After testing a lead-gen capable tweet internally, Twitter has now expanded the product to a select few brand advertisers -- and more will, no doubt, be able to access the technology soon. Twitter announced its new "Lead Generation Card" today. It gives brands a chance to drive new leads inside a tweet. Here's how Twitter describes it: The Lead Generation Card makes it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share their email address with a business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form. When someone expands y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Advertising | Twitter: Cards

Did Twitter unfairly take away Leonard Barshack's handle and give it to Central Idaho ski resort Sun Valley Co.? After using the Twitter handle @sunvalley since 2010, Barshack received an email from Twitter last year notifying him that a report had been filed declaring he was engaging in "non-parody impersonation" with his Twitter handle. The Associated Press reports Twitter claimed Barshack was violating their policy that mandates an account's profile information "make it clear that the creator of the account is not actually the same person or entity," as the subject of the impersonation. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Accounts & Profiles | Twitter: Legal | Twitter: Marketing

The buzz around startup culture lately is all about "minimum viable product." It's the idea of creating a product as quickly as possible — in its most minimum viable form — so you can then make it better by adapting it to what your customers really want. It makes sense as a way to build things, but I think it has other implications, too. What if "minimally viable" was the way we looked at social media metrics, as well? After all, one of the biggest challenges we face in social media marketing is that there are hundreds of different elements we could measure. Sometimes it seems like w [...]

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

That was fast. After consumers protested against Nutella coming down on a fan-based "World Nutella Day" event, Ferrero -- the maker of the popular hazelnut-spread -- has resolved the issue, expressing "gratitude" and saying its cease-and-desist letter was caused by some "misuse" of the Nutella brand on the fan page. Nutella sent us a copy of its letter sent to Sara Rosso, the founder of World Nutella Day. Ferrero wrote: World Nutella Day: a positive conclusion Positive direct contact between Ferrero and Sara Rosso, owner of the non-official Nutella fan page World Nutella Day, has brough [...]

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

In 2007, Sara Rosso, an American blogger living in Italy, created World Nutella Day to showcase her enthusiasm for Italy's hazelnut-based spread, Nutella. Seven years on, someone at Nutella's corporate parent, confectioner Ferrero SpA, decided they were not happy with this fan-led product promotion, prompting a social media backlash against the company. NOTE: See Nutella Gives In, Allows Fan To Continue With “World Nutella Day” for our update to this story. Ferrero decided to have its lawyers send out a cease and desist letter to Rossoa. She wrote on her World Nutella Day site: O [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing

Time for the Grow Your Audience With Google+ session at Google I/O 2013. We get underway at 3:30 pm PT to hear what tips Google+ product marketing manager Amy Walgenbach has to share. Live blogging is below: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+ | Social Media Marketing

In an effort to get more app developers on board using sections, the Facebook Developer blog released a list of best practices for creating customized sections and added section timeline analytics to their App Insight tool. After replacing aggregations with app sections last month, Facebook has rolled-out sections to everyone, and according to the blog post, "...are seeing almost 200 million items added daily." With sections, users can rate movie, TV show and book content directly on their timeline, as well as include ratings from apps. By highlighting a number of apps already using section [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Insights | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: User Interface | Social Media Marketing

If social curation & integration firm Mass Relevance has its way, you'll have social content surrounding you in the offline world. As of today, they've reached a new milestone as they've  integrated more than 25 billion pieces of social content on digital displays around the world. In 2011, Mass Relevance became the first Certified Twitter partner that was licensed to re-syndicate Twitter content for display, and they also tie in updates from Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube. This curated social content is pushed to the following mediums: TV and second screen Billboards [...]

Related Topics: Social Media Marketing

When it comes to social media marketing, many brands and organizations have staked claim to various hashtags. Yet by their nature, hashtags can't be owned. They can’t be wordmarked or copyrighted, either. The reality is that many hashtags are started organically, not by brands themselves but by their customers. Hashtags were once the sole domain of Twitter. Over the years, other social properties began incorporating them as well. Google Plus and Instagram recognize them. Earlier this year, LinkedIn started using them. And soon, they'll become part of Facebook as well. Hashtag Bombs Are S [...]

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

Buffer has quickly become one of the most useful social scheduling tools, thanks to constant innovation and affordable price points. Over the past year, Buffer has released a handful of updates including design & app changes and social analytics. Today, Buffer has announced the ability to schedule official retweets with the software. Previous to this update, users were required to add the RT symbol in-front of the user's text when scheduling retweets. The new changes will feature the "true" retweet where the actual Tweet (along with the author's icon and timestamp) will be shared dir [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing

  More than one in three large social media advertisers are not satisfied with their efforts from both paid and organic social media strategies. Those marketers that are satisfied with their social efforts are happiest with the results they achieve from paid social advertising than from using organic tactics alone. These are conclusions of a study published by Kenshoo Social today called "The Key to Successful Social Advertising." Kenshoo Social commissioned the study from Forrester Consulting to look at the strategies and tactics used by marketers in the U.S whose companies spe [...]

