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We came across Thumbtack today and thought we might give it a shot! Thumbtack is a website that connects people with products and services around their region. The service seems pretty popular in some other cities, and we thought it might be cool to add Erie, PA to the list! Check out our newly minted Thumbtack profile here: Epic Web Studios: Website, Database, Social & SEO 

By Samantha Murphy, Mashable

Last week Facebook unveiled its first major update to the news feed since the feature launched nearly seven years ago. Like every change the company makes to the site, it’s been met with mixed reactions.

Some praise the introduction of multiple news feeds, mobile consistency and a bigger focus on pictures, as well as a cleaner, more organized look. Others claimed it borrowed too much from competitor Google+’s design — in fact, a Mashable poll revealed 87.5% of respondents said the new design resembles Google’s social network.

If history is any indication, many users will resist the changes once it rolls out to more accounts soon. In fact, when news feed was first launched in 2006, founder Mark Zuckerberg even wrote a blog post called “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you” to address the public outcry.

Zuckerberg noted when people called the news feed “overwhelming” and “cluttered,” and some joined Facebook groups on the site protesting the changes.

“We’re not oblivious of the Facebook groups popping up about this (by the way, [our news feed product manager] is not the devil). And we agree, stalking isn’t cool; but being able to know what’s going on in your friends’ lives is,” wrote Zuckerberg, adding that the product is still evolving. “This is information people used to dig for on a daily basis, nicely reorganized and summarized so people can learn about the people they care about.”

It’s now hard to picture what Facebook would be like without the news feed, a concept which — in essence — takes the hard part out of navigating friends’ pages. And can you believe that when the site launched in 2004, it was basically just a directory of names, interests and contact information? Since then it’s become a much smarter, complicated platform over the years, and it’s brought a lot more depth to the user experience along the way.

In light of the new design, let’s take a nostalgic walk down news feed memory lane and see how “then” as evolved to “now.”

The Beginning

On Sept. 5, 2006, Facebook introduced the news feed — which appeared on the homepage — and the mini-feed, which appeared on each person’s profile page (and has since been replaced by Timeline).

“It updates a personalized list of news stories throughout the day, so you’ll know when Mark adds Britney Spears to his Favorites,” Facebook said in an official blog post. “Now, whenever you log in, you’ll get the latest headlines generated by the activity of your friends and social groups.”

At the time, this was a radical departure from what we had seen on Facebook before, and it was also a concept we were relatively unfamiliar with on other parts of the Internet. This spawned a lot of negative attention around news feed in the beginning — many didn’t understand it, questioning how personal information would be highlighted to others and whether privacy settings were still in tact.

More Control

In March 2009, Facebook made a few changes to the homepage, alongside introducing new profiles for public figures and organizations. When a user Liked a page, he or she would see updates from celebrities, athletes and politicians in the stream. Meanwhile, thanks to new filters, users could decide if they only wanted to see updates from family members or social circles in the feed.

To encourage people to add their own updates, Facebook also improved its “Publisher” feature — also known as the update form — with a prompt that asked, “What’s on your mind?” It was moved to the top of the homepage and made it easier to add status updates, links and photos, right from the homepage. If you added an update through the publisher form on your profile, it would also post on the news feed for friends to see.

Facebook periodically rolled out smaller updates based on user feedback. A few weeks later, it added controls to reduce app content from appearing in the stream, as well as added photos tagged of friends (so you didn’t miss what your closest friends were doing).

By May, Facebook was moving content to the news feed in real time.

Getting Smarter

As more people got used to news feed, the product got smarter. In September 2011, Facebook started displaying news updates you were most interested in at the top of the feed, instead of strictly chronological updates. 

Even if you hadn’t been on the site in a week, it predicted which stories you would be most interested in seeing from the last time you logged in. And for those who frequented often, news feed showcased most recent news. Facebook started calling the concept “your own personal newspaper,” a term we heard emphasized again at its most recent press conference.

In 2011 it also introduced the “ticker,” a real-time expansion of the news feed located at the top-right section of the homepage. This displays all user updates in real time, such as checking in to a restaurant or adding new pictures.

