Erik Qualman's Blog, page 557

Is Employee Social Engagement a Good or Bad Thing?

With electronic communication and social media, texting has made its way into the work place. Is this a good thing?

Many professionals feel both sides of this; texting work information to consumers and clients has strong pros, but also some cons to go along with it.

As a business owner, it’s a good idea to set some parameters and guidelines for your employees regarding texting so as not to have anyone regret anything or be caught in a difficult situation, but overall work texting is an important mode of communication and should be accessible.

Here’s a look at some pros and cons of work texting….

Pros:

• It’s an easy way to communicate. You can text individually or within a group and this way, information gets out quickly and to the right people. No sifting through emails or waiting for programs to load. Responses are easy and to the point.

• It’s accessible. With a phone call, you need to be in a space to talk and have the time for a conversation. With email, you often have to pull up your email account and it’s a bit more difficult to access past emails and read the whole conversation. Texting is easy – conversations are right in front of you, it just takes a minute and you can be doing something else during a text conversation.

• It’s non-invasive. As long as you’re not driving or attending to something else where you could be in a dangerous situation, or in a meeting with someone else, texting is pretty easy to do. You can text while working on something else or even while traveling. As the following article looks at, some may think, texting while flying? but it’s an easy way to stay connected even during travel time. In places where a phone conversation isn’t feasible, you can text.

• You and your employees can text out links of information – press releases, media, product launches, social media links, all of these are easy to disseminate through text. It’s a good marketing tool.

Cons:

• Texting isn’t always seen as professional. Some people still don’t like texting as a means of professional communication. They’d rather have an email or phone call. The best way to work around this is to make sure you and your employees know your clients, customers and colleagues.

• Texting is not secure. Texts are easy to pass around and can leak valuable, secure information. To work around this one, simply don’t text information that you’d like to remain private.

• It can be distracting. Because texting is so convenient, it can be distracting and take away from current tasks. You don’t want someone else texting while you’re talking to them or in the middle of an important meeting (unless it’s related and part of the meeting), so you and your employees shouldn’t do it, either.

Texting is the second most popular of work communication, email being the first.

It’s hard to stay away from texting regarding work, and it is an efficient and easy way for your employees to communicate.

The key is to be careful, but, then again, any communication should come with that warning.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of shutterstock.com

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Twitter Cuts Off Meerkat From Its Social Graph

BuzzFeed – Twitter is cutting off Meerkat’s ability to port people’s social networks over from Twitter to its own service — the so-called social graph. That means when new users come on board, they will no longer be automatically connected to the other people they are already following on Twitter. This comes not long after Twitter purchased a competing live-streaming service, Periscope, and just as the South by Southwest festival is getting underway in Austin.

Meerkat is a live-streaming video service that automatically tweets when you start recording. But it essentially piggybacks on Twitter’s network. Not only do new users sign in via Twitter, but the app also connects you with all the Meerkat users you are also connected to via Twitter, and you then have the same follower and following relationship on Meerkat that you do on Twitter. Which means once you have the app installed (and assuming you have notifications turned on) every time someone you follow on Twitter starts live-streaming a Meerkat video, you get a notification.

Several people have noted the danger in this strategy for Meerkat, especially now that it is competing with Twitter.

Friday evening, BuzzFeed News learned from a source familiar with the matter that Twitter was taking steps to break Meerkat’s ability to access its social graph. When we tried adding other accounts, such as the BuzzFeed SF and BuzzFeed FWD Twitter accounts, we noticed lots of inconsistencies with the follower graph numbers.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that Meerkat had been cut off.

“We are limiting their access to Twitter’s social graph, consistent with our internal policy,” the spoeksperson said. “Their users will still be able to distribute videos on Twitter and log in with their Twitter credentials.”

This won’t totally kill Meerkat — people will still be able to use it to announce on Twitter that they are streaming — but it will seriously kneecap it. It means that new users won’t automatically be notified by the app when friends are broadcasting unless they manually build out their friend networks. This hurts the app’s ability to keep people on Meerkat itself.

