Posts Tagged: Social Media Marketing
Written by Corrie Scott, July 13th, 2011
It’s been a couple weeks since giant Google launched their latest effort in social, Google+. The search giant has had a couple false starts 
in their attempt to go social with both Google Wave and Google Buzz failing to catch users’ attention. However, from the buzz around the web, Google+ might just have the potential to rival the leader of social, Facebook.
What is Google+?
In short, Google+ is Google’s latest attempt at a social network. The official Google blog stated that,
“Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”
To facilitate ease of sharing, Google is integrating many of their current features and products into Google+ in the form of Circles, Sparks, Hangouts, and Mobile. They’ve also included a ‘Stream’, analogous to Facebook’s newsfeed or the Twitter stream – something social savvy users will find familiar. The constantly updating stream will aggregate updates and postings from all your friends in one place.
Circles
Circles are similar to Facebook lists, but easier and more intuitive. The premise behind circles is that people don’t want to share everything with everyone. For example, you most likely share different things with your friends than you do with you family, and you probably want to keep your weekend escapades separate from the information you share with your work contacts. You can easily do this by separating your contacts into different circles, such as ‘friends’, ‘family’, ‘work’ or a customized circle. To do this, simply click on a contact and drag them into the appropriate circle where they will only see the information you want them to see.
Sparks
Sparks brings content to you automatically based on whatever ‘sparks’ your interest. Maybe you’re interested in cycling, dogs, cooking, or you’re a car enthusiast – sparks collects interesting content from across the internet and brings it right to you, on a separate page for each topic. It’s easy get started with Sparks, you type a topic of interest, such as ‘social media’ into the search box and, if you like the content that appears, you can click ‘Add Interest’ and social media will be added to your Sparks.
If you later decide you don’t want to follow a certain topic, it’s easy to delete it from your Sparks – simply hover over the topic you wish to delete and click the X.
Hangouts
This is basically video chat, with an added twist of being able to have a multi-person video chat. You can choose which friends, or even entire circles, you wish to video chat with, and anyone in the Hangout can invite their own contacts to join as well.
Mobile
Huddle
If you remember group messaging from the days of msn messenger, you’ll quickly understand the Huddle feature. Instead of having multiple similar conversations, you can instead start a Huddle where everyone can chat together. This feature could be incredibly useful for trying to make plans to get any group of people to meet all at one place at one time.
Instant Upload
Photos taken on your mobile phone will be automatically added, with your permission, to a private photo album in the Google cloud. This way, you can share them straight from Google+, without the hassle of traditionally uploading them. Many users fear only having a copy of their photos in the cloud, which is why it’s easy to backup your online images to your home computer using Google Takeout.
Location
You can easily add your location to every post you make in Google+. Or not, the choice is up to you.
Privacy
Social networks, most notably Facebook, have been notorious for their privacy issues. Google has tackled users’ privacy concerns by making it easy to customize your Google+ profile’s visibility. Your name and photo (if you upload one) are the only things that are public on your profile, everything else can be customized to private. Or, you can assign different levels of profile visibility to different circles. Furthermore, the names of your circles won’t be disclosed, not even to the people that are in them. So, feel free to put someone in the acquaintance circle without worrying about insulting them!
As with Facebook, you can block people you don’t want to interact with, and choose whether or not your profile is indexed by search engines.
How to join Google+
Currently Google+ is in Beta testing stage and can only be accessed through invitation from a current Google+ user. If you have a friend already on Google+, ask them to invite you! Or, you can sign-up here with your Google ID and be notified when Google is allowing more users access to the testing stage.
If, once you’re a Google+ member, you decide it isn’t for you; you can downgrade your account by following the steps in this guide. Deleting just your Google+ account will leave your other Google accounts unaffected, or you have the option to delete your entire Google Account and all associated services.
Have you tried Google+? What do you think of it? Let us know below in the comments section.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, June 09th, 2011
Is social media one of the things on your to do list that never gets addressed because you don’t know where to start, or how to use it 
effectively? Perhaps you have embarked on a social media implementation that has fizzled out because you have other more pressing priorities and don’t have the time to manage it effectively. For many small to medium sized businesses, social media is a conundrum and the solution is invariably to bring in a social media expert to assist.
