Most progressive and “cool” companies and brands have embraced social media. They created a Facebook page, a Twitter account and even have a YouTube channel.



If they are real marketing pioneers then they may even have learned how to spell Instagram and know that “pinning” is not just something done by the grannies at the weekly sewing club.

The “geniuses” even know that “Vine” is not just something that grows in the fields of France that leads to much glass clinking, bad jokes and wild dancing.

So the power of social media has been identified to assist and even supercharge creating online brand awareness through the leverage of  ”crowd marketing” that is facilitated by customers and fans sharing your content.

The smart cookies even know that unique fresh content that is popular and resides on your website can provide better search results. Key terms that people use to find your product or service may even appear on page one of Google if your content and search strategy is integrated and honed.

That is gold for any brand.

The challenges

But despite the opportunities there are many challenges.

Creating great content takes time and resources and many organisations have started the journey with enthusiasm but have given up in desperation. They drew up the plan but realised it was a Mount Everest. Blogs were designed and launched but are now desolate and haven’t seen a published post for months. Twitter accounts were started but the tweets are missing and followers are few.

This is due to many factors such as lack of inspiration, the sustained effort needed and the persistence required.

I know what discipline, skill and passion is needed. For the last four years I have painstakingly built this blog on the back of content and technology that has taken me to the teetering edge of keyboard throwing, mouse hurling and laptop launching.

But there are some solutions emerging to help in the battle of content creation and being visible amongst the universe of half a billion websites and blogs.

A solution

For the last 18 months I have been involved in a journey to find a solution to those challenges with a company called Shuttlerock.

It provides a powerful easy to use platform that helps you easily create content that keeps your website and blog fresh, relevant and engaging. It enables your customers, supporters, staff and fans to interact with your website.

Here is a video overview of the concept of how the Shuttlerock software works.

Introduction to Shuttlerock from Shuttlerock on Vimeo.

It is a solution that builds great content for your domain and not just Facebook.  It drives views and engagement to the platform you own.

How does it work?

Shuttlerock is a white label photo and content sharing platform embedded on your website. It allows you to generate, curate and publish photos and stories. It means that your website is no longer one dimensional; it’s now multi-dimensional using customers, staff and partners and their social channels to bring your site to life.



What are the key benefits?

The platform was born out of the frustration of creating content, watching Facebook nabbing all the good photos and not being able to create engagement and content curation at scale.

Here are the key benefits that highlight how it it will assist you with the marketing of your business on a social web that craves fresh unique content.

• More high quality engagement leading to more sales. This is created by the generation of ‘real’ content from ‘real’ people. This “is” content marketing.
• Better interaction with customers AND their friends: a social platform on “your” website. And more control of the customer relationship, content and conversations.
• Creates an on-going source of fresh content which you can share to your company’s social channels.
• Higher search engine rankings. Search engines require fresh content and they rate the social conversations that Shuttlerock encourages.
• Helps you build a valuable email list of your customers and their friends

The key features

The ShuttleRock “software as a service” platform has some powerful features to help you tap into the power of your fans (if you are a sports brand) and followers or customers that love creating content, whether that is a tweet, a photo or other media.

Here are the key features.

1. Content board

It takes minutes to create a content board and you decide whether it’s open to the public or staff only, whether it’s open to voting or not and where it appears on your page.



2. Easily add photos to your site

It’s simple, two-step uploading from a range of sources. No more messing around with cumbersome content management systems or resizing images.



3. Search engine optimisation

Photos are renamed using pre-determined key words to help with SEO.

4. Automatic onsite content creation

Automatic content generation including the hash tags from Twitter, Instagram and Flickr and geotagging.

5. Mobile apps

Content collection doesn’t have to wait to be sent from your computer but content collection can be from a smart phone including Android and Apple.



6. Content publishing control via moderation

Moderation is provided which allows you to accept or reject photos, edit comments or change which board the image appears in before publishing.



7. Prompted sharing

Each time someone shares a photo your brand is centre stage and each share encourages people back to your website.



8. Update multiple social networks at once

You no longer need to chase several channels. Shuttlerock lets you update multiple social networks at once. Create a schedule of posts to your company Facebook pages so something is posted every day even when you have the day off.

9. Demographics and statistics measurement

Demographic information and statistics are presented in an easy to view graph for quick analysis.

10. Integration with 3rd party platforms

Integration with 3rd party platforms including Facebook, Mailchimp and Instagram.

11. Easily create and run a competition

The Shuttlerock content boards create a reason for your customers to send a message to their friends about your business – and drive them to your website.



Some results

The Shuttlerock platform has been added to the marketing toolkits of companies in a range of industries including sports teams, retailers, travel & tourism, real estate and many more.

Some results.

• Progear photography generated 770 shares in the first month getting their brand in front of 77,000 of their customers’ friends.
• Black Cat Cruises created 850 photos in 6 months and lifted their user sessions and online sales by 50% year on year.
• The Queensland Reds football team generated 233 images from 7 content boards in their first 30 days.
• Jucy car rentals increased their Google rankings for ‘Christchurch rental car’ from the second page of Google at #13 to page one at position 3.

View the Original article

Most Americans now know the feeling of typing something into a social media input box, thinking again, and deciding against posting whatever it was. But while it certainly seemed like a widespread phenomenon, no one had actually quantified the extent of this "self-censorship."

But now, new research based on a sample of 3.9 million Facebook reveals precisely how widespread this activity is. Carnegie Mellon PhD student Sauvik Das and Facebook's Adam Kramer measured how many people typed more than five characters into Facebook content-input boxes, but then did not post them.

