The app’s main screen is a clean and simple, containing three options: UPDATES, PROFILE and INBOX. For social savvy people, the UPDATES option rocks. Here you will find stories our connections have shared right next to news about our connections’ job changes. We also don’t have to dig to see who has been looking at our profile any more.

With your permission, the app also links to your Google or Exchange Calendar and pulls in your appointments for the day allowing you to open one app to grab your news, catch up on your LinkedIn connections and see what’s ahead in your day. People are likely to open the app during meals and in between meetings just to catch up and prepare for what’s next.

Current data indicates LinkedIn has more than 150 million users, and the iPad continues to be the fastest growing device on the market. According to LinkedIn, more than 22% of its traffic comes from mobile devices; a year ago, that figure was 8%.

So, what do you think of the LinkedIn iPad app and the new Android version? Will you use it? Let us know in the comments.

Brad Friedman

http://socialmediatoday.com/bradfriedman/500884/linkedin-extends-its-reach

For whatever reason, The Powers That Be have chosen you to write your company’s social media plan.  Or perhaps they haven’t asked, but you know social media is big and getting bigger, and so you want to write a plan to persuade your management to get involved.

Where do you start?

Here are some ideas on the main topics you need to cover in creating an impressive, yet realistic social media plan that garners executive buy-in and a clearer path to success.

1.      Paint The Picture of The Big Opportunity of Social Media

Start your social media plan with some startling statistics and pithy quotes about the huge shift away from traditional publishing towards social media.

If you wrote this plan two years ago, you would have leaned on the endorsement of old media with quotes like this:

 “Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind.” – The Wall Street Journal

But now you can tell the big opportunity of social media by just relying on social media’s accomplishments.  Include nuggets like:

• 4 of the top 7 highest-traffic websites (Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Blogger) are social media websites
• Two-thirds of the global internet population visit social networks  – Nielson, Global Faces and Network Places
• More than half of all people in the U.S. over 12 have set up a social media profile
• With over 400 million users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3^rd largest country in the world
• Twitter now has 110 million users and is adding 300,000 a day

Add with a flourish a quote or two from a top social media book, such as Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, or The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.

2.      Define Social Media

Because social media is such a nebulous thing for many, you need to put concise parameters on what it is.  However, don’t start your plan with the definition of social media because it’s not as exciting as the first section about the big opportunity.  Get their attention first, and then you can go Webster on them.  Include something like this:

“Social media is user-generated content on the internet.  It’s created with free or inexpensive technology, is easy to update, and can reach a niche audience or millions.  It can be mere words in a blog, but also user-generated videos, photos, and audio.  It can be interactive with unfiltered comments from visitors.  And as user-generated content, it does away with controls associated with traditional media – and most of all, it removes the need for big media.”

3.  List Tangible Business Goals

If you don’t already have a social media plan, it’s very possible that your top management fears that social media is only a plaything.  You have to show them you mean business.   Tell them how you will use social media activities to:

• Build awareness
• Strengthen relationships with clients, prospects, and influencers
• Better understand your buyers
• Improve customer service
• Identify new product ideas
• Increase web site traffic
• Improve search engine rankings
• Drive traffic to your trade show displays at events
• Generate leads
• Generate sales

You don’t have to promise to do all these things.  And preferably your goals will match top management’s goals.  But whichever goals you choose, make them attainable, and include a measurement plan.  Ask for a grace period (at least several months) for learning and experimentation until you have to start proving tangible results.

4.  Plan A Timeline Of Steps

You can’t just push a button and have a full-fledged social media marketing program running full-swing.  But management won’t wait forever, either.  Give them an idea of what your steps will be, which may include:

• Time to define goals, objectives, and strategy
• Time to get trained on social media
• Time to determine team, either internally, choosing a social media consultant, or both
• Setting up accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube
• Finding your existing community of clients, prospects, and influencers on the main social media sites listed above, on niche social media sites, and on established industry blogger sites (if you determine your clients are not yet on social media, you may not have a plan!)
• Time to set up your own blog
• The sequence of  social media sites you will concentrate your efforts
• Time needed for listening to each online community
• Time to develop a following
• Time to create content, such as a blog (which is ongoing), videos, white papers, podcasts, and more
• Time to learn time-saving tools such as RSS feeds, Technorati, Hootsuite, Bitly, and more
• Dates of pre-scheduled progress reports

Write this timeline of steps on paper, not in stone.  This is a working plan that you use every week, and change as you learn what works and what doesn’t.

