euroblaze | OXID e-Commerce User Blog

Facebook has recently published a manual giving businesses and brands a guide for the best practices doing marketing on the social networking site.
The small document can be seen as an official resource on how to use Facebook’s advertising for succeeding with your own business.
Although this guide is tailored to the Facebook platform, it can be adopted to any social media marketing effort. Some of the core topics of the guide point on key business objectives like increasing traffic and sales, product development and building customer loyalty.

You can download the PDF here.

Source: www.readwriteweb.com

What sounds like a bad joke at first glance, can’t be taken seriously even at a second view.
A few days ago, an online retailer was sued for unfair competition by his competitors because he was using the Facebook “Like” Button on his website. In two courts, the accusation was rejected.
The charge was based on the fact, that website visitors click the Like Button without knowing of the transmission of user data to Facebook. This apparent ignorance of the user can indeed be questioned in matters of data protection, but it is not illegal and it is not an unfair competition.
Facebook members, who click on Like Buttons, receive personalized ads on Facebook, but this is a matter between Facebook and the Facebook users, who accept the security rules while creating a Facebook account.
Bizarre accusations are well known in the United States, but this German case is definitely challenging.

This week’s big social media news: Facebook is launching the photo tagging feature for pages! The change allows anyone on the social network to tag certain Facebook pages in images, as well as the usual contacts. At the moment only products and brands are supported (which includes musicians and bands), though a post from the Facebook pages team expressed a willingness to extend the service beyond the current offering (for example; pages for places).

Many business owners and those with their own pages have expressed gratitude, whereas others claim that the change will encourage spam and irrelevant tagging. Any photos that a Facebook page is tagged in appears on the appropriate page, much like a normal users’ profile.

To tag a page, view a photo in the new photo viewer (tested not working from the “old” image view) click Tag This Photo, choose what to tag and start typing. If the business, brand or artist you are trying to tag has a Facebook page you will be able to tag it – even if you haven’t clicked Like. The only exemption to this rule are photos that do not allow tagging at all, a setting which can be stipulated by the uploader.

Source: www.makeuseof.com

Over the past year, users have become accustomed to using Facebook’s “Like” button for a variety of reasons – to show approval, to agree with a sentiment, to follow a brand and to share content. For this last function, however, the “Like” button can be a bit of a blunt tool when what’s really needed is a precision instrument.
A few days ago, Facebook announced the “Send” button. By using “Send,” Facebook users will be able to share content with specific groups of friends, rather than everyone on their friends list, giving them the precision sharing tool they’ve needed all along.

Source: www.readwriteweb.com

Google has announced a Facebook “Like” button competitor called Google +1. Yeah, that’s really its name. Google’s brand new +1 button appears next to search results and therewith gives SEO and online marketing a new dimension. Does it really?

I think no, and I would like to share with you why:

1. First of all, the Facebook “Like” Button is established and accepted all over the web. You can literally implement it on any page, any content, any product. There is actually no need for another type of “Like” Button.
2. Friend-Networks do already exist and are established as well – Why start from zero with Google’s +1? What’s the additional value?
3. Google Search results don’t always display the content that you would like to “+1″. In most cases, you have to navigate away from the search results page to arrive at the specific page, that you want to recommend.
4. Google’s +1 Button reminds me of Google Buzz. It’s nice to play around with once but in the end you go back to the established services such as Twitter.
5. Google has a clear business strategy, which is to protect it’s core business “Search and Ads” with new developments such as +1. An interesting article about this strategy was recently released by TechCrunch.

I’m curious what you think of this new approach of Google!