6 Things to Avoid in Your Social Media Conference Presentation

Over the last year, I have attended quite a few social media conferences, and I have been alarmed that many presenters seem not to have updated their talking points, examples and messaging since Facebook had 500 million active users. (July 2010, to be specific.) Perhaps they are worried about speaking over audiences' heads, or maybe it is time for some social media speakers to update their shtick. Either way, I feel many of the conference presenters I have seen in the past twelve months could have done much more to enhance their reputation and educate the audience.

If you are planning to present at a social media conference in the future, I challenge you to challenge yourself and your audience. Don't merely brush the dust off the same deck you have been using for years--say something new, something your audience has never heard from anyone else. Shock them. Surprise them. Inspire them. Leave them eager to hear more or to jump out of their seats ready to adopt new practices or strategies. (I may not always achieve this lofty goal, but those are my objectives every time I present at a conference.)

Many presenters have fallen into ruts, it seems. To help, I am proposing six things you might strive to avoid when presenting at a social media conference. I believe if you (and I) can sidestep these traps, our presentations will be more informative and memorable. I welcome your feedback, additions and criticisms to my list:

Tired Analogies to Describe Social Networks

At one time while speaking to an audience, I intoned, "Twitter is like a cocktail party." That was in 2009, so I can be forgiven, but we can now declare a moratorium on any metaphor that declares a social network to be a cocktail party, golf course, bar, coffee shop, scrapbook, "like dating," or akin to anything other than a powerful business tool.

People who attend social media conferences (not to mention most of the developed world) have adopted these platforms and thus no longer need to have social networking simplified with glib analogies. Simple metaphors were fine when no one understood microblogging or status updates, but using this sort of shorthand today misleads audiences and diminishes the complexity and importance of social networks. Twitter and Facebook are not like a cocktail party--they are powerful enterprise platforms for communication, customer service, reputation management, sales, collaboration and marketing.

Not only are the rudimentary analogies unnecessary in 2013, they can even be counterproductive. As social continues to struggle for attention and budget within companies, the last thing senior executives need to hear is that one of their enterprise social platforms is a "cocktail party." Your peers in other departments don't reduce their procurement, sales and accounting processes to ridiculously basic analogies ("tax accounting is like playing marbles"?!?), and it is time social media speakers stick to business language when defining and explaining social networks to audiences.

Old Examples (Unless You're Saying Something New and Unexpected)

United Breaks Guitars goes viral! Dell Outlet sells $2 million of merchandise on Twitter! A YouTube video of a Comcast technician asleep in a customer's home gets millions of views! These are just a few of the well-known (and too-often repeated) social media examples that can be retired. By now, everyone employed in social media does (or should) know these case studies. These tired examples, all from the early days of social media, have collected cobwebs.

If you are a presenter, the time has come to find case studies that haven't already appeared in thousands of presentation decks and blog posts. They are not hard to find--even a minimal bit of monitoring of Mashable Social, Social Media Explorer, Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today or dozens of other blogs and news sites can furnish a flow a recent examples. Want to get an audience to look up from their tablets and smartphones and pay attention? "Here's a case study you may not have heard of" works every time.

I offer one important caveat to this suggestion: Feel free to cite an old, tired example if you intend to violate expectations and help people to see it in a new light. For example, I still cite United Breaks Guitars, not because it is an example of a "social media crisis" but because, despite what everyone "knows" about the situation, it did not hurt the airline's business. In the six months following the release of the "United Breaks Guitars" video, the company's stock outperformed competitors by more than 150%. I find most people assume United's bottom line took a hit, so they are surprised to hear "the rest of the story." That is one example of how to turn an old case study into something new for a social media presentation.

Social Media 101

For some reason, speakers at several social media conferences I have attended recently felt it necessary to take the audience's time to explain basic mechanics of social networks. Last week, speakers from Twitter spent 30 minutes on stage to--I kid you not!--explain retweets, hashtags and replies to social media professionals attending a social media conference. This makes as much as sense as telling an audience at an email marketing event what the "reply all" button does.

Does every attendee at a social media conference understand the basics? No, some are still new to the space and need education, but that doesn't mean speakers at social media events should furnish those lessons. Conference speakers are under no obligation to bore 90% of the audience in order to make sure the remaining 10% are not left behind; in fact, they diminish their attention and reputation by doing so.

It is 2013, and by focusing on Social Media 101 lessons rather than advanced social strategies, conference speakers not only insult many in the audience, they also miss an opportunity to raise their reputation, expand listeners' knowledge and leave attendees with new ideas and inspiration.

Social Media Results, Not Business Results

Social media has become social business, and that means the case studies shared at conferences should furnish business results, not merely social media outcomes. Too often, case studies presented at social media events end with a slide listing new fans, new followers or number of engagements as the payoff. By now, social media professionals realize that these are not an end but the means to end--so share the end!

I am not suggesting every social media case study must have a financial ROI as an outcome, but it is not too much to ask that those bragging about success at social media conferences tell us how the business (and not just the fan page) was improved. Don't tell us that you generated new fans (that failed to increase attention or enhance business); instead, tell us how your social media efforts saved money, increased inbound traffic, enhanced awareness, generated new ideas, improved Net Promoter Score, solved customer problems, improved retention or generated new customers. A good business case study needs a business outcome, and I continue to see far too many case studies presented at social media events that fail to tell an entire and compelling story.

Uncited data

This is a special pet peeve of mine: The use of data without citation. I recently saw a presentation that included a number of bold data points, such as that 17% of social media users have purchased a financial service product because of a social media interaction. Unfortunately, the speaker failed to give the source of this statistic, and now that I am back at my desk and searching for the origin, I cannot find where the speaker got his data. (In fact, the top search result on Google is the tweet I made from the event!)

