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| 6 Ways to Improve Your Vacation Using Social Media | |  The Social Travel Series is supported by join.me, the easiest way to have an online meeting. join.me lets you instantly share your screen with anyone, for free. Use it to collaborate, demo, show off -- the possibilities are endless. Try it today. Even if you're trekking into the wilderness, you need never be without some friendly guidance from your social network. There are hundreds of travel booking websites -- many featuring peer reviews -- that travelers find immensely helpful. But beyond the Kayaks and the Jetsetters of the world, there are numerous ways to tap your social network and crowdsource public opinion to help you assemble your travel plans. Here are six great sites that will help you gather travel tips and even connect with locals who just might let you crash on their couch if you're looking to save some dough. Peer Recommendations and Travel Planning Jauntlet Jauntlet lets you post a map with pinpoints of places you've traveled on your Facebook Timeline. You can aggregate your check-ins from Facebook and Foursquare, along with your posts from Instagram and Twitter to create a map of your jaunts. You can also search others' maps to connect with fellow travelers from around the globe, a helpful tool when you're planning a trip. Gogobot Gogobot connects with Facebook to source travel information from your jetsetting friends. You can't book travel through Gogobot, but you can create travel plans, blast questions about your plans to your network and arrange an itinerary on the site. One great feature is the "passport," where you can document where you've been, upload personal photos and offer tips for other travelers. Its purpose is twofold -- to be a personal diary of your travels while being a source of advice and inspiration for friends. Dopplr Marketing itself as a "smart" traveler's guide, Dopplr lets users privately share their personal and business itineraries. At first, Dopplr was only available to "select global companies," but now anyone can join. What that means for users is that there's a wealth of information regarding what to eat, where to visit and where to stay from travelers who've been there. Travel Companions Meet & Seat Find love or an interesting travel companion mid-flight. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines launched Meet & Seat for passengers to make the friendly skies a more social experience. KLM flyers can sign in with their LinkedIn and Facebook accounts to see who will be on their flight, view others' profiles and chose their seat based on who is sitting where. Another cool feature KLM offers is the free TripShake app, which works like a Magic 8 ball -- give it a shake, and it'll show you where you should travel next. CouchSurfing CouchSurfing offers a social network for budget-minded travelers who need a place to crash while they're backpacking through Europe. The coolest part about couch surfing is you get an experience you would never have at a hotel. You get to know the person you stay with, and they can provide a glimpse into the local lifestyle. There is no money required to stay with someone, although many people take their host out to a meal or two as compensation. Travellution Your friend's not interested in visiting Taipei? Find a traveler who has the same dream trip you do -- and go together. It takes an adventurous spirit to be willing to travel with a complete stranger, but it's a cool concept if your friends don't share the same passion for travel that you do. Each dream itinerary you create grants you access to a whole new network of like-minded travelers. Travellution also sets itself apart by stressing cultural appreciation and gives a portion of its annual revenue to NGOs and social businesses around the globe. No matter where you're traveling, an expanding slew of social media sites can help you connect with others and gain useful advice. Planning a trip -- and figuring out which sites are worth seeing in the time you have -- can be overwhelming, but diving into the social space to flesh out your itinerary and connect with others who've been there can be tremendously useful. Do you use your social networks to help you plan vacations? What do you think about the web tools listed in this post? Would you use any of them? Tell us in the comments. Series supported by join.me
The Social Travel Series is supported by join.me, the easiest way to have an online meeting. Named one of Time magazine's best websites of 2011, join.me lets you share your screen so you can instantly get together, collaborate, demo, show off, and more. Plus, it's totally free. How will you use it? Check it out today. ? Image courtesy of iStockphoto, xavierarnau and pressureUA. |
| 20 TV Shows With the Most Social Media Buzz This Week [CHART] | | Monday, March 19, 2012 10:31 PM | Stephanie Buck |
