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Beta testing has begun for a new Facebook feature, Facebook Questions, which allows users to ask and answer questions via the social media network.

The Questions product is strongly reminiscent of Yahoo! Answers, whererin users exchange questions and answers by posting to message boards.

Currently only 1% of Facebook users are able to access the testing version of Questions, with Facebook planning an eventual universal implementation of the feature if it proves to be a success.

Users will be able to ask Facebook Questions in a variety of ways: by updating their statuses, via the search field, or by using a new dashboard specifically developed for Questions. Popular Questions will be able to be identified by user-added category tags for ease of reference.

One might think that asking questions on a social media platform would personalise the task of online information-gathering, with users going to their friends for answers instead of the whole of the Internet. Not so – every question posted via the new feature will be entirely public. No exceptions allowed.

Then again, this is Facebook. User privacy is not its forte.

Beyond giving Facebook users access to the collective wisdom of their 500 million plus online brethren, the upcoming format will present new opportunities for using social media in business.

A brand’s Facebook fan page will be enabled with the Questions feature – so expect to see Coke and McDonalds asking and answering their way to real-time consumer research and viral marketing in the near future.

At least they’ll probably be giving away freebies in exchange for answers.

Social media has its place in every online marketing campaign. However, how you use it to its best effect for generating returns for your business, or for giving value to your customers, will be very different from business to business. I work with many different types of businesses and entrepreneurs, and there is no one single strategy that will suit them all.

The type of social media interactions you want and the motivation behind a social media campaign will differ for every situation. Some businesses wish to simply interact with current customers to increase satisfaction and enjoyment of their products or services. Another reason would be to improve exposure and branding. The more common reason is to drive traffic to a site in order to generate leads and increase sales.

If you are not sure what you want to achieve through social media or even what you could achieve with it then follow these simple steps to test the waters and have a splash around in the Web 2.0 ocean.

1. Focus your attention on one or two choice platforms. Don’t spread yourself too thin or you won’t be able to determine which platform is working for you as you’ll be too busy working hard for all of them! Trial a couple at a time to learn and grow, then evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy and reevaluate it if necessary.

2. Set your performance targets and measure them. Simple yet not often done. Once you have chosen your platform, come up with a rough idea as to what it is you want to try and achieve and set some targets. This will help you gauge their effectiveness, but also help you determine how much time to invest in social media moving forward. Think re-tweets, blog posts, referral traffic, fans, connections, enquiries, etc.

3. Don’t clog the line! As a rule, don’t post information that you wouldn’t want to receive in a frequency that you wouldn’t want to receive it. Avoid over posting information promoting your business as this will spam your followers and turn them off.

4. Are there niche social media sites that serve your industry? Considering the amount of social media sites out there, this is quite likely. Find them and interact. These people are interested in what you’ve got and will be happy to interact and hear about what you have to say.

5. Follow people who are doing it right, take notes and do it how they do it.

6.  Make it easy for people to follow you by adding widgets to your site.

So what are you waiting for? Jump in and start swimming!

Click here to read more on social media tips for beginners.

Social media and iPhone apps have arrived on the Australian and New Zealand slopes this winter, providing the skiing and boarding enthusiast options to track the ‘air time’ from a jump, or the newbie skier or boarder to track their way around the mountain if lost on a run.

Snow resorts such as Perisher, Falls Creek and Mount Bulla have launched mini sites,  iPhone apps, e-news subscriptions and text messages for snow bunnies to track their ski miles, find a friend on the slope, access the snow reports and find a warm food or drink spot on the slope or in the village.

An online community, snowtweeters.com, collates all snow-related tweets for your chosen ski or ride destination.

For the diehard skier or boarder, there are two fun iPhone apps:

• Ski-o-meter: tracks your downhill speed, distance covered, and provides a diagram of the slopes height profile and speed over time.

• Hangtimer : records how much time you spend in the air when making a ski hump in terrain park and where in the world you did it.

Apparently there was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico little while ago. A big one.

Admittedly, I’m a little out of touch with current events, unless of course they relate to search engine marketing. Which is how I came to hear rumours of this alleged oil spill – according to articles on online marketing sites, BP caused a massive environmental disaster on May 19 with the accidental detonation of one of their offshore drilling rigs.

What interests me as an Internet marketer is how BP is fighting the public relations fallout of their Gulf catastrophe with an extremely aggressive online PR campaign. The oil giant’s level of commitment to the damage control of their brand name online is extraordinarily comprehensive.

