Social Seven Roundup Archives « Spiderworking.com's Social Networking blog

Delight Your Customers, Twitter Mistakes And More - The Social 7

photo credit: Luke Hayfield Photography via photopin cc

It’s been an interesting week. Facebook finally added hashtags, although I don’t have them yet, and there’s been loads of great content for me to choose from. I even found a fantastic tutorial on setting up a hosted WordPress blog which is particularly relevant as we’re just about to launch Blog Awards Ireland 2013.

5 Ways to Make Your Customers Feel Loved

The first article I’ve chosen this week isn’t exclusively about social media but the lessons learned can certainly be applied to it. Delighting our customers is one of the best ways to encourage positive word of mouth both online and offline. This article is full of tips on how to be delightful.

How to Ensure Your Facebook Contests Attract Genuine Fans

Facebook competitions are one of the most frequent topics that people get in touch with me about. People are beginning to worry that they are breaking rules and seeing the benefits of using apps to run them. This fantastic post from Social Media Examiner is great as it discusses the various ways to make sure that you are attracting the right people with your competitions. Some very simple tips but worth familiarising yourself with. You might also be interested in my 8 step guide to setting up Facebook competitions.

Show, Don’t Tell: 5 Lessons In Communication

I love this article. Once you have got to grips with your social networks and understand posting you should start thinking about how you can be more creative, how you can really stand out and be special. That’s what ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ is all about. It’s one you definitely want to sit down and have a good read of, you will be inspired!

How to Set Up a Hosted WordPress Site

WordPress is a very impressive blogging tool but it can be so much more. If you are comfortable with your WordPress.com account but would like more features or if you want to expand from just a blog to a fully fledged website I’d highly recommend looking at a hosted WordPress.org site. My own site is slowly being built on it and I’ve recently developed the We Teach Social site on it.

The good news is that it’s not too complicated to get started with it, this guide from Mashable takes you through the process step by step.

10 Twitter Mistakes You Also Make in Real Life

The Infographic I’ve chosen to share this week, cheekily branded an ‘InfoComic’ by it’s developers is fun but also quite relevant. I agree with most of the points and love that they’ve managed to slip a Breaking Bad reference in there.

Facebook Introduces Hashtags – #Copycats

This week Facebook introduced clickable hashtags, although at time of writing they are still not enabled on my account, some people are delighted, others are terrified that this will lead to a flurry of unreadable status updates peppered with irrelevant tags. Love them or hate them I’m pretty sure they will be here to stay and that Facebook will soon be selling advertising based on them. Here’s an excellent overview from the Wolfgang Digital blog.

Nine Reasons Fans Don’t “Like” Your Status Updates

This is an interesting one, and it’s probably something we’re all familiar with. We post something brilliant on Facebook and we get zero reaction. Why don’t our Likers like our posts? Social Media Today gives us six possible explanations.

And from Spiderworking.com this week

4 Ways That Twitter Is Better Than Facebook

I do love Facebook, it’s a great marketing tool and if you put the time in you will see results. Twitter however is often overlooked and in some ways it is a better network for businesses. Here’s some of the reasons I think you should take a first or even second look at it.

We Teach Social – A Beginners Guide To Twitter

If you are not using Twitter yet or are struggling to get started take a look at the online course that I am running. It’s part of a new project ‘We Teach Social’ that I am working on with the women from Write On Track. More info here.

Here’s wishing you a fantastic weekend.

medium_5069179060 — photo credit: Derbeth via photopin cc

This weekends roundup of cool links includes 20 apps to help you mess around with your photos, some of which I’m using already, how to make your pins go viral and some blogging, Twitter and Facebook tips.

2 Keys to Writing a Great First Paragraph For Every Blog Post You Ever Write

Marcus from the Sales Lion has been popping up in my feeds quite a lot this week. He has a pretty inspirational blogging story, when his Swimming Pool Business started blogging it saved them. I’m not mad about templates for blogging but they can sometimes help you over that bump of bloggers block. That’s why I’ve included this link in this weeks roundup. Writing that first paragraph can often be the hardest bit, when you have it done very often the rest falls into place.

How A Picture of Kale Went Viral On Pinterest

If you are not familiar with Kale it’s a green vegetable similar to spinach, not the most likely of things to go viral anywhere. It did however manage to get shared 451 on Pinterest resulting in 1,936 clicks to a website. If it can be done with Kale it can be done with anything. This post and Infographic shows you how they did it and is packed with tips for helping you get more shares on Pinterest too.

