Retailers using social media to promote Black Friday specials

It used to be that shoppers trying to find great holiday deals the day after Thanksgiving – aka “Black Friday” – would do most of their research by going through their newspaper and clipping out specials. But Reuters reports that social media has changed the way that consumers and retailers approach Black Friday, with many major stores using Twitter and Facebook to announce deals and stir interest in their specials.

Brands such as Office Depot and J.C. Penney used Twitter to promote specials, while other brands went a step further: Toys ‘R’ Us announced special deals through their Twitter feed, while Sears has a contest through its Facebook page giving shoppers a chance to win a $500 gift certificate and a chance to shop the Black Friday specials early.

Kasey Lobaugh, a principal at Deloitte Retail, said that social media is attractive to retailers because they can easily track performance metrics.

“If you send out a URL via Twitter you know how many people clicked on that URL,” he said. “When you put a newspaper tab out, you have no idea of the traffic in your stores, how much was influenced by seeing an ad in the newspaper that day.”

Facebook photos costs woman her health benefits

A Canadian woman says her sick-leave payments were cut off because of photos posted on her Facebook page depicting her having a good time at certain events, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The woman was on leave from her job because of a diagnosis of major depression. When the payments stopped coming in, her insurance company explained that the benefits were stopped because the photos were evidence that she was no longer depressed.

According to the article, the woman didn’t deny the existence of the photos, but she said they were not a true indication that she had been cured. “In the moment I’m happy,” she said in the interview, “but before and after I have the same problems.” Her doctor recommended that she go on vacation.

Although the insurance company declined to comment on the case, a statement to the CBC stated, “We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook.”

Xbox Live social media integration an apparent smash hit

According to a report from CNET News, Microsoft’s integration of social media features into its console gaming program last week has apparently been a runaway success. Microsoft has announced that at least two million people have accessed Facebook during the first week of its integration within the Xbox Live digital media delivery service.

Along with Facebook, Xbox Live members can use the service to connect to a wide range of other social media sites including Twitter. One of the major successes has been Last.fm, as Microsoft spokesman David Dennis said that more than 500,000 people registered for new Last.fm accounts within the first 24 hours of its appearance within Xbox Live. In addition, Xbox Live users had streamed more than 120 million minutes of music on Last.fm within the first week of the site being available through Xbox Live. Users can also watch video through the Zune marketplace – formerly known as the Xbox Live marketplace.

LinkedIn platform now live

Developers worldwide can now integrate LinkedIn into their business applications and Web sites, the social networking site announced today. The LinkedIn platform leverages the open OAuth standard to make integrations from almost any language and development environment as simple as possible.

In the past couple of months, LinkedIn has partnered with companies such as IBM, Blackberry and Microsoft to support integrations and have extra time to invest in both functionality and scalability of the platform.

According to announcement, various developers who have helped provide the company with feedback and guidance will be announcing integrations in the coming weeks, including TweetDeck. Users can now “easily view or take action on their LinkedIn network updates from within TweetDeck, with the full integration of the LinkedIn profile information of the person who posted the update.”

Interested developers can begin developing for the LinkedIn platform at http://developer.linkedin.com. To date, LinkedIn has more than 50 million users with professional identities and relationships.

Tales of a Link Prostitute: No Cash in Vegas Calls for Desperate Measures

It’s a widely known fact that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Not quite as widely known, but still a fact is this: if you have no cash in Vegas, you stay in Vegas.

This is the position I found myself in when I attended PubCon, a conference for online marketers. I could only take out $80 a day in cash due to a mix up at the bank. Also, another mix up had depleted all of my credit without me knowing.

What was a girl to do?

“You could become a link prostitute,” one search engine marketer volunteered at the bar. “Sell links from your website to make mad dollars.”

Some online marketers buy links to their website to help them rank higher on search engines – but none will admit to doing it. It’s a bad idea.

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

I take you through the steps of degenerating into a link prostitute while living it up in two luxury hotels in Vegas.

Palms Place

I arrived at Palms Place late at night on Monday and couldn’t believe my amazing room and warm reception. I stayed in a gorgeous studio with black hardwood floors, a mammoth king-sized bed, a sleek well laid out washroom, and a fully functioning kitchen.

The room also came equipped with a sitting area, comfy sectional couch, and an amazing view of the mountains and the Strip, which I used to make new friends who were staying at a not-quite-as-stunning hotel down the street.

One thing that everyone needs to know about Vegas is that you need cash to get around. Most cabs don’t accept credit cards. I tried to take out some money as I was leaving late for my first day of the conference.

“Insufficient Funds”, the machine said.

Crushed.

Palms Place is not the sort of outfit that caters to folks with insufficient funds. Did I sleep walk to the craps tables, conveniently placed at Palms Resort and Casino just down the way? I broke out into a nervous sweat.

