Splatforms Team

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Flickr, LinkedIn -- the list of leading social networks businesses and brands must suddenly pay attention to goes on and on. Needless to say, it can be a daunting task to keep track of the social media marketing world when it comes to your business. Before you get overwhelmed, know that there are a number of handy online tools, software programs and apps out there that can not only help you save time, but also simplify your social presence. While many great options exist to choose from, to save time, we've narrowed the list down to seven of our favorite tools that any corporate enterprise should be using. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Kippt, which lets you collect and share content from across the web, is looking to attract developers with a brand-new API and gallery of apps.The two-person startup has relied on outside developers to have a mobile presence on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Kippt just returned to San Francisco from Helsinki, almost a year after graduating from Y Combinator’s summer batch.“An API is not only good for us, but it’s good for our users,” said Karri Saarinen, who co-founded Kippt and leads design. “There are some companies that fear this kind of openness will somehow harm the company, but we feel it brings value.”He pointed to more than a dozen third-party apps that bring Kippt to the iPhone or turn it into an elegant mobile reading list. Popular reading app Pocket added support for Kippt recently, too. Saarinen said that some developers have already organized hack days around the API. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Although it may seem fairly straightforward,I've often found that the best content marketing campaigns usually follow a relatively simple formula when it comes to content creation. The less fuss there is the easier it will be to get content out the door and working in favor of your SEO.One of the biggest complaints I hear from my SEO clients is that they don't know what to write about. Unless your industry is constantly evolving chances are there isn't brand new, earth-shattering knowledge to share with your audience every day. But keep in mind that just because you've been up to your elbows in your niche for months or year that doesn't mean you target audience knows all the nitty-gritty details. What may seem like basic information to you could actually be ground-breaking to someone just getting involved. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

I wrote about successful social marketing strategies in "9 ways to guarantee a winning social campaign," and defined successful social marketing strategies as, "we made more money from social marketing than we spent on social marketing."Both that article and this one are based on NextStage studying the social efforts of more than 400 companies in the U.S. and Canada from 2009 to 2012. We monitored companies as diverse as Alberto-Culver, Boston Scientific, Gucci America, Pioneer North America, and Walgreens. That study also produced a lot of information on how not to do social marketing. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

When used carefully, Twitter can be a useful platform for social media marketing, driving engagement and virality. However, it can also go badly wrong, leading to users responding negatively – or even obscenely – to a brand’s efforts, for all the world to see. In this post, we look at some of the most well-known social media marketing campaigns on Twitter, and examine how well they worked ... or didn’t. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

There have been countless rumors about a potential "Facebook phone" over the years, and they finally came to fruition on Thursday.Well, sort of."Today we're finally going to talk about that Facebook phone," quipped CEO Mark Zuckerberg immediately after walking out during a packed invite-only event on Thursday morning.Zuckerberg went on to explain the inspiration behind the social network's new mobile strategy, suggesting that instead of designing phones around apps first, why not "design around people first" and then interact with the apps. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Last week there were even more people in New York's Times Square than usual, and this columnist was one of them. That's because SES New York was on in full force here, covering everything from link building and SEO optimization to how to turn social activity into e-commerce dollars.While many of the sessions were great (check out Laura Lippay's fabulous presentation on earning visibility through content here), I was reminded just how many basic mistakes marketers are still making when it comes to building their campaigns. That's because for every best practice, there are 10 campaigns that failed to follow it. And these are basic, obvious, and easily fixable mistakes. The good news, dear readers, is that now you can be sure to avoid them. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

When you think back to how the world of SEO and link building has changed over the past 2 years, it’s absolutely amazing. Before the rollout of the original Penguin update and all of the webmaster warnings, link building was kind of a Wild West, with SEO managers throwing budget of whatever worked at the time (or was rumored as working) and piling fragile strategies on top of fragile strategies.I think one of the more powerful visualizations of the link farming drought was looking at the booths at search marketing conferences, and comparing the link oriented businesses that had set up in 2011 vs. 2012. There used to be almost every type of linking vendor you were looking for; from sponsored blog post companies to link rental companies … from link wheels to social bookmarking companies. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

