Lawrence.com

by Megan Spreer

Facebook's newly launched Promoted Posts for Pages has been causing quite the stir around the web this week. Many small business owners and bloggers took to Facebook to publicly decry the feature, type out a few choice words aimed at Zuck and to ask fans to quickly perform some steps to insure that their posts aren't maliciously hidden from their loyal fans.

To that we say: Whoa, guys. I think we missed an important part of how the Facebook news feed works.

Remember all that talk about EdgeRank and Graph Rank not so long ago? If you do, bravo! However, I think a large group missed it because if they'd seen it, we wouldn't have seen the backlash that we did.

Based on the many, many factors that figure in to EdgeRank and Graph Rank, as well as other factors (such as how cluttered your followers' news feeds are and how often they log in), not all of the followers of your page see all of your updates. Facebook reported in February that only an average of 16% of your fans see each update you post.

Yep. You read that correctly. Only 16%.

So, it's potentially only a small window of followers that are seeing what you post. What Promoted Posts do is expand that average percentage to a higher level and get your post seen by more of the people who already like your page (or to the friends of the people who like your page) by placing your update in the news feed as a sponsored post so that more people (who already like your page) see it. It bases impressions on the dollar amount you spend for each post. Spend $5, get a little boost. Spend $20, get a bigger boost.

You with me?

Essentially, Facebook's Promoted Posts is a way for you to extend your message and get it seen by more eyeballs online. It's not a way for Facebook to force you to pay to use the service and it's not "hiding your posts" unless you cough up the dough. It's just giving you another way to increase the likelihood that your followers see the messages you send out.

If you still have questions, I'd be happy to address them in the comments or tweet them over to me at @WorldCoSocial.

Facebook's much anticipated IPO fell flat today on its opening day. With a mere $0.23 jump in share price, it did not make the waves that were anticipated to flood Wall Street.

Industry analysts are speculating numerous causes as to why the IPO was less than eventful. We have some ideas of our own.

1. Buzz overkill. How long have we been hearing about this? This highly publicized IPO filing was talked about on so many different media outlets that even non-Wall Street followers were in the know about almost every hiccup that Zuck made in this process.

2. GM's bomb. Losing a major advertiser within the week of your opening day on the NASDAQ, can't help. This well-publicized development probably only added more doubt to potential investors.

3. NASDAQ stalled. Some (Kevin Pleines, equity market analyst with Birinyi Associates) say that the confusion created by the 30 minute delay didn't offer the stock any favors. NASDAQ offered the stock at 11:30am EST instead of the initial 11am scheduled time.

This list could potentially go on and on, but we want to hear from you. What factors do you think contributed to Facebook's anticlimactic? Do you think things are just slowly warming up? Or was this just a lot of hype?

You’re celebrating the last stop day, the last prom, the last final and the last day you’ll be a senior.

Graduation day is almost upon us. Soon Lawrence will explode with balloons, grill outs, parents in downtown bars (yeah, we’ve seen you there), cards stuffed with money and students rushing to partake in one last party before they take the next big step.

Duh. Right?

Well, we’re excited for this year’s graduates and want to be a part of the fun. That’s why we’re asking you to share the photos you take on Instagram throughout your graduation festivities. (Keep it PG, though).

It’s called Instagrad. We’re celebrating all of the grads of Lawrence. Grads, moms, friends, little sisters, uncles, roommates and everyone in between can participate.

by Megan Spreer

Here’s the just: Take a photo of your favorite graduate some time during the graduation celebrations with the Instagram app on your mobile phone. Tweet your photo to @LJWorld using either #instagradKU (KU grads) or #instagradLKS (high school and Haskell grads). We’ll be compiling the tweeted photos into an album on the LJWorld.com Facebook page to celebrate all of the graduates in Lawrence.

Until then, good luck on your finals, packing and all that other lame stuff. When the party gets started, don’t forget to Instagrad. (And please don't laugh too much of my dorky grad photo above.)

