5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now

What’s the first thing young women do when they wake up? Check Facebook. How do enterprise employees pass the time at work? With social media. With so many studies highlighting ever-accelerating social media usage rates, the conclusion is obvious — social media is everywhere.
Entertainment check in services are changing the way we watch television. Mobile loyalty applications are helping us connect the dots between our real-world shopping behaviors and digital rewards. A new breed of Q&A services are changing the way we search. Barcode scanning applications are making products social, and deal-of-the-day sites are giving us ways to save by recruiting our friends to the party. What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now provided by Mashable. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways.

1. Social Scanning:
Advances in mobile barcode scanning technology have given rise to applications that allow for comparison shopping, QR code place check ins and ultimately a social experience around product barcodes.
What this means is that at any given moment, any smartphone owner can pull out their device, fire up a barcode scanning application, scan a code and complete activities or gain access to a wealth of immediately relevant information. Really, what we’re seeing is the convergence of social media and barcode scanning to create “social scanning.”
The consumer’s scanning behavior is so significant that location-sharing check in services such as SCVNGR are giving away QR code decals to retailers free of charge. Even Google( ) is sending their own QR code decals out to small businesses with popular Place Pages. Services such as Stickybits and Bakodo are taking the social scanning experience beyond the check in and creating product-driven communities around brands and items via barcodes. Stickybits lets users add video, text, photos and audio to the barcodes they scan in the physical world via iPhone and Andriod apps.

2. Q&A and Intelligent Information Discovery:
Web-based Q&A services have been around for years. Now the previously sleepy space is seeing renewed interest from some of the Internet’s biggest names. This second iteration of Q&A services will likely forever redefine the way we find information, because it re-imagines “search” as intelligent information discovery.
The most buzzy of the bunch right now is Quora, an intuitive and relatively straightforward Q&A site whose co-founder, Adam D’Angelo, is most known for his past role as Facebook’s CTO. Quora was founded in June 2009, released into private beta in January 2010, and immediately became a hit Q&A site with the technorati crowd. In fact, web celebrities have been known to use the site to answer questions about themselves.
There are few Q&A services that have received the same type of attention as Quora, but the just-launched Facebook Questions project — which mirrors Quora in purpose and function — was released before Quora ever achieved mainstream recognition. Now the two products are essentially going head-to-head, competing for the same audience. Another notable Q&A site that contributes to the intelligent information discovery trend is Google’s Aardvark. Aardvark approaches the space with a model that helps users surface answers through friends of friends.

3. Group Buying:
Group buying is the deal-a-day group coupon trend made popular by Chicago-based startup Groupon. Over the years, Groupon’s successful model has been copied with ease. LivingSocial, 8coupons and a host of other clones have found their own way on the web. Recently, Yelp, Zagat and OpenTable have veered away from their core product strategy to bring group buying to their respective site audiences.
In the future, look for more brands to create their own Groupon-style deals and for Groupon and its larger competitors to snatch up smaller clones in order to expand and enhance their offerings. Also watch for check in and location-based services to intersect with group buying to create services similar to GroupTabs. The notion of having patrons check-in in masses to unlock deals is extremely business-friendly.

4. Mobile Meets Loyalty:
As consumers purchase more and more smartphones and phone technology heads in the direction of the “super,” it’s only a matter of time before old-fashioned loyalty, rewards and club card programs head in the mobile direction. Two applications — Key Ring and CardStar give us a preview of what’s to come.
Both applications are designed to eliminate plastic loyalty card buildup with a single digital repository. The apps leverage barcode scanning technology so users can save gym cards, grocery store cards, drug store cards and the like, right to their phone.
This trend is just beginning to take shape as smartphones become more commonplace, scanners become more sophisticated and retailers become digitally savvy. In the future, we can expect integration with merchant loyalty programs, as well as integration with check in services like Foursquare.

5. Checking-In to Entertainment:
Consuming most entertainment media is an inherently social experience. A crop of services have popped up in recent months to refine that social experience through entertainment check ins — the act of checking into the television show or movie that you’re watching right now.
CBS recently released their entertainment check in service, TV.com Relay. It’s a browser-based mobile app for most smartphones that allows users to check in to live television shows and follows the same TV guide-style format that Philo employs. Tunerfish is another mobile and web television check in service. It’s backed by Comcast and boasts partnerships with networks including HBO, Showtime and NBC. App users answer the question, “What are you watching?” by typing in the name of a show or movie and clicking the “I’m watching” button. The service also provides behavioral incentives in the form of awards, and has been actively working to bring network-sponsored, show-themed awards into the mix. There’s also Clicker Social, a relatively new addition from Clicker that turns the television search engine and web TV guide into an entertainment check in service as well.

5 Ways to Create News and Get Media Coverage

As a new business owner, it’s easy to rush through publicity efforts in order to concentrate our core business activities and priorities. But before you contact the media or post a press release, ask yourself if the information you’re about to send is really newsworthy, says copywriter Melanie Rembrandt.