50 Excellent iPhone Apps For Photography

I’ve been doing a picture of the day Tumblr this year and as the days pass I’m looking for new and interesting apps to create more interesting images. I found this article whilst searching for an app that would make a chalk drawing from an image and have started playing with a few of them already. So far ColorSplash is my favourite. It allows you to highlight a portion of a photo in colour whilst leaving the rest black and white.

Although this is highlighting iPhone apps I’m sure many of them are available or there are good alternatives for Android users.

5 Of The Best Social Media Campaigns 2012

I like to look at what big businesses with big budgets do with social media to inspire me, my clients may not have the budget but great ideas can spark other great ideas that will translate to smaller budgets. That’s why I am always interested to read posts like this one that show some of the most creative recent campaigns. For me Prometheus had to be one of the best campaigns I’ve seen. Some of it was a bit hit and miss – the TV ad trailer followed by a Tweet stream didn’t really live up to the hype – but the clever things they did with teaser trailers and on Linkedin really caught my imagination. For more stuff go get your creative juices flowing read this on Social Media Today.

How to Optimise Images For Your Facebook Page

Even though images don’t have the biggest organic reach on the Facebook newsfeed anymore they are still the type of content that gets the most interaction. I love this Infographic from PostRocket that shows how you can optimise your images.

9 Twitter Tips & Tricks

I see a lot of posts full of Twitter tips but this one is really useful. It’s not your standard stuff but more focused on information that the average user might not know. In fact in includes lots of stuff I share on my courses so it must be good! Definitely worth a look how ever experienced a tweep you are. I’ve seen many a social media aficionado make some of the mistakes that reading it could have prevented

3 Awesome Ways To Identify Your Biggest Fans & Collect Customer Testimonials

I am a big believer that social media sites are just a set of tools that facilitate word of mouth marketing. Much of this happens away from our pages. Our page likers, our followers etc may recommend our products and services by sharing our content or by becoming more familiar with us and what we do. Of course we can amplify this by collecting good, believable testimonials from our happiest customers. This post from unbounce looks at how we can approach getting testimonials both on and offline.

And From Spiderworking.com this week

The Importance Of Conversation – Part 1 – Blogging & Facebook

Due to the bank holiday it’s been pretty quiet here at Spiderworking.com HQ. However I did write one mammoth blog post… so mammoth in fact hat it had to be split into two halves. Here’s part one.

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How To Contact Facebook & Why Twitter Rocks At Privacy - The Social 7

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the office long enough on a Friday to compile my best reads. It’s a shame as there’s been some fantastic stuff appearing over the last few weeks, I may try and squeeze some of it in over the next couple of weeks.

In this weeks roundup I’ve chosen the good news about Twitter privacy, a great list of ways to contact social networks including Facebook. A really interesting read on encouraging your employees to become brand ambassadors and some great PicMonkey tips. It’s a bank holiday here this weekend, I hope you are all getting this sun and will be able to make the most of it.

How To Contact Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Google+

I’m often asked if there is a way to contact Facebook? Is there a customer service email or phone number? Sadly the answer to direct contact is no but there are ways of reporting stuff to them. This post from Kikolani covers all the forms that you will need to report an issue or to get in touch with Facebook. It also covers LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest but it’s the Facebook list that occupies the most space. This is one to bookmark, you never know when you may need this info.

Twitter Earns Top Spot For Protecting User Privacy

When we think about privacy on social media we generally think about who can see pictures of our children and our updates. But privacy is more than that. Twitter is leading the way in protecting our information not just from people we don’t want to see it but also from governments. They earned a full score card on the latest study from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Not only will they kick up a fuss when a government comes looking for your data but they will tell you and fight for you in court.

In comparison to Twitter’s 6 stars Facebook only got 5 and MySpace a big fat 0. I’d love to see Facebook making inroads in this area too. I’m sure everyone would be more comfortable with transparency and protection of this kind. Find out more on this study on the All Twitter blog.

Very Clever Use Of Vine

It’s only a few months old but it looks like it’s here to say. This week saw an update to the app that supports the front facing camera, at last we’re going to be able to shoot selfies, and the announcement that an Android app is on the way. Here’s a Vine from the Lowe’s hardware store. It’s part of a series offering six second useful tips, this one shows you how to clean rust from your knives.

