Facebook Introduces Embedded Posts

Have you ever wanted to post a Facebook status update, picture, video or conversation in its entirety to a blog post or a website? Facebook, the social media giant, just announced they’re now rolling out embeddable posts.

Embedding a Facebook post works similarly to Twitter or YouTube in which you have the option to click “Embed post” from a menu and an embed code will be provided. This code can be copy and pasted into your website or blog post’s HTML. Facebook posts must be set to “public” and your Facebook profile or page must be enabled in order for the embed codes to be provided.

Dave Capra, Software Engineer at Facebook also noted on their website that “When embedded, posts can include pictures, videos, has tags and other content. People can also like and share the post directly from the embed.”

Embedding posts is a popular method amongst journalists, news organizations and bloggers, allowing them to share content in a timely and dynamic manner.
Currently, CNN, Huffington Post, Bleacher Report, PEOPLE and Mashable all have embedding rights with “broader availability coming soon.”

Facebook shared this example from the official British Monarchy Facebook page. “You can click the #RoyalBabyBoy hash tag directly from the embedded post to discover similar content on Facebook,” says Capra:

I Sold My Company Today

Today, we announced that we were acquired by a wonderful company. And, I have to admit it's with mixed emotions that we sell right now.

 

Today, we announced that we were acquired by a wonderful company called Deluxe Corporation. And, I have to admit it's with mixed emotions that we sell right now. We're on the cusp of a brand new product (coming soon!) and we're geared for greatness all on our own.

So Why Sell?

I've always told our employees, our loyal investors (12 years loyal) and even our customers that one day we'd find the right match with a company that valued us for our ability to:

1. Be experts at what we do with our talented team
2. Acquire and retain small businesses worldwide
3. Be profitable for many years while still being able to invest back into the company to grow

In my opinion, if we found a company that would value us for all of these things, want to acquire us and pay us what we're worth, then all our shareholders would benefit. After all that's where my responsibility lies. (Did I mention it's 100 times harder to take money from your family and friends than from VCs or a bank?)

Over the course of 12 years, we've had many conversations-- and I mean many. Companies big and small, public and private, too many to even think about. And every time we walked away from a conversation, it was because the company didn't value us for our abilities and wouldn't have given our shareholders what they deserve.

But this one was different. It was great; it was time and it was perfect.

So I had to weigh it all, taking care of customers, employees and shareholders. And with a great brand like Deluxe and millions of small business that trust them with services that help their companies grow, it felt like the right thing, at the right time and the right way to take care of everyone.

The Next Chapter

Deluxe shares our long-term vision of being the best destination for small business marketing. This gets them even further and with our acquisition they come closer than ever to completing a pretty cool picture.

Put simply, we got acquired by a company that wants small businesses to save time, money and ultimately work happy and that's a goal we can easily get behind.

And, to my much-loved VerticalResponse employees, this is going to be pretty fun. Now we've got 4 million customers that might just need our services; are you ready? I am! Let's do this!

How to Make Money on Facebook

Is your Facebook page a real snoozer? You won't make much money that way! Even the smallest business can make money on Facebook. Here's how.

 

As a small-business owner, you probably don't have the resources that a large corporation employs for online advertising campaigns, but social media consultant and author Brian Carter says that even solopreneurs with limited funds can gain the competitive edge in this vast cyber-arena.

"For years the Internet has provided us with the wildest opportunities that haven't been very competitive or expensive," says Carter. And with all of these options available to us, Carter is most passionate about Facebook advertising.  "It provides us with the biggest opportunities—it's a great place to profit," he says.

"Advertising on Facebook is the biggest opportunity for businesses large and small," Carter says.  "What Facebook advertising does, which is great, is to allow you to reach a TV-sized audience, locally, nationally and even internationally, and still target it the way you would in any internet marketing campaign, yet start with just five bucks a day. To me it’s revolutionary because businesses can reach an audience they couldn’t have ever reached before."

