Facebook has announced video chat, along with chatting in groups, both made possible through integration with Skype.
These features are available on the site already, so if you’ve had a chance to try them out, we’d love to see your opinions in the comments section.
“Today marks the beginning of what we call launching season“, Mark Zuckerberg said at a press conference.
He confirmed that the social network has surpassed 750 million monthly active users and that most of them actively use groups.
Facebook’s overall growth is moving at an exponential pace, he said.
Users share several billion items a day on the site, and people are sharing online content twice as much today as they did a year ago, and that has been the growth rate for the last several years.
The demonstration of Facebook’s video calling makes it look simple: a call button appears on profile pages and in chat panels. It takes about 30 seconds to fire up the initial connection and then the conversation becomes real time.
Apparently, half of Skype’s traffic involves video calls, says the telephony company’s Chief Executive Officer Tony Bates.
He anticipates that he’ll be able to launch paid services in the future based on the expansion possibilities that Facebook can offer.
Today Facebook introduced several updates to messages: video calling, group chat, and a new chat design.
Video Calling: Together with Skype, you can now video call your friends on Facebook for simple real-time face to face conversations
Group Chat: One of our most requested features is the ability to chat with multiple people at once. Now you can have conversations with more than one person on the fly for quick group discussion.
New Chat Design: The new chat design people can see a sidebar that shows the friends they message most, whether on or offline. Simply click on a friend to start chatting or send a message.
Have you seen them yet? What do you think about them?
Google is taking its +1 feature beyond search results and launching a button that publishers can include on their own websites.
The button, which debuted in March in Google search, will compete with the likes of the already sharing buttons offered by Facebook and Twitter.
The code is now freely available to anyone.
As with most other sharing buttons, setting up the +1 button on your website is straightforward.
Google has created a tool that lets you choose from a number of sizes and styles, and then provides the JavaScript code that you can cut and paste into your site.
Google is hoping that +1’s integration in search results will make it an attractive option to publishers, which stand to gain more traffic when their visitors start sharing thier content.
Facebook is a great platform for connecting with others. It is very good for building relationships with possible future colleagues and partners.
Getting Known, Liked and Trusted are three steps that help solidify future business relationships.
Here are 7 ideas for building those relationships on Facebook.
1. Leverage Facebook’s EdgeRank Formula
EdgeRank, Facebook’s algorithm for determining what appears at the top of people’s News Feeds, might be more important than Google’s PageRank. EdgeRank uses multiple factors to determine what may be more relevant and appealing to users. Unlike email, where we receive a constant barrage of pushed messages all day, every day, Facebook updates surface to the top of our feeds based on how likeable and relevant the updates are.
At any given time, you are competing with all of your fans’ friends and other pages for attention. This is great because it means they’re not spammed with irrelevant, sales-heavy messaging. But it’s also a challenge to marketers. You’ll want to use photos and videos, keep the text short and drive as many Likes and comments as possible.
2. Improve Your Engagement
There is a difference between talking AT people and engaging WITH them. I often use the analogy of a TV show versus an improv show. TV advertising is a one-way communication where a huge production and great creative can make a strong impact. Social media marketing is more like improv comedy, a back-and-forth between performers and audience, different every time yet totally effective at a fraction of the cost, when done right.
3. Respond Quickly to Negative Comments
People like to complain. Some use social networks to share their frustrations. Negative sentiment can spread lightning-fast on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The faster you can respond, the better.
The best practice is to respond publicly, indicating that you’re addressing the issue through a private message. The person will feel that he or she is heard, and most importantly, the public sees that you care and are responsive. “I’m sorry” are the two most powerful words for brands in social media.
Never try to hide negative messages or argue with the poster. Transparency is a key factor in building trust.
4. Respond to Positive Comments, Too
Many people are not yet leveraging this opportunity, but your positive comments on Facebook and Twitter are likely from your biggest advocates or partners, capable of spreading your messages far and wide and defending you against naysayers at no cost. If you owned a retail store and a customer walked up to you and said, “I just love all your products and have been shopping here for years,” would you ignore them? Don’t ignore them on Facebook either. “Thank you” are the other two most powerful words in social media.
5. Provide Value (for Free!)
People that provide real value to potential and current partners will see long-term dividends, build trust and credibility, and grow contagious following. While 10% off is not value (it’s marketing), 50% off is value. Free is value. You can give away ebooks, share articles, do free webinars, hold contests and share entertaining content.
6. Share and Inspire Stories
Stories bring relationships to life in a way that nothing else can. Stories can be about the overcoming a struggle, or a customer experience with your product. You can tell a story through tweets, photos and Facebook groups. Make sure to respond to other people’s stories as well.
