Social Media Marketing or Content Creation: Which Comes First?
While creating a Facebook Fan page, Twitter profile, and LinkedIn profile, YouTube channel, Flickr account, etc and then using those social media networks is technically “creating content,” for the purposes of this post, when I speak of “content...
Get More Followers with the Official Twitter Retweet Button
I have been avoiding putting the new Twitter retweet button on my site for a few reasons. For starters, it uses the t.co shortener instead of giving the option of getting to use the URL shortener of your choice like you can with the Tweetmeme button. And there are no...
My Review on “The Social Network” Movie
On Saturday, I decided to go see The Social Network with some friends. I had heard a few reviews of the movie prior to going, but really didn’t know much about it besides that it was based on the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. I must say...
New Twitter Interface Revealed!
Some of you may have already noticed, but Twitter announced yesterday that they will be rolling out a new user interface. They will be pushing the new interface to a select test group initially, and then to the entire community over the next few weeks. This is one...
Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Twitter Following
Individuals and businesses around the world are unleashing the power of social media as you read this. While almost every social network adds value to the world in some way, some enjoy more exposure and popularity than others do. As we stand today, Twitter is...
Survey Says Teens & Young Adults Don’t Interact with Brands in Social Media
Don’t say this too loud in front of your boss, but there’s a chance that all the social media marketing you’ve been doing to attract a younger audience could be falling on deaf ears. Turns out, the 12-24 age bracket doesn’t want to “like” or be friends with brand...
Who Needs SEO Marketing When We Have FaceBook?
When ever I get a opportunity to speak about seo or social media to a whole new audience. I start to get a feeling of enjoyment because I feel like this is my time to not just teach but also help others to simply just understand online marketing. Meaning that people...
3 Must Follow Tips for Using Social Media to Boost Your Marketing Campaign
In order to best use social media, you need to understand how to capitalize on your presence on these networks. From Facebook to Twitter, social media can serve as a powerful tool to reach new customers and gain greater influence within a particular group online. If...
How to Use Paper.li – The Daily Twitter Newspaper
Paper.li is a service that pulls tweet links and compiles them into newspaper format. The benefit to using these is that it brings relevant content to your users, as well as mentioning 2 – 3 users in each paper. These papers can be a good way to keep up on the...
How Social A/B Testing Generates Traffic
Marketers have long understood the benefits of ab testing content on their site to increase subscriptions, signups, and sales through small changes on elements of their site. In this increasingly interactive web, have you considered the placement of your social...
Panda and the New Google
Google is a great example of how powerful the Internet really is. With more users than all the other search engines combined, and by a crazy wide margin, Google is a powerhouse the likes of which the business community hasn’t seen for a long while. No More...
Is Your Website at Odds With Your Social Media Presence?
If you are actively participating on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and yet your website telegraphs the opposite of transparent and interactive, you and your brand or business may be suffering from a split personality complex.
Google+ Working for Your Business
As anyone can tell from Google’s stock on the trade market, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Google+ is a testament to the new technology in search engine features, which Google continues to improve upon. This awesome Google software enables social...
100 Marketers You MUST Follow on Twitter
If you haven’t already seen my previous post about 100 SEO blogs you should subscribe to, make sure you check it out. In this collection, I wanted to highlight a number of marketers who really stand out from the crowd and do an outstanding job of engaging on...
Linking the Right Fan Pages on Your New Facebook Profile
With the roll out of the new Facebook profiles, some of you may have noticed that the links at the top of your profile for your employer, blogs, school, etc. are pointing to newly developed pages and not the official pages related to each entity. For example, when I...
How to Manage What Job Recruiters See About You Via Social Media
It is not exactly news that social media is playing a role in job seekers finding opportunities. For the most part, it can play a wonderful role in connecting potential employees to employers through avenues like Linkedin, and it is great for business. While these are...
