Very useful tip if your job involes a lot of social media for Twitter and Facebook

Are you fed up with being limited to 140 characters on Twitter? If you are someone who needs to post updates about a company, product, event, or anything else, it is very hard to say what you need to say in 140 characters....especially if you need to post about it often but want to say it in different ways. Well I have your solution. I'm sure a lot of you know about this, but I'll bet a lot of you don't know as well. This tip can also be useful even if you don't have to use social media for work and just want it for personal use. Well, if you want your followers to see longer posts, there is a way to link your Twitter page with your Facebook page so that they can see the entire thing instead of it being cut off.  I can't tell you how many times I spent hours on Hootsuite because I was posting multiple things to Twitter and Facebook together and then when I save it, it cuts off everything I just wrote at 140 characters..and then I have to rewrite them all again!

Here is the solution...go to this website http://www.wikihow.com/Link-Facebook-to-Twitter and follow the directions. It's that simple! You just need to authorize the app with Twitter and then once you post something longer than 140 characters onto your Twitter and Facebook pages from Hootsuite, it will automatically leave a link to that Facebook post so that it doesn't have to cut it off! This is going to be a life saver to many people, and it definitely is to me! So spread the word!

When are Facebook users most active?

Even though this article is a few years old, it is extremely helpful to know if you are working in the Social Media biz...especially since many people don't know this.

The biggest takeaways:

• The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
• The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
• Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.
• Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week.
  
  
  Not only is it useful to know this stuff if it's your job, you also have to think about your audience and the season. If you have targeting younger kids who have Facebook and Twitter and it's also Summer, you have a better chance of reaching them during the day since they don't have school and have nothing better to do than be on their phones and constantly looking on Facebook or Twitter. 
  If your audience is older than 25, chances are no matter what season it is, they will be working 9-5 jobs...but also, it depends if it's their job to be on social media sites during the day, in which these spike periods can be useful. If not, then also posting before and after work with scheduling using Hootsuite, for example, can be very helpful.
  Again, this information is good for anyone in the biz and very useful to know..so I suggest you read this article and pay attention to your audience! Don't make it a one-way conversation..engage your audience and listen to them!
  
  
  http://mashable.com/2010/10/28/facebook-activity-study/

There's a new player in town

Chromebook is finally here. I just saw the commercial yesterday and read an article today, and I am very excited for it. If I could get a new laptop right now and pick anything I wanted, I would probably want a Chromebook. First of all, I hate Macs. I don't see what the huge deal about them is. They still confuse me and I don't understand why they have to be so incredibly different from PCs in the way you do things. I will never have a Macbook.

Second, I love Chrome. Even if I'm using a computer at school that doesn't have Chrome on it, I will download it as the browser and use it. I hate Internet Explorer (I think we all do) and don't know why computers still have it as the main web browser anymore. At least choose Mozilla over Internet Explorer! But even still, I like Chrome so much better. It's so much easier to use than the other browsers, it's faster, smarter, and I think just better in general. If Chrome can be such a good browser and Google such a great company, I have no doubt that Chromebook will be very popular and a great laptop.

Reference: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/18/the-time-has-come-for-chrome-os-in-the-home/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Twitter activity affecting concerts' live streams

Well, social media has done it again. They have found a way to engage their audience in such a unique way that I am impressed. This upcoming weekend, the band Vampire Weekend will be playing on Sunday at the Tribeca Film Festival. And they're planning on streaming the show on YouTube for its digital viewers. Not only do the viewers get to see the show online without having to leave their bedroom, but depending on how often they tweet during the show with the hashtag #AmexUnstaged, they can unlock online-only access to an encore by the band backstage. 

What a great way to get even more people talking about the band and the show. Normally, only the people who were actually at the concert would probably be able to tweet about it, but now they're offering a way to drive even more engagement and interact with their followers. This is such a great idea for spreading the word about the different bands and artists that are doing this. Kenny Chesney also did this during one of his beachside concerts in that depending on how many tweets viewers sent would determine the number of songs he would play in his encore (not 10,000 songs for 10,000 tweets, but more tweets means more songs--aka a 9 song encore). 