It's a rumor, no longer. Google Drive was released today.

Google Drive has the potential to become a major resource for local start-ups, team collaborations, business owners, and even for families who like to share photos and videos under the radar of social media.

We have questions for both sides of this new, sparkly cloud service, though: 1) Will people be trusting enough to give up their files to Google and trust its security? and 2) How long until we have to amp up our service to the next tier because we uploaded too much?

Which side are you on? Will you start adding your beloved files to a Google Drive account tonight? Or are you keeping them right where only you can see them on a computer or external hard drive?

As you probably saw last week, Facebook opened up its ginormous wallet and bought the immensely popular mobile-based app Instagram for $1 billion.

And the collective social media sphere let out an “Oh, great.”

It was pretty split on whether that remark was uttered with some shred of optimism or if it was said just before a smartphone was hurled into a wall.

Jokes were aplenty, fears that the app would suffer gained notice, and speculation swirled as to what was to come of the app that had just garnered 5 million downloads for Android in just six days.

We’re still on the fence on this one and are anxiously waiting to see how this plays out. Until then, we’ve compiled some of the chatter we saw on social media as this story unfolded last week on Storify.

Check it out here: http://storify.com/MeganSpreer/instafacebookgram

by Megan Spreer

A great way for businesses, groups, organizations and individuals to increase their online presence and authority on a subject is to start a blog.

However, after the blog is up and running, some common questions usually pop up.

Am I doing this right? When is the best time for me to put up these posts? How many am I supposed to write in a day? a week? a month?

There are a few best practices in blogging, but of course, these kinds of things will vary based on your audience and subject matter.

However, we stumbled across this great infographic from Kissmetrics, Dan Zarrella and Search Engine Land that laid out some basic ground rules. Their findings report similar data to what we've seen.

*Side note - The trendiness and shareability (yes, I just made that word up) of infographics make it a hot form of content right now. Not only are they easily shared on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, but they're great for Pinterest too.

by Megan Spreer

This infographic highlighted some great information for blog owners and writers. I picked out three main points that I've heard raised as questions recently.

1. When should I post a new blog?

by Megan Spreer

In my own experience, I have found this to be true. Most readers come to blogs in the morning. If I want to have the most traffic on a blog post, I generally try to have it up by at least 8:30am. People tend to like to get their information first thing in the morning. Traffic usually starts tapering down as the day goes on. Granted, this won't be true for certain industries targeting blog readers who work hours that don't allow readership at those times, but for the general public, this seems to be the rule.

2. What day will get the most traffic?

by Megan Spreer

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are the heavy hitters with Monday being the overall winner. Readers seem eager to play catch up after spending a leisurely weekend offline.

3. How often should I post?

by Megan Spreer

The data revealed that bloggers who updated numerous times a day garnered the most unique visits. It makes sense. If your readers are used to frequent, fresh content, they're going to regularly come back for updates.

Are you a blogger? What posting strategies have you found to be the most beneficial in building and maintaining your audience?

by Megan Spreer

Is your Facebook business page timeline ready?

Well, ready or not, it's rolling over to the new format tomorrow.

If you haven't already acquainted yourself with the upcoming changes, you're in for some big surprises. Whether they're ideal still has yet to be decided, but they will require you to rework your previous strategies if you were a fan of the page wall and landing tabs in the prior version.

Some of the key changes include:

• Cover photos that span the top section of the page
• An admin panel that's mounted to top of the page
• Posts that are organized in chronological order and easily navigable by year
• Admins can now post business milestones
• Posts can be pinned to the top or highlighted on a timeline

The biggest and perhaps, most criticized change is the deletion of a Page's ability to send traffic to a custom tab. In the new Timeline format, your custom tabs still exist, but all traffic must be directed to the timeline. There is no wall anymore, either. It's all on the timeline.

