Facebook

• Facebook has introduced clickable hashtags. “Similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest, hashtags on Facebook allow you to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a larger discussion,” the company said in a blog post. 360i writes about the implications for marketers; SteamFeed has some hashtagging bonus tips for business brands.

Twitter

• Twitter has opened up its various analytics tools to the public, giving all Twitter users access to data about the people and brands who follow them, as well as the performance of their most recent tweets. (The Next Web).

Social Commerce on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

• Social commerce platform Chirpify announced that its members can now accept credit and debit cards, as well as send and accept automated clearing house (ACH) payments, making it possible for users to make purchases with a single comment on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. (AllTwitter)
  

Instagram

• Wish you could make prints of some of those gorgeous Instagram shots you’re sharing? Printicular lets you make prints of your digital photos and pick them up at your local Walgreens. The app has a special 4×4 or 8×8 Instagram format; you can also use print photos from your Facebook, Flickr, and Dropbox accounts. (MediaBistro)

MySpace

• MySpace has relaunched as a site focused on entertainment that combines social networking with streaming music. The new MySpace includes features aimed at helping musicians, writers and other artists connect with their followers, an app and a radio function. (AP) According to a video released by the company, it’s also a good place to smash some amplifiers.

Please email marissa@modernmedia.co if you have additional updates, or a social network that you feel should be on the list.

Snapchat Users Share 150 Million Photos Daily — More Than Instagram

Business Insider has issued a report, How Teen Mobile Behavior Threatens To Upend The Tech Industry, that breaks out the market share of the various social photo sharing platforms.

As of April 2013, the number of photos shared daily on Snapchat averaged 150 million, up from 50 million in December 2012–a surge of 200% in just 4 months. This is far more than Instagram’s 40 million daily uploads. Not surprisingly, Facebook remains the leader in photo sharing, with 350 million photos uploaded daily by the social network’s 655 million daily active users.

If a photo is shared but then quickly deleted, does the service still have potential for brand marketers?

Oscar Mayer‘s #SayitWithBacon campaign, a play on saccharine jewelry commercials (i.e. #SayitWithDiamondRing) , suggests that “when words aren’t enough,” you give your loved one a box of Oscar Mayer bacon strips. But it’s not only bacon dad gets – there are three unique gift packages offering a special non-bacon-gift within: “The Commander”, which comprises a stainless-steel money-clip engraved with the words “Bring’ it Home”; there’s “The Matador”, which is a set of bacon-strip cufflinks; and “The Woodsman”, which includes a 12-function multi-tool with, you guessed it, a bacon strip carved into the handle.

All packages arrive as a velvet box containing a pack of Oscar Mayer bacon, with special gift enclosed. 360i, the firm that pushed Oreo into the social media fray, is to thank for the brand consciousness becoming one with the bacon-frenzy consciousness.

Sears‘ long-running #GrillingisHappiness campaign asks Twitter followers to submit stories and participate in a live Twitter party to share Father’s Day plans, and show off each other’s best grilling practices via live chat. Not only is #GrillingisHappiness the retailer’s social media campaign, it’s also a full-fledged online community of grilling specialists and professionals (according to Sears), where visitors can learn new techniques on the art of grilling – as well as other tricks of the outdoor entertainment trade. Recent blog entries on www.grillingishappiness.com have been Father’s Day related, so you know Sears is serious about this holiday.

Dick’s Sporting Goods, as part of their #GreatestGift Twitter campaign, is flying a lucky father and his child of choice (limited to one child per father) to one of five destinations to spend some quality bonding time together either fishing, golfing, hunting, watching baseball, or riding off-road vehicles. Other than making sure their dads are up for these potentially strenuous adventures, contestants should follow the prompts here in order to win. The trip choices are broken up into activity categories: “Baseball” (a trip to the 2013 World Series), “Fishing” (in Alaska), “Golf” (tour of the Golf Channel studios and a trip to Ponte Vedra Beach), “Hunting” (South Dakota’s Cheyenne Ridge Signature Lodge and $500 of hunting apparel), and “Outdoor” (Colorado’s Gateway Canyons).

The NRA (National Rifle Association) is giving away a knife, a hat, and a “shooting vest” for Father’s Day – as well as a “Don’t Tread on Me” package – all part of their #NRAgiveaway campaign. They’ve had little positive engagement with followers so far, and, as in the case of the Tweet I’m embedding here, the campaign is generating some negative feedback, too.