If you've jumped into the Facebook frenzy, like millions of business owners, by creating a Facebook page: congratulations—but that simply isn't enough. "There are a lot of problems with pages," Carter claims. Recently, he combined efforts with EdgeRank Checker and found that the average page across 4000 pages is only reaching 17 percent of their fans. So if you have 100 fans, you may only be reaching 17 people with all of your hard work! "The downside of the page is that you're not visible to all of your fans," says Carter.

Like any marketing campaign, it's apparent that you need a strategy before you launch your page. So how can a small business benefit from what Facebook has to offer? Here's what I learned from my conversation with Carter. And I'm learning much more from his most recent book release, The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money With Facebook.

• Combine your Facebook marketing plan...
  ....with the strategies that you are best at. If you're good at e-mail marketing, for instance, use Facebook ads to get more e-mail subscribers. If your website converts traffic really well, use your page to drive traffic there. Always plug into what you already know works well for your business.

• If you're growing fans through Facebook advertising...
  ...get people to click "Like" right on the ad. You will get a lot cheaper fans that way than if you send them to a fan page through your ad. If you run an ad that sends people to a custom tab because you want to get an opt-in, that's the same thing as sending them to another website, and you may not want to do that. Not everyone will put in their e-mail and click like so you are dividing your efforts. Decide first if you want fans or e-mail subscribers. If you want fans, don't send them directly to a custom tab.

• Think of your page as a social e-mail.
  There's a chance that followers will see your updates in their feed, but you have to really capture them within your first few posts. There are parallels to e-mail in this strategy; not everyone will open them. If you get a 30 percent open rate, you're doing great. On Facebook you can use the same strategies to do really well. The difference is that with e-mail marketing you don't want to send out e-mails everyday or you will lose your subscribers.

• If you're not sure...
  ...whether the greatest benefit will come from sending people from your ad to your site, your Facebook opt-in page, or gaining fans through prompting them to click "Like" right on the ad, test them all! See how much it costs you to acquire a fan, and how much traffic you get from those fans, versus the cost of acquiring an e-mail and the ROI on that e-mail address.

• Engage with your fans in your posts.
  Don't make every post a call to action. You want to turn the folks who like your page into true fans of your brand.

• Boring Facebook pages won't get you far.
  If your business isn't something that most people would consider exciting, like culture, lifestyle sports, animals, dating, kids – or anything that people get gushy about—go the opt-in route rather than the fan marketing route.  If your business is attractive to many consumers, use pictures in your ads to entice them to click like. If your brand allows you the creative freedom to toss in a picture of a puppy, cat or baby, you’re golden! People will click on your ad.

• Remember one of the key differences...
  ...between using AdWords and Facebook advertising. That is, in order to generate revenue through online advertising, you must reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time, with the right offer. It's possible to do this with AdWords and Facebook ads. The main difference is that AdWords is about fulfilling demand: finding the small set of people who are ready to buy, or very close to it, and capitalizing on finding people at that stage of the sales funnel. With Google you are targeting people by what they are looking for. With Facebook  you are targeting them by who they are and what they like. These are people who are likely to buy from you at some point which is a larger group of people. There's more sales potential overall. But be careful not to spend too much money on people who are going to wait three or four years to buy, unless you have a sales cycle that is naturally that long. But you may be able to get them to buy sooner than they would have by posting enticing posts or with compelling conversion practices on your website.

• Facebook page insights...
  ...can be a great resource to learn about your audience. You'll find this tab on your admin panel on Facebook in the left hand column. Look at the graphs that tell you how many people are liking you per day, how many people are talking about you, sharing your posts, etc. Notice what type of posts get more engagement than others and create more like them. Know your audience, put yourself in their shoes and engage them!

In light of Google's new Search Plus Your World, I couldn't resist asking Carter if he thought Google+ will give Facebook a run for its money anytime soon."Google+ can become big if it becomes more sticky—if we can enjoy using it more," Carter says. "Right now it's all the early adopters on Google+. It's not really an opportunity for most marketers because there is not enough of a general audience there. Google+ has to be more fun to use to attract that audience.Search Plus might be a strong-arm tactic to try to force it to happen faster."

