socialgeek-be

© some_communication

Many businesses around the world are being shaken by the latest revolution of social media. Several businesses are confused and many don't know how to use social media efectively in their own advertising, marketing and public relations efforts. One of the core reasons why numerous businesses are remaining out of the loop with the wave of social media is because they don't proactively update their knowledge on the subject.

Computer technology, especially the internet, has advanced rapidly in recent years, and many of the businesses that have failed to innovate and keep up to date with the technology trends quickly struggle against those businesses that do. It can be difficult for many business people to keep in the loop of the social media trends, such as the changes in Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. Nonetheless, media monitoring services can help. The Meltwater News Blog, for instance, highlights ways in which business clients can use media monitoring services to receive regular updates on social media trends. For businesses, the most important information that they will want are the best ways to exploit social media for their strategic advantage. Media monitoring services can simplify the information gathering process for businesses, providing analysis, documentation and copies of all the relevant social media insights.

Social media is still evolving and changing, even as you read this. One of the latest social media trends for business, for example, is the fact that many social media sites are becoming more exclusive and restrictive. Social media initially focused on a wide audience, for general internet users to join and share information. The newest trend, however, is that social media sites are becoming more niche, which is beneficial as users can access more relevant information. For business people, this is useful to know so that they can advertise or participate in more targeted social media sites where they can find potential customers, clients and leads.

Another major social media trend is the fact that the internet is moving more towards mobile interfaces. The internet was once only accessed on personal desktop computers. Soon, laptop computers and mini computers began to proliferate and users could surf the web on these devices. Now, people can simply get their smartphones and access the internet on it. More internet users are spending their time on social media sites via their mobile phone, and businesses whould thus cater their social media strategies to cater for this trend.

© marcopako 

Facebook was left red-faced on Thursday after acknowledging it had hired a prominent public relations firm to draw attention to privacy practices at Internet rival Google.
The PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, said meanwhile that it had taken on an assignment for Facebook on the condition that it not reveal the name of its client and that it should not have done so

Facebook's clumsy PR effort was first revealed by the website The Daily Beast, which said Burson-Marsteller had reached out to a number of U.S. news outlets urging them to look into claims Google was invading privacy

Facebook, which has struggled with privacy controversies of its own, said in a statement to AFP that it had hired Burson-Marsteller but insisted that

"no 'smear' campaign was authorized or intended."

Facebook said it hired Burson-Marsteller to "focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst."

© Robert Scoble

Real-time, online communication via social networking sites is fast moving beyond text-based communication. The next step in real time communications is likely to be video-based. For example, Tout is a mobile video tool that's specifically designed for capturing and sharing short video status updates on Twitter and Facebook.

It is available for free as an iPhone App, and allows for point and shoot 15-second clips to send to the social networks. Social networking thrives on engagement and relationship building, and video facilitates a whole new level of engagement which Tout describes as a "visual conversation." The founder of the company explains that their product is perfect for those who do not enjoy expressing themselves in writing in blogs and Tweets and are more visually oriented. However, Tout and similar apps like BubbleTweet and Zkatter may run into problems as Twitter may limit third party engagement and integrate its own video sharing tool.