LinkedIn

5 Social Platforms to Put on Your “Fadar”!

Over the last several years lots of social platforms have come and gone. Some are slowly fading away. It’s really hard to keep track of where to spend your time and energy! 2012 will remain a big year for big players such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn and similarly, we should also expect to see exponential growth for newcomers like Pinterest. However, as newcomers gain momentum, we will start to see other social networks fizzle off. Here are 5 social platforms we think you should put on your “fadar” (aka fading radar):

1. Quora: The question and answer platform was predicted to be the next big thing in 2010. However, half way through 2011 the big buzz surrounding the site slowly started to fade off. The site still receives decent traffic, with an estimate of 500,000 users, however, as new social sites emerge Quora might not be at the top of social minds.
2. Digg: The once beloved site-sharing website has been dying a slow death for several years. It hasn’t been able to compete with sites like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. It is my opinion that it is just a matter of time before it completely fizzles off. A few months ago it did launch a new version of the site, however, it doesn’t seem like users found it very appealing. A couple of years ago a great article would have received on average 3000 Diggs, now you’re lucky if you even get 100.
3. Delicious: This social bookmarking site had everything going for it back in 2005. It was new to the scene and had no real competitors. What happened? As new bookmarking sites started to saturate the market Delicious didn’t reinvent quickly enough. Rumors are it might shut-down or sell its technology.
4. Gowalla: This location-based site was once a fierce competitor for foursquare, both entering the market at about the same time 2 years ago. However, foursquare quickly gained momentum with over 1 billion check-ins to date, leaving Gowalla in the dust. Gowalla’s leadership has now joined forces with Facebook. According to industry insiders, Facebook has not purchased the technology, only the talent. Gowalla will slowly fade out.
5. QR Codes: There’s a huge online debate about whether QR (Quick Response) Codes are slowly starting to die off before they’ve even had the chance to really take off. Some people may think, why would QR Codes be on the “fadar”? I see them everywhere? Well, that’s exactly my point. The ubiquitous use of QR Codes in often ill-conceived marketing efforts, is what might lead to its demise.

What do you think? Do you take issue with any of the above observations? Are there networks or tools you feel should be on the fadar?

Maryam Mehrtash
@socialmaryam

Tags: cool, Delicious, digg, facebook, foursquare, google, gowalla, LinkedIn, pinterest, QR codes, reddit, Social Media, technology, Twitter, youtube

What’s New: Facebook & LinkedIn Ads

The race to innovate and re-engage users through online social ads is on! News about LinkedIn’s new ad formats was released yesterday and not long after, Facebook released news about experimenting with ads that allow users to post comments.

New LinkedIn Ad Formats

One of the new ad formats allows users to include relevant LinkedIn “connections” in the banner ads. This is similar to Facebook’s ad feature.

Another new ad format allows users to show how many people have recommended or follow a company.

NOTE: these new formats are not yet available to everyone.

Facebook Ads with Comments

Facebook’s new ad type allows Facebook users to post comments under the ad. Posting comments on Facebook is not a novel idea, but allowing comments on ads could be an interesting experiment. However, the idea of allowing users to comment on ads may not work out for Facebook. Would an advertiser continue to pay for an ad with negative comments?

The online social advertising space is continuing to evolve. These new ad formats may or may not be a good solution for your company. Consider your company’s objectives, experiment, measure the results and determine if there is a positive ROI.

Victor

Tags: ads, facebook, LinkedIn

LinkedIn DirectAds Advertising

Here’s the scenario. You have a business and you may or may not have a Google Adwords campaign. You’re now thinking about investing in LinkedIn ads and questioning whether or not you should run a LinkedIn DirectAds campaign to promote your business. Here are some things to consider.

Target Audience

Does your target audience include business professionals?

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. Its website highlights that there are 90 million LinkedIn members World wide with 32 million members from the United States.

Advertising Budget

How much capital have you budgeted for online advertising?

LinkedIn campaigns can be created and disabled at any time.
However, there is a minimum $10.00 daily budget and a minimum bid amount ($2.00 for the cost per click payment model and $3.00 for the cost per thousand impressions payment model).

Depending on your ROI on LinkedIn compared to your other advertising programs, LinkedIn may or may not be cost effective for you.

Audience Targeting Options

LinkedIn allows advertisers to target LinkedIn members with the following categories:

• Company size
• Job Function
• Industry
• Seniority
• Gender
• Age
• Geography

Use these settings to ensure you are speaking only to people who may be interested in your business.

A final point to be aware of. LinkedIn ads are display ads which appear to members based on the ad targeting options selected. Display ads typically have a lower click through rate than search ads. Search ads, for example on Google, are displayed to users who search for a specific topic. Display ads may be good for increasing awareness for a business in general, but may have a lower conversion rate than search ads because people who are searching for a topic already have an intention to find information.

