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Introduction
Social medias importance means that its now an integral part of any social media strategy. Due to its cheapness, immediacy and allowing brands to develop a relationship with their consumers, doing social media well can certainly help you out in the long run. Its no longer enough to say that you have a Twitter or LinkedIn account, you must be able to back it up with consistency and customer service. But while were all savvy enough to know what Facebook and Twitter are, the finer points like customer service on Twitter, video editing and marketing on YouTube, company pages on LinkedIn, using Foursquare as a marketing tool and the rise of Pinterest may elude you. With so many platforms out there and compelling reasons to use them, it can be difficult to know which ones to choose and in one or two cases, which ones to drop. Chances are you already two or three different platforms to focus your efforts on (unless youre a larger company and have the luxury of a community manager) and thats a good thing. Taking on too many platforms will only result in a diluted experience that wont help your company or brand in the long-term. While Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the obvious choices, it may be worth looking into other depending on your industry. An app like Instagram can help show off your wares or communicate far more than a simple status update, Foursquare can be useful if youre looking to drum up extra business by offering deals and offers and YouTube can offer a unique way of engaging with your audience. The amount of time you can dedicate to it and the type of marketing you want to engage in will determine which tools you will use to promote your business so consider your options first before you decide to embrace a new platform on top of your existing ones.

Essential Social Stats & Facts That Brand Marketers Should Consider
f theres one thing that marketers are constantly craving for, its new stats and facts to sink their teeth into. Knowledge is indeed power and with new developments, research and products happening regularly it can be difficult to keep up with them. One good place to keep up with this is at the major conferences and events held around the world, where agencies, brands and companies will always provide stats and figures. The Dublin Web Summit last week was no exception so here are the major points to take away from the digital marketing stage, with key facts presented as images.

Mark Dewings Brand Communications At Soundcloud

Talking about the importance of sound and how its under-utilised as a medium, Dewings mentioned that there is a discrepancy between how we consume and create mediums. While creating images was popular thanks to the popularity of Instagram and Camera+, others like sound and video recording was much lower, sharing similar levels of creation and consumption His main reasons for embracing sound were that its everywhere, its inherently practical as it requires less digital memory, its less intrusive in comparison to other mediums as it requires less effort to process as video requires more than one sense. 3

Alan Coleman Founder & CEO of Wolfgang Digital

On a talk about at the three most important innovations for marketing retargeting (promoting what the user already likes), analytics (finding out how many times people visit your site before a sale is made) and interest (developing interest in consumers through advanced ad targeting) Coleman spoke about the wealth of options that brands have to help amplify their marketing efforts. One of which looking at the process between first visiting a site and purchasing a good or product. Using some of the status gathered from Wolfgang Digitals work, Coleman showed how you could get specific details to help your retargeting campaign such as average site visits per purchase and the number of different sites visited per purchase.

Jan Rezab Founder Of SocialBakers

Considering that stats are SocialBakers bread and butter, Jan Rezab based his talk on understanding fans and the importance of engagement and consumer feedback. Elaborating on Socialbakers Socially Devoted concept that it introduced at Le Web London, Rezab showed that while more brands were beginning to respond to consumer queries, they were still a long way from achieving satisfactory levels (less than 50% of questions on social media were responded to). However, in comparison to 2011 where only 5% of questions were answered, its has improved immensely

Hubert Grealish Global Head of Brand Communications At Diageo

Talking about how the relationship between brands and customers has reversed, Grealish talked about how consumers want a greater input into how brands work and the power of getting them involved. Mentioning that 2/3 of people are influenced by personal recommendations, he revealed that in a recent survey, 55% wanted to have ongoing conversations with brands and 89% would feel more loyal if they were invited to take part in a group. What was particularly interesting was that out of the 89%, 41% wanted companies to seek feedback from them and 37% said that they would like newer ways to interact with brands via social media.

Dharmesh Shah Co-founder and CTO of HubSpot

Concentrating on how Googles search engine works, Dharmesh Shah talked about how PPC ads arent as good an investment as you think saying youre not buying attention, youre renting it. Instead, what you should focus on is creating useful content, clean design and fast websites as thats what Google is actually looking for. What you want to focus on is results and not rankings, as measuring how many leads you get for your site is more important. He also stressed the importance of Google+, saying that the important part is the part before the + and how its playing a major part for writers and journalists, highlighting their Google+ profile, the number of circles theyre in and allowing you to see articles theyve written.

Omid Ashtari Director Of Business Development At Foursquare

Although the major status Ashtari provided arent anything new, theyre still significant enough to be repeated again. With over 25 million users globally and one million businesses registered, the service has registered over 2.5 billion check-ins at 40 million venues. However, Ashtaris talk focused on case studies where Foursquare was used in an innovative manner such as the London 2012 olympics where Foursquare became an unofficial events guide, showing visitors where to visit, where all the events were being held and ran badge competitions to encourage checkins. Another example was the weather channel where your first check-in of the day triggered a weather report filled with images and global news.

Mobile Its 1999 All Over Again

Our very own Niall Harbison decided to speak about mobile for his presentation. He showed how the transition from desktop and personal computers to mobile devices is having an effect on the biggest companies like Google and Facebook as well as hurting traditional media companies.

It is no longer good enough just to have a mobile version of your website and big companies like Nokia and Blackberry have been caught out and will probably die because of the emergence of iOS and Android. The companies and brands who are going to win big are those who bet big on mobile and who start embracing while others are still asleep.

Mobile Advertising How The Big Social Networks Are Adapting

obile advertising is experiencing an odd growth rate at the moment. While smartphone penetration continues to rise worldwide, and even across lower-spending markets, the rate at which companies are picking up on this isnt quite matching. Looking at recent figures, consumer interest in mobile is far outweighing the spend made by brands in advertising: So why the disparity? First, it is still an incredibly new medium. We dont quite yet know how consumers will react to advertising via mobile, or how much time we can reasonably expect them to spend with an ad. Secondly, it is a much less open market than say, social media advertising, where many sites now have open ad platforms allowing brands to set up and manage their own campaigns. 9

While Facebook is making some movement in this, for example by allowing brands to target ads to mobile users, this is currently only available within Power Editor, which is not something immediately open for all advertisers, but rather conserved for those with larger budgets. And just as we saw with social network marketing or advertising, mobile is currently at the stage where it is still very much an afterthought. A case of ticking the box to allow your ads to show on mobile, without really thinking about what type of ad will work, which format it should be in, and what the overall strategy for a mobile ad campaign should be. This is understandable, given how new the concept is.

Image via The Alantic

However, some brands are making real inroads with smart mobile ad campaigns that are sympathetic of the medium theyre operating in. Weve shared some of the best ones below, along with some compelling stats to show why mobile advertising deserves its place on your marketing campaign.

Types of Mobile Advertising

Banner Ads
The most common example of mobile advertising out there, if youre a smartphone user, the chances that you have already seen this type of ad is quite high, While they served a purpose on desktop, banner ads are starting to fall out of favour with 10

advertisers as users begin to ignore them and marketers are looking at different ways to engage users. While they mostly feature on free apps, most of these apps have a paid version which gets rid of these ads. The cheap nature of banner ads means that they wont be disappearing any time soon, but as smartphone users start expecting more, marketing strategies will have to change to reflect this.

Augmented Reality

Definitely the area that will see a lot of growth over the next few years, Augmented Reality (AR) is where computer-generated graphics or animations are added on top of a view of your real-world environment. The rise of companies such as Blippar is paving the way for how AR is used to market and promote brands and products. While AR is the most expensive advertising format here, the potential and the opportunities provided are massive. Its functions could range from providing additional information about goods or services, or superimposing items in your home to see how they would fit in. Its use is growing and the fact that it has yet to hit mainstream use means that its going to become more popular as usage grows.

Apps

Quickly becoming a very crowded market, apps have become the lifeblood of smartphones with a platforms success or failure depending upon it. Its no longer enough to just release an app and expect it to perform well, to get people to download it, you need to produce something special. Also, while people are spending more and more time on apps sometimes more than they would spend surfing the Web the majority of this time is spent on gaming apps, which would take up more time. Currently, having an app is the same thing as having a Facebook or Twitter page, so if you decide to release one, you need to make sure the quality is and have a decent marketing campaign behind it so that people will download it. 11

NFC

Near Field Communications (NFC) is another emerging area in mobile marketing. The best way to understand it is that it functions like a mobile wallet and a large number of smartphones come with this technology pre-installed. Its most popular use is paying for goods by simply taking out your phone and tapping/ swiping it at the checkout, for contactless payment. Services like Google Wallet are leading the charge with numerous other competitors releasing their own versions over the coming months.

QR Codes

Although theyve gotten a bad rep as of late, quick response (QR) codes are a great way of providing content to smartphone users in a direct manner. Basically, QR codes work in the same way as bar codes, except these can be scanned on your smartphone through a specialised app. The QR code acts as a visual URL which takes the use to a particular address when they scan it. While the majority tend to direct people towards a webpage, those with a little more imagination would use it to provide special offers or link to different videos which show off their new products. Also, other apps like Kuapay generate QR codes which you use to pay for goods, so there are other uses for it beyond linking to different URLs. There is a large number of QR code generators out there, but remember that for most generators, youre not able to change the URL once you create one.

Tagging

Working on the same principal as QR codes, tagging is slowly becoming more popular with marketers as it provides a more seamless process. Instead of scanning a code or typing in a URL, tagging apps like Kooaba work by holding your smartphones camera over an icon, like in a newspaper or magazine, and youll be automatically directed to whatever content is linked. 12

Social Media & Mobile Advertising

The problem that all of the social networks face at the moment is that an increasing amount of their users are using their services on mobile devices rather than on the desktop where it is easier to show more ads. This is one of the main reasons why Facebooks share price has been struggling whereas Twitter, which is more of a mobile play, seems to be having great early success with its mobile ads. Here are some of the formats that are being used by the big guys.

Facebook

Facebooks problem is complicated. Its mobile sites and apps are starting to see huge amount of usage, but they simply cant serve as many ads on small screens as they can on larger devices. Last weeks overhaul of the Facebook app does mean that more sponsored stories are starting to appear in the newsfeed and the design is done in such a way that you would hardly know they are even ads. There is also no doubt that Facebooks next revenue stream will involve pushing app distribution through its new app store. They are promoting it heavily through the log in screen on the desktop and they have 150 million people using it already. If you think about it, people are most likely to download apps when on their phone so Facebook will no doubt be offering developers and publishers a way of securing downloads through ads in the newsfeed. Mobile app developers have the chance to run their ads on prime real estate on devices and given that six of the top ten apps in the iOS app store use Facebook login, you can see the huge potential here. The beauty of these ads is that given how much information Facebook has about its users, apps developers can target their ads based on demographics and user interests. This is still very much in a test phase, but these ads will continue to grow and become the default way to distribute apps soon. 13

Twitter

Twitter has a huge advantage over other social networks because most people primarily use the service on their phone or on tablet devices. It will also make a lot of money on the desktop, but it doesnt have the same challenges that Facebook has in terms of moving their revenues over to mobile. Over the past year, it has been busy shutting down their API to other developers because it knows that it needs to control everything in their ecosystem in order to increase revenue from ads. Word on the street is that Twitter ads are massively engaging and are seeing massive click through rates. The first type of ads are pretty harmless because they just allow you to pay to be suggested users. Where it starts to get a little more interesting is when Twitter puts in sponsored tweets into the main feed. These are still being tested on a very small level as it essentially changes the entire Twitter experience and puts paid content into your feed. That is a big step and one that Twitter is taking slowly. One or two ads a day are fine, but what happens when they open it up to a much bigger and wider market with a self-service option? Chaos? 14

You can also target ads at people based on the mobile device they are accessing Twitter via and that makes for some interesting marketing options especially when it comes to app downloads.

Foursquare

Considering the data Foursquare has at its disposal, it was inevitable that it would introduce its own ads. Similar to Facebook, these ads are coming in the form of promoted updates, messages that are presented to users who are within the vicinity of a business, store or restaurant. These updates will be found in the explore tab and are tailored towards the likes and interests of each user. Currently, the new format is being tested with a small number of companies, but when its released for general use, businesses and brands will pay Foursquare on a cost per action model.

The other method Foursquare used to advertise goods is local updates, which is free and only appears to those users who have either liked a venue or have checkedin a number of times. This is more to reward loyal customers and only appear when somebody checks-in to a business or looks at the apps Friends tab. 15

Mobile Campaigns
KFC
Earlier this year, KFC utilised a variety of mobile apps and channels to promote its chunky chicken pot pie. The campaign had a 1970s funk flavour to it and a Pandora radio station dedicated to only the grooviest hits was created to entice customers. QR codes were also displayed on the side of KFC cups; they led customers on to additional content and gave them the opportunity to enter a sweepstakes giveaway.This campaign had a winning humour at its centre thats easy-going and helpful when engaging with potential customers. It was multifaceted and takes advantage of many platforms so as not to be one-dimensional or easily discarded.

This amazing campaign for limousine rental app Uber ingeniously incorporated a great product, with mobile savvy and, of course, ice-cream. Instead of using the app to arrange a limousine pickup, users in seven North American cities used the app to call an ice-cream truck to a location of their choosing and were encouraged to use the #OMGUBERICECREAM hashtag. A really novel way to advertise a great if impractical app that spread like wildfire because of how unique it was. It stands out because it offered something different and fun, while requiring very little from excited users.

Uber

Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures and the movie industry have been keen to use mobile advertising to hit key demographics. Famously, cinemas are populated with mobiles and social media-inclined teenagers who would be susceptible to such advertising. Universal were more than happy to promote the Kristen Stewart-starring Snow White & the Huntsmanthrough mobile devices and across a number of social media platforms, incorporating Facebook, 16

Twitter and Pinterest into their marketing strategy. Quite simply, upon tapping the ad, interested users would be redirected to the Snow White page, where they could view trailers and browse photo galleries and buy tickets to screenings of the film, among other things. It obviously worked, as the film was one of the surprise hits of the summer, outstripping the likes of Prometheus and Battleship at the box-office.

Target

For Christmas 2010, American megastore chain Target introduced its iAd, which functioned as both an ad and an inset ad, featuring on large apps such as that of the New York Times. If users didnt engage, it would still function as a static ad, promoting the chain to discerning users of popular apps, but they also had the option to click and be taken to the Merrymaker gifting app.Essentially a fullpage interactive ad, the Merrymaker presented users with gift ideas for the holiday season and general tips to help them cope with the demands of Christmas or on how to make their Christmas a little more festive. A clever and malleable campaign.

The soft drinks giant is no stranger to expense and innovation in advertising, and the Freestyle app and corresponding vending machines, launched in 2009, prove as such. The freestyle app is laded with games and tasks that encourage socialisation and sharing on social media, but the app also works as a remote control for vending machines spread around major American cities. Big whoop, right? Wrong. These werent any old vending machines. These vending machines contained over 100 drinks and allowed users the chance to create their own cocktail of said drinks if they so pleased. Over the top, fresh and, with 41,000 interactions to its credit, clearly doing something right.

Coca-Cola

Glamour Magazine

Last Septembers print issue of Glamour magazine had digital content and interactive competitions, thanks to the work of the fine folks at SpyderLink. The magazine captured over 100,000 users for its app by using mobile barcodes. The scans allowed advertisers to gather data from smartphone users and led the 17

users to exclusive content; the move led to an 18% increase in Glamour s Facebook fans. By taking pictures of the links and sharing them, users could also unlock gift coupons and other discounts online. A smart way of incorporating mobile users and guiding them to both online content and to advertisers. This isnt the first time Glamour has incorporated SpyderLink into their campaigns. They also used it for its Taxi Shops campaign to help promote their Fashion Week back in February 2012.

American Express

American Express teamed with mobile developers Zumobi in a bid to bolster, diversify and prove their mobile advertising. Its aim was to create a more personalised experience for their users, while also incorporating video, social media and usergenerated content. Users sync their cards with social media apps to learn the latest offers on products that they would find intriguing or essential and have the ability to view other peoples profiles as well as share their purchases and what not. Its an app that uses the social aspect to power consumer demand and sustain spending.

Heineken developed the StarPlayer gaming app in time for the 20102011 Champions League final. Fans, of course, access their mobiles to interact and chat with absent friends and followers about the game theyre watching, so Heineken were aiming to tap into this in-built audience as one of the competitions main, most visible sponsors. The app would ask in-game questions about statistics and ask users to give their opinions on the game as it progressed, and it certainly paid of for the famed lager company.

Heineken

Axe (Lynx)

The deodorant kingpins created a fun little game for its users, that played to its male demographic and gave them a little puzzle to solve. Supplemented by a print ad that sent users to this mobile app, Axe beckoned its fans to complete a picture of a young woman who wasnt wearing much of anything. Its a clever and titillating ad that played directly to the core demographic in a cheeky manner and promoted the brand extremely well. 18

Starbucks

Finally, coffee giants Starbucks created a very useful, everyday app for its customers that both promoted their product and made it easier for customers to acquire it. 6,800 Starbucks outlets were equipped to handle mobile payments from customers using the Starbucks app; it allowed user to pay via PayPal/credit card and rewarded them with offers. They simply scan their phone at the register and avoid any hassle, fiddling for change in their wallets etc. The app made payment more efficient and increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty with over three million users as of June 2011. Google, for once, had been caught napping and are now looking to implement the innovative 2-D code scanner that Starbucks used to power this great time-saver. The company has expanded its mobile payment services by teaming up with Square, which will see its services featuring in 7,000 U.S. stores along with investing $25 million in the company.

Future Trends

Despite the rapid advancements made in the mobile sector, there is still a long way to go before it becomes the core of any marketing strategy. While its safe to say that mobile advertising is the future, here are a few areas which will be improved over the coming years.

Improved relevance, behavioural targeting

One of the benefits of mobile is that its portable and with location services growing in popularity, its easier than ever to know where your audience is. More importantly, 19

you can find out when theyre in the vicinity and will be handy for fixed business and brands like cafes and restaurants. But alongside that, marketers will be able to target ads based on location, time and their behaviour. Apps like Foursquare has already done the latter by using the data from check-ins to display relevant ads and updates that would interest specific users. The next few years will see a substantial improvement in these services and what results they can generate.

Increased focus on interactivity

Currently, the majority of ads are either banner or text, presentable but give you little reason to click on them. As consumers become more accustomed to the capabilities provided by smartphones, the hunger for more interactive means of advertising will increase. Further down the line, users will have grown accustomed to AR, interactive ads that encourage you to participate and media rich ads that incorporate video and audio into their message. There are some examples of interactive ads out there, but the majority require you to download an app to experience them. Future advertising campaigns will bypass this requirement, allowing users to jump into the experience immediately.

Mobile search

Tying into the concept of geo-location services, mobile search will continue to be a major source of revenue for Google and with the possible inclusion of social and other services like Google Now and Siri, these ads could be even more focused than before.

Measuring ad performance

Currently, we measure the success of ads on a CPM or cost per click basis, but the terms we use to measure the success of desktop ads doesnt necessarily mean a perfect fit for measuring mobile ads. Analysing the success of mobile campaigns is currently a problem as not everyone has access to the necessary tools to successfully measure these ads. In future, companies and brands will have developed a much better idea about measuring mobile ads and the analytic tools available will have improved to reflect this.

Infographic Sources

- http://www.emarketer.com/PressRelease.aspx?R=1009228 - http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/170935/mobile-growth-influencedby-clicks-on-paid-search.html - http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1726614 - http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3077792/apple-wwdc-2012-stats-ios-macgrowth - http://yourstory.in/2012/06/google-play-quick-stats-key-takeaways-google-io-2012/ 20

The Ultimate Guide To Social Media Advertising

ith advertising budgets for more expensive media being gradually reduced, were consistently seeing positive figures for the rise in online advertising, with some reporting a 17.2% increase from 2011 to 2012. Increasingly, the trend is to allocate this ad spend on a niche basis by focusing on the relevant social network. Facebook set the trend here by making a selfserve ad system available to marketers, with no minimum spend required similar to the way in which Google Adwords functions. Other sites have now followed suit like LinkedIn, and Twitter is ultimately heading that way, albeit whilst dragging their feet towards making it completely open for advertisers. For brands and marketers, this represents a whole new approach to advertising: Ultimately its more trackable, has improved targeting options and has improved analytics. There are also many untapped opportunities, most notable in mobile advertising. Facebooks problems with this are well documented, with Twitter more capable of adapting their existing ad system for mobile users. As more advertisers turn towards social advertising, costs are evidently rising, but by looking outside of the big player of Facebook, you can run targeted ad campaigns that get you in front of the right audience as a part of their social experience as opposed to interrupting it. 21

Facebook Advertising

When it comes to social advertising, Facebook is obviously the biggest platform to use. It has an incredible amount of information on how to use the platform as well as case studies and tips that you can avail of. The fact that they collect so much personal data allows you to target ads precisely, which can help drive excellent results if used correctly. Here are some of their excellent resources.

Facebook Marketing Page

As you would expect, there is a Facebook page dedicated to tips, tricks and info about the Facebook marketing platform. It is a good place to stay on top of all the latest trends on pages and advertising.

Facebook Offers

A brand new offering from Facebook and only in the process of being rolled out at the moment. Offers are seen as one of the main ways in which brands and small businesses will be able to generate real revenue through Facebook.

Learning Lab

This is the hub from Facebook that has tons of tips, tricks, case studies and other information about the advertising platform. You can also find some of the best creative campaigns and practical learning tools here to help you get the most out of the platform. 22

Twitter Advertising

Although it doesnt generate the same amounts of revenue as Facebook, Twitter is quietly emerging with its own business model that is perfectly suited to mobile. While Facebook has had problems with this area, Twitters core function means that its perfectly suited for mobile advertising. That said, the company is experimenting with a number of different advertising models, the main ones listed here.

