — that means you.

In a Harvard Nieman Report, Mark Little, founder and CEO of social news agency Storyful, wrote:

Not too long ago, reporters were the guardians of scarce facts delivered at an appointed time to a passive audience. Today we are the managers of an overabundance of information and content, discovered, verified and delivered in partnership with active communities.

Any individual or media organization can instantly send a piece of news to the web. This makes things more competitive — in print, everyone always wanted to be first (and right). But social media and the speed of digital news raise the stakes.

We’ve been watching this play out all week, following the Boston Marathon bombings. For instance, reports from trusted news sources to individual Twitter users inaccurately stated authorities held a suspect in custody.

Distrust in Media 

Georgetown political scientist Jonathan Ladd suggests the rise of the Internet and cable news, and the resulting diversification and fragmentation of the media, have caused a general distrust in the media. He writes in a blog post, “Because of technological changes, such as the rise of cable and the Internet, as well as regulatory changes, such as the end of the fairness doctrine, the media industry has become much more diverse and fragmented.”

He's right. But I'd take that one step further to include, specifically, social media's effect on fragmented news consumption.

And it’s not just the social media accounts of journalists and news organizations. Media consumers now have more opportunities to glean news straight from primary sources.

Access to Primary Sources 

We saw Friday how Boston residents and reporters shared information on social networks about the manhunt for the bombing suspects. On social media, they shared real-time photos, videos and information about the circumstances they witnessed.

They also shared information they heard over police scanners. A decade ago, listening in on law enforcement chatter required expensive equipment, limiting police scanners' use mainly to hobbyists and journalists.
Today, you need nothing more than a smartphone. Apps like the 5-0 Radio Police Scanner browse scanners around the world, porting criminal activities and police information to you anywhere.

Immediately following the bombings Monday, I used 5-O on my iPhone to access information from Boston. But the whole time, I remained aware that the officers I heard weren't always aware of the facts. What they said wasn't necessarily true or verifiable. And I couldn't verify it, I shouldn't report it.

The average person may not operate with that same filter, though. Unverified information heard over the scanner could turn into a tweet, which could get picked up by a media outlet and, thus, become a (potentially inaccurate) news report. 

Inaccuracies Spread 

In his book Trust Me, I'm Lying, Ryan Holiday writes about the dangerous and exploitative practices of bloggers and social media users, which in turn, can spread like wildfire. It’s a pattern we’ve witnessed this week.

"The more immediate the nature of their publishing medium (blogs, then newspapers, then magazines), the more heavily a journalist will depend on sketchy online sources, like social media, for research," he writes.
This process relies on a "delegation of trust:" reporting what others are reporting. Because NPR is a "trusted" source, other news outlets reported its false claim that Gabrielle Giffords had been fatally shot.

When a trusted site or Twitter user publishes something, we assume they did their due diligence by confirming the veracity and authenticity of a claim, and therefore, the news is safe to repeat as fact. Not always so.

More Access Can Be Good 

However, some more optimistic media professionals believe social media can help verify information and sources. We can follow the digital footprint of social media users.
In his book Hacking the Future, Cole Stryker writes,

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, one actually has more access to evidence with social media than traditional off-line sources."

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, one actually has more access to evidence with social media than traditional off-line sources."
In some instances, perhaps this is a good thing. But this week, that "evidence" became fodder for hasty accusation, as Redditors attempted to crowdsource the investigation and identification of the Boston Marathon bombers. As the week played out, it became apparent the Reddit search would not trump the one led by authorities. 

Verification Required 

Unfiltered information, without context or verification — usually the job of journalists — can be dangerous, as Storyful founder Little points out:

When I was a young TV journalist, the phrase ‘golden hour’ meant the early evening light that bathed faces and landscapes in a warm forgiving glow. As a social journalist, I've started to use the term in a different way. I now think of the golden hour as the time it takes social media to create either an empowering truth or an unstoppable lie, when a celebrity death trends on Twitter or an explosive video surfaces on YouTube. In other words, when journalism can matter most.

According to Little and the BBC, journalists should answer these questions when attempting to verify the truth behind user-generated content.

