Last night we covered a range of topics related to optimizing your social network, including:

1. How to Optimize Your Facebook Post Effectiveness

2. How to Use Video on Facebook As The Center of Your Next Marketing Campaign

3. How to Track & Manage Sentiment On Your Facebook Page

4. How to Target Facebook Ads for Engagement

5. How to Promote Your Promotion

If you want to learn more, please join us for the workshop on 8/3/2011. Also, if you have any follow-up questions, feel free to tweet them to us at @enternewmedia with the hashtag #enm10x60. Special thanks to everyone who attended and participated – the event was a huge success!

TheCollegeJuice.com is a new blog we’ve launched for Barnes and Noble College. With an emphasis on interesting news, as well as random information and distracting games, posts on the blog run the gamut from “New Apps Keep Tabs On Your Crushes” to easy-as-pie dorm room recipes and everything in between. This blog is part of a much larger branding campaign we are putting together for Barnes and Noble College. We look forward to sharing that news with you soon”.

— Mark Curtis, President, enter: new media

– Netty Devonshire, Senior Account Manager, Fashion & Retail.

The Open Graph

With its development of the Open Graph API, Facebook is giving publishers a toolset for connecting content on their sites with Facebook in a more integrated fashion.  In general, the social plug-ins are extremely useful but almost completely un-customizable; for now they’ll look exactly like they look on the preview page.

The Graph API looks like it has much of the same functionality as Facebook Connect, but all the API calls can happen on the PHP side instead of the Javascript side, which gives us more flexibility and makes it faster for the end user.  What that means in English:  the new API works like Facebook connect, but is a lot more elegant.

Some of these new tools are drag-and-drop and don’t need any backend integration and the rest require some backend work on the same level of work as implementing Facebook Connect. We’ve separated the reviews by type.

Like Button & Like Box

Instead of becoming Fans, users on Facebook will now “Like”Pages on Facebook, as well as sites and sub-pages elsewhere on the web.  Off-Facebook “Likes” will permanently link the liked web page to the user’s profile.

Activity feed

This shows the five (or so) most recent Facebook actions that occur on a site (i.e. people liking or sharing sub-pages of a website). It’s pretty useful and easy to set up, it also reports all activity on your domain.  This is a great tool for sidebars and homepages and other places with a site-wide context. Each entry is what a person does, as opposed to…

Recommendations

This shows the top 5 or so pages on a domain, ranked by how many people like or share each. Again, this is a good tool for sidebars or homepages.

Comments

This brings a comment board to any page. It’s especially useful because Facebook introduced an API call that lets you see all the comment boards you used, so we have more options for administering the boards. There’s no spam protection though, which makes it less useful than a  Wordpress as a commenting system, which blocks spam.

Live stream box

This is the same live stream box and has not changed.

Login with Faces

This just pretties up the FB Connect login button with friends who are also on the site. This creates a social incentive for users to sign up if their friend’s already have. Using this unit means implementing Facebook Connect.

Facepile

This is just Login with Faces without the Login button.

What’s it like to walk the red carpet? How will you handle the rush of paparazzi fighting for the perfect shot of you from every direction? Can you keep your composure as you stride right past the hottest international models, Hollywood A-listers, legendary artists, New York social elites, and even Donatella Versace herself? Thousands of Versace Facebook Fans had the chance to find out via an exclusive live broadcast from the Red Carpet at the Whitney Gala & Studio Party to support Art Unites. Yet another exclusive perk of being a fan of Versace’s official Facebook page.  Check out more images from the red carpet, or watch it on demand.

If it wasn’t enough that we created the #1 FB application for WV, according to WeFollow, WeightView is now the #1 tweeter in the weight category. We started tweeting for WeightView only a few months ago and it has taken off beyond our expectations. We truly believe the secret to this success is, well… we take that back, it is not a secret at all. We mix up the type of things we tweet about, such as post links to interesting articles, comment on what others in the community are doing, and engage with our community with frequent one-on-one conversations. Most importantly, we provide motivation, which is what WeightView is all about!

We got Parenting magazine to give  WeightView a shoutout this month in their piece, “Working in Working out”. The story gives moms tips on how-to fit excercise into their busy day, and it recommends using WeightView as a visual motivator for achieving their weight loss goal!

On Valentine’s Day the enter team showed some love to Giftybox with a placement on NBC Today Show’s “Valentine’s Day Gifts for under $50” segment! Giftybox’s Classes package was the star of the show -after all, who doesn’t want to be sent on a tango, salsa, dog training, martial arts, yoga, knitting, jewelry making, photography, music, painting class experience?

It’s a tradition as old as Amazon. The Monday after Thanksgiving is the biggest online shopping day of the Year.

So how can your PR team help you maximize your results on the big day? What id we turned “the big day” into “the big week?” For client GiftyBox, we helped turned Ctber Monday into Cyber Week with new placements and  promotions hitting online gift guides, blogs, and sites every day. We didn’t stop there. The hits keep coming as we make our big punch to get the word out about the coolest experiential gift idea available- www.giftybox.com