Simply Social Media

Are you wondering how your competitors are using social media?

Have you explored what works for other businesses?

If you analyze the social media efforts of other businesses you’ll find insights to improve your own social media marketing.In this article you’ll discover four ways to research what your competitors are doing on Facebook, Twitter and Google+....

A couple of months ago without notice, all of the social media sharing counters on my primary website had reverted to zero. Just like that, thousands of shares that had accumulated over a period of nearly seven years had vanished.

Why is this significant? Social sharing is what is known as “social proof.” It’s evidence that your site is active and worthy of the attention of new buyers that happen to be passing through. Not knowing if this action was recoverable, I settled into the realization that I may have to simply move on and start fresh. While the problem was resolved, the incident got me thinking about what I would do if my entire online presence vanished – what then?

So, here is that plan. It has lessons for businesses that are new to social media, as well as for the rest of us that can (and should) do more of what needs to be done to ensure the online relevance of our businesses in a digital world that is now driven by the customer....

Now, I don’t have the luxury of being able to delegate social media marketing duties, which is why I devised a few tricks to be effective and efficient. The first step is to not think of social media as a burden, it’s business. When you allow yourself to accept that social engagement is not optional, you will quickly find what was once a time suck is now the best use of your precious minutes.

Here are four tricks I use to squeeze the most out of my precious time....

The buzz around startup culture lately is all about “minimum viable product.” It’s the idea of creating a product as quickly as possible — in its most minimum viable form — so you can then make it better by adapting it to what your customers really...

What if we could pinpoint the metrics that provide the biggest bang for our buck in terms of telling us whether our efforts are paying off while taking the least amount of time to measure? Focusing only on what matters (and nothing more) could satisfy the ROI demons, keep bosses and clients happy, and give social media marketers more time to do what we’re supposed to be doing: engaging and connecting with our communities.

So, whether you’re still struggling to measure social media effectiveness or simply want to declutter your measurement efforts, Here’s your minimalist guide to social media metrics....

Top social media, internet marketing & SEO blogs in the United States and Canada ranked by Cision Digital Reach in 2013....

Ever since Jay Krall compiled the inaugural list in 2009, our top 100 social media and internet marketing posts have been among CisionBlog’s most discussed, shared and trafficked content. Along the way, we’ve made some changes, from Valerie Lopez’s introduction of Compete metrics in 2010, to the addition of SEO as a topic for consideration the following year.

Much like the social Web itself, our lists are constantly evolving, and this year is no different. Rather than ranking by traditional metrics, we’re using our new in-house UVPM measurement, Cision Digital Reach. Given the social nature of this list, the change is quite fitting.

Cision calculates Digital Reach by aggregating the number of quarterly shares a website attracts on Facebook and Twitter, then multiplying this sample by an average number of visits per share. This new method better reflects the way real Web users view and share content. Increasingly, the traditional concept of “reach” in media measurement is intertwined with online sharing activity, and no longer based solely on website traffic.

To create the list, we mined Cision’s media database and found nearly 700 blogs in the U.S. and Canada covering social media, online marketing or SEO. From there, we winnowed it down to blogs that primarily focus on these topics. Finally, we ranked the blogs based on both Digital Reach and inbound links. Without further ado, here are the results...