What We’re Reading ~ Week of April 9, 2012

Smartphone photography certainly dominated the social media news feeds this week with Facebook’s $1 billion dollar Instagram deal. In this week’s social media reading summary below, we enjoyed some strong real-world examples of both brands and cities (New York City at that) leveraging social media for photo sharing, consumer engagement and user-generated content creations.

Wednesday’s announcement of Google+ design enhancements also sparked significant chatter about the increased “white space” real estate and plenty of comparisons to the new cover photo feature, which is eerily similar to the new Facebook timeline look.

Finally, as Pinterest skyrockets through the social media ranks dozens of infographics about best practices are published on a daily basis. The two included below focus on how to pin for engagement and interesting recommendations for how educators can get into the Pinterest game to benefit students.

Facebook

Facebook Contest Finds 10 Best Shots of New York City
Mashable
The City of New York asked city dwellers to submit their best snapshots of the Big Apple in its first Facebook photo contest, #lovenyc. The photo contest is the first crowd sourced social media initiative from the recently launched NYC Government channels, which aggregate content from the city’s roughly 250 social media accounts. Rachel Sterne, City of New York chief digital officer and #lovenyc contest judge, hopes the contest will provide a template for what will be monthly digital initiatives designed to increase community engagement.

Twitter

15 Ways to Boost Your Tweets’ Click-Through Rate
Ragan’s
From content to context, hashtags to @replies and mentions, there are many methods to coax your audience into tapping that left mouse button.

Google+

Google+ Redesign: Here’s What’s New
Mashable
Google’s social network got a redesign on Wednesday that makes it more aestheticand easier to navigate.“It accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google,” Google Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra argued in a blog post announcing the redesign.

Pinterest

16 Ways Educators Can Use Pinterest [INFOGRAPHIC]
Mashable
The team at OnlineUniversities.com has put together the following infographic, which details how teachers can use Pinterest to organize lesson plans, distribute curricula, collaborate with other faculty, and even encourage student participation.

[Infographic] How to Get More Pins and Repins on Pinterest
The Social Media Scientist
This data should be useful for Pinterest users who’d like to get more repins on the images they’ve pinned, as well as content producers who want their content pinned and repinned more.

Photo Sharing

How to make the most out of Instagram
Nation’s Restaurant News
Use of the social-media photo application Instagram has been filtering into the restaurant business slowly over the past two years, but Facebook’s announcement this week of a $1 billion deal to buy the photo-sharing platform turned more heads.

Location-based

5 Ways to Market Your Brand with Location Based Networks
Mashable
Between the rise in location-based social networks, like Foursquare, and the mobile market’s meteoric growth, a new marketing avenue has opened up. Location-based marketing is a nascent frontier, and marketers are clamoring to take advantage of it.

~ GFM's Social Media team