Social Media, Social Engagement News & Guidance

Instead of signing in to apps with Facebook or Twitter, there's now the option to sign in with Google+.

This week for our Facebook app of week, we take a look at TidalWave, an app design tool.

It’s a huge hit in the wealthy city-state of Monaco, used by about 90% of that population. And now, the Cyprus-based calling/messaging service Viber -- one of Skype’s start-up competitors -- is reporting that its worldwide user base has soared to 175 million. 

Anyone who's ever wondered how to measure social media impact, should take note of the most influential CEOs on social media.

Despite the plethora of social media analytics and intelligence tools in the world, there are only a few that are really worth a closer look. Topsy is one of them. Topsy provides a social search engine and social analytics tool with freemium and premium models. Today, Topsy introduces two new alerting tools designed to analyze billions of social conversations and deliver timely updates about relevant topics, breaking news and emerging trends.

Adding to Twitter's fire hose of information will be full advertising campaigns brought to the world by three of the company's initial ad partners: Adobe, Salesforce and Shift.

Hacking has been all over the news lately. In the past week or so, major global corporations Apple, Burger King and Jeep, as well as customer service technology vendor Zendesk, have all been hacked -- to say nothing of apparent intrusions into systems governing the country’s infrastructure by the Chinese military.

 Google's new addition to the Chromebook range boosts it way out of the cheap-and-functional category into the Ultrabook class of sexy and desirable. But will that be enough to boost uptake of Google and partner's Chrome-powered devices?. 

Exponential growth of customer data, and the difficulties most marketers have in keeping up with that growth, are creating a situation where marketers are “data-rich and insight-poor.” Findings of a new survey from Infogroup Targeting Solutions and Yesmail Interactive indicate that during 2013, marketers plan to increase spending and hiring to help keep pace with the explosion of customer data and turn it into actionable insight.

Enterprise social media management technology provider HootSuite is launching HootSuite Promoted Products Integration for Twitter. Currently available in limited beta for enterprise customers, the integration lets HootSuite users directly create and manage Twitter advertising campaigns from their HootSuite dashboards.

With social media becoming an increasingly visual medium, marketers should be aware of how are using images.

Is social media worth the expense and effort? The answer to that question depends on the results, and the results depend on the data analytics. To help marketers make sense of social data, digital engagement provider ePrize has unveiled a new social analytics reporting service based on Facebook information.

Personal branding start-up company, Social.Me has announced the first phase of its social media click tracking rollout with the introduction of its outbound click tracking tool.

Do you think social media is bullshit? You’re not alone. Author Brandon Mendelsen agrees. In his book of the same name, he dissects the ways that those within social media industry have made social media marketing something more complicated than it needs to be. Mendelson seeks to expose the truth behind many social media myths created and upheld by large agencies and so-called social media experts.

  Just as Facebook is well on the road to ad-creep on your mobile and desktop feeds, it looks like Twitter is following the slippery slope, moving on from promoted tweets to adverts served thanks to its new API.