Promoted Tweets, Accounts and Hashtags

Brands use promoted tweets to spread awareness among Twitter users. They are suggested to tweeters when they search specific terms on Twitter; the tweet in question will then appear at the top of the page. Targeted users may also be the friends of a brands Twitter followers; such people are targeted in the hopes that the promoted tweet will spark conversation between the friends and thus influence their friends and followers, further spreading the brands message. There is a purpose to this method of stealth advertisement, however. Advertisers can choose to make their tweets specific to a particular device (iOS, Blackberry etc.) or a particular geographic area, depending on where are whom they want to promote to. The promoted accounts feature is now also being exploited by advertisers in their attempts to gain followers and online popularity. Twitters accounts recommendation engine, Who to Follow, will promote brand accounts to users they believe are most likely to follow said account, on the basis of their similar interests and Twitter activity. It is much the same deal with promoted hashtags, which will be shown at the top of a users trends list. Hashtags are, of course, more liable to spread and be picked up on by other users, though there is less of a guarantee that influenced users will follow the brand that is promoting the hashtag. The success of these methods can be easily followed and charted with the use of Twitter analytics. The analytics feature will monitor user trends and timeline activity that has been inspired by promotional efforts. 23

Age Filter

Twitter recently introduced a new feature called Age Screening. This filter will aid more age-discerning brands (specifically companies promoting alcoholic brands) to target a specific age group as well as to weed out Twitter users who are too young to be buying their products and such. Age Screening determines whether any new follower is old enough to be compliant relevant industry or legal age guidelines. However, the technology is far from foolproof. Upon following such a brand, a user will be sent a direct message linking them to age. twitter.com, where they will be asked to give their birth date. The age is not shared with the brand, but it is surely very simple to lie about your age on the internet. While this isnt necessarily an advertising related development, the possibility of it being included with targeted advertising, which Twitter recently introduced, could give it more data to work from and provide users with more targeted ads.

Self-Service Advertising

Twitter introduced new methods for small businesses to amplify their Tweeters and exponentially increase their reach in February. When it first began, Twitter teamed up with American Express and all businesses using American Express where the first 10,000 cardholders were allowed $100 of free advertising on Twitter. Twitter also offers promoted tweets and accounts to small business owners. They do not pay to have their accounts/tweet advertised, instead its when users engage (i.e. follow, reply retweet etc) do they pay a fee to Twitter, but its good value for money. Twitter will, of course, target users who are likely to have an interest in their business and will promote the business in question at the right time of day so as to engage as many people as possible. Business owners can put a cap on how much they are willing to spend, so they do not end up with a nasty shock once they become overwhelmingly popular, and they can also direct Twitter to promote them in certain geographic areas, much as a larger business can, as well as across the web and mobile devices. Such self-service advertising is very helpful and allows small businesses using Twitter to get off the ground without having to incur a large expense to begin with. 24

LinkedIn Advertising

Compared to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn doesnt focus as much on ads nor does it offer any major differences in how you advertise. However, despite this limitation, the site does offer greater opportunities for B2B companies due to its focus on professionals and is, therefore, a much better suit. The reason it works so well is because, like Facebook, LinkedIn lets you target specific demographics like a particular industry, location and seniority and age. Therefore, its perfect for any companies or people focusing on B2B. While Facebook does have GlassDoor, it targets demographics based on their likes and interests. When you log in, you will find that ads appear in two different places. The main ads appear at the side of the page, consisting of a 25 character heading, a 75 character description, the company name, an image and a URL. The second place ads appear is just underneath the main toolbar where it is a text only ad. Depending on your ads performance, it may be shown here.You can choose to pay LinkedIn either by CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) or by CPC (cost per click), the latter is more expensive, but better if youre more focused on generating leads. If youre in any way familiar with Google AdWords, you will know what to expect here. Each click will cost between $2 (the minimum CPC) and your bid. The main thing you need to focus on is creating a strong ad that will appeal to those demographics youre targeting. First, make sure your heading and description are eye-catching and effective. As you only have 25 and 75 characters to work from, every word counts. Be specific in what youre advertising as people wont respond to general statements and include a strong call to action thats tailored towards your company3 like get a free quote, download now or free trial. LinkedIn itself provides a number of tips and guides to improve the success rate of your ads on its site. Also, remember that you can promote LinkedIn company pages and groups through ads if you want to direct users towards them instead. Amassing extra followers can be beneficial if you have a company page as you are able to send out targeted updates.

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Foursquare Advertising

Foursquare is a bit of an oddity as while theres a number of ways for a business to advertise, it recently started rolling out paid ads for brands. Since its a location based app, most of your audience is going to be local and so your deals and offers should reflect this. We covered Foursquare as a marketing tool recently (which you can read here) so we wont waste too much time covering this topic. To give a brief summary, the two main ways to advertise is through local updates and promoted updates. The former are available to those who liked your venue or have checked-in a number of times, while the latter are paid ads, allowing users to discover new places and deals to those near the vicinity. Also, merchant pages and brand pages come into play when advertising any deals or offers, which has primarily been the way merchants advertised their deals on the app.

Infographic Sources

- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303879604577408481688851336.html - http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/03/stats-facebook-made-9-51-in-ad-revenue-peruser-last-year-in-the-u-s-and-canada/ - http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-mobile-ad-revenue-500k-per-day-2012-7 - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-01/twitter-said-to-expect-1-billion-insales-in-2014-on-ad-growth.html - http://marketingland.com/twitter-60-percent-of-users-access-via-mobile-13626 - http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-q2-ad-revenue-hits-63-million-2012-8 - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/twitter-ad-sales-to-rise-to-540-millionin-2014-emarketer-says.html

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10 Innovative Ways To Get More Out Of Facebook For Your Business

acebook pages are a crucial part of the marketing mix for businesses these days but with the platform and features changing on a near weekly basis it can be hard to get the best out of them and many people are surprised at their options available to them. We decided to put together 10 simple tips that can help you to manage your page more effectively. Some are simple 2 minute changes that you can work in to your schedule while others will take some learning and getting used to but theyll drastically improve how you use the platform. We have a decent focus on mobile given how much importance Facebook themselves are putting on that channel. Get used to these 10 tips and you wont be saying Facebook pages are as restrictive as you thought they once were

Drive Revenue Through Facebook Offers

This is still a pretty new feature but one that is starting to drive very real revenues for businesses who are using Facebook effectively. The idea is that you can post any type of offer that can be used either online or in the real world and the fact that the offers can spread virally via the news feed can give you great distribution. If you have a large enough community of people who like your page that can be enough to get your offer kick started but you may also need to lean on Facebooks advertising platform to help get the word out about the offer. This is one of the first ways that Facebook business page owners have had of driving physical sales in the real world and the early word on the street is very good. 27

Use Advanced Targeting For Updates

Until recently you could only send out status updates to people based on their location or language but Facebook have improved that targeting and now give you nearly as many options when sending out a regular update as they do when you are using their advertising tool. You might not want to target every single update but we have seen a huge improvement in engagement levels when you start targeting updates at specific groups of people based on their interests. This tool is going to be most useful for people with much larger fan bases that can be segmented down in to specific niche groups without annoying all likes with one generic update.

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Use Facebook Groups For Internal Communication

Facebook groups are one of the most underused items on Facebook and they offer a great way of improving information flow within a company. Given that most of your employees are probably already on Facebook and they are increasingly spending a large portion of their day there it is a great way to get your company talking to each other using the tools that they already know. If the group is set up correctly you can lock the group down so as only people within the company see updates and other content. Use groups for feedback, questions, social events and anything else company related. Internal communication is just as important these days as anything else so groups are a great way of improving that on an existing platform that people know rather than getting them all to embrace something new.

Use The Facebook Pages App

The Facebook pages app is a wonderful addition that allows you to manage multiple pages through the one app rather than having to fire up the main Facebook app which is designed for personal use. The app will allow you to publish updates, share photos and engage with your community while on the go. You can also drill down in to your analytics to see what your fan base growth and engagement levels are like while out and about. Youll probably still want to do most of your updates, scheduling and engagement on the main site on a desktop as it is quicker but you have a very real alternative on mobile devices now. 29

Reposition Photos After Posting

Youll often post a photo update to your business page only to realize afterwards when you see it in the newsfeed that you have it totally wrong. The good news is that you can actually go in and edit the photo again and reposition it after you have posted without disrupting the original update.

Block Competitors Names With Moderation Blacklist

Large brands and businesses probably dont want people talking about their competitors or other specific terms on their Facebook business page and the good news is that you can set up a moderation blacklist to block certain words. All you have to do is head in to the backend of the page and you can type all the words that you dont want to see appear on the page. This could be competitors, rude words, specific products or anything else that you dont want to have appearing on the site.

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Turn Off The Ability For People To Message The Page

While it is great to give people the opportunity to send the page private messages we find that with large pages the volume of private messages can get pretty high and some business pages simply dont have the resources to manage all the replies. Now private messages might be a great way for some large brands to manage customer service in a more discrete way but some pages might just be happy to turn them off altogether and not deal with the extra volume of queries. You can head in to Edit Page >> Manage Permissions >> untick Show Message

Comment On Third Party Websites Using Your Business Page Identity

Facebook comments are starting to pop up all over the web on websites who are using them as a way of improving their current commenting system and avoiding spam. While the vast majority of people leave comments using their personal profiles you do have the ability to leave comments as your business page as well. This is a great way of signposting your own page and getting people to click on your logo to find out more about you. The key here is to leave high quality comments that rise to the top (The comments with the most likes go to the top of the pile) rather than just spamming lots of pages to create links. If somebody sees what you are writing, thinks you know what you are talking about and generally likes what you are saying there is a very good chance they will then go on and like your page.

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Install Facebooks Power Editor Match Your Existing Database With Facebook Users

Power editor is a relatively new tool that completely changes the way people use Facebooks advertising tools and although it has been mainly used by large tech advertisers, agencies and brands to date it is something that anybody can get their hands on. You can now do really smart things like import your existing email marketing lists and telephone numbers and match them up to people who are on Facebook who like your page. You can also run much more advanced mobile ads and generally customize your ads in a way that you never could on the traditional Facebook advertising interface. Everybody we talk to is seeing huge success through this tool and the good news is that it is getting better all the time.

Export Your Insights For Deeper Stats Analysis

Lets be brutally honest about things and say that Facebook insights just dont offer the way to slice and digest the data as effectively as we all would like. It feels like a work in progress and not the finished article like say a Google Analytics. Although they are clearly improving it all the time you can actually go in and download all the data from your various pages and export it in to Excel with a couple of simple clicks. We find that when using the data in something like Excel (or the other program of your choosing) you can manipulate the data and engage with it in a much more meaningful way to start to spot trends on your page. It will take a good bit more time but if you want better results across the board download your data and start playing with it.

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How To Make $10,000 From Adsense In 20 Days Using A Single Blog Post And Facebook
o we write this blog to share the latest marketing trends and social media news from around the world. It is in no way our core business although because the levels of traffic that it starting delivering last year were so high we decided to start adding some simple ads around the content. They dont bring in much revenue but they do allow us to hire a full time writer and pay all the hosting charges etc. We do write some posts that get tons of traffic though and I wanted to highlight one such post that brought in over 10,000 in revenue in less than 20 days. It happened last November and this post is a mini case study on some of the things that made it spread and why it was able to bring in so much revenue in a short period of time.This wont work for you every time but there are lessons in here that you can use to help grow individual posts and start creating new revenue streams from your blog.

The 20 Day Revenue

I wanted to focus on one piece of content that really took off. It was one single blog post that contained a viral video and which was made for sharing. People would watch it and find it so good that they would instantly share it with their friends. As you can see the revenue took off immediately (from a base of about 150 a day at the time) and accelerated as the sharing on Facebook picked up.

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The following chart shows the revenue broken down by day with most days bringing in 300 and the top day driving 1000 in revenue. The average revenue per day was 500 and the 10,000 mark was hit in less than 20 days.

Platforms

Although the vast majority of the revenue is coming from the desktop you can see that people are still starting to click on the ads on both mobile and tablets. This pace has also been accelerated over the last year and the percentage accessing via mobile and tablets has already increased more since then.

Countries

As always the big 6 or 7 English speaking countries were the most effective when it came to driving large volumes of clicks and a higher cost per click. The vast majority of the traffic came from the USA with nearly 6 times more revenue than the next revenue source.

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Find Content That People Are Already Sharing

If you want people to share your content the best bet is to find content that people already like. Why rely on your own judgement when you can look at the popular sites out there that let users vote on the best videos or content. You could start by looking here, here, or here. Find a piece of content that is about to break in to the big time but that not many people have seen yet. People wont share something that has been covered in loads of places but they will share something amazing that they dont think anybody has seen yet. Look for little things like the amount of thumbs up people are giving a video on Youtube as indications of how much they will share it from your blog.

The vast majority of the traffic to this post came via Facebook. As you can see from the image below the post has been shared over 20,000 times already and the sharing from other social networks is also strong. All of these shares are starting to count in search results now as well (especially +1s from Google) so they are telling Google that this is an important piece of content. The post itself was viewed over a million times because of the amount of shares it had. If you think that everybody has a few hundred friends on Facebook and you times that by 20,000 shares you can see where the volume of traffic is mostly coming from.

Facebook Sharing

Advertise

If Facebook and other social networks can help you grow your traffic and revenue organically why not give them a little push to get it all started. Facebook have some great ad tools that can help your content start to spread and grow its own legs. You wont want to do this every single time but as soon as you have a piece of content that looks like it is going to get shared a lot why not push it with some ads. The first type of ad is an ad that is targeted at the people who already like your page. They wont all see your content by default (because of Facebooks edgerank formula) but you can pay for them all to see it. The logic here is that if they already like your page there is a good chance they will share or like your content. 35

After you have targeted your own Facebook page and the people who like it you will want to create some precise targeting ads to go after the wider population. The key here is that you are driving people to the URL in question. Using the precise targeting on Facebook Ive shown the example here of people who have indicated that they like beer and targeted them with a picture of an ice cold bottle of beer and some copy prompting them to click on the image. Youll also notice that I have gone after the countries that are performing best in terms of clicks on Adsense and delivering the best resturn on budget. There will be a number of campaigns that you can run depending on the content of your post but here is another example of a target market that would be very likely to share the content about the bikers in the cinema What is really important to realize here is that one person clicking on your ad and looking at the content is never going to be enough. You need that person to find the content so relevant and funny that they want to share it with all their friends and drive them to your blog. This stage will take a lot of refining to figure out what works and what is the cheapest way of getting them there. You might also be able to use ads on other networks but I always stick to Facebook given their precise interest targeting.

Flick The Ads On Aggressively

Once you have the critical mass of people coming to the post it is then time to start placing the ads more aggressively on the post. Bear in mind that this post only took off about 2 weeks after it was actually posted so this doesnt happen overnight. We dont want to annoy our regular readers with aggressive ads (they are normally tucked away in the sidebar far away from the content) but when a post is getting this much traction you are leaving money on the table by not placing ads within the content. The chances are that 36

99% of your regular readers will already have seen this on the day that it was posted and most of the people coming from all over the world are not our normal readers. We placed 4 sets of ads all around the content as soon as we started to see the spike in traffic. People were there to see the video but many would have clicked on the ads.

Ongoing Revenue

These posts wont come along every single day but when you get one you should make the most out of it. Leave the ads on the post and add any social media buttons or plugins that you want to push. With 10s of thousands of people visiting the page the post jumps up the rankings and people now searching for terms like Carlsberg video will arrive on our blog and possibly click on the ads. It becomes a bit of a virtual circle with more people liking the page, sharing it, commenting and pushing it up the rankings. It will never continue to drive the same revenues as it did during the peak but there will always be a certain amount of sharing and people finding it through the search engines. Create 10-12 of these posts and you have a nice little long term revenue stream there for the future.

Summary

Find a piece of content that is amazing and that nobody has shared that much. Something like the video above before it has actually hit the big time. Embed it in to your blog and give it a push using social ads to some targeted people who are likely to share it. Make sure the social buttons are visible for people to push it to their friends and then when it does take off place ads on to the post. It isnt always going to work but you give yourself a good chance by doing all the things above. I will say that when it does work there is no better feeling as all the hard work is done for you and the people sharing it drive all the revenue for you. Try it out, see how you get on and share any tips here that you might have.

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50 Innovative Ways To Use Twitter More Effectively

W
Twitter

ith over 170 million active users and playing a significant role in media consumption, Twitter has turned into the go-to site for real-time updates and gathering snippets of info from those were interested in. Pretty much everyone knows how to put a tweet together and how to reply to users, but what about more advanced features such as shortcuts, apps and SEO. If you want to improve your knowledge or want to pick up a few tips and tricks to help you get more out of the service, then read on.

Keyboard Shortcuts

With many of us spending large amounts of time on Twitter every day, there has to be a quicker way to use the desktop interface and that comes in the form of keyboard shortcuts. As you can see from the list below, there is a shortcut for pretty much every one of the actions you carry out on a daily basis.

App Security

Over the time that youve been using Twitter, there is a very good chance that you have given some apps permission to access your account. While most of the apps are fine, it is worth checking in here to see what apps you have given access to recently and purging some of the ones you no longer use. 38

Schedule Tweets

Sometimes you can come up with a good tweet, but feel that its not ready to be posted for the world to see. If thats the case, theres a vast number of apps and tools that will allow you to schedule tweets for later. Tweetdeck is one example and if youre looking for something a little more advanced, then Buffer is a great tool to use.

Sensitive Content

If, for whatever reason, youre tweeting content that isnt suitable for general consumption, activating this option in settings will either display sensitive content (those that users have marked as such) or mark yours. The latter will mean that users will be warned about your content before they proceed.

Embedding Tweets

Instead of taking screenshots of a tweet, you can now embed it into your blog post and allow visitors to interact with it if they were viewing it on Twitter. To do this, find the tweet you want, expand it and click details. You will see the option Embed this tweet appear in a new screen.

Deleting Location Information

While you can turn geotagging on, sometimes you might not want people to know where youre are or have tweeted from. If this is the case, head to settings and you will find the option under Tweet location.

#hashtag searching

If youre looking for particular topics or searching for updates to an event, using a hashtag to search can bring you more accurate results. Provided you know what the main hashtag is (eg: #London2012), you can find out more real-time info. Linking to Facebook account The majority of social media sites allow cross-posting and Twitter is no exception. In your profile settings, you will find this option at the bottom of the page underneath your bio.

Discovery

Twitter Search

Twitter recently redesigned its search feature so its a good place to start when discussing features. Behaving more like Google and Facebook by suggesting users, searching terms can be filtered by top, all or best yet, People You Know. The latter allows you to see what those users you follow are saying so you can jump into the conversation or add your own comment. 39

Advanced Search

However, if that isnt enough for you, you can take things a step further and increase your search capabilities. When youve viewing a search result, clicking the cog icon up in the top right-hand corner to bring advanced search. Here, you can filter by words, accounts, location and even moods to find what you want. Alternatively, you can access advanced search here.

Save Search

Similar to how you find advanced search. On the search results page, this is the second option offered in settings alongside advanced search.

A section some users tend to ignore, but more valuable then most people give credit for. Discovers main function is to expose you to content and users you mightnt have found through your normal feed. Alongside presenting the major stories appearing on Twitter, the activity section shows you everything thats been happening with those you follow, such as retweets, follows and favourites so you could find new content and users to follow.

Discover

Follow by Category

Finding Friends

Not content with presenting news, the Discover section also gives users the chance to find new people to follow based on interest. Just click on browse category and Twitter will present a list of topics that might interest you.

Search and categories arent the only ways of finding friends on Twitter. In discover, you can click the Find Friends section and find users through your Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail or AOL account.

Follow Buttons

The majority of people have a blog so its a good idea to include a follow button so that people can find you on Twitter. Simply visit Twitters button page and select the share content or follow button, fill out the details and embed it into your site. 40

Hashtag & Mention Buttons

If youve created an event or covering one, installing a hashtag button is an effective way of getting the message across. The process is the same as installing the share and follow buttons and is handy if you want to get your content out there.

General Tweeting
Less is More
You may post interesting content or say witty things, but when youre doing so, you want to give people the opportunity to retweet your stuff. As a rule, you should leave leave 20 characters worth of spare to allow this. If its possible leave 40 since that way, the person retweeting should be able to fit in a quick comment.

Modified Tweet

For those cases where youre retweeting something thats too big, modified tweets come into play. Marked as MT, this lets people know that this tweet has been edited so you can cut down the least essential parts or reword it so you can tweet it.

Shorten URL

Yes, Twitter and every other third-party app automatically shortens apps, but using a URL shortener has its benefits. For one, all URL shorteners include analytics so you can see how effective and popular your links are. Handy if youre a business or blog and want to see how many clicks a link got.

Twitter lists

Chances are youre following far more people then you can keep up with. Lists are a handy way of counteracting this. By creating different lists for different categories, you can easily follow the same number of people without being overwhelmed.

The last thing you want to do is spam your followers and if youre one of those people who tweets everything they can think of in the one go, youre not doing yourself any favours. Try to space out when you tweet so that youre more consistent throughout the day. If that isnt possible, use one of the scheduling tools mentioned earlier to space them out. 41

Pace Yourself

Images & Video

If you want better engagement or responses, sometimes an image or video is the way to go. Its good to mix up your tweets with a mixture of the two. If youre not used to taking photos or need an excuse to take some snaps, then things like the photo a day challenge on Instagram is a great way of getting practice. Just be sure to choose only the best photos to tweet if you dont want to overwhelm your followers with abstract photos.

Learn the Best Times to Tweet

Tweeting is one thing, but knowing the best times to tweet is another thing entirely. If youre being strategic and want to make sure your tweets are seen by as many people as possible, then this report from bit.ly could help you. Essentially, the best times to tweet is any time between 1pm-3pm from Monday to Thursday. Bit.ly also recommend that you should avoid posting after 8pm on any day as well as after 3pm on Fridays.

Hashtag tweets

Most users add hashtags onto their tweets without actually thinking about why they do it. Hashtags are supposed to signify that youre talking about a particular topic or event so in that case, only one hashtag is necessary in a tweet, and two at most. Any more than that and its overkill.

Favourites

The best way to look at favourites is not to view them as things you like, but instead things that you would bookmark for later use. Most of the time, you would favourite things that you dont have time to read, or a comment that you would like to save for future reference. So treat it as a resource that you can come back to and you will find that its value will go up.

Public replies

Sometimes when youre having a discussion, you want everyone to see it instead of just the person. It might be to strengthen a point you made with a previous tweet or to help followers keep up to speed with a discussion. To do this, simply place a full stop (really you could place any symbol, but this is tidier) and it will appear as a public tweet.This rule also applies to any tweet that begins with a username. 42

Twitter Mobile
SMS Twitter
Just because smartphones have grown in popularity doesnt mean that feature phones arent still being used. A section for traditional SMS still exists in settings, allowing you to receive text notifications, how many notifications you want to receive is really up to you, but bear in mind that you have to enable certain followers for mobile notifications first before you can start using it.

SMS Sleep settings

Because you dont want to be woken up at 3am by a Twitter user on the other side of the world, you can choose to switch off updates during certain times. Simply turn on the settings and choose the times you dont want to receive notifications.

Tweet alerts

One of the new features for Twitters new app update is the ability to receive notifications every time someone tweets. To activate this, go to the account you want to keep up to date with and hit the options button (person symbol). Select Turn on notifications and now you will now be alerted to any updates from that account.

