I recently wrote about Facebook’s new features and how they work for small businesses, but today I’m highlighting a different kind of social network : Tagged. Tagged isn’t a Facebook competitor per se; as a matter of fact you can (and I do) use Facebook Login to sign into the site. Tagged is different – instead of just keeping up with your friends, Tagged is focused on meeting new friends. This is accomplished via site-generated friend suggestions, public profiles, group interests, and most importantly, social games. This kind of behavior is great for your social life, and making friends can be good for your brand as well. In the business world it’s all about who you know, and Tagged is a great way to get to know people. Read More
Tag: Social Media
Facebook has new features for your brand
It seems like Facebook has been announcing a lot of changes lately. For busy small business owners this can be a prescription for paranoia, since it’s hard to keep up with all these changes and quickly analyze how they affect your brand’s page. However, the Facebook team seems to be working at keeping it clean and simple, with new metrics that help you understand your page’s impact.
The latest changes come as part of Facebook’s new Insight tools, which indicates a shift in Facebook’s emphasis towards sharing and engagement. Until now there hasn’t really been a way for brands to measure the impact and reach their content and fan pages have. The latest updates will give brands a much better measurement of engagement over the previous offerings. Read More
Premade Recipes Make ifttt Awesome
A while back, we found “if this then that”, a cool new way to automate some of the logistical work of your social media campaign. “If this then that”, or just “ifttt”, is a way to write custom recipes or routines that fit your social media campaign perfectly. That’s awesome, and what’s even more awesome is that you can share these recipes with the world. You’re also free to use the recipes that have already been shared by others, rather than having to make them all up from scratch. Today I’m going to take a look at some of the coolest recipes I’ve found, and let you know how you can put them to work with your social media outreach. Read More
ifttt makes social media a breeze
Social media is a big part of any modern marketing campaign. However, managing social media properly can mean a lot of time-consuming work. It’s one thing to have a solid plan, but the real work comes with the day-in, day-out hands-on implementation of this plan. There are lots of products that claim to automate this process, but they’re all missing a key thing: variety. You can set your tumblr to auto-update to your twitter, and your twitter could update your facebook, but this creates a single monolithic, repetitive structure. So, how do you add nuance to your social media plan without adding complexity and hours to your day? Read More
Google+ Open To The Public: Business Profiles Still Uncertain
Even though it wasn’t too hard to get an invite into Google+, Google’s social networking site that is still in “Field Testing”, you now should be able to access and edit your Google+ profile the next time you log in to your Gmail account. Google has made the brand-spanking new social networking site available to the everyone with a Google account despite the fact that the site is still under construction.
Yeah, Google+ may be new, but it has been able to much more than its counterparts in the same amount of time. According to The Next Web, it took Twitter 780 days and Facebook 852 days to reach 10 million users – Google+ achieved that same feat in only 16 days. So there is no question that the site will round out the “Big Three” social networking sites once it’s finally ready for production. Google admits to not being nowhere near done, and is constantly adding features, some per user request and others as a means to differentiate itself from other social networking sites. Read More
TweetBook for BlackBerry PlayBook – A Native Twitter Feel
Twitter hasn’t released a native app for the BlackBerry PlayBook. They have recently improved the mobile-friendly web app that looks…good. But for those of us who want a native app that can deliver more features and customization while we surf Twitter, TweetBook might just be what you’re looking for. Read More
LiveShare Condenses pictures from your event into a sharable stream
We’re always throwing events at my job. We have parties to promote new product launches, new partnerships, good sales quarters and the mandatory “holiday season” shindigs. Parties are great branding opportunities, because they put a human face on your company and because everyone loves free food and drinks. After you throw a party, make sure that you get some good press out of it; parties are expensive and you’ll want something concrete to show ROI. Read More
LinkedIn Apps get Refreshed, Introduces HTML5 Mobile Website
With the updated LinkedIn mobile apps for iPhone and Android, users can network with like-minded individuals faster while other mobile device users can stay in the know via the new mobile-friendly HTML5 site.
