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It's no secret that media companies have a complicated relationship with Facebook .

The social networking giant pulls in billions of advertising dollars at a time when more traditional news publishers are scrambling to boost their online ad revenues. Those same media players are also desperate for the web traffic that can come from placing their content in front of Facebook's 2 billion users though, there have also been some debate over just how much that Facebook-derived traffic is worth to publishers.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, BuzzFeed wrote about a practice in which it claims a growing number of businesses are paying Facebook to promote positive news stories from publishers as sponsored posts. As BuzzFeed points out, rather than spend marketing money on a traditional online ad campaignwhich would involve paying someone to create an ad and then paying to place it on Facebook, or another social website, or even with the publishers who so desperately need the ad dollarsbusinesses are sending more of that money to Facebook to promote content created for free by publishers.

The BuzzFeed piece points to several recent examples of this practice, including one where a sponsored Facebook post pointed to a positive BBC article about mattress startup Casper. Another example comes from anonymous work chat app Blind, which says it paid Facebook to promote an article from Mashable. BuzzFeed's point being that, while those media companies likely saw a slight uptick in web traffic from those sponsored posts, the advertising dollars went to Facebook.

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BuzzFeed did not report any numbers that would indicate exactly how prevalent this type of marketing is on Facebook. (An executive at Blind told the publication anecdotally that he knows of other startups who are promoting positive stories on Facebook, calling the tactic "probably the best form of awareness building, community building, and user acquisition there is.")

Fortune reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this post as needed.

The practice is an example of just one of the ways how news publishers face an uphill battle when competing with the social networking service for online advertising dollars.

Facebook has been working to improve its relationship with publishers who may be unsure about the benefits of providing the social site with so much content. The social network launched its "Journalism Project" earlier this year, aiming to curb the amount of "fake news" articles on the platform and to figure out ways to help the news industry benefit from distributing its content via Facebook. Last week , Facebook said it is working with publishers to begin testing a paid subscription news service with a paywall, though Fortune has noted that media companies depending too heavily on Facebook for traffic and money could be placing themselves in an uncomfortable position.

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Companies Are Paying Facebook to Promote Positive Press - Fortune

Social media's presence in the sales world is an old story by now, but the latest figures suggest its power in the space is stronger than you might think.

LinkedIn recently gave me an early look at the findings from their second annual State of Sales Report for 2017. (You can download the PDF of the report directly here.) The study surveyed 2,000 business-to-business professionals based in the U.S. about how they perceive technology is impacting sales. Some of it's to be expected: Investment in sales tools is up, cold phone calls are less effective, and the majority of people consider technology important to closing deals.

What did surprise me, though, was how much social is changing sales--especially our expectations around how salespeople should conduct relationships with customers.

It makes sense when you think about how drastically social has changed other areas of work and life. The question is, how can we use our social tools to better meet those expectations in our client relationships?

Here are some of the most interesting figures from the LinkedIn study, along with some steps you can take to incorporate these new ideas into your daily sales work.

The study noted that 94 percent of the respondents said they get "valuable insights" about customers from social networks. So if you're not immediately hitting the social networks to research potential customers, you're doing your sales relationships a disservice. Seventy-seven percent of study respondents said they won't engage with people who don't know their business. That doesn't leave much room for forgiveness if you send a cold email or go to a meeting not knowing the basics of your potential customer's business.

CREDIT: LinkedIn

LinkedIn vice president of products and marketing Justin Shriber had an even more surprising stat when we spoke over the phone. "When people send out an InMail [LinkedIn's version of email], if there's a personalized note associated with it, where [the salesperson] pulled something from the profile of the buyer or introduced another kind of information that makes email unique, the respondents are five times more likely to respond."

How do you find and choose that kind of compelling information? In my experience, that's where "e-stalking" comes in handy. Look closely at the other person's "About" section on LinkedIn to see how they describe themselves. Note how they talk about their roles, past and present. Comb through their skills and endorsements to see what technologies they regularly use. Elsewhere, note what they tweet about, who they follow, and if they share information on smaller, industry-specific social networks.

You've heard stories about recruiters scanning candidates' social-media profiles before interviews. Turns out, potential buyers use that practice, too. Over half (62 percent) of the study's respondents said they look for "an informative LinkedIn profile" when they consider talking with a specific salesperson. Meanwhile, 69 percent of Millennial buyers are more likely to connect with salespeople who have a professional online presence.

Those figures boil down to a simple conclusion: Your professional social networking is hugely important to your job.

There are always opportunities to improve that presence. Pack your LinkedIn job history with interesting details and accomplishments, and consider writing something in your summary to help people get to know you.

You probably shouldn't share photos from that crazy Halloween party on LinkedIn, but appropriate personal details can make you seem human. I have a friend who posted about his love of baseball only to discover several of his clients feel the same way. He now regularly uses ballgames to close deals.

One of the most surprising things in this study was that today's buyers appear to value trust over price, strategic counsel, or even return on investment (ROI).

