Jell-O Hijacks Twitter’s Profane #FML Hashtag, Changes It to Mean ‘Fun My Life’ (AdWeek)
What’s your perspective on this Twitter stunt? Between now and June 14, Jello wants to fight the absurd phrase.

Everyone who tweets the #FML hashtag is entered in a pool for a “Fun My Life” prize pack. Bold move.

Fandium Raises $1.25 Million for Sports App that Blends Storytelling with Betting (PandoDaily)
This app is aiming to blend the world of social media, gaming, and sports.

Using geo-location and hashtags, the app pulls activity from Instagram and Twitter into a single feed. To encourage user engagement, the app offers virtual points and encourages friendly wagers.

Google Said to Face New Antitrust Probe Over Display Ads (Bloomberg)
The FTC is investigating whether Google is unfairly curbing its competition in the display advertising market.

Central to the issue at hand? Data. Investigators are questioning whether Google is using its U.S. display ad market to encourage companies to use its other products and services —  a practice that’s considered illegal. Stay tuned.

Twitter Deepens Ties to TV With Media Deals (AdAge)
Twitter is experimenting with a new type of ad — targeted to TV viewers with a new series of media deals.

This strategy adds content to Twitter’s stream in addition to video ad revenue. The fuel that powers it all? Semantic technology to align Twitter conversations with relevant shows.

Instagram’s Brand Engagement

Instagram is seeing more brand engagement on the site. Analytics firm Simply Measured found that engagement is up 35 percent amongst the top 100 brands on the site, which include Coca-Cola, Apple, Google, and IBM, Lisa Lacy of ClickZ reports.

The survey also found that brand adoption for both Instagram and Pinterest “grew at the fastest rates compared to other networks — at 9% and 10% respectively. Since August 2012, 19 Interbrand Top 100 brands have created Instagram accounts; 18 have created Pinterest accounts.”

Keywords for Content Marketing

Beth Hayden of CopyBlogger writes about finding keywords and using them in content marketing campaigns.

Marketers can use tools like Google Trends to find them or CopyBlogger’s Scribe, which has a keyword research tool. They can look at social networks and see what keywords people are using in their conversations, and conduct searches in the Yahoo and Bing search engines. To get started, marketers should look at a few possible keywords, determine their popularity, check the trending data on them as well as the social conversations they pop up in, and figure out which ones to use for the content.

The Dish and its Metered Paywall

Funds for Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish have slowed down, according to Paid Content.

So far, he’s raised $611,000 in under two months, with a goal of $900,000. Currently, 20,000 people have clicked on over four ‘read-ons’ in three weeks and haven’t paid for the content. Laura Hazard Owen suggests that Sullivan nag his readers more, ends his free RSS access, and sets the meter lower so that people pay up.

Pitching to Freelance Websites

The Freelancer’s Union covers how writers can get their foot in the door at different websites.

They should blog and figure out what sites are a good fit for their writing style. They need to follow the contact instructions and keep the inquiry email short.

Writers should “Give a quick description of the article you’ve attached (or the article you want to write). Tell them, briefly, who you are and give them your blog URL and any relevant sites you’ve written for.” Submissions should be attached and writers need to follow up afterwards.

Oreo’s Super Bowl Promotion

ClickZ’s Lisa Lacy writes about Oreo and its week during and after the Super Bowl. The brand gained almost 8,000 Twitter followers after tweeting about the power outage, and its Cookie vs. Creme campaign has grown to more than 65,000 followers on Instagram.

There were almost 32,000 fan submissions for the contest, which asked customers to “submit a photo they love with the hashtag #cookiethis or #cremethis on Instagram. Over the course of a three-day period, Oreo selected a number of submissions and worked with a team of artists in Portland, Oregon to create sculptures based on the images using either cookie or creme. The sculpture creations are then photographed and uploaded to Instagram.”

Google+ Content

Piggybacking off Brian Clark’s entry about Google+ yesterday, CopyBlogger has posted a list of content strategies for the website. Google+ should be linked a company’s blog, and strategic networks need to be built within the circles.

Hashtags should be included in posts, and marketers can write long posts inside of the social network. Tags can be used to reach out to people and brands, and companies can offer live video Hangouts on the site: “Upload that Hangout to YouTube, add the link to your blog with a reader-friendly keyword-rich description, and you’ve got a powerful SEO tool that doubles as a branding resource, allowing people to see you in action.”

Vine Contests

Lauren Indvik of Mashable writes about Vine and the contests brands have started running on it. For example, the Cavendish London hotel is reaching out to users “to create a romantic Vine and tweet it with the hashtag #ValentineVine to @Cavendish_Hotel.