For a start, the BP website has undergone a revamp, with the creation of a new section dedicated to the disaster. There are daily news updates and blog posts, press releases and videos, and the interface capability for site visitors to share information on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

BP’s Facebook page is also being utilised as part of a social media initiative dedicated to minimising bad press. The company has also bought the keyword phrase “oil spill” in Google AdWords, so when a user of Google.com enters that search query, a PPC ad runs linking back to the BP website.

A quick look at the page’s source code reveals that even some SEO work has been done to optimise the site’s relevant keywords.

After looking around the BP site, I’m forced to concede that the company’s apparent ongoing dedication to cleaning up their spilled oil is impressive – almost as impressive as the effort they’re putting in to make sure that everyone knows about it.

A new social media company Syncapse has released a report on their research on the true value of a Facebook fan, by asking 4,000 social media fans of top brands such as Coca Cola, Red Bull, McDonald’s and PlayStation.

The objective of the report was to try and put a monetary figure on the value of a Facebook Fan. In summary, the main points found:

• An average fan is worth about $136.38
• On average, fans spend an extra $71.84 they would not otherwise spend on products they describe themselves as fans of, compared to those who are not fans.
• Fans are 28 percent more likely than non-fans to continue using a specific brand.
• Fans are 41 percent more likely than non-fans to recommend a product they are a fan of to their friends.

With social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the number of fans and followers have become a big numbers game, and almost a competition between businesses. However with almost anything, quality over quantity will trump.

How can you measure the quality of fans or followers?

• Updating and evaluating fans on Facebook by looking into their user information such as demographics and like can help you determine if they are in the same industry as you, or would be interested in your products or service.
• Ask questions and feedback from fans and followers. You not only are actively engaging with your current/potential clients, this will help  you determine how active and eager they are.
• Google Analytics is also a great way to track the number of users coming through the referring sites of Facebook/Twitter. If you are an e-commere store, specific tracking on your shopping cart system can be set up so you can specifically track sales from social media sites.

Yahoo Inc is currently undergoing a revamp to its layout in an its attempt to establish itself as a social network hub. With Yahoo Inc partnering up with Facebook in December 09, personal updates from the social network, known as their ‘news feed’, will be available throughout the Yahoo’s website in the coming days. The new interface will only require a simple click of a link by Yahoo users to activate.

Other tools are also in the pipeline such as Twitter ‘tweets’, and features of popular Zynga games such as ‘Farmville’ and ‘Mafia Wars’, all intended to be incorporated on the Yahoo Inc site. Its aim is to retain its status as a popular social hub and encourage users to stay on the site longer.

Yahoo already has large share of the internet audience, with many of its millions of monthly visitors using the site to access information through search, read world news or check emails. With the rise of market share competitors like Facebook and Twitter, Yahoo wants to keep and grow its existing user base by providing integration through various social media networks. Net increases in site visitor time equals more opportunities for Yahoo to sell online ads to grow its revenue.

With the current concerns of various social media security issues, Yahoo has said they will simplify its privacy controls and encourage users to review the privacy settings.

Twitter has recently become a platform for cross boundary politicking as the Dalai Lama reached out to Chinese followers to take questions and provide some solace on issues from Tibet to his succession.  The Dalai Lama held a one-hour question-and-answer session via Twitter. It was not done through his official Twitter account but facilitated by Chinese writer Wang Lixiong who ran the feed from a New York hotel room. The Dalai Lama’s responses were translated into Chinese by an interpreter and then tweeted on Lixiong’s Twitter account.

According to the AFP’s report, “Nearly 12,000 people selected the 250 questions by online voting done on a Google Moderator site, which was blocked in China on Thursday.” It’s not known how many Chinese people were able to follow the tweets as Twitter is a restricted site in China. There are an estimated 150,000 people in China who use Twitter, and access to the Dalai Lama’s responses were accessible via third-party Twitter applications so it’s very hard to gauge.

This blogger does not want to get too much into the political issues surrounding this case but more so wants to point out the amazing boundary that social media has succeeded in crossing. As much as the Chinese government attempts to blindfold its citizens, another way to see has been found. Kudos is given to Lixong and the Dalai Lama for their innovative efforts to use new technologies to reach out a hand directly to the Chinese people.

Social media tools are becoming ever more popular amongst businesses throughout Australia as a way of offering special promotional deals and offers to their loyal fan base and followers.
Adding this additional interactive level with customers not only continues to build on your company’s brand awareness, and improve customer satisfaction but also encourages customers to continually purchase your products or services when they may not have until this particular ‘deal’ or ‘promotion’ caught their attention.