Citing the source of data in your decks not only adds credibility to your presentation, it also furnishes a way for those in the audience to seek out more information and validate the data. In addition, citing the source is the fair thing to do; if a study or survey is interesting enough for you to share in your deck, then you owe credit to those who invested in and conducted the research.

Examples that Violate FTC Disclosure Regulations 

If some habits of social media presenters annoy me, this one amazes me--I have seen people on stage admit to violating FTC disclosure guidelines with either no awareness or no shame. Some speakers share programs that involve the distribution of free merchandise or social sweepstakes, but the tweets and posts they include in their decks are devoid of any required disclosure. In addition, I have heard influencers admit on stage that they hype clients' products without acknowledging the material relationship.

Of course, if the FTC is going to sleep on the job and if consumers show little concern that earned media is not, in fact, earned, there is little risk in these sorts of non-compliant programs. Still, I would hope that speakers at social media conferences might strive for greater ethics in the industry and at least nod to the well-established FTC disclosure guidelines.

So, what say you? Do these presentation habits annoy you? Think I am wrong on any of these? Am I missing something from my list? Please share your thoughts, and perhaps we can help make each other better speakers and presenters.

(6 conference mistakes to avoid / shutterstock)

10 Ways Google+ Will Improve Your SEO

There are still people that argue for a wait and see strategy before using Google Plus. They will often point to lower numbers of people using Google Plus. These people fundamentally misunderstand the nature of Google Plus and the way it can improve your SEO results, even if none of your clients actually use Google Plus itself.
There are ten ways that Google Plus will improve your SEO:

1. Google Plus content is treated by Google just like any other page on the web. Google Plus content will be efficiently indexed by Google, it will gain page rank and appear in Google’s search results.  With two thirds of searches in the US taking place on Google you want your content indexed and searchable in this way.
2. Your Google Plus posts allow you capture SERP real estate as they appear on Google search page results, thus your audience may find your Google Plus content through a standard Google search.
3. Google Plus content stays around, gains page rank, gives page rank and appears in search results over a long period. It appears Google Plus posts can retain ranking indefinitely with some posts over a year old still top of search result pages. Compare this to the 14 minutes of life a standard tweet is estimated to have.
4. Google Plus authorship provides you with a higher visual profile in search results.  By validating your Google Plus profile with sites where you publish, you will enable your image to appear next to the search results and attract greater visual attention on search pages.
5. The use of Google authorship is closely tied to content authority. Google is keen to give a higher profile to authoritative content in search results. If an author posts interesting content which is shared and receives plus ones, this will potentially lead to higher authority. There is growing evidence that Google+ authorship improves your authority and search performance. Mark Traphagen argues that “over a broad sample of bloggers with G+ profiles, those who use Google authorship tend to average a full Page Rank higher than those who do not.”
6. Google Plus authorship and the Google Plus social layer provides a wide range of social signals that may improve the social media optimisation (SMO) of your content and SEO. This is not as simple as the number of followers, people in your circles or number of Plus Ones. What appears to be far more important is the interaction between you and your content and others of a high authority. Thus if a high authority person shares your content this will improve your own authority.
7. Social signals from platforms such as Google Plus will become more important in determining search results. Joshua Berg has called this the social media optimisation (SMO) of SEO. He has explained that “social signals provide a much better way of filtering out the noise and improving the quality of search results” and “this is a trend that will continue because it is a much better way of understanding what people really want, which is one of Google’s founding principles.”
8. The featured link in a Google Plus post will pass page rank to the page to which it links. Note there is a no follow for links included in the body of a Google Plus post, you must use the featured link. If you connect a Google Plus page to your website this will increase the relevancy of your website content and support your search ranking
9. Links from regular websites to Google Plus content can also pass page rank authority in the other direction back to your Google Plus posts and pages.
10. Finally, the use of hashtags in Google Plus connects every post to a search on the platform.

You are simply losing out in terms of SEO if you are not using Google Plus effectively. Hopefully, the ten reasons outlined above will make you look again at Google Plus and reconsider your social media optimisation strategies for SEO.

10 Useful Twitter Tools for Your Twitter Toolkit

1. Nearby Tweets - nearbytweets.com
This is a nice twitter tool that lets you see tweets that are in your area. You can choose any location though - but the biggest feature is you can search for certain keywords in that area. So you can find people who are tweeting about what your business does.

2. Qwitter - useqwitter.com
Qwitter is a service that lets you see who unfollowed you on Twitter. It will send you an email at the end of each week telling you who unfollowed you.

3. TweetDeck - tweetdeck.com
TweetDeck is an application you install in Windows that will give you a wide overview of all the things you can do in Twitter. It's divided into columns that feature live feeds of what the people you are following are doing, direct messages, active tweets and columns for searching keywords. You can have a column setup to monitor certain twitter keywords and hashtags that are happening in all of Twitter and reply directly to them.

4. WeFollow - wefollow.com
This is a good site to see the top people to follow in your industry. You can search by keywords, industry or hashtags. This is a great place to find relevant people in your area who are in your industry, you can also sort by location so you can find people and businesses close to you.

5. LocalTweeps - localtweeps.com
While this one sort of overlaps a few of the others listed, it is useful because you can search for users that are near or in your city. So it may be helpful if you're a business who want to follow local people to see what they say and get them to follow you.

6. ExecTweets - twitter.com/exectweets
While not quite a tool, this is a Twitter account that retweets top executives in multiple industries. This can be good to get business insights from various top players in your field or just see what the top competition is up to.

7. PollDaddy - polldaddy.com
Another one that's not quite a tool for Twitter, PollDaddy let's you send out customizable polls that you can use to glean info from your followers. It's build by the same people who created WordPress, so it's a great tool.

8. Google URL Shortener - goo.gl
There are a bunch of URL shorteners out there, but I've been using Google's since it's easy and I already have a Google account. You can track how many clicks you get too.

