40% of users’ time on Facebook is spent on the News Feed. When a user logs in, there are normally many more posts than can fit in their “top news.”

EdgeRank is an algorithm developed by Facebook that governs what is displayed — and how high — on the News Feed. Knowing how Facebook decides what shows up (and what doesn’t) in news feeds is key for digital marketers. If you can write posts with an eye toward the EdgeRank algorithm, they will have a higher probability of being displayed in users’ News Feeds.

Article: “Understanding Facebook EdgeRank [INFOGRAPHIC]”

This article is by Pam Dyer on Social Media Today.

The available guiding metrics and studies are really just in their beginning phase and a lot is still quite vague.

To help make things a bit clearer, I’ve collected 10 of the most interesting social media studies and summarized what we can best learn from them.”

Article: “The 7 most interesting social media studies and what to learn from them”

This article is by Leo Widrich of BufferApp.com

Fortunately, there are many solutions.

Approach #1

For all of the sites which feed into your Google Reader account, just subscribe to receive their updates by email. Most offer such an email option. It’s easy and you can unsubscribe at any future point.

For example, if you receive this Emerge2 Blog via Google Reader, here’s our email subscription form to receive new blog posts in your inbox.

Approach #2

Use the Google Takeout utility to extract your Google Reader subscriptions into an export file so you can import them into an alternate RSS reader tool.

There are many other RSS reader tools available. For example, Feedly is often suggested and they already have a list of tips for migrating from Google Reader to Feedly.

In addition, Marketing Land has created a post of 12 Google Reader Alternatives and Buffer has created the “Top 5 Google Reader Alternatives that work with Buffer“.

There are many other such lists of alternative RSS readers. In other words, you have options.

And, if you wish to receive the Emerge2 Blog via an RSS reader, here’s the feed’s URL: http://blog.emerge2.com/feed

Closing

Unfortunately in the ever-changing world of technology and online services, things are always changing. The closing of the Google Reader service is sadly just another example of this.

The ball is now in your court: Select your approach, make the changes, and move on. You can do it — Do it now!

(PS: Thanks to copyblogger for the idea for this article.)

One of our clients asked this question today. I thought it might be helpful to create a quick post about the process so that others could also benefit from the information.

Your Facebook Page

Step 1: To provide admin access to your Facebook page, all of the following must be true:

1. You must already be an admin of the Facebook page (at Manager level)
2. The new admin person must have a personal Facebook account
3. Your personal Facebook account must be friends with their personal Facebook account. If you are not yet friends with them on Facebook, then do an Add-Friend request to them and wait for them to confirm it. (You can always unfriend them later.)

Step 2: Go to your organization’s Facebook page (e.g. here’s ours), click the [Edit Page] dropdown menu and select the “Admin Roles” option. If there isn’t an empty slot shown then click the “Add Another Admin” link to create an empty slot. Start typing the new admin person’s name into this empty slot. A dropdown list of your friends should appear containing the names that begin with the letters that you’ve entered thus far. Once you see the new admin person’s name, click on it. Very Important: Do not leave the link under their name at the default of “Manager”. Click the link and select the most appropriate option. If you aren’t sure, then select “Content Creator”. Click the [Save] button. You might be asked to confirm your choice. The new admin person will be notified that they have been made an admin of the page.

(Note: Anyone with “Manager” level admin access can remove all other admins from the page, including you!, and take over the page for themselves and there is nothing that you can do about it and Facebook will not help you recover it. Manager level means “can take over the entire page and kick everyone else out.” Of course, if you only have one Manager level (you) and if you ever stop using Facebook or your personal account gets suspended for whatever reason, no one will ever have Manager level to add/remove admins in the future. So it is also a good idea to have a backup second (trusted) person at Manager level.)

Your Twitter Account

Unfortunately, Twitter doesn’t provide the ability to designate multiple administrate accesses for a given Twitter account. Therefore, the simplest way to have the new admin person help with managing the account is to provide them with the login information for your organization’s Twitter account. Then whenever either of you are acting on behalf of the organization, just login to Twitter using the organization’s Twitter account.

Option: There are utilities available to assist with the management of Twitter accounts, but discussing them is beyond the scope of this post.

Your LinkedIn Company Page

(If your organization doesn’t yet have a “company page” created on LinkedIn, you should create one.)

Step 1: To provide admin access to your organization’s LinkedIn company page, all of the following must be true:

1. You must already be an admin of the company page
2. The new admin person must have a personal LinkedIn account
3. Your personal LinkedIn account must be a “connection” of their personal LinkedIn account. If you are not yet connected to them on LinkedIn, then search for them and do a Connect request to them — wait for them to confirm it. (You can always remove the connection later.)