The notion of a miraculous genius being born smarter and more capable than the rest of us mere mortals charms our curiosity. Robert Greene, author of the popular The 48 Laws of Power (Penguin, 2000), would disagree. The fascination we have in prodigies, he says, is "bogus. It's completely bogus." Exceptional talent is about hard work, he says.Greene studied the lives of exceptionally successful people for his latest book, Mastery (Viking/Penguin, 2012). He says that there is no such thing as being born into superior success. Rather, those politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, athletes and artists who rise above the rest in their field, achieving what he calls a "high-level intuitive feel" for their specialty, have an unyielding focus and work ethic."It's not a question of some natural talent or brilliance that you have, it's that you have reached that level of experience or practice," Greene told Entrepreneur.com. "We have to get rid of that old-fashioned notion of genius and... more... - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

By now, if social media isn't a critical element in your online marketing strategy, it should be. Having a presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can add value to your product, to customer service and ultimately to your brand.But simply having an account and broadcasting company news isn't enough. To attract and keep customers -- and to build a strong brand online -- business owners need to be active on social media. They have to provide valuable information and engage with their followers.Here are four things businesses should be doing on social media in order to grow the brand online. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

It’s recently been very quiet around Delicious, the social bookmarking service Yahoo bought in 2005 and then sold to AVOS in 2011. Back then, the AVOS team said it was relaunching Delicious “back to beta,” but Delicious hasn’t made all that many waves since then, nor has it added all that many features to the relaunched service.But after four months of slumber, the Delicious blog sprung into action today and launched a few new features that could make the site a bit more interesting for those of us who long ago abandoned social bookmarking for social networks like Twitter and Facebook. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

One of the great success stories of the first years of the tablet platform, Flipboard, issued its 2.0 version release yesterday with an eye toward empowering users as editors. To some degree, this has always been the case. After all, Flipboard leverages a user's social graph in order to render much of its well-designed magazine-like content.But with the new release, the app is now engaging users more directly in the process of making new content. With the touch of a button, the reader can now tag specific articles and build magazines that can be made public for others to see or kept private for their own later use.In some sense, this takes the Tumblr concept onto the tablet in a compelling format. The visually oriented Flipboard, like Tumblr, encourages people to be public curators and use the image as one of the principal tugs. Likewise, it takes some of that spirit from Pinterest, which many people use as a kind of public bookmarking.Read more:... more... - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Mobile news aggregation app Flipboard released a major update on Tuesday, adding various UI tweaks and Etsy integration, but perhaps most exciting is a new feature that allows users to create and curate their own virtual magazines. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

You've likely heard the weeping and whining from blog readers across the Internet over the demise of Google Reader. Heck, you may even be one of the many people who will miss it when it's gone. But Digg wants you to know that not all hope is lost. The once very popular social bookmarking site is building its own reader, and its looking like it will have some extra features that Google Reader never had. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

College kids, company employees, soccer moms, and stay-at-home moms do one thing when they turn on their computers (or smartphones) — log into their Facebook account and start liking and sharing everything their friends have published. This has sort of become a routine for most of us. It has in turn changed the world of marketing altogether.While a few years ago everyone was focusing on targeted ads through advertising networks as Google Adsense, they are now turning to social media.Facebook’s advertising platform is now so popular due to its capability to better target the users. A user base of one billion from all over the world doesn’t hurt either. If done properly and intelligently, Facebook can transform any business. Still, a few are using the social network in the wrong way, causing more bad than good. Let’s look at a few social media mistakes that you could avoid pretty easily. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