They term this "last-minute self-censorship." The research was posted to Das' website and will presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's conference on Weblogs and Social Media in July.

The numbers are impressively large. Fully one-third of all Facebook posts were self-censored, according to the method Das and Kramer devised, though they warn they probably captured a substantial number of false positives. Seventy one percent of all the users surveyed engaged in some self-censorship either on new posts or in comments, and the median self-censorer did so multiple times.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the study was the demographic correlations with self-censorship. Men self-censored more often, particularly if they had large numbers of male friends. Interestingly, people with more diverse friend groups — measured by age, political affiliation, and gender — were less likely to self-censor.

While the researchers declined to speculate in this study about why people may or may not have self-censored, earlier research with a small group of users found five reasons people chose not share what they'd written: aversion to sparking an argument or other discussion, concern their post would offend or hurt someone, felt their post was boring or repetitive, decided the content undermined their desired self-presentation or were just unable to post due to a technological or other constraint.

For Facebook users, the main takeaway here is probably: Feel free not to share. Facebook, on the other hand, has to have a more complex relationship to this research. Their interaction and business models depend on sharing, but it's not hard to imagine some circumstances in which it would be better not to share: racist content, say.

Das and Kramer say future research should address when the non-sharing is "adaptive," (which I think means good, in this context) and when, in the words of Das and Kramer, "users and their audience could fail to achieve potential social value from not sharing certain content, and the [social-network service] loses value from the lack of content generation."
Image via Manjunath Kiran/AFP/GettyImages










































View the Original article

Whether your company is just starting to dabble in social media or has a strong strategy it has been implementing for a while, you may want to know how other companies are navigating the social Web.

If you've ever wondered how many people companies hire to manage social media, how they measure success or whether you're the only ones getting help from interns, we have the answers you've been looking for.

We asked 2,714 communicators how their companies use social media in our Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey, and Go-Gulf.com highlighted some of the findings in an infographic.

Here's a peek at what we found:

• Forty-two percent of companies have only one person who works on social media. Forty percent have two or three.

• Twenty-five percent of companies have interns help with social media.

• Only 5 percent of companies are highly satisfied with their social media campaigns.

• Almost 90 percent (86 percent) of companies measure social media in terms of likes and followers.

• The biggest obstacles to measuring social media are a lack of time (65 percent) and manpower (63 percent).

For more, check out the graphic below or download a free copy of the white paper.



View the Original article

The younger generation would rather watch a 2 minute video than read a page of text.

How do I know that?…because I asked them.

Last week I was standing in front of thirty young adults aged from 18 to 25 at the International College of Management and I posed the question.

“Would you rather read a blog article or watch a 2 minute video?”

Twenty five of the thirty put up their hand and said  ”video!”

This maybe not the scientific method preferred by mathematicians with PhD’s and avid students of statistics, but it’s fast and efficient and measures the beat of the street.

That crowd is not getting any younger and in fact they are becoming your mainstream audience as they move into management and create startups. You need to create content that communicates to that crowd.

This is a challenge for marketers and bloggers.

Sensory overload

Readers and younger viewers demand more titillation and excitement. Videos that entertain and content that contains more visual eye candy in high definition. Have you noticed that a 42 inch big screen TV is now no longer big enough. A 3.5 inch smart phone is sometimes seen as too small. We are heading into a mobile gadget world and now 5 inches is fashionable and demanded.

Sensory overload is a journey of diminishing returns, but you have to play the game. It is now essential to think color, visual and multi-media.

Monochrome and mono media is not enough anymore.

The game is multi-channel and multi-media.

What other media content should be on the menu?

Images, photos and infographics are some of the other key elements to content curation and creation that grabs attention and asks the question.

Is this interesting enough to share on my Facebook page or Twitter account?

Infographics are a media that attracts attention and flows across a social web. They started to gain more prominence about 2 years ago and have maintained an interest that sees them used in marketing campaigns and used to create blog attention.

What are the seven key steps to create an awesome infographic?

It starts with selecting a topic or an event that that you think people will want to learn or know more about.

Learn about the others below.


Infographic source: Graphs.net







































View the Original article

Brands that want to succeed on social media know the number of followers they have isn't as important as how engaged those followers are.

But engaging followers is no easy task.


You have to know what kind of content your customers like, and when they use various social media sites.

To help you out, an infographic from Fusework Studios offers a few general guidelines on how to get more engagement on Twitter.

For example, tweets sent on the weekend get 17 percent more engagement than tweets sent during the week. Wednesday and Thursday are the days with the lowest engagement rates.

Also, tweets with less than 100 characters see 17 percent more engagement than longer tweets.

Are you looking for more retweets? Just ask your followers. A tweet's retweet rate increases 12 times when you ask followers for a retweet. Only 1 percent of brands actually do this.

Check out the infographic for more:



 

Tweets are like the subject lines of your emails. A good email subject line is usually less than 100 characters. Use the same thought process when sending a Tweet, and in no time, you'll get over your fear of Tweeting.


Keep your business Tweeting professional so you project a professional image. You want to make your business Tweets interesting and compelling so people will want to follow you and click on the links you add to your Tweets, but you don't want to offend people with unprofessional behavior.

If you're still stuck, here are some ideas to help you create Tweets that your followers will enjoy.

This is the easiest and most obvious thing to do. You can find people to follow using the # Discover tab in your Twitter account where you can find Twitter users in any category under the Browse Categories tab.