Read Articles Later

If you have an Instapaper account and you want to save articles, just go into settings (found under me at the bottom right-hand corner), and go into advanced. Here you can activate your Instapaper or Pocket account so you can save articles you find in your news feed.

Image Quality & Size

Under the advanced option, you can adjust other settings such as font size (if the smallest font is too hard to read) and image quality. The latter is incredibly handy if youre having problems loading up images; setting it to low will mean a lower quality image that will load up faster.

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Apps
Nurph
Nurph is smart in that it correlates hashtags to create an ongoing conversation between Twitter users, making it easier for them to respond to one another and chat through tweeting and creating hashtag chatrooms. You can also create Twitterbots to guide users to a chatroom and funnel all your replies into the one space. Nurph is the ultimate in Twitter community curation.

dlvr.it

TweetBoard

dlvr.it (deliver it ) schedules blog posts to be delivered onto Twitter and across other social media platforms, allowing you to keep up with all social media and projecting your content to as many people and in as many ways as possible at one time or many. Its fairly by-the-numbers and simple to use, so as to be effective as possible.

TweetBoard pulls your Twitter stream into real-time and reformats them into threaded conversations. So instead of clicking view conversation a viewing a feed between you and few users, TweetBoard will enable you to view the conversation, other similar conversations and any tangential tweets as well, forming one giant conversation among you and your friends and followers.

Who ReTweeted Me

Who Retweeted Me enables you to congregate all your Retweeters on one page and thank them one by one, if you so please. It will tell you how many retweets a certain tweet has had as well as the average amount of followers the Retweet-ers have and the potential reach the tweet had with their help. To top it all off, it puts the chronology of retweeting in a simple graph for you to analyse at your pleasure.

MentionMap

MentionMap displays all your mentions and replies in a spider diagram, which, though undeniably nice to look at, can be awkward to navigate. Type in your username and the diagram will appear with legs dedicated to users you have tweeted, hashtags you have used as well as tributary users and conversations. It is a great way to visualise your tweets and the connections youve made on Twitter. 44

The Archivist

The Archivist is one of the premier Twitter analytic apps, allowing you to archive tweets and analyse the biggest trends. Whether youre searching for stats on keywords, hashtags or certain users, the Archivist will provide an extensive and aesthetically crisp analysis of whatever you want.

TwitLonger

Twitter is a hard task-master where TwitLonger is merciful and sympathetic. Sometimes 140 characters isnt enough and TwitLonger understands as such. You dont want to write an entire blog or a novel, but you just need a few more words to convey your point. TwitLonger will cut you some slack and then post a link to your extended tweet on Twitter just so everyone wont miss out on it.

TweetAdder

TweetAdder is a management tool that is designed to get you get more Twitter followers, but more importantly, it helps bring in engaged followers suited to you and whatever you are pedaling rather then just pure numbers. It is a good tool for those that are new to Twitter or want to exploit social media to their business advantage. Fast and easy to use, TweetAdder will get you up and on your feet in no time, helping you add users and get properly involved with Twitter.

ManageFlitter

ManageFlitter is quite a behemoth. You can unfollow users and bots en masse, copy and follow lists of users from other accounts, and the in-built analytics are comprehensive and allow you to pick the best time to make your most important tweets. Theres even a search tool tailored to your account unlike any offered by Twitter itself; very helpful and essential for popular accounts/ businesses.

Qwitter

Qwitter is an email service that keeps you up to date on your followers and those who have unfollowed you and the fluctuation in each. For people with a great deal of followers, Qwitter would be very useful with its daily updates, telling you how many people you have gained and lost and putting it in a statistical context as well. It has a clean design that is similar to Twitter itself and is perfectly effective if you really need to know these details.

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TweetDeck by Twitter

Perhaps the most well known Twitter app out there,TweetDeck is great and quickly becoming the preferred way to use Twitter among dedicated users as it is far more expansive and comprehensive than a standard Twitter news feed. Instead of merely viewing your following feed, you can view multiple feeds at any one time, and they can be customised to your choosing. Most likely, one would use it to view replies, mentions, interactions and search hashtags simultaneously, but there are plenty of possibilities.

Miscellaneous
Twitter SEO
Social media and SEO has a close relationship. One complements the other and it shouldnt be any surprise that you can optimise your Twitter account to take advantage of this. There are many ways you can do this: - The first is to pick a name and username that has the main keyword you want (if its marketing then @ABCmarketing etc.). If you already have a Twitter account, then you can change your actual name, but dont change your username. - Include your website address. its an obvious statement, but you want to make sure people can find your site. Dont use a URL shortener and whatever you do, dont make your address direct to your Twitter account, thats just silly. - Your bio is also important. Above all, you want your personality to shine through, but you should include some main keywords in it. You only have 160 characters so make sure the words in question are high value. - Your profile photo is also handy for this. Make sure you rename it before you upload it. If youre happy with your profile photo, then just upload it again, but under a new name.

Google Analytics

If you have a blog or site, its important to know how much of your traffic originates from social media. Google analytics has made this easier with the addition of a flow visualisations, which illustrates how many visits you get from Twitter and other social media sites. Important if you want an idea of how much traffic you can generate from the site.

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Create a cartoon

This is cheating a little, but it does show just how effective the medium can be if you apply a little bit of creative thinking. Electric car brand, Smart in Argentina created this brilliant cartoon using just tweets to highlight their point; that their car can fit into the tightest spaces.

Twitter For

Twitter itself has a vast range of guides and blogs for different sections, which is bound to come in useful at some point. Some of them include advertising & business, developers and newsroom just to name a few.

Twitter Stories

Considering that Facebook has just released its own version there, its a good time to go back to Twitters version, which is a year old by the way. Simply showcasing the best stories involving Twitter, the sites aim is to get you to think of the site differently and see the creative ways the service has been used.

Know Your Followers

It helps to know who exactly youre communicating to and with more people stating their location in their bio, its easier than ever to find out. There are two ways of going about this, the first way is to go though your followers and make a note of the countries and locations theyre from. If you have a significant number of followers this will be quite time-consuming. The second way is to use a third-party tool like SocialBro to do all the hard work for you, giving you data which you can use to communicate more effectively.

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Everything You Need To Know About Twitter For Customer Service + 10 Brands Doing It Well

witter is a wonderful tool, but one way in which brands are using it and adding great value to their social media activity is by using it as a customer service tool. Customers will often turn to the medium first to vent about their frustrations around customer service or a new product, and the shrewd brands are there in place with a team of people to answer all queries and to help create brand loyalty. In some cases, companies are able to use it as a cost-cutting exercise with queries handled faster online and calls deflected from customer service numbers and other costly channels. Beyond the basic functionality it offers, Twitter is still limited in terms of the premium features it offers brands, but there are a number of hacks and third party tools that you can use to help improve your customer service and Twitter themselves will be rolling out additional features over time. Until Twitter does that, however, you will need to work with what you have so here are a number of ways and examples you can use to improve customer service.

Tips For Using Twitter For Customer Service

While Twitters functionality is rather limited in comparison to other sites, there are a number of ways you can improve interaction and ensure that customers leave with a positive experience. Heres what you should keep in mind.

Using Apps like Tweetdeck

If youre going to understand your customers, you will need to see what theyre saying. Not everyone is going to mention your twitter handle so to get a clear picture of what 48

people are saying, you will need monitoring tools to help you out. The most popular one would be Tweetdeck which lets you view numerous streams at once. By typing in your company name, you can see what mentions, links and comments people are making about your business. There are many other third-party apps and analytics out there so try them out and see what fits best.

Respond At Speed

A simple but effective way to build trust and provide a positive experience. If you see somebody asking a question, dont leave it until tomorrow. Respond as soon as possible. Even if you dont have an immediate answer to their question, its much better to show that youve seen their tweet and are working to solve their problem.

Never Let Customers Reveal Their Private Details

Relating to the last point, never let a customer reveal private or potentially private information publicly. The obvious examples are bank account details, passwords and addresses, but also things like phone numbers, account names (if its about an online platform) and email would also apply. Put yourself in their shoes: If you dont feel comfortable sharing something, chances are your customers feel the same way.

Be Polite And Courteous

A basic TIP but always make sure that the tone you use is polite, even when somebody , is criticising your company. It can take one bad tweet to tarnish your reputation so make sure youre taking the moral high ground when dealing with complaints. Also, if youre getting heated up, remember that youre not expected to reply straight away so use those minutes to regroup and get your thoughts together before replying. 49

Place Your Twitter Handle In Prominent Locations

Twitters a fast and snappy way of responding to queries so if you use it for customer service ,direct people to it. Your own site is an obvious place to highlight this, but also use your other social media channels and emails to show this as well. For people to use it, they need to be aware of it so dont neglect promoting it.

Create A Separate Customer Service Twitter Account

If youre a bigger company and youre getting a lot of mentions and comments, it might be best to create two separate accounts to make things more manageable. This way, youll be able to have one platform for dealing with queries and questions, and another to help promote the site.

Be Consistent

Another simple but effective tip, always make sure youre responding to people when they tweet and do it regularly. Nobody will comment or respond to a dormant account or one that is only active when it feels like it.

Personalise The Experience

Most companies tend to be faceless corporate identities, but if you make things a little more human, it can have a positive effect. A good way is to put the first name at the end of said tweets so people know theres a person behind the response. If you wanted to take things a step further, you could include your twitter handle instead. One good example is Triberr who place the twitter handles of their two co-founders on its bio so people know whos responding.

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Create An FAQ From Common Questions

If youre receiving a number of queries and questions, you will probably notice a few appearing regularly. If thats the case, instead of answering the same question over and over again, create an FAQ that answers this. Most people will look through your site first when looking for information so an FAQ will free up more time for you to focus on the less common questions.

Use Direct Messages (DM)

Chances are somebody will have a complaint or problem that you need to sort out. Most of the time, this can be resolved within one or two tweets, but if it gets particularly heated or involves personal information, its best to make it a private conversation between yourself and the other party. Remember that to send DMs, both parties need to be following each other so make sure this is the case before doing anything.

Know When To Move Problems On

Sometimes it isnt always possible to solve a problem on Twitter and when that happens, be sure to direct them to an email account or phone number to rectify the problem. You can use Twitter as a way to direct people to other help services so dont try to solve a problem in 140 characters if it requires far more than that.

Follow Up

Something brands tend to forget is that when the problem is solved, theres still opportunity to interact with people. If youve solved a problem or redirected someone to another area, make a note of their username and a week later, send them a tweet to see how things are going. Its the little things that will endear you to your fan base and will get you good publicity sooner or later. 51

State When Youre Open

Unless youre a massive company with offices in different parts of the world, chances are youre only going to be monitoring your Twitter account during working hours. If so, place said times on your Twitter bio to avoid confusion. Also, make sure you include the time zone too as you could very easily have customers from abroad trying to reach you.

Ten Brands Doing Customer Service Right

There are many examples of brands doing customer service on Twitter, but fewer are getting it right. Since people learn a lot more from example than through theory, here are some brands that are getting customer service on Twitter right:

Zappos Customer Service

The shoe company makes sure that its customer service team says who they are as they address all queries and comments. As well as placing their team in the background image, it also injects some personality into its tweets by asking users to tweet in pirate talk and talking about the latest sport events.

Hertz

Hertz makes sure that it responds to all questions from its customers, always stating who the message is from by placing their initials at the end of each tweet. Each member has their initials on the background image so you know exactly who youre talking to.

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UPS Customer Support

UPS state what times their customer support account is open for so that customers know when to expect a response. It also follows the same principal as Hertz and Zappos by placing their teams names and photos in the background image.

Best Buy (twelpforce)

Best Buys Twelpforce does its best to answer any tech-related queries and brings all the different services together. While it tweets in different languages, it makes sure that its answers are as comprehensive as possible.

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Uber

Since Uber is a mobile service, it follows up on customer queries by asking how their experience was, getting feedback and interacting with their customers to create a welcoming service.

Xbox Support

The Guinness world record holder for most responsive brand on Twitter certainly lives up to its name by making sure everyone gets a response, even going as far to respond to people who mention Xbox in passing.

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Southern Electric

Southern Electric not only provides help on its Twitter page, but also provides alternatives for contacting them on its background image. It also states times for contacting them clearly so there is no confusion.

Royal Mail

Not only does Royal Mail personalise its tweets and respond to queries, but the account is incredibly funny. Its also a massive fan of (bad) puns, which is always a good sign.

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Citi

The financial brand has its own customer service account, which it updates quite regularly. With 18 different people servicing its account, it ensures that everybody gets a response, no matter how trivial it may seem.

Samsung

One of the biggest technology companies in the world has its own support service. While it does use it to promote its services, it always finds the time to help customers out with their devices.

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Stuck With B2B Marketing? The Complete InDepth Guide To Linkedin

inkedIn is a stalwart of the social networking scene, yet it often suffers from a lack of limelight around younger, sexier upstarts. Pretty much everyone you meet in the professional world will have a LinkedIn profile. The only problem is that many dont actually know how to use it or make the most of different features available. Of course, you will only get out of it what you put in and there are some great examples of how LinkedIn can be used for business in ways you might not imagine. How about raising investment for your new business, purely through LinkedIn? Also, businesses are just starting to take more notice of LinkedIn, as it opens the platform to allow for campaigns and apps to run more effectively. Add to that the fact that LinkedIn has an ad marketplace that runs in the same way as Facebooks and that its working more on strategic partnerships, such as their recent addition to the new Microsoft Office and already you have numerous reasons to start using it to your advantage, if you arent already.

Why It Matters

Its easy to forget about LinkedIn and just use it to respond to the odd contact or post a link to something you want to promote. However, if you consider how many connections youre likely to have in there, it can actually be an important part of your 57

professional life, if you want it to be. The benefits of an active LinkedIn profile, whether its personal or for your business, extend way beyond the immediate connections you have with benefits such as SEO also being incredibly important.

And, of course, with a public network like LinkedIn, it is almost guaranteed to feature on employers background checks when researching potential candidates. While it may not be the case that securing a job will be wholly dependent on your LinkedIn profile and activity, having a professional looking profile that has been properly filled with your background and work experience will ultimately make it easier for prospective employers to see what youre all about.

10 Ways To Help Make Your Profile Stand Out

1. Get Your Profile Picture Right
Profile pictures are a relatively small part of any users LinkedIn profile, but its usually the first thing potential employers will see and are of great importance. It is recommended that users get a respectable head shot taken, but it doesnt have to be professionally done (although that would, of course, be preferable). It can be as simple as standing in front of a neutral background and asking a friend to take a photo of you with a digital camera of smartphone; as long as you are looking into the camera and your head and shoulders are visible, it will make for a sufficient profile pic.

2. Include a professional headline.

Headlines are important as they give users a basic idea of who you are and what you do in a concise form. Its important that your headline is crisp and comprehensive so that it conveys everything you want to potential employers in 100 characters or less. Think of it as an initial pitch to users to read further and learn more. 58

3. Provide a summary

A good summary is a must and allows you to put your experience in a wider context beyond your CV/resum. Ultimately, a summary will, of course, condense your profiles content into a few hundred words so it is important that it presents you at your best and makes the most of a readers attention span. After all, there are plenty of others out there, and you have to show why they should prioritise yours.

4. Make sure your profile is 100% complete

LinkedIn is keen to assist firsttime users in building their profile with helpful tips and step-by-step guides, so much so that your profile should be up to standard level in no time, especially if you import your CV or resum on to the site early. Professionalism is key, so it is important that your profile is well presented and upto-date at all times.

5. List all previous experience, no matter how small

You may find a previous job insignificant or even embarrassing, but readers will use your resum to form a better idea of you, both as a person and as a professional, in their heads. A comprehensive listing of your complete working experience, complete with descriptions, responsibilities and searchable key words and attributes will leave you in good stead.

6. Make Connections

It is important that new users try and make at least 50 connections. Put the foundations in place by searching for people you know well, such as friends, family, employers/employees and colleagues, or import contacts using your email address.

7. Use applications

If you have a blog or website that could be appealing to potential employers, then you can link on your profile. WordPress makes this especially easy; theres an application to put an RSS feed on your LinkedIn profile. Its an easy way to of displaying your work to users and on a consistent basis. Weve included a list of plug-ins and apps that are compatible with LinkedIn; be sure to use SlideShare to improve your presentations, or Rapportive, to help you acquire connections outside LinkedIn. 59

8. Create a Group

Groups can be the absolute nadir of LinkedIn, equating to glorified forums and filled to the brim with users you do not want to be associated with. However, creating a niche topic group that is defined by specificity and exclusivity will be show you to be an authority in your field, and you will be able to curate important information that will be of use in your search for the next big opportunity.

9. Add a video to your profile

Most people wont have a video, which will make you stand out all the more. Videos are obviously easier to digest than text; they will make your profile more memorable and ensure you make a strong first impression. Obviously, videos are a good way of showing the person behind the profile and will allow you to connect with readers on a personal level, while also effectively showing off your skills.

10. Keywords

Think of employers like magpies and keywords like shiny things. You need to put some thought into creating your profile making sure to litter keywords throughout so that you best match what fellow users are looking for. It can be easy to impress someone or even show up on someones radar with the right words; the better you use them, the more likely you are to show up in search results worldwide. Be wary though, you run the risk of sounding SEO-orientated if you use too many buzzwords. Remember: you are a person, not a professional archetype.

Making Groups Work For You

Perhaps one of the major features that LinkedIn has over other social media sites is its groups feature. Granted, this isnt a unique feature by any stretch of the imagination, but what LinkedIn groups have over other social media sites is the type of audience they attract. While Facebook and Twitter can attract almost anyone, with LinkedIn, you know the type of people asking and answering questions are professionals and have a good working knowledge in their field. There are numerous reasons why you should join a few groups relating to your position if you havent already, but for those who are unsure about how to proceed, heres some pointers to keep in mind.

1) Focus on a few select groups

When you join a group (or the admin for said group accepts your application), you should get a feel for each group. For example, which groups are most in-line with 60

your profession or expertise? What type of questions are asked? What discussions does this group usually have? How many are active users? You should also consider the number of members each group has. Dont go for the biggest groups as you will end up getting lost within the noise. Instead, aim for specific groups within your industry and make sure youve more than one keyword in your search. Its better to search for social media PR instead of PR as the latter will bring up general groups or subsections that have nothing to do with you. Also, if you want to get noticed, the type of groups you want to join should have roughly 500 4,000. Thats why its important to research how active these groups are when youre starting out.

2) Be consistent

When we say be consistent, we dont just mean posting comments, but making sure youre visiting your groups regularly. You should visit each group at least two times a week so that youre up to speed with whats happening. While you do get daily emails regarding groups (and weekly emails if you dont visit often), its better to take a proactive approach and visit these groups yourself so that when something comes up that you can comment on, you will be one of the first to provide information and insight into a particular topic.

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3) Identify the top discussions and engage

Usually, the most popular discussions in a group are pushed up to the top for all to see. Because of this, its a good idea to weigh-in on the discussion and offer your opinion or advice of certain topics. Alongside that, each LinkedIn group has a chart showing you the top influencers, that is those people who gain the most traction in the group. If youre engaging with these discussions either through providing insight into a topic, responding to comments or even asking your own questions, users will respond and will begin to see that you are a valuable member of the community.

4) Ask Questions

This links back to the first point, which is know your audience. Once you do, you will know the type of discussions people will respond to and the type of questions that will benefit the group the most and be able to start your own discussions. Knowing whats members find important is crucial so have a look at previous discussions to see what resonated and which ones were the most valuable. You dont want to repeat these discussions, but you want to find out the topics and subjects that allowed such interaction. Its best to take a sporadic approach to this, you dont want to be that one person whos constantly posting stuff online and unless youre the group admin whose job is to facilitate discussion, this is a bad thing.

5) Make sure youre providing value

Its ok if you want to link to an article or piece that youve written on a group page, but make sure youre contributing and adding value to the group. Chris Brogan made a rule for Twitter which can be easily applied to any social media site which goes like this: For every promotional tweet you post, 15 should be sharing or providing content. You dont need to go to this extreme if youre providing helpful and insightful comments, but its worth keeping in mind if you dont want to look like youre spamming the group. 62

Company Pages
Why Create One?
The same reason why you would create a group page. LinkedIns audience are professionals so they will take a far greater interest in whats happening with your business (provided you make it relevant to them). It also appears in Google search alongside LinkedIns search engine so the chances of being found by professionals increase. Alongside that, it gives you a platform to promote your services and products as well as any other events or items you want to get out there. Thankfully, LinkedIn provide a step-by-step guide about setting up a company page so we dont have to bore you with the how-to part. Once youve filled out the details and your page is set up, its time to see what else you can do with company pages.

When youve promoted your page to everyone you know and youve amassed a sizable audience, the first thing you should check out are follower and page statistics. As well as giving you a quick overview, you can also get a further breakdown of each statistic such as follower demographic, recent followers, update impression, and unique visitors. This will give you an idea as to any emerging trends or demographics. Also, knowing what type of follower you have and how many there are is important for when you start using targeted updates.

Follower and Page Statistics

Follow Button

At one point, the only social button you could get for LinkedIn was the share button for articles. Earlier this year, LinkedIn decided to introduce the follow button, allowing users to follow the company page directly from a site. Handy as more people would be inclined to visit your site and you want to make it as easy as possible for users to follow you. 63

Targeted Updates

One for the bigger company pages, targeted updates allows you to post to specific demographics, so if youre posting an update thats only relevant to European followers, its perfect. However, if your page has less than 1,500, its probably not recommended to use this as you will probably end up ignoring a significant amount of followers through this. The exception is if youre posting something very specific and the people not seeing the update are a tiny minority.

Linkedin Today

With people spending more and more time-consuming content on Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn came up with its own content offering last year called LinkedIn Today. It essentially personalises your business news, based on what your LinkedIn network is reading. You can also follow news by category, company or by suggestions that LinkedIn provides you. Essentially, LinkedIn Today is an online business newspaper for the online generation. Think of it as the Financial Times, but carefully curated and constantly changing to help filter the news that is most important to you. Here are a few tips that will help you get more out of Linkedin Today.

Browse and manage your news categories

To enhance the experience, click on the browse category, which will give you a huge list of the news broken down into the various categories that might be of interest to you. Taking time to curate these at the start will mean that you have a better experience at a later date. 64

The best news for you is often the news that your connections are sharing and commenting on. By clicking on the Trending in your network tab, you will see all the content that people within your network think is important. You will find that this news is incredibly relevant to you and your business because of the time you have spent curating your connections. You can also choose to follow individual news sources like blogs, websites and media sites much in the same way as you would on Twitter. By taking the time to curate these news sources, the news gets even better for you and all the rich media blog posts, videos and articles relevant to you will start popping into your feed.

