Ok, so there were no actual new links on Murrayiz.com this past week. A couple of reasons for that – I’ve been kind of busy, and we are having some major changes going on at Biztegra (more about this later this week), so I’ve put the Daily links on hold for a week or so.  Also, Murrayiz.com will be transitioned to a new blog that we are working on, which should hopefully be up and running by sometime next week.

Here are some links though, for you to peruse (10 to be exact – 5 extra).  Items that I found while not doing the actual work that I should have been doing at the time.  Enjoy!

Link 1: IKEA Turns Consumer Behavior into Viral Marketing
Link 2: Building Branded Social Communities
Link 3: Find out what is trending on Facebook
Link 4: Awesome Air New Zealand All Blacks rugby safety video
Link 5: Google Reputation Management Just Got Easier
Link 6: Google Now Invading the Privacy of Dolphins, Sponges and Sea Cucumbers
Link 7: Scitable.com Goes Mobile
Link 8: Why Motorola Bought 280 North
Link 9: Social Trends: The pulse of social media at your fingertip
Link10: Radian6 Engagement: Looking Beyond Twitter

Leading Interactive and Social Media Agency Schedules Social Media Strategy Workshops in South Florida, Orlando, Atlanta and New York.

West Palm Beach, FL – August 19, 2010 – Biztegra (Biztegra.com), an interactive and social media strategy agency, today announced their fall schedule for their popular one-day Social Media strategy training workshops. Known for creating innovative programs, Biztegra’s workshops explore how social media presents a valuable opportunity for businesses of any size to further communicate and market their product or service.

The workshops are scheduled for:

Strategy Workshops:

• New York (October 5)
• Atlanta (September 21)
• Orlando (October 19)
• Fort Lauderdale (August 25 & October 28)

Implementation Workshops:

• Boca Raton (September 14).

Miami will be added later in the year, as well as Boston, Dallas, and Chicago. The complete schedule of the workshops can be found at http://www.smworkshop.com.

With the incredible rise in the use of platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube and WordPress, not only by millions of users, but also from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, the web has gone social.  The workshop will help attendees uncover the process of developing a social media strategy and, unlike other workshops, create a customized actionable plan that they can implement right away.

This workshop is led by Biztegra’s Senior Interactive and Social Media Strategist, Murray Izenwasser. Izenwasser has developed both interactive and social media strategies for major corporations, and has been a featured speaker for numerous events and industry forums related to social media.

“There is still a tremendous amount of misperception and hype about how to truly implement a social media program that drives your business, and that’s exactly what we attempt to cut through in our workshops,” said Izenwasser. “The goal of our workshops are to clear up the confusion on how to utilize social media for business and actually help attendees begin the process of creating a strategy right at the event. Based on the evaluations and the testimonials that we have received, we know we are offering something unique in the industry that really offer a real-world solution to creating a social media marketing program.”

The workshop comes in 2 flavors: Social Media Strategy, where participants learn the process for creating a strategy, and Social Media Implementation, where participants learn the steps to actually implementing their strategies on the major platforms.

In New York and Atlanta, Biztegra is partnering with Aquent, the only global talent agency that specializes in marketing and design. Marketwire (the leading newswire service offering press release distribution, media contact management, multimedia, media monitoring services and other workflow solutions for public relations, investor relations, journalists and other communications professionals) is a national sponsor of the workshops.

For pricing information and to register, visit SocialMediaStrategyWorkshops.com or http://www.smworkshop.com.

# # #

About Biztegra

Biztegra is an interactive agency dedicated to the integration of social media programs into marketing campaigns.  Biztegra’s focus is to not only build out individualized strategies that take advantage of the new technologies and markets that have arisen over the past few years, but to ensure that, at the end of the day, these activities generate business.  Biztegra is prides itself as being more than an agency, but a partner that helps clients navigate the social media landscape, take a strategic approach, and implement programs that integrate all of their marketing communications with a customized, industry-specific plan.
Biztegra is located in West Palm Beach, Florida. For more information visit www.biztegra.com.

Media Contact

Murray Izenwasser
Biztegra, Inc.
561.452.2662
murray@biztegra.com

Well, it was a nice run that Foursquare had. I think Yelp! has a chance, but not sure about Gowalla, or Loopt (did I put the exclamation point on the right one?), or the dozens of others out there.  The issue I have always had with Foursquare is that it lacked context of the rest of my life, and how where I was fit into that.

Well, Facebook announced Places, its location based service, which takes care of that context.  If you haven’t heard about Places, here’s a good video from TechCrunch about it.  If you have a business location, make sure you claim it. Oh, right, there are also privacy issues. Imagine – privacy issues on Facebook. I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!

Some Other Links:

• Facebook Goes Places With Gowalla And Foursquare In Techcrunch (realestateradiousa.com)
• Facebook, Places and Privacy… a Few Thoughts (geardiary.com)
• Will Facebook Places Erase Rivals from the Map? (pcworld.com)
• Facebook Turns the Privacy Fear Meter Up to 11 (gigaom.com)
• Facebook Places Banks On Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Booyah Steam (searchenginewatch.com)
• Why Facebook Places matters and how it will be used (intomobile.com)
• Facebook Location – of Sharks and Remoras (broadstuff.com)
• Facebook Places Vs. The Location-Based World (techcrunch.com)
• Facebook Places completes the picture (charleneli.com)

A couple of months ago, Facebook launched community pages (here’s Facebook’s description of them). But basically FB Community pages are pages that are driven by the community.  The issue is, is that Facebook has gone back and reclassified a whole bunch of smaller Fan Pages into Community Pages.  And a lot of organizations and brands still haven’t done anything about this.  (Biztegra was actually in the process of building out a client’s page, and had rolled it out to their employees as the first step when FB reclassified it as a community page. With some contacts that we have, we were able to get it put back to a regular fan page, but it still took a week or so.)