How To Get Employees To Share

Your employees could be a huge asset to your social media campaign, most people use one social media site or another so it makes sense to encourage them to engage and share your content. They could be your best brand ambassadors if you just give them a push in the right direction.

This excellent post on the Jeff Bullas blog walks you through the benefits and the how tos of putting an employee engagement strategy together.

Cool Pic Monkey Secrets Revealed

I’m a massive fan of Pic Monkey, although I have GIMP on my big computer for editing images I use PicMonkey all the time when I’m on the move. It’s easy to use and has a lovely interface. If you want to put text on your images or even put Instagram style filters on them PicMonkey is the place to look. I discovered this article from their blog via Google+ this week, it’s full of tips for using the app and I’ve even put one of them into action already. Give it a read and if you haven’t used PicMonkey yet give that a try too.

18 Fresh Stats About The State Of Social Media Marketing

I love a good stat and a good graph. This post from Social Media Today is full of quick fun statistics. Here’s a few to whet your appetite:

52% of all marketers have found a customer via Facebook in 2013

Women are more likely than men to regularly check out a brand’s social page (48% vs. 43%)

59% of Twitter users have visited B2B tech brand sites, compared to 40% for the average internet population.

18 Sweet Tips For Facebook Page Posts

And my favorite Infographic of the week has to be this one from Post Rocket. It’s simple no nonsense tips that will help your Facebook marketing.

And From Spiderworking.com This Week

Get Alerted About Trouble On Your Facebook Page With ShitStormAlerts

This weeks cool tool is one for those of you who worry about customer complaints getting out of hand on your Facebook page. ShitStormAlarms monitors your page and drops you an email and text message if it sees unusual activity. So in theory if someone posts a complaint and it is jumped on by a number of other people it will let you know. It’s a handy one to have but one I hope I never have to use.

Have You Made Your First Vine Yet?

Last week I worked with a really creative group on a digital marketing course. As part of the course we cover online video and of course no discussion about video these days can neglect Vine. Here are some of their first attempts at making a Vine. I think they even helped me improve my own Vines.

6 Ways To Capture Leads From Facebook

I was lucky enough to guest post for Jon Loomer again this week. This time I looked at the different ways we can capture leads from Facebook. We tend to obsess about the number of Likes we get and the number of people talking about our page but ignore the most important stat, sales leads. Here’s my six top ideas.

How To Create A Social Media Policy For Small Business

When we think about social media policy we tend to think that it’s just for big business. I’m a big believer that every business, whatever the size should consider a policy. This week I put together a list of the different types of policy we should consider and some tips on putting them together.

What Is Social Media And What Is It For

I’ve been playing with SlideShare again. This presentation is the basis for a guest blog I’ve just written and looks at the different ways that businesses use social media.

What Is Social Media And What Is It For? from Spiderworking.com

Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back in the hot-seat on Tuesday

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It’s Easter weekend and we’re having a cold one here in Ireland. If like us you have a long weekend, take some time to put your feet up and read my top links of the week.

How To Set Up A Facebook Business Page

Yes I know most of you have probably already set up a Facebook business page and are well versed in how to. It is sometimes worth going back to basics though and this post from Social Media Examiner does just that. It’s a step by step guide to setting up your page, taking into account all the new features. It’s a great one to pass on to someone you know who is just starting out.

The 5 Types Of Social Media Complainers

People live in fear of the complainers, people who arrive on their social media channels to complain or have a good rant. We shouldn’t fear them however, these are mostly customers who can teach us about our business and particularly what we don’t do well. We have the opportunity through social media to address complaints and customers, to turn them around and showcase our customer service. This infographic discovered via All Twitter breaks down the different sort of complainers you may encounter and shows you how you can deal with them.

The Wave System – How To Get Your Facebook Page Updates Seen By More People

Since Facebook changed their Edgerank algorithm towards the end of last year page owners have been up in arms about the reach of their posts. There are a few cheats and quick fixes for some areas but the system described here on pro blogger will take far more work. The benefit will be huge however. I’m not sure I’m ready to run a campaign like this but it’s something I’ll definitely try at some stage.

