Getting Your First 1,000 Facebook Fans (Infographic)

More and more people are using Facebook to research businesses these days, and they’re doing more than just finding a business’s location and reading posts. People are using Facebook for social proof. They want to see how many people “Like” a business.

Think about it. If you want to go to a new restaurant and you visit its Facebook page and it has 30 fans, does that make you more or less likely to visit the establishment? It probably doesn’t help. The same goes for internet businesses. If you’re running an ecommerce store and you have only 100 fans, do you think that helps your chances of getting orders, especially when your competitor has 5,000 fans?

This doesn’t apply to all businesses, but for most B2C companies, having a lot of Facebook fans is important. This is especially true for small businesses. In certain bigger industries, such as automotive, the amount of Facebook fans doesn’t factor into a buying decision for the consumer.

To help you grow your fan base, Neil Patel over at Quick Sprout has created an infographic that’s full of wonderful tips to help you reach your first 1,000 Facebook fans.

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

For additional tips on getting more Facebook fans, check out this content from Kissmetrics:

• How to Get More Likes on Facebook (Infographic)
• How to Increase Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is a Content Writer for Kissmetrics.

The CMO’s Guide To Mobile Marketing (eBook)

A few months ago we released a guide which we created along with The CMO Club entitled the CMO Solution Guide to Leveraging New Technology and Marketing Platforms. The guide contains results of a survey of over 100 marketing leaders plus the five key solutions we identified to help CMOs and marketing leaders tackle the challenge of providing a seamless customer experience across all marketing channels via the use of technology - the right technology that is.

In our newest guide, The CMO’s Guide To Mobile Marketing - we get right to the point, two as a matter of fact, when it comes to mobile marketing:

1. Mobile marketing is not reserved for the B2C CMOs of the world only— nor is this guide.
2. Mobile Internet usage has overtaken desktop as the most used digital platform—and there is no looking back.

We did that for a reason, which was to make abundantly clear to any B2B CMOs out there who may be thinking mobile marketing has no place in their strategic plans and lest anyone forget, ours is a mobile world after all.

The guide covers three critically important aspects when it comes to mobile marketing.

1. SMS & MMS
2. Push
3. Data Management Platforms

For each aspect we delve into the value of each, what may be holding CMOs back and how to go about actually implementing them.

If you're a CMO you owe it to yourself to download The CMO’s Guide To Mobile Marketing today.

And for more on the value of mobile marketing, you will also want to download the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Mobile Marketing where marketers can learn how to:

• Market with cross-channel orchestration
• Use smart data and signals to inform your mobile communication strategy
• Create a holistic view of customer interactions
• Deliver personalized marketing experiences
• Prove the value of your mobile marketing strategy

Matterport Captures $30M To Scan Rooms Into Virtual Reality

This $4500 camera turns the real world into the virtual one. Today, Matterport’s hardware is a hit with real estate agents. But fueled by the $30 million Series C it just raised, Matterport’s software and partnership with Google’s Project Tango could let you wave your phone around to create VR tours of anywhere you want. For example, here’s Matterport’s VR version… Read More

Dropbox Now Has More Than 400 Million Registered Users

Dropbox said today that it now has more than 400 million registered users — a jump from the last public figure about its user base in May last year. Previously, the company had said it had 300 million users. The company didn’t say how many of them are monthly active users, but it still shows that Dropbox’s registered user base at the very least continues to grow. Read More

21 Instagram photos that capture common objects as works of art

Last week, we challenged you to combine everyday objects with doodles to create unique works of art. This theme was inspired by Christoph Niemann, a world renowned artist who specializes in mixed media illustration.

"It was a lot of fun to look at all those different submissions," said Niemann, who hosted our challenge. "I've always found that setting tight rules makes for the best results in series like these, and it's exciting to see such a range of approaches despite the limitations I gave to the artists."

See also: 20 splashy photos that reflect your creativity with water

Niemann, known as @abstractsunday on Instagram, has had his work featured in numerous publications. In 2010, he was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame Read more...

More about Art, Photography, Instagram, Social Media, and Mashable Photo Challenge

Facebook developing tech that can recognize you in photos — even if your face isn't showing

Facebook is working on facial-recognition technology that can identify someone even if their face isn't in the photo.

The tech recognizes people in photos using distinguishing features other than their face, according to New Scientist

See also: Facebook will now be with Australians in death

To test its algorithm, Facebook scanned more than 40,000 public photos from Flickr with faces in the frame or out of it, and eventually achieved 83% accuracy using the software. The algorithm looked at various attributes, including hair, clothing and body type to determine who was in the photo.

"For example, you can recognize Mark Zuckerberg very easily because he always wears a gray T-shirt," Yann LeCun, Facebook's head of artificial intelligence, told New Scientist. Read more...

More about Facebook, Privacy, Social Media, and Apps Software

The H.E.L.P. Method For Writing Business Content

Corporate blogging poses a wide spectrum of challenges to address, from editorial priorities all the way to business objectives, and supporting the audiences in between. As a former corporate blog editor, my personal priority was to ensure that the content supported our audience’s education and professional development, and offered information that would empower them to do their jobs better.

I’m of the belief that a corporate blog shouldn’t be all that corporate, meaning its primary functions should be to educate and engage. But all too often corporate blogs act as mere extensions of the public relations machine, where press content is reposted verbatim and the message goes to die.

To quote one of my favorite acts, Hall & Oates, let me just say, “I can’t go for that…No can do.”

Neither should you, or your company. Content should foster helpfulness and facilitate improvement. Your writing can support a stellar experience and your company’s growing demand imperative. Everybody wins.

Here’s an example:

Check out this blog post I wrote offering tips to enhance the value of social media intelligence. The promotional objective was to share Oracle Marketing Cloud’s positioning in a SiriusView Report. I thought to myself, "But *what about* the report is going to move the needle?" Of course buyers care about this content as it helps them benchmark their companies, as well as the solutions they’re considering implementing, but what good is a chest-beating blog post when it comes down to real business?

Let’s not foam finger point. Let’s be problem solvers.

Deliver universal insight that isn’t relegated to a specific platform or service, but rather focused on tangible information that anyone can reference, understand, and implement to strategically improve the way they do their jobs (in the case of this content, social marketing).

It doesn’t matter the theme; you can do it! Remember the “H.E.L.P” Method for blogging, and any business writing:

Ask yourself: Is this content…

Helpful? Does it offer readers valuable information beyond the story your brand desires to tell people? (FYI this message may differ from what’s actually pertinent to your audience).

Engaging? Does it use examples and entertaining references to hook and keep the reader’s attention?

Learning-oriented? Does it focus on providing information that’s fresh and forward thinking? Does it purge others’ pearls of wisdom?

Product spec-ulated? Don’t bore the audience with product specs; hone your writing on the information that paints the prettiest picture of your user benefitting from what you’re selling.

Writing well for your audience should be an imperative in your content strategy. By focusing on being helpful, you can refine your messaging objectives and deliver the value they really need and want.

After all, we get by “with a little help from our friends.”

For more on content marketing, be sure to download the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Content Marketing where you'll get tips from leading content marketers and thinkers, new content categories to consider and a whole lot more!