Facebook announced three updates to their Page post link ads today. With the new updates, advertisers can customize images, create unpublished Page post links ads directly in the ad create flow, as well as have more options when posting an ad with an off-site link destination. Advertisers can now customize images by uploading their preferred image for a Page post link ad instead of Facebook automatically sourcing a thumbnail image based on images from the linked site. Advertisers can customize images via the Page composer, create flow, Power Editor and the API. Facebook has also made [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Facebook Exchange | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: News Feed | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News

Marketing insiders had much to say about yesterday's announcement that Salesforce.com will be acquiring ExactTarget for nearly $2.5 billion. Commentaries were offered on everything from the future of marketing automation to the role of email marketing and its continued significance in an organization's overall marketing strategy. Many feel the deal only reinforces the need for CMOs to become more technology-focused. Salesforce Deal Moves Marketing Closer To the IT Department "On the heels of Marketo's recent IPO and Oracle's purchase of Eloqua, Salesforce's bold move into this space has b [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Email Marketing | Features & Analysis | Internet Marketing Industry | Marketing Tools | Marketing Tools: General | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing

Today, one of the most popular social media scheduling tools, Buffer, has teamed up with the also-popular Twitter Analytics tool Followerwonk. The integration is an exciting one. Thanks to Followerwonk data, Buffer will now be able to auto-schedule posts for users at the ideal times for each specific account. Followerwonk, a tool within the large suite of marketing tools from Moz, has helped many a user to answer the age old question: "When is the best time to post content with my account?" A quick follower analysis will allow users to see their optimal tweeting times based off of follow [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Top News

With the help of social photo crowdsourcing solution Olapic, the fashion website Boticca.com has started using customer photos on their homepage and adding the photos to product pages, as well. Launched last week, the website's new photo Gallery feature will showcase Instagram and regular photos taken by customers wearing Bottica's jewelry and accessory items. According to the company's announcement, Boticca's founders Avid Larizadeh and Kiyan Foroughi realized that "street style" content was impacting a large portion of sales on the website. "We were keen to harness the power of street [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags

According to visual analytics and marketing platform Curalate, brand images on Pinterest are 23 percent more likely to receive a repin if the image does not contain a face. Using custom algorithms to evaluate more than 500,000 Pinterest images, Curalate researched how an image's visual characteristics influence social media activity. Examining 30 different visual characteristics, including color, texture, lightness and saturation, the study found that images with lots of color are preferred, while red, orange and brown images are twice as likely to be repinned over blue pictures. Images of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Analytics | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Pinterest | Pinterest: Analytics | Pinterest: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

In an attempt to keep marketers from diluting Pinterest's core value of quality over quantity, the image-focused social media site updated contest guidelines earlier this year, adding a list of "Dos" and "Don'ts" for brands wanting to host Pinterest contests. Pinterest's compliance language makes it clear that they are in no way responsible for any promotions hosted on their site, and any brand holding a Pinterest contest must comply with all legal requirements. The list of "Dos" and "Don'ts" offered on Pinterest's Brand Guidelines page give marketers a standard set of rules to follow wh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Pinterest | Pinterest: Business Use & Advertising | Pinterest: Spam | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Social Media Marketing: Spam

Selected by Gartner as one of the five "Cool Vendors" in the CRM customer service vertical for 2013, Conversocial has landed a $3.2 million investment from Octopus Investments, along with $1.2 million from a previous convertible note for a total of $4.4 million in funding. With the upgrade of their Real Time Management Dashboard and Conversations Workflow platforms, Conversocial makes it possible for companies to manage customer service initiatives via their social media channels in real-time. "The new investment allows us to innovate even faster to take social into the contact center, and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing

Social media has, since its introduction, created a conundrum for marketers: how do we measure success? It’s all well and good to gain followers and likes, but what does that really mean in terms of bottom-line impact? Pinterest, the latest addition to the social set, introduces a whole new set of opportunities, as well as a whole new set of questions. Don't Think Of It As A Social Platform The best way to look at Pinterest is not as a social platform. Don’t think about developing a “Pinterest Strategy.”  Consider Pinterest a media channel for content marketing. The social aspect [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Pinterest | Pinterest: Analytics | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

If you're responsible for social media for a large organization, odds are good that you either use automated tools or are giving serious thought to using them. At enterprise scale, it's virtually impossible to manage an effective social program without some kind of software assistance. The good news is that over the past year, social media management tools for the enterprise have become robust and reliable. Marketing Land’s sister site, Digital Marketing Depot, regularly takes deep dives into areas we can’t always cover in depth while we’re keeping up with the rapid change of news in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Features & Analysis | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing

I have a couple of cool tools in my kitchen: The Aero Press and the Vitamix. I love them both. The Aero Press is a convenient way to make a great cup of morning coffee. It helps me accomplish a habitual practice I engage in each day. But, the Vitamix (a high speed blender) has shifted my understanding and approach to food. I’ve learned to use different types of raw foods to fuel whatever activity I’m about to engage in (tip: try kale for mental clarity). This shift has improved my performance and productivity both mentally and physically (some in my family even point to a sunnier dis [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Analytics | Marketing Day | Marketing Tools: Analytics | Marketing Tools: Social Media

If only Epicurious had been using Social Flow or Buffer, it might've avoided the headaches associated with social media's latest tragedy-related faux pas. But it appears the food-lover's website wasn't using either of those social management services, and sent out a couple tweets on Tuesday that looked like an attempt at self-promotion in the aftermath of a terrible event. Twitter user Thomas Powell seems to have been the first to notice (that's his image above), and coverage on other websites has quickly picked up steam, as is always the case when brands take this route with their s [...]

