Small Business Saturday buzzed through Facebook

While we know that Facebook users love to post about Black Friday, the same rings true about Small Business Saturday. Facebook tries to help small businesses however possible, and the company’s Director of Small Business, Dan Levy, previously told Inside Facebook that a good chunk of the site’s advertising base consists of non-chain stores.

Facebook recently released some statistics showing how popular Small Business Saturday — the counterpart to Black Friday — was on the site. Mentions related to Small Business Saturday were 1,200 percent higher on the day compared with the week leading up to it.

The site noted that the hashtag #SmallBusinessSaturday had the biggest jump in usage this past Saturday, up 2,300 percent over the daily average in the week leading up to the event. Shop Small-related mentions also saw a big jump on Small Business Saturday (vs. the previous week’s daily average). The term saw a 550 percent increase, while the hashtag a 900 percent leap.

Top 5 demographics, in terms of Small Business Saturday buzz on Facebook:

Women 25-34Women 35-44Women 45-54Women 18-24Men 25-34

Top ten locations buzzing about this:

CaliforniaNew YorkNew JerseyFloridaIllinoisMichiganGeorgiaNorth CarolinaMarylandMassachusetts

Facebook currently has a global total of 25 million active small business pages. Small business tips from American Express can be found here.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Mediabistro Course

To say thank you for a great year, we’re offering 15% OFF any boot camp, in-person course, or online course when you use code MBTHANKU. Choose from any of our exciting upcoming courses, from a copy editing class taught by the chief copy of Seventeen Magazine to an intro course for Excel. Hurry – offer expires 12/24!  Browse our upcoming courses.

View the original article here

Facebook hires: head of automotive, VP business communications, global brand designer, software engineers, more

Facebook has hired Brunswick Group’s U.S. Managing Parnter Michael Buckley as its vice president of business communications, according to AllThingsD. Buckley has worked with Facebook previously from his role at Brunswick, which the social network has turned to for strategic communications related to its IPO and other financial news.

Facebook also removed 31 job listings from its careers page this week, likely after filling roles in the areas of software engineering, marketing, sales and others.

Notable positions that seem to be filled include Head of Automotive, Global Vertical Marketing; Strategic Partner Development, Games; and Global Brand Designer.

Software Engineer, Internal Tools (Menlo Park)Software Engineer, Measurement Systems (Menlo Park)Business Operations Associate, Platform (Menlo Park)P2P (Procure to Pay) Specialist (Contract) (Dublin)Revenue Analyst (Dublin)Administrative Assistant – Data Center Operations (Menlo Park)Executive Assistant – Contractor (Hyderabad) (Hyderabad)Compliance Analyst (Dublin)Employment Counsel, EMEA (Dublin)Public Policy Manager (São Paulo)IT Manager (Menlo Park)University Recruiter – Contract (Menlo Park)University Recruiting Events Specialist (Menlo Park)Network Engineer, Provisioning (Menlo Park)Associate, Partner Marketing (New York)Global Brand Designer (Menlo Park)Vertical Content Associate, Marketing Communications (Menlo Park)Platform Product Marketing Manager (Menlo Park)Content Associate, Marketing Communications (Menlo Park)Head of Automotive, Global Vertical Marketing (Menlo Park)Principal, Developer Operations (Menlo Park)Account Manager, Quebec (Toronto)Strategic Partner Development, Games (Menlo Park)SMB Analyst, Swedish (Dublin)Account Manager, Gaming (Dublin)Client Partner, Gaming (Dublin)Client Partner (MENA) (Dubai)Client Partner Brazil (São Paulo)Client Partner Gaming (Singapore) (Singapore)Manager, Global Sales Outsourcing (Japan) (Tokyo)Vertical Industry Manager (London) (London)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

View the original article here

SimCity Social: Let your Sims 'shop small' with this new branded business

While most shoppers spend their time in major departments stores on the weekend of Black Friday, the "Shop Small" initiative encourages shoppers to look at the smaller, local businesses in their towns as well, with one day - Small Business Saturday - being placed aside for shopping in these smaller, independent stores. EA / Playfish is getting in on the fun of Small Business Saturday, as players can now claim a free, branded Small Business for their towns in SimCity Social.

The Small Business is available via American Express's Facebook fan page, as they support the Shop Small cause. Once you get it into your game, you can place it from your inventory. The business offers 190 Simoleons every 11 minutes, and it can be upgraded to a full three stars, just as you would upgrade any other business. For instance, the 1-Star upgrade requires three clicks at 40 Materials each to upgrade, increasing the building's productivity by 20%. The second upgrade requires four clicks at 60 Materials each, while the third requires five clicks at 110 Materials each. This final upgrade boosts your income by 50% into the future.

The Small Business likely won't be available forever, so make sure to claim yours as soon as you can, while you know you still can.

Click here to claim your free Small Business in honor of Small Business Saturday >

What do you think of this new Small Business in SimCity Social? Did you already claim and fully upgrade yours? Sound off in the comments!

