Social Media Today | Maggie Fox

Best Thinkers Webinar Series – Defining and Measuring Influence

January 17, 2012 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog

Join Maggie Fox next Tuesday January 24th at 12pm EST / 9am PST, as she hosts another exclusive, live webinar from Social Media Today on Defining and Measuring Influence.

We are all subject to being influenced by people, events and experiences in our lives. This is just as true in our online behaviors as it is in the rest of our lives. With the growth of the social component on the Internet, we are exposed to many stimuli aimed at grabbing our attention and affecting what we do next – where we click, what we “Like,” who we trust and what we buy. This webinar digs deeper into how influence works and does not work on the Internet.

Maggie and her panelists Pam Moore of Zoomfactor and Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks will be examining:

Is influence such a personal thing that it can’t be generalized?
Can a person be defined as “influential” simply by having more followers on Twitter and Likes on Facebook?
How can you tell is someone has been influenced?
What kinds of influence should be recognized and leveraged through market research?
Is building influence different in B2B vs B2C?

Don’t miss it! Register now, click HERE!

Best Thinkers Webinar Series Today – Boldly Social: A Conversation with Sandy Carter

January 10, 2012 / 1 Comment / Posted in: Blog

Don’t forget to join Maggie Fox today at 12pm EST/9am PST for an exclusive, live webinar from Social Media Today on being Boldly Social: A Conversation with Sandy Carter. A great discussion to be had with Sandy Carter – a leader in social business and Maggie Fox – an expert in enterprise level social media, as she asks Sandy to explain the need, as she sees it, for a much bolder approach by big businesses in adopting transparent social practices and identities.

Register now, click HERE!

Best Thinkers Webinar Series – Boldly Social: A Conversation with Sandy Carter

January 4, 2012 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog

Join Maggie Fox next Tuesday January 10^th at 12pm EST / 9am PST, as she hosts an exclusive, live webinar from Social Media Today on being Boldly Social: A Conversation with Sandy Carter.

One of the greatest challenges facing businesses today is communicating with and understanding customers and coworkers through social media. It’s not all about technology, nor is it so much about marketing technique; it’s more about changing basic assumptions and getting comfortable with the new communications reality where opportunities for social interaction are pervasive and ubiquitous.

Don’t miss out on the great discussion to be had with Sandy Carter – a leader in social business and Maggie Fox – an expert in enterprise level social media, as she asks Sandy to explain the need, as she sees it, for a much bolder approach by big businesses in adopting transparent social practices and identities.

Register now, click HERE!

B2B vs B2C Social Media: Whither the ROI? (Webinar)

December 13, 2011 / 2 Comments / Posted in: Blog

Tune in today at 12pm EST / 9am PST for a live webinar from Social Media Today – B2B vs. B2C Social Media: Whither the ROI?

Is social media going to pay its way or not? For most of Web 2.0’s lifetime, this has been a key question. Both B2B and B2C marketers wrestle with this question, and there are few examples of success.

Join Maggie Fox and fellow panelists, Paul Gillin and Sandy Carter, as they explore these urgent questions:

What can we learn from businesses like Apple that have figured out how to get people to part with their money by leveraging social channels?
Which platforms—LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter (and now Google+)—provide the best ROI for B2B marketers?
How can companies leverage their internal thought-leaders for generating influence and, eventually, sales?
What barriers block marketers from converting people who use social platforms only for social reasons?
How do you measure the return on social investment in B2B? What are the best cases for its use?

Will definitely be a great discussion! To register now, click HERE!

Social Media Roundup for November 25

November 25, 2011 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

This week the roundup covers changes to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad unit, the shiny updated Facebook Insights (with handy infographic), Klout’s explanation of changes to their algorithm for influence and how it works by a couple of their executives. And we wrap it up with the news that through Facebook we’re only 3.74 degrees away from anyone (what does this mean for poor Kevin Bacon?).

Facebook Ads in the Ticker

This week Facebook began showing ads in the Ticker in the form of Sponsored Stories. When Sponsored Stories ad units were launched last year, they only to showed up in your News Feed and then this summer they expanded into the Games Ticker. Since Facebook didn’t receive significant complaints, they expanded even further to include them in the standard Ticker, which happened this week. These ads will be subtle — the only difference from the regular content is that they will be labeled “Sponsored”. Some people see this as a sneaky approach to getting people to click on ads. But as long as these ads aren’t flooding the Ticker, I think it could be a positive shift in advertisements because the ads will include some social content or context. It will be interesting to see what the further reactions to this roll out will be. What do you think of this change?

Facebook’s New Insights

Facebook also rolled out their new insights this week. All of the analytics are presented in a visual format, giving Page administrators a more organized and detailed look at the analytics about fan interaction and engagement on their Page. The insights tab is further broken down by “Likes,” “Reach,” and “Talking About This.” The “Likes” section will help you narrow in on your target market, making sure that your tone, voice of brand and content are resonating with the right people by providing detail about the demographics of your fans.

