First of all, last nights Super Bowl was the most watched Super Bowl ever – which is saying a lot. Not only it was it the most watched, but it was also one of the most talked about events across social media platforms. Here are the three most talked about moments from last nights Super Bowl:

1. The Power Outage. Did anyone else think that it was done on purpose to make the game a little more exciting?? The fist half was a bit of a yawn. The power outage was the second most talked about event from yesterdays Super Bowl on Twitter with 231,500 Tweets Per Minute. It was the 3rd most talked about moment on Facebook. That 30 minute delay really put a damper on the game, but luckily when the power came back on, the game got a lot more exciting!

Power going out at the Super Bowl

2. Beyonce’s Halftime Performance. Not surprisingly, Beyonce’s half time performance was one of the most talked about moments from the night. It received 268,000 Tweets Per Minute, making it the most talked about moment on Twitter, and was the second most talked about moment on Facebook. The most talked about moment of her halftime performance, was the reunion of the group Destiny’s Child. This was by far my favorite moment of the Super Bowl, that girl can dance!

Beyonce & Destiny’s Child

3. The Ravens Winning. Of course the whole reason why there is a super bowl in the first place is to see who wins the big game, and this year the Ravens took the cake. The 2nd half (luckily for the NFL) ended up being pretty exciting to watch and it was a close game with the Raven’s prevailing in the end. When the clock expired in the 4th quarter there were 183,000 Tweets Per Minute talking about the Ravens win, and it was the most talked about moment on Facebook – beating out both Beyonce and the power outage.

The Raven’s Win!

The other big winner of the night had to of been Twitter. They were mentioned in half of the 52 ad’s that ran during the Super Bowl, far more than any of their competitors (Facebook was only mentioned in 4). And, this Super Bowl was the most tweeted about Super Bowl in the history of Twitter.

The big loser of the night was Go Daddy. There was just too much noise in that commercial! I know that I, and everyone I was with was really grossed out. And twitter just confirmed my thoughts with the majority of the people I follow also extremely grossed out. Bad move by Go Daddy, thats for sure!

It was another successful Super Bowl, and I cant wait to see what sorts of surprises next years game has in store for us.

The post The 3 Most Talked About Super Bowl Moments appeared first on Clix.

Just call me McKayla.

I’m not discounting the search tool from the outset, but there are a few things to consider before we all jump on the good news bandwagon.

1. Facebook Has Had The Data All Along

First, my biggest issue with Graph Search is that Facebook has had all of this data for years. I’m not diminishing the task of organizing millions of connections, there’s no way I could personally do it. The question is: why now? Why has the search feature been left alone for years without significant improvement? I won’t even touch on the fact that web searches through Facebook default to Bing.

2. Search Remains Limited

The information you can search is limited to the information that users choose to share with the social network. The search assumes that users within a search actively Like pages for businesses, restaurants, music, sports teams, etc. and that these likes are true and legitimate reflections of that user’s taste.

3. That Whole “Privacy” Issue…

Facebook maintains that the new search feature will not affect users’ privacy. To accomplish this goal essentially means that the information you find in Graph Search will all be information you could already see elsewhere. This isn’t new information, just a new way of categorizing the data.

My Thoughts:

Despite  all of the negatives, I think there is potential for Graph Search to take off. It could change the way we search and review businesses. Natural language could change the way we conduct searches everywhere. All of these great, enormous alterations to the way we find information have potential- if people actually use it.

Facebook may find that the search is a quickly passing fad or that it is used in ways the social network does not intend (i.e. stalking) and general applications are not as popular.

Businesses may panic and establish a presence on Facebook. Then again, they may not. Until it becomes widely available and moderately functional there is no real way to know if Graph Search will be the game changer Facebook is imagining.

The post Facebook Graph Search – Not Impressed (Yet) appeared first on Clix.

With this update, when you click on this it will show you places near by that your friends have rated, recommended, checked-in to, or liked. The results that you see will be ranked by the recommendations, check-ins and likes. Your network will act as the filter for this, at least for the time being.

How is this different than before? When you previously clicked on Nearby, it showed you places that your friends had recently checked in at, but thats really it. It will still show you that, but it will also show you various other businesses “nearby” that have been recommended or liked by your network of friends. Of course, only those businesses that have a Facebook Page will be listed – which is just another reason why its so crucial for your company or business to be active on social media sites.

Not only will the update show you businesses and places that your friends have visited and liked, but it also will give you the capability to search by location and/or category (restaurants, shoe stores, hotels etc). Results that appear will be ranked by the number of star ratings, recommendations, likes and check-ins. Since most people are on their Facebook app anyways when out and about, this makes the Nearby tool much more effective and helpful to those looking for specific places.

