Since launching Facebook Deals four months ago, the social network has decided to exit the online daily deal business with industry-competitors like Groupon and Living Social, in the near future. Facebook emailed the following statement to Reuters:

“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks. We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how best to serve local businesses.”

Facebook says that they are planning to keep Check-In Deals, which works differently than Facebook Deals. Check-in Deals are based on people’s Facebook check-ins when they visit your business. You can run check-in deals across multiple store locations, and create different types of deals to achieve different business goals.

Check-In Deals is currently available to all businesses in the United States and Japan and is free to create, although the product, its availability and pricing are subject to change in the future. 

Facebook Social Deals required businesses to have a Facebook page and allowed the merchants to offer deals that didn’t specifically offer a percentage-based discount. In addition, Social Deals was only open to five cities: Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco.

There are over two hundred million registered users of Twitter.  This number grows by hundreds of thousands each day as new users sign-up.  There are over one hundred and fifty million Tweets per day.  So many, in fact, that many people find it hard to monitor ongoing conversations without using special platforms.  Twitter is used not only by individual people, but by businesses, organizations, governments, and individuals on behalf of animals or fictional characters.  It seems everyone wants to share information in 140 character snippets. 

The White House ( @WhiteHouse ) uses Twitter to share quotes, information, and interact with citizens.  Jason Scott uses Twitter on-behalf-of his cat Sockington ( @Sockington ) and has amassed almost 1.5 Million followers (dubbed Army of Socks).  The mastermind behind the internet meme “Nyan Nyan Cat” (a looped music video of a pixelated cat shaped piece of buttered toast flying with a rainbow) signed-up for a Twitter account to share the sage advice “Nyan Nyan.”  On April 23, 2011, @NyanNyanCat had 114 Tweets and @replies containing little more than a variation of “Nyan” and some symbols.  Which makes one wonder, a repetitive looping fictional cat can make over 100 Tweets in a day – is there a maximum Tweets per day allowance?  How many Tweets can a business make before they reach Twitter’s maximum daily Tweet limit?

The answer is 1,000.  A Twitter user can make 1,000 Tweets in a day (although special restrictions apply. 

The takeaway from this blog post is simple: You have little to worry about with regard to the maximum number of allowed Tweets per day.  Your business should focus on delivering the most relevant content in 140 characters on a frequency that works for your audience.

Community Building through Social Media, with guest @bocachamber
Thursday August 25, 2011

MoreVisibility’s Twitterchat (#MVCHAT) took place today, August 25th with special guest the Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce. We discussed the current activities and success stories that the group has used, including:

• Current Member Engagement
• Recruiting and New Member introductions
• Future Collaboration plans for the Chamber members including Foursquare and QR codes

MVCHAT is a weekly 30 minute discussion starting at 3:30 pm (est) covering a variety of online marketing topics. Clients, advertisers, and online marketing enthusiasts are invited to participate in this rapid-fire conversation by following and including #MVCHAT in tweets. Read more about #MVCHAT in the news here.

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network on the Internet, has over 120 million members as of August 2011.  These individuals are browsing the internet and when they come across good onsite content, they have the same urge many of us do – to share what they have found with others in their network.  A simple snippet of code, typically added to a section of your website near other buttons such as Google’s +1 Button, Twitter’s Tweet Button, and Facebook’s Like or Share Buttons is all that is needed for set-up.  You can build a LinkedIn Share Button through LinkedIn’s Developer Network.  The buttons come in three basic designs: No Count, Vertical Count, and Horizontal Count (example below).  No Count is simply the button without a numerical count of how many people have clicked the button to share the content.  Vertical Count places the numerical bubble count above the button and Horizontal Count places the bubble count to the side of the button.  

http://mashable.com/2011/08/22/khan-academy-kno/

Upon clicking of the LinkedIn Share Button, the count (if shown) will increase by one and a pop-up will appear (if you have pop-ups allowed).

http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/11/30/linkedin-share/

The pop-up box has three options of how you can share the snippet: Post to updates, Post to group(s), and Send to individuals.  The first option, Post to updates, allows you to add a personalized message to the snippet, post to Twitter at the same time you post to LinkedIn, and adjust the visibility of the post (anyone or connections only).  The second option, Post to group(s), auto-completes a group’s name as you type it into the Group(s) field.  If there is a grey lock symbol next to the group name, this signifies that the group is Members Only and that posts will only be visible to members.  If you are posting to an Open Group, note that the post will be visible to everyone on LinkedIn.  After selecting your preferred Group(s), you can also add a subject and details to the post, both of which are optional fields.  The third option, Send to individuals, allows you to share with people who you are not currently connected to by entering their email address in the To: field.  You can also include a personalized message and check a box to disallow the recipient from seeing your name and email address (the default for this box is checked – where those you are sending the post to would see your name and email address).  Once you have decided how you would like to share the snippet of content (and you have the option of using any combination of the three options) you can click the blue “Share” button.

Affiliate Marketing, with guest Sharon Mostyn
Thursday August 18, 2011

MoreVisibility’s Twitterchat (#MVCHAT) took place today, August 18th with guest and Affiliate Marketing Specialist Sharon Mostyn. We discussed the new topics and trends in Affiliate Marketing. Specific topics discussed included:

• The current tax implications for Affiliate Marketers
• Holiday opportunities to prepare for now
• Tips about the upcoming Affiliate Summit 

MVCHAT is a weekly 30 minute discussion starting at 3:30 pm (est) covering a variety of online marketing topics. Clients, advertisers, and online marketing enthusiasts are invited to participate in this rapid-fire conversation by following and including #MVCHAT in tweets. Read more about #MVCHAT in the news here.

