Do You Use StatusNet As A Microblogging Platform?

StatusNet Cloud Service Opens To The Public

Are you looking for an optimal solution to handle your Twitter account?

If so, have a look at statusNet!

StatusNet can be the solution for you! SocialOomph offers you full support for this federated microblogging platform.  StatusNet is an inter-connected network of microblogging sites, which use open source software to run a Twitter-like microblogging service.  You can join any of the sites in the network and follow the updates of any user on any of the other sites, right there in your one account on one site. StatusNet sites tend to be niche-oriented, which means people with common interests tend to flock to one particular site. Since it is a distributed solution, overall performance is far better. If one site is having a technical problem, it does not affect the other sites in the network at all. These sites are owned and run by completely different people. The only thing they have in common is that they use the free StatusNet software to drive their sites.

With a StatusNet integration you can schedule recurring tweets, send broadcast DMs to all your followers, synchronize your friends and followers lists, and perform other actions without fear. You define how you want to use their system.

You can run your own microblogging site if you want to. Soon you will be able to get a hosted solution from StatusNet, using your own domain name, so that you don't even have to worry about servers and software installation. Check out their site at http://status.net and reserve the name you want right now, while the hosted solution is in private beta phase.

Here is a sampling of such sites:

• Identi.ca is the original StatusNet site and is still the largest.
• The TWiT Army is run by Leo Laporte, the well-known American technology broadcaster and author.
• Mozillaca is a Mozilla community microblogging site.
• Bleeper.de is the largest German language microblogging site.
• Brainbird is frequented by English and Colombian users.
• Twyka Usikike is connecting you with Africans around the world.
• SwiSen is a microblogging site for Chinese speaking people.
• Cielo is microblogging site for Spanish speaking people.
• Managing Multiple Twitter Accounts? Click Here!

There is a comprehensive list of sites here: http://status.net/wiki/ListOfServers

SocialOomph integrates with aLL these StatusNet sites, and all future StatusNet sites, including your own. Have a look at a href="http://www.socialoomph.com/92566.html">http://www.socialoomph.com to see all about the features that are available. You also can view a date-sorted integrated timeline of your mentions and retweets across Twitter and all StatusNet sites on one page. StausNet grows one person at a time, and that requires your participation.

Does Ignoring Social Media Marketing set you up for failure?

Peter Chubb in his posting "Ignoring Social Media Marketing sets you up for failure" on Online Social Media writes: 

Getting ahead in business is changing all the time and there are always new ways to help promote your company. The latest is with the power of social media, Leon Hill Writes on Official Wire that ignoring this will “set yourself up for failure.”

Your business is one of the most important things in your life, so giving it the best marketing solution is a must – this allows you to stay ahead of your competition. However, chances are, they are already doing it – even more reason to embrace social media marketing.

Understanding these benefits can be hard to grasp if you are new to it, which is why uSocial.net helps explain them to you and then put them into practice. The service that they offer will help make your social media marketing campaign faster and easier than ever.

We know that getting a business off the ground is both hard and expensive, so will find it hard to allocate enough funds to begin a social media marketing campaign. However uSocial.net’s prices are more affordable that what you might think – these services include getting your name on Facebook and Twitter, amongst others. What are you waiting for? Start your social media marketing campaign today.


For more advice read our recent article on 16 do’s and don’ts.

What do you think?

How to Integrate Paid Search and Social Media for Better Marketing Results

Matt Lawson is director of marketing for Marin Software, provider of the leading enterprise-class paid search management application for advertisers and agencies.


Paid search and social media are both extremely important marketing channels. But how can brands combine the two distinctly different tactics, the bid-based, conversion-obsessed, ROI-driven world of paid search and the experimental, brand-building, hard-to-measure world of social, to drive an overall increase in ROI? Marketers large and small are grappling with the challenge of how to integrate their paid search advertising programs with social media programs on networks like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and viral video sites.

Social and Search Should Work Together

The most important thing to remember when starting a search-and-social integration program is that search and social each provide different benefits to your business, so you should leverage their strengths instead of trying to get them to deliver results that aren’t suited to the medium.