The “Reach” section shows you the number of people that have seen your content and then this information can be leveraged by looking into which days had the most reach and what you shared on those days. Lastly, the “Talking About This,” section shows you who have reacted to content on your Page so you can better target your content.

The new algorithm focuses on “People Talking About This” or the number of “stories” your Page is producing and in turn creating shared content. A story is: when someone “Likes” your Page, posts to your Wall, “Likes,” comments or shares one of your posts, answers a question, mentions your Page, tags your Page, checks in at your Place or recommends your Place. Admins can now obtain insights into what type of posts have greater chances of going viral (the number of people reached multiplied by the number that actually took action).

Take a look at this Infographic for a little cheat sheet:

Klout on Algorithms and their Business

Klout has been taking heat over user privacy and the legitimacy the algorithms they use for determining an individual’s online influence. Klout actually changed their algorithm last month and Social Media Today author, Rohn Jay Miller interviewed Klout’s CEO Joe Fernandez, which you can read here.

Also check out this video of Klout’s VP of Platform, Matt Thomson at the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas talking about their business and its mission. I found it interesting to hear that they consider themselves more consumer-focused than business-focused. They say that individuals can know whom they are influencing and then identify brands that they may want to connect with and reach out to. I like this angle, put the power in the influencer’s hands because they are the ones that have achieved their influence!

4 Degrees of Separation?

You’ve heard of the six degrees of separation right? Well it just got smaller, thanks to no other than the world’s largest social network, Facebook. New research shows that we are now only 3.74 people away from knowing someone. Facebook’s study looked to see if modern technology made it easier to connect with people worldwide and of course the answer is yes, resulting in cutting the six degree rule almost in half. It really is a small world after all!

Best Thinkers Webinar Series: Disclosure, Transparency and Ethics in Blogging

October 12, 2011 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog

Join Maggie Fox on October 18th at 12pm EST/9am PST as she hosts an exclusive, live webinar from Social Media Today on Disclosure, Transparency and Ethics in Blogging.

On the social web, it’s not always easy to distinguish marketers from regular citizens. With the explosion of online marketing in recent years we’ve seen all sorts of ethically dubious practices, like PR agencies posting “impartial” product reviews about their clients and “independent” bloggers failing to disclose freebies and other considerations from the companies that they write about. In the latest installment of Social Media Today’s Best Thinkers series, ethics guru Randy Cohen (former ethics columnist for the New York Times Magazine), and marketing expert Paul Rand discuss the emerging ethics of blogging.

Our panelists will explore the following questions, and yours:

How do we distinguish opinion, information and marketing in the blogosphere?
What are appropriate disclosure requirements for corporate bloggers?
Can you be an objective blogger?

Maggie Fox and fellow panelists, marketing expert Paul M. Rand and ethics guru Randy Cohen as they discuss these emerging ethics of blogging.

Will definitely be a great discussion! Register now, click HERE!

Best Thinkers Webinar Series: Where Have All the Hippies Gone?

October 5, 2011 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog

Join Maggie Fox on October 11th at 12pm EST as she hosts a webinar: Where Have All the Hippies Gone? to explore the topics of Monetization, Data and Social Media.

We define “hippies” as individuals who are not centered around making a profit or having a “revenue model.” In the early days of the social Web, strategies for making money took a back seat to building traffic and refining the software platform. Many companies focused on giving the platform away for free and serving users well in order to win their loyalty and perhaps even their dependence on the social platform. The next stage of the social web is monetization, or figuring out how to profit from the presence of many habitual users and the information gathered about those users. In this webinar, the panelists will explore the various strategies that companies are adopting to pay their way on the social web.

We’ll cover the following questions as well as yours:

What are the leading monetization strategies for social media companies?
What’s the future of online advertising?
How can companies formulate appropriate data management policies that allow them to monetize user data without violating the trust of their users?

Panelists Mike Edelhart, Judy Shapiro, and Brett Shellhammer will explore where all the hippies have gone!

It promises to be a lively discussion. Join in. Sign-up here.

Social Media Roundup for Sept 30th

September 30, 2011 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

As Facebook has been on our front page for the past two weeks,we feel like we’ve missed out some big movements in the social media world. We certainly have some catching up to do, so does Google.

On September 20^th, two days before Facebook’s f8 conference, Google+ announced it is now open to the public, and has 9 new features, which added up a total of 100 updates since it launched three months ago.