Hiring an expert in social media can be a great solution to these problems because it enables you to cut to the chase without having to worry about the steep learning curve social media can entail. It also increases the likelihood of your organisation achieving its social media goals more quickly, but only if you choose the right organisation or individual to work with. Beware, if your chosen partner in this area turns out to be inept, you could end up throwing money down the drain, or worse, damaging your online reputation.
Here are ten tips that will help you determine how to hire the right social media help.
- Do a little research up front. Google the person or company to see whether the results are related to social media.
- Find them on LinkedIn; check their referrals, experience and how long they have been doing social media related work. If they don’t have a LinkedIn presence then maybe they are simply social media power users, and not social media for business experts.
- Facebook and Twitter – check out their feeds – do they add value? Are they social media related? Avoid companies that have generic posts or worse, simply spout famous quotes. Also on Twitter, consider their follower counts, and remember that quality is always better than quantity when it comes to those.
- How long have they been doing social media? – social media is a relatively new principle but generally if someone has been doing this less than a year then they are still wet behind the ears. Best to work with an organisation that has been doing social media for upwards of 2 years (we’ve been doing it for 5!).
- Do they ask the right questions? I am often asked which questions to ask a social media expert from a hiring perspective (and I will get to those momentarily) but more importantly, you can determine whether a social media expert knows his or her stuff by the questions she asks you. If she asks how many followers you want but doesn’t ask about your target audience, or about your business, then that should be a red flag. Social media is not simply about being on Twitter or Facebook. It is about using these tools strategically to build your business given your audience, marketplace, goals and resources, and a good social media strategist will take these into account.
- Do they have a business background? Social media should be a component of your overall marketing and business strategy, and should complement your missions and goals. As such, a good social media expert should have a strong back ground in business systems whether it be through their education or experience. Working with someone with no business background that has many followers can be a mistake.
- A good question to ask a social media expert is how do they monitor and measure social media success. If they are flummoxed and don’t have a good answer then avoid them. If their answer includes mentions, interactions, web traffic analysis, community, insights and your goals then they are more likely to be on the right track.
- Ask them why you should use social media. If they answer that everyone is doing it then turn tail and run. However if they ask if your competitors, clients and prospects are online, and if you want to attract the next generation of customers, then move on to number 9.
- Social media professionals often get asked about the ROI of social media. Again, if an expert has no answer to this then they probably won’t be the right partner for you. It is much easier to track the ROI of a social media campaign than it is to track the effectiveness of some tradition marketing approaches such as billboard and newspaper ads. A good SM person will know this and will point out that your ROI will be dependent on what you want to achieve using these tools. They might give examples of projects they have worked on and how ROI was measured.
- Ask yourself if this is an individual or organisation that you can work closely with. When considering outsourcing your social media effort, it is extremely important that you chose a partner that you can work well with. Your social media will be a team effort and will likely involve lots of back and forth when maintaining your online presence, so work with someone you like and trust.
As with any partnership decision, often the best place to start when looking for a social media expert to work with is to ask people in your own business network who they work with, and whether they would recommend them. Unfortunately, there are a a lot of cowboys and snake oil salesmen claiming to be social media gurus right now, but if you follow the guidance outlined above you will be more likely to identify the right social media partner for you. Or you could just contact Out-Smarts, we do come highly recommended!
Written by Corrie Scott, March 22nd, 2011
Recently, Facebook updated their business pages and in the process they replaced FBML with iFrames for creating custom tabs. This means that instead of using FBML to create custom content on your page, you will now need to create a custom application and use an iFrame. Basically, an iFrame allows you to use content across different web domains through code which tells the website browser to request content from a different location. This enables you to display content from one webpage on another website, such as embedding a youtube video or flickr photo on your Facebook business page. IFrames are a bit more complicated than FBML, but we’ll walk you through the basic steps below.
1. Create the webpage you will be integrating with your Facebook page and upload it to your web server – making sure that the page will fit within the 520px wide size limit of Facebook. The iframe application that you will be creating will pull this content from your web server directly to Facebook.
