Facebook Launches New Hashtags
You’ve seen people use hashtags on your Facebook newsfeed before, but did you know that they will now be functional? This week, Facebook introduced clickable hashtags to its site platform. These hashtags will function similarly to other social networks’ hashtags, including Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest or Instagram. According to Facebook’s Newsroom, the introduction of clickable hashtags on Facebook will allow users to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a...
Best Practices While Updating Your LinkedIn Business Page
Article Updated: Feb. 2015 Having a LinkedIn page for your business may seem like a superfluous social media gimmick but there are many reasons why having a page is essential for your business. There are over 3 million companies on LinkedIn in 148 different industries. Not only do they spread brand visibility, but they also build and sustain a community around your products and services. According to an article from Hootsuite, LinkedIn users are 8x more likely to engage with your brand, 3x...
Facebook Introduces Graph Search
Facebook is continuing to stay on top of innovations, recently rolling out a test of its new Graph Search capability. Graph search will be an excellent tool for many businesses that utilize Facebook, as it allows your company to analyze and act on new information about your customers that you previously did not have access to. First and foremost, you’ll want to turn on Facebook Graph Search – you can do so by signing up here: https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch Once you have...
Facebook Offers Gifting Opportunities
Facebook has been rolling out a lot of new updates recently, such as Graph Search. Facebook has also been eying your status updates for gifting opportunities. What does this mean? Facebook has already been offering the Give a Gift option for people’s birthdays, where you have the option of purchasing your friends a real life gift on their birthday – for example, if you are wishing a friend that has Liked Starbucks on Facebook a happy birthday, Facebook might suggest you purchase...
Optimizing Your Facebook Fan Pages
The optimization of Facebook fan pages has been a point of great debate on many SEO and social media blogs, as different experts argue the best ways to get your fan page noticed. Despite the conflicting ideas, there are some basic ways that you can optimize your Facebook fan pages SEO. Name Your Business Page First and foremost, you need to pick the best name for your Facebook fan page. Google puts the most importance or weight on the first word of your fan page title, so you want to make sure...
New Communities on Google+
A recent addition to the Google+ platform is Communities. This latest feature integrates with other features such as Google+ Hangouts to allow you to gather members in either public or private communities to hold discussions. Google’s official blog touts the new Google+ Communities as a great opportunity for its users to reconnect with loved ones during the holiday season. Google+ aims to make these new communities as accessible for sharing as communities in real life are, allowing...
Growing Your Email List with Twitter
Email marketing, when done correctly, can be beneficial to your business. Whether it is a monthly newsletter that you send out on a regular basis, or the occasional coupon, unless you have many people opting in to the email list, it will not be very beneficial. One way you can grow your email list is by turning to social media. Some easy ways you can use Twitter to help grow you email marketing lists include: Linking Your Twitter Bio to an Opt-In Page Most Twitter users realize they should...
Are You Properly Using Pinterest for your Business?
We’ve told you before that Pinterest can be a great marketing tool for your company. But are you using it properly? There are a few ways that you can use Pinterest in order to attract customers to your site and make conversions. Think About Your Ideal Client Think about what kind of visual content would attract them - would it be a photo of a beautiful beach for a timeshare company, or an infographic about the current job market for a job placement company? The photo attached to your pin...
Instagram Launches Web Profiles
We already know that Instagram was bought out months ago for a high price by the people at Facebook. Up until this week, Instagram remained a mobile-device based application. But now, Instagram is slowly rolling out web profiles to its users. These profiles look shockingly like the Timeline we are already familiar with on Facebook profiles. With a cover photo of rotating photos from the users Instagram feed, it is slightly different than the static cover photo offered on Facebook currently...
Online Social Media Security Tips
One of the biggest things people worry about is their online security. It can be scary – with the amount of personal information we are putting on the internet through social media sites, we often wonder who is able to access everything. Some people’s minds have been eased, as according to Mashable, Facebook recently announced that deleted photos will now also be removed from their servers previously, even after the photo had been deleted, they could be accessed by entering the...
