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Archive for December, 2009

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Add Videos for an Engaging, Successful Social Media Presence

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Photo by laverrue

Video blogging is a growing trend and close cousin to traditional blogging, which incorporates engaging video communication instead of static text content. These “vlogs” let visitors see and experience their favorite bloggers through multimedia—they come across more personal and build added trust, and often allow users to interact by leaving video ratings, comments, or even video replies.

Who’s Using Video?

More and more successful websites are quickly incorporating video. You’ll notice the prominence of video content on the big news websites that used to have all static content—sites like CNN, Fox, and Huffington Post, for example—now video media makes up a huge percentage of their content. And the use of video is growing. Since it’s creation in 2005, video-sharing site YouTube has become the fourth-most-visited website globally. The network has over 70,000 uploads each day, which include news clips, comedy sketches, animations from talented artists, silly amateur humor, useful coaching videos, documentaries, clips from popular primetime TV shows and much, much more. There is no doubt about it, video is hot.

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Posted in Marketing | 2 Comments »

Why College Students Should Use LinkedIn

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

LinkedIn

When I first learned of LinkedIn , I was already a senior in college. It was in my last quarter of school and I just got around to learning about LinkedIn and what it had to offer. A year and half later, I consider it to be one of the most powerful networking tools around. So powerful in fact that I wish I had known about it my freshman year in college.

While it may be too late for me to turn back the clocks, it isn’t too late for others. As a professional, networking with other professionals both within my field and out, has led to several business opportunities. During college, while they stress the importance of building skills for you career, one area that could use attention is networking amongst your peers.

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Posted in Social Media, Strategy | 2 Comments »

Get a Little Personal

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Photo by happeningfish

Everyone likes a card; not everyone likes an e-card. Everyone likes a personal message; not everyone likes a “mass message.” Why?
…Because you need to get a little more personal. Messages to the masses are just not cutting it these days. Gone are the days when we knew little about our audiences and one general message would work to target everyone (the blanket approach). We know more about our audiences than we ever have and messages that are irrelevant are not going to get you anywhere (but give a reputation of being distasteful and “spam-ish”…and no one wants to be labeled with that dirty four letter word).
A message with a personalized name or mention to a specific attribute (without being creepy) goes a long way. Consumers are inundated with messages and will only be listening to the ones they chose to hear—and those are the messages, which cut through the clutter because they are relevant and personal. And if you are honest and transparent, well by gosh you have cracked the code to social media success!

To use social media to get a little more personal, here are a few tips:
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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

Seven Things To Do After You Embrace Social Media

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Photo by birgerking

So, you’ve embraced social media? You are finally ready to get on the wagon and see where it takes you? That’s great, but before getting all hyped up about it, let’s talk a little bit about what you have to next! Embracing it is only the initial part of the fun:

Learn It!

As easy as it may be to join the wave of Twitter, Facebook, and such, you still need to take time to learn what it’s all about. Not only the systems and the technical stuff, you also have to see how people use it, what do other business do with it. You can’t just pay an agency and forget about it, you need to investigate it and take a look around to see where you are standing and how it’s going to help you.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Strategy | No Comments »

I joined a social-media network; now what?

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Photo by: Philipp Klinger

If you’ve begun to use social media to market your product or service or are considering breaking into social media, you may be wondering what exactly you can and should be doing with these new platforms. To better understand what you can do with your twitter account or Facebook fan page, let’s look at some of the best practices by companies who are doing it right.

Customer Service- Comcast

It goes without saying that the ComcastCares Twitter account (run by Frank Eliason) has set a new standard for customer service. Individuals looking for help with their Comcast products or services are sought out by ComcastCares via Twitter search, then reaching out to them through @ replies. Personal information is passed in Direct Messages and the problems are often solved within minutes. When an entire area is experiencing difficulties in service, @ComcastCares can let the entire community know and avoid plugging up the phone lines with folks trying to figure out if it is a problem unique to their home.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Avoid These Common Blogging Mistakes

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Photo by Todd Barnard

Blogging has quickly become one of the biggest traffic generators for marketers around the world. It’s an incredibly powerful and fun way to build and maintain relationships with potential clients, vendors, and partners around the globe, and quickly rank well in the search engines for your desired keywords by constantly releasing fresh, valuable new content targeted at your niche.

Especially if you’re building a business-oriented blog, though, you’ll need to work hard (oftentimes for at least 6–12 months) before your blog will really become an authoritative tool that pays off for you, and there are several things you need to take into consideration if you want to get a good return on your investment.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Strategy | No Comments »

5 Ways To ReTweet Your Messages

Monday, December 28th, 2009

ReTweet T-Shirt

photo by debh2u

Twitter here, Twitter there, Twitter everywhere. The simplicity of the application along with the portability of the data on the service has allowed Twitter to grow by leaps and bounds. The sharing of 140 character messages in easy and convenient ways has been a great twist for the company itself, as messages from the service are seen by more eyeballs and causes a sticky factor to commence, but also allows for the creator of the message to receive viral promotion of their message.

The terminology behind all of this is the ReTweet.

A ReTweet is simply one Twitter user passing on the message of another and giving credit back to the person that originated the message by placing RT at the start of the message. Here is a quick example:

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Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

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