LinkedIn Apps & Plugins

Connected is a dashboard that manages all your contacts from across your email address book, social networking friends/followers/connections, calendar and phone contacts, unifying them and making them easily manageable as part of one contact list, a corresponding profile will then be created for each. Connected presents a device for constructing a comprehensive online contact list with minimal effort and little fuss. It takes details of your contacts from across the internet and melds them into a cohesive whole. Connected will be integral to the sites ongoing development as the internets premier business network.

ConnectedHQ

SlideShare

LinkedIns current aim is to reconstruct traditional business networking for an online generation. In the case of SlideShare, users can host documents and presentations on the site to share with their contacts. As part of LinkedIn, SlideShare can be used 65

to share CVs, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets among many other file types and will surely represent a useful tool for LinkedIn users and their connections as they try to transfer their business and interactions online.

Rapportive

Gmail add-on Rapportive, which LinkedIn acquired in February, displays a wide range of social networking details about the contact you are emailing. Rapportive and its new owners will continue to build the extension, but at this moment in time, one can add Gmail contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Gmail all from your Gmail account and without having to manually search for them on individual sites, one at a time.

IndexTank

IndexTank is innovative in that it allows its user to develop search apps with relative simplicity and without said users having to host their own software. LinkedIn bought the company in October and has since open-sourced its technology. Back in October, LinkedIn predicted that upwards of one billion searches would be made on the site in 2012, and IndexTanks engineers will be of great assistance as they attempt to maintain demand and facilitate user activity without disruption.

HookFlash

HookFlash is a video chat app think of Facebook chat or Skype and you will have a pretty decent idea as to how it works. Sign in with your LinkedIn account and any connections you have on the site and you can message them or call them whenever theyre online. Currently, the app is available for iPad only, but there are plans for an iPhone app and an Android version to be released later in the year. 66

There are also a number of plug-ins for LinkedIn too, which will further enhance your experience. You can find most of the plugins listed here. CardMunch for iPhone Scan your business cards using an iPhone and it will calibrate the information given with a potential LinkedIn contact. Tripit Allows you to plan trips with LinkedIn contacts or even plan a trip together with LinkedIn contacts. Using Tripit, you can also see which of your contacts will be in which city at what time, providing greater potential for networking meetings. Reading List by Amazon Allows you to share and compare reading lists with your LinkedIn contacts, a proverbial ice-breaker for you and your virtual business acquaintances. LunchMeet for iPhone Put yourself out there and advertise your luncheon spot to all your many, faceless LinkedIn friends, encourages people to use lunch as a networking tool rather than an important daily meal. WordPress Automatically submits your WordPress blog posts to your LinkedIn account. Box.net Files Add the Box.net Files application to manage all your important files online. Box.net lets you share content on your profile, and collaborate with friends and colleagues. SlideShare Presentations Allows you to upload and display your presentations with the people in your LinkedIn network. Portfolio Display Use Portfolio Display to show off your multimedia work on your LinkedIn profile. GitHub Learn more about the projects your connections are working on, and indeed, tell the world more about what you are working on yourself. Blog Link Connect your LinkedIn profile to your blog. Events Find professional events, from conferences to local meet-ups, and make the right connections with other professionals at the event. Projects and Teamspaces Share and track unlimited tasks, projects, documents and Google Apps. Legal Updates Get legal news that matters to you and your business. (Lawyers, upload your articles and other content. Be found for your expertise on LinkedIn.) Real Estate Pro Access your local real estate and office space market. Follow active brokers, agents and professionals. Track new property listings and available spaces and stay informed of completed deals in your area. 67

Polls The Polls application allows you to collect actionable data from your connections and the professional audience on LinkedIn. Lawyer Ratings Lawyers can showcase their Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings and Client Review Ratings to further validate their stated credentials and help them make the right connections. LinkedIn for Outlook Put a face to your Microsoft Outlook contacts and find their corresponding LinkedIn profile. Lotus Notes Widget 1.0 Beta Get your email and LinkedIn updates all in one place; quickly learn more about people who send you email; search for people you want to contact and work with; share your status, see what your connections are working on. FB LinkedIn Resume Extract important details and parts of your LinkedIn profile to post on your blog.

Infographic Sources

- http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2012/06/27/how-linkedin-strategy/ - http://press.linkedin.com/node/1191 - http://press.linkedin.com/about

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The Complete Guide To Creating A Killer LinkedIn Company Profile Including 10 Simple Tips
f youre a regular LinkedIn user, you may have noticed that the company pages has underwent a significant redesign. Following the redesign of the main LinkedIn page and LinkedIn Today, the company pages has experienced the same facelift and have given them much needed vibrancy.

While there are obvious changes such as the introduction of a cover photo, other changes mightnt be as obvious. So now that all page owners have had access to the new layout for a bit, its time to start finding out exactly what they have to offer.

Company Profile Overview

Over the last few years, there have been many different places for companies to interact like groups, profiles, company pages and the stream itself. However, just as Facebook moved all brands and businesses to pages as the central presence, LinkedIn is now doing the same. While it may be annoying for any marketing efforts that you have carried out on other parts of LinkedIn in the past, you should now focus all your energy on the company pages. Think of the company profile in exactly the same way you do your Facebook page although youll almost certainly be using LinkedIn differently. The pages are a great hub for pushing out company updates, sharing new positions in your company and showing off your products and services 69

Cover Photos

One of the major features that LinkedIn has introduced is the addition of cover photos for brand pages. The dimensions for cover photos are 646 x 220. This is smaller than Facebooks cover photo, but it follows a very similar format. There is the opportunity for multiple cover photos, as they are allowed on the Home, Careers and Products Pages. Speaking of which, LinkedIn cover photos for your products and services page is a feature brands often overlooked. The Products page allows for three different cover photos that can be clicked through as a slideshow, and allowing you to highlight a specific cover when a user lands on a page. One nice feature of the LinkedIn cover photos is the ability to insert links for each photo, something that Facebook lacks.

Post Updates

When youre posting a link onto your company page, youll notice that you have one or two extra options available to you before you hit share. As well as being able to edit the heading and intro blurb, youre now given the option to include a photo and select one to use. Granted, this is a feature thats been available for a long time on Facebook and Google+, but it does emphasise how LinkedIn is improving the visual aspect of the site to ensure more people will visit and stay on the site. A small, but useful addition is the character count which appears underneath the text box. While you already have an idea as to whats a long message, this will help as you try to make non-link updates short and succinct. Something else thats also worth reminding about is the targeting functions underneath your status. This was a feature of the old company pages, but its given greater importance with the redesign. If you have a significant number of followers and only want to target a specific industry, location or demographic, you can do so here. 70

The targeted audience function is only useful if you have a diverse audience and want to ensure people only see content thats relevant to them.

What about when you post something and you want to see how well it did? Thankfully, within a day of posting an update, you will be provided with statistics relating to its performance underneath the photo of said post. Not only will you get figures for impressions, clicks and shares, but you will also be told what percentage of followers engaged with a post. Its a great way to see how certain posts do and better understand what your audience is looking for.

About Section

The About section, which was placed at the very top of the page, has been moved to the very bottom. This is a little odd as visitors will have to scroll down past a maximum of ten updates to see it. However, the pages are designed to promote multimedia content (cover photos, connections, links, careers, etc.) and chances are that those who are really interested in your company will seek it out anyway. Remember that the first thing people will see is your cover photo and your posts so that will need to catch their attention first.

Brands Using Profiles Effectively

Although all the functionality is there, not that many of the biggest brands in the world are using the pages effectively yet. One of the main reasons for this is that many companies are dubious about grouping all their employees into one easy to find page where their competitors could easily sift through them and poach them. Having said that, considering the fact that you can gain followers on your page in the same way you would on Twitter, it does offer a great way to build a community and have a group of people that you can push your content out to. Here are some brands that are doing it right. 71

AT&T

One of the largest phone companies in the world has an excellent page and over 170,000 followers. It clearly puts a lot of emphasis on its page because it has all the tabs properly designed, including their products and services.

Salesforce

One of the biggest enterprise tools in the world is becoming increasingly social in its offerings. Its leveraging LinkedIn as a recruitment tool as it continues to build a large following on its page.

Zipcar

Not one of the biggest companies, but Zipcar is showing how LinkedIn company profiles can be used effectively and regularly for staff recruitment. The tabs on its page provides good information on the company such as videos, and theres a constant stream of jobs being posted. 72

Hubspot

The marketing software company was one of the first to get access to the new layout and its clear to see why. A cover photo that stands out, regular blog content with standout images, and a clear tone means its works well.

Dell

A comprehensive careers page, some great content from both its own and external sites and regular interaction from its 335,000 strong followers shows that Dell knows what its doing with its company page.

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Careers Page

Another section that has gotten a new lease of life, career pages are simply a place for your company to advertise new jobs on the site. For normal company pages, you will be greeted by a snapshot of employees and the opportunity to post positions for a fee (more on that later). However, if youre a larger brand, and you can afford to spend a bit of cash, you can upgrade to a fancier and more comprehensive page. You only have to look at a company like Dell, for example, to see how much brighter and how much content features to understand the benefits. For one it has a significant cover image covering the length of the screen. Scrolling down you can see that everything is clearly presented as connections and vacant jobs are given prominence. A brief summary about what the company does with accompany video and some testimonials showing that the company is to be trusted. Saying that, its main function is to advertise job opening in your companies and to target professionals in the demographic youre looking at. Prices vary per region and demographic aimed, but using Ireland as an example, the price for posting a job on the site is 139.95 for 30 days. There are also 5-job packs for 110.99 per job and 10-job pack for 89.50 per job.

Products & Services Page

If the main company page shows your social media efforts, then the products and services page is where the real company details are. The tab allows you to add all the important information about your company and what you offer. While most people will still look for that information on your website, its important to remember that some potential customers might be finding you for the first time through LinkedIn. The page can be a very useful way of driving traffic and even sales via your LinkedIn page. You can make the tabs and individual products link through to your website or places where customers can actually buy from you. 74

Adding products and services is easy and you can add as many as you wish. Customisation is rather simple and along the usual details that you can add in key features, URLs, company contacts, YouTube video and promotions if you have one running. Whats also of value is the recommendations section. Here, you can see how many people have recommended your services and any recommendations from your networks of connections. You can also place video content here too, locating it on the right-hand toolbar.

Page Tips

1) Videos On Products Tabs

Videos are a great way of showing off what you can offer clients and customers. If you have any of your own content hosted on Youtube or other video sharing channels, we recommend you get it into the sidebar.

2) Use Advertising To Drive Audience

While you will pick up followers for your page organically, LinkedIn does offer some very targeted advertising options that can help you build a following. It can be broken down by location, job title and there are many other advanced targeting options. It is fairly expensive, but that is because it is both focused and effective. You can have a look at all the advertising options, but if youre serious about using this as a company page where you share the best content, you will want to start spending a little to build your audience. 75

3) Use LinkedIn Buttons On Your Site

We keep talking about the benefits of social buttons, but they really are a great way of getting content shared. Yet you know you could do the same for your company page? Adding a share, follow, endorse or recommend button can help drive views and gain you some new followers so choose the ones that you feel are most important and add them in.

4) Create Multiple Product Pages

Chances are you might have offices based in different countries and you want to direct certain visitors to them instead. Simply go into Edit on the services tab (located on the top right-hand corner) and it will be the first option presented to you. Click create new audience and fill in the details. This is also handy if you offer more than one service and you want to target different sectors.

5) Add Cover Photos For Products Page

You could do this with the old company profiles but since cover photos have taken greater prominence, its worth adding in or updating them. Simply scroll down the edit product page and you will be presented with three blank banners. Add your images (640220 pixels) and the URL and you will get a rotating spotlight module displaying all three. This is handy if youre promoting different products, sections of your company or simply trying to provide a call to action for visitors. For example, mobile network AT&T uses its cover photos to promote new products, offers and events, all of which can be seen below.

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6) Use Insights To Your Advantage

LinkedIns insights are comprehensive in comparison to similar first-party efforts so be sure to use it to your advantage. You will be given a breakdown of follower demographics, engagement, impressions. This is important if youre using targeted status updates as you need to know your audience if you want to effectively target them.

7) Use Description Tags

Scrolling down the edit page, you will see the option to enter in your company specialities. This is important if you want people to find you so make sure you fill in as many as you can. Think of it as SEO for LinkedIn and use relevant keywords to ensure the best possible chance.

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8) Update Regularly

Nobody is going to visit your page or follow you if you rarely update so make sure you get into the habit of posting content regularly. If you have a blog, post content from that, but you can also mix it up with interesting articles from other sites too. The key is to provide value so build it up.

9) Add Different Services

Vary your content in your products page and when adding a new service in, ensure that the image is unique from the other services you have included. When someone first sees your page, the first thing that will catch their eye are distinct images so making sure theyre different is a good way of getting the unique qualities of your company across.

10) Control Your Page

Depending on the size of the company, you may want to dedicate one or two people to managing LinkedIn duties. You have the option to allow anyone with an email registered to the companys domain name to be an admin, but this should only be the case if you have a small company. If its medium sized or bigger, its better to just have one or two people managing it instead.

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40 Tips & Tricks To Help Improve Your Google+ Experience

espite having rubbed many of the tech press up the wrong way when it first came out, Google+ has developed a passionate fan base. Whatever your views on it, theres a lot to take away from Googles social media effort, developing a reputation for blogging, photography and design. But whether youve been using the site since day one or have just recently jumped into it, theres a lot of little tricks, add-ons and features that you can take advantage of and make your experience richer.

General Use

Text & Image Shortcuts

If you want certain parts of your post to stand out, you can insert symbols for it to stand out. If you place two asterisks before and after the selected text, you can bold the text. Similarly, using two underscore symbols will format your text in italics and using two hyphens will strikethrough the text.

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Some quick key shortcuts: Space = Scroll down stream Shift + Space = Scroll up stream Q = Jump to chat J = Scroll down by single post K = Scroll up by single post Return = Start comment Tab + Return = End comment Also, you can add videos, photos and links to your post by simply dragging them directly to the share box.

Hashtags and mentions

Similar to Twitter, you can mention people in your updates by using the @ symbol and mark your posts topic using the hashtag symbol. However, the handy part of Google+s hashtags is that when you check a trending topic, you can pause the feed, allowing you to see whats going on without being overwhelmed by constant updates.

Linking to a Post

If you want to link to a post on Google+, just right-click on the posts date/time of post and select copy link address. When you put it into your address bar or post it on a different site, it will bring people to that post. Alternatively, you can go into post options and select Link To This Post.

Editing/Modifying a Post

Ever post something and notice a typo or feel you could have phrased it better. If so, you can edit a post long after youve posted it. Go into your post settings and select edit post.

News Feed
Filtering Noise
If youre following numerous people and you want to see more content from a particular circle and less from another, you can filter how much noise comes from each circle. To do this, go into a circles feed and underneath your name, you will see a slider allowing you to bring more or less updates from this circle into your main feed. Handy if one circle is dominating your feed and you want to hear what others are getting up to.

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Send Private Messages

Although Google+ doesnt have a private message function like Facebook (although you could argue that it has and its called Gmail), you can send messages only intended for one or two people. When youre posting an update, just get rid of whatever circle is there and type in the names of those you want to communicate with. When you post it, only those people will be able to see your message.

Blog Posting

Because of its formatting and style, Google+ is better for directly publishing blog content on the site than other sites. When youre writing a post, you can mix it up by posting long-form posts which can be 100,000 characters long. Sometimes, longer, more comprehensive posts can get a lot more engagement so experiment to see what people respond to best.

Circles

Inviting Friends

While youre linked up to your Gmail profile, you can find people based on specific friends. Just go into Circles, and select find people. When youve done that, simply drag one of your friends to the search bar and you will get suggestions based on that person.

Friends About Page

If youre Gchatting with someone, you can access their about page by clicking on their name in the chat window. Doing this will direct you to their about page without leaving the chat.

Finding people

If only a few of your friends are on Google+ and you want to get more out of it, theres an active community out there for you to discover. While Google has its own suggestions page, Creative Web Design posted a number of Google+ directories to help you find the most followed and most interesting users on the site.

Hangouts

The jewel in Google+s crown, hangouts let you talk to a number of your friends at the same time. While starting a hangout is easy, when youre on Gchat, you will be notified anytime your friends are holding a hangout so you can join in. The same notification is given when youre on Google+ itself on the right hand side.

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Design

Google+ changed the option to only have thumbnail images at the top of your Page, which is what Google heavily adopted themselves across their brand pages. Now you can upload a banner image, giving your profile page a strong design. Make sure youre utilising this new feature, as its part of a recent update Google made to it. - This clever template tool will help you when you are designing a cover image to fit with your profile image. It will allow you to see which part of your photo will be cropped so you can test the design before going live. - If you do want to go for the thumbnail option, then why not go for a good old photo hack? Check out this collection of clever hacks for a bit of inspiration. - If youre running a company Google Plus page, you should consider creating a small twibbon style icon that can be overlaid on your employees profile pictures. This will allow them to be easily identified as official admins/moderators of your Google Plus page, and this will carry through when they join other circles. - If youre stuck for inspiration for cover images, you can access a handy resource here which contains some pretty nice cover images to jazz up your profile. - Try and make the most of video posts on your profile. When you upload a photo you have the option of adding text onto the overlay banner, which will help with your design and encouraging people to view your content.

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- One for the more advanced designers here (and were not totally convinced this is a nice feature), but you can follow this guide to find out how to create an animated profile picture. Use with caution as you dont want to risk putting people off with a profile thats too busy. However, if you spend time on a nice animated image, then you can add a bit of colour to your profile page.

Links

Google Ripples

One of the handiest features of Google+ is its ripple feature. Using this, you can see how viral or how shared a particular post or link was. So long as the post in question is marked public, you can go to that posts options and select View ripples. Alongside a visual representation, you will each each persons post on the right hand side when you zoom in.

Mobile

Send Feedback

Did you know that if youre using the iPhone app, you can send feedback to the Google+ team just by shaking your phone? Now you do!

Instant upload

You can change the settings on this so that photos are only uploaded when you have a wi-fi connection. Useful if your 3G connection is slow or youre reluctant to use your network data.

Photos

Editing Photos

Google+ has an impressive array of features for editing photos, which puts it on par with many photo sharing apps and programs out there. Alongside 83

the basic features like cropping, sharpness and rotating, you can apply filters to your images as well as other fun elements like speech bubbles and fake beards, if you feel your photo is enhanced by these additions.

Cross Posting Images

If you want images from your other accounts to go to your Google+ account, a handy way is to upload everything onto dropbox. Using If This Than That, you can make sure Instagram, Facebook Camera, and Flickr uploads go into Dropbox. This way, you can download them from Dropbox and later upload them onto Google Plus. This is only if you dont save uploaded photos onto your phone.

Import Photos

There are a number of ways to bring your photos from your other social media accounts, mostly in the form of plugins. Facebook - Move Your Photos, a chrome extension that will move your Facebook photos onto Picasa. Instagram - You can use the IFTTT method or you can use Instaport which will export them to Pisaca. Flickr - You can use FlickandShare or Migratr to complete this.

Events

Party Mode

An interesting feature from Google+ events is the ability to group everyones photos together to create one massive album. Everyone thats attending the event can take and automatically upload photos onto an events album, showing everyone whats happening in real-time.

Only Show Important Events On Google Calendar

If your feed is getting clogged up with events from Google+, you can disable these by going into settings in calendar. Scroll down to near the bottom and you find options either to only send reminders when youve responded yes or maybe, or to only show invitations that youve responded to.

Check Availability

If you have been invited to numerous events, but are unsure as to which ones you can attend, you can see if youre free at that time by clicking check availability on the events page. Here you can cycle through each day to see if there are any other events on during that time. 84

Brand pages

Disable comments

For brand pages, if a post is receiving too many spam comments or if the topic at hand is quite sensitive, you can disable comments as well through post options.

+1 Plugin Button

Like all the major social media sites, Google+ also has its +1 button, which you can add to your site. You can find the code for it here and you can adjust the size, width and to an extent, the shape. https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/

Importing your content from Facebook.

Although you cant do it directly, there are steps you can take to add your existing Facebook content onto your Google+ page. How To Geek has a great guide about how you can bring all your Facebook data, photos and videos to your Google+ profile.

Privacy
View as
Similar to Facebook, you can see how your profile looks to the outside world. Simply go into your profile, type in the name of someone youre following in your circle to see what theyre presented with when they visit your profile. This is helpful if youre applying different privacy settings to different circles.

Privacy through circles

While Google+ is mainly a public site, there are numerous ways to make sure youre only sharing info with people you trust. The first is through circles, creating them gives you the opportunity to share your next post with them only and the next time you post something, that circle will automatically be selected. You can also control which circles you appear in as well, you can block or ignore users through this so they cant see your profile.

Restricting search visibility

If you dont want your profile to appear in Google search, go to your about page and edit settings there. Near the bottom of the page, you will see a section called public discovery. This controls whether your profile is visible on search or not. 85

Two-Step Verification

If you want to give your account an extra layer of protection, you can activate twostep verification here. What this does is if somebody somehow gets access to your accounts username and password, when they enter it, your phone receives a text or voice mail with a code to enter. This means that would be hackers would need to steal your phone as well to be able to access your account.

Tagline

Not everyone has the time to read through your about page, so taglines are a handy way of summarising what youre about. Its best to treat it similar to Twitters bio as you want to make sure its snappy and to the point.

SEO & Links

Author SEO
If youre a blogger or write content online, you can make sure that Googles search engine recognises who you are by filling out your About page. Link to your other social media profiles, link to your website (make sure you do the same thing vice versa), fill out your profile and add people to your circles. The more you do this, the more people who will add you to their circles and the chances of your profile popping up beside a blog post. The debate about how much Google+ influences your search rankings is unclear, but you can at least place things in your favour by fleshing out your profile.

Tagline

Not everyone has the time to read through your about page, so taglines are a handy way of summarising what youre about. Its best to treat it similar to Twitters bio as you want to make sure its snappy and to the point. Your tagline will also appear beside your name on things like Disqus.

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Creating A Vanity URL

If youre linking to your profile and you want your URL to be a littlesnappier, then there are a number of services to avail from. Gplus.to is one such example. Simply give a nickname, add your Google+ ID and voila, a new shorter address is yours.

