Mediaboss Marketing

You heard social media networking was the key to an effective marketing campaign in todays digital world and jumped on the bandwagon. So, where are all those new customers and outstanding sales figures? Social networking, like everything else, has to be done correctly in order to be effective. Here are the most common mistakes companies make in social media, and how to take your suck to good luck.

Image via Flickr by Loozrboy

Are your posts and tweets blatant promotional content or something the readers see as valuable? For example, Check out our new products! is only going to attract the few readers who are already hooked on your stuff. Instead, try something like, 5 Things You Cant Do Without This Season. This statement builds interest and excitement without being in-your-face advertisement. After all, one of the reasons social media is more effective than traditional advertising is because it offers something of value not just a shameless promotion, which is quite easy for consumers to ignore.

Image via Flickr by Barmala

Do you set your Facebook page, Twitter feed and other social networking accounts to spit out automated content all day every day? If so, you can fully expect readers to completely ignore your stuff and quickly opt out of receiving your spammy messages. Thats one of the 10 ways to suck on Twitter. Readers want substance, not fluff. They dont care to hear drone messages, but they are interested in receiving up-to-date, meaningful information. For example, if youre selling widgets, give them great information about widgets. What are the safest widgets on the market? What size widget is best for your wing ding? When is the best time to buy a widget? Articles like these give the customer information they want and need, which builds goodwill between your company and your customers.

Image via Flickr by cooper.gary

Some companies just spit out information at consumers with no input and commentary from the people who matter most. Effective social media networking doesnt leave out the networking part its a two-way conversation. When people use social media,they want to communicate back. This means having staff members who respond and reply to comments, answer messages and let consumers know there really are humans behind that logo. Furthermore, the most successful companies in social marketing encourage comments and questions. Opinion polls, open-ended questions and other ways to illicit input from customers helps build relationships, not just advertisements.

Continued here:
Why You Suck At Social Media Networking

15 January 2013 Last updated at 13:24 ET By Dave Lee Technology Reporter

Facebook has announced a major addition to its social network - a smart search engine it has called graph search.

The feature allows users to make "natural" searches of content shared by their friends.

Search terms could include phrases such as "friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter".

Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg insisted it was not a web search, and therefore not a direct challenge to Google.

However, it was integrating Microsoft's Bing search engine for situations when graph search itself could not find answers.

Mr Zuckerberg said he "did not expect" people to start flocking to Facebook to do web search.

"That isn't the intent," he said. "But in the event you can't find what you're looking for, it's really nice to have this."

Earlier speculation had suggested that the world's biggest social network was about to make a long-anticipated foray into Google's search territory.

"We're not indexing the web," explained Mr Zuckerberg at an event at Facebook's headquarters in California.

More:
Facebook unveils social search tools

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Jan 15, 2013) - As technology matures and social networking grows increasingly ubiquitous, data from networks like Facebook and Twitter is increasingly used as a resource by app developers. More and more apps tap into the social signals provided by a user's social media feed, and use those signals to provide customized news headlines, social trend reports, product recommendations, and more. Not all of these social-assisted apps are created equal, however -- and, according to technology enthusiast Rich Gorman, a new app called NewsWhip has made great strides toward separating itself from its competitors. In a new statement to the press, Gorman offers acclaim to the NewsWhip app -- and opines on the future of social-assisted news aggregation.

"This is hardly the first app that draws from social media signals in order to provide users with personalized news and headlines," remarks Gorman, in his press statement. "However, the app's development team has taken some critical steps in ensuring that their product is different from the rest -- and in doing so, they have pointed to the future of social news-gathering."

As Gorman notes, NewsWhip is not the only app of its kind. Its most noteworthy competitor is Flipboard, a social news reader that gleans information from Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. The NewsWhip service is similar, but distinct in a few crucial ways -- most importantly, because rather than drawing only from the user's own social spheres, it pulls trending activity from social networking users more broadly, in an attempt to provide a more comprehensive, yet still concise, summary of the day's news and current events.

"This is ultimately a very different animal, because, unlike Flipboard, it is not necessarily aiming to tell users what their friends and acquaintances are talking about," Gorman explains. "Rather, it seeks to draw on social cues to condense the news and headlines of the day, providing users with insights into what people are actually talking about."

NewsWhip works by scouring social networks and picking up on the news stories that are most widely shared, tweeted, and "liked." Stories are divided into a variety of categories, such as business and tech, and the NewsWhip algorithm actively scans those stories that receive the most social media "heat," presenting them in a live stream for users to explore.