|  Since the March Madness college basketball tournament began last week, social media has dribbled and rebounded right along with it. Four NCAA games slam dunked their way onto our social TV chart. The game that generated the most social media chatter? Duke vs. Lehigh. Normally a powerhouse favorite, Duke's team crumbled under pressure from the Lehigh Mountain Hawks, the sure underdog. The upset shocked the social universe, and made for an even more thrilling tournament. SEE ALSO: 7 Baller Apps to Follow March Madness Online However, The Walking Dead took the top spot overall. Sunday night's season two finale kept people glued to the TV and their social streams, hypothesizing possible season three scenarios. Until the next season premieres (expected around Halloween), fans will have to console themselves with #walkingdead hashtags and undead reruns. The data below is compliments of our friends at Trendrr, who measure specific TV show activity (mentions, likes, checkins) across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Miso. To see daily rankings, check out Trendrr.TV. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, subjug |
| Are You In Control of Your Social Media Privacy? [INFOGRAPHIC] | | Monday, March 19, 2012 8:55 PM | Stephanie Buck |
|  By now, we know that social media behavior differs, based on factors like gender, age and nationality. It turns out, how you manage your social media privacy may depend on similar indicators. ZoneAlarm created the below infographic, based on a 2012 study by Pew. The research points to gender-specific privacy practices. For instance, men are nearly twice as likely as women to profess regret for posting online content. On the other hand, men are more likely to maintain public social media presences. So, are you among the 11% of social media users who have posted content they regret? How actively do you manage your public social media persona? Do you find it difficult to manage privacy settings? Let us know in the comments below. Image courtesy of Flickr, Darwin Bell |
| Tumblr Blog Sheds Light on American Housing Crisis | | Monday, March 19, 2012 5:19 PM | Zoe Fox |
|  America Underwater, a new Tumblr blog, is creating a community of Americans living in debt due to underwater mortgages. The blog, launched by economic justice group Rebuild the Dream, highlights individual stories of the housing crisis while reminding those affected they are part of a significant trend. "The idea is to show how common and how big of a problem underwater mortgages are, while also putting a human face on the situation," says Jim Pugh, chief technical officer of Rebuild the Dream. Tumblr was the natural choice, Pugh says, because of its emphasis on visuals and its accessibility. The popular Occupy Wall Street Tumblr We Are the 99 Percent inspired America Underwater. The idea for the blog spun from the case of southern California homeowner Arturo de los Santos, who Rebuild the Dream says is being unjustly evicted. Santos, a former marine, tried to rework his mortgage with his bank to get the interest rate adjusted. His bank told him to stop paying for seven months -- which he did -- but he was later evicted by J.P. Morgan Chase. "The system they have now is not working," Pugh says. "We're trying to blow this up so there's more national attention." SEE ALSO: HOW TO: Create a Group Tumblr Blog In addition to sharing stories, America Underwater hopes to have the Obama administration replace Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) director Ed DeMarco with someone who will prioritize $300 billion of principal reduction. America Underwater also hosts a data-driven website, which serves as an educational resource about the mortgage crisis and maps underwater mortgages by state. It estimates that some 11 million homeowners are drowning in their mortgage debt -- which is roughly 25% of all American mortgages. What do you think of America Underwater? Do you think Tumblr can be a powerful storytelling tool? Let us know what you think in the comments. Image via America-Underwater.tumblr.com BONUS: 5 Non-Profits Winning on Tumblr |
| Got Tons of Facebook Friends? You May Be a Narcissist, Says Study [VIDEO] | | Monday, March 19, 2012 4:15 PM | Samantha Murphy |
|  Do you have tons of Facebook friends and often update your status? If so, you may be a narcissist, a new study suggests. Research from Western Illinois University showed a link between the number of Facebook friends you have and how active you are on the site to the likelihood of being a "socially disruptive" narcissist. The study -- which was recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences -- was conducted among 300 participants, who took a Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire. Those with more Facebook friends, tagged themselves in photos and updated their status throughout the day were more likely to have narcissistic traits. "People who have a heightened need to feel good about themselves will often turn to Facebook as a way to do so," study author Chris Carpenter from Western Illinois University told Mashable. "Facebook gives those with narcissistic tendencies the opportunity to exploit the site to get the feedback they need and become the center of attention." SEE ALSO: Survey Says Facebook Feeds Narcissism/a> Carpenter said that Facebook users that self-promote themselves on the site show signs of two narcissistic behaviors. The first is called grandiose exhibition (GE), which refers to people who love to be the center