This has the potential to be a great asset to businesses. The new Timeline format has the ability to create an interactive "About" page for your company. You can add the date the company was founded, input old photos of the founders and post stories about past successful product launches. Facebook will allow you to input all of this in chronological order so that your viewers can learn even more about your company and they also can share their own memories within the posts. Early studies on Timeline have shown that it drives more engagement with followers of brands, especially with photos and videos, which are larger in the new format. So if it's used well, your Facebook Timeline page could serve to be one of your company's best assets.

To learn more about Timeline for Pages, Facebook has released a comprehensive guide on the new format.

What do you think of the new Timeline? Love it or hate it?

U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) took the stage at SXSW on March 11 to discuss The Startup Act, a bill authored with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to promote entrepreneurship. His presentation, "Encouraging Innovation and Empowering Entrepreneurs" was targeted to get the tech community talking on social media channels about this new bill.

In an article from Silicon Prairie News, Sen. Moran referenced the enormous social media response to SOPA and PIPA as a key element of his strategy in going forward to promote The Startup Act. While he said he didn't expect to get the same level of response that SOPA did, he said that social media communities have piqued the interest of congress members and messages are in fact, being heard.

What do you think of politicians using social media to encourage conversation in order to leverage their initiatives? After the huge response that SOPA and PIPA received, do you think it's possible for other bills or issues to receive similar outpourings in social media?

Do you have a Pinterest account? The better question may be: How many times have you heard this question in the past few weeks? Pinterest has become the fastest growing standalone site in history with 11.7 million unique visitors recorded in January. It now drives more traffic than LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube combined. Pretty impressive, right?

by Megan Spreer

So, just what is Pinterest? The company calls it a virtual pinboard. Well, OK, but that doesn’t really spell it out.

I explain it to people this way: Remember your junior high days when you would cut out pictures you loved from magazines and pin them on cork boards or the walls of your bedroom? Pinterest is kind of like that. Only, it’s an online pinboard that lets you pin images you love that you find online. It also keeps links attached to the images you find so you can easily refer back to the site you found them on. You can also organize your pins into different categories by having a pinboard for various topics. Many users usually have a recipe pinboard, a home decor pinboard, a favorite product pinboard, and so on.

Perhaps the most interesting recent development of Pinterest is the inclusion of brands and companies within the social media platform. Once reports of the high traffic numbers started to surface, it was a no-brainer that businesses would need to make themselves visible to their potential customers. But how does a business fit into this platform that most people are using for dinner and home decorating inspiration?

With a little creativity.

Businesses, companies and brands have revamped their social media approach to fit into this image-heavy social media platform. In doing so, we’ve seen some really great ways to engage and foster a new online community. From promoting a certain lifestyle to calling followers to pin photos of themselves holding various products, there are a lot of very cool ways you can join the pinterverse.

Some of our favorite brand pinboards are:

• Real Simple
• HGTV
• West Elm
• Chobani
• Mashable

Are you on Pinterest? Check out our pinboards at http://pinterest.com/worldcosocial/.

It’s been a little quiet around here, huh? Well, things haven’t slowed down a bit here at The World Company or in our social media circles. We have quite a few new things going on that have kept everyone pretty busy.

Speaking of new things, I would be one of the new faces around the office.

Hello! I’m excited to be the new social media specialist and am anxious to dive right in and join the conversations already circulating around the area about the latest in social media.

This week, the announcement of the new Apple iPad caused quite a buzz around the Web and on various social media channels. Mashable covered the news with a great gallery of photos to showcase the high-resolution Retina display, improved camera and 1080p video capabilities. Gadgets have a big effect on how we use, share and create things online, especially in social media. What do you foresee as a game changer in social media in the near future? Do you think the ever-increasing resolution levels of screens on gadgets like the new iPad will push marketers to step up their content creation plans? Or do you think trendy platforms like Pinterest will spark the next big wave of changes (if it hasn't already)? Share your predictions in the comments. I look forward to hearing (err...reading) what you guys think.