Earn social media badges by reading Google News

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If you were a brownie, cub scout, girl or boy scout, or play organized sports, this innovative social rewards idea will resonate. Now you can get badges for reading Google News. The company is offering a variety of 500 different emblems, each one for a particular topic. As you become more well-read, Google News awards a star to the badge for that topic. There are five different levels of the stars, starting with a bronze star. As you read more articles, you receive a silver, gold, platinum and, ultimately, the coveted blue star.

According to the Google Blog, you can keep all this badge mania to yourself by default, or share with others how well read you are. As your Google+ communities grow, badges may be a great way to start discussions and social interaction between you and others with shared interests.

Publishers build new revenue with digital assets

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Mathew Ingram cites how several national publishing groups are moving to leverage their digital assets and brand in creative ways to produce new revenue. I use the term ‘monitize’ continually while exploring new ways for my clients to use social media real estate to engage readers, support your sponsor’s efforts and drive e-commerce through app technology. His closing comment sums the state of affairs succinctly:

No one has found the formula for generating revenue from online publishing, so the more experimentation that occurs the better.


New media mantra: Monetize, monetize, monetize
By Mathew Ingram Jun. 14, 2011, 3:04pm

It’s great that your magazine or newspaper website has millions of page views or unique visitors a month, but those kinds of statistics mean less and less when traditional banner ads bring in virtual pennies for the media companies running them. Some see iPad apps and paywalls as the solution, but several major media outlets such as Hearst and AOL have started experimenting with other ways of monetizing their content — and even Google says it wants to help by making traditional online advertising more efficient for publishers.

Google’s contribution comes in the form of an acquisition. The search giant confirmed on Monday that it’s buying AdMeld, which provides tools that allow online publishers to make their ad buying and placement more efficient. According to several reports, Google is paying $400 million for the company, which makes it one of Google’s largest acquisitions. The web giant says it’s buying AdMeld because “we often hear from major website publishers that ad management today is still mind-numbingly complicated and inefficient.”

Meanwhile, both AOL’s Patch and Hearst are experimenting with different forms of advertising that they hope will convert browsers and readers into shoppers: AOL, for example, has partnered with a service that American Express runs called Serve to launch a Groupon-style “daily deals” offering. As part of the deal, customers can get a co-branded AmEx card that lets them redeem offers at the point of sale without having to print out coupons (something Groupon users apparently complain about).

The AOL unit has more than 800 Patch sites across the U.S., a hyper-local project it has spent more than $100 million on since it launched last year. But while traffic to Patch sites has been climbing — according to some recent estimates — the revenue being generated by the operation is still minuscule. Will local readers be attracted by daily deals from merchants in their area? That’s the bet AOL is making, and some traditional publishers such as the Toronto Star (which acquired a Groupon clone called WagJag last year) say they have been using a similar strategy with some success.

Hearst Magazines, meanwhile, has formed a partnership with a company called Pixazza that allows readers to click on images, find out more about products in the image, then click through and buy them if they wish. This kind of interactive ad has been the dream of advertisers since the commercial web was first invented, but it has never really paid off in the way most had hoped. Hearst is also partnering with Buddy Media to develop Facebook-based apps that allow more interactivity with the magazines’ content.

Whether any of these monetization attempts will ultimately be successful is anyone’s guess. Patch is a gigantic bet by AOL that locally relevant content will draw enough readers to make an advertising-based revenue model work, and the Serve deal is just another twist on that — if not enough readers come to Patch sites, it won’t really matter what kind of advertising the site has. Likewise, Hearst could be trying to squeeze revenue out of a smaller and smaller group of traditional magazine readers.

That said, however, at least there is some experimentation going on, rather than just the same old creatively bankrupt banner advertising campaigns that media sites have been relying on forever. No one has found the formula for generating revenue from online publishing, so the more experimentation that occurs the better.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Emilian Robert Vicol
This story is sourced from:

http://gigaom.com/2011/06/14/new-media-mantra-monetize-monetize-monetize/

Follow Matthew on Twitter @mathewi

The price of a Facebook fan – post reprinted from Ellie Behling’s Blog, Vital Business Media

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How much do you have to pay to get people to “like” you?