The worrisome trend happening beneath everyone's noses (and keyboards), is that slowly but steadily, we are all giving up our privacy to the world -- and like a herd of buffalo running off the side of a cliff -- we are doing it willingly. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Any music lover can attest to the fact that the internet has done great things in terms of accessibility to new artists and their music; thanks to the likes of YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Itunes, Spotify, Vimeo, Rdio, Pandora and everything else in between, it’s now easier than ever to find great music.The problem though, is that with so many different websites, platforms, and music players, organising all those tunes can be a real bitch. Organising all those bookmarks, Facebook suggestions, YouTube mash-ups, and general music tabs can be a nightmare.Cue new French website Whyd. From the people who brought us baguettes, striped shirts, and funny moustaches comes the answer to everyone’s online music organising woes. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Google finally released its personal note-taking app Keep today, after it “accidentally” saw the light of day last week. The product is as expected, a place to save notes, lists or photos on the fly, for safe…keeping.One of the things that jumped out at me after giving it a quick try is that you can switch to a layout that’s very similar to Pinterest, another app that wants you to hoard a bunch of things. The only difference between Keep and Pinterest is that Pinterest is social. While Pinterest isn’t the only social bookmarking site in the world, it’s the one that has the most consumer appeal. That can’t be lost on Google.Social is something Google could turn on with a flick of the wrist, thanks to the plumbing it has built with Google+. Imagine being able to bookmark and share things you find on the web, specifically things you find within Google searches, then throw them on a “board” and share them with all of your friends. Sounds like Pinterest. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Kippt has realeased a big new update, keeping their bookmarking and indexing services powerful, but presenting your links in a fresh new way.The first thing you'll notice about the new redesign is how visual it's become. Gone is a bland list of text-based links, instead the new design brings out the images and video stills that make the content you're saving memorable. As they say in their blog announcement, "Storing a link in itself isn’t valuable – it should be the content." - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

The dream of everyone who has a website is to drive traffic to it, yet it’s not always easy. There are millions of websites that go live every day that make driving traffic quite a challenge. Luckily, however, a number of creative ways can help you get the necessary attention and traffic you desire. You simply have to work harder, throw a little creativity in the mix and apply new methods. Here are some of the top ones. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Netflix are a streaming company that are always looking to improve, so much so they are giving away a cool $100,000 for any developer that can tweak, tune-up or improve the online cloud based video service they offer.The prize money is being split into ten x $10,000 prizes which was revealed in a press release by Netflix. They explained, ” Netflix Cloud Prize challenges developers around the world to do their very best to improve the features, usability, quality, reliability and security of computing resources delivered as a service over the Internet, popularly known as cloud computing. Contest submissions will be judged by a panel of experts. All submissions will be available freely to anyone.” - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

One of the you-betcha-surefire Pundit strategies is that when something is getting a lot of heat, like the current flap over Google dropping Google Reader, you can get a lot of attention by disagreeing with the crowd. You want to do so in the most colorful possible way, in fact. It’s a common form of link baiting and mild trollership. So long as all that’s happening is they’re family the flames of emotion for their own benefit and to gain attention, I couldn’t care less. But, along with this behavior, comes the risk that someone will actually take some of what’s said seriously and be confused about it. That’s to be avoided. Hence my list of 6 ways the Pundits are confused about Google Reader and RSS - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