of attention. The second is a category that involves entitlement/explotiveness (EE), which indicates how far people will go to get the respect and attention they think they deserve. "There isn't a baseline of how many friends a person has or how often they update their status that would qualify as them to have these narcissistic characteristics," Carpenter said. "However, it's interesting to note how often these people use first-person pronouns such as 'I' and 'me' on the site." This isn't the first time a study has been conducted about Facebook narcissists. In 2010, a study published from York University highlighted the differences between how men and women self-promoted themselves on Facebook. Men tended to promote themselves in the "About Me" description, while women used pictures that "includrevealing, flashy and adorned photos of their physical appearance." Do you think narcissism can be linked to how people use Facebook? Let us know in the comments. |
| Pew: Social Media Not Yet Driving News Traffic | | Monday, March 19, 2012 3:36 PM | Alex Fitzpatrick |
|  Article recommendations from your friends on Facebook and Twitter aren't a major source of traffic for news websites, according to Pew's State of the Media 2012 report -- but they have potential to become one. The annual release focuses on trends in the world of journalism but as news continues to be made, read and reported with technology, this year's edition is chock full of interesting data about the ways we all use the Internet. According to Pew, social media use is on the rise, more people are reading the news online and advertisers are spending more money on Internet advertising than ever before. All of those factors have the potential to make social media one of the most important elements of a news outlet's business plan. Social Media Use Facebook usage is up, according to Pew: 133 million users in the U.S. from 117 million last year. The social network's got 845 million active users globally -- about 54% of the world's online population. It's also winning the social media popularity contest in terms of time spent on the site. Facebook users scrolled through their news feed, gawked at photos of friends and played games like Farmville for an average of 423 minutes in December of last year. Tumblr came in second (151 minutes) and Pinterest third (80 minutes). To some surprise, MySpace (13 minutes) beat out Google+ (5 minutes). Twitter is growing as well -- 24 million active users in the U.S., according to eMarketer. That's an estimated 32% increase from last year year. The company is tight-lipped on exactly how many people use the service. Journalists have flocked to Twitter, says Pew, giving it "outsized influence" in the media game. Its ability to disseminate breaking news before traditional wire services gives it a "critical role" in journalism, says Pew -- Whitney Houston's death announcement on Twitter 55 minutes before it was confirmed on the AP wire is just one example. "Twitter is the new newswire," said Chloe Sladden, the director of content and programming for Twitter, at a recent conference on the future of media at Stanford University. (It's worth noting that news broken over Twitter is not always accurate, as was the case with Joe Paterno's death.) News Consumption Social media, says Pew, is not yet an overwhelming driver of news traffic. Only 9% of the average news organization's traffic comes from social media and 9% of online consumers of news in the U.S. "very often" get their news via Facebook or Twitter. However, those numbers are up from 2010 -- and Pew expects them to continue rising. Those numbers also differ wildly for various outlets -- outlets with more developed social media strategies tend to see more traffic from Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Meanwhile, most Facebook users who use the site for news click on articles posted by their friends are family, while more Twitter users get their news from news outlets or journalists. What are digitally-savvy people reading online? Often the same news sources they've read for years, according to Pew. Despite the creation of new online media outlets, the "traditional players" remain the go-to news source for most online consumers of news. "Long-standing" news organizations accounted for 17 of the top 25 most highly trafficked news websites, while 8 are online-only outlets. However, more Americans are turning to the Internet in general as their primary source of news -- 40%, as opposed to 20% who rely on newspapers. Television news, however, remains as popular as the Internet and newspapers combined. Pew suggests that the creation of frictionless news sharing apps on Facebook might be contributing to the rise of Internet news -- Yahoo boasts 25 million users of its social reader, and The Guardian's has been installed five million times. The drawbacks of those apps, according to Pew, is the way they keep eyeballs away from a company's website (and its advertising) and that it makes media outlets more dependent on Facebook. Online Advertising How's the online advertising market doing? Very well. $32 billion was spent on Internet ads in 2011, up 23% from the previous year. Digital ads now make up 20% of