The Latest

Last week, Facebook announced three major updates to the news feed: more feeds and control, larger photos and mobile consistency.

Most noteworthy, multiple news feeds will allow users to dig deeper into content. Thanks to feeds that highlight photos, music news (what friends are listening to and what concerts they’re attending) and celebrities and organizations they subscribe to, it gives even more control over the stories in a network.

The company is also getting back to its roots by making some of the feeds chronological, meaning updates from “All Friends,” “Following” and “Photos” will display in the order they come in. A company spokesperson told Mashable they are testing the concept.

A greater focus on pictures is also a big step forward for Facebook. Photos will take up a lot more real estate in news feed, and since the company said 50% of news feed updates consists of pictures, this is a smart move. And as part of an effort to embrace mobile even more, the new look — which was even inspired by mobile — will be consistent across all platforms with a side navigation bar and significantly more white space.

What was your favorite iteration of news feed? What features do you miss, and what capabilities are you still waiting to see? Share your news feed memories and opinions in the comments below.

Image composite by Emil Lendof. Other images courtesy of Facebook and via Flickr, William Couch. Homepage image via iStockphoto, PressureUA

The original article can be found here on Mashable.com & was written March 12, 2013 by Samantha Murphy.

Do you see the value of social media as a business application, yet? If not, are you bothering to measure the return on the investment you’ve made with social media? You may remember our post from a few days ago about “Including Social Media in Your 2013 Budget”, and the video in that post does a nice job of explaining this process - but we wanted to take it one step further. Check out this article by Nichole Kelly that we’ve re-blogged from one of our favorite places, Social Media Examiner...

Do Fans Mean Business?

Marketers have made tremendous strides in growing their audiences on social media channels. There have been concerns over whether social media could only be successful in business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, but we’re starting to see great case studies in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) brands.

In looking at the B2B software space, we can see tremendous success from companies like HubSpot, InfusionSoft and HootSuite that have grown large numbers of followers by providing valuable content to their target audiences.

In the B2C space, our passion for brands like Old Spice, Coca-Cola and Ford have been reignited by creative social media campaigns. But what now?

Have these large followings contributed to revenue for these brands? The next natural question for C-level executives and marketers is, “Can we monetize our social media following?”

As pressures have risen for solid measurements and a demonstration of social media ROI, more companies are recognizing that revenue generation has to be a top priority of social media strategies.

This doesn’t give license for tacky sales pitches on Twitter. Rather, it opens the door for a more strategic approach to social media content, content distribution and measurement.

To get started, there are a few things you’ll need to prepare for.

Tip #1: Understand Your Sales Funnel

It’s pretty difficult to place leads into the sales funnel if you don’t have a clear understanding of the sales process that supports it.

The first step in monetizing the social media channel is to have a clear understanding of which marketing channels are currently contributing leads to the funnel, what the sales follow-up process is and how long it takes to close the sale.

You’ll need to figure out where social media fits into the equation.

• Will social media leads respond to existing sales processes?
• Where are social media leads in the buying process?
• Will they convert at the same rates?

To truly understand how social media leads behave, you’ll need to do some testing. It is unlikely that social media leads will perform the same way that other types of marketing leads do.

This is because with social media, more commonly you are reaching potential buyers earlier in the sales process, before your competition. Getting potential buyers’ attention early has tremendous value that can be overlooked if expectations haven’t been set for how the social media lead will perform.

If you compare social media with traditional sales, in essence social media adds three levels that extend your sales funnel to provide more opportunities for conversion.

Social media adds three levels of brand awareness to the sales funnel, providing more opportunities to convert prospects.

Tip #2: Optimize Your Path to Conversion

It’s important to make sure it is super-easy for potential buyers to buy. We tend to be fairly lazy consumers and if we have to search out how to buy from you, we are less likely to convert.

Therefore, take a look at your Facebook page. Does a potential buyer have to click on the Info tab to find your website, then go to your website and figure out how to buy your products or services? If so, you are likely missing out on the opportunity toconvert Facebook fans into purchasers.

