“Maximizing Your Social” is all about fully leveraging the opportunities that social media holds for your entire enterprise. While most companies seem to be stuck on simply using limited social media channels for social media marketing or marketing communications, there is a new generation of enterprises that are using social media in a broader and more integrated sense to truly humanize their brand, better communicate on a one-to-one basis with stakeholders and influencers, and, for lack of a better word, reap the many benefits of simply participating in the conversations all around us for . I had the chance to …
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With all of the buzz around Pinterest, and the near-addict like dependence on Facebook, there is one social network that gets little love from businesses that use WordPress – Twitter. Disagree? Well, I’m going to show you why your company is not only missing out on the #1 way to promote your business on the most open social network in the world, but how you can make an never-ending and effective campaign in less than 5 minutes (I’ll also share some other goodies, too). Editor’s note: Twitter drives more traffic to this website than any other social network! But We …
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I recently changed my main Twitter client (more information on that below) and decided to create a new LinkedIn Poll for Groups in my Social Media Strategies for Business LinkedIn Group to find out what others use. I asked my 2,500 group members: What Twitter client do you use for business? Statistically speaking, the results can not represent the entire user base for those who tweet, and I only gave the poll readers a choice between 5 popular clients: Twitter.com, HootSuite, TweetDeck, CoTweet, and SproutSocial. The leading client in the poll as I write this blog? SproutSocial. Cibo, a digital agency based …
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It’s been several months since the incredible misfortune and tragic events that have struck my beloved 2nd home of Japan. Although you don’t read about it on the news anymore, Japan is still in crisis in both trying to contain a nuclear power plant which might require years of work while also trying to keep radiation-tainted food away from the dinner table of 125 million Japanese who are understandably nervous. #PrayforJapan still needs you, so please do not forget to include the Japanese nation in your prayers. Thank you. Twitter has always had more uptake in Japan when compared to …
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Social media is fascinating in that businesses and professionals are often using all of these websites for things they were never intended for. Although it feels as if Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the rest have been around forever, believe it or not quite a few of these sites came from humble beginnings with very different intents. From dorm rooms to couches, let’s look back to the history as to how the most popular social networks began – and perhaps learn some trivial knowledge that can help deepen our appreciation for these platforms.
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The secret to success in utilizing Twitter for social media marketing in 2011 is in taking advantage of all of the 3rd party apps that exist for the platform. If you go to a Twitter application directory site you will literally find hundreds if not thousands of these apps available for you to use for free. The problem in 2011 is that many of these applications are old or just plain old don’t work as advertised. I’ve already blogged about the most popular Twitter applications that exist according to their Alexa rank, and some of the apps on this list …
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Every person or business has probably had that “Aha!” moment when they see their tweet show up in a Google Alert. Of course, with Google Realtime Search probably relaunching with Google+ data to replace tweets, your tweets may not appear on Google but are still being indexed by all of the other search engines. Every time you tweet, there is a chance that your message will be retweeted or even linked to, but a majority of the time your tweet becomes a fleeting piece of data that is lost in time and buried together with the billion other tweets that …
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It was only a matter of time before it happened, but overwhelmed with the sudden and sometimes overwhelming impact that their tweets had on society, some Japanese celebrities are now calling on other celebrities to stop using Twitter. As social networking websites penetrate every society around the world, every country will at some point be dealing with a variety of issues regarding invasion of privacy, employees getting fired because of their use (or perceived misuse) of social media, and even defamation lawsuits from a tweet. In Japan, Twitter has become the rage and even Facebook is still challenged in its …
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One of the problems about Twitter is that it was never meant to be used for data mining. It displayed conversations of those you followed, and you could see whenever someone mentioned your username or sent your a private message. In fact, Twitter didn’t even have an integrated search engine until it bought one from Summize in July, 2008, 2 years after they had launched their service. Fast forward to today, where the most recent stats last year hint at Twitter being one of the largest search engines that exist and you get a sense of how important searching for …
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When I taught my first Twitter workshops back in 2009, I mentioned one of the many reasons why I was bullish from the start about using HootSuite as a Twitter client: It gave you the ability to seamlessly import RSS feeds. At that time, I mentioned that this was efficient for your blog content, although now I would say since you spent 2 hours (at least I do!) to create a blog post, you might as well spend a minute or two to customize your tweet to promote it. However, I also told those in the workshop that, should they …
