Justin Levy » announcements

Facebook Marketing: Now Available!

Justin Levy — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 04:08:24 +0000

I’m proud to announce that my first book, Facebook Marketing: Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign (affiliate link), is now available for purchase. It has been a 12-month process from the time that we originally started talking about writing this book to it hitting bookshelves. I’m proud of the work that I put into it and hope that you’ll find it helpful.

Below I have put together an overview for you to assess whether or not you think there will be value in spending a few dollars and buying the book.

What is Facebook Marketing About?

Facebook Marketing is a deep dive into how Facebook can be leveraged by your company starting TODAY. This book is not just a Facebook-is-cool-and-you-should-join type book. This book provides you with actionable information that you can begin implementing into your business. It gives you the ammunition you need to convince your boss, your board, your IT team, or your employees why they should be investing time and money on “just another social network.”

Who Should Buy This Book

Simply put: This book is designed for professionals who want to understand how Facebook can be integrated into their business. This includes anyone from the CEO to the CMO to PR, communications, and marketing. Besides gaining an understanding of how you can use Facebook within your business, you can also gain an understanding of how YOU can use Facebook professionally as part of your own personal/professional branding.

Where You Can Pick Up a Copy

Does all of this sound good and you are itching to grab a copy or 50 for you and your closest friends? Well, first of all, thank you. It means a lot. You can grab your copy from one of these awesome retailers:

Facebook Marketing – Amazon

Facebook Marketing – Barnes & Noble

Facebook Marketing – Borders

Facebook Marketing – 800CEORead

Facebook Marketing – Books-a-Million

Note: There is a Kindle edition available but not iBooks or audio versions, as of yet.

How Facebook Marketing is Organized

Facebook Marketing is organized into 11 chapters:

Chapter 1, “From Dorm Room to Boardroom: The Growth of Social Networks,” takes you from the beginning of Facebook in the founders’ dorm rooms at Harvard University all the way to their corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California. This chapter provides an introduction to the phenomenon known as Facebook including major milestones such as opening the platform to everyone, going mainstream, and the major growth data points.

Chapter 2, “Getting Around Facebook: The Basics,” deals with getting you around Facebook by taking a stroll through the basics. This includes a summary and detailed description of the basic profile options, notes, photos, videos, comments, likes, friends lists, Facebook Chat, and many other features. This chapter provides you with a foundation for going deeper into the platform and understanding how it can be integrated into your business.

In Chapter 3, “Establishing a Corporate Presence,” you explore establishing a corporate presence including a deep dive into Facebook Pages and Groups. You gain an understanding of how to set up each of these features for your business, how they can be used, and which ones you should select based on your needs.

Chapter 4, “Extending Facebook into the Interwebs: The Power and Reach of Facebook Connect,” breaks out of the framework of Facebook and discusses extending Facebook into the interwebs through the use of tools such as Facebook Connect. You learn how this major feature has been integrated into websites and how you can use it for your needs.

In Chapter 5, “Facebook Advertising: How and Why You Should Be Using It,” you can learn about the Facebook advertising platform and why you should use it. You learn about creating an ad, setting a budget, selecting cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impressions (CPM), discovering your target audience, and using Facebook Insights (analytics).

To gain a full experience while using Facebook, you need to extend its capabilities with Facebook Apps. In Chapter 6, “Extending the Experience with Facebook Apps,” I discus plug-ins such as flickr, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and several other applications that can help you to connect with your prospects, customers, and fans.

One of the most addressed issues throughout Facebook’s history has been privacy. Chapter 7, “Addressing Privacy Concerns,” reviews the changes of Facebook’s privacy policy, whether you should have a personal AND professional Facebook account or if you need a single profile, and several other issues as it deals with your privacy, your customers’ privacy, and the privacy of your company.

By the time you make it to Chapter 8, “Developing a Facebook Marketing Strategy,” you will have developed a deeper understanding of Facebook and how you can use it as another part of your marketing toolbox. Chapter 8 helps you to pull all these tools together to develop a Facebook marketing strategy.

