Social Media Changes Faster Than Blink of An Eye

It’s hard to keep up with the ever changing world of social media. It seems each week we hear stories that there has been another change to a social site that we have just become familiar with – but this is the nature of the digital world we now live in.  I’ve waded through some of the most asked about and newest social media changes and listed a few things that I think are most relevant;

1.) LinkedIn endorsements – Personally, I don’t care for this feature because it pops up immediately when you open someone’s profile.  Inexperienced LinkedIn users are quick to click the Yellow “Endorse” button which automatically endorses that person for all the skills listed inside the blue box.  The best practice is to only endorse a specific skill that you personally know this person has. In order to do that you actually have to scroll down through the persons profile to the bottom to the Skills & Expertise section and click on the individual skill you wish to endorse.

2.)  LinkedIn recommendations – I  believe requesting a recommendation carries more authority than an endorsement.  When some recommends you and your services, that testimony is specific and offers details  from a personal experience they had with you and your company.  I encourage the use of this feature over endorsements.

3. LinkedIn Answers – As of January 31, 2013 the LinkedIn “Answers” feature will be shut down.  For all of you who liked to show your expertise by answering other people’s questions, will now have to focus your time in groups, the best feature on LinkedIn as far as I’m concerned!

The new look of LinkedIn is clean and image-centric. LinkedIn itself has added a lot of new images and logos to its look, as well as increasing photo size for company and group.  If you want to learn more about LinkedIn, register to my free training webinar, dates change every month.

4.  Facebook Timeline – Facebook has rolled out the new Single Column Design to some users, you can expect the change to hit all profile very soon.  You can now organize various sections of your profile as you wish except for About, Friends and Photos which remain in the same space. It’s easy to hide sections that you don’t want displayed.  Cover image & profile picture area are changing as is your name which now automatically appears over your cover image.   This is what Twitter did to their redesign a few months back.  They also are changing the label from “Subscribers” back to “Followers”.  I suspect this same change to the single column design will be coming to Business Pages shortly after the rollout to all personal pages.

5.  Facebook Graph Search – Just announced by Facebook and still in Beta testing stage. I learned from FB social expert Mari Smith, “Graph Search will surface People, Photos, Places and Interests. It won’t search and display actual profile or fan page posts (yet). Everything is privacy-aware, meaning a non-friend cannot search and see content you’ve only shared with friends. (“Graph” refers to “social graph” – meaning you’ll be able to find all kinds of new connections depending on the relationships between people and the things they like).

Now is a good time to review ALL your privacy settings. We may see a flurry of users reviewing and editing their interests and pages they’ve liked in the past… as all this will be searchable with the new Graph Search feature.”  You can actually get on the waitlist to one of the first to receive graph search – click HERE for the details & watch Facebook’s video detailing this new feature.

BY THE WAY…Facebook  has hit 1 Billion users!

6. Pinterest – Can’t deny the success with this new platform because the numbers don’t lie…

• 10.4 million users
• 25 million unique visitors/month
• Average time spent: 1hr 17 min
• Draws more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and youtube combined

here’s a great article on  33 Ways To Create Engaging Content & Be More Pinnable

JoAnne Funch

    Stay tuned…more updates to come every week!