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Video technology company Unruly released a Social Video Quarterly Report for Q1 2013 today, the first in a new series of quarterly reports measuring social video advertising trends. According to their findings, the Entertainment sector won 28.7 percent of total shares for social videos, followed by the FMCG/CPG, Tech and Automotive sectors. The two entertainment video campaigns that drove the most shares were a set of two trailers for the movie Fast & Furious 6, which generated a combined 4,090,803 shares and Fox's ad for the 'Homer Shake' episode of the The Simpsons which garnered 568, [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Video | Marketing Tools: Analytics | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Statistics: Online Advertising | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Video

With its launch today at the 2013 ad:tech Summit, Blab claims to be the first commercial platform to predict social media conversations up to 72 hours before they happen. Applying algorithms that analyze text, images, and videos from more than 50,000 real-time data sources, Blab organizes billions of conversations to predict future conversations within 24, 48 and 72-hour windows. Designed using a SaaS platform, marketers access Blab's Conversation Canvas dashboard to find opportunities and threats in real-time, making it possible to devise strategies and develop content based on future conv [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags

The marketing technology company HipLogiq launched their newest social media software SocialCentiv at last month's SXSW Conference. Within 30 days after its launch, the company says more than 1,000 companies had become customers. Designed for small to medium sized businesses, SocialCentiv claims to help companies identify potential customers on social media sites like Twitter, allowing them to reply to social media conversations with location-based offers. When someone uses an offer, SocialCentiv emails a referral incentive reward to the new customer. The software also includes reporting op [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Twitter: Advertising | Twitter: Marketing

Little Twitter is growing up, today announcing it will offer an advertising API for its Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products, a development allowing marketers to buy and optimize Twitter ads alongside their other media buying. The company has been testing the system for the last month or so, with beta partners Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, TBG Digital and SHIFT. "With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale," wrote April Underwood, Twitter's prod [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News | Twitter: Advertising | Twitter: User Interface

After giving users a sneak peek last month, the new owners of Delicious.com have launched the new version of the venerable bookmarking site. On first glance, it looks like they have a winner on their hands. Going to the home page today should show a small pop-up window introducing the new site to both users and non-account holders. If you have an account already, logging in will bring up another overlay with a couple quick tips about using the new site. Content discovery looks like a cross between the old Digg and a page of Google search results. The far right column shows a preview o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Delicious | Marketing Tools | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Top News

It's funny how subjective using social media tools can be from person to person. Every day, I use at least a half dozen tools to post and track social activity online, primarily SocialFlow, Chartbeat, Google Analytics, Tweetdeck, Facebook Insights, Exact Target. On occasion, that toolset grows: Google Webmaster Tools, Simply Measured, PageLever, Followerwonk, Raven Tools, Curalate, Twitter Analytics, bitly, Muckrack, Tweetreach, Google Insights, Statigram, IFTTT... and there are more if I count the tools I use on a personal basis. I haven't used Union metrics for Tumblr yet (frankly I am si [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Features & Analysis | Marketing Tools | Marketing Tools: Analytics | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Uncategorized

Marketers that want a better sense of where a Facebook Page is most popular can do that now via a new tool from the social analytics firm, SocialBakers. The company announced its Local Page Ranks tool today, which shows where Page fans are located geographically. This data has been available to Page owners in Facebook Insights, but only for their own Page(s). SocialBakers' Facebook Page Statistics page now has a "Country" dropdown where the local ranks of Pages that SocialBakers monitors can be accessed. The data shows, for example, that Walmart is currently the most popular Facebook p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook: Pages | Facebook: Statistics | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

The dog never ate my homework. Or at least, I never tried to use that as an excuse, which is odd, considering my family actually owned a dog kennel. To this day, the memory of homework sends chills down my spine -- I just wasn't one of those people who dashed off their evening assignments with ease. If only they had called it research. Research evokes pictures of Mission Impossible dossiers of secret agents, or scientists discovering a breakthrough cure for a killer pandemic. Research is a key task in social media marketing. We have to listen to and analyze our communities, perhaps [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Twitter | Twitter Marketing Column

Buffer, the increasingly popular social media management tool, has announced a new update for both its web interface and iPhone app. Together, the two products are getting a pretty substantial list of new features along with a new look. The new Buffer web app sports a new design that appears to make it easier to choose social accounts when publishing, and also shows the media (photos, videos, etc.) right inline with scheduled updates in the Buffer queue. Analytics are grouped together under a new menu option, and now indicates which posts performed best with "top tweet" and other icons. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing