Facebook posts are mysteriously disappearing for some users

It's not just you: Facebook posts from certain user accounts are mysteriously disappearing left and right.

Content from select Facebook pages, including Mashable's, have been disappearing over the past hour or soMashable's posts to the social network from the last three hours have disappeared, including a story published early Thursday about Jeff Bezos' phallic space rocket.

See also: 5 tips to make Facebook Messenger work better for you

Facebook told Mashable that it is currently "trying to identify the bug."

BREAKING: @Facebook is not letting people post and/or making already published posts disappear. We are in this together. On @Twitter.

— Andrea Garcia-Vargas (@AGVwrites) April 30, 2015 Read more...

More about Facebook, Media, and Social Media

There's only 1 month left to submit your work for the 2015 Mashies

From marketing and advertising to social media and PR, the Mashies are all about the very best in digital.

Want to attend? There's only one month left to submit your work to be considered for Mashable's annual celebration of the agencies and brands that are paving the future of communication on new digital platforms

See also: 2015 Mashies submissions are open. Think you have what it takes to win?

Submit your work now by 12 a.m. on June 5 for the chance to win. There are several new awards this year, including two in our brand-new Public Relations category, and for the first time ever, we'll be accepting submissions for our coveted Overall Awards. Read more...

More about Events, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, and The Mashies

Throw it back to the good ol' days for our Vine challenge

From your high school promposal to buying your very first car, throw it back to the moments you miss for this week's Vine challenge

Recreate the scene using stop-motion animation, or share some of your favorite childhood photos in a creative way. We're also open to reposts of old Vines — the ones you made before HD, or even pre-ghost mode (remember that?)

See also: 9 stages of getting invited to your high school reunion

Submit using the hashtag #MashTBT, and we'll revine and feature some of our favorites next week

The theme was inspired by this month's #MashFlix film, The D Train, which follows Jack Black's character back to the good ol' days, as he tracks down a former classmate and plans his high school reunion Read more...

More about Film, Vine, Social Media, Mashable Vine Challenge, and Throwback

The State of Email Marketing Mergers and Acquisitions

The email marketing world continues to be shaken up by multiple mergers and acquisitions. What does this mean for the industry?

Email Marketing and Copywriting: Why you should send “spam”

As email marketers, we're taught to never use certain words for fear of upsetting the almighty spam filter. But maybe our fears are more irrational than we thought. In this MarketingExperiements Blog post, learn about a recent test that proved using the word "spam" in your emails can be beneficial.

Why The Customers Who Don’t Convert Are Immensely Important

I love Warby Parker, but I’ll never buy a pair because I have 20/20 vision. My boss reads the Buffer blog daily, but she’s never used the tool a day in her life. We’re brand fans, part of an enormous audience of advocates you may be missing out on. While brand fans like us may […]

Why Do Sites Rank High on Google When They Aren’t Optimized?

Have you ever wondered why some sites rank high on Google when they aren’t optimized for search engines? Or even worse, when they barely have any backlinks? I’ve been asked this question a lot over the last few months, so I thought I would write a blog post explaining why that happens. Here’s why some  [click to continue...]

12 Awesome Content Marketing Ideas That Aren’t Blog Posts (Infographic)

Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Sylvia Jensen, Senior Director, EMEA Marketing, Oracle Marketing Cloud.

Today I want to share with you 12 creative media formats that make your company’s story stand out from the blogging sphere. An easy-to-grasp guide introducing 12 great ideas for content that isn’t blog-shaped.

With so much content out there it can be hard to ensure that your brand’s message does not get lost in the noise of the Internet. Particularly if that message is being presented in the standard blog format - SEO optimised for sure, but is it engaging and different from any other content?

So to help your content stand out from the numerous dry standard formatted blogs out there why not take a different approach and frame your content as a quiz, or a comic strip? Perhaps move onto Twitter and host a Q&A session? Or why not post your content into a shared space and generate discussion around it?

There are many ways in which you can differentiate your brand message and really engage with prospects - below we have pulled together 12 of the most awesome creative media formats, from charts, text messages all the way through to content vampires, to help you really make sure that your content is noticed. As fashion designer and style icon Vivienne Westwood once said “You will have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes” and the same applies for content marketing - you will have a more interesting brand if you create impressive content”.

But remember - the key to content is all about making it relevant to your target prospects in message, design and distribution - so read on, get inspired, keep creative and start generating the awesome content needed to really get your brand noticed.

Discover Oracle Marketing Cloud’s ‘5 Pillars of Social Success’ in our Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Social Marketing.

Twitter’s New Dedicated Food Account Could Help Broaden Appeal

Twitter is launching @TwitterFood today, a dedicated account that sifts through the myriad food-related tweets shared on the social network and offers up a curated selection oh hand-picked missives from heavyweights in the field including Martha Stewart and Alton Brown, as well as choice posts from the general public. The Twitter Food account is a smart idea for a company looking to expand… Read More

Ask the Experts: What Is Dynamic Keyword Insertion?

Transcript

Hey guys, thanks so much for tuning in to WordStream’s fourth installment of “Ask the Experts.” My name is Erin Sagin, and I’m a manager here on the Customer Success team at WordStream.

Today, I’ll actually be asking a question that was submitted by one of our viewers, which is awesome - we love getting questions from you guys for this video series. So today we’ll be focused on, “What is dynamic keyword insertion, and should I be using it in my PPC account?”

So, dynamic keyword insertion – or DKI, as a lot of people call it – is a common practice used in PPC that allows you to plug in a little snippet of code to your ads, and it will automatically insert whatever keyword matches to the user’s search query in the ad. The goal of it is to ensure that your ad text is super-catered to what that particular searcher is looking for.

Alright, so I know coding sounds a little scary – it’s actually really easy. All you have to do to plug this code into your ad is use a curly bracket, and then the word “keyword” with a capital “K” and a capital “W.” Then you’ll plug in a colon, and the substitute text. The idea of plugging in that substitute text is to ensure that, if your keyword is too long to plug into the ad, we have something else to go off of, so we’ll throw in that substitute text if that’s the case. Then, to close out that snippet of code, you’re just going to plug in another curly bracket and you’re all set.

You can put this in the title of your ad – that’s the most common place to put it – but you can also put it in the body, or in the description URL. Really, wherever you want to plug it into your ad, it will work for you.

Alright, so the second part of the question is, “Should I be using it?” It’s really dependent on the advertiser themselves. This is a godsend for lazy advertisers. So, if you don’t have the time or don’t have the resources to commit to creating really, really small, catered ad groups, with really, really specific ad text, this is kind of a way to jump over that hurdle. You can use a more assorted group of keywords and still ensure that your ads are catered to what that searcher is looking for – not necessarily the best way of doing things, but definitely an easier way of doing things.

It’s also awesome for those of you out there who are advertising for products that have SKU numbers. So, say for example you’re advertising for printer ink. Now, I know that when I search for ink for my printer, I always plug in the SKU number of that particular printer. Because God knows, you buy the wrong printer ink, and you actually put it in your printer, it’s too late to return it by that time. So I want to make sure I’m getting the right printer ink, and I’m always looking up the SKU number. And I’m really only going to click an ad that shows they have printer ink for that particular SKU number.

So dynamic keyword insertion is awesome here, because you can use it to ensure that whatever SKU number someone is looking for – as long as you’re bidding on a keyword that matches that – is plugged into your ad text and you’ll ensure that the searcher is actually seeing that SKU number in the ad. Amazing, right?

That said, there are definitely some drawbacks to using this particular coding in your ads. The first thing is if you’re bidding on your competitors’ terms, this is a no-no for those particular ad groups. The reason being you don’t really want your competitors’ terms to show up in your ad, because you could definitely risk getting in trouble with Google.

