Posts Tagged ‘Mari Smith’
Shareaholic Becomes a (Top Notch) Content Curator
Thursday, November 8th, 2012Shareaholic, a content discovery and sharing tools vendor, yesterday announced Shareaholic Channels, a new way to find the most relevant, fresh content based on topic. Of the more than 200,000 publishers who use Shareaholic tools (such as social sharing buttons at the bottom of this post), the company selected the top 25 bloggers in each of the following seven categories to feature:
- • Food
- • Parenting
- • Fitness
- • Fashion & Beauty
- • DIY
- • Social Media Marketing
- • Personal Finance
Who is Shareaholic? According to the company’s website:
“Founded in 2008, Shareaholic has quickly grown from a ‘nights and weekends’ project to a fast-growing VC backed company that today is the leader in making content discovery & sharing on the web a simple, delightful and elegant experience for readers while providing powerful tools to content publishers to measure, analyze and improve the effectiveness of their content to drive even more visibility, traffic, leads and views.
Through web browser extensions, open platform APIs, and one of the largest and fastest growing networks of content publishers, Shareaholic reaches over 270 million people across every continent each month. Or put another way, if Shareaholic was a country, it’d be the 4th largest country in the world.”
The company’s products include tools for browsers, websites (including WordPress plugins), analytics and developers. It’s been featured in publications including TechCrunch, Mashable, ClickZ, Search Engine Land and Fast Company.”
We’re honored that Shareaholic chose to include Webbiquity among its top 25 sources for the Social Media Marketing channel, along with an impressive list of bloggers including Peg Fitzpatrick, Jayme Soulati, Mari (“rhymes with Ferrari”) Smith, Shelly Kramer, Dan Zarella, Janet Aronica, Pam Sahota and Darren Herman.
With Channels, Shareaholic now joins the ranks of leading content curators like AllTop, Social Media Today, B2B Marketing Zone, Business2Community and Social Media Informer. Check it out!
“Oursourcing” – Typo or New Concept?
Thursday, May 26th, 2011I was writing some web copy for a client the other day when I accidentally typed “oursourcing” instead of “outsourcing.” Now, being that I don’t exactly type with the fluid grace of a classical pianist, I make typos all the time. But this one caught my eye. It seemed like it should be a word.
I envision it meaning something beyond doing it yourself, but less formal than outsourcing and less chaotic than crowd-sourcing. Along the lines of:
oursourcing (n): collaboration between a small group of individuals inside and outside of an organization to perform a specific task for mutual benefit.
The keys are that the individuals involved come from more than one organization, and that there is mutual benefit in the project. The recent collaboration between me and Cheryl Burgess on the Nifty 50 Top Women on Twitter and Top Men on Twitter posts would be a small example of oursourcing. The Social Media Examiner blog (a collaboration between Mike Stelzner, Mari Smith, Chris Garrett, Denise Wakeman, Cindy King, Casey Hibbard and Jason Falls) is a larger example. The steering committee behind the B2B Twitterer of the Year Awards would be a larger example still.
It could be the way a harried marketing manager with no time to produce a corporate blog could get this done, spreading the work between individuals from other departments and outside the organization. It could, alternatively, be used to create an un-corporate blog; an industry blog co-written by individuals from different but non-competitive firms in the same industry speaking to the same audience.
Or it may be just a typo. What do you think—is there any need for this “word?” Is it a concept that has legs, or only a result of fat fingers?
The Nifty 50 Top Women of Twitter for 2011
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011Few phenomena have ever spread as far and grown as rapidly as social media; obviously, this has tapped into something essential to our nature. What is it? The answer may come from the email marketing field. According to a recent study by email service provider Aweber, four simple words virtually guaranteed to get an email opened are: “You are not alone.”
That is what has driven social media adoption. From freedom seekers living under oppressive regimes connecting with each other and with people around the world who support them, to individuals with uncommon viewpoints or highly specialized professional interests connected with the like-minded anywhere on the globe, social media is about not being alone. It’s a way to find and form relationships with others who share our particular interests and passions, whether down the street or on other continents; interesting people with whom there has been no practical way to engage before.
Talking recently with Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess)—partner and CMO at Blue Focus Marketing, a B2B social branding consultancy firm in Bridgewater, New Jersey; 2011 & 2010 winner of the Twitter Shorty Awards in Marketing; and author of the Blue Focus Marketing Blog—we were both struck by how many of the same people we know through social media (and we both learned about some interesting new people to follow as well). Many of these were other B2B marketers, but others were social media experts, journalists, PR professionals, or just plain fascinating personalities.
Cheryl and I thought it would be a great idea to collaborate on this special social media project—and so the process began for creating the 2011 #Nifty50 List of Top Twitter Women. We decided to recognize and share the names of some of these noteworthy individuals with our respective readers and followers, starting today with 50 remarkable women (just in time for Mother’s Day, as we’re pretty certain that every woman on this list either is a mom, has a mom, knows someone who’s a mom, or some combination thereof).
One source of inspiration was Twitter’s Top 75 Badass Women by Diana Adams (@adamsconsulting) and Amy D. Howell (@HowellMarketing), a list on which Cheryl was honored. Though it’s a remarkable list, to keep ours distinct we haven’t duplicated any of Diana and Amy’s picks.
Next month, we are following up with our list of 50 men, just in time for Father’s Day. This list will be posted on Cheryl Burgess’ Blue Focus Marketing Blog. Whatever your role in social media, we hope you find this list valuable in expanding your knowledge and your network.