View the original article here

Cafe World Business Upgrade I: Everything you need to know

Ever since 2010, chefs in Cafe World have been asked to complete catering orders of all lengths and difficulties, but the feature is, understandably, becoming a bit stale. Zynga hopes to fix that by allowing us to upgrade our Catering Businesses through three different upgrades. Unfortunately, those upgrades themselves come with new Catering Orders to complete.

The first Catering Order is called, appropriately enough, Business Upgrade I and it has you completing the same tasks you'd expect from such an order, with little variety. You'll need to serve Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail (a 30-minute dish) 300 times, Tony's Classic Pizza (a five-hour dish) 300 times and Angel Fruit Cake (an eight-hour dish) 150 times. Luckily, none of these have incredibly long cooking times, and the quantities required of each are fairly understandable when compared to some of the incredibly difficult orders that have been released over the past few months.

To give you an even easier time, you'll be able to bring up to 12 of your Cafe World neighbors in on this catering order with you, and remember that you can have a full set of dishes ready to serve on top of your stoves before manually starting this order's timer, in order to be able to serve them instantly for all of that progress. In addition to these three cooking tasks, you'll also need to ask your friends for 32 collectible items: 10 each of Trumpets and Pianos, and 12 Crawfish.

If you can finish all six of these cooking and collection tasks within the first three days of starting this order, you'll finish the first upgrade on your Catering Business and will also receive a variety of rewards for your efforts: 15 Catering Points, 7,500 Cafe Points, 200,000 coins and the Crawfish Etoufee recipe. If you can't finish within three days, but still complete everything within five days, you'll receive 10 Catering Points, 5,000 Cafe Points, 125,000 coins and the same Crawfish Etoufee recipe. Finally, finishing the order at any point after the first five days have passed rewards you with 5 Catering Points, 3,000 Cafe Points, 75,000 coins and the Crawfish Etoufee recipe.

It should be noted that this is the only time in recent memory that any time limit within a catering order will still reward you with a free recipe. Instead of forcing yourself to play the game more often than you might otherwise, just to finish on time, you can now take it easy and will still end up with the otherwise exclusive new recipe when you're done. How cool is that? As we said before, this Catering Business upgrade feature comes with two additional parts, and we'll make sure to let you know what those are just as soon as we can.

What do you think of this Business Upgrade I catering order? What sort of upgrades do you hope these new orders trigger? Sound off in the comments.

Bookmark this site!

View the original article here

Outplay Entertainment Ltd Kicks off Cross-Platform Business on Facebook

Android, Business, casual, Design, facebook, Featured, Funding, international, iPad, iphone, Marketing, Metrics, Mobile, News, Social Games

Scotland-based newcomer Outplay Entertainment enters the social and mobile game market this month with two games launched on Facebook that will eventually become cross-platform experiences on iOS and Android in the first quarter of 2012.

The term “cross-platform” has been used a lot by developers in the last year as Facebook-spawned devs make their first attempts at mobile games and mobile developers attempt to migrate their apps to Facebook and other social networks. It can mean two completely unrelated games that share a common theme, like CrowdStar’s It Girl for Facebook and Top Girl for mobile. It can mean a game that is identical across all platforms, but not connected by platforms, such as Rovio’s Angry Birds on G+ versus Angry Birds on just about every other device under the sun. It can also mean games that are the same game no matter what device the player users, like Zynga’s Words With Friends — which is what many developers term “true” cross-platform play.

Outplay Entertainment currently falls toward the Words With Friends end of the spectrum with its two games, Booty Quest and Word Trick. When the mobile versions launch, players will be able to initiate games on Facebook and then have that same game immediately available to them on iPhone or Android if they switch devices. For future projects, the developer may lean more toward CrowdStar’s cross-platform model where one platform has the “main” gameplay experience while another platform provides supplemental elements. Similar to what Ubisoft has planned for its upcoming Ghost Recon games, this could take the form of a mobile companion game generating additional currency or experience points for the Facebook main game.

For now, though, Outplay is focused on getting its foot in the social-mobile games door and scaling quickly. Though there is some skepticism that developers cannot use Facebook as a sustainable starting point on which to build a business, the developer feels it has an edge by virtue of experience, compelling gameplay, and ample resources to direct toward marketing. The company was founded by brothers Richard and Doug Hare, two video game industry veterans that have come a long way from 1997 when they first founded a development studio focused on porting Windows games to the PlayStation console. In the following interview, the brothers outline Outplay’s approach to the rapidly shifting market:

Inside Social Games: How two brothers can work together without killing each other?

Richard Hare, Outplay Entertainment Co-Founder (pictured right): It’s probably the fact that we grew up playing games together. It’s been a hobby and then it became a common interest. The first company of scale we created was The Collective, which we formed in 1997 with one other business partner, and focused on console development. We grew that over the course of eight years to 150 people, then we merged with Backbone Entertainment in 2005.

