Round out your professional reading (and video watching) list with these suggestions, contributed by members of the Federal Social Media Community of Practice.
Today, we have 22 headlines to share. Enjoy!
Social Media Today: 16 Experts on the Future of Digital Customer Service - Digital customer service is on the rise. More and more companies are finding their way to the social web to answer questions of clients and prospects. A study conducted earlier this year showed that about one out of three companies is currently helping clients in the digital world.
Social Media Today: The Timing of Tweets - Catching the attention of individuals on Twitter is challenging at the best of times, however could it be that some times are better than others? In particular we observe an increase in the number of comments received when a post is made on the weekend, presumably because people have more time.
Social Media Today: How to Effectively Listen on the Social Web [Infographic] - For an easy two-step guide on monitoring and acting on social media conversations, take a look at our infographic below! It’s time social marketers went beyond simply counting ‘Likes’ and comments, and uncovered the deeper meaning of social conversations.
TechPresident: Rethinking Government Services Online - But there are three reasons why I waded through not one, but three lengthy UK reports about its vision, and now believe that if you care about government services online or better still, advise a government, there are some things worth knowing about this plan.
Forbes: 6 Ways Brands Build Trust Through Social Media - Social media used for digital marketing is a form of traditional public relations disseminated through new channels. But unlike traditional marketing, social media gives brands a chance to interact directly and immediately with their customers.
Social Media Today: The Art of Successful Multilingual Social Media Management - Working in multilingual social media management (as a moderator or as a community manager) requires more than just language skills.
Social Media Today: 10 Reasons Why Your Website Redo Will Fail - Today’s fast changing environment brings new requirements and strategic considerations for this undertaking that may have changed dramatically from your last encounter with digital marketing. For the brave businesses about to embark on investing in a web site redo, we offer 10 perceptions that we often encounter which are worth reconsideration.
eMarketer: Brands Get Users Sharing with Social Video - The power of social video represents an evolution in digital advertising, according to a new eMarketer report, “Social Video: The Next Wave in Digital Advertising.” Marketers are starting to move past the interruptive model of the 15- or 30-second pre-roll ad and toward a broader strategy that includes longer opt-in videos with built-in sharing capabilities. This branded content is designed to be consumed and shared on the social web, driving earned media and raising the potential for viral success.
Mashable: Lessons From Sandy; Tech Tools for the Next Big Storm - The Internet was our constant companion with a shout-out to WeatherUnderground for crowd-sourcing the weather to amateur weather stations and aficionados. We calculated and recalculated wind speeds, tides and barometer changes based on Internet data — in addition to grabbing sleeping bags, water and flashlights and moving the car to the top of a hill. We stayed online searching for all the latest data. Then we lost power. Our yard turned into a thigh-high lake of Hudson River overflow. We decided to abandon the house and slogged our way up to the cozy car where we spent the night and hoped the river would behave itself.
Hillicon Valley: ‘Do Not Track’ effort at a standstill - Little progress has been made toward implementing a “Do Not Track” button for the Web more than nine months after a highly publicized launch event at the White House. Advertisers, privacy groups and government officials came together in February to tout their agreement to give Internet users an easy way to opt out of online tracking.
Information Week: Big Data And Gamification: Good Partners? - What do big data and gaming have in common? At first glance, not a lot. The former is a nebulous term referring to the collection and processing of large volumes of data arriving very quickly from multiple sources. The latter? Well, Call of Duty and Angry Birds come to mind.
ReadWrite: Facebook’s New Big-Data Tool Cranks Up Hadoop — And It’s Open Source - Struggling with even the most cutting-edge big-data tools, developers at Facebook have announced a new open-source tool set, Corona, designed to enable data-processing on the incredible scale required by the massive social-media network. Admittedly, there aren’t a lot of companies with big data this big, but Corona should have spill-over benefits for the entire Hadoop-using big data community. Increasing Hadoop’s overall efficiency should make big data even more accessible and faster to use, enabling big data applications to disrupt even more industries.
