In addition, if you search for a person, their profile will be the first thing displayed. This has sparked a big debate among users and some major complaints from Twitter. Now, Google is the biggest search engine on the web. It’s goal is to find the content most relevant to what you need. The question is, do your personal connections have the answers you’re looking for? Now if they do, then this personal customization is a good thing. But if, not the the information my friends provide is not going to be very helpful.

What do you think? Do you like Google’s new personalized search feature? Or do you think Google has gone too far. Share your opinion in the comments!

Doh! The top 10 tech ‘fails’ of 2011 via CNN

Netflix, Blackberry, tablets that aren’t the iPad. Bad years for all of them. But who had it the worst?

The Hottest New Technologies Of 2011 via Forbes

Who is your target audience? 

Who are you talking to? Is it kids? Adults? Athletes? Social Media Experts? Or total noobs? This is important. It will help you determine what networks you are on, what you need to say, and how you are going to say it? You probably shouldn’t focus most of your energy on Google+ if most of your audience is tweens. Most of them aren’t really there yet. Now if your target is techies and social media junkies, Google+ is probably a good place for you.

What are you trying to accomplish? 

Do you want to gain customers, or simply awareness. Are you trying to sell a specific product directly through your pages, or are you trying to create buzz about an overlying campaign.

How many times per day will you post? 

Post too much and people might think you’re spamming. Post too little and people might think you’re dead. Find the balance that is right for your business.

What will those posts be?

There is a general 80/20 rule of social media. 80% of your posts should be about other people, or things you find interesting. Only 20% should be about you. Kind of shocking isn’t it. That rule can be bent a little bit, but you still have to decide what it is you’ll be posting. What websites will you share from? How many will be replies to fans? Will they be promotions for your business? A lot of this has to do with what your objective is.

When will you post? 

You may be sleeping at 4am, but that doesn’t mean all your fans are. Services like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow you to preschedule Facebook and Twitter posts so you don’t have to be awake at all hours of the night to service your fans. Post consistently. Someone could miss your post by 30 seconds if your don’t post it at just the right time. Mix it up a bit to make sure you give everyone a chance to catch your posts before they fall off the front page of their timeline.

Who are you going to follow? 

Are you going to after your fans, or do you want them to come after you. Choose who you follow carefully. Don’t just follow random people hoping for a follow back. You’ll come off as a spammer. Especially if your following way more people than are following you.

Be prepared to share. Have a plan. What kinds of things do you ask yourself before posting to Facebook, Twitter, or Google+?

To take a peek at your Mentions and Retweets, simply click in the @Connect button at the top of the page. The @Connect page is essentially the same as the Activity Tab that rolled out a few weeks ago. In addition to your mentions and retweets, you can easily see who has followed you recently.

More Keyboard ShortcutsTwitter has made it even faster and easier to get around the site. You don’t even need a mouse. Check it out!

Image Courtesy of Mashable

You now have the option to “open” a tweet

This allows you to see the photo or image attached to the tweet. When you open a tweet, it is super easy to see how many times it has been retweeted AND favorited.

Discover New Things About Your Friends

The “Discover” tabs allows you to take a deeper look at what the people you are following are doing. Activity allows you see who your friends have followed recently, what they’ve favorited, and what they’re saying. It’s a nice way to track everything that’s going on in one place.

Browse Interests

One of the coolest new features allows you to find new and awesome people to follow by sifting through different interests you may have. So if you are looking for artists, musicians, or social media experts you can find them in second. You may even discover some new interests!

The new Twitter hasn’t quite rolled out to everyone yet, but if you’ve got it, let us know what you think in the comments!

Travelocity’s social media presence has exploded with the help of a little blue lawn gnome. Serving as the face of the brand the gnome has his own Facebook Page, Twitter and entire persona. His Facebook page hosts a number of hilarious photos and videos of the gnome in crazy situations like sunbathing, snowboarding, or hot tubbing.

What can we learn? 

Putting a face to the name does wonders. The gnome is personable, recognizable, and extremely memorable. People feel like they are interacting with an actual being rather than just a company logo.

2) Hipmunk

Here’s another travel company that knows how to make creative use of social media. In April, 2011 this start up launched a campaign using their own adorable Chipmunk mascot. The campaigned, entitled “Hipmunk Me” allowed Facebook users the chance to have their very own version of the chipmunk. All they had to do was write on Hipmunk’s Facebook wall with a request to “Hipmunk Me!” along with their favorite destination and activity. The first 500 fans got their own personal Hipmunk doing that activity in the location they requested. Here a a few examples:

What can we learn? 

Give your fans something personal. The personalized chipmunk is something simple you can give your fans that makes them feel special. It’s something they can call their own even if it is just a simple image that probably only took a few minutes to create. It also required users to like the page in order to participate. Doesn’t hurt that the giveaway involves an adorable Chipmunk.

3) Old Spice

In 2010 Old Spice launched an internet campaign centered around the catch phrase “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The campaign features a series of YouTube videos starring Isaiah Mustafa, who would later become known as, “The Old Spice Guy.” To date, the original video (below) has over 30 million views on YouTube. Shortly after, the brand launched the “Old Spice Responses” campaign. The Old Spice Guy created personalized videos for bloggers who had written about him in the past and responded to fan questions and comments on Twitter.

What can we learn?