Doug Hare, Outplay Entertainment Co-Founder (pictured right, with child): We merged the companies, created Foundation 9 Entertainment, and then sold the majority of it in 2006. As a result of that investment, we grew to about 800 people in 11 different studios. That’s when we started [researching] Facebook as a platform and at the same time saw the [rise] of Apple with the launch of the App Store. It was difficult to go after those markets from within our company, so it ended up being easier to start a new company. We’re still substantial individual shareholders at Foundation 9, but we have no operational involvement.

ISG: How did you end up back in your native country, Scotland? What’s the development culture like there?

Doug: We started with the idea of doing Outplay in the states as a very virtualized company with lots of different individuals collaborating on the product — after 800 people, we were drawn to the idea of a small company. As we refined our view of the market, it became apparent that games were services rather than products you could fire [off] and forget, so we started realizing that we needed a fairly substantial internal capacity. We started looking at various locations where we could set that up, and [chose] Scotland. We came to that realization around April or May of last year and came back in September to start meeting with VCs and angels investors. We officially opened our doors in April 2011.

We can’t claim to be experts, but a lot of stuff happened while we were away [from Scotland]. But one of the surprising things [about] Scotland is that it’s the home of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto. Those games originated here and Grand Theft Auto is still developed here. [Video games] is not a huge industry in terms of headcount, but in terms of the size of the country — five million people — the amount of relevance is amazing for such a small country.

ISG: We’ve heard some people say that Facebook isn’t the best place to launch a studio anymore now that Zynga dominates the market and cost per install (CPI) is really high. Where do you see opportunity on the platform?

Doug: It’s a question of having the type of product people want to play. Whether it’s the App Store, the Android Market, Facebook, or Xbox Live, they have the same challenges around discoverability — grabbing people’s attention so that they come back. [The opportunity] comes from the quality of the product that we create, the genres that we select, and the part where we can direct a reasonable amount of marketing toward [the games] to get traction. We’re not trying to be Zynga, we’re not trying to compete for the same audience. They’re an atypical outlying phenomenon. We’re making different types of games that will ultimately attract a different audience.

ISG: Booty Quest is a match-3 game and Word Trick is more like more like Scrabble, both very casual older female-skewing genres. Is that the demographic you’re primarily focused on?

Richard: There’s a multitude of reasons why we led with those genres. From our perspective, they’re great games. It’s a style of casual game that we enjoy playing. And because we’re forming a new team in a new country, we wanted smaller scale products with a relatively constrained and focused style of developing. From a market analysis standpoint, they seemed like logical bets to start with [because] even though there are many match-3 games, there’s a large appetite for that style of entertainment. We also felt we could create something that was innovative within those [genres]. These are an exercise in proving out the team and proving out our product. As we move into next year, you’re going to see more complexity in content types and development.

ISG: How do you offset CPI on new games, being such a new studio? Is it all in the marketing or will you integrate an ad platform or hot new viral mechanic no one’s thought of yet?

Doug: We’re moving rapidly and beyond simple raw marketing. We have other secret sauce as to how we [attract] audiences that we’ll be rolling out next year. It’s something along the lines of what you mentioned — only it’s saucier and more secret.

ISG: On the cross-platform side, what’s your approach? Are you using HTML5 or building native apps by platform?

Doug: We built our own technology for cross-platform development. HTML5 is interesting, but the experience that we have on mobile devices is just not something that you’d be able to get on HTML5 right now.

Word Trick and Booty Quest exist very happily on [PC or mobile]; the experience is satisfying regardless of the platform. However, that’s [not the case] for most types of games. Taking another type of game and making the same experience [on multiple platforms], one of them is going to be a pure experience on one of the platforms whether you like it or not. We’re not going to make the games identical all the time; we’re going to have games that you want to play on Facebook, on PC. And then we’ll have another game that’s a different experience [but related to the Facebook game] on a different platform. The two games are standalone, but if you play both, you’ll move faster through the experience. It’ll be a better experience overall.

There are other companies that are doing this. But there will be a change in the patterns that people play [by] and we want to have an approach to where we’ll be there whenever [the player] want us, no matter what the device.

Richard: The key is being sensitive to the context of the platform you’re playing on. There’s certain things that work extremely well or are only possible on mobile. We want to make sure it’s not going to be an exercise in porting between desktop and mobile, but trying to recognize the true experience based on the context. We’re not going to do, “Here’s the Facebook game,” and then a few months later, “Here’s the mobile game.”

ISG: You define your games as “skill-based,” even though they’re not actually related to the concept of gambling — where players compete against one another to earn prizes relative to their skill. What does the term “skill-based” mean in the context of your games?

Richard: One way of looking at it would be that there’s always a level of challenge that can be worked and mastered. That’s something that has a natural appeal and draw over time because it’s not too easy. With gameplay mechanics, we want to make sure that it’s always rewarding and satisfying. It’s finding the right level of skill or challenge. That will be based on the style of product — [Booty Quest] is more reaction-based while [Word Trick] challenges your vocabulary.

