If you ever wondered what image sizes to use to showcase your brand on social networking sites, well…..think no more as Original Ginger put together this infographic showing the images sizes on major social media platforms: 

Who wouldn’t like to get influential on Twitter? But, having most followers means you have the most influence? NO, says a recent HP Labs study. The study suggests that most Twitter users are passive and the Twitter users with the most influence are those who retweet. Here are also some FAQs on the study.

According to the research, it is important to separate the concept of “influence” from “popularity.” While a user on Twitter may have a large number of followers, his or her influence is more strongly associated with their engagement with the network, rather than the total number of followers or retweets. To identify Twitter influencers, the authors devised an algorithm called the IP Algorithm. This algorithm assigns a relative influence score and passivity score to every user:

• “Influence” depends on both the quantity and quality of the user’s audience
• “Passivity” is a measure of how difficult it is for other users to influence him or her

The algorithm makes the following assumptions:

• Influence score depends on the number of people the user influences as well as their passivity.
• Influence score depends on how dedicated the people the user influences are. Dedication is measured by the amount of attention a user pays to a given one as compared to everyone else.
• A user’s passivity score depends on the influence of those who he’s exposed to but not influenced by.
• A user’s passivity score depends on how much he rejects other user’s influence compared to everyone else.

2.5 million users were included in the dataset show that the influence measure is a good predictor of URL clicks, outperforming several other measures .

The study concludes: “This study shows that the correlation between popularity and influence is weaker than it might be expected. This is a reflection of the fact that for information to propagate in a network, individuals need to forward it to the other members, thus having to actively engage rather than passively read it and cease to act on it.” The authors also see their measure of influence applicable to other social networks.

If you looking for a complete Social CRM solution, then, definitely look at JitterJam.

Some benefits for your campaign

• Gathers information about social contacts — JitterJam collects the brand’s contacts from their social accounts (Twitter friends and followers, Facebook contacts, etc.) and automatically imports them into their JitterJam database.

•  Social listening and engagement — Brands can create social searches to find conversations on the real-time web about their brands, their products, their markets, their competitors and more across a number of channels. JitterJam collects the results and stores them for the brand to review. Each of these conversations is immediately actionable. JitterJam also highlights the most important conversations for prioritization.

• List of key influencers — The integrated Jitterater Social Rating Engine estimates the influence and reach of individuals and assigns a numerical rating for each person based on the various elements of their social profile, including Twitter and Facebook accounts, blogs, websites, etc. This information is available for each social conversation found in the brand’s social searches and in each of the social profiles for the brand’s contacts.

• Puts privacy in the hands of the users — JitterJam has developed the Make Me Happy™ permission marketing system to let consumers set the rules of engagement — and to enable the brand to send only the information that each individual wants

Additional Feature summary

1. Jitterater™ Social Rating Engine: Rates influence and reach for each individual and allows brands to easily identify key influencers

2. Enhanced Make Me Happy™ Permission Marketing System: Create customized opt-in forms and pages for different channels, campaigns and markets

3. Streamlined User Interface and Social Search Hot List: Get to your most important conversations and contacts quickly and easily

4. Enhanced Metrics: Measure reach and impressions per message, identify those sharing your updates, more buzz and trend analytics

5. Additional Enhancements: YouTube, automatic database development, Twitter favorites and more.

JitterJam has four pricing tiers ranging from $290 to $1,290 per month. Pricing packages are based upon the number of social contact points in the database and the number of social searches that are defined/in use by the business.

The people polled in the Center for the Digital Future’s annual report on the impact of the internet on Americans answered a resounding “NO” to paying for tweeting. Not a single person who said they used Twitter responded in the affirmative to the question of whether they would pay for the privilege to tweet.

“Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Other interesting findings from the study are:

• Internet usage in US – 82% Americans go online regularly,
• Hours/week online – Americans spend 19 hrs/week, on average, surfing the web.
• Top 10 online purchases – 59% of Internet users said they purchase books or clothes online, followed by gifts (55 %), travel (53 %), electronics/appliances (47 %), videos (46 %), computers or peripherals (41 %), software or games (40 %), CDs (40 %), and products for hobbies (38 %).
• Newspapers no longer at the top as a source of information – Newspapers rank below the Internet or television. Only 56 % of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them – a decrease from 60 % in 2008 and below the Internet (78 %), and television (68 %).
• Low adoption rate of new media for older generations – 79 % of internet users do not blog and 85 % know little or nothing about making phone calls online, the vast majority of whom are above 24. Those under 24 use these and other new services regularly.
• Reliability of Information Online: Views of Internet Users -For the third year in a row, a declining percentage of Internet users said that most or all of the information online is reliable. 61% of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable.