CREDIT: LinkedIn

Thirty-nine percent of respondents answered that "trust in our relationship" was the most important factor for closing a deal, while only 33 percent answered "return on investment," and only 13 percent answered "price." While any good salesperson understands that it's important to win a customer's trust in order to win new business, most people might not expect 3x more buyers would care about trust than price. This is an important finding, as any business can theoretically lower their price to win new customers, while trust takes much greater effort to build and can easily be destroyed, making the salesperson's job more critical than ever.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the study found 43 percent of respondents view salespeople as "trustworthy," 31 percent say they have "high integrity," and buyers increasingly consider salespeople to be "trusted advisers."

Those facts mark a positive shift in our perception of salespeople, who too often get stereotyped as aggressive frat boys willing to sacrifice morals and integrity for a dollar.

But if you want to be seen as a trusted adviser, your behavior has to live up to the label. That's especially true on social media, where potential customers can view every click, Like, and post you make.

To that end, use common sense. If you post about "the dying publishing industry" but back that claim up with bad data, people will call you out on the error. Ranting will not make you look passionate about a topic, just arrogant and possibly stupid. And never, ever talk about your clients on social media. A friend of mine once tried to skirt this rule by anonymizing the client in the post. She ended up losing money and trust with that client and others.

The moral of the story is, transparency is great when it comes to learning about one another in a sales relationship, but use it wisely. Whatever you say online should be something you would stand behind later on.

A word of caution: Social-media activity like this should never replace a cold email or in-person meeting altogether. There's no guarantee someone will care about knowing you just because they accepted an "invitation to connect." Using social media for sales doesn't mean doing less work in your client relationships. And in fact, spending extra time each week with these tools will likely give you more relevant contacts, higher open rates, and, ultimately, a stronger presence in your customers' lives.

What tactics do you have for using social media in your sales relationships? I'd love to hear about them.

The rest is here:
Why Your Sales Strategy Needs to Become a Social-Media Strategy, Immediately - Inc.com

(Thinkstock Images)Roposo, the fashion social network that gives its users a chance to share their style stories via blogs, video links, and infographics to inspire and get inspired is now a case study on the reputed Harvard Business Publishing platform. The study focuses on how the fashion social network has matured from being a discovery platform to an ultimate lifestyle social network for Indian consumers.

Chirantan Chatterjee, former faculty at IIM-B and faculty member at Indian School of Business, has co-authored the case study with Reechal Vardhan, product manager at Roposo and IIM-B alumnus. In the synopsis of the study, titled On innovation and entrepreneurship in growing Asian digital markets, the authors have stated that niche social networking platforms like Roposo bring social media and online shopping together by allowing its users to not only look at stories or videos posted by people but also to buy similar looking clothes or accessories, as per their preference.

The case study also looks at how Roposo germinated from the founding team's prior venture Giveter that provided the team unique insights on consumer behaviour, product development, dynamic capabilities, and network economies. This case study takes it forward to a point where in the last few quarters, with social-selling as a paradigm being explored by the likes of Facebook and WhatsApp, Roposo tries to reinvent itself - considering whether to enter the social selling space or to strategically focus on further deepening its base on pure play social networking.

Adding to this, Reechal Vardhan, product manager at Roposo, said, "Roposo has had an incredible journey so far and I am extremely happy to share it's story with the world, along with Professor Chatterjee. Being an MBA myself, I can appreciate the value a case-study like this could add to classroom discussions - through which students will get an insight to innovation in the Indian start-up landscape and the strategic decisions that we have to take in our day-to-day operations."

According to Professor Chatterjee, faculty member at Indian School of Business, "Roposo proved to be an ideal case to examine the challenges and opportunities for home-grown social platforms in entrepreneurial pivoting, building dynamic capabilities, and maintaining strategic focus when there is a US Facebook, a Chinese Weibo, or Japanese Mixi."

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Fashion social network Roposo is now a Harvard case study - ETBrandEquity.com

Teenagers in Britain are fortunate to have access to computers, laptops and smartphones from an early age. A child in the UK receives a smartphone at around the age of 12 among the earliest in Europe. The natural consequence of this is that children spend a significant amount of their time on the internet.

Nearly 20 years or so since the first social networks appeared on the internet, there has been considerable research into their psychological, societal and health effects. While these have often been seen as largely negative over the years, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

A recent report from the Education Policy Institute, for example, studied childrens use of the internet and their mental health. The report found that teenagers value social networks as a way of connecting with friends and family, maintaining their networks of friends, and long distance connections. Teenagers see social networking as a comfortable medium for sharing their issues and finding solutions to problems such as social isolation and loneliness. They are also more likely to seek help in areas such as health advice, unknown experiences, and help with exams and study techniques.

Social networks afford the opportunity to find people with similar interests, or to support teamwork in school projects. In unsettled economic and political times, teenagers use social networks as a means to be heard and to get involved in political activism, as well as volunteering and charitable activities.