A new report from digital marketing firm Webtrends examined Facebook ad campaigns and the “cost per fan,” or the ad spend required to acquire fans, among different industries.

The good news for media companies is that they typically spend less acquiring Facebook fans than companies in most other industry sectors. That shouldn’t be a big surprise, considering media and entertainment-based companies have built-in fan bases, unlike a sector like healthcare that is just beginning to interact directly with customers.

The study also found that media and entertainment companies advertising on Facebook get better click-throughs than other industries.

The report analyzed 4.5 billion Facebook ad impressions across 1,529 campaigns. Across all industries, the study revealed that Facebook ads perform half as well as traditional banner ads. It also found some differences in how geographic and demographic groups interact with Facebook ads (“the older we get, the more we click”).

The price of a Facebook fan
Advertising campaigns from media channels stood out from other industries, receiving a 0.165 percent click-through rate, compared to 0.050 percent across all industries, according to Dennis Yu, managing principal of Facebook marketing at Webtrends. Media properties also acquire Facebook fans at a cheaper price than other industries (between 31 and 41 cents compared to $1.02 across all industries).

The chart below illustrates how media companies have higher click-through rates and lower cost per clicks than companies in other industries. While Facebook is usually more of a focus for consumer media, B2B media companies might be interested in how particular industries fared.

(Use quick link to the right: Industry Comparison Table – Facebook click through rates and costs per clicks)

The value of Facebook fans
The study by Webtrends, which offers a Facebook advertising platform, mostly looked at media companies that are more entertainment-focused, rather than traditional, print-based publishers, which aren’t advertising much on Facebook. Yu said more traditional publishers could be taking advantage of Facebook advertising in order to acquire fans, for instance by targeting friends of fans.

“The traditional, brick-and-mortar folks aren’t there yet; it’s a new opportunity,” he said in a phone interview.

But why is acquiring fans valuable for publishers? Yu compared the ROI of Facebook fans to the ROI of having an e-mail list; it’s another method to drive revenue to subscription products.

Yu added that Facebook is now the foundation of where people are interacting; the next step is doing something in the platform. “Now the game is ‘who can build applications and other things on top of this infrastructure?’,” he said.

Media companies have a built-in advantage because they have the ability to engage Facebook fans with content.

“Naturally, social media is a great medium for news ― it’s shareable, has emotional context, is current, and can be made very relevant to highly targeted audiences,” Yu said in an e-mail.

5 ways to monitor your competition with social media

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There are more ways than ever to find out what is working and not working for your competitors. Tools available to all businesses include monitoring websites for popularity using Alexa Rankings or compete.com. MSN and Google link-domain services allow you to find out who is linking to their site. Set Google alerts to industry topics, product names or anything you want to keep track of. Thinking about buying Google ads? See who is buying Google Adwords with Googspy.

Brick and mortar businesses have observed the competition for years. Tried-and-true techniques include tracking their approaches to marketing and advertising, understanding their resources and profiling employees that might be a good fit as a future hire. A walk down any business-to-business or consumer trade show aisle offers a look at their employees, their culture and how they interact with customers.

Media competitors swim, if not almost drown, keeping on top of their competition’s output every day. Typical monitoring of a broadcast competitor might include team-assigned viewing or listening, paid monitoring services, or executive offices that feature a wall of televisions – each on a different channel. As a regional magazine publisher, I subscribed to over 60 magazines each month plus scanned dozens regularly for design and content ideas to try in our market. Checking competitor page counts, looking for new advertisers or purchased scanning services are the standard in publishing.

Add social media monitoring to whatever ‘tried and true’ competitive monitoring strategy you have been using to get a verbal ingredient missing from digital analytics and time-consuming or costly techniques. You’ll uncover valuable comments of the sort you’d find from focus groups or an extensive qualitative marketing study that includes anecdotal comments.

5 ways to monitor your competition with social media:

1. Start with their website. If your competitor is using social media as part of their strategy, you’ll find recognizable icons for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn or Share buttons right on their home page. Look for their active social media real estate, but locate places where they started and stopped too. These are good indicators where they are building traffic and conversation, and where they did not see much return for their effort.