They wanted to make sure they had something special for the digital audience, which I think is a great idea and in the future will have even more people talking about whatever subject is involved. For Usher's concert, they had viewers send in digital avatars of themselves for a chance to be virtual back up dancers. There is so much potential with social media for the future, and I'm excited to hopefully work in the Social Media Marketing world and participate in some of these amazing ideas. 

Source: http://mashable.com/2013/04/28/vampire-weekend-concert-live-stream-steve-buscemi/

Mobile Marketing Tactics

In light of our recent discussion in Social Media Marketing about Mobile Marketing, I figured this would be an appropriate time to talk about mobile marketing tactics, since, from what we learned, advertisers are not doing the best job in this category.

1. Know what you want your mobile prospects or customers to do next.

• So many people are using their mobile devices as their way of accessing the internet, engaging with others, and for games, so make sure your customers know what you want them to do because they're going to be on their phones...be sure to communicate with them!

2. Develop mobile content that enhances your product. 

• What do your customers care about most? Find out what will deliver value to them and make sure you offer that to them!

3. Focus on the one or two things for which mobile users will use your site.

• Make your mobile site easy to use since mobile users are usually just on for short periods of time, or "snacking," so be sure fulfill their needs as efficiently as possible.

4. Tell stories that hook your viewers and set up the action.

• Tell stories to engage your customers and use videos to draw them on, such as on Vine.

5. Craft videos to ensure viewers see at least half of your content. 

• 25% of YouTube videos are viewed on mobile devices, and 40-60% of viewers don't want the entire video, so make sure that what you need to say is at the beginning and try to entice them to click out to your other content.

6. Create content that works within bandwidth limitations.

• Make sure your consumers can access your information

7. Measure more than the mobile impressions. 

• Track mobile impact in terms of mobile website, apps, in-store activity, cross device use, and calls

Final Four Weekend

The Final Four was this weekend, with the final game ending tomorrow between Michigan State and Louisville. I could not think of a better way to spend my weekend than I did this weekend. I was able to be a part of the Social Media Street Team as a volunteer and help out on Friday and Saturday. Not only did they give us about $100 worth of Nike gear to wear while we worked that said Final Four Atlanta 2013 on it, but I got to spend two days listening to some great bands in the beautiful weather. 

I got to pass out free t-shirts, hand out Bracket Town tickets, get people to do crazy stuff for me like push up contests, beer chugging contests, funny photos, dance contests, and an arm wrestling competition. I was taking videos and pictures all weekend and had an absolutely amazing time. I could not have asked for a better way to spend my time or work. Even though it was tiring, it was such a rewarding experience and got me really excited for when I graduate and can hopefully do more things like this in the future for my job. 

How do you keep up??

These days, there is just way too much stuff. Too much stuff on the internet, too many websites to visit, too many news channels to read and watch, too many social platforms, and just too many people to talk to. How do we keep up with it all? It's hard to stay on top of things because so much can get in the way of what we're doing at the time..whether we read an email and forget about it, go on vacation and can't get to our email for a few days, don't know the latest trend going on, or miss something that someone posted on Facebook or Twitter that eventually disappears in a few hours. 

The best way is to just prioritize your life. Figure out what is most important and start with that. For email, for instance, try responding to an email right away rather than reading it and then saying you'll get back to it. Or, if you have email that is more than 2 weeks old and you haven't done anything about it...delete it! Or archive it at least...make folders with different names so you know where everything is and can find it more easily. 

As for trends, it usually doesn't matter if you're on top of every single one or are the first one to know about something...unless it's your job to. You'll find out eventually and no one will know that you didn't already know. I am usually the last person to know about things and I've learned to live with it. I don't always have the time or energy to read news and keep up with celebrities or fashion trends. So, just prioritize what's more important and worry about that. Don't fret about keeping up with everything and worry about making time for everything every day. Just do the most important things first. 