Doug: Both games require you to develop [a skill]. It’s rewarding to see your development of that skill, more fundamentally satisfying than games that are based on patience. The term “skill-based” reflects casino gaming, but the idea is really that you’re demonstrating a skill and the evolution of that skill is underpinning the overall enjoyment. There are a lot of games on Facebook that don’t have the requirements for what [we define as] skill. They have behaviors that can be rewarded, but there’s no change in behavior.

ISG: What does the road ahead look like for you, beyond launching new products? Are you in the process of raising funding?
Doug: We raised our seed funding at the start of the year, so we’re not raising money right now. When we pitched the company as an investment opportunity, the idea was that we were going into it [with] the functionality a publisher would have — dedicated community management, dedicated quality assurance, marketing, and public relations. We’re at 32 people right now — we started with two in April — and we grew ourselves in the space of three-and-a-half months. We’ve built these games and mobile versions that are nearly complete. What we’ve accomplished, when you think about it, is quite a lot.

View the original article here

The Social Networking Business Plan

A Fully Automated Way To Integrate The Best Social Networking Sites For Automated Content Distribution And Social Networking Publicity. Take Advantage Of Free Social Media Sites To Create A Social Media Marketing Machine

Check it out!

Facebook Names Political and Business Leader Erskine Bowles to Board of Directors

Whether it’s gearing up for an IPO in the next year or two, or just trying to strengthen its ties to other power centers in the United States, Facebook has named Erskine Bowles to its board of directors.

Bowles might not be a familiar face in Silicon Valley, but he is on the Eastern seaboard due to a career that spans investment banking, politics and a stint in higher education.

From a leading political family in North Carolina, he started began his career at Morgan Stanley before cofounding an investment bank, holding key positions in the Clinton administration, founding another investment bank, running for senate a couple times, and holding top positions in the University of North Carolina education system. He recently co-chaired Obama’s debt panel, which produced a politically difficult but intellectually sensible national debt reduction plan that has yet to be acted upon. He’s currently on the board of Morgan Stanley, Cousins Properties Inc., Norfolk Southern Corp. and Belk Inc.

“Erskine has held important roles in government, academia and business which have given him insight into how to build organizations and navigate complex issues,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a press release. “Along with his experience founding companies, this will be very valuable as we continue building new things to help make the world more open and connected.”

He’s the sort of serious figure that Facebook wants to be associated with as it looks to convince the world of its seriousness as a company.

As a consequence of its success, and particularly its plan to make its financial information public next year (possibly ahead of an IPO), Facebook has attracted new scrutiny from the government. Various congresspeople have spoken out against Facebook over privacy and security issues, the Securities and Exchange Commission has looked into its secondary market transactions, the Federal Trade Commission has examined how Facebook collects and applies user data in its products and revenue models. The company has already been building out its public policy team to help convince the political world of its positions.

Meanwhile, Bowles’ legitimacy within the finance community and corporate America can help bolster Facebook’s image as a leading company in the nation, and possibly encourage more investors to take a closer look at Facebook stock if it decides to go public.

Facebook also recently added Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings to the board. Long-time members also include Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Don Graham and Peter Thiel, with David Sze and Paul Madera on as observers. Founder Mark Zuckerberg continues to own a majority of the company and as a result has decision-making power over the other directors.

View the original article here

“Facebook for Business” Resource Center Eases Onboarding for Marketers and Advertisers

Yesterday, Facebook launched its “Facebook for Business” resource center, which collects instructions and guides for using Pages, ads, Sponsored Stories, and Platform applications. It walks business owners, marketers, and advertisers through the purpose and functionality of Facebook’s core products in simple, straightforward language, and links to .PDFs where they can learn more.

With Google preparing to allow businesses onto Google+, this seems like an opportune time for Facebook to showcase the depth of its existing business offering and make it easier to start marketing to its 750 million users.

Previously, the resources found on Facebook for Business were scattered across several other official Pages and introduction sites, including Facebook Marketing Solutions, Guide to Facebook Ads, and Facebook Platform. Now businesses can find all this information in one place, and with a more intuitive flow for those unfamiliar with Facebook.

The section on Pages gives step-by-step instructions for creating a Page, executing a strategy, gaining fans, and using Page Insights. One new recommendation it includes is that Page admins should create a “conversation calendar” to organize what kind of posts their Page will publish each day of the week.

For ads, Facebook outlines how to create and target ads, manage a budget, and optimize performance by analyzing metrics. It links to a Facebook Ads Optimization Guide (.PDF), which recommends a strategy of testing ad variants for two to three days.

The Sponsored Stories section is the first dedicated site for learning about the social ad unit. It does a good job of clearly explaining a complex subject. Lack of understanding of how Sponsored Stories work has likely been a deterrent to adoption. These instructions, combined with recent reports of the high efficiency of the ad unit, should lead more advertisers to integrate Sponsored Stories into their mix.

Canvas Apps, Page tab apps social plugins, mobile single-sign on, and Facebook Credits are all addressed on in the Platform section. This part of Facebook for Business is the least fleshed out, often just directing users to the developer documentation, which may be too advanced for those new to the Platform.