9. Twitter Advanced Search - twitter.com/search-advanced
Twitter has an advanced search feature where you can search by many different criteria. It's more "advanced" than the basic search and can come in handy when you need more control over what you're looking for.

10. WordPress Twitter Tools - wordpress.org/plugins/twitter-tools/
Very handy if you have a WordPress blog and want instant tweets when you post a new one and much deeper integration with Twitter.

These twitter tools are just the tip of the iceberg. They are just the ones that I find useful. If you have any must have Twitter Tools that you use please share & let me know in the comments!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7804886

Now You Can Comment on Facebook Posts Directly From Bing

Interacting with your friends on Facebook just got a lot easier — If you’re a Bing user, that is.

Starting Friday, Bing will show comments from Facebook relevant to your search in the sidebar. From that search, you can Like a friend’s post, comment, or see the original post in its entirety on Facebook.

For instance, my search for "New Kids on the Block" brought up several posts from my friends who are fans, one who was excited to hear a NKOTB song on the radio, and another who was excited to be going to an NKOTB concert this summer. So, if I happened to be looking for a friend to go to the concert with, I could potentially contact one of them.

You can also add your own Facebook post directly from Bing. So, I could post a status asking if anyone would like to go to the concert with me, or express my own excitement about the event.

Friday’s new Facebook feature is an extension of the social sidebar Bing introduced last year. That feature brings in relevant social results from networks such as Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, and Klout that are pertinent to your web search. Previously, you were not able to comment on or Like those posts.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

Twitter Adds Tailored Trends to iPhone, Android App

Twitter updated its app for iPhone and Android Wednesday, adding the ability to view Trends from around the world or focus on those in your backyard.

Located in the Discover tab, the feature shows you what's trending on Twitter as whole. You can also drill down to tailored trends within the app. They're based on your location as well as who you follow on Twitter. The idea is that you’ll see trends specifically catered to your own personal interests.

With the update, replies to retweeted tweets within the app now include not only the person who originally tweeted the message, but the retweeter as well.

The new versions of the apps also added the ability to invite friends to join Twitter from within the app, improved playback of Vine videos, and a few other bug fixes and improvements.

You can download the updated version of Twitter for Android and iOS now from their respective app stores.

Image via Mashable

The Future of Social Media

In the past decade we have seen many changes in the world of Social Media and business. Twitter and Facebook have adapted to the world of business better than anyone could have imagined. In 2009, we saw the realisation of the influence that listening to consumers had on Social Media and in the ending of 2011, media went from being a simple broadcast platform to a sophisticated network of connections and rewarding engagements.

In 2012, we saw Social Media as a way of connecting with potential consumers and building brand awareness, and 2013 will be no different.

Looking at findings from various companies, it seems the Facebook is on the decline. It has been suggested that around 34% of Facebook users say the time they spend on the site has decreased over the past year with only 3% saying they will spend more time on the site in the coming year. Facebook need to re-evaluate their standing as a social network and focus on this rather than the many other things that have been reported in recent months.

Despite Facebook declining, it seems social media overall, will continue to rise. Social Media usage is up 38% over the previous year and is likely to increase to around 50% by the end of 2013. The increase in social activity is mostly down to smartphone users and we all know the mobile market is booming.

People’s expectations are changing. Social media is now more than just networking, its a way of successfully building a brand. There’s an old saying that all human behaviour is goal directed. We need a purpose that has to be obvious and in the absence of this behaviour, the task itself will not happen. This applies to Social Media and how are are going to act in the future. Without a direction in the form of a social media strategy, a business will suffer online.

A lot of companies will be weighing up the benefits of spending their time on social media because as well all know time is money. As said by a famous philosopher, all human behaviour occurs to gain pleasure or avoid pain. In the beginning, the purpose served by using social media was just the pleasure of connecting with people in a new and unique way. This soon had its difficulties when it comes to how much time one can devote to social networking activity and how to communicate online. Looking to the future, networking has to have some kind of tangible benefit otherwise it may not be worth it which is a very uncertain thing.

When looking to the future of Social Media, you will need to consider the following:

• Tribes – We as humans, by nature, are social despite the many years spent relying on mass marketing. We will be using social media as a way to have conversations and build a community or tribe that share the same interests.
• Relevancy – Something that will always be crucial to social media is how relevant the content is that you are sharing.
• SoLoMo – We are in a new era now where being Social, Local and Mobile are an important part of being on social media.

So, where is Social Media going? This, I cannot answer. Social media depends on its users, so really, the future of social networking is down to us!

Why Brands Should Be Human on Social Media

The success of any social program is ultimately determined by its ability to connect on a one-to-one, human level. But what does it actually mean to be human in social media?

Is it having a fun and engaging brand? Speaking in everyday, colloquial language? Establishing a more relatable — even intentionally non-corporate — online presence?

To an extent, but these are surface symptoms. The core issue lies much deeper, in the nuances of how we interact with one another.

Specifically, there's a phenomenon in linguistics known as "code-switching." It refers to when a person alternates back and forth between multiple languages in a single conversation. Recently, a team at NPR dived into this concept, elevating it beyond linguistics and identifying its prevalence and significance on a cultural and sociological level.

One writer, Gene Demby, points out how most of us do this every single day at work. We adopt a corporate tone when speaking to our superiors or coworkers. Then a friend or family member calls and we morph into an entirely different — perhaps even seemingly completely opposite — persona.

The key, though, is that both voices are still inherently us. As Demby writes: "Many of us subtly, reflexively change the way we express ourselves…hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities - sometimes within a single interaction."

The implications of this in social media are massive. Social already blurs — and is on the way to obliterating — the line between professional and personal. Combined with our nature to code-switch, that means two huge shifts in how we need to approach social as brands.

Users Don't Approach Corporate Content Solely as Corporate People

Code-switching not only illuminates the fact that we express various aspects of our personality at different times, but it also reveals that all of these aspects are - at all times - fundamental parts of our makeup. By extension, all of these components of our personality come together to affect our decision-making, preferences, and actions.

