JailbreakCon 2012 Will Be Held In San Francisco On September 29

This year's JailbreakCon 2012 of WWJC (World Wide Jailbreak Convention) will be held on Saturday, September 29, in San Francisco at the South SF Conference Center.




What exactly is JailbreakCon? Actually, it is the new name for MyGreatFest, a convention dedicated to jailbreaking. "A community event featuring the most prominent members of the community". Expect to see "the best hackers, developers and themers that the community has to offer" at the convention and make their findings and achievements public. If you want to participate, make sure to secure yourself a ticket. Else, hit up the source link for more details.

Should Small Businesses Follow Everyone Back on Twitter?

Marketers know that Twitter is a valuable tool used to reach thousands of customers. But it's not just the output of content that's valuable—the people and other businesses you follow on social media are of equal worth.
Unless your account is private, you have no control over who is following you (unless you block them). But as a business with thousands of followers, is it wise to follow every single person who follows you?
"Don't fall into the trap of something I call a 'courtesy' follow—that is, following someone that has followed you out of a desire to appear grateful," advises Sheena Medina, community manager at Fast Company.
Medina, who says this "does nothing but fill your stream with noise," cites President Barack Obama's account, @BarackObama, which at one point was following 702,586 users—the most on Twitter. The account, overwhelmed by tweets, is in dire need of a bit of damage control. But, unable to dump seven hundred thousand followers at once, the admins must slowly reduce its followers in order to keep the President's social media-friendly image intact.
On the other hand, some say that businesses should follow back so that their followers may DM them privately.
"Here's a way to look at it: would you put up a Web page without adding your e-mail address or a contact form so that people could reach out to you privately?" asks Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton, inbound marketing evangelist for HubSpot, and lead author of Twitter for Dummies. "As a business, not following someone back means you're telling them, 'Thanks for your support, but you're not important enough to us to be willing to listen to you privately.'"
Fitton says she tries to reply to all of the genuine direct mentions, and when possible, she will thank or respond to @-mentions and retweets.
"Above and beyond that, stuff like retweeting their content, asking them questions and truly listening to their answers, giving them interesting stuff to interact with are all good ways to engage your community," she says.
Both Fitton and Medina encourage businesses to refrain from using an automated "thanks for following" mention. If you do decide to follow everyone, authenticity is key. Your followers will be able to tell whether they're talking to a robot or a person—and a real person is always more valuable on Twitter.
If you do decide not to follow everyone on Twitter, Medina advises to be strategic about curating your stream on Twitter—knowing your audience helps, but you must also think about what sort of content is going to be useful and entertaining to you.
"We're not one-dimensional people," says Medina. "And increasingly, businesses are using Twitter to show how multifaceted they are. Your stream should reflect the dynamics of your personality and business."
As a small business owner, do you follow every follower back? What ways do you show appreciation to your fans?
American Express OPEN offers YourBuzz, a free app that can help you manage your online reputation and connect with customers via one easy-to-use app.  For more information or to get started, visit YourBuzz.com/freeapp.

The 5 Fastest Growing Social Media Skills on LinkedIn

If you’ve been on LinkedIn lately, you might have noticed that you can add keywords that describe your skills and expertise to your profile. It’s a great way to help prospective employers find your name in the search results, especially when your job title doesn’t fully capture your essence. Here are some of the social media-related skills that have taken off in the last year:

1. Social Media Monitoring – 52% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Public Relations and Communications
“A media monitoring service provides clients with documentation, analysis, or copies of media content of interest to the clients. Services tend to specialize by media type or content type. For example, some services monitor news and public affairs content while others monitor advertising, sports sponsorships, product placement, video or audio news releases, use of copyrighted video or audio, infomercials, “watermarked” video/audio, and even billboards.”

This is the 25th fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. Of the 11,000 professionals who claim social media monitoring as one of their selling points, 58 percent of them are between the ages of 25 and 34, while 20 percent are between 18 and 24.
2. Social Media – 47% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Marketing and Advertising
“Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”

This general term is the 86th most popular skill on LinkedIn and also the 49th fastest growing.  There are 751,000 people who count social media as an area of expertise. The age ranges are a little more varied for this category, with 20 percent of them being between 35 and 44, which is slightly less than the 23 percent of social media professionals who are between 18 and 25.  The largest group was still the 25 to 34-year-old crowd, at 47 percent.
3. Online Community Management – 44% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Computer Games
“The online community manager role is a growing and developing profession. People in this position are working to build, grow and manage communities around a brand or cause. While the term “online community manager” may not have been used at the time, the role has existing since online systems first began offering features and functions that allowed for community creation.”

