Report:  Facebook to Add Location Features

Beginning next month, Facebook may start telling its users not only what their friends are doing, but also where they're doing it.

The New York Times' Bits Blog says the popular online social network will announce this "location-based" feature at its upcoming conference, called f8. The conference takes place April 21-22 in San Francisco.

Site users, according to the post, will be able to add their locations to status updates on Facebook.

What the Alzheimer's Association Gets and 100 Other Organizations Don't

I just flipped through today's Politico hard copy - actually it was the digital online version of the hard copy which is wonderful - it even makes the "turning the page" sound - anyway, the only ad that contained social media icons was the one presented by the Alzheimer's Association.

The Elusive Follower/Following Twitter Ratio

I seem to be agreeing with Wesley Donehue a lot lately. His latest post “Claire McCaskill’s Twitter Arrogance” addresses an issue I was considering writing about. The optimal Twitter followers/following ratio is a topic that many have weighed in on. Some say that your followers should always be 5% more than those you’re following, some say only follow people you care about, and some say you should only follow people with “influence.” There are dozens of theories on what your ratio should be.

How to Create Web Pages that Share Beautifully on Facebook

It’s really the fine details that matter most when it comes to website design: the balance of text and images on a page, the user experience after submitting a form, how linkable text appears throughout the site.

But think also about how your website appears when shared on other sites, like when someone shares it as a link on Facebook. It’s important. When Facebook users scan a busy news feed, a strong image or a bold headline can make all the difference and lead to a better click conversion.

Social Business Beyond Just the Marketing Department

I've been thinking a lot about how organizations extend the use of social networking beyond the marketing department. You've probably thought about this too or are even implementing it at your company.

It seems there are three phases of development as an organization matures its social business 

Young Republicans More Enthusiastic

A new Harvard Institute of Politics poll of 18 to 29 year-olds finds young Republicans are showing more enthusiasm than young Democrats for participating in the upcoming midterm elections with 41% of Republicans planning on voting, compared to 35% of Democrats and 13% of Independents.

Data Shows Articles with Digits May Be Shared More on Facebook than Those Without

More new Facebook data, continuing this series.

The next Facebook sharing data point I analyzed is the presence of numbers (in digit form, 1 through 9) in titles. In a wide range of marketing arenas digits have been shown to perform very well. They tend to help conversion rates in the form of prices and on social news sites like Digg “Top 10″ style posts have always done well.

 

There's more to Barack Obama's Facebook Feed

Our colleagues at Slate have released the latest version of their hit satirical feature, "Barack Obama's Facebook Feed." This edition has updates on health care and Sarah Palin -- as well as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's iTunes playlist.

10 Tips for Integrating Social Media With Marketing

We had an excellent seminar this morning at Brandswag. The seminar was over the concepts of integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy. It is extremely important that every business drive social media through traditional marketing practices…. and vice-versa.

It's Not Easy Being Popular. 77 Percent of Facebook Fan Pages Have Under 1,000 Fans.

In this age of instant Internet celebrity, anyone can become famous for 15 seconds (to rework Andy Warhol's oft-quoted maxim). But what does famous mean exactly when anyone can have a Facebook fan page?those public pages on Facebook set up by brands, media outlets, celebs, and wanna-be celebs. As it turns out, being popular is not as easy as it looks. A full 77 percent of Facebook fan pages have less than 1,000 fans, according to an upcoming report by Sysomos, a social media monitoring and analytics firm.

Update: Twitter to Charge for Tweets Next Year?

An announcement this week from one of the investors in Twitter has managed to surprise the usually unflappable Web 2.0 crowd by revealing that the company will begin charging for some services in January next year.

Japanese firm DG Mobile, which is part-owned by Digital Garage, a Twitter investor, revealed that the microblogging site would charge users not to write tweets, as had been anticipated, but to read those of key users. 

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Iraqi Govt YouTube Channel

On a recent visit to Iraq, Google CEO Eric Schmidt shot this video to welcome the Iraqi Government to YouTube. See the channel at: http://www.youtube.com/iraqigov

The Platform vs. The Eyeballs

This might be the most subtle yet important shift that marketers face as they deal with the reality of new media. Marketers aren't renters, now they own.

