New! The Social Media Monthly Magazine

There is a new magazine on the block and it’s called The Social Media Monthly. That’s right. It’s about the digital world of social media and it’s delivered in print format. Shaking your head? Print, OMG, no! Social media is a wildly dynamic world or restless users that demand mealtime solutions. This magazine Can this magazine survive given the restless users of social media that demand online, real-time solutions.

Editor and publisher, Robert Fine, feels that print is not dead and that “electronic media hasn’t quite replaced all of the intimacy you can get with a printed book or magazine” and social media is not an exception. Initially, the word intimacy might come across as a trifle hokey, but from curly myself up on my couch while flipping through the magazine while stopping to feel  each page to rolling it up under my arm on my way to my local coffee shop, I got! I understand what Robert means when he associates magazines with intimacy.

There are some tactile and interactive features in their launch issue that are a value-added feature for its readers. You can peel off a reusable wall decal on the cover and peel a card off an ad, visit CherryCard and donate 10 cents to your charity of choice.  Many of the ads take a minimalistic approach and most include a QR code in hopes of getting users to interact with the brand.

I put on my critical hat and feel that the article on Empire Avenue takes up a disporporionely large about of space–nine pages worth! That said, if the numerous parallels the founder draws between their Social Stock Market and Facebook and Twitter are accurate, maybe the length of the article is warranted.

The following are a sample of articles you can expect to read in the magazine’s launch issue:

• Shifting social media into social transformation.
• Data and context – The road to good decisions.
• Looking for a job? Get on board with social recruiting or get left behind.
• Brand advocacy in a socially networked world.

A selection of contributors include Tonia Ries – founder of Modern Media and The Realtime Report, Rory Cooper–Director of Communications for The Heritage Foundation and Duleepa Wijayawardhana– founder of Empire Avenue’s.

The article that really pops for me is Data and Context – The Road to Good Decisions by Shelly Krammer and Wendy Scherer that stresses the importance of understanding context to frame data and writes that “data combined with context is powerful” and concludes that “data is where it starts, context is the midpoint [and] great decisions are what follow”. The buzzword to take away from this article is clearly context.

Robert’s goal for The Social Media Monthly is to “create something that… you’ll look forward to receiving in your mailbox every month” and for this social media sponge, that magazine has done such that. It is the first magazine that I’ve read from front to back, including the advertisements!

What have you heard so far about this magazine? Do you think it will be successful? Are you planning on subscribing to this magazine. I would love to hear from you!

Buyer Beware of Couponing Sites

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not scoffing couponing sites such as Groupon, SwarmJam and DealFind to the extend of banning them in my life. I’ve gotten excited when I see a manicure-pedicure combo for $25 or a $50 worth of food at a local restaurant for $25. I am however acknowledging that a dark underbelly exists both for consumer (and the proprietor for that matter) and the proprietor, most of which may not be evident from the get-go.

Consumers beware: watch for the regular prices that make the claims of 50 to $80-ish percent off. Those prices are often inflated. For example, upon closer inspection, my regularly priced $90 haircut, equaled $60 worth. The moral of the story here is to check if the regular price seems reasonable given the offer and/or to judge the merits of the deal base on the actual product or service price instead of amount saved. Rebel against this marketing ploy.

Alright, moving on – the devil is in the details. Read the details for an exact description of what your getting, but remember that not all information may be included and that the headings and subheads may be misleading. Where does this leave you? If you are not sure the exact nature of what you’re getting, inquire with the company offering the the product or service before buying in. For example, maybe that deal for full cleaning of your house only includes a light cleaning, such as counters and carpets or maybe that fully-customized umbrella offer, only lets you only choose from 7 different pre-made, out-dated, umbrellas. You’ve been duped!

Oh, and a precautionary note on that great deal for your massage service – if 867 people have purchased this deal, it may be months before you’re actually able to use the coupon, which increases the likelihood that it will not get used. Try being one of the first people to call to book the appointments as soon as the coupon becomes usable.

Check the expiry dates of the coupons. A coupon with an expiring date of a month may not jive with your busy schedule, resulting in not re-deeming your coupon on time.

Prepare to be given second-class service. Maybe your server has dealt with one too many restaurateurs that have tipped on the sale price, not the original price (bonus tip: factor the tip on the original price into the deal you’re getting) or maybe a proprietor has realized that they are actually losing money from their Groupon promotion. These facts might lead to resentment and to subsequent sub-par service.

Certain mentalities surrounding couponing sites can act as fodder that gets you one step closer to falling squarely into the addiction category. The I’ll-only-go-for-the-very-best-deals mentality can get you into a whole heap of trouble as can the if-the-product-or-service-is-close-by, I will buy in. There are always going to be what come across as being good deals or products and as these sites grow in popularity there are increasingly ample availability of coupons in your area. Instead, try limiting yourself to a fixed number of coupons at a time – for some people that number will be 5, for others it will be 20. The point is to have a cap that is reasonable for you.

