Dec
08
2010

Developing a Social Media Content Strategy

books in a stack (a stack of books)Having a good content strategy is a vital key to any successful social media strategy. You may be connecting with the right people in the right places with the right message, but if you don’t have content they’re interested in, you’ll eventually fail (at least in engagement).  No one communicates in a positive way with brands on social media just because they’re there. Nor do people care about your marketing messaging. They want to know what’s in it for them, and that’s usually great content.
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Nov
03
2010

Review: Real-time Social Media Monitoring with Social Mention

Keeping up on what’s being said about a company or brand can be difficult with so many different channels. It’s even more challenging when people expect real-time responses via social media to problems and issues. A lack of response when there’s a problem can be more harmful than the problem. Social Mention makes it easy to monitor, not only what’s being said, but also who is saying and what the general sentiment is towards the company or brand.
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Oct
27
2010

Networking on Steroids

angiePretty much anyone will agree that networking is important, whether or not you’re in business for yourself.  Most of us will put networking events on our calendars and make an effort to attend, at least occasionally. If we agree that networking is important, why then are we so hesitant to connect with these same people online? One of the best ways to have conversations online is to connect with people you’ve already met offline.
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Oct
25
2010

14 Basic Blog Measurements

Once you’ve started blogging, you want to know how you’re doing, especially if you haven’t had much interaction (yet). Starting to blog can be frustrating since there’s not much feedback right away. Like other marketing efforts, blogging will be more successful if you measure results to see what’s working (and what’s not).  Here are 14 basic blog measurements to help you get an idea of how your blog is doing… Most of these statistics are available in Google Analytics.
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Oct
19
2010

Klout Adds Facebook to Influence Measurement

Klout recently added Facebook into its influence measurement (which previously was looking mostly at Twitter). Even after recalculating my Klout score from time to time, it didn’t move from my initial score until I added in my Facebook profile. The Facebook integration still doesn’t look at any fan pages (just your profile), but does provide some useful information. After my previous review, my complaint about Klout using only bit.ly’s data for clicks on links is still an issue — if you don’t happen to use bit.ly to shorten your links, Klout has no data about them, and this may negatively affect your influence score. Let’s look at what information the Facebook integration has added….
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Oct
18
2010

13 Twitter Tips for Increasing Engagement

The BirdsA major frustration for people trying out Twitter for the first time is figuring out how to get anyone to respond. They set up their Twitter account, tweet a few times and wonder why no one responds. While tweets are public unless you protect them, they probably won’t be seen by anyone unless they’re following you, they do a search for something you mention or you’re on a list. Here are some tips for increasing the engagement on your Twitter profile and getting people to listen to you…
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Oct
12
2010

WordStream Helps Advertisers Generate More Qualified Traffic with New Tools

Most PPC (pay-per-click) software is focused on helping advertisers manage bids on keywords, WordStream’s new AdWords Quality Score Management Tools are designed to boost quality scores in Google AdWords campaigns while driving costs down. These tools are now incorporated into WordStream’s flagship PPC product and should make it much easier for AdWords advertisers to develop more cost-efficient and effective campaigns.
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Oct
11
2010

The Most Effective Time to Tweet

Eiffel Tower TelescopeI crunched some numbers on my Twitter account to see what the most effective time is to tweet (at least for me).  I took a look at the number of clicks on tweets by what time of day and what day of the week for a 2 month time period (August and September) and then averaged them to remove discrepancies due to the number of tweets. Tweets included links to articles by others, my own blog posts, a few promotions and retweets.  I took out a couple of retweets that had huge click numbers since I had retweeted a very influential person and clicks were most likely due to their influence.  I tweet about a fairly wide range of topics, but the results are interesting….
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Oct
07
2010

WiseStamp Adds Dynamic Content to Your Gmail Signature

While Google finally allowed Gmail users to have images in their signatures, there still isn’t a way to automatically update your signature with a link to your latest blog post, for example. Or have a random quote. Or show your latest tweet. WiseStamp is a free plugin for Chrome, Safari, and Safari which lets you customize your signature with links to your social networks, images, links, plus provides applications which can bring in the title of your latest blog post with a link.
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Oct
06
2010

5 Tips for Protecting Your Privacy on Facebook

privacyEveryone is on Facebook — so is everyone’s business (and mother and aunts, etc.) Connecting with your business network on Facebook is nice, but not everyone wants to mix personal and professional.  There are some ways you can segment who gets to see what, so you’re not sharing your spring break pics with your business contacts, but can still keep in touch with your family.
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