It’s not a matter of how much time you have, because we all have exactly the same amount. No, it’s a matter of how you choose to use your time. Let me share several “out-of-the-box” ways you can use your time. Before you know it, you’ll crankin’ out more blog posts (and good ones, at… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Social Media
15 Social Media Marketing Terms Defined so You Don’t Sound Like a Dumbass
My 20 not-so-obvious blogging terms post was a popular one, and it got me thinking of something along similar lines for social media. Social media is even more of a mystery to people than blogging is, so instead of going for the “not-so-obvious” here, I’m going for “dumbass prevention.” Enjoy, and if there’s anything else… Continue Reading
Should You Use Twitter Hashtags?
Twitter hashtags are bedeviling little creatures. They never seem to work the way you want them to. Especially if you’re McDonalds. You may have tried to use them, yourself, with the only real result being that you have fewer characters in your tweet to say anything useful. And yet you see them sprinkled over everything… Continue Reading
Sharecasters: The 5 Motivations Behind Why People Share Content on Social Media & Blogs
In my previous post on Sharecasting, you were introduced to term itself and the differences between sharecasting and broadcasting were highlighted. This material comes from research recently conducted by the New York Times Customer Insights Group partnering with Lancaster Research. Get their report here. What I want to examine for this post are the 5… Continue Reading
Are You a Sharecaster?
The New York Times Customer Insights Group (yes, there is such a thing) along with Lancaster Research conducted a study on how and why people share stuff over social media. They studied over 2,500 people from New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. The study had an immersion/deprivation focus group phase and a quantitative survey… Continue Reading
Twitter – Improve Your Content with Follower Chaining to Find High-Value People
Here is a simple but effective way to find awesome people to follow on Twitter so you can improve the content you provide your Twitter followers (which leads to more Twitter followers and higher engagement). I call it “follower chaining.” What you do is look for any high value people you’re already following as a… Continue Reading
Explained: Social Discovery Platforms and Services
Pinterest has taken the online world by storm, as you no doubt know by now. But Pinterest isn’t a singular phenomenon, it’s an indicator. Think of Pinterest as part of the next social groundswell, called “social discovery.” Pinterest is what you’d call a social discovery platform or service. And it definitely won’t be the last,… Continue Reading
How Business Blogs Fit in with Social Media
All the stuff you can do to market your business is pretty overwhelming, even on a good day. You hear people making noises about blogs, about social media, about search and many other marketing channels. How exactly does a blog fit into the big marketing picture? If you knew the answer to that, you could… Continue Reading
WTF is Pinterest?
Pinterest is exploding right now. Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board or pin board. You create boards, give them names, and then create “pins” which are mostly pictures you find on the web of stuff you like. Then, you share your boards and pins with friends and everybody has a good time. It has a… Continue Reading
Poll Results for Streamlining Social Media
A few days ago I conducted a poll on whether or not people were abandoning social media accounts. The number of people who participated isn’t large enough for the results to be considered as representative of the majority of my readers and the results are not unexpected (at least, by me). Here are the results…… Continue Reading
Poll: Are You “Streamlining” Your Social Media?
After my recent 5 Profitable Business Blogging Predictions for 2012 post, life coach Tim Brownson wondered in the comments if others like him had “streamlined” their social media. In other words, did they shut down or ignore social network accounts in favor of only a few “big ones” they either liked more or profited more… Continue Reading
Should You Use Google+?
I was originally gonna write the next installment in the business blog post types series, but then Google+ happened. And the whole damn interwebz blowed up. Nobody can shut up about Google+, it seems. And right now, you’re probably wondering if you should get into it or not, and if so, to what degree. Because,… Continue Reading
Should You Really Use Your Photo as an Avatar Online?
This is a guest post by Nancy Stuckwisch Are photos of yourself the best way to make your brand recognizable and customer friendly? Only if you never change the photo. This is swimming against the tide, I know, but isn’t the point of branding to create a consistently identifiable image? Shouldn’t we make it as… Continue Reading
Do You Tweet Like a Woman?
AOL and Nielsen recently released a report with some interesting numbers regarding gender and communications styles in social media. The report is concerned about how gender should be best addressed in social media marketing. They use the word “targeted” but I don’t like that. Your ideal client is more than a target. Targets are shot… Continue Reading
What is Quora (and why should you care)?