NorthReal has has launched a new offering called PropClip which allows consumers to bookmark properties and share them with friends and family as they search for their next home. The company adds this tool to their portfolio alongside Real.io, which offers a social media dashboard specifically for Realtors.The company tells AGBeat that the tool allows brokers to customize the app to fit their brand, making it a tool not only for consumers, but helpful for teams of all sizes. The upcoming updates to the newly launched tool will offer more features like a partnership with BlockAvenue to enhance the truly hyperlocal aspect of home shopping.Besides the look and feel, how does PropClip differ from other bookmarking tools like Nestio or Dwellicious? The company tells us that “although this product is, at its core, a consumer tool we have given brokerages the opportunity to be forward thinking and customize the tool for their brand. From their colors, logos, etc. we enable agents to utilize the tool to be more engaged in their client’s online property search.” - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Until now, Pinterest, the world's third-largest social network, has been lacking one big thing: analytics. Users could rack up followers and repins of their content, but there was no way for business owners to find out what had been pinned from their sites, or, in the other direction, how many people were coming to their sites from Pinterest.But today the company announced that it has introduced an analytics dashboard to help website owners -- whether they're running a small business or a big brand -- gauge the popularity of their content.The analytics will show how many people have pinned content from your site and how many users have seen those pins. It will also track visitor traffic from Pinterest, and you'll be able to see recent pins and your most repinned content of all time, so that you can get a sense both of what is currently trending and of what is most popular overall. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

The App Store takes delivery of hundreds of new apps per day. The overwhelming scene makes it possible to easily overlook an exciting game, valuable productivity suite, etc. However, we have a solution. Today’s Best Apps tackles this problem by providing you with a handpicked and tested list of apps that are truly worth your consideration each and everyday. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

DIYRockets, a company that wants to open-source space exploration, has partnered with Sunglass to launch the world’s first open source competition to create a 3D printed rocket engine.The contest opens on March 9 at this year’s SXSW and challenges inventors, creatives and space entrepreneurs to come up with a new engine design that can be used initially for small payload delivery, but later to “disrupt the space transportation industry.”DIYRockets says it recognizes the progress that private companies have made regarding space exploration, but wants to take this further by creating a contest that invites the public to create and collaborate with one another across the globe. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

The Internet is a distracting place. Cat videos, recipes, and interesting blog posts all conspire to steal our focus and distract us from whatever we've set out to do in the first place. One way you can deal with this constant barrage of brain candy by blocking it out with procrastination-curbing applications such as Cold Turkey.Another possible way is to save all those interesting distractions for later, carrying on with your day secure in the knowledge you'll get to them when the time is right. If that sort of distraction management appeals to you, you're going to like free Web-based service Pocket.Pocket started out as a service called Read It Later, which specialized in saving articles, and later morphed into a more general-purpose service that can also save videos and anything else. With the change in purpose and design came a change in name, and Pocket was born. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

Are you a small business owner that is relying on the search engines to drive traffic and sales to your websites? If so, this Google SEO Guide is for you.The ultimate goal of the search engines is to provide the most relevant and useful of information for the keywords being searched. And in order to achieve this goal, Google has to “weed” out spammy and irrelevant websites from the top of the search results.While Google claims to make at least several hundred updates in a year (500+), they have also released several “animal” updates targeting low quality websites. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

With competitors such as Ex.fm and Whyd, it may not be the most original idea, but newly-launched Songdrop — which is perhaps best described as a ‘Delicious for music’ — is a fun and well designed take on solving the music discovery and sharing problem, at least for music fans that live outside of the paywalls of services such as Spotify.Today the company is announcing its first round of funding. SOIC Capital, a seed and early-stage fund that largely focuses on social fashion and music startups, has invested £100,000 (~$150k) in the burgeoning London-based company.Consisting of a web app-only for now but with mobile apps in the pipeline, Songdrop lets users ‘bookmark’, organise and share music from disparate sources such as YouTube, Soundcloud, Vevo, and various blogs. Users sign up via Facebook or directly, install the cross-browser bookmarklet or Chrome extension, and can then begin bookmarking — or dropping — music (and videos) they discover across the web for later retrieval. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet

8inShareIf you think your brand needs a social media presence, you’re the person in charge of building it. A good social media presence of a brand enhances the purchasing ability of the consumer.Take a look at this infographic from Intuit, While creating a social media presence for a brand is a major task, this infographic makes it easy by breaking down the process into 12 month plan for your brand’s social media marketing success. - Splatforms Team from Bookmarklet