Facebook chooses "Likes" over "Fans"

Facebook last week took another step toward redefining the relationship between its users and brands with the introduction of "community pages." The initiative will encourage users to start community pages for brands, entertainers, and politicians rather than unofficial fan pages, which have been a source of some confusion on the site.

Big brands that have seen their official Facebook fan numbers hindered by third-party fan pages will likely welcome the move. For instance, even Coca-Cola - with its Facebook-leading 5.3 million fans - stands to benefit. A Facebook search query for Coca-Cola produces more than 500 fan page results, and some have been started by individuals who have accrued thousands of fans of the beverage company. There's the five-month-old fan page, "Coca-Cola In A Glass Bottle Is Way Better Than Plastic," which has built up a following of nearly 400,000.

To read the rest of this intresting article written by Christopher Heine at ClickZ click HERE.

Social Media Marketing 101 (Top Five Reasons for having a Facebook Fan Page)

From Todd "The Brawn" Muffley at Fat Atom Internet Marketing.

Let's all decide right now that we should not just jump on the social media bandwagon because we can, but because we have a plan. An easy and effective plan, i.e., one that you will actually implement and upkeep, is usually a good place to start. Let's discuss Facebook Fan Pages and how this can help you grow your business.

Facebook, for those of you stuck in 2003, is a place where you can go online, set up a profile (put stuff in about you) and then find friends with whom you went to elementary school and show them pictures of your pets, kids, trophy spouse, etc.

The Fan Page on Facebook allows, let's say, business owners, to set up a page about their business and then invite people to "become a fan" of that business. Usually at this point, some people are saying to themselves, "Why?". So let me tell you my...

Top Five Reasons for having a Facebook Fan Page:

1. A Facebook Fan Page allows the approximately 175 million Facebook users to learn about your products and/ or services - free of charge.

2. A Facebook Fan Page allows you to control the conversation about your business. It allows you to push relevant content to people who want to see it, even ask for it, free of charge.

3. It is estimated for every Fan you have, 10 more people will be exposed to your messaging. 1=10, 10=100, 250=2500 - and yes, it is still free of charge.

4. Facebook allows you to leverage your clients to help you get new clients by running clever promotions, giveaways or specials.

5. When people "Fan" your Facebook Page, and your Facebook Page has a link to your site, you are building the incoming link traffic to your website. That helps your rankings with Google and other search engines.

Remember, before you run and start a Facebook Fan Page for your business, think about a plan first. Creating a marketing calendar that helps you plan events, set goals and manage to-do's is your first priority. No marketing, even when it is free, is good if you don't execute properly and Facebook is no different. Next month, read about how to advertise your Fan Page.

Original Post

The Rise of Creative Philanthropy

Special thanks to the writer of this article, Scott Henderson for his permission to let me post this.  Read more on his site Rally the Cause.


#1 Thing You Need to Learn from this Post:
With the proliferation of easy-to-use media tools, new people are entering the cause arena and launching innovative ways to raise money and awareness for the issues they care about. These creative philanthropists will continue to play a role in shaping the charitable sector.

A More Detailed Exploration:
Thankfully, it doesn’t take a special certification to do something for a cause. It just takes a desire to make a difference and the willingness to act.

While many non-profit leaders and fundraisers deliberate how to integrate online and social media into their operations, a new group of people are showing them how it can be done. The only question in my mind is: Are they even watching?

Click here to read the rest.

How Kiva.org is Improving The World By Using Social Media

I am a big fan of the Stuff You Should Know podcast from HowStuffWorks.com and first came to hear of Kiva.org through their episode on micro-lending.  For those unfamiliar, micro-lending is the loaning of very small amounts of money at low interest, especially to start-up companies or self-employed people.  During the episode, the topic of Kiva came up.  I was extremely intrigued by the idea and signed up.  In the time it has existed Kiva has had such an effect on the world not only in what they accomplish, but how they accomplish it that I wanted to share.

Kiva.org is a non-profit organization that supplies micro-loans to entrepreneurs around the world (mostly under-developed countries in South America, Asia and Africa) to help them get a leg up and find success.  Kiva achieves this by finding people like you and me to fund these loans. 

Once you become a Kiva member you look through lists of entrepreneurs that are in need of a loan and find a person you want to help support.  You can then provide as little as $25 to the person or people running the business.  Together with funds from other Kiva.org members a group micro-loan is created to send to the entrepreneurs.  As the business you support grows and profits the loan is repaid.  Now you have the choice of taking back the money you originally funded OR immediately reinvesting it in another business!

Ok now here is where the awesome social media side of Kiva comes in.

Kiva has what are called "Lending Teams".  Whenever you loan money you can contribute it towards a total loan score for the Kiva Lending Team of your choice!  This creates an air of friendly competition between lenders to fund more money than rival teams.  This element makes loaning absolutely addictive.

Members can post messages to lending team message boards, talk with other members, get lending banners to put on other websites (like the one on the left of this page), create a customizable Lender Page and read updates from the field agencies that have direct contact with the entrepreneurs.  There is definitely a sense of joy when you read how these loans have immensely helped these hard working individuals.

Head over to Kiva.org to sign up and start loaning!  You will love it.

Note worthy links.
Kiva's Twitter page
The How Stuff Works Twitter page
The Stuff You Should Know Lending Team

Refining the Twitter Explosion

By Noam Cohen

And, no, I don’t just mean the Twitter users who share too much information about their lives, social, medical or otherwise.

