Top 10 Social Media Blog Finalists 2014: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news.

Finalists: Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2014

We received over 600 nominations for our fifth-annual Top 10 Social Media Blogs contest (the blogosphere’s biggest contest for social media blogs).
The list of 22 finalists is pretty impressive! See for yourself below.
The judges: Our judges include Lee Odden (author of Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing and CEO of TopRank Online Marketing), Denise Wakeman (founder of the Blog Squad™) and Neal Schaffer (author of three books, including Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing). They are currently finishing up their reviews of these sites.

Here are the finalists (in alphabetical order):

• Amy Porterfield
• Bloggers Make Money
• Boom Social
• Brands With Fans
• Christian Karasiewicz
• Danny Brown
• Dustn.tv
• Jenn’s Trends
• Jon Loomer
• Likeable Daily
• Muddywall
• Pagemodo
• Post Planner
• Pushing Social
• RazorSocial
• Simply Measured
• Social Media Frontiers
• Socially Sorted
• Socially Stacked
• SocialMouths
• Spiderworking
• Top Dog Social Media

How We’ll Pick the Winners

#1: Initial Qualification: A blog must have a strong social media focus and must have been nominated multiple times by multiple individuals. If someone nominated more than one blog, only the first nomination was counted.
#2: Final Winner Selection

• Quality of posts: Our judges will examine and score the quality of posts on each blog. Educational and discussion-spurring posts are more valuable than self-promoting posts.
• Frequency of posts: Blogs that feature multiple posts per week will score higher. This is a sign of the blogger’s commitment to blogging.
• Reader involvement: Regular comments from readers are another sign of a healthy blog. In addition, the number of nominations for a specific blog plays a part in this.
• Blog ranking: The number of other blogs that link to the nominated blog shows the value of the content. We’ll use accepted third-party blog ranking systems for this portion of the score.

Congratulations to the finalists! We’ll announce the winners here soon!

What’s New This Week?

To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
Facebook Launches Trending: “A new product that’s designed to surface interesting and relevant conversations to help you discover the best content from all across Facebook.”

“To the right of your news feed, you’ll see a list of topics that have recently spiked in popularity. The list is personalized, including topics based on things you’re interested in and what is trending across Facebook overall.”

Twitter Rolls Out New Web Design: Twitter is “now rolling out a refreshed http://twitter.com” to reflect the look and feel of their iOS and Android apps.

Twitter’s new design on the web.

YouTube Launches New Comment Management Tool: YouTube has “fast-tracked the development of a new comment management page that lets you see, respond to and moderate your comments all in one place.”

“From this central page you can easily remove comments, flag comments for spam or abuse, give a thumbs-up or click over to the video watch page and reply.”

Twitter Releases New Ways to Create Tailored Audiences: “Advertisers can define groups of existing and potential customers more flexibly and connect with them on Twitter.”

“You can now create tailored audiences from lists of email addresses from your own customer relationship management (CRM) database or you can use your CRM database records that you have previously stored with an ad partner.”

Tumblr Adds Support for @Mentions: In Tumblr, “just type @ and a username when you’re writing a post and let that person know that you mentioned him/her.”

Tumblr adds Mentions feature.

LinkedIn Launches LinkedIn Volunteer Marketplace: “Nonprofits can discover the relevant members who’ve expressed interest in volunteering.”

“These members will now be able to browse hundreds—and eventually thousands—of specific, high-quality volunteer opportunities that nonprofits are seeking to fill.”

Here are a few social media tools worth checking out:
LoginBox: A mobile app that “will change the way you log into websites on your iPad and iPhone, forever!”

With a fresh and different approach, LoginBox not only remembers and fills in your username and password, but also automatically completes any other login workflow actions that may be required.

Kuhcoon Ads: An app you can use for Facebook ads management and optimization.

“Create, manage and monitor on the go!”

Other Mentions

Introducing Social Media Marketing World: 60+ pros help you master social media marketing! Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author of Platform), Jay Baer (author of Youtility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author of Launch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner’s mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.
Check out this overview of the conference or click here for more details.
What do you think? Please share your comments below.

Top 10 Social Media Marketing Posts: This Year in Social Media

It’s not always easy to stay up to date with social media.

Here’s what was really hot in 2013.

As you scan these articles, you’ll find great ideas you can put to use today.

Here are 10 of our most popular articles of 2013.

Top 10 Social Media Marketing Articles

#1: New Facebook Marketing Research Shows What Works: The latest research on Facebook marketing shows interesting trends and opportunities. Use this to update your Facebook marketing with the latest findings.

Read more about this research to help you improve your Facebook marketing.