7. Don’t Sell
Just make it easy and compelling for people to buy, or join your team. While it’s essential for people to create likeable, engaging communities on social networks, every marketer wants to increase sales. But there’s a huge difference between using social networks to aggressively sell versus making it easy for people to buy.
Ultimately, the most important rule for people to remember is the Golden Rule: If you read the page or post, would you click Like?
What else have you found for building Know, Like and Trust on social networks?
Social marketing is becoming more and more important on networks like Facebook.
It is attracting innovative marketers that are taking advantage of new technologies and responding to their consumers.
Working with fans to create unique shopping and sharing opportunities empowers the kind of viral experiences that were fundamental to Facebook’s own rapid growth and consumer engagement.
How can you maximize facebook to gain sales for your business? Here are some tips to help you design a Facebook presence that makes buying your products more desirable and easy.
1. Encourage Collaboration
Facebook is the perfect environment to create a collaborative experience. People love sharing on Facebook! It’s what the site is built for. Letting people share this information is a great example of how marketers can join the conversation in a relevant way.
Marketers who harness the potential of comments, likes and shares will empower messages to go viral. Facebook makes it easy for your fans to share deals and purchases. Offering incentives, loyalty programs and other word-of-mouth generators will not only spread your reach further but give your fans a reason to make a purchase because of your Facebook Page.
2. Create an Exclusive VIP Experience
We know that people like to be “in the know” and they like to invite others to join the club. Let your Facebook fans be first in line to access new info, limited edition offers and products that are only available to them through Facebook. Your fans are more apt to share their limited-access purchase with other fans. This builds buzz for hard-to-get products and prompts Facebook users to become fans to get involved.
3. Privacy and Security are Paramount
Facebook apps that immediately ask permission to access personal data are a major deterrent for all consumers, especially those who are simply looking to browse. Offer an experience that doesn’t require fans and consumers to install an application. Consumers are wary of their personal data being tracked, so if you do require an application installation, specify what information you are going to access and what you’re going to do with it.
People like familiarity, especially when it comes to their financial data. Offering familiar alternative payment methods like PayPal or AlertPay will extend greater buying confidence.
Your website is not the community, and Facebook is not your company site. Don’t just copy and paste between the two. There is a reason why Facebook is unique — it is a community for sharing, collaborating, being the first to know, and much more. Give your fans something of value and make it fun, and they’ll reward you by telling everyone they know.
Based on the outstanding efforts of Team Building Project (TBP) partners around the world over the past several months, we are pleased to make the following announcements!
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Be careful what you click on when you’re using Twitter, because there is a new “Tweet Viewer” virus.
Under the guise of revealing who’s been visiting your Twitter profile, when you click on its link it asks for your Twitter logon info, and then tweets that same message to more unsuspecting users.
Keep in mind that merely clicking on the link is not going to automatically authorize anything.
That only happens if you click the Authorize button after clicking the link.
Like many viruses, worms and scams, you have to actively give it to yourself, rather than having it attack you as you stand by innocently.
What to do if you’ve been affected by this?
It’s easy enough to go to Settings/Connection/Revoke Access, and then you’re free of it.
Here’s the help page if you need more info.
Why would something like this exist?
Most likely to, at some future time, send out links to computer malware or possibly to sell access to advertisers.
I wanted you to know that Tissa Godavitarne is launching his new business this week.
It is called ACME Phone Leads and you CAN get in early.
It’s a pay-per-call platform designed to generate leads for local businesses.
Wow!
After a year of designing, programming, and testing the platform, it is finally ready to go!
And you are going to love it.
The platform is pre-built with over 230 different local businesses that you can promote in over 80 different categories. And we are adding more all the time.
Each of these businesses pay $10 to $50 per phone lead generated!
Or, if you choose, you can use the platform to negotiate your own deals with local businesses anywhere in the U.S.
( You can be anywhere in the world. Just the business must be in the U.S. for now )
There are a LOT of powerful features built in and tremendous flexibility when it comes to promoting local businesses.
But maybe you don’t want to use the platform yourself and just want to promote the business to others as an affiliate.
Well, you can do that too and earn residual income.
In fact, approximately 90% of commissions generated by APL is returned back to our affiliates.
That’s pretty unheard of in the affiliate marketing world.
You earn 50% commissions on level 1 for all your direct referrals.
You also earn $5 per referral for every referral your referrals sign up down 5 levels.
And this is residual income which you earn every month for every referral who remains subscribed during the month.
APL is just now launching so you are on the ground floor!
We already know 2011 is going to be the year of local business marketing.
Now you can get the tools to earn it.
