A lot of the actions users take in Open Graph apps are going to involve commercial products or entities. People will be able to “watch” movies, “wear” designer items, “drink” beverages and so on. Most of these actions will not be taken within brand-specific apps. Instead they’ll be made via Rotten Tomatoes, Pose, Foodspotting and other third-party platforms. As a result, we may start to see more brands directing people to these apps. For example, a movie page on Facebook could link to the Rotten Tomatoes page after opening weekend and tell fans to rate the movie, knowing this will generate additional impressions among a user’s friends. Brands will also be more likely to partner with apps to offer promotions or be featured in some way now that their reach will be much greater. This is because instead of waiting for users to actively share things on Facebook, Open Graph apps can continuously publish lightweight stories about users’ activity. As a result, formerly niche communities like the aforementioned Pose or Foodspotting could become more viable marketing avenues.

Marketers might be tempted to create their own Open Graph apps, but they will need to think more long term than they previously have with Facebook. Timeline apps provide value through use over time, helping users share part of their identity or learn something about their own habits. These apps are not ideal for one-off promotions. If marketers create them solely to take advantage of “frictionless sharing,” users are likely to recognize them as spam.

Another important point about Open Graph apps is that since they benefit from users taking repeated action, they work well as mobile and web integrations not page tab apps. A few of Facebook’s more than 60 Open Graph partners developed canvas applications, but none were using page tabs. We suspect this is in part because tabs apps are unavailable on mobile and pages could be converted to the Timeline format sometime this year. Marketers should be mindful of how much they invest in page tab apps moving forward and instead consider what kind of Open Graph integration or partnerships would be most relevant for their consumers.

See our breakdown of Open Graph apps by category here.

Image credit: Facebook

The company announced Wednesday that it is integrating feeds from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) into Google Maps.

Providing a glimpse of how the program will work, Google offered the hypothetical example of a flood in Indiana. If you searched “flood Indiana,” you’d see a Google Maps page offering links to local flood-related businesses. However, if there were a flood warning, Google would state there was a “Flood Warning in Northern Indiana” and offer a “more info” link, which would lead to a page like this offering more details on the progress of the flood.

Google is also aggregating all its public alerts on www.google.org/publicalerts. The idea, according to Google, is to provide the public with better information to make decisions during a crisis. So far, however, the company doesn’t appear to be integrating dynamic data from its Google+ social network (or other social networks, like Twitter and Facebook), which might yield even more relevant data.

This isn’t the first time Google has attempted to use its dominance in search to aid public safety. In 2008, the company introduced Google Flu Trends, which analyzes search data to show where the flu is spreading. Last year, Google also rolled out Google Dengue Trends, which performs a similar service related to Dengue Fever.

Google also has a Crisis Response Team that focuses on providing information to the public during emergencies.

What do you think? Is Google offering a needed public service, or is this just an attempt to garner good pr? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, a.

More About: Google, Google Maps, Social Good

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Local businesses can learn a lot from the social media marketing strategies of large, national, or international businesses. But one of the reasons consumers love social media is for the personal experience it provides. Large companies have found ways to try work around the problem this presents for community managers who are clearly located elsewhere, while local businesses have a unique opportunity that doesn't often present itself in the face of giant corporations. If your local business isn't all over local social media opportunities like bees on honey, now's your chance to get started. And here are 8 creative ways to begin that cost you nothing but your time!

Creative Ways Local Businesses Can Use Social Media

1.) Complete all of your profile/page information. This is the least creative idea I'll give you, but the easiest to knock out of the park. As search gets more social, it's more and more likely your social profile could show up in search results. Make sure you've filled it out with adequate information about who you are, what you do, where people can find you, and how to get in touch with you. Of all the social media networks to consider when leveraging an organic search presence, Google+ is currently at the top of the pile. With its consistent incorporation of Google+ profile and page information into search results, brand presence on Google+ is quickly becoming a social media must.