@NRA Yea! Win a gun for dad. Increase your chances of losing a family member! What a blast!

— Radical Rib (@RadicalRib) June 12, 2013

Net-A-Porter‘s men’s style destination Mr. Porter, opened up a competition to its followers on Instagram, prompting contestants to post a photo of their “sartorially smart father” and mention @MrPorter and #DapperDad. The winner receives an Aesop Grooming Kit, and subsequent bragging rights over all of his friends’ unkempt fathers. Unfortunately the competition has already ended, but you can always play the #WristGame at Men’s Health, which has the potential to create a photographic encyclopedia of people’s wrist fashion (finally).

Saving $7 on a Father’s Day gift is a dad-approved move! RT if u’r giving Dad a power brush from Oral-B. #powerofdad http://t.co/gI7X0Xg5mC

— Oral-B (@OralB) June 13, 2013

Oral-B released an only-on-YouTube video, as part of their #PowerofDad Twitter campaign, compiling a chronology of touching moments between fathers and children, beginning with scenes of dads and babies and ending with a dad giving away his daughter at the altar (not the sacrificial kind, though). Apart from this very sweet online-only ad, Oral-B has been fervently engaging followers on Twitter over the past week, encouraging them to participate in the #powerofdad hashtag by speaking highly of their fathers on Twitter and mentioning #powerofdad. From an engagement perspective, it was easily one of the most successful Father’s Day campaigns on Twitter this year, telling some of us, perhaps, that one of the strongest memories we have of our fathers is the one where he first yells at us to brush our teeth.

Which of these campaigns is your favorite? And how will you be celebrating Father’s Day?

Scriball users to start a story by selecting a theme—such as action, comedy, fan-fiction, etc.—and then piecing together parts of the story. Users then share the story online to allow collaborators to contribute to the piece. Members of the community are able to vote for the lines that work best, and the winning lines are added to the final story.

How Scriball Works

People can release their creative side to a public community and receive contributions from other creative writers. Story writing becomes much less of a solo act and more of a group effort.

What is the motivation behind the collaborative storytelling app? Scriball CEO John Volturo wants to use his storytelling and community-building experiences to renovate the way the world sees traditional content creation.

“Scriball will transform the way we share and post stories by merging the work of creative minds into one story,” says John.

Previously limited to only iOS users, Scriball is looking to crowdfund through Kickstarter in order to raise a budget to produce a Desktop version of the app. Scriball’s team goal is $50,000 to develop the desktop version. The app promises people who donate to their Kickstarter an exclusive subscription to Scriball premium for only $25.

Currently, Scriball is only available for iOS devices. Development of a web app depends on Kickstarter funds.

There are many apps available to iOS devices that deal with content creation story telling, such as SonicPics and Scribble Press. However, neither allow story telling to be a group effort, where many contributors are able to write their own lines into a single story.  The collaborative aspect is what makes Scriball unique.

Businesses can use Scriball to create a unique story about their brand and involve their customers in telling that story. Scriball could also be a great way to collaborate with employees who want to add their own voice to depicting their company. It’s a versatile tool that can bring creativity to a brand.

Scriball can be found through their official page, Facebook, and Twitter.

How many consumers value review sites? According to David Mielach with BusinessInsider.com, “70% of people profess trust in the appraisals” — an increase of 15% in the last four years.

So when it comes to managing a brand’s presence both online and in the brick-and-mortar world, review sites–and how your brand responds to those reviews–can have tremendous implications on businesses large and small.

But how do you manage a situation in which your business has received a negative review?

As the owner of a small restaurant, Los Perros Locos in NYC, I recently had to handle a tricky situation just like this. A consumer gave a fairly scathing review, ranking the experience one star out of five and citing “Grade-Z hot dog meat.”  Knowing this review could turn traffic away, how could I remedy the situation?

Rather than disputing the customer’s claim, I replied to the customer on Yelp, showing my understanding that he didn’t enjoy his hot dog, and instead offering up hot dog alternatives: “one of our Pat LaFrieda Creekstone Farms beef “hamburguesas”, or our “Pollo Coca Cola sandwich (organic chicken thigh meat marinated in Coca Cola and Pineapple juice).”

This turned a negative review into a point of mutual understanding with the customer–and created a solution by providing a  product that might better suit his needs. In this case, the customer reacted by returning to the store, trying a hamburger, and revising his previous review to four stars with the comment “I’m now a believer.”