This is the 63rd fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are 3,000 professionals who have added online community management to their lists of skills. The 25 to 34-year-old age range still dominated the group at 59 percent, with 35 to 44-year-olds training behind at 22 percent.
4. Community Management – 44% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Computer Games
“Community management is the functional control of systems by communities or their representatives. It can and often does, but does not have to, include elements of community ownership, and involvement in day-to-day operation and maintenance. It is particularly reliant on clarity of ownership of schemes.”

Some skills sound so similar to one another that it’s good to read the description first for before you add it to your profile to see which one is the best fit. This is the 76th fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are currently 21,000 professionals who list community management as one of their skills, with 64 percent of them being between the ages of 25 and 34. Some congratulations are in order for the 1 percent who are between 55 and 64.

5. Social Media Marketing – 42% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Marketing and Advertising
“Social media marketing is a term that describes use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.”

This is the 71st fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are 259,000 professionals who have this skill in their arsenals and once again, half of them are between the ages of 25 and 34.
The “skills and expertise” option is great for social media professionals because they don’t all work at Facebook and Twitter.   And not all 751,000 people who are claim to be experts in social media are going to be right for any one position. there are a number of other keywords, like “social media development,” “social networking,” and “social outreach” that also made the list, but don’t have descriptions yet. Make sure that employers can drill down to what it is that you actually do – and be sure to have evidence to back it up.
Image by Elnur via Shutterstock.

12 Engaging Facebook Posts to Consider

If you are wondering what would help you grow your Facebook community organically, the answer is relevant interesting content and engaged community managers. But even the best community managers sometimes run out of creative ideas.
Here are the 12 types of posts that in my experience consistently produce high levels of engagement.
1. Pictures. Pictures, images and photo albums are rather popular with the fans. One of the top five Intel Facebook posts of 2011 wasn’t even technically a post; it was the photo album featuring images of new Intel museum in Santa Clara. The post was liked over 17,000 times and with over 1,000 comments. And it isn’t the only example.
2. Fill in the blank. Let fans share their own perspective with you. Example would be “I love technology because _____” Again, one of our highest performing posts.
3. Questions. Asking fans to share their story or point of view is one of the most effective ways to increase engagement on your page. Though simple, this type of post is often overlooked by community managers. “Real or fake?” “What do you think?” “What is your story?” Or just plain “PC or Tablet?” would do.
4. Trivia. Your real brand fans as well as those who are not very well acquainted with your company would appreciate a little bit of trivia or sharing of historical company facts.
5. Quotes. People love quotes. Use them!
6. Videos. This one is a no-brainer. Videos, especially the unusual or funny ones, are always welcomed by fans. Rich media like pictures and videos are also one of the most shared formats on Facebook.
7. Holiday wishes. Show the human side of your company by wishing your fans happy holidays throughout the year.
8. Celebrate milestones and say thank you. Did you reach an important milestone? Celebrate with the fans! When Intel reached 500,000 fans, 1 million fans, etc. we celebrated on our Intel page by changing the profile picture and thanking our fans for being a part of our amazing community. The response was overwhelming.
9. Call to action. If you want your content shared or your posts to be liked or commented on, ask! Simple “Like [or share] this post if you agree” or “What do you think?” would do the trick. However, use it sparingly.
10. Offer interesting challenges. Quizzes or trivia questions might be interesting to your fans. Earlier this year we posted a comment written in binary code on the Intel page. Our fans loved it!
11. Open the kimono. Offer behind the scenes videos or the making of videos or posts that will give your fans exclusive inside scoop on what’s happening within your company.
12. Polls. Want to know something? Ask your fans! And if you run out of ideas or if your content calendar suffers from the “boring bug” just ask your fans what they would like to see on the page and deliver on their expectations.
And whatever you do, don’t automate your posts. Show your fans you care enough about this community to create a custom message specifically for them every day. Good luck!