Social Media

In order to help your content spread, you have to reduce the friction of sharing. In other words, make it very easy to share via Facebook, LinkedIn Twitter, Pinterest and via email. And no, don’t hide it at the bottom as a tiny button that needs to be expanded to show the real sharing buttons.[read more]

One of the most under-leveraged resources for many brands, within social media, comes from within: their employees. Research has continuously shown that people trust word of mouth or recommendations anonymously or via personal networks. So then this raises the question – why don’t more companies leverage the support of their employees?[read more]

lanier67, Flickr

This isn’t hard to respond to comments on some platforms like Facebook where most comments can be visibly seen on the post itself. However, mentions of your brand can be harder to track on forums you’re not a part of or on social networks like Twitter where you get a steady stream of content on your feed. To help you monitor mentions of your brand, you can use a tool like Mentions to track your name and get real-time alerts.[read more]

It seems that Target may have finally found its way into the next frontier of digital retail. Within the last week, Target has launched Cartwheel, a responsive website which will eventually become an application that allows users to earn and redeem in-store savings via Facebook and their smartphones.[read more]

A brand is essentially the sum of what people say about it. We’re connected and social now. And that’s not all. We’re hypercritical, hyperactive and so hyper-online, we’re barely offline when we sleep. Scheduling our content to publish while we’re snoring is easy. There are apps for that.[read more]

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]

You can go “off grid.” You can turn off your email. In unplugging yourself from your social media networks and the online world, I posit what you’re really doing is unplugging your robot friends till you want to deal with them again. Friends have become objects of convenience.[read more]

Flickr’s redesign propelled it in the direction of looking exactly like Facebook would look if images were the only content. I am not denying that Marissa Mayer has brought an incredible amount of fresh ideas and new strategies to reinvigorate Yahoo, but the Flickr property, ignored since its 2005 acquisition, seems to be rebounding in the direction of other platforms.[read more]

Google+ is following its competition with a design change that has everyone up in arms. As usual, some like the changes made while more disapprove. The new design is going to take some getting used to, but the worlds biggest search engine had the best intentions in mind for both businesses and individuals when it came to the very photo-friendly redesign.[read more]

After weeks and months at the same desk, it’s easy to feel out of ideas. In a job that requires fresh-thinking, creativity and inspiration, a new setting can spark productivity better than any program or time-management technique. Work outside, work in the lobby, (or if you’re lucky) work from home. A new environment can reinvigorate your work life and tap into unreached potential.[read more]

I don’t think I’m being too controversial to say that women drive the majority of e-commerce and social sharing. Yet this infographic asserts that men are driving eCommerce and social sharing, and that a Google Plus share is worth five times what a Facebook share is and nine times what a Pinterest share is worth.[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]

penguin/shutterstock

As expected and announced by Matt Cutts for upcoming penguin updates on Twitter, this is the first major update which is being called as Penguin 2.0 (officially) rolled out yesterday on May 22, 2013 has impacted 2.3% of queries that a regular user might notice.[read more]

Intrigued by the viral video phenomenon? YouTube has released a new Trends Map that highlights the most popular videos at a moment in time across the United States.[read more]

There are three things on the Tumblr/Yahoo to-do list for 2013: 1. Push the edges on intelligent recommendation technology (just think of the dataset they must have!) 2. Innovate on engagement-based ad format design. 3. Bypass agencies: try to build partnerships directly with brands to help bring scale and meaning to a revenue model that is based on adding value rather than the very comfortable “interrupt and repeat.”[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]

Your digital footprint is huge. Okay, well, truthfully, I don’t know what size it is. But here’s what I do know: your digital footprint has a huge effect on your online marketing. When it comes to factors you can control to improve your website traffic, it’s Mr. Big. You do want to improve your website traffic, correct? Let’s have a look at how it’s done.[read more]

Every day, I hear about how social media strategists and managers are frustrated with the lack of executive support. Yet, many aren’t doing themselves any favors. Executives don’t speak the language of social media. They speak the language of the C-Suite and their audience are shareholders and stakeholders.[read more]

Social media savvy is a unique skill and advantage that not all traditional PR pros have figured out yet and is now included in a public relations professional’s job description. Make sure you know how to improve and build media relationships through social networking.[read more]

From the moment Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, the underbelly of the alternative social network bellowed. An avid Tumblr user assures fans not to worry and provides a solution to the advertising question.[read more]