What Is Facebook? - Ways To Monetize Social Media

If you could only search on the internet for facts and figures on Facebook, you will be shocked with the massive numbers you see. $100 billion dollars and plus: that's the value of this innocently named social networking website. How does it feel to know that every 13th person walking on this planet has a Facebook profile? So, if you are thrown on an island which you haven't ever heard of, it is possible that you might find the dwellers of that island using Facebook. Most of the users on Facebook are between 18 to 34 years old so it is the best place for businesses that target this age range.

Before you think that the above mentioned facts were astonishing for you read this: over 48% people who are below 34 and above 18 years of age do Facebook as first thing in the morning. You could go on and on when it comes to writing the interesting facts about Facebook but the most important thing is how you make use of Facebook to monetize social media and ultimately your business. Here's how Facebook can be the best source of leads and online traffic for any business.

The Many Ways Facebook (and other Social Media) Can Be Monetized To Generate Profits for Businesses
Before talking about anything it must be mentioned that Facebook is one of the best, most influential and revolutionary websites on the internet that has the strongest force of changing the consumer behavior towards a particular brand, company, manufacturer, government, celebrity etc.

· User recommendations are considered the most important factors steering consumers to or away from a particular brand. Most of the users using the internet for purposes of researching products and services like to look at user comments and recommendations before they make a purchase. The same can also be said for subscriptions to particular services. Therefore, if you have a representation on Facebook and most of the votes are positive, it is likely that you will receive recommendations and more business through Facebook.

· Several surveys and theories show that an unhappy customer is 10 times more dangerous to business as a good customer is profitable. If your customer didn't have a good customer service from your company or customer support representatives, he can spread the word in no time through his Facebook profile, sharing, wall or simply the shout. However, the Facebook page and representation allows you to interact with your customers personally and resolve their matters. Nothing makes a customer feel better than a company making him special. It's an essential component of customer satisfaction.

· Facebook has proved to be the best place for the introduction of your newly launched products and services. However, you must be stay on top of yourself and be sure that you are not throwing a sales pitch through your Facebook profile or page because that carries a very negative impact for the users. Go for a genuine introduction or announcement of what you are about to introduce in the market and your customers will just love it. The key is to build relationships with people not entirely based on business. Under no circumstances should you attempt to hard sell to anyone.

· It wouldn't be wrong to say that an efficient employee is another profit made by the company and by posting pictures and company habits on your company profile on Facebook, you could really invite some great professionals from all around the world to work for your company. This is the most effective way of inviting people to join your company for work and it doesn't even require any money or investment from you.

· Targeted advertising is another great benefit that Facebook is able to offer to businesses related to various industries. For a certain group of people or country, the businessmen could pay for getting the information from Facebook and after knowing the trends of those people on the internet, this company can place targeted ads only on the profiles of those people who it paid to target ads to.

· Branding is definitely considered the most important part of any business' marketing and advertising. Through branding you send a message to all the customers, new and old. If this branding is done through a social networking website such as Facebook, the impact is greater than ever before.

· Since every user on Facebook is spending some part of his day using Facebook, you are likely to get a great return of your newly introduced offers, promotions and special discounts. Many people become followers and fans on your business page once they have taken advantage of a particular offer to wait for another one.

· Once you have a Facebook page, you can be found anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter if someone is trying to search your business on Google because your Facebook business page will appear in the Google search results as well.

Facebook is the leader of social networking websites at the moment and with the number of users it has right now, it doesn't seem that it will be overtaken by any other social networking website anytime soon... If ever. If you have a business, an internet website and/or a blog but no Facebook page, there is a good chance that you are possibly missing out on the biggest profit earning opportunity for your business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7509671

Quora Opens Loopholes To Enable Sharing With Non-Registered Friends

In the past few weeks, Quora has been criticised by its users for the restrictions the site puts on sharing with people who have not registered. Last week, Quora responded to these criticisms in a blog post which explained the reasoning behind the restrictions and revealed some loopholes around it.

In the blog post, Quora employee Marc Bodnick, admits that many of the site’s writers have “expressed strong feelings about being able to freely share from the site, regardless of whether the person you're sharing with wants to join Quora.”

“We ask people to sign up because it's important to our mission -- to share and grow the world's knowledge”, says Bodnick. “The more people who join Quora, the more knowledge is added.”

Quora need users to register because it increases their “participation”, making it more likely for them to return to Quora to write, ask, read, vote and follow. The more people write and ask, the more information there will be on the site. The more people vote and follow, the easier it is to determine the quality of the information.

The most obvious benefit to registration is that it increases membership figures, benefitting both Quora and Quora’s writers, whose own readership will increase as a result.

“We are delivering increasingly large audiences to our writers”, says Bodnick, “one of our top writers recently announced that he had achieved 1 million views on Quora in only four months. In the coming year, active writers on Quora can achieve 1+ million annual views, with some people achieving 3-4+ million.”

Despite Bodnick’s insistence that compulsory Quora registration is beneficial to its users, he admits that there must be some leeway given to those who want to share with people who are not registered. To enable this, Quora has opened three loopholes:

1. Share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Starting today, when you use the Share button to share on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, people won't be asked to join Quora to read what you've shared.
2. Sharing URLs. Another option is to share pages using short links (e.g., when you want to share via email). You can get a short link by clicking the Share button and then copying the short URL listed at the top of the Share box. Other people can open that link without being asked to join Quora to read the content.
3. Open any Quora URL. If you come across a Quora link anywhere and you want to read it without being asked to join Quora, you can add the text "?share=1" to the end of the URL. Example:http://www.quora.com/Hostage-Situations/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-a-hostage-negotiator?share=1

Quora hope that, by reaching out to a wider audience on dominant social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, they can attract new users onto their own site.