The app will be updated this afternoon, and I cant wait to start trying it. We all knew and expected Facebook to eventually join the search conversation, and I’m sure this is just the very beginning for them, as they test out the waters.

I’m sure the Nearby feature will become more and more complex as it gathers more data from their Facebook users. I would imagine them letting businesses pay to be on the top of the listings you search for as time goes on, much like Google’s pay per click.

I personally think that this new feature will be very beneficial. Its always nice to be recommended to go try a restaurant by a friend, because you know that it will most likely be a good experience. And now, you can just browse all of the locations near by that your friends and family like and recommend, hopefully making decisions a lot easier!

The post Facebook Introduces Local Search Tool appeared first on Clix.

“On average, less than 1% of Likes on any given Page will be removed, providing they and their affiliates have been abiding by our terms.”

The news is welcomed by legitimate brand managers and social media marketers, who will find it a relief that those engaging in less-than-honorable tactics will feel repercussions. While the larger companies can afford to lose thousands of followers without making a dent in their revenue (Texas HoldEm Poker lost over 103,000 fans- less than one half of one percent of all fans) smaller businesses and start up companies can not afford to see such fluctuations.

Among the top 20 brands on Facebook, all but 4 have lost Likes in the last 24 hours, with only Facebook For Every Phone, Facebook, YouTube, and Coca-Cola remaining immune to the slaughter. In those cases, the positive metric does not necessarily indicate that no Likes were lost, but rather that the number of Likes gained was greater.

Data courtesy of PageData.

The elimination of fake Likes is important for brands to consider when selecting a social media company to manage their online presence. While it is tempting to see a massive influx of Likes initially, it is crucial to remember that true, organic growth takes time. Hoping for a quick fix in this case may get you much less than you bargained for long-term.

This once again stresses a point that we at Clix share with out clients- choosing to engage in social marketing and SEO are long-term solutions. The audience must be carefully cultivated and the brand loyalty genuine. Like Facebook, potential customers can spot a fake profile, and your reputation will not be improved in their eyes. The key is to remain constant and cater to the real needs of your real followers. This should keep you too busy to spend time looking for fake Likes.

The post Facebook Fake Out appeared first on Clix.

As a social media company, we believe it’s crucial to stay involved in all of the latest developments in technology and sharing, so naturally this latest development caught our attention.

What’s The Big Deal?

According to the Apple Store’s description:

“With Camera, you can share photos on Facebook faster than ever, and see what friends are up to in a feed of nothing but their photos.

–Post a bunch of photos at once

–See friends’ latest photos in one place

–Play with crops and filters

–Tag friends, add captions and say where you are

–See photos from different apps”

But isn’t that what Instagram already offers? The difference is in the style of sharing and the quality of the product. Instagram gained popularity as the first in its field to really take the concept of making ordinary mobile photos look professional, and Facebook Camera plays on essentially the same concept.

The Sharing Style: Friends Vs. Followers

Instagram gives users the option of selecting to post public or private profiles. A public profile in this sense is much like the style used for Twitter. Users have the option of “following” others who they think post good content. There is not an approval process, and just because User A follows User B, User B does not necessarily have to follow User A. It means that you can follow anyone you want with a public profile, not just those with whom you share personal connections.

Facebook Camera, on the other hand, operates in the traditional Facebook “friend” format. Two users who have mutually accepted a friendship on the social network will show up in each other’s respective feeds. This means that the content you access will be limited to those you are already connected to. You’ll see the same photos that appear in your newsfeed already, but with a more stylized appearance.

Bonus: Instagram allows users to connect their social networks and share to all simultaneously. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and Foursquare are all connection options. Do you know what that means? Instagram is already sharing on your Facebook account if you want it to.  Two birds with one metaphorical stone, if you will.

Quality: Filtering Out The Good From The Bad

Instagram gives users 18 basic filters to apply, along with blurring and border options. The names are relatively creative, and the editing quality dramatic. The filters and blur options add an artistic quality to the service aside from just improving the image.

Facebook Camera has 15 filters. That’s about it. The filters primarily highlight different elements of the image and focus on lighting. A quick breeze through the line of filters makes it obvious that the focus is improving the basic, visual quality without the artistic element.

And The Winner Is…

Facebook clearly comes out on top. No, not Facebook Camera: the company itself. Owning both Instagram and Facebook Camera means that the social network has purchased its greatest competition and now has the ability to control its promotion. Facebook can choose to promote both platforms simultaneously, singularly, or scrap one of the apps all together. It seems that Instagram has the stronger case for surviving such elimination.