The move comes just as SXSW is starting, where Meerkat seemed poised to be this year’s breakout app.

Image from BuzzFeed

Article by Mat Honan from BuzzFeed News

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Facebook Aquires E-commerce Search App TheFind

Mashable – Facebook has acquired TheFind, an e-commerce search app.

TheFind announced the deal Friday on its website.

“We are now starting our next chapter by combining forces with Facebook to do even more for consumers. Facebook’s resources and platform give us the opportunity to scale our expertise in product sourcing to the over 1 billion people that use the platform,” the company wrote.

In the post, TheFind said many of its employees would be joining Facebook, and work on improving the relevance of the social network’s advertising. TheFind added that its search engine will go offline “in the next few weeks.”

Facebook did not reveal details of the acquisition, including how much it paid for the company. Founded in 2006, TheFind previously raised $26 million in three investment rounds, but had not received an influx of cash since 2007.

Facebook’s move could also be another step toward introducing more e-commerce on its site. In July 2014, the company began testing a “Buy” button on ads and Page posts. It previously explored payments, including its own online currency called Credits.

Since then, however, Facebook’s e-commerce ambitions have been relatively nascent.

A Facebook spokesperson released the following statement about its acquisition, stressing TheFind’s ability to bolster its advertising products:

“We’re excited to welcome TheFind to Facebook. TheFind’s talented team has built a successful search engine that connects people to products. Together, we believe we can make the Facebook ads experience even more relevant and better for consumers. Our business is about connecting people with the topics, companies, brands, and increasingly products they care about and we look forward to doing that with TheFind on board.”

Image from TheFind

Article by Jason Abbruzzese from Mashable

Thumbnail from Shutterstock.com

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CEO’s Know They Need a Social Game

Top CEO’s know that social media is no longer an option if they wish to stay in business, it’s a must.

With billions of people using social media, it has quickly risen to the top as one of the best ways for companies to advertise, market their brand and gain exposure. With so many platforms to choose from and so many different ways to go about advertising with social media, it can be tough to know what to do.

Surprisingly, 68 percent of CEO’s are not on any social network, according to CEO.com. Despite these alarming statistics, CEO’s should be on social media in order to be viewed as more innovative and accessible.

Get Your Brand Some Promotion

Here, we’re providing tips on how CEO’s can use social media to promote their company’s brands:

Make it personal – People like to follow businesses and individuals they feel they can relate to. As a CEO, you don’t have to make your social profiles all about business. You can incorporate some of your family life into your photo feeds, share status updates on what your plans are for the weekend or mention a new restaurant you experienced recently. Social media is all about connecting with other people, who will hopefully wind up as customers of yours down the line.
Emphasize the fun – A great way to gain exposure and followers on social media is by hosting giveaways and contests on your pages. If you own a retail store, for example, you can ask followers to share their favorite product of yours to be entered into your giveaway. Take it one step further by giving extra entries to those that share your contest with their social media followers, and so on and so forth. Giveaways can be a quick and easy way to introduce your company to thousands of new faces.
Use videos – Oftentimes, CEO’s and other business owners will be active on social media but will forget about one of the biggest platforms – YouTube. YouTube currently has more than 1 billion users and 4 billion video views per day. YouTube is easily one of the biggest markets to advertise on as the proof is in the numbers – people clearly like watching videos. As the following article looks at, CEO and philanthropist Cecilia Ibru, for example, shares a video on the gender norms and being a woman leader in Nigeria. Watching a video connects you to the speaker and allows you to feel what they are feeling, which is something a Tweet or a status update just can’t portray.
Get employees involved – As the CEO, you’re the ring leader of the group. You should be on social media to both promote your business and encourage your employees to actively engage on the platforms, too. Having employees on social media is also a great way to grow your company and find qualified candidates to work for your company. Professional network LinkedIn is ranked as the number one professional social networking tool. You and your employees can use it to scout new talent, hire new team members and grow your staff.