Another thing you want to think about is if you’re bidding on misspellings, this could cause some serious problems because you could end up with misspelled words in your ad text, which definitely doesn’t look super professional.

And then finally, if you’re bidding on super-long-tail keywords, chances are they’re going to be too long to fit within the character limits for your ads, so will end up substituting in whatever substitute text you’re using, resulting in a generic ad. So you probably don’t want to use this particular strategy if you are bidding on a lot of long-tail keywords, or the keywords you’re using are just longer words.

That said, it really depends on you as an advertiser what the best fit would be. I absolutely recommend to most of you to give it a shot. Always A/B test to see if it’s a good fit for you, and we typically see these fall within the top 5 to 10 percentile of ad text, so you can expect pretty decent results.

Hope that sums it up for everybody. If you have any additional questions, don’t hesitate to comment below, or tweet at us @WordStream, or directly to me @ErinSagin. You can also subscribe to the video series by clicking the button below! Thanks so much for joining!

Solar Energy – A Brief History in the United States

The technology to derive substantial electricity using sunlight has existed since mid-1950, when the first solar cell was created by Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson at Bell Labs – developed the first solar cell capable of generating enough power sun to run everyday electrical equipment. A silicon solar cell which was produced was ...

Foursquare has a new problem: Employees are checking out

Foursquare has a problem: Many of its employees have checked out.

The company has lost more than two dozen employees over the last year — and several key members of its engineering team just in the last few months — including Vice President of Engineering Harry Heymann, Senior Director of Engineering Kushal Dave, and Senior Software Engineer Govind Kabra, among other employees in areas such as content and recruiting.

See also: Twitter teams with Foursquare to let you get specific in tagging locations

"If an employee hasn’t left, it is mostly because they haven’t found the right next gig,” said a source familiar with Foursquare's internal matters. Read more...

More about Social, Foursquare, Startups, Social Media, and Apps Software

Setting Themselves Apart From Their Competitors - The Penn Foster Story (Video)

Founded in 1890, Penn Foster has been a leader in career-focused distance and hybrid learning for over 125 years. More than 13 million people have enrolled in their College, Career School and High School to further their education and learn advanced skills to better position them for life success.

Today, they have over 133,000 active students in programs focusing on high growth, in-demand fields like Veterinary Technician, Business, Medical Billing and Coding, HVACR Technician and Pharmacy Technician to name a few.

And of course, like any other brand they want to set themselves apart from their competition.

To do just that they partnered with the Oracle Marketing Cloud.

Sara Dellecave, who is the email marketing manager for Penn Foster says it's vital they engage with their students and deliver great content at the right channels. "Oracle Marketing Cloud has really helped us pull together all the data that we have on our students and create meaningful messages."

Watch this video to see how Penn Foster extends its marketing team with Oracle Marketing Cloud.

To learn more as to how the Oracle Marketing Cloud can help your brand be sure to check out the Modern Marketing Essentials series which are invaluable resources to help you better understand and execute on marketing effectiveness, manage organizational structures, sharpen the skills necessary to round out your technology toolkit, and support the creation of ideal customers.

Inbox Impact and the First Impression Factor

Just as they do in the worlds of dating and job interviews, first impressions matter in the email marketing arena as well.

10 photo collage templates to make your Pinterest posts pop

Whether you want to showcase your cats, kids, crafts or cookery, photo collages make for a fab way to spice up your Pinterest posts.

We've taken a look at few sites that offer fantastic free designs to inspire you.

See also: Your social media cheat sheet for perfectly sized images

Check out our 10 collage choices below. Have we missed a site you swear by? Then shout it out in the comments

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Kitten image courtesy of Flickr, meliha tunckanat Read more...