With all the described options, you learn that one of the best uses of Facebook for your business is through the development of communities. But how do you pull all of this together? Chapter 9, “Using Facebook to Develop Communities,” teaches you how you can use Facebook to develop communities.

Because you’re not the first company to jump into Facebook, Chapter 10, “Best in Class,” shows you some of the Best in Class companies that have fully utilized Facebook to build communities, engage with their audiences, and become more social.

To finish, Chapter 11, “Shaking the Crystal Ball: What’s Next for Facebook,” shakes the crystal ball and tries to guestimate what’s next for Facebook. This is your sandbox to play in to see if you can figure out where Facebook goes from here. Place your bets and let ‘em ride!

A Bit of a Warning

While I did my best to keep updating the manuscript, eventually my publisher cut me off from making edits since the book had to head off to the printers and to store bookshelves. That means that you should expect that some of the stats have changed and that there have been feature set changes. But, the underlying core is the same. The theories, strategies and tactics are the same.

Special Thanks

I just really wanted to say thank you for all of the never-ending support. This opportunity wouldn’t have happened without each and every one of you. Should you choose to pick up a copy, thank you for skipping a few coffees to grab it. I hope that you’ll find it useful.

If you have already read it, I’d love to hear your feedback. What did you think? What can be improved upon in the next edition?

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Email Marketing and Social Media: 2 Peas in a Pod

Justin Levy — Sun, 09 May 2010 16:06:58 +0000

This was originally posted over on the New Marketing Labs blog. I thought you’d find the upcoming webinar useful too so I wanted to share it here. I hope that you can join us!

Are you desperately trying to figure out where your email marketing and social media efforts come together to form a seamless digital marketing strategy?
If you’re nodding your head up and down as fast as you can then we’re here to help! On Wednesday, May 12th at 2:00p EST I’ll be hosting a webinar along with DJ Waldow of Blue Sky Factory to yap about new media strategy and how social media and email marketing can work together.

During the webinar you’ll:

Gain an understanding of the new media market and its benefits
Learn why email marketing is the digital glue and how it easily integrates with social media
Take away strategies and tools for measuring results and using them to optimize future campaigns
Have access to examples of real-world marketers using these channels effectively
Walk away feeling EXCITED about email marketing and social media

What makes me so excited for this webinar is how passionate and knowledgeable DJ and the entire team over at Blue Sky Factory is when it comes to email marketing. Every time I chat with anyone from their team or hear them speak at our events or other conferences, I always learn something new.

So, will you join DJ and I from the comfort of your office, bed or local coffee shop for our webinar on 5/12 and come chat all things email marketing and social media?

Make sure you bring your questions, problems and confusion with you to the webinar and we’ll do our best to deal with everything you can throw at us. Let’s just make sure it’s about email marketing and we’ll be fine. Deal?

Photo Credit: tiny banquet committee

Dusting Off

Justin Levy — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 15:26:52 +0000

Well hello again. It’s been just a few weeks, er, actually, 12 weeks, since I’ve written around here. It hasn’t been because there hasn’t been tons of great stuff going on that I haven’t wanted to share with you or that I’ve lacked ideas to write about. So, what have I been up to then?

The end of 2009 and the start of 2010 has been extremely busy at New Marketing Labs. We keep getting opportunities to work on lots of fun projects with great partners. This has kept me flying in airplanes. Already this year I’m at 50% of the flights I took all of 2009. When I’m actually home for a weekend, I’ve been spending it over at my steakhouse where we continue to be fortunate that the community chooses us as their restaurant of choice for a romantic evening out. In fact, we were just named the Best Steakhouse in the Pioneer Valley and continue to break our monthly sales goals. Additionally, the past 3 months I’ve had to really keep my head down to finish my first book, Facebook Marketing, due out on May 20th. I just sent the final edits off to my publisher this week and it’s at the printer now. Yay! When I haven’t been on a plane, at NML, in the kitchen, or writing, I’ve tried to spend that last little bit of time available in the day with Laura.