2. Go to the Facebook Developers site to begin creating your application. Click ‘set up new app’ in the upper left-hand corner. This will take you to a screen that looks like the one below:
Fill in your application name – it’s easiest to make this the name of the custom tab you are creating, and click ‘create app’.
3. Now that you have created your app, you will be taken to the About Tab for your application. There are many options with your new application, but for basic custom tabs, our one recommendation is to change the icon. This way an icon of your choosing will show up on your page navigation bar under your page profile picture, instead of the default iframes icon. For best results, make sure the photo you upload is 16px x 16px.
4. Next, click ‘facebook integration’ on the upper left-hand side of the page.
These next steps are the most important in creating your custom iframes tab. It is where the integration happens between your webpage and Facebook. You will see a screen that looks like this:
5. Canvas URL: This is the url where the file you wish to integrate is located – remember to include ‘http://’. However, do not include the actual name of the file here. In other words, fill in everything but the name of your iframe file, instead the URL must have a trailing slash at the end. For example, if you webpage is hosted at http://www.mysite.com/webpage, only include http://www.mysite.com/. (You will fill in the name of the iframe file in a later field).
6. Secure Canvas URL: Re-enter the same URL as above, this time using ‘https://’ instead of ‘http://’.
7. Canvas Type: select iframe.
8. Iframe Size: Select ‘auto-resize’. This ensures that your webpage will fit neatly onto your Facebook page without users have to scroll left to right and up/down.
9. Tab Name: This is the name of your tab, such as ‘Welcome’ or ‘About’, you are limited to 16 characters here.
10. Tab URL: This is the name of the file you wish to integrate with Facebook. It is what you didn’t include in the above ‘canvas url’ field. For example, if your webpage is hosted at http://www.mysite.com/webpage, only include ‘webpage’ here.
11. Save your changes. You have created your first Facebook application!
12. The next step is adding your new application to your page. The screen you should see now includes the information on your new application. Do not submit your application, unless you want everyone to be able to add your custom iframe to their page through the Facebook Application Directory. Instead, click ‘application profile page’.
From here, you will be taken to an empty business page. On the left side under the profile image, click ‘add to my page’ and, if you have multiple business pages, click the appropriate one.
13. Go to the page you just added your application to, and hit refresh. Your new custom tab will appear in the list under your business page’s profile picture. Done!
You can make your custom tab the default landing page by going to ‘edit page’ and clicking ‘manage permissions’ on the left hand list. From here, use the drop down menu to choose your new application in the default landing tab field.
As you can see, iframes are a bit trickier than FBML. If you are looking for more guidance or have any questions, contact us at Out-Smarts Marketing.
Written by Corrie Scott, March 08th, 2011
Facebook recently updated their business pages, and the changes are overwhelmingly positive for page administrators. Many of the issues with business pages have been rectified with these new changes, and the new pages more align with the look and feel of personal profiles, making for a more streamlined user experience on Facebook.
On March 10th all Facebook pages will permanently switch over to the new pages. Currently, administrators can preview the new profile or choose to opt-in to the new profile. Why not upgrade early? You only live once! Besides, you’ll have to make the change in a few days, you might as well have the new page features figured out before then and be ahead of the curve.
Once you’ve clicked to upgrade your profile, here are some of the new features you will find:
Tabs have migrated:
Your tabs have moved from the bar at the top of page to below your page’s profile picture on the left hand side. This change aligns with recent personal profile changes and promotes a seamless user interface.
Photo Strip:
Similar to tabs now being placed on the left hand side to mirror personal profiles, there is now a photo strip at the top of pages. These highly visible photos can be used strategically by your business to promote your brand and engage fans of your page. They are also easily customizable, so you can hand pick which pictures appear in this strip. If you upload many photos, you can frequently change the photos that appear there to give repeat visitors an ever-changing visual on your page or, with a spare half hour, you can create an eye-catching montage such as the one below.