#2: 10 Ways to Use Social Media to Promote an Event: Discover 10 creative ways to use social media to promote your offline and online events.

Read more about these 10 creative ways to use social media to increase your chances for a gangbuster event.

#3: How to Use Hashtags in Your Social Media Marketing: How to use hashtags in your social media marketing to create successful campaigns and maximize your exposure across all social media channels.

Read more to discover how to choose a hashtag that’s memorable and unique.

#4: 4 Ways to Use Social Media to Generate Leads: Here’s how social media for lead generation works and how you can activate your social audiences to generate leads that can affect your bottom line.

Read more on how you can activate your social audiences and generate leads that can affect your bottom line.

#5: How Your Business Can Use the New Facebook Cover Photos: Here are some examples of what you can do with your Facebook cover photo and how to leverage the new rules to boost your business.

Read more to find out how you can feature an engaging and interesting cover photo.

#6: 26 Tips to Create a Strong Social Media Content Strategy: Discover how to strengthen the impact of the content you create and generate the buzz you’re looking for.

Read more in this A-Z guide, with key points that will help you create a social media content strategy that resonates with your audience.

#7: 21 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros: Here’s what these social media experts recommend you focus on to successfully market your business with social media.

Read more to discover the best social media tips from these pros.

#8: 6 Facebook Metrics Marketers Should Be Measuring: Here are the statistics you need to measure and how to measure them to determine your Facebook page’s performance.

Read more to discover the six key metrics you need to track to understand your Facebook page’s performance, why you need them and where to find them.

#9: 9 Creative Ways to Use Social Media to Launch a Product: Here’s how we used social media to launch a new website. You’ll discover unique ways to launch your next product or service.

Read more to find out how to create a teaser campaign on Facebook.

#10: 5 LinkedIn Company Page Tips to Enhance Your Marketing: Here are the benefits of engaging followers with company news, updates, events and relevant content on your LinkedIn company page.

Read more to find out how to optimize your LinkedIn company page.

Discover more social media marketing tactics in 2014

Introducing Social Media Marketing World: 60+ pros help you master social media marketing! Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author ofPlatform), Jay Baer (author of Youtility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author ofLaunch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner’s mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.

Check out this overview of the conference or click here for more details.

What do you think? What was your favorite article on Social Media Examiner in 2013? Please share your comments below.

Instagram Direct: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

Instagram Introduces Instagram Direct: Instagram Direct gives you “a new way to send photo and video messages to friends.”

Twitter Enables Photos With Direct Messages: With Twitter’s latest iOS and Android app updates, you can now “send and receive photos via direct messages and swipe back and forth between timelines.”

You can now share and view photos via direct message (DM) on your Twitter mobile phone app.

Twitter Introduces Broad Match for Keyword Targeting for Ads: Twitter advertisers can use the new broad match, sentiment filtering and negative keyword match feature “to support the increasingly sophisticated needs around keyword targeting.”

For example, a coffee shop that wants to reach coffee enthusiasts can run a campaign targeting the broad match keywords “love coffee.”

Facebook Rolls Out Full Availability of New Like and Share Buttons: After testing, Facebook rolled out the new Like button and extended it to the Follow and Like Box plugins as well.

In early tests over the past month after launching the new Like and Share buttons, Facebook has “seen more than a 5% lift in likes and shares across the web.”

Google Is Testing +Post Ads: “+Post ads allow a brand to take a piece of their public Google+ content, like a photo, video or even a hangout, and with a few clicks, turn it into a display ad that can run across the more than 2 million sites in the Google Display Network.” This new feature is currently only offered to a select group of partners.

Your LinkedIn Inbox Gets a New Look: LinkedIn “started to roll out a new, freshly redesigned and easier to navigate inbox experience to help you better manage and build your professional relationships on LinkedIn.”

LinkedIn’s new inbox gives you a “cleaner and more streamlined design with larger pictures to make it easier to follow and manage your professional conversations.”

Foursquare No Longer Allows Private Check-ins on iOS7: In the latest iOS7 app update, Foursquare decided to remove the ability to privately check in. Private check-ins are still available on other platforms.

Here’s a cool social media tool worth noting:

Circle: An app to show you local news and events from helpful and positive people who are near you right now.

Use Circle to find out what’s happening near you.

Weekly Marketing Tip

Here we bring you weekly marketing tips from Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner:

How to Use Video on Sales Pages

Other Mentions

Introducing Social Media Marketing World: 60+ pros help you master social media marketing! Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author ofPlatform), Jay Baer (author of Youtility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author ofLaunch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner’s mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.

Check out this overview of the conference or click here for more details.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.