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Google+ Brand Pages finally arrive

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Just when you thought you could forget about Google+, there’s been a major feature added that may refresh its relevance. Since day one, a major shortcoming of Google Plus was that there were no pages or support for brand profiles. But on Monday Google finally started rolling out brand pages.

The brand pages are extremely similar in appearance to regular profiles with a lot of the same functionality as a Facebook page. Users add pages to their circles just as they would with other users. But there are differences between a page and a profile.

First of all, a page cannot add a user to its circles unless the user has added it to one of his or her circles already or mentioned it in a post. Secondly, brand pages are public by default. The third major difference is that pages have a +1 button and count, which can be linked to your websites count as well (more on that later!). Pages also can’t use some other Google+ features such as playing games and giving +1 to other pages.

The reason the brand pages may be such a game changer is because of Direct Connect. Direct Connect is a way of finding and following Google+ brand pages through Google Search. All a searcher has to do is type “+” followed by the name of the brand or business. Instead of sorting through a page of results, you will be taken directly to the correct Google+ page. Google+ users can also opt-in to a feature that automatically adds the brand to their circles by searching with Direct Connect. (Side note: Google+ brand pages will also now show up in Google search results.)

Google has also released Google+ badges for brands to promote their presence on Plus. Similar to the Facebook’s Like Box plugin, the widget can be embedded on web sites and lets a user either +1 the page or add it to their circles. The important thing about the Google+ badges is that it will connect your brand page with your website. This will help Google better index the brand’s Google+ page, but will also link together the +1′s from your brand page, search, and display ads. It is also required for your brand to be eligible for Direct Connect.

It’s obvious that the Google+ brand pages will open up a lot of new possibilities for brands, although there are still shortcomings and questions. For example, right now brands cannot run any contests or promotions through their page, and there are no page analytics or insights. Will these things be added in the future? There are also no custom URLs yet, something which seems impractical. Lastly, pages can also only be controlled by the one admin that created the page. Multiple admin support is expected in the future, but when? We’ll need to wait and see!

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What are your opinions on the Google+ brand pages? Do you think they will make Plus more popular?

Tags: Direct Connect, Google, google plus, Google Plus Brand Pages, social networking
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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

Twitter partners with two new data firms

Yesterday Twitter announced partnerships with two data firms: Mass Relevance and Crimson Hexagon. The firms will be granted access to all of the tweets sent daily. The firms will “work directly on creating and maintaining partnerships with media firms (like television networks) without Twitter’s involvement.” Companies will be able to use data from these partnerships to determine new ways of connecting with and gathering information about a show’s audience. Mass Relevance will work with media companies interested in re-purposing and re-syndicating tweets for display on websites, television shows, jumbo-trons, etc. Crimson Hexagon performs sentiment analysis to measure viewers’ opinions on a show or program.

Twitter Stories for when 140 characters just isn’t enough

Last Wednesday, Twitter launched a new page called Twitter Stories for when 140 characters just isn’t enough. The page explores the way Twitter has changed people’s lives. Users are invited to share their own stories by mentioning @Twitterstories or #twitterstories and including a picture or link about their story. The page will be updated every month with new inspiring stories. So far, there are stories about how a man secured a kidney transplant, how Chad Ochocinco took over 100 of his followers out to a steak dinner, and how a bookstore was saved from closing by a single tweet.

Top News and People in search

Twitter is slowly rolling out new features in Twitter search: “Popular” news and people will be highlighted at the top of the search results page. The “Top People” feature highlights one account with a link to “view all”. How the highlighted user is chosen has not been revealed, leaving some skeptical about it. The “Top News” feature does not have a link to “view all,” but more options have been added to refine the search, such as by phrase, language, hashtag, or location. As you can see in the photo below (from Search Engine Watch), the “Top News” is formatted as a bolded headline, 1 line excerpt, a small photo, and a link.

Tags: social media, Twitter, twitter partnerships, twitter search, twitter tuesday
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Introduction to Foursquare for Businesses

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

If you have never heard of Foursquare, it is a geo-location app that uses coordinates from a user’s mobile device to set their location and share it with their friends and social networks. Foursquare users “check-in” to venues based on their location and can share it with their friends on foursquare, as well as publish the check-in to their Facebook wall or Twitter timeline. There is also a big gaming aspect as users earn points, badges, and mayorships.

