Brand Central Station

(from Localeze)
Using Localeze Premium Listings, Feature Allows Consumers to Tag Location Details in Tweets

VIENNA, Va. (June 15, 2010) – Localeze, the largest business listings identity management company for local search, today announced its partnership with Twitter for its new Twitter Places feature. Localeze will provide Twitter with 14 million local search business listings, which allow users to tag tweets with locations, helping to establish a consistent and robust online identity for local businesses.

Localeze provides the standardization of local search listings needed to create a consistent anchor identity for businesses, including name, address and phone number (NAP), on local search and social platforms, including Twitter. Localeze’s process of managing and enhancing listings allows businesses to directly take control of their online identity by providing a new level of access, governance and consistency.

“Local search business listings are one of the foundational pieces of context adding insight to social media interaction as they give users critical information about nearby places,” said Jeff Beard, president, Localeze. “For exploding social platforms like Twitter, it is essential to share where conversations are taking place so that consumers can fully engage with local businesses.”

To access Twitter Places, users need to enable Twitter’s “tweet with your location” feature and click “add your location.” Selecting the location populates a list of nearby Twitter Places offered by Localeze.

Localeze currently provides 14 million local search business listings, including nearly 600,000 verified and managed by local businesses to more than 90 local search platform and application partners.

About Localeze
Localeze is the largest business listings identity management provider for local search.  As a trusted partner, Localeze maintains direct, authorized relationships with local search platforms, national and regional brands, channel partners and local businesses. The company provides businesses essential tools to verify, manage and enhance the identity of their local listings across the Web. Through these relationships and access to authoritative local business information, Localeze is the largest provider of trusted, enhanced online local business listings in the local search industry. Localeze is a privately held company headquartered in Vienna, Virginia. For more information visit www.localeze.com.

Application Platform Enables Brands To Create a Custom Facebook Fan Page In Minutes At Minimal Cost

June 14, 2010 – Oakland, Calif. – Today, any brand can create an engaging, robust Facebook fan page within minutes and at a cost that is less than one tank of gas, with a new, disruptive platform launched by North Social (www.northsocial.com), an offshoot of Oakland-based Incubator North Venture Partners.

The powerfully simple suite of applications for Facebook enables any brand, big or small, to run viral social media-based promotions, upload photo showcases, create a unique landing page, connect to Twitter and Yelp, link to e-commerce sites, offer coupons and sweepstakes, and more. The North Social Facebook platform launches with fifteen applications, which can all be installed with a single user account, starting at only $29/month.

“Facebook has become the most powerful way for brands to reach their audience, but not every brand has the budget or technical expertise to harness its capabilities,” said Alex Bernstein, Partner, North Venture Partners. “We’re pleased to give brands, agencies and consultants simple tools that remove all obstacles to jumping into the social media revolution.”

The easy-to-use North Social Facebook platform allows any brand with a fan page to install all fifteen custom page applications within minutes. Each application comes with a control panel which allows the features and content on the page to be quickly customized by the user. This unique content management interface enables users to create, update, and manage multi-tab promotional pages at a fraction of the cost of what web developers typically charge to create a single static page.

To see the North Social applications in action, visit their website.

About North Venture Partners
North is a brand-centric incubator that builds, launches, and accelerates the growth of innovative brands, products, and spin out companies. To learn more about North and how they identify and capture disruptive growth opportunities, visit their corporate website.

Besides when you’re at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, of course.

The answer is when you’re trying to drag your business (or your client) into the realm of social media and/or online marketing (no, they’re not exactly the same thing – but that’s a topic for another post at another time). 

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Web 2.0 marketing appeals on a number of levels to charities and non-profits.  It can be inexpensive.  It’s trendy.  It can appear to be very democratic – allowing all with an opinion to chime in on issues they feel are important.

The truth is, however, that what makes the social web such an intriguing tool for charities and non-profits faces many of the same obstacles those charities and non-profits faced in their pre-technology days.  Enthusiasm for a new medium can overcome some of those barriers initially; but in the long run, it’s the institutional thinking and long-established traditions and taboos that can doom a non-profit’s attempt to join the social web.

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One of the great things about online marketing is the ability to breakdown results to the most “granular” level.  It sounds great – but the biggest problem with all of the great measurement technology is that most marketers are still operating with a pre-online marketing set of expectations.  As a result, the assumptions they make about the impact their online marketing program will have can be way off.

Gary Stein, writing for ClickZ, outlined the five biggest mistakes people make when it comes to their social media campaigns.  I’ll summarize them here, but strongly recommend you read the whole article.