He continues: "It certainly could be a big deal at some point but there are phases of adoption of something new—like Facebook was in 2009. There aren't enough people on it in this phase to do any real marketing. But once it reaches enough adoption the network effect happens. You can reach more than half of the United States with Facebook ads, and Google+ is just not there yet."

Social Media Sites to Earn Money

Technology has changed the lives of people in a big way. This allows them to gather information from all over the world and keep in touch with friends and their relatives through the Internet, especially social media really was a revolution.
In recent years it has evolved from a fun and gossip among friends games a useful role in bringing political changes across different countries. But one aspect of social media is still neglected by many is the economic turnaround that resulted in people’s lives.

Now you do not need to have a large sum of money to start a business. You can do it with a computer and access to social networking site.
Now we need to look at the impact of different social media sites change people’s financial destiny.

Facebook

Can rightly be called Facebook springboard is a social revolution.It also has become a source of making some serious money for people. Now it is being used to promote blogs, websites, businesses (especially small businesses). People who do affiliate marketing even use it as a promotional tool.
Many national with extensive marketing network also benefiting from Facebook by creating pages of their products or services and put their advertising content.
All this is done without spending a single penny. On the other hand we have sites like Zazzle “working together with Facebook. You can create and design a product in Zazzle ‘without paying anything and then sell it on Facebook. Other sites, such as Blaster music site and use the same concept as’ Zazzle.

Google+

There is not much difference between Google+ and other social media sites, except for the fact that you can create circles of people belonging demographics and different cultures and target them marketing messages to order. This is a nice way of determining what works for them.
You can also create a group on Google Plus Like as you made Facebook fan page to market your product. Here you can provide the details of your products or services, along with reviews and coupons.
People are good at programming can also create an app to Google and submit it to Apple iOS and Android Market. If your app is liked by users, it will download the software to a large number.

Twitter

Emphasizing the importance of Facebook, you can not forget Twitter. With millions of users worldwide, it provides a great marketing you promote your website or blog.
But the foundation reinforcement, your followers is of utmost importance while thinking of making money on Twitter. Waiting for your higher, the higher your chances is to make it big on Twitter.
Affiliate marketing is also made easy by Twitter. You just need to sign up with an affiliate marketing website and choose a product to promote. You can then create a blog post with some landing on it. It can be your gateway to making money on Twitter.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is different from other social media sites in which it is primarily for professionals to connect with each other. It helps professionals classifying the problems in a big way. You just need to create a ‘Group’ in LinkedIn where different professionals can come and share their knowledge.
Another feature that is essential to the professionals’ recommendations. ” You can put the recommendations of your job or business clients and your peers. It is helpful to anyone looking to expand their business and are willing to reach new heights in their career their.
Let us know your views in the below comments.

Tips for Students to Save Money

The transition to college can be a stressful time in general, but when you add into the mix finances then concerns can really accumulate. The study can be an expensive business, so it’s a good idea to do some research and see where you can save some money here and there. Small changes can make a big difference in the time to be proactive and plan ahead before you are out of pocket.

Getting a Job

Not the most popular suggestion among students, this. While the college years are generally seen as a time for partying and hard work, the financial reality of the situation means that landing a part-time job can be the difference between scraping by and really be able to enjoy while you’re away.
Job is always a good idea if you can get it as it gives you the opportunity to socialize as you earn. Even if you decide to work in a shop for a couple of hours on a Saturday then all bonus money that can go towards a few drinks in the week or make sure your not beans on toast for dinner five nights in a row. If you are able to save some of their earnings, even better – put everything you can into a savings account high interest and will have a small boat not in time for emergencies.

Go Second Hand

One of the biggest expenses at the beginning of the university comes with the purchase of recommended textbooks for your course. Consider buying used books instead of new copies – remember that many people have no use for their books once they have finished their course so they could be in line to break up on the cheap.
If you can lend books, even better. Or, find like minded people off course and buy a book each with the understanding that everyone in the group can borrow books from the other when the need arises.

