Ad.ly is a social media ad agency that provides brands with celebrity endorsements. To come up with a more steady revenue stream, it’s turned to offering analytics. Read more at paidContent »
Klout is moving to target a slightly new audience with its latest product: businesses. Klout for Business will allow corporate customers to measure their company’s influence on social media, moving Klout away from just targeting consumers. Read more »
Prague-based social media analytics startup Socialbakers on Monday announced that it had raised $6 million in funding from Index Ventures and Earlybird Venture Capital. The startup says that more than a fifth of all Fortune 500 companies are its clients. Read more »
Vibrant Media, the company behind many of the in-text ads on the web, is on Wednesday rolling out a redesign meant to make its advertising more transparent and interactive for users. Read more »
Listening platforms — or social media monitoring, analysis, and engagement tools — are bringing massive amounts of new information to businesses’ marketing departments. These tools are also leading the way in the growth of social media information and access throughout organizations so that customers’ wants and needs can be better understood and, presumably, satisfied. This report analyzes how the adoption of listening platforms is transforming marketing departments, their relationships with central IT, and the core systems that run the enterprise. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Gannett Co., the media giant behind USA Today and other properties, is reportedly buying social-media marketing company BLiNQ Media, which helps brands execute and manage advertising campaigns on Facebook and other social platforms. Read more »
Enterprise-focused social marketing startup Unified Wednesday released an updated version of its social operating platform that layers on a Yammer-like user experience to the workflow specific to a brand or agency executing multiple social media campaigns. Read more »
Unified Social, which calls itself an enterprise-grade social operating platform, announced Thursday that it had raised $14 million in new financing. Read more »
Social marketing platform operator Buddy Media is rolling out a bunch of updates to its suite of tools including a unified social data API, the ability to track conversions and campaigns across their entire social media efforts, and a new mobile content development platform. Read more »
A key objective of online social media marketing is to reach influential consumers and get them to pass the word. But marketers and advertisers have to find those influencers ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
After attracting attention last summer for social commerce initiatives with Foursquare and Facebook, last week American Express announced a new coupons hook-up with Twitter. Amex has the potential to be a powerhouse in social commerce, but so far that potential remains ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook needed to change the way it sold advertising inventory and add some glitzier formats. Last week, at its fMC event for marketers, it made some progress towards addressing those needs. Let’s see what Facebook is doing right and where it still has ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Businesses are struggling with how to evaluate the effectiveness of their social media campaigns. Currently, most companies are using metrics that fail to provide a clear picture of which marketing programs are increasing their revenues. Here, Sudha Jamthe outlines five metrics that accurately measure success. Read more »
Will Pinterest be a fad that flashes and burns, as Turntable.fm shows signs of doing, or will it end up a midsize link sharer like Digg or Reddit? It is worth examining Pinterest’s growth, usage, influence and money-making potential for startup lessons and marketing ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
This report outlines the myriad issues at play in Facebook’s move, from examining how CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to rewire the world to understanding the company’s infrastructure dependency. But from every angle, it’s clear the effects will ripple throughout the startup and tech communities. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Much has been made of the success of Louis C.K.’s self-released video special, but Jessica Lee examines it as a social media marketing campaign, chalking his success up to one ingredient that’s often missing in marketing: trust. Read more »
Last week, companies including Google, Facebook and NetShelter introduced new products and services that, while unrelated, all promise to be new vehicles for web content discovery. And with so many new offerings coming to market, content companies must evaluate whether and how to best use services ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Crowdbooster, a Y Combinator start-up, is publicly launching a new social media optimization platform that pairs analytics with tailored recommendations about how to employ social media. The company, which just raised seed funding, is looking to stand out by telling customers what to do and when. Read more »
One of the things social media marketing will need if it’s going to live up to its aggressive $5 billion spending forecast is more differentiation between marketing and collaboration platforms. Companies like Jive Software, Lithium, Mzinga and Telligent offer social network platforms aimed at both employees ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A recent batch of product and funding announcements points to a real trend: the infrastructure and business ecosystem for social media advertising is developing rapidly. That’s good news for marketers – and even for Facebook competitors – as it is critical for growing the market beyond ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook has launched Facebook for Business, a step-by-step online guide aimed at helping small businesses use the social networking site. The timing is interesting, as it comes just a week after Google began shutting off all company profiles on its Google+ social network. Read more »
