Grand Final Weekend

Here we are for another year, where regardless of where you live in Australia (at least), it becomes almost impossible to avoid the ceremony, fervor, hype and if your interested, the gargantuan amount of social media that is being generated about the game, the players and every other conceivable aspect of the historic matches about to be played in the respective codes where legends are made.

So why should we care as marketers you may ask.  Well it's simple.  At times like these people are their most engaged and completely switched on to what's going on around them and yes for one of the few times they are actually listening.

How then can we enter the discussion. How can we align our product or service to what's going on. How can we leverage any communal theme and link it back to what we do?

Certainly food for thought and for those clever enough to:
a. Come up with something and
b. Anticipate the event in a proactive way the spoils will be yours.

Regardless of  whether or not you have been proactive this time round, be on full alert and listen in on the discussion and this may provide you with some real insights for the next sports bonanza down the line.

And until next time, good luck and good marketing (and if your team is playing) good luck :)

Regards
Daniele

LinkedIn and Scoop.it Form a Strategic Alliance

As of now, you will be able to integrate your slide share presentations into Scoop.it to allow you to curate your slide share presentations. 

This will allow you specifically embed the presentations through the site, and subsequently share them through your various social media networks that you are aligned with.


The aim is to provide these curator sites like Scoop.it to drive the content to others who are interested in the subject matter you are presenting in your slide share presentations.

When your presentation is added to Scoop.it, they get added to their topic pages, and by inference receive the endorsement of the portal and subsequently reading it to their social networks, and getting it in front of interested audiences made available to the  networks following them. 

Once you join Scoop.it you simply click on the toolbar widget to scoop a presentation, right from the SlideShare page. 

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards
Daniele

New LinkedIn Notifications Function

LinkedIn's new Notification section will allow users to be notified of relevant discourse in real time as people like anything that you have put up through your LinkedIn account.

Simply you will see a notification flag that appears at the top of the homepage as shown in the picture below.

If you have any new updates such as connection requests, comments, etc, you will get a red circle to highlight this.

As well LinkedIn have advised through their updates that this new notification functionality will also be available on  mobile devices, including Android, iPhone and iPad applications, thereby ensuring additional convenience for the traveler requiring portable access.

These updates highlight LinkedIn's continuing efforts to stay current and drive business focused utility that is time effective and ultimately improves your effectiveness in the real world.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards
Daniele.

Facebook Launches Its New Recommendations Bar

Facebook has now officially made available its new plugin called the Facebook Recommendations Bar, which gives Facebook users an additional sharing tool on top of the other more established options such as The Like Button and the Recommendation Box.

The way this new sharing feature works is along the lines of the  the Like Button. Basically as someone reads for example a blog post, by using the Recommendations Bar, the readers who read their time line.

The way it works in practice is that  the box as per the picture below literally pops up as the person is reading down the article or post, and in fact you have the power to control exactly how far down the post you want the reader to see the box.

The pop up will align with your post or article, and there is also the facility to chose between the words Like or Recommend to appear.  If a reader then goes on to click the button within the top left hand corner, the material is transferred directly to the readers Facebook timeline, where their network can also read the material liked or recommended. In the opposite right hand corner there is also a box that can minimise the box as needed.

Also of importance is the fact that the box will only ever open under specific circumstances. If for example they are logged in as their page, the box will appear, but if they are not logged into Facebook, the box will appear but if they click Like, they will have to log into Facebook to complete the Like process.

So if you have a blog you may wish to install the plugin and potentially drive more traffic through the Facebook network.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Facebook To Follow Google Adwords With Its Own Sponsored Result Search Ads

It has been reported recently by TechCrunch, that Facebook has been launched its own version of sponsored ads similar to Google's Adwords, with its own version of Sponsored Result Search Ads.

For those of you that are familiar with Google's version (i.e. Adwords), you know that these types of ads provide businesses the ability to specifically target people who are searching for specific topics by way of keywords, apps, page names.  With the Facebook ads advertisers would be able to direct people who may be searching for specific pages, apps and Places and then insert a link into the search box that directs them to their own app, Page, custom Page tab, or post.

However it has been reported that marketers will not be able to drive direct these users off-site with the ads yet, though they can appear above the top organic result providing them with a position of great prominence.

The ads now have a black-bordered section in the typeahead results. That’s makes the fact that they’re paid advertising obvious as opposed to organically positioned results. 

Potential marketers interested in this type of promotional option will soon be invest part of their promotional budget into Facebook's Sponsored  Ads. The option will be found in the power editor.

With over one hundred million search queries a month, Google is till obviously our first port of call today, so it will be interesting to see how effective this new feature becomes and how much people want to use it to do something that they have traditionally done elsewhere. 

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.