Jennifer Aaker
@aaker
Jennifer is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School or Business, and author of The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change
Diana Adams
@adamsconsulting
Diana is a USC grad now based in Atlanta. She heads up Adams Consulting Group, a technical services firm specializing in Apple Macintosh desktops, servers and laptops. Diana writes for BitRebels.com and InkRebels.com, and as noted above, her post on Twitter’s Top 75 Badass Women was one source of inspiration for this #Nifty50 list. She’s smart, personable, sometimes controversial and never dull.
Alicia Arenas
@AliciaSanera
Hailing from San Antonio, Alicia is founder and CEO of Sanera, a professional development and training firm for sales and business leaders. She describes herself as a “small business coach, speaker, corporate trainer, blogger, singer, lover of life, dreams, family and God.” Alicia is a warm and outgoing social media pro and creator of March Marketing Madness.
Allison Mooney
@allimooney
Allison lives in the New York City area and works with the Marketing team at Google to explore the changing face of media, mobile and consumer behavior, drive new thinking internally, and communicate Google’s visionary concepts to wider audiences.
Ambal Balakrishnan
@Ambal
Ambal is co-founder of ClickDocuments, based in Silicon Valley. She’s an entrepreneur, marketer, blogger, and alum of Wharton and Purdue. Her Connect the Docs blog—frequently featured on the B2B Marketing Zone—is a platform for her own thought leadership content as well as frequently solicited insights from other B2B bloggers.
Amber Buhl
@amberbuhl
Director of Sales for @klout. Though fairly new to Twitter, Amber is active and highly engaging, and her following is likely to grow quickly. A USC grad, Amber’s past includes stints at Hulu, Yahoo!, and the E! Entertainment Network.
Amy Nelson
@AmyPioneerPress
Amy serves as social media editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press as well as the Features/Travel editor for the newspaper. She’s an informative and prolific Twitterer, and active in Twin Cities social media.
Ardath Albee
@ardath421
A B2B marketer, strategist, writer and Author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. Friend, mentor, and source of inspiration. Also an expatriate Minnesotan now living in southern California (we miss her, but can’t blame her).
Angie Schottmuller
@aschottmuller
Interactive Minnesotan skilled in web strategy, conversion rate optimization (CRO), e-commerce, SEO, social media, QR codes (she knows a lot about QR codes), design, UX, analytics and inbound marketing. Angie is also a Search Engine Watch columnist and speaks at national events including SMX, SES, and OMS.
Becky Denniston
@Becalynd
Expert Community Manager with the Focus Expert Network, a network of thousands of leading business and technology experts who answer questions and post thought leadership content. Becky is also an MBA Candidate at San Francisco State University with a strong appetite for Social Media and Marketing.
Jenara Nerenberg
@bopsource
Jenara is an Asia-based filmmaker, organic farmer, and freelance journalist for Fast Company magazine and CNNGo, as well as a Harvard and Berkeley grad. She’s interviewed the famous and not-so-famous from high fashion superstars to up-and-coming designers to UN leaders, literary giants, cashmere producers, and royal mistresses, and her work has also appeared in TIME, BlackBook Magazine, and NextBillion.
Maria Popova
@brainpicker
Brooklyn-based Maria calls herself an “interestingness curator and semi-secret geek obsessed with design, storytelling and TED.” She’s also the editor of Brain Pickings and writes regularly for Wired UK magazine, The Atlantic and Design Observer.
Connie Bensen
@cbensen
Connie is the Community Strategist for the Alterian (formerly Techrigy) SM2 social media monitoring platform. She’s been named by Forbes.com as one of 20 top Women Social Media & Marketing Bloggers. Connie recently migrated from the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota to much balmier climate of Minneapolis.
Deirdre Breakenridge
@dbreakenridge
Diedre is the president of Mango! Marketing, author of PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences
Deborah Weinstein
@DebWeinstein
Deb is a journalist-turned-PR pro. She’s president of Strategic Objectives, an award-winning PR agency in Toronto. And she’s energetic and inspirational on Twitter.
Eileen O’Brien
@EileenOBrien
Eileen has more than 14 years of digital healthcare marketing experience. She is an opinion leader on social media, and has been invited to speak at industry conferences and quoted in publications. As @eileenobrien she moderates the #SocPharm tweetchat on Wednesdays at 8 pm EST which discusses pharma marketing and social media.
Ekaterina Walter
@Ekaterina
Oregon-based Ekaterina is a corporate social media strategist as well as a “speaker, connector (and) passionate marketer.” She’s also a frequent guest-poster who’s written bookmarkable pieces like 9 Ways to Sell Social Media to the Boss.
Ellen Hoenig Carlson
@Ellenhoenig
Based in New Jersey, Ellen is focused on simplifying consumer and healthcare marketing for “elegant solutions in a complex world.” Though she writes mainly on pharma-related subjects, her blog topics also include branding, family, fundraising, innovation, leadership, and Twitter.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen writes for Fast Company magazine and helps run the 30 Second MBA site.
Elise Segar
@Esegar
Connecticut-based Elise is active in social media, an enterprise technology sales and business development pro who is passionate about inside sales and sales strategy. She’s a fellow member of the #Lebronians team “drafted” by Robert Rose in FollowFriday & Who’s The Lebron In Your Strategy – Maybe It’s You.