5.  Set Realistic Expectations

Because social media revolves around so many free tools, and because it has become the darling of marketing hipsters everywhere, expectations run high.  So you also need to help your team understand there’s no guarantee it will be a silver bullet.  Tell them things like:

• Social media is not a panacea: if your company or product sucks, social media is not going to make that go away
• While many of the tools are free, it can take a substantial investment in time and consistent effort to build up a loyal following on the main social media sites
• Social media is not just another advertising channel – old-school product messages will go down in flames
• There is a substantial learning curve of the technology, language, and culture of the various social media sites
• Social media is always evolving, so successful methods can stop working
• Success may require effort from a team, not just one person

6.  Ask for Resources

Getting this plan accomplished will require resources.  Don’t be shy, ask for help, be it training, people’s time, or budget to pay for consultants, website hosting fees, a video camera, or useful web applications you later determine you need.  Because social media requires near constant attention, tell them you need a laptop with broadband access, and a smart phone with an unlimited web access plan, too.

And ask for something free but priceless:  For your top management to share their buy-in with your plan to help you get more cooperation from the rest of your company.

7.  Recommend Who Does Social Media For Your Company

The first step of choosing who does social media for your company is deciding between doing it internally, hiring a consultant to do it, or a combination.  You can shorten your learning curve with social media consultants who can train you and help identify online communities where your clients already gather.  But ultimately, your social media activity really should be done by people who work for your company.  It’s just too hard to hire an outsider to be the authentic voice of your company.

Then figure out who does social media within your company.  Just remember that while the youngest member of your marketing or customer service team may be the most familiar with social media, they may not be the best choice to represent your company in social media.  You want someone who has:

• Deep knowledge of your customers, industry, products, and company
• Exemplifies the personality of your organization
• Insatiable curiosity
• Integrity
• Good people and communication skills
• A quick study on technology
• Very strong work ethic

That person, of course, may end up being you.

8.  Finish with an Urgent Call to Action

While similar to how you started your plan, you want to finish with some more strident points that create a sense of urgency.  End your plan with things like:

• “We no longer control our brand – it is being shaped by our customers in social media with or without us, so we must engage with them to protect and enhance the brand.”
• “Social media is where our communities are shifting their attention; we ignore them at our peril.”
• “If we delay our entry too long we risk being left behind by our customers and our competitors.”

Social Media is a vast universe of communities, cultures, and ultimately, for the marketer, choices.  I hope these 8 parts of a social media plan will help you to inspire your organization to get engaged with your clients, prospects, and influencers via social media.

Written By:  www.socialmediatoday.com

http://socialmediatoday.com/mikethimmesch/475146/how-write-your-social-media-plan-8-steps

The new Facebook page timeline layout changes the way your organization needs to think about content. Previously, a Facebook Page content strategy was primarily focused on two things:

1. Custom Tabs – The the content strategy for custom tabs (landing tabs) focused on engaging visitors with a clear call to action in mind. For example, custom tabs to encourage users to join and or share a fundraising campaign. Custom welcome tabs were also used as a way to convert Facebook fans.
2. The News Feed – The the content strategy for the newsfeed focused on engaging Facebook fans in the hopes that greater awareness would be spread through virality. For example, you’d post a photo and a fan would like it, which automatically posts an update on their newsfeed for their friends to see.

The Newsfeed hasn’t changed, and so to some degree your content strategy is still about what’s happening “now”. But Facebook Pages now make it about the past present and future as well!

Here are a 11 things to consider in your new Facebook content strategy:

1. Your Second Website - The timeline allows visitors to your page to interact with a story that has a beginning, a middle, and it now. Facebook users can flip through the pages in your story in a variety of ways (as shown below).

Now don’t get me wrong – the NewsFeed is and will be where all the action is. But Facebook users will soon start seeing your Facebook Page in the same way they see your website. They’ll visit to see what’s new, what’s important, and what their friends care about.

2. Tell A Story In Your Cover Image – Think of your cover image as taking the place of the default landing tab (more on that below). The purpose of your cover image is to create a powerful first impression that will convert.

Beth Kanter has put together an amazing collection of orgs that are using cover images effectively.

Rotate Your Cover Image: You can keep fans interested by frequently rotating your cover image, communicating freshness, spontaneity and dynamism around your brand.

3. Soft Sell – Facebook says that your cover image should not be used for calls to action like “Donate now” or “Sign our email list”. You also can’t include any contact information like URLs, or reference any features on your Facebook page such as the like button.

4. Simplify Your Profile Picture – The new profile picture (AKA avatar) is now 180 pixels square. This means that you can no longer include a call to action (as some organizations did previously).

Because this image will be as small as 30 pixels square, it’s best to use only your logo. You don’t need to include the name of your organization in your main avatar because the name of your Facebook page travels with your avatar everywhere on Facebook.

5. Complete Your About Section – The about section has more prominence just below the cover image. This will include your address and contact information if you have a Facebook Place, or just a brief description if you have a Facebook Page (as shown below).

