Platforms

A blog post shouldn’t just be a blog post. Any time you put the effort into writing a blog post, you should consider how to deconstruct it into several pieces of shorter form content to feed your business’ social media content pipeline. I’ll describe how you can do this and a few things you should consider for each social media platform.[read more]

Blogging with stock photos / shutterstock

It's rarely taken into consideration that part of a social media budget should be set aside for a paid stock image account, but it should be a high priority for company social media departments. These accounts are worth every credit spent for the following three reasons.[read more]

Shutterstock

A community manager is the person who manages the social identity of a brand, from Instagram to YouTube to Tumblr. When companies launch (or decide to perfect) their social presence, the first major decision they need to make is whether or not they will manage their accounts internally or hire an agency to do so.[read more]

Twitter today announced the launch of Twitter #Music, a Tweet based music discovery service using popular streaming apps like Spotify and Rdio.[read more]

good employees/shutterstock

Add this to the mountain of evidence that contradicts the conventional wisdom that employees’ use of social media is a drain on productivity: Among hourly workers, those that use five or more social networks are more productive and better at handling customer transactions.[read more]

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A lot of social media agencies claim that the world's flat, which we think it's absolutely wrong and misleading. As the social media world is conceptually deep, there's a critical need to reinvent the criteria of engagement.[read more]

Image courtesy of Thomas Forsyth, Flickr

In the age of Information, the ability to “curate,” or gather and arrange content, becomes one of the most important skills you can have. After all, the information is out there for everyone to see. What makes you stand out from the crowd is how you locate and present it.[read more]

personalization/shutterstock

Personalization is a term bandied about with increasing frequency. Everyone seems to be personalizing everything. There is personalized learning, personalized shoes, personalized phones, personalized fitness, personalized ads, and the list goes on. Just as a rainbow spans a continuous span of colors, personalization seems to span a continuous spectrum of options.[read more]

twitter #music

Twitter appears poised to launch a new music app this weekend! The web page was spotted at music.twitter.com featuring the #music hashtag and a sign-in button, suggesting the new service is getting ready to launch.[read more]

3% of audience

There is, of course, nothing wrong with reaching less that 3% of your audience – provided what you do with this 3% generates significantly more value per contact, that the type of value we are accustomed to generating when we are seeking to reach 100% of our audience.[read more]

North Face has been recognized by Outdoor USA Magazine for their social media excellence. This comes as no surprise, as they have been at the forefront of social marketing innovation for years. With over 3 million fans on Facebook, over 100,000 followers on Twitter, and over 1.5 million views on YouTube, North Face is constantly evolving their social platforms.[read more]

It all started with Twitter. Now other micro-sharing platforms, like Vine and Snapchat, are becoming a popular way to share content and communicate with friends, family, and online. What will this trend mean for businesses?[read more]

promote/shutterstock

The success of your contest relies on how many targeted individuals enter. While the contest market is heavily saturated, the response you will get is related to the prize you giveaway (the better the prize, the more entries) and how well you promote it. Just as I focus a lot of energy on blog promotion, contest promotion should be taken just as serious.[read more]

social media management tools

Social media is one of the most effective ways for you and your business to get more traffic and generate new leads. Having a presence on all the major networks is a business necessity these days. But what tools are the social media gurus using to manage these multiple accounts?[read more]

Triple Lift

“We’re not trying to build a slightly better mousetrap. We’re trying to reinvent the way display advertising is thought about,” said Ari Lewine, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Triple Lift. “What we’re doing is fundamentally different than anything that’s been done before."[read more]

A dynamic visual presence is essential to a successful social media campaign. But stunning visual campaigns don’t have to be just for the big-name brands with money to burn on fancy lighting, editing and production costs. Even a small brand can make waves with thoughtful and visually powerful multimedia.[read more]

Twitter surge for a hurricane

Users behave differently on different social media platforms. When a news story breaks it moves across social media in different pulses depending on what the news is and how it travels through these platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress. Here's a case study that explains a lot about how each social network works.[read more]

What would it feel like if our phones were designed around us, not our apps? Today, Facebook has revealed a new integration on Android devices that puts social network updates directly on the home screen. It's a family of apps called "Home" that looks to help you stay connected with people, not apps, making your phone friendlier. So did Facebook actually introduce a new phone?[read more]

social media 2.0/shutterstock

The SEC decision to allow social media to be used as a channel of communication for companies marks the beginning of the transition to Social Media 2.0. A social media savvy audience uses the medium to suit itself. Platform loyalty is no longer a requirement. This also makes it harder for marketers whose social media marketing revolves around a platform-specific presence.[read more]

Pinterest tools

Pinterest is a great tool for businesses (when used effectively), and I'm seeing more engagement, sharing and traffic back as a result of using it. Here are my favorite Pinterest tools and how they can help manage, measure and enhance the Pinterest experience.[read more]