In other words, when a user comes across your Twitter handle or Facebook feed, she doesn't suddenly transform into a "professional-only" mode that consumes, filters and reacts to content based 100% on her company and career.

No, her professional persona may take center stage, but her entire thought process is also influenced by the less apparent parts of her personality: the fact that she's a parent, enjoys rock climbing, is coming off a rough week or lives in a city.

As marketers, we need to embrace this fundamental nature of user behavior; namely, that people act, engage, and respond not solely as professionals, but as nuanced human beings. Users are not simply — and absolutely cannot be solely treated as — potential sales. Our campaigns, programming and offers must be built to connect with users on that human level — which encompasses, but is not wholly defined by — their professional status.

Learn the Art of Authenticity

Understanding the complexities of code-switching users and the need to connect on a human level doesn't mean we abandon our marketing objectives, though. We still have businesses to run and revenue to generate. But it does mean we rethink how we communicate and present our brands.

Think about it: If connection needs to take place at a human level, then our brands must also become human. Connection only occurs when there is a convergence between two parties who find something in common. If the user is approaching from a professional-and-personal perspective, and we only approach from a professional one, we've already limited how effective our engagement can be.

Being a humanized brand means learning the art of authenticity. It means being genuine, being passionate about whatever it is your brand is and does. Just like in everyday life, people respond most to others who are perceptibly and consistently real. And that's why it's an art, not a formula. Authenticity, in the long run, can't be manufactured or faked.

Every corporation, no matter how buttoned-up, no matter its product or service, has a unique personality. Being human in social media, then, involves identifying all aspects of that personality — even the less obvious or less corporate ones — and embracing them as a whole. From there, the surface symptoms we referenced at the beginning of the column — tone, language, aesthetics — will be easier to define.

The beauty, though, is that there's always room for a brand's personality to expand and express itself in new ways. Just as various parts of our individual personalities can evolve, brands can similarly introduce concepts and experiences that reveal more of what they're passionate about, without deviating from their key values, objectives or principles.

It won't happen overnight. It may even be painful. But discovering how to be authentic, to be genuine, is an exercise that will only help a business in the long run. At the end of the day, people connect most with real. And social allows us to connect easier and more frequently than ever before, making it the perfect place to start.

Image by Mashable

Facebook Introduces Emoticons To Status Updates

After the relative failure of status update prompts, Facebook has begun rolling out new options for users who want to tell their friends how they feel. The new feature could prove to be beneficial for Facebook marketers, as users can also update their status with activities.

Some users in the United States of America have been given the option to add emoticons to their status updates. There are a number of emotions to choose from, each illustrated by a round yellow face, similar to the ones used on Skype.


To choose an emoticon, users have to click on the smaller section separated from the main status update text box which asks “What are you doing?”. A drop-down box will appear, the first option of which is “feeling”, providing users with a number of different smiley face emoticon options.

Users don’t just have smiley faces to choose from, there are also a number of tiny pictures emblematic of different activities. For example, if a user selects “eating” from the drop-down box, they can choose to display an ice cream cone if they are eating ice cream, or a slice of pizza if they are snacking on a hot piece of quattro formaggi.


As well as the “feeling” and “eating” options, users can choose from “drinking”, “watching”, “reading” and “listening to”. Users can name the films, TV shows, books and artists they are enjoying, which could potentially provide Facebook marketers with extremely useful targeting data.

Chosen artists, films, TV shows and books will appear in the status update as a picture (if one is available), a description and a link to the corresponding Facebook page. Users who want to know more about a band that their friend is listening to can just click on the link in the status update.

Facebook is currently testing the new feature, so it is only available to a few users in the United States. Whether people will be more willing to share their feelings in image form is yet to be seen, but Facebook do intend to roll out the feature to the rest of the United States soon. There is no news concerning international users, so those of us living outside America will have to be without for the time being.

What do you think of the new emoticons?

Facebook Testing 'Post-From-Any-Page' Button

Facebook is testing a new button on the top of its homepage that allows users to post directly to Timeline regardless of what page they're on.

The button was first spotted by Mashable reporter Alex Fitzpatrick Friday morning. After clicking the button — which resides at the top right-hand side of any Facebook page, next to home button and the small icon of a user's profile picture — a prompt pops up that looks very similar to the one we're used to seeing for posting a Facebook status.

Because it lives on the top bar, you can access it even when you're visiting another profile or brand page.

In the picture below, you can see he is on my Facebook page yet he can still post directly to his. Typically, you have to be on the homepage or your own page to post a status update.

The new feature was spotted on a page that has yet to be switched to the new Facebook news feed or be given access to Graph Search, its smarter search engine. We haven't seen any other pages with the feature just yet.

Smartphone Users Check Facebook 14 Times a Day

Think you use your phone to look at Facebook a lot? Unless you're doing it at least 14 times a day, you're actually below average.

That's just one of the surprising revelations in a research report by IDC released Wednesday. The study tapped 7,446 iPhone and Android users in the U.S. between 18 and 44 — representative of the 50% of the population that uses smartphones — and asked them questions about their phone usage across one week in March.

Depending on your perspective, many of the results are either depressing or confirm what you knew all along. For example, it seems that 79% of smartphone users reach for their devices within 15 minutes of waking up. A clear majority — 62% — don't even wait 15 minutes, and grab their phones immediately. (Among 18-24 year olds, the numbers rise to 89% and 74%.)

Given that the survey was sponsored by Facebook, most of the questions focus on the social network. Which is, it seems, only the third most popular app on your smartphone, after email and the browser. Still, 70% of smartphone users are frequent Facebook visitors, with more than half of them checking it every day.
Peak Facebook time is during the evening, just before bed. But any time's good: on average, we visit the Facebook app or the site 13.8 times during the day, for two minutes and 22 seconds each time. Our average total daily mobile time on the site — and remember, this is just via our smartphones — is half an hour.

