Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

With over 800 million active users, Facebook is by far the biggest social networking website at present. The number of users is increasing on a daily basis, with thousands of people setting up Facebook accounts. The traffic and usage is sufficient to judge Facebook’s stature in the social media industry. It has grown in leaps and bounds and is far ahead of the competition.

For the past few years, businesses have gauged the potential of Facebook for marketing and creating a brand image. The trend towards online marketing has increased, with internet based promotion becoming a major part of businesses’ marketing strategies. Through Facebook, businesses can target their market segment and attract customers. Already, a majority of the businesses are using Facebook to increase awareness about their products and services. A corporate Facebook page can enhance the popularity and sales of your business.

 

Read more: http://bit.ly/KUeh5U

Via Martin Gysler

Check out this overview of best practices to stand out from the crowd with your Twitter theme and follow the tutorial to create your own profile from scratch.

 

With Twitter quickly becoming the hottest site to be seen on, everyone wants to stand out from the crowd. There has already been a range of quality designs showcased on various sites, which has shown an emergence of trends such as the ‘sidebar’. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices around Twitter background design and get to work creating our own.

 

We all recognise the default blue Twitter background right? It’s not a bad design, it’s clean and trendy but it doesn’t stand out when the majority of Twitter users also have the same look. Furthermore, if you’re keen to achieve more followers, removing this background would probably help out by showing that you’re an active user, or if you’re tweeting on behalf of your company or service, it helps prove that you’re not a spammer.

 

Generally speaking, there are three main approaches when it comes to creating your Twitter background (other than a boring solid colour!):

 

Read more: http://bit.ly/KoEvz4

Via Martin Gysler

Spend some quality time with Reddit -- you'll find it an essential resource, a self-correcting marketplace of ideas. Get started with our guide.

 

To the uninitiated, Reddit looks like a mess — text links, comment threads, points, upvotes, downvotes. At best, posts seem contextless — at worst, totally random.

 

But spend some quality time with “The Front Page of the Internet,” and you’ll find it’s an essential resource, a self-correcting marketplace of ideas that’s nearly impervious to marketers.

 

Simply put, Reddit is a message board wherein users submit links. What differentiates it from a real-time information network like Twitter is that the stream of content is curated by the community. Items of value are “upvoted,” and those deemed unworthy are “downvoted.” This determines a post’s position on the site, and items that hit the front page are seen by hundreds of thousands of people (consequently, sending boatloads of traffic to the linked website).

 

Read more: http://on.mash.to/Ke9Bil

 

[A really good walk through of Reddit - JD]

Via Martin Gysler

Social marketing is an advertising art that is widely utilized but less widely successful, forcing marketers who are looking for real, measurable results to hone their tactics. Review our list of seven ways to be a successful social marketer to help give you a leg up on the competition!

 

1. Build strong, targeted social media accounts.

Your social media accounts are only as useful as the friends and followers connected to them, making the first step of building those accounts absolutely crucial. Instead of simply working to obtain as many connections as possible, work instead to connect with like-minded people who are more likely to have an interest in what you have to offer.

 

Read more: http://bit.ly/LtgVRt

Via Martin Gysler

Even if this list is from 2011, you'll find a lot of interesting tools for today. [note mg]

 

If you want to know what’s happening in the social web you need monitoring tools. Before you get out your credit card and start to spend money try out some of the free social media monitoring services. This way you get a taste of what is available and if you need paid services.

 

I have collected 48 free social media monitoring tools. In the Group A are the services that I use regularly or seem interesting to check out immediately. The Group B is an alphabetical list of tools for you to play with. Here we go:...

 

Read more: http://bit.ly/IDzrqr

Via Martin Gysler