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Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

  1. Small Business and the New Facebook

    October 11, 2011 by Blair Stover

    Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

    Image via CrunchBase

    You may not be surprised to learn that Facebook has changed again. These new changes affect brands and companies that utilize Facebook for marketing more than ever now. So what does this mean for small businesses?

    The first change involves privacy settings for sharing. Users now have  more control over who is able to see the content they post on their  wall, or home page. Facebook defaulted “Public” as a setting rather than “Everyone”. “Public” means that one’s updates, photos and additional user information can be viewed by anyone in the public. This is helpful as this will most likely result in less public-facing citations.

    If you were excited about Facebook Deals, you should know it is over. Facebook has discontinued the project. However, the company stated that it is looking into the best way to be of service to local businesses, as it learned much from this project. Another feature which will soon be phased out is location tagging. This is the feature Facebook members use with their cell phone to “check in” when at locations.

    Rather than targeting ads by precise interests and keywords, Facebook now allows those who advertise on their media network to target ads based on topic. This will simplify the list of keywords companies were managing. Now, a business can target the interests of their clientele.

    Restrictions on types of advertising have been eased by Facebook. So long as ads are properly targeted, Facebook now allows legal gambling operations to be promoted. This includes offline casinos. Furthermore, ads for herbal and dietary supplements are now allowable, as long as they do not include banned ingredients such as, ephedra, anabolic steroids or human growth hormones.

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  2. Five Alternatives to Hootsuite

    April 18, 2011 by Blair Stover

    HootsuiteIn today’s society, social networking has become a staple as a normal means of communication.  People want other people to know where they are and what they are doing.  Then along came HootSuite, a social media dashboard that allows you to update several of you networking sites all at once.  But now that HootSuite is becoming a paid luxury, what are some new alternatives for your new social media dashboard?

    The first we are going to look at is Buzzom.  Buzzom is almost identical to HootSuite in reference to the features that it offers its members.  Buzzom chooses to mostly focus on the feed and stream aspect of social networking and has a fairly good filtering system and easy account management.

    If you are a fan of the Facebook interface then you will be a fan of this next option.  Brizzly offers an experience much like the king of social networks.  You have options to check your inbox and view replies that have been sent to you.  They have recently released a new concept called Picnic which focuses on your Twitter activity.

    Cotweet is very similar to HootSuite and was the first social media dashboard to become a paid site.  It does offer a free version, but it is nothing compared to what you can do with its paid service.

    One of the first media dashboards on the market was Seesmic.  It shares many of the same features as HootSuite.  Its account management features are very easy to use and it also partnered with Microsoft to develop a desktop application, but the application has failed to pick up any steam in the social networking world.

    The number one alternative to HootSuite is a desktop application known as Tweetdeck.  The application allows you to connect all your social networking sites together and was the first to introduce the popular column view to social media dashboards.  It is currently viewed as the pioneer in the social media dashboard scene.

    So do not fret about HootSuite becoming a paid site because there are plenty of great alternatives at your disposal.  Your choice will come down to what features you want in your social media dashboard and which one will fit those personal preferences.