Top CEOs understand the importance of social media and know the benefits of using the platforms.

The sooner you can start interacting with customers online, the quicker your business is going to grow.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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Snapchat Receives Investment From Alibaba at $15 Million Valuation

Bloomberg — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. plans to invest in Snapchat Inc., the mobile application for sending disappearing photos, at a valuation of $15 billion, people familiar with the situation said.

China’s biggest e-commerce company intends to invest $200 million, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

Snapchat is part of a breed of startups with multibillion-dollar valuations, with investors lining up to offer financing. With the latest deal, Snapchat would be ranked behind only mobile car-booking application Uber Technologies Inc. and Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp., according to data compiled by researcher CB Insights. Xiaomi is pegged at $45 billion, while Uber’s latest round valued it at $40 billion.

“We continue to hire across the business,” Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel said at the Montgomery Summit in Santa Monica, California. He declined to comment on fundraising efforts, adding, “We are famous for not talking about the future.”

Snapchat, based in Los Angeles, was in discussions last month to raise $500 million in a round of financing that could value the company at $16 billion to $19 billion, a person familiar with the situation said at the time. Alibaba’s planned investment would be outside of that round, one of the people said Wednesday. Alibaba declined to comment on the funding.

Alibaba Expansion

Alibaba was also involved in discussions last year to invest in Snapchat ahead of the marketplace’s initial public offering in September, although a deal didn’t happen. Alibaba is expanding beyond its core business of e-commerce, adding other investments such as finance and entertainment content as part of a plan to serve 2 billion customers globally.

“Alibaba has major plans to access overseas markets,” said You Na, an analyst at ICBC International Research Ltd. in Hong Kong. “They also have intentions to move into social networks.”

Snapchat lets people take and draw on photos, then send them to select friends or add them to a public “story.” The photos and videos disappear seconds after the recipient views them. The company says its users — the app is popular among teens — send more than 700 million disappearing “snaps” and view more than 500 million stories daily.

High Valuations

Spiegel started Snapchat in a Stanford University fraternity house in 2011 and turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook Inc. in 2013. He raised funds from 23 investors at a $10 billion valuation last year. That increase has corresponded with a surge in venture spending to the highest level in more than a decade.

Venture capitalists pumped $48.3 billion into U.S. companies last year, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Alibaba, founded in 1999 by a group led by former English teacher Jack Ma, held the world’s largest initial public offering when it listed in New York last year. The stock surged 38 percent on its first day of trade in September to $93.89, yet fell to $81.99 at Wednesday’s close.

A stake in Snapchat would take Alibaba’s total equity investments over the past 12 months to $6.3 billion from 26 deals, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Article by Serena Saitto from Bloomberg

Thumbnail courtesy of Shuttershock

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Is Pinterest Part of Your Marketing Plan?

Most business owners know the importance of social media and have the important accounts, like Twitter and Facebook.

Customers will usually see icons on business websites, and by following social media they can get discounts, real time updates and other pertinent information. Social media is a great place to engage and share relevant material.

However, there is an often forgotten, but important, social media platform, and that is Pinterest, which has more than 70 million users.

Engage Consumers

Many people think the primary purpose of Pinterest is planning a dream vacation, gathering color palettes for a home update or finding the perfect font for wedding initiations.

However, Pinterest is an excellent platform for any business to engage in.

Not surprising for those businesses with a more visual side, like a design firm or dance studio, but even those on a more traditional business side can benefit from a Pinterest profile.

As the following article looks at, take a view of Bob Bratt’s Pinterest page; he has created an interesting, personal board that can enhance his professional business profile.

Be Creative

For those in a creative position, it’s easy to create Pinterest boards.

A photographer can pin his or her own photos, media publications, other interesting pieces, information on photography, the list goes on.

But what about an executive in a business firm? Maybe his or her job isn’t as visually appealing, so think outside the box. How about pins on a college alma mater or home town? Favorite sports team or food (everyone loves food). Pin about travel or hobbies.

If they can relate to work, great, if not, that’s okay, too.