That's roughly a fifth of all the time we spend communicating; it's only slightly less time than we spend texting. On weekends, we check Facebook more than we text.

Any place seems to be good to check Facebook, too. Some 46% of us check it when we're shopping or running errands; 48% use it at the gym. Even preparing a meal gives 47% of us no respite from the social network. (Well, what else are you going to do while you're waiting for the microwave to ping?)
Perhaps the most unpardonable sin: 50% of smartphone users admit to checking Facebook while at a movie. We hope they mean only during the ads.

So what are we spending all that time doing? Well, for about half of that daily half-hour on the social network, we're simply browsing our News Feed. The rest of the time is divided fairly evenly between Facebook messaging and posting updates. Half of Facebook users play games via the service on their phone a few times a day.

Does the smartphone survey ring true to you? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter

Social Media - A Vital Component of Your Internet Marketing

Social Networking websites as we all know are viral, Facebook, twitter and many others play an important role in connecting us with people today. Our lives are so affected by these websites, and people who are connected through this almost spend about half hour a day on their desired networking website. These websites influence us in many ways such as lifestyle, we see many people from all over the world, and learn the way they live, they travel, they party and many other things, through their profiles, pictures. This influence is not only limited to lifestyle but other things such as music taste, preference of educational institutions, and many other things relating to our daily life.

Social Networking websites have turned out to be a great media to connect with people, may it be person to person or from a person to mass of people, and just like any other media such as T.V, Newspaper has turned out to be a great channel for commercial advertising so did these websites. Social Networking websites are a great way to advertise, turning out to be a great component in an internet marketing strategy, it is easy to access, and it's easy to spread content through it. Now, this has turned out to be such a useful media that companies rather than pitching for their products online give more importance to maintaining their pages and groups on Facebook. Groups owned by the companies are a way to connect them to their followers, just for an example, if Puma has a group of them on Facebook, people who like puma as their brand would join that group. This practice helps brands in the way that if there would be people who don't follow puma, but by seeing that brand appear in an attractive way on their friend's profile, would persuade them to try it out for once at least. This is how the brand following increases, but this is just a single way of advertising; there are many other ways of advertising suitable for companies of any size or budgets, and most of them don't even require costs, just a bit of time.

Majorly your popularity on a social media depends upon the quality and quantity of content you provide. On social media the advertising is not in the way it is done on other media, there is no sales pitch over here, don't sell, and just interact. If you want to achieve great popularity easily, you can take help of an SEO reseller. They can also provide you quality content for your social media; this is just like any other media, except the content has to be more personalized.

Social media endures a grave importance in any internet marketing strategy, its cost effective, provides you a great audience, and is the most used platform for any sort of interaction.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7542225

How to Get More Followers on Twitter

Twitter emphasises the number of followers you have. Emblazoned on your Twitter profile is the number of times you have Tweeted, the number of people you follow and the number of people following you. It is like some badge of honour, as though raw numbers mean something important.

Of course, the number of followers you have is largely unimportant. You could have a million followers, but if none of them interact with you, if none of them do anything as a result of your Tweets or if none of them buy anything if you are in business, what is the point? But you could have just 10 followers who all interacted and who all were loyal customers.

Even so, people are keen to get more followers - because the whole Twitter set up emphasises the issue. People feel somewhat undervalued if their friends have more followers than they can muster. Equally, business owners get into competitive situations, trying to get more followers than their rivals.

There is plenty of myth about how to get more followers, as well as some cranky, underhand techniques which boost your follower number, but little else. Now, for the first time, a long-term study has looked at the growth of Twitter followers over time in more than 500 users and half a million Tweets.

The research confirms that you gain followers when - surprise, surprise - you are social. That's right, hold conversations, chat to people and you instantly appear more interesting and therefore more likely to be followed.

The study also demonstrates three things you must AVOID if you wish to gain followers.

Avoid these to gain Twitter followers

• Hashtags
• Surprising as it may seem, hashtags are negative influencers of follower growth - especially if you use them for the sake of them, or if you use them excessively
• Negativity
• Twitter is often full of negative things, like complaints or criticism. But negativity makes you less attractive to others, so you won't grow your follower count
• Self focus
• Talk about yourself a lot and people don't want to follow you

Do these to get more Twitter followers

• Interact
• If you have lots of @replies in your Twitter stream, you gain more followers
• Be useful
• Provide useful information that includes a URL to original content. This is significant as it encourages "retweeting" which is also associated with increased follower counts.
• Show your location
• People like to follow people nearby. When you show your location, you gain more followers

Overall, the research demonstrates one over-arching principle:

Write positive, useful Tweets, that contain links to informative web pages and then reply to people who retweet you.

Simple.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7531330

Some Users Are Seeing “Give A Gift” Suggestion Alongside Friend’s Celebratory Status Updates

Inside Facebook has reported that some users are noticing a “Give a Gift” suggestion in their News Feeds alongside status updates that contain good news.

Facebook has been pushing gift giving for a while in the United States. Facebook gifts was made available to American users on 12/12/12, after the feature was tested extensively in the beta stage.

Since then, Facebook has partnered up with Starbucks to suggest gifts from the coffee chain on birthday announcement posts and even created a gift card, which can be topped up by a user’s friends on Facebook.
Now, Facebook is suggesting that users buy gifts for their friends to celebrate good news, as seen in status updates. Inside Facebook reported that the “Give a Gift” button was seen beside a status update announcing a friend’s new job and another which read “it’s a boy”.

This suggests that Facebook has developed an intelligent language processing system, which can monitor posts for keywords in specific orders and suggest gift-giving accordingly.

Karma, the gift-giving app that Facebook bought last year and then converted into Gifts, originally had software that could scan for celebratory updates, so it was inevitable that Facebook Gifts would eventually have a similar feature.