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

Website owners with a Google+ page will soon be able to add content recommendations to the user experience on their mobile websites. Google just announced the new feature today, which blends both Google+ activity (such as +1s and shares) and search authorship to determine the best related content to show to users as they browse mobile website content. Readers will see recommendations whether they're signed in to a Google account or not. If they are signed in, though, they'll see more personalized recommendations that involve content that was +1's or shared by their people in their Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google | Google: Google+ | Google: Mobile | Social Media Marketing | Top News

Social media metrics firm Unmetric evaluated over 5,000 branded Pinterest pages to determine which brands are leading on the social networking site built on images. The data gathered spanned from all time up until March 14, 2013 to identify the top five brands in five different categories: most followers, most comments, most likes, most pins and most repins. Of all the brands succeeding on Pinterest, Better Homes and Gardens made the most appearances, showing up in three of the five categories. The report revealed that brands with fashion, recipe, home and wedding boards score the highest a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Marketing Tools: Analytics | Pinterest | Pinterest: Analytics | Pinterest: Business Use & Advertising | Pinterest: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media

WordPress continues to gain in popularity among top blog publishers. The blogging platform's market share rose to 52 percent, up from 48 percent last year, according to Royal Pingdom, which uses the Technorati Top 100 blogs list for its annual study. To get a sense of WordPress' growth trend, in Royal Pingdom's first study in 2009, they found WordPress was the blogging platform of choice on 32 percent of the top 100 blogs -- that's a 63% increase in five years, while no other platform has been able to increase share in a meaningful way. According to WordPress's own stats, there are over 6 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

I hadn't seen my old high school pal in about 20 years. As we sat at a bar overlooking Grand Central Station in New York, he told me that he, too, was in social media -- something involving sentiment analysis. “Oh, sure,” I said, “many social media tools use sentiment analysis -- and it’s always a big topic at digital marketing conferences.” “No,” he said, “we analyze Twitter for changes in sentiment that might affect stock price. Then computer trading can kick in for transactions that might only be fractions of a penny per share.” Twitter As An Economic Predic [...]

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

Today, native advertising company Sharethrough announced the launch of Sharethrough Mobile, a platform that allows advertisers to promote branded content through native ads across mobile devices. Sharethrough uses proprietary technology called Real Time Templating (RTT) that enables the platform to identify the style elements of any webpage and match the look of each individual ad to that environment. RTT also adapts to any future style updates publishers make to their templates so ads stay consistent with the new elements. Below are examples of how Sharethough mobile ads appear across d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Content Marketing | Display Advertising | Internet Marketing Industry: Stats | Mobile Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Statistics: Online Advertising | Top News

After analyzing billions of mobile app events during the first quarter of 2013, mobile apps measurement platform AppsFlyer discovered that social networks were the most effective mobile app marketing channel, but search delivered the highest quality of mobile app users. Comparing conversion rates, user quality and install volume across various channels, geographies, app categories, and user segments, the AppsFlyer Mobile App Discovery Report revealed that the most common mobile marketing channels included ad networks, app discovery platforms, cross sell opportunities, incentivized ad networ [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: Google Play | Marketing Tools: Analytics | Mobile Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Statistics: Mobile Marketing

On the heels of announcing record level financial results and member engagement numbers for the first quarter of 2013, Linkedin is celebrating their 10th anniversary with more than 3,700 employees and 225 million members worldwide. Started in May of 2003 by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly and Jean-Luc Vaillant, the founders initially set their goal on growing their member base to make Linkedin a valuable site for searching and networking with other professionals. According to an interview in June 2009 on CNN Money, Hoffman admitted that the first challenge for Link [...]

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

Crafting a content strategy for social media is just as important as developing a strategy for what is published on the company blog and website. Social media is one of the main megaphones that a company uses to create its overall online presence, which in turn shapes brand recognition and sentiment. Social media has developed to the point that it is now more than putting a message out online and hoping for the best. Because the users are smarter and have made social media a part of their lives, it is up to companies to make the most out of every post and update they publish. Social med [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Channel: Strategy | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

Author and speaker Nancy Duarte has said that speakers must take their audience on a hero’s journey (YouTube video). In doing so, the speaker doesn’t assume the role of hero – the audience does. The speaker is the hero’s helper. Spokespeople for The Coca-Cola Company announced last year their ambitious goal of doubling the company’s overall revenues by the year 2020 (YouTube video).  How are they to achieve this monumental task, comparable to the doubling of a small country’s GNP? Their answer was storytelling in all of its many forms. In his latest book, What's The Fut [...]

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