It’s far too likely that Facebook Camera will go the way of Google Video after the acquisition of YouTube and disappear quietly into the night.

The post Facebook Camera- An Instagram Challenger? appeared first on Clix.

Social media is changing the way that we receive news as a society, and it amplifies reactions to cases that would not have received such attention in its absence.

The Old Media:

Let’s be honest, my parents aren’t exactly social media savvy. Actually, they have no clue what social media really does. My mom can’t even open a word document on her own, much less log in to a website (I still love you, Mom). For people in this situation, news comes in traditional formats. We’re talking newspapers, magazines, and the local news programs. In that kind of communication, there is a single sender (the media) and the receiver (the audience). The message flow is omni-directional and the audience takes a passive role.
When watching the news or reading the paper, the audience gets the “unbiased” opinion of a given station and is not invited to offer their own comment. Ok, you could call the station or write a letter to the editor, but honestly, it’s not a very productive system. There isn’t a lot of audience feedback here, and public opinion remains muted.

The New Media:

It’s not a secret that I’m a fan of social media. I think it’s a great sharing tool and awesome for promotional purposes. When you get your news solely through social media such as Facebook or Twitter it is important, however, to consider the source. The advantage of algorithms and sharing information with friends is that you are automatically directed to searches that relate to your interests or concerns. This is a double edged sword, because you are directed to issues or events that relate to your passions and those issues are presented in a format loaded with the opinions of the people you consider to have valuable views. Users can comment on a post or story when they share it, and you, the viewer, are hit with the opinion before you have a chance to read the facts and form your own decision.

Example: If I’m scrolling through my news feed and I see a friend has posted a story with the comment “This is a crazy example of XYZ!” I’m predisposed to take that person’s opinion in mind when I read the article for myself, regardless of the actual implications of the facts. I consider myself to be an educated person, and I still value the opinions of my friends.

Public Opinion:

The catch with this new social media news distribution is that it projects the opinions of a few onto the masses and creates the court of public opinion. The projection of opinion occurs through the “liking” of statuses, re tweets, and reposting information with commentary. In sharing the information, you are unwittingly sharing the opinion of the previous poster. Not something you always want.

Social media has also created the court of public opinion and projected it on a global scale. Everything from political events, protests, and criminal trials are massively distributed.

Making a Change:

Social media is the future of news and information sharing, but it will be up to the public to develop the ability to evaluate the quality of content and opinions of their friends. When commenting and sharing news stories it is helpful to focus on the factual information.

The post The Social Media News appeared first on Clix.

This year the candidates are all on social media and they all have a lot of followers, so does that mean everyone is even?  Is social media not going to play a big part in this election, because everyone is doing it and there is nothing new or innovative this time around?  It looks like the Obama campaign might have another trick up their sleeve when it comes to engaging people with their campaign online.

The Obama campaign has recently released a 17-minute video on his own YouTube page.  The video is narrated by Tom Hanks and called “The Road We’ve Traveled”.  This video is going to appear on a new YouTube platform that enables the Obama campaign to turn the passive experience of watching a video into a great organizing and fund-raising tool.  This technology is going to allow viewers of this video to post campaign content to their Facebook pages, volunteer, and donate to the campaign.  They are going to be able to do this all from President Obama’s YouTube page.

This is a step above simply putting out a video, as the YouTube platform will give the Obama campaign the ability to get visitors to share the content, or pledge their support.  This is the one-click approach that campaigns see as an integral part of their online strategy.  This type of video being released shows the importance that political campaigns are starting to put on web-video.  The online video is now being seen as a valid tool for proactive electioneering.

The Obama campaign is thinking that video will be the primary way they communicate with undecided voters, because it offers them a way to spread their messages into online communities, where friends and family members will discuss and debate.  This helps the video look more like dialogue and a constructive discussion, rather than political propaganda.  This provides a level of interaction that a TV advertisement cannot provide.

The idea is to get these videos into the hands of trusted people in the different networks.  If people start to share the videos, it will add a degree of credibility because a friend or family member is endorsing it.  This is taken more serious than a traditional TV commercial.  The major change with the videos being released is that they give people something to act on.  The Obama campaign wants to bring their engagement tools to their supporters.

The Obama campaign already has a head start with that, since his Facebook page has over 25 million likes.  Do you think it’s possible for social media to change minds or convince an undecided voter one way or another?

The post Obama Using Videos and Social Media in Campaign. appeared first on Clix.

