‘Fan Pages’ are free pages generally used by businesses and brands who want to create a social media presence. Currently, a Facebook user clicks ‘Become a Fan’ when they want to follow the brand.  You can become a fan of McDonald’s or Britney Spears. Becoming a Fan of a brand or business is very similar to adding someone as a Friend on Facebook. The brand status updates begin to populate in your newsfeed, the brand has the option to send you messages, and depending on the specific fan page settings, you can post on the brand’s wall.  Fan pages that a user has ‘Become a Fan’ of are also displayed on their personal profile.

The ‘Like’ feature, however, is quite different. A user can ‘Like’ someone’s status, photos, wall posts, etc. It’s a simple way of giving approval or a thumbs-up. Depending on privacy settings it’s possible others can see items you ‘Like’ and you’ll be notified when someone else ‘Like[s]‘ or adds a comments to that item.

Understanding the difference between ‘Become a Fan’ and ‘Like’, it makes sense that Facebook is reporting users click ‘Like’ almost twice as much as they click ‘Become a Fan’. It’s much easier to ‘Like’ something. It’s quick and easy. After maybe another comment by a user, in a couple days that item you ‘Like[d]‘ has disappeared. Becoming a Fan is saying you want to stay updated. You want to regularly see more about this brand or business. These two items are not the same and should not be interchangeable. That’s why I feel this switch won’t be positive.

Changing the language is not going to cause users to ‘Become a Fan’ of more fan pages.  Users click ‘Like’ more often than ‘Become a Fan’ not because the word is more appealing, but because the act is simpler. There might be an increase in clicks at first, but once a user’s newsfeed is populated by more businesses and less friends, users will revert.

• The People Pane A name, picture, and title for your colleagues whenever reading a message from them.
• Rich history See a rich communications history for each person that sends you messages with one-click access to the most recent messages and attachments.
• Activities Download and see real-time activity for your colleagues from business and social networks.
• Get friendly Request someone as a colleague or friend with one click. Synchronize those colleagues with Outlook and keep them up-to-date as their information changes.
• SharePoint 2010 Connect to the new MySite social networking experience right out of the box with the OSC & SharePoint 2010.
• Extensible A public SDK allows anyone to build a connection to business or consumer social networks.

It’s now available on Outlook 2010 Beta and we’re wondering about the Outlook Social Connector.  Has anyone been using it?  It seems like Outlook’s version of Google Buzz with the mission of LinkedIn.  Have we reached the copycat era of social media or is there going to be a real breakthrough in connecting with people?  With the onslaught of real-time results, we’re thinking that we’ll need a predictive formula.  This social media plug-in will predict where all of your friends will be going and what they will be doing based on their past entries…  It’s Tuesday.  Amber is going to go to the Starbucks on King St. and will tweet about their delicious bran muffins at approximately 9:18am.  Oh [big] brother!

Source: Michael Affronti, MSDN

Yele is a program developed by recording artist Wyclef Jean committed to keeping the spirit, heart and pride of the Haiti people intact.  He, too, assigned a number (501501) to automatically donate $5 to the disaster relief of Haitians after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

Photo courtesy of Bing

Bing has had a deal in place for the last week to integrate Facebook status updates and tweets from Twitter into Real Time Search Results.  Google announced their deal with Twitter last week as well, also announcing that Facebook updates would also be made available soon.  However, today Google released their deal with Facebook and revealed that only status updates from Facebook pages would be available in their search results (ie: not personal pages, but company pages).  Bing will also have the personal status updates, not just public Facebook pages.  The reason?  Facebook says, “The terms of the Google deal were specifically related to public updates on Pages. But our conversations with both companies are continually evolving regarding ways in which we might work together in the future.”

Sources: Search Engine Land, Bing.com

Photo courtesy of SearchEngineLand.com

There is a “Pause” button if you wish to stop the news from streaming but you cannot remove the tool all together.  Instead, let’s discuss what you could utilize in the search to filter what you want to see.  There is a “Latest” toggle which will give you tweets from Twitter.com, news results and web pages as they come in.  The “Updates” toggle will allow you to filter even more, simply receiving tweets.  In the future, Google plans to also release Facebook updates (for those who have public profiles), but not just yet.

Visiture is excited to see the even further exposure of social media into the Google Real Time Search results.  This can only benefit your company if you update your Twitter pages, Facebook fan pages and LinkedIn pages consistently.  We have the tools, especially with this onslaught of social media and Google Real Time Search results to market your brand effectively and improve your ROI.

Source: Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineLand.com

Photo courtesy of greatdance.com

In case you were wondering, Social Media is taking over the world.  Facebook statistics are astounding!  Over 350 million users with 50% of them logging on daily.  What does this have to do with marketing? Well, the fact is simple.  If you create a Facebook Fan Page, you are sure to promote your product or company in an organic way (through people “liking it” and sharing with others).  Facebook is comprised of the younger and older, friends, siblings, parents, grandparents, colleagues, students, and the list goes on!  Essentially, it reaches everyone.  With people actively using it every day, it is easy to see why it would be a great marketing tool.  Visiture can help you create profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or help you optimize the ones you already have.  Because these sites have so many pages pointing to them and are being updated so frequently, they are often at the top of the natural results on Google and Yahoo!.