Your page now operates as a ‘person’:
You now have the option to switch back as forth between using Facebook as yourself, or as your page. For example, now I can post as ‘Out-Smarts’ on other walls as opposed to only being able to post as ‘Corrie Scott’. Furthermore, if you are using Facebook as your page, you now have a newsfeed customized to your page which you click ‘home’, and you have the ability to ‘like’ other pages as your brand. You can find the option to use Facebook as your page under ‘account’ as seen below or, if you go to your business page, you will find the option to ‘use facebook as your page’ on the right hand side under the ‘edit page’ button. You can return to using Facebook as yourself by following the same steps. This is a very handy feature as it allows you to post as your page on other walls, whereas, in the past you were only able to post as yourself.
Post as yourself on your page:
The opposite of above. In the past, I could only post to the Outsmarts page as ‘Outsmarts’, but now I have the option to post as ‘Corrie Scott’. To post as yourself on your page, click ‘edit page’, then ‘your settings’ on the left hand list, and uncheck the button called ‘posting preferences’. Click ‘save changes’ and now you can post to your page as yourself.
Receive notifications from your page:
You now receive email notifications about your page in the same way you receive notifications for your personal profile. If your page receives significant activity and the notifications are cluttering up your email, you have the option to turn off email so that you only see notifications when logged into Facebook as your brand. To turn off email notifications click to edit your page, click on ‘your settings’ and uncheck the box that says ‘email notifications’.
Featured likes and featured page owners:
‘Featured likes’ are simply a name change – this used to be ‘favorite pages’. Featured page owners allows you to showcase the administrators of your brand’s page. This allows you to further humanize your brand – if you want to connect yourself personally to your business page. To add either of these features to your page you need to again click to edit your page, this time click on ‘Featured’ and click to add either option.
Changes to your wall:
You can choose whether to show posts by just your brand, or allow fans to post to your wall as well – much like before. However, posts will no longer appear chronologically on your pages wall. Instead, posts now appear according to a ‘relevancy algorithm’ where posts that have had the most interaction will now appear at the top of your page. To see posts in chronological order you can click on ‘admin view’ under the ‘wall’ tab now located on the left under the page profile picture. Admins also have the option of deleting spam or inappropriate posts which will be filed under ‘Hidden Posts’ – you can always unhide these posts at a later time if you wish.
No more static FBML:
As of March 10th, Facebook no longer supports static FBML tabs. They will continue to support any custom tabs already created with FBML, but all new tabs must be developed using iFrames.
‘Suggest a page’:
This feature is no longer available for fans of your page. From now on only admins can suggest a page to their friends, instead fans can now ‘share’ a page. This is similar to the way users share other content on the site, and is Facebook’s attempt to be consistent across their entire site.
Written by Corrie Scott, December 23rd, 2010
A business page is the business equivalent to a personal profile, and has a few advantages over the alternative of setting up a Facebook group for your company, although both have their strong points. Our previous post, Facebook for Business: Groups or Pages discusses the merits of both options, and you can always have both a group and a page for your company. However, between the two options, a Facebook page is probably the best way for a business to have a presence on Facebook.
A good analogy for pages vs. groups is to think of a Facebook page as a separate entity that is your business, whereas a Facebook group more closely resembles a club for your business. In other words, pages focus more on a business, whereas groups focus more on a shared interest in that business. With a page, updates and notices are seen as coming from the page itself, the names of the administrators are not listed, and your personal Facebook profile is not linked to the page which allows you to maintain personal privacy. With a group, you can control who joins your group, administrators are listed, your personal profile is linked to the page, updates come directly from you, and there is a 5000 member limit (no such limit exists for pages).
There are also a number of other features that are exclusive to Facebook pages. One key difference is that, unlike groups, a page is indexed by external search engines and shows up very high in Google search results. Pages also have the ability to add an application, which allows you to customize your page, show more content, and adopt a cohesive online presence. You can either use Static FBML to create your own customized tabs, or browse the Facebook Application Directory for a complete list of all the Facebook applications that can be added to pages. For the above reasons, a page not only appears more professional but also allows for much greater flexibility and room to grow as your customer base expands.
How to Create A Facebook Page:
Creating a Facebook business page is a simple process, just click here and choose whether you are a local business, brand, product, or organization, or an artist, band, or public figure. It is obvious which user type should pick the last category; however, it can be harder to pick between the first two. You should select local business if you strictly sell your product or services locally, and plan to continue this way in the future. For all other businesses, you should select brand, product, or organization. Also, if you chose local business, the template for the page is set up as if you are a brick and mortar business, whereas the brand, product, or organization choice gives you less restrictive info tab options for inputting your information. Choose carefully because once you have selected a category, you cannot change it without deleting your page and starting from scratch!
