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

LinkedIn To Launch New Home Pages

LinkedIn is about to introduce a new, simpler, and more state of the art design for its home pages.  Specifically LinkedIn have revamped the its homepage  with improved functionality and usability.  The result being a new look and feel page to make it easier to scan and find the information that matters most to you. 
This simpler and cleaner design makes it easier to navigate the page and quickly find the updates you’re looking for, regardless of whether that’s a news article or an updated skill by someone in your network.

The most relevant and useful updates are now seen at the very top of the feed making it easier to stay on top of what matters most to you, such as trending topics, news, and professional updates based on what your connections and industry are reading, sharing, and discussing. This in turn will drive better time management with you being able to spend less time finding information you need professionally and spending more on the must dos.

As well LinkedIn have updated the way updates look and feel in the stream with richer visuals for better viewing. You can also see a continuous stream of updates without clicking “see more” to access all the latest updates from your network.  It’s also easier for you to see what your connections are talking about and engage in these professional conversations by liking, commenting or sharing the updates that are most important to you.

LinkedIn has continually stated its desire to continue to make its Homepage experience better, more efficient and a place where you can go each day to get what you need to be productive and successful. This is just the beginning of many more exciting, new features we plan to bring to the Homepage to offer more customization and functionality this year. We look forward to making the LinkedIn Homepage your go-to destination to discover and discuss what matters to you, your industry and your professionals network around the world.

LinkedIn have announced that these newly redesigned Homepages will rolling out to all members over the next few weeks.  Make sure you keep checking in every day and let us know what your thoughts are.

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

Facebook Adds Location For Member Posts

Facebook have recently added the option for page owners to tag their posts and photos with location.There has not been an official announcement about the feature so it is unclear whether it has rolled out to all pages or if it is still being tested with a small group. 

Adding location to a post is useful for providing a more complete story, but there could be future changes that make location an even more critical aspect of posting.

Similar to personal posts, if a page post doesn’t have a photo or link included with it, a map of the location will be included. This could help text posts get noticed in News Feeds.

Pages do not yet have a map feature like personal Timelines do, so there isn’t an easy way to see all of a page’s location-tagged posts at once, but perhaps this is in the works. We wonder if Facebook will give pages even more functionality similar to personal Timelines, for example, adding Open Graph apps to share activity on behalf of the page. This would be useful for brands that are also active on networks like Instagram or Pinterest because they could display this activity within boxes on Timeline.

Location tagging could also be a part of a potential new ad product. Facebook is working on a location based advertising program, which may involve tagging page posts with location and promoting them as Sponsored Stories.

Page owners can tag their posts with location the same way they do on their personal profiles.

Many Types of Content to Select From

It's amazing how many times people have asked me in recent times about content and how they can routinely come up with content that is consistently funny, informative, newsworthy or just plain interesting.
As someone who knows all about the pressures and stresses associated with producing a consistent weekly amount of data for the Rad Scholars marketing blog, I found it interesting that an interesting infographic was recently  developed by RecessionSolution.com and shown on the graphic below.

Depending on your market, brand and product range, different types of content listed above may well be more attractive than others, but the key point here is that over time a good blog will provide posts that reflect most if not all of these areas, thereby ensuring that occasionally all the sought after and anticipated types of content are provided to the blogs keen readers.

No doubt over time you will see from first hand experience that certain types of  content are better received, liked, shared and commented on by your specific audience, and obviously you'll also want to make sure that these are seen more often than others, but not invariably. Because with blogging, as with all other things in life, variety really is the spice of  life.

Let us know what type of posts work best for you and until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards
Daniele