The hotel staff let me use their front desk computer – which was great customer service by the way. I learned that the bank machine was stupid, that I had more than sufficient funds, I just couldn’t access them. Again, the staff went out of their way to flag down the only cab in Las Vegas that accepts credit cards. I made the conference on time.

Learning You Have More in Common with the Thieves Than you Thought

The next morning, I called my lovely bank to ask them what the %&@*! was going on. They had reset my daily withdrawal limit so that I could only take out $80 cash, they explained, because they felt that my card had been compromised in May 2009.

Could they raise my limit for the duration of my stay?

“No. The thieves might have greater access to your account if we do that,” the lady said.

Well, at least I had something in common with my frenemies in debit card fraud: neither of us could access large sums of cash from my account. How comforting.

Encore at the Wynn

One plus about working for Kiwi Collection is that you get to move around every couple of days and experience the best hotels in a given area. Using my allotted $80 USD, I zipped from the conference center to Palms Place, and then over to Encore at the Wynn, one of the newest (and most gorgeous) hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.

Encore is a sister property to the Vegas landmark Wynn Las Vegas. It opened in December 2008.

I entered the complex at the Wynn Las Vegas. As it turned out, I couldn’t check in to Encore from there, and had to meander through the elaborate red-carpeted halls, lined with shops, casino areas and restaurants (poor me!).

My suite had a comfy king-sized bed and separate sitting area, a great view of the strip and a big desk for post-conference work. My favourite thing about the room was the bathtub, which I made immediate use of.

I had the Grilled Jidori Chicken at Society Café at the hotel. And, over a glass of sweet Riesling, all of my cash-strapped stress was melting away…at least until it came time to pay.

“This credit card is declined,” the barman said. “Can I put this meal to your room?”

He didn’t seem rattled – and even believed me when I explained that I was “surprised” and “shocked” and that there “must be some mistake”. This is Vegas after all: after five days, most people’s credit cards don’t work.

Sparing the boring details – my credit card disaster was the product of yet another “misunderstanding” that would need to be sorted out once I arrived back home in Vancouver. If I could get back to Vancouver, that is.

Meeting Your Inner Degenerate

I used my remaining $20 American to hitch a ride to the networking event held by Pubcon. Since I wouldn’t be able to buy anything there (ie. booze), I figured it would be safe to go in my frazzled state. Also, I was looking forward to getting in my exercise, walking the 10 or so miles back to Encore at the Wynn when the festivities were over since I now had no cash or credit.

I was met by a hundred or so friendly online marketers all of whom had lots of suggestions on how to make a quick buck. They all agreed that with this crowd, the most valuable thing I could sell would be links from my website. This would allow me to return to Vancouver, where I could shake my fist at my bank in person.

Michael Bonfils of SEM International – a company that specializes in international online marketing strategies, chose to buy me a beer instead of buying my links, promising that it would make me feel better.

Jill Sampey of Blast Radius was also sympathetic, and offered to feed me tequila shots when she realized my night had gone awry.

My new friends Alon from Israel, and Allen Horwitz and Pierre Zarokian from Submit Express, an SEO Company, provided much assistance in finding a cash machine at three minutes to midnight so I could withdraw my $80 allowance for the day.

One chap would only agree to buy my links if I would sell 500 of them for $5.

I wasn’t prepared to go that cheap.

But then I saw him, from across the room. It was Danny Dover – a young up and coming SEO who surely wouldn’t know any better than to buy my crap links for cash. Why I thought this, I don’t know. In reality, this young grasshopper works at the famous company SEOMoz and has just finished writing an excellent Internet Marketing book all about doing search marketing the “right way” and not needing to resort to buying links from link prostitutes like me.

After talking at this poor man for about an hour, he decided to feed me more shots (probably to make me shut up). That’s when my inner degenerate made a guest appearance.

The rest is a blur of generous Americans offering me money not to link to them and blackjack dealers getting angry at me for stumbling through their “working area” at 4 a.m. Thankfully, my new best friends Michael and Danny led me back to Encore at the Wynn, since I no longer had motor skills and was easily distracted by shiny objects.

The good people at Encore took pity on me, and allowed me to check out late. I spent the day with the blinds closed, contemplating what I had done, and working on materials for my friends back at the office.

At the end of my time in Vegas, I realized that being a link prostitute was just not the career for me. I was lousy at it. Also, I wouldn’t be able to tell my mother what I was doing at night.

However, I did learn a lot about how fun and friendly Las Vegans can be (even if you have no money), and that I was good at getting free tequila, business cards and cab rides.

And if that doesn’t make for a great trip to Sin City, what does?

Story submitted By: Melissa Mewdell from Kiwi Collection
Danny Dover is the author of Search Engine Optimization Secrets.
No parts of this story may be copied or duplicated without permission from the author.

