Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
YouTube Launches Paid Channels: YouTube Paid Channels is “a pilot program for a small group of partners that will offer paid channels on YouTube with subscription fees starting at $0.99 per month. Every channel has a 14-day free trial, and many offer discounted yearly rates.” YouTube will be rolling Paid Channels out more broadly in the coming weeks as a self-service feature for qualifying partners.
"For example, Sesame Street will be offering full episodes on their paid channel when it launches."
LinkedIn Today Offers New Channels: LinkedIn Today’s design has changed with the new Channels “to make it easier for you to discover and share professional news and insights. Through Channels, you can follow broader topic areas that cross multiple industries and professional sectors.”
LinkedIn Today has a new design and new Channels.
Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:
Klout Announces Preview Release of Klout Experts: Klout Experts will give users a platform to answer questions on their areas of expertise. During this preview period, Klout Experts are available to select users. You can also request early access to Klout Experts by signing up for the waitlist.
"Influencers who take part in Klout Experts will have the opportunity to have their answers seen by millions of people using Bing search every day."
LinkedIn Turns Ten: In the ten years since LinkedIn was created, the company has reached 225 million members and is growing at more than two members per second.
Click on the image to see what's happened since LinkedIn started in 2003.
SlideShare Celebrates 10 Million Presentation Uploads: More than 10 million presentations have been uploaded to SlideShare.
Check out the top content and professionals on SlideShare, along with the presentation trends across the world.
Some upcoming social media news worth following:
Facebook Rolls Out Video Ads to News Feeds: Adweek reports that Facebook “is launching video ads in a bid to capture some share of TV advertising revenues.”
What do you think? Please share your comments below.
About the Author, Cindy King
Cindy King is the director of editorial for Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts by Cindy King »
Over the past few days, I have been having some discussions around the idea of Social Media Maturity. People have, over the past few years, decided to jump onto the social media bandwagon without too much thought while opening the business up to quite a number of risks. In some cases management have excitedly patted them on the back and applauded them for their efforts. Well done!
Today, is reminiscent of the past era of Web 1.0 when a website was considered to be an important component to businesses both large and small. While a lot of those sites were good in their day, their current existence is a historic relic in need of replacement. You see, the internet promised to make us all rich, well, that is what we were thinking.
With the rise of Social Media the game was about to change yet again. Marketing guru's have been selling 'snake oil' concepts and then leaving town. Today, the internet and Social Media platforms are littered with discarded communities, groups and Social Media accounts. Do not get me wrong, there are many great success stories, but there are far more failures.
I am reminded of a ghost town. Typically a place where settlers established a community but where the people, over time, got up and left. When you look around you're able to find all sorts of treasures which have been discarded and left to the elements.
On LinkedIN, I also suspect other Social Media platforms, there are a lot of groups which have been setup and are no longer used or have never gained traction. The interesting thing is that these groups sometimes have a membership in the hundreds or even thousands. There they lay to waste. In the picture which I have included with this blog post, you'll see that I am the top influencer of a LinkedIN group. This group is not providing any great value to it's members so my status is easily achieved.
I then decided to take a look at a group which had been set up by a company as a way for them to interact with their customers as a followup to courses which they had provided. I am not sure how I ever got accepted into the group as I have never attended one of their courses. However, I have access to about 80 of their customers. What makes it even worse for this company is that they left a comment saying that they would be closing the group and yet the members are still subscribed to the group.
So, here is the "opportunity." Walk into the ghost town and take your place of residence or even the place of Mayor. In most cases, all you need to do is start a conversation and you'll become even more influential than the group or community manager. At the end of the day, the community manager is not the person who initially opened the group, but it is the person with the most influence.
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International speaker & consultant on Social Business and collaboration. I help knowledge workers gain value through 'social'.See complete profile
There’s been a good deal of talk about content overload lately.
How all of our efforts may soon come to a non-rapturous end in the Crap-ocalypse that now represents much of content creation and sharing.
One of the best commentaries on this is the pithy – and nicely designed (don’t get me started on the sorry state of conceptual and graphic design in content marketing) – slideshow from Velocity Partners in the U.K.
Because my own livelihood depends on people recognizing the value of real creativity in content (thank you, Mark Schaefer, for tapping Creative on Call to design your latest eBook), I frequently find myself cornering other creative types to get their opinion on the current state of, and outlook for, real creative thinking in content creation.