all advertising in the U.S. By far and away, that money is heading directly for the coffers of Google and Facebook. Together, they earned 68% of that $32 billion pie in 2011. According to Pew, Google and Facebook excel at the ad game because they're able to collect detailed data about their users and use it to show users advertisements highly relevant to their life and interests. Do you often search for film trailers and swap movie reviews with Facebook friends? Guess what: you'll probably see cinema advertisements on Google and Facebook. Pew believes that future growth of the online ad industry will come from local advertising (based on IP addresses and other data), video advertising and mobile ads -- the latter of which is expanding faster than any other kind of digital ad. If news companies find a way to tap into the advertising money well, it could help them thrive in the digital age. What's Your Take? Do you see any trends in Pew's findings that you're excited about? Do you think social media will become more of a traffic driver for news organizations? Sound off in the comments below -- we'd love to hear from you. |
| 3 Ways Kevin Rose Could Improve Google+ | | Monday, March 19, 2012 3:09 PM | Rick Bakas |
|  Rick Bakas is the Founder of Bakas Media, a new media relations firm in San Francisco working with brands such as wine.com, ABC's Bachelor Ben Flajnik, British Airways and Portalupi Winery. Rick is also VP of Marketing for mobile payments provider, Press Pay. Now that Kevin Rose (and a handful of his Milk team) have joined Google, the future for Google+ may be a bit rosier. The move to bring Rose in demonstrates Google's dedication to making social work. Although Google+ has 100 million users by some estimates, there's a perception of the platform being a ghost town. Ex-Google employee (and Google+ engineer lead) James Whittaker was recently in the news for blasting Google on the blog of his new employer, Microsoft, claiming Google was "desperate." Whittaker was the second Google employee in the past six months to criticize Google+ for losing its spirit of innovation. By bringing in Rose and his team, Google has the opportunity to improve its overall UX design across products. Moreover, Rose has connections to tap some of the most talented engineers in the industry to tweak and refine Google+, transforming it from a sterile environment to a warm, human space. Here are three suggestions for what Rose and Google can do to make Google+ more engaging. 1. Stop Making Google Employees Top Influencers As soon as Google+ went live, Google employees were given "verified" status and many were promoted as featured users, allowing them to build large followings. Google built the Google+ platform, then gave themselves home court advantage. That sends the wrong message when attracting new users. A truly social ecosystem cannot be controlled, nor should it be dominated by its own employees who push their own agenda. According to Whittaker, "Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation." Recent successful social platforms make their experience about the users and the ecosystem, they don't make it about themselves. Google can learn from that and think small. 2. Open It Up If Google's future hinges on social, then Google+ has to be open to people's social graphs. People post photos on Instagram. They share checkins on Foursquare. They're pinning interests on Pinterest. Google+ will benefit by merging with the places people already live online. New users may find it hard to locate their friends on Google+ without the standard "Find Your Friends using Facebook and Twitter" buttons. It gives new users less incentive to come back if they can't interact with the people they know online. The current model of supporting only Google products is working against Google+. It's unlikely for many users to live solely within the Google ecosystem. Google is actually sending an "unsocial" message to the world by not opening up the API. 3. Allow More Metrics The third item on this list could have been related to search and SEO, but that's an entirely separate discussion. In the near term, Google+ can help users -- especially marketers -- understand key performance indicators such as brand mentions and sentiment if they allow third-party developers to build better tools. Google Analytics is a great tool for measuring traffic to a company website, but it can't be all things to all people. More importantly, it can't be the only tool to measure activity on Google+. Marketers will want to make Google+ part of their marketing mix, but without measurement, it's not a valuable investment of time. Google+ will succeed when it becomes a valuable part of the social web, not the only destination of the social web. If anyone has the vision and influence to convince Google management, it may be Kevin Rose. But the addition of Rose and team doesn't guarantee success any more than LeBron James going to the Miami Heat will guarantee championships. On paper, it makes a lot of sense. So did Digg and OINK. Those platforms enjoyed success, but didn't enjoy sustained growth. When Google stops thinking big and starts thinking small, they'll begin to realize organic growth and more importantly, user adoption. As for Kevin Rose, this might just be his biggest challenge yet. As a seasoned veteran in the social space, Rose may just be in the right place at the right time to apply everything he knows and breathe life into Google+. |