Top 25 Social Media Keyword Search Tools
Want to find out who is talking about what in your niche or industry? There are many search engines that allow you to search one or multiple sources of information to see real time results. Check out these popular (and free) blog, forum, and social media search...
The Ultimate Social Bookmarking Content Creation Guide (Part 5: Delicious)
This is part 5 of a 5 part series that covers creating content for the following social bookmarking sites. Part 1: Digg Part 2: StumbleUpon Part 3: Reddit Part 4: Mixx Part 5: Delicious Delicious For anyone who is not familiar with Delicious, it is simply a more...How Online Press Releases Can Benefit Your Business
Most of today’s business professionals are well aware of the benefits of marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter. But with the rise of social media and blogging, the power of the press release seems to have gotten the cold shoulder. If you’re looking to boost...
Interview with Social Media Expert Michael Fraietta, Chief Listener at Filtrbox
With social media having a huge impact on brand marketing and online reputation, I thought it would be a good opportunity to ask Michael Fraiette, the Community Manager and Chieft Listener at Filterbox, a few questions that I’m sure are on the minds of anyone...
5 Basic Rules of Social Media Marketing Management
Social media marketing has moved out of the realm of “trial and error” and has become a critical component of any online marketing strategy. Cost effective and relatively easy to use, social media has become a favorite tool of marketers. However, for business owners...
Connect to Social Apps in Gmail With Google Buzz
Google just announced Google Buzz, allowing you to share photos, videos, and updates in gmail with existing friends you already have made. You have the option of sharing things with the world or specific friends. Easily connect with social sites you use like Picasa,...
8 Blogs SEOs Must Check Daily
“SEO is not dead, but it’s changing.” These are words extracted from the interview of Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media. SEO, like the rest of the world, is now in 2011 – another year of progress, struggle and learning for me and for everyone in the...
Grow Your Twitter Following Through Guest Blogging
There are many reasons for guest blogging, such as getting exposure and backlinks for your website, positioning yourself as an authority in your niche, and so on. Can increasing your Twitter following be a benefit of guest posting? Absolutely! So what do you have to...
Google+ – Is it the Future of Search?
In the SEO community we have been fighting the effects of personalised search in Google, turning the function off so as not to cloud our results pages with links that are biased towards our browsing history and recommendations from our friends on social networks. So...
Online Business: How to Utilize Your Social Networking Sites Properly
Facebook, Twitter and Google+—these three major social players aren’t just places to drop your ad and service update bombs. In Internet marketing, social networking sites are a sacred place to position yourself in the market without even mentioning that you sell a...
Get More Retweets with These Plugins, Apps, and Services
There is a lot of information about how to get more retweets for your content, the most popular being the Science of Retweets with Dan Zarrella of Hubspot. But the simplest way to get retweets is to make your content easy to retweet. Amazingly, I still see lots of...
How Best Buy Uses Social Media to Connect with Customers
Social media has really changed the way brands are connecting with their customers. More and more companies are starting to realize the value of social media and are quickly adapting this new form of communication. However in order to have a successful social media...
Making the Most Out of Social Bookmarking for Marketers
Something that I learned fairly quickly when I started blogging, was that my content alone would not bring visitors to my blog. You need to give your content legs and promote it. Leveraging your network of connections, social bookmarking, Twitter, Facebook, guest...
Sphinn vs. SERPD – Interesting Numbers After Version 3 Goes Live
A few weeks ago, I took a look at some traffic and social sharing statistics for Digg vs. Reddit after Digg launched their new version which received a lot of backlash from members of the Digg community. This week, I decided to take a peak at the numbers between...
Make Social Sharing Simple with Bookmarklets
How many times have you been reading a great blog post or page and just knew that you HAD to share it with your followers because you knew how much they would love it or find it beneficial? So you scroll up to the top, scroll down to the bottom, look to the left, then...
Three Pro-Active Tips for Online Reputation Management
For a business owner, reputation management is not getting easier. Twenty years ago it would have been really hard for a single customer with a bad experience (or just sour grapes) to single-handedly take down a business. But in this age of the Internet, it just...