Will a reporter really care about what you have to say? If you can’t answer this question accordingly, you need to conduct additional research, rework your story angle or rewrite your announcement. Focus on a specific benefit, current industry trend or unique idea. Once you rewrite your announcement, have a regular customer, or someone in your target market, read it. At the very least, have co-workers, friends or family members review the information. Do they think it’s boring?
This work takes extra time and effort, but it can mean the difference between front-page news and the trash bin. And if you are having trouble finding newsworthy items to share with the press, here are some tips to help.

1. Take part in a community event, or create your own.
Give something back and encourage others to do the same. You’ll help others in need while creating a newsworthy event.
2. Create a brief report or “Top 10 List.”
Relate this document to a big trend in your industry that will help others solve a problem. Provide your expertise without asking for anything in return.
3. Submit an opinion piece.
Write to your local newspaper, and provide your opinion about a published story or current news item. This can help build credibility and awareness for your business when written in a postive manner.
4. Give a presentation.
Speak at a local community college, business group or other organization where your target audience attends.Provide valuable information without giving a sales pitch, and invite pertinent reporters. You’ll establish yourself as an expert and meet potential new customers while increasing your chances of obtaining media coverage.
5. Find success stories and promote them.
Talk to your customers, and ask them how your products and services have helped them save time and money, increase productivity, meet deadlines, etc. Media members like unique, “before-and-after” stories, and you can always use these case studies to build credibility and market new customers.

Now, please note that some announcements are just that - announcements about winning awards, events, fresh partnerships, new hires, etc. These may not be the most exciting news-items, but they are still important to share with the press. These announcements will help project a fresh, current and credible image for your business. But before you share this information be sure to create a list of appropriate press members, event-listing media venues and customers. Not everyone will be interested in this kind of news. And you want to send it to the right people so you don’t waste your time.
These are just a few, key ideas to consider when announcing your news. Hopefully these tips will help you provide valuable information to the press and build positive, company awareness.

David: A New Monthly Magazine

When you think Jews and Las Vegas, what comes to mind? If you answered Bugsy Siegel, we're on the same page, says Fern Siegel, Deputy Editor of MediaPost. Or maybe you guessed Mo Greene, the Siegel stand-in, in "The Godfather." He's the one who slaps Freddy Corleone around -- and gets shot in the eye as payback. Greene is also referenced in "Godfather II," when Hyman Roth, aka business tycoon Meyer Lansky, fondly recalls that his vision transformed a once-dusty stopover for GIs into, according to David magazine, "the world's most dynamic city." I'd challenge that assertion, as a New Yorker, but I agree: Jews do wondrous things in the desert.

The magazine's editorial and target audience is Las Vegas' Jewish community. As such, it covers Jewish life and interest in the city. According to its founder, Max David Friedland, “it is called David, for a person, Jewish or otherwise who knows where they come from and what is important in life.” The magazine promises to deliver every month a mix of serious journalism, lifestyle features and entertainment presented with exciting artwork and design.

So let's see where the pastrami meets the rye: page 43. The photo is a healthy serving (and by that I mean as big as your head) of pastrami on marble rye, served up nice at The Bagel Café -- an East Coast deli for West Coasters. The 14-year-old restaurant boasts such favorites as raspberry rugelach, matzo ball soup, knishes and potato pancakes. The lox platter, like a Grecian urn, is a thing of beauty -- only tastier and more accessible.

Now, Judaism is an ancient civilization -- and our contributions to the world are exemplary: medicine to entertainment, law to psychoanalysis. From Jesus to Freud to Spielberg, we're rocked almost everyone's world at one time or another. But food is a great leveler -- and if you want to understand a culture get to know its cuisine. And the Bagel Café, should you visit Sin City, is a great place to start.

We're all aware that Las Vegas is expanding its reach. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," is a familiar refrain. At the same time, the city is a growing retirement and family city. Currently, it is the 28th-most populous city in the U.S. with an estimated 2009 population, per the Census Bureau, of 567,641 -which means there is ample subject matter.

Because this is a lifestyle monthly, launched with 20,000 copies being distributed throughout the Las Vegas Valley at over 100 locations, David covers health, dining, arts and shopping. Given the city's nightlife, there is a profile of nightclub entrepreneur Jason Strauss, who, with partner Noah Tepperburg, already runs an A-list club in the Hamptons. Together, they oversee the $20 million complex known as the Tao Nightclub and Asian Bistro.

But LV is not all glitz and glam; the article titled "Help" underscored the pub's larger aim of inclusion. Project Ezra, spearheaded by the Jewish Family Services Agency, is committed to giving Jews and non-Jews aid with job placement and training. The goal isn't just economic sustenance, but enhancing self-esteem.

Given its Jewish bent, David also includes candle-lighting times for Shabbat and synagogue options, covering every denomination from Reform to Hasidic-run Chabads. If Madonna is in town, she can check out the Kabbalah Center.

The big kick is the ads, two in particular focus on funeral directors. The Kraft/Sussman tagline: "Who better to care than 2 Jewish mothers?" It's billed as the "No. 1 choice of independent Jewish funeral directors across America," adding: "Allow us to show you why." If Sarah Palin wins in 2012, they'll get their chance.