Bon Anniversaire Marie Curie!
We’ve been crazy busy and neglected poor old BuzzRocket, but we’re back and wanted to celebrate by once again posting about another incredible Google Doodle – yeah, we’re still obsessed. This one is about Madame Marie Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first female scientist to get a Doodle. Go, girl. Happy 144th!
Facebook Timeline
I can’t decide whether or not the just announced Facebook Timeline app totally freaks me out. I’m about as out there online as anyone can be, but I don’t know if:
- I want to share all that information about my life;
- Anyone would actually care enough to look at all of that information about me, or
- I would ever care enough to roll through someone else’s timeline (and I’m all about a solid Facebook creep).
Social Media Week LA #SMWLA
Social Media Week Los Angeles (SMWLA) is part of an international, multi-city event “connecting people, content and conversations around emerging trends in social and mobile media.” SMWLA kicked off this morning with a welcome from Michael Terpin, city host of SMWLA, and founder/CEO of SocialRadius followed by a keynote address from Robert Tercek, President, General Creativity and host, THIS WEEK IN MEDIA.
Tercek offered a great overview on social media’s impact on all of our lives, whether you have a Facebook account or not. It’s true. How we receive, process and delivered information has been completely revolutionized by social networks.
I, for one, am looking forward to hitting several events all week and getting actual FACE-TO-FACE time with like-minded people! I’m also hoping to be inspired and learn more, more, more.
Click here for the schedule of events. If you aren’t located in one of the hosts cities, no worries. You can stream the sessions from your computer.
And stay tuned for more updates from BuzzRocket!
Facebook changes … again. We can’t keep up!
It’s difficult for us to keep up with the ever-evolving Facebook functionalities … and we’re the experts! It seems every time you blink, Facebook has changed the way the behemoth social site works.
Earlier this year, Facebook announced a partnership with Skype and major changes in Chat, adding the ability to video chat (Has anyone actually done this???). We’ve seen Check-Ins enhanced with Bing maps, more accurate, branded location-based pages. We’ve seen Deals bite the dust.
And last week we saw a few major changes to the way you receive updates on your wall. Perhaps most interesting is the new Subscribe feature. People can now (if you allow them) follow your updates – a la Twitter follows. Gone are the days of waiting for Pete Cashmore to finally accept my friend request. Now I can see his updates and even post on his wall. As a subscriber, you can select which types of updates you want to follow. As a publisher, your public updates can only be subscribed to, and you must elect to have this ability – it’s not an automatic feature.
Facebook also launched Smart Lists, self created lists that make it easier to manage your friends lists. For marketers, these Smart Lists function much like the Page Lists that were recently added to the left navigation on the Newsfeed page. The Smart Lists are automatically updated, making your Newsfeed a one-stop shop for updates across your Facebook account. This feature also allows the user to organize friends as “Close Friends” or “Acquaintances,” making their newsfeed more relevant. Users can also share stories with select groups within his or her Friend Lists, which allows for a little more privacy. All of this should also allow for better friend suggestions to help Facebook users build a better network.
We’re not sure what this will mean for brands on Facebook, if any of this will effect the algorithm brands are forced to deal with to stay relevant on the social giant. But by the time we figure that out, all of the aforementioned new bells and whistles will be obsolete.
By Gretchen Schneider, Principal, Interactive Marketing at treadsocial. Gretchen lives and breathes all things social media. Based in Los Angeles, she oversees the interactive division for treadsocial, working with brands and personalities to strategically market themselves in an integrated, engaging manner online.
12 tips on getting started on Facebook Pages
You’ve finally realized it’s time to get set up a Facebook Page for your brand. And why not? With Facebook’s nearly 700 million users and its updated Pages features, which make marketing a breeze (compared to the olden days…), you’re a fool not to. Having a Facebook presence also takes advantage of their SEO, which will help pop you to to the top of the list on most searches. In fact, Bing have deepened their relationship with Facebook to take “social search” to new heights.
So where do you begin? Here are a few tips on where to start from your friends at BuzzRocket.
IMMEDIATE
- Establish a Corporate Social Media Policy, which will advise your associates on how to behave online. Example: Bashing the company online is a fireable offense. Click here for a more complete rundown from BusinessWeek.
