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Social Networking is Expanding, Becoming More DecentralizedLast week Facebook and MySpace both announced that they will be allowing users to transplant information to other web sites. This will allow users to share pictures, applications, and information much easier with their friends and family on different web sites.For both companies, this move towards decentralization is a bold step away from the previously "walled garden" approach to their sites. While this type of site has been appealing to advertisers in the past, Facebook is hoping that the move will make them even more powerful by becoming a "command center" for social interaction across the web, thereby increasing their marketing appeal. For advertisers, broadcasting their message through a wider range of social media sites may now become more of a necessity. In fact, simply having a presence in social media will become more of a requirement than a nice-to-have. This move by Facebook and MySpace is pushing the online community towards an even more decentralized, user-driven atmosphere, and only the advertisers that are willing to keep up the pace will truly reap the benefits. Parts of this article were derived from http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OPEN_FACEBOOK Labels: blogging, Social Media Corporate Responsibility in Social MediaChances are that people are talking about your company online. In blogs, forums, and online social networks. And, like any invested businessperson, you want to join the conversation.Great, so time to flood the scene with nothing but gratuitous praise for your company, right? Yes, but only while maintaining a good sense of corporate responsibility. While social media is still somewhat of a "wild west" for corporations, there have already been some examples of what not to do in social media. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was caught trashing the competition and boosting his company on Yahoo's message boards. The result: a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation... and a very public humiliation. And the list goes on. The answer? You can't control what people say online, and you certainly shouldn't try to manipulate the results. The best course of action is to be upfront in your postings, reach out to the bloggers relavent to your business, and treat social media like any other legitimate media outlet. If you do that, then it will be much easier to integrate your company into the social media scene. Parts of this article were derived from http://www.socialsignal.com/tags/social-web Labels: blogging, Online PR, Social Media What's Next?It’s understandable why there’s so much buzz going around Social Media nowadays. Millions of consumers like me are already so deeply immersed into social networks, UGC and brand channels that it’s part of our everyday lives already. In fact, if I had 15 minutes of free time, I would not think twice about spending it online in the social media space: log into my accounts on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Flickr, Multiply, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger, Wordpress, Yelp (whew – did I miss anything?) and before you know it, the 15 minutes had stretched into an hour, or maybe even longer. Last year, a study called Never Ending Friending (commissioned by MySpace, Isobar & Carat) confirmed that majority of users really would check out social networking sites if they had 15 minutes of free time.What does this mean for marketers? First of all, it tells us where we can find our consumers (and consequently, where we should be spending more media money). Second, it tells us that consumers don’t just join these networks for the sake of joining. Consumers actually engage in conversations, build relationships, and spend hundreds of precious online minutes on social media. And last but not least, it tells us that marketers should be doing the same thing because whether we like it or not, social media is now a major part of our media mix. But what’s next? – That’s the question we have to keep asking. What do we do after we set up our profiles, blogs, pages, brand channels? Aside from making sure that there is always fresh and relevant content, we can now use this medium to communicate with the consumers. We do not want to be the static “friend” who never updates his or her site. We want to be the brand/product/company that has a dynamic, cross-functional, multi-connected presence. Profile set-up? Check. Build community with friends and fans and followers? Check. Content-rich, constantly-updated page? Check. Time to start socializing? Yes, please. Because the next thing that marketers need to do is be part of and herald the ongoing conversations in the social media world. So next time you have some free time, think about how you can continue to leverage the power of social media to help your brand or company. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to check out those Facebook updates too. Labels: blogging, POV, Social Media Facebook Launches Keyword Measurement ToolGood afternoon everybody,Facebook.com, one of the first and most popular social media sites, has launched a keyword measurement tool called Lexicon. When users enter a term or phrase into the search bar, Facebook then returns a graph that counts the number of instances a word occurred on profiles, groups and walls in its network. The keyword data goes back 6 months and can be tracked to the day. By far the best feature of Lexicon is its keyword comparison functionality. Users can compare up to 5 keywords at once. In a comparison between iPod and Zune, iPod is clearly garnering more buzz, so no surprises there. Overall this will be a great tool to help companies better tailor their social media efforts to what people are talking about. The Facebook Lexicon can be found at http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/ Parts of this posting were derived from http://www.marketingvox.com/facebook-launches-lexicon-tool-for-measuring-buzz-038138/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink - Bill Holmes Labels: blogging, Social Media Wordpress SEO Plugins and Other Quick Blog TipsIf you are going to use Wordpress as your blog platform, here are a few plugins I would recommend for SEO:AllinOne SEO Pack - use this plugins to quickly insert the Meta description tag and Meta keyword tag into your post. Also, you can use it to set a search compliant URL scheme, and eliminate duplicate content by adding "no index" tags where applicable. You can download it from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/#post-753. Google Sitemaps Plugin - install this plugin to automatically generate XML sitemaps and ping Google when a new page is added to your blog. This is a must-have for any blog. You can download it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/#post-766. Google Analytics for Wordpress - will help you to easily connect your blog to your Google Analytics account. I would recommend treating your blog as another website as far as Google Analytics goes. Downloadable from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/#post-2316. ShareThis - use this plugin so that visitors to your blog can send your articles to a friend or submit them to the social web. Downloadable from http://sharethis.com/. Don't forget to register with Feedburner, so you can grab metrics about your RSS subscribers. I would also strongly recommend registering your blog with blog aggregation sites, such as Technorati, to increase your web traffic and inbound links to your blog. Generally, the more you participate in Web 2.0 communities the more traffic you'll drive to your site. Labels: blog, blogging, SEO, web 2.0, wordpress |
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