Marketers usually participate in social media to create an active dialogue with consumers around their products and services, with the main goal of building brand value, and a secondary goal of driving sales. On the other hand, marketers use paid search primarily to drive sales, leads, and conversion, and don’t expect the short text of their paid search ads to do much for branding.

But together, the two disciplines can increase the value that each program delivers. By creating social content that attracts an engaged audience, marketers can then craft targeted paid search campaigns to “capture” this audience and turn them into buyers.

As an example of how this works, consider these findings from an October 2009 study conducted by GroupM Search, M80, and ComScore. The report found that consumers exposed to a brand’s social media content are 2.8 times more likely to search on that brand’s terms. What’s more, consumers exposed to social media are more likely to perform deeper searches, going further down the purchase funnel and completing more purchases. Consumers exposed to a brand’s social media are 1.7 times more likely to search with the intention of making a purchase, and, overall, brands reported a 50% lift in click-through rates from consumers exposed to both social media and paid search, according to the study.

What these statistics show is that stronger brand awareness through social media helps drive paid search effectiveness in three ways:

• Target audiences are more likely to search (more impressions on your ads)
• Target audiences are more likely to click (more clicks on those impressions)
• Because of higher clickthrough rates, ads are placed higher on page (higher quality score)

Smart Strategies

There is no silver bullet for integrating search and social, but there are several concrete strategies every marketer can use to start bringing the two disciplines together. Here are a few tips to help you optimize social and paid search programs to work in a complimentary way to boost overall ROI.

• Make your social campaigns search-friendly. Make sure your social media programs (Facebook, Twitter, viral video, etc.) are appropriately tagged and indexed, and that metadata for pages includes your top keywords. This will allow people searching for your brand content to not only find your paid search ads and natural search results, but to find your social media content as well. The first step to building brand engagement through social activities is to enable consumers to easily find your content.
• Experiment with keyword advertising on social media sites. Facebook and YouTube both allow for keyword targeted advertising, but the way that these ads work is vastly different from how advertising works on Google or the Content Network. Facebook ads allow you to target users based on preferences they list on their profile. For example, a retailer selling DVDs would create ads that target interests such as “action movies,” “horror,” or “funny movies.” YouTube’s advertising system allows you to target specific user queries. However, remember the queries that occur on YouTube are different than those on Google, because users on YouTube are searching for content, not products. For example, people may be trying to find “Avatar trailer” or “car scene from Modern Family,” rather than searching for a particular DVD, so make sure to target your ads to these more specific types of search queries.
• Create social media-influenced paid search campaigns. Closely analyze the topics and discussions taking place around your social media campaigns, and then mine these discussions for new keywords you can use in paid search campaigns on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Whatever people are talking about, bid on keywords that reflect these conversations. As always, you should measure the performance of these campaigns to prune non-performing ads and increase investment on terms that are more likely to capture downstream conversions. In addition, consider running controlled experiments with social media advertising turned off and on, so you can measure the impact these campaigns have on your paid search programs by observing changes in your paid search click-through and conversion rates.

By quantifying the uplift that social media delivers to your paid search programs, you can gain insights into your marketing programs that search marketers who limit their view to just one channel do not –- and improve the performance of both your paid search and social programs.

Swiss PMI soars to highest in over three years

• Swiss PMI rises to 65.5 in March, beats forecasts
• Index now at highest level since Nov 2006

ZURICH, April 1 (Reuters) - The upturn in Switzerland's manufacturing sector gathered even more pace in March, underscoring the strength of the Alpine state's economic recovery, data showed on Tuesday.

The Swiss purchasing managers' index soared to a seasonally adjusted 65.5 points in March, its highest level since November 2006, from 57.4 points in the previous month.

The index posted the strongest rise since the survey began in 1995, according to Credit Suisse which publishes the PMI. The jump beat even the most optimistic analysts' expectations and is the latest set of data to highlight the robust recovery of the Swiss economy, which emerged from its worst recession in decades in the third-quarter of last year.