LinkedIn may be a good advertising solution for your business. It all depends on your overall online strategy and how this piece of the puzzle fits into the overall plan.

Victor

Photo Credit: Coletivo Mambembe

Tags: advertising, budget, LinkedIn, PPC, Social Media, target audience

Managing Social Media Burnout

A reporter from CTV News came to Magnify Digital today to ask what advice we could offer to people with social media burnout. Turns out, managing time spent on these all-consuming networks is a popular new year’s resolution. You can see why it would be. The problem is there’s no on/off switch for social media. It’s always on. And we have more and more ways to connect to it. Through our computers, our phones, other handheld devices. Never before has social media been so prevalent and accessible.

Here are some tips on how you can reclaim some of your personal time:

• Limit the amount of time you spend on social networks. Even go as far as setting timers, to remind you when to step away.
• If you’re spreading yourself too thin trying to maintain multiple profiles across several networks, ditch one or two. Focus on fewer channels; maybe even just one.
• Consider dropping a friend or acqaintence if they’re too chatty and constantly require too much of your social time online. If that feels too harsh, then resist always giving him/her a response. You’ll train them to stop expecting it… and hopefully, asking for it too.
• On Facebook, turn off your chat function. That way, if you’ve limited yourself to ten minutes on Facebook, you won’t get caught using 8 of those 10 minutes on a chat. To find this function, look to the bottom right of your personal profile page.   If the circle beside chat is green, you’re open for business. Simply click on this to open the chat function, select ‘options’ and ‘go offline’.
• If having a daily presence on social networks is important to you, use tools that can post your content for you. You can pre-schedule messages using tools like Hootsuite to populate your Twitter profile, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many others.
• Likewise, Ping.fm & Friendfeed are two examples of tools that give you the “one-stop-shop” option. If you want to post a message to Facebook, Twitter and MySpace all at the same time – these tools will do that for you.
• Even location-based tools like Foursquare and Gowalla can be managed simultaneously.  Gowalla recently integrated Foursquare, Tumblr, and Facebook into its platform.
• If you’re feeling burnt out from too many messages on Twitter – also referred to as a congested stream – free tools like Tweetdeck allow you to organize who you’re following into columns (like friend tweets only, tech tweets, foodie tweets, etc.).  That way, you can limit how much you see without having to drop friends or people you like to follow.
• And finally, this post would not be complete without mentioning mobile apps! These little gems can be a friend or foe when it comes to helping manage burnout. Apps can simplify access to social media – but perhaps too much. Limit your use of applications just as you would the social networks they’re enabling.

What do you do to manage a threat of burnout online?

Erin

Tags: Apps, burnout, chat, Erin, facebook, foursquare, friendfeed, gowalla, HootSuite, LinkedIn, ping.fm, time management, Tumblr, tweetdeck, Twitter

Handling multiple accounts: Convenience vs. Privacy?

Lately I have been thinking a lot about how many email accounts I have.  And how I seem to be getting fewer emails, but continue to check multiple accounts.

I have a personal email that I use for most things.  I have a school email account that is still active.  I have a work email, which I like to keep separate from my other accounts.  And lastly, I have a ‘placeholder’ account that I use when I need to give an email account to sign up for something.  These in combination with the other online tools I use each day make me a busy lady.

I have a Twitter account, used largely for professional purposes. I use Google Reader to compile my RSS feeds.  I visit LinkedIn once a day to follow discussions of the groups that I have joined.  I also have a few other personal sites that I like to check every day.

And of course, I have Facebook – my go-to for staying in the loop with friends and even checking out those who I have not stayed close with.  I can see the pictures of friends who just recently returned from a trip.  I can see who is engaged, who is having a baby, and who is moving house.  I have fewer reasons to touch base via personal email, because I feel like I am already in the know.

Yesterday, Facebook announced their new ‘modern messaging system’.  This online chat/text/real-time conversation tool is being described as a combination of email, SMS and IM.  Sounds like a good idea right?

Being able to cross stuff off my list, or shorten my to dos, is always a good thing.  This new integration would potentially allow me to eliminate my email, leaving me with one less thing I need to check every day.  Hmmm…  maybe more time for sleep?

Then my curious nature kicks in and my thought process goes as follows:  Facebook already knows more about its 500 million users than it knows what to do with.  And although Facebook makes us feel like we are in the know, Facebook is truly the one in the know.

Is giving Facebook access to even more personal information something I should be worried about?  I mean, I don’t have that much to hide.  But it certainly makes me think.

I am faced with the decision of whether to make one less online pit stop each day or consider an analogy frequently used in financial investing – do I want to put all, or most of, my eggs in one basket?

Taylor

Tags: email, facebook, Facebook email, LinkedIn, privacy, Social Media, Twitter