Engagement

Semantic search is changing everything. From the way traditional marketing is done to the way social media connections are now forged, the web is forcing us to create more transparent, honest connections than ever before.[read more]

Eighty percent of companies plan to use social media for customer service and brands must respond quickly to customer queries on social channels. There is also an opportunity to use social customer service to increase brand loyalty.[read more]

Your company may not even be taken seriously without a presence on the big four social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. However, simply maintaining social media accounts for your business is not sufficient.[read more]

allison.hare via Compfight cc

Sara Rosso was a bona fide Nutella superfan: a consumer so passionate about Nutella that she had dedicated her precious time to furthering the brand’s cause. She was the type of fan that brand managers dream of. Then Nutella shut her down.[read more]

The phenomenon of big data certainly comes with big promise. After all, having terabytes of data on customer history and behavior is certainly better than trying to extrapolate from just a few data points. The good news is, there are technologies and tools that make it much easier to find the gold hidden in the data—and use it to refine your online marketing with laser precision.[read more]

Social relationships

In a noisy, distracting world, we are bombarded. We start each day feeling as if we are behind. Data noise is everywhere. Over 100 million bits of information come in through your visual system—every second! In the midst of this chaos, you need to build, manage, and nurture your relationships.[read more]

Marcy Kaptur (D-OH9) tweeted a joke from the White House Correspondents Dinner. But then she erased it 8 minutes later. What if more members of Congress could embrace the boldness of a funny tweet, without running away from it as if scared of their own shadow? We might see more real discussions among our elected officials as they work to solve our very real problems.[read more]

As of today, Twitter sees 200 million plus monthly active users globally, and 120 million plus active mobile users monthly. Together they’re tweeting a billion tweets every two and a half days, but Guy Yalif, Head of Global Product Marketing at Twitter, said it’s the kinds of tweets that matter, not the volume.[read more]

Adam Naide, Social Media & Digital Marketing Lead at Cox Communications

I had a chance to sit down with Adam Naide, Social Media & Digital Marketing Lead at Cox Communications to discuss some of the topics that you will see at the Social Shake-Up Conference where Adam will be speaking. The following is a transcript of that conversation.[read more]

Last year an employee was sued for taking the Twitter followers he’d amassed with him when he left his company. The case focused attention on just how much a Twitter follower was worth. Suffice to say that since then, a good deal of effort has gone into highlighting just how many followers are fakes. So it’s clear that not all followers are of equal value to you.[read more]

It isn’t just your imagination – the internet is becoming less of the “too nice” place that The Atlantic speculated it was turning into and advancing into a state of “social rudeness” where arguments are increasingly made public rather than privately discussed.[read more]

Your goal each day should be to inspire your audiences to connect with you with a goal of helping them achieve their goals. When you help them achieve their goals, you achieve yours by default. Inspire – Connect Achieve! Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be. Got it?[read more]

Photo from Brian Solis

What makes Brian Solis' book most interesting is that it is a product informed by the very thing he is covering, namely, social and the Internet. It may be one of the first books which is a product of “the internet of things."[read more]

Many branded viral videos achieve that status by being supported by a sizable seeding campaign. When a video is produced, companies will invest huge dollars in paid media to drive views of their YouTube content, pay to have high-profile sites and blogs host the content, and will put PR initiatives in place to raise the profile of their content to garner more views.[read more]

A warning, from an ex-digital activist, that keeping a low profile, or no profile, is a tactical risk when it comes to reputation management in the 21st century.[read more]

Blog audience bonding

Connecting with your audience, improving your ‘About Us’ page, fighting content challenges in B2B marketing and many more tips have been offered this week by expert bloggers and content marketing pros. Here are some recommendations to follow for content marketing success.[read more]

Facebook analytics

Engagement has become a nearly universal social media KPI. However, Facebook's infamous People Talking About This (PTAT) metric puts a bit of a wrench in this equation. Using Nike Golf's Facebook Analytics as an example, we can clearly see how PTAT doesn't correlate with engagement.[read more]

promoting with Google+

Many bloggers stop the promotion of their content at Facebook and Twitter. Google+, however, has broadcasting components that can make the promotion of content easier and can create more interactive reader experience.[read more]

Venn Diagram of Samy & Amy Meltdown

Yelp may not be the go-to source for restaurant reviews. Why? Amy's Baking Company has 1131 reviews, 99.9% of which are snarky, mean, negative “reviews.” How many of those 1131 reviewers actually ate at the restaurant and how many just piled on for flash mob social media bashing? 99.9%[read more]

eCommerce site building

Building and maintaining a great e-commerce site can be overwhelming at times as it seems there is no end to what needs to be focused on. Wordpress is a great tool for e-commerce sites just starting out. But even small sites focusing on e-commerce should follow these simple rules.[read more]