Naturally, then, I simply had to nab Jason Konopinski, one of my favorite writers, when I saw him at Social Slam 2013.
(I encourage you to take five and watch the video – there’s some interesting commentary on branding and content - forgive, please, the background noise from the conference; it was catch as catch can.)
Jason Konopinski interview from Creative on Call, Inc. on Vimeo.
Here’s the gist of what the creator of the Riffing on Writing podcast and Poetry Friday had to say.
Chuck Kent: I’d like to know what your evaluation is of the current state of creativity in social media and content.
Jason Konopinski: Creativity is a challenging concept, and it’s something I write on frequently… stringing out the best way to present my unique voice, my unique perspective, and how to translate that into client work. Let’s be honest: Marketing creativity is hard, it’s not easy, and marketers in particular tend to take the path of least resistance. We try to replicate the success of others.
An example I used recently was the comparison between the brilliantly executed Instagram ad that went out during the Super Bowl for Oreo, during the power outage, and then comparing that same kind of content three weeks later during the Oscars, and how that moment of brilliance had faded into nothing more than noise because so many other brands were trying to replicate that success.
Jason Konopinski: Marketers are a tricky lot. We really try to look at creativity and take the path of least resistance, try to replicate the success of others and how figure [that] out in terms of a formula – but that runs contrary to really what creativity is. We have to think creatively to reach our audiences in the best ways possible, and that’s gonna take a little bit of legwork, a little bit of research.
Content – the current state right now – it’s sad to say I think we’re starting to hit a saturation point. There’s lots of “me-toos” in the space, lots of derivative content, often without a whole lot of thought, a whole lot of planning to take the opportunity of that moment, with very little to show in terms of success.
Jason Konopinski: For content marketers now, the biggest opportunity for this space is working within a set of circumstances, setting your guardrails an achieving those ends. If that means increasing sales 10 percent through the publication of a whitepaper, those are the guardrails that we’re setting. But if it’s simply increasing this nebulous idea of engagement through a hastily shot photograph, that’s really not that creative at all.
Two questions to you, dear readers: What do you see as the most over-used “me-too” content approaches? What examples of uniquely creative content have caught your imagination?
Sound too good to be true?
It is actually possible if your daily use of social media is built upon a well-developed social media strategy. But, a strong social media strategy does not mean that your brand has to be on every single social media channel out there. Instead, focus on the social media channels that the majority of your customers frequent.
The infographic below explains how having an over-arching social media strategy in place can save you time and make you a more effective social media strategist. This great infographic was developed by the talented Matt Wesson, a Marketing Content Specialist at the marketing automation company Pardot. It focuses on a six channel social media strategy, and how you can build engaged communities around your brand in as little as 30 minutes a day.
So how should you allocate your time on each channel? Well the infographic breaks the recommended 30 minutes down as follows: Twitter – Allocate approximately 10 minutes a day to Twitter for responding to any brand mentions and retweets, scheduling new messages, and share content of industry influencers.Facebook - Allot approximately 6 minutes a day to respond to comments, like content from clients and/or industry leaders, and share highly visual content (videos and pictures) because they have the highest engagement rate.LinkedIn - Designate 6 minutes a day to share content or news on your company profile, share new content and join discussions in relevant industry groups, and ask questions on your company profile and in groups. Pinterest - Assign approximately 4 minutes a day to pinning any new and relevant company content, repin relevant pins from industry influencers and respond to comments on your pins.Google+ - Allocate as little as 2 minutes a day to posting new content on your Google+ company page and asking your followers questions.Instagram - Set aside around 2 minutes a day to share behind the scene photos of your company, new visual content you have created, and inspiring quotes. And in 30 minutes a day you have managed a 6 channel social media strategy!
As with most things, the more you do something the more efficient you become at it. While it can hard to imagine only allocating 30 minutes a day to social media, over time you will become more efficient at finding and posting interesting content and need less time to share content and respond to brand mentions.
Want to be a marketer? Well, make sure you know what it truly means. To become a successful marketer it is no longer about developing a catchy ad campaign that you will shout from the roof tops. Marketing has evolved into a combination of artistry and science. The modern marketer must have a strategic and analytical mind dedicated to measurable metrics but that is always craving a creative outlet.