While none of these things are good excuses for not stopping by and sharing my thoughts with you, I wanted to bring you up to speed on the past few months. I hope that you’ll tune back in and we’ll keep exploring together.

How have you been? What are you up to?

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Photo Credit: Tobias Sieben

Are You Subscribed Yet?

Justin Levy — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:40:55 +0000

I really appreciate all of the meaningful conversations that we have in the comments of this website, on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and the other ways that we find to connect online. But, I realize that for some of you, you simply click through or you’ve arrived here from a search engine. If so, it would make me smile if you took a minute to subscribe. I’ve given you a few different options below.

Thank you for the continued support. I’m really looking forward to learning from you and hopefully share some helpful material throughout the rest of 2010.

Subscribe via Email

Don’t have time to check in with your feed reader but still want to get any new content? Sign up via email and receive any new content in your inbox every morning. What’s better than a little bit of Justin along with your coffee? Let’s be real now….

Subcribe via Google Reader

Google Reader happens to be my favorite RSS reader and I highly recommend it. I love that we can share and learn together using something as simple as a feed reader.

Subscribe via RSS Reader

Realizing that Google Reader isn’t the only feed reader out there, feel free to grab add to your reader-of-choice.

Subscribe in a reader

Thank You

Finally, thank you for all of your continued support. I love every minute that I get to spend with you either here, on one of the various networks or, even better, in real life. Keep doing super cool stuff!

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Photo Credit: Frank Gruber

Gone Mobile

Justin Levy — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 06:30:23 +0000

You can now access a mobile version of [justinrlevy.com] when you use a touch mobile device such as an iPhone or Droid. Previously this blog had utilized the Carrington theme to create a mobile version of the site. But, I just switched over to WPtouch to create a fuller experience. Carrington had many of the features that WPtouch has but I like the look, feel and design of WPtouch a little more. It displays photos, Tweetmeme and Disqus tightly as well as the basic features of the site including tabs, tags, categories, date/time, and more.

What really impressed me about WPtouch was the level of customization the theme allows from the Settings menu. In my previous experience with themes or plugins that created mobile versions, they usually were limited in their customization options, if they allowed customization at all. Of course, you could pay to have a custom mobile version created but who wants to spend money if they don’t have to.

To highlight the high level of customization that the user is allowed, I took the below screenshot of the just the icon selection menu. This menu allows you to choose the icons that will be displayed for your different tabs.

That is just one of the many customizable features that you can tweak and have fun with.

So, if you’re looking to create a mobile version of your blog/website and you’re on WordPress, head over and grab WPtouch.

Adding More Value Around Here

Justin Levy — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:40:11 +0000

As a way of trying to add more value for you and giving us another way to connect on a regular basis, I have decided to launch a monthly newsletter. The newsletter will focus on topics such as: social media, marketing, business, time management, productivity and other topics that are hopefully helpful to you.

The content in the newsletter will be completely different than the random thoughts that pop into my head and I blog about. It won’t be just a rehash of articles already posted here either. The newsletter is a behind-the-scenes view of strategies, tactics, stories, and people that have helped me and I hope help YOU.

I would love it if you subscribed below and as you receive the newsletter, if you would be so kind to provide feedback. The intent of this newsletter is for it to be helpful to YOU. That said, your feedback will help shape this newsletter into what you need and want it to be.

Please know that I take the relationship that we’ve built here very seriously. Therefore, I will never sell, distribute or make public your contact information.

Thank you for the time we get to spend together. You keep pushing me to think about the way we run business in new and hopefully helpful ways. You always give me so much so I hope that with this newsletter I’m able to provide you useful info.

As always, thanks for tuning in and I hope you stick around for a while.

Missing in Action

Justin Levy — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:25:51 +0000

Well, first of all, hello again! Yes, I’m still alive. No, I didn’t abandon you. Yes, I feel extremely bad that it has been a very long month since I’ve written here, shared fun videos, or heard your thoughts on what’s happening. I could make 1,000 excuses about why I haven’t written lately. But, the bottom line is that I’m back. I have a list full of ideas that I want to share with you, videos I’ve been collecting up, and experiences that I’ve had over the past few weeks.