It’s a wild world of daily deals out there. These tips should help you benefit the most out of your couponing deals du jour. Happy hunting!

Photo credit: Todd Barnard

Related articles

• Extreme couponing: Not what it is cracked up to be (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Beware the Daily Deals (suddenlyfrugal.com)
• Once Groupon a Time: A Cautionary Tale (bradsdeals.com)
• Should You Jump on the “Coupon Deal Bandwagon”? (riseinteractive.com)

How You Can Benefit From Using Google+

Everyone knows how quickly information can be passed along about anything on the internet. It generally spreads like wildfire if it’s shared with the right group of people in the right places. Now imagine that you can combine the art of social media marketing and Google+.

If you’re anything like I was up until about thirty minutes ago, you’re probably sitting there wondering what the heck Google+ even is.

Google+ is a new project that the team at Google is working on and provides users with a way of sharing, communicating and organizing everything from interests and photos to friends and family into easily accessible groups. Frankly, it looks amazing. Along with the ability to instantly upload content from your phone to a private folder in your Google+ account, there is also the option of categorizing your contacts into groups to make sharing the things relevant to each faction even simpler.

You can have group chats via text message on your phone. Yes, that’s right: a “chat room” on your phone. I can see, in that one feature, where I would begin to wonder where all the time in the day went.

You can even video chat online with up to ten people? Say what?

Granted, I don’t think there will ever come a time when I, personally, will need to talk to ten people all at the same time and, generally, when I am online, I’m not in any sort of position to even think about putting myself in front of the camera, but imagine what it could do for families on opposite sides of the world, or even those just a few hours from one another

And, of course, let’s not forget how much more streamlined it could potentially make running a business meeting, where you no longer have to wonder who is talking in the background because, hey, Google+ will automatically show, on your screen, the person that is talking or talking the loudest.

All that aside, I think the part that I would find most useful is the fact that I can punch in certain interests that can be saved into my account and Google will hand pick and deliver relevant articles and material for me, even when I’m not logged in, so that when I come back, I know I’ll always have something to read. For me, that’s priceless, especially considering how often I forget the many things I had wanted to sit down and search for when I finally have the time to do so.

The age of technology never ceases to amaze me and with the combination of social media marketing and Google+ the possibilities are infinite.

Article: courtesy of my guest blogger – Christine Winter

Related articles

• Google Release Group and Video Chat (telecomaustralia.wordpress.com)
• Google Launches the Google+ Project (shoppingblog.com)
• Facebook, Google+: Social Marketing, e-Commerce Fight to the Death (christianlouca.com)

Social Media Engagement Done Right

At the start of the year, the Digital Buzz blog published the results of a survey looking at social media penetration and engagement. I found the following statistics to be incredibly relevant to the average business professional…

Facebook

• 51 percent of people who follow a brand on Facebook currently buy from that brand
• 41 percent of Facebook users login every single day
• 40 percent of all Facebook users follow at least one brand
• 30 percent of Facebook users login via mobile device
• 12 percent update their status on a daily basis

So what we see here is that less than half of Facebook users are engaging with brands at all. Perhaps the incentives to “follow” a brand need to be juicier. The average Facebook user is thinking, “Life is complicated! Why would I want to add another voice into the mix? Won’t it be like spam in my Facebook feed?” As a business owner, you need to consort with objective third party consultants to find out what holds value for current and prospective customers.

For example, YOU may think it’s “totally cool OMG!!!!!!” that your company is holding a sale on cargo shorts this weekend. On the other hand, your customers might be thinking, “So what? They have sales like that all the time.” Or you may be excited to announce that the brand has a new marketing manager. Ho hum, who cares? You need to find, not only topics that people will care about, but ways to elicit a response and show that your fan page is a lively community where people can interact with the brand. In other words: social media is a soft-sell. You can’t overdo it with self-aggrandizing or shameless promotion or people won’t want anything to do with you.

The other day, I saw a feed from the History Channel Facebook page that posted three compelling historic photos and posed the question, “Which decade had the biggest impact on American history?” Not surprisingly, this post was “liked” by over 5,000 people and solicited more than 400 comments. I was awestruck by their engagement, but when I perused the rest of the site, I could see why they had so many passionate fans. Their Facebook page was full of relevant information – not just promoting History Channel DVDs or shows, but promoting historical facts and stories. They had themed posts on “This Day In History,” “History in the Headlines,” “History Quizzes” and random historical facts with links to more information. Perhaps we can all learn something from the History Channel page about engagement.

Courtesy of guest blogger Jennfusion