While pinning to enhance a professional profile, keep these few things in mind:

• In your profile, list your other social media. Bob has a link to twitter, about.me and other business related information.

• Go personal, but not too personal. If this is your business Pinterest page, keep it relevant. Your college alma mater is great; your family photos are not.

• Keep away from controversial subjects. Neutral is better in this situation. Don’t try to change who you are, but it’s not the place to pin boards on material that may make potential clients second guess you or look the other way.

• Have a business board. You can get more personal here with business logos, media about you and your company, and other relevant business pieces.

• Be organized. Go for more boards if you find yourself getting too many unrelated pins on one board.

• Follow. Just like on any other social media, follow other pinners.

Pinterest is a different medium than the Facebook and Twitter.

It’s primarily photo sharing, but you can include links. Your pins and boards also stay more accessible than your old Facebook and twitter posts, where things can get lost and buried in a matter of minutes.

That’s not to say that people can’t come across what you posted weeks or months ago, it’s just not as readily visual.

Give Pinterest a try; you may be surprised how it can enhance your business profile.

Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

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Keep Up With Your Favorite Shows With Twitter’s ‘TV Timeline’

Mashable – Twitter is launching a bold TV experiment and if it takes, it could change the face of second-screen viewing — at least as far as Twitter is concerned.

It’s only fitting since social media has, for the last five years or so been an agent of change for TV.

We don’t watch TV the way we used to — at least not anything we’re watching live. The conversations we used to have in our living rooms about Survivor, The Bachelor, Lost The Academy Awards and potboilers like Scandal, have migrated to social media.

A recent study by Nielsen says that at least 15% of TV viewers enjoy TV more “when social media is involved.” They’re also, Nielsen notes, still watching live TV. Adults (18 and over) watch over five hours of live TV per day. And when we watch live TV we use social media to engage, react and discuss.

On Twitter, we manage these interactions with hashtags. If you wanted to keep track of all the conversation revolving around the Academy Awards ceremony, you used #Oscar2015 in your tweets and watched for tweets containing that hashtag. Savvier Twitter users employ Twitter dashboards to track all the activity revolving around these hashtags. Tools like TweetDeck and Hootsuite and put all related tweets in a single column, while leaving your other columns, Notifications, your general Twitter stream, Discovery, untouched.

Twitter’s traditional homepage has always been little used in this quest to have the ultimate second-screen experience. But this Twitter TV Timelines experiment could change all that — at least for mobile. Sorry, there’s no indication this experiment is running on Twitter for desktop.

Mashable got early access to Twitter’s first foray into Twitter TV conversation management. It’s only accessible, in limited quantities, through Twitter for iPhone’s March 12 update.

The concept is fairly simple. Twitter sees you using a TV show-related hashtag, a character’s name, even a key phrase from one of a handful of designated shows. For this experiment it’s American Idol, Big Bang Theory, @Midnight and The Blacklist. A dialogue box pops up on your iPhone Twitter Timeline (at the top) and invites you to try out Twitter TV Timelines. If you accept, you’ll see a very unusual Twitter interface.

Think of TV Timelines as TweetDeck (which is owned and operated by Twitter) for TV. The interface is separated into three columns or panes that you can swipe through: Highlights, Media and All. This organization is designed to help make it easier for you to track not only all the conversation revolving around, say The Blacklists, but to also cut out all the noise by showing you highlights and key media. That media will include show-related photos, vines and videos.

Image via Twitter courtesy of Mashable

The obvious benefit here is that you can dive deep into the Twitter conversation for one show and easily ignore everything else — because you’re not seeing anything else. Naturally, tweets built while you’re in the TV Timeline automatically include the show hashtag.

These shows and networks know about the experiment, but since it’s so early, it’s unlikely you’d see anything special from them beyond posts from the stars who are already live-tweeting their shows and networks posting content relating to the shows — something they’d also do anyway.

For now, our sources tell us there are no ads in the TV Timeline, though you would have to assume that will change if this graduates to a real Twitter feature.