Miscellaneous
RSS Feeds
If you want to create an RSS feed for your profile (or someone elses profile), there are a number of different apps that will help you do this. Sites like Plu.sr and Google+ to RSS will help you do this.

Save content onto Evernote

If youre a regular user of Evernote, you can save content directly from it onto your . Simply find the email address for your Evernote account, add it onto a new Google+ circle called Evernote, then any time you want to save something from Google+ onto it, just share with that circle. Google+ will send the content in an email and Evernote will translate into a notebook item in your account (Tip originally from ComputerWorld).

Chrome Extensions

If youre a chrome user, there are a number of extensions out there that will improve the experience for you. Such extensions include: Google+ Tweaks: Lets you preview images when your mouse pointer hovers over them and uses the entire screen when you decide to go full screen. Google +1 Button: Lets you +1 and share a page, wherever you are on the web. Circle+: Let you add people to your circles on Google+, wherever you are on the web. Streamified - Lets you cross post to other social media sites Photo Zoom - Lets you zoom in on photos on Google+

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Chrome Sharing

If you have Chrome for iOS, the app has been recently updated to allow sharing on different social media sites. You can now share links and pages you find onto your Google+ account. For Google+, you now have the option to open up web links either on Safari or on Chrome.

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How To SEO Optimise Google+ & Stay Ahead Of The Competition

ts been more than a year since Google unleashed its latest social media site to the world, and while it didnt get off to the best start (theres still a lot of debate about what qualifies as an active user), its found and developed a core audience. However, even if you havent warmed to it, theres a very important factor to take into considering and that is how it affects your SEO rankings. At the Web Summit earlier this month, the Co-founder & CTO of Hubspot Dharmesh Shah talked about how Googles search engine is looking for three things: Useful content, clean design and fast websites. Tying into this was the importance of Google+ and how it can benefit you and search engines by focusing on the Google part. Therefore, were going to look at the ways in which you can optimise your profile or business page and ensure that your content gets seen more.

Install a +1 button

A little obvious considering that social sharing buttons are part and parcel of any social media site, but what makes Googles buttons more valuable is that they are the biggest driver of organic traffic. If you dont have one installed on your site, then get on it.

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Importance In Titles

Since Google+ posts appear in Googles search results, its usually the first line of your post thats treated as the title of your post. So you want to make sure you put a bit of thought into what your title is going to be as Google is very quick in scanning new content on its site. To bold something, use the * symbol at the beginning and end of what you want bolded, it may come in useful.

Insert numerous links

One of the joys of Google+ is that theres no limit to the number of links you can place into a single post. These links work separately so if somebody shares them, +1s or links to them, their value will increase which can only be a good thing for you.

Use The About Page To Your Advantage

The About page is important as it fleshes out your profile and lets you link to other social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. However, what you may be interested to know is that you can embed links directly into your description. These links would be valued the same way as any other link so take the opportunity to insert one or two into it. This also applies to business pages as well so make sure you fill everything out to get the maximum effect.

Be Active

Like your company blog, an inactive account wont do much good for building links so make the effort to update regularly, comment and +1 stories in your feed so that your ranking goes up. Also, your reputation on the site will increase too so thats also a good way of increasing views.

Get Author Accreditation

One of the major benefits of having a Google+ account is that you can be accredited for your work. If youre a blogger, you can put yourself down for it by going into your About page and adding yourself as a contributor to your site. Depending on the blogging tools youre using, you will have to add your Google+ account into your author profile (For WordPress, its under contact info), but once youve done that, Google will do the rest. 90

It may take a little bit of time for Google to recognise your name (it might be wise to expect it to happen over the course of a few weeks), but once its approved, youll see your name and profile appear with your articles, which could mean people would be more likely to click on your work.

SEO Optimise Search Terms

This was a tip spotted by Ronnie Bincer back in May and its something definitely worth keeping in mind the next time youre posting targeted content. If youre looking to associate a post or article upon a search term, simply type it into the Google+ search bar, you can post something and have it tagged in relation to the topic youve searched. So if youve written a blog post on marketing, you can enter the relevant search term into Google+ and post there with the appropriate tag.

Ability To Edit

Perhaps one of the biggest features that Google+ has is the opportunity to edit previous posts. While this mightnt seem major, it means that you can repurpose content and change any part of your content. This is handy if you make a mistake or spot a typo, but its also good for repurposing content so that its more relevant to Googles search results.

Create A Vanity URL

Back in August, Google started rolling out vanity URLs for verified users and brands with the expectation that this would be extended to everyone like on Facebook. Unfortunately, this hasnt happened just yet, but there are numerous ways to create one for yourself. One example is Gplus.to where you simply give a nickname, add your Google ID and a new, shorter address is yours.

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Y
Share

YouTube The Complete Marketers Guide To The Worlds Biggest Video Sharing Website

ou dont need to be an expert to see that YouTube has become something more than mainstream. With over three billion hours of video watched on YouTube each month, its the fourth largest site on the Web, and its obvious to say that the site has surpassed the internet and has become a part of our social conscious. Brands have latched onto this and to show just how far priorities have shifted since then, more are launching advertising campaigns online first to gauge reaction before they hit TV screens. You only need to look at events like the Superbowl or the Old Spice The Man Your Man Can Smell Like campaigns and look at the number of ads debuting on YouTube first to properly understand this. The viral nature of YouTube means that while its incredibly difficult to create a hit without some things working in your favour. Back in November 2011 at a TED talk, YouTubes trends manager Kevin Allocca presented the three things that make any video go viral: tastemakers, participation and unexpectedness. Of course, achieving is by far easier said than done, and while youre not going to come up with the next Nyan Cat, theres a lot you can do to make the medium work to your advantage.

Tips & Tricks

Found underneath each video, the share button is a lot more powerful than youd expect. Alongside the option to share on the major social media sites, you can also get the embed code (if

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you want to play the video on an external site) & shortened link for your video. The handy part about the latter is that not only can you choose to link to the HD version, but you can choose exactly what time you want the video to start. Handy if you want to highlight a particular part of a video.

Stabliser

If your video suffers from shaky camerawork, then this tool is a godsend. Found in enhancements, this feature smooths your videos out and allows for a less jittery experience. Have a look at the before and after videos presented below to gain an idea.

Creative Commons

If you want to place a soundtrack in your video and youre unsure whether you will be breaking copyright, YouTube gives you access to over 150,000 pre-approved tracks to select from. Simply choose a track and it will play over your video. Be warned though, as the music will play over any previous audio such as voiceovers.

Create Video Apps

YouTube video maker isnt the only tool that you can use to create a video. The Create section on YouTube allows you to make videos without having to record, upload files or do any editing. 93

Captions

Although YouTube provides automatic transactions, theyre not the most reliable (Exhibit A: the accompanying screenshot). Simply go into editor and upload your transcription. Also, you can adjust the font, font colour and background colour through clicking settings on a videos caption settings.

Tags and Search

Its a basic tip, but if you want your video to be found, you need to get specific with tags. Its fine if you want to include general tags like business or technology, but make sure you have an even greater number of specific tags to help people find your video, otherwise theyll get buried in the search results.

Annotations

Handy if you want to provide additional context to whats happening on screen or link to a page, you can insert speech bubbles, notes, titles, spotlights and labels. You can also make sure the pause the video at a specific point if you want to place emphasis on a particular section or provide a call-to-action.

YouTube Speed Test

If your videos are streaming slowly and you feel that its down to your ISP provider, you can visit YouTubes speed test and compare your city to other cities and countries across the world.

Enhancements

If you want your video to have a different feel, then there are a number of filters that you can apply. If you get tired of applying filters or dont find one that suits, you can still revert back to its original look. 94

Video Analytics

Although you can get a quick recap of stats underneath each video, you can get even more detailed stats for each video in the video manager page. Simply click on stats on the right-hand side of a video and you will be presented with a wide range of info including performance, engagement, demographics and discovery.

Creators Corner

A fantastic resource for those who just dont know where to get started or wanting to really improve their output, YouTube provides users with tips on production, editing, promoting and additional tools and resources to help you produce the best videos possible.

Advertising

If youre creating video content, it helps to know what tools are at your disposal when you sign up. As mentioned earlier, theres a substantial amount of traffic coming into the site every day and because of that, there are a number of ways to help promote your channel. Here are some of the main ones.

Promoted Videos

The first is promoted videos which can usually be found on the top right-hand corner when youre viewing a video. Designed to take advantage of a viewers habit to click on the next video they see, Promoted videos are normally triggered by specific keywords which relate to the video being viewed, and if youre familiar with how Google AdWords works, you will find the same applies here. Your videos performance can be tracked in YouTube Insights, an analytics tool that is available for all videos. 95

There are also featured videos, which follow the same format and appear in the search screens, but these are reserved for those brands who have a commercial relationship with YouTube.

Brand Channels

Similar to how Facebook pages work, YouTube Brand Channels brands can drive traffic by engaging viewers and gaining subscribers. The page allows you to customise elements like the background image, the channel banners and the branding box to give your page a unique look. When you load up a brand page, youre greeted by a main video while also presenting you with featured playlists for you to browse through.

InVideo ads and In-Stream Ads

InVideo ads are transparent overlay ads that appear on the lower portion of your video. Usually they appear shortly after the video has started and can be closed if the viewer wants to. If the viewer does nothing, they will minimise automatically. In-Stream ads are streamed before a video starts or midway through it. Usually, viewers are given the chance to skip the ad five seconds after they start playing. If a viewer watches 30 second of the ad or watches it to the end, the advertiser is then charged.

YouTubes Main Brands

PlayStation is the most popular brand on YouTube, and it truly dwarfs the competition, with a mammoth 124,246,048 total channel views thats over 77 million ahead of its nearest competitor, Coca-Cola. However, the Sony console fails to break the top ten when it comes total uploaded video views; Angry Birds creator Rovio comes out tops in that category, nearly 300 million views ahead of energy drink Red Bull. The upper echelons of both lists are littered with familiar names, such as Red Bull, Nike, Nokia, Google and Electronic Arts. The large technology companies listed above are reliant on previews and advertisements of their new products for their millions of views, while Red Bull pulls in views with their uploads that pertain to extreme sports. One name that is surprisingly high on both lists is Old Spice, and its fairly obvious as to why. 96

Channel Views

1) Playstation 124,246,048 2) Coca-Cola 46,761,145 3) Old Spice 34,379,893 4) Walmart 18,685,497 5) AXE (Lynx) 16,112,917 6) Nike 13,049,506 7) Nokia 11,412,083 8) Cartier 10,989,836 9) Apple 10,821,178 10) Google Chrome 10,325,227

Uploaded Video Views

1) Rovio 2) Red Bull 3) Old Spice 4) Electronic Arts (EA) 5) Disney Pixar 6) Google Chrome 7) Nike 8) Evian 9) EA (Germany) 10) Sony Music India

621,925,202 310,377,983 293,716,206 210,294,952 180,140,977 145,487,708 141,017,905 128,512,656 118,986,672 115,592,592
[Stats via Socialbakers]

YouTube Music

Good music can make or break a video and there are several options when it comes to uploading a video to YouTube. The first is uploading the video without any music and once uploaded you can go to YouTube Editor where you have the choice of thousands of songs that YouTube have the license to and which you can use on your video.

The second option you have is that you can upload whatever song that you want (providing YouTube has a deal in place with the label) and let YouTube serve ads against the video. The revenue from these ads will go to the record label and although you can have a quality song on your video, the ads are plastered all over the video which takes away from the overall quality of the video. 97

Most phones will have a YouTube app either built in or one that you can download from the app store. The apps provide an excellent experience for viewing content, but are not really built for uploading and sharing content that youve produced yourself.

Uploading A Video From Mobile

Go to the video in your Camera Roll and select the video you want to publish. Click on Send to YouTube.

Fill out the details including description, title and tags. Also, you can choose if you want the video to appear publicly, private or unlisted. All videos from mobile will be uploaded in standard definition because they are going over the 3G network and this is the default setting. If you want to take advantage of the fantastic new cameras on your smartphones, you will have to connect to a Wi-Fi connection to upload in full HD.

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YouTube Mobile Site

With a huge increase in smartphones, consumers are using YouTube on the go more than ever. Most phones will have an app that you can download, but you can also access the mobile version of the site which offers more functionality than the apps often do. You can engage through comments and watch full HD videos among other things.

The mobile site also allows you to record videos with one tap of a button and those videos are uploaded in full HD phone (if your phone is good enough). This table shows which phones support the mobile experience:

YouTube Remote

YouTube Remote seems like an obvious development for YouTube in this, its seventh year of existence, but it is a symbolic one, also, as more people eschew conventional television and get more of their fix online. By going to YouTube Leanback and downloading YouTube Remote app, you can now remotely control YouTube on your laptop, desktop or internet-enabled television using your smartphone or other mobile device. Upon accessing the app, you will be presented with two tabs: Search and Recommended, much like you would be upon accessing your account on a desktop, and its just as simple to use. From there, a playlist of your selected videos will be created at the top of your remotes screen to be played on a screen of your choice. 99

The videos will appear in fullscreen on your chosen screen and can be controlled by keyboard/mouse, but that would defeat the point. The app and the screen are wellsynced, ensuring ease of use; its very simple to pause, skip, fastforward and rewind. Its smart, too. Upon selecting a video, a list of related videos will show up as well as Topics in this video, which link to Wikipedia, and IMDb profiles of famous parties involved or additional, enlightening web content that you might find engaging. However, if you leave your remote inactive for too long, it will disconnect and will likely re-start your playlist once reconnected, which is frustrating. YouTube have also taken this opportunity to make intermittent adverts seemingly unskippable in spite of the option to does so left teasingly in the lower right hand corner. Apart from these minor faults, it works much like YouTube normally would, except with additional motion allowed to you, the user. You can like and dislike, share and flag videos as usual, but now you can roam about as you do so, which is always nice. It might be somewhat redundant or convoluted if youre working at your desktop or laptop, but is sure to be a nice addition for those relaxing at home or hosting any kind of guests. The YouTube remote can be downloaded for any Android device on Google Play.

Beyond Video

As YouTube tries to keep up with an evolving web and dealing with upstarts such as Facebook, they are beginning to adapt the platform to take advantage of new content. Were seeing more cases of Youtube partnering up with major media brands, artists and sporting events to become the home of live content online. Its success was on full show when they partnered with the Indian Premier League to broadcast live cricket matches. This was their first major sporting announcement at the time, in 2010 and a healthy 39 million video views to date, this is clearly the right direction for them to take. Since this announcement, YouTube has explored a number of partnerships such as the Coachella Festival, where they livecast a number of concerts. This also saw them experiment with multi-channel live streams, where users could switch between three channels to view a performance at any one time. Add in the likes of U2 and Barack Obama, who have both featured in live stream projects with YouTube, and it is clear the direction its beginning to take. 100

Rather than simply act as a destination for mass-uploaded content, its turning into a major content provider, which it needs to if they want to survive. Facebook is increasingly becoming a default platform for user generated video content as it simply makes more sense for users to go for a one click upload via the Facebook mobile app where they are already connected. But Facebook doesnt get video like YouTube does, and it certainly doesnt get livestreaming like YouTube does, or has the power to. The platform is vast and it may well be turning into a media company of the future, where content is owned by the people, but facilitated and importantly monetised by them. Quite where YouTubes owned content sits within here remains to be seen, but its starting to look aggressive in their tactics. It has hovered up the top talent on YouTube before by bringing them in-house and giving them production facilities where they can make even better videos. This makes the site even more money and I would expect to see it move into this area more and more. Social media is clearly about the content and YouTube, it seems, now want to own this content like never before. Stats and figures provided by Infographics from YouTube.

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How To Increase Your YouTube Video Views The Right Way

ouTube is one of the most important social media tools that we use and as the second biggest search engine in the world, it presents a wonderful opportunity for brands and businesses to have their content seen by a large audience. The only downside is that with billions of videos on the site, getting attention is not easy and YouTube is packed with brilliant videos that only have a few hundred views. Today, weve compiled a huge list of tips and tricks that will help you get more out of the biggest video sharing site. The amount of views that your content ultimately gets will come down to the quality of the content because people will start sharing it then.

Advertising

One of the most obvious ways of getting views is to simply pay for them, but it is amazing how few people know that advertising is an option on YouTube. One of the best ways of getting views is by making it appear in the sponsored videos section of the site. YouTube offers a wide range of advertising, but by simply appearing at the top of search results in the same manner as on Google Adwords, it means your video can get highly relevant clicks. 102

Embedding Videos

Pretty obvious that the more places that your video is embedded in, the more views that you will get. Have a look at some of the stats on videos and youll see that the main place people see them is when theyre embedded on third party sites. Dont just expect people to find your content on a whim though as you will have to proactively go out there and ask people to feature it, submit it to sharing sites and generally find sites where your content will be relevant to their audience.

Increasing Interaction On Videos

The more people who comment or click on the like button, the better your video will perform in the rankings. YouTube uses these as a metric to see which videos people are liking and engaging with to show better results to future people searching on the site. This doesnt mean that you should try and game the system, but if you find ways to encourage people to like the video or leave comments, it will definitely help you in the long-run.

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Making People Watch The Videos For Longer

This is one of the most recent changes to the YouTube algorithm and its one that makes a lot of sense in terms of determining the quality of videos that get watched on the site. The longer that people spend watching your video, the better it will perform in future search results. There is absolutely no way of gaming this or trying to come up with little tricks because the best and only way of making sure people watch your video for a long time is making sure the content is so compelling, they simply dont want to click on to the next thing.

Leave Annotations And Captions

You can easily add captions and annotations to your videos and you will often see these on some of the most viewed videos on the site. The idea here is that you can prompt people to do things such as like, comment or engage with your videos in subtle ways. You can also turn annotations into clickable links so if you have a video that is getting a lot of views, you can point people to another video, channel or playlist to help drive traffic to that video too. You are only limited by your own imagination when it comes to annotations and captions on YouTube so come up with innovative ways to help them increase your video views.

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Choose Your Best Thumbnail

The thumbnail pic is what appears when people are searching for it and the image that shows when the video is embedded on a third-party site. Therefore, you want to make sure that the image used best represents your video. While YouTubes video editor gives you the choice of many screenshot thumbnails, you do have the option to upload a custom one, which can make your video stand out more when youre looking through the search results.

Attract Subscribers

Attracting subscribers can be difficult if you dont have a plan, but thankfully there are a number of ways to boost that number. The most straightforward method is to do it in your own videos. Provide a call-to-actions in your video by asking them to subscribe, why they should do it and how to do it. Other places you can promote your video content include your own blog, your different social media channels and embedding a subscription widget on your site.

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Fill In The Meta Data

It might seem boring to fill in the titles, descriptions and tags but they work. YouTubes search engine needs ways to recognise relevant videos and by filling these out, you increase the chances of your video being discovered so take the time to come up with relevant keywords, phrases and tags.

Create Timely Content

People always look for content that is timely and relevant. So if its coming up to Christmas, release something that ties in with that. Is Apple releasing a new product? What are the big news or sporting events at the moment? If you think what people are most likely to be searching for and make content specifically for that, you have a much better chance of appearing in search results.

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Add a YouTube Widget To Your Blog

Another way of directing people to your YouTube site is to add a subscribers widget to your site. This is a box that will contain your username, logo, and number of videos and subscriptions your account has. What you need to do is to place the widgets embed code into the source code of your site or blog the same way you embed a YouTube video. YouTube itself has a more detailed post explaining how to do it here.

Interact In The Comments Yourself

YouTube comments are a wild place that seem to attract a particularly nasty group of commenters. While they might have negative things to say about your video, one of the best ways to get people coming back is to have an active discussion thread. Jump in as your own channel profile and engage in the comments as much as you possibly can. Dont be scared to disagree with other people and say things that could encourage more comments. The more people involved in the discussion, the more people that are coming back to your video to see whats going on.

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Be Consistent

Nobody is going to come back to a channel if they dont know when the next video is going to appear so put a schedule together that ensures youre producing content consistently. When youre scheduling, its best to know what youre going to be covering for the next four or five videos and if its possible, create them long before theyre due to go up. That way, not only are you ahead of schedule, but if you want to produce a video that deals with something current, you had the leeway for it. If it is a case that the next new video isnt going to appear until later than usual, then highlight it at the end of your latest video or on your site. Your viewers will appreciate it and there wont be any confusion when it happens.

Dont Create Long Videos

When youre getting started, short, snappy videos are the best way to get people hooked. Preferably, four to five minutes would be the longest video you want to create since people want to watch as much as they can in the short space of time they have. The shorter it is, the easier it is to finish and the better chances you have of getting your message across. When people become more familiar with your content, you can lengthen it if you wish.

Create Playlists

Playlists are a great way of grouping brilliant videos you like and uniting them under the one common theme. While many create them for their own personal fun, you can use them to help increase your own videos views. Simply create a playlist that follows the same theme as the video you want to promote and then slot your video in with them. Playlists usually appear near the end of a search page so you wont get immediate views, but if you share the playlist around and it grows in popularity, your video may get a number of views on the top of its success.

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Get Personalised Recommendations

There are numerous commerce studies which shows that personal recommendations are more effective so why wouldnt the same apply when promoting your video. If you have a number of friends online, find out whether they would mind sharing your video on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn. The aim is for the post, update or share to be genuine and for it to be shared by other people for the same reasons. This should only be a once-off however, as your friends would probably get annoyed if you ask them to promote your latest video again and again. Also, dont beg. Theres really nothing more unappealing than that.

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Use YouTube Keyword Suggestion Tool

If youre struggling to come up with the appropriate SEO related words for your video, YouTubes Keyword Suggestion Tool is a great way to discover key phrases that you can use for your video. You can also copy in your video URL to get suggestions for your video.

Upload A Transcript

While its usually overlooked, you should provide a transcript whenever you get the chance as it will give you a major advantage when it comes to SEO. If you have a script for your video, uploading it up is simple, but if you havent one, transcribe the video and upload one as soon as you can. YouTube does offer an automatic transcription tool for videos, but most of the time its hilariously inaccurate so provide your own when you can.

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Use Video Responses

If theres another popular video out there, you can potentially piggyback off it by creating a video response. Normally, users upload a video in response, but you also have the option to choose a video that youve already uploaded. The reason why this is useful is when you scroll down, video responses are the first thing you will see. The possibility of your video appearing there is dependent on how popular the video is and how many other users posted responses. Be warned though, each video in your account can only be used as a video response one so choose wisely.

Create Backlinks

If you want your video to be more prominent in Googles search rankings, then you need as many high-qualities links as you can get. Try and get as many links to your content as possible through social media sites and blogs and share it with other sites who might be interested in covering it.