Quora is taking the interwebz by storm. Question & answer type sites have come and gone, but Quora seems to have reached the tipping point. It’s getting a lot of attention and a lot of users. What is Quora? Quora is a place where you can ask and answer questions. How Quora differs from previous… Continue Reading
Social Media is the New “Online”
After reading Why Your Social Media Strategy Sucks (EDIT: somehow forgot the link when I first published this, now fixed), I was reminded of an old IBM commercial from the 90s. If I remember correctly, it may have been a Superbowl ad (chances are, however, I’m not remembering correctly–mind like a steel trap: everything gets… Continue Reading
Just Tweeting for Online Business May Not Be Enough – Measure Your Twitter Power
Twitter can be an online business’ best friend, sending traffic and helping to get those precious backlinks as followers spread what you’ve tweeted. Kudos to you if you’re using Twitter to connect with new people, grow your network and send traffic to your blog. One way you know you’re getting traffic from Twitter is to… Continue Reading
The Golden Triangle of Online Marketing, Part 2: Social Media
There are three major online marketing channels for any business these days: blogging, social media, and email. If you haven’t read the first post in this series, check it out. It covers blog marketing for business. In this post, we’re going to cover the second point in what I call the Golden Triangle of Online… Continue Reading
Social Media Marketing May be about Driving Behavior, not Conversation
On February 1st, I attended the Burlington Social Media Breakfast in Vermont, where Adrian Ho of Zeus Jones gave a really smart presentation on social media marketing. The video is below. If you can’t see it in your email or reader, come on over to the blog to watch it. I think you’ll find watching… Continue Reading
Social Media Marketing Done Right
I recently had an interesting social media encounter with Eric Romer of HeadBlade, whose history is a great modern social media and internet marketing success story. To see what happened, watch the video below. If you don’t see it in your email or reader, you can find it by visiting the blog. I think Eric… Continue Reading
The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Your Business on Twitter
Twitter seems to have come out of nowhere to become one of the world’s most popular online social services behind Facebook and MySpace. Twitter now has millions of users, and even Oprah got on it, putting it in the minds of millions more yet (and irking thousands of existing users in the process). Celebrities and… Continue Reading
How to Not Pay Attention on Twitter (and Make Embarrassing Blunders)
This is kind of embarrassing, because you’d think I would know better. But when you’re excited about something and you want to share your enthusiasm with others, it can blind you to obvious things you should pay attention to. So I’m going to tell you this little story about how I made a faux pas… Continue Reading
How to Add Tweets to WordPress
Can’t see the video in your reader or email? Watch it on the blog. This video walks you through how to install a plugin for WordPress 2.7 (self-hosted) that displays your Twitter posts (called “tweets”) in your blog’s sidebar. I’m not doing this at the moment on Remarkablogger, as you can see, but I will… Continue Reading
Do You Hate Social Media?
I’m noticing a split in the blogosphere, a division that feeds itself and creates more division. I’m talking about the social media haters versus the social media lovers. Not everyone thinks social media is all sunshine and sparkles. Some people look at social media like something that slithered out from under a slimy rock. The… Continue Reading
How Social Media Amplifies Blog Marketing
From Commenting to Social Media Comments are cool, but they take forever and after all that writing, you only have a few of them to show for your labor. Comments are only created as fast as you can create them. Well, no kidding, you think. But before you think I’m simply stating the obvious, here’s… Continue Reading
Social Media Bought My Car
Social media bought my car. Well, not really. Social media made my down payment on a car after I had an accident that totaled my Jeep. OK, that’s not really it, either. Social media didn’t buy anything, although it makes for a catchy headline. No, people who cared helped me out of a jam. They did… Continue Reading
10 Social Media Tips from 30,000 Feet
Ding! This is your Captain speaking. You see a lot of tip posts on blogs for specific social media services, which is like flying low to the ground and looking at only one thing. What I want to do here is fly up to 30,000 feet to see the social media landscape from the air… Continue Reading
ProBlogger’s New Blog about Twitter – TwiTip
Darren Rowse has created a new blog all about Twitter, called TwiTip. I’ve written two posts for it, so far, and hope to continue to in the future. Darren and I both love Twitter, but we both know it wouldn’t be a good idea to bombard readers of our regular blogs with posts about Twitter.… Continue Reading
The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter
This is a guest post by Deanna de Bara from Sugarrae.com. As a relative “newbie” to the social networking scene (I sporadically use facebook and myspace, but thats about it), I was interested to try Twitter, a social networking and micro blogging site that has recently become popular with internet enthusiasts. The program began as… Continue Reading
The Top 5 Mistakes Internet Marketers Make on Twitter
If you’re in internet marketing and you want half a chance to succeed on Twitter, pay attention. I don’t know who you’ve been listening to telling you how to make it on Twitter, but if they’re telling you to do these five things, then they don’t understand social media, and you shouldn’t listen to them.… Continue Reading