How to Utilize Facebook Lists
Facebook lists aren’t new, but many people do not realize the many ways they can utilize them. Normally, if people utilize Facebook lists, they are using them to manage their privacy settings – making lists to decide who can see what items on your page. But now that Facebook has launched the subscribe feature, lists can be used for a variety of different social media marketing and social networking purposes to help separate out business, entertainment, and friends feeds from one...
How Can You Increase Your Engagement on Facebook?
So, you created a Facebook page, got some fans…now what? There are some simple tactics you can use to keep up your engagement on Facebook. By using calls to actions, you are able to create an incentive for fans to interact with you on Facebook. Tailor your status updates to ask your fans a question. Whether it be their opinion, a call for stories, or even for advice. The more comments a status update receives, the higher it will be placed in news feeds by Facebook’s EdgeRank...
How to Understand Your Social Media Audience
One of the most important parts of crafting a workable social media strategy is understanding your audience. Unless you are providing your social media followers with information that is useful and relevant for them, they will not be engaged with your social media accounts. So how can you better understand your social media audience? There are a couple questions you can ask yourself when considering your targets. You should focus on the details and demographics of your audience. Where do they...
Google Places Taken Over by Google Plus Local
Over recent months, Google has changed Google Places for Business into Google+ Local. These pages serve as a directory listing for your business that can place prominently in Google search results. They allow you to display photos, videos, reviews, and other essential facts about your business like your address, phone number, and hours. You can also utilize your Google+ Local page to offer your customers real time updates about your business as well as offers they can take advantage of. There...
Instagram Management Added to Hootsuite
Are you using Instagram to reach your customers? Instagram is one of the latest crazes in social sharing, allowing users to share photos with friends and family, adding filters to transform their look and feel, and share to other social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. It also allows its users to tag their photos, and search hashtags so those with similar interests can find you. If you are using Instagram, or are thinking of adding it to your dossier of social networks, HootSuite...
Getting Your Company Behind Your Social Media Strategy
One of the biggest roadblocks to utilizing social media for your company is the company itself. You have to make sure everyone supports the process, and understands why social media is so important. To have a successful social media campaign within your company, your employees have to understand not only what social media does, but why it is useful and how they can play a role in its success. Social media is a team process. It is important to realize that the entire staff has to buy into its...
Google + Expands to Include Business Pages
Just when you thought you were getting a handle on Social Media and managing your online reputation, Google has gone and changed the playing field again! Earlier this year Google decided to try again at creating a social network and launched Google+. They set this project up so you could sign in and then invite your friends and family to your circle in order to share with them things you like or found interesting. Unlike Facebook, Google+ was built from the ground up around the idea of being...
Twitter Follows Suit with New Functionality
With Facebook’s recent changes to its personal page design, Twitter couldn’t be left behind in updates. Therefore, Twitter recently implemented significant redesign changes, with new tabs for browsing, embeddable tweets, and even new brand or business pages. Twitter’s new Discover tab runs an algorithm which finds relevant tweets to your interests from people that you do not follow. Otherwise, the new tabs are basically features that have been available on Twitter before, but...
Is Tweeting the New Link Building?
Article Updated: Feb. 2015 A study conducted at MOZ is helping us understand how tweets influence search rankings. The study has shown that a bit.ly link tweeted by an influential user group has the ability to rank keywords quickly, without followed links and without anchor text. As time continues, the issue of social signals and how Google factors them in to its search results is beginning to take shape. While Google has been somewhat forthcoming on the key ingredients of search...
How To Edit Your Company Profile on LinkedIn
At the beginning of November, LinkedIn released some new features for their Company Profile section. LinkedIn now allows businesses to add services and products to their company profiles, solicit customer endorsements for company products and services, as well as the ability to "follow" companies. Follow Company There is now a "Follow Company" button displayed on the company profile page. Selecting to "follow" a company allows you to keep up to date on when employees of this company leave...