Google+ has run into a few snags in its program for businesses. Many brands created personal profiles only to have them deleted. While it first said that official brand pages would be available within weeks of the launch of the new social network, Google has revised that time table to say businesses may have to wait months before they can set up a presence on Google+.

Facebook may be purposefully taking advantage of the the current discontent with its new competitor by launching Facebook for Business this week. It may be able to gain extra ground on Google if it can remind both existing Facebook-integrated businesses and those new to the site of all the marketing channels it already offers.

View the original article here

Digital Chocolate’s Millionaire Boss is Moving Up in the Business World on Facebook

Providing an escape from the country’s current budgetary woes, Millionaire Boss is Digital Chocolate’s micro-level take on the concept of city-building and management, condensing the gameplay into an office setting and casting players as a business tycoon. The game only just launched a couple of weeks ago and debuted at No.2 on our list of emerging Facebook games last Friday.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Millionaire Boss currently has 391,984 monthly active users and 29,978 daily active users.

Millionaire Boss tasks players with building and managing an office of workers plugging away at unnamed tasks to make the company money. Players must purchase various types of desks from basic employee to CEO to build and then staff either with friends (for free) or non-playable characters (for an in-game currency fee). The type of desk determines the sort of work that can be done at it and, in turn, how much money it can produce once occupied. When a worker has been assigned to a desk, the player can give them timed task to complete, some requiring mere minutes, others hours and days. Once complete, these tasks reward the player with cash, experience and bonuses that are distributed to nearby workers automatically.

In addition to desks and workers, players can place various decoration items and performance boosting “perks” like large-screen TVs to indoor aquariums to zen spas. These perk items help expand the number of people the player may hire, thus bringing in more money and necessitating the purchase of office expansions.

Recruiting friends to desks and specific office areas is one of the social aspects of the game. Friends do not need to opt-in to work at desks, but they do need to accept requests to fill roles in specific office areas (e.g. a “Loudmouth” for the “Small meeting room”). Players can visit friends’ offices and help motivate employees for bonus cash and experience points. Certain items required for construction, like brooms and screwdrivers, are also available via friend gifting. An in-game leader board displays the player’s position relative to their most successful friends in terms of financial holdings and accomplishments can be pushed onto friends’ Walls.

Monetization in Millionaire Boss come from spending Facebook Credits on everything from gameplay boosting items and premium decorations to the construction materials needed for perks or special office areas. Normal desks and decoration items can be purchased with the game’s soft currency, cash. Avatar customization items, including hairstyles, shoes and clothing, are also available for purchase – some for cash, some only for Facebook Credits.

Digital Chocolate did not respond to require for comment on Millionaire Boss’s future at time of press. We observe that the developer has been applying a steady stream of updates to the game, as evidenced by its numerous Wall updates notifying users. It will be interesting to see if any cross-compatibility with Millionaire City is added in the future, as the game’s shallow narrative connects the two games and the friend invite system allows players to filter for Millionaire City friends much the same way Zynga’s Empires & Allies allows players to filter for CityVille friends.

You can follow Millionaire Boss’ progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

View the original article here

How Your Business Should Reply to Comments on Facebook Pages

The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, brand, or website using Facebook. The full version includes an a description of the benefits to your brand of enacting a successful replying strategy, and a walk-through of how to reply to positive commenters, disruptive commenters and trolls, and spammers.

Facebook isn’t just a broadcast medium, but a two-way conversation between your and your fans. Communicating directly with those who Like your Page by replying to their wall posts and comments on your Page updates can help fans feel appreciated, increasing their loyalty and the likelihood that they’ll follow your calls to action. It can also inspire them to leave more comments on your Page updates, increasing their news feed optimization — the level of visibility your posts have in the news feed.

Here we’ll explain how to formulate a reply strategy for your Page that offers the greatest benefits for the level of resources you can devote to your Facebook Page’s community, and explain how it can improve brand loyalty, avert customer service disasters, and keep conversation on your Page productive.

When To Engage

Comments fall into four broad categories:

Positive comments – Those that thank your brand for the value it provides the commenter.Constructive negative comments  – Those that criticize your brands for flaws in your product or service.Disruptive negative comments (Trolls) – Non-constructive insults to your brand or other members of your fan community, and non-sensical comments designed to distract and interrupt the conversation.Spam – Links or mentions of unrelated websites or brands.

Constructive Negative Comments

Constructive negative comments are the most important to respond to because if these fans aren’t appeased they can start evangelizing against your brand and cause customer service and public relations disasters. In a famous example, a man who rode a certain airline had his guitar broken in transit. When his attempts to contact the company through social media were ignored, he created a video criticizing the airline that received millions of views and hurt the company’s business.

In most cases, the best strategy is to apologize for the fan’s negative experience without admitting that there is a flaw in your product or service. If you’re sure there’s a simple solution to their problem, kindly explain it in your reply.

