Steve Rosenbaum, creator of Magnify.net (one of our great clients), published an article on Mashable.com today regarding the Curation v. Aggregation debate that Rosenbaum has dubbed “The Great Creationism Debate.” While we at Apps4Brands are fans of the curation model for it’s efficiency and keen editorial abilities, many creators of online content claim it could be the end of user generated content getting any attention organically.

What does this mean for the marketing and advertising world? We’d love to know your thoughts! Read the full article at Mashable.com and let us know what you think!

—Samantha Bordignon

What’s up everyone? I want to share with you a personal story about using social media as an advertising tool.

My name is Austin. I am in college. Thus equating to the fact that I have no money.

I know that it is cliché to say that I have no money as a college student, but seriously, I have less money than Nicolas Cage right now. My only job is two days a week at my church, which means I don’t have a lot of money because you didn’t tithe last time you went to Sunday School.

Where am I going with this?

Two years ago I started a comedic sports blog called Korked Bats. A buddy of mine and I both loved sports and we both loved making people laugh so we figured, why not start a blog that is primarily jokes about sports news.

The popularity of our website spread like wildfire. We currently have 5 writers and accumulated over 40,000 hits internationally in less than 10 months last year. Not to mention we capped off a great 2009 by being named “Site of the Day” by ESPN’s SportsNation. I don’t mean to toot my own horn (yes, I do), but Korked Bats has blown up faster than Tiger Woods after slicing a tee shot.

Now, I know what your asking yourself, “Did I remember to TiVo Dancing With The Stars?”

I can’t answer that.

But you should be asking yourself, “How did Austin grow his blog to what it is today?”

That, my friend, I CAN answer.

In fact, I can answer that question in three words:

“SOCIAL MEDIA, CHACOS!”

(I figured the “chacos” part would add a nice effect. Obviously, I was wrong.)

If you were to search “Korked Bats” in Google, you will see that Korked Bats has a Twitter account, a Facebook Fan page, a YouTube account, etc. I have branched my website out to as many social media outlets as I can manage. Through this, I am able to Tweet or update my status whenever Korked Bats releases a new article or video. Over 80% of our normal hits come from social media websites.

What’s the best part of reaching out to various social media sources to advertise my website? It’s 149% free. That’s right, it’s more free than Willy. Which, as I was saying earlier, fits perfectly in my budget.

So if you have a website, a YouTube channel, or even just a casual blog, get yourself set up in social media, trust me, you won’t regret it.

• Sign up for a Twitter account.
• Set up a Facebook Fan Page for your site.
• Comment on other blogs or website with your site’s URL on it.

Every time you update your site, Tweet about it, update your Facebook status, and spread the word in any other free way possible. So far that is the only way Korked Bats has grown.

However, it’s not something that will happen over night. So don’t be discouraged if you don’t see a quick change in your site’s analytics. Continue to work hard, stay consistent and ALWAYS post your work on your social media outlets. Eventually, this word of mouth word of keyboard advertising will work. Take it from me.

Hopefully, soon Korked Bats will attract advertisers on our site to eventually help pay for us to advertise on other sites. See how that works? It’s like a chain reaction.

If you have any questions about advertising with social media, Korked Bats, professional sports, starting a website from the ground up or states and capitals, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Twitter: @TheAHuff

E-Mail: austin@korkedbats.com

• • •

For more information about Korked Bats, check us out:

korkedbats.com

Or follow us on Twitter:

@KorkedBats

• • •

-Austin H.

Let’s take a closer look into Clove App. What do ya say?

Everybody loves parties. Whether it is just attending one or even throwing one. Parties are fun.

I love Clove App. To me, Clove App is a party.

Alright, roll with me on this…

Close your eyes and imagine you’re throwing a party at your house. Ok, now open your eyes so you can read the rest of this post.

When you throw a party, you invite anyone and everyone. Your best friends, your friends, people from class, people from work (except that annoying guy who always seems to be in the copy room at the same time that you need to make copies), people you’ve never met before, your extended family, that guy or girl you kind of have a crush on, that guy or girl that has a crush on you, your dentist, people who work at the Laundromat. You know, pretty much everyone is invited to your party.