Compose a Plan

Coming up with a realistic budget that you can stick may sound like a boring activity, but one that you’ll thank yourself to stay on the line. Many students choose not to stick to a budget, sure they can regulate themselves effectively in the moment – and a large number of them are digging price a few months in the line with everything that happened.
Not surprising when you think about it, students are usually away from home for the first time and are having their first taste of financial independence.
Enter the amount of rent, bills, food, entertainment and other expenses will cost more in a given month and make sure there is going to be able to cover them all. If not, will have to be the figure of entertainment that gets stung a little.

Be Careful with Credit Cards

Credit cards are a great way to manage your money – but only if they are fully aware of everything and are able to pay off your balance every month without fail.
In any other situation, the interest that will be charged to credit cards very inefficient way of borrowing money. It is easy to pay for things of a credit card and forget about them, but this is a dangerous road to travel down. If you will not be able to pay the bill in full at the end of the month, then do not use the card.
If you are able to use a credit card the right way and then think about applying for a cashback credit card for an additional bonus. Every transaction you make with the card will be a certain percentage back to you, which means you must use the card to pay for anything and everything you can to get the maximum benefit – provided, again, that can be pay the bill.

Tips to Save Money on Food

Food bills are one of the major component of one’s spending. With rising inflation food items are getting costly day by day. The rising food bills are eating up your monthly savings too. But don’t worry!  In this post we will discuss tips to save money on food for our esteemed readers.

How to Save Money on Food

Buy in Bulk:

Try to buy groceries and other food items like grains, pulses and even fruits and vegetables in bulk. There are many sellers who offer great discounts on bulk purchases of such kind of products

Buy Online:

There are various online shopping sites which offer food items at very cheap prices. You can consider buying products from them. Try using coupon codes of these sites to get further discount if possible.

Reduce Eating Out Trips:

Try to reduce your trips to hotels, restaurants and fast food joints. No doubt the food is tasty there but Most of them sell items which are very highly priced. You can consider looking for recipes online for the same items, prepare them yourself and enjoy them at home.

Browse Daily Deal Sites:

Daily deal sites have some of the best deals on restaurants and cafes. Try to find such value for money deals in your city. You may even consider using cashback sites and deal forums to get best deals.

Shop During Sales:

There are many minim marts and superstores which sell food items at cheap prices on certain days. You might consider shopping from them to save money on food items.
There are various other ways to save money on food bills but the above mentioned ones are tried and tested and will definitely help you in saving a lot of money of food bills and items.
Share your ideas on the above topic through the comment box below.

Save Money While Going to Watch Movies

We all love going to the theater to watch the latest blockbusters. However, we must also look at our personal finances at the same time, make sure not to overspend. Here is a small list of ways to save money while having fun at the same time we discuss.

Save Money Movies

In addition, since you have already completed, so you have less food/beverage purchases and just sit quietly while watching the movie.
1) The point is that the idea is that you can bring your own food into the theater. But make sure that they allow. If they do, then you can enjoy movies, your favorite foods and your personal finances are not strained. This can prove to be a very easy way to save money.
2) If you are able to eat before leaving home, not bring their own food into the theater, then try to look up the “Best Deals” value. You might just be lucky and save money.
3) Try to go to the cinema in the afternoon, the show generally offer discounts on movie tickets, compared with late-night show. The reason is that, at night, most people without job-related stress, business and money, and want to relax, so more people will show up during the night there. Thus, some of the time, the price of movie tickets are up for the night show.
4) If you can, then try to wait around a month to watch a new movie. When a new movie is released in theaters, a lot of excitement and a lot of people come to watch a movie there, But after about a month or more, they can revert to lower prices. So, you can save money if you can wait for a while and then go to the theater.
Hope you love the above tips to Save Money While Going to Watch Movies.