You can start by ReTweeting and adding your comments to the Tweet. When you ReTweet a business leader's Tweet, people subconsciously associate you with the person, adding to your credibility. If you continually ReTweet another expert's Tweets and add value, often that person will reach out to you and start ReTweeting your Tweets.

Tweet breaking news. 

Twitter is the first place you find breaking news from around the world, whether it's related to politics, business, sports, or natural disasters. You can follow popular media outlets like @cnnbreak, @nytimes, or others, and ReTweet breaking events, or create new Tweets with links to their news items. You will be helping tell your Twitterverse about breaking news and people will know you're someone who keeps up with current events. You can also Tweet about breaking news in your industry, which will add to your credibility. Don't forget to add hashtags to your Tweets so people on Twitter who are not following you but monitoring hashtags will see your Tweets.

Be a curator. 

We all read articles about our industry and profession on the internet. As you come across interesting or controversial news stories related to your business or industry, Tweet a link to that article. In the Tweet, tell your followers what you liked or disliked about the article. Adding your perspective adds value for your followers.

You don't have to Tweet only articles you agree with. When you disagree with an article, let your followers know so they see where you stand on the subject. Disagreeing in your Tweet can lead to stimulating Twitter conversations with your followers, and the conversation will often expand outside your Twitterverse, expanding your following.

Help requests. 

One of the most popular uses of Twitter is to reach out for support. Every day people Tweet to find solutions to their problems. You can monitor popular hashtags or keywords related to your products or your industry and help people when they have questions. When you reply to their Tweets to help them, people will see you're an expert in that area. You can send links to webpages that can solve their problem or make suggestions in your Tweets.

You can also ask other Twitter users for help when you have a problem. You can Tweet something like, "Is anyone else having a problem with #Firefox crashing since the last update?" Notice how you can turn "Firefox" into a hashtag so nonfollowers will see the question and be able to reach out.

Evaluations, reviews, and opinions of products or services. 

When you're thinking about purchasing a product or service, you can use Twitter Search to see what others are saying about the product or service. You can join in the conversations by replying to their review of the product or ask them questions. When you purchase products or services, you can share your opinion with others on Twitter. Include a relevant hashtag so more Twitter users will see your review.

Promote your company. 

You can Tweet links about your company. Some of the most popular topics people Tweet about are:

• A new blog post
• Client acquisitions
• Press releases
• Jobs available
• Awards/recognition
• Events you're hosting and/or attending
• Discussions you're hosting on LinkedIn
• Special offers, sales, or discounts

By now, if social media isn't a critical element in your online marketing strategy, it should be. Having a presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can add value to your product, to customer service and ultimately to your brand.

But simply having an account and broadcasting company news isn't enough. To attract and keep customers -- and to build a strong brand online -- business owners need to be active on social media. They have to provide valuable information and engage with their followers.


Here are four things businesses should be doing on social media in order to grow the brand online:

1. Engage with followers and provide customer service.

Your customers are engaging with your brand wherever they are -- including over social media. Don't miss this opportunity to listen to what they're saying to and about you, and to provide the best customer service.

Why is this so important? Responding to customer questions and resolving issues over social media shows everyone who's following you -- and potentially anyone who is online -- that your company cares about its customers, potential customers and goes the extra mile for people.

Tools like Hootsuite and Tweedeck can be handy for monitoring mentions of your brand over social media. As for when and who you respond to, set the tone early. If you reply often, people will expect it. If you don't reply a lot, people will see that as well and might stop engaging with you as often.

2. Crowdsource ideas.
 
Use social media as a marketing research tool. Just as people can reach out to you, follow you and stay connected with you, business owners can do the same with their customers. Social media is a two-way street.

Say, for instance, you're getting ready to launch a new product. You can ask your fans and followers what they think about specific details like which colors they prefer or what types of features they want. Not only can you get real, valuable market research at no cost, you're involving the consumer in decisions. Asking customers for their opinions can help show that they matter, and when they see their ideas become a reality, ideally you create brand and product champions.

3. Keep an eye on the competition.

Remember the old saying: Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.

When it comes to business, it's good to know what your competitors and other companies in your market niche are doing. By keeping an eye on their social media feeds, you can learn a lot about a company -- what it is doing differently, what it's good at and what it's bad it. Use this information to implement things in your strategy that you might be missing such as contests, giveaways or forms of content that their followers respond to most.

4. Establish yourself as an industry expert.

Nobody can know what you know unless you share your knowledge. By sharing information like tips, advice and answering questions about your industry, you can position yourself as a valuable resource.

Develop a content-sharing strategy where you respond to questions daily, provide unsolicited tips and share your perspective on industry news. Over sites like Twitter and reddit, also consider scheduling events such as question and answer sessions. Let your followers know that you'll be hosting the session, set the date and time, and determine the theme or topic you'd like to discuss. Then let your followers know that you'll try to answer everything they ask.











































View the Original article

Twitter was never meant to be a social network. In fact Twitter started life as an internal messaging service for a podcasting company just over seven years ago.



But how things have changed.

On the social web we live on a diet of fast change and rapid media evolution. Twitter’s slow burning maturation often flies below the radar and Facebook changes such as the new timeline and graph search attract numerous blog articles, comments on Facebook and mass media attention.

Twitter has become a multi-media social network without anyone really noticing.

Are you just tweeting text?