Simply put, there is way too much information on Twitter — lately, it defies navigation. In January, there were 2.4 million tweets a day, according to Alessio Signorini, a researcher at the University of Iowa. By October, he reports, there were 26 million tweets a day.

Read the rest here.

5 Tips To Write Great Headlines

Courtesy of Geoff Livingston from Livingston Buzz comes this awesome list of tips for writing a eye-catching headlines that make readers want to click.  It's extremely useful.  You need to read the list here.

How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession

You've probably seen the ads on Facebook, flash game websites, or other places online.

"Someone has a crush on you!  Click here to find out who."

"You are the lucky 100,00th visitor!  Click here to get your free laptop!"

"Larry thinks you're stupid.  Prove him wrong with this IQ test!"

Today we take a look behind the scenes at the people who created these spam ads and made loads money of off them.  Check out the article from Dennis Yu at Tech Crunch here.

Facebook To Launch Memorial Profiles of Deceased Users

This is a good solution to a question I have wondered about ever since I first started using social networks.  What happens to your profile when you die?  The friends and family of people who have passed will now be able to contact Facebook in order to have the deceased person's profile page memorialized.  Facebook will remove the person's status updates and contact info, but will leave photos, videos, profile info, and other media there for confirmed Facebook friends to see.  There is also a function that lets users put memorial posts onto the wall of the dead person's profile.  Check out the full article here.

10 Ways to Get Fired For Building Your Personal Brand

Today's post is by Dan Schawbel at Personal Branding Blog. 

"For all of you employed readers, this post is directed at you because I wouldn’t want you to become unemployed, as you build your own personal brand. Branding has become very personal these days and the relationship we have with our companies is changing very fast, so I think it’s important to focus on what you shouldn’t do at work, not just branding and career strategies.  I view web 2.0 technologies at the driving force that converges our professional and social lives.  Who you are and how you behave outside of work can impact how you’re perceived inside of work and visa versa.  The way the world works now is that you have to spend more time thinking about your actions than you did ten years ago because words spread faster and they are accessible by everyone."

Read the rest of the list here.

Twitter Users Are Now Younger on Average Than Facebook's

The Pew results are in!  Those crazy young people are more prone to use Twitter while the older demographic have drifted towards Facebook.  I can't say I'm surprised, but it's a cool article with several interesting graphs.  Check it out here.

Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter

Today's article is from Steven Levy over at Wired.  It has some great insight into how people on Twitter have unintentionally caused a hostile takeover of the social networking service and to some extent have prevented the inventors and owners of the site from making any major interface changes.  Twitter is working towards changing that, but for now it is still basically governed by those that use it.

You can read the article here.

 Illustration: Christoph Niemann

15 Most Annoying Types of Twitter Users

I think about half of my Twitter followers need to take a nice, long look at this list from Soshable and re-think how they Tweet.  Yes, I'm talking to you "@networkingmlm".  You fit into about 8 or these categories.

Check out the hilarious (and sadly true) list of annoying types of Twitter users here.

The New FTC Rules For Internet Marketers

Today's internet marketing item of interest is episode 58 of the Web Video University podcast.  Apparently the FTC has a new set of rules being enacted December 1st that will hopefully spell the end of "get rich quick" schemes and "Get 10,000 Twitter Followers Fast!" e-books.  This makes my Twitter account's direct message inbox very happy.  You should listen to the episode here.

MySpace becomes social-media "ghetto"

This article from CNN poses the question "Does your social class determine your online social network?".  I believe it does and MySpace is its ghetto.  You should check out the article here.

On a related note you should also take a look at the article "MySpace is dead... the Prostitutes and MLM'ers have left." from The Naked Entrepreneurs.

Fans help rock stars write music

This is cool idea.  It's a website where music fans can submit lyrics and bits of songs that could end up on the final album.  Read the article here for more.

Smarter Food: How Social Media is Making Our Cities Tastier

Here's a brilliant feature from Mashable about how social media is changing the way businesses and people promote, find, buy, and sell food.  This was particularly interesting to me as I currently run the social media campaign for City Flavors, a directory and review site for restaurants in the Indianapolis, IN area.  You can check out the article here.

Study: 54% of companies ban Facebook, Twitter at work

Everyone's favorite work time distractions are apparently not too popular with companies.  Computer World has posted this extremely interesting study showing that most businesses limit or just plain ban the use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites in the workplace.

...in other (and more sarcastic) news, productivity has nearly tripled for all companies that have chosen to ban social media.

Music Labels Emphasize Artist-Specific Social Networks, Websites

Today's article comes to us from good old Wired.  Apparently, social networks and websites made for specific bands and musicians are getting increasingly better traffic than larger websites that have lots of artists with similarly styled pages (for example MySpace, Last.fm, etc).  This is very interesting to me as I have been doing work for a musician by helping him build MySpace and Last.fm pages and am very involved in music myself.  You can check out the article here.

The Speed Of Share

Here is an amazing article by MG Siegler from TechCrunch.com about data sharing.  Facebook may have more users, but Twitter seems to be the best way of data sharing by far.  Check out the article here.

Social Media Blues

This has been a monumental week for the blog.  Updates are being posted regularly, the new Twitter feed is setup, the blog is running on the Networked Blogs for Facebook and my Technorati page is complete.  So to celebrate I've decided today's post is going to be a little more fun.  I give you "Social Media Blues".