Jun152011

Social Media and Real Estate (Infographic)

By Cassie Viau | June 15, 2011 | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

I worked with a group of real estate agents over the past few months, teaching them how to use the most popular social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. As someone who is just beginning to get into house hunting, it seems pretty clear to me that social media will play a large role in my search. Check out this infographic to see how social media is changing the world of real estate:

Would you ever use social media sites to find a house or apartment?

Cassie Viau is the Senior Manager of Client Services at Effective Student Marketing, Inc. Follow @CassieViau on Twitter for more social media tips and tricks!

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Jun012011

LinkedIn Now Publicly Traded

By Cassie Viau | June 1, 2011 | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

The professional, career-focused social media site LinkedIn started to be publicly traded on May 19, 2011. LinkedIn’s IPO was the biggest internet IPO since Google! It’s traded on the New York Stock Exchange under LNKD and shares have more than doubled from their original asking price two weeks ago.

The professional networking site has more than 100 million users who create profiles that resemble online resumes, connect with other professionals, and participate in industry specific groups and discussions. As the first social media company to go public, LinkedIn is setting the stage for other sites who also want to join the stock exchange.

It’s rumored that companies like Facebook, Zynga (makers of Farmville), Groupon, and Pandora are all set to go public in the next year or so. How will social media companies balance a need to make profits for stock holders, while still providing the free, social atmosphere that their millions of users have come to expect?

I’m curious to see what changes are made to these sites after they go public. And I’m even more interested to see what happens to the stocks of these companies when they’re available. With a major announcement like the LinkedIn IPO, it’s pretty easy to see that social media sites have moved beyond the “fad” stage and are set to become an even larger part of our every day lives.

Do you think the LinkedIn IPO helps validate social media sites? Would you ever buy stock in a social media company?

Cassie Viau is the Senior Manager of Client Services at Effective Student Marketing, Inc. Follow @CassieViau on Twitter for more social media tips and tricks!

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May252011

Lady Gaga Goes Social To Launch New Album

By Cassie Viau | May 25, 2011 | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , , , , , | Comment (1)

Lady Gaga is pulling out all the stops to promote her latest album release, “Born This Way.” The new album came out this week, amidst  a variety of online games and promotions.

GagaVille

The first of her online promotions is directly on Facebook. Gaga launched her own world within the popular Facebook game Farmville. In “Gagaville” you can get access to some quirky animals that you wouldn’t normally find on the farm. By completing Gaga specific quests you can earn things like Gaga Grow Potion, a chrome cow, or a motorcycle riding sheep.

Words With Friends

Words With Friends, a game similar to Scrabble and played on mobile devices like iPhones, Droids, and iPads, is also getting in on the Gaga action. When you play a special “Gaga Word of the Day” you’ll be entered to win one of ten daily prizes. The words are announced on the website www.wordswithfriends.com/ladygaga and on Gaga’s Facebook page.

Starbucks SRCH

This is my favorite of the social promotions that Lady Gaga has going on. The performer has teamed up with Starbucks to put together an online scavenger hunt. Start by solving the first clue on www.frappuccino.com/srch. For example, on Monday, you had to figure out what the missing letters in a puzzle spelled out. That message directed you to Lady Gaga’s website, where you found the next link, leading you to a Facebook image. Finally, the Facebook image led you to the Starbucks website, where you could claim the prize. View the full recap of Monday’s hunt here. It’s a really great idea to get people to visit all of these online locations and click around. The next clue will be released at 1 PM today, if you’d like to check it out.

Cassie Viau is the Senior Manager of Client Services at Effective Student Marketing, Inc. Follow @CassieViau on Twitter for more social media tips and tricks!

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May112011

PSA: Upgrade Your Facebook Groups!

By Cassie Viau | May 11, 2011 | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

If you’ve ever created a Facebook group in the past, it’s time to revisit the group and upgrade it to the new style if you want to hang on to the content that’s in there.

Facebook groups used to be a popular way to connect with people, long before the creation of Facebook pages. While they aren’t as popular now, groups are still available and have recently undergone one of Facebook’s notorious “upgrades,” complete with feature changes and a new look and feel.

Previously, you had the opportunity to keep using your group in the old format, skipping the “upgrade.” But, the time has finally come for those stragglers who haven’t made the switch to go to the new format. If you don’t upgrade your group soon, Facebook will be “archiving” it for you and switching over to the new version automatically.

With this archiving, you could lose a large portion of your content, including all of your current group members! If you don’t want this to happen, you can switch to the new version easily.

Go to your group page, and look for a message at the top giving you the chance to upgrade.  Click “upgrade this group” and you’re good to go!

You will still lose some of your old group content when you upgrade, so be sure to save things like news, officer titles, and the group network before you switch. In your new group, you’ll still have all your group photos and wall posts, group discussion threads, group description, and of course, your group members!

For more information on the new groups, check out http://www.facebook.com/groups

Cassie Viau is the Senior Manager of Client Services at Effective Student Marketing, Inc. Follow @CassieViau on Twitter for more social media tips and tricks!

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Apr272011

Deals Come to Facebook

By Cassie Viau | April 27, 2011 | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , , , , , | Comment (1)

There are a lot of daily deal sites floating around now, each one offering a special discount at a restaurant, spa, or other local business. Some of the bigger sites include Groupon, LivingSocial, and Eversave. There’s even a Manchester based daily deal site called Couptopia. Today Facebook announced that it would be joining the online deal world in select cities. Those in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco will be able to access Facebook’s deals first.

For most deal sites, you subscribe to a daily email for your city. Around here, most deals revolve around the Boston area, with a few spreading north to our neck of the woods. On Facebook, you can choose to receive an email or Facebook notification to find out what deals are available. Or, you can visit the “Deals” section on your homepage to see everything available near you.

Facebook is hoping that these new deals will spread quickly, as the deals your friends buy start appearing in your news feed. They claim that these deals make it “easy to share, buy and plan with your friends. “

A lot of the current deal sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, and Eversave allow you to share your purchases on Facebook and Twitter already, so Facebook’s deals don’t seem like they offer much of a unique feature. On other sites, you can even earn rewards points when your friends click on the links you’ve shared on your social networking sites.

I’m curious to see how Facebook’s deals stack up, and if they catch on as quickly as all of these other deal sites. I’m already finding myself overwhelmed with daily deal emails, tweets, and Facebook posts from the few sites I follow, so I’m hoping the Facebook deals don’t also start to clog up my news feed.

Have you ever purchased from a daily deal site? Do you think you’ll try out the Facebook deals when they come to the Boston area?

Cassie Viau is the Senior Manager of Client Services at Effective Student Marketing, Inc. Follow @CassieViau on Twitter for more social media tips and tricks!

 

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Apr202011

The “World” of Social Media

By Cassie Viau | April 20, 2011 | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , , , | Comment (1)

There’s a stat floating around the internet that says “Facebook is the third largest country in the world” due to the number of active users registered on the site. But what does the world of social media look like? This infographic is a fun look at the “world” of social media. (Click the image to view it full size.)
The 2010 Social Networking Map
Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

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