Better know and better use Social Media today

How long has it been since you’ve reviewed your Facebook Page?

Are you taking advantage of the latest Facebook features?

It’s critical that Facebook Page managers take time to regularly audit their Page and ensure that they are not missing out on new features.

This Facebook Page audit guide outlines 11 key items to review to help maximize your Page’s potential.

Social media is all about engagement.

Right? How many times have you heard that. Engage, engage, engage. So why are so many brands so bad at it?

Blasting out one-to-many messages and using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as nothing more than broadcasting tools isn’t (a) engaging anybody and, therefore, (b) is rarely going to convert. Whereas, building relationships with people, maintaining conversations and listening to (and resolving) their issues and complaints will ensure your brand is represented in the best possible light, raising awareness of your products and services and significantly improving website footfall, lead generation and sales.

It is a business, after all. Your business. Are you prepared to do the work?

Content curation services, which had been one of the choice tools of marketing experts for some time now, are finally entering the mainstream.

Some research done by the guys over at LikeHack showed that this service is now often used not by marketing consultants but by ordinary people. This is due to information overload and the rising need for content filtering.

For this reason, content curation is evolving from not being only a professional tool but a tool that saves web surfers time as personal service.

The demise of Google Reader is only going to accelerate the use of these tools as people switch to these emerging technologies to filter their content to save them time and increase content relevance.

Social media is time-consuming for even the most dexterous mouse-clicker.

Luckily, keyboard shortcuts abound for multiple social networking sites – and they’re all laid out for you in this handy infographic by Quintly.

A keyboard shortcut is a specific key combination for a command that’s otherwise available only through a menu or interface. (Read: major time savings.)

Watch YouTube videos in full screen, send a Twitter DM, or toggle between your Facebook profile and news feed with just a key or two.

Might want to bookmark this guy for future reference!

For an industry that prides itself on producting content and campaigns that are easy for people to understand, social media marketing still has its share of jargon.

Many words and phrases are trotted out by self titled social media marketing experts that are tossed around so much they lose their meaning and impact.

Specialist, thought leader and even guru are some of the glib terms used. Maybe we should be using words that are a bit more fun.

Like…savvy, adept, adroit or even crackerjack.

Just imagine being at a dinner party and someone asks you what you do. You respond with.

“I am a Crackerjack Savvy Social Media Marketing Specialist“.

Bit more fun really.

The “Guru” term is the one phrase that makes me cringe the most. To me it is someone who has disappeared into the Tibetan mountains, had a vision, hummed a lot and and has come back with insight and enlightenment that is god like and transcends being human. They are wearing sandals, donned a magical cloak and the halo is shimmering.

Sorry…haven’t met one of those yet.. but looking forward to it.

Facebook is more than just a tool to stay in touch with friends or waste time. Sometimes people post valuable information that you may want to refer to later. So how do you find an old post on Facebook, if you barely remember the content, let alone who posted it or where? Facebook doesn’t exactly make this convenient.

While there are several ways to find stuff on Facebook, they are all but comprehensive or reliable. This situation also forces you to spend even more time on Facebook, increasing the likelihood that you will get distracted. One way to increase your chances of finding something and thus waste less time, is to enable Facebook email notifications. As I explore the benefits of email notifications, I will also show you other ways to search Facebook.

The world of digital marketing shifts, adjusts and evolves at a furious pace, with a veritable plethora of tools, technologies and platforms arriving – and changing – all of the time.

Heck, a couple of days ago Tumblr was a standalone entity. Now it’s wholly-owned by Yahoo. What changes will that bring? More ads? Less porn? Will Tumblr finally get that all-important exclamation mark? All of the above!?

We’ll have to wait and see, but social media is just one aspect of digital marketing’s metamorphosis agenda for 2013, and this infographic takes a closer look at four probable trends in the space, which includes mobile marketing, content marketing and author rank.

On May 7, popular Twitter comedian Rob Delaney took over the @MLB Twitter account for seven hours.

Hilarity ensued, the account gained more than 20,000 Twitter followers, and all was well in the world.

If that’s the best case scenario for a celebrity Twitter takeover of a sports account, here is the worst.