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The Essential Guide To Using Pinterest For Marketing

fter getting $100 million in funding and a $1.5 billion valuation back in May, Pinterest is facing a challenging time, despite its popularity. The recent news from Amazons Zappos Labs which found that, in comparison to Twitter and Facebook, the site doesnt generate that many sales. Also, throw in sites like The Fancy which shares many similarities, but has taken a more commercial route by allowing the seller to feature (if theyre the ones pinning it) and its clear that Pinterest has a lot to face as it embarks on the next stage of its life. But there are a lot of positives relating to the site. With 11.7 million users, Pinterest doesnt quite match the figures boasted by the other major social media sites, but with over 100 million visitors monthly, it has a large active fan base. How the removal of the invite-only tag will affect the site remains to be seen although you could base some of its success on its exclusivity but there are many reasons for marketers to get in on the action, or to give it a second chance. 112

Marketing Opportunities

If you havent gotten started with Pinterest, here are some basic ideas that will help you grow your page into something that will get numerous repins and followers.

Create Boards Relevant To Your Brand

Pinterset prompts you to create boards when you start up, but dont underestimate how effective this can be. An important thing to remember is that users can choose to follow boards instead of the company page so you may find that you have more followers on a particular board than on your page. When youre creating boards, make sure that theyre relevant to your brand, but think about what areas will provide brilliant images for you to pin. For example, if youre a music store, you could have a board dedicated to live concerts and album covers. If youre a furniture store, you can create a board entitled Dream Homes where you show beautiful designs. If you have a stunning or interesting board, people will repin it and start following you.

Interact With Users

Like all sites, Pinterest is a two-way street and while you can pin all the content you want, you also need to get out there and interact with your followers. Follow them, pin some of their content (if its relevant) and comment on their posts.

Use your Other Social Media Accounts

There are two reasons why you should feature other social media sites in your strategy. The first reason is for promotion. Make sure youre linking to it on your Facebook and Twitter accounts so that people know its there for the chance of nabbing a few new followers. The second reason is that if you regularly use sites like Instagram, Flickr, or Facebook camera, you can cross post those image on a separate board for everyone to see. Be selective with the images you post online though as not every image is going to be worth repining. 113

Install plugin buttons

If your site content is visual, you can have your visitors do the hard work for you by installing a plugin button on your site. The more people who are pinning your content, the more exposure you get

Focus on Indirect Marketing

If users think youre just going to post your own content repetitively, then the chances of them following you is very slim. Make sure your content is diverse and interesting first before you try to promote your own stuff and even then, do it sparingly. What you should be doing is pinning content that your audience will find interesting, like gift ideas, cool gadgets and interesting campaigns.

Apps & Plugins

Pin It Buttons
Like all the major social media sites, Pinterest has its own Pin it button which you can add on your blog or site. You can find it here on Pinterests main site.

Pinstamatic

Pinstamatic allows you to pin the usual webpages and images, but also create quotes, pin Spotily songs and even places. A handy way of diversifying your content and make it more than just images and pull quotes.

Repinly

The Pinterest dictionary is probably the first place you should go to if you want to find content for your Pinterest page. Highlighting the most popular pin on different boards, it will show you whats pins are trending so you can get ideas for your own board. You can also add yourself to Repinlys dictionary if you want other users to find you. Spliced image If you ever looked at certain boards and wanted to make the photo layout do something different, then this tool could be what youre looking for. It allows you to create an entire board that looks like one image, and its a good way to create eyecatching designs on your page without much effort.

Spinpicks

Currently in Beta mode, SpinPicks is an interesting way of discovering new content from a number of platforms including Instagram, Twitpic, Flickr, Reddit, and YouTube. The site pulls in this content from these sites, but you can limit it to content from just Pinterest which will show you pins you can click through and introduce you to new people to follow. 114

Browser Extensions

There is a vast number of Pinterest plugins and extensions for both Chrome and Firefox. Here are some of the best: - If you just want quick and easy pinning, Pin It for Chrome lets you pin any image that appears on screen while Right-Click for Firefox gives you the option to pin sites and images by simply right-clicking them. Also, Easypinner for Chrome give images a little Pinterest icon for easy pinning. - Pinterest Pro for Chrome gives you extra features when you use your browser, including right-click images to pin and zooming in on pins by hovering over them. - Pin Search for Chrome lets you use any picture from Chrome to do an image search on Google - Pinzy for Chrome lets you enlarge pinned images by just hovering over them. - URL2Pin.it lets you pin screenshots of web pages that youre currently on.

Pinterest Influence

If you want to see how influential you are on Pinterest, there are a number of services available. The first is PinPuff, which gives you a brief dashboard regarding how valuable your pins are, what your most popular boards are and scores rating your virility and reach. The handy thing is that you dont need to sign in to use the service just an email and a username so if you wanted to, you could find out how other Pinterest pages are doing and compare. Another way is to use PinReach, which helps calculate a score for you showing how popular you are. The score is calculated through factors like followers, repines, and boards. The site also lets you know what your most popular boards are, and how you compare to the most popular Pinterest users.

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Pinterest Analytics

PinReach is a pretty nifty way to monitor the activity on your Pinterest page and boards. By connecting up to Twitter or Facebook and entering your username and email, you will gain access to a dashboard showing the stats of your page. Such stats include the history of your repines, your most popular pins and advanced analytics on your followers. Another option is Pintics, which lets you see traffic and sales from your pins and boards as well as manage multiple accounts.

Marketing Campaigns

Kotexs Womens Inspiration Day

Feminine hygiene and toiletries company Kotex found a perfect ally in Pinterst, a famously female-driven social network in its relative infancy. Kotax, as directed by Israeli advertising agency Smoyz, sent virtual gifts to 50 influential females on Pinterest, and asked them to pin the gifts of their profiles. Upon doing so, the women would be sent an actual gift, which they would then, without fail, post about on Pinterest, as well as Facebook, Twitter and even Instagram. The 50 gifts got upwards of 200,000 impressions across social media platforms, quite a return on such a small investment for Kotex. An innovative way of harnessing this fledgling social media that shows incredible knowledge of and desire to cater to a brands core demographic.

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Peugeot

Peugeot recently hosted a scavenger hunt for puzzle pieces across the major social media platforms, but it was anchored by Pinterest and its image-driven ethos. Users had to scour the French car manufacturer hid parts of a main image on its website and Facebook. Once they had found them all, their task was to assemble the piece to form a whole on their Pinterest pages. The first five to do so won a prize. Overall, the competition drove interest in Peugeots social media brand to unprecedented levels.

Guess

Fashion house Guess asked its Pinterest fans to create boards inspired by four of their branded colours for Spring 2012. Users had to work in service of Noir Teal, Hot House Orange, Red Hot Overdue and New Plum Light to be in with a chance of winning a pair of colour denim jeans from the Guess collection. The winner was selected by a panel of judges and wasnt just determined by popularity, though that was certainly factored into the decision and helped spread the word about Guess.

Honda

Honda recently created a Pinterest account and set about discouraging users from the site. The company offered $500 to the sites top five users for them to stay off the site, or rather, take a pintermission. Honda wanted these five people to get away from the 117

internet and accomplish some of things they wanted to do before they die. Of course, it was then their prerogative to post about their experience on Pinterest once they had done so. This creative campaign came in relation to the Honda CR-V, as Honda believes it is a car that encourages people to tackle their bucket lists, but maybe the campaign was just weird enough to pique interest.

British Midland International

Airline BMI surprised random Pinterest fans with trips abroad as part of a Pinterest Lottery. Posting images of worldwide holiday destinations as disparate as Beirut, Nice, Moscow and Marrakech, BMI asked its fans to re-pin all the images of holiday destinations that boasted the companys logo that they posted (six in total). A lucky winner was then selected at the end of each week that the campaign ran, and they would be rewarded with a pair of return-flight tickets to any destination BMI flew to. Youre bound to be successful with such a great and sought-after prize, so it is no surprise that this campaign was as successful as it was.

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ModCloth

Clothing brand ModCloth help a pin it to win it contest that had several conditions for its participants to fulfill in order for them to stand a chance at winning. Users had to be following @ModCloth on Twitter, include relevant hashtags when pinning, etc. Participants then had to pin 20 items fitting the Something ModCloth, Something You criteria. Categories such as Something vintage, A lovely location and A creative cocktail were all included in the list of 20. The contest presented a challenge to users that would take time and effort and prove a sustainable way of increasing brand awareness; it has been aped by other notable fashion brands since.

Sephora

Another female-focused company, cosmetics brand Sephora, held a competition on Pinterest to boost its popularity. Sephora wanted its fans to create Sephora Color Wash boards and spread word of the competition on their own boards. The chosen winners, of which there were ten, would win a $250 Sephora gift card. The boards had to be pinned in the hair and beauty category, and users also had to post five images featuring their favourite colours. The competition helped users to engage with each other and the promoted products.

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A Platform For E-commerce?

As is the case with any site that explodes in popularity, at the start of 2012, the conversation about Pinterest shifted towards how can generate revenue and its potential as an e-commerce platform. While the former hasnt materialised yet, the site already landed $100 million in funding off the back of a $1.5 billion valuation back in May. Its investors include Max Levchin, a founder of PayPal, Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten, and investment company Bessemer Venture Partners. The reasoning for Rakutens involvement (and the lack of U.S. investment) was that Pinterest was looking for a global strategic investor that would help the company grow internationally and help stave off foreign clones. Currently, Pinterest is the fourth most popular social media network out there, behind Facebook, YouTube and Twitter respectively, which is no mean feat considering that many were fearing that it come crashing down once the hype around it had worn off. The idea of Pinterest being a medium for e-commerce makes sense. Its highly visual, users do explore the site for new content ideas and repins can be effective way to curating a wish list. The fact that users visit for these reasons will mean that traffic coming from Pinterest will be more targeted than other sites.

However, thats not to say its all plain sailing. A report released today (August 29th) from Amazons online store Zappos suggests that while consumers share more on Pinterest than on Facebook or Twitter, sales from Pinterest posts contribute the smallest amount of revenue. On the Zappos platform, Twitter brought in the most revenue an average of $33.66 an order while Facebook posts garnered $2.08 per order. Sales from Pinterest, however, were $0.75 on average, showing that the endorsement per pin. Yet earlier reports have it that Pinterest users spend twice as much as Facebook users and have a higher conversion rate so its difficult to say which one is right or wrong. 120

But saying that, its easy to forget that Pinterest is still a site finding its feet after some explosive growth. Now that it has evened out, Pinterest needs to make sure it holds on to these users first and ensure it doesnt let the last few months go to waste. If it can maintain and grow its current traffic, theres nothing to say that Pinterest wont become a valuable assist for e-commerce merchants.

Infographic Sources

- http://www.businessinsider.com/this-stat-reveals-the-incredible-potential-ofpinterestand-why-amazon-google-or-facebook-should-buy-it-2012-7 - http://econsultancy.com/ie/blog/9803-pinterest-drives-more-sales-than-facebookstats - http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/274266067164-pinterest - http://econsultancy.com/ie/blog/10598-10-interesting-digital-marketing-stats-we-veseen-this-week-12

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The 101 Marketers Guide To Instagram Tips, Tricks, Case Studies And Campaigns
hen Instagram first came to the iPhone, few would have expected it to become so dominant. Four billion photos later and the app has become the most popular photo sharing app ever created and is iconic in bringing the Polaroid look to digital photos.

Despite being criticised for being hipster and cheapening the art of photography, these criticisms tend to miss the point of what Instagram is about. Its not about inserting filters for the sake of making them look retro, but its to help amplify and convey a mood that mightnt be possible through normal means. The emergence of Instagram and other camera apps only allows regular people to become photographers themselves and while it certainly not going to replace professional photography any time soon, it still allows smartphone users to do more than snap random shots. Granted there will be some that will use the service terribly, but thats the price you pay when youve got 80 million users signed up to your service. Now that Android users have been using the service since April, nows as good a time as ever to start using the service or take the steps to become a power user. 122

Where it All Began

Believe it or not, Instagram is not even two years old yet, having been founded in October 2010. For the first 18 months of the service, it was only available on iOS devices and it was only in April of 2012 that it was made available to Android users. Although Instagram is adding more web functionality since it was snapped up by Facebook, it has always been a mobile social network, which is one of the main reasons why it was acquired. Kevin Systrom and Michael Krieger actually spun the company out of their previous app which was called Burbn, which wasnt getting much traction. From its early days, the growth was impressive, but they were also known for the way they ran the startup, sticking with just four employees for the first year, despite the service doubling in size every month. Indeed, when it was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for $1 billion, it only had 13 employees. To put Instagrams impressive growth and life into perspective, The company wasnt even 600 days old when it was acquired by Facebook. With 80 million active users on the platform. Users now visit the site as a new way of sharing their photos and in December 2011, Apple Inc. named Instagram App of the Year which helped solidify its position as a mainstream app with huge potential.

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Best Apps For Instagram

Considering how popular Instragram is, its no surprise that a dizzying array of apps, extensions and supplementary websites have popped up. They range from desktop browsers to instant printing apparatus and everything in between, and below are ten of out favourites, plus a list of a few you might find useful yourself. Each title contains links to each app.

iPad Apps
iDarkRoom
iDarkRoom will fuel Instagram users love for eyecatching effects with its expansive range of colourcontrasting filters, blurring techniques, texture effects, cropping options and editing functions there are 20 colour filters, 11 paper effects and 13 light leak & effects for you to play around with. The name is a good indication of what you can expect from the app, and it clearly aims to help users to edit and tinker with their photos with a greater degree of professionalism and complexity than standard IG users can. The interface is clean and simple and photos are easy to share on social networking sites or assemble in a photo album. iDarkRoom is available for the iPhone, but is compatible with Instagram.

Flipboard

Although you wouldnt think it, the social magazine reader can also be used to display your Instagram photos too. The format lends itself perfectly to the photo sharing app by filling the screen up with numerous photos. Its almost like flicking through an album the way its set up.

Instagallery

Instead of presenting as many photos on screen as possible, Instagallery just focuses on one photo at a time, allowing you to appreciate each one in full-screen.

iris

While the other apps here go for style and follow the Instagram template, iris gives users a simple and clean presentation that allows you to take each photo for what its worth instead of trying to decide which ones are worth your attention. 124

InstaPad

Instapad pulls off the impressive feat of packing in as many photos into the screen as possible without making you feel overwhelmed. Browsing is easy and youll lose hours as you browse through your feed and discover the work of other Instagram users.

Web Apps
Statigram

Statigram is the most prominent web-based Instagram account management application, and it is rather comprehensive in its functionality. It functions much like Facebook or Twitter would, so users can effectively translate their Instagram experience onto their desktop browsers. You can chat with your followers, view/respond to comments they make on your photos and analyse follower and image viewing statistics. The intersection between social media and metrics is well occupied by Statigram, so much so that you could be chatting with a follower while considering the best time to post a photo or pouring over which of Instagrams various filters will get you the most likes. It all comes in a sleek package that is easy to use as well as on the eyes.

Carousel

Carousel is an Instagram client made for Macs. Firstly, you will need to sync it with Instagram account, but then it will present a whole new viewing experience. There are some really cool and unique features, including multiple viewing windows, the ability to view your photos by location and even some quirky, vintage designs to boot. Much like Statigram and Inkstagram, Carousel translates Instagram onto desktops with an interface that is easy to navigate and relatable to social networks with its Popular tab (akin to trending photos) and a chronological feed, reminiscent of Facebook or Twitter. Again, it is only available to Mac and iPhone users, but those of you who fit such criteria will be impressed. 125

Snapseed

This IOS-exclusive photo-editing app is probably the best currently available on the market. It is not exclusive to Instagram, however, but it is compatible with IG and will enable you tweak your photos to very minute specifications. Users can easily bring their photos up to standard with the automatic adjust feature instantly bringing out the best in your shots. From there, you can make manual adjustments to the brightness, contrast, white balance and various other settings. Snapseed also offers a good range of filters and a range of other novelties; you can choose image borders or even magnify background objects, before sharing your work on IG.

Hashgram

Hashgram is Google for Instagram, plain and simple. It doesnt even try to hide the fact with its design, which is eerily reminiscent of the worlds largest search engine. Much like Google, it is incredibly simple to use: you simply type in your search term and either select # tag search or @ user search before a cacophony of Instagram images appear before your eyes. Alternatively, you can select <3 Im popular for the most popular images on Instagram. So theres not a lot to Hashgram, but it is a comprehensive search tool for Instagram and fills a glaring need for Instagram users worldwide.

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Instake

Instake is simple in that its sole function is to download photos from Instagram so you no longer have to take mere screengrabs to save them to your phone. You can view photos either as a normal feed or to specifications, such as most popular, your own photos, photos you have liked etc., or you can just search Instagram to find the pictures you like. You can select individual photos to download or you can select all the photos on any given page; either way, by using Instake you now have an option unavailable to you when using Instagram alone.

My InstaAlbum

If youre taking photographs and love curating, then youve got to have photo albums, right? Well, just because all your photos are already displayed on the internet, doesnt mean they cant be nicely compiled and ordered for the viewing pleasure of your aesthetically-minded friends and bored relatives. My InstaAlbum, available through the Apple store, allows you to organise your IG photos by date, location, tag or filter; it can also determine your most used filters, photographed locations, and tags. Theres not a lot to InstaAlbum, but it is an extremely effective organising and sharing tool that makes the IG photo stream easier to navigate and makes uploads to Facebook or DropBox exceedingly simple.

Postagram

With Postagram, you can use your best images to send as postcards. Simply select your picture, type in the address along with a personalised message and it will be sent it in the post. Its a simple idea that adds an element of DIY and bygone ways to your Instagram experience and is surely a nice novelty app to be enjoyed by both the sender and recipient. Its a fun way of bringing Instagram offline, bringing a new edge to your holiday postcards or a hint more personality to an emailed message.

InstaPrint

Now, InstaPrint isnt easily downloadable or available as a website, but it is pretty cool. Say you have a special occasion coming, one that is sure to see many, many photos being taken; well, instead of getting proper cameras, you can go to the InstaPrint and rent one of their printers. InstaPrint adds a distinctly Polaroid-esque edge to you photography experience. Each printer is set to a 127

specific location or hashtag, so it is easily synced with every part-goers IG account to automatically print your nicest or most embarrassing shots. Is more physical evidence of your nighttime exploits a good idea? Perhaps not, but its a fun addition nonetheless.

Some we may have missed

InstaCat, InstaPuppy, Pictarine, ExtraGram, Webstagram, InstaFB, InstaDrop, InstaGreat, GramJunction, Cartagr.am, Screenstagram, Heroku, Gramfeed, Instarium, Instagrid, InstaWar, Pic-a-Fight and many more.

Instagram Filters: When To Use Them

Normal

With 17 different filters to play around with, its easy to take any photo and then choose a filter. But if you put a little thought into it, you will find that both the quality of your Instagram photos will greatly improve. What it does: The Vanilla of Instagram filters. Not every photo requires modification so why do something for the sake of it? Use it for: Any photo you want.

Amaro

What it does: Adds more light to the image, but most of all towards the centre so the darker the photos, the more you will notice the filter effect. Use it for: If you want to give your photo a somewhat aged appearance.

Rise

What it does: Gives photos a nice glow so if youre looking for softer lighting, Use it for: Any close up shots of people.

Hudson

What it does: Gives certain photos an icy look. The slight tint and altered lighting gives images a wintery feel. Use it for: Whenever youre outdoors. Particularly nice if youre taking photos of buildings or monuments.

X-pro II

What it does: If you want your photo to become more vibrant, X-pro II is the filter for you. Makes images appear warm and colourful. Use it for: Can be used for a wide variety of photos, but only if you want certain colours to stand out more.

Sierra

What it does: Makes images softer but unlike Rise, Sierra gives images a slightly faded look, making colours almost calm and soothing. Use it for: Nature and outdoor shots are the perfect images for this. 128

Filter: Lo-fi Earlybird Sutro

What it does: Adds rich colours and strong shadows makes an images colour richer and stronger shadows. Use it for: Food, food, food! What it does: Mostly faded and blurred colours, gives images an older feel. Use it for: If you really want to go down the cool route, slap this filter on. What it does: Gives photos a somewhat smoked look, with emphasis on purple and brown colours to achieve the effect. Use it for: If you want to give images a creepier look so Halloween like events.

Toaster

What it does: The most noticeable of all the filters, gives the centre a burnt look and makes the image look aged. Use it for: Summer nights out, so beer gardens, picnics and your friends BBBQ (the extra B is for BYOBB).

Brannan Inkwell

Effect: Greyish tint gives images a darker, more metallic look. Use it for: Anything with strong shadows. What it does: Turns photos black and white. Exactly what youd expect. Use it for: Anything where shadows and light is the main feature.

Walden Hefe

What it does: Gives images a washed-out look, and a pleasant, breezy feel. Use it for: Any summery or bright, happy photos. What it does: Much like Lo-Fi but the colours arent as dramatic. Use it for: Anywhere where you want to enhance vibrant colours, but not too much.

Valencia

What it does: For a faded quality, much like if the photo was taken in the 1980s. Use it for: Anything you want to give an antique look.

Nashville

What it does: Images get a nice, warm feel with a slightly pink tint to help achieve the effect. Use it for: Anything you want to look back on with nostalgia.

1977

What it does: Like the title suggests, makes your photos look like they were taken in the 1970s. Use it for: Making images look like they were taken in the 1970s.

Kelvin

What it does: Give images a bright, vibrant feel. Provides photos with a radiant glow that you will either love or hate. Use it for: Any photos that you want to give a nice, warm feeling. 129

The Best Brand Campaigns on Instagram

Ford
This might not be a groundbreaking campaign, but its nice to see a brand like Ford really embracing Instagram. To promote the new Fiesta, Ford ran a weekly photo challenge on Instagram, where users had to upload photos with hashtags that reflected certain aspects of the car. The activity was then brought back onto their Facebook Page, where the content was hosted within a hub.

Levis search for talent

Levis is running a long-term campaign on Instagram, to find the next star for their ad campaigns. All you have to do is upload a picture to Instagram with the hashtag #iamlevis. So far, over 3,000 photos have been uploaded with the hashtag, which is not a bad result for whats still a fairly niche platform. People from all over the world can enter, with the winner starring in the Levis 2012 brand campaign.

