WhatsApp bigger than Twitter
WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said his messaging app is now bigger than Twitter, which officially claims 200 million monthly active users. WhatsApp has eight billion inbound and 12 billion outbound messages per day, Koum said.
Social Tonic
Your Daily Dose of Social Media Engagement News
Facebook Video Adds About to Hit Your Screens
Facebook video ads are soon to cover our screens. Apparently we will start seeing them hit the site in just a few month time.
AdAge’s sources say that Facebook is expecting the first ads to hit sometime in June or July.
It will be interesting to see the reaction of Facebook users to another push media placed onto their screens.
What do you think Facebook users will react?
LinkedIn confirms acquisition
LinkedIn confirms its acquisition of Pulse, a popular news reader app similar to Flipboard and Circa. The cost of the deal was $90 million.
Facebook style mentions for LinkedIn
LinkedIn has just announced on its blog that a new Facebook-style mention feature, letting users tag companies or users, is officially official.
This new feature being tested on LinkedIn would let users mention other LinkedIn members or companies in status updates, instantly sending a notification to that user or company’s profile.
At this stage it appears that not every user had access to the mention feature so LinkedIn must rolling it gradually across its members.
Tweeting a URL? well its about to get shorter
Starting this Wednesday, any tweet that is sent out with a URL will be reduced to 118 characters, or 117 for https links.
The reduction is due to a change in Twitter’s t.co link wrapper. It extends the maximum length of t.co wrapped links from 20 to 22 characters for non-https URLs and from 21 to 23 characters for https URLs.
in layman’s terms the condensed links now take up a bit more space, and a s a result it leaves you with a little less space to add commentary with them. In short, the update represents a two-character drop per tweet. How will we survive..
All applications that use Twitters t.co wrapped lengths will be required to accommodate the new lengths starting on Wednesday.
Do you think that this change in length reduction will effect you and your tweets? Let us know in the comments, below.
ENGAGE WITH ME
A lot of businesses have a presence on social media but very few have taken this opportunity seriously. There are even a greater number of businesses that still see Social Media as a fad, or are unable to grasp the opportunity due to either a lack of understanding or fear about someone posting a complaint on their social channel site.
2013 will be a defining year as we see the social channels continue to grow and evolve. For businesses, governments, charities and educators, 2013 is the year of engagement. The consumer is now front and centre and controls what information he/she wants to receive from their brand communities. They are the ones that give you and your brand permission to interact with them. It’s no longer a one way street in terms of communication, where traditional marketing has been used over the years. 2013 is the year of engagement; it’s the time for brands to interact with their community / tribe members, understand more about your brand from them and get them talking about your brand. The organisations that get this will see their brands outpace their competitors, especially the ones that still don’t see social media as a channel to participate in.
www.facebook.com/thesocialtonic
www.twitter.com/thesocialtonic
www.linkedin.com/in/stephenbduggan
Why Social Media Policy is Important for Your Business
Globally, interest and participation in social media is growing at an ever-increasing rate as more and more people connect online via various social media platforms. This interest also extends to organisations, who are recognising that social media offers new opportunities to engage customers, clients, targeted communities and the public in conversations and brand awareness initiatives to help grow and develop their brands and services.
But as events highlighted recently in the media have shown, unguided or irresponsible social media usage can have vast ramifications for organisations that do not have effective policies in place.
With the rapid growth and application of social media, businesses need to have a policy in place that ensures employees who use social media (either as part of their job or in a personal capacity), have guidance as to the company’s expectations of their behaviour and communication online. This is particularly important around social media usage regarding the organisation, its people, partners, products or services, competitors or other individuals and organisations related to the organisation.
A social media policy can be an organisation’s first line of defense in mitigating risk for both the employer and the employee. A well-written social media policy can:
- Provide employees with guidelines for communicating in the social and online world, clearly articulating the organisation’s expectations on what is permissible to say or do online, thus ensuring the organisation’s representatives understand what is right and wrong and the consequences of posting obscene, defamatory, threatening, harassing, discriminatory or hateful content to or about another person or entity.
