360DigitalInfluence

Over the next few months, be on the lookout for Friday posts about Facebook news, trends, and tools. Today I get my feet wet with three hot tips on this week’s Facebook news. continue reading

This is the final post in a five-part series exploring the trends laid out in our webinar, Facebook Bootcamp for PR. Look out in the coming weeks for some interesting updates to the original presentation!

One of the oft sited benefits of Facebook is its ability to keep us connected to friends and family who may be thousands of miles away, but there is a missed opportunity to better connect with the friends and fans in our own backyard. That’s why we’ve identified geolocation and mapping as a Facebook trend we’d love to see blossom in the near future. A hat tip to Trendwatching.com is due here- they’re January piece on Mapmania was an inspiration to notice all of the ways that virtual maps make daily life easier and with maps and social networks both growing in use on mobile phones, the two trends must eventually intersect. continue reading

As a follow up to our recent webinar, Facebook Bootcamp for PR, you’ll see five blog posts in the coming weeks exploring the five trends set out in our presentation.

There are two distinct forms of currency set to expand on Facebook: Facebook credits and cold, hard cash. Months after Facebook playing around with gift credits and launching a candy coated beta test, Facebook announced last week that it will be rolling out more gift monetization options. And just on Wednesday, Facebook posted a Payment Terms of Service Agreement on their developers’ site showing that this option is not far off. In this post I’ll touch on both and what each trend means for brands. continue reading

As a follow up to our recent webinar, Facebook Bootcamp for PR, you’ll see five blog posts in the coming weeks exploring the five trends set out in our presentation. With over 30 million active users Facebook Mobile is a trend that’s gaining serious momentum over the last year and eMarketer.com predicts that worldwide numbers across networks will reach 369 million by 2010. This is great news for brands looking to leverage social media for offline events; some of the new possibilities include signing up fans via SMS and extending consumer generated media programs to include mobile uploads.

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As a follow up to our recent webinar, Facebook Bootcamp for PR, you’ll see five blog posts in the coming weeks exploring the five trends set out in our presentation. This installment looks at the quickly evolving role of Facebook Connect and reviews how brands can use this open ID to enhance their Facebook presence and expand other social media programs. continue reading

One of the most useful free tools out there is Google Trends and I’m continually surprised by the innovative ways I see it used by my colleagues. Beyond the obvious function in SEM and SEO campaigns, the half of all internet users who are starting their session with a good Google must be giving use some other useful information. Google showcased this recently with their Flu Trends project and it got me thinking about other ways to bring the line graphs to life. Here are some of my favorite examples (including Quail Man) of interesting Google Trends and I ask you to add your own ideas and provide links in the comments.

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