The submission deemed most romantic will win an overnight stay at the hotel on Friday, Feb. 15, including pre-dinner cocktails, a four-course dinner with wine and a full English breakfast the next morning, among other treats.”

Goodbye to EveryBlock

The New York Times reports that EveryBlock, a website owned by NBC that featured hyperlocal data-driven journalism, was shut down this week.

NBC closed the site due to financial losses. It was started in 2007 and showcased local public records, articles, and a forum that let its users talk to their neighbors.

New York Times for Younger People

According to Paid Content, the New York Times is working on a product for a younger audience.

It would be for 20-somethings and college students and “offer them a limited-content version at a price point calibrated to a just-starting-out-in-life budget,” said an unidentified source from the paper.

Laura Hazard Owen speculates that $11.80 per month would be a good deal for monthly digital access, and says that it should be easy to customize and choose what sections to subscribe to.

Peter Perl’s WaPo Departure

According to Poynter, Peter Perl, who has been at the Washington Post for 32 years, is leaving the paper to do freelance writing, editing, and executive coaching.

He was the assistant managing editor and confirmed the news via his Twitter, where he said, “After 32 years, announced I’ll be retiring from The Post. Great run at a great place, now on to new challenges & fun & grandparenting!”

Making an Author Platform

Freelance Writing’s Irene Watson discusses author platforms, which are enhanced resumes that help “publishers and the media take notice that you are a professional, you have experience, you are good at promoting yourself and promoting your book and topic of interest without being self-serving, and overall, you know what you are doing.”

Websites should include the home page, about the author, places to buy products, media kits, and blogs. A list should be kept of publishing experiences, speaking engagements, and workshops. Writers need online forums to connect with fans, whether it’s a Facebook page on a discussion group the website.

Earlier this week, Mashable reported on how brands are now using Vine for ads in their Twitter streams. For example, Wheat Thins posted a video promoting its tag #MUSTHAVEWHEATTHINS, while General Electric put up a video of its logo being drawn, in stop animation, on a piece of large paper.

 Vine is currently an app only for iPhones. The beta lets its users produce six-second videos to share on its website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook. Touch screen is required for recording, and the videos come out as “something between a video and an animated gif,” says The Huffington Post. There is no editing involved, and users can’t upload the video from a camera roll. “There’s no way to edit the finished video. Nor is there a way- at present- to upload a video from the camera roll. What you made is what you made.”

Right now, companies are trying to master social video, just like Instagram led the way with social photos, writes Eliza Kern of GigaOm. Twitter is investing in Vine “because there’s potential for a huge payoff for the company that finally gets social video right.”

Twitter and Instagram were feuding just last month. Twitter, it seems, wants to compete when it comes to social media sharing.

There have already been problems with Vine, however. It’s been a victim of porn, and the company had to erase and hashtags #sex, #nude, #porn, and #naked.

On Jan. 29, the company was temporarily shut down services. As Jennifer Van Grove points out, Twitter had a lot of “fail whales” and outages in its beginning stages as well.

Indy 500′s Instagram Campaign

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is teaming up with social media management platform Venueseen for an Instagram campaign.

The hashtag, #Indy500orBust, is “intended to capture the overall experience and history of the race,” ClickZ reports.

With the help of Venueseen, Indy will post photos of tagged fan images from races. Then, the photos will appear, plotted, on a map on a microsite. The brand has no launch date for this campaign as of yet.

Facebook’s Graph Search and Site Changes

Business2Community’s Sam Sudano writes about Facebook Graph Search and how it aims to compete with Google.

The search, which is in beta stages, will let users search on the social media site for photos, places, people, and business pages. It’s also going to allow users to see anything people have shared with them on the site, along with “public content from non-connections.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, ““It’s interesting because most people today don’t think about Facebook as a place to discover places they could go eat, or things that they could go do, but with this product, it’s so natural to be able to do that.”

Tumblr’s Buzzwords Blog

Todd Wasserman of Mashable reports that a new Tumblr blog, Behind the Buzzwords, illustrates buzzwords from 2013.

The project is being produced by CreativeFeed, a marketing firm, and features words like collaborative consumption, crowdsourcing, The Internet of Things, and longtail.

Layoffs at Jersey Paper

NJ.com is reporting that Star-Ledger out of Newark, New Jersey, had to lay off almost 10 percent of its newsroom this week.

Thirty-four employees, including news clerks, editors, and photographers had their jobs eliminated at the state’s largest newspaper. The Star-Ledger, which has won Pulitzers and major national journalism awards, said the layoffs occurred because of “continuing financial pressures and the lingering effects of Hurricane Sandy.”