Once you have chosen your category, name your page, i.e. the name of your business, accept the terms, and click Create Official Page. Done! Again, name your business carefully. You cannot change it once youve created your page.
Now, fill out your new business page with all of your business information, in the same way that you would a personal profile. Finally, once youve completely filled in your profile, promote your new Facebook page and begin to grow your following. There are a number of ways to do this including, providing great content, targeting advertisements towards your target customers, and using Facebook suggestions to suggest your page to people who may be interested.
Remember to install Facebook Insights so you can track and measure your success using important metrics such as the number of fans added/lost per day, total fans, number of reviews, page views, unique views, photo views, video and audio plays, as well as total interactions. Also, dont forget to add your location details, hours of operation, and phone number to the information section so customers can find you offline as well, and remember to regularly update your page with new content to keep your customers engaged.
If you would like more information on Facebook pages, or need help creating one for your business, Out-Smarts Marketing can help – we provide social networking training and consulting services to help you use social media tools effectively. Contact us now to find out more.
Written by Corrie Scott, December 17th, 2010
By now everyone has heard of the social networking service, Facebook. The company isnt all that old – it launched in February 2004, and quickly grew into an internet sensation that currently has more than 500 million active users.
The population of Facebook, if it were a country, would be 3rd in the world after China and India. Those 500 million users spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, and 250 million active users log on to Facebook any given day.
Smart companies are learning how to harness the power of Facebook – with its vast amounts of information regarding consumer preferences, trends, and like/dislikes, it has never been this easy to reach your target market. However, we recognize that Facebook can be very intimidating for businesses used to operating in the traditional marketing realm of TV advertisements, newspapers and magazines, or radio announcements.
The following information will not only demystify some of the questions surrounding using Facebook for professional purposes but also prove that Facebook is an invaluable and increasingly essential part of a growing business.
How Facebook can help you build your business:
1. Branding
Continue to build brand awareness for your business and create a unified presence across the internet by creating a Facebook profile that uses your company logo and biography. Static FBML also allows you to create customized Facebook tabs. This creates a cohesive image and solidifies your brand in peoples minds.
2. Customer Engagement
Making your business available on a medium that your customers are already using regularly can only increase exposure and engagement. This is a great place to offer special deals, contests and promotions to current customers and to entice new ones to interact with your business.
3. Reputation Management
Facebook is about real people, which means real opinions. This shouldnt scare you off, but rather be seen as an opportunity to grow. If a customer is expressing displeasure at some product or aspect of your company, it should be seen as an opportunity to engage with them and rectify the problem in an open and transparent way. Remember, negative feedback isnt necessarily bad feedback if it allows your company to grow and gain a reputation for quickly solving customer complaints and problems.
4. Customer Feedback
Similar to reputation management, Facebook allows you to have a conversation with your customers by asking questions and responding to replies in a comfortable, non-threatening environment.
5. New Customers and Retention
Potential customers you may not have considered will be able to find and interact with your business online. Facebook also helps you stay connected with the customers you already have, and show them your appreciation for their business through communicating and providing great content.
6. Drive Web Traffic
Facebook shows up very high in Google search results because of the sheer number of people searching for, and interacting with, the social networking site every day. Your business on Facebook will also show up very high in Google search results which is where most people first look when researching a product or business. You can also drive traffic to your official website, or business blog, by including a link on your profile page which encourages fans to explore your business outside of Facebook as well.
7. Research Competitors and Business Leads
Other businesses are also on Facebook including competitors and potential allies. Its easy to view competitors profiles to see who their customers are and how they engage customers with content. This can give you tips to improve your profile. Facebook can also generate new business leads by exposing your business to other companies that may be interested in collaborating with you and vice versa.
8. Viral Marketing
The very nature of Facebook is viral. People see a comment or story they like, and they share it with their friends. Harness this power by providing exciting and engaging content to your customers and they will share it with their friends, who will share it with their friends, and so forth. Essentially, let your customers help promote your business!