More about Social Media, Features, Dev And Design, Pinterest, and Apps Software

BuzzFeed Pitches Advertisers On “Pound” Tech That Tracks A Story’s Viral Spread

BuzzFeed is known as the king of viral content, and today it’s sharing more details about a new technology showing how that content actually spreads. By using what it calls Pound (short for Process for Optimizing and Understanding Network Diffusion), BuzzFeed promises to go beyond just counting social media shares and clicks. In a blog post, BuzzFeed Publisher Dao Nguyen writes: Read More

How to Successfully Launch Your First Marketing Automation Program

Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Zach Watson, content manager at TechnologyAdvice. He covers gamification, healthcare IT, business intelligence, and other emerging technology. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

For marketing departments accustomed to smaller, fragmented software applications, implementing marketing automation software can be a daunting task. Properly integrating marketing automation into your organization requires a certain set of criteria, including:

• Understanding what marketing automaton can and can’t do
• Having a copious amount of leads to nurture
• Having the necessary talent to operate the system to its full potential
• Having enough content to fuel your nurturing campaigns

If you meet these standards then it’s likely you’ve already investigated solutions and perhaps even chosen a platform. But selecting a capable tool is only the beginning. Automation software touches numerous channels and presents marketers with a broad range of capabilities, so narrowing down the expansive strategies to actionable tactics should be the first order of business.

Luckily, there are several core undertakings that all marketers should complete when they begin to use marketing automation software. By segmenting your database from the start, setting up a scalable campaign creation workflow, and implementing clear lines of communication with sales, you’ll lay a strong foundation on which you can build successful marketing campaigns and optimize your business processes.

It all begins with your database.

Create Accurate Segmentations

Before you begin developing your automation campaigns, you should take the time to fastidiously segment the customer data you’re storing in your marketing automation platform. Because the real goal of marketing automation platforms — and really marketers at large for that matter — is to create personalized marketing for each customer, you have to spend time on the front end organizing your customers into appropriate segments.

On an operational level, this task isn’t all that complex. Most marketing automation platforms use lists (which are essentially customer segments) as reference points to deliver content. It’s the responsibility of the marketer to create lists that reflect the differences in your customers.

Common strategies for segmentation include dividing leads based on where they entered your system, e.g. through a webinar or landing page. A more detailed approach will use where these customers are in their buying journey and which of their pain points your product or service addresses. The behavioral analytics included in your automation platform are often the best data sources for deciphering how to segment.

The real value of segmentation becomes apparent once you start deploying campaigns. By empathizing with your customers and only sending them content that’s relevant to their interests, you’ll dramatically increase your chances of converting them from prospects into customers.

Take an Agile Approach to Creating Campaigns

Once your customer information is properly organized, you can begin creating drip campaigns. Depending on the buying cycle in your industry, these email autoresponders could span a couple of weeks or they could extend to several months.

Since marketing automation features a number of moving parts, it’s best to get one campaign up and running as quickly as possible. Once you launch your initial campaign for one segment, you’ll be able to move on to another campaign while your first initiative runs in the background. While it’s important to monitor campaigns for opportunities to improve, approaching the campaign creation process with an Agile outlook can reduce the period between implementing your new software and seeing results.

Starting with a single campaign also allows you to approach the project with more detail, learn the myriad of minor functions on offer, and set baselines for performance. Build your first campaign where your business is strongest, whether that’s a specific marketing channel or a certain customer segment.

Work with Sales on Lead Standards

Marketing automation software helps create a more holistic journey for customers by building a better link between your marketing and sales departments. Sales can access the behavioral data marketers have build up in the automation system, and marketing can better tie their efforts to revenue.

This relationship helps keep the entire buying experience relevant for the customer, but marketing has to get sales involved in the automation process early for it all to work. Sorting out lead scoring and defining a “marketing qualified lead” are the building blocks to a successful marketing/sales partnership.

Collaborating with sales on how to score leads will not only result in more accurate scoring criteria, but also reduce tension between the two departments about when a lead should be sent to sales versus when a lead should be further nurtured. The numerical aspect of a lead score adds a quantitative element to this strategy that helps eliminate any vagueness around each department’s expectations.

Like all digital marketing, experimentation will be necessary to truly nail down lead scores, but sales department input is invaluable for deciding which type of behavior truly signals buyer intent.