Teenagers also leverage social networks to engage with creative projects, and many young artists are first noticed through the exposure offered by the rich networking opportunities of social media, such as musicians on MySpace or photographers on image-sharing sites Flickr or Behance. Teenagers looking to pursue careers in art or other creative industries turn to social platforms in order to create their portfolios as well as to create with others.

These opportunities have a positive impact on adolescent character formation and the development of their individual identity, and helps them toward choosing a career path. These choices are made at an early age and to this end social networks are enriching young peoples lives.

Risks not to be ignored

On the other hand the report was able to list a substantial list of negative influences stemming from social media use, ranging from time wasting and addictive, compulsive use, to cyber-bullying, radicalisation, stress and sexual grooming to name just a few.

Unsurprisingly, governments are concerned with the impact of social networking on the vulnerable. Concern over the uncontrolled nature of social networking has prompted action from parents and politicians. The issue of children roaming freely on social networks became an issue in the recent UK general election, and was mentioned in the Conservative Party manifesto, which made a key pledge of safety for children online, and new rights to require social media companies to delete information about young people as they turn 18. This is a tall order, as it would require erasing tens of millions of teenagers profiles on about 20 different social platforms, hosted in different countries worldwide.

The Conservatives also suggested the party would create a power in law for government to introduce an industry-wide levy from social media companies and communication service providers to support awareness and preventative activity to counter internet harms. Awareness-raising is an important step towards encouraging conscious social media use among the young. But despite continuing efforts to educate youngsters about the dangers (and, to be fair, the benefits) of using social media, many are wary of the impact technology may have on overly social teenagers once outside parental control.

It has been shown that teenagers increasingly use social networks in private, leaving parents outside environments where children are exposed to real-time content and largely unguarded instant communications. The concern raised in the report that responses to protect, and build resilience in, young people are inadequate and often outdated is timely. While schools are tasked with educating teenagers about the risks of social media, very few parents are able to effectively introduce controls on the content their children access and monitor the evolving threats that operate online.

Speak their language

A recent study of compulsive social media use showed that it is not the users age that matters, but their individual motivations. In fact, users who are highly sociable and driven by friends towards compulsive social media use suffer physically and socially. On the other hand, when users are driven by hedonic (fun-seeking) motivations, their physical health and sociability improves. This explains why teenagers in the UK see social networking as a positive phenomenon that enriches their social life. There is clearly potential to harness these positives.

While the tech giants that run the social networks with billions of users must play their part to ensure the safety of their youngest users, it is also parents role to talk openly with their children about their use of social networks and demand expected standards of use. Teenagers have questions about life and are looking for answers to their problems as they go through a challenging time of life.

With the Prime Minister naming mental health as a key priority schools, parents, politicians and social networking platforms should help teenagers to build resilience to what they encounter online and how it makes them feel, rather than adopting only a safeguarding approach. Its interesting to note that 78 per centof young people who contact the organisation Childline now do so online: teachers, family and friends providing support should make the most of a medium with which todays children and teenagers are comfortable.

Vladlena Benson is an associate professor, department of accounting, finance and informatics, Kingston University. This article was originally published on The Conversation (www.theconversation.com)

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Social media genie won't go back in the bottle, so we must teach youngsters to use it wisely - The Independent

For some, social media networks are nothing more than a fun way to pass the time. But for others, they can become an addiction. This unhealthy behavior can take a toll on families. Thats what lead one Colombian teenager to seek treatment.

CGTNs Michelle Begue reports from Bogota.

Seventeen-year-old Andrea Barrios stayed up till 3:30 in the morning on her cell phone. For Barrios, conversations through social media sites, like Facebook and messaging apps, were the only way to communicate.

I became supremely intolerant, and impatient, she explained. I stopped interacting with my family.

Barrios realized she needed help when she began to feel insecurities that were amplified by social networking. She voluntarily sought a month- long treatment at a Colombian foundation. The Criar Foundation treats a range of addictions, from drugs and alcohol, to social media technology.

Last year, data research group eMarketer estimated there were 2.34 billion social network users worldwide. That was an increase from 2015. There are no statistics on how many of those users are addicted to networking sites, but there are studies on these sites mental health impact on youth.

The child who is addicted to social networks has a fractured self esteem, which means if they arent finding attention from their family life, they look for it in social networks, psycologistCamila Quinones of the Criar Foundation explained.

According to Quinones, treating social network addiction is different from other substances because of its popular use in modern society.

In the case of drug addiction it is different, because you can take away that substance more easily. But in a Colombian middle class society, almost everyone has internet. That makes it very difficult to abstain,Quinones said.

After a month-long rehabilitation, the challenge for patients like Barrios will be to follow the limits set on social networking use. For now, she said she doesnt feel the immediate urge.

I feel peace now, Ive come to realize I dont need a cellphone to live, she said.

Doctors have said prevention of abuse and healthy coping strategies may be the wisest way to move forward from social media addiction.

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Colombian teen seeks out treatment to combat social media addiction - CGTN America (blog)