Many of us are just using it for tweeting text and links and forget that you can increase engagement by including video, images and even Slideshare presentations that can be viewed within the Twitter platform. Twitter is hoping that we will use the network to share multi-media in new ways.They are even punting on changing the world of video marketing and communication by integrating their new 6 second video service called Vine into the Twitter ecosystem.

Twitter’s aim is to make video an acceptable marketing medium that is short, snappy and sharp, that cuts through the clutter just like they have done with the humble 140 character text.

Effective marketing is multi-channel and multi-media

The question is often asked “what social network should you be using?“. The answer is, “As many as you can manage and that time and resources allow where your target audience is hanging out”

Multi-channel marketing should be your goal.

Coca Cola knows this well and Wendy Clark the  senior VP-integrated marketing communications and capabilities at Coca Cola had this to say about effective marketing strategies in a digital world.

“None of our plans are simply social, or TV, or mobile or experiential. On the contrary, it’s the combination of owned, earned, shared and paid media connections“.

She went on to say

“No single medium is as strong as the combination of media”

To highlight this point she mentioned that for their Olympic campaign in 2012, Coca Cola used 60 different types of media!

In other words multi-channel  and multi-media combined are vital to create marketing synergies that have the potential to become viral.

Did you know this about Twitter?

Twitter has released some internal research that shows how multi-media rich its platform has become and also its increasing role as an effective buzz and engagement tool that can used by journalists, news organisations and  users to increase their Twitter followers and retweets.

#1. Tweeting more gets you more followers

For journalists who post a concentrated number of Tweets in a short time span, follower growth is 50% more than expected.

 

#2. You can send tweets with a text message

Twitter was born with mobile in its DNA and that is obvious from its 140 character limit that was designed around the texting constraints of  mobile SMS. When Twitter became embedded within Apple’s mobile operating system it reached a tipping point that has continued to cement its place as the the web’s go to channel for breaking news and quick bytes of information.

Twitter can be set up to integrate with your texting.



Not only can you send tweets with a text message but you can receive text messages when someone new follows you, your tweet is retweeted and even when your tweet is marked as a favourite.

Below is the screen you see when setting up your mobile for texts and Twitter. To make sure that you aren’t receiving texts all the time from someone new following you or retweets it may be best to turn most of these off.



#3. Tweets with media receive on average 3 to 4 times more engagement

Twitter started as mono-media but has evolved into a multi-media social network. Media can include videos, photos and even Slideshare that can be viewed within Twitter. Tweets with multi-media receive 300-400% more engagement than tweets without media included.



#4. Using more @mentions increases your follower growth faster

Twitter research of its Twitter stream shows news organizations that tweet 20% fewer URLs and 100% more @mentions grow followers 17% more than expected.



#5. Hashtags can increase engagement by almost 100%

According to research from Twitter, journalists using hashtags increased engagement by 100% and the increase was 50%  for news organizations.



#6. Retweeting more gets you more followers

Sharing more but letting them know via a retweet can get you more followers.

So use the retweet button.

Twitter found that journalists with above expected follower growth send 200% more retweets (3X) compared to journalists with below expected follower growth.









































View the Original article

Call it an epiphany: Social is officially mobile.

Several weeks ago, I was looking at the user data for one of the brands that I manage and one statistic stuck out more than others. Nearly 60 percent of the people who interact with that brand do so via smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. I started checking other brands, and the numbers were all similar.


The majority of people interacting with our content were doing so from a mobile device.

Nielsen’s State of the Media: Social Media Report confirms that our brands aren't alone.

In 2012, the time spent accessing Facebook via mobile increased 85 percent, Twitter 140 percent, LinkedIn 114 percent, and Pinterest 4,225 percent. That’s a staggering increase. Forty-six percent of social media users say they use their smartphone to access social media; 16 percent say they connect to social media using a tablet.

Here are a five easy tips to help you optimize your social media content for mobile readers:

1. Be much more thoughtful about when you’re posting.

The average Facebook post gets 50 percent of its reach and engagement in the first 30 minutes of being posted, according to Socialbakers. It’s all downhill from there.

Start asking yourself: Where is my audience going to be in the hour or so after we post this? Is there an opportunity to capture them where they are at that moment and inspire action or tap into an emotion that you know a large number of your fans are experiencing at that time?

Don’t limit it to experimenting with when you post, either. If you have an assumption about where your audience is consuming your content (specifically, where they are on Earth), you can create some calls to action and inspire them to engage that way.

For instance, Instagram, where the mobile engagement is close to 100 percent, is great for this: “Show us what you’re doing now and how our product fits into that.”

2. Add value to the mobile experience -- which differs from adding value to the desktop or laptop experience.

The greater the distance you make your fans travel in mobile, the worse the experience becomes. No one wants to hop from one app to another—to another—to download your app that, let’s be honest, isn’t all that cool in the first place. On a desktop or laptop, people are more forgiving when it comes to bouncing around the Web. You have to be more respectful of the mobile experience.

Similarly, if you’re in the Facebook or Pinterest app and you click on a brand’s link, it’s going to send you to a website. Unless you’ve checked that link in social, you’re not 100 percent sure where you’re sending them. It might look great on your laptop, but on mobile it could look like a Geocities site and do your brand a huge disservice.

Keep your posts simple and undeniably specific to your brand.

3. Design for mobile first.

Keep your font sizes legible on your graphics. If you’re tapping through to a photo, you don’t want to have to zoom in on something just to read it. If you’re taking the time to design an asset, make sure you’re taking the time to design it so that mobile users can read it.