For example, if they say “I don’t enjoy your website because you require an account to upload photos, but I don’t know how to create an account”, you could reply “Sorry to hear you’re having trouble creating an account. You can create one by visiting this link www.examplesite.com/create or by clicking the ‘Create Account’ button at the bottom right corner of the home page.”

If it’s not exactly clear what their problem is, you aren’t exactly sure of the solution, or the solution may be complicated, refer them to your customer service department or provide contact information for someone they can privately communicate their issue with. You don’t want to have a negative customer service conversation in public where it might give other fans the impression that there are problems with your brand.

For example, if you received a comment saying “I bought your food product but it tasted rotten”, you could reply “Sorry to hear you had an issue with our food product. Please contact our customer service department here www.examplesite.com/service and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

Conclusion and Priorities

Every organization needs to decide how many resources they will devote to community engagement. In general, though, you should prioritize replying to the different kinds of comments in this way:

1. Replying to constructive negative comments to keep the authors of those comments from causing problems for your brand in the future

2. Deleting the comments of or banning trolls and spammers

3. Replying to the best positive comments to create brand evangelists

4. Replying to the remainder of positive comments

Walk-throughs for replying to positive comments and dealing with disruptive commenters, as well as Page management and moderation strategies  can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing your brand using Facebook.

View the original article here

Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Media Games

A never-before published look at the many possibilities of social game development

As one of the few entrepreneurs in the world with expertise building both social media and games, author Jon Radoff brings a one-of-a-kind perspective to this unique book. He shows that games are more than a profitable form of entertainment?the techniques of social games can be used to enhance the quality of online applications, social media and a wide range of other consumer and business experiences. With this book, you?ll explore how social games can be put to work for any business and examine why they work at all. The first part of explains what makes games fun, while the second part reviews the process and details of game design.

• Looks at how games are the basis for many everyday functions and explains how techniques of social games can be used by businesses as money-making tools
• Drills down the process of game design while focusing on the design, analysis, and creation of games
• Features screen shots, diagrams and explanations to illuminate key concepts, accessible to anyone regardless of game playing or design experience
• Reviews what works and what doesn?t using a range of real-world scenarios as examples
• Author Jon Radoff has a unique blend of experiences creating games, Internet-based social media, and Web technology.

Game On is not playing around. Discover how social media games make money?and how you can enhance your business using games.

Amazon.com Exclusive Article: â??8 Businesses Changing the World with Game Mechanicsâ?
by Jon Radoff, Author of Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Media Games

Author Jon Radoff

People are playing games more than ever before--but many of those games are less obvious than you might think. Games have influenced education, healthcare, retail, and consumer industries. Here are a few companies doing things with game mechanics that you might not have suspected, as well as questions you can ask yourself about your own business:

1) LinkedIn.com
The popular business networking website has turned networking into a game. People love collecting things--and on LinkedIn, the connections you form with other people are like a collection of virtual business cards. The more connections you have, the more you â??win.â? On LinkedIn, the rewards are social status; but collecting is fun in a wide range of businesses. What could you enable your customers to collect?

2) Dollar Tree
Exploration is fun, and many popular digital and social games are about finding hidden places, secret treasures and unusual artifacts. Dollar Tree attracts people with the premise that everything will be only $1 --but itâ??s the act of exploring that is fun for many people. Could your company give your customers the thrill of exploration? Better yet, could you let people use social media to spread the word of their discoveries?

3) Cold Stone Creamery
In games like World of Warcraft, many people enjoy â??craftingâ? their own products. Creativity is fun--even when it comes from a well-worn process. Combine it with the pleasure of eating great ice cream, and youâ??ll understand part of what makes Cold Stone Creamery interesting. Beyond Cold Stone Creamery, other companies as diverse as Brighton (jewelry and accessories) and Build-a-Bear Workshop (stuffed bears) are tapping into the desire for personal, automated crafting to turn shopping and dining into an experience. How can you allow your customers to craft?

4) Upromise
Upromise has turned saving money for college into a game--itâ??s about discovering the products and companies that allow you to earn extra cash to invest in your kidsâ?? education. Itâ??s also a social game: you enroll your family, and make college savings a team effort. What makes it work is the continuous sense of progress. How can you give customers a sense that theyâ??re always achieving something?

5) Nike
Nike has gone beyond being a footwear company--theyâ??re about providing a complete experience thatâ??s about running and fashion. Using social technology like Nike+, an application that letâ??s you record your runs and share them with others around the world, Nike promotes a sense of community with their brand. Likewise, Nike.ID allows customers to design their own look, and share them with others. By integrating multiple elements of competition, discovery and personalization into their products, itâ??s as if youâ??re playing the World of Nike game. How could you create an immersive experience for your customers?

6) Groupon
For many people, collecting coupons is more than a way to save money--itâ??s about discovery and reward. Groupon has taken it to the next level by making it a social experience as well: when you find an activity you like, you can save a few dollars while also uncovering an activity that you and your friends can enjoy together. How can you market your business better by turning a solitary experience into a social activity?