• Can you speak to the original source of the material?
• Can you geo-locate the photo or video? Can you correspond landmarks to those in Google Maps?
• Do the streets look similar to those on Panoramio or Google Street View?
• Does weather in the footage correspond to weather reports from that day?
• Does the reported time of day correspond to where shadows should be at that time?
• Do traffic signs and vehicle plates show the correct locale?
• Does this footage look similar to that being uploaded by other users in the location?
• Does the information or footage seem too good to be true?
• Where did the material first appear online?

By leveraging technology resources, human knowledge and community history, journalists and individuals can seek to verify the authenticity of user-generated content.

The Curator's Role 

More than two years ago, founder of Storify Burt Herman wrote for The New York Times: “A new class of gatekeepers has arisen, people whose reputations are built on their ability to highlight relevant information to their audiences. We are still looking for the right word to call these new gatekeepers, but so far ‘curator’ is what appears most appropriate.”

It's safe to say, today, that all social media consumers should be their own curators — consuming, verifying and disseminating what is accurate and relevant — because more information is easily available to us than ever before.

I still believe we can trust legacy institutions to provide us with the truth — most of the time. Still, we need to be smart media consumers by remembering that even the trusted institutions get stories wrong. And, as journalists, there's more than one side to a story, more than one truth. We must use the technologies at our disposal to determine which ones are accurate, and all social media users, including both content curators and content creators, must remember: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

Image via Darren McCollester/Getty Images

Twitter Introduces Keyword Targeting To Timeline

Yesterday, Twitter released keyword targeting in timelines: a ‘new feature [which] enables advertisers to reach users based on the keywords in their recent Tweets and the Tweets with which users recently engaged’, says Twitter in the announcement post on the Twitter advertising blog.

Keyword targeting could prove to be a powerful tool, as it will allow advertisers to target users as soon as they post relevant content on Twitter. It will also mean that users are more likely to see advertising relevant to their tweets. Keyword targeting is an option for advertisers creating promoted tweets: advertisers must ad specific keywords that they want twitter to search for; users who tweet those keywords will be shown promoted tweets as soon as they have used them. In the announcement post, Product Manager Nipoon Malhotra describes how the instantaneousness and the relevance of promoted tweets make them far more effective:

This is an important new capability – especially for those advertisers looking for signals of intent – because it lets marketers reach users at the right moment, in the right context. For example, say a telecommunications network provider is building a cell tower to provide signal to somewhere new, they could target users in that area who are complaining about the signal they have using their current provider. Another example: a magazine publisher whose new edition contains a big interview with a celebrity could target people who name the celebrity in their tweets.

The new feature has already had some success during the testing phase, with companies such as GoPro (@GoPro), Everything Everywhere (@EE), Microsoft Japan (@SurfaceJP) and Walgreens (@Walgreens) all noticing significantly higher engagement with their promoted tweets when they used keyword targeting.

GoPro (@GoPro), a leader in wearable and gear-mountable cameras, is a great example of a test partner that achieved promising results. After testing keyword targeting in timeline across four marketing campaigns, GoPro saw close to two million impressions, and engagement rates as high as 11 percent on Tweets promoted using the new feature. The keyword search feature for the timeline is very similar to that for search: enter the keywords, decide whether you want Twitter to look for the phrase or just each individual word and select the other targeting options – gender, geotargeting, device, etcetera.

Apart from maybe seeing more relevant advertising, users won’t notice any change to the promoted tweets feature: there won’t be any more and they can still dismiss the ones they don’t want to see. Keyword targeting is available to all markets and languages supported by the full Twitter Ads UI and the Ads API.

Have you used the keyword targeting feature yet? What’s it like?

Top Tips That Will Boost Your Social Media Results With Little Time And Effort!

Social media works and it really does give your website more traffic, as well as more exposure to your business. Of course nothing happens overnight and if you want to get results, you must put in a lot of effort. The vast majority of business owners, who have achieved decent results, have not used the full potential of social media. There is always room for improvement and I will give very simple tips that can very quickly give you noticeable social media results and take your business to another level.

