It’s been another busy week in social media. Facebook announced it’s IPO (initial public offering which means anyone can now buy shares) so there’s been a flood of posts about the now public information on Mark Zuckerberg, what he spends his money on and how much he earns. I’ve decided to ignore this in my links below because as yet we don’t know what, if any effect it will have on our user experience.
New Google Privacy Policy
This story has been around longer than a week. Essentially Google are merging their 60 different privacy policies into one making it easier for users to understand. I’ve been searching for a good, user friendly article on the topic and this one from Hubspot popped up. I quite like the simplicity of the new policy, although any change tends to worry users this just simplifies what was already there. It’s also fun to see who Google thinks you are, click this link and you may be surprised at the results. I’ve had lots of friends assigned the wrong gender or being aged significantly. For me the results are disappointing, they can’t work out who I am at all (see above).
The new policy takes effect on March the 1st.
Pinterest Explodes
There’s been a steady growth in news stories about Pinterest since the new year but this week it exploded. It seems a day hasn’t passed without a new story hitting my feed about how much traffic it drives to websites. I’m pretty new to Pinterest, like many of the new users I joined when Facebook added it’s new Timeline apps. It’s fun and easy to use and gives us even more incentive to include fabulous images on our websites. I’m going to be posting my first Pinterest tutorial later on today to help you get started with the basics.
For those of you who have missed the phenomenon Pinterest is a social bookmarking/sharing site where you ‘pin’ cool images you find on the web to virtual pin boards within the site. If you bookmark directly from a website a click on the image will bring you to the page it originated from.
For me I was really convinced Pinterest had arrived when Brian Solis wrote about it.
Blogger Follows Twitters Lead On Censorship
Last week I talked about the new Twitter policy that will ‘withhold’ tweets in certain countries. This week popular Google owned blogging platform ‘Blogger’ has followed suit. When content from a blog is considered inappropriate for a region the page will re-direct. I’m still unhappy with this sort of censorship and wonder how it will effect the future of the Internet. This post from Read Write Web asks if it’s better to have no Twitter / Blogger or to have a censored version. It’s a good question, to me both solutions are censorship but I imagine that both can be easily bypassed if you have the tech knowledge.
In Defence of Klout and Influencer Marketing
One of my favourite reads of the week from Jay Baer on the Convince & Convert blog is the story of an Influencer marketing campaign. Indianapolis is hosting the 2012 Superbowl and as part of their marketing strategy they used Klout (that gives you a score out of 100 for your social media influence) to choose 46 people to help promote the town and the event. The 46 were given a goodie bag and tickets to the event in exchange for sharing on social sites. If you read on you’ll see that the campaign didn’t go exactly to plan. It’s a great read even to see from the inside how an influencer outreach plan works. It’s even convinced me to have another look at Klout!
Some Brilliant Facebook Campaigns
The title and lead paragraph are a bit misleading but this article really got me excited about the creative ways Facebook has been used on specific campaigns. My favourite story is the campaign by Swiss town Obermutten that posted photos of all it’s Facebook fans on the town’s noticeboard… and when they ran out of space the sides of barns. A massively creative, simple and successful campaign.
There’s a few other brilliant ideas in the article but I won’t spoil it for you, have a read!
Amy Porterfield On The Basics Of Facebook Marketing
It’s often a good idea to go back to the basics and this interview with Amy Porterfield outlines some of the really simple ways to increase Likes on your Facebook page and how to manage your page. There’s no big revelations here but it’s a great read for someone starting out on Facebook for business or someone who needs a refresher.
My two top takeaways are not to let spammy links from other people clog up your wall and to tell people why they should like your Facebook page.
15 Cool Twitter Tools
For those of you who are likers of my Facebook page you will know that I run a weekly feature ‘Monday Morning Cool Tool’ where I showcase a simple social media tool that is either fun or will help you with your marketing. I love gadgets and I think my love of social media tools springs from this. That’s why this article on ‘15 Twitter tools to boost your online presence and productivity‘ grabbed my attention. I’ll be playing with these over the next few weeks for my Facebook article, but be warned they will eat time!
And from Spiderworking.com this week
In case you’ve somehow managed to miss Chris Brogan here’s my article on why he’s a social media superhero! I’m going along to the Social Media World Forum in London in March and he’s the keynote speaker.
Facebook is often considered a purely Business to Consumer, or Consumer to Consumer tool but there are some tools out there that allow you to forge business relationships. Here’s my videocast on how to use Facebook to build business relationships.
If you read or write a great social media article this week leave a link in the comments below and they may appear in next weeks roundup.