What do you think?

According to the R2i study, a majority of marketing professionals view social media as essential to their business, most have not made any money using it. The R2i study makes a compelling case for a social media strategy. The study compared the 35% of companies that reported increased revenue or profit using social media with the companies that did not report a growth outcome. Those benefiting were:

• About twice as likely to have a formal social media strategy
• Almost twice as likely to have a dedicated headcount for managing social media
• About twice as likely to rate themselves as “proficient” or “expert”
• Almost three times as likely to have read a book on social media

Also, another study from Digital Brand Expressions had some interesting findings. The study found 88% agree it is important to have such a plan, suggesting perhaps the lack of a cohesive planning process is preventing the company from moving forward to adopt strategies for the social channel.

Here are some other key findings:

Of those companies that work from some plan, 94% say that marketing activities are included in the plan and 71% say that the Marketing Department is the group with the primary responsibility for creating and maintaining the firm’s social media presence.

• 71% indicate they use social media for public relations communications,
• 55% say that they use social media for sales-related activities.
• 16% say their human resources team is using social media
• Just 26% use it for customer service

Companies that don’t have a strategic plan but think it is important to create one, the number one activity rated as important to include in a social media plan is allocating resources for ongoing activities.

So, all you companies out there, better take notice of social media and have a plan.

Twitter announced the launch of tagging tweets with specific places called “Twitter Places”. Several other features of this launch include:

• Foursquare and Gowalla integration: Many Foursquare and Gowalla users publish check-ins to Twitter. Location is a key component of these Tweets, so we worked closely with both companies to associate a Twitter Place with Tweets generated by these services. This means that if you click on a Twitter Place, such as “Ritual Roasters,” you will see standard Tweets and check-ins from Foursquare and Gowalla.
• API: We are releasing API functionality that lets developers integrate Twitter Places into their applications.
• Support for more browsers: Now, you can add location to your Tweets from any browser—Safari and Internet Explorer, in addition to Chrome or Firefox.

Here are my thoughts:

1) What does it do to Foursquare or Gowalla? Will people prefer social badges over location?

2) This is still not a Facebook killer; I am sure pretty soon Facebook will launch location based service. So, what is the real value?

3) As users are getting ore and more savvy and knowledgeable about social networks, does location tweets expose them more to the outside world? User might share their location on twitter but if something was to happen to their car or house “while they were out” can be a cause of concern.

4) Finally, is this maneuver to monetize Twitter? Not sure I would like to share my location information for making money for twitter.

No one has really been able to crack the nut for location based services, but definitely there is potential in it. Love to hear your thoughts.

I know sharing is integral part of social media and is very critical for social media content. Clearspring (AddThis) and some of large technology companies including Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, have announced OExchange, an “open sharing protocol”.

The two most shared platforms that were very conspicuously missing from this alliance – Facebook and Twitter. The question that comes to my mind is “Should I use Facebook Connect, Twitter Anywhere or OExchange? I would go with Facebook Connect with additional existing sharing tools like: addthis, sharethis, addtoany & socialtwist.

Even better, you can use “Facebook Like” button and tweetmeme (twitter icon) on your blog and you are done for most part on social sharing.

Check out oexchange video:

Don’t forget to use addthis below for sharing this post

Yes, I am still a believer that social media will be my new Inbox but I saw NutshellMail which actually aggregates your social media updates from different sites and puts it in an email!!! Wow, so we are back to from where we started – our emails.

So here is what your get in your email from NutshellMail service:

1) Facebook – comment, reply, post on walls, and update your status from your email.

2) Twitter – see your mentions, new followers, quitters, and your friends’ latest tweets in your Twitter summary. Tweet, Reply, Retweet and DM.

3) MySpace – Get you new messages, friend requests, photos, videos, groups and status updates.

4) LinkedIn – Your connections, profile, job listing, group, recommendation, and Q&A.

5) Ning – get your new messages, friend requests, photos, videos and status updates.

I am not sure about the future of this service but will try it out see if it helps me in my social madness.  What about you guys?

When it comes to simple Twitter management, there is a whole host of tools and services you can use. However, before you start to glorify the abundance of the web, you should consider that there are just two prominent tools, CoTweet and HootSuite, specifically designed to help you manage the customer service element of your business. This is not to say that they do not fill the space well, because both are quite effective as Twitter Power-tools, in their own ways.