9. Humanize Your Business
People like to buy from other people, and having a profile where you post company photos and interact with customers in a friendly way makes your business more approachable than a professional website. Facebook is also an excellent medium for content marketing because it engages customers with your business and entices them to share your information with their friends.
10. Targeted Advertising
Paid advertisements can be targeted to specific demographic targets and consumer preferences. Results can be easily tracked through Facebook Insights so you know exactly how effective your advertisements have been.
If you are interested in using Facebook for business purposes, but still a bit wary about tackling it by yourself, Out-Smarts Marketing can help – we provide social networking training and consulting services to help you use social media tools effectively. Contact us now to find out more.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 24th, 2010
Guest blogger Kerry Sauriol of Crunchy Carpets explains why small businesses should blog.
When I Started Blogging
A little while ago, I was attending an event held by the Enterprising Moms Network. As usual I had to explain what Crunchy Carpets was. One woman exclaimed to me that she had never gotten into blogging and Twitter and all that stuff as she just never had the time.
This got me thinking about a few responses to that statement.
If she didnt have the time, what did that say about me or the many women I know who are into blogging or social media?
The statement seemed to imply that a blog was a tool mainly for personal use: merely a hobby. Judging from the amount of women I knew at that event that were using blogging and social media as business and marketing tools, I was quite taken aback by this assumption.
Many small business owners and entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed by the thought of adding one more activity to their already demanding days. Most then want to know in concrete terms what they will get out of a blog. What their ROI (return on investment) would be.
If your company has a website, adding a blog to it is the simplest and easiest way to reach out to your customers. A blog can add a human touch to your website. It gives you the space to reach out and communicate directly with your customer base.
The biggest lesson about blogging is ….you get out of it what you put in.
Companies can struggle with the difference between marketing and communicating. With marketing, you see the results of it quickly and easily in the form of sales that stemmed from that campaign. Blogging is different. Blogging is about relationship building. This can be tough to understand when you are focused on the bottom line.
This is true for both personal and corporate blogs.
Blogging shouldnt be demanding…but quality writing is key. Poorly written copy or a blog that is just all about marketing can put off a reader/potential customer. So yes, hiring a copywriter or professional blogger might be your next step.
Blog Examples
Agoo Clothings web presence is an amazing example of taking social media and community building to the extreme. Their site is more than an online store. Their blog is a mix of promotional copy and child and family oriented copy that they feel their readers (their shoppers) will appreciate. Add their HUGE Facebook activity and the promotion they do with personal (mom bloggers) and you can call their social media presence a huge success. Agoo wants you to know that the people behind the clothing line are family people too with kids of their own and so they can share an understanding with their buyers.
Raspberry Kids, another online child focused store already has a rich and readable website, but the blog has become not only a promotional tool, but a great insight into the life of the owner/operator of the company. She shares the ups and downs of entrepreneurialship with her readers and customers. She is one of “us.”
From these two examples, you can see how well the addition of a blog to your web presence can enable your business to connect with your community.
Marketing today has a far more touchy feelly vibe to it than the days of traditional marketing, and for some this may feel frivolous, but I do firmly believe that community building, relationship building through the internet is the way to building solid business in the real world.
If you already have a company site, the addition of a blog is a simple and inexpensive step. Talk to your webmasters and they should be able to help you or talk to Out-Smarts.
If you don’t have a website, platforms like WordPress are simple and easy to set up and there are many free templates out there that can be customized without needing a degree in code. WordPress.com is a free system and their .org site is where you can set up a blog with your OWN URL and host.
If you need a writer for your blog, there are a lot of us out there!! And we are all so talented and ready to help.
About Kerry
Having discovered that children don’t give annual employee evaluations, Kerry jumped at the chance seven years ago to be a stay-at-home mom. She has found she can more than handle being called a stupid head by her two eldest and sweetly precocious children instead of being fired by her peers.
Kerry’s hold on sanity is her computer and the world of mommy bloggers. She can ignore the chaos created by three kids, three cats, a dog and patient husband and find the peace it takes to come up with her latest post at her personal site Crunchy Carpets . Apart from obsessive Tweeting and Facebooking, she can also be found haranguing people to post on her other site Wet Coast Women.
