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.

Facebook Share Price Continues to Fall

Facebook's share price (despite getting a little lift from it's all time low of $18.75) still sits at an unrecognisable $19.41.

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Since we first reported on the Facebook share launch at $38 on the first day of issue, the price has continued to gradually decline.

There are some strong parallels between this and the dot com experiences of the past. In the end you always need to invest in businesses that have a proven model for income generation. 

Facebook strength of course is that hundreds of millions of people use it. No argument there. But how will the company continue to generate money and how will the continuing trend away from lap tops to mobiles and tablets.

As well as per recent reports, there will be upcomming expirations of the IPO lock-up periods which for a fixed period prevent Facebook employees from selling their own shares. When they do sell it is possible that the market will be flooded which may put further downward pressure on the share price.

Time will tell both long and short term what where it goes from here, but if history is any guide, I'm betting that Facebook will find a way to keep adding to it's value adding.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Vanity (Custom) URLs for Google Profiles and Pages

Your Google+ profile is a place for you to share your passions with the millions of people who come to Google each day. Whether you're a clothing brand showing off your latest fashions (google.com/+hugoboss), an athlete talking about the game (google.com/+davidbeckham), or an actor recalling a favorite role (google.com/+hughjackman), your Google+ profile helps you connect with the people who share your interests. Today we’re introducing custom URLs to make it even easier for people to find your profile on Google+.

A custom URL is a short, easy to remember web address that links directly to your profile or page on Google+. For instance, +TOYOTA  can now usegoogle.com/+toyota to unveil their latest models, +Britney Spears  can share her upcoming appearances at google.com/+britneyspears, +Ubisoft  can share game trailers and videos at google.com/+assassinscreed, and +Delta  can help travellers find great deals at google.com/+delta. 

Custom URLs will also be available to people and pages worldwide, so brands like Globo can point readers to google.com/+epoca, or any of their other Brazilian publications.

At first,Google are  introducing custom URLs to a limited number of verified profiles and pages. But over time, they plan to offer custom URLs to many more brands and individuals, so watch this space.

Original story from: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109179785755319022525/posts/aWREtiDhse2

Facebook Business Pages Become More Targeted

How great would it be if you could target your organic Facebook business page updates by more than just users' location and language? That'd probably be pretty valuable -- and more effective -- right? If you're nodding your head in agreement, we've got some great news for you. According to TechCrunch, it looks like Facebook has started rolling out powerful new post targeting options today called 'Page Post Targeting Enhanced.'

New Facebook Post Targeting Options

Facebook hasn't released a ton of details about its new targeting options yet, but TechCrunch reports that Facebook page admins will soon be able to target posts to segments of fans by a variety of characteristics in addition to the basic location and language targeting options admins are already used to.

Below is a list of the full set of targeting options that will soon be available to marketers.

• Age
• Gender
• Interested In
• Relationship Status
• Education
• College Grad: College Name, Major
• In College: College Name, Major, Years
• In High School
• Workplace
• In addition to existing options — Language, and Location: Country, State, City

Remember, up until this update, Facebook admins were only able to target their updates by those last options, language and location:

According to a post from a page admin who is a member of the closed Social Marketers Facebook Group, a Facebook rep has indicated that the new, 'enhanced' targeting options are available to a select number of pages today and will be rolling out to all Facebook pages over the next few weeks.

Just as with targeting by language or location, we're told that all updates a page publishes -- even if it's targeted in one way or another -- will still appear on the business' Facebook page timeline. However, targeted updates will get displayed in the news feeds of only the appropriate users being targeted.

In other words, if HubSpot chose to target only females who are at least 20 years old for a specific post about Cyndi Lauper performing at our upcoming Inbound conference (it's true!), that post will be visible to males visiting HubSpot's Facebook page, yet that post wouldn't appear in males' news feeds.

Facebook Launches Its New Recommendations Bar

Effective immediately, Facebook are launching the new Recommendations Bar, which is a  social plugin that will assist people to find articles based on what their friends like and share from your site.

As a person reads an article, a small pop-up surfaces at the bottom of the screen highlighting recommended articles and prompting them to like the page. Recommendations are based on content that friends have overtly liked and then shared in your app or website.

Just as the Like button currently works, when a person likes an article using the Recommendations Bar, a story is published back to their timeline and friends’ news feed.

Other well known sites such as Mashable are already using the Recommendations Bar. 

As with all of our social plugins, integration is easy and takes just a few lines of code. Simply configure the plug-in, copy the code and paste it on to your site. 

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards

Daniele