The default has been to design social assets for the desktop or laptop experience and back into mobile. Reverse that. Design for mobile, and it will back into the desktop experience.

4. Test different mobile platforms to understand the differences.

If you post a photo album on Facebook, you can’t click on the links that you've put in the captions of the individual photos if you’re using an iPhone or Android phone. However, those links work when you’re using most tablets. That’s good to know if you want to drive traffic in mobile.

Of course, that’s just one of the many quirks and intricacies when it comes to presenting social content in mobile. Understanding the user experience across devices is important in making sure your posts are accomplishing their desired outcomes.

5. Check your analytics.

Every brand is different, and every audience is different. Before you completely shift the way you’ve been creating and posting content, take the time to dig deep into your metrics and understand where your engagement is coming from. Certain demographics will use mobile more than others.

For the brand I mentioned earlier, males 18-34 had the highest instance of engaging with our content through mobile (nearly 75 percent). We were able to make some assumptions based on that and test some content around those assumptions.

Test, measure, analyze, optimize, rinse, repeat.

















This story originally appeared on PR Daily

Mistakes are a good thing if you learn from them and they don’t kill you.



Well, that is the common wisdom.

The reality is that mistakes can cost you your job, your relationship and significant dollops of money.

All of these are painful.

Social media provides a public platform that make stuff ups visible at velocity. Humiliation on a global scale is the downside of the social web.

Tweet some stupidity and you have the potential for a viral campaign of the very wrong kind that provides a new category of embarrassment.

Embarrassment at speed.

Public relations agencies have made a lot of money from advising companies on how to be ready or recover from a social media disaster.

So not engaging your brain before you post to Facebook or tweet on Twitter is a mistake that should be avoided at all costs when participating on social media networks.

So what should you do?

There are are some basic principles to keep in mind when you next punch out 140 characters to 200 million people.

• Think before tweeting
• Summon your commonsense
• Don’t drink and tweet
• Don’t tweet when angry
• Implement social media policies or guidelines

There maybe more but these will enable Twitter harm minimization that will help you retain your job, your business and your sanity.

What shouldn’t you do?

Here are 14 Twitter mistakes to be avoided to ensure that the boss values you on Monday morning, your wife still loves you on Friday evening and your career path is not hijacked by an insane moment.


Infographic source: Boot Camp Digital 











































View the Original article

The question that seems to be on everyone’s lips on the social media marketing team is “How can I increase the number of Facebook likes?”



This has led to tactics emerging to increase engagement by posting frenzied Facebook updates many times a day. Brand pages are offering incentives, bribes and tactics that look very much like begging.

Just to gain those precious additional likes.

The magic marketing goals often heard around the water cooler are 1,000, 10,000 or even 100,000 Facebook fans. Always numbers with many zeros.

It all has become a bit unseemly really.

Despite large fan counts being the social media managers holy grail, the core challenge on Facebook is that it is filtered. It is lucky if even 15% of updates such as photos, quotes and videos even appear in people’s Facebook timelines.

This filter on Facebook is due to censoring being applied by the social network called “Edge Rank”.
So the question that needs to be asked is this “Is a Facebook like worth what we think it is?”

The Twitter advantage

Twitter might seem a bit more wild west. But its advantage is that is not filtered. Every tweet appears in your followers streams.

This is something that the marketing team quite often forgets.

What is not appreciated by many is that it is easier to build a loyal tribe of fans on Twitter who are interested in your content and subject than it is on Facebook.

Maybe you should rethink your social media strategy?

Top tactics to gain more Twitter followers

So how do you get more Twitter followers?

• Follow people on Twitter. The law of reciprocation is what works with this tactic
• Have great content that links from your Twitter account. People will check you out and if your content is good on your blog or website then it is more likely you will be followed
• Engage with your followers on Twitter with retweets, comments and questions
• Make it easy for people to follow you on Twitter from your website by including a follow me on Twitter button that is obvious and near the top of your page

40 ways to increase your Twitter tribe

So you are still short of ideas? Here is an infographic to get you started.



Infographic Source: Twiends














































View the Original article

The goal of most Twitter contests is to increase the number of targeted followers. Targeted followers help spread the word about your products and services for free. When a third party spreads positive comments about your products or services, it gives your company credibility and helps sell your products.


You also want to collect contestants' contact information so you can nurture new leads and eventually turn them into customers. You collect their contact information by enticing them to fill out a web form on your website or blog.

There are several ways to attract targeted followers during your Twitter campaign:

1. Have a clear goal for your contest. 

What are you trying to achieve with your Twitter contest? Are you trying to generate new leads? Are you generating traffic for a new website or blog? Are you announcing a new product and want to generate a buzz? You need to have a clear goal and outcome for your Twitter contest or you'll be disappointed with your results. The clearer your goal is, the better your results will be.

2. Choose prizes carefully. 

This is where people make some of their biggest mistakes when they conduct a contest. Your prize should match the goal for your contest. If you're trying to generate more targeted followers, offering a large cash prize isn't the right prize. Offering a $1,000 prize will attract a lot of new followers, but they may not be targeted. In fact, many of your new followers will be participating in the contest just to win the $1,000, not to support your company.

If you're trying to attract landscape artists as followers, for instance, you could offer an autographed book of landscape pictures or artist accessories as your prize. This would be a more effective way to attract targeted followers than offering a large cash prize.