How To Be A World Class Real Time Marketer

This is a term that seems to have really taken off since the Superbowl. During the event there was a massive power cut and several brands, Oreo most prominently responded by pushing out complimentary content. Since then hardly a day goes by without someone talking about Real Time Marketing or Newsjacking. As this article points out Newsjacking and Real Time Marketing are two different things but both are indicative of the new power of social media on marketing. Social media gives us the opportunity to respond instantly in a way that not even radio or TV can. Here’s Hubspot’s take on RTM and how to use it.

Vine And The RTE Archive

RTE is the national broadcaster here in Ireland. As we all sit at home shivering or roam the streets taking photos of the freak snowstorms we’ve had over the last week they cut together this Vine showing us what the weather should be like, what it was like this week in 1965. I love how they’ve used Vine to tell this story.

5 Ways To Proactively Engage As A Brand

It’s not just enough to create content and push it out via social media anymore. We need to be proactive and engage with our customers. Many of us forget about the ‘social’ in social media when in fact it’s that aspect that can make us most successful. Our content needs to be engaging, we need to listen and respond, we need to know our customers and thanks to social media we can do this better than ever before. This article on Social Media Today talks you through five of the best ways to proactively engage.

Fake Tweets & The Ethics

I stumbled upon this tool myself on Twitter last week, it helps you easily create fake tweets enabling you to create screenshots that look 100% authentic from any user you wish saying whatever you wish. Of course there are massive ethical issues with a tool like this so I decided to step away as soon as I’d found it. I really like what Brian Solis has done with it, drawing our attention to it’s existence and asking what this tool and tools like it can mean for social media.

And From Spiderworking.com This Week

Does your Facebook cover photo comply with the 20% rule?

Facebook have just updated their cover image rules. We can now post calls to action, contact details and offers on our images. The only rule that stays is the 20% text rule which Facebook claim they are going to enforce more strictly. But how do you know if your image complies? This weeks cool tool helps you work it out. It’s really simple to use and gives you an instant result.

How to add the right category to your Facebook business page

Up until now it’s been really hard to categorise business pages on Facebook, they give us such a small selection to choose from that it can be quite frustrating finding one that comes near to your business type. Luckily there is a fix, you can add sub categories and there’s one for almost everyone. This weeks one minute video shows you how.

That’s it from me for another week. Have a great Easter and if you are as much of a chocolate addict as me… enjoy!

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This week has been a busy one in social media. Google changed their profile layout with bigger cover style images and Facebook revealed a new newsfeed. I’ve been travelling all over the country and I’ve picked up some new tips and tricks that I’ll be showing you on this blog over the next few weeks. For now here’s my pick of this weeks social media reads.

Everything You Need To Know About The New Facebook News Feed

Every piece of social media news this week has been out-shadowed by the announcement of the new Facebook newsfeed. I’ve applied to be one of the first people to get it but I did that for Graph Search too and I’m still waiting. It looks clean and seems to make sense… even if it does seem to take a cue or two from Google+. It will be interesting to see what the reaction is to it. This mammoth post from Jon Loomer tells us everything we could possibly want to know about it, take some time out to read it.

Blogs Outrank Social Networks For Consumer Influence

Yet another reason why businesses should seriously consider blogging. A new report from Technorati shows that blogs are influencing buyers purchasing decisions more than social networks. This great analysis of the report from social media examiner is packed with figures and graphs. It’s also interesting to note that brands tend to rely on Facebook for customer influence. Will we see a swing back towards blogging and blogger outreach I wonder?

The World’s Worst Website

I gave a presentation on common website mistakes this week (more on that below). Whilst researching it I found this website, it’s absolutely awful, every single mistake or irritating thing you can think of is part of it, even hideous autoplay music. The good news is that it is deliberately bad, it has been designed to be the worlds worst website and it talks you through the major mistakes that can be made when putting a site together. It put a big smile on my face.

How To Set Up Google Authorship To Improve Your Google Rankings

Which ever way you look at it search is becoming more social. Facebook Graph Search will connect your search results with the people you are connected to on Facebook and Google search is already doing this. Google Authorship allows us to attach our Google profiles to the content we create giving it more prominence in search results. I set it up here on my blog at the end of last year, it’s simple enough and worth the effort. Here’s a step by step guide for getting registered via Ian Cleary on The Content Wrangler blog.

The New Facebook Edgerank – Brian Solis on Mark Cuban

I never fail to be impressed by Brian Solis, he’s not just a social media celebrity, he’s intellegent and forward thinking. That’s what makes this such an interesting read.