Gail Nelson
@gail_nelson
CMO with Siegel + Gale, a brand strategy, customer experience and design consulting agency in New York.
Gini Dietrich
@ginidietrich
CEO of Chicago PR agency Arment Dietrich, author of spinsucks.com, Vistage member, author, speaker, communicator and writer of amazingly entertaining and insightful rants like Get Rich Quick! Lose Weight Tomorrow!.
Gretchen Rubin
@gretchenrubin
Based in New York City, Gretchen is the best-selling author of The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Heidi Cohen
@heidicohen
Heidi is a fascinating marketer who shares practical advice about marketing and life from New York, NY.
Jill Konrath
@jillkonrath
Minnesota-based keynote speaker, sales trainer, motivator, creator of fresh strategies for selling to crazy-busy people; author of SNAP Selling (#1 Amazon sales book) and Selling to Big Companies
Judy Grundstrom
@JudyGrundstrom
Minnesota social media rock star, Business Development Director at Pixel Farm Digital, founder of the annual Twin Cities Top 10 Titans in Social Media awards, talk show regular on myTalk 107.1, and never boring.
Karen Emanuelson
@KarenEman
Karen heads Reciprocate LLC, a small business marketing consultancy in Minneapolis. She’s an expert in social media marketing (particularly LinkedIn optimization), a small business advocate, trainer, speaker and coach. She’s active in local community and business organizations as well as social media.
Katie Rosman
@katierosman
Katie reports on technology and pop-culture for one of the world’s greatest newspapers—the Wall Street Journal—and is the author of If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, a Daughter, a Reporter’s Notebook
Eve Mayer Orsburn
@LinkedInQueen
Eve is the author of Social Media for the CEO: The Why and ROI of Social Media for the CEO of Today and Tomorrow
Lisa Petrilli
@LisaPetrilli
Based in Chicago, Lisa is CEO of C-Level Strategies Inc, CEO Connection Co-Chair, Leadership & Executive Marketing Consultant, and #LeadershipChat co-Founder. Like Elise Segar and Cheryl Burgess, Lisa is a star of the #Lebronians team.
Liz Strauss
@LizStrauss
Liz is the founder of SOBCon, a brand strategist and leadership trainer based in Chicago. She’s also an insightful, prolific and generous social media presence.
Lorna Li
@lornali
Officially, an expert in inbound marketing, online visibility and personal branding, via social media, SEO and SEM. Also big on green business marketing. Unofficially – friendly, smart, and writer of many highly bookmarkable blog posts.
Lucretia M. Pruitt
@LucretiaPruitt
Living in and tweeting from beautiful Denver, Lucretia refers to herself as a “random muse, speaker, ex-CIS Professor, social media devotee, geek, mom, wife, & insomniac.” Lucretia is a highly engaging and sophisticated observer of technology developments.
Lisa Grimm
@lulugrimm
Digital PR Specialist for the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, Lisa describes herself as “a gal constantly awed by the intricacies of human behavior. Love my family, peeps, dogs, film, food and learning.”
Mari Smith
@MariSmith
Mari (like Ferrari) describes herself as a “passionate leader of social media, relationship marketing and Facebook mastery,” but most of us know her as the ultimate guru-ess of Facebook marketing and co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day
Missy Berggren
@MarketingMama
A phenomenally busy yet amazingly prolific blogger, Missy is a marketing pro at healthcare network Allina, co-founder of the Minnesota Blogger Conference, and is also active social media as the MarketingMama.
Martine Hunter
@martinehunter
Idea generator, b2b marketing professional, creative director, process engineer and writer at MLT Creative in Atlanta, as well as a mother, friend, sister, daughter, diabetic, crocheter and jazz fan. She’s also really nice.
Sally Church
@MaverickNY
Sally is a scientist with Icarus Consultants in New Jersey, a pharmaceutical / biotechnology-focused marketing strategy firm. She blogs about marketing strategy, market research, science, oncology, hematology and immunology.
Michelle Tripp
@michelletripp
Working and tweeting from New York, Michelle is a creative director, brand strategist, and author of The BrandForward Blog. She spends her time exploring the future of advertising, social media, and emerging technologies and just being pretty cool.
Jennifer Preston
@NYT_JenPreston
A staff writer for the New York Times, Jennifer writes about the use of technology and social media in politics, government, and real life.
Susan Kang Nam
@PinkOliveFamily
Splitting her time between New York, Andover (MA) and elsewhere, the dynamic Susan Kang Nam is founder of Cebisu Research Inc., a member of Andover’s Harvard Club, founder of Boston-based career club Salty Legs, “an entrepreneur, former recruiter and non-profit advocate who grew up in Asia (Korea, Japan) and US (Hawaii, California, New Jersey, NYC) and since 1994…using the world wide web exploring different platforms to engage in various of conversations”—and a classical pianist.
Laura Fitton
@Pistachio
Prolific Twitterer, Bostonite, CEO and founder of the oneforty social business software hub, as well as co-author of Twitter For Dummies
Rebel Brown
@rebelbrown
Rebel has been a marketing and business consulting for more than 20 years, is a popular speaker and author of Defy Gravity. She’s also a self-described “spiritual seeker, horse crazy, ski freak, and animal lovin’ nature gal.”