- Establish Brand Standards that your associates must adhere to when posting anything on your social properties, or if they are discussing the company on their social sites, they must speak within the brand/communications standards.
- Set up the Twitter app on all Facebook Pages so that all Facebook Posts automatically get posted onto the respective Twitter page. (We recommend this for the less tech-savvy folks out there. Once you get used to using Facebook and Twitter, you should get set up with a Twitter client like Hootsuite, which will track your tweets, and offers invaluable analytic information.
- If you are a location-based brand, make sure you list your page as a “Place” so users can check into your branded Page.
- Sign onto Facebook as your Page and “Like” all the Pages of the brands you work with, or with whom you want to stay in contact. Once you do this, those Page’s posts will appear in the newsfeed and make it easy for you to keep up with what they are posting.
- Suggest your Page to your friends. Do this via Facebook and by uploading your e-mail lists into Facebook.
- Identify strategic partners and develop a network on Facebook and request that they send out a message on their Facebook Pages welcoming you to Facebook and suggesting that their fans “Like” your Page.
ONGOING
- Post frequently. At least once a day. We would suggest 2 posts a day. Say you’re a restaurant operator: Mix it with informative (daily lunch/dinner special), engaging (ask a question: We’re featuring Brancott Sauvignon Blanc this week! What’s your favorite white wine varietal?) Post images with people from your establishment. People like seeing people.Post Events and Images
- Post sales, specials, news
- Answer all questions fans and followers ask on Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis
- Link comments back to other pages (This feature has been disabled over the past few days. We’re hoping it returns!)
- Reshare and comment on other Page’s posts that make sense for you. If you are a coffee shop and your local newspaper posts something about the best lattes in the city, you can comment on their post as the coffee shop, which increases your visibility and further markets your brand. RESOURCES – Facebook changes almost on a daily basis. We suggest keeping up with things online since most info out there goes bad quicker than a bottle of red left uncorked overnight.
Grammar lessons
We’ll take a compliment anyway we can get it. Today’s installment comes from Chicago blogger Kelly Ryan O’brien via her new (quite cool) blog Idols and Egos, calling our own Gretchen Schneider a “Grammar Nazi” and “bitchy.” Please: We’ve heard worse.
We’ve written a few blogs about business writing and grammar. Perhaps it’s time for a refresher course.
It’s our job. We worship the Associated Press Stylebook like it’s the second coming of Christ. We are, after all, the nerds behind your words.
More iPhone 4 Love
If it wasn’t obvious from a previous BuzzRocket post, iPhone 4 Challenge at TEDx, I love the iPhone 4, which has proved itself again today at a Writers Boot Camp Business Breakfast session, featuring Shira Lazar, an EMMY nominated TV and Web Personality who continues to bridge the gap between traditional and new media and be a prominent leader and voice for the digital age.
The moderator, Jeffrey Gordon, politely reminded the crowd to turn off their phones before the session started. Lazar quickly interrupted, saying, No! Leave them on. Tweet about this. I want you to tweet.” A girl after my own heart.
I quickly pulled up my Evernote app and started voice recording the Q&A, then popped over to Hootsuite to start tweeting realtime updates about the event. I was able to multitask and jump from app to app, updating, documenting all without a hitch.
I realize that many people, like my mother, use the iPhone to check email, take pictures, text and, yes, make the occasional phone call. But when you take advantage off all its capabilities, it truly is an invaluable tool that I’m very proud to have – even in LA, the land of dropped AT&T calls.
True story.
nail tech: What do you do?
gretchen schneider: Interactive marketing. (blank look on her face) Um, people hire me to run their Facebook, Twitter pages and to ghost write?
nail tech: Oh, so you’re a private investigator.
gretchen schneider: (pause) Yes.
Happy Birthday Harry Houdini!
In celebration of Harry Houdini’s 137th, Google has once again switched up its logo to honor the occasion. We have to admit, we’re a little disappointed. We were expecting a little more for Houdini, master illusionist. After all, Google Doodle did pull out all the stops – think interactive submarine – for Jules Verne just last month. Oh well. Happy birthday to a man who famously escaped from an underwater box in the East River in 1912.
Click here to see a complete gallery of recent Google Doodle logos.
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