Hangars have total number of Facebook likes displayed... C&A

Would you be more likely to buy an item?

http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/3694/real-time-facebook-likes-in-clothes-hangers

About

Jeremiah Owyang
SF, Silicon Valley

Industry Analyst
Altimeter Group Client Disclosure Policy

Another new social market segment emerges - Social Performance

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2012/05/04/a-new-category-defined-social-p...

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1009011&R=1009011

This could save thousands of lives....

Social media is a great tool for measuring consumer sentiment -- if you’re using the right “listening platform.”

Aiding in the decision process, Forrester has released a 64-criteria evaluation of enterprise “listening” vendors, which it breaks down by product fit, customer success, and Forrester client demand.

Fresh off its acquisition of Cymfony, Visible Technologies shared the top spot with Radian6 thanks to their flexible dashboards and inventive road maps. “The landscape consists of many strong performers,” according to Zach Hofer-Shall, social intelligence analyst at Forrester, and lead author of the report.

Additional standouts included Attensity with its data-processing focus; Converseon with its research reporting; Networked Insights with its focus on media planning and buying; NM Incite with its consulting services; SDL with its data collecting; and Synthesio with its international expertise.

Whichever vendor marketers choose, Hofer-Shall insists that social intelligence -- or the process of turning social media into actionable business insights -- requires some level of technology assistance.

“The social Web is simply too big, too fast, and too full of irrelevance and spam to manage alone,” Hofer-Shall says. Forrester eliminated vendors that had limited customer references, and products that didn’t fit the scope of its evaluation.

Most listening platforms help capture social data, manage and analyze its content through text analytics, and deliver insights in dashboards and reporting services.

Going forward, businesses evaluating the listening platform market have a tough task ahead, according to Hofer-Shall. Hundreds of offerings are competing for attention, selling solutions to simplify social media.  “Differentiating among vendors in the crowded landscape can be difficult and, due to recent market movements, is only getting more complicated," he says.

Increased competition has let to industry consolidation. Along with Visible Technologies recently taking Cymfony off the table, Attensity bought Biz360 in April 2010; Lithium Technologies absorbed Scout Labs in May 2010; and SDL acquired Alterian in early 2012.

What’s more, while Radian6 still operates under its same name, it now sits under its parent company Salesforce.com following the 2011 acquisition.

Some familiar and unfamiliar names here... many of which don't complete head to head at all.

What is certain is that the fragmentation of how social is being used by businesses has set the requirements for this many specialty vendors

Full Whitepaper available with Forrester subscription.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/173189/forrester-rates-top-list...

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Demystifying_social_media_2958

McKinsey has produced this 10 page white paper on the consumer journey in social media - broken into 4 steps, Monitor, Respond, Amplify, Lead.

While academic in nature, there are some valuable insights in this piece worth absorbing.

Bingo and Facebook games have never been synonymous with real cash which is why these $25 winnings seam more like testing the waters than substantial prizes. Will be interesting to see if virtual cash gaming can translate to other awards...

http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2012/03/21/pirate-cove-bingo-mixes-social-gamepl...

You are going to see MUCH more of this...

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2167206/-commerce-giants-amazon-ebay-add-pi...

This is a big finding and I suspect something that was probably inadvertent and a side product of Timeline. Thats me being optimistic as it is not in Facebook's best interest to penalize the 3rd party apps designed to produce more content more often.

I understand FB wanting more native content publishing through their platform directly as it creates a demand to use FB analytics tools and draws more advertising impressions and views. I can only hope that this study highlights that FB is under scrutiny and should resolve this - or find a very unhappy small business and SMMS community...

Lets watch this space, shall we?

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32124/Facebook-Content-Published-...:+HubSpot+%28HubSpot%29

Very encouraging news to see that not only has Buddy broken through to begin the process of rich application hosting into YouTube - but that this will show a precedent for other social networks like Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest to possibly require opening their platforms. This is not entirely new however as thisMoment www.thismoment.com has been aggregating functionality through their iframe player into YouTube for some time.

This could open up the social as a new gateway (dare I say portal) into any number of rich experiences beyond the native function of their platform, eg in this case, a social game or rich experience inside YouTube.

Supports the concept of 'transferable audiences' - where a community once aggregated, can then be redirected to other marketing endeavours and destinations via a social gateway.

Excited for the possibilities here... ! Will be watching closely.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/03/youtube-channel-apps/#

http://www.freundevonfreunden.com/interviews/stephane-vacher/

Interview

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/21/wildfire/

Wildfire has had huge growth in rev, employees and clients. The key is the self-service model of intuitive plug and play modules that fit right into social networks brand pages like Facebook. The other key is focusing on the huge swath of SME (small medium enterprises) who need a quick fix, without the overhead of an agency... Its Salesforce for social multi-markteting...

In case you missed this last year... even more relevant now as brands continue to expand their use of Open Graph Objects and Open Graph Actions.

Love the section identifying MCDonalds using OGO to retarget hand raisers by posting offers and coupons in their Newsfeed. The use of Open Graph Objects and Open Graph Actions across the web is the most powerful way one can bring sizable social audiences into the .com experience.

You are going to see smart marketers using this more and more...!

4 Tips for Creating Your LinkedIn Company Page

By Stephanie Sammons
Published March 13, 2012

Does your business have a LinkedIn company page?

Keep reading for tips to create and grow a following for your LinkedIn company page.

Why LinkedIn Pages?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. The network has 150 million members worldwide, and is adding 10 new members every 5 seconds!

LinkedIn is a publicly traded company now (symbol LNKD), which means that information about their revenues, operations and earnings are publicly available.

You can gain a lot of insight about a public company by following their investor relations communications to better understand how the business is growing, and what the areas of focus are for the company.

