Top 10 Social Media Blogs: The 2012 Winners!
Are you looking for some good blogs to read? Look no further!
Our third-annual social media blog contest generated nearly 600 nominations (almost twice as many as last year’s contest).
Our panel of social media experts carefully reviewed the nominees and finalists, analyzing the quality of their content, the frequency of posts and reader involvement (among other things).
With that in mind, here are ten blogs that need to be at the top of your reading list. 
Google+ Updates: This Week in Social Media
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What’s New This Week?
Google+ Allows Nicknames: Over the next week, Google+ will provide “support for alternate names—be they nicknames, birth names, or names in another script—alongside your common name. This name will show up on your Google+ profile and in the hovercards which appear over your name.”
To add an alternate name, go to your Google+ profile, click Edit Profile, select your name and click on “More options.”
Facebook App Integration: This Week in Social Media
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What’s New This Week?
Facebook Announces Tight Integration of 60 Apps to Timeline, More on the Way: Facebook now allows developers a tighter integration with Facebook’s Timeline. “More than 60 apps are immediately going live, including such favorites as Pinterest, eBay, Foodspotting, Airbnb and Foursquare.”
Check out the new apps to add to your Facebook Timeline.
Google Search Adds Google+: This Week in Social Media
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What’s New This Week?
Google Search Integrates Google+: Google transforms “into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships,” and introduces three new features: personal results, profiles in search and people and pages. This means that your Google search results will be even more personalized, thanks to information shared on Google+.
Finalists: Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2012
We received over 570 nominations for our third-annual Top 10 Social Media Blogs contest (the blogosphere’s biggest contest for social media blogs).
The list of 20 finalists is pretty impressive! Take a look for yourself below.
The Judges: Our judges include Andy Sernovitz (author, Word of Mouth Marketing & CEO, SocialMedia.org), Rick Calvert (CEO, BlogWorld) and Michael Stelzner (CEO, Social Media Examiner & author, Launch). They are currently finishing up their reviews of these sites.
Here are the finalists (in alphabetical order):
Google+ Traffic Increases: This Week in Social Media
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What’s New This Week?
Google+ Increases Traffic by 55%: Experian Hitwise shares statistics for Google+ that show a significant increase in December 2011 compared to November 2011.
Experian Hitwise tweets about Google+ growth.
30 Social Media Predictions for 2012 From the Pros
How will social media impact businesses in 2012?
We sought expert opinions from a wide range of pros you’re likely familiar with.
We are grateful for the dozens of social media professionals who have written over 600 articles for us since we started Social Media Examiner in October 2009.
To give you a glimpse of what we can expect in the next 12 months, we decided to tap their knowledge and expertise. Here are their predictions of where social media is headed in the next 12 months.
#1: Businesses consolidate social media activities
Michael Stelzner @mike_stelzner
As the social media landscape becomes more crowded in 2012, businesses will pick their battles and dig in. What used to be simply Facebook and Twitter is now Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (and who knows what’s next). On top of this, you have many specialty networks like Foursquare, Yelp and Instagram.
The old mantra of “be everywhere” will quickly be replaced with “be where it matters to our business.”
Ranking Tools: This Week in Social Media
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What’s New?
Multiple Google+ Page Managers Now Possible: There are a few new features on Google+ Pages including multiple admins, or page managers. You can now have up to 50 page managers for your business page. There are also notifications for page managers to stay in the loop.
12 Google+ Marketing Tips From the Pros
Are you struggling to figure out how to market your business with Google+? Looking for some tips and ideas? You’ve come to the right place.
We asked 12 experienced social media professionals to share their best tips on Google+ for business with you.
Here are 12 ways you can use Google+ to promote and market your business.
#1: Personalize your page URL
Ben Pickering @bpicks
Carly Simon’s 70′s hit “You’re So Vain” gave vanity a bad name. But using a so-called “vanity URL” can be a smart move when it comes to your online presence.
While Facebook allows page owners to create vanity URLs of the structure facebook.com/YourName, Google does not currently do the same.
By default, Google+ page URLs look like this: https://plus.google.com/103145815507039304597/posts. It seems likely that at some point Google will allow for personalized page URLs, but until they do, there is a service that can help.
LinkedIn Polls: This Week in Social Media
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What’s New This Week?
LinkedIn Makes It Easy To Publish Polls In LinkedIn Groups: With this latest upgrade, the LinkedIn Polls application is the the first application rolling out within LinkedIn Groups.
"Voting on polls now provides the same quick convenience of clicking “Like”, but with also the richer point of view of a comment."
