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3 Social Media Changes You Don’t Want to Miss

July 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

As a social media company, it is our job to stay on top of all the fancy new stuff that pops up every 10 seconds or so in our industry. Most of these changes don’t really mean much to you, our readers – they are new startups working out glitches, back-end programs that make our jobs easier, or simply new ideas that haven’t quite reached critical mass yet.

The last couple weeks, however, have brought about 3 major news items that are worth sharing. The first is the release of Google+, a social network that is Google-based and is supposed to be a new rival for Facebook. The second is a trio of information bits from Facebook regarding their chat features. And finally, YouTube is in the works of redesigning their user experience, and the early results look promising.

1) Google+

Currently in Beta Mode with limited availability, Google+ seems to be aiming at being a simpler and more user-friendly social network. Friends are organized into “circles” such as work, friends, family, acquaintances, etc. The rumor is that it will be open to the public as of July 31. They will also be rolling out business profiles sometime in the next few months.

Pros:

  • Seamlessly integrates with other Google Apps, especially chat.
  • Has built-in video chat.
  • Organizes friends better than Facebook, making it easier to find the ones you’re truly interested in following.

Cons:

  • Yet another social network to share content on.
  • Not sure yet of how it competes in the social world with the giants that are already present.
  • Has yet to integrate things like events (Google Cal?) or collaborative work (Google Docs?).


2) Facebook Chat

Facebook held a live event viewed by thousands of people online to announce their latest upgrade. The Facebook Chat feature has long been known to be a little glitchy, and not as easy-to-use as Google Chat or Skype. They seem to be trying rather hard to fix that problem. Their trio of items to note:

  • Group chat: You can now add multiple people to a single chat box, making things like weekend planning a breeze.
  • Chat sidebar: depending on your browser size, you may now have a sidebar with a listing of your friends and the ability to chat with them right there, versus just that little box in the bottom right corner.
  • Video chat: This is the biggie. Facebook has partnered with Skype to bring video calling to any of your Facebook friends.

Pros

  • Group chat seems like an awesome feature and will be easy-to-use. This will make life much more simple for a lot of people and even businesses.
  • The ability to video chat without having to download a program is huge. You now have access to all your friends, versus just those with the Skype program.
  • They capitalized on the best video technology out there (Skype) instead of trying to create their own.
  • You can leave video voicemails when your call isn’t answered.

Cons

  • You still have to download a plugin, and it may not be user-friendly for those who aren’t tech-savvy.
  • Still no group video chatting – that really would have been icing on the cake. It will likely be a paid premium feature in the future.


3) YouTube Redesign – Codename “Cosmic Panda”

This change might be my personal favorite. Virtually since its inception, the site has looked a little clunky, and not very user-friendly. All of that is about to change with this update. The overall design is slick and clean, and makes navigating much more intuitive. To activate the update for your account, visit www.youtube.com/CosmicPanda.

Pros

  • It just looks and feels so much better. That’s a big pro in our book.
  • Playlists are organized neatly on the right side and can be seen at all times.
  • Channel stats such as subscribers and views are now easily visible on the rop right.
  • You can change the video size manually, putting the viewing experience totally in your control.
  • It is easier to scroll through videos of a selected channel.

Cons

  • The “Featured Video” seems to be lost, so the video that people see when they land on your channel is likely just the most recent upload.
  • That’s about it for now! We LOVE this update!



What do YOU think of all these changes? What pros and cons have you found? What are you most excited to start using? Chime in here on the blog, or over on our Facebook and Twitter pages!

Jeremy Anderberg

Jeremy is a blog-reading, report-writing project manager. In his spare time he enjoys reading a good thriller, drinking a freshly brewed cup of coffee, and spending time with his wife.

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How Social Media Has Changed the Reading Experience

April 20, 2011 By 2 Comments

New Kindle features allow you to rate books on Twitter and Facebook instantly.

What happens when you combine one of the world’s oldest practices with one of the world’s newest? While the practice of reading has been around for literally thousands of years, social media has exploded onto our planet in the last five years or so, and that’s being generous. So how do these worlds converge? Until recently, they haven’t very well. It’s been more like oil and water than peanut butter and jelly.