If you want to reach the Millennial generation, it’s probably a good idea to use the Internet. But according to new research from MTV, companies run the risk of alienating their target audience if they go about social media marketing in the wrong way. Read more »
Many white-collar workers end up sending slight variations on the same email over and over again. Web application startup Tout has announced a new integration with LinkedIn that could be a major boon to a number of potential power users in fields like sales and PR. Read more »
When it comes to the social networking crowd, sex apparently sells. Victoria’s Secret ended June as the top retailer on Facebook with more than 14.3 million fans, according to the latest data from e-commerce software provider ChannelAdvisor. Walmart, the world’s top corporation by revenue, ranks fourth. Read more »
The web may be more social now than ever before, but according to a recent study, there’s still a lot more room to grow. Fewer than half of the world’s top websites link to Facebook or Twitter on their front pages, according to a new research. Read more »
Netvibes, the San Francisco-based startup that allows people and brands to create personalized RSS feed dashboards, has added social analytics capabilities to its web content monitoring platform. But can the company hold its own in today’s world of hyper-funded and hungry social media analytics startups? Read more »
Wildfire Interactive has had solid success with its flagship product, CEO Victoria Ransom tells me. Since the company’s public launch two years ago, Wildfire has attracted big name clients, grown its staff, and become profitable. But the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup isn’t resting on its laurels. Read more »
A new Facebook app launching in the U.K., called Gruvi.tv, wants to help users find the right movie to see this weekend Gruvi.tv’s personalized recommendation system for movies currently in theaters uses Facebook activity, and that of your friends. Read more »
Wiley Cerilli saw the growing plight of restauranteurs, who were inundated with marketing options created by social sites, mobile apps and group buying services. Instead of launching another start-up aimed at tapping local merchant marketing dollars, Cerilli is trying to be the solution to the madness. Read more »
As the social media industry matures and best practices continue to refine, I’m struck by how too many people tend to get caught up in the numbers — or at least the wrong numbers — and let those numbers dictate how and when they use social media. Read more »
A lot has changed in social media over the course of 2010 — the first year that social has been fully and comfortably embedded in the marketing mix. According to KickApps CEO Alex Blum, many companies should take a more aggressive approach to social media in 2011. Read more »
I’ve been thinking about what this year has meant for social media marketing and how things have changed. I came across one of my posts from 2008 where I tried to find category names for social media tools; it’s interesting to see how they have evolved. Read more »
You have a Facebook page for your business, you have a blog, you have a Twitter account and you’re even still using email marketing campaigns. But how are you tracking how those channels are performing? Have you figured out how to measure social media marketing ROI? Read more »
The issue of online privacy has become such a highly charged topic that whenever Facebook or Google overstep the line between data collection and personal privacy, all hell breaks loose. And as that line continues to blur, social networks and online services would do well to ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The key to a successful social media marketing campaign, is knowing when — and how — to use the medium. That’s the central theme of my latest Long View for GigaOM Pro, “The Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing” (subscription required). Read more »
I was recently invited to participate in a social media campaign for the independent film “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” I thought the campaign, the Dragon Tattoo Blog Hunt, was interesting, so interviewed the film’s social media campaign director, Julie Roads. Read more »
Citing examples from campaigns run on Funny or Die and AdMob, Sequoia Capital partner Mark Kvamme told an audience of marketers at OMMA Global in San Francisco today, “If you can harness social media marketing, you don’t have to pay for advertising any more.” Read more »
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of social media, and I’m reminded of where we were in the mid-90s with the advent of the web. I lived through Web 1.0, and am feeling a sense of déjà vu as we play out the same routines with Web 2.0. Read more »
How many times are you hearing the question, “Why should I engage in social media?” during your work week? I’m hearing it often, and it’s reminding me of 1995 and 1996, when clients — and colleagues — were asking “Why should I have a web site?” […] Read more »
Every once in a while, a girl deserves an Arrested Development renaissance, and I am deep into mine right now. Which means that I have been reminded of how solid the show’s cast was, especially overlooked players like Tony Hale, whose work as youngest sibling Buster […] Read more »