In case you are wondering what the different types of profiles/pages there are, and which you should have, here is my take:

• Profile – this is for a person (only 1 allowed per person)
• Page – this is for a business or a brand
• Group – well, this is for, well, a group
• Community – for an idea.

Good article about Facebook Community pages, how they work, and what you should do, on Marketing Pilgrim:

1. Conduct a search on Facebook for your company’s brand name to find your page.
2. Sign up to be notified. You can do this directly from your brand’s Community Page. When you get this message after entering your email address, you’re good to go: “Thank you for wanting to improve this Community Page. We’ll let you know when we’re ready for your suggestions.”
3. Wait for Facebook to catch up.
4. Realize these global results might be the same ones appearing in the SERPs, eventually.

And if you find that a page of your has been reclassified incorrectly, fill out the request to have it switched back. And wait for that to happen. Or contact me, and I’ll see if I can help out.

Some other links:

• Scott Meis: Facebook Community Pages: How to Protect Your Brand and Strengthen Your Facebook Presence (blueglass.com)
• Branding on Facebook Community Pages or NOT? (downtheavenue.com)
• Facebook’s Community Pages: Four Silver Linings for Brands (ogilvypr.com)
• Be Aware – Facebook Community Pages Are Hijacking You! (donteattheshrimp.com)
• Facebook Community Pages Create Headaches For Brands (mediabistro.com)
• Scott Meis: Facebook Community Pages: What Your Business Needs to Know | Social Media Examiner (socialmediaexaminer.com)
• Let’s Be Best Friends on Facebook! [Community] (gizmodo.com)
• How Facebook’s Community Pages are diluting brands. (thesocialpath.com)

10 very funny spoofs of the iPad.  Not  much else to say.  (I especially love the Grandma one).

Some other links:

• Check out the iPhone 4 and iPad spoof adverts (geek.com)
• Apple Fanboy Hubs – The Spoof Apple Friend Bar Means Diehards Will Always Have a Buddy (VIDEO) (trendhunter.com)

About a year and a half ago, I posted an entry to the agency’s internal blog about how Web sites were going to go away, and all we would need was Facebook. I actually was joking, but members of the agency’s web dev team (my previous agency, not Biztegra) took it seriously, and got into a serious argument with me about it (all on the blog). They not only told me about how full of crap I was, that I didn’t know what I was talking about, but also how the Website was never going to go away.

Well, it turns out that they were only right about 2 out of the 3.  Today’s link is an interesting article about how Facebook is making Websites less relevant than ever, titled R.I.P. 3 Ways Facebook is Killing Your Website, Jay Baer from ConvinceandConvert.com tells us his thoughts about it.

I was joking when I made that original post (seriously).  And while I don’t think that Websites are ever going to truly go away, there is a dramatic shift going on in how the sites need to interact to what we are calling the Social Web, which is dominated by Facebook, of course.

I especially like the last paragraph of the article:

I have said on this very blog that I was dubious about putting too many eggs in Facebook’s basket, because you’re essentially building your marketing program on rented land. And I still feel that way. The amount of control Facebook has (or will have) over the data and interactions on the global Web is truly unprecedented (and I trust them even less than Google). But, if your old house is abandoned and full of mice and cobwebs, a shiny new house – even on rented land – may start looking pretty inviting.

RIP websites. It was great while it lasted.

I wonder if The Buggles will do a remake of their song for Websites. For those of you not old enough to know what I’m talking about, watch the video below; for those of you, like me, old enough to remember, watch and get all melancholy.

Sing with me: Facebook Killed the We-e-ebsite, Facebook Killed the We-e-ebsite, Facebook Killed the We-e-ebsite…

Some Other Links:

• Is Facebook Killing the Web Site? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Deathwatch: Why Facebook won’t kill your website (holtz.com)

We Are Facebook - Resistance is Futile.

In a somewhat little noticed announcement, Facebook has provided the ability for Web sites to send updates to everyone who has liked their site, whether or not the site has a fan page on Faceboook.  Think of it: 1000 people like a page. The page can then send an update to Facebook, and they don’t even need to have a presence on Facebook. Oh, and then they’ll be able to track it with upgraded analytics. Check out the article from AllFacebook.com.  Here’s the Facebook Developer’s Blog Post about the new functionality.

Some other links:

• Facebook Dominates U.S. Web Usage (e1evation.com)
• How People Are Signing In Across the Web [STATS] (mashable.com)

Very cool ad takeover of YouTube for the expendables movie. It’s kinda gone viral, so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon. Enjoy.

From Adfreak.com, some fake vintage social media ads, for Facebook, Skype, YouTube, and Twitter – someone has way too much time on their hands.

Mashable article about the new release of the Echo platform, which allows you to post real time comments and conversations on your website.

According to Mashable:

The real-time comment and reaction platform Echo has just introduced a new feature for its Pro customers called the Echo River. The new product lets traditional publishers take a Facebook-like approach to publishing on their home pages, upon which new posts and comments appear in real time.

There’s also a demo page of Echo River. You can also read the Echo release on their blog about the product.