Create a tab that allows fans to convert within Facebook and you’ll likely see a spike in new revenue.

Success in social media relies on having strong content to share on social networks, which many times resides on the corporate blog.

Look at your blog and make sure there are conversion points that will in essence turn every post into a landing page. Make sure you test multiple calls to action to figure out what works best at converting social media traffic.

Understand the path to conversion from social media so you can optimize each step.

Tip #3: Provide Opportunities for Soft Conversion

The social media lead likely enters the sales funnel earlier in the buying process. He or she may not be ready to make a purchase; however, you have an opportunity toconvert interested social media fans and followers into email subscribers.

Soft leads are people willing to provide their email address in exchange for highly valuable and relevant content. These are valuable leads who have said they are interested in your content; but they haven’t necessarily said they are interested in your product yet.

If you combine email marketing campaigns that provide a mix of content that helps to push them through the sales funnel while providing valuable information, you will have a better opportunity to convert social media’s soft leads into potential buyers.

Tip #4: Nurture the Social Media Lead Differently

It’s important to understand the difference between the social media lead and the traditional lead because traditional sales-related email campaigns will kill the sale with the social media buyer.

Because social media leads may enter the sales funnel at an earlier stage in the buying process, you will need to adjust your email campaigns to provide value and content that will help drive the decision-making process.

This will require a strategy that includes decision-making content. Decision-making content is designed to answer questions that commonly arise when purchasing your product, overcome objections that are frequently heard in the sales process andprovide opportunities to convert into a hard lead.

A hard lead is someone who has taken an action that directly indicates he or she is now interested in your product. This means the lead is now in the research and consideration phase of the buying cycle and you have an opportunity to convert the lead into a buyer.

Through your other social media efforts, you have been able to develop trust with prospects; therefore, if you continue to show thought leadership in helping themto make a decision, they will be more likely to purchase from you rather than the competitor they don’t have a relationship with.

Having a combination of decision-making and topically relevant content that is sent to soft leads will help you identify when the lead makes the jump to product interest.

At that point, you can follow up with traditional product-based information andput the lead in the traditional sales process.  Many times you can recognize this transition if you identify pages and calls to action that indicate product interest, such as signing up for a product demonstration, attending a product-based webinar or downloading decision-making content.

Tip #5: Measure Your Results

Finally, the only way to identify where leads are in the sales process is to measure your efforts.

The quickest and most cost-effective way to monitor social media conversions is to apply Google Analytics campaign tracking to the links you shorten and post on social networks.

The combination of Google Analytics and HootSuite Pro makes this easy. Once you have the data, it is important to put it into a format that tells the management team what they want to know.

Use these metrics to demonstrate success through the sales funnel:

• Cost per impression
• Cost per engagement
• Cost per soft lead
• Cost per hard lead
• Cost per sale

What do you think? Have you successfully converted social media fans and followers into revenue? Are you still trying to figure out how to do this? Join the discussion and leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Originally posted by Social Media Examiner
By Phil Mershon
Published April 24, 2012 

Do you primarily market to other businesses?
Are you wondering, “How does social media work differently for B2B businesses?”

In the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Mike Stelzner asked marketers how they’re using social media.

More than 1,900 business-to-business (B2B) marketers shared their insights on what’s working with social media marketing and where they’d like to improve.
In this article I’m going to focus on those areas where B2B marketers have significantly different experiences than their consumer-focused counterparts.

Let’s dig in.

B2B Marketers Show Confidence in Social Media

Of the B2B marketers who took this year’s survey, over 93% use social media to market their businesses. While that’s slightly below their consumer-focused brethren (95.2%), there’s been a significant increase since the 2010 survey when only 88% of B2B marketers responded affirmatively.

Just over 93% of B2B marketers are using social media for marketing purposes (slightly behind B2C marketers).