| Facebook Photos: The Key to a Successful Social Media Campaign | | Monday, March 19, 2012 12:37 PM | Matt Handy |
|  Matt Handy leads the social-local-mobile practice and Social PIX team at Brand Networks, a leading Facebook Preferred Developer and Ads API Vendor. Brand Networks engineers social, local and mobile experiences to amplify stories for the world's most liked companies including AMEX, JetBlue, Diageo and Starbucks. While Facebook marketing strategies shift with every new iteration and development from the network, one thing remains the same: The stories that jump out from our Timelines and News Feeds are told with photos. If you doubt the relative importance of photos, take note of the only permanently anchored module on the new Timeline pages. This is clearly a strategic decision in light of our increasingly visually-oriented consumer culture. The role photos play in creating engaging content cannot be understated: Posts that include a photo album or a picture generate about 180% and 120% more engagement than the average post respectively, according to Facebook's internal data. More than 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each day. Pinterest, the virtual pinboard for photos, has seen exponential growth thanks largely to its deep integration with the Facebook Platform. This integration was one of the first and most important "design" decisions for the startup. To ensure a brand is breaking through in this visual storytelling ecosystem, marketers need to look beyond attaching a generic image to a status update and think about specific business goals. Here are some ways brands can become better Facebook storytellers through attention-grabbing visuals. Showcase Your Fans With Products Verizon Wireless has pulled off a storytelling trifecta that combines photos, fans and product into a powerful brand story. The company featured fan-submitted images to adorn its cover photo, tagged with the fans' profiles, and of course, the Verizon Wireless device used to capture it. The result is an authentic cover photo that gives fans a reward, all while showcasing products in a positive light. Turn Real-World Interactions Into Shareable Visual Stories Events, sponsorships and retail promotions are valuable opportunities to turn your customers into brand storytellers via photos. Brands such as Johnnie Walker, REI and JetBlue have utilized photo apps to turn their events into visual marketing extravaganzas. For example, when JetBlue wanted to promote its new route from Hollywood, CA to Hollywood, FL, the company took to its terminals with a socially-connected photo solution, converting hundreds of in-person connections into hundreds of thousands of stories created and shared in one day. As Stories Become Ads, Images Are Big Business Some of Facebook's newest ad offerings -- Sponsored Stories, Featured Stories and Reach Generator -- all have one thing in common: They amplify stories. This blending of content, analytics and media planning is highly disruptive throughout the marketing services industry. The days of a content manager planning updates, creative folks tuning copy and images, and media planners buying ads are over. We've collapsed these roles into one: the story planner. And can you guess the most important weapons in his arsenal? Compelling visuals, images, graphics and photos, of course. How do you use images to tell a compelling brand story on Facebook? Share your strategies in the comments. |
| 10 Top Execs Share Their Social Media Secrets | | Monday, March 19, 2012 12:01 PM | Lauren Drell |
|  The Social Media for Business Leaders Series is supported by The Awareness Social Marketing Hub, Social Marketing Hub, the leading social media marketing software for marketers to publish, manage, measure and engage across all their social channels. Request a free trial here. When you're occupying the C-suite, you may not have time to think about tweets, Facebook posts, Foursquare checkins and Pinterest boards. But you should. Social media is an increasingly important tool for building brands, connecting with customers and boosting customer loyalty and engagement. All of these factors can work together to increase awareness of your brand and drive new business. Mashable asked C-suite execs from companies like Virgin, Ford and IBM for their best social media advice, which is listed below, straight from their mouths. Which tip is your favorite? Let us know -- and leave your own tips -- in the comments below. Think About Community "Encourage a social culture: Culture and change management is the foundation of true social business transformation. Create a social business agenda, an integrated plan to be more competitive and have a measurable ROE (return on everything) an organizations does socially. Embed social into business processes -- to fully evolve into a social business, organizations need to foster social behaviors, thinking and technology into the fabric of the company, i.e. customer