2.) Monitor social media mentions. Of your brand; of related products and services; of your competitors. When people are talking about these things, you should be the first to respond with a coupon, information about your product or service, or just a helpful answer to their question. People use social media for real-time information, and if you're the one who provides the answer, you elevate yourself as a local thought leader. This tactic will help you generate new leads, close more deals, or just keep prospects, customers, and your community happy.

3.) Keep track of where your prospects and customers check in. Many local businesses leverage mobile check-ins via networks like Foursquare to encourage foot traffic. But you can also use it to identify potential affiliate opportunities. Where else are your customers checking in? If you know where they spend their time, you also know where you should be making your brand visible with things like guest blogging, paid advertising, referrals, and co-marketing opportunities.

4.) Do a little stalking. Check out your fans' and followers' profile information to see what they like, and edit adjust marketing activities and communications accordingly. This helps you create buyer personas, refine the style, tone, and content of your messaging, and ensure you're talking about the things your audience likes to prompt more social engagement.

5.) Become a resource for local events in your industry. Keeping your ear to the ground on events -- whether live or web-based -- that your audience would like to attend makes you an indispensable resource. Aggregate everything that's happening in your industry, and maintain groups on social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, or Circles on Google+ that keep interested parties up to date on can't-miss activities. And be sure to show up to these events, too; your future customers will be there!

6.) Maintain your presence on local review sites. Sites like Yelp! often appear among the top results in search engines. How does your reputation look? Consumers hold peer reviews in high esteem, and it's crucial that their first impression of you is positive. Plus, these sites help answer common questions for customers like addresses, hours of operation, and contact information that people are frequently checking on their mobile devices when on the go. You should be actively involved in maintaining your reputation on these sites by keeping your business information up to date, soliciting positive reviews from happy customers, and working to resolve issues with those who have posted negative reviews of your business.

7.) Ask your employees to use their social networks on your behalf. National companies may ask their employees to do this, but they won't reap as much benefit unless their employees connect with people that are overwhelmingly interested in their industry. Fat chance, right? But you know what people tend to have in common with lots of their connections? Location! If their networks know their friend or family member works for a local company, you can be sure they'll contact them the next time they need a local dentist, doctor, health food store, pet groomer, t-shirt maker, customized widget designer...well, you get the point.

8.) Connect with other local businesses and consumers. Get active in online conversations. Connect with people that live in your city and businesses who are doing cool things in your area (especially if they could act as a referrer of business!). It's important to stay locally connected and network with people even if they're not directly related to your industry; you never know when someone has a secret passion for something you offer or a need arises further down the line for your products and services. Local businesses can use social media to remain a fixture in their local online community and at their brick-and-mortal establishment.

How do you leverage social media to grow your local business? Share your creative tactics in the comments!

Image credit: alexliivet

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Together, social media channels and your website should work seamlessly to promote your online brand.

However, if you’re like most businesses, you’re probably missing out on potential interactions, impressions and ultimately sales.

In this article, I’ll dive into a quick how-to guide to ensure your business website and social media platforms are working together to maximize your online exposure.

I’ve included examples from small- to medium-sized businesses that specialize in a whole host of fields to illustrate that you don’t have to be one of the big players to take advantage of these simple tips.

#1: Include Visible Social Media Buttons

This seems like a no-brainer, but double-check. Best practices suggest that social media buttons be displayed on the top, bottom or along the side of your home page. Links or buttons that remain in your navigation as the user moves from page to page are optimal.

To ensure that users don’t exit your web page altogether, you may want to create the buttons or links so that they open your social media pages in new windows.

Also, do not feel obligated to link out to all social media channels you’ve created or dabbled in. If you’re fonder of Twitter and have completely abandoned your Facebook page, there’s no reason to link to any outlet that is not being actively managed. In fact, linking out to inactive channels can ultimately cause more harm than good.

There are several ways in which to display your buttons or links and none of them are wrong. In this case, it is more of a design preference focused on how the user will be interacting with the site.

Below are some examples of ways in which websites have successfully displayed their social media outlet(s).

Big and bold button catches your eye.

This eCommerce site specializing in alternatives to dog and horse supplements only links out to Facebook and chooses to do so in a big and bold manner.