Gary points out that success in the world of social media requires more than just showing up.  The assumptions they bring into the new media marketplace can lead to some disappointing (and sometimes non-existant) results.  Gary’s list of big mistakes:

1. Don’t assume your fans/followers will see a post.  An occassional post from you will get lost in the wash of other tweets, status updates, notes, shared content and more.
2. Be careful not to double-count people as fans or followers.  Some of the folks who follow you on Twitter may also be a connected to you via LinkedIn.  But they’re still just one person – don’t count them as two.
3. Driving traffic to your site via Twitter, Facebook, et al requires more than just dropping in links on your updates … COUNT THE CLICKS!
4. Pay attention to how your brand comes up in search on social networks.  Tools like SocialSeek are very helpful when it comes to doing this.
5. Don’t get caught up in how many followers or fans you have – focus on the folks who engage with your brand.

Gary sums it up this way:

The bottom line with social media measurement: we’re in some really early stages and there are plenty of bright lights to distract us. The biggest mistake of all, of course, is not to measure. With the effort you’re putting into social media, it’s like that famous bumper sticker: “If you’re not concerned, you’re not paying attention.”

Check out the entire article here.

ADOTAS — Unsurprisingly, females are using sites like Facebook and Linkedin to connect with colleagues and friends and check out products, but they also worry about privacy protections.

According to “The Power of Social Networking For Women Research Study” from female-oriented social networking site ShesConnected, substantial majorities use social networks to research products and services (79%) and finding deals and discounts (64%). While users understand the need for revenues, networking, self-promotion, keeping in touch and privacy remain their top priority.

Read the whole story.

I received a queery from the folks at Trackle.com last week and have to say, it looks interesting.

The site purports to be a service like Google Alerts – but with lots of added features.  Here’s some of the info sent ahead to me:

A free Web app that acts as a standing search engine, Trackle searches the Internet for you, updating you on the news and events you want to know about. Unlike similar services, such as Google Alerts, Trackle doesn’t just search for keywords. It incorporates change into the keywords and provides real-time alerts on the subjects you choose – as often as you choose, and all in one place.

For example, if you see something on Amazon.com you’d like to buy, but only want to spend $50, Trackle can monitor the item and let you know when it reaches that designated price. You can also track things relevant to your location by inputting your address. Trackle will show you local activities, neighborhood crime and even home values.

Keyword searches make it easy to search any subject of interest to you, existing category searches also include: video games, social media, movie releases, politics, sports, health, travel and personal finance, among many others.

Trackle keeps all results on your personalized site, and sends you a daily email with new information, but you can also choose to receive real-time alerts via email, SMS text or RSS feed. Updates can also be shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Now, does it do everything it claims?  I don’t know.  I’m going to use it and report back.  In the meantime, if anyone else uses Trackle, hit me up off-blog and let me know about your experiences.

by Mike Bawden
President & CEO; Brand Central Station

These are indeed interesting times in which we all live. The pace of life has picked up so dramatically in the last ten years, I question our society’s combined ability to adapt without some kind of major cultural meltdown occuring during the process. But still, I have faith.

With rapid change comes great opportunity, as well as terrible risk.

From society as a whole, there comes a desperate cry for sanity and creativity. For compassion and stewardship. For accountability and self-discipline.

As marketers, I think we all owe it to our customers, clients, communities, employees and partners to do the best we can with what we have. To make a positive difference in the world. And to encourage everyone – whether they’re our kids or our customers – to be smart and discriminating consumers of everything we’re told to believe.

In the past fifteen years, the Internet has evolved from a loose connection of crude email servers into an interactive, social network that connects us globally. For the most part, we’ve recognized that and call it Web 2.0.

Well folks, maybe it’s time we come up with Customer 2.0. They need to be better informed and capable of handling the ever-increasing flow of information, images and noise that comes their way.

As marketers, it’s our responsibility.

In the last installment of our series on where your business should be connecting to the social web, we take a look at job sites.  After all, Web 2.0 is all about people – not technology.  And by finding the best people, you’ll position your company for growth and future success.

If you want to secure high-quality talent, you have to know where to look.

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Leveraging your business’ and employees’ experience via the Social Web is another strategy for increasing your brand’s online “footprint”.  In part four of our series of important social web sites your business should connect to, we provide a list of general, informational sites that in many cases serve as the “front line” of online research.

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As part of our week-long series of important social media sites for your business, today we’ll list a number of niche sites that will help you stay on top of important news and trends in a variety of areas.  These sites can be very important for small and mid-sized companies that don’t have the large training budgets or funds available to participate in industry events or conventions.

Although we only have eight niche sites listed below, we’re open to other suggestions as well.  Just email us and let us know.

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In the second part of our listing of important social media sites for businesses (especially yours), we’ll look at professional networking sites that can make a difference.  These sites are intended to help business people find colleagues, employees, employers and sales prospects.  

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