Gifts is clearly a feature that Facebook plans on devoting time on, as it has potential to bring in considerable revenue for the site and even move Facebook into competition with Amazon and eBay.

Facebook, of course, doesn’t have the same inventory as either of the big shopping sites, but it does have huge amounts of targeting information on its users, which is already made available to advertisers.

What do you think the future of Facebook Gifts is?

Internet Network Marketing Tips: 5 Tips For Online Network Marketing Success

These internet network marketing tips for success will help you move away from traditional "offline" network marketing strategies and start to leverage the power of the internet to boost your sales.

* Train Your Team - Instead of having to build a huge team, focus on training your existing team members. Arrange live events, create video tutorials, and organize Skype meetings to help improve the sales of your members. It is far more profitable to have 10 successful team members than 100 team members who do not take action. However, make sure that the internet network marketing company that you are involved with as a solid compensation plan that rewards you for the success of your team members.

* Social Media Marketing - As in all types of business, this industry about building relationships. So leverage the power of social media marketing for this purpose. Engage in relevant Facebook groups and offer you insights. Share useful content of yours and encourage discussion. Social media is not about "look at me, look at me" but is about talking to people and building relationships and that will then lead to growth of your business further down the line.

* Content For Leads - Article marketing for network marketing on the internet can generate a daily stream of free leads for your business. The key is to concentrate on writing daily articles that offer useful network marketing tips and tricks to your prospects. Then get the content out the on the internet on your blog, in the article directories, on document sharing sites, and other relevant websites in the industry.

* Leverage The Internet - In the modern internet era, network marketing and multi level internet marketing success is much more than cold calling, personal meetings, direct mail and newspaper advertising (you don't have to do any of that if you don't want to). A powerful network marketing tip is to instead of working once and getting paid once, get some content out there on the internet and generate traffic and capture leads on a daily basis. Each article could potentially generate leads for years to come and you only need to write it once.

* High Commissions - In order to earn a living from online marketing you will need to be properly rewarded for your efforts. If you only get 5% commissions then you are going to have to make a very high amount of sales to see much money from that. But if you are promoting products for 100% commissions there is much less pressure on the quantity based approach and you can simply focusing on making quality sign-ups.

Content That Will Wow Your Audience

Social media is undeniably a great way of putting a face and voice to a company or business and build solid relationships so that you can grow a loyal supportive community of followers for your brand. Social media enables you to respond directly to individuals. By communicating with your community on a regular, more personal basis, you demonstrate to them that their comments are not only being acknowledged but their feedback, whether constructive or otherwise, is being taken seriously, and most importantly, is appreciated.
Okay, I’ve got a community of people who like me, what next? What’s next is getting them to rave about you so that your brand is amplified as one voice tells many. Imagine if everyone in your community brought just two more people to your website. I’ve formulated 5 easy steps to give you that critically acclaimed continuous flow of traffic that many a social media enthusiast craves.

1.   Keeping it fresh

One of the key factors in keeping social media traffic consistent, and preferably on the increase, is to remain on trend. There is no such thing as old news! Every story has the potential to be retold in a new and exciting way. If everyone is talking about a particular topic, don’t just rehash the same old facts. Find a new angle, a way to make it more targeted for your community and wow them with your fresh insight. Content curation is another approach to keeping old topics fresh. Content curation is the latest trend in social media and involves pulling together the best of the ideas and information on a topic and providing your community with easy access to them. Remember, if you show that you are knowledgeable and have researched thoroughly about the current key trends and appear up-to-date with the latest goings on, your content will not only be considered a trustworthy source, but it gives it that ‘wow’ factor, and that uniqueness that many find so difficult to achieve.

2.   Quality over quantity

Whilst it is true that regularly updating the content on your website not only gets you valuable Google brownie points (aka SEO ranking) but also encourages your community to visit more frequently, posting poor quality articles for the sake of posting is counterproductive. The gold standard for the serious social media blogger is to post at least once a day. However, 2-3 well written articles per week is preferable to 1 good one and 4 that would score “nil point” if they were an entry in the Eurovision Song Contest! Poor quality material is a waste of everybody’s time. Your community are likely to soon tire of the inconsistence in quality and tired content. The key is, not to put yourself under too much pressure if you’re new to the blogging or social media scene, just enjoy yourself and immerse yourself in writing top quality material.

3. Controversial content

Freedom of speech is always encouraged in the world of social media (that’s not to say go around upsetting people!). I personally really admire people who are prepared to step away form the herd and go out on to the plains in full view of the stalking predator to put across their own unique/controversial views. Most people find it refreshing being exposed to different ways of viewing things and alternative viewpoints. If your aim in social media is to attract attention and stand out from the multitudes you need to be prepared to voice a controversial/different view. Being opinionated doesn’t mean you necessarily have to be offensive or show a lack of respect. However, strong convictions will generate more interest and more traffic to a webpage. The more traffic, the more likely you will gain a loyal community, who will re-visit time and time again. Your content is never going to please everyone, its personal taste at the end of the day, but you should never be afraid to speak up and put your opinion, controversial or not, forward for a discussion.

4. Acknowledgement = loyalty

People like to be appreciated and replying to comments on a personal basis demonstrates that you appreciate the individual, whilst creating solid and loyal relationships. If you ask for feedback you need to be prepared to receive the negative as well as the positive. My top 3 tips for dealing with negative feedback:

1. Don’t take it personally.
2. Don’t take it personally.
3. Don’t take it personally.

If you don’t take it personally you can move your ego out of the way so that you see validity in their point. Their point is valid even if you disagree with it. Leaving a comment takes time and it is better to see this as an honour that they were prepared to invest some time in communicating with you, even if it wasn’t what you hoped for. Remember, the more you encourage social sharing, the more willing an audience will be when promoting and sharing your content with a wider and more diverse audience across their own personal social networking sites. Social sharing buttons are a quick way to endorse the sharing of your content and also promote the work of others. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask your community directly to share your content with other like-minded people who might enjoy it. Social Media is about maintaining people’s interest, and keeping your community engaged. Sharing is the cement between the bricks – it holds it all together.

