Over the past year or so, Facebook began intensifying its courtship of the media industry. So far, media definitely finds Facebook attractive but seems afraid of getting hurt. In fact, while it seems clear that while Facebook and the media business are becoming further intertwined, media has so far rebuffed Facebook’s larger ambition—to be the place where media is consumed, talked about and shared for the majority of Web users.

via Facebook Still Courting Media Business | Adweek.

Enterprise software giant Salesforce has agreed to acquire Buddy Media — which helps brands with their Facebook Pages — for more than $800 million, according to one report.

The Buddy Media clientele currently includes such well-known brands as HP, Mattel, L’Oreal, Carnival, and Virgin Mobile and promises on its site to “turn fans and followers into real connections.”

via Salesforce Ready to Buy Buddy Media For $800 Million [REPORT].

When Facebook launched Timeline for brands last month, it wasn’t just marketers’ social media strategies that got turned upside down.

The new format also changed the way consumers experience brands on Facebook.

In a webcam eye-tracking study for Mashable by EyeTrackShop, participants spent less time looking at Wall posts and ads and more time looking at the cover photo on brands’ timelines than they did on their old Facebook Walls.

via Facebook Timeline Changed the Way We See Brand Pages; Here’s How.

If you have a Facebook page, you likely know how important it is to get likes and comments. Without those, your EdgeRank suffers, and your posts are seen by fewer fans in the future. Facebook has already admitted that the average Facebook page only reaches about 17% of its fans. Since less than 1 to 2% of fans go back to your page, EdgeRank and newsfeed visibility are critical.When you get a new fan, you have the opportunity to keep them engaged. If you don’t, they’ll simply stop reading your posts. Here are some of the things you should keep in mind as you determine how best to engage your Facebook customers.

via How to Maximize Your Facebook Engagement.

While the average Facebook user may still not have made the switch to the social network’s new Timeline format, as of March 30, 2012, all brand pages were required to do so, and some brands have been seeing increased engagement as a result.

Social media measurement company Simply Measured looked at 15 brand pages that were early adopters of the Timeline format and found that average engagement on brand posts (i.e., comments and “likes”) rose 46% in the three weeks after the switch compared to the three weeks before. Prior to the Timeline introduction, the 15 brand pages saw an average of 1,672 points of engagement per post, rising to 2,441 after switching to Timeline.

via Has Timeline Increased Engagement on Facebook? – eMarketer.

We’ve all had Timeline for at least a little over a week now (and over a month for some users who were quick to adopt), and hopefully you’ve gotten the time to adjust the formatting of your brand page to fit the new design as well as play around with the new features; if you haven’t yet, take a look at our guide to the changes timeline introduced as well as our guide to optimizing your timeline for your end-user experience.

via Two Timeline Features for Power Users.

Barriers to entryOnline contests have earned a permanent spot in the social media super bowl, especially in attracting the 90% of lurkers who don’t engage with you but know exactly what your brand is up to. By giving them a compelling incentive to engage with you through prizes, freebies, vacation pacakages and/or unique experiences, contests and sweepstakes do offer a reason for brand engagement. Whether its meaningful or not is a topic for a different blog post. My post today is inspired by a #PRSADIConf session I attended last week called “You May Already Have Won: How to run a winning online contest?” presented by Sandra Fathi, President, Affect Public Relations and Ben Pickering, CEO, Strutta, an interactive promotions company that helps businesses manage online contests.

via Six Key Questions to Ask before Launching Online Contests #PRSADIConf – The Buzz Bin.

A survey released earlier this year by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth says the percentage of companies that maintain blogs fell to 37% in 2011 from 50% in 2010, based on its survey of 500 fast-growing companies listed by Inc. magazine. Only 23% of Fortune 500 companies maintained a blog in 2011, flat from a year ago after rising for several years.

The trend in business is consistent with the broader loss of interest in blogging among all consumers. In late 2010, the Pew Research Center said blogging among adults ages 18 to 33 fell 2 percentage points in 2010 from 2008. “Blogging requires more investment. You need content regularly. And you need to think about the risk of blogging, accepting comments, liability issues, defamation,” says Nora Ganim Barnes, a professor at the university who wrote the report. One benefit of a blog: “It’s a tool and content you own.”

via More companies quit blogging, go with Facebook instead – USATODAY.com.

Facebook appears to be testing a new feature to make users aware of their social reader privacy settings before they click on links that could end up being shared on their profiles.

Articles from social readers like the Huffington Post, Digg, ESPN, Yahoo News and others now include an icon to designate whether users’ friends will be able to see that they read the article. A green circle with a check mark means social reader activity is on. A grey circle with a check mark means a user’s activity will be private. When privacy settings are clear upfront, users are more likely to feel comfortable using social readers and other Open Graph application.

via Facebook tests new way to let users know which links come from social readers and whether their activity will be shared.

Every Franklin spent on Facebook advertising has 35 times the reach of comparable spending on Google.

Social media guru Brian Carter fleshes this out in a cool infographic we’ve reproduced below. Readers, what do you think of these numbers?

via Facebook Ads Have 35 Times The Reach Of Google – AllFacebook.