2. Use search engines. Plug in your competitor’s company name, product or their industry category. Start, but don’t limit to Google searches. Try YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, bing, Twitter. Be willing to follow the trail.

3. Follow discussion forums and blogs that turn up on search listings. Blog mentions and comments can be quite revealing, but also biased. While there is a lot to sift through, you’ll start uncovering general positive and negative themes about your competition, and maybe, about your own business too.

4. Check out their Facebook Fan Page. You are not required to ‘like’ it! What posts generate conversation? How often do they post? Check out their fan count, their tabs, how long they have had a page and applications they are using to customize their pages.

5. Discover the #Hashtag with Twitter. This is a terrific tool for uncovering real-time trends and conversations. Set searches for categories, brand names, industry news or any subject that impacts your business.

While you are looking for what they are saying about the competition, be on the lookout for what they are saying about your brand while you’re at it.
• Benchmark your own social media real estate while in this ‘monitoring zone’ so you can keep track of what is working and not working.
• Are your own customers using your physical location to check-in playing Foursquare? Who is the mayor?
• Use Insights, Facebook’s built-in analytics tool to study your fans. The latest version of Insights offers real-time analytics. Check to see which posts are generating your highest feedback or the most impressions and which pages are receiving top views.
• Review your Twitter followers and clean out the spammers who clutter the conversation for your true followers. What are they saying about you?
• Where is the social media real estate vacuum in your industry where you might create true impact and reach the right customer with a little effort? Video and photo sharing sites are ideal for demonstrating products and services or to cover engaging events. SlideShare and LinkedIn are logical choices to build your company and staff’s reputation and credibility.

Include valuable social media monitoring to learn more about your competitors, your industry and your own position. When the volume becomes overwhelming, check out CRM tools that feature social media monitoring as a capability. For now, add this powerful habit for a comprehensive competitive snapshot that won’t cost a lot of money and will be time well spent.

Publishing pros cite 5 benefits for establishing a Facebook presence now.

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Five tangible benefits to consider as you are weighing your Facebook investment:<a
1. Content syndication
2. CRM/customer support
3. Story development/R&D
4. Subscription revenue
5. Sponsorship revenue
Read the entire article from emedia vitals last newsletter of 2010:
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5 tips to stage your home office for Skype

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Ready to make your first Skype conference call? Check your surroundings before you dial.  A Skype call for business is an opportunity to impact a positive first impression. As expenses decrease for corporate and small business travelers, face-to-face time is harder to come by. Sharpening your Skype skills and video home office setting will separate you from your competition while you make impressive connections.

Try these easy 5 tips:

  1. Look at the camera. While it seems more ‘intuitive’ to look at your caller in the center of the monitor, the way to actually keep steady eye contact is to look and talk right at the camera. Paste a little ‘smile’ icon next to the lens to remind you. Tilting your monitor forward so that it is perpendicular to your desktop will help your image fill up their frame too.
  2. Adjust the lighting. Do windows surround you? Is a florescent fixture shining right above your head? Take cue from professional photographers and soften to natural light. A lamp providing side lighting, closing or adjusting blinds and making sure you are not sitting too far away ‘in the dark’ will make it easier for your caller to see your expressions.
  3. What’s above your left and right shoulder? Make it interesting. Add something with movement, your logo in cutout letters, art that draws the eye or a fun clock. The opportunity to reinforce your brand lies right above your shoulder for the length of this call.
  4. Is your backdrop cluttered? Even a beautiful jar of pens and pencils will look disorganized. Imagine what stacks of papers, random items pinned to a bulletin board or a cluster of hot peppers your sister gave you last summer looks like in the video frame. Yes, I can say I have all of that in my space and clear it away for Skype business calls.
  5. Sit up straight. If you have to sit at the edge of your chair, do it. A good chair, pulled up to the desk will encourage you to sit up and be animated. Don’t hang your sweater or jacket on the back of the chair either. If you are calling from a laptop, resist the urge to slump on the couch with your feet propped up.

Become your own stylist with these 5 easy tips and your home office becomes a professional video-ready Skype set that keeps your caller (and you) focused and ready for a productive call.