So why has the most shared video of 2012 completely gone against conventional wisdom?  KONY 2012 is 29 minutes long and isn’t funny at all, yet it has been seen more than any other video so far this year, at last count it was viewed 73,999,551 times since being uploaded on March 5^th.  It has also been shared more than 7.6 million times on Facebook and embedded in more than 6,200 blogs.  There have been nearly 5,000 news sources that have written about “KONY 2012”.

There is a recent study that was done by the University of South Australia.  The study identified the emotions that are most likely to be shared across the social web.  They found that most videos are amusing or boring, and most of them don’t go viral.  They found that videos, which evoke marked physiological responses, such as laughter, anger, crying, or shock are most likely to be shared.  So if you laugh or cry, you are more likely to share than if you smile or frown.  Videos that evoke positive emotions such as exhilaration, hilarity, astonishment, happiness, and inspiration are more likely to be shared than negative emotions such as anger, disgust, sadness, shock or frustration.

What does this mean for video marketers?  Knowing the emotions that people respond to and are most likely to share is a great indicator of how to make content in the future.  One lesson learned is that laughter is not the only way to get people to share your video, although hilarity is easily the most likely emotion to get your video shared.

The “KONY 2012” video shows us that the stronger the emotion, the more likely a video will get shared.  This says pick the emotion you are aiming for and then crank it up.  Being positive is a much safer bet when doing this as anger can lead to users becoming irritated and cause a backlash.

Of course this data doesn’t tell the full story, there can be things happening offline, the possibility of you having used the product before, and if the video is being promoted in one way or another.  Also you might find a video hilarious that I find disgusting or vice versa.  The main takeaway is we never know which video will catch on, however the stronger the emotion that video evokes, the more likely it will be shared.  Humor is no longer the only factor when making a viral video.

Here is the “KONY 2012” video in case you haven’t seen it and a funny marketing video about shaving.

KONY 2012

DollarShaveClub.com

Which one do you like more, is one more effective than the other?  Tell us what you think, how can this affect SEO, or Social Media?

The post Viral videos are changing marketing tactics. appeared first on Clix.

You’ve started your new blog, made a couple of posts and made it look all flashy and stuff.  Now what?  How do you get people to interact with you on social media?  The first tip seems rather obvious, but might be overlooked if you’re new to blogging.  Display your social media icons prominently near the top of your blog.  This will make it easy for your readers to connect with you on your social networks.  I say this is a great idea.  Next you will want to create a Facebook page for your blog specifically, this isn’t the first thing I would do, but it makes sense, it might drive your blog readers to be your fan on Facebook, which ultimately creates more interaction.

Some of the other tips included generating traffic with StumbleUpon, which is a recommendation engine; again this should be good for your blog as long as you tag things appropriately for random people to find your niche.  Using the same concept there are a few tips about using things you might already be using to promote yourself, such as sending your RSS feed to your LinkedIn account and using Pinterest.  You can even add a pin it button to your blog, to make it easy for your users to share your content.  If you can get people you already engage with to interact with your new blog, then others might join in.

Other tips were to use link shorteners, even when you don’t need to; this is so you can gain access to metrics.  Metrics are always good; this way you know who is clicking and when they are doing it.  Other things you can do is to use your blog name as your username, this will promote your personal brand.  On top of that you should join many blogger groups on Facebook, this will hopefully lead other bloggers to link to you, if you have good content, which ultimately builds social awareness of your blog.

On that same note, you should show some love to other bloggers as well, retweet them, share their content on Facebook, or repin their stuff, and hopefully they will return the favor.  The last thing you should remember is to stay on Social Media, continue to post and read everything you can.  This will help you make and maintain relationships and get new ideas for your upcoming blog posts.

The post Socially Interacting with your Blog Readers appeared first on Clix.

One company is trying to put the sweet and cute back into Valentine’s Day.  Starbucks recently released some nice heart-adorned cups.  But, there is something hidden in these hearts, they are part of a mobile augmented reality program.  If you have the app downloaded for iPhone or Android, and put the cup into your phone’s display, the hearts will come to life.  Heart-shaped flower petals will start flying off the cup.  What makes it sweet and cute, is that you can send a scene to your loved one via email or Facebook.

This is an excellent mobile marketing strategy by Starbucks, this will lead to sales, just so customers can send cute videos to each other, plus the nerd in some of us might get excited about Valentine’s Day, if we get to play with an augmented reality program.  Come on that is just COOL!  Not to mention the ability to share the scene on Facebook, which will lead to more people wanting to play with the cool cups.  Starbucks! Way to bring the sweet and cute back to Valentine’s Day, and thanks for finally introducing the NERD!

The post Putting the Nerd into Valentine’s Day appeared first on Clix.