Facebook. Twitter. MySpace. Tumblr. Hundreds and hundreds more. For individuals trying to find out where they have signed up for among social media networks is probably like trying to find a specific scroll in the Library of Alexandria. The sheer size of where you have to look – much less update – is intimidating. It’s the same for businesses. Do you know where your brand, product, trademark, or even company name is being used in all these popular and emerging social media websites? You might be surprised to find that it’s being used unofficially – a classic case of brand identity theft. You lose control. Your online reputation isn’t secure. Thanks to something called KnowEm, representation across all social media has become a lot easier. KnowEm is a service that lets you discover where your name, brand, trademark, or product is available on social media networks. It also lets you know where it has been stolen. Developed in April 2009 – Read the full article
E-mail: it’s one of the earliest and most widely used forms of communication on the Internet, even in the age of Twitter, Facebook, mobile apps, and social media. It can also be one of the most scandalous – and potentially one of the most embarrassing – sources of personal information, or just plain bad manners. Indeed, a lot of people can do with a little primer on E-mail etiquette in today’s world – regardless of whether they’re corresponding for business purposes, sending important information to various recipients, or marketing through E-mail. So for the sake of those who aren’t quite sure whether or not they have been misbehaving on E-mail, here are a few must-follow tips on E-mail etiquette: Keep it short and sweet E-mail marketers should be familiar with this rule. The longer your E-mail message is, the higher the chances are that your recipients are not going to read all the way through it. It’s a sad fact – Read the full article
A few weeks ago marked the onset of major changes in the landscape of social gaming: Google announced plans to launch its own social gaming service and Disney purchased social gaming company Playdom for $763 million. Playdom is currently vying for second place in the social gaming industry, battling with Electronic Arts and other competitors. Industry leader Zynga is the developer of FarmVille, the wildly popular Facebook application that is set to bring in $500 million in revenue this year. Another factor that could have a major impact on social gaming is the possibility of a repeal on the ban of online gambling. At the end of July, the House Financial Services Committee voted 41-22 in favor of new guidelines that would regulate, but not outlaw, some forms of online gambling. If legalized, the federal government could bring in a great deal of revenue by heavily taxing online gambling. Real money gambling could increase opportunities to generate revenue for social – Read the full article
Chicago is lucky enough to host a only a few great tech events in Chicago each year and Social Dev Camp, is one of them. The two organizers, Tim Courtney (@timcourtney) and Andy Angelos (@andyangelos) ran a wonderful event last year and we are very much looking forward to this years conference. SocialDevCamp Chicago is a summer camp for the social web. Immerse yourself in two full days of sessions with leaders of the Internet. Topics include learning opportunities surrounding building applications, working with APIs, mobile, new media strategy, and much more! They have a rockstar lineup of speakers this year for Social Dev Camp. Keynote presenters for the August 13-15 event include Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, Google Open Web Advocate Chris Messina, and Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh. In addition to technical and business track sessions, attendees can compete in the developer Hackathon—with more than $3,000 in prizes—and share practical knowledge at Unconference gatherings. Last year they had some – Read the full article
Social media marketing is an essential part of many businesses and organizations today – regardless of size. The Internet has grown so much more community-focused, so much more social, that if one were to truly establish and enhance the online presence of a company or brand, there’d be no way of doing it without social media marketing. Sure, to some people, sites like Facebook and Twitter are just a complete waste of time, but without social media sites like these it would be next to impossible to keep up with everything that’s happening online. This is why companies are beginning to recognize the importance of hiring social media managers, social media agencies, social media consultants and strategists. The titles vary, but one thing is clear: if – as a small business owner or an Internet marketer – you want to be able to engage the right way with an online audience and steer the conversation about your brand to the – Read the full article
In recent times we’ve seen social media grow exponentially fast. Thanks to quick Internet adoption and the advancement of mobile technologies, hundreds of millions of people are now part of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. These two sites in particular have enjoyed an incredible amount of attention, but we must understand that they form but a part of a continually evolving social media landscape. That’s why it’s important to take a wider perspective and check out which new social media and social networking sites may soon become the Internet’s new darling. Foursquare Foursquare is a location-based social networking site that’s lately been getting a tremendous amount of hype. A number of its features are parallel to Twitter (like the ability to post quick status updates wherever you are), but Foursquare sets itself apart by encouraging – and rewarding – users to explore their own cities. Here’s how it works: users “check in” by posting updates through a messaging service. – Read the full article
Marketing Sherpa, a trusted resource that publishes useful news, case studies, and best practices data about Internet and integrated marketing, recently released the new Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report. It’s a robust guide that contains research, charts and tables, case studies, and trends in today’s ever-evolving Internet marketing industry. Over 2,000 marketers participated in the surveys conducted by Marketing Sherpa, surveys which covered topics such as strategy, forecasting, budgeting, integration with other marketing channels, social applications, and social media. It is meaty: 197 charts and tables, 14 chapters, 255 pages, and results from research conducted with 2,317 business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers. The benchmark report also introduced a ROAD Map, which stands for the Research, Objectives, Actions, and Devices that businesses and marketers would have to determine in crafting and implementing a social media strategy. Because social media is continuously evolving, one has to consider this ROAD Map, which is meant to help businesses and marketers stay abreast of social media – Read the full article
Do you know that 54% of CIOs ban the use of social media in the workplace? “Wow” was our first reaction, too. A bunch of Web 2.0 marketers are of course prone to advocate the merits of using blogs and sites like Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and YouTube in efforts to help businesses grow. But like with many things, social media can be a double-edged sword. A secretary will tweet about the laughable fashion sense of her boss. An employee will write an eloquent blog about how the routine Monday meetings are a total waste of time. And then another staffer will post status updates about how nothing here – certainly not promotion up the corporate ladder – is based on meritocracy. Don’t think social media can be stopped, though. While this new digital sandpit is highly interactive and engaging, it can also be extremely hard to control. There are varying approaches taken by companies to either ban or limit it, – Read the full article