Subtle buttons suit some sites well.

This farm credit services business subtly displays their social media buttons at the bottom of their page.

Front-and-center buttons ensure visibility.

This artist decides to feature his along the top.

#2: Integrate Social Where it Makes Sense

If you use social media to keep your customers or clients apprised of your recent happenings and are actively managing your outlets on a daily or bi-weekly basis, it might be wise to showcase your Twitter feed or Facebook posts directly on your website.

Linking out or displaying inactive social media channels will only cripple your online efforts. If you choose to go this route, it is important that you maintain your presence.

Below are two examples of how vastly different businesses (a web design firm and an online gift card site) have integrated their social media feeds into their websites.

On this site, tweets are visible along the right-hand side throughout the website. Tweets vary from deals and contests to interactions with followers and customer service responses.

On this B2B site, recent tweets are found at the bottom of the homepage and are mostly comprised of industry-related blogs, recent events and projects in which they've participated.

These businesses vary significantly in what they do and the way they make use of social media, but both have found a logical method of incorporating social media into their sites.

#3: Include Up-to-Date Buttons

Social media changes fast—dare we say in real time? So if you added your buttons a year ago, they are probably palling around with the dinosaurs. Facebook fans morphed into Likes, group pages died, +1 is spanking new and LinkedIn improved significantly. Do research to find the most current social media terminology so you don’t get caught mumbling about “The Facebook” and “The Twitter.”

Social Media Examiner stays up to date.

In order to maintain credibility within this ever-changing realm, it is important to stay with the times. However, staying up to date with your terminology does not mean that you need to jump on every platform that springs up. It is important to be tactful with your social media choices and do your research before blindly forging into unknown territory.

#4: Include Share Buttons

If you sell a product or run a full-fledged eCommerce site and you haven’t added share buttons to your product pages, you are missing out on a whole host of potential social impressions.

Share buttons should enable website-goers to seamlessly share or recommend a product.

If you find yourself hard up for a broad solution for this, check out AddThis or ShareThis. Both provide efficient and easy-to-use solutions for social media sharing across eCommerce sites with the added benefit of analytics to see how the content is getting shared.

As illustrated below, these buttons are easy to see.

The easier you make it for customers to share your product, the better.

Similar to eCommerce sites, if you have resources, articles, a blog or other valuable content on your site, you should attempt to make it as simple as possible for readers to share it with others. Social media share buttons should be displayed somewhere easy to see. Nicholas Creative does a decent job with this, as seen on their blog below.

If you enjoy an article, you won't want to keep it to yourself.

#5: Use Analytics

Pay attention to the way in which individuals are using your social media buttons by tapping into Google Analytics. How many people are actually clicking on your outbound social media links?

An easy way to explore this is by setting up Event Tracking in Google Analytics. If you’re unfamiliar with Event Tracking, Google provides a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate the correct codes into your site.

Google Analytics allows you to track the number of individuals who click on outbound links by setting up Event Tracking.

If you find that few individuals explore your social media outlets once landing on your page, perhaps your social media buttons aren’t in a convenient location. It’s always best to have actual numbers to back up your choices.

#6: Pay Attention to Terms and Conditions

This goes hand in hand with staying up to date and knowledgeable, but I continue to see major brands using social media in ways that violate platforms’ terms and conditions.

You cannot use Google+ for contest entries, a personal Facebook page shouldn’t be used to operate a brand and there are certain rules to adhere to when running a promotion on Facebook.

The way you use social media reflects on your website, as well as your brand as a whole. If you’ve accidentally violated some terms and conditions in the past, delete those pages and do not link out to them even in the interim.

I'm not sure what Pita Pit is doing with this personal Facebook page or if it was created by an unaffiliated party. Whatever the case may be, steer clear of using a personal page as a brand page.

#7: Don’t Over-Do It

You want to make sure that compelling information is easily shareable, but littering social media share buttons all over your webpage isn’t the way to go. Before adding share buttons to a page, ask yourself, “Is there information here that people would find worth sharing?”