You might remember last year Mark Cuban kicked up a huge fuss about the change in the Facebook edgerank algorithm. He was devastated that the reach of his posts had declined and that Facebook wanted to charge him thousands to promote posts to his millions of page likers. This analysis of the situation from Brian Solis is very level headed and tells us how we should evolve as the social media tools we use do.

Twitter Best Practices – 9 Steps to A Better Strategy

Sometimes it’s worth taking a step back from our social media strategy to give it a spring clean. Twitter is a particularly good one to review from time to time. We can become so involved that we sometimes forget the basics. That’s what I like about this article. There’s nothing startling or new there but it’s a good reminder of what we should be doing.

The Complete Guide To Getting Started On Pinterest

My quest to conquor Pinterest continues. I am getting there slowly although it does still seem to drop to the bottom of my social media to do list. This is a mammoth post from Pro Blogger that takes you step by step through the basics. It’s worth taking the time out to read it, it will save you the time of having to discover it all to yourself and hopefully it will inspire you to better pinning.

And From Spiderworking.com This Week

Does Your Website Work On Mobile? – Cool Tool

With more and more people using mobile devices of all kinds to access the Internet it’s crucial that our websites are responsive, that they work well and are easy to navigate on all of them. This weeks cool tool Responsive.is will show you how your site fares on tablets and mobiles. Luckily I’m building my site on WordPress and the theme I am using is mobile compatible so it looks OK. That’s not to say that there aren’t improvements to be made.

It’s also interesting to put in some of the larger sites that you would expect to be ahead of the game and see that they haven’t invested in mobile yet.

10 Common Website Mistakes

As mentioned above I was speaking to a Woman In Business group this week about common website mistakes. Here’s the 10 points I covered but I know I’m probably missing a few. Go ahead and share any that you think I’ve missed.

And that’s it from me this week. Here’s wishing you a great weekend. I’m off to crack open a bottle of beer and grab a cat to cuddle.

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The Man Behind Dollar Shave Club, The Best Vine Ever & More – The Social 7

photo credit: Howdy, I'm H. Michael Karshis via photopin cc — photo credit: Howdy, I’m H. Michael Karshis via photopin cc

I’m very late with my social media roundup this week but I’d found so much good stuff that I found it really hard to choose just seven links to share. After sleeping on it over the weekend I finally narrowed it down. Enjoy the read.

The Top Reasons To Hash-Tag & Photo Map On Instagram

Instagram has to be one of my favourite social networks. I’ve yet to use it for marketing purposes but there is something lovely about logging in and scrolling through interesting, quirky and bizarre photos. Like all social networks the more you participate the more you get out of it. When I’m feeling energetic I add tags to my photos but there is more to tagging than adding #catsofinstagram to the latest picture of your favorite kitty. This post from Hubze shows you how to make the most out of tagging and mapping your images on Instagram.

8 Big Campaign Mistakes To Stop Making Now

I don’t think a week has gone by where I haven’t linked to a post from HubSpot and this week is no exception. This post on marketing mistakes works well as a checklist for a campaign. Is your campaign integrated? Have you set timelines and goals. This is one I’ll be bookmarking for future projects.

How To Find Keywords That Work For Your Content Marketing Goals

Keywords is probably the area that I’m weakest at in my blogging, I tend to just sit down and write. Since I’ve installed the Yoast plugin I’ve found that I am forced to think about them a lot more so I was happy to stumble upon this post from Copy Blogger. It re-introduced me to the Google Trends tool which is far more satisfying than the Google Keywords Tool that I’m used to using. A great read and some sensible tips to put into action.

The Story Behind Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club is always going to be famous for the wonderful video that made us laugh. If you haven’t seen it yet I’ve embedded it below. But it’s not just a great internet video, it worked, is sold razors and helped the company get investor funding.

Here’s a short interview with Michael Dublin, the face of Dollar Shave Club about the challenges he’s faced in business and what happened when they launched the video.

Newsjacking Creates Brand Interest And Value

Newsjacking is one of those words that I’m beginning to hear everywhere. Essentially it means creating content around a topical news story in order to gain traction for your business or blog. When done right it can be highly effective and this post from Social Media Today takes you through the basic steps to be use it succesfully.