Foursquare has huge potential as a tool for businesses. The Foursquare for Business page outlines why you should set your business up on Foursquare and how to do so. Foursquare offers two different for solutions looking to expand their social media presence: the Merchant Platform, for businesses with a central location, and the Brand Platform. The differences are outlined below, but both offer the opportunity to connect to and expand your community of followers and customers.

Foursquare Merchant Platform

Getting started

The first step is to claim your venue. Since Foursquare has been around for a while and is very popular, it’s likely a location has already been created for your venue. Once you claim it and Foursquare verifies that you actually manage the venue, you will have control of the venue and be able to create specials, use the merchant dashboard, and more.

What you can do

Create specials: Specials are one of the biggest attractions to Foursquare, rewarding your customers for checking in to your venue. There are several types of specials:
- Friends specials – unlocked when a user is checked in with a certain number (set by you) of their friends on Foursquare
- Swarm specials – unlocked when a certain number (set by you) of Foursquare users have checked in to your location within a 3 hour period
- Flash specials – unlocked by a limited number (of your choice) of users on a first-come, first-served basis
- Newbie specials – unlocked only the first time a user checks into the location
- Check-in specials – unlocked every time the user checks in, based on specifications set by you
- Mayor specials – unlocked by the user who has checked in to your venue most frequently in the past 60 days (this user is known as the Mayor of your venue)
- Loyalty specials – similar to a punch card

Merchant dashboard: Lets you view real-time data, including the total number of check-ins, most recent visitors, most frequent visitors, and how many check-ins were shared to social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Foursquare Brand Platform

Getting started

If your business is not a venue customers can check-in to, a brand page will better suit you. Creating a page is very simple. Just go to the brand platform page and click “Create a foursquare page” at the bottom. NOTE: It requires that you sign in with Twitter to create a page, so you need to have a Twitter account with your business’s name as the handle, since the handle will be the same. From there, you can add the header image, profile picture, description, and any links.

What you can do

Brand pages: Create a customizable page for your brand with tips you leave for venues. You need to leave at least 5 tips at venues to be featured on the foursquare page gallery.
Partner badges: On Foursquare, users are rewarded for check-in accomplishments with badges. While there is a fee and some stipulations attached, brands can create partner badges
Add to foursquare: You can create embeddable Foursquare tips on your own website

Tags: Foursquare, foursquare brand pages, foursquare for business, foursquare merchant platform, social media
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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

New partnership between X Factor USA and Twitter

A new partnership between Twitter and the TV show The X Factor USA will add Twitter to the list of ways audience members can vote, in addition to voting by phone, text messages, online, and mobile apps.

The new form of voting will be through direct messages to the account, not regular tweets. Normally, you can only direct message someone if they are following you, but Twitter has made it so that anyone following @TheXFactorUSA can vote. More details on how to vote can be found here.

Steve Martin turns tweets into a book

On October 27, funny guy Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo) tweeted: “Due to absolutely no demand, soon I’m publishing a book of my tweets. Many of your replies included! All my profits to charity.”

The book, titled “The Ten, Make That Nine, Habits of Very Organized People. Make That Ten.” is slated to be around 112 pages of Martin’s tweets and fan replies. It’s expected to be released around June 2012.

The book’s description explains that, “With over 1.4 million followers (a number growing by the day), and a now famously uncanny ability to pack 140 characters with a maximum amount of humor and wit, Steve Martin has defined what it means to be a celebrity in today’s world of social media.”

Lady Gaga reaches 15 million followers

Lady Gaga (@LadyGaga) has become the first Twitter user to have 15 million followers, with the newest million added in the past 28 days. Gaga and her Little Monsters have set many records on Twitter before.

Over at All Twitter, they did the calculations and if Gaga continues amassing followers at her current speed, she should be expected to hit 20 million followers between March and April 2012.

Kim Kardashian files for divorce, takes over Trending Topics

On October 31, Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) filed for divorce from her husband of 72 days, Kris Humphries. After all of the publicity surrounding the wedding, including a 2-night, 4-hour wedding special on E!, the news of divorce has caused quite a stir.

On Twitter, several joking hashtags and Trending Topics began circulating, including #ThingsLongerThanKimsMarriage, which is still the number one Trending Topic.

While the public may not have been sensitive, Kim’s sisters Kourtney and Khloe tweeted support for their sister. Kim has not tweeted anything since the news of her divorce broke.