Rebecca Corliss
@repcor
Based in Boston, Rebecca is a singing Inbound Marketer with all-in-one marketing software platform developer HubSpot. She’s also a founder of a cappella group Common Sound. And yes, she is a rock star.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
@RosabethKanter
Harvard Business School Professor, author of SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good
Stacey Acevero
@sacevero
A social media communications manager for PR/social media monitoring provider Vocus in Washington DC, Stacey runs the popular monthly #prwebchat on Twitter. She is a former model, auxiliary member in the U.S. Air Force, and a self-proclaimed “SEO nerd” who loves NASCAR, steak and rock n’ roll. Definitely one of the most awesome and unique bios in social media.
Anita Campbell
@smallbiztrends
CEO of Small Business Trends, an online small biz community reaching over 250,000 each month. Anita tweets from Cleveland, Ohio, the hometown of rock n’ roll.
Liana ‘Li’ Evans
@storyspinner
Liana describes herself as “an online marketing geek girl who loves all things social media.” She’s a top expert in social media and SEO, and the author of Social Media Marketing.
Wendy Blackburn
@WendyBlackburn
Wendy is a blogger and digital marketer focused on the pharmaceutical industry. She’s an executive vice president at at Intouch Solutions, a marketing agency serving the pharmaceutical, animal health, medical device, and similarly regulated industries.
Wendy Marx
@wendymarx
Based in Trumbull, CT, Wendy is an award-winning PR and marketing communications executive who helps B2B companies become well-known brands, and a truly engaging social media personality.
There you have it, the Nifty 50 Women of Twitter for this year. To keep it to 50, we had to leave off some deserving names—it was a tough call. Maybe next year…
Watch next month (close to Father’s Day) for the Nifty 50 Men of Twitter for 2011.
36 (of the) Best Facebook Guides, Stats and Rants of 2010
Monday, January 10th, 2011It’s hard to overstate the impact of Facebook. Having long ago passed MySpace as the most popular social network, Facebook recently replaced Google as the most-visited website in the U.S. It started 2010 with roughly 350 million users and is now on its way to 600 million. Founder Mark Zuckerberg was TIME magazine’s person of the year, was interviewed on 60 Minutes simultaneously with new features being rolled out on the platform, and had a movie made about him and Facebook’s beginnings.
And though a website used primarily by young people to post embarrassing pictures of themselves and by older people to share cute pictures of their progeny would seem an odd venue for selling after-shave or enterprise software, both b2c and b2b marketers have embraced the platform in droves simply due to its incredible scale and reach. So how does a marketer capitalize on this unruly and ever-changing platform to drive business results? How can you stand out from the crowd, grow your fan base, get “likers” to come back to your page, engage your audience, target your prospects, conduct research, and basically prove to the CFO that all of this work isn’t just a colossal waste of time?
Find out here in three dozen of the best Facebook marketing guides of last year—along with some interesting stats and even counterpoints from a few naysayers and holdouts.
Facebook Marketing Tips and Guides
The 12 Best Ways To Customize Your Facebook Pages by TechCrunch
Orli Yakuel reviews a dozen free and fee-based tools for making Facebook page tabs, including Miproapps, TabSite and of course the “pioneer” in this space, Static FBML.
3 reasons your brand doesn’t have more Facebook fans by iMedia Connection
According to Scott Meldrum, “Brands should market their Facebook page in every available channel they can, including their website, landing pages, email communications, and ad creative” among other recommendations for increasing their following and level of engagement on Facebook.
Using Facebook as a Strategic Marketing Channel by Green Buzz Agency
Pointing out that putting up a Facebook page and hoping fans will find you is not a strategy, Erika Jolly Brookes provides a detailed set of tips, considerations and questions to ask yourself when crafting a true Facebook marketing strategy, from developing a creative brief through putting together a “conversational calendar.”
5 Ways for B2B Companies to Engage on Facebook by Social Media B2B
Conceding that Facebook is often viewed as the “red-headed stepchild” of b2b social media marketing and that the world’s largest social network has done a lot of things wrong in from a B2B marketing standpoint, Karlie Justus reminds us that nevertheless, “Facebook has more than 500 million reasons for B2B companies to create and foster an interactive, informative community for employees, partners, customers, retailers and distributors.” She then offers five recommendations for B2B Facebook use including offering a mix of original content and industry news, and asking questions. I’m still not sure that Facebook has more than one effective use for B2B marketing, but Karlie makes an interesting case.
How to target Facebook wall posts to specific fans by Socialbrite
John Haydon provides detailed instructions on how to send Facebook wall posts to specific groups of fans based on location and language. For example, although a significant proportion of the population of Quebec is bilingual, many of those people have a language preference. If you know that and have an upcoming event in that region, you could send separate wall posts in French and English to your Quebec fans based on the language they prefer.
A Blog App for Your Fan Page by Trailblaze Social Media with Josh
Joshua Lyons explains how the Networkedblogs app makes it easy to automatically feed your blog posts through a Facebook fan page tab, and easy for your fans to follow your blog.
How to Design a Kick-Ass Facebook Fanpage by 1stwebdesigner
As more brands jump on the Facebook bandwagon, it’s getting more challenging to stand out from the pack. Piotr Krzyzek recommends using a portrait-size profile picture, creating an opt-in landing page, adding contact information and links everywhere possible, and of course fan interaction and quality content.
Branding & Engagement, pt. 2: My New Favorite Facebook Page by Inkling Media
Ken Mueller uses the example of Dave’s Ace Hardware in Wisconsin to demonstrate how to optimize business engagement on Facebook: be personal, use photos and video, provide great customer service among other things.