7) MeYouHealth
Successful games feature many small rewards to keep you focused and engaged. One of the largest areas where this could have a huge and positive effect on society is our health--but letâ??s face it: healthcare is rarely fun. MeYouHealth, a subsidiary of Healthways, is creating games and applications that get people to think about well-being by focusing on the small steps you can take to improve your life. How can you give your customers a pathway to success, one small (but rewarding) step at a time?

8) St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum
Almost every game is about learning: figuring out a strategy, improving a skill, or gaining an understanding of a set of rules; yet attempts at integrating learning with games have often yielded less-than-engaging results. However, when learning is made fun by crafting an experience enriched by story and discovery, the results can be spectacular. A great example of this is the St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum, which has turned learning about pirates into a fully immersive adventure. Rather than have your customers look at a world, how can you have them customers experience it?

Price: $29.99

Click here to buy from Amazon

Following Problems with Profile to Business Page Migrations, Facebook Introduces Appeals Process

Last week, Facebook released a tool allowing users who had created a personal profile for a business venture to convert that profile into a Page and change their friends into fans. However, some users didn’t fully understand the consequences of conversion while others had their profile deleted but no new Page created due to a technical issue. To help repair the damages from these issues, Facebook has created a Profile to Business Page Migration Appeal that users can fill out to apply to have the conversion reversed and their profile restored.

This quick answer to complaints and horror stories should help Facebook mitigate the backlash stemming from its troubled attempt to provide the conversion tool users had requested for years.

Text on the appeal page explains:

“Profile to business Page migrations are meant for profiles that do not represent a person. If you have accidentally migrated your profile to a Page, you can submit your request for a reversal. Please keep in mind that we will remove your business Page if your profile is restored. We may reject any appeals that we deem to be inappropriate. Further, we may not reply to all submitted appeals.”

Though this says the appeals process is for accidental conversions, users whose conversions were interrupted and never finished, possibly due a severe strain on the Facebook API at the time, may also be eligible for a conversion reversal. Facebook temporarily disabled the feature over the weekend while the API issue was being fixed

While Facebook clearly explained how the process worked in a warning on the tool and a series of Help Center article, we received reports of people assuming they could reverse the conversion themselves, or that their new business account would have the same capabilities as a standard profile. Some other unforseen issues, such as the inability to re-register with any email addresses or mobile phone numbers connected to a user’s old profile, may have led some users to wish they could reverse the conversion.

Facebook has been working to erase any perception that it doesn’t care about users — a sentiment that developed during several crises around changes to its privacy controls and before that Beacon, which syndicated user behavior offsite to the news feed. It has since become more receptive to concerns, adding a requested unmerge option to merged Pages/Places, returning the Most Recent reverse-chronological feed to Page walls, and suspending the ability of applications to request user phone numbers and home addresses.

The Profile to Business Page Migration Appeal process is another example of Facebook’s efforts to keep users, and especially Page admins who buy ads purchases, happy with the social network. Rather than stifle innovation, Facebook has chosen a riskier but ultimately more progressive stance of iterating quickly and occasionally making mistakes, but hurrying to fix them when necessary.

View the original article here

The Social Network Business Plan: 18 Strategies That Will Create Great Wealth

All of us know that users of the Web do not read advertisements on the websites we visit, yet the online communities are emerging as the next great media rely solely on this method to produce revenue. In The Social Network Business Plan, social network expert, David Silver presents and explains 18 cutting-edge methods to create revenue for social network websites--none of which are advertising. He also predicts the demise of seemingly successful online communities such as MySpace and Facebook that rely on advertising as non-sustainable modalities. Silver describes and explains that in the future new products and services will be introduced, talked about, rated, reviewed and recommended - or killed - by online communities. One example of the 18 new revenue channels that online communities are adopting is the sale to vendors of anonymized conversations of the community members concerning those vendors' products or services. Another example is online communities who partner with the internet providers to receive payment when a particular online community's information is downloaded usinf that providers service. The other sixteen revenue channels are equally head-turning!

Silver is the only angel investor, operating down where the rubber meets the road, who is investing in online communities in their infancy, and writing about which ones will win and which ones will fail.

Price: $24.95

Click here to buy from Amazon

History of the Business Card

                                                                                                                                                             Just like all marketing tools, business cards are ever changing but still the same.  It has always been important to have a business card that creates a great impact and makes the right impression for you and you're business.  But now, with advancements in the internet, technology and social media, the plain-old business card is no longer an effective tool.   In the early 1400's Visiting cards were first seen in China. They became such an entrenched part of the European culture that there were many rules and traditions surrounding them. Most wealthy Europeans would adorn their visiting cards with their family coat of arms and other decorations. They were, in effect, the first advertisements, though they were used as a personal badge rather than a corporate tool. 

Trade cards were first introduced in the 1600's in England. Trade cards were used to tell people how to get to a particular place used to direct customers to stores.  As trade cards became more popular, businesses began to add design features to them. They began to look more and more like mini advertisements that would distinguish the company from its competitors.

