Social Media Examiner Turns 5 Years Old: 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?

Social Media Examiner Turns Five Years Old: Five years ago today, we started Social Media Examiner. Wow, how things have grown!

If you’ve been reading for a while, thank you!

We published our very first article, Top 10 Easy Steps to Starting a Business Blog, by Denise Wakeman, on October 12, 2009.

Here’s what Social Media Examiner looks like today:

• 287 of the industry’s top social media professionals have written for you here.
• 1,583 helpful articles have been published.
• 24.7 million people like you have read our site.
• 293,000 of your peers subscribe to our daily newsletter.
• Our podcast has been downloaded 3 million times.

Facebook Introduces Local Awareness Ads: “With local awareness ads, businesses can quickly and easily find new customers by showing ads to groups of people who are near that business’s neighborhood.”

“Local awareness ads are built to be more cost-effective than traditional advertising channels like newspaper while offering more precise targeting and greater reach.”

LinkedIn Launches New Addition to Who’s Viewed Your Profile: “An additional component to the existing insights graph so that, in addition to seeing who is looking at your profile, you can see which actions you took that led to that specific increase in engagement.”

This includes “making various updates to your profile, endorsing a connection, joining a group or expanding your network.”

Facebook Launches Audience Network: The service is extending “to more developers and publishers across the globe.”

“The Audience Network offers multiple ad formats—native, banner and interstitial—so developers and publishers can show ads that work best for their app.”

Twitter Makes It Easier to Enjoy Photos for Mac Users: Twitter has improved the photo sharing features of its Twitter for Mac platform.

Now it’s easier to enjoy photos on Twitter for Mac. Share pics in messages, view/post up to four pics in tweets: https://t.co/ZwtA39UiAo

— Twitter (@twitter) October 2, 2014

Google Rolls Out Hangouts Chrome App: “The new Hangouts Chrome app brings all you love about hangouts to your computer running Chrome OS or Windows.”

Here are a few cool social media tools worth checking out:

WhoWeUse: “The fastest, easiest and smartest way to find out who your friends and neighbors use for everyday local services.”

“WhoWeUse automatically connects you with friends in your local area.”

Delighted: “The fastest and easiest way to gather actionable feedback from your customers.”

“Delighted uses the Net Promoter System® to gather real feedback from your customers—in minutes, not weeks. No technical knowledge required.”

Snowball: “All your messages in one place.”

“Snowball shows your messages from Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, SMS and all of your other social apps in ONE place. It’s the fastest way to talk to your friends!”

Here are some recent studies worth noting:

2015 B2B Content Marketing Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends for North America: The fifth-annual benchmark report from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs shows that 60% of companies that have a documented content marketing strategy rate themselves highly in terms of effectiveness, compared to 32% who only have a verbal strategy.

The 2014 State of Enterprise Social Marketing Report: Commissioned from Forrester Consulting by Spredfast, this report sheds light on the role of social media at 160 billion-dollar companies in the US and Western Europe. 78% place executive-level oversight and priority on their social media efforts. Nearly 3/4 reported that the way they measure social media’s ROI is constantly evolving.

The 18 Publishers That Are Shared Most on Social Networks: A report from Fractl and BuzzSumo shows which 18 publishers have mastered the art of consistently getting their content shared across the five major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Social Media Is the Number One Promotional Tool for SMBs: BIA/Kelsey found that three-quarters of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) view social media as their #1 promotional tool and devote approximately one-fifth of their total media budget to platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

YouTube Drives More Sales Than Other Social Media Platforms: YouTube is leading the way to introduce new products to consumers and convert them to purchase, according to a recent study by AOL Platforms.

In a Bad Mood? Head to Facebook and Find Someone Worse Off: A new study from Ohio State University suggests that when people are in a negative mood, they tend to focus on the social media profiles of those they consider less attractive or successful or just generally less well-off as a way of feeling better about themselves.

Check Out Our Conference!

Social Media Marketing World 2015 is a conference designed to help you master social media marketing (brought to you by Social Media Examiner).

Join Guy Kawasaki (author, The Art of Social Media), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Chris Brogan (co-author, The Impact Equation), Jay Baer (author, Youtility), Ann Handley (author, Everybody Writes), Michael Stelzner (author, Launch), Michael Hyatt (author, Platform), Laura Fitton (co-author, Twitter for Dummies), Joe Pulizzi (author, Epic Content Marketing), Mark Schaefer (author, Social Media Explained), Cliff Ravenscraft, Nichole Kelly, Ted Rubin, Chalene Johnson, Darren Rowse, Joel Comm, Kim Garst, Martin Shervington, Marcus Sheridan, Gini Dietrich, Pat Flynn, John Jantsch, Andrea Vahl and Brian Clark –just to name a few.

Click here to learn more about Social Media Marketing World.

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