Fans are fickle: How to inspire loyalty after the “like” by iMedia Connection
People are busy. They may like your Facebook page, but most won’t come back very often without a reason. Scott Meldrum (again) suggests rewarding loyal fans and customers, targeting your wall posts (see John Haydon’s post above), and responding promptly to questions and comments among other methods to encourage repeat visits.
Facebook SEO by Blind Five Year Old
***** 5 Stars
A.J. Kohn presents a remarkably comprehensive yet understandable guide to taking advantage of the search capabilities within Facebook. As A.J. explains, “This isn’t about optimizing your ‘fan’ page to appear in Google search results, but instead is about optimizing your own site and pages to appear in Facebook search results.”
How To Build Your Facebook Landing Page (If You’re Not A Programmer) by SocialMouths
After explaining why a custom Facebook landing page is important and what can be done with one, Francisco Rosales provides a detailed, richly illustrated 10-step guide for creating a landing page that’s as unique as your business—even if your business isn’t writing code.
7 Simple Tips for Using Facebook to Promote Your Business by Digital Labz
Basic but nevertheless helpful tips for successfully marketing on Facebook, such as adding a Facebook widget to your blog, highlighting your personality, updating your page regularly, and participating on other pages as well.
5 Staggeringly Simple Ways to Create Custom Facebook Landing Tabs by Convince and Convert
“With the exception of baking the ‘like’ button into your website, the best way to generate new fans on Facebook is to create a custom landing tab,” according to Jay Baer, and in this helpful post he reviews five options / apps for creating a custom landing tab on Facebook.
22 Inspiring Examples of Facebook Page Designs by DreamGrow Social Media
Priit Kallas highlights almost two dozen examples of dazzling Facebook design to get your creative juices flowing, like Kit Kat, Victoria’s Secret and Sony, all of which direct new visitors to somewhere other than the brand’s wall page.
26 Tips for Enhancing Your Facebook Page by Social Media Examiner
***** 5 Stars
Need inspiration for new ideas to keep your Facebook page up to date with fresh content? Debbie Hemley offers “26 practical ways to use good content for your Facebook pages, everything from A to Z,” literally–starting with Alltop and business updates and running all the way through YouTube and Zen. Highly creative AND useful!
Facebook Advertising Tricks for B2B Marketers by Buzz Marketing for Technology
Paul Dunay provides three brilliant tips for b2b marketers to optimize their use of Facebook advertising, such as “Put the 20 top companies you want to target into the Workplaces field. Facebook unlike Google works off of the ‘or’ operand not the ‘and’ operand so you can use this to your advantage by placing as many of the companies you want to target into the Workplaces field and thereby target the employees of all of those firms.”
What Happens After the Facebook Like? 20 Tips To Engage Your Audience After the Like by Pam Moore
What happens after someone “likes” your page—will they ever come back? Really? Pam Moore offers 20 tips for making the “like” just the beginning of a Facebook relationship, including developing an editorial calendar for updates (with a mix of different types of content), focusing on value to your audience, and making it fun.
7 Simple Facebook Page Tricks by AboutUs
Kristina Weis supplies helpful instructions for how to do things like target your posts to specific audiences, create a custom URL for your Facebook page and get into your fans’ “top news.”
Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page by Social Media Examiner
Facebook marketing rock star Mari Smith reviews the top 75 Facebook apps that enable you to “customize your landing tabs, add your blog, add videos and photos, add chat, add polls, contests, geolocation, scheduling, email, ecommerce” and much more.
Facebook Changes and New Features
Facebook Rolls Out New Like Buttons For Publishers by All Facebook
Caitlin Fitzsimmons provides a quick rundown of the features of Facebook’s revised “like” button for publishers and differences from the original version.
8 Recent Updates for Facebook Business Pages by Masterful Marketing
Since Facebook changes it interface the way Lady Gaga changes dresses, Debra Murphy attempts to sort things out here, detailing eight changes made in the latter half of 2010 including the ability to remove the creator admin for business pages(critical in the case of employee turnover), ability to view insights per post, and the end of boxes.
Facebook Overhauls Profile Page by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Speaking of changes, Mark Walsh here details the end-of-year changes Facebook made to the profile page, and the implications for users.
Facebook Groups – a Complete Guide by Jesper Åström
Jesper Astrom explains what the new Facebook Groups is, how to create a Facebook Group, what you can do with it, and the benefits and risks of using Facebook Groups.
Facebook Features, pt. 2: A New Way to Invite Fans to Your Business Page by Inkling Media
Ken Mueller (again) writes about a new tool from Facebook to invite fans to “like” business page: “In addition to using the ‘Suggest to Friends’ and ‘Share’ functions…it is now possible to invite people via email. This is especially helpful if you have any sort of business email database. Facebook now allows you to upload email addresses from a variety of platforms in order to send an email to your contacts to invite them to ‘like’ your page,” and shows how to use this new capability.
Facebook Is Becoming Your Company’s New BFF by MediaPost Search Insider
Derek Gordon reports on Mark Zuckerberg’s 60 Minutes interview and simultaneous release of Facebook’s new profile functionality. He outlines the new functionality and speculates on the motivation behind some of the new features.