In time, people began to combine elements of visiting cards and trade cards into what we now know as business cards. For a long time in America, business cards were very bland and professional looking, which made them appear much like traditional visiting cards. Now, however, business cards are becoming more and more artistic, with more advertising formulas tied into their design.

Again times are changing, and the way business interacts with their customers and potential customers is changing too.  A new interactive web approach must be considered, even in the design and creation of a simple business card.

There are 2 keys additions you really should consider when designing your new cards:

1. Create Your Brand

If you think only big corporate names need to think about things like brand names, think again. Your brand says a lot about you and your business, and that's as true for a one person home- based operation as it is for a multinational conglomerate. Creating a strong brand for your business can help you set yourself apart from the pack and lay the right foundation for the future growth of your business.

Your brand is more than just the logo on your business cards or your business name. It is your corporate identity. An effective brand tells the world who you are, what you do and how you do it, while at the same time establishing your relevance to and credibility with your prospective customers.

Your logo is NOT your brand but your logo should allow your brand to be instantly recognized by those familiar with it. To this extent, your logo helps create and reinforce brand awareness.

The logo you create should be able to be used consistently in a variety of different media. It should be suitable for corporate letterhead and business cards, as well as for your website and corporate signage (if any). You do NOT want a confusing mishmash of logos and banners and heaven knows what else. Everything you produce needs to use the same, consistent style of logo so that, over time, your logo becomes synonymous with your brand. Instant recognition is what you're going for here, so don't dilute it by using several different logos for different purposes.

 2. Your Social Media Networks

Now that your business is on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and You Tube, it's important to get traffic to these places.  Whether you put in the full address, abbreviation, or just the symbol or icon, it's important to remind anyone who receives your business card that you can be found on these networks. Having your Twitter URL, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. on your business card is important. You want people to connect with you and interact with you after you meet, and this is done with social media. Including your Twitter URL is especially important. Having vanity URL's on all of your social sites is a great idea. Especially if these names are the same, they help contacts find you much easier.

Don't forget that a business card is a point of contact, not a brochure. It could be single-handedly be the most important marketing piece for some companies. The object is to leave a lasting impression and create a feeling of class and trust. Thanks for taking the time to read this article, and I hope that it will benefit you on your next business card design. If you're looking for a great business card printer, then check out http://www.justpressprint.net

View the original article here

Adopting a Pet is Serious Business

If you are adopting a pet, you may want to consider the space, money and time involved in becoming an owner.

Space for a Pet

If your home is full of valuable carpets and upholstered furniture, then cats and dogs may not be appropriate. Cats are hard to contain in one room, can jump a fence and do not respond to being told no. Dogs, which can be contained by indoor fences, need different space according to size. Active dogs of almost any size need a dog yard. Also, the bigger the dog, the more indoor space it needs to be happy. Of course, dogs and cats return affection much better than other pet and can be wonderful companions.

If you are constantly worrying about damage, you might consider smaller animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters or fish. For small animals, you will need an appropriate place for a cage. Small animals often carry viruses such as strep throat that can be communicated to children. For that reason, the cage should be in a family area not a child's bedroom. For fish, obviously you need an aquarium. Consider where it will be placed, what water could do to the furniture and how easily you can access it for cleaning. An aquarium -- or perhaps lizards in a terrarium -- could be in a child's room, if the child is old enough to be trusted with the temptation to play with the animals. Finally, if you are interested in birds, you will need to take into account the mess that most birds make. Bird droppings and food are tossed about by even the smallest birds.

Money

Each type of pet requires a different financial outlay. For those starting with a bird, fish, small mammal or lizard, the initial expense is the cage, aquarium or terrarium. Upkeep for these animals is generally limited to food and bedding, perhaps $15 a month. Aquariums need replacement filters of $10 or more each month.

Cats and dogs purchased through a breeder or a pet shop can run from fifty dollars up to a thousand for rare breeds. An average of $125 to $300 is a regular outlay for a popular breed such as a cocker spaniel or a golden retriever. Adopting an animal from a humane society runs $35 to $75, but generally comes with a free spay or neuter at a local veterinarian and the initial shots. Cats and dogs need a rabies shots. There is also a regimen of shots for each that can total a hundred or more with a veterinarian visit. These costs may be repeated yearly. It is important to consider these costs as you debate a pet purchase.

Time

Regular weekly, even daily cleaning may be needed for small mammal cages, bird cages and lizard terrariums. Aquariums need new filters monthly and often require cleaning. Dogs will need walks several times a day unless they have a dog yard. Cats tend to take care of themselves. A cat litter pan will need cleaning daily to avoid odors.

For more information on pets, visit http://petfinders.tv

About the Author:

View the original article here

Wowwhatsavings - Integral Aspects of a Website for the Restaurant Business

About the Author:
Todd Rideman is the CEO and founder of Wow What Savings. His idea of helping people find a great deal in their city came to life in September 2009.He has become the Ultimate 'Deal Hunter'!!

View the original article here