Well let’s say that when everyone shows up to your party, you send them to different rooms of your house. For example, you send your best friends to the living room, you send the people you know from work to the kitchen, and the people who are in your bowling league, well, you send to your bedroom.

Throughout the night you are forced to go into each room separately and check up on everyone. You have to make sure everyone is doing ok, catch up on the latest gossip, share your latest stories with them, etc. After a while, it gets annoying and exhausting just checking each room for each different group of friends.

That’s exactly how the Internet is.

You are forced to go to several different websites to check each social media outlet. You go to Facebook.com, Twitter.com, all of the various blogs that you follow, etc. It gets annoying and takes a lot of time out of your Internet surfing time.

Why not bring everyone into the same room at the party? That way you can have all your information in the same area.

That’s what Clove App does. It throws a party in which all your social media outlets can party in the same “room.”

Clove App is a desktop application, which brings together your Twitter feed, Facebook news feed, blog RSS feeds, and much more. Clove App is currently still in the BETA stage, and will soon be released to the public for download. If you are new in the social media world, or an experienced expert, you need to get Clove App!

-Austin H.

Facebook fan pages are very popular. Did you know that Facebook hosts over 1.6 billion active fan pages, reaching over 5.3 billion fans? There are more than 20 million new fans each day! These and more Facebook facts in a helpful infographic, courtesy of Mashable.com: http://bit.ly/bYfU75

As Fortune 500 Companies and small businesses continue to invest more of their marketing budgets into social media, many are looking for ways to get the most out of these campaigns.

If you have ever created a Facebook fan page, you know that there is only so much you can do. Facebook provides a layout and template. Fans can post pictures, and comment on the walls and discussion board. But for groups, events and brands that want to get more out of their page, they must look elsewhere.

Have you ever heard of Involver? http://involver.com/start In the last year, over 40,000 “brands” have adopted Involver’s social media platform. These brands engage over 100 million people. And while these figures seem small when compared to the magnitude of fan pages, these brands, including Best Buy, General Mills, Sony/RCA Records, P&G, Toys R Us, Audi, Sprint, HP and many others are on to something.

“Involver is the fastest growing social media technology platform, used by leading agencies and brands to create world-class social media applications that engage audiences across multiple social media sites.” http://bit.ly/ct5HH7

Involver has a pretty big application gallery. They have free apps, such as including your YouTube channel or RSS feed on the page. There are pro applications, like coupons or polls to reward and engage your audience. Finally, Involver offers a premium suite of apps for bigger budgets. These applications turn fan pages into something entirely new: music players, flash imbed, social media games and quizzes, it’s amazing what Involver’s apps can do. Check out the app gallery here: http://www.involver.com/gallery.html

In the coming weeks, we’ll be looking for more ways to complement your social media campaigns. But if you’re looking for new ways to engage your Facebook fans, you need to check out Involver.

-Connor Cole

As we begin to tweet, blog and publish information about applications that will help brand marketers with their social media marketing campaigns, we should begin by discussing some of the clients we will be paying particular attention to these next few months.

We have already been asked by Involver, Magnify, and Clove App to share information on their companies’ services with our followers. These companies and their “apps” will not be the only ones will be sharing, but we want to be sure you learn about them. A little introductory info on these companies:

Involver maximizes Facebook Fan Pages with a suite of professional applications. Their social media platform is used by over 20,000 companies to build, manage, and measure rich and dynamic user experiences on Facebook. Learn more about the company here: http://www.involver.com/tour1.html

Magnify is a platform for video curation. Curated video content lets publishers, e-commerce sites and online communities aggregate and filter content from multiple sources. As a tool for finding new content, empowering user submission and much more, Magnify’s platform can use multi-source video to attract a lot of attention to your site: http://www.magnify.net/

Clove App, a social media management desktop application, is still in private beta. As it moves to public beta, we will be writing about its ability to organize social media feeds, and customize dashboards that are compatible with Facebook, Twitter, Digg, RSS and more: http://cloveapp.com/