"For the first time the PMI exceeded the figures recorded amid lively economic activity around the turn of the millennium (mean 60.6 points) and those of the boom that lasted until mid-2008 (mean 61.4)."

The Swiss franc rose as high as 1.4187 per euro after the data was released, its strongest since the euro was launched in 1999. The backlog of orders component posted its sharpest-ever rise, climbing to an all-time high, while employment grew for the first time in 17 months, pointing to a possible turnaround in the labour market, the Credit Suisse analysts said.
The Swiss National Bank raised its 2010 growth forecasts at its March meeting and many analysts expect the central bank to hike rates in the second half of this year.

Switzerland's leading growth barometer rose to a near-2-1/2 year high in March, showing the economy was set to grow at a solid pace as banks and manufacturers continue to recover.

Reporting by Katie Reid; Editing by Toby Chopra

Credit Suisse’s Dougan to Get $67.6 Million in Stock

Credit Suisse Chief to Get SF71 Million in Performance Payout

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse Group AG Chief Executive Officer Brady Dougan will receive shares valued at 71 million Swiss francs ($67.6 million) under an incentive program.

Under the five-year plan, as many as 400 staff at the managing director level and above will receive shares on April 20 worth a total of about 3.1 billion francs at today’s closing price, based on details of the program released by Zurich-based Credit Suisse today.

The program was “designed to compensate, incentivize and retain senior management and executives particularly during 2004 and 2005, a period of fundamental change for Credit Suisse,” the bank said in an e-mailed statement.

The Performance Incentive Plan was created in the year that Oswald Gruebel took over as sole chief executive of the bank after his co-CEO, John Mack, was ousted. The plan started on Jan. 20, 2005, and the initial grants were priced at 47.40 Swiss francs, the closing stock price on that day.

At today’s closing price of 54.35 francs, the stock is up 15 percent in Swiss trading. Over the same period, shares of UBS AG have plunged 60 percent, Barclays Plc lost 37 percent, Morgan Stanley dropped 36 percent and Deutsche Bank AG shed 13 percent.

Some rivals have performed better than Credit Suisse. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s stock is up 65 percent since Jan. 20, 2005. Gruebel, who left Credit Suisse in 2007 and was succeeded by Dougan, became CEO of UBS in February 2009. Mack became chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley in June 2005 and gave up the CEO role at the end of last year.

No State Aid

Paul Calello, head of Credit Suisse’s investment bank, was awarded shares worth about 37 million francs at today’s price and Walter Berchtold, CEO of private banking, will receive shares valued at about 34 million francs, based on details of the plan provided by Credit Suisse.

Today’s payment calculation reflects share performance over the last five years as well as earnings over the period and performance relative to rival banks, Credit Suisse said.

The stock will be paid from treasury shares and won’t dilute existing investors or affect first-quarter results, the bank said. The awards are subject to a withholding tax of about one-third.

Dougan was paid 19.2 million francs in compensation last year, an almost seven-fold increase, including 17.9 billion in bonuses and a fixed salary of 1.25 million francs, according to the bank’s annual report, published March 25.

Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s largest bank by market value, didn’t require government aid during the credit crunch. The company reported net income of 6.72 billion francs for 2009.

Long-Term Performance

UBS amassed $57.4 billion of writedowns and losses from the credit crisis, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The Zurich-based company turned to the Swiss government in 2008 for a 6 billion- franc capital injection to help it spin off risky assets into a Swiss National Bank fund.

After the financial crisis, shareholders, regulators and politicians called for Wall Street banks to better align their employees’ compensation with the long-term risks the companies were taking. As a result, many firms implemented plans that have similarities to Credit Suisse’s PIP plan.

Goldman Sachs, which set a Wall Street pay record in 2007, last year paid all of its management committee members in stock that they couldn’t sell for five years. Morgan Stanley paid executives in performance units that are tied to the firm’s return on equity and the firm’s total shareholder return compared with nine rivals.

--Editor: Frank Connelly

To contact the reporter on this story: Warren Giles in Geneva at wgiles@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Frank Connelly at fconnelly@bloomberg.net