For generations, marketers were trained to buy (actually rent) eyeballs.

A media company assembled a large amount of attention. A TV network or a magazine or even a billboard company found a place you can put an ad, and they sold you a shot at reaching their audience...

How to Measure the Value of a Fan or Follower in Social Media

It’s hard to justify the time spent on social media account management. But there are ways to measure the real value (monetary or otherwise) of fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter. These top two social media websites offer free advertising, an open customer service and communication platform and a demographics database all wrapped up in one, so knowing the value of fans and followers can be a big help when deciding how much time should be allotted to social media efforts. Here are some of the ways to measure how much Facebook and Twitter users are really worth.

Brands that Matter

In this era, there are two questions every marketer answers:

1. Do I want people to interact with me and my brand in unexpected ways (as opposed to just quietly consume it)?

2. When they interact, do I overwhelm people with delight worth remarking about?

Facebook Pages to Automatically Publish to Twitter

Facebook just announced that administrators of Facebook Pages will be able to publish their updates to their Twitter accounts automatically. Administrators will decide which info to share from a Page including status updates, photos, notes and events. A number of well-known groups and celebrities are already using the feature including Dane Cook, Livestrong and the World Wildlife Fund.

Palin's Facebook Megaphone: Bigger & Better

Here's a metric that might get your attention. Here in these doggiest of August days, Sarah Palin's Facebook page has accumulated roughly the same number of brand new supporters in the last week as Mitt Romney and Bobby Jindal each have in total. That's gotta sting. 

This morning, I woke up early, threw on my "Blog Off" T-Shirt and got ready for an UnConference at PodCampDC. So far, I'm learning many cool things from folks like Christopher Penn & Joel Mark Witt about marketing online and finding a place for social media.

This topic is important to TechRepublican readers. We aim to establish our organization's/campaign's/member's message or brand online, but often our bosses don' t buy the hype.

Maybe The Powers that Be don't always understand the words we use or don't understand how new media will effect the bottomline. We can't assume that it's because they're not using the technology.

Christopher Penn's Talking Points:

Every organization should go where the people are. (Did you know that Myspace currently has a user population that surpasses that of Indonesia or even of the United States?)

When talking to your boss, find the Old Media Analogy:

*Google Reader is your own personal newspaper

*RSS Feeds are online deliveries of your newspaper

*Social Networks are the new water cooler

In reality, new media isn't so much new as it is a different way of communicating to different people, on their terms.

Penn goes on to say that being online is essential, but not enough.

To be effective, you have to be a regular publisher of content.

You have to have something to say.

You have to have a goal.

Otherwise, your boss will not see the big picture.

ID your brand. Penn quoted someone who said that a brand is merely an "emotional aftertaste" that results from a unique experience with your product.

Test market your brand. Get out there.

Joel Mark Witt says, Don't ask permission, just do...then emphasize results.

Social media is like a no man's land in which organizations can open up a new world of opportunities. We need to break out of our comfort zone and snap out of our geek bubble.

Translate new media language into words your boss can understand and relate to.

This is just a snippet of what's going on here. We're having some fun.

Up next: Andy Carvin & Jim Long on "Social Media & New Journalism" -- expect a post on how twitter is changing journalism and affecting information distribution. See Also: Patrick Ruffini's The Year of Twitter.

The controversy over MoveOn's General Betray Us ad reminds us that the best online strategy is still about getting the basics right. In this case: tapping into the visceral reaction to an event within the first 12-24 hours and inviting your supporters to participate to respond in ways that count. And you'll primarily use the most unglamorous, Web 1.0 club in the bag: e-mail.

An outrage like General Betray Us doesn't come along very often when you're the party in power. So I was pretty disappointed when, in the maelstrom that unfolded on Monday, the Republican candidates for President chose to respond by press release, rather than by writing a personal note of disgust to their email list. By sending a well-crafted email, not only could the candidate have gotten his initial response across to a larger audience (the essential principle of "Big Seed Marketing") but he could have more effectively stayed in the news cycle with an action item he could follow up on over the next couple of days. Most reporters are on your email list, so they won't miss it if you break news through the medium. And for those that aren't, you follow up with a press release announcing the email. This is basic blocking and tackling.