Facebook Top 10 Lists
Top 10 Facebook Fixes by lifehacker
Noting that you don’t have to use Facebook exactly the same way everyone else does, Spencer E Holtaway offers “ten tweaks to make Facebook better,” such as accessing it from a different client, backing up your account, getting your privacy settings right, and preventing friends from revealing your location.
10 Top Facebook Pages and Why They’re Successful by Social Media Examiner
Amy Porterfield suggests ways to make your company’s Facebook page more popular, interactive and effective by borrowing ideas from highly successful pages from brands like Red Bull, LiveScribe, Oreo and the Travel Channel.
10 Tips & Tricks For Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page by Hongkiat.com
***** 5 Stars
Ever come across a really cool brand page on Facebook and wonder how they created it? Michael Vreeken provides step-by-step instructions on how to use Static FBML to create a custom landing page, embed videos, create a “fans only” content area, insert Flash content or image rollovers, track your fan page visits with Google Analytics and more.
10 Facebook Tabs to Add by ReadWriteWeb
Richard MacManus explains how to create 10 common types of Facebook tabs, including Flickr, Slideshare, Questions and YouTube tabs.
Facebook Statistics
Facebook Added 5 Million U.S. Users In August by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Mark Walsh reports interesting stats on Facebook’s continued growth in the U.S. and elsewhere. For example, Facebook’s membership (as of August) reached 44% of the U.S. population, 13.2 million users in India (still only 1% of the population there)—a 179% increase in the past year—and 3.2% of the rapidly growing Brazilian social network market.
5 Fascinating Facebook Infographics by Rhino SEO Blog
A handful of cool infographics loaded with Facebook facts, stats and trivia such as the fact that Facebook is now available in over 70 languages, hosts over 1.6 million active pages (700,000 of which are for local businesses) which collectively have 5.3 billion fans, has 3.5 billion pieces of content shared on it each week, requires more than 10,000 servers to run, and has more than half a million applications written for it. Collectively, users waste, er, spend, 8.3 billion hours on Facebook each month.
Facebook Commentary and Observations
I Really Don’t Like Everything I “Like” on Facebook by Inkling Media
Ken Mueller notes several situations where you have no choice but to “like” a page or company on Facebook even if you really feel no affinity toward it, such as when conducting research or even to express displeasure with a company’s product or service on their fan page.
Breathtaking Facebook Fan Pages by DesignsMag
Need some inspiration for creating or revamping your Facebook presence? Check out 40 stunning examples of pages for movies, artists, food & beverage brands, fashion and more.
Facebook Skeptics
The Death of Facebook by Geoff Livingston
Asking “Who in their right mind would predict the death of Facebook given its ever increasing dominance?,” Geoff Livingston proceeds to do just that, arguing that it’s only a matter of time before Facebook’s increasing cluttered interface, confusing privacy settings and other issues allow an as-yet-unknown new competitor to eat the leading social network’s lunch. Not sure I buy this, but I do agree with Geoff’s larger point that it’s best not “to become too entrenched on a mega social network like Facebook (or Twitter)” but rather maintain the nimbleness to “move with our community” to new networks as social media tools continue to evolve.
The Facebook Reckoning by Anil Dash
Anil Dash takes Facebook to task for its privacy policies; not weaknesses but conscious choices made by privileged Ivy League founder Mark Zuckerberg, specifically “impos(ing) an extreme set of values on its users without adequately communicating the consequences of those choices.” Anil holds out hope though that Facebook can become more truly inclusive “by engaging more with its users in an honest way about its radical stance on public sharing.” But as Facebook’s popularity continues to expand globally, it’s not clear that Facebook’s ambiguous and confusing privacy policies matter much to users, or to Zuckerberg. And some of the comments following this post are possibly even more thoughtful enlightening than the post itself.
Is Facebook Forever? by iMedia Connection
Andrew Edwards muses about the fates of brands like AOL and MSN, and delves into several reasons why he believes Facebook will follow their path into obscurity, including the fact that it’s a closed system, the observation that the vast majority of the chatter there is inane, and the insight that despite the fact every company on earth thinks it needs a Facebook page, the platform is in the end a poor fit for business (“Most users of Facebook want to look at stuff like baby pictures and make fun of each other”).
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35 (of the) Best Guides to Facebook Marketing, Advertising, Search and More of 2010 (So Far)
Best Facebook Marketing Tips and Guides of 2009
35 (of the) Best Guides to Facebook Marketing, Advertising, Search and More of 2010 (So Far)
Thursday, August 26th, 2010Facebook is an extraordinary phenomenon. Depending on the day, it’s either the #1 or #2 most-visited site on the web. It’s inspired a movie. It has half a billion adherents. And it’s become an imperative point of presence for businesses (or has it?).
Whether you’re anxious to get started marketing on Facebook, already there but looking for better results, or not sure if Facebook is right for your company (despite the eye-popping audience numbers), you’ll find guidance here in some of the best posts on Facebook marketing so far in 2010: tips, tactics and best practices for building Facebook pages, growing your fan (or “like”) base, advertising, optimizing for search, using Facebook apps and tools, and more, from experts like Mari Smith, Lisa Barone, Ching Ya, John Haydon, Brian Carter, Marty Weintraub and Shel Holtz. Also included are a few posts from Facebook proponents, and skeptics, to help you determine if you even really need to be concerned with any of this — or if your social media marketing efforts might be best directed elsewhere.
