Mediaboss Marketing

CHICAGO, May 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --MapsNshop.com (http://www.mapsnshop.com), the first geo-social product marketing platform for businesses, has fully revamped and relaunched its site to now include Facebook and Twitter applications for business and consumer accounts so that users can streamline social media marketing campaigns and outreach. The geo-social media platform merges social media and location advertising to provide businesses with an innovative channel for quickly and easily promoting products and services to local consumers.

"Our new features connect to Facebook and Twitter effortlessly, so it takes a business less than 10 seconds to introduce all the products that it's featured on MapsNshop to Facebook followers, for example," said MapsNshop CEO Dare (pronounced "Derry") Ajala.

MapsNshop accounts now feature Facebook and Twitter icons that send users to their respective social media sites. The Facebook tool provides businesses with a menu of product photos from their MapsNshop page so that users can simply select which products they want to display and then press the "Post to Facebook" button. Their Facebook Page will immediately display the selected product photos along with the product names and descriptions. Consumers can use MapsNshop's Facebook application to recommend a particular product to their friends.

MapsNshop's Twitter application lets businesses click on a product in their account and automatically send a promotional tweet to that business' Twitter followers. The tweet identifies the selected product by name and includes a link to the item at the MapsNshop account page.

"As of now, no other product out there has these features," stated Dare. "We are leveling the playing field for small businesses by enabling them to put their products in front of their consumers without having to worry about the typical costs that go along with it. Instead of a 'mom and pop shop' that's making quality products getting shut out of the market because no one knows about them, MapsNshop enables customers to find you no matter where you are. At the same time, we are providing large retail stores with a channel through which they can coordinate the merging of product display and social media on a large scale."

The geo-social platform has been steadily adding tools that make businesses known to customers in their area. For example, MapsNshop.com's Product page includes a "Search by Product" dialog box that displays a map of relevant, local businesses within a 10-mile radius of the user's location. Consumers can find basic information such as business name, address and ranking from the map or click through to that business' MapsNshop account where they can see a slideshow of products.

"Consumers are looking for ways to answer the questions of where and how to buy what they need easily, quickly and locally while businesses are looking for the most direct options of putting their products in front of the ideal consumer," said Dare. "MapsNshop helps both parties answer their questions."

Contact:

Dare Ajala info@mapsnshop.com 888-556-2744 http://www.mapsnshop.com/

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Geo-Social Marketing Platform MapsNshop Adds Facebook and Twitter Integration to Further Level the Online Marketing ...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Indaba Music, the leading online community of musicians and marketplace for music opportunities, today launched its Social Contest Suite, an end-to-end music marketing platform that connects its more than 700,000 independent musicians with fans via a socially integrated music discovery product. Aimed at brands and record labels alike, the Social Contest Suite syndicates musician actions including recording and fan actions such as voting through Facebook and other web properties to amplify authentic user-generated conversations. The toolset has been optimized with the help of user and client feedback to simplify the experience.

A common challenge that our music industry and brand clients face is how to connect with a larger audience via digital marketing campaigns. Indaba Musics Social Contest Suite provides marketers with a scalable solution by leveraging social networks and the traffic of their own, branded properties, said J.J. Rosen, Chief Executive Officer, Indaba Music. With this launch were uniquely positioned to painlessly connect brands and record labels with musical talent to create custom, unique content thats then amplified by millions of socially connected fans.

Indaba Music began developing its Social Contest Suite in late 2011 in response to the success of its Opportunity Marketplace programs and the growing consumption of music across social networks. Successful previous campaigns include Red Bull, Kate Spade NY, Alicia Keys and Staind. Designed to convert social actions into earned media, those campaigns averaged 27 minutes of listening per fan and a 500% increase in social actions per campaign that in turn earned each program over 20M digital impressions.

Providing new music to my fans on Facebook is exciting to take part in. It's fun to post photos and video clips, but it's a totally different proposition to bring fans into my creative process and invite them to collaborate through my music, said Matisyahu. With Indaba Music's Social Contest Suite I'm able to hear the collaborations from musicians all around the world and watch that creativity explode across a variety of social networks. I enjoy watching my fans share and interact with my music, something Indaba Music truly helps enable.

The Social Contest Suite includes the following product features:

About Indaba Music

Indaba Music first pioneered the online music collaboration space in 2007, enabling anyone with Internet access to connect with musicians from around the world to create, edit and mix studio-quality music online. Indaba Music now provides musicians with opportunities and reasons to make music including remix contests, sync and licensing opportunities, and branded marketing programs. Indaba Music currently boasts members from over 200 countries around the world.

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Indaba Music Launches Social Contest Suite Amplifying Music Marketing for Brands and Record Labels

Facebook loses GM's advertising business - does this have larger implications on the state of social media and e-ads?

Talk about poor timing: the same day that Bloomberg reported that Facebooks IPO is falling short of investors expectations, GM announces it has decided to pull all of its Facebook advertising. And thats no small account Facebook has lost it was a $10 million account.

According to the Wall Street Journal, GM decided to nix its Facebook campaign efforts after concluding the paid ads didnt significantly impact buyers. While the company says its business page is still a product it intends to invest in, it will no longer use the Facebook paid advertisement system.

This is bad news for Facebook for a few reasons. Losing an account especially a big one hurts, especially when its been made this public. But the larger impact is that this fuels the overvalued fire that just wont be extinguished. The skeptics have been crying foul since whispers of the word billions starting being thrown around: Facebook is big, sure, but its unproven. And a big part of all this caution has been uncertainly about the companys ad platform.

