A 3-Step Beginner's Guide to Social-Media Marketing

Social media has become as much a daily part of our personal lives as it has our business lives. What once was cutting edge just a few short years ago is now just the norm. So how do you know which aspect of social-media marketing you need to have and which aspects are simply passing fads? For entrepreneurs who are just starting their businesses, wrapping your arms around your social-media marketing plan can feel like a stretch. Do you need...

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Jump on Board Now! Snapchat’s Influence Growing in Marketing

If you thought that Snapchat was just for teenagers, think again. This social media site is rapidly gaining influence in the marketing sphere. Brands that are not already including Snapchat in their marketing campaigns could be missing out on significant opportunities. Many marketers have remained somewhat confounded by Snapchat and how to deploy it for marketing purposes. Snapchat certainly does not function like other social media sites. Users...

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New Facebook Publishing Tools Gives Brands More Control

On December 10th, Facebook quietly announced new publishing tools aimed at better supporting the needs of media companies and content publishers. Interest Targeting lets brands segment their organic content to only those fans that might care about the topic. Post End Dates give brands the power to pull organically published content from the Newsfeed once it’s no longer relevant. Smart Publishing offers media companies...

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'Simplifying The Way We Work' is Great, But What About The Customer?

I caught a small article flashing across my news feeds, “Coca-Cola Disconnects Voicemail At Headquarters.”  I’m not a big fan of voicemail, those I receive are translated into texts and sent to my mobile and email.  So this post is not about voicemail. The thing that struck me in the article the reasoning behind this.  The article cited an internal memo from the CIO, the change was not done for cost savings, but rather “’to simplify...

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Dark Social Media: What it is and Why Marketers Should Care

The term “dark social” was first created by Alexis C. Madrigal in a 2012 article written for The Atlantic. Which in digital life means 14 years ago and therefore ahead of his time.  His instincts were that, to a large extent, we share links with each other using IM, email, and forums and that when this happens and the link is clicked, it’s invisible to most analytics programs and ends up falling into the “direct” or “typed/bookmarked”...

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Using Your Facebook Page Cover Photo to Get Noticed

Social media is here to stay and if you don’t do everything possible (and then some), you will not get noticed by other people online. If you are not noticed, other people will not interact with you and you won’t have the opportunity to interact with them. No interaction equals no eventual selling. It is that simple! If you have effective Facebook Page Cover photos, you can get a great deal of mileage out of it. The importance of your interactions...

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SocialMedia vs. Email Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

There's a heated debate inside marketing circles right now about whether email marketing or social media is better. While there are many valid and profitable reasons for adding social media marketing (SMM) to your toolbox, the current research shows that it would be a costly mistakes to toss email marketing out just yet.Take a look at this infographic, created by Emaildelivered, and find out which marketing channels is more...

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U.S. police struggle to uncover threats on social media

  SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. law enforcement agencies are a long way from being able to effectively track threats of the kind a gunman posted on Instagram before his execution-style murder of two New York City policemen last weekend. Police need more data analytics and mining software to monitor social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter , as well as trained personnel to make sense of what could be a deluge of...

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Timing Vital to Leverage Social Media Marketing: Study

The secret to how certain products create a ripple in social media while others fail despite working hard is hidden in a proper timing strategy of promotion, says a research. People in social networks are often influenced by each  other's decisions, resulting in a run of behaviours in which  their choices become highly correlated, thus causing a  cascade of decisions. "Our work began from the realisation...

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Bill Clinton needs some social media help. So we asked an expert.

Bill Clinton. (AFP PHOTO / Frederic J. BROWNFREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images) About a month ago, I thought to myself, Hmm, Bill Clinton on the campaign trail in an era of omnipresent cameras and social media seems risky. Honestly. I did. You probably don't believe me because, sure enough, Clinton got caught seemingly checking out a woman last month as she was taking a selfie. Then, earlier this week, a photo...

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The 8 worst social media blunders of 2014

When in doubt, don’t tweet it out. That should’ve been the motto for these blundering brands and clueless tweeters. Luckily for us, it wasn’t. In the interest of living and learning (and convincing ourselves that these massive slip-ups will never, ever happen to us), here are the biggest social media blunders of 2014. 1. #ImAMetsFanBecause Photo: Twitter/@Met In the spirit of good, old-fashioned user-generated...

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