Social Brio

Universities Take Advantage of Social Media

I recently wrote an article for my friend, Neil, who has a blog on NCAA Football called The Victory Formation.  As both a big college sports fan and social media enthusiast, it was natural for me to focus on how university athletic departments are getting students involved and increasing sales through the use of various social networks like Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare.  If you're a big sports fan like I am, check it out!

Here's the post; enjoy and Happy Last Minute Christmas Shopping!

Mashable Awards Voting Ends Tomorrow

If your reaction to this title was just, "What the heck is Mashable?," then you should probably take a few minutes to read this article!  Without going into a long, drawn out explanation about all of the fabulous things Mashable does- you can head on over to the site in a few minutes- I'll just say that it is the mecca of news for all things Internet, including technology and social media.  Whether you're an individual or a business owner or both, I highly recommend that you get aboard the Mash train and start regularly going to the site (or follow their many feeds on Twitter, or subscribe to a few of their RSS feeds, or... you get the point).

I was just on the Mashable Awards page to vote for my favorite Internet/social media/tech products, services and influencers, and decided that the diverse range of nominees are worth a blog mention.  Some of the unique titles include Most Creative Social Good Campaign, Must Follow Personality and Best Use of an API; nominees for those categories include @letsfcancer, @JayBumaom and Score.ly.  Haven't heard of all three of these nominees?  My point, precisely...

Voting for the Awards ends tomorrow; if you have some time today or tomorrow, go to their Awards home page, browse the nominees by category (easier if you're logged in with Twitter or Facebook) and vote if you so desire.  But more importantly, take the time to write down the nominee people/companies/apps/campaigns with which you're not familiar, then check 'em out on the web.  You might just find your new favorite Twitter feed or even a tool to better manage your company's social media campaigns (ahem, HootSuite)!

Going into 2011, your next meeting or even just to this weekend's holiday party, people will think you're an Internet genius (no one has to know that it took you 15 minutes to figure out how to login to vote).  Score.

New LinkedIn Company Profile Elements

Does your business have a LinkedIn company profile?  If not, it just might be time, especially if your company is a B2B!

Last month, LinkedIn expanded its Companies program (still in Beta, meaning it's still in the testing phase) to allow companies to include specific details about each of their products and services.  For example, say that you have a Widget business and you offer five different types of Widgets.  For each of the Widgets, you can now include the following:

• The industry to which your product/service pertains
• A title and copy description
• A photo
• Elements (bullets) of the product/service you want to highlight
• A direct hyperlink where more information can be found- likely your website
• A video from YouTube
• Current promotions
• The LinkedIn employee whom interested parties should contact regarding that particular product/service
  
• A disclaimer

In my opinion, these capabilities have been a long time coming; a network that prides itself on professional networking shouldn't stop at the individual who works for that company.  With these new elements, businesses can now grow a following on LinkedIn (yes, there are now Follow and Share buttons), showcase their diverse products/services, display promotions and company blog posts, and assign employees who are on LinkedIn to particular products.  The latter is very intriguing to me, as it offers a built-in solution for companies (especially big ones) to manage incoming leads originating on LinkedIn.

In addition to the new business elements available for display to any LinkedIn user, the Companies beta also offers up a nice serving of Analytics.  Although not nearly as in depth as a dashboard such as Google Analytics, graphs of metrics such as company profile visitors, page views, member counts and click-throughs are available in a few quick clicks.

I recommend you look into the new capabilities for businesses on LinkedIn, and that you talk to (convince!) the decision maker in your office that implementing this solution should, at minimum, increase your company's visibility on an established professional network.  It certainly can't hurt!

New Facebook Layout Available Today (activation link)!

If you haven't heard yet, Facebook just released a new profile layout today, the day after 60 Minutes aired a two-part interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Part 1 Part 2).  I personally like the new layout- it looks cleaner and makes more sense to me- and includes elements such as a summary of personal details at the top, a stream of recent photos, and tabs neatly placed just under the profile picture.

Companies with a Facebook Business Page: these changes don't seem to apply to Pages- at least yet- and I'm not sure if the powers that be plan to do so.  But I'll keep and eye on mine and let you know if/when any updates are made.

Aside from the new layout, I'm also pretty impressed by Zuckerberg's new found poise and personality, both which came through in the interview.  I saw an interview with him by All Things Digital a few years ago, and it was painful to say the least.  Keep it up, Facebook and crew!

Upgrade your profile when you have a chance, and have a great Monday!