The re-designed mobile apps have broken LinkedIn down into four areas. You can access you network updates and activity; browse your profile and view recent activity; check your inbox and send new messages; and check out your groups to join the conversation and view potential connections. The layout for each area is very easy to navigate and is attractive overall – A much better improvement from the older version. Of course, you will still want to access LinkedIn via a full computer browser to get the most out of the professional networking site, but I can definitely see users wanting to use the mobile app more especially if they have a heavy presence on the site as a result of the update. Read More
BlinQ: Control your TV with your iOS Device
At a recent tech expo, a newer contender in the world of universal remote apps for iOS devices caught my eye. Although not an original idea, this particular implementation has a relatively low cost considering its rich feature set. This type of app represents the direction I believe that TV is going: businesses should be prepared to engage customers in new ways using ancillary content like ads, interactive games, and social content.
Ryz Media’s BlinQ TV has the newest twist on this idea. BlinQ’s big “get” is that, instead of routing commands over Wi-Fi, BlinQ gives you an IR blaster that plugs into the device’s headphone jack. The small blaster can control a TV, cable box, and most other devices with no intermediary hardware. Best yet, it’s very affordable at ten bucks.
BlinQ offers a guide that allows you to forget channel numbers and just concentrate on content. It does this by focusing on the popularity of shows among BlinQ users–the popular stuff is at the top, and there are pop-ups that alert you to trending shows. You can recommend what you’re watching to your friends via Facebook and Twitter. This product is a great look into the developing relationship between the TV and mobile devices; as soon as we don’t have to find a little gizmo to plug into our phones to get this functionality, absolutely everyone will use their phone as their remote. So, start thinking about what kinds of games and social features you might want to integrate into your company’s TV advertising campaigns, because it’s going to be the norm in the very near future.
Google+ Not Yet Ready For Business
Last week, Google unveiled Google+, its latest attempt (following Wave and Buzz) at crafting a social networking platform potent enough to lure users away from Facebook (and, to a lesser extent, Twitter). Though Google+ is still in an early beta phase—registration is currently closed, so prospective users will have to wait for the G to re-open its gates sometime in the near future—it seems like this may be Mountain View’s big push into the social networking arena. While the future success of Google+ will largely be determined by whether users embrace the new platform—either in lieu of Facebook, or as a supplement to it—we’re most concerned with how Google+ might enable small businesses to enhance their sales and online presence.
This is a big question, especially since Facebook’s offerings for businesses are somewhat limited; through Facebook, businesses can directly advertise to particular demographic groups, and/or create company profile pages, which users can then “like,” and follow. These limitations aren’t particularly surprising, as Facebook’s initial imperative focused on providing social connectivity features for individual users, allowing the site to build a critical mass of users, from which, it was hoped, profits would somehow follow.
By contrast, Google is building its platform long after achieving significant mind-share amongst the world’s Web-enabled citizens; as a result, it’s probably safe to surmise that commercial considerations and companies’ needs were given high consideration throughout the Google+ development process. Indeed, Google has pro-actively assured small business owners that they will soon be able to create company “Pages” on the new platform, while also asserting that “initially we wanted to make sure that we optimized for the individual use case…[b]uilding great consumer products is a necessary prerequisite for compelling business products.” Sure, Google knows that it has to attract users before the platform will have any real value for businesses and advertisers, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t planning for the future. For instance, Nexus 4G users have found that the Google+ mobile app features NFC integration: Though the NFC functionality is currently quite limited, Google is likely planning to integrate its Google+ NFC tech with its recent Google Wallet and Google Offers NFC-based mobile applications (you can check out our previous coverage of Google Wallet here), which could provide some really innovative new ways for businesses to build relationships with their customers.
As it stands now, Google+ doesn’t really have much to offer small businesses, with Google (rightfully) focusing on building out a sufficiently large user base before inviting commercial interests to the party. Of course, Google’s investment in this platform isn’t altruistic, it’s commercial, and when all the various pieces are considered as a whole, it seems as though Google is on the cusp of offering a fully integrated system that will combine features of Yelp, Foursquare, Groupon, Facebook, and Twitter, powered by a combination of mobile and desktop devices, and utilizing NFC technology at every possible turn. There’s a lot of promise here for small business owners, let’s just hope there’s enough user adoption for these services to come to fruition.