Let me guess, you heard about Pinterest. Or more like, you can’t spend 15 minutes online without hearing about it…
And now you’re thinking, “should I jump on the wagon too?” or “another social network to keep up with?” and on top of that, everybody is talking about using it for marketing and getting tons of traffic and, you just don’t see it.
Alright, I hear you. I’ll give you everything you need to know about Pinterest and a bunch of resources so you can decide if you or your business are ready to join the hottest trend online.
Let’s start with what it is…
Pinterest is another way of collecting and organizing stuff (images) you find online. Think visual bookmarking, publicly and with a social network in it. Some see it as a vision board, some as a catalog and others as a great way to promote your products or generate traffic to your site/blog.
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This week started on a high note. The results for the Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2012 from Social Media Examiner arrived on my iPhone while I was getting my first coffee on Monday. SocialMouths was named #1.
The afternoon wasn’t that fun when my server crashed welcoming all the traffic from the post, even though SocialMouths does not live in a shared $5 server at GoDaddy… still crashed. But that’s a whole different story.
Then today my friend Jessica Northey pointed out that I was also included in the Top 100 Influencers in Social Media from Social Technology Review with a list of people I admire and lots of friends.
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If you are an entrepreneur using Twitter as part of the marketing strategy for your business or you are a blogger trying to improve your traffic, one of the most important metrics you look at is how many clicks your tweets are getting, specially when those tweets are containing links to your own site.
One thing I’ll tell you right off the bat is that, marketing in general works different for each one of us and it delivers different kinds of results too. Twitter is no different and, while I always say that you should not rely on anybody’s advice but instead run several tests until you find the most effective way, the data in this infographic offers a very nice starting point for you to do so.
The infographic is from Dan Zarrella, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with his work but if you’re not, click on that link and bookmark his blog or subscribe to his RSS. What I like about Dan is that he gets simple things we all need to know and he goes very deep into the data to provide you with tips you can take action on.
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This is a guestpost by Brad Shorr from Straight North.
Like many social media participants, I “joined” Klout without really knowing it, without really caring one way or the other. Towards the latter half of 2011, Klout became quite prominent — and controversial. Despite a lot of criticism of it from people I respect and my own ill-defined angst, I kept playing along.
Eventually I decided not only that Klout has fatal flaws, but also that I needed to put my money where my mouth is and disconnect from it. So I did.
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This is a guest post by Eugene Farber from ContentStrategyHub.com.
More and more business are hopping on board the content marketing train. Marketers across all industries are recognizing the power and effectiveness of content for producing an online business presence.
Statistics show that a vast majority of marketers believe content is a key to future marketing success. And a majority of B2B marketers plan on increasing their content marketing budgets compared to last year.
And yet, even with this recognition and mindset shift, most are likely to get lost along the way and find themselves in a whirlwind of confusion.
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This is a guest post by Garrett Ira, a digital marketing strategist who blogs at garrettira.com.
Over the last few years, just about everyone has given their two cents on how to “do social media” the right way. You know what I’m talking about: connect with your audience, add value, it’s about relationships, and all the other advice we hear over and over.
Something has happened that few are ready to admit: companies have gotten much better at social in 2011. Yes, there are still plenty of companies doing it terribly, but if you compare the present day to two years ago, there’s a huge difference.
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A lot is speculated every day about the future of Google+, one of the main topics is how the social network will affect search.
So far we are all just talking about the great potential and what we want it to become while Google doesn’t say much.
But Google decided to bring out the big guns today with the announcement of “Search, plus Your World”. This is basically the integration of Google+ into search results and it represents one more big step into the world of personalized search, or social search.
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This is a guestpost by Srinivas Rao from The Skool of Life.
Shortly after this interview I did with Chris Brogan at Blogworld, I decided to start spending quite a bit more time on Google+. As I’ve spent more time there, I’ve found new and interesting ways to leverage the platform and have found that the overall quality of discussion there is significantly better than it is on facebook. It’s also not bound by the limitations of twitter’s 140 characters.
I recently decided to run a focus group using circles and it turned out to be incredibly insightful. Below I’ve outlined what I consider best practices for running a focus group using Google+
1. Know Your Objective
When I started the focus group, I had one clear objective which was the improve the user experience for my podcast listeners. Without a clear objective in mind you’ll just end up spinning wheels and the value of your focus group will diminish.
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