Amazon, a leader in combining reading and technology, has managed to find ways to create a happy marriage between two of my favorite things.  The Kindle has a new function that allows you to share on Twitter or Facebook a rating of your books as soon as you have finished them. The device also allows you to electronically highlight your favorite passages, and immediately share them via your social networks. This means you can share the wisdom of whatever you’re reading instantly, versus taking that extra time to manually type or write things out.

With hash tags and search functions, you can also instantly see what other people are saying about whatever book you’re reading or want to read. With uStream you can do online live reviews, something we’ve done a couple times here at One Social Media. Anyway you cut it, the social web is affecting the very concept of what it means to read a book and learn from it.

Social media has also changed some of our reading habits. Recent studies are showing that social media may affect attention spans, making us less able to focus while working (or reading, perhaps). This coincides with Amazon releasing what they call Kindle Singles. These are short stories written by well known authors and published electronically by Amazon that come at a cheaper price than full-length books. The company realizes that shorter attention spans means books (and even chapters) must reflect that if they are going to continue to be profitable.

There has been a lot of talk recently about how technology has changed reading, but not much talk about how social media itself has changed reading. When you dig a little bit, you’ll find that it has, and will continue to in the years to come. In what ways have YOU seen this happen already?

Jeremy Anderberg

Jeremy is a blog-reading, report-writing project manager. In his spare time he enjoys reading a good thriller, drinking a freshly brewed cup of coffee, and spending time with his wife.

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VYou: Using Video To Connect With Your Customers

February 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I recently started experimenting with a new website this week that offers an intriguing way for people to communicate with each other. The site is called VYou, and it’s the next resource you’ll want to add to your social media toolbox.

The concept behind VYou is simple, yet ingenious: Ask a question about a topic—get a video response.

Here’s how it is explained on the site:

“VYou allows people to broadcast video structured as conversations, offering the most personal form of social interaction on the web. It works like this: you record video responses to messages entered by friends and fans. VYou organizes their messages and your videos into conversations, making the experience feel continuously live even though the content is stored” (Source).

VYou provides a great opportunity for organizations and companies who want to start connecting with customers on an entirely new level.

To see VYou in action, take a look at the channel I created for myself earlier this week:

As you can see, I have already started interacting with people who have submitted questions to me about social media. Setting up my own VYou account took hardly any time at all, and managing my channel is fairly easy. And the best part is, you can connect your other social media profiles with VYou, and share your video responses with all of your followers on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

VYou is just one of many great resources that you can use to connect with your past, current, and future customers online. We’re extremely excited to start using it on a regular basis at One Social Media. We like it so much in fact that we’re designating it as the primary place you can go to ask us questions that you want us to answer on our new weekly LIVE show: The Social Truth.

Haven’t heard about our new show yet? Tune in next time! We broadcast our live show every Wednesday at 3 P.M. central time. If you want to learn more about how your business can start harnessing the power of social media, this show is for you.

Want to see more examples of VYOu channels? Connect with other members of the One Social Media team:

Rob Wormley

As a social media specialist, Rob thrives in situations that require constant creativity. On days when Rob isn’t working hard to create, maintain, and strengthen relationships online, you might find him spending time with family, browsing through his nearest bookstore, or sipping on a cup of coffee at his local Starbucks.

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Filed Under: blogging, facebook, social media marketing, Social Media News, twitter, YouTube Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

What Happens When You Don’t Use Facebook?

February 4, 2011 By 1 Comment

We talk to a lot of people who don’t think Facebook is necessary for their brand or company.  What they don’t realize is that millions of people have come to rely on Facebook as their primary form of interaction with companies, brands, and people.

What happens when someone can’t find you on Facebook?  They give up and look for someone or something else to replace you. The hardest thing to do as a brand is to get people to trust you.  Facebook makes taking that step a little easier for the customer.  They can start by clicking the “Like” button.  From there they can interact with you and your page all the while developing a better relationship with your brand.

Marketers have spent years trying to find the perfect customer.  A customer who wants to hear what you have to say and who will spread the gospel of their favorite brand.  Facebook offers a way for those customers or fans to find you and we would recommend taking advantage of it.

