LinkedIn Profiles – New Look and Added Features

Have you been on your LinkedIn profile today? If so, you might have noticed your profile has a new look and some added features. I first found out about this via TheNextWeb and as soon as I logged on to my profile, sure enough, I was greeted with their new Post-It note checklist.

The post-it note guided me through some items I still needed to add to my profile, like a better description of what I do at my current position, as well as past employment.

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How to do Onsite-Social Media Optimization?

" Social Media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you." - Matt Goulart

Social Media Optimization is an outstanding way to promote your business on the web and create strong brand recognition in a very short period of time worldwide. By doing SMO, it can help build market reputation and ensure success of your business. As in our previous email, we have covered the topic on How to think Social ? In continuation to that, we will tell you more on how to do Onsite Social Media Optimization: Your website is your command center - Place social media communication front-and-center on your website. This provides another way for people to discover your social media channels and increase your visibility. Consider adding following to your homepage- tweet stream, a link for users to "Like" your page, blog, testimonial and customer feedback. Instant Personalization - We all want to see stuff that matters to us, our friends, our job etc. Facebook and LinkedIn cater to that need by providing features like personalized search results, news feed, invite friends etc. Few things that you can do on your site are - At login screen, show other friends who are using your website (take FB like button) Once logged in, show his network's activity e.g. Spotify shows what my friends are listening to or, have listened in past. Recommendations can also be made relevant through personalization. e.g. TripAdvisor Make your content easily shareable - Ensure that content is sharable across the web e.g. Slideshare's "Embed Slide" option, or, YouTube's "Embed Video in your page" option. Also, add other sharing options like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn. Recognition always works well - if you have users who contribute by going above and beyond, recognize them. E.g. SEOMoz Top Users, Top Fans app and other leader boards are powerful tools to motivate customers. Stay tuned to get tips on off-site social media optimization. Cheers SocialAppsHQ

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I M (is) fun!!!

Disclaimer : People who didn't actually get my pun, IM in the title meant Internet Marketing.

Back in the day, when I was still a kid, or maybe a grown up kid, I used Internet just for fun and you know what and of course to download movies and projects.

Then came Facebook and I became one of its foremost addicts. Facebook was all about friends and of course chicks. Well, more about chicks...anyway, what I mean is, it was all about time pass and enjoyment.

Then I was introduced to the amazing world of Internet Marketing and for the first time in my life I felt 'Wow!! I never knew this.' I have been in awe of the web and the socia media ever since.

This is not something I do for a living, yes of course for a living, I am not doing this for charity. What I meant was not 'just' for a living. I actually kind of like it. I like exploring the new dimensions of web everyday and there's really too much information to grasp. Having been in this arena for quite a few years now, I can definitely say, I am a pro. Or, may not be a pro, but definitely I am better than an amateur. I am still in the process of learning and will always be.

This virtual world is changing and growing too fast and I don't want to be left behind.

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Expanding Google Analytics Social Reports: Tracking Links To Your Site Content

Have you ever wondered which other pages on the web link to your own? Wouldn’t it be nice to know which sites are talking about your content, and in which context? Well, a problem no more: now you can see all the backlink URL’s, post titles, and more right within the new Social reports.

The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002. Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption. If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users.

If you’re not familiar with Trackbacks, then think of it as automated Google Alerts for all of your pages: you publish new content, we scour the web for pages that link to it and build automated reports for you right within Google Analytics - simple as that.

These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content. Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.

To learn more about the new Social and ROI reporting, take a look at our announcement last month, and also take a look at in-depth example of how to use these new reports to measure your user’s engagement in Google+. Posted by Ilya Grigorik, Google Analytics team

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LinkedIn Sit tight Can't wait?

LinkedIn 

Sit tight 

Can't wait?

They're taking a moment to clean things up. They'll be back by 9:30pm Pacific Time, 04:30 GMT.

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Google Maps Now Includes Real-Time Traffic Data

Now if you’re trying to figure out how to get to your job interview or dinner with friends you can also account for what route might be the fastest. Google Maps has added the ability to see the estimated time of your journey using real-time traffic data.

The new-and-improved feature offers estimated travel times within Google Maps based on current traffic conditions. So, if you’re heading across town to meet a new yoga instructor you’ll be able to see how long several routes might take with no traffic, as well as how long the expedition might be based on the traffic conditions right now.

Depending on where you live, the shortest distance may take the longest time to travel depending on the time of day your journey begins. Traffic data is constantly refreshed where available, offering the latest possible information.

Google previously offered traffic data, however, this is the first time data has been available as part of directions.

“The previous traffic feature that was removed from Google Maps last summer provided users with the worst-case traffic scenario based on historic traffic data — e.g. ‘up to 50 minutes in traffic.’” a Google spokesperson told Mashable. “That feature was removed because we wanted to improve the freshness of the data. The feature that we’re introducing on Google Maps today works differently and serves a different purpose. The new time-in-traffic feature provides users with the ability to check current traffic conditions and estimates the length of travel time based on constantly refreshed data.”

Data is gathered through third-party services and through information from Android users who have opted in to the My Location feature on Google Maps. Google would be able to tell, for instance, if there were several Android owners moving slowly on the freeway and determine that there was traffic slowing them down. The more people opting into the service in the area, the better the traffic information available will be.

If you want to help provide data for the service and help your fellow driver in the process, you can do so byturning on the My Location feature for Google Maps on your Android phone.

Let us know in the comments what you think about traffic data being incorporated into Google Maps in the comments.

Google Maps Now Includes Real-Time Traffic Data

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Facebook Announces Tight Integration of 60 Apps to Timeline, More on the Way

In a press event in San Francisco, Facebook Director of Platform Products Carl Sjogreen announced further extension of the Open Graph, which will now allow developers to build a variety of apps that let users add anything they want directly to their timelines.

Sjogreen announced that more than 60 apps are immediately going live, including such favorites as Pinterest, eBay, Foodspotting, Airbnb and Foursquare. He said that when people add an app to their Facebook timelines, they can control whether activities they do on that app appear on their timelines. They can also determine who gets to see these updates.

SEE MORE: Facebook’s Big Announcement [LIVEBLOG]

This is just the beginning for Facebook and its relationship with apps, where Sjogreen said the company’s vision is, “whatever you’re using, you can add it to your timeline.”
Here’s the list of apps Facebook released Wednesday night, with more on the way:

TRAVEL

Gogobot

Airbnb

TripAdvisor

Wipolo

Where I’ve Been

FOOD

Foodspotting

Cookpad

Snooth (wine)

Urbanspoon

Yummly

Foodily

SHOPPING / FASHION

Pose

Pinterest

Polyvore

Oodle

Fab.com

eBay

Giftrocket

Payvment

Livingsocial

FITNESS

MapMyRun

Runkeeper

ENTERTAINMENT

Rotten Tomatoes

Dailymotion (French video site)

Cinemur (French video site)

Metacafe (videos)

Ford (game)

Wooga (Bubble Island, Diamond Dash)

OMGPOP (Draw My Thing)

Zynga (Words with Friends, Castleville)

GIVING

Causes

Fundrazr

Artez.com

MORE

BranchOut (job search)

BeKnown from Monster (job search)

Color (photo and video sharing)

Courserank (education)

Grockit (education)

Foursquare (location)

Goodreads (books)

Kobo (books)

StubHub (ticketing)

Ticketmaster (ticketing)

Ticketfly (ticketing)

ScoreBig (ticketing)

Appsfire (app discovery)

Artfinder (art)

Autotrader (cars)

Add apps to your timeline contact here.

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