6. Create Milestones - Up until now, anything posted on the Facebook page was automatically tagged with the date it was posted. Milestones allow you to select any date in the past.

Picture for Milestones can be up to 843 pixels by 403 pixels.

7. Direct Attention with Highlights and Pins – Up until now Facebook admins had little control over how posts were displayed on their Page. and visitors to that page would see updates in either reverse chronological order or in an order determined by Facebook’s Edgerank.

Pages now allow you to control feature specific posts on your page through Highlighting or Pinning. Highlighting turns any page story – which normally occupies a single column – into a full-width story (as shown below). This is perfect for large horizontal photos (dimensions for highlighted photos are 846px by 403px.

Pinning allows you to give any Page story more attention by moving any page story to the top of your Facebook Page. When you pin something on your page it remains at the top of your timeline for seven days, or until you unpin it, so it’s a good idea to think about what you want to feature at the top of your page each week (shown below).

8. Focus on Photos – Again, Facebook Pages are now much more about your visual story told over time, rather than what’s happening now. As much as possible, it’s best to focus on telling that story through images photos and other visual content. Think Pinterest.

9. No Default Tabs – You’ve probably heard by now that Facebook pages will no longer have the ability to set a default tab for nonfans. Default tabs in the past were primarily used as a way to increase fan conversion rates on a page. Now you’ll have to do that with your cover image, highlights, and other ways to make that first impression.

10. No Hard Sell Messaging – Facebook Pages also have a messaging feature which allows visitors to send you a private message. It may be really tempting to sell them on why they should donate or volunteer, but it’s better to use these opportunities to nurture a relationship on their terms. Keep in mind, they are messaging you – not the other way around. Also, you are limited to two messages for every one they receive.

11. Not About You – At first glance you might assume that the story you’re supposed to tell your organization’s story. But this is not an interesting story, nor is it the real story. The story you must tell has to be bigger than you. It has to be about the cause. It has to be about your community.

http://socialmediatoday.com/node/462416?utm_source=smt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Matt Handy leads the social-local-mobile practice and Social PIX team at Brand Networks, a leading Facebook Preferred Developer and Ads API Vendor. Brand Networks engineers social, local and mobile experiences to amplify stories for the world’s most liked companies including AMEX, JetBlue, Diageo and Starbucks.

While Facebook marketing strategies shift with every new iteration and development from the network, one thing remains the same: The stories that jump out from our Timelines and News Feeds are told with photos.

If you doubt the relative importance of photos, take note of the only permanently anchored module on the new Timeline pages. This is clearly a strategic decision in light of our increasingly visually-oriented consumer culture. The role photos play in creating engaging content cannot be understated:

• Posts that include a photo album or a picture generate about 180% and 120% more engagement than the average post respectively, according to Facebook’s internal data.
• More than 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each day.
• Pinterest, the virtual pinboard for photos, has seen exponential growth thanks largely to its deep integration with the Facebook Platform. This integration was one of the first and most important “design” decisions for the startup.

To ensure a brand is breaking through in this visual storytelling ecosystem, marketers need to look beyond attaching a generic image to a status update and think about specific business goals. Here are some ways brands can become better Facebook storytellers through attention-grabbing visuals.

Showcase Your Fans With Products

Verizon Wireless has pulled off a storytelling trifecta that combines photos, fans and product into a powerful brand story. The company featured fan-submitted images to adorn its cover photo, tagged with the fans’ profiles, and of course, the Verizon Wireless device used to capture it. The result is an authentic cover photo that gives fans a reward, all while showcasing products in a positive light.

Turn Real-World Interactions Into Shareable Visual Stories

Events, sponsorships and retail promotions are valuable opportunities to turn your customers into brand storytellers via photos. Brands such as Johnnie Walker, REI and JetBlue have utilized photo apps to turn their events into visual marketing extravaganzas. For example, when JetBlue wanted to promote its new route from Hollywood, CA to Hollywood, FL, the company took to its terminals with a socially-connected photo solution, converting hundreds of in-person connections into hundreds of thousands of stories created and shared in one day.

As Stories Become Ads, Images Are Big Business

Some of Facebook’s newest ad offerings — Sponsored Stories, Featured Stories and Reach Generator — all have one thing in common: They amplify stories. This blending of content, analytics and media planning is highly disruptive throughout the marketing services industry. The days of a content manager planning updates, creative folks tuning copy and images, and media planners buying ads are over. We’ve collapsed these roles into one: the story planner. And can you guess the most important weapons in his arsenal? Compelling visuals, images, graphics and photos, of course.

http://mashable.com/2012/03/19/facebook-marketing-photos-brands/