Facebook is trying to better corner mobile, where ads have been noticeably absent until recently. In fact Facebook recently edited its S-1 filing in order to reflect this change. Based upon our experience in the second quarter of 2012 to date, the trend we saw in the first quarter of DAUs increasing more rapidly than the increase in number of ads delivered has continued, an added section of the document reads. We believe this trend is driven in part by increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices where we have only recently begun showering an immaterial number of sponsored stories in News Feed, and in part due to certain pages having fewer ads per page as a result of product decisions.

Basically, Facebook user numbers are increasing but ads arent part of this is because of mobile growth, but youre certainly welcome to wonder if it also means the ratio of users to ad buyers is increasingly at odds.

Facebook isnt the only social site to raise eyebrows over ad monetization platforms. The stories of Twitters revenue struggles are almost as old as the site. Even after launching its self-serve ad platform, not everyone is convinced of its effectiveness as a marketing medium.

But theres a conflict here: Facebook and Twitter have the users these numbers are climbing, no doubt about it. And pundits continue to predict that social media ad spending will only increase. At the same time, there seems to be general confusion on making certain these campaigns are working. It doesnt help that while marketers are trying to adapt to this system, the likes of Facebook and Twitter are reinventing it. Everyones moving at different paces with different agendas, and considering the fact its not surprise that e-advertising has yet to hit its stride with even our most popular social networks.

So will this hurt the Facebook IPO? Dont get too caught up in the pre-May 18 (probably?) hype. Whether or not Facebook worked for GM, advertisers simply cannot and will not ignore it, but they might have to struggle with it. And because Facebook is Facebook, they will.

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GM pulls Facebook advertising amid growing concerns over social media marketing

General Motors has announced that it will no longer advertise its cars and trucks on Facebook according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The poor performance of GM ads on the social network isnt necessarily an indictment of Facebook advertising, though. It may just be the wrong thing to market on Facebook.

The beauty of Facebook--and Facebook marketing--is the social aspect of it all. A commercial like the post-apocalyptic Silverado ad GM ran during the 2012 Super Bowl has tremendous appealon television. However, a social network is a different medium entirely, and it takes a completely different strategy to conduct a successful marketing campaign.

Facebook will miss GM's $10 million, but not much.Facebook is about word-of-mouth. The value of marketing on a social network is the sharing between friends and family. One person tries a restaurant and likes it, and shares that experience with the rest of their social network. Someone finds a pair of shoes that are comfortable, and posts it online for everyone to see. That type of interaction is less likely for big-ticket items like cars, but its a gold mine for small businesses that cant afford Super Bowl ads.

One of my PCWorld peers shared research from a Wordstream research study indicating that the click-through rate of Google ads beats Facebook ten to one. Based on that information alone, it would seem that any business would be better off marketing with Google ads instead of Facebook.

Facebook is nowhere near as mature as Google--its primary rival--when it comes to online advertising. But, it has the audience, and that audience spends more of its online time engaged on the social network than doing anything else, so the potential is there. As Facebook evolves and expands its marketing options, it will be fertile ground for online advertising--just maybe not for General Motors.

Larger companies like General Motors, or Coca Cola, or McDonalds can still benefit from marketing on Facebook or other social networks, but it should probably be viewed from the context of brand penetration and recognition as opposed to trying to measure sales resulting directly from the ads. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, can hit the jackpot with the right Facebook marketing campaign, and word-of-mouth advertising of the social network.

The $10 million account was a lucrative advertiser for the social network, and the ad revenue will be missed. But, the loss of GM as an advertiser wont exactly break Facebook. Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011 from advertising, making GM a mere fraction of a percent of the overall pool.

You can follow Tony on his Facebook page, his Google+ profile, or contact him by email at tony_bradley@pcworld.com. He also tweets as @TheTonyBradley.

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Why Facebook Marketing Doesn't Work for GM

NEW YORK, May 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Buddy Media, the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world's top ten global advertisers, today announced many industry firsts as part of major enhancements to its social marketing suite. The enhancements -- including a unified social data API, conversion, campaign and goal tracking across paid, owned and earned social media efforts, and a new mobile content development platform enable brands to unify their social media programs with one enterprise social marketing suite.

"Social media marketing is anarchy right now within brands and agencies. Buddy Media is the only company to provide a unified solution that helps our customers to organize their teams, optimize their social programs to deliver real business results, and repeat," said Buddy Media Founder and CEO Michael Lazerow. "Buddy Media continues to lead the way in social marketing software, and our new product enhancements demonstrate why we are trusted by the largest brands, agencies, publishers, and retailers in the world."

Buddy Media is the only company to be named a charter Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, LinkedIn Certified Developer and Google Engagement Solutions partner. The company's new industry-leading enhancements include:

Unified Social Data API

Buddy Media is the only company to allow brands to break down siloes with a unified social data API for their social media presences, conversations and ads. Brands can now:

"It is essential for brands to be able to easily export all of their social data programmatically, and integrate it with existing CRM, email or other business process software, so social can be truly integrated into greater business decisions," said Lazerow. "It's another first for Buddy Media to be able to give brands all of their social data, across paid, owned and earned media in one API and one software solution."

Universal Comprehensive Conversion/ROI Tracking

Buddy Media is the first social marketing software company to launch universal conversion tracking across its entire social marketing suite. Brands can now see in real time which content is performing best, and specifically which social posts, applications and sharing activity drive the most conversions. For example, if a user posts several updates to a social stream that link to a Buddy Media social application, the user can track the conversions driven by each specific update, such as a form submission or a video view.

"It's not enough for brands and agencies to only know qualitative data such as shares and comments. They also need to know specifically which content is driving the most actions," said Lazerow. "With Buddy Media, you can now optimize content specifically for actions, not just engagement."

Mobile application platform

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Buddy Media Leads Industry Standards Forward With Unmatched Enterprise Social Marketing Suite Enhancements