If you find yourself on your “About Us” page and don’t see any added value to website-goers being able to share your administrative assistant’s contact information, then forgoing buttons in this instance is totally acceptable.

#8: Stay Knowledgeable

Don’t get it twisted. With the changing social media landscape and array of rollouts these days, it is easy to confuse social media features. Keep in mind:

• You won’t be directing individuals to your Facebook page by installing a Facebook “Like” button on a specific website page. Instead, you are allowing individuals to “Like”/share the information, content or product that is found on that specific website page. There is no correlation between Liking a specific website page and directing users to “Like” your branded Facebook page.
• Similarly, directing individuals to your Google+ brand page is different than adding a +1 button to a page. At this time, there is no correlation between the two.

As illustrated below on this pool supplies website, social media pages and social media share buttons can be found on the same page. Verbs such as “Tweet” and “Share” often help distinguish between share buttons and social media pages.

Be sure you know the difference.

#9: Use Social Media Insights Alongside Google Analytics

Many types of software allow you to see your social media insights alongside your web analytics in order to pick up on trends and to better understand the successes or failures of campaigns.

SproutSocial allows users to compare web analytics and social media reporting information from specific timeframes side by side. Being able to see the way in which your social media and website analytics relate proves useful in establishing goals, measuring successes and identifying areas in which you can improve.

Here's an example of the correlation between website traffic and a social media campaign via a SproutSocial report.

There you have it—a quick-and-dirty guide on immediate steps you can take to make your social media and business website play nice.

Do you have any tips or things to avoid at all costs? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

This week, we asked: If a social media public relations crisis were to hit your brand tomorrow, do you think you would be prepared to respond effectively? The results:

• We have the capacity to respond, but there’s no formal plan in place: 63.81%
• We wouldn’t know it was happening until we read about it in the media: 15.24%
• Yes, we have a well-documented social media crisis-control strategy: 15.24%
• We’re monitoring social channels but lack the capacity for a response: 5.71%

If it can happen to McDonald’s, it can happen to you. The fast food chain recently found itself in hot water after its promoted trend on Twitter was turned into an opportunity to mock the company. McDonald’s pulled the trend after two hours. Some people have criticized the brand for ending up in that position in the first place, but think about how much worse things could have been if the company hadn’t been aware of how users were responding to the promoted trend and willing to take quick, decisive action. Two hours is long enough that pulling the trend isn’t a knee-jerk reaction, and the company didn’t make the mistake of trying to feed the trolls — engaging in rational debate with people who are out only for attention. But the company acted early enough to keep the abuse from truly going viral — and its response since then has been consistent and appropriate. You can argue about whether the company should have used the promoted trend at all, but once things began to go south, its response was right on point.

But what about you? If your social media presence were hijacked or a damaging news story broke about your company or a customer service complaint started to go viral, would you be prepared to respond in a cool, disciplined manner? Most of you say you’ve got the means to respond but no plan for how you’d react. And that’s a problem. Because when it comes to social media, he who hesitates is lost. Speed is important, but so is consistency and calm. And those are attributes you can get only from having a well-considered social media crisis-response plan.

Maybe it’s the word “plan” that frightens people. This doesn’t have to be a major undertaking: Having a social media crisis plan means everyone knows his or her role. If you don’t have a plan yet, try asking yourself:

• Who is supposed to be monitoring social channels for signs of trouble? How is the person doing this?
• If something went wrong, who would have the authority to respond?
• If that person is unavailable, how is that authority delegated?
• What kind of negative reaction does the company need to respond to, and which ones are better left alone?
• What’s the official company line for common complaints about the brand?

Now, knowing the answers to those questions isn’t the same as having a social media plan. But it’s a start. You can hammer out the answers to those questions in an afternoon meeting and use them as provisional guidelines while you work on a more formal plan. That way, you won’t be caught flatfooted, even if trouble comes looking for you.

How are you preparing to respond to negative publicity on social media channels?

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• 5 ways social music tools can build brands and boost business

These five cities bring the total number of locales where Google Offers is available to 38.