Social Media Is Getting Results

When asked about the benefits of social media marketing, B2B marketers noted the following:

• Over 56% of B2B marketers acquired new business partnerships through social media (compared to 45% of B2C marketers)
• Nearly 60% of B2B marketers saw improved search rankings from their social efforts (compared to 50% of B2C marketers)
• B2B marketers are more able to gather marketplace insights from their social efforts (nearly 69% vs. 60% of B2C marketers)
• The one area where B2B marketers significantly lag behind their B2C counterparts is in developing a loyal fan base. 63% of B2C marketers found social media helped them develop loyal fans, compared to only 53% of B2B marketers.

What Tools Do B2B Marketers Use?

While almost all B2C marketers (over 96%) use Facebook as a marketing tool, a significantly fewer 87% of B2B brands do the same according to this study. This barely surpasses the adoption of LinkedIn (86.6%) and Twitter (84%).

B2B marketers are also more likely to use blogs (65% vs. 57%) and Google+ (44% vs. 36%).

B2B marketers use Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and Google+ more than B2C marketers.

Where Will B2B Marketers Invest More Time?

There is little difference in how B2B and B2C marketers will increase their time investment except when it comes to Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging.

In 2012, B2B marketers are far more likely to increase their use of LinkedIn. In fact, over 76% of B2B marketers will increase their use, compared to only 55% of B2C marketers. These are both increases from 2011 (71% of B2B and 51% of B2C).

71% of B2B marketers plan to invest more time in blogging (compared to 65% of B2C marketers).

A significant majority of marketers will increase their use of Facebook this year, but B2B marketers (68%) lag behind B2C companies (76%).

What Do B2B Marketers Want to Learn?

If you offer educational products or consulting for B2B marketers, you’ll be interested to know that B2B marketers want to learn about Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter, in that order. Only in the case of LinkedIn does their interest surpass that of B2C marketers (56% of B2B vs. 50% of B2C).

The top topics B2B marketers want to learn about (compared to B2C) are:

• Measuring effectiveness of social media (77% vs. 78%)
• Converting activities to sales (72% vs. 69%)
• Discovering best social media tactics (69% vs. 74%)

Only in the case of converting activities to sales do B2B marketers exceed B2C marketers in their desire to learn. 

Still not convinced?! Read Nichole Kelly’s post on Social Media ROI & how to measure it!

To preview of the report, watch this video! Download the report here.
 

Originally posted by Social Media Examiner 

For more insight into B2B Social Media, check out this article in Fast Company

The 2012 holiday season is upon us, it’s time to start thinking forward to the new year. The Epic social media department is curious – have you considered adding “social media & digital marketing” to the 2013 line items? If so – you are on the right track! If not, consider why we think this is important.

As social media matures, it is no longer possible to remain a “test”, virtually ignored and sitting on the outside of your budget. We are talking about the most dominant promotional technique for online exposure the world has even seen, after all.

Social media has a wide reach and versatility, too. Networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn can not only help you connect with clients, but also generate real, and long-lasting relationships that bring them back for future business.

Social media is everywhere, becoming an essential part of many people’s day-to-day routines. That being said, a business’ online exposure can either make or break their opportunities to thrive as a company. The exposure with social media can lead to increases in revenue, traffic, subscribers, and even online ranking (check out our post on Social SEO if you don’t believe us). What business couldn’t use a boost in revenue and visibility?

While a properly executed social media campaign requires significant funding, social media can also reduce other marketing, customer service & client acquisition costs, ultimately justifying the expense. A professional social media ecosystem will be able to speak to consumers, sell products and close sales quicker than ever before by providing stronger brand affinity & awareness, as well as generating more business leads. That kind of efficiency & power is something that a boardroom just cannot deny.

Many businesses & executives that overlook social media in their budgets believe two things:

1.  Stay in the Comfort Zone. Many marketing professionals believe that you should stick with what you know. However, we are in a more advanced day and age. The average user of Facebook is a 35 year-old female, while professional males primarily dominate LinkedIn. This is your demographic. Why are you still fighting an uphill battle of trying to bring them to your website? Bridge the gap. Hold their hand over to your website (which, goes without saying, must also be in top shape).                    