Amazon’s Music Store for Apple

The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon has introduced an MP3 store for iPhone and iPod Touch.

The program lets users buy music on the site on the Apple devices and access it anywhere, anytime. The MP3 store, which has more than 29 million songs available globally, is trying to compete with Netflix, Google, and Apple in their latest project.

Rolling Stone Magazine on the iPad

According to PaidContent, Rolling Stone magazine is finally coming to the iPad. Wenner Media, which owns the magazine, also forged a music purchase partnership with iTunes for users.

Album and song reviews are going to include links to listen to and buy the music on iTunes. Currently, subscriptions cost $1.99 for a bundle, while a single issue is $4.99.

Marc Benioff talks at DellWorld 2011

Content is one of the best vehicles for customer service — every blog post, every interactive video, and every curated article can cement or shatter a brand’s reputation.

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, referred to quality customer service as “the future of profitability for brands,” at last week’s 2013 CES Brand Matters conference in Las Vegas.

Here are the top five reasons bad content equals bad customer service:

1. It’s Pointless

Like a cashier that’s slumped behind the counter texting, there’s no reason meaningless content should exist.

If it’s not helpful, and it doesn’t have any clear purpose, it shouldn’t be there.

Josh Silverman, president of consumer services for US American Express, pointed out that companies have a “responsibility to … [give consumers] a message they’ll want to hear.”

One notable fail? NBCTV’s Instagram account. They’ve been called the “paparazzi” of Instagram (not the fun kind).

2. It’s Untrustworthy

Sometimes, a server will actually try to help you choose between the roast chicken and pasta primavera — other times, they’ll insist you try the lobster.

As Joseph Tripodi, EVP and CMO of The Coca Cola Co., said, “Consumers are smart; they know when they’re being oversold.”

When it comes to connecting with consumers, focus on building trust above sales. According to Benioff, “If trust is not [your company’s] number one value, in this economy, it’s over.”

3. It Doesn’t Anticipate Needs

As a waitress, I was told to “anticipate” what people wanted before they even knew they needed it. A “warm up” for a cup of coffee? An extra napkin for a messy sandwich? There before the customer asked.

In the same way, good content reflects how a brand watches and listens to what users want. The makeup-sample box brand Birchbox does this right. Their popular blog, The Haute Box, gives beauty-obsessed readers tips and recommendations — even nonsubscribers can find something to love.

4. It’s Boring

When it comes to content, says Tripodi, “Unless [an agency] is pulling us to the edge of the abyss, we don’t need you.”

Even if you hit the target audience, if it’s boring you to tears, your consumers won’t tune in.

“At the end of the day, it’s about the emotional connection,” said Keith Weed, CMO of Unilever.

A good example of a truly lame blog? Check out this one, from American Airlines. Nothing like your partner’s hotel renovation to keep readers riveted.

5. It’s Offensive

We’ve all spoken with customer service reps that make it all too clear that your feelings don’t matter. It seems obvious, but some content still crosses the line between innovative or radical and rude.

Content shouldn’t intrude if it’s irrelevant, ill-informed — or worst of all — offensive. From off-putting tweets  to misogynist Youtube videos, it’s surprisingly common.

Image courtesy of Dell/Flickr

Content During the 2012 Holiday Season 

Paid Content’s Robert Andrews reports on what hit it big this Christmas among consumers.

Ebook sales were up (86 percent at Hachette UK) and overall, according to a Pew surve, the number of Americans who are reading ebooks increased from 16 to 23 percent from 2011 to 2012.

An examination of tweets reveals that the iOS devices were seven times more popular than the Kindle Fire, and Temple Run, a free game on the App store, was ranked number one on the charts.

No Mention of War in Top Stories of 2012

According to the New York Times, in 2012, the year’s top stories made no mention of the war in Afghanistan or the countless other wars being fought by American around the globe.

Lists by AP and Yahoo didn’t include war stories, and, as reported by Pew, “weekly polling on the public’s interest in news stories showed such a low level of interest that the overseas conflicts didn’t make the organization’s list of the year’s top 15 stories.”

The top stories were about domestic issues, such as President Obama’s gay marriage endorsement and the state of the economy.

Top Paying Gigs for Freelancers

SFGate reports on the jobs that pay the most money for freelancers.

Writing makes the cut, as does translation. A freelance translator certified by the American Translators Association has the potential to make $72,000 per year.

Freelancers just starting out in social media positions earn an average of $15 an hour, while the pros can make $250 per hour, and proven expertise in SEO can lead to a position that pays $1,000 per hour.