Blogging has brought her the opportunity to meet amazing people, speak on CBC Radio and be interviewed by the Globe and Mail on a few occasions.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 05th, 2010
As always there has been a lot going on in the social media arena in the past week. This is a summary of the major (and minor!) developments.
Facebook Questions
On July 28th Facebook announced that it was going to launch Facebook Questions. The tool is set to allow you to 
crowdsource the collective intelligence of the 500 million and growing Facebook user base to ask questions and get answers. Set to compete with tools like Ask, Yahoo Answers and Answerbag, you will be able to ask any question and hopefully get the right answer practically instantaneously. The functionality isn’t live yet and is only available to a small number of beta testers but to find out more you can read this Mashable post about the 5 Ways Facebook Questions can be improved.
Google Wave
Google waved bye bye to its Wave product which was launched late last year. At the time there was much clamoring to get on the communication and collaboration tool which was supposed to allow people to easily work together online. Unfortunately, Wave didn’t really catch on and today it is no more. In typical Google fashion though, it would appear that they are turning the failure to their advantage. On a positive note Google yesterday announced that business can now respond to reviews on Google Places. Not before time.
Twitter Fail
The Twitter fail whale was omnipresent for much of the afternoon which 
prompted diehards to take to Facebook to voice their complaints and comments and to vent to relieve their anxiety withdrawal. This leads me to conclude that the Reuters article in today’s Washington Post highlighting a study that found that social media is costing businesses in the UK billions in lost productivity, could in fact be true across the Twitter world! Twitter is back up much to the disapointment of businesses in North America who saw productivity peak in the last few hours.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, June 15th, 2010
Bookmarking sites are sites on the Internet that allow you to share and save your online discoveries making it easier for you to keep track of those gems you discover online and intend to revisit. Not only do bookmarking sites allow you to bookmark the sites you like but they also allow you to connect with others who have similar interested and to share sites with them too. They also have an added benefit in that, if you use them effectively they will increase your online exposure.
Most bookmarking sites allow you to download a widget to your br
owser allowing you to easily bookmark sites that you like and want to share. Each time you find a site you like you can click to add it and to organize with appropriate tags.
Some of the most popular bookmarking sites are Reddit, Delicious, Stumble Upon and Digg for a more comprehensive list go to Wikipedia. These are all social networking sites: online hubs where people connect, build community and communicate and interact online. Like other types of social networks they can be very effective in driving traffic to your website, building online connections and increasing your online exposure.
If you think bookmarking sites may be a good tool to consider using as part of your Internet marketing strategy, you should take time to take a look at the sites above to ascertain which is most appropriate given your target audience and content (by exploring tags or categories and the type of sites contained therein). As with any social media marketing activity, to be effective you need to add value, be consistent and to connect and build community with others.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 31st, 2010
There are social networks, professional networks, microblogs, video sites, events sites, blogs, photo sites… the list goes on and one thing is for certain, you can’t be on all of them.
It is best, in fact, to deploy social media marketing strategies that involve using only a select few of these tools in highly targeted ways.
How to decide which social media tools to use?
In order to ascertain which social media tools are best you need to know a few things – some good old market research is needed:
- Customer – if you don’t already know this then you should. Understand who it is you want to do business with and what it is that you do that solves a problem for them. Take some time to listen to what is being said about your company or industry in these forums. Doing so will help understand the online habit of your customers.
- Company – consider your organisation, its products or services and determine which media are most appropriate to showcase these. Consider too, the resources you have at hand (what are you and your staff great at?) and use these strengths to build your social media campaign.
- Convenience – where is the best place to reach your audience online? Which tools you use will depend on knowing this. For example, LinkedIn is great to reach business people, Flickr is a great place to showcase art, photography and design companies – you get the gist.
- Communication – always remember to be consistent with your messaging and branding. Your online brand and message should be consistent with your overall branding as well so as not to confuse. The goal here is to build community, so consider ways to communicate and interact online that will add value, encourage interaction and grow your following.
Take these four C’s into account and your social media marketing is more likely to hit the mark.