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Twitter is now 5 years old – Long Live Twitter! With an estimated user base that is now double that of LinkedIn at more than 200 million users, Twitter is less about what we are doing now and more about becoming a channel for customer service, consumer campaigns, and big brands to engage with their present and potential customers. Needless to say, with the mass usage and attention to tweeting on the Internet, many businesses have taken advantage of the site for its marketing potential. This has become such a popular and fruitful business tactic that Twitter have included an …
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As I continue to speak to corporations, professional associations, as well as social media workshop attendees on the strategic value of Twitter for both B2C as well as B2B companies, I am finding many businesses starting to take the plunge and explore tweeting as a business tool. As you can imagine, becoming comfortable with a Twitter presence, especially for a business, can be confusing, especially if you’re just starting out and getting your feet wet. There are many different objectives that businesses have in embarking on using Twitter, but a common goal for many companies is to build brand loyalty …
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As Twitter grows to encompass almost 200 million users and businesses display almost as many Twitter icons as Facebook icons on their websites, you’d think that companies are starting to figure out how to better utilize Twitter to inform and truly engage with the public. While there are success stories of businesses on Twitter who are finding their own path in social media, it still amazes me as to how many ways businesses can improve upon their Twitter presence and stop making the common mistakes I often see. As I prepare to present at a virtual conference put on by …
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One of the amazing things about Twitter, when compared to a LinkedIn or a Facebook, is that it’s core functionality is so simple yet complemented with complexity by hundreds if not thousands of useful 3rd party apps because of its open architecture and growing ecosystem. Where you don’t really need any external tools to maximize your presence on LinkedIn or even Facebook for that matter, using external apps on the realtime platform for tweets can not only help save you time, it can also help you unearth critical business intelligence and allow you to truly maximize your presence for whatever …
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There have been famous cases reported of those who lost their job because of a tweet or even have a viral negative campaign spread about their company from a tweet. Now your tweets may show up as evidence as part of a defamation case in the court of law. It has always been rumored, but never confirmed by anyone of course, that law enforcement agencies forced Facebook to open up their platform so that public investigators would get access to more information. Whether this is true or not we may never know, but my first eye-opener was when I was …
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It’s that time of year where I look back at all of the changes that happened in social media and choose those best blog posts that you want to make sure you read. I’m going to start with Twitter for my 2010 best of lists, and I think you’ll be happy with the mix of resourceful blog posts that were published that cover both tips for beginners as well as business-related and insightful analytical posts for intermediate and/or experts. Of course the biggest functionality added to the realtime platform was its new user interface, so I have made sure to …
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I hope that the title to this blog post knocked you out of your comfort zone, because that was my intention in writing this guide. Don’t get me wrong: LinkedIn is still an essential part of your job search, and having an optimized LinkedIn profile and networking with others on that platform is still a prerequisite in helping you land your next job. But where LinkedIn may have been the ultimate differentiator for the job seeker two years ago, it no longer is. Instead, it’s time to start thinking about investing more time in utilizing Twitter for your job search. …
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LinkedIn Signal was released just two months ago as a new way for professionals to consume information. While the new product was only available in beta for some time, my good friend Glen Loock recently mentioned to me that now anyone can access the application through LinkedIn Labs, or better yet, here’s the official link for Signal. I always feel it is best to wait a little time and give new features some historical perspective before reviewing them fully on my blog. This is no different with Signal: While it was announced with some fanfare in late September, the application …
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Once you’ve been active on Twitter for awhile, you will begin to realize that the micro-blogging platform is not just about you and your tweets: it’s about everyone. You could say it’s a huge chat room, and everyone is vying for attention. One of my friends thinks that Twitter is more like a high school popularity contest than anything else. But one thing is for sure: If you’re only talking about yourself, no one wants to listen. Talk about relevant issues to a target audience and people start to follow you and listen to what you’re tweeting. In such a …
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Despite the fact that Twitter has apparently grown from 58 to 175 million users in less than a year, it is clear that some of those “users” are actually “bots” or even corporations who have several different accounts to serve their current and potential customers with. Case in point: Dell alone has more than 30 Twitter accounts. All it takes is an email address to register a new account, so it is not uncommon for even some individuals to have multiple usernames. This may explain why, outside the networking circles of those active in social media, there are many people …
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