Step 2: Go to your organization’s company page (e.g. here’s ours, see the Companies dropdown menu), click the [Edit] button in the top-right corner of the page. Scroll down to the “Company Pages Admin” section. Find the empty input field and start typing the name of the new admin person into this field. A dropdown list of your connections should appear containing the names that begin with the letters that you’ve entered thus far. Once you see the new admin person’s name, click on it. Click the [Publish] button in the top-right corner of the page to implement the change.

Assistance?

If Emerge2 can assist you with any of these social media activities, please let us know.

…..

 Of course, there are many ways of managing various social media platforms. This post only describes one way of accomplishing this one task of adding a new admin person to help you manage these specific accounts. You might want to consider if these methods might also work for you.

The article is written from a non-profits perspective, but in our experience the mistakes are very common to most new Twitter users.

If you are new to Twitter, or still don’t feel that it is working well for you, then do yourself a favor and make sure that you these basic set-up parameters populated and try to avoid these mistakes.

Article: “Eight Common Mistakes Nonprofits Make When They First Join Twitter”

This article is by Heather Mansfield of the @NonprofitOrgs blog.

There are many definitions of social business, but they all center around a few key concepts. Making decisions faster and more fluidly, with more information and intelligence to hand that is shared with less friction, and with people at all levels of the organization engaged in the purpose.

It’s become commonplace for the terms social media and social business to be used interchangeably, effectively stating that a social business is, by definition, one that engages in social media activity through content creation and online engagement.

Social media marketing is an activity, and an important one in a modern age. But it’s not the same as social business.

The absolute foundation of a social business is…”

Article: “Building a Social Business That Won’t Fail”

This article is by Amber Naslund of SideraWorks.

“We ran a one-week experiment at my business. We wanted to see what a simple promotion via social media would do. How many fans would it reach? How many click throughs would we get? Could we possibly derive revenue from social media?”

How do the numbers change on Twitter versus Facebook versus Email?

Here are the results…

Article: “The Reality of Facebook Promotions”

This article is by Jason Falls on the Social Media Explorer blog.

He also explains what he liked, what he didn’t like, and whether Twitter paid advertising is worth it.

Article: “Twitter Paid Advertising: The Good and the Bad”

This article is by Saman Kouretchian on the SocialMediaToday blog.

“Understand the nuances of Facebook ads to find the best fit for your objectives.”

“Organizations considering Facebook ads can look at this summary of the four different types of ads, with an example of each, plus a handy comparison chart at the end of this post.”

Article: “4 kinds of Facebook ad types compared”

This article is by John Haydon on the Socialbrite blog.

“The Wall Street Journal’s survey is worth looking at if you want an idea of how social media is used among small businesses in the U.S.”

Article: “Four Reasons Why Twitter Should Be Used By All Small Businesses”

This article is by Quinton O’Reilly on the @SimplyZesty blog.

Here’s a study that shows that if a Facebook page owner makes a post on their page and then pays to promote that post, the post will show up in the targeted users’ news feeds and the click-through-rates will be 45 times higher than the ad’s that show up in the right margin.

Similarly, other actions associated with promoted posts are higher than the right margin ad’s.

In addition, right margin ad’s don’t show up for mobile users, but promoted posts show up for all users.

Article: “Location matters when it comes to Facebook ads”

This article is by Zak Stambor of Internet Retailer magazine.

If 2012 is measured as the year of social, then we are heading into a new-age renaissance of engagement marketing. Sometimes called experiential marketing or event marketing, engagement marketing is about encouraging consumers to participate in the creation and evolution of a brand campaign. Much like social media, it is a two-way conversation that excels because humans by nature desire interaction, and want to shape and customize their experiences based on their personal preferences.

Marketers have realized the importance of social media in their brands’ promotional strategy and are no longer naïve to the basic assets needed to communicate their product or service socially. The good news is …”

Article: “3 Tips On Turning Your Social-Media Strategy Into Real-Life Brand Engagement”

This article is by Alex Frias on the FastCompany.com blog

Social media best practices are constantly in flux as tool sets change and algorithms are modified. Unless you study Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. Google, etc. on a regular basis you may not realize that the best practices that worked a year ago have evolved and some simply don’t work anymore at all. Social media is time consuming and if you aren’t doing it right, you’re wasting your time.”

Article: “11 Obvious Signs Your Nonprofit Needs Social Media Training”

This article is from the Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog.

The pressure that brands feel to make connections on Facebook is tremendous. They’re reading about all kinds of data about over a billion connected people and the power that Facebook yields in terms of keeping people engaged and using the channel.

The numbers are truly staggering.

There is no question about it: brands really do need some kind of formal and iterative Facebook strategy.

Article: “The Thing About Facebook And Brands”

This article is by Mitch Joel on the TwistImage.com blog

But, have you managed to get READERS through countless blogging methodologies found all across the web? I’m talking about conversions, NOT raw traffic!

One of the biggest challenges for most of us is to convert the incoming traffic.