As always, thank you for hanging out with me. I always strive to provide you with content that will you be helpful to you whether it be for professional growth, industry related information, product/book reviews, or just a fun video to help lighten up your day.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

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A New Look and Feel Around Here

Justin Levy — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:43:00 +0000

So, I was getting jealous watching Danny Brown talk about how much fun he was having playing with the newly released Headway theme. Knowing that my friends over at CoffeeHouse Ideas will be designing something new and sexy for me in the next few months, I was a little hesitant to switch things up. But, then I saw this video from Remarkablogger and I was sold.

If you can’t view the video, it is also hiding over here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHnd0H1tIQo[/youtube]

As I get a chance to play with the back-end of Headway more, I will post a complete review of my experience behind-the-scenes. But, I know that many, if not most of you, connect here through RSS or email so you may not notice when design changes are made. With this update, I have also added in a Lifestream, Photostream (from my Flickr), Google Connect and a few other nifty things. I purposely left it kinda minimalist so there is a focus on content and connecting.

I really like the changes and was getting bored staring at the same blog day in and day out. I’m curious to know what you think. Do you like it? What’s ONE thing you want to see around here?

Want to try out Headway for yourself? Check it by hitting up the banner below (affiliate link)…

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Daddy Bloggers and Technology Collide to Form the DigiDads

Justin Levy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:01:46 +0000

Ok, I have to admit that as I was trying to come up with the title for this post I kept thinking of Transformers

Back on topic…today I’m really proud to announce the launch of a new project at New Marketing Labs. We’ve teamed up with Sony Electronics USA and a group of top-tiered daddy bloggers as a different form of blogger outreach. You see, Sony makes all sorts of super cool gadgets and they wanted to come up with a new way of getting the info about these products out in the wild. Sure, they could send the products to a handful of bloggers and ask that they review it. But, why not do something more fun, more creative, and experiential at the same time?

So, who better to play with all of this awesome gear? How about a group of daddy bloggers that use products like digital cameras, camcorders, and laptops to capture memorable moments with their kids all the time? Sounds perfect to me and sounded fun to Sony.

With that being said, I’d like to introduce the group of DigiDads who will be participating in this project:

C.C. Chapman
Jeffrey Sass (disclosure: Chris Brogan is the founder of Dad-O-Matic)
Brad Powell
Max Kalehoff
Michael Sheehan

Over the next few months the dads will be completing all sorts of different projects where they use this Sony gear with their families and provide unbiased reviews on what they thought of it all. You can track each of these projects on the dads’ blogs as well as on the DigiDads Community that Sony has set up. You can also follow the conversations taking place on Twitter using the hashtag #SonyDads.

What do you think about this? A fun, different way to do blogger outreach and product reviews?

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Facebook Marketing for Businesses

Justin Levy — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:54:40 +0000

Today is a special day for me as I announce signing my first book deal. I have inked a deal with Pearson Education/Que Publishing to write a book tenatively titled Facebook Marketing: Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign. The book is slated for release in January.

My goal with the book is to provide you with a solid overview of where Facebook has come from, where I believe it’s going and then in between all of that, how you can fully utilize the platform to become a trust agent both as an individual and as a business. I plan on showing you how to build a marketing plan with Facebook as an integral part of that plan, best in class examples, case studies and a ton more. This won’t be a gimmicky “you should join Facebook”-type book. I want this to be the type of book that might get you to look at Facebook through a different lens. I want this book to give you another cannon on your ship from which fire from. With this book I want to provide you with maps that will help you to chart a course using Facebook that will be helpful to you and your company.

This is an exciting next phase for me as I’ve always wondered whether I had the chops to write a book. Now we’ll see. I love challenges and this certainly is going to be a big challenge for me. Over the coming weeks and months I’ll take you behind-the-scenes and share my experiences as I go through the processes of writing and releasing a book.

As always, thank you for all of the support that you give me. My hope is that I’m helpful to you in some way that allows you to grow.

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Photo by: avrdreamer