5. Getting the balance right

If you use language that is a chore to read, your audience will give up. Your social media content should be engaging and written at a level that is easy to rapid read. The most successful books are those written in grade 8 English, i.e. at a level that a 13-year-old could understand. This is because we are all short of time and if you use complex, difficult language, the majority of your readers will quickly give up.
To summarise, spending time building and working on relationships is imperative and arguably the most important factor when utilising social media, because once you have established that trust, you will start seeing results

Designing Buttons for Your Website

Placing social buttons on your website provides companies both large and small the opportunity to have their content shared. However, it is not as simple as just adding a button to your existing pages; in order for your social buttons to be effective they should be included on your website pages proper manner. This will help ensure that the readers can easily locate them and that they work correctly. We are going to offer you some helpful tips on how to successfully incorporate social buttons into your website.

• Placement Matters - The easier your buttons are to locate, the more likely they are to be used. People will not typically take the time to scroll over your page looking for social buttons; this is why you should place them in the most obvious location. Once you have placed the social buttons on your pages you should consult with co-workers and friends to ensure that they have been placed in an easy to see area.


• Use Recognizable Buttons - If a visitor to your website can easily recognize which site your buttons will post to, they are more likely to use them. You should also avoid trying to incorporate the button image with your design. This may end up making the button unrecognizable and it will likely not get used as much as you would like.


• Include Text - Two little words such as, "follow us" can encourage visitors to your website to do exactly that. This is not a required step when adding social buttons to your website, but it certainly can help. Many people will hesitate to share something, but these two little words may give them the little push they need.


• Size Matters - Choosing the proper sized buttons for your website is very important. They should seem as if they are part of the original design and not be so large that they are overpowering. You also don't want to make them too small, if a visitor has trouble locating them because they are too small or get lost in the design they may not get used at all. Apple suggests that web designers use buttons that are 44px x 44px.


• Keep It Simple - Almost everyone can easily recognize the most popular social media buttons. Because of this it is important that you do not redesign the logos. You may think that adding a friendly not to the Twitter bird will be entertaining for your visitors; it may have the opposite effect and change the logo so much that it becomes unrecognizable. Stick with the most familiar and widely used buttons that are easily recognized by your readers.

Social buttons are a great way to compel readers of your content to share it among their friends. The more visibility that your content receives, the more traffic that you may see coming to your website. It is even possible for your content to go viral if it shared among enough readers and their friends. There are a lot of benefits to including social buttons on your website, the tips we have provided should make the process easier to do and understand.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7500728

Vine Already Climbing Despite Setbacks

Twitter’s new affiliate, video sharing service Vine, has already been adopted by a number of brands despite some early setbacks.

A few businesses have posted videos on Vine: clothes retailer Gap has taken a “trip down #Gap advertising memory lane for [their] #firstpost on Vine. http://vine.co/v/b5PeYQOLuLj”, while broadcaster PBS has given followers a look into the lobby of their offices in Arlington, Virginia.

PBS also invited its Twitter followers to post videos on Vine during the new series of Downton Abbey with the hastag #DowntonPBS, promising that the best would be featured.

Here is the tweet on PBS's Twitter account:

The video sharing service has also been used by news broadcaster NBS New York, after a bystander sent them footage of a dolphin trapped inside Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.

The app’s immediate popularity can be somewhat attributed to the influence of its parent company, Twitter, but is also largely thanks to Vine itself.

The service allows users to create videos quickly and simply which, despite their brevity, convey a lot of information. These videos require no editing thanks to the ability to stop and restart recording at the press – or depress – of a button.

After Vine was released, Matt Buchanan at BuzzFeed wrote an article recognising the gif-like appeal of the videos the service creates: Gifs are popular thanks to their instant gratification factor; Vine videos have a similar instantaneous effect, but can be created by simply recording real life.

Vine, however, is not without its limitations: there are a number of alterations that could be made to the service regarding privacy and content restrictions, as well as potential improvements to the app’s functionality.

The app currently has no privacy settings, meaning users can’t make their account private or block other users. All they can do is report content as inappropriate, which is a problem considering the content restrictions do not prevent people uploading some inappropriate video's (UPDATE: Vine Now Censoring content).

The Terms of Service does have some restrictions. Users are prevented from posting a video which:

• Impersonates another person or entity in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others;
• Violates the rights of a third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, and publicity rights;
• Is a direct and specific threat of violence to others;
• Is furtherance of illegal activities; or
• Is harassing, abusive, or constitutes spam.

Improvements have already been made to Vine which make the impersonation of “another person” less likely, with the introduction of badges on verified accounts, as seen on Vine Co-founder Rus Yusupov’s page:



There are some issues with Vine’s functionality which could be changed: videos can only be shared with friends as soon as they have been uploaded, so if you forget to share it with someone when you post it, it’s unlikely they’ll ever see it.

Users cannot share other people’s videos on Twitter which, although understandable considering the lack of privacy on the site, still loses Vine ground in its struggle with Instagram, which allows the sharing of anyone’s photos at any time.

Complications outside Vine’s control have also arisen: Facebook has cut off Vine’s access to its social graph, along with Yandex’s Wonder, after updating its Facebook Platform Policies page to restrict access to rivals.

So, Vine still has someway to go before it satisfies everyone, but the fact that a number of big companies have adopted the service early on shows that it potentially has a big future.

What do you think of Vine? Would you use it to promote your brand?