Forming a Loyal Community Base

ClickZ’s Laney Whitcanack writes about how businesses can build loyal consumer bases.

She says that marketers should distribute relevant newsletters and put out “news related to the brand promise” as well as develop thought-provoking surveys that let consumers “share information about themselves and what they care about.”

Personalized communication, in the form of social media most likely, is very important. It can come as a retweet or a direct message, for instance.

Digital Trends in 2013

AdWeek reports on what digital trends might be in store in the coming year.

The FTC may begin regulating a universal Do Not Track system, and Amazon might bring together its streaming video service, app store, tablet, advertising platform, and cloud computing platform all in one place.

Pinterest may become the next Instagram and be bought for big bucks by Facebook, while Marissa Mayer could transform Yahoo into a tech company. Of course, more brands will become publishers and create content.

Facebook Trademarks “Poke”

Todd Wasserman of Mashable writes that Facebook is filing to trademark Poke, the app that lets its users send out photo, video, and text messages that self-destruct in 10 seconds. 

On Dec. 22 the social media site released the app, while is similar to Snapchat. “Poke” was previously trademarked in 2006, but there was a lapse in it in July of 2011.

Important Content Marketing Strategies in the New Year

Joe Pulizzi of Business2Community and Content Marketing Institute says that in 2013, marketers need to focus on creating catchy headlines, even if it takes 20 tries to do so.

The plan for the “channel” must be defined as well: This means posting content on a blog, distributing it, and writing another one. Content marketers need to practice public speaking because this is a great way to spread company messages.

Instagram Facing Class Action Lawsuit

According to Mashable, last week a class action lawsuit was filed against Instagram in a federal court in San Francisco following its service term changes.

An Instagram user in California, Lucy Funes, brought on the lawsuit, claiming breach of contract. It states, “In short, Instagram declares that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don’t like it, you can’t stop us.”

Say Goodbye to Print Newsweek

The Wall Street Journal reports that Newsweek will no longer be in print after 80 years following its Dec. 31 issue. The cover of the magazine features a photo of its building in Manhattan with the hashtag #lastprintissue.

Subscriptions to the new Newsweek Global, which is online, will be $4.99 per copy or $24.99 per year. The print edition shut down because of declining subscription and advertising rates.

Content Writing in the Next Year

Business2Community’s David Goehst writes about how content writing will change in 2013 and what marketers should be aiming for in the coming year.

Content must have purpose and be written by professional writers and freelancers. Content developers need to be on the same page as business developers and marketers, otherwise it’s a waste of time.

“Research before writing, even if that research takes you offline into your library, performing live interviews or the like. Never copy others’ work, either; it will eventually catch you in the end.”

Link Building and Content Marketing Face Off

Web Talent Marketing reports on link building and content marketing and weighs which one is more valuable.

Instead of paying for SEO and putting out a bunch of content that isn’t helpful, “it should instead be your goal to provide something of value to your site’s visitors, which makes them want to share this information with their friends, their site’s visitors, and so on.”

Over the past year on search engines, the keywords “link building” have declined and ”content marketing” has risen. Marketers now can do real marketing, and not try to figure out the “game of Google.”

Netflix Fails on Christmas Eve

The Wall Street Journal also reports that Netflix wasn’t working on Christmas Eve after there were technical problems at Amazon.

Video streaming was down on numerous playing devices and was restored on Tuesday morning. This is the third major outage from Amazon’s web provider service. Earlier in the year, a glitch caused the malfunctioning of Pinterest, Instagram and Foursquare as well.

Musician Donates Toys through Eventful Poll

Darius Rucker, former leader of Hootie and the Blowfish, turned to Eventful’s social platform Demand It ”to ask fans where [he] should purchase $10,000 worth of toys to donate,” according to ClickZ.

Five thousand votes were tallied on DemandIt, Twitter, and Facebook, and in the end, Lindenhurst, New York was the winning city.

Essentials for Content Marketing in 2013

Michele Linn of Content Marketing Institute put together a list of what content does well, and what marketers should be tapping into in 2013. 

She says that content marketing and social media are two distinct disciplines to be studied, that marketers need to learn how to keep track of content suggestions via a dashboard, that a content marketing mission statement is necessary, and that B2B marketers are using LinkedIn the most, while B2C marketers are on Facebook.

In addition, article titles can make or break content, Slideshare will increase the value of content, and the website-first mentality is dying out.

Content Marketing and Video [INFOGRAPHIC]

Brainshark created an infographic that shows just how popular video has become.

In 2014, video could very well account for 50 percent of all the traffic on the internet, and every day, 100 million Americans view videos online. This is a — a 43 percent increase since 2010.