Salesforce.com launches new social media tool

BusinessWeek reports that Salesforce.com, one of the leading names in customer relationship management (CRM) & cloud computing, has launched their own social media tool. Called Chatter, it is designed to help businesses keep track of sales and customer service in an interactive manner. The new product will display profiles of employees and posts about projects they’re working on or the customers they’ve visited.

“I know more about these strangers on Facebook than I do about my own employees and what they’re working on,” said Salesforce.com Chief Executive Marc Benioff during a speech at Dreamforce. “I know when my friends went to the movies, but not when my VP of sales visited our top customer.”

Salesforce.com will begin selling the Chatter software in February 2010. It is designed to integrate with other Salesforce.com CRM products.

New Oxford American Dictionary names “unfriend” as Word of the Year

Social media continues to move mainstream, with social media terms entering the common lexicon. This point was driven home on Tuesday, as CNN.com reports that the New Oxford American Dictionary has named “unfriend” as its Word of the Year, beating out a field heavy with technology-based terms such as “netbook,” “hashtag” and “sexting.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” said Christine Lindberg, a language researcher for Oxford’s U.S. dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines “unfriend” as a verb that means to “remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

As you might expect, news of the honor awarded to the word “unfriend” spread quickly across social media sites, and not all of it was positive. Many people were upset that the New Oxford American Dictionary selected “unfriend” and not the similar term “defriend.”

“Frustrated that ‘unfriend’ is the word of the year. It’s definitely ‘defriend’ when referencing Facebook,” one Twitter user wrote, adding the hashtag #dictionaryfail.

Agencies rarely engage in social media

AdWeek reports that while the majority of advertising agencies have a presence on social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, they rarely use them for marketing or pursuing client prospects.

According to a new survey from RSW/US and Second Wind, nearly three-quarters of the 2012 agency leaders polled are connected to LinkedIn, 66 percent to Facebook and 56 percent to Twitter. However, when asked how often they use these social networking services, an overwhelming majority said no more than once a month. When it comes to Twitter, 47 percent said they never tweet, seven percent said they tweet less than once a month and four percent tweet once a month. Blogs have similar findings, with 56 percent of the respondents reporting that their agencies have blogs, yet only five percent use them daily. In addition, 66 percent said they blog no more than once a month.

According to AdWeek, RSW/US president Mark Sneider attributed the respondents’ limited engagement in social media to laziness and a lack of time. But such sites can be powerful tools for getting to know CMOs or sharing agency thoughts about marketplace issues, said Sneider, whose Cincinnati-based firm helps agencies hone their prospecting skills.

“Any one [site] in and of itself on its own isn’t enough. You really have to use them like a media plan,” said Sneider. “And each of those components should have a different purpose. [Agencies should] stay true to that purpose, and then integrate the entire social space with other more traditional initiatives” such as e-mail marketing.”

Consumers respond positively to branding and marketing on social media sites

Consumers are more willing to engage with and purchase from brands on social networking sites than previously thought, according to a recent survey from Performics and ROI Research. This is especially true if the ads and marketing messages they receive include offers for discounts, specials, deals freebies, points or sweepstakes.

The study found that more that 34 percent of respondents have used a search engine to find information on a product, service or brand after seeing an advertisement on a social networking site. In addition, 30 percent said they learned about a new product, service or brand from a social networking site. About 32 percent said messages about printable coupons on social sites resonate with them, while 28 percent said messages about sales or special deals made an impact with them.

“Social networks are creating a monumental shift in how people communicate with each other and with brands,” said Michael Kahn, SVP of Marketing at Performics. “The results of this study can help marketers better understand where and how consumers interact with social media sites and what types of offers and communications engage them and motivate them to act.”

The study also reveals the opportunity for engaging with consumers on social networking sites. For example, 46 percent of respondents said they would talk about or recommend a product on Facebook. In addition, 44 percent of YouTube users said they have gone to an online retailer or ecommerce site after learning about a brand on a social network site.

“We knew that these sites are extremely popular for socializing, but the level of interest for branding and promotional marketing content is surprisingly large,” said Scott Haiges, president of ROI Research.

Alleged hostage situation becomes social media sensation

According to The Columbia Missourian, social media played a major role in the coverage of what was believed to be a hostage crisis in Jefferson City, Missouri. Reports circulated on Tuesday that a hostage had been taken at the state’s Public Service Commission. Police shut down a four-block radius around downtown Jefferson City for four hours, even though it turned out that there was in fact no hostage situation.

Within that four hour span, there were around 310 updates sent on Twitter with the tag #JCMOhostage. In addition, several major news outlets updated the situation on their Twitter and Facebook pages. Even Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kindler tweeted about the incident, which he said he could see from his office window.

He said he decided to tweet about it because he thought it was “important to notify the world.”

“This was obviously a public event,” Kinder said. “And being Twitter, it seemed appropriate.”

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