Facebook Marketing Tips and Tactics
How to set up a Facebook fan page that works by Direct Creative Blog
Dean Rieck shares his top 10 tips for creating a managing a successful business Facebook page, from using FBML to create a landing page to promoting your page through email and your company blog.
How to Better Engage Facebook Fan Page ‘Fans’ by Social Media Examiner
As Mari Smith explains, “There are two primary components to Facebook fan page engagement: 1) Sharing quality, relevant content and 2) inciting comments. In this article I’ll tell you how to best engage with Facebook fans.” Tactics include tying your post frequency to number of fans, creating an editorial calendar and varying the types of content posted.
Facebook Marketing Tips: Make the Most of Your Fan Page by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
Michelle Bowles offers five tips for “making the most of your fan page” such as keeping content fresh, encouraging interaction and offering discounts, promotions or information not available anywhere else.
How to Create a Campaign to Get More Facebook Followers by Proimpact7
Jan Petrovic presents a case study on how Lands’ End used a creative incentive campaign to draw 25,000 additional fans to its page.
5 Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From by OPEN Forum
Matt Silverman shares five examples of brands stretching the boundaries of Facebook to provide a unique experience including Baby Gap and Adidas.
10 Secrets of a Winning Facebook Fan Page by Palmer Web Marketing
Justin Palmer suggests 10 “must-do’s” for Facebook marketing success, like responding to every comment, strategically timing your updates and leveraging your fans to attract more fans.
10 Secrets To Creating Your Brand’s Facebook Presence by All Facebook
In another “10 secrets” post, Christopher Parr shares his tips for brand success on Facebook, such as talking like a friend (not a company), adding value through content, and doing some housekeeping (e.g. keeping your page free of “clutter, profanity, and MafiaWars spammy links”).
Creating Facebook Pages Customers Will Want To Join by Outspoken Media
Opening up with “most fan pages ARE vomit-inducing…but it doesn’t have to be that way!,” the prolific Lisa Barone details four ways to make your customers and prospects on Facebook feel like they are part of something — not just following a self-promoting brand.
9 Ways to Enhance Your Facebook Fan Page by Social Media Examiner
Noting that “Facebook fan pages number among the few social media channels that allow page customization for users,” Ching Ya shares nine great ideas for creating a unique and vibrant Facebook presence. An excellent “what to do” post though a bit light on the “how.”
10 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Page Following by Social Media Examiner
In the sequel to her post above, Ching Ya provides recommendations such as rewarding loyal supporters, leveraging your other social networks and integrating Facebook social plugins with your website in order to build a Facebook fan base.
10 Ways to Create a More Engaging Facebook Page by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
“The average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events. This means that aside from all the other Facebook friend activity that goes on, your page is one of 60 trying to grab attention a fan’s attention.” How do you do it? This post offers 10 helpful ideas such as using a custom landing page, tagging fans in photos, using contests, and most importantly – persevering.
Facebook’s new functions (and how to leverage them) by iMedia Connection
Doug Akin previews six new features (as of May 2010) in Facebook that enable brands to expand the functionality and engagement potential of their Facebook pages. “If you only look at Facebook as a place to have a fan page, you are missing the greater offering and will likely be sitting on the sidelines when the future arrives.”
The Changing Face of Facebook Marketing – 5 Things you MUST Know by Social Media Today
Shama Hyder writes that “It seems like every day we wake up, Facebook has implemented a new policy or added a new dimension overnight.” Hell for companies and users, heaven for Facebook consultants. But given this environment, Shama outlines the “top five things you need to know about Facebook marketing” about fan pages, ecommerce, ads, apps and other subjects.
Facebook Tabs: What They Are & How to Use Them by ReadWriteWeb
In yet another post about keeping up with Facebook’s continual interface and function changes, Richard MacManus explains the difference between application tabs and boxes, why Facebook made this change, and how to effectively add and use tabs.
11 ways to promote your Facebook Page outside Facebook by John Haydon
Since, and John Haydon notes here, “Most likely, your current presence is much bigger outside of Facebook – especially if your Page is new,” you may want to take advantage of some of the ideas here to promote your Facebook presence elsewhere, such as adding your Facebook page link to your email template, answering webinar follow-up questions on your Facebook wall, and placing a LikeBox on your website.
13 Facebook Page features that will make your day by Socialbrite
***** 5 stars
It’s John Haydon again, this time in video form, answering 13 common yet vexing questions about Facebook like how to edit your thumbnail, how to set up a custom view for new visitors, and how to easily create a custom URL for your Facebook page.
4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook by Mashable
While acknowledging that Facebook may have limited use in b2b marketing, Leyl Master Black nevertheless offers “tips for creating a powerful presence on Facebook that will engage a business audience” such as becoming an industry resource by sharing blog and webinar content, expanding beyond your wall using ecommerce or lead generation promotions, and “lightening up” through the use of humor, quizzes and polls.
Facebook Marketing: Ultimate Guide by SEOmoz
***** 5 stars
Tim Soulo has compiled a fantastic guide filled with best practices and tips for Facebook marketing success, starting with setting up the profile of your “brand ambassador” and progressing through your creating your avatar and adding applications, and ending with using other social media services to promote your presence on Facebook.
Facebook 101 for Business: Your Complete Guide by Social Media Examiner
***** 5 stars
Mari Smith ambitiously provides a “comprehensive guide to using Facebook” from setting up your profile (including Facebook’s mysterious and frequently-changing privacy settings) to making Friend lists to a six-step for building a Facebook business page.
