By Nadia Soeker In today’s world, we are discovering how social networks can redefine how we communicate and connect with one another. Social media platforms have become incredibly prevalent and important in connecting with customers. Yet, they also have the ability to create risky situations for brands. We’ve all heard of inappropriate content being shared on major social networks and how these tweets or posts can make press headlines. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and similar plat...

By Edwin Lo Many social media marketing agencies are using Stumbleupon to build brand loyalty and keywords. Why? Not only is it a great way to get traffic but it also offers the Paid Discovery tool which is perfect if you are an emerging brand on a limited budget and can't compete with larger companies by spending thousands per month on Google AdWords. Let's look at how a company used HypeTree to get over 6,000 signups in less than a week: Case Study: Old Fashioned Paid Ads – Done Smart!...

LinkedIn is a social networking site which is essentially a directory of professionals and companies.  It allows individuals and companies to search for career opportunities, ask and answer questions, and post resumes and design personalized profiles. As with most social networks, it has some degree of integration with Twitter and Facebook.  LinkedIn has over 175 million members and most users are typically 30 and older professionals and all Fortune 500 CEOS are represented on LinkedIn...

Contributor: Justin Wong The internet has gone through tremendous changes since it first came out, increasing in size, speed, and scope from an incredibly fragmented list of websites towards more consolidated mega-sites such as Facebook and YouTube.   However, there is another very important change to the internet known as web 2.0.  Before web 2.0, websites focused mainly on broadcasting information.  Businesses would have a web page that would transmit information to the au...

A problem for businesses looking to invest in their social media marketing strategy is that it is difficult to determine whether it is cost efficient or even effective.  In order to monitor and track your efforts, you should use metrics to determine whether a social media strategy is working for you. Here are a number of simple, commonly used metrics used at social media marketing agencies and by social media consultants. Referral Traffic This refers to the amount of traffic redirected th...

By Edwin LoInstagram is a free photo sharing program available on smartphones and a social network that allows you to take a picture, apply a filter to it and share it with others with an Instagram account. With Instagram, you can share your photos on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare. Like other social networks, other users can follow you and vice versa, and similar to Twitter you can add hash tags to your photos. As a social media service, Instagram is one of the largest and busiest pho...

By Edwin LoTumblr is a microblogging and social networking website that allows you to post multimedia such as pictures and videos to a short-form blog. It's a great social media service for small businesses that you can use internally or use for social media outsourcing. Tumblr integrates the features of a social network platform such as Facebook and Twitter into a simple blogging platform – you can find and follow other Tumblrs, reblog and “Like Content”. Tumblr has around 77 million blogs and ...

By Edwin LoHootSuite is a social media management system and one of the web's most useful social media services. The website’s interface is essentially a dashboard and allows integration with social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, Mixi, MySpace, Ping.fm and WordPress.  It also provides custom analytic tools and customizable reports. For example, the Facebook analytics allow you monitor and measure your fans, likes and comments, and determine your fan...

By Edwin LoGoogle+ is a social networking site that has more than 90 million users. It is a also a great social media service that you can use. It is a collection of different social products and because it has many features, it is easy for a new user to be overwhelmed. Here is a quick rundown of some of its features that from a social media marketing agency point of view.ProfileThis section is self-explanatory.  Similar to your Facebook profile, it has information such as occupation, educa...

Over the past couple years there has been a radical shift in the way businesses are communicating with their customers. Social media has become an invaluable resource for businesses looking to interact with customers in an engaging and cost effective way. For those without the time and/or expertise, hiring a social media agency can really expand your company’s presence on the web. However, there are a couple of issues to consider before hiring an agency.1. The first step is to consult a legitima...

By Edwin LoFoursquare is smartphone app which is essentially location based social networking website.  Using a phone’s GPS technology, users can “check in” their location using either a website, text message, or the application itself. Your check ins reward you with points and sometimes “badges.” You can also connect foursquare to Twitter and Facebook. There are over 25 million users and over 2.5 billion check ins. Considering outsourcing socia media marketing? Use foursquare - it has dist...

By Paul DonnettIn my first post, I argued that social media is here to stay. Okay, great. And if I was a fifteen year-old girl or a grandpa with a penchant for scrolling endlessly through photo albums, I guess I could see the lure. But how (and while we’re at it, why) the heck should I use it for my business?Now hang on, those-of-you-for-whom-the-answer-is-glaringly-obvious, let’s be fair: no two people drawn to the irresistible (if a bit unfathomable) glimmer of social media marketing gold are ...

By Edwin LoPinterest is a social networking site that acts a virtual online scrapbook. Users “pin” (add) photos or videos to Pinterest, and in turn organize them into boards, which are usually thematically titled. You can add photos from your computer or straight off another website. Users can follow other users: meaning his/her pins will be shown to you, and you can also “like” or comment on other people’s pins. You can also repin photos, meaning you can add photos you find on Pinterest to your...

By Justin WongNow that you hopefully have a larger userbase, the next step is to keep that userbase engaged.  Referring back again to the funnel diagram we touched on last blog, you must now increase the proportion of subscribers that will actually become engaged. Similar to the subject of outreach, engagement involves much more than just adding new social media platforms.  It requires a conscious effort on the part of the social media manager to keep people interested, regardless of t...

After the Net went public in 1995, for example, we were barely out of the gate when we started inventing ways to turn our computers into glorified living rooms, coffee shops, and high school reunions. ICQ, MSN Messenger, AOL, Classmates - remember those guys? Wasn’t that long ago. Heck, Doug Brown and David Woolley didn’t even wait for the gun to go off; they were already chatting it up in 1974 on a little thing called “Talkomatic” at the University of Illinois.Seems you just can’t get people to...