 

Klout (www.klout.com) measures a person’s influence in aggregate of all of their social networks (at least those currently integrated with Klout).  The San Francisco based company has scored over 80 Million people since 2008.  The unit of measurement compiled is called The Klout Score and is a number from 1 to 100.  The higher the score, the more influence Klout has computed that you have. 

Your Klout Score is compiled from three factors – True Reach, Amplification, and Network Score.  Your True Reach measures how many people you actually influence. There are safeguards in place to filter out bots and spam to sift down to how many people are actually interacting with your content.  Another way of looking at your True Reach is to think about how many people share your content and how many people are compelled to respond to your messages.  Your Amplification can be thought of as how many times your message is spread. Do your friends want to share your message with their friends?  Your Network Score takes into account not just how many people are in your network, but how many of those people are influencers themselves.  The more influencers you know who react to your content, the higher your Klout Score is likely to be.

The Klout Score Formula

Until recently, your Klout Score was determined from online influence in five social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and YouTube.  Klout doubled that number to ten by adding Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, Last.fm and Tumblr.

Keeping with the trend of social media companies having their very own buttons, Klout introduced the +K Button in June.  The +K Button is similar to Google’s +1 Button in that you are making a recommendation.  In Klout’s case, you are recommending an individual as a good source of information on a certain topic.  You can read more about the +K Button on Klout’s Blog.

MoreVisibility’s Twitterchat took place today, August 11th. MoreVisibility’s chat (#MVCHAT) was led by EVP Danielle Leitch (@DanielleLeitch) and discussed the importance of testing different variables in your communications, to discover what best delivers your desired results. The topics discussed included:

• The value and critical instances of when to test variables
• Understanding the importance of recognizing external factors that can sway your test results
• Introduction to resource GWO, Google Website Optimizer, with 2 links to blog posts

MVCHAT is a weekly 30 minute discussion starting at 3:30 pm (est) covering a variety of online marketing topics. Clients, advertisers, and online marketing enthusiasts are invited to participate in this rapid-fire conversation by following and including #MVCHAT in tweets. Read more about #MVCHAT in the news here.

 

So far, MoreVisibility’s Social Media blog has covered Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.  Promoted Accounts is the third form of paid advertising currently available through Twitter.  First introduced in October of 2010, Promoted Accounts is a way of having Twitter suggest following your account to users who may find you interesting.  It almost goes without saying that within this calculation there is a note to check if those users are already following the account and only to display the message to those who are not. 

The calculation takes into consideration a Twitter user’s public list of who they follow and what categories those followed accounts could be grouped into.  It then tries to display Promoted Accounts that fall into related categories. 

An example of a Promoted Account in Twitter is @DietCokeUS who showed up during a recent log-in under the Who to follow section of the Twitter Sidebar:      

Many household name companies have tried Twitter’s Promoted Accounts to have their Twitter account suggested to Twitter users, the first of which was @Xbox.

As you can see, a small yellow-orange icon with an arrow pointing to the top right corner of the screen is present with the word “Promoted” next to it, clearly noting that this was a paid placement.

If you are interested in learning more about Promoted Accounts and other paid placement options on Twitter, please contact us.

In a previous blog, we touched on Twitter’s first form of paid advertising: Twitter Promoted Tweets.  Twitter then came out with Promoted Trends in June of 2010.  There were a lot of trending searches for hashtags and keywords and many people saw “Toy Story 3″ with a yellow-orange button next to it with the word “Promoted” inside.  Today many people have seen Disney-Pixar’s animated movie and so too, have those continuing to use Twitter, seen the progression from a button with the word “Promoted” to a small yellow-orange icon with an arrow pointing to the top right corner of the screen.

An example of a Promoted Trend hashtag is #BornElectric – the following is what may appear in the Trends section of your Sidebar as you are logged into Twitter:

It should be noted that advertisers can not simply pay to be on the trends list.  To be eligible to be a Promoted Trend, a topic must meet or exceed a minimum level of popularity on Twitter.  In other words, a topic must already be trending toward the Trending Topics list on its own.  Being accepted as a Promoted Trend simply gives the topic an extra push into the Trends section.

Just because some Promoted Trends are seen at the top of the Trends section does not guarantee that your topic will make it there.  Twitter experiments with placement much the way that the search engines do and does not guarantee placement amongst the displayed topics.

If you are interested in learning more about Promoted Tweets and other ways your business can leverage from Twitter, please contact us.

If you use Twitter regularly, you may have noticed a small yellow-orange icon of an arrow pointing toward the top right corner of your screen.  This little icon indicated that the tweet, hashtag, or username it appears near is a promoted – read “paid” – Tweet, trend, or account. 

An example of a Promoted Tweet is the following from @generalelectric:

 

This Tweet does not show up in the regular stream of Tweets from @generalelectric.  It is displayed in the home streams of Twitter users who have conducted a relevant search or are one of the advertiser’s followers.  The Tweet can be replied to, retweeted, or marked as favorite, the same as a regular (non-promoted) Tweet.

Promoted Tweets helped move Twitter from a micro-blogging platform into a paid advertising platform.  Today, hundreds of advertisiers have tested the waters of Promoted Tweets and eMarketer, Twitter, and ClickZ have compiled some data as to the level of engagement to be expected.

Because Promoted Tweets allow your business to get in front of a large number of people with varying interests that are using Twitter but who are not necessarily currently following your account, by adding Promoted Tweets into your marketing mix you can extend the reach of your brand.

You can sign up for more information from Twitter’s advertising department by filling out this form or you can contact MoreVisibility to talk to our paid placement team.