This article from Biz Actions, clarifies the “Facebook Firing” case that was settled privately between and employer and their employee.  The employee was speaking negatively about her boss on a social media site and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects and gives the right to employees to discuss their employment and work issues.  Single Throw offers a variety of ways to monitor your social media sites and build your brand positively through the internet.  Let Single Throw help you today with your internet marketing strategies!

Source: bizactions

The NLRB-filed “Facebook Firing” case – which had been set for a hearing in late January – has instead been privately settled. The case involved a Connecticut employee who was fired for violating the employer’s written policy barring employees from describing the company “in any way” on social media sites.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had argued the employee’s posting of unflattering statements about her boss was protected under federal labor law. In the recent settlement, the Connecticut company agreed to back off from its policy of overbroad restrictions on employees’ expressions on social media sites like Facebook.

Here’s a recap of the case:

After a dispute in the workplace involving a customer complaint, employee Dawnmarie Souza posted a negative remark about her supervisor on her personal Facebook page. This drew supportive responses from coworkers. Those responses then led to more negative comments from Souza about the supervisor.
Souza’s employer, the American Medical Response (AMR) ambulance firm, suspended her and later terminated her because of her Facebook postings.

The AMR blogging and Internet posting policy included these statements:

“Employees are prohibited from posting pictures of themselves in any media, including but not limited to the Internet, which depicts the Company, in any way, including but not limited to any Company uniform, corporate logo or an ambulance, unless the employee receives written approval… in advance of the posting…

“Employees are prohibited from making disparaging comments or discriminatory or defamatory comments when discussing the Company or the employee’s superiors, co-workers, and/or competitors.”

The NLRB filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the Connecticut company.

The NLRB asserted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) gives all employees the right to discuss with other employees such work issues as pay, benefits, and working conditions. These discussions on work conditions and work issues are protected activities. In the case against AMR, the NLRB argued an employee’s comments about a supervisor and about an employer, posted on a social media site like Facebook, is protected concerted activity when it involves comments and responses between coworkers.

The NLRB alleged the ambulance company illegally terminated Souza for violating the company’s policy prohibiting employees from describing the company “in any way” on the Internet without company permission. The NLRB described the company’s policy as overly broad.

A settlement is reached:

In a private settlement between AMR and Souza, the employer has agreed to back off from its restrictions on employees’ expressions of workplace issues outside the workplace.

The NLRB issued this statement about the settlement:

“Under the terms of the settlement… the company agreed to revise its overly broad rules to ensure that they do not improperly restrict employees from discussing their wages, hours and working conditions with co-workers and others while not at work, and that they would not discipline or discharge employees for engaging in such discussions.

“The company also promised that employee requests for union representation will not be denied in the future and that employees will not be threatened with discipline for requesting union representation.” [The employee in the case, Dawnmarie Souza, was a member of the Teamsters union and the Teamsters represented her before the NLRB.]

Meaning to employers:

The settlement between AMR and the NLRB strengthens the NLRB’s position that employers can overreach in attempts to prevent employees from discussing matters relating to their work.

For the full article and to read more about the policy vs. NLRA, click here.

As social marketing evolves, so will search engines.  This article from Search Engine Watch, reviews the new updates Google and Bing will be making by integrating organic search results and social context via Facebook and Twitter.  Single Throw can help your business grow in search engine results and social media marketing with internet marketing strategies and a great team!

Source: Search Engine Watch

Social search updates by Google and Bing have generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks. Instead of separating results from social networks like Twitter and Facebook from organic results, both search engines are streamlining search engine results pages (SERPs) by combining organic results with this social context.

Both Google and Bing have declared that, for some searches, social context will boost the rankings of results higher on the SERP than regular results. These announcements are just further confirmation of the convergence of social and search, and signal the growing importance of social media marketing for businesses.

What’s noteworthy about these changes:

• Both Google and Bing have moved away from showing tweets and sectioned-off “Liked Results” in the SERPs.
• Search engines are now sending users to the correct websites, as well as providing the detail about the origin of the recommendation (i.e., friend’s profile, original recommendation).
• With these social annotations, the search engines are giving users some visibility as to why they’re algorithms are picking certain results over the others.

Google’s Evolution: Twitter Integration

Google’s SERPs have progressed from showing organic results as a website link, to a specific tweet from a user within your social circle who mentions a link, and now to a combination of the two: the website result, a link to the friend’s social network profile (e.g. Twitter account) who did the sharing, and a link to the original recommendation are now combined into one result.

• Classic result: Google’s organic result for a keyword search pointing to a website.
• Tweet result: An link to the actual tweet from friends within your social network, mentioning your search query.
• Combined result: The website result, with additional annotations linking to your friend’s profile and a time stamp that redirects to the original recommendation are all combined in one result.

Bing’s Evolution: Facebook Likes

Bing has primarily focused on the integration of Facebook Like data in their SERPs and algorithm. Their social search features have evolved from showing organic result as a website link to a module within SERPs that’s set apart the organic search results with the header, “Liked by your Facebook friends,” to listing organic results with an added social annotation mentioning friends from your Facebook network who have also Liked the URL.

• Classic result: Bing’s organic result for a keyword search pointing to a website.
• “Liked Results”: A separate module included alongside organic results in the SERP (includes the website result, friend’s profile)
• Combined result: The website result front and center, with social context (friend’s names and profile pictures who have liked the link).

Facebook Uses Bing Search Results

Another development of note is coming from Facebook, which has started providing Bing’s web results as a part of their internal search feature. Twitter isn’t using Google results, just yet, but judging from Facebook’s and Bing’s partnership, it might be a matter of time before we see this unfold.