For example, 50% of LinkedIn’s revenues come from hiring solutions, and 30% are derived from marketing solutions. This means that a total of 80% of revenues for LinkedIn come from brands, corporations and businesses. The remaining 20% of revenues come from premium member subscriptions. All areas of the business are growing very rapidly (triple-digit growth).

Also, keep in mind that LinkedIn has a more educated and affluent audience than some of the other popular social media sites for business.

Given that the majority of LinkedIn’s revenues are derived from companies and brands, LinkedIn company pages are going to continue to grow in importance and relevance for the network.

Jonathan Lister, LinkedIn’s VP of North American sales for marketing solutions, was recently interviewed on Business Insider and had the following to say about LinkedIn company pages:

“The product we are most bullish on is a product that allows members to follow companies, and companies to message members.”

Also referring to LinkedIn company pages, Lister says,

“We’re seeing some of our highest engagement rates across the board on status updates to members.”

Bottom line? Build a LinkedIn company page for your business now! Invest your time and resources where LinkedIn is investing their time and resources.

Building Your Company Page

To build your LinkedIn company page and take advantage of all of the features offered, review this article: 5 Tips for Using the New LinkedIn Company Pages.

The newest feature of company pages is the ability to post a status update. That status update can be viewed in the streams of your followers. If you don’t have followers for your company page, your status updates won’t get any visibility outside of your company page itself.

In order to build followers for your LinkedIn company page, you will have to run some campaigns such as:

• notify your employees to follow your page,
• send out an email to your existing contact database to follow your page,
• place a Follow button on your website or blog, and
• cross-promote your page on other social channels, including LinkedIn Groups.

For the purposes of this article, I pulled together a few examples of best practices on companies that are using LinkedIn company pages to grow their visibility on the network and engage followers.

Best Practices for LinkedIn Company Pages

#1: Maximize the Overview Tab on your LinkedIn Company Page

On your company page Overview tab, only the top portion of your company description is visible. You need to make the most of this real estate.

HubSpot has done an awesome job of this. Not only do they give you a reason to follow their company page, but they also provide a call to action to keep you on the company page by driving you over to their Products tab.

On the Products/Services tab of the HubSpot company page, you will find a “Free Demo” call to action for HubSpot software, and you will find a list of free eBooks and webinars. These are all calls to action that generate qualified leads for the company!

HubSpot uses the valuable Company Overview real estate to build followers and convert them to leads.

#2: Create Interesting LinkedIn Company Page Updates

Status updates that either create dialogue (grow your visibility) or contain a call to action (generate leads) are the most effective forms of updates.

Sure, company news updates or blog posts are great from time to time, but the updates that get the most visibility are going to get members talking. For every like, comment or share by your page followers, that update has the potential to go viral and provide your business with significant exposure!

Here are a couple of examples of LinkedIn company page updates that created dialogue or contained a call to action:

A recent “engaging” status update from LinkedIn’s own company page:

Watch LinkedIn's own company page updates for tips on engaging your page followers!

Here’s a “call to action” company page status update from HubSpot:

Clicking on this company page status update takes you directly to a landing page to download the handbook!

Here are some additional suggestions that have worked well in helping company page status updates “go viral”:

• Donate to charity in exchange for followers
• Hold a contest or a drawing
• Showcase compelling stats or data
• Ask for a “like” or a “share” with the update
• Use catchy images and/or videos in your updates

#3: Encourage and Showcase Your Products or Services

When LinkedIn members visit your company page, they can see which of their network members have recommended your products or services.

When a member recommends your products or services, their network connections are notified and the recommendation also lives on your page (you can control which ones are visible).

When visiting HubSpot's Products/Services tab, I can view members of my network who have already written a recommendation!

You can easily ask your best customers to recommend your products or services through the LinkedIn “Request Recommendations” module. This can be found on a specific Product page. See the example below.

• Navigate to the specific Product page and click the “Request Recommendations” button.

Use the "Request Recommendations" button to easily ask connections to recommend a product or service.

• Fill in the “To” box with names of your connections (this field will prepopulate, and the message can be edited).

A pop-up window will appear with a prepopulated message asking for a recommendation!

#4: Use LinkedIn Ads

You might consider utilizing LinkedIn social ads to build company followers and/or recommendations for your products or services.

LinkedIn’s social ads are still affordable, and can be very powerful for driving visibility. You can run a LinkedIn social ad to ask members to follow your company or recommend your products or services, and you can strategically target these ads. (You can also run targeted ads to build group membership.)

Here's an ad that asks readers to recommend or share HP products.

In reviewing company case studies on LinkedIn, much success with LinkedIn company pages is  a function of Followers + Engaging Updates + Product/Service Recommendations.

In addition, evaluate whether an investment in social recommendation ads or follower ads is worthwhile and appropriate for your company and has also contributed to the success of the companies in the case studies.

Use LinkedIn Company Pages

Right now I believe there is a tremendous window of opportunity for small- to medium-sized companies to significantly grow visibility and market share on LinkedIn because there is little competition. Many companies are not yet utilizing LinkedIn company pages to their full extent, and many more have not begun to consistently update their company page status. The stream is not yet crowded. Think of the early days of Facebook pages—now almost every business has a Facebook page and it is very difficult to get into the news feed of your fans.

It makes sense to invest where LinkedIn is investing. LinkedIn company pages are only going to grow in significance, and if your audience is there (influential, affluent, educated members), you must build and activate your company presence!

What do you think? Are you using LinkedIn company pages? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

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Tags: company page, linked ads, linkedin, linkedin call to action, linkedin case studies, linkedin company page, linkedin overview tab, linkedin request recommendations, linkedin social ads, linkedin status updates, lnkd, stephanie sammons

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