Twitter is not commenting publicly on the experiment, though it’s obvious that serving as a better second-screen partner is a strategic move. After every major live TV event, both Twitter and Facebook tout engagement numbers. On the face of it, Facebook appears to be winning. It has a larger global audience and typically posts significantly larger numbers. On the other hand, we could be comparing apples to oranges. Are Twitter favorites analogous to Facebook likes? Do Twitter retweets equal Facebook shares?

The TV Timelines experiment is Twitter’s most aggressive attempt to manage conversation topics. Twitter’s users are a fairly vocal bunch who will probably either love that they can dive so deeply into a single show’s conversation or resent to the level of Twitter’s control.

Article by Lance Ulanoff via Mashable 

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Are Real Estate Investors Social Enough?

When thinking about real estate investing, or the process of using properties to generate income rather than live in, most people don’t think about social media.

Real estate investors work with real estate agents, contractors, buyers and other investors, making the need for social media pertinent.

Every business nowadays, whether looking to connect to just a few people or the world, should be using social media. Real estate investors are no exception.

Make the Connection

As a real estate investor, your goal is to connect with others in the business that will possibly bring business to your company. You should be thinking on both a local level and a worldwide level.

Three ways to use social media to enhance your real estate investing business include:

Start a blog – A blog gives you credibility on your subject of choice and over time makes you an expert. You can use your blog to showcase the type of work that you do, interact with other real estate investors, share useful information to those in your niche and more. As the following article looks at, Jim Decker, for example, oversees a real estate management company based in Vancouver and uses his blog as both his portfolio and his resume. You don’t have to update your blog multiple times per week, but having a blog in your field is a great way to get recognized by other investors and agents.
Connect with people in your area – LinkedIn is a professional social media networking platform that can get you connected to other real estate professionals in your area. Join local groups and groups on real estate investing. Further expand your network by following these professionals on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Keep your own social media pages professional, engaging and full of useful information. Building up a following doesn’t happen overnight, but by being consistent with networking you should see results within a few months.
Learn from investors all over the world – While an investor in Florida may never get you any direct business in your home state of California, networking with other real estate investors is key to growing your business, learning from others and staying up to date on what’s going on in the real estate investment world. Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus to meet other investors across the world and learn from each other’s mistakes. A great resource for connecting with investors both locally and nationally is the site Bigger Pockets. The site posts multiple articles per day plus connects you to other investors in your area.

Go Where the People Are

So, why social media for real estate investors? Put simply, social media is where the people are.

One in four people worldwide use Facebook, Twitter has 232 million active accounts, LinkedIn has more than 347 million users and growing, and Google Plus has more than 300 million active users.

The numbers don’t lie – it’s time to start engaging on social media if you’re looking to grow your business and connect with others, particularly when it comes to real estate investing.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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FCC Releases Net Neutrality Rules

USA TODAY – The Federal Communications Commission just posted its net neutrality rules.

Simply titled “Open Internet FCC-15-24A1,” the order runs 400 pages. The initial rush to get it from the FCC website Thursday morning led to some getting an error from the site. But downloading quickly smoothed out by 10 a.m.

The commission voted 3-2 last month to approve the rules to protect an open Internet, or enforce net neutrality, as the principle is often called. The goal of the rules is to establish the FCC’s authority to ensure that the Internet is equally available to all types of legal content generators.

Internet service providers (ISPs), mostly large cable or telephone companies, are prohibited from blocking or slowing some content and from “paid prioritization” to deliver some content via faster lanes for payment.

The FCC has approved net neutrality rules before, but Chairman Tom Wheeler was forced to come up with new ones after a federal court tossed out the previous rules early last year.

While throwing out the rules, that court upheld that the FCC could assert its power to regulate the Internet, but needed to consider the network as a public utility and the ISPs that deliver connectivity as “common carriers.” The court also “affirmed the commission’s conclusion that broadband providers represent a threat to Internet openness and could act in ways that would ultimately inhibit the speed and extent of future broadband deployment,” the agency says in the order’s executive summary.