Take a look at what you need to be a successful modern marketer in the infographic below. A marketer must:
Be a creative writerHave an eye for great visual contentUnderstand the power of social media for engaging with consumersLive by the rules and best practices of email marketingBe Dedicated to tracking and measuring all marketing effortsEnjoy using analytics tools to understand data and visualize trendsBe a budgeting mavenNever stop looking for new tools and resources to understand consumers
But, even though being a modern marketer means not thinking like the advertising minds of the Mad Men characters, it does not mean you can’t dress like them!
Infographic by Matt Wesson, is a Marketing Content Specialist at Pardot.
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Brianna Smith is the Marketing Coordinator at Fpweb.net, a leading managed SharePoint hosting provider. As the Marketing Coordinator, she manages and contributes to Fpweb.net's inbound marketing efforts, including social media strategy, SEO, email marketing, and event promotion. Prior to her position at Fpweb.net, she was a brand strategist at Mudbug Media, an interactive media agency in New ...
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Why Salesforce is Closest to Pulling KPIs from Social Media [PODCAST]Like it? 1 comments0Posted May 7, 2013Keywords:Monitoring Tools, Social Media Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks Social Media Monitoring has been the focus of a podcast series released over the last few weeks in the wake of Google’s announcement they’ll be retiring Google Reader. As the producer of an online social media monitoring course based on Google Reader, I’ve been intently evaluating free Google reader alternatives such as Feedly and Netvibes. After an in depth evaluation of these two contenders, I also wrote a post comparing them for Venture Beat last Friday.Listen to the audio: (length 00:40:50)
or download here (right-click, save as)
While Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which bundles Radian6, Buddy Media and Social.com, isn’t free, in the quest for thoroughness, I decided to include their offering in this evaluation to check in and see what’s new over there. Radian6 is the monitoring and engagement module, Buddy Media is the publishing platform and Social.com (acquired by Buddy Media) as a way to manage paid social media campaigns. They’re currently in the process of integrating those three platforms seamlessly together. What was most interesting to me about our conversation about CRM software, the primary business Salesforce is in. Imagine the KPIs you could generate if they acquired a company like Quicken or Sage and integrated it with their CRM and Marketing Cloud products. The, in my opinion, would a big data trifecta. In this episode, Jeffrey L. Cohen, from the content marketing team at Salesforce Marketing Cloud and I discuss content marketing, social media monitoring, engagement dashboards and big data analysis. Jeffrey is also editor at Social Media B2B (a blog I’ve written for in the past) and author of The B2B Social Media Book. Social Media Monitoring Topics Discussed: Top of the sales funnel lead generation content marketingBrian Solis’s cluster funnel analogyUnderstanding the content funnelCreating content that solves the customers problemsUsing content marketing to make sales reps more productiveHow to motivate service agentsSocial media is always a hot topicIntegrating online sales and marketing through lead scoringWinning purchase consideration through the best educational materialsThird-party semantic analysis products available in Radian6Number of Radian6 customersRichard Binhammer’s social media avalanche analogyRadian6’s social media monitoring features » Login or register now to comment!
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Eric Schwartzman
Eric Schwartzman is Founder and CEO of online social media training provider Comply Socially, which helps employers manage the risk and capitalize on the opportunities of social media in the workplace.
He is also an independent communications consultant for hire to businesses, global nonprofits, the US Military, US Federal government agencies and foreign governments. His consulting services ...
See complete profileWould you like to contribute to this site? Get started »» Already a member? Login now to comment!» Not a member? Register to comment! Like it? 0 May 7, 2013 Heaven Jelo says:
Informative post Eric.. I had a great time reading it.. Thanks for sharing..
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“I started a LinkedIn page about six months ago and I've met a narrartor and have a couple of potential interviews. Behind FB, it's my most active social network.”
May 7th, 2013 by Dan Erickson
“Good advice Mark. Moving beyond the 'lots of screens' obsession and really concentrating on the utility of the data presented seems so obvious it's surprising it could ever be overlooked by any switched on organisation. In my experience, social media montoring is both art and science; you need the right data mining and visualisation setup plus brilliant analysts who know how to repeatedly spot ...”
May 7th, 2013 by allisterf
“Hey Allister,'Command centers' are important as that focal point, as you mention, but too many get caught up in the number of screens, here's ListenLogic's Intelligence Center which dwarfs the 20 screen center you mentioned, but then again we're overseeing real-time threats and risks for some of ...”
May 3rd, 2013 by ListenLogic
“Great post Randy. It is really a very good read.. Yes, I agree with Dan, I'm ...”