service, HR, marketing, operations. Hire a social media strategist/manager: This person is essential to serve as a community advocate and works with employees to understand the value of social media. They are also responsible for protecting the reputation of the brand online." -- Sandy Carter, vice president, social business evangelism and sales at IBM "The thing that I try to stay focused on is what is it that's resonating with the community. Don't get distracted. There's so much activity going on in the market, the challenge foris to pay attention to our relationship with the consumer and stay focused on that." -- Drew Patterson, CEO at Jetsetter "As people increasingly use social media in their personal lives, businesses need to dive into these communication channels to enable their customers to communicate about - and with - brands in a true dialogue. Retailers should allow customers to share, comment on and discuss products and services openly. Why? Because online recommendations, ratings and reviews are a tangible source of increased sales. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but ultimately, it's that openness and honesty (including some bad reviews) that people are looking for. Believe or not, even bad reviews will increase time on your site and ultimately drive sales." -- Richard Anson, Founder and CEO at Reevoo "As a blogger, Twitter user and seemingly well-rounded social media CEO, what advice do you have for other founders and CEOs looking to use social media sites effectively? I know that calling me "well-rounded" was a fat joke, but I'm going to overlook it. I guess my main observation is that social media users can smell inauthenticity in much less than 140 characters. Enjoy yourself, have fun with the conversation, be yourself. You can't fake it." -- Phil Libin, CEO at Evernote Careful Content "Understand the EQ and the IQ of everything you do, and for Pete's sake give a crap of the life time value of your customer and or community." -- Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur and founder at VaynerMedia "We have a huge opportunity, a whole new world of people we weren't able to speak to before. Figure out the best way to do that for your brand and what fits in with your DNA. I'll go back to something Oscar has told me frequently: 'We are not all things to all people, but we should always try to be more things to more people.' I think that's the way to do it." -- Alexander Bolen, CEO at Oscar de la Renta "Be authentic and organic. It can't be forced or it won't work. And most importantly, have fun." -- Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group "It's critical for brands to always be leaders, to always take risks and experiment. There's this notion that a lot of brands have of not wanting to be first on a particular street or in a particular media space. That has to change, because the brands that are not being leaders in social media are being left behind very quickly. I also think thatis a unique space, and you have got to make sure the people who are most connected, the ones who access it every day, are empowered to be leaders in this environment. Often they are the youngest members of a team." -- Craig Leavitt, CEO at Kate Spade "We mix it up with posts about product, posts about content and questions about topics of the day. Last year, for example, we posted a design-your-own shoe contest inspired by the Double Rainbow guy, who was blowing up that week on YouTube. Some of what we do is planned, but a lot of it is spontaneous. You have to be flexible and ready to talk about lots of topics -- just like at a dinner party. We're also learning a lot about posting tactics -- time zones, language, regional relevance, etc. I go back to what I said earlier -- you have to have the courage to let go and not try to control the conversation or broadcast advertising messages every chance you get. Be respectful of the time between purchases of your product by adding value and contributing to the conversation. When it comes time again to purchase, your relationship with them should pay off." -- Geoff Cottrill, chief marketing officer at Converse "Retailers: let your loyal fans or followers have exclusive access to sales, offers or new lines for a limited time. This is not only a great way of rewarding your brands advocates, but also creates buzz by encouraging consumers to share, like and tweet your news and products to their extended network." -- Mr. Tomoya Ishikawa, Executive Officer and Head of Creative and Web Design Department at Rakuten Series supported by The Awareness Social Marketing Hub
The Social Media for Business Leaders Series is supported by The Awareness Social Marketing Hub, the leading social media marketing software for marketers to publish, manage, measure and engage across all their social channels. The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is leveraged by companies of all sizes, including MLB, American Cancer Society, and Starwood Hotels. Request a free trial here. Download a complimentary whitepaper from Awareness: The State of Social Media Marketing. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sd619. |
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