- Provide clarity around the organization’s values and culture for customers, employees and the public alike.
- Set expectations beginning at the point of employee induction, ensuring problems are proactively prevented rather than being left to impact upon the business and afterwards require a crisis response.
- Allow the company to allocate the responsibility for content control and approval. In other words, who an employee needs to make contact with in the organisation to get approval for comments or the creation of content relating to the organisation.
- Reduce lost time and productivity spent dealing with unauthorized usage of social media, including dealing with the consequences of conflict related to social media use.
- Reduce risk and legal exposure for the business.
By providing clear guidelines and parameters to your employees, you will be able to ensure that your organisation’s brand is enhanced and that your reputation is not inadvertently damaged by comments placed online by an employee.
Facebook Graph Search – One step closer to becoming its own internet universe.
Facebook Graph Search – One step closer to becoming its own internet universe.
Facebook today took another step in it becoming its own web universe when it launched a search engine for shared content. This move challenges the future relevance of search engines like Google as well as review sites such as Yelp and Foursquare.
The aim of “graph search” is to assist its Facebook community to find information more easily about what other Facebook users have shared on the network. It uses the indexed information generated within the Facebook universe to generate search information. It will allow people to find people by their interest, location or career. So if you like water skiing you can find other people that live nearby that also like water skiing, which will in turn allow you to make new connections with other people who share similar interests to you. Alternatively you can search for people nearby whom like Chinese food and see what restaurants they have “liked” and read their comments.
This graph search engine is designed to give Facebook users the ability to sort information by topics and interests with the added advantage of keeping its users within the Facebook community instead of them heading out to search engines or review sites for the information they seek. Zuckerberg said. “Graph Search is designed to take a precise query and return to you the answer, not link to others places where you might get the answer,” he said, highlighting some of the issues of a typical Web search.
Graph Search (beta) version rolls out Tuesday on a limited basis to users. This version will be able to handle queries based on people, photos, places and interests.
It is anticipated that results will be displayed based on importance, so a restaurant with more likes could possibly show up toward the top of the list that is generated by the search. Check-ins could also have an impact on where a place is positioned on the list, highlighting the importance and need for businesses to be actively involved on Facebook and ensuring that there Page is relevant, engaging and up-to-date.
Facebook also partners with Microsoft’s Bing social search engine to fill in some of the gaps where Graph Search cannot supply the information. Facebook does stress that their graph search is not a web search, but this can be seen as the first step in that direction as when the product is fully operational it would give many Facebook users an incentive to stay within the Facebook community and less time on other social media and search sites.
ABOUT US
The Social Media Engagement Co. help’s businesses across the globe to create, connect and engage with their communities by creating on-line social experiences that integrate business intelligence, social networks & mobile technologies. Our mission is to provide interactive solutions to assist organisation’s to optimise their on-line presence and to drive this medium to its fullest potential by developing tailor made on-line strategies for our clients to ensure their objectives and outcomes are achieved.
We specialise in creating robust Social Media Policies that can be tailor made to your organisations needs. Some of our other services include:
To find out more head to www.socialmediaengagement.com.au
2013 Social Media Trends – Where to next?
2012 has seen social media continue to gather pace, with even more social channels hitting the market. Even with all this buzz, there is still a level of scepticism and uncertainty by business who still fail to understand the power and the enormous opportunities that social media presents. This situation is somewhat similar to the late 1990’s where a large number of businesses believed they didn’t need a webpage which resulted in many missed opportunities by businesses that waited till the major shift to online sites took place. Like the website scenario, the same now applies to social media.
Within this world of change in how we communicate, connect, and engage what does 2013 have in store for us? There are a number of technology driven shifts underway, and these will continue to have a major impact on how we work and how we engage using social media. Here are some of the trends that will impact us in 2013.