With more and more companies arming themselves with a quiver full of potent arrows named Twitter, you must be eager to fire your shots before others can. Both CoTweet and HootSuite can help you do this. Nevertheless, before you can decide which of the two tools can serve you best, maybe you should know about the things that both of them offer you.

Whether you use CoTweet or HootSuite, you can:

• Manage as many accounts as you want. Remember that in Twitter-space, the rule is ‘the more the merrier’! You do not have to manage all the accounts yourself and instead provide access to some of the accounts to suitable people in your organization.
• Use both tools to retain password access to all your accounts, because the other users chosen by you simply have to use their CoTweet or Hootsuite logins to use their assigned accounts and interact with customers on behalf of your business.
• Use multiple editors and search for keywords quickly and efficiently.
• Get notified as soon as you receive a message on any of your accounts.
• Program both CoTweet and Hootsuite to send out posts at a designated time later in the day or week. This can be really helpful if you are looking to run a blitzkrieg marketing campaign.

You may also be happy to know that both these tools are free (for now that is).

Okay, but, before you start thinking that these two tools are clones of each other, here’s a brief look at both right now.

If you use CoTweet, you can look forward to:

• A sleek user-interface, boosted by detailed texture. The homepage is nothing much to write about but the spacious layout more than makes up for it!
• Referring to your archived Tweets as and when necessary. You can also create lists and save searches that are easily accessible at any point of time.
• Assign someone in your organization to be the ‘On Duty’ tweeter. This ensures that your business is alive and well on Twitter, throughout working hours. In addition, the Twitter-bugs in your company do not need to waste time in checking their Twitter accounts throughout the day!
• Adding a personal touch to your Twitter posts. If you feel that the posts should be credited to the person making them on behalf of your organization, you can use CoTags. These are short signatures (usually initials) which can be set up to appear automatically along with every post. In hindsight, if you make it a must for every tweeter in your organization to use CoTags, they might be a lot more responsible with the content of their posts!

But there are some downsides to CoTweet too.

• CoTweet does not support Facebook, which may be a vital element of your social media efforts. Social media is not just about Twitter, and the sooner the makers do something to incorporate Facebook usage, the better.
• Finding specific tweets can be tough, particularly when you are in a hurry.
• If you are looking for something within the searches you have saved, you may find it hard to obtain results for specific operators such as ‘near’ or ‘within’ a place. For such geographically specific searches, you have to refer to search.twitter.com repeatedly.

Now that you know a fair bit about the pros and cons of Cotweet, let us take closer look at HootSuite as well! Here are some of Hootsuite’s key features that deserve two thumbs ups and no less:

• If you like multifunctional tools, you will love HootSuite. It allows you to manage Facebook, Ping.fm, and LinkedIn in addition to Twitter. To top it off, you can plug in WordPress blogs and any RSS feed of your choice into HootSuite streams. There is hardly an easier way to promote your blogs through Twitter and Facebook!
• To complete the social media bouquet, HootSuite gives you an iPhone application to post, search and even check user stats.
• Talking about user stats, HootSuite provides you the deepest and most intricate data you may ever need! Use the URL shortener ow.ly to get to know stuff such as who are the most influential re-tweeters of your links.
• You can customize the entire process of profile management by adding and removing columns from the different tabs representing the profiles you are managing. If you want, you can also add more columns for content such as Twitter lists, searches and keywords.
• The HootLet is a mini-bookmark system unique to HootSuite. Marking your favorite sites for tweeting can be really easy thanks to this feature.
• You can start or stop following people on twitter via HootSuite whenever you wish. With the click of a button, you can report spammers to Twitter HQ for appropriate action.

Even though the above mentioned features of Hootsuite sound great, you should keep in mind some of its downsides as well:

• The iPhone app works for Twitter only. For the rest you have to log in to the website. Moreover, the app costs you an extra $2, which makes it a paid service feature.
• More than one person in your organization can access HootSuite, but there are no such features as the ‘tweet assignment’ and ‘on duty’ ones in as is the case of CoTweet.
• Specific searches do not seem to work here either.

In conclusion, while both are great tools meant to empower you while engaging in social media customer service, CoTweet is perhaps the better choice if you run a business with some employees to assist you in your social media efforts.

On the other hand, if you want to keep your social media cards close to your chest, HootSuite may serve you best with its better layout and simple interface. If you want to choose one, what you need to do is to take a look at your organization’s needs and the facilities at your disposal for social media customer service and making the right choice suddenly won’t seem so hard after all!