Facebook Advertising
Pay Per Face: 52 Facebook Advertising Tips & Best Practices by Search Engine Journal
Brian Carter uses this post along with a white paper and video to share more than four dozen tips and best practices for Facebook advertising, which he describes as a combination of “AdWords’ copywriting and analytics with image-oriented linkbait.” Among his tips: use CPM bidding, change ads frequently, and “Always test multiple ads. Always. Always.”
10 Tips for Advertising on Facebook by PPC Hero
Christine Laubenstein recommends getting familiar with Facebook’s advertising guidelines, understanding the different ways to target users, and using Facebook’s bid estimator to help you set your bid before diving into advertising on Facebook.
Facebook SEO
How To Rank #1 In Facebook Search In 60 Seconds For Any Term by All Facebook
***** 5 stars
Dennis Yu provides an outstanding tutorial on how Facebook search works, what factors are most important, what to do (and what not to do) to rank highly in Facebook search, and what changes are likely coming to the search algorithm.
Facebook SEO Ranking Factors, 2010 Study Results by aimClear
Marty Weintraub explains, in exhaustive detail, the top ranking factors for “Suggest,” All Results, Pages, Groups, Apps and more. His aside on the Adult Filter in Facebook is NOT safe for work but is quite amusing in a completely inappropriate way.
Facebook Apps and Tools
15 Applications For A Better Facebook Fan Page by Interactive Online
Lucas Cobb lists his favorite tools for boosting the popularity of your brand’s Facebook presence including Static FBML, SlideShare, Reviews and Notes.
12 Applications to Make Your Facebook Page More Engaging by Social Media Today
Sarah Hartshorn recommends Twitter for Pages, Page Maps, Eventbrite and other apps to help “dress up your Page and make it more interesting and fun for your ‘likers’.”
How to Customize Your Facebook Page Using Static FBML by Social Media Examiner
***** 5 stars
As Nick Shin notes, “Maybe you’ve seen those really attractive Facebook pages and wondered, ‘How’d they do that?’” The answer is frequently Static FBML, a uniquely powerful and popular Twitter app, and in this helpful post, Nick walks through how to use it to achieve a variety of effects and accomplish different tasks.
How To Get Traffic from Facebook Social Plugins by Daily Blog Tips
Chris Webb explains how to use the Like Button (for blogs) and Like Box (for Facebook pages) to generate more Facebook traffic.
15 Simple Ways to Integrate Facebook into Your Website by appstorm
Contending that “There are umpteen number of ways to plug websites of any shape & kind into Facebook thereby nurturing a community, encouraging conversations, improving user engagement and increasing page views,” Justin Stravarius presents 15 such options including the Like Box, Echo, Fotobook and Facebook Connect Wizard.
Facebook Marketing Strategy
Ensuring A Successful Corporate Facebook Presence by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Aaron Strout presents what he terms the “four golden rules of creating a successful Facebook presence,” and supports these using Dunkin’ Donuts as an example of Facebook marketing success.
Six questions to ask before launching a Facebook fan page by a shel of my former self
The legendary Shel Holtz proposes half a dozen questions companies should ask before plunging into Facebook in order to avoid looking “lame and clueless to all but the least sophisticated Facebook users.”
Facebook Fans
Why You Can Say Facebook Is Worth $35 Billion With A Straight Face by Business Insider
Jay Yarow uses the theory of cognitive dissonance to explain why “Facebook pages are the best ads in social media.” Facebook pages are ranked against six other ad types such as banners, enewsletters and widgets based on their effects in driving recommendations and purchases.
Facebook Facts The Numbers Are Insane! by PRUnderground
500 million users, 3rd-largest “country” on earth, yeah we’ve all heard the numbers. But sometimes it helps to see them. Alex Miranda presents an infographic of Facebook facts, figures and myths.
Facebook Skeptics
Why Businesses Should Think Twice Before Investing Money or Time in a Facebook Page by Social Media Today
Given Facebook’s never ending stream of changes (many of which seem to break or eliminate earlier features) and ultimate control over all content on the site (no matter how much a business has invested in developing that content), Maggie McGary questions whether it’s really advisable for companies to rely too heavily on this platform.
Does Facebook Work? by iMedia Connection
Noting that “While 49% of marketers surveyed by MarketingSherpa think Facebook is very effective at brand awareness only 12% think it increases sales revenue,” Daniel Flamberg presents statistics and real-world results from leading brands suggesting that whatever the benefits of Facebook marketing, it generally isn’t producing “the kind of results the reach, usage and loyalty of Facebook would otherwise suggest.”
“Does Anything Other Than Facebook Really Matter?” by iMedia Connection
Taddy Hall does such an awesome job of chilling down Facebook fever with the cold water of reality that I’d like to just republish his entire post here, but will limit duplication of his brilliant content to this: “When it comes to how we (marketers) approach Social Media, I’m reminded of the drunk looking for his car keys beneath the street light because the light is better than in the dark alley where he last saw his keys. Sometimes doing what’s easy trumps common sense…Facebook is not just another broadcast media outlet where marketers can buy inventory and interrupt consumers. As P&G’s General Manager for Interactive Marketing and Innovation, Ted McConnell, remarked with characteristic flair, ‘what in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?’” Yes, Facebook works quite well for some companies (particularly large consumer brands), but it’s not always the ideal venue. Do your research (particularly for b2b marketing) and pursue audience quality over quantity.