Pay attention to your fans and they will do the work for you. The Old Spice Responses campaign showed people that Old Spice was paying attention to its fans. They took the time to interact with fans and engage them with the brand. As a result, the fans talked. Not just back to the brand, but to their fans. They shared videos and tweets and from Old Spice, causing them to go viral and reach an entire new audience that might not have discovered them on their own.

The Good

Business

These applications have the potential to bring about a wealth of business opportunities. By sharing their check-ins on social networks, your business is given a good deal of exposure to people who may have otherwise not heard of it. Users can also write in tips and recommendations for all of the locations they visit. FourSquare allows business to provide special deals and offers to people who check in at their location.

Meet Up With Friends

Looking to hang out with friends? This is a great way to find friends that might be near you. Let your friends know you’re hanging out at the Starbucks on University Blvd, they just might decide to meet up with you. Trying to meet up with a friend at the mall, but can’t find them? Open up your Find My Friends app and find out exactly where they are.

The Bad 

Safety

Is it really the best idea to publicly announce when you’re not going to be home. Sure there’s privacy settings, but so many people don’t even realize the dangers of telling people exactly where you are. It’s essentially a stalkers dream if you don’t pay attention to what you’re revealing. The website PleaseRobMe.com aims to raise awareness about how you may be putting yourself endanger of being robbed by telling the world when you will be out of your house.

What do you think of these services? Do you use them? Do you keep your check-ins public or private?

Looks a bit different, eh? Facebook Timeline is  built not only to show your friends what you are up to today, but to tell all the stories of your life.You can go back and edit your timeline, adding in experiences and photos from events that happened before Facebook was even created! Facebook has created somewhat of a digital scrapbook for you to document your life. Don’t want to go back and fill in the blanks? The great thing is, you don’t have to! You can continue using Facebook to chat and communicate with your friends as you normally would, now you just have the improved ability to go back in time and view your past events and conversations!

Wanna try out the new timeline before it’s launch on September 29th? You can do so, but checking out these instructions!

Have you tried it out yet? Let us know what you think. Waiting until the official release? What’s your opinion from the preview?

1) Schedule your posts ahead of time

With tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and TweetDeck, you can preset when you would like to send out posts to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. At the beginning of the day, decide what you would like to say when and the app will do the work for you. You don’t have to worry about deciding what to tweet all day!

2) Use social media management tools to view all your profiles at once

It can be a bit time consuming to visit so many different social networks, but when you’re using tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, you can not only schedule your posts ahead of time, but manage all your profiles from one place. It cuts down on loading time, and you can view and respond to all of your messages from one application.

3) Keep a stockpile of idea

Feeling uninspired? Spending a lot of time just sitting and thinking? Keep a list of ideas handy so when you go to write your next blog post, instead of sitting around thinking about what to write, you have a bunch of options to choose from. Write ideas down as they come to you so you can cut downA on brainstorming time. Next time your ready to work, open up your list and take your pick!

4) Keep an editorial calendar

The most important benefit of keeping an editorial calendar is that it keeps you on your toes. Putting a publishing date on your calendar makes it seem like it’s set in stone. It prevents you from making excuses not to post because you’ll feel like you have to. Also, by having a solid schedule you will be more organized and better prepared to fit in your other tasks around it. And like keeping an idea stockpile it saves you hours of brainstorming because what you need to do is right in front of you!

What do you do to keep you social media management more efficient? Have any tools or tricks that you have found successful? Share them in the comments!

1) Facebook social plugins

By inserting a simple code into your webpage, you will instantly create a new way for you website users to interact not only on your site but on Facebook as well. The most common of the Facebook plugins is the Facebook Like Box or Button. These feature allow users to “like” your business’ Facebook page right from your website as well as allowing them to see which of their friends have liked the the page too!

2) Easy sharing

This one is incredibly important for anyone trying to gain presence online. When you find something cool you want to share it with your friends, right? Well, so do your fans. The easier you make it to share your content, the more likely your fans are to do it. This can be achieved by the simple addition of a like button and Twitter share button at the bottom of the page. Plenty of other sites provide share buttons to submit to their sites as well including Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and of course the new Google +1 button.

3) Message Boards and Chat

What more social can you get than letting your fans have actual discussions about your product!? If you’ve got a blog or even a game adding a message board or chat window greatly increases the users social experience. Users can learn from each other, give each other tips, will be more engaged with your brand and most importantly, spend more time on your site!

4) Allow users to log in through Facebook or Twitter

If your business provides a website or service that fits well within the social atmosphere, make it easier for your customers to log in via Facebook or Twitter. It eliminates the need for them to create a new username and password and fill out a bunch of forms. Plus it makes it a lot easier for them to share the content on your site! Both Facebook and Twitter make this very easy using an API that can be found on their respective development sites.

One of the most popular sites for all things social media and Web 2.0. Mashable is total MUST READ to stay updated on everything from neat start ups to companies doing cool things in social media.

TechCrunch

The go-to source for all things tech, gadgets and gizmos, startups, social networks, gaming, and maybe some robots.

All Facebook

The name says it all. Anything and everything Facebook. New updates, features, breaking news, you can find it here.

Social Times

World news on technology, social media, marketing, gaming, web trends, and pretty much anything else you might be interested in!

Social Media Examiner

A great blog geared towards helping small business grow using social media. Great tips on branding and increasing sales.

Got a favorite you’d like to share! Leave us a comment and we might include it!

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