When you create a plan for your Twitter contest, it needs to do two things:

• Encourage people in your niche to participate 
• Discourage people who aren't in your niche from participating

Until now, Pinterest, the world's third-largest social network, has been lacking one big thing: analytics. Users could rack up followers and repins of their content, but there was no way for business owners to find out what had been pinned from their sites, or, in the other direction, how many people were coming to their sites from Pinterest.

But today the company announced that it has introduced an analytics dashboard to help website owners -- whether they're running a small business or a big brand -- gauge the popularity of their content.


The analytics will show how many people have pinned content from your site and how many users have seen those pins. It will also track visitor traffic from Pinterest, and you'll be able to see recent pins and your most repinned content of all time, so that you can get a sense both of what is currently trending and of what is most popular overall.

"We think that these tools will help website owners understand what's working for them and what’s not so that they can create even better pins in the future," writes Tao Tao, a Pinterest software engineer, in a company blog post.

To start using the analytics yourself, first get your website verified by Pinterest and then simply access the Analytics tab on the top-right menu. You can even download your analytics to study offline.

News of the analytics dashboard comes only weeks after Pinterest closed a $200 million funding round that valued the social bookmarking site at $2.5 billion. With Pinterest experiencing explosive growth, brands are taking a greater interest in it than ever before.

As of February 1st, 69 of the world's top 100 brands, as measured by consulting firm Interbrand, had Pinterest accounts. Large retailers are especially eager to capitalize on Pinterest's majority-female user base. Pinterest shoppers spend $169 on average per session, according to RichRelevance, an ecommerce consultancy. Nordstrom, one of the most popular brands, has nearly 4.3 million Pinterest followers, and L.L.Bean has 5.7 million.



































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For many business owners, Twitter is a valuable tool for networking, marketing and keeping on top of industry news. But the popular social network can easily become a disorganized mass of unwanted information and spammy followers.

If you want to get the most out of Twitter, consider scheduling a thorough "cleaning" of your account. All you need is about half an hour and a few online tools to turn down the noise and turn up the value.

Here are three steps for streamlining and cleaning up your company's Twitter account:

1. Unfollow low-quality accounts.

If you've actively been using Twitter for a while, you might be following a significant number of accounts that don't add anything to the conversation. These include spammers, abandoned accounts and people who don't follow back. The good news is there are several online tools that can help you identify and remove these accounts from your lists.

If your ultimate goal is interaction, stop following people who haven't followed you back. FriendorFollow is a popular service that makes it easy to see and disconnect from any non-followers. The tool can also help you locate accounts you haven't followed back. FriendorFollow is free if you don't mind unfollowing accounts one by one. If you want to unfollow in bulk, you'll need to upgrade for $9.99 a month.

To remove unactive members from your follow list, UnTweeps is a simple, free program that helps you unfollow any accounts that haven't posted in the last 30 days.

For deeper insight into the people you follow, try using TwitCleaner. This service groups unwelcome accounts based on "potentially dodgy" behavior such as accounts that post nothing but links, accounts that post only from an RSS feed and people who rarely follow back or interact with others.

2. Follow new people.

Breathe new life into your account by finding new people to follow on a regular basis. This can help you network within your business or locate new customers. Look for people who post regularly and have a large number of followers. These "influencers" are likely to introduce you to their circle of friends if you retweet and reply.

To identify influencers, start with the "Who to Follow" box in your home page sidebar. From there, check Klout, a popular online service that ranks people based on their overall social media influence. Also try WeFollow, the Twitter directory that ranks accounts by category.

3. Give your profile a fresh look.

Since Twitter updated its profile page design, you can change the background, the header and your profile picture, as well as your bio. Enhance your branding by creating your own exclusive background. Choose a color that compliments your logo then go easy on the additional graphics.

The place to get creative is in the header. You can post a montage of photos that tell your company's story or feature holiday or seasonal products throughout the year. Your header should say something about your personality.

Also, take a look at the recent photos in the sidebar. Your account should look lively and up-to-date, so regularly delete old photos or add new ones to push them off the front page.












































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Twitter is a great tool to build your brand and spread the word about your business. Here are six tips for building your brand on Twitter.


1. Use your brand name as your Twitter name. 

This seems obvious, but I see many companies not using their brand name as their Twitter name. They use a cute Twitter name that isn't related to their brand name.

2. Use your logo as your Twitter picture. 

Again, this sounds very obvious, but some companies don't use their logo for some reason.

3. Send Tweets that provide useful information to customers and prospects.

Always add a link to more information on your website. It should be a page on your website that adds value to the Tweet but doesn't require them to fill out a web form to view the information. This complements your lead-generation Tweets. You don't want to make people fill out a web form every time or they may get frustrated.

4. Send Tweets to new blog posts or videos. 

You can also send Tweets to older blog posts and videos that are still relevant.

5. You should Tweet 10 to 20 times a day to keep your brand name in the Twitter stream. 

You can schedule the Tweets that have links to valuable content and complement that with five to 10 personalized Tweets where you are interacting with other Twitter users.

6. Create a persona for your Twitter presence so people will get to know your brand.

Investopedia defines brand personality as "A set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name." A brand personality is something to which the consumer can relate, and an effective brand will increase its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits. This is the added value that a brand gains, aside from its functional benefits. There are five main types of brand personalities: excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence, and sophistication.