Furthermore, this number will soon be 40, as two more cities – Oklahoma City and Omaha – are on the “coming soon” list.

For starters, Google is offering a beer tasting deal in Charlotte, cheap burgers in Milwaukee and a deal on Greek cuisine in Tampa.

You can check all the debut deals for the new cities here and sign for the service over at www.google.com/offers.

Image courtesy of Flickr, joi

More About: daily deals, Google, Google Offers, groupon

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Facebook’s steady march to global Timeline coverage just turned into a dash — and it’s really the users who are running.

By making Facebook Timelines the new de facto standard for all Facebook profiles, in effect, the company just held up a starter pistol and yelled “Go! You have seven days to reach the finish line before we completely change the track!”

That’s right, everyone has just one week to get their social media houses in order before Facebook moves the furniture (something we’d heard Facebook did not want to do).

Now, you may get slightly more than seven days. Even though Facebook is no longer offering a choice, the countdown clock to Timline-ification doesn’t start until the “activate” button appears atop your profile page.

Once it does, you have just one week to prepare. Facebook (and Mashable) can give you lots of advice about how to hide those embarrassing posts from your virtual biography.

That’s not what this column is about. I’m more concerned with why Facebook suddenly decided a mad dash to rollout completion made more sense than ambling along with occasional conversions.

Is Facebook just super-confident about the global reception to its profile makeover? Millions must have already converted, either by forcing the change through publicly available development tweaks last fall or by clicking the button this winter.

I don’t think that’s why, though. I’ve met a lot of people who like—even love—timeline, but also almost an equal number who are confused or appalled by it. In my own home, my son likes it, but my wife and daughter hate it.

Some folks I’ve spoken to said that, given the chance, they would never switch. Others told me they simply abandoned Facebook and set up camp on Google+.

Facebook must know that putting a ticking clock in front of users is bound to make very few of them happy, yet here it is, stop watch in hand. Here’s my theory.

The rather confusing Timeline apps environment isn’t very effective without it. Facebook made a decent sized splash last week with the introduction of 60 new app partners.

Facebook apps and games are not new. Neither are apps in Timeline (Foursquare already got there). But conducting most of your day-to-day activities, like watching movies, sharing content, reading news, eating out, and more — that’s a new wrinkle.

None of this has quite the same impact without Timeline. During last week’s event, Facebook made it clear that these apps and your activities around them would live on the Timeline. They’d be summarized in a special section of it.

For these Apps’ activities to show up in your timeline, you need only install and allow them once. Then they and the gestures they generate become a part of the fabric of your Timeline—a piece of your growing biography.

I can see it now: “Poor, Charles, I’ll miss him. Remember when he used to tell jokes? Remember when he would take us all out to dinner? Where was that? Oh, wait, here it is on his Timeline. And there’s the music he was listening to right before he …”

The real reason Facebook is pressing so hard on Timeline now is that it really needs to prove to app partners like Slacker, Payvment, TripAdvisor, TicketFly, Wall Street Journal, Airbnb, and others that this is a real platform. They have to prove the ecosystem has just as much relevance as, say, Android, Windows or Apple’s iOS.

Facebook execs, who may be noticing slowed growth in the U.S., realize the time to strike is now. Google is raising the stakes in the platform space, consolidating services and boxing out Facebook and Twitter.

If Facebook does not pull its users in closer and make sure they spend as much time as possible on Facebook, sharing everything they do, those users could share everything elsewhere.

And those of you who are not ready to make the switch to Facebook Timeline? Sorry. You are casualties of a social networking platform and ecosystem war, one that will likely continue for the rest of this decade.

All that’s now guaranteed about our social networking experiences is battle after battle, and change after change.

Do you agree, or do you think there are other reasons for the hurry up to Facebook Timeline? Let me know in the comments.

Bonus: How to Fill in Your Facebook Timeline

1. The Timeline Menu Bar

As you scroll down your new Timeline, a floating menu bar will appear at the top of your screen. Use it to add new events.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Facebook, timeline, trending