How Significant is This Change for Marketers?

This is yet again confirmation that social media optimization should be an integral part of any company’s search strategy.

Actions like getting retweets and mentions on Twitter, Likes on Facebook, and mentions on Quora are crucial for today’s online businesses to gain visibility through search engines and social networks.

As search gets more social, the idea of the social footprint which gives you exponential reach into a follower or fan’s social network just from a simple @mention, retweet, Like, or follow will have a whole new large-scale network effect.

When people share your content, it will show up across their social networks and in their friends’ SERPs.

For the full article, click here.

Social media is on the rise and this article by PRWeb discusses the impact that social media has on the importance of decision-making.  Social media can help your business grow with a few key points that were found in the study.  Single Throw Internet Marketing offers social networking as well as other important internet marketing strategies to help your business grow.

Source: PRWeb

The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), a global nonprofit research and education foundation and think tank, announced the results of the 2nd annual New Symbiosis of Professional Networks Study led by SNCR Fellows Donald Bulmer, Vice President, Global Communications, Industry and Influencer Relations, SAP, and Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks. The study — supported by quantitative data gathered from more than 100 senior business professionals and executives — benchmarks the impact of social media on enterprise decision-making.

This study extends the research Bulmer and DiMauro began in 2009 and 2010 focusing on professionals’ use of social media for decision-making. The 2010-2011 study examines the dynamics of trust that professionals have within their social media communities, as well as the value of engagement and collaboration to support decision-making and innovation across company operations for internal and external purposes.

Of the 114 executives who participated in the study, most were key decision makers in their respective companies that ranged in size from under 100 to over 50,000 full time employees.

Key Findings include:

* Social networks have evolved to become knowledge and communication networks, and access to thought leadership content is now the primary reason professionals visit networks and communities. Professionals are collaborating with each other through the thought leadership content they generate, curate or share. No longer is collaboration an experience between a limited number of people.

* While nearly all professionals surveyed (97%) use LinkedIn, the use of smaller (niche) professional networks are actively being used to find peers and content specifically related to the work that they do (by role, industry, geography, etc.). Professionals are finding the right mix of large open networks and private communities to support their learning, networking and decision-making activities.

* Professional communities are being used more frequently to inform business strategy and supporting new products and services (much more than in 2009). A majority (80%) of respondents are able to accelerate decision process and information/strategy development by participating in online communities.

* Endorsement (e.g. like, read, share, retweet) is at the center of collaboration in social media communities. “The Crescendo Effect” in social media environments has great impact on buying decisions. High quality content yields transparency and credibility.

“Business professionals are changing how they collaborate as a result of online professional communities and peer networks,” stated Bulmer about the study.

“Professional collaboration is changing from a small professional exchange into an interaction with content in more public ways,” added DiMauro. “The consequence of sharing content online is enhanced influence.”

To read the full article, click here.

This article by Mashable discusses the latest release from Facebook.  Real-time analytics will help a company see how the content is doing on their Facebook.  Social media has really taken off these past couple of years, and with some analytics with Facebook your brand could receive some great feedback.  Single Throw offers many different types of services for internet marketing and social media is one that is rapidly growing.  Take a look at the article and then contact Single Throw for all of your social media needs!

Source: Mashable

Facebook has released extensive updates to its Insights tool, which provides publishers who use Facebook plugins with analytics on how content is performing. Now they can see those analytics in real time.

The update enables publishers to get real-time distribution and engagement metrics of how the content on their site is performing on Facebook, meaning they’ll be able to optimize it for Facebook. For example, publishers will be able to see if a certain post is performing exceedingly well and could adjust its prominence. The metrics, of course, are exportable through the Graph API.

The update also includes a well-rounded look into content performance on and off Facebook. Publishers now can see the impressions, referral clicks and the most popular pages on their site. The Popular Pages view was expanded to include the top 100 pages that are getting the most likes, comments or shares.

What’s useful is that one can break down the analytics by Facebook plugin (Like button, Comments, etc.). Website owners with Like buttons, for example, will be able to see how many people saw the button, clicked on them, saw the stories that got posted through the Like button and how many of them clicked on it to come to view it on your site. It also provides metrics for the recently updated Comments plugin, enabling publishers to see the rate of comments taking place and from whom.

Users can see the granular information, such as how many “likes” included a comment from the user — only 6% on Mashable.com, I found (knowing that the comment functionality on the Like button doesn’t always work). I also was able to learn that the “likes” that included comments were more likely to get clicked on Facebook, which makes sense because it adds a personal voice from the user. What is interesting is that Insights also breaks out the shares that occur using the plugins and “organic” shares, which essentially is how many shares took places by users simply copy-and-pasting links to share or using the old Share button.

This is likely to bring some great insight to designers who implement Facebook’s “Like” buttons to see how its placement affects the click-through rates of the button.

Insights now breaks down interactions based on anonymized demographics, which may enable site owners to target specific audiences.

For the full the article, click here.

Wall, NJ – Key Software Systems, a courier management software company, has updated their online branding thanks to the internet marketing consultants at Single Throw!  These courier management software experts specialize in creating logistics software solutions for businesses throughout the U.S. and Canada.  The world-class Internet marketing consultants at Single Throw have integrated sales, marketing, design, and technology to optimize the website for Key Software Systems, which will better connect this online dispatch software company with its clients.

About Key Software Systems:

Key Software Systems of Farmingdale, New Jersey develops sophisticated logistics and dispatch management software for the messenger and courier industry. Their courier software system, Xcelerator, has established Key Software Systems as the industry leader in technical capabilities