Moderating What Gets Hot on Social Networks
In light of the recent blog post on voting patterns and unexceptional content over at Sphinn which has drawn several desphinns and some heated debate in the story’s Sphinn page comments, I thought it would be a good time to touch on some issues when it comes to...
Essential Twitter Searches for Your Business
When it comes to Twitter, there is a wealth of information that is at your fingertips, as most everything on Twitter is public record. For businesses, this can mean a wealth of market research, lead generation, and reputation monitoring can be done with the use of...
The Power Of Stories (To Engage With Your Audience)
People love stories. We humans are curious in nature, and by using stories in your marketing messages you can engage with your audience a lot better. Take the 2 scenarios below for example: Scenario 1 Susan exclaimed: “Yes! I’ve finally made it!” After a continuous...
Using Facebook Applications to Engage Users
No brand can ever ignore the potential of Facebook applications. In order to build your brand presence on Facebook, you can use a variety of these applications. Each application has its own unique value. If you want to drive social momentum, it’s crucial to use...
Are You Ready For Social Media? “The Office” Style
For anyone that is looking to dive into the wonder world of social media, there are probably a few questions you should ask yourself before you get started. Also, to express my love for The Office, I decided to use the show as my theme for this post. By the way,...
6 Resources to Help You Design a Twitter Background
Microblogging super service Twitter has revolutionized the social media world. You have even finally jumped onto the band wagon and started following and collecting followers. You might not have over 6 million followers like Ashton Kutcher (of course, who does?), but...
7 Ways to Get More Comments on Your Facebook Page
Facebook posts look stale without comments on them. Getting fans to comment on your Facebook pages requires time and effort. However, you can expedite the process by following a couple of proven tips. Getting comments on Facebook posts is all about encouraging your...
HootSuite Goes Freemium – Paid Plans and Free Alternatives
My favorite Twitter management tool HootSuite has made the announcement that they are going to start offering different plans for using their service. New users from now on will have to choose a plan (with the option of a 30 day free trial), and current users will...
Traditional SEO to Social, What Matters?
Have you ever wondered how Twitter links and updates play into search results? A recent study by Michael Stelzner on small business social media use reported, 88% of all marketers found social media helps get them increase exposure. But where is this exposure coming...
Is Social Media Over-Saturated?
Social media is an important part of our lives. Most of us rely on it to receive and relay all sorts of information. But lately it feels like there’s a bit of a social media bubble. Social Media: Tactic Not Strategy Social media is rapidly starting to reach...
Do “Like” Buttons Influence Search Engines?
With the rise of social media marketing, the notion of collaboration, integration and disseminating information with a click of a button has become an evident norm. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and recently Google have all found multiple innovative ways to make it...
The Ultimate Social Bookmarking Content Creation Guide (Part 1: Digg)
Social Bookmarking sites have been a great source of traffic and inbound links, however understand the type of content that each community enjoys and are willing to share with other community members is extremely important. One of the best ways to know what type of...
Location Based Social Media Safety Tips
With more and more happening in the way of location based social media, including deals that you get and contests you can enter simply by checking into places, there is also a growing need to remind people just what they are sharing when they “check in”...
So, what does the Groundswell mean?
I just finished reading “Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. This is a must read for any internet marketer or company looking to implement Social Media Strategies. This book is jam packed with social...
Can You Really Outsource A Social Media Strategy?
The foundation of social media involves the interaction, engagement, and discussion with people using user-generated video, audio, and text through blogs, wikis, social content sharing sites, and video hosting sites. With that being said I ask…Is it possible to...
How to Create a Social Media Conversion Funnel
Defining your social media goals As with any other type of marketing initiative, social media marketing must begin with a goal. For marketers many times these goals will be: Increasing awareness, loyalty and influence Measuring public opinion Market research...