Ning to Do Away With Free Services

Change is inevitable, especially when it comes to online social networks. The latest platform to undergo some major changes? Ning. The growing social media site just announced that it’s discontinuing its free services – and laying off close to half of its staff.
Ning has been growing in popularity over the past year, but obviously this [...]

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Study: Majority of Facebook Users Follow Brand Referrals

When it comes to a social media program, measuring ROI tends to be one of the most difficult challenges facing organizations. Other than website referrals, how do you REALLY know if you’re Facebook posts or Tweets are driving brand awareness?
Well, polling consumers is one way to go, and a recent study by research from Morpace [...]

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Twitter Finally Graduates to Making Money with “Promoted Tweets”

We have all been wondering for some time when Twitter execs were going to make money off this gigantic boom in the social media space. That time has finally arrived. Twitter announced early Tuesday that a new business model has been adopted proving to finally graduate Twitter to a money making business. “Promoted Tweets” are [...]

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Top 5 Ways to Drive Engagement from Your Twitter Followers

Most marketing savvy folks are on Twitter these days, as it’s been widely shown that the popular platform can do wonders for your business or personal venture. But it’s not quite as simple as posting Tweets and walking away – there are a lot of tactics that, when utilized, can drive engagement and earn you [...]

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Blackberry Releases Official Twitter App

All you Blackberry users out there – good news in the Twittersphere! Blackberry released its official Twitter app yesterday, making a whole lot of users mighty happy. According to the Twitter blog, the app includes the following features:

Real-time BlackBerry push of Twitter direct messages
Camera and photo gallery integration
Browser integration for Tweeting links
Customizable interface for changing [...]

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To Unplug Or Not to Unplug … What Was the Question?

So many gurus are giving advice about unplugging from the net, facing our web addiction and how we’re so overwhelmed with technology that we aren’t living our lives.  Let me share with you a little tale filled with irony.  Last night I was looking at this “Internet Rehab” called reStart.  Their platform (as with many [...]

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Is Facebook Doing Away with “Become a Fan”?

An article released yesterday on ClickZ shares with us a confidential email that surfaced from Facebook to ad agencies alerting them to a change in the wording “Become a Fan” seen at the top of pages on Facebook. Word on the “online” street is that the word “Like” will take over the “Fan” language.
Part of [...]

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Twitter Cuts Down on Spam

If you’re a power Twitter user – lord knows you’ve had some experience with the often overwhelming spam accounts. I often wonder, why do they bother? Spam is hardly an effective marketing tool – but they just keep on coming with the “Click here to make $1,000 a day on Twitter!” messages.
The good news? Twitter [...]

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Social Gaming for Marketers

Are you one of the millions of Facebook users who spends much of their time planting watermelons or engaging in Mafia wars? If so, you’re part of a growing market of social gaming users.
Even for the non-gamer types, the ease and popularity of Facebook has made social gaming a favorite activity. Farmville is the game [...]

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The Integration of Social Marketing

At this point in the evolution of marketing, most organizations understand the importance of social media to their overall efforts. But, a new study by marketing management firm Unica, as reported by emarketer, shows that integration is still lacking.
While 70% of responding companies have integrated voting features/product reviews into marketing campaigns, only 41% have [...]

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