The FCC spent nearly a year gathering comment from citizens, companies and public interest groups. The agency received a record 4 million public comments on the issue.

In crafting the rules, the agency had three objectives, the order says: “America needs more broadband, better broadband, and open broadband networks. These goals are mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive. Without an open Internet, there would be less broadband investment and deployment. … All three (objectives) are furthered through the open Internet rules and balanced regulatory framework we adopt today.”

In the order, the agency says that it is basing its authority on Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 and on Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Critics of the strategy have argued that Title II regulations could lead to the FCC setting broadband rates and increased bureaucracy. But the FCC has said it agreed not to use some of the sections of Title II and, for instance, not impose additional taxes or tariffs or require ISPs to unbundle some services or file a burdensome amount of documents.

“There is a reason that Title II has been called the nuclear option. No matter what the FCC tries to do to limit the fallout (and it is not trying very hard to do that here) the decision will still impact investments,” said FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly in a dissenting statement released Thursday. He and fellow Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai voted against the rules.

But Wheeler, in his own statement, said that the old rules have been “modernized” for present-day technology.

“Our challenge is to achieve two equally important goals: ensure incentives for private investment in broadband infrastructure so the U.S. has world-leading networks and ensure that those networks are fast, fair, and open for all Americans,” he said. “The Open Internet Order achieves those goals, giving consumers, innovators, and entrepreneurs the protections they deserve, while providing certainty for broadband providers and the online marketplace.”

There’s more to come. The rules don’t become law until 60 days after they appear in the Federal Register.

Congress is working on legislation that would supersede any FCC rules. And a court challenge by ISPs is expected, too.

Article by Mike Snider from USA Today

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Five Ways to Engage Potential Customers Through Facebook

Customer interaction has been completely revolutionized with the rise of social media. Where customer relationships used to be based on simply transactional relations, these days the relationship is much more about engagement and trust. Facebook is one of the best tools for engaging with your potential customers and creating a stronger brand image for your business. Below are five simple ways you can engage potential customers through Facebook and build better customer relationships.

Royalty free photo

1. Regular New Content with Shout-Outs

The first thing to keep in mind is all about creating regular content. No matter what type of content you publish, the most important thing to do is to do it regularly. It is really important that you post around two to three times a day on your Facebook profile. A really good way of keeping your posting regular is by giving shout-outs to your existing customers. You can even use the content your customers have created.  This SEO blog can give you tips on what to write about, and how to keep your customers interested.

2. Encourage People with Questions

It is a good idea to make your Facebook posts interactive by actively encouraging engagement. You shouldn’t use social media just for broadcasting your own message. You want to talk about your business and products in a way that also gets people talking and not just passively taking in your message. A simple way to do this is by asking questions on Facebook. At the end of your post, it is a good idea to use a ‘call to action’ and make sure people have an incentive to like, share, or comment your post. So include questions in your Facebook posts.

3. Use Video and Images

You shouldn’t just put written posts on your Facebook profile. People want to see a variety of content, and this is often the easiest way to get new people involved with your business. Posting an occasional video on your Facebook wall can be a great way to get people sharing and liking your comments much more. There is even clear evidence to back this. A MIT Sloan study found in 2012 that simple brand photos were able to generate a higher number of likes compared to regular broadcasting posts. So be creative and change the type of content you post.

4. Offer Promotions

Facebook is a really powerful tool for getting people interested in your business. Another great way to get people interested in your products and services is by using different promotions and offers. You can use Facebook to provide people the chance to win free products or get a simple discount. Simply encourage people to like, share, or comment on your posts and choose a winner or provide the person with a promotional code.

5. Create Competitions

People are generally very competitive, so challenges are a great way to get people excited on social media. You can use your Facebook posts for creating competitions. Asking people to either like or share a certain post depending on their preferences is a really simple and powerful way to get people to react. Make sure you use controversial choices and ones that will invoke emotions. This will create a wider response and will get the online community talking.

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