Brand Marketing on Instagram

Instagram is becoming all the rage lately. Everyone who's anyone is using it, especially companies to try to increase awareness for their brand. And people who are on Instagram, about 90%+ of them, trust what their friends say and think about brands, so it's important for brands to have consumers make brand recommendations. 

A few tips for brand marketing:

• Share authentic content: Look real and be unique
• Content streams: Share behind-the-scenes images of your product, including "in the moment" images and planning ahead for the future. Build a calendar around content streams.
• Share quality content: remember--it't about quality, not quantity. Be interesting, engaging, and memorable. 
• Positive Content: Ask users to share their positive content on your media page.
• Post often: be consistent with posting great content and don't let people forget about you.
• Hashtags: DON'T FORGET HASHTAGS!! You can never use too many hastags, but make sure they're relevant to your content, as well as UNIQUE. Users may start to use this hashtag, which will help raise more awareness for your brand and content.
• Relationship building: ENGAGE with your users..always try to connect with them and not just post one-sided. It must be a two-way relationship.
• Customer Service and Negative Feedback: People want to talk to you, especially if they have something negative to say, so don't be afraid to talk back and try to solve their problems. 

After comparing the social media strategies of Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, I learned a lot..especially in relation to these tips for brand marketing. It is so important to always engage with your users, whether they are saying good or bad things, keep them interested, interact with them, and be memorable. It's not enough just to post things every once in awhile without interacting and engaging. You must always have something important to say that your consumers will remember and therefore be more likely to follow you, try your product, be a loyal customer, etc. These are very good tips for any company, no matter how big or small you are--and on any platform. 

Listening in on Consumer Conversations

Ok, so here's the deal...apparently consumers don't really know squat about social media because all we do is complain about it, yet we're so addicted to it we can't stop. In this technological era of social media and companies using social platforms to help their business, it has become more of a priority for companies to listen in on conversations either when they're being talked about or just to see what consumers are interested in. 32% of consumers using social media don't even know that companies do this, yet 51% of them are talking about these companies on a social media 
platform but don't want them to know. 



Excuse me...but this is the internet. We basically learn from day 1 that nothing on the internet is truly private and that if you don't want something to be seen, then don't post it. It's that simple. If you want to rant about a company, do it orally, or you might as well post it directly on that company's website, because someone is going to see it. 43% of people think it's an invasion of privacy for companies to listen in on conversations, but this is just the new thing in our world. We have to accept that the internet and social media is becoming a dramatically more popular way of doing business and it can help companies in a lot of ways. How else are consumers supposed to complain about companies or rave about companies or talk about them at all for all to see without the internet? It's a blessing and a curse, but people need to get over it and stop acting like they don't expect this kind of stuff to happen. You want companies to listen in some cases when it helps you and then not in other cases? Sorry, not gonna happen. If you don't want companies to listen to you and figure out your needs, then get off the internet.

Google Store

Google seems to be trying to open up a physical store to sell some of their own products, but I think that is just about as dumb as Amazon trying to open up their own store. People like those websites because we are lazy and don't want to go to an actual store to buy things, and we can usually find cheaper things by searching on the internet rather than going to a store. Sure, we have to deal with shipping and handling and sometimes unnecessary service charges, but again, we are lazy. People aren't going to suddenly stop buying things off the internet and go to these physical stores if they did exist, they just wouldn't do very well. And even though Google is trying to showcase its new Glass project in a physical forum, there are many other places that Google could show this off, and they have plenty of money to have another store help them out. 

It's going to be hard for them to turn a profit with these stores trying to sell some of their products. Why bother with rent, utilities, employees, etc. just to show a few products? I think it's all very unnecessary. But I do have to agree that if Google is trying to change its image from just a search engine to more of a consumer brand, the shift in public perception could actually help them in the future. I suppose Google has enough money to try to figure all this out, but I guess you gotta try everything once.

