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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Whenever I speak to a large group or consult with a client on social media, I have a tendency to overwhelm my audience with the so many things that they could be using it for. That leads to a growing fear for those that aren’t active in social media that it will become a total time suck. On the other hand, for those that start to get active and see its professional and personal benefits, they can’t seem to find enough time to cover all of their online bases. Which leads to the question that I am often asked: How …
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There are many tools that are available to companies in social media marketing, but one that you don’t hear about often is social gaming, especially when these games are played directly on popular social networking sites like Facebook. Farmers Insurance earlier this week announced a new campaign that would put their virtual airship on the screens of everyone playing the popular social game FarmVille, which was reported to be 80 million users earlier this year. I had the opportunity to interview Ryon Harms, the Director of Social Media for Farmers Insurance, and get his input on the significance of this …
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While recent social media conversations tend to be about Facebook and Twitter, I find that many professionals and businesses aren’t maximizing their LinkedIn presence. There are many that simply don’t know what else they can be doing on the platform, while others still believe in some of the many common fallacies about the social networking platform for professionals that exist. Social media is a tool, and you can only leverage the tool by thinking outside of the box and applying it to your situation. Believing in what you hear about any social media platform, without taking the initiative and experimenting …
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It’s not easy being a social media consultant these days. Between the bashing of some social media “experts” and the viral what the **** is my social media strategy blog, you’d think that every social media “guru” is a quack. I thought it was about time to clear the air and stick up for my profession and the need for our existence, and I am glad to see that Shannon Paul just did something similar by writing an excellent blog post on why we still need real social media strategists. Yes, there are professionals with years of successful sales, marketing, …
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Twitter is both a tool for communicating with your network as it is about sharing information that interests you. While you may only connect with those in your professional network on LinkedIn and friends & family on Facebook, we are also following those that we share a similar interest with on Twitter that is helping to expand our networks. If you are active on Twitter, then, you are probably already sharing information that your target audience, whether personally or professionally, might be interested in. Sure, there’s never a lack of personal information that you can share about yourself, but …
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Social bookmarking websites always confuse my social media strategy customers. There seems to be an aura that somehow just posting all of your own content to these sites will somehow magically drive massive traffic to your website. Of course, it doesn’t work that way. And unless you have a certain objective or niche demographic that tends to find a large population of your targeted users using sites like Digg, Reddit, or Delicious, my advice is simply to concentrate efforts on other more popular sites. I will make one exception, though: StumbleUpon. First of all, StumbleUpon is not a niche site. …
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As I consult with more clients on social media strategy, I am always amazed after I do a competitive analysis to find out that most American companies that I run across don’t seem like they know what they are doing on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. I’m not talking about the big consumer brands like Starbucks and Coca Cola that have gathered lots of Facebook Fans and are truly engaging with their customers. I’m talking about most B2B companies as well as those B2C brands that don’t necessarily fall into the Fortune 500. According to Hubspot, 72% of businesses have …
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Let’s face it: Since email as we know it today started developing from the 1960s, a lot has changed. The way we use email, the way that businesses try to get our email addresses to opt-us-in to their newsletters, and the fact that we tend to use email less and less as we send more and more messages through social media websites means that it may be time to start looking for more convenient forms of representing our virtual mailboxes beyond email that might exist. In fact, a recent report by Hubspot mentioned that Facebook is now our most popular …
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Over the past several months there has been a significant increase in the number of social media-related events occurring nationwide. These events range from formal educational seminars and full-day events with multiple speakers to networking social events and tweetups over lunch or on a weeknight. If the target audience for your business is using social media, which is increasingly the case, it makes business sense for your company to start participating in these events through event sponsorship. If you have been a blog reader of mine from the past, you’ll know that I am a co-founder of ConnectOC, a group …
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