In many respects, marketing automation embodies the advancement of digital marketing, and the possibilities it presents in terms of data consolidation, cross channel campaigns, and improving the buyer experience are undeniably exciting. However, certain steps must be taken before marketers can start to turn some of these possibilities into reality.

Developing strong protocols for segmentation, campaign creation, and lead scoring will place your marketing automation program in a much stronger starting position.

Smugglers use social media to lure migrants in the Mediterranean

VALLETTA, Malta — Human traffickers throughout North Africa and the Middle East are using Facebook, Viber and other social media tools to recruit clients from across the region.

As European officials wrestle a major migrant crisis in southern Europe — nearly 2,000 people have died in Mediterranean shipwrecks since the start of 2015 — the smugglers are turning the flood of refugees fleeing war-torn regions into a booming multi-million dollar business online.

See also: The Mediterranean migrant crisis, explained in under 2 minutes

Migrants wait to disembark from the Italian Coast Guard ship Fiorillo, at the Catania harbor, Sicily, southern Italy, on April 24, 2015.

Image: Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press Read more...

More about Facebook, Social Media, Europe, Twitter, and Us World

Anita Sarkeesian, Ashley Judd aren't ignoring violent trolls: They're fighting back

After dealing with her fair share of trolls, video blogger Anita Sarkeesian knows one thing for sure — she detests the term itself

“I think the word troll is kind of a problem," she said on April 24, speaking to a mostly female audience at the Women in the World summit, a three day event in New York City that tackles the issues women face today

See also: Feminist blogger posts 157 abusive tweets — from just one week

The term "troll" is "juvenile," its cartoonish influence playing down the harmful and often violent aspects of social media harassment, she says

Ashley Judd, New York Times staff writer Emily Bazelon and California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris also shared the stage with Sarkeesian, speaking about their own experience with online trolling. The conversation was moderated by Katie Couric Read more...

More about Features, Trolls, Gaming, Social Media, and Trolling

Why You Need a Social Media Calendar and How to Create One

You’ve heard of social media calendars before, but do you know what they are and how to use one? Chances are you don’t. And that’s okay… I didn’t either when I entered the realm of social media marketing. But once I learned about it and how to use it, it change how I marketed my businesses  [click to continue...]

10 Marketing Channels to Grow Your Small Business (FS107)

In this conversation we present 10 growth channels to grow your small business, adding our honest commentary on each one. We also walk you through a growth model we’ve adopted that’s helped how we brainstorm, plan for and execute our growth strategy for Fizzle. Enjoy!

Facebook's new notifications tab is a robust mini-news hub

Facebook wants notifications to become much more than a perfunctory list of recent behavior, events and invitations.

Mashable has learned the social network is quietly testing a robust new notifications tab that pulls content from across the entire site and serves it up in one central place. Facebook, which confirmed the development to Mashable, plans to roll out the new tab to mobile users across the U.S. first, then worldwide, although it has yet to pin down exact timing.

See also: Facebook Likes don't go as far as they used to in News Feed update

"We are testing an updated Notifications tab that adds additional, relevant content about everything that might be helpful to know on a particular day," a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable. Read more...

More about Social, Facebook, Social Media, Dev Design, and Mobile

There’s More to Life than Analytics – Why Ignorance of Conceptual Models is Costing You Money

I’m a copywriter on a quest for the most conversions. I sit surrounded by data that my agency uses to raise landing pages high on the search results page. Titanic resources ensure these pages are well optimized with tight-coding, clean links and sheaves of search insight that explain what’s been done and what’s on deck. […]

Victorious Launches Its First Apps For Online Stars And Their “Superfans”

Victorious is launching mobile apps today built for Internet video stars Ryan Higa and The Young Turks. I assume this is good news if you’re a fan of Higa or The Young Turks, but even if you’re not, it’s the first public launch of apps from Victorious, making it the first real glimpse of what the company can do. Basically, Victorious works with stars from video platforms… Read More