SMI: How long should a tweet be for optimum engagement? - Engagement with tweets increases with length, plateaus around 70-110 characters, and then drops as the 140-character-mark approaches. While a tweet of between 70-110 characters is not guaranteed to be an engagement success, it does also leave from for the ever-critical links, which, SocialMediaToday says, should include images (yep, even on Twitter).
Mashable: 9 Strategies to Gamify Your Startup -A panel of successful entrepreneurs give their best tips for successfully “gamifying” a brand. Nine pieces of advice on implementing a game strategy that gets results are included.
Instagram Blog: Announcing Instagram Profiles on the Web! - You’ve asked for Instagram on the web and we’ve listened. Over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out Instagram profiles on the web! Your web profile features a selection of your recently shared photographs just above your profile photo and bio, giving others a snapshot of the photos you share on Instagram. In addition, you can follow users, comment & like photos and edit your profile easily and directly from the web. It’s a beautiful new way to share your Instagram photos!
Mashable: Election Night Hits Record High: 20 Million Tweets - More than 20 million tweets have already been sent about the election Tuesday night, Twitter’s government team revealed. That makes it by far the most tweeted political event in U.S. history. The number was announced at 10:16 p.m. ET, with the election still in the balance — suggesting that the final tally would be much larger before the night was over.
ClickZ: Web Analytics Is Dead, Long Live Digital Intelligence - As the tracking and reporting capabilities were bedded into the business, the team started to focus on optimization activities. They systematically reviewed every part of the acquisition and conversion process across their multiple products. They used techniques such as campaign attribution and multivariate testing to drive down costs and improve ROI. They were able to tune the fixed web channel to such an extent that they became one of the best in class within their sector according to independent benchmarking studies. They even started to look at joining their web data to their call center data to understand multi-channel journeys.
Mashable: 8 Hacks to Make Google Calendar More Useful - But, what if it wasn’t just a calendar, and “events” weren’t just places you had to be or items on your schedule? It turns out, Google Calendar can be useful for just about any task that is relevant to either days or times.
ZDNet: How Microsoft is monetizing Messenger: Turn it into Skype - The death of Windows Live Messenger is nigh — in another life known as MSN Messenger — but Microsoft is holding on to its 100-million-plus users by migrating them to Skype. Why? Messenger was dying, its user base was dwindling, Skype is getting stronger by the day, and it’s generating millions in revenue.
ReadWrite: Microsoft’s “Skype In The Workspace.” It’s Like A Video-Based Quora - Thursday, Microsoft’s Skype launched Skype In The Workspace, a service that combines elements of Quora and social networking to create an online space where entrepreneurs can seek knowledge from one another. In reality, Skype In The Workspace is a fancy bulletin board designed to help small businesses connect with each other to provide live question-and-answer sessions — via Skype, naturally.
Mashable: The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years - If you were asked to name the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years, you might say the combustion engine, air travel, Henry Ford’s Model-T production line or even the bicycle. The list goes on. Now answer this one: What’s been the single biggest innovation in education? Don’t worry if you come up blank. You’re supposed to.
TechPresident: After a Shaky Start, Slovakia’s Open Gov’t Portal Succeeds - Earlier this year the government of Slovakia launched a portal that was supposed to make all public contracts and invoices available online. But as Sunlight Foundation International Fellow Matej Kurian recounts, there were serious problems from the outset: The site “…was half-baked, missing full-text search, documents preview or space for comments. While the policy produced more data (“transparency,” if you will), it left accountability untouched.”
2 comments
Naveen Kumar Barthwal says:
December 10, 2012 at 5:57 am (UTC -5 )
Hi
I have been doing Social Media Marketing for Multinational Companies for quite a long time, and believe me its all about audience engagement and popularity. Though there are many companies that are hugely investing on Online Marketing but the one who are sucessfull are those who can manage the Buzz in the Online Worl.
Rob Lons says:
December 7, 2012 at 12:17 am (UTC -5 )
Great share on the Google Calendar article! I use Google calendar to plan blog posts, bills, and everything else. That article came in handy.