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Trying to find new ways to communicate with your potential customers and increase their engagement? Start getting your current customers to share and recommend content on your behalf to increase the performance of your campaigns! Download this new eBook, 5 Ways to Encourage Customers to Share Your Content, and learn ways to motivate your existing fans, and create new ones in the process.

Download the complimentary ebook here at: http://ow.ly/vMLgW

• Turn sharing into a game increases pass-along tremendously

• Identify, recognize, and reward influencers to turn them into brand ambassadors

• Appeal to altruism – like we always say, sharing is caring

• Give them something exclusive to share for 'bragging rights'

• Let them co-create value through participation


Feel free to share this email with your friends and colleagues – after all, that's what this is all about, right? ;-)

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Today Facebook begins rolling out a new opt-in feature called Nearby Friends. It lets friends see approximately how far away you are from them, and you can share your exact, on-going location with them for a limited time. While it’s sure to stir privacy concerns, Nearby Friends could get people spending more time with friends in the real-world instead of online as it hits iOS and Android in the US in the coming weeks.

Below is a deep analysis of how Nearby Friends works, how it was built, its privacy implications, how it impacts the competitive landscape, and its long-term opportunities for Facebook. But here’s the tl;dr version:

Nearby Friends was built by the Glancee location sharing app team led by Andrea Vaccari that Facebook acquired in 2012. It adds a list of nearby friends to Facebook’s iOS and Android apps. It will also send notifications if you come within a short distance of a friend, and if someone shares their precise location with you you’ll see it on a map.

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You may not know this, but iTunes had its modest beginnings in 1998 and very few people had any clue that it would eventually become what it is today. But here's the part of that story you may not yet know: iTunes is one of the most cost effective ways to drive traffic to any website in any niche using simple, cheap and easy to create podcasts.

Kris Gilbertson literally wrote the book on podcasting and how anyone can use simple, inexpensive (or free) tools to create a podcast that will boost their marketing and bring their business traffic, leads and sales. That's why you need to meet her.

We got Kris to do a free live webinar for us to explain how to take advantage of podcasting and achieve:

• Ways to monetize podcasting for your business
• How to stand out and be discovered with your message
• Steps to launching a world class podcast [technical "How To"]
• Mistakes to avoid that many podcasters make
• Ways to easily monetize your podcast

Go here now and grab your spot for this free live webinar: http://igotowebinar.com/register/417600/   

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Most organizations have a huge blind spot when it comes to social media. Sure, we’re well past the days of people ignoring social altogether – and that’s great. But most organizations still haven’t given social customer feedback the spotlight it deserves, and that translates into missing huge opportunities for the bottom line. For example, did you know that brands that regularly engage with customers will have six times the number of loyal customers? In other words, six times as many customers will return or recommend your business over those don’t if you regularly engage with them online. It doesn’t take a CFO to recognize this means real revenue and a significant impact on the long-term success of your business.

How to achieve Social Media Maturity

Marketing executives from major brands like PetSmart, Southwest Airlines and Dick’s Sporting Goods have all told us that social listening for marketing along simply is not enough. Only when using social feedback throughout the organization – for everything from informing strategy in the boardroom to perfecting the supply chain in the warehouse – can a business truly reach social media maturity for happier, more engaged and more loyal customers. Here’s how to do it.

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Might downloading a 50-cent coupon for Cheerios cost you legal rights?

General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, “join” it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways.

Instead, anyone who has received anything that could be construed as a benefit and who then has a dispute with the company over its products will have to use informal negotiation via email or go through arbitration to seek relief, according to the new terms posted on its site.

In language added on Tuesday after The New York Times contacted it about the changes, General Mills seemed to go even further, suggesting that buying its products would bind consumers to those terms.

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Facebook ads can be a very powerful advertising method for businesses. Where else do you have access to one sixth of the world’s population, and have the ability to precisely target who, out of those people, you would like to advertise to? The answer is nowhere. So then why isn’t everyone converting millions of dollars a day from Facebook? What’s the catch? The catch is that it is very easy to make mistakes when building a Facebook ad campaign. There are many ways in which an ad can be spoiled; anything from poor targeting to bad copy can lay your ad to waste. This post will discuss a few steps that you should follow in order to increase the effectiveness of your Facebook ads.

1. Plan Out Your Target Audience