ALDO Moodboards

A great example here of using Instagrams API and combining with gamification to offer an engaging user experience. When you visit the site, you can select the images that you want, gathered via Instagram, to create your moodboard which can then be shared to your Facebook profile. It would be nice to see the campaign go a little bit further in terms of the execution as the mechanic is exciting, but good to see a brand using Instagrams API to extend their offering. 130

O2 road trip

O2 in the UK has just launched a new campaign on Instagram, which has it sending five influential Instagrammers Mike Kus, Jiri Siftar, Dan Rubin, Finn Beales and Naomi Atkinson - on a road trip around Europe. The campaign has been put together to promote its EU roaming package and you can follow photos of their travels through the #O2Travel hashtag as well as following O2 on Instagram to see some of the best images reposted.

Giorgio Armani Frames Of Life

Fashion brands seem to be particularly taken with Instagram and Giorgio Armani is getting in on the act. For its frames of life campaign, its asking followers to upload a picture of them wearing sunglasses. And when you visit the Frames Of Life site, Instagram pics are pulled in alongside the frame styles in their new collection, bringing users content right into the site experience. While the Frames of Your Life campaign has been run previously for Armani, the Instagram element is a new addition, which you can take part in by uploading a pic to Instagram with the hashtag #framesoflife. make you look like the photographer you wish you were.

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Infographic Sources

- http://blog.instagram.com/post/28067043504/the-instagram-community-hits-80million-users - http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-03/tech/31279486_1_android-app-photosstatistics - http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/28575-instagram-now-has-80musers/ - http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/04/04/instagram-for-android-hits-1mdownloads-in-under-24-hours/ - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/04/23/facebook-paying-300-millioncash-23m-shares-for-instagram/

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Foursquare Why Brands & Marketers Should Be Getting On Board

alk about mobile and chances are that someone will mention Foursquare. Having spent three years quietly building up its app, it now has over 20 million users signed up to it. Its obvious that its popular, but there are more reasons behind its success than just letting users check-in to places. Through use of gamification, providing tips and highlighting deals and providing engagement that other sites can only dream of, it means that brands are thinking up of new strategies to help engage with what is a relativity modest, but highly engaged audience. While primarily a mobile app, Foursquare has also expanded its services to the web, creating a specialised portal that takes advantage of the capabilities offered by desktop. While being set up for mobile obviously helps Foursquare especially since many other sites are making the transition the desktop presence gives it the opportunity to really build upon its success.

Why Should You Use It?

With 20 million users yet only close to a million merchants using the service worldwide, there is great scope for businesses to take advantage of the platform. The obvious reason why its popular is so that people know where you are and where youve been. However, Foursquare has become more about discovering new places and providing tips and recommendations. 133

While check-ins mightnt seem like a big deal, its when you consider the data that you can gather from this that things get interesting. From numerous check-ins, you can find out about a persons interests, what they like to do with their free time, and find out which users are loyal customers because the more they visit, the more likely they will have good things to say. Its no wonder that Facebook introduced its own check-in and location mapping service before allowing Foursquare to be an open graph app. Its capabilities as a social media marketing tool is really just being explored. The platform is ever changing with Foursquare making little adjustments here and there to improve the experience for both users and businesses. Some changes are for generating revenue (Promoted Updates) while others have come from user suggestions (the return of the nearby friends feature). User experience is still king, but the next few months will be crucial as the mobile app tries to become a fully fledged business.

Foursquare For Businesses How it Works

While users are the heart of the service, brands have been slowly getting in on the action. Theres a dedicated user base to be taken advantage of and provided you can provide incentive for them to check-in regularly, there is a lot to take away from it. Here are the basic ways to reach your audience. 134

Merchants Page

This is the traditional business page and is essential if you want to even use the service to promote deals and discounts. All you need to do is claim your venue by filling out this form and before you know it, users can check-in when they arrive on your premises. This doesnt have to be limited to just restaurants and bars, any building or place can be checked-in so if you offer goods or services and you have a physical location, theres no reason why you shouldnt have a merchant page. The first thing you need to do is to claim your venue. If it doesnt already exist, you can create it here and add in additional details such as Twitter profile, type of venue and map location. Once youve created and claimed your venue, Foursquare will verify that youre the manager or responsible for the place through phone or email, depending on where youre based. After this, you will be able to connect with customers and run special offers. Of course, you will have to get the word out that you can be found through word of mouth, social media promotion and real world advertising (highlighting that you can be found on Foursquare in-store, etc.) Alongside being able to offer deals and let customers know what to expect, you will be able to alert your best customers to new deals and updates when theyre near the vicinity. There are also analytical tools available to use so you can keep track of how many people check-in and see how popular new deals or offers are.

Brand Page

Mainly for those businesses that dont have a physical presence. When you boot up the app first of all, you will be suggested a number of brand pages to like so you can follow their updates. Like Merchant pages, Brand pages can also create location-specific events for users to check-in and communicate to them through updates. Brand pages will get web versions as well as in-app pages, the former being a cross between Twitter and Facebooks own brand pages. If your brand has a physical location (Starbucks, H&M, etc.), you can combine the brand page with your merchant page. 135

Types of Advertising
Local updates

Foursquare has recently pushed new methods of advertising so that businesses can get the word out about the latest deals. Here are the main ones to keep in mind.

Only available to those users who have liked your venue or have checked-in a number of times, local updates will be automatically shared with them when theyre in the same city. These updates will appear as soon as somebody checks into a business, or looks at the apps Friends tab. This rewards loyal customers and allows businesses to take care of those who are regularly bringing them business. This feature is available to all companies and services that have claimed their business on the site.

Promoted Updates

Promoted Updates work differently to Local Updates. While Local Updates gives users a better way of keeping up with new updates from businesses and places they already like, Promoted Updates allows users to discover new places. These updates can be found in the explore tab. The major difference is that, as the name suggests, businesses are required to pay for the privilege of using Promoted Updates. These work the same way as Local Updates, businesses can promote new services, deals or specials through it and it will appear to anyone who is near the vicinity. These ads are tailored towards your likes and interests (i.e. the places and venues that you regularly check into) so if you regularly check into restaurants, your updates will reflect that. Businesses and companies pay Foursquare on a cost per action model, instead of views or impressions their updates receive. At the moment, the feature is only available to a number of companies and businesses, but expect it to be rolled out for general use pretty soon. 136

Custom Badges

You may remember the mention of gamification (the word that nobody really understands), and this comes in the form of badges and mayorship. The more varied places you check into, the greater the chance you have of obtaining a badge. IF you check into a specific place a number of times, theres the chance you will become mayor of that spot, which if a business is savvy enough, will use that position as a way to offer special deals or discounts.

While mayorship is rather self-explanatory, custom badges are really for one-off events, mostly for credit so that users can say they attended an event or did something exclusive. Anyone can apply for once (form found here) although you have to specify why you want to create a new badge and state what people have to do to obtain it. If Foursquare like the idea, you will get a response within two weeks and six to eight weeks to get ready before your campaign launches.

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Foursquare Campaigns
Fulham FC
At the tail end of last season, English Premier League football club Fulham made Foursquare one of its official social media channels and urged its fans to use Foursqaure on game days. Their main aim was to get 250 check-ins at their home ground, Craven Cottage; doing so would earn the ground a Super Swarm Badge. As an added incentive, Fulham and Foursquare offered every fan to check-in at the ground special offers on tickets and merchandise once the club had reached that magical 250 mark on one game day. The club has been reasonably successful in harnessing Foursqaure and, at present, 3,095 people have checked in at the Cottage; with the new season approaching, theyll be hoping to see that number quickly rising.

Miami Ad Schools Metropoli

The creative folks at the Miami Ad School has built a reputation for their innovative concept campaigns, and their Foursquare-infused Metropoli game is no exception. Metropoli combines Foursquares check-ins features with popular board game Monopoly. To buy a property, Foursquare users must first check-in there, and friends who check in later must pay rent to the owner, of course, but in virtual Metro dollars instead of actually currency or Monopoly money. Metropoli adds a competitive and fun, additional social element to Foursquare. Once again, providing an incentive for people to use it and check-in at their favourite places. Metropoli (Formerly Foursquaropoly) from Deanna McDonald on Vimeo.

Euro RSCG

Theres nothing you cannot do with a little hard graft and subterfuge, as Belgian ad agency Euro RSCG recently proved. As part of a massive recruitment drive, RSCG checked-in at the offices of 43 of their rivals every day, until they had done enough to become the mayor of each location, amazingly enough. From there, they released tips on the 43 pages and linked each location to their recruitment page as a way of encouraging opposition talent to come to their agency. 138

Foursquare is still very, very niche in Belgium, so it is doubtful they were very successful, but this was certainly an extremely aggressive (almost shameless) campaign that is sure to get attention and give people ideas in using social media for corporate espionage and manipulation.

KLM

Dutch airline KLM went out of their way to surprise their customers early last year, using Foursquare other social media sites to decide which surprise gifts to buy KLM fliers arriving at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Fliers, who checked at particular KLM-endorsed locations, would then have their social media output scoured over by the airline as they searched their personal preferences for the perfect gift. Verging on stalkerish? Probably, but such personalised gifts certainly marked how happiness spreads as KLM intended and garnered them plenty of positive publicity.

Foursquare, American convenience store 7-Eleven and the studio behind last years sci-fi blockbuster Super 8 teamed up to award prizes to Foursquare users checking it at 7-Eleven stores across the US. 21,000 prizes were available, and the campaign very smartly ensured that more people went to the store, used Foursquare and heard about the JJ Abramsdirected flick. It worked out so that every 88th check-in got tickets to see the film, every 88,888th person won a weightlessness experience with Zero gravity corp, and the 888,888th person won the final prize of actually going on a private mission to space estimated at a more than $100,000 value. Quite astounding prizes, really, and more than enough to get you to use Foursquare.

7-Eleven and Super 8

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is all about health, and partnered with Foursquare last month to encourage more people to get active and start going to local, state or national parks in the US as part of a budding competition. With every visit, the park received 100 points and the totals were tallied up to decide a winner. The winning park received a $100,000 donation from Coke; the parks, in turn, put 139

on additional activities and exercises for Foursquare users. Its quite a nice way of getting people out the house over the summer, while also encouraging them to get active, enjoy Coke products and to see their local parks.

Starbucks and (RED)

AIDS prevention and awareness charity (RED) and coffee titans Starbucks got Foursquare users to check-in at Starbucks joints across the US and Canada recently, and with every check-in, Starbucks donated $1 to The Global Fund, up to 250,000. The campaign is a simple way of leveraging social media activity for charitable benefit and doesnt ask very much fo Starbucks customers/Foursquare users at all but to keep doing what they were doing. Savvy and kind-hearted.

Tips and Tricks

- If youre looking for a location that you checked into a while back, but cant remember the name, you can search through your archives and find it. On the web, you can access your check-in history (foursquare.com/username/history), and search for it using terms like place, person and categories. - If you accidentally checked into the same place more than once, you can delete the duplicates. Simply go into your check-in history, and select the check-in you want to get rid of. There will be an x located to the right of the locations name. This is useful as you can normally only make 30 check-ins in the one day. You shouldnt need to check-in that many times, but its handy to know. - Because you wont be looking at your phone 24/7, a handy feature to use is radar, which will make your phone vibrate whenever youre near somewhere or something interesting. Simply go into settings on your profile page and you will find radar there. 140

- Also in settings, you can manage local updates under account settings. If your feed it clogged with updates and you want to filter out updates, simply go here and untick them. Brands that you like and places that you check-in regularly will feature in this list. - Your privacy settings are important if you like to keep certain details to yourself, or if some of your friends here are people you dont know that well. Here, you can choose to hide your mobile number (if you provided it), email and control how much of your actions can be viewed by the public. - Relating to the last point, you can also adjust notifications in settings and decide whether you want to be alerted to check-in notifications (nearby check-in make by your friends). - You can add apps onto the service, but not directly on the app version itself. There are two ways to go about this: The first is to go into the app itself and connect it up to your Foursquare account. The second is to go into settings and select Add and Manage Connected Apps. Here, you will be given a number of suggestions ranging from Instagram, Path, Soundtracking, Sonar and Lanyrd (provides info when you check-in at a conference or professional event).

Infographic Sources

- http://www.slideshare.net/WaveLab/10-social-networks-and-a-bunch-of-stats - http://statspotting.com/2012/04/foursquare-statistics-20-million-users-2-billioncheck-ins/ - http://liesdamnedliesstatistics.com/2011/04/foursquare-users-spend-3-5x-as-much. html - http://www.factbrowser.com/tags/foursquare/ - https://foursquare.com/business/

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The Complete Marketers Guide To Tumblr

onsidering the success and hype that surrounded Pinterest earlier this year, another site has been quietly going about its business and slowly growing is Tumblr. Since it was first created in 2007, Tumblr is one of the older social media sites out there, but has found a dedicated audience thanks to its quick and easily digestible posts. Also, the major difference between Pinterest and Tumblr is that while Pinterest is more about sharing links to content, Tumblr is all about blogging. While designed to house longer posts, Tumblr is more commonly used for posting images, GIFs and videos. The popularity of the site is such that its given birth to a number of blogs that have gone viral over the last few months. For brands, the appeal should be obvious: As users are more interested in visual posts and easily digestible content as well as a younger audience, and since brands are becoming more visual thanks to other sites, there is a lot of scope for promotion as well as opportunities to increase brand awareness. 142

Why Use Tumblr?

It would be easy to write off Tumblr or see it as an afterthought. A mere 120 million people frequent the social networking/microblogging site, a number that is dwarfed by titanic contemporaries such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and Blogger, but that is still an extremely sizeable demographic to target for brands and advertisers. The site is among the fastest-growing online, currently, and brands are starting to take notice, making Tumblr a core element of their online marketing plans, for a number of reasons beyond its increasing popularity

It is far more consuming that its competitors. Tumblr users are found to spend well over two hours per day on the site; thats an average time only bettered by Facebook, so its clear that Tumblr is a far more immersive site than most. People get lost on Tumblr that isnt found on other major social networks; it is strangely addictive and people will engage with anything from amusing banalities to high-powered advertising campaigns if they are presented correctly.

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Tumblr also retains an air of inclusivity that other sites simply do not. No content is restricted on the basis of membership, and the entirety of the site is completely open to whomever wants to view it. So, although the number of active Tumblr users is quite a bit smaller than other sites, that number can grow quickly and the potential for stealth sharing is extremely high. The reblog button is also a godsend that will help sharing increase at an exponential rate with the right campaign; the word will spread quickly if brands get any traction on Tumblr. And though, we are talking about Tumblr as an alternative to mainstream social media, the site does, in fact, facilitate synchronisation extremely well, especially with Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and WordPress. The sites openness also lends itself to search. Increased traffic is a distinct probability if your campaign has the Google algorithm at its back, and as Tumblr is so easily integrated with Google Analytics that brands should be able to easily manipulate the SEO to their advantage.

As far as actual advertising content goes, it helps that you can accomplish a wide range of things on Tumblr that you cannot on certain other sites. Brands can post text, photos, links and videos all together or how ever they choose, which grants them a broader scope for advertising campaigns.

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Tumblr & Brands

So the platform is growing at a massive pace and people are looking at billions of pages, but are there any brands getting in on the action? The answer is yes! There are plenty who have, but prefer to stick to the safe ground of Facebook or Twitter. Here are some of the brands and businesses that have been embracing Tumblr and doing it really well to date.

Given the target market on Tumblr, the fact that it is rich media content and that people can easily share content, its no surprise that Universal Music is on the list. They give lots of their different artists exposure on the site.

Universal Music

Elle Magazine

As you would expect, there are lots of traditional publishers jumping onto Tumblr to try and drive people over to their magazines and other forms of traditional media. It suits a brand like Elle because of the amount of stylish, and rich photos they have.

The second fashion type brand on the list and this Tumblr is a joy for anybody obsessed with the world of fashion. Lots of endless scrolling of beautiful images, which act as a great shop window for the designers clothes.

Alexander McQueen

The Today Show

One of the biggest TV shows in the USA uses Tumblr to share content that is getting talked about online. Because of the size of their audience, people share its posts all day long thus exposing the TV brand to a much bigger audience.

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One of the biggest tech companies in the world was quick to embrace Tumblr and although its content can feel a little corporate at times, it does help you understand more about what they do.

IBM

Topshop

Bit of a no-brainer for one of the biggest retail outlets in the world to be on Tumblr and it essentially uses it as an extension to their shop window. Tons of people share the outfits they like the most and effectively exposing the brand to a bigger online audience.

If ever a brand was made to have a Tumblr, then it has to be Etsy. The home craft site has a lot of examples of the latest goods added to their platform and this is one Tumblr where you could lose hours at a time browsing.

Etsy

Tips & Tricks

Post Offline
A nifty little Tumblr feature here, allowing you to upload posts offline, via phonecall. When youve configured your account in the settings, you can call and record your blog post, which Tumblr will then automatically update for you. Pretty cool.

Queue your posts

The nature of a Tumblr blog means youll likely be posting little and often. This might get a bit too much for your readers, so you can let Tumblr do the hard work for you and help with restraining your level of posts. Their queue post option will allow you to space out your posts without having to actually delay uploading something when you want. You can find this option in your dashboard, then simply select how often you want posts published within a set timeframe. 146

Add Google Analytics

If youre serious about your Tumblr, you should think about adding Google Analytics, which thankfully is pretty easy to do. You dont need to know any hard code in order to do this. Under appearance on Tumblr, youll have the option to add in your code, which you can generate from Google Analytics. Then simply log in to GA to find out the latest activity on your site, with advanced metrics such as traffic sources and average site visit giving you a deeper insight than Tumblr itself.

Edit Multiple Posts

If you want to edit numerous posts at the same time (give them the same tags, delete posts etc.), simply use Mega-Editor http://www.tumblr.com/mega-editor. Here, all your posts will be visible allowing you to make quick changes.

Hot Keys

There are certain keys which make using your dashboard that bit easier. Use the J or K keys to move forward or backwards, you can like the current post by pressing L. If you want to tag, press the Ctrl key. To reblog without having to leave the dashboard or tagging , simply click the reblog button while pressing the Alt key.

Blog via mobile

If you have a Tumblr and a smartphone, then you should absolutely be combining the two. Tumblrs apps make for an incredibly easy way to update your site on the go. The iPhone app in particular is really easy to use for photos. Simply take your pic then upload to Tumblr directly with a short description and tags.

Paid Advertising

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With its popularity, it was only a matter of time before Tumblr would begin venturing down the route of paid advertising. In this case, Tumblrs founder and CEO David Karp announced that the site would be introducing paid advertising back in April. This was originally a surprise due to Karps scepticism about digital advertising but the site is gradually introducing advertising into the mix and create a new way o,f generating revenue (the other ways it makes money is by taking a cut from the sales of custom blog themes and allowing users to highlight posts for their followers for $1). The advertisement comes in the form of a Radar post which appears on a users dashboard as an ad unit. The section usually highlights the most popular posts from across the site so any advertisements would feature alongside these. Ad slots could be bought for an entire day and are marked by a dollar sign to highlight that it is not organic content. So far only one major campaign has been held here, but it was a significantly large one to begin with. In June, Adidas bought a month-long slot to promote its latest football Tumblr blog for the 2012 UEFA European Championship in Poland and Ukraine. The campaign included the usual images and videos, but developed it further with fan reactions, tributes to players from former tournaments and podcasts.

The only problem is that while it was announced back in April, theres nothing to say just how successful this advertising model is. Tumblr, and by extension brands, is still learning how effective the medium is and it may be another while yet before any case studies begin to emerge. Yet saying that, the fact that Adidas, one of the top brands in the world, took a chance with it is encouraging for the site as it looks to host more large scale campaigns.

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Other brands who have opted for Tumblr advertising include luxury fashion retailer Bottega Veneta, which ran Radar and spotlight (a section that highlights content creators from specific interests) ads the week before Adidas campaign. However, there has yet to be another brand who have run a campaign to the same scale as Adidas.

Infographic Sources

- http://www.webcost.info/tumblr.com - http://therealtimereport.com/2012/01/27/social-networking-stats-tumblr-reaches-15billion-monthly-pageviews-rltm-scoreboard/ - http://statspotting.com/2012/02/tumblr-statistics-15-billion-pageviews-a-month1000-servers/ - http://mashable.com/2012/01/23/tumblr-15-billion-pageviews/ - http://venpop.com/2012/why-your-brand-should-consider-tumblr-for-social-mediamarketing/

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The Complete Guide To Email Marketing Everything You Ever Wanted To Know

hile social media tools like Facebook and Twitter dominating our online strategies, one of the most successful forms of online marketing ever is email and today we have a look at some of the tips and tricks to running a good campaign. When you think about it, one of the first things most of us do every day is check our email. So if you can deliver good, targeted content with a strong call to action, it is going to be highly effective in terms of driving sales. On the flip side though, many of us consumers have been bombarded by so many spam emails and added to so many marketing lists that it can have a negative effect. In many cases, users block emails as spam or report the company for adding them to a list without permission so it is massively important to do this correctly, creating brilliant content and following all the right procedures. People might be saying that email is dying, but as far as we can see, it still works great and here are some tips on how to get the most out of it.

What Are The Best Times To Send Emails

You could have a brilliant email campaign featuring amazing content thats fully optimized for people to open and click on your links, but if you send it at the wrong time, you dont stand a chance. The common knowledge is that the best time is to send it sometime during the working day between Tuesday and Thursday, but that only works if you are in a specific country and your audience is located in the same time zone. It also depends on the product you are trying to sell or the message you are trying to get across. 150

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Making Email Mobile Friendly

Like everything in marketing these days, one of the newest options available is mobile and how that affects what you do. A couple of years ago, the vast majority of people would have opened their emails on their desktops or laptops, but that trend has changed with nearly everybody now using their mobile devices. Most of the big email software companies are aware of this change and have introduced mobile friendly templates and new ways of targeting consumers on their mobiles. 152

Link Through To A Mobile Optimized Website

Presuming that your email has been opened and that somebody has then decided to click on a link within the content, you will want to make sure that they are arriving on a mobile optimized page. Send users to a page that is full of tiny links, which requires them to squint to see the content and theyre going to leave in a hurry. You cant just downsize your content for a mail screen. Instead, you should be creating landing pages with mobile users in mind. It could be the difference between a lot of sales and none at all.

Go Big On Images

You have to be prepared for people flicking through their emails, and the simple fact is you will be lucky if your email is viewed for more than five seconds on a mobile device. It can be very hard to get a users attention when there are apps and social media tools to keep them entertained. The use of images is one way of doing it and weve seen large images taking up the entire screen and linking to a sales page performing really well.