National Brand/Marketing Manager of EB Games, Debra McGrath talks about how EB Games distributes exclusive beta codes and offers through its ‘tweets’ on Twitter, which now has over 6000 followers. Their objective with social media was to make the user experience on these networks fun, useful and enhance their customer’s experience, with no particular focus on revenue goals.

Smart marketers know how powerful and influential word-of-mouth can be, and utilising social media to encourage this continual word of mouth, promotes interaction with customers in a simple way which will make aid in getting your brand name out there.

Twitter has proven a real hit for online promotions and brand awareness for Virgin Blue and Jetstar which actively offer specials deals and offers with their followers. Fast growing pizza chain Crust,  has a ‘Free Pizza Friday’ competition, getting fans to tweet ‘I’m entering @ Crust-Pizza # CrustFreePizzaFriday’, for the chance to win five free pizzas for that night.                                                                                                              Chief Executive, Michael Logos from Crust stated that although it was hard to track the exact revenue that came in from their online presence, Crust chains have definitely noticed the increase in sales as well as enjoying the increased ability to communicate with customers in real time.

We all know that social media is a powerful networking medium for businesses to create and increase their online presence.

Businesses that are actively involved in social media and seen as very social online are easier for people to refer. Using social media networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can be very advantageous for businesses to promote themselves to become more connected with their customers and socially involved with various communities.
People may be more likely to refer your business if they can see your active participation and engagement with others through tweets, Facebook comments and blog posts.

Below are some tips from the article ‘Why You Aren’t Getting New Business Referrals’ to actively encourage referrals from your customers through social media:

• Monitor your primary social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and thank people, to show your appreciation if they are talking about your business (of course not if they are saying negative things about you).
• If people are saying negative things about your business, ask them why this is the case and see if you can help. Being active with negative feedback can help you find out a solution to prevent this from being a regular occurrence.
• Engage (with your users, fans, customers) by using social media to inform and assist them by being approachable and helpful.
• Keep in touch with existing customers and clients to ensure you are not forgotten, such as sending a mail newsletter each month.
• Ask people for referrals through all the forms of social media. It’s as simple as that. You may even like to promote a special offer for existing clients if they send you through a referral.

Google Buzz is in the news yet again, implementing more damage control for the spate of public concern and legal backlash that was set off by the fledgling social media network’s release earlier this year.

Integrated within Google’s highly popular Gmail email service, Buzz was intended as a rival for social media giants Facebook and Twitter. However, its launch was met with a cacophony of criticism from users, bloggers, journalists and consumer rights groups.

There were several glaring issues with the premiere version of Buzz, all centered around privacy. For example, Gmail users were automatically set to follow people in their contacts lists, without being asked permission first. These auto-added followers could access sensitive information, such as who else was on a user’s followers list and how often they communicated. And it was a needlessly complicated process to block them from being able to do so – if the user was even aware of the privacy loophole in the first place.

While Google did apologise and rectify the most conspicuous of these problems within two days of Buzz’s initial launch, its contrition was not enough to prevent a class-action lawsuit against Google, and a official complaint being lodged with America’s Federal Trade Commission. Members of the United States Congress have also called for an investigation into Google Buzz’s alleged mishandling of its users’ personal data.

Now, nearly two months after it was first rolled out, users of Buzz will for the first time be given a clear explanation of its privacy settings, and asked if they choose to accept or decline them.

However, it remains to be seen whether this belated consideration will have an impact on Buzz’s flagging popularity with users. Google’s official blog reported 9 million posts – or “buzzes” – being made on the new network within its first 56 hours. But Google’s own Insights For Search tool reveals that that brief surge of attention flatlined soon afterward.

It seems that people are simply not interested in Buzz. Even beyond its deficit of consumer trust, the reasons are not difficult to guess. Facebook and Twitter are so entrenched as the dominant forces in social media, any effort to entice its users away would be a steep uphill battle.

Besides that, Google does not seem to really be making the effort. Innovation is a trademark of the Google brand, but Buzz  is essentially a regurgitation of features developed by other social media platforms. Except for its integration with an established email service provider, Buzz brings nothing new to the table.

Development of Buzz remains ongoing, with more updates to follow. If Google can stay out of further legal trouble, and come up with even just one killer app to hook its Gmail users on Buzz, then the beleaguered network may finally stand a chance of getting a piece of the social media market share.

Until then, the buzz remains muted.