"While Flipboard and apps like it seek to show you what your friends are talking about, NewsWhip offers more objective insights into what's hot, both in the U.S. and abroad," comments Gorman. Indeed, in addition to classifying news stories by topic, NewsWhip also allows users to sort stories in terms of geography, revealing what is current and trending in ten different countries.

The NewsWhip app does offer some options for personalization. There is a function called "My Whips," which remembers which topics and sections of the app the user visits most frequently. The categories available include music, technology, movies, health, food, and celebrity gossip.

The goal of the app is ultimately to make it easy for mobile users to keep up with current events, in the categories of their choice. The development team has heralded the app as a new resource for those who wish to keep up with current news and happenings while riding on a train, waiting at a restaurant, or spending "a few minutes on the toilet."

According to Gorman, NewsWhip is a big step forward in digital news consumption. "This is one of the best efforts yet at condensing news into a palm-sized, engaging, and easy-to-read summary," he explains. "In this ever-active and increasingly mobile-oriented era, that is a formula for success."

Rich Gorman is a tech pundit and app enthusiast, active on Twitter @richgorman101.

More:
Rich Gorman Acclaims NewsWhip as Next Step in Social News-Gathering

January 15, 2013 22:01 PM

Social Networking A Risk To Children - MCMC

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 15 (Bernama) -- Social networking has been found to be risky to children, according to The Malaysian Internet Experience-Household Use of The Internet 2011 by Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) chairman.

MCMC Chairman Datuk Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi said according to the survey, 65.5 per cent of the respondents agreed that the social networking was risky to children, while 28.5 per cent have not agreed and 5.9 per cent were neutral.

"I see children aged eight to nine, having Facebook and putting all sorts of information.

"When we ask the kids the purpose of social network, they would say to keep in touch with friends and find information," he said when presenting a paper entitled Law and Activism in the 21st Century at the Transformation of Security and Fundamental Rights Legislation Conference, here Tuesday.

According to a survey on social network purposes, he said 69.7 per cent of respondents among teenagers wanted to stay in touch with friends, 64.6 per cent to find information, entertainment (60.1 percent), sharing experience (59.3 percent), socialise (58.8 percent), get opinions (53.7 percent) while 12 percent highlighted products and others (7.6 percent).

"Starting from friends, searching for information, having fun, sharing opinion and social. But irresponsible people also follow them and would try to influence the youth," he said adding that 85.21 per cent of penetration of online population have Facebook, and people aged between 18-24 were the highest.

Given the high percentage of children and teenagers using the social networking, Mohamed Sharil noted that parents and teachers were the most appropriate guardians to monitor their children's social networking activities.

He added that the survey in 2011 showed 92.5 percent of respondents agreed that parents should regulate their children's use of internet, 28 percent voted teachers while 25 percent put the responsibility to internet service providers and government, respectively.

Read more from the original source:
Social Networking A Risk To Children - MCMC

More clues

In 2009, researchers released the findings of a six-year HIV vaccine study carried out in Thailand known as RV144. Conducted among 16,000 HIV-negative men and women, the trial found that HIV infection rates were 31 percent lower among participants who received the vaccine than in those who had not.

It was an encouraging protection rate, but short of the minimum 50 percent prevention rate required to slow the epidemic, which afflicts an estimated 34 million people worldwide, according to researchers at Duke University in the US.

Now, researchers say they have a better understanding of why the vaccine might have worked - and possible new targets for future vaccines.

Released in a recent edition of the journal Immunity, the study found that the vaccine prompted an immune response from four different antibodies. Researchers from Duke University, the US Military HIV Research Programme and the Thailand Ministry of Public Health used data collected from three of the trials participants to determine that these antibodies worked on an important site on the surface of HIV-infected cells. These antibodies essentially marked infected cells for death by natural killer cells, part of the bodys immune response.

The research could change the way future HIV vaccines are designed.

According to study co-author and Duke Human Vaccine Institute director Barton Haynes, the findings show the importance of often ignored variable sites on the surface of infected cells for vaccine research. Traditionally, most researchers have shied away from pinning their hopes on such sites because they differ across strains of HIV, he told IRIN/PlusNews.

He cautions, however, that researchers cannot say for certain this kind of immune response was the reason behind the Thai trials limited success.

This study follows similar results from South African research that may have identified yet another novel vaccine target. The South African research looked at broadly neutralizing antibodies that target and bond with specific sugars, blocking the virus from infecting healthy cells. According to Haynes, an ideal HIV vaccine candidate would be able to induce both types of immune responses.

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Originally posted here:
HIV/AIDS: Groundbreaking vaccine research reveals more clues about HIV