May 3rd, 2013 by Heaven Jelo
“I have never really had a stroong sense of SEO strategies, so I don't do much ...”
May 3rd, 2013 by Dan Erickson
“Disappointed. Only one of these is actually a #HashtagGoneWrong - and that is ...”
April 28th, 2013 by Neal Brown
“I couldn't agree more. However, poor grammar and spelling does allow me ...”
April 28th, 2013 by RosieBrent
“Excellent article! Easy read, makes total sense and hopefully will help small ...”
May 3rd, 2013 by SueCockburn
“Digital first is better because we live in a digital century.”
April 30th, 2013 by Chinky Sioson
“Hello Lucas.The fact that you do not advertise is commendable (two hands ...”
May 4th, 2013 by Randy Milanovic
“Hey Randy,Excellent article - my compliments. What's particularly rewarding is ...”
May 4th, 2013 by Guukle
“I'm with you Sue! Further reading around content being the new SEO: ...”
May 4th, 2013 by Randy Milanovicshow more
“This infographic kinda reminds me of 7-minute abs in the sense that it is catchy but ultimately ineffective in what it promises. You can argue that doing any type of exercise is still better than doing none at all so I won't fault the infographic for appealing to the time constrained ...”
May 7th, 2013 by ben.e.david
“My pleasure, have you seen any companies using mobile personalization ...”
May 7th, 2013 by RoyMorejon
“I appreciate the infographic as these tasks, up to this point, have been farmed ...”
May 7th, 2013 by Tackymom
“I agree with you, Steve, and I'm never against ways to inject a little fun into ...”
May 7th, 2013 by JeannieWalters
“Jesse, I love when humans and human nature are considered as part of the ...”
May 7th, 2013 by JeannieWalters
“Khalid, it's a great point to stay focused on what you're actually trying to ...”
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“I really like what you have to say here Sean! It was a great read and you ...”
May 7th, 2013 by Heaven Jelo
“I coudnt agree more Dan.. ”
May 7th, 2013 by Heaven Jelo
“Thanks for sharing! It is really helpful..”
May 7th, 2013 by Heaven Jelo
“Informative post Eric.. I had a great time reading it.. Thanks for sharing..”
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
"For example, Sesame Street will be offering full episodes on their paid channel when it launches."
LinkedIn Today has a new design and new Channels.
"Influencers who take part in Klout Experts will have the opportunity to have their answers seen by millions of people using Bing search every day."
Click on the image to see what's happened since LinkedIn started in 2003.
Check out the top content and professionals on SlideShare, along with the presentation trends across the world.
About the Author, Cindy King
On LinkedIN, I also suspect other Social Media platforms, there are a lot of groups which have been setup and are no longer used or have never gained traction. The interesting thing is that these groups sometimes have a membership in the hundreds or even thousands. There they lay to waste. In the picture which I have included with this blog post, you'll see that I am the top influencer of a LinkedIN group. This group is not providing any great value to it's members so my status is easily achieved.
Connect: 
There’s been a good deal of talk about content overload lately.
Connect: 
About Social Media Today 
The world's best thinkers on energy & climate 
The world's best thinkers on social media HomeAboutContactFAQAdvertiseHelpPost HereMarketingAdvertisingAnalyticsBrandingContentGraphic ContentMetricsROISocial NetworksFacebookGoogle+InstagramLinkedInNew FeaturesPinterestPlatformsTwitterMobileGeolocationMobile AppsPracticesBehaviorBloggingCommunity ManagementEducationEnterpriseJobsJournalismListeningNon-profitsResearchStrategySocial CustomerCustomer ServiceCRMReputation ManagementSalesWebinars & ReportsBest Thinkers eBook LibraryBest Thinkers WebinarsAll Things Customer WebinarsCurrent News WebinarsAdvertise Events Posted by:
Eric SchwartzmanPostsProfileCommentsFollow
Social Media Monitoring has been the focus of a podcast series released over the last few weeks in the wake of Google’s announcement they’ll be retiring Google Reader. As the producer of an online social media monitoring course based on Google Reader, I’ve been intently evaluating free Google reader alternatives such as Feedly and Netvibes. After an in depth evaluation of these two contenders, I also wrote a post comparing them for Venture Beat last Friday.Listen to the audio: (length 00:40:50)
(right-click, save as)
Like it? 0 May 7, 2013 Heaven Jelo says: 
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