The From Line Is The Most Important

When viewing emails on a mobile device, the subject line (which is what most good email marketers focus on) is nowhere near as important as the from line. As you can see from the image below, the from field is by far the biggest font so you are going to have to have something there that people really want to click on. 153

Building An Effective Mailing List

Know Your Audience

There are a number of general rules to keep in mind when youre launching an email campaign, none more important than getting people to sign up and continue receiving your emails. There are a number of ways of encouraging users to sign up and to get the content in front of them, so heres what you should keep in mind.

Knowing who youre targeting is important as your newsletter or weekly emails will have a theme. If its social media, then market it as such. This audience will form the core of your email database so know what they want and market accordingly.

Place A Sign Up Form On Your Site

For your readers to sign up, you need to make them aware that your newsletter exists. However, you must do it in a way that doesnt disrupt their overall experience. The best way to do this is to place in a prominent location on your site so that its immediately noticeable. Normally, slotting it in the sidebar is better as you dont risk making your page look too busy, which could put some people off.

Place A Sign Up Form On Facebook

The same principal to your site applies here, you can place sign up forms on your Facebook page, placing it as a tab on it. There are a number of sites which provide this, one of the more popular examples would be MailChimp, which provides a video and screenshot tutorial showing you how its done.

Place a Pop-Up Box On Older Blog Posts

Since a great deal of visitors would arrive at your site through Google and other search engines, the chances are they will visit one of your older posts. This is a good place to place a pop-up box as these visitors arent regular readers so theyll only see it once when they first visit the site. Provided your content is good and it doesnt appear for regular readers, your sign-up rates will increase. 154

Sign Up Via Purchases

If youre an online retailer, chances are that including email addresses are already part and parcel of completing the sign-up process. Again, provided you inform buyers that you may send them emails relating to the company, its another great way of leveraging emails.

Encourage Sharing

Word of mouth and personal recommendations are the best way to promote something so if you have a newsletter or weekly email, why not encourage people to share your stuff. With different social media outlets out there, its worth trying out.

Run Competitions

Competitions are a great way to build up engagement and convince people to get involved. Everyone wants to win something so provided that the prize is good and you inform them that you could be emailing them again, then its perfect.

Purchase Opt-in Databases

This is one option youll need to be very careful with, but if you want to inject your mailing list with a new lease of life, then purchasing an email list can help as it will provide you with a targeted list. The only reason wed be reluctant to recommend this is that there are a lot of spam sites offering the same thing so make sure the site youre purchasing from is reputable and above board.

Create Different Email For Different Audiences

If youve built up a good database and have email addresses that are associated with different sectors, then you can send more targeted content to these people. Providing variety is a good way of reaching more people, but make sure its something you have the time to do in the long-run. Its pointless to start sending out four different newsletters only to cancel three of them because of time-constraints.

Release eBooks Or Reports

Providing value for readers and visitors is the best way to get followers and if you release valuable content like ebooks or reports for free, people are bound to download it. While youre doing that, get visitors to provide their email address so they can download it. 155

Be Transparent

We mentioned this in one or two earlier points, but its worth repeating again as trust is vital to success. Clearly state how a visitors email will be used (newsletters, monthly emails, product updates, etc.), and youll find that most will respond positively.

Guest Blogging

If youre writing blog posts for different sites, you can include a call-to-action and link in your author byline. This allows you to promote your services through other sites.

The Legalities Of Email Marketing How Not To Spam People

There is nothing more annoying than getting spammed by a company that you didnt sign up to, or not being able to opt out of their email updates once you have signed up. Luckily, you are protected by some pretty important rules that companies should be adhering to (although many dont) so make sure that youre doing things the right way. The main rules you should keep in mind are: 1) Make sure the content and reasons for emailing are clear and easy to understand. 2) Provide users with an easy way to opt out or unsubscribe from emails. 3) Create a double opt-in to ensure that all subscriptions are from the person in question and not someone using someone elses email address without their knowledge. 4) Never sell or disclose personal details or an email list to a third-party. 5) Send a confirmation email when someone subscribes or unsubscribes. 6) Dont spam users, make sure your emails are consistent and relevant. 7) Provide a valid email address for those who want to contact you directly. 8) Promptly deal with complaints or queries that may arise. 9) Build up your email list organically through site opt-ins and subscriptions. 10) Provide a privacy policy on your site clearly explaining what user details will be used for, and then follow it. 156

Creative Campaigns

When you think about creative marketing campaigns, it is always sexier tools like Google, Facebook and Twitter that spring to mind, but there are many cool things that can be done with email as well. Some of the biggest businesses in the world are powered by email marketing so coming up with creative ways of doing that is always essential. Here are three examples of creative email marketing campaigns that you can take inspiration from.

Digital Accomplice Video Campaign

Digital Accomplice ran this campaign after hosing a webinar on B2B video marketing, sending out a video email. The email directed them to a page with an embedded video offering a free strategy assessment and a call to action, getting them to fill out the form underneath.
Image via Digital Accomplice

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Within the space of a day, the email received twice the industry average for opens and clicks, 34.1% of its email were opened, while 7.3% were clicked on. While the results only correlate to one day, its worth considering if youre thinking of including multimedia content and are targeting a specific demographic.

Artbeads.com

Jewellery maker and retailer Artbeads.com wanted to peruse targeted email marketing, but wanted to make sure that different demographics were catered to. So it tested a number of targeted emails over the year by writing the email in a personal tone (including the CEO of the company), made the email specific to the user through using their first name and thanking them for their purchases, offering an exclusive discount and placing a deadline on it. The result was that the email achieved an open rate of 20.25% and a CTR of 4.36%. The overall conversion rate was 0.71%, and was 208% higher than their previous efforts which ranged from 0.04% to 0.23% depending on the period.

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Back in 2010, insurance group Ecclesiastical wanted to target existing brokers to alert them to its new online service. So to catch attention, it created an email campaign featuring a finger sprint race video in the style of Chariots of Fire. It also worked with a company called Vismail whose proprietary software enabled graphics and embeddable videos to get past firewalls and ensure that the video actually played when the email was opened. Overall, the cost was 14,000 but after 5,084 deliveries, it had an open rate of 21%, the email was refowarded on average 3.5 times meaning the total number of times it was opened was 3,556 times and its CTR was 10% (552 times). The results showed that the video was reshared to large groups of people (5+), with one contact having their email opened over 106 times.

Ecclesiastical Insurance

Infographic Stats & Figures

- http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/when-is-the-best-time-to-send-emails - http://www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk/Blog/when-is-the-best-time-to-send-outemail-marketing-campaigns-1640.aspx - http://blog.getresponse.com/best-time-to-send-email-infographic.html

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Five Ways To Increase Engagement On Social Media

or any brand page, the question of getting more fans or followers will come up sooner or later. While there are underhanded ways of obtaining followers (paying for fake followers is the main method although we strongly advise against it for obvious reasons), the best way is to make your page more engaging for your fans. While this is a long-term strategy, the results are well worth it so here are five quick tips (and some guides below) to help you out.

Content, Content, Content

The golden rule of social media. If you dont have the basics in place, then it doesnt matter what you post, if it doesnt make people want to interact or share, your efforts arent going to go far. Posting links is all well and good, but make sure you mix it up a little. Post photos, videos, ask questions, make statements, crack a joke, respond to users. Just make sure youre giving people a reason to follow you in the first place, and adding value and variety to their news feeds is the way to go.

Know Your Audience

A lot of sites have either first or third-party analytics that will provide you with much information about your followers and fans. Knowing factors like age, location, profession and gender can help you determine the best type of updates to post and who will be most likely to read them. This way, you can adjust your content to be more appealing towards your biggest demographic. 160

Timing Is Everything

Tying into the last point, theres no point posting something if most people arent going to see it. The majority of research out there suggests that early afternoon is generally the best time to post. However, youll need to do your own research first to find out the best times for posting before you can do anything. This will involve trial and error for the most part, but Another thing to take into consideration is timezones. More often than not, the majority of your followers will be located in the same, or close to the same timezone as you so you wont have to make major changes. However, if your fan base is more international, then you will need to experiment by posting at different times to measure engagement.

Be Consistent & Dont Spam

If you want people to pay attention to you, then you need to make sure theyre expecting you to update. Nobody wants to follow an inactive or inconsistent account, so make sure youre posting regularly. On top of that, avoid tweeting in quick succession as it will mean that followers will get annoyed that their feed has been taken over with your updates. Also, its more valuable to space out your tweets.

Hashtags

Really this is a Twitter and Instagram specific tip, but dont underestimate how valuable hashtags can be. Not only do hashtags provide context, but also gives non-followers the opportunity to discover your content. One hashtag is more than enough so dont spam users by throwing every hashtag you can think of.

Guides & Opinion

Since there are so many similar guides like this, here are some more tips and guides to sink your teeth into. - ReadWriteWeb has a quick guide about what and when to post on Instagram. - Jeff Bullas highlights ten ways you can increase fan engagement on Facebook. - OpenForum gives similar advice, but for Twitter this time. - Raka Interactive took the data from bit.lys research and created a handy infographic based on its findings. - Marketing Pilgrim post explains the caveats behinds broad studies relating to post and the importance of doing your own research to find the best times. - Focusing on the best times to post, Jon Loomer explains on his blog why you shouldnt take such research literally. - ReadWriteWeb features again, this time it explains the purpose of hashtags.

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The Guide To Search: Why Social & Mobile Are The Future

earch is currently in a transition period right now. As algorithms become more complex and the major search engines introduce new features, its clear that our expectations about how search should work and what it can do for us has risen with every new development. Its not enough that it just suggests relevant information. Now we demand that it comes faster, becomes more accurate and matches our tastes and interests. Throw Siri and Google Now (or at least, the potential of Siri and Google Now) into the mix and the idea that the very concept of search will be radically different in three to five years time is a distinct possibility. Social search was seen as the next step in this process. Using our profiles to filter and curate the content we want to see, the results have been mixed. Googles insistence on using Google+ and its +1 system has been criticised because it neglects the more popular social media sites to plug its own. On the other hand, Bing has struggled to even dent Googles hold on search, despite championing its social search feature partly because Microsoft has a stake in Facebook. Throw in the massive rise of mobile search, and the concept of search is evolving in a way that we mightnt have expected. Yet one thing is certain: With more and more content being created online, a new way of curating and processing the vast waves of information out there will necessity. With Google making small changes to search both on desktop and mobile and Bing pushing its social credentials even further, the race is on to see who can discover (or possibly stumble) upon the next stage of search. 162

Where Is Social Search Headed?

Despite social platforms like Twitter and Facebook making huge strides and pulling in hundreds of millions of users, its still Google that controls search for the large part. Facebook has had a flawed search experience since the site launched and even a partnership with Microsoft and its search engine Bing has not been able to help them improve. Twitter has a wealth of realtime data with the couple of hundred million tweets they see every day, but their search experience is also poor. Despite the fact that Twitter and Facebook are not making the best strides in the battle for social search, Google does recognize the threat that they pose and that search will eventually be powered by humans rather than just algorithms, which is why it invested so much time, money and energy into Google+. While its spiders can crawl the web and their page rank system has proved the foundation of the company over the last decade, it knows that it needs to find out more about the people browsing the web and what they actually like. The fact that people spend so much time on Facebook and that it is effectively a walled garden to which Google has little or no access to has to be a huge worry for the worlds biggest search engine, especially with users volunteering so much useful information to the social network. There have been persistent rumors about Facebook getting into search, or at least improving the experience on their own site, and it is something that we would love to see happen. Id love to be able to tap into the wisdom of my friends to find the best restaurants, bars, holiday destinations and books. We do see it happening through frictionless sharing for the likes of movies on Netflix, songs on Spotify and other apps through open graph, but that is a different type of discovery than search itself. Despite all the knowledge within Google, Twitter and Facebook, none of them have cracked social search yet and I fully expected one of them to have done so at this stage. One thing that is certain is that it will be one of those three companies who will eventually crack it. A startup might lead the way with a totally new solution, but one of the big guys would inevitably acquire that company and fold it into their own offering. As far as true social search is concerned, we are all still waiting. 163

The Development Of Mobile Search

The major focus of mobile is that most search queries relate to location. Naturally, the majority of users search while theyre on the go, but this has a far greater bearing than you might expect. As the above infographics highlight, many users search when they are shopping and make shopping decisions soon after their search, meaning that localised search plays a massive part in how mobile will develop. While desktop search is primarily focused on providing as much information as possible, people on the move dont enjoy the same luxury, not having the time or screen space to filter through numerous results. Instead the focus has turned towards providing a concise answer and making sure the process from search query to result is as smooth and as frictionless as possible. In a way, this is probably the avenue that mobile search will go down for quick inquiries and local searches, while for more research intensive searches, brands and businesses will have to optimise their sties to deal with this. While the same search engines are available on iPhone and Android (oddly Bings app isnt available outside the U.S.), the only two that seem to be treating mobile differently are Google and Apple. The latters effort, Siri, was the first real attempt at creating a mobile only search engine through the form of a personal assistant. While its by no means perfect (and it does search through Google, it must be added), Siri did at least introduce the idea that mobile search could be more than just an afterthought and give the very idea of personal search some credit. As a search engine, Siris use is quite limited, yet one-third of people are said to use it to search the internet and 87% say that they use it once a month, suggesting that while it hasnt exactly set the world alight, its doing enough to engage users and has given voice activated search something to work with. 164

Google, on the other hand, has been trying a number of different approaches with its search engine unsurprising since it is its main business. Google Now, one of the latest features introduced alongside Androids Jelly Bean, is its closest rival to Siri as it too has voice control, but it does things differently. Tailoring it to suit your needs, you can have it present different information and updates to you at various times so things like how busy traffic will be, times of flights, sporting updates and translations can be accessed or timed to help you out. All of this is tailored using existing info like web history, your current location and location history. Since Google automatically keeps track of your previous web searches (unless you turn it off ), this is the basis for social search: Taking information we already know about ourselves to make the system more effective.

Siris influence spreads even further into Googles own search app, which recently added voice recognition so you can ask questions and answer them with a brief statement. It works separately to Google Now, only drawing on results directly from the search engine instead of your previous searches, and if its promotional video is anything to go by, it will provide more diverse and snappy answers than Siri currently does. Considering that Google Now was just released, its too early to comment on whether its more successful than Siri or not. However, the gauntlet has been thrown down and both Google and Apple will work towards making Google Now and Siri faster, smarter and better to the point where having them is essential. 165

Web & Mobile analytics tools

Google Analytics
Google Analytics makes it easy for anybody to manage and analyse a website. Once youve copy/pasted the GA code onto your site, you should be set to go and explore the many ways in which Google can analyse your blog or website. You can monitor many sources of information with GA: visitors, traffic sources, content, ecommerce and goals. Thats all fairly standard tracking how many visitors you have, how they are getting to your site and what pages theyre viewing but the goals tab is especially helpful in that it allows you to set aims and then guides you along as you try to achieve them, a vital and knowledgeable assistant. The sites dashboard is simple to navigate and is open to customisation, so you can get the facts that are most important to you upfront. The visualisations of the analytics are especially clear and very malleable seeing as you can easily choose the range over which you are gauging interest and compare activity over certain time periods or across certain pages. Free and simple to use, GA is pretty much essential.

Crazy Egg

What makes Crazy Egg unique is its use of heat and scroll maps, which not only show what pages your users are viewing, but what parts of those pages they are viewing in particular. Heat maps will shows which links are most clicked on, while scroll maps will tell you if people are scrolling through the whole page, or just moving on quickly. These are minute details which display why people are viewing particular pages rather than just if they are. Crazy Egg is really meant to be used to measure how many clicks are being made, but its visual manifestation is creative and appreciably easy to follow since it annotates any particular page with visual aids rather than with stats and graphs.

WebTrends

WebTrends is a pensioner in comparison to many of the other analytic sites mentioned here, but it still packs a punch in some areas, in spite of its competition far outstripping it in others. Story mode still presents data in a package that is simply consumed and takes various statistics and lots of information from across your site. Assets such as Analytics 9, Ad Director, Marketing Warehouse, Professional Services, Score, Social Measurement, and Visitor Intelligence come at a price, but are well-suited to analysing your traffic and helping you increase it. Its ability to measure traffic and referrals remains largely unmatched still, but its all-encompassing ability may be superfluous, daunting or offputting to many users and small businesses and it fails to surpass younger rivals in the latest aspects of analytics. With that said, WebTrends is still a sound investment for those that are especially serious about their analytics. 166

Facebook Analytics
SocialDon
Theres not a lot to SocialDon, but it is very simple. Log in using your Facebook account and then using Don to compare statistics between any pages (you dont have to be an admin, though it would surely be advisable that you were). The dashboard is quick to load and stats are presented in line graphs that clearly state the facts. The analytics are all as you would expect, but the talkability data offers something beyond the norm and you can, of course, change the date and intervals over which you want SocialDon to measure data. You can also measure yourself and your contributions to your various pages if you want, or if your business is in need of a social media evaluation and makeover. Its a helpful little tool, but SocialDon is by no means comprehensive.

Pagelever

Pagelever is probably best know for its work with YouTube and those who has glanced at the analytics on YouTube videos can see the contextual knowledge that Pagelever provides. Pagelever can give you pure numbers, but it also gives milestones that you will find interesting and help you to replicate and improve on any successes you may have. The aim of Pagelever is to cut though noise by showing businesses what is working for them on Facebook and what isnt, in the hopes that will reduce their posts and refine their content and yet still continue to grow their popularity. Pagelever will present you with stats and graphics tell you what and when it is best to post and why that is so.

Twitter Analytics
Twitsprout
Twitsprout is a one-page Twitter analytics service that concisely summarises all your Twitter accounts key statistics and presents them in an easily understandable format. That all the important facts and figures are presented on one page is what makes Twitsprout stand out, and updates are tailored to activity rather than a set schedule so you will be alerted via email when RTs or followers are increasing/ decreasing at an abnormal level, for instance. The graphics are informative and very colourful (which is always a plus), and stats are explained for those that are getting to grips with Twitter and analytics with very 167

few buzzwords and little jargon. Finally, Twitsprout is smart; it can evaluate trends and interpret them in a way the unindoctrinated eye just cant, so it is perfect for new users and flourishing businesses.

The Archivist

The Archivist is one of the premier Twitter analytic apps, allowing you to archive tweets and analyse the biggest trends. Whether youre searching for stats on keywords, hashtags or certain users, the Archivist will provide an extensive and aesthetically crisp analysis of whatever you want. It is very extensive, but it also immediate; literally type in the account hashtag or keyword you want to analyse and the results will pop up in a matter of seconds. There is no programme or anything to downloadable, it is done purely online, but you can download the results into an Excel spreadsheet or a .zip file if you want once youve signed in, which should alleviate worries about organisation.

Twitalyzer

Twitalyzer will give you a complete overview of your Twitter accounts influence based on, among other things, number of followers, number of people following, retweet level, number of retweets by others, how often an account replies to other users and engages in conversations. Again, it doesnt have to be your own account, you can just type in any username if you really want to know that type of thing. It puts a visual preference on numbers as opposed to actual statistics as the final percentages and numbers come up in large type while their corresponding graphs and charts are dwarfed in comparison. Twitalyzer offers additional metric points and reporting data, making it one of social medias most complete analytics/measurement apps.

Social & Mobile SEO Practices

Having a social media and mobile presence is all well and good, but you need to optimise both sectors if you want your site to benefit. Your social and mobile search strategy should complement your main SEO strategy, so make sure you have a traditional SEO strategy first before you start focusing on social.

Social SEO

Post your articles immediately on social media

While this should always do this, theres an extra benefit that you mightnt have considered. According to Mitch Monsen of WhiteFire SEO, social media helps content get indexed faster. So if youre posting a time-sensitive post or if you focus on reporting, it helps to be quick. The faster you post something, the faster you get into Googles index for your keyword terms and the faster you show up at the top of the results. So when you get the chance, post it onto Twitter and Google+.

Provide sharable content

Content is very much king, and while were not saying you should create content solely for the sake of sharing, but by focusing more on what people want, the chances of it 168

being shared and liked increases. According to Jordan Kesteler of PETA, there are two reasons for this. The first is that its good for SEO as more shares mean more links to your site, which is always a good thing. The second is that if a popular user or account shares your content, their whole network may see your post the next time they search for similar material, resulting in another boost in your ranking.

Use Twitter Directories

Building up links to your Twitter profile doesnt have to be hard provided you do two things: Tweet often and use Twitter directories. The latter is handy for getting your content to those who might be interested and CNET has a great list on the best Twitter directories out there.

Twitter SEO

We covered this originally in our 50 Twitter tips list last week, but its worth repeating to help improve your social SEO rank. Essentially, make sure your name and username has the main keyword you want, include your full website address and fit keywords into your bio and profile picture. The same would apply to both Google+ and to an extent, Facebook.

Mobile SEO

Different Keywords for a different format

Just because certain keywords work for search doesnt mean that you will get similar results for mobile. As mentioned earlier, mobile search usually focuses on local so if youre a retailer, create keywords that reflect your location. For other sites, have a look at your analytics tools to see which keywords come up when users search through mobile and use that data to form your keywords. The traditional SEO rules apply so make sure theyre optimised for mobile use as well as desktop.

Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

Not exactly an SEO tip, but its important that your site is suited to mobile. A desktop site isnt going to work well on a portable device (unless its a tablet), so you should design your website to reflect this. Some brands go for apps, but a better way is to 169

optimise your site to work on a smaller screen. Even if its relatively basic looking in comparison to your main site, thats much more useful as it will (a) load faster and (b) users will find the content theyre looking for faster.

Create mobile-friendly content

Linking to the last point, Neil Patel of Quick Sprout makes the point that you should figure out a way to host your mobile site and mobile exclusive content. Your regular desktop content can stay the same provided youve reformatted it for mobile users (see last tip), but the best thing to do is to host your homepage and mobile only pages on m.domain.com subdomaion or /m subfolder. Patel says that you can redirect to your desktop pages, but to use canonical tags so that the links are directed back to desktop pages.

Infographic Sources

-http://www.tekgoblin.com/2012/07/07/over-3-billion-searches-on-google-each-day/ -http://www.biakelsey.com/Company/Press-Releases/120418-Mobile-Local-SearchVolume-Will-Surpass-Desktop-Local-Search-in-2015.asp -http://searchengineland.com/google-50-percent-of-smartphone-users-exposed-toads-took-action-74760 -http://www.viralblog.com/mobile-and-apps/11-incredible-mobile-marketing-statistics/ -http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google. com/en//events/thinkmobile2011/pdfs/time-for-mobile-is-now.pdf -http://www.google.com/events/thinkmobile2011/presentations.html -http://thesocialskinny.com/99-new-social-media-stats-for-2012/

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