Video is the sixth most popular content marketing strategy, and 70 percent of content marketers are producing online videos. They are using video  — to sell, educate, and entertain consumers.

Twitter Announces Photo Filters

Twitter photo filters will now be available on iOS and Android phones, the company announced on Monday.

According to Mashable, Twitter’s image hosting service, which was introduced in 2011, allows users to take 4×4 photos, like Instagram, and choose between eight different filters. This news comes after Instagram dropped Twitter Cards support.

Content Marketing Budget Concerns

SiteProNews’ Nicole Beckett discusses the fact that sometimes content marketers don’t know where their money is going.

Beckett says Marketers are wasting their money when they hire a cheaper writer who makes content that sounds just like everything else out there, or when they micromanage to the point that they don’t let the content writers do their jobs. It’s also a waste to pay a top notch writer, receive great content, and not promote it around the web.

“If you want to make the most out of your content marketing budget, you have to leverage every single piece,” she says.

Time Inc.’s MyRecipes.com Offers Series of E-Cookbooks

According to Paid Content, MyRecipes.com, which is owned by Time Inc., is introducing new e-cookbooks that include recipes from Southern Living, Coastal Living, Food & Wine, Real Simple, and other Time magazines.

They will cost $3.99 per download. The first one, ““MyRecipes Best-Loved Cookies for Every Occasion,” can be purchased through iBookstore, Nook, and Kindle, and has 61 recipes. A second will be released this January and focus on snacks that are 100 calories.

What 2013 Holds for Brand Journalism

Chelsi Nakano of Business2Community writes that in 2013, authenticity is what will determine if content will be successful. 

“Content is explosive, there’s no stopping it, but it only offers real value if it’s authentic,” she says. “Be it with a blog, a tweet, or a thirty-second video spot, projecting your true voice and core story is going to have positive effects on your audience. Regardless of form, authenticity has never been and will never be just a fad.”

To be authentic, content strategies need to be headed up by in-house teams at a company who know the most about the topics.

The Art of Long-Term Story Arcs in Marketing

CopyBlogger’s Georgina Laidlaw says that in order to keep customers interested in what a company has to say, there always has to be an evolving story line.

She says that in marketing, “we create an emotional connection with readers (through story) that causes them to naturally wonder about our brand, and that entices them to come back and check out the latest installment of that brand story.”

To create long-term story arcs, marketers can produce a series of articles, use comments for spinoff stories, and curate social discussion of stories.

Getting Customers to Buy in the Morning

Kara Trivunovic of ClickZ highlights some of the ways that brands can get customers making purchases thanks to morning email marketing.

She says that brands should look at the last six months of data with email newsletters and figure out who has opened emails. Brands need to “examine the behavior of this audience” and see what content they engage with, where they spend time on the company’s website, and what motivates them.

Content in those emails should be geared towards this audience and there should be a discount for them as well.

A new infographic by SilverPop compiles the data and numbers for social media sites as of this year. While Facebook has one billion users, Twitter has half that, and Google+ comes in third place with 400 million users. Between its third and fourth year of existence, Facebook’s membership increased by six times, while Twitter’s grew eight times in that same period.

The infographic proclaims that the “rising stars” of social media are Foursquare, which more than doubled its user base in this last year; Instagram, which “quintupled its users from year one to two;” and Tumblr, which just recently reached 80 million users. The sites that grew exponentially were Path, a mobile-friendly photo-sharing platform, Pinterest, which “took less than three years to hit 25 million users,” and Soundcloud, the audio site that “has more than tripled its base each year since its 2008 inception.”

Industry professionals voiced their opinions on Business 2 Community about what 2013 will bring for the world of social media. Founder and president of WAM Enterprises Mike Wolfe believes that images will be a “driving force,” that Internet video usage will rise, and that because of smartphones, more people will start signing onto social media platforms.

Jeremy Goldman, entrepreneur and author, says that social media will not be run by one person at a company anymore: “Instead, they will begin to shift social media responsibilities into multiple departments. Companies will begin to see social media as something akin to a telephone that can be used in multiple ways by multiple departments.”

Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, predicts that native ads, such as promoted tweets and sponsored stories, will continue to grow. He says that brands will need to keep up with all the social networks around the world (such as WeChat and Sina Weibo in China) and “anticipate increased demand in 2013 for social media management systems that streamline monitoring and posting across multiple networks.” He also said social media education, including courses at universities and training for company employees, will continue to grow.

Holmes says, ”In 2013, expect to see companies who have taken the plunge begin to reap expanded returns from their social investments, with help from improved social technologies, innovative ad models, and an expanded user base around the globe.”