Scroogled

There's a new phrase being thrown around by Microsoft, and it's "scroogled" which is a play on words combing google and screwed. There is a major war going on between Google and Microsoft, and Microsoft is playing dirty. They are trying to let everyone know that Gmail goes through your emails to find what you're talking about and interested in order to advertise to you, and Microsoft is trying to be really negative towards them. But Outlook is already a very good and modern webmail client, that they don't need to be so negative to compete with Gmail. It has features that Gmail doesn't have, such as Active View, and it's a bit more modern, which Gmail can become cluttered. I personally think that when you try to be negative and bash a company, it usually ends up backfiring on you. People like to root for the underdog or the person or company who is getting picked on. So Microsoft should just focus on what they do better than Google instead of being negative, and maybe they can win fair and square. 

Social Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is tonight, and there will be plenty of social media activity going on. In an article on Social Media Today, they say that the companies the release their commercials before the Super Bowl actually helps the game get as many as 600% more views than if they didn't. There will also be many more YouTube views, tweets used as story lines for commercials, allowing fans to create commercials for companies (such as the Goat for sale video), and letting fans send in photos to be used to introduce Beyonce in the halftime show. Now more than ever, social media is going crazy with millions of people tweeting about the Super Bowl, getting involved with ad campaigns and commercials, and just getting them to tweet about their company to gain more recognition. It's crazy what social media has come to. Obviously this year will have more people tweeting than last year because it is more popular now, but how big is it going to get over the years? And when will it hit its peak? Companies are definitely taking advantage of social media in the best possible way this year; it has become such a great way to generate more buzz and to get people involved with their campaigns. It's amazing what social media has come to. I can't wait to see where it will go. 

Comment: 5 reasons how twitter helps with engagement

http://socialmediatoday.com/jamesongbrown/1173711/5-reasons-how-twitter-helps-engagement?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Social+Media+Today+%28all+posts%29

I'd like to respond to this article on Social Media Today. Up until a few months ago, I didn't have a twitter. I never really understood it, and there is still a lot for me to learn, but I have to agree with this article comparing it to Facebook and other networking sites. Twitter is a little safer and more discrete than Facebook and doesn't have all the other games and tools that Facebook is adding. Facebook is almost becoming too much sometimes. Yes, it can be very helpful in keeping in touch with friends and seeing what everyone is doing and other stuff, but as the article states, it's not very private and Twitter can do a lot of stuff that Facebook can't. It allows you to follow celebrities and directly tweet to them or respond to something they have posted, you can say what you want in a short space so that you are to the point and everyone knows what's really important, you can connect with people you never could connect with on Facebook, and you can just see what's going on in the world besides in your little circle of friends by just reading tweets on your home page. I think it's definitely a good place to help with engagement and finding new connections..you never know who you will connect with or what will happen from those connections. There's always all sorts of opportunities like contests and such that could be really cool. I think it's possible that Facebook could become irrelevant someday, and a lot sooner than Twitter will, for these reasons. 

Facebook Graph Search

Facebook is doing a great job with trying not to become irrelevant like Myspace, Buddy Profile, Xanga, and plenty of other social media sites from the past. While the others either didn't offer enough or became creepy, Facebook just keeps adding new things to it to keep people interested. It appears now that Google is attempting to compete with Facebook by trying to have chat on Gmail, Google+ where you can add friends to your page, and personalizing your page. The thing that Facebook is now doing that Google has not, it it's helping you find restaurants and places based on reviews your actual friends have given it rather than strangers or possibly employees of a restaurant giving their opinion online. And a lot of the times you only find a lot of bad reviews for restaurants and you don't always know if you can trust them. It's called the Facebook Graph Search. Mark Zuckerberg has really got it going on. He's young and so smart and always seems to know what the users of Facebook really want and seems to be ahead of many other sites. If Mark Zuckerberg keep this up and if it actually works with no bugs, it is going to make the Google search much more irrelevant.