Category:
Social Media
Facebook. Twitter. MySpace. Tumblr. Hundreds and hundreds more. For individuals trying to find out where they have signed up for among social media networks is probably like trying to find a specific scroll in the Library of Alexandria. The sheer size of where you have to look – much less update – is intimidating. It’s the same for businesses. Do you know where your brand, product, trademark, or even company name is being used in all these popular and emerging social media websites? You might be surprised to find that it’s being used unofficially – a classic case of brand identity theft. You lose control. Your online reputation isn’t secure. Thanks to something called KnowEm, representation across all social media has become a lot easier. KnowEm is a service that lets you discover where your name, brand, trademark, or product is available on social media networks. It also lets you know where it has been stolen. Developed in April 2009 – Read the full article
E-mail: it’s one of the earliest and most widely used forms of communication on the Internet, even in the age of Twitter, Facebook, mobile apps, and social media. It can also be one of the most scandalous – and potentially one of the most embarrassing – sources of personal information, or just plain bad manners. Indeed, a lot of people can do with a little primer on E-mail etiquette in today’s world – regardless of whether they’re corresponding for business purposes, sending important information to various recipients, or marketing through E-mail. So for the sake of those who aren’t quite sure whether or not they have been misbehaving on E-mail, here are a few must-follow tips on E-mail etiquette: Keep it short and sweet E-mail marketers should be familiar with this rule. The longer your E-mail message is, the higher the chances are that your recipients are not going to read all the way through it. It’s a sad fact – Read the full article
Social media marketing is an essential part of many businesses and organizations today – regardless of size. The Internet has grown so much more community-focused, so much more social, that if one were to truly establish and enhance the online presence of a company or brand, there’d be no way of doing it without social media marketing. Sure, to some people, sites like Facebook and Twitter are just a complete waste of time, but without social media sites like these it would be next to impossible to keep up with everything that’s happening online. This is why companies are beginning to recognize the importance of hiring social media managers, social media agencies, social media consultants and strategists. The titles vary, but one thing is clear: if – as a small business owner or an Internet marketer – you want to be able to engage the right way with an online audience and steer the conversation about your brand to the – Read the full article
In recent times we’ve seen social media grow exponentially fast. Thanks to quick Internet adoption and the advancement of mobile technologies, hundreds of millions of people are now part of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. These two sites in particular have enjoyed an incredible amount of attention, but we must understand that they form but a part of a continually evolving social media landscape. That’s why it’s important to take a wider perspective and check out which new social media and social networking sites may soon become the Internet’s new darling. Foursquare Foursquare is a location-based social networking site that’s lately been getting a tremendous amount of hype. A number of its features are parallel to Twitter (like the ability to post quick status updates wherever you are), but Foursquare sets itself apart by encouraging – and rewarding – users to explore their own cities. Here’s how it works: users “check in” by posting updates through a messaging service. – Read the full article
Marketing Sherpa, a trusted resource that publishes useful news, case studies, and best practices data about Internet and integrated marketing, recently released the new Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report. It’s a robust guide that contains research, charts and tables, case studies, and trends in today’s ever-evolving Internet marketing industry. Over 2,000 marketers participated in the surveys conducted by Marketing Sherpa, surveys which covered topics such as strategy, forecasting, budgeting, integration with other marketing channels, social applications, and social media. It is meaty: 197 charts and tables, 14 chapters, 255 pages, and results from research conducted with 2,317 business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers. The benchmark report also introduced a ROAD Map, which stands for the Research, Objectives, Actions, and Devices that businesses and marketers would have to determine in crafting and implementing a social media strategy. Because social media is continuously evolving, one has to consider this ROAD Map, which is meant to help businesses and marketers stay abreast of social media – Read the full article
Do you know that 54% of CIOs ban the use of social media in the workplace? “Wow” was our first reaction, too. A bunch of Web 2.0 marketers are of course prone to advocate the merits of using blogs and sites like Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and YouTube in efforts to help businesses grow. But like with many things, social media can be a double-edged sword. A secretary will tweet about the laughable fashion sense of her boss. An employee will write an eloquent blog about how the routine Monday meetings are a total waste of time. And then another staffer will post status updates about how nothing here – certainly not promotion up the corporate ladder – is based on meritocracy. Don’t think social media can be stopped, though. While this new digital sandpit is highly interactive and engaging, it can also be extremely hard to control. There are varying approaches taken by companies to either ban or limit it, – Read the full article
Attention small business owners who think social networking is silly: knock it off. We know you’re just afraid, or confused, but you can’t hide behind those excuses any longer. With the recent announcements of Bing and Twitter integration, and Google’s Social Search, your business can’t hide any longer. Those angry tweets about your poor quality that you ignore? Yep, those are appearing in searches right next to your latest press-release. Photos of your day-old looking food you served up are not only on Flickr, but now they’re in any searches people may perform who are friends with those folks. Bottom line: you’re bad service and poor products are going to be exposed faster, to a wider audience, and with lasting impact. So get involved; interact with your customers, make them feel welcome, make them feel something. Have a great product? Good. Lots of people are no doubt talking about it. Let them know you’re listening. Encourage them to make those – Read the full article
Thanks to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, charity is moving beyond direct mail, newsletters, and door-to-door campaigns. It has gone “non-traditional” – and so have forms of giving. What d’ya know: social media has churned out something we may aptly refer to as ‘social good’. This came to record-setting light in the recent #BeatCancer campaign. You might have heard of it. Actually, you may have participated in it. Here’s how the fundraising effort went. For every Tweet, Facebook status update, or blog post containing the #BeatCancer hashtag, eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors pledged to donate one cent to cancer research. The campaign went viral, mobilizing raised social media users everywhere. On October 16 to 17, #BeatCancer raised significant money for several cancer charities – to the tune of over $70,000, actually – and set the Guinness World record for the most social mentions in a 24-hour duration: 209,771. Not all have set records, but more and more fundraising initiatives are – Read the full article