The three loopholes are only available to desktop users: mobile users will still have to register with Quora via an app to use the service. All Things Digital reported that, in a follow up statement, Bodnick said:

Accounting for about 25% of overall traffic, mobile platforms are important and growing on Quora — for both reading and contributing. We’ve worked hard to create the best mobile experience with our Android and iOS apps, and we encourage users to download them for the optimal mobile experience. We are always listening to the feedback of our community, and will continue to iterate the way that we help people discover the best Quora experience on any device.

Would you register to use Quora? Or, would you prefer the service to be unrestricted across all platforms?

An American Airport Is The First Location To Reach A Million Check-Ins On Foursquare

On Monday, Foursquare announced on their blog that the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has passed 1 million check-ins on the site, a significant milestone for the company as it is the first location to do so.

Airports get a lot of human traffic, points out Foursquare in the announcement post, and the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is one of the busiest airports in the world.

According to Foursquare’s data, Monday is the airport’s busiest day and Terminal B its busiest terminal on average. Foursquare has also discovered that One Flew South is the most popular restaurant in the airport and that waiting travellers tend to walk by the permanent collection of sculptures from Zimbabwe to kill time.

Visitors to the airport have left 2,000 hints, reviews and tips for fellow travellers: “so whether you’re looking for power outlets, a quiet place for a nap, or the shortest taxi line, a quick search on Foursquare Explore will make you a concourse connoisseur.”

The 1,000,000 check-ins at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport amount to less than 0.03% of the total 3,000,000,000-plus check-ins that have been made on Foursquare in total.

Foursquare inserted a heatmap of the airport in the announcement post – the image at the top of this post – its structure defined by every check-in. As you can see, people are even checking in on the runways as they arrive, suggesting that Foursquare is one of the first things people do when they turn their phone on.

If you look closely, at the heatmap you can even see the outlines of planes that have taxied to the terminals. Here is the heatmap beside a satellite image of the airport to put all those check-ins into perspective:


It is more than likely that another airport will be the next location to break a million check-ins, given the amount of human traffic that goes through them every day and the length of time people have on their hands waiting for their plane, but, considering how eager people are to check-in, even logging into Foursquare as soon as their planes touch down, it might only be a matter of time before some shopping centres and train stations hit the million mark.

What do you think the first non-airport location to reach a million check-ins will be?

Facebook Pages Manager Updated To Version 1.1

Facebook Pages Manager for Android devices has just been updated, introducing three new features to the service.

Facebook Pages Manager was released to users in New Zealand, Canada and Australia last month, becoming available to the USA and the UK a few days later.

The first version of the application allowed Facebook page administrators to make posts, reply to comments and direct messages on the go using their Android devices.

Version 1.1 of the Pages Manager app, which is available from the Google Play store, adds three new features:

• Promote your Page posts to get more people to see them in the news feed
• Schedule your post to be published on a future date
• Create events from your Page.

The update means that page administrators will be able to easily manage their business pages on the go, or if there is not a desktop device immediately available.

What do you think of Pages Manager Version 1.1?

Pinterest Updates iOS App

Pinterest has updated its app for iOS devices, allowing more pin editing on mobile and smoother scrolling.

Version 2.2, which is currently available from iTunes, allows users to edit their pins: they can change the pin description, move its location on the board and even delete it.

Users can also delete comments – their own and other people’s comments on their pins – if they have made a typo or one of their pins is being spammed.

The apps general performance has also been improved, with smoother scrolling through pins.
This comes a few days after Pinterest began testing a site redesign.

What do you think of Pinterest’s updated iOS app?

Twitter Tips For Turning Your Website Into A Business Machine

The following tips, if used diligently, will help you turn your website into a business machine.

Tip #1: Gain followers by giving your readers valuable information. Twitter is all about networking and building readership to promote your business in an artful way. The best way to do that is to tweet regularly, be informative and provide information that is relevant to your niche and important to your readers.

Tip #2: Use hash tags to get attention. Hash tags are searchable and using them results in your content being displayed to a wider audience. Popular hash tags can make a big difference.

Tip #3: Link back to your site or blog occasionally. It is not good practice to do this every time, but do it often to let your customers know where they can go to do business with you.

Tip #4: Interact with your readers. Reply to customers who leave comments. This is very important because, as you know, social media is all about interaction.

Tip #5: Always link your social media accounts. For instance, link your Twitter account to your Facebook, LinkedIn and blog accounts. People use various social media accounts so try to have a presence on as many as you can.

Tip #6: Hold contests and give freebies from time to time. Twitter parties are fun and are an easy way to gain new followers. How? Require your readers follow you in order to be eligible for the contest or freebie.

Tip #7: Respond to personal messages. This is just as important as responding to public tweets. You don't want to lose customers because you ignored them. Remember, for every customer lost you are also losing potential customers because of a damaged reputation.

Tip #8: Interject personality and levity into your tweets. It should not always be about business. Supply relevant content to your readers and you will grab their attention and keep them coming back. Refrain from constantly throwing products at them.

Tip #9: Use the personableness of social media to your advantage. Social media provides freedoms not found in conventional businesses. Use these freedoms to build relationships and form alliances. Keep in mind a great benefit of social media is that your customers help you gain new customers.

Social media marketing via Twitter presents a wonderful opportunity for your business. As one of the most powerful and influential social media sites, Twitter helps you connect with your targeted customer base in a whole new way. Take advantage of this opportunity and remember to use the tips provided in this articles.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7491243