Google Recruits Advertisers To Google+, Promises Greater Returns

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Google Recruits Advertisers To Google+, Promises Greater Returns (Independent)
Google is promising businesses greater returns on advertising if they sign up to its social network, in a fresh bid to take on rivals Facebook and Twitter. The company has been emailing advertisers boasting that businesses with Google+ pages see a five to 10 percent rise in click-throughs when linked with its AdWord campaigns. Google also features businesses' Google+ pages prominently on the right hand side of search results. These pages also show recent posts on the page and the number of people who have given a "+1." Having more businesses on Google+ could strengthen the company's commercial clout as it would allow it to build up more detailed pictures of the brands and businesses users like through the +1 feature. Read >>

Why I Unfriended Almost Everyone (GigaOM)
Mathew Ingram at GigaOM recently unfriended almost 80 percent of the people he was connected to on Facebook. Part of the problem was the way he was using it, but part of the problem was that Facebook had simply become a lot less relevant to him. And what he was left with was a more useful network, but also one that he only uses for very specific things. If he could get more of his friends to use Path, he might use that for friends and family, in which case he wouldn’t need Facebook at all. Facebook's biggest problem is that it has to not only to remain relevant in people’s lives, but offer them more and more things that will keep them engaged. Read >>

Facebook Wants To Make Your Calling Plan Obsolete (TechCrunch)
Facebook updated its flagship iOS application to offer free voice calling functionality, like in the Messenger app. Users in the U.S. and Canada can phone their friends directly from the right-hand sidebar within the application. With voice calling, it’s notable that Facebook has not been building on top of its existing Skype partnership, which in the past had powered a voice calling test on Facebook’s desktop site. More importantly, the move is pitting Facebook against the phone’s default calling application. It would also provide Facebook with another piece of data about its users, by informing the network who a user’s “real” friends are. That can help it refine its relevancy algorithms for everything from the News Feed to ads and even to Facebook’s newly launched Graph Search. Read >>

Social Media Data To Drive Business Campaigns In 2013 (DazeInfo)
According to a study by Infogroup Targeting Solutions and Yesmail Interactive, 68 percent of respondents said they will increase data-related marketing spending in 2013 while, only 3 percent planned to decrease spending.

Nearly 80 percent of marketers also said they plan to make greater use of customers’ social media data to drive marketing campaigns in other channels in 2013. Read >>

How Users Interact With Pinterest (Marketing Tech Blog)
Creatives have an incredible opportunity to take advantage of visual social mediums like Vine, Instagram or Pinterest. This visual guide details how users are interacting with pins, boards, other users and brands on Pinterest. Pinterest is a powerful visual platform because it’s so simple to page through hundreds of visuals until one catches your eye.

Click here for the full infographic. Read >>

More Social Media Marketing Predictions For 2013 (Dachis Group)
It has indeed become a pivotal year in using social media to cultivate advocates, optimize our marketing efforts, and genuinely engage with customers:

• Brand advocacy becomes mechanized for scale as companies acquire capabilities for orchestrating advocates like never before.
• Social media comes in from the cold, gets added as an equal partner to the cross-channel mix.
• Content strategies will continue to be the leading method of triggering social engagement, yet new methods pique marketers' interest.
• Marketing strategies will get better at bridging a social presence to a sales funnel, but many marketers will fall short as they learn the cross-channel ropes.
• Brand management will be transformed by social media more than any other year prior. Improved data science will be the top reason.
• The long overdue shift to engagement marketing will begin.

Certainly, social media remains a top priority for marketing departments this year, even as they realize there is a lot to learn. Read >>

How Social Media Shaped The Oscars (shoutlet)
Here's how social media is reshaping how we watch the Oscars and how it is impacting the film industry overall:

• Oscar-nominated documentary Searching for Sugarman was partly shot with a $1.99 iPhone app.
• New York Times numbers guru Nate Silver applied his wizard-like data analysis to the Oscars, predicting that Argo would take Best Picture, Spielberg would take Best Director, and that Jennifer Lawrence and Daniel Day-Lewis would win for actress and actor, respectively (can't win them all).
• 50 percent of fans have bought movie tickets online as a result of social media recommendations.
• For some, warnings to turn off your phone are just suggestions. 55 percent of moviegoers have texted during a movie.
• Three of four Facebook users discover new movies from friends.
• Positive posts about movies had more influence over decisions than negative ones, says survey.
• Younger-skewing genres like horror get the most boost from social networking.
• Hugh Jackman and Jennifer Lawrence would take home Oscars if social shares alone picked the winners (one out of two isn't bad).
• Twitter has released a list of celebrities who will be live-tweeting the show Sunday, including Heidi Klum, Dick Van Dyke and Helen Hunt.
• Tablet-owning moviegoers watched almost 47 movies on average over the past year, 10 more than other viewers.

Marketing overall no longer has the same impact in the movie business. Social media reveals more of a movie’s flaws. Read >>

The Pros And Cons Of Social Media In Education (OnlineUniversities.com via The EdTech Times)
By understanding social media, schools can make better choices on how to use it in education. Read >>