Having a presence on Facebook doesn’t mean you are getting anything out of it.  You have to be willing to maximize your efforts by creating strategies that get your customers and “fans” involved. By being valuable to those who choose to follow you, learn from you, be entertained by and informed by you.

How are you being valuable to your customer base?

Mike Bal

Hi, I studied advertising, I have a passion for creativity and I love working in social media. I try to write about the combination of traditional marketing, branding, and advertising strategies that can apply and work affectively with social media. I also enjoy music, batman and life.

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2011 Social Networking Websites Review Comparisons

December 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Have you ever wondered how all the different Social Media platforms in operation today compare with each other?

Each has its merits and shortcomings. So, who’s the best of the lot? Who’s at the bottom of the barrel?

Click here to find out.

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 12 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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How to Permanently Delete Your Account on Popular Websites

December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In this era of rapidly proliferating Web based services, our lives are continually getting busier and more complicated. Typically, we have accounts in dozens of websites, whether we use them regularly or not.

It may sometimes become necessary, even if it’s just to uncomplicated our lives or to stop using a service that you are dissatisfied with, to permanently delete an account. And that’s when the trouble begins.

What we often don’t realize when signing up for all these accounts, though, is how difficult it can be to permanently delete our accounts when we’ve had enough. Some require complicated, multi-step processes that can stretch over the course of days (or weeks). Others take less time, but still require multiple steps by the user.

Here’s a very helpful guide to deleting accounts permanently in some of the most popular websites in operation today. Keep it handy for you never know when you’re going to need it.

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 12 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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Stop Collecting Facebook Fans (and Start Engaging Them)

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It is common practice to try and measure the success of your Facebook campaign by the number of fans you have to your page. The more ‘likes’ you can garner, the better it is. Right?

Well, not really.

While having a good number of fans for your Facebook page is a good thing by most standards, it’s not the end of the story. Rather, it’s just the beginning.

The real secret lies in engaging them. Just sitting on top of your fan-count and hoping that something good will happen of it, will not take you anywhere. You need to get them busy, get them talking and engaged with you.

The bottomline is, it’s not so much how many people are liking your brand, but who those people are and how many are engaging with you once you’ve got them.

Here’s an excellent article to help you better understand the topic. Read it and take your Facebook campaign to the next level of success.

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 12 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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5 Must-Have Components of Focused Social-Media Goals

December 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If I were asked to name one single thing that can truly make a difference between success and failure from a Social Media campaign, I’d say it’s having a clear focus about one’s goals.

Yes, I’m talking about having a laser-sharp focus, and a clear understanding of what one wishes to achieve with the campaign. And, of course, a dogged determination to pursue and realize that goal.

Here’s an excellent article on five design principles that you should bear in mind while creating your goals. Click here to read it.

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 12 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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10 Rules for Advertising on Facebook

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Facebook advertising is a highly lucrative and effective channel for promoting your products and services to the millions of users who regularly frequent this highly popular Social Media site. However it is also one of the most under-utilized and misunderstood of advertising services.

This is largely because most people advertising on Facebook are unaware of certain rules that govern the entire process. Ignore them and you stand to profit little from Facebook advertising.

Here’s a nice guide to help you better understand them and make the most out of Facebook advertising. A bit dated (this was written in July 2009), I agree, but still surprisingly relevant and useful.

Click here to read the full article.

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 12 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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The Anatomy of the Facebook Status Update [STATS]

December 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

‘Write something’, ordained the Social Media giant and we obeyed. Let’s face it, Facebook is as much about its millions of status updates daily as it is about the thousands of apps and ads. Don’t you wish you could get some useful info about this critical aspect of using Facebook?

We all know that Facebook’s users are updating their status millions of times per day. While we have a general idea of what those users are chatting about the most, don’t we wish we could get some data about what a particular age group is most vocal about? What about users with more Facebook friends? Or, how does time of day affect status updates?

Facebook recently analyzed approximately one million status updates from U.S. English speakers. It then broke down those updates based on context, demographics and content to figure out just what its users are buzzing about.

Here’s the report for you. Click here to view it.

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 12 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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