ENGAGE ME
A lot of businesses have a presence on social media but very few have taken this opportunity seriously. There are even a greater number of businesses that still see Social Media as a fad, or are unable to grasp the opportunity due to either a lack of understanding or fear about someone posting a complaint on their social channel site.
2013 will be a defining year as we see the social channels continue to grow and evolve. For businesses, governments, charities and educators, 2013 is the year of engagement. The consumer is now front and centre and controls what information he/she wants to receive from their brand communities. They are the ones that give you and your brand permission to interact with them. It’s no longer a one way street in terms of communication, where traditional marketing has been used over the years. 2013 is the year of engagement; it’s the time for brands to interact with their community / tribe members, understand more about your brand from them and get them talking about your brand. The organisations that get this will see their brands outpace their competitors, especially the ones that still don’t see social media as a channel to participate in.
A MARKETPLACE WITH NO BOUNDARIES
2013 will see companies beginning to realise that they are no longer servicing a local community, or geographic location. With the internet, mobile phones and social media, business is now truly global and can service anyone that they engage with via social media.
Smart Brands will begin to realise that they need to rethink their strategy, realign their marketing mix and product offerings to effectively compete in a global marketplace.
With this shift in thinking comes an understanding that social media is an important part of your marketing mix. If you have a product to sell or a service to market, social media can play a major part in getting your brand global. Today you don’t need to rely on an intermediary such as distributors, licensors or retailers. You can get online set up a presence on social channels and sell your product or service 24/7.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Social media has given every person a voice. For the first time ever the power is now rests in the hands of the individual. 2013 will see this power shift, continue to grow and influence every aspect of society.
The consumer now holds the power, they now decide which brands they want to interact with and receive information from.
This shift will continue to reverberate across society as brands, companies, associations, and governments come to terms with this shift in power.
As we have seen recently, social media controls the noise, spreads the word, allows individuals to gather together and become one voice. People now congregate both on and offline to support a cause or injustice.
In 2013 social media will continue to drive the news, views and opinions of the individual which in turn aggregates to the masses. ‘Power to the people’ can now bring down Governments. It can now impact elections, damage or destroy brands, change legislation, and create change itself; it provides the silent majority with a voice.
Governments, Businesses and Brands as well as social media providers now have to come to terms with how they operate, market, communicate and engage in this new economy. As we have recently seen with Instagram (who wanted to change their terms of operation to give them the right to use other peoples images for advertising purposes) people will spread the message and people will disengage in protest.
BATTLE OF THE NET TITANS
In 2013 we will see the battle of the “net titans”. These are the major players on the internet, once dominated by computer hardware companies, the new age titans are the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Apple.
These companies dominate a marketplace like no other before them, and they hold the biggest asset of all, information; on what we like dislike, think and do.
We will see these big companies butting heads with each other as they try to grab an advantage and more power. Some may decide to stop allowing their information being shared via search engines, others may stop third party providers of services, (such as the plethora of twitter third party services providers from being able to access the twitter streams) in an attempt to control the information and data they are gathering.
Will this battle create separate webs with their own search engines where you never need to leave the social channels you engage in? This will certainly start to play out over the coming years and dramatically change the nature of the internet and destroy the original philosophy of the internet, which was open shared content.
COMPANY SOCIAL MEDIA
2013 will be defined as the year that social media started to be ‘integrated’ into business. This trend will be all about businesses using social media channels as a vehicle to communicate and collaborate and engage with other employees online through social media channels.
We have seen education facilities start to integrate social media into their operations, and we will start to see savvy smart businesses and governments do the same. Using social media as vehicles to communicate internal announcements, to create collaborative cross functional working groups, to seek out new employees or internal job opportunities…. social media for business will provide endless opportunities and will hopefully put an end to those dreaded emails that have become the biggest time consuming and some may say most unproductive activity in business today.
So there you have it, the five key social media trends that will impact us in 2013. If you have a comments or a question, please make a post on one of the following social media channels.
www.facebook.com/thesocialtonic
www.twitter.com/thesocialtonic
