Facebook Helped Its App Publishers Monetize In 2012

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Facebook Helped Its App Publishers Monetize In 2012 (Inside Facebook)
Facebook is announcing its fourth quarter 2012 earnings today, which seems like a perfect opportunity to reflect on the major trends and developments that impacted the Facebook app ecosystem in the last year. Amidst increasing competition for the hearts and minds of app developers, Facebook released a number of platform changes intended to address two of the biggest factors impacting developers’ long-term success: discoverability and monetization. Facebook launched the new app center to help with discoverability, and to address monetization they released the ability to charge subscription fees for apps, transitioned Facebook credits to local currencies, and improved payment flows for in-app purchases.

Despite only modest gains in the number of apps on Facebook in 2012, LifeStreet Media, the largest in-app ad provider on Facebook, actually experienced significant increases in the number of developers monetizing apps. Read >>

Foursquare Launches App For Merchants (CNet)
Foursquare introduced a mobile way for its more than 1 million business users to connect with and follow the check-in activities of the over 30 million people using the location-based social network. "The Foursquare Business Companion App is another means for merchants to help manage their Foursquare presence without having to be in front of a computer," a company representative told CNET. The new business application, available on iPhone and Android, is an extension of Foursquare's long-standing merchant dashboard and is meant to provide venue owners with a window to what's happening at their stores. The app allows merchants to view recent check-ins and posts at their venues, check out top customers, and turn special offers on or off. Read >>

Why Most Social Business Efforts Fail (Gartner)
Enterprise social networks will become the primary communication channels for noticing, deciding or acting on information relevant to carrying out work. However, Gartner estimates that through 2015, 80 percent of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology. "Businesses need to realize that social initiatives are different from previous technology deployments," said Carol Rozwell, vice president and analyst at Gartner. By 2016, 50 percent of large organizations will have internal Facebook-like social networks, and that 30 percent of these will be considered as essential as email and telephones are today. By 2017, the majority of all new user-facing applications will exhibit gamified-social-mobile fusion.

Social Business Experts Name Four Trends To Watch In 2013 (ZDNet)
While the majority of the attendees at IBM Connect 2013 this week are presumably keen on the idea of social media in the workplace, there are plenty of businesses out there still looking to catch up. Education (and a dose of caution) is in order, based on a panel discussion with Beverly Macy, CEO of consulting firm Gravity Summit, along with Sandy Carter, vice president of sales and evangelism for IBM's Social Business group. The two women outlined the following four themes that they deemed most relevant for anyone curious about the social business bonanza:

• Beyond the marketing department
• Social + Analytics + Cloud + Mobile = Success
• Social business architecture and alignment
• Social business education and skills

Both Macy and Carter seemed to agree that if you don't have the right model for your business set up, then your employees won't use it. Read >>

How Social Media Connects The Online And Offline World (salesforce)
Along with the breakdown of traditional marketing silos, the barriers between advertising mediums have been destroyed. Here are several ideas for how social media connects the digital and real worlds.

• Twitter as the second screen: For brands looking to capitalize on the companionship Twitter provides during television, hashtags are a great way to create or join in on the conversation.
• Logging in with Facebook: For brands, it will often provide additional information for users signing in through Facebook, such as social data that is so critical for brands looking for extra insights into their user base.
• Pinterest as impetus for purchase: Pinterest has the social influence of showcasing items pinned by friends. The interaction that occurs ingratiates the object more deeply in the mind of a prospective buyer

Social media is starting to serve as the glue between the digital world and the real world. Read >>

Daily Habits For Effective Social Media Marketing (Entrepreneur)
The number of recommended actions and suggested tasks that social media managers must engage in can seem downright overwhelming. To prevent that from happening, refocus your efforts on the following daily social media habits made up of tasks you know you can complete:

1. Check the pulse of your social profiles
2. Respond to direct interactions from followers
3. Post stimulating content to encourage conversation
4. Seek out new followers
5. Search for your company's branded terms

These steps should help you to form positive brand recognition and responsive follower bases, without driving yourself crazy over everything you could be doing. Read >>

Treat Your Social Media Strategy Like Your Content Strategy (Search Engine Land)
In a typical organization, the social media tweets away in one department while content writers toil away in another. Fact: social media posts are content. Social media is not a random outlet or a sounding point. It is not a place for blind self-promotion. It is a tool, one that should be wielded with care and forethought. Furthermore, content and social must be integrated into one strategy. Here's how:

• Create a clear social posting schedule and integrate It with your content schedule
• Run your posts past another person
• Build anticipation for your content
• Know (and write for) your audience
• Respond to every question
• No original content to share? Curate!
• Don't be afraid to optimize
• Create clear goals and track appropriately

With the rise of micro-content, social and content are becoming more linked than ever before. A photo you post on Facebook can have just as much impact as a blog post. Read >>

Social Media Recap Of 2012 (WTWH Media)
2012 brought a lot of changes to social media and its many platforms. Facebook had its IPO. Gangnam Style took YouTube and the world by storm. Watching TV became a social experience as television shows started designating Twitter hashtags for episodes and scenes. Pinterest became one of the fastest-growing social networks … ever. Instagram became so popular that Facebook bought it for $1 billion. More than three million new blogs were created each month. Google+ still quietly continues to grow. People were getting hired based off of their Klout score. Some of the major statistics from the major platforms can be found in this infographic:

And these are only a fraction of changes that happened on the various social platforms in 2012. Read >>