BUT HOW? … Two simple steps …”

Article: “2 Insanely Easy Ways to Get More Subscribers, or Readers (with Low Traffic and Visibility)”

This article is by Rajeev Edmonds on Mintblogger.com

It lets users type queries in natural language, like the following examples:

• “Who are my friends who live in San Francisco?”
• “Photos of my friends taken in Paris, France” (assuming your photos are geotagged)
• “Friends of my friends who are single, male San Francisco residents who are from India”
• “Photos of my friends before 1990″

Apparently, all searches will respect people’s privacy settings — you will only see entries in the results if you already had are access to see those items.

If nothing is found, then your query will be sent to Microsoft’s Bing search engine for results.

This new social search feature is being rolled out slowly to selected users over time.

Article: “Facebook Debuts Graph Search, A Natural Language Powered Social Search Engine”

This article is by Taylor Hatmaker on the ReadWrite.com blog

There are a host of issues created by meaningless metrics, which include but are not limited to: wasting time, wasting money, and making bad decisions based on inaccurate, incomplete, or incomprehensible data.”

Article: “The 9 dumbest ways to measure social media”

This article is by Kent Lewis on the iMediaConnection blog.

In addition, websites can baffle and perplex users in equal measure. Now he has compiled a list of 20 things that need to be cleaved in two in order to make the web a better place for all.”

Article: “Dear silly web: 20 things to banish in 2013”

This article is by Chris Lake on the Econsultancy blog.

But, quite frankly, depending on how these buttons are implemented, they can also be quite annoying—adding visual noise when users just want to read content. This led me and a couple of my clients to ponder their value—conducting some usability testing and an online survey to find out how users most want to share.

The short of it is…”

Article: “Designing Social Buttons: How Do Users Share What They Like?”

This article is by UX Magazine on the Mashable blog.

• “What new techniques should I be using to grow my business? I have been (blogging) (Tweeting) (attending a networking group), and I don’t seem to be getting many results.”
• “How long have you been doing it?” I ask.
• “For two whole months!” the person says.
• <Heavy sigh>

We often think that new tools,  techniques or formulas will be the answer to our marketing woes.

When in reality, it is …”

Article: “Why Your Marketing Is Not Working”

This article is by Pamela Slim on on the “Escape From Cubicle Nation” blog.

A number of people are starting to talk about app store SEO (search engine optimization) as developers and marketers look for ways to ensure their apps can be found across the app stores.”

Article: “How to market your app across the app stores”

This article is by Clair O’Neill on the Econsultancy blog.

For most brands, a risky marketing move consists of not testing the copy on that new ad, or using a new media channel despite the lack of rock solid metrics.

Red Bull’s idea of risk is that one of its sponsored athlete’s bodily fluids will turn into gas as he plummets 24 miles from space at 800+ miles per hour while his parents, girlfriend, and the rest of the world watch, live.

With the Red Bull Stratos Project, the energy drink brand-turned-media company brought extreme sports spectacle to new heights and redefined the idea of content marketing, PR stunt, and brand utility.”

Article: “Red Bull Stratos Shatters Records—And Traditional Notions Of Marketing”

This article is by Teressa Iezzi on the Co.CREATE blog.

“So the day-to-day reality is that many companies believe in their bones that social media works, but aren’t sure precisely how, or where, or in what fashion. ”

Is social media for acquisition (top of the funnel) or for retention (churn avoidance)?

Here are some tidbits for a recent study by The Social Habit…

Article: “53% of Americans Who Follow Brands in Social Are More Loyal To Those Brands”

This article is by Jay Baer of the Convince & Convert blog.

I remember joining Twitter in late 2008 and entering a community of acronyms that I didn’t understand and an atmosphere that, to be honest with you, seemed a little intimidating at the time.  I didn’t see its immediate value and ended up unplugging from the platform for a number of months.

G+ is in a very similar situation, and it shares a very active and passionate community.

Google Plus has now announced that they have 400 million users, with an active user base of 100 million users.  Yet most businesses and professionals that I meet have stayed away from Google Plus much like many stayed away from Twitter in its early days.

I asked 11 Google Plus experts how to leverage G+ today for a business and personally, and here is their advice…”

Article: “Guy Kawasaki and 10 Experts Chime in on the Value of Google Plus – and How You Can Start to Leverage It”

This article is by Neal Schaffer on the WindMill Networking blog.

But what about social media? Are our expectations for response more urgent and similar to phone, or less urgent like email? We decided to find out, and our findings paint a difficult and resource-intensive picture for business.”

Article: “42 Percent of Consumers Complaining in Social Media Expect 60 Minute Response Time”

“Quick note on methodology: This isn’t some ‘we asked 42 people’ survey. The respondent base – just the people who HAVE reached out to a company for support via social – is 690 persons from a sample of over 3,000 American social media users. Real data = real answers for your business.”

This article is by Jay Baer on the Convince & Convert blog.