4 Improvements Twitter Should Make in 2013

It wasn’t just you – on Monday, Twitter was suffering from some “service disruption” largely due to the fact that it was Inauguration Day 2013 for President Barack Obama and the tweeting traffic was heavy. And while the outage didn’t affect all Twitter account users, so long as you could tweet from the iOS apps available on iPhones and iPads, Twitter via Google Chrome and Firefox browsers was inaccessible for several hours.

While engineers at Twitter worked as quickly as they could to get the site back up and functioning again, the time-out was enough to make me consider what features Twitter could, and should, be revamping to take 2013 by storm.

1) Courtesy Messages for Outages
The service disruption on Monday left Twitter users everywhere hanging on the hope that the site would be back up and running on browsers soon, with little more to do in the meantime but check their phones for updates and hit the refresh button every now and then. Just as airlines offer the ability to receive flight time changes and information via text messages or phone calls, a similar method should be employed on Twitter. Courtesy messages, complete with an estimated time clock on how long it may be before the site is back up, should be emailed or texted to all Twitter users in the event of an outage occurring. It may be some time before the site does go back up, but it’s comforting to know that the problem is being worked on and hey, it’s not just you or your computer!

2) Increase Tweet Character Limit to 150
It’s the happy medium between the original tweet character limit (140) and the Twitter bio (160). Since it was launched in 2006, I think Twitter deserves the upgrade, which may even lead to more organic tweets sent out on an even quicker basis – with users struggling much less to get around condensing their meatier tweets to the bare bones.

3) Enable Easier Scrolling Techniques
For anyone who follows or has a following base that falls well into the four digits, it can be difficult to scroll through the list in an effort to clean it out or find new people to follow. The same thing goes for your own tweets – should you want to categorize them, there is no tagging system available. In 2013, Twitter should create and enable easier scrolling and editing techniques. They may even want to borrow a page from Tumblr’s “mass post editor” book, which displays by month everything you post and allows you to categorize, delete, or change the tags on said postings.

4) Let’s See Some More Trending Topics, Please!
The trending topics are typically tailored to where you are geographically and reflect the big stories in your area. But what if you’d rather see trending topics from pretty much everywhere – a little melting pot in the sidebar on your Twitter feed? The ability to get a brief “global” view of trends would be much more beneficial and provoke more stirring conversation across the board than say, #TellMeWhy, as a trending topic would.

Five Tips to Dominate Social Media

There are ways that you can dominate social media however something that you need to know before you start that it is not going to happen overnight. Dominating any specific niche that you might be interested in takes time, consistency and effort. But probably the most important aspect in getting any recognition with social media is gifting.

1. The most important factor that will get you results if you want people to start talking about you is giving stuff away. You need to have it all in a long term plan that you will not just have one valuable gift that you give to everyone for free, but rather a series of gifts that are all in the same theme and related to each other.
It takes some planning to get recognized as an authority on anything but probably the best way to get it started is by giving something away for free that has some decent value to it and not something that one can pick up anywhere online for free. The fastest way to fail on Facebook or Twitter is to be greedy and simply send out your URL day after day and expect people to be grateful for this.

If it costs money then it is not a gift no matter how cheap you might be selling it for. You need to make sure that you have some valuable information that if it is worth money then it is worth using somewhere for your specific niche that you might be interested in.

2. If you wish to dominate a social media niche you need to be specific and that means creating content which appeals to your target audience. You can reach your target audience in a number of different ways that range from liking or commenting on Facebook or making sure real Twitter followers are following you. But there are other ways as well, from small job websites to micro jobs and article submission the list, possibilities are endless. All of these mentioned services can be found for a very low price at MinimartJobs.com.

Content is king and there are various ways that you can do this that range from creating blog posts and videos which resonate with your social media buddies. When doing this you need to take extra care to use niche specific keywords. The only way you are going to know what you friends want is to ask and then do what you have to do and serve it up. The more frequently you can help others with your content the more easily you can develop a rep, and boost your authority.

Don't fall into the trap of trying to take social networks by storm without bringing anything to the table. This is a very bad mistake. You can only gain authority, or develop your expertise, by being a persistent creator. Bring your skills to the table, help people through your content and you can become popular on social media sites.

3. You need to make personalized connections. Social media is not about adverts that draw you in, that is something completely different. You should always place a strong emphasis on the personalized aspect of social media sites. You can send out personal, direct messages on Facebook and Twitter with ease and you do this by using first names. The only way that you are going to stand out from the hurried crowd is by adding a personal touch to your social media campaign which in the long run helps you dominate your market.

The reason is simple because people will remember you when you make it personal. You will make a firm impression on the minds of your Facebook buddies or Twitter crowd. In time you will slowly come to be seen as an authority in your niche. Personalizing experiences makes your job infinitely easier in the online realm.
You have to concentrate on being a person and not just another profile. Be personable will always have a real impact on social networks.

4. You have to be persistent and keep it going as this alone will make you stand out from the others. Few are tenacious enough when it comes to creating content and making strong personal connections with their target audience. If you can do this daily you will make a serious impact on individuals from within your niche. The only way that you are going to get results is to be consistent and keep it going on a daily basis so that people can rely on you which is what gets people talking. Don't stop no matter how hard you find the going from time to time. Persistence is a great secret to social media success. People who are social on a daily basis, individuals who chat to people persistently, really gain traction in their target market. The great secret to online success has always been and will always be consistency and you need to show up more than the other guy and you can become memorable because you stand out from the crowd. Simply keep at it and persist like heck and you will begin to dominate social media networks.

5. The last tip is about timing. You need to see when the best time is to connect with your niche. There is certainly no golden rule here but a study that was done showed that traffic increases by over 14% in the mornings and evening after work and also weekends. It obviously depends on what type of niche you are in but it speaks for itself because if you are trying to make an impression on work at home mums then posting a wall post at 11pm at night is not a good idea.

Social media has a big impact on your sales and your Google page rank. Try to spend 90% of your daily time dedicated to your business doing online marketing of which 50% should be on social media.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7461261