Tags: celebrities, kim kardashian, lady gaga, steve martin, television, Twitter, twitter partnerships, twitter tuesday
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Social For the Cure: Big Brands

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Earlier I posted the first Social For the Cure article, focusing on how social media can be used to build communities around breast cancer awareness. But big brands are also doing a lot outside of those communities, such as raising massive amounts of money for breast cancer awareness, which is just as important as communities and support.

Through apps, websites, Facebook pages, and more, big companies are recognizing Breast Cancer Awareness Month in different ways.

Estee Lauder’s Shine a Light on Breast Cancer campaign is one example. Estee Lauder has been a pioneer in breast cancer awareness before; they were the first to give out the pink breast cancer ribbon in 1992. In 2000, they began illuminating buildings in pink light to raise awareness. This year, through the Facebook app, users can share messages of hope for people with breast cancer. Estee Lauder has also integrated YouTube, Tumblr, and Foursquare into the campaign, with photos and videos of illumination events and a Foursquare page listing them all with tips for checking in at the events.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure also has a Facebook app for it’s What I would Have Missed campaign. The video campaign encourages people to upload videos about what you would have missed had you or a loved one not been screened for breast cancer. Among the videos are touching stories about child births, weddings, graduations, and other experiences. The goal of this campaign is to promote early detection and encourage everyone to get screened.

Finally, lots of brands are supporting Breast Cancer Awareness Month more traditionally with donations, but with a social media twist. Companies such as Wirefly and ParknPool are pledging to donate a certain amount of money to Susan G. Komen for the Cure for every new Facebook fan they gain during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Tags: breast cancer awareness, breast cancer awareness month, social good, social media
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Social For the Cure: Building Communities

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

If you didn’t already know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. It’s the time of the year that pink starts showing up everywhere. Pink ribbons are tied onto lampposts, NFL players are wearing pink on the field, and newspapers are being printed on pink paper, all to raise awareness for breast cancer. Social media has proven to be an extremely effective way of raising awareness for any cause.

There have been several creative campaigns that have brought people on social media together to raise awareness for breast cancer. Do you remember seeing “I like it on…” Facebook statuses last year? That was a social media campaign to unite women against breast cancer. There was also a campaign where women posted the color of their bra as their Facebook statuses. Earlier this month, #nicknamesforbreasts was trending worldwide on Twitter to raise awareness for breast cancer in a fun way.

One campaign for cancer awareness actually set a world record: the Guinness World Record for the “Most Widespread Social Network Message in 24 hours”. The record was set in 2009 by Everywhere from Atlanta, Ga. for having 209,771 unique mentions of #beatcancer on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Sponsors donated a certain amount for each mention, raising more than $70,000. In 2010 they attempted to beat their own record and while they did not succeed, the website still displays new mentions of #beatcancer on social media.

Besides raising awareness about breast cancer, social media is also a resource for people fighting breast cancer. There are countless blogs about living with breast cancer and raising awareness. There are also forums to connect and inform people, such as the weekly #BCSM Twitter chat.

One unique website discovered is Cancer Be Glammed, offering resources on everything from mastectomy fashions to blog posts. The website is dedicated to finding stylish fashions for women undergoing cancer treatment. The site also has a guide that addresses the challenges of dressing and looking your best to help you feel your best during cancer treatment. The owners of the site also provide advice and inspiration through the site and it’s social media channels.

As social media continues to gain even more momentum it will become an invaluable resource for those affected by cancer, from patients to friends and family. Have you heard of any other great online communities that have to do with cancer awareness?

Tags: breast cancer awareness, breast cancer awareness month, social good, social media
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3 Ways to Interact on LinkedIn

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

A social media revolution seems to be happening all around us. But as companies are rushing to embrace social media, they frequently lose focus. Everyone says that your business needs to utilize social media more, but how many people tell you how? This post is part of a series on different ways you can use social media to interact with your customers.

LinkedIn is known as a great tool for developing your personal brand, but that’s not all its for! LinkedIn is also a great tool for businesses. As you develop your company’s presence on LinkedIn, here are three things you should be focusing on.

1. Complete your company profile. - If you haven’t already set up your company’s profile on LinkedIn, check out this guide because it’s something you should do as soon as possible. Your company profile should have a good description of your company, keywords, your logo, location, etc. It should be as complete as possible. In addition to this basic info about your company, you can also highlight products your company offers and even get recommendations from customers. You can even post status updates from your company’s page, up to 500 characters long. The updates support text as well as pictures, videos, and links.