With over 400 Yelp views for Los Perros Locos per week, this conversation occurred in full view of every user who checks the page. By responding to the customer’s individual review and needs, I was able to create positive content out of negative, and to manage my brand’s reputation on social media.

What are your tips for managing negative reviews of your business?

This is a guest post by Megan Totka, Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com.

Hashtags are a cornerstone of social media. First utilized on Twitter in 2007 as a means of organizing tweets, hashtags have come to represent anything from the pulse of pop culture to the completely irreverent. With sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr further breeding the concept of “tagging,” and Facebook creeping closer towards utilizing hashtags themselves, it’s clear that tags are here to stay. In addition, the influx of mobile users today only adds to the popularity of the modern hashtag.

Internet marketers and big brands have been jumping on the bandwagon in order to leverage hashtags in their own marketing efforts. We’ve seen a huge influx of big brands using hashtags to create buzz or push a new product. It was difficult to get through a single commercial during this year’s Superbowl without some sort of corresponding tag for each ad.

Hashtags are challenging for marketers due to their seemingly random and spur-of-the moment nature, short lifespan and difficulty to control, and small businesses in particular face challenges when it comes to hashtags. How are SMBs to compete with big business when it comes to leveraging tags? Where’s the money? Are hashtags more trouble than they’re worth? It’s important to step carefully, but hashtags have certainly their place for small businesses looking to create a buzz.

What Are #BigBrands Doing?

Let’s first focus on what big businesses are doing. Today’s biggest brands are attaching a hashtag to just about every product launch. Movie trailers, fast food, you name it; if it’s out there, it has a tag. Hashtags provide a way for brands to gauge interest in what they’re pushing and examine the buzz accordingly.

An effective ad or commercial combined with an equally memorable hashtag can spark a sensation. Consider KFC’s recent “I Ate The Bones” (#iatethebones) promotion. The catchphrase has been used in their latest commercial campaign alongside the hashtag. In conjunction with a contest on their website, users are invited to submit their own photos and videos reacting to the campaign on Twitter through Vine and Instragram, coupled with the #iatethebones tag. The concept here is rather simple; KFC wants users to talk about the promotion, the commercials and also enter the contest. Through hashtags, they get the best of all three worlds.

Is the campaign a success? Difficult to say. True, users are utilizing the hashtag. With an estimated 1 in 100 tweets actually corresponding to KFC’s contest, however, it could be argued that a large chunk of the hashtag’s usage is white noise. This begs the question: if a hashtag is being used beyond its intended purpose, is it still good “press?”

The challenge for small businesses becomes clear when we look at how big brands use hashtags. Hashtags are not always easy to measure in terms of effective engagement. Tags are often short-lived, and a hashtag’s “owner” has almost no control over how it’s utilized.

Meeting the Hashtag Head On: Tips for the #SmallBiz

Find and Leverage Relevant Hashtags

Let’s consider a timely cost-effective approach for small businesses to handle hashtags. A brand could take advantage of a popular tag by either creating or finding a piece of unique content to correspond with that tag. For example, a business looking to take advantage of an #EarthDay tag could tweet a blog post concerning green office supplies or an equally topical article. An art-savvy business could examine similar tags to take pictures of their office or city’s skyline to correspond with a photograph tag on Tumblr or Instragram.

Attaching content to tags can quickly backfire if users feel that the content is overally promotional or even spammy, but if a marketer stays focused on relevant tags and provides meaningful content, it can quicly connect your business to new audiences. Tip: pay attention to the hashtags your customers are using and see if you find a pattern. Commonly used tags amongst your followers may represent opportunities for new content and engagement.

Hashtags? Newsjacking? Hashjacking?

A second approach, which requires a bit more attention to detail, is a modified form of newsjacking. Also known as “hashjacking,” businesses may look at trending topics and topical hashtags and then insert their own content or commentary depending on what’s being talked about. This is an effective way to get some short-term attention or buzz, although it may not represent the long-term engagement that most brands are searching for when it comes to small business social media. Again, the risk is that you insert yourself in a conversation in a way that feels spammy, or even entirely inappropriate–you don’t want to land on next year’s list of social media fails.  Make sure you first take the time to understand what a given hashtag conversation is about before you attach your brand and content to it.

The #BottomLine

Regardless of their viability for smaller brands, hashtags are here to stay. It’s important for small businesses to keep tagging it mind when it comes to their posts and potential engagement opportunities through social media.  As the social sphere continues to change, tags will continue to be part of the mix.

What’s your tagging strategy?

