#hashtag
As anyone who uses Twitter knows, the ‘#’ symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. Interestingly enough, it was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. Hashtags are simply a way to “tag” your tweet with subject matter to make it easy to be found. Anyone can create a hashtag simply by placing the ‘#’ sign in front of a word. (more…)

Social Media is a tactic for SEO. They are complementary like peanut butter and jelly. At the very least, social media provides a great opportunity for additional inbound links and traffic. Social media, in all of its forms, creates an increase in brand exposure and exponential link-backs to your content (website, blog, etc.) resulting in higher search engine rankings, and additional rankings for your site since Google and Bing display Facebook and Twitter results. (more…)

You may have seen the announcement from Google in March about their social feature called +1. Perhaps you are patiently waiting to start seeing the +1  in your Google search results. You may be waiting forever and never see it. Following is a comprehensive list of information regarding Google’s new feature: (more…)

Social Media Goal: Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness is always at or near the top of our client’s list when we discuss social media marketing goals. Even for large brands, Brand Awareness continues to appear as one of the top 3 goals…typically in the form of “enhanced” Brand Awareness or “top of mind” Awareness. And the question usually comes down to… what should we measure (and how) to determine awareness and our success in achieving such? (more…)

Backing up your social media information is helpful for personal use and a no brainer for any business with an active social presence! Not only is backing up your information simple, and many times free…it will save you time when trying to locate information you’ve previously shared or better yet – let you restore your entire network if your information were to be lost. (more…)

If you have a Facebook Page for your business, you should strongly consider running a social, interactive promotion on your Page. According to Jupiter Research: 80% of all internet users have entered at least one sweepstakes or contest within the past year, and 50% enter them at least once a month. And, companies that run contests or sweepstakes have twice as many fans on their sponsored social network pages as those who don’t.  Pretty powerful metrics for any type of business. Running a social promotion on Facebook is easier than you might think.

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If  your business has a Facebook Fan Page, you want to create interesting and compelling content to keep your Fan community active and participating on your wall. Polls are a great way to engage your Fan base community for fun, feedback or to gain insight into your brand, product or service or customer mindset. Although there are many poll application options for Facebook, we like the one simply called, Poll. Popular brands that use Poll include:

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While on the hunt for meaningful metrics tools, Erwin Hendriks, creator of Social Website Analyzer, brought his insightful resource to my attention.

Simply put, Social Website Analyzer is a one-click snapshot of the state of your website’s or brand’s social media presence across the top 20 social media sites.

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The client wants to know if their social media campaign is working! They want to understand how social media marketing will meet their goals before they commit to a budget allocation for a “mythical campaign”.  Social media marketing companies like other marketing agencies need to back their claims with statistics and provide metrics to prove effectiveness.

Granted, it is a relatively new game with the rules of engagement (sorry couldn’t resist it) still evolving, but there is a sizable number of reliable tools in form of plugins and apps that can be used in combination to measure different features of social media channels. There is no magic pill with one-tool-measure-all functionality yet and measurement is not esoteric like it would be, for say a PPC campaign, but social media experts can assemble a more or less effective group of measurement tools that best fits the business goals.
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It’s not likely that you are going to lose your online data anytime soon, though it is always a present possibility. Your real threats to your online social media accounts are hackers, viruses, user error, disgruntled employees and legal issues. You risk your access being shut off—without warning—if a service suspects you of violating its terms of service. At this very moment, many hackers are targeting online accounts simply because they are easier to access than your computer. On top of that, roughly one third of all data loss is due to user error. Backing up your social media accounts can minimize this risk.

Below are some useful apps and services, mostly free or with low subscription fees, for backing up your social media accounts and more.
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