• Excitement. It's easy to spot a person who's excited on Twitter.These people love life, and they love everything they do. They also love to share their excitement with the Twitterverse, and it's fun to follow these people. Their Tweets will almost always uplift you.
• Sincerity. We all know the sincere people in our lives. They really care about you and your well-being. They Tweet the same way by always being genuine, caring, and sincere when they converse with others on Twitter.
• Ruggedness. These are the tough guys who never shed a tear. Their Tweets sound like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood confronting their adversaries and never backing down. You'll never see a hint of compassion or sympathy from rugged Tweeters.
• Competence. This is a well-educated, knowledgeable person who loves to Tweet information that will impress others. They love to share their knowledge and use big words in their Tweets, which can be challenging with the 140-character limit.
• Sophistication. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are sophisticated Tweeters. They love to Tweet pictures of their shopping trips and expensive cars, and let you know they're eating in the finest restaurants.

Facebook unveiled today a radical new look for the news feed, but it wasn't the only social network getting major buzz following the design announcement.

Minutes after Facebook debuted the overhaul, boasting multiple feeds, mobile consistency and a bigger focus on pictures, people took to Twitter to discuss the similarities between the update and the existing look of competitor Google+, which was trending on Twitter in the U.S. for a good portion of Mark Zuckerberg's presentation.

Facebook's announcement comes just one day after Google+ launched new features of its own, including a "Local" reviews tab and larger cover photos.

As a part of an effort to de-clutter news feeds, Facebook introduced on Thursday more white space to make reading easier on the eyes. This shift is indeed reflective of Google+'s signature look. Both platforms now have a lot more space in the center of the page.



Looking at the designs side by side, the similarities are obvious. For example, Facebook's new look takes updates from friends — also called Stories — from small thumbnails to beautiful, blown-up displays, just like Google+'s approach to highlighting updates. Previews of articles shared from friends will also take up more real estate in the redesigned news feed. (Google+ does this too.)

In addition, Facebook will be removing its cluttered left side bar and replacing it with a cleaner, sleeker black bar with visual icons for bookmarks, such as messages and chat. This resembles Google+'s existing grey-scale side bar, also with stacked icons. If you take a look at Facebook's sidebar now, which features smaller icons and more text, this is a huge change toward saving space and streamlining the design. It's also similar to Facebook's iPhone app.



But Facebook has taken its design to another level by adding multiple news feeds that allow you to go beyond just scratching the surface of what's happening on the site. Thanks to feeds that highlight photos, music news (what friends are listening to and what concerts they're attending) and a section just for celebrities and organizations you subscribe to, the move gives you more control over the stories you.

Although a Google+ spokesperson declined to comment to Mashable's Chris Taylor on the comparisons, he didn't deny social networks in general are seeing the same kinds of needs for cleanliness from users.

Do you think the redesign looks like Google+? Take the poll below and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Does the new Facebook news feed look like Google+?

Images are Mashable Composites

Facebook News Feed Event

Mark Zuckerberg



Old news feed



Sharing stats



New news feed



New way to view shares




New profile photos



New Pinterest display



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The look and feel of Facebook's News Feed is getting a major overhaul. The social networking giant said the new design will emphasize content from your friends and the brands you've liked with larger and more vibrant photos, articles, videos, events and maps.

Additional updates include a left-hand navigation menu and new feeds. The feeds will allow users to view specific types of content that is most important to them. These include feeds from all friends, music, photos, games and specific lists of people or brands a user follows.


The new look will be consistent across Facebook whether you access it through a mobile device or the web. The redesign is only visual, Facebook said, meaning the algorithm that determines the content that people see and when they see it will not be changed.

As a business owner, these News Feed changes represent an opportunity to more visually represent your brand on Facebook. Here is how you can take advantage of the new News Feed look:

1. Be more visual.

Facebook users tend to respond better to visual content in the News Feed. You can now increase engagement with your brand by posting more visually appealing content that will be larger and more vibrant.

2. Make sure your ads are in News Feeds.

If you're advertising on Facebook, ensure your ads are getting into the News Feed. They too will be more rich, vibrant and engaging.

3. Get discovered. 

Another new feature is the "Following" feed, which collects and displays all content from friends you're connected to and brands you've liked in chronological order. This means that your fans now have a place where they can see all of the content you publish.

4. Have an eye-catching cover photo. 

Whenever you add a new friend or like a new restaurant, for example, you'll see the cover photo for that person or that business's page appear in the News Feed. According to Facebook, this change is designed to provide more context about your Page, so make sure the photo is eye-catching and visually representative of your Page.























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Even with the huge emphasis placed on permission marketing lately, so many marketers still fail to understand that consumers don’t like to be yelled at.

The paradigm of interruption marketing went out the window long ago and, if you’re not careful, you’ll be going out the window with it.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling cars, advertising a laundromat, or trying to bring readers to your blog — if your social media strategy is to push, push, yell, and push, you’re not going anywhere.

There are five unfortunately popular examples below describing the annoying pushing and yelling that still plagues social media. Are you using any of these tactics?

#1. Automated Direct Messages on Twitter

When someone follows you on Twitter, there isn’t an implicit agreement saying it’s okay to send them a direct message. Twitter isn’t an email list, it’s a conversation. It’s a conversation centered around the concept of giving before receiving. So, that automated DM requesting a LIKE on your Facebook page when you’ve done literally nothing valuable for that new follower is a bit greedy to say the least.

Sending an automated DM to every new person who follows you is bad Twitter etiquette and it’s plainly hypocritical when your Twitter bio brags about how your mantra for social media success is “engagement.”