2.  Social Media is Free. This is partially true. Many times, building pages or interactive media for your business can be free on social media channels; but why even bother if you’re not going to realize its full potential? Maximizing the effectiveness of the social media techniques is not easy. The hardest part is that you’ve got to be executing all the time (we recommend an absolute minimum of 60 minutes a day). Plan ahead – time is expensive!

If the video above and this article have not convinced you – take a look around. Some of your favorite causes, brands & activities are on social media – and stronger than ever. Social media is influencing you right now – and you may not even realize it! Tumblr, one of the most popular social media websites, is hosting this very article. It’s possible you got here through Facebook or Twitter, too.

In the beginning was the Web. And the Web was information—all the world’s knowledge, linked together in html code. That was disruptive, and it was good. Well, more than good. Pretty awesome, actually.

But the Web continues to evolve, with crucial help from people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey. The Information Web—the one that shut down newspapers, wiped out travel agencies and electronics resellers, and overthrew Arab dictators—is turning into the Social Web. The former was about knowledge, the latter is about…well, actually, you! It’s all about you, and everything about you that the Web and Big Data analytics can gather and process. The end result is a scarily true-to-life online portrait that businesses can use to target messages to you, and—equally important—that you can trade on to get what you want. It’s going to be powerful stuff, and the foundation is even now being laid.

That was the message of a particularly mind-expanding session at the Inc. 500 conference earlier this month, led by Inc.com columnist, entrepreneur and Flashpoint Academy CEO Howard Tullman. Tullman’s thesis is that the era of what he calls “hyper-personalization” online will transform advertising (yet again), retail (ditto), corporate power (it’s a Facebook world), notions of privacy and even the use of data. “Personal data is the oil of the digital age,” to quote Tullman.

Tullman will cover the implication of the social Web in his own Inc.com columns to come, but let’s start now with a key point that every business owner should know: There’s not a ton of time to get ready. The process is already much further along than you probably realize. Indeed, the most common reaction to Tullman’s session at the Inc. 500 was “Holy ….! I had no idea.”

Take a look at these eight numbers, which are symptomatic of the impact that social media—facebook in particular—are already having on your world:

3 billion

The number of searches on Google every single day. For a little perspective, there are about 7 billion people in the world. And remember: Each of these searches generates data that can be used to flesh out the growing picture of who you are, what you like, what you are about to do, whether you know it or not.

10 Million

That’s how many new users began coming per week to two video sharing sites, Viddy and Social Cam,  after April 24, when Facebook began highlighting them in its news feed. The point is that Facebook is the kingmaker of the social Web, a role that seems all but inevitable when you realize that people spend more time on Facebook than on YouTube, Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo combined.

 12 to 18 

The number of months it takes for the amount of online sharing to double, according to Mark Zuckerberg. Remember Moore’s Law? Sharing content is on the same exponential growth curve as processing power when Moore made his famous prediction.

1500

The number of new retailers per week that join Payvment, a social commerce site that allows users to set up stores on Facebook. This week Facebook launched Facebook Gifts, which allows Facebook users to send their friends real gifts over Facebook (publicly or privately). “F-commerce” is the term Tullman prefers. You may want to get used to it.

28%

Share of all ads now served online that appear on Facebook.

3.3 million

Facebook is not the only king- (or queen-) maker on the social web. 3.3 million is the number of Tyra Banks’ twitter followers—and a key reason that her forgettable bookModelland was number one on Barnes & Noble and number two on Amazon its first week on the market. 

48 hours

The amount of video uploaded every minute to YouTube. That’s one reason video is the new medium of communication on the social web.

 80 million

The number of virtual farmers on Farmville. Just for reference: There are 1.3 million real farmers in the U.S.

On the social web, marketers no longer need content to approximate who a given audience is, because everyone who wants to reach you will know exactly who you are, exactly where you are and what you’re likely to do at any given moment. Who you are will determine not just what marketing messages you see, but also what price you pay for things, compared to others with a different profile or reputation. Maintaining your social status and reputation on the social web will be as important as maintaining your personal appearance—and that’s just the beginning of changes already under way.

I know. I didn’t have any idea, either.

(original article posted by Eric Schurenberg on Inc Magazine)