Of all the major GOP players, only the Republican National Committee -- my old stomping ground -- used the medium to respond in a timely manner, sending an appeal for money out on Monday night. While I expect that this email and others like it did quite well, I think the opportunity to list-build was even greater. Fundraising is generally a one-off. The people you sign up using a petition or who co-sign a letter stay with you for an entire campaign -- and beyond.

The key to being effective in this operational window is building an action item with actual news value. And it could have been as basic as asking your supporters to sign on to a letter to Hillary Clinton asking her to denounce the MoveOn ad. When she doesn't -- you get to send another email telling people she's ignored the voice of the people and asking people to take further action, like donating to defeat Hillary Clinton, or doing letters to the editor, or emailing Pinch Sulzberger about the New York Times' "family discount." Either way, the candidates would have gotten an automatic story out of this.

The one candidate who fundraised effectively off the controversy was Rudy Giuliani, who devised his own New York Times ad using MoveOn's dramatic discount as a hook to re-enter the discussion. Rudy engaged the medium effectively by asking people to participate in his response, rather than just donating to fight the generic MoveOn/Hillary bogeyman. Now, I don't quite get how spending $181,000, or $167,000, or even $65,000 on one page of newsprint is cost-effective -- unless your message is explosive like MoveOn's -- but if there is anything this has controversy has shown, it's that a spread in the Times still has a certain aura about it.

Still, I was hoping the Republican candidates would use this moment as an opportunity to dramatically beef up their email lists by signing up tens of thousands of outraged conservatives.

When critics point to the Republican Party's problems online, my response is that our problems aren't online. Our problems are offline, in a cranky base, in a reluctance to truly motivate and inspire cause-oriented Republican voters, and in the fact that we are in power in the midst of an unpopular war. Many of these apparent problems go away or get a lot better once we unify against Hillary as the nominee. If this were simply a contest of Web sites and technology -- GeorgeWBush.com vs. JohnKerry.com in 2004, GOP.com vs. Democrats.org, Voter Vault vs. Demzilla, microtargeting vs. what exactly? -- Republicans would win hands down.

Or at least, that seems to have been the case until now.

I've worked with enough of the developers and tech visionaries on the Republican side to know that the talent to build great online experiences, ones that connect you directly with your voters, exists in abundance. But recently, this approach has lost ground to a theory that the best way to communicate with your base is through third parties like bloggers and social networks. That means Republicans are far out front on things like blogger conference calls, hashing out legislation on Red State, and Twittering. And they're quietly losing ground on the basics of online campaigning: e-mail lists, Web development, and video.

At the end of May, the NRCC unveiled phase two of the Real Democrat Story. The site, which was first launched back in March, now includes 21 Democrat targets and new features such as web ads and a blog.

It’s our hope that The Real Blog can serve as a forum for discussing the issues that matter most to people and an opportunity to expose the broken promises and hypocrisy of Congressional Democrats. The NRCC would like to use this blog to create a two-way dialogue where folks come to participate in the process, share their thoughts and provide insights into what we at the NRCC believe is "The Real Democrat Story."

What makes this blog unique will not only be the content generated by NRCC staff and Members of Congress, but it will also feature contributors from across the country who have expressed interest in blogging on behalf of the NRCC. Already the NRCC has featured guest bloggers from Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

When we initially rolled-out the website, www.TheRealDemocratStory.com, in March, we asked people to sign-up to blog and the response was so overwhelming that we created a platform for their voices to be heard. Along with adding additional files on the Real Democrat Story, the NRCC expanded its viral marketing campaign and has sent targeted emails into each district and will run banner ads across the country. The banner ad buys, along with the emails, will reach nearly 8 million people in an effort to capture tens of thousands of additional email addresses.

The story on the expansion of the Real Democrat Story has already appeared on Drudge, and was featured on page one of the Politico.

* Josh Shultz is the New Media Director for the NRCC