Hangouts on your phone finally works on Android(version 2.3 or greater) powered mobile phones. We can now video chat with friends from our Circle or join other people’s conversation while on the go.
Hangouts On Air allows us to speak to a large audience, or alternatively, view as a spectator.
Hangouts with extras include several net new functions which enable us to do things more than chatting.
- Share screen with our friends through Screensharing
- Draw, doodle or just scribble together on Sketchpad
- Google Docs is now supported on Google+
- Named Hangouts for when we want to join or create a public a private hangout about a certain topic
The Hangouts API is now available to developers to build new apps and games off of
Search in Google+ lets us search for relevant people and posts, as well as popular content from around the web

After Google+’s announcement, research estimated that the site has received about 15 million U.S visitors last week, which was 13 TIMES more traffic then the week before! Furthermore, according to a Google+ statistician Paul Allen:

“The growth rate has skyrocketed to rates we only saw during the first week of its field test”

Registered users on Google+ went up 30% in two days to an estimated 43.4 million – the biggest growth since its first beta launch three months ago.

Now let’s get back on Facebook, as today is the day Timeline is going to be rolled out to regular users (if you have signed up earlier). Be prepared!

Social Media Group’s upcoming webinar with Social Media Today!

We are proudly to present our next webinar with Social Media Today. Tom Foremski and Steven Rosenbaum will join us to discuss:

Is Curation the New Journalism?

Where journalists used to be the trusted agents for reporting on the ground and fact-checking stories before publication, every Web user is now a potential journalist. And as the deluge of user-generated information gathers strength, finding out what’s important to people in their private and working lives becomes more and more challenging. How to sort between truth, half truth and falsehood? Technical filtering can’t (yet) match human capacity to discriminate between useful content and garbage. This is the increasingly vital role of the online curator. The discussion will examine to what extent curation is becoming integral to journalism, and whether bloggers and tweeters can adequately play the the reporting role of journalists.

We’ll cover the following questions, as well as your own:

What’s the difference between curation and journalism?
How does factchecking work in the blogosphere?
What are emerging best practices for online curators?
Can the hive mind of the Internet match the formal editorial structure of a traditional news organization when it comes to producing accurate reporting and analysis of current events?

Register to the Webinar and join us on October 4th at 12pm EST/9am PST. It’s free!

Social Media Roundup for August 26th, 2011

August 26, 2011 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

August is certainly not a quiet month in the tech and social media worlds. This week was a busy one. On the 24^th, Steve Jobs, again, successfully announced his latest “mind-blowing” product called “iQuit”… but I think everyone has already seen this news in their feeds and across the front pages, so we won’t spend too much time on that subject!

On the social network front, Facebook and Twitter both made announcements this week.

Lets take a look at Facebook first:

Facebook has made some significant changes to its privacy settings. Users now can now share to specific people or groups, essentially increasing user control over who see what.

They also updated their location services. In addition to the existing Places check-ins, users can now add location information to wall posts and photos.

From allfacebook.com

Here’s a list of the major improvements.

The privacy settings are moving toward individual post windows and profiles.
Users are gaining the ability to approve tags of themselves in others’ posts and photos.
All tags will include an attribution of the person who did the tagging.
Places no longer require physical check-ins, so people can add locations to posts, even from the desktop.
You don’t need to be friends with someone to tag them in a post or photo.
You don’t have to like a brand to tag it in a post or photo.
Facebook has changed the word “everyone” to “public” in privacy settings, for clarity.
You can customize privacy, or visibility of information, on a post-by-post basis.
Users can edit the visibility of individual bits of content anytime after they post.
The changes don’t affect mobile users, at least not for now.

Speaking of Twitter:

Twitter has begun its new photo sharing feature to its users. The new photo service allows users to attach photos with their tweets, which could pretty much replace the similar functions provided by 3^rd party vendors such as TwitPic over the past years. It means that users can now generate richer content on Twitter than merely text. But on the other hand, the new function makes Twitter feeds resemble a Facebook wall post, which has always allowed users to share many types of media content.

Are we forgetting about Google+?

Last week at a Social Media Today Webinar, Our CEO Maggie Fox presented some of the latest stats of Google+ as it approaches its two-month birthday. Instead of going into detail on people’s reaction to functionally, I think it is better to let the numbers do the talking.

From singlegrain.com

74% of Google+ users are male

Top 10 Occupations of Google+ users

10.05% Software Engineer
10.77% Designer
13.57% Developer
24.56% Engineer
4.88% Writer
4.23% Web Developer
3.67% Software Developer
3.05% Programmer
3.05% Photographer
2.79% Artist

Google+ has gained over 25 million registered users in about two months. But the question is, how many active users are there? Or let me ask you this, when was the last time you checked your Google+ account and saw new feeds from anyone of your circles?

It is not hard to recognize that some of the latest changes Facebook and Twitter made align to the aesthetics of Google+. So do people really need Google+ if other platforms are offering the exact same services? I think we are all still looking forward to see what Google will do next in the social space battle.

All posts in “Social Media Today”

Facebook Ads in the Ticker

Facebook’s New Insights

Klout on Algorithms and their Business

4 Degrees of Separation?