About the Author

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

Following in the style of Dos Equis’ pervasive “Most Interesting Man” marketing campaign, Heineken (parent company of Dos Equis since 2010) has written another manly-man-centric chapter into its now three year-long running “Legends” campaign.

#Dropped is the fifth installment in Heineken’s “Legends” campaign, which began back in December 2010 with “The Entrance”, a video showcasing the ‘arch manliness’ of the ideal Heineken drinker. Unlike previous incarnations of Legends, however, #Dropped welcomes fans to participate in its brand-formation.

To participate, potential contestants are asked to submit short videos on either Vine, Vimeo, or Tout documenting – in legendary style – an everyday journey in their lives. After uploading the video, all the contestant needs to do is tweet a link with “#Dropped” by June 17.

Winners will be “dropped” into a environment such as the Alaskan tundra, and followed by a film crew as they navigate difficult terrain, interact with the local color, and face any manner of obstacles in their attempt to return home alive.

Think Les Stroud’s “Survivorman” but in episodic fashion, and with viewers following along via social media and tracking the contestants’ progress through journal entries. All episodes can be watched on the Heineken Dropped YouTube channel.

“The fifth installment of our Legends campaign,” Heineken global communications director Sandrine Huijgen writes in a release, “demonstrates our commitment to providing rewarding experiences to those who are willing to use their resourcefulness.”

Responses have largely been favorable, other than the confusion arising for the Heineken Twitter account manager regarding the multiples uses of “#dropped” (ranging from dropping classes, dropping an album, LSD, etc.), and from similarities with another web show (on the Sportsmen Channel), which shares the same title and is based on a somewhat similar concept.

Check out the #Dropped trailer below:

So far, the campaign has seen over 14,000 likes from six #Dropped posts on Facebook, and fairly modest interactions on Twitter and YouTube. It’s a serial ad campaign, however, so views are likely to increase as the stories continue and the cast of “regular” dudes transforms into an ensemble of Legends.

But with a series of recent announcements, it turns out that the Twitter Chat community now has several choices. If you’re a regular participant in one of the 600+ active Twitter Chats, or you enjoy live-tweeting around events, here are your options:

Tchat.io

Tchat.io is a streamlined chat tool that offers all the same basic functionality that Twitter chat users need to participate in active hashtag discussions. You authenticate via Twitter, enter your hashtag, and the tool displays the stream of tweets around that hashtag. A clean,simple interface lets you reply, retweet or favorite individual tweets; user names are linked to open up an individual user’s profile on Twitter.com. As new tweets are added to the stream, they appear in realtime. Sending a tweet is easy, and the tool automatically adds the hashtag to the tweet you’re sending.  Tchat.io is built using HTML5 with a responsive design, so it will work well on smartphones or tablets as well as laptops.

The platform was announced yesterday by Congo Labs, creator of Twitter tools such as Twilk.com; founder Kyle Mulka says the company wanted to offer a way for users to participate in Twitter chats “without the clutter of more bloated Twitter clients.” I’ve test-driven the tool over the last couple of days, and it works: an easy, smooth interface that puts the focus on the conversation.

TweetChat.com

After initially announcing that it would not be able to support the API changes, TweetChat was acquired by Internet Media Labs, creator of analytics platform oneQube and other realtime tools.  The company has big plans to support realtime conversations and engagement, and yesterday announced that it would update TweetChat to support the new API.  For the many users for whom TweetChat was their go-to client for Twitter chats, this will be welcome news.

As of this morning, a message on the TweetChat home page says that “this work will be complete in the next several days or so.”  The old TweetChat interface is still there, and appears to be working, so it will be interesting to see how the update affects the tool. In addition to updating TweetChat, the company also plans to host a calendar of Twitter Chats.

oneQube SmartStream

Internet Media Labs has also built a more advanced tool for Twitter Chats. In addition to supporting Chat functionality, oneQube SmartStream also offers realtime analytics about the conversation around the hashtag, and leverages some of the social relationship management features from oneQube. We posted a detailed review of SmartStream last month. If you’re an advanced user, social media or community manager, or if you host an active Twitter chat, some of the tool’s features–such as the ability to highlight key users or save transcripts of your chat–will make it essential.

Let me know if you find any other good tools for Twitter Chats that we should check out!

UPDATE: Literally moments after posting this, I received a press release with information about another chat client from Twubs. I haven’t had a chance to play with the tool much, but am adding it here so you can see all the options available.