Reduce The Number Of Social Media Sites You Use!
It is really sad if you put in lots of effort to expand your business but do not get results. It is really essential to use various social media sites to promote your business, but having an active presence in dozens of social networking sites is also not a good idea. If you are active in dozens of sites, your energy will largely be wasted. Instead you should carefully choose a few sites that suit you and your niche the best and focus on these sites. This way you will get much better results!

Focus More On Quality, Instead Of Quantity!
One of the main tactics that people use to promote their business is to flood social networking sites with meaningless posts. Sure, this can give you some results. It is much better though to focus on the quality of your posts. Focus on providing your readers with interesting and though-provoking posts. This way your readers will look forward to your posts and you will get better results. It is much better to have a blog post that gets a 100 views than 100 blog posts that get 1 view.

Give Others Your Love
Another positive way to get social media results, is not to focus solely on promoting your business, but to promote other people`s content as well. If you are in it for yourself, you will not gain any friends or fans. Social networking sites you give a great opportunity to take part in the community. You should vote for other people, get into discussion and basically take an active part in the community.

Make Your Posts More Reader-Friendly!
Most social media visitors and blog readers do not read your blog content word-for-word. They basically scan your blog, which is why it is necessary to focus on the readability of your blog post. This means breaking up your content into smaller paragraphs, using bullet points and sub headers. The last thing you want is getting tons of people to your site and having them leave just as quickly because of poor readability.
Your social media results depend of many factors and it is very difficult to focus on all of them. Some people write amazing posts but get very little traffic. Others get lots of traffic but have very low conversions. It is really essential to analyze your content and your tactics objectively. So if you are not getting good results, take a step back and try to look at your methods, tactics and content from another perspective. Often you only need to make a few tweaks to get fantastic results.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7620578

Facebook Expands Gifts Feature Beyond The United States

Facebook now allows users outside the United States of America to send gifts to their friends, as long as their friends live in America. Users in the UK, Canada and India have noticed new gift suggestions appearing on their Facebook pages.

Facebook Gifts was launched in the United States late last year. Since then, Facebook has launched its own gift card, entered into an agreement with Starbucks and begun suggesting users give gifts alongside celebratory notifications.

Now, users outside the United States are beginning to gain access to gifts. When I went on Facebook this morning, I was informed that I can now buy a gift for a friend on Facebook, after which I was prompted to buy a gift for my American friend’s twenty-seventh birthday.




Facebook has confirmed to Inside Facebook that the social media site has made "an update to Gifts that allows people using Facebook in English outside of the U.S. to send Gifts to friends living in the U.S." Facebook has not yet reported whether the Gifts feature will become fully available to international users, allowing gift giving outside the United States.

There have also been reports that Facebook is now alerting users who have the redesigned news feed of any news feed posts they miss. While users are off the home page, a number will tally up the number of unseen posts beside the “Home” tab.

Would you like to be able to send friends gifts on Facebook?

Facebook Home Released For Android

Facebook has released Facebook Home, a new patch for Android devices which makes viewing messages and photos from Facebook easier by changing the device’s homepage into a Facebook cover feed.

When Facebook home was announced yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasised that the company’s intention was to build a mobile interface which put people first instead of apps. To that end, Facebook Home replaces an Android phone’s home page with information from the owner’s Facebook news feed, all of which can be clicked on and interacted with. At any point users can get to their apps by swiping up on their Facebook profile photo.

Facebook notifications will appear on the home screen beside a profile picture of the active party, Facebook promises on the announcement post that these notifications will be “bigger [and] bolder”. Notifications can be taken off screen with a simple drag.

Meanwhile, messages – both SMS and Facebook – will appear over apps as pop-ups in the corner of the screen. This feature, called Chat Heads, “will help improve engagement as it lets people jump in and out of conversations without ever having to leave your app”, according to the Facebook announcement post.

Home will be available in the US from the Google Play Store from April 12. Home works on the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung GALAXY S III and Samsung GALAXY Note II. Home will work on the yet-to-be-released HTC One and Samsung GALAXY S4, and on more devices in the next few months.



What do you think of Facebook Home?