As a promotion during the team’s playoff matchup against the San Jose Sharks, the L.A. Kings handed its Twitter account over to local morning show host Kevin Ryder earlier this week.

You’re a fan page PRO, right?

Right — but do you ever feel like you might be missing certain Facebook features or tricks?

No matter how long you’ve been running your Facebook page, my bet is you still have a few things to learn.

And even if you’ve learned everything — you still might have forgotten something.  ;)

So this blogpost is either going to be a refresher for you — or be full of things you never knew about.

Either way — I hope it helps!

No question, social media has transformed thetelecommunications industry.

The days of “Can you hear me now?” are over, and the telecom giants – Sprint, Verizon, Comcast, Bell – know they need to be proactive in cultivating customers via social media.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a bit of a love/hate relationship between digital media and telecom.

LeadSift, er, sifted through thousands of tweets to gauge how social media has changed the telecom industry. The infographic below represents their findings:

When you find something you love on Pinterest, sometimes you want to learn more so you can act on baking those cookies, streaming that movie, or buying that couch. That’s why we’re taking a first step toward making pins more useful. We’re also making it easier to pin no matter where you are.

How do you manage your online interactions right now? If you’re like me, the answer is probably “not very well.” I create tags in emails and reminders and lists and all that – or I favorite tweets and sometimes email tweets to myself so folks don’t get lost in the chaos that is Twitter.

But along the way, you’ll likely realize (to your horror) that you’ve let various opportunities slip by – and all because “social” isn’t easily organized. Till now.

We’re excited to tell you about a service, a social client relationship management (CRM) that will organize all of your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google+ contacts in ways you’ve only imagined. This social CRM also integrates with your favorite apps like Hootsuite and Evernote (to name my two favs).

And better still? It just released new features – insights, signals and reminders – that will make this site the hub of your digital marketing efforts.

AND, they have a special offer for AllTwitter readers (only the fastest will snag it though, so read this quick!).

In less than a decade, social media has empowered businesses of all shapes and sizes across almost every industry worldwide to attract and engage with fans and customers to raise awareness, drive website football and boost sales, but it’s a relationship that, by definition, has to work both ways.

Accordingly, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have made it increasingly difficult for brands to maintain control of their online reputation, with these (and other) channels also empowering customers to proactively voice their opinion and share their experiences about these companies (and their products and services). Which, of course, is fantastic when everybody is happy, but let’s return to the real world for a moment: what do you do when things go wrong?

Reputation management today requires taking control of your brand’s message before somebody else does. Check the infographic below for a guide in how to manage your business presence online.

No matter your profession, age, gender, socioeconomic status, geographic location, interests, or hobbies, surely you occasionally seek advice.

Whether it’s the optimal place to launch your startup, the best Italian restaurant in your neighborhood, legal advice, or tips for finding a better work/life balance, everyone finds themselves at one point searching for advice.

But where do you start?

When is it appropriate to DM someone on Twitter and ask for advice? Which websites should you turn for tutorials on certain subjects? When does WebMD suffice, and when is it time to make a doctor’s appointment?

The folks at Clarity, a San Francisco-based, entrepreneur-focused online community centered around connecting people to experts in order to answer their questions and provide guidance, have more experience than most in giving advice.

The Clarity team summarized their findings as to how the process of looking for and receiving advice works, in flowchart form.

As the popularity of smartphones and tablets continues it is no surprise that people are increasingly consuming digital content on these devices and sharing it with their friends.

Uberflip researched key usage data from February 2010 through February 2013, using Google Analytics and Uberflip Metrics, and then used the data to produce the following infographic.

Over one-fifth of global traffic now comes from digital content consumption at the expense of our declining interest in turning on the Desktop (desktop traffic continues to decline steadily). This trend is reflected in email open rates on mobile phones – see infographic.

In 2010 video content accounted for only 6% of users incorporating video into their digital content. But with a rise of over 3.7X it is a good reflection of video as a key component of content marketing by brands. A figure supported by comScores 2013 U.S. Digital Future in Focus’ report.

Maybe you weren’t good with numbers in school. Maybe numbers were boring to you and now you’re happier letting someone else deal with the “math” of your life. There are just a few numbers that you might want to consider when you delve into Twitter a little deeper. You could use some of these numbers to help you track your progress on Twitter.