There’s nothing genuinely engaging about an automated DM you send to every new follower. Don’t kid yourself: It’s beyond easy to spot them too — automated DMs read like an advertisement, have generic messages, and usually aren’t personalized. People catch on with ease. That’s no way to start a relationship with a new follower.

#2. Sending Posts Directly to People on Google+

I’m not sure why every feature on a new social network needs to be abused. As they say, “marketers ruin everything.” That’s a pretty dismal notion, but as a fellow marketer, I have to say we need to be very careful how we use the tools placed in front of us.

Simply because we have an opportunity to push our message to a wider audience doesn’t necessarily mean we always should.

Since Google+ has been growing in popularity, I’ve seen an increase in the number of people using the feature that allows you to share posts directly with people — this sends both a Google+ notification and an email to the receiver.

It’s not a big problem to use this feature occasionally, especially if you’re very selective with who you’re sending the post, but it has the potential to quickly spiral out of control. If you just had a major breakthrough and got published on Forbes or another big name blog, that’s awesome and you should let people know. On the flip side, you don’t need to directly notify people about every new post you publish. This will quickly get your account flagged as spam from a lot of people.

#3. Inviting Everyone and Their Mothers to Contribute to Your Pinterest Group Board

I haven’t seen too many complaints about this yet, but it’s a growing problem. I’ve been getting a lot of invites on Pinterest from random people asking me to contribute to their group Pinterest boards and let me say this:

No, I don’t really want to pin on your Pinterest board. I’ve never met you or had any interaction with you anywhere in the social media sphere.

Group Pinterest boards were definitely meant for collaboration, there’s no doubt about that. However, I doubt the creators of Pinterest envisioned users spamming invites to people who have shared no interactions in the past. If you have relationships with a group of people, collaborating on a group Pinterest board can be a great social media tactic.

The key is the relationship should already exist. If you want to collaborate on a Pinterest board with someone, at least introduce yourself first via a tweet, blog comment, or some other means. Yes, it slows down the process and spamming is easier, but you’re likely to get more people to collaborate if you don’t spam and you’re just being annoying otherwise.

#4. Using Hashtags on Facebook

This isn’t so much an issue of permission-based marketing as it is simply looking like you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you’re a social media marketer at any level and you’re using hashtags on Facebook, there’s a big problem. Of course, most people who do this will say they have their Twitter and Facebook accounts linked.

While I’m not a big fan of connecting accounts, I realize it have benefits in some cases. However, you should be very careful when cross-posting on multiple networks, because using hashtags on Facebook is a shot to your credibility as a social media marketer.

Apart from that, it’s annoying! Hashtags have absolutely no functional value on Facebook as they do on Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest and it really does irk some people when they see hashtags on Facebook. Perception is reality in marketing, so it’s in your best interests to protect your perception.

#5 Sending Mass Google+ Community Invites

This one is unfortunate, because I like to join new Google+ Communities and test the waters. I don’t mind being invited to Communities in principle. What’s annoying is being invited to Communities about pottery, parasailing, breeding rabbits, or climbing trees while holding a baseball bat between your teeth. Okay, those last two didn’t actually happen, but you get the point.

I decided to turn off community invites entirely about two weeks ago, because it just got out of control.

If you insist on inviting people to your Google+ Community, please take the time to target your invites to people who show at least some slight interest in the topic of your Community. For one, it’s simply good manners. For two, it keeps your account from getting marked as spam and subsequently suspended or banned.

What We Need Here is a Little Empathy

I understand we’re all trying to get our messages out there. We want people to see what we’re doing and we want them to love us. That’s a basic human desire and it can definitely be hard to tame.

Let’s pause for a second, though. As humans, we have the ability to step outside our own minds to a degree. We’re able to place ourselves in the shoes of others and feel what they’re feeling — that is the very essence of empathy and at the core of making ethical decisions.

Try this little exercise: The next time you’re sending an automated DM, community invite, email, making a Facebook update, or carrying out any other digital marketing effort, genuinely try to put yourself in the shoes of the person who will be on the receiving end of your message. If you were on the receiving end:

• Would you be annoyed by the message?
• Would you hit the delete button before even giving a second thought to the message?
• Would you want to continue building a relationship with the person who sent the message?

Relationships are built on trust and selflessness, not a constant ring of, “Give me, give me, give me.” Every detail matters in marketing, so I challenge you to take this exercise seriously the next time you’re preparing to send a message to others via social media.



































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Despite facing plenty of controversy over its proposed Terms of Service changes, Instagram remains a hot site for both users and the marketers who want to capitalize on its popularity. If you've never used it before, Instagram is one part Flickr and one part Twitter: essentially a community in which users take and share photos with one another.

From a marketing perspective, the community's enthusiastic fan base and built-in social aspects make it an ideal place to connect with potential customers and build brand recognition. Here's how your business can take advantage of Instagram's potential:


Plan your content strategy.

Before you post your first image to Instagram, plan out a content strategy for the types of images you'll share and how these graphics communicate your brand's message. Although plenty of people use Instagram for personal purposes -- posting everything from pictures of their lunches to their pets -- businesses must be more strategic.

To start, identify potential followers by seeing who's following your competitors on the site. Then, take a look at the images they're liking and sharing and consider their preferences when defining your own content strategy. That way, you should ensure that any image you post to the site will appeal to your new followers.

As you go through this process, continually ask yourself the following questions to help guide the content curation process:

• What types of content do my potential followers seem to prefer?
• What types of content will most likely encourage these Instagram users to engage with my brand?
• How can I share content that will get people talking about my brand?