Twubs Twitter Chat Tools

Twubs creates branded hashtag landing pages and builds Tweet walls for live events and they, too, have released a free API-compliant Twitter chat tools today. This tool also offers more advanced features to Twitter Chat organizers, in addition to supporting the chat itself and claiming a robust infrastructure to handle heavy traffic loads.

Twubs Twitter Chat Tools allow chat organizers to create a public, branded homepage for their Twitter Chat and then add their chat to a global calendar. The tool offers SPAM filtering, and the Twubs interface separates out host messages from the regular feed, displaying the host feed in a separate and designated area above the feed. This is designed to allow participants to more easily follow the conversation; people joining the chat late can quickly get up to speed on the conversation by viewing the host’s Tweets. 

According to the company’s announcement, the Twubs infrastructure is “built on top of the latest cloud computing technologies,” and is “specifically designed to handle the large traffic spikes Twitter Chats can create. As heavy loads are encountered, Twubs is designed to scale horizontally and automatically.  All components are deployed with enough margin to handle a spike, while the additional resources come online.”

Interested users and businesses can get started and schedule their chats at http://twubs.com/twitter-chats.

Facebook

• Facebook app ‘Pipe’ bets big on file sharing – new Facebook app allows users to simply drag and drop to share files 40X bigger than the max file size allowed on Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail (Wired)
• Facebook launches new local currency payments API, gives developers till September 12 to switch from Credits – developers have to migrate their apps if they want to continue accepting payment on Facebook; Credits are being phased out and replaced by local currency (The Next Web)
• Facebook drops ‘Sponsored Stories’ as it pares down ad formats – Facebook is reducing the number of available ad products from 27 to less than half that amount over the next six months, including deleting ‘Sponsored Stories’ as a standalone product (AdAge)
• Facebook appears to be testing geotargeting for Promoted Posts, even if the original post was not geotargeted (Inside Facebook)

Twitter

• Twitter strikes another big ad-world deal, this time with WPP Group – a new “global strategic partnership” with Twitter means that WPP will be able to take advantage of Twitter data to inform more effective campaigns and enhance ad targeting (AdAge)
• Twitter for Windows Phone gets photo filters, more – an update brought several new features to the Twitter app for Windows Phone, including photo filters, lens app integration, the ability to play Vine videos right from the timeline, and an option to save tweeted photos (CNET)
• TweetDeck gets a major makeover from Twitter – TweetDeck is revamped for web and Chrome, with an updated look, cleaner design and improved usability, including commands on the left sidebar (CNET)
• Twitter’s Vine is now available for Android devices (Mashable)

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn redesigns its ‘Who’s Viewed Your Profile’ page, expands analytics for premium members – users with a free account get a slightly updated ‘Who’s Viewed Your Profile’ page; this section is greatly expanded for premium members (The Next Web)

YouTube

• How to make the most of YouTube’s new redesign – last week YouTube rolled out its One Channel redesign; background graphics are replaced by a responsive banner image and brands can embed social media links into the banner (Entrepreneur)

Pinterest

• Pinterest debuts personal search feature – users can now search by keywords associated with their own pins; the feature rolled out on the web last week, and will arrive on mobile soon (AllThingsD)

Snapchat

• Snapchat launches v5.0 with revamped UI, swipe navigation, and in-app profiles – this “huge” update allows users to double-tap to reply, access in-app profiles, and provides better tools for adding friends, along with swipe navigation and a much better-looking camera panel (TechCrunch)

What updates were you talking about in social media this week?

Please email marissa@modernmedia.co if you have additional updates, or a social network that you feel should be on the list.

WhatsApp Tops Twitter In Monthly Active Users

According to WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum, WhatsApp is now larger than Twitter by monthly active users. Without revealing an exact number, he just said the app has over 200 million users (the last reported amount of monthly active users for Twitter.) WhatsApp is a cross-platform instant messaging application that allows users to send text, image, video and audio messages; it’s hugely popular as a way to stay in touch while traveling overseas.

While onstage at an AllThingsD conference in New York, Koum also announced that WhatsApp now sees an average of 8 billion inbound and 12 million outbound messages per day.

While WhatsApp and Twitter are very different platforms, the comparison does provide possible support for recent theories that younger users are turning to newer apps (like WhatsApp), while older social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter) are falling out of favor with this demographic.

Previously free, WhatsApp is now charging $0.99 per year – a change that has not yet caused “any drop off in user numbers or engagement,”reports TechCrunch. 

Have you tried WhatsApp yet?