2. Participate in groups. - Creating and joining LinkedIn groups is important to find people to connect with. Participating in groups, and especially creating your own, can give you lots of new leads. You should join groups related to your industry as well as regional groups as a way to connect with other businesses in your region. Also think about what sort of groups your target customer may join. Groups are a place to find new information and learn more, as well as to find new connections.

3. LinkedIn Answers. – Answers is a tool that not many people know about, making it even more valuable to those who do. Answering questions builds credibility and can also generate leads. You can even subscribe via RSS to questions from categories you have the most expertise in. Asking questions yourself can connect you to more experts. Social Media Examiner suggests that when answering questions, research the person asking the question and tie a personal response into your answer, suggest other places to go for more information, and invite them to connect for further discussion.

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Halloween Tricks and Treats on Social Media

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

Halloween and social media could be a match made in heaven. Social media can be a perfect match for almost any activity, but it can really pump up Halloween spirit. Lots of people, including myself, care more about Halloween than their own birthdays and spend crazy amounts of time planning their costumes. It’s tough when you have all this Halloween spirit and your friends and family don’t appreciate the holiday as much as you do.

But have no fear, Halloween fanatics! Social media has embraced the fun and festive holiday as it has so many things, from fashion to sports. We can stop trying to get our friends to care more about Halloween and take to social media to find each other! Here are some ways social media has celebrated Halloween:

Social media and tech themed Jack-o-lanterns – In the past few years, traditional Jack-o-lanterns have gone out of style. People get more creative with their carving, and some awesome social media-themed pumpkins are the result. Some popular ideas have been the Android logo, the Twitter Fail Whale, and Angry Birds. This year, Mashable is even having a contest for the best social media/tech Jack-o-lantern! The prize is a bunch of Mashable swag, making me wish I had better carving skills.
“Liking” Halloween costumes on Facebook – For the first year, costume websites such as HalloweenCostumes.com are encouraging customers to “like” costumes on their sites. Doing so can shout to all your Facebook friends “I found this costume first, so no one copy me!” Clicking “Like” for lots of costumes can give your Facebook friends ideas for their own costumes, too. Personally, I wouldn’t share a picture of my costume with anyone before the big night!
Trending costumes - People are also dressing up as popular social media icons, as well as actual social media platforms! It’s pretty popular to cut a square into a big piece of cardboard and go as your Facebook profile. People also dress up as popular memes and personalities. You can go as “duh-winning” by dressing up as Charlie Sheen, or as a Rickroll. Take a look at these 15 costume ideas inspired by memes and social media.
Chat with author of Goosebumps - R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps series, will be hosting a 2-hour live chat on Scholastic’s Facebook and Twitter accounts on Friday, October 28. He will be offering followers jokes, trivia, and Halloween ideas, as well as answering questions asked by followers.

Tags: Facebook, halloween, holidays, social media, trending topics, Twitter
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3 Ways to Interact on YouTube

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

We have already talked about Facebook and Twitter, the most obvious social media platforms to utilize for business. But other social networks can be just as effective.

YouTube and other video hosting websites provide you with an environment different from other social networks. Here are some important things to do to develop your YouTube presence.

1. Organize your channel. – First things first: if your YouTube channel is not organized and set up strategically, you will not see results. Use playlists to sort your videos into groups, either by topic or by type of video. Also remember to use SEO for your channel. A lot of SEO practices can be transferred very easily over to YouTube search. Use keywords in your video titles and descriptions, and make sure to use tags. Lastly, make sure there are calls to action on your channel and in your videos. Do you want viewers to head over to your website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed after watching your videos? Then point them there.

2. Join/start conversations. – Just as with Facebook and Twitter, you cannot wait for someone to interact with you, you need to go searching for interaction. Find channels relevant to your industry/products and become friends with them. Just as with other social networks, you can friend users. You can also like videos and comment on them.

3. Create the right kind of content. – Similar to any other social network, your content must be specially catered to a certain medium. Do not just post advertisements, focus on more fun and casual content. Good ideas for content can be podcasts or webisodes, customer testimonials, ways for customers to make the most out of your products, and how-to/customer service videos.

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