Understanding Unicorn – A Geeks Guide to Facebook Graph Search

For those of you like me who enjoy delving deeper into Facebook updates this article from Cnet is fascinating. I’m still waiting for Graph Search and learning about ‘Unicorn’ the infrustucture behind it makes me want it even more. It really does feel like a far more intellegent way to find recommendations. I’m sure I’ll be boring you all to death with posts about it when I finally do get it.

General Electric Pours A Refreshing Glass Of Science On Vine

I’m still completely obsessed with Vine, the social video app is just one month old and it’s already created a huge buzz. This example from General Electric is one of my favourites so far. Convince & Convert blog also shares some good tips for anyone planning on using Vine for marketing.

And From Spiderworking.com This Week

Get Inspiration For Your Online Videos

If Dollar Shave Club above has inspired you to make some videos of your own this weeks cool tool can help inspire you even further. Choose what type of video you want to make, what sort of triggers you want, and what category it should fit in to and TubeRank will find videos that match your requirements. It’s a bit addictive but it will help you get into the right mindset to make succesful online videos.

How To Get Rid Of A Twitter Virus

There seems to be a whole rash of Twitter viruses around at the moment. You’ll know when a friend has caught one as they’ll send you a DM saying something like ‘OMG I can’t believe this is you…’ accompanied by a link. If you click that link your account will start sending out the DM’s and so it continues. If you have clicked a link or if someone tells you you are sending out spam DM’s here’s what to do.

5 Reasons To Go To #SMWF 2013

It’s going to be my third year in a row attending Social Media World Forum Europe this year and I’m really looking forward to it. There are some great speakers and great networking opportunities. Here’s my 5 top reasons for attending. If you are going too give me a shout I’d love to meet up for coffee.

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The Problem With Facebook, Pinterest For Brands And More – The Social 7

seven — photo credit: debaird™ via photopin cc

It’s Friday night and although Spring should be in the air it feels like winter just hit us in Athy, so I’m wrapped up in a blanket waiting for the fire to light choosing which 7 articles I should share with you this weekend. I’ve chosen a great critique on Facebook and the dilema faced by small businesses, a cool video made when Blackberries were the coolest phones on the market and PC’s took up half your desk, some great example s of brands being personal on social media and way too many links about Facebook.

The Major Problem Facebook Needs To Address For Brands Right Now

There have been numerous articles written on the folly of Like and Share competitions on Facebook, my heart still sinks everytime a spammy photograph hits my news feed, as another competition promises I could win an iPad if I would just spam all my friends too. This post from Simply Zesty looks at it from another perspective, we used to think that social media levelled the playing field, small business had the same opportunities as big business, but this has changed. When our posts start to loose their reach small business can’t afford to pay so running an illegal contest may seem like the only solution.

Twitter In Plain English

Time seems to move so fast in the digital world. Or maybe because I’m getting older. I’ve been teaching a lot of workshops recently and I find it hard to restrain myself from talking about how Twitter used to be. The changes have happened so slowly over time that if we landed on the old Twitter, or the Twitter of 4 years ago it would surprise us how much has changed. Do you remember when you had to go through that whole cut and paste thing to ReTweet someone? Maybe that was a good thing, now that we can RT with the click of a button maybe we value the posts we share a little less, but that’s a discussion for another day.

This video shot in 2008 is a quaint reminder of a time before the iPhone and iPad but still very relevent today. Sadly they won’t allow me to embed the video here so you’ll have to click through to YouTube to watch.

Facebook Offers Effective In Boosting Reach & Virality

This week someone asked me if I think Facebook offers work, I couldn’t give an answer. I did try them out when they first appeared and found them succesful, I haven’t however set any up recently for myself or clients. I wondered if it was like ‘questions’ that were hugely succesful when they were launched and have since tailed off in popularity? According to this study, reported on by All Facebook they are effective in boosting brands reach and virality.

It doesn’t however answer the big question, are people redeeming offers or do they just claim and forget.

The Problem With Facebook’s 20% Text Rule

The new 20% text rule for Facebook advertising has taken effect and people are seeing their ad’s getting rejected left right and centre. I’m seeing lots of frustrated people venting on Twitter and even Jon Loomer is finding it difficult to swallow. The problem is that the rule isn’t as straightforward as we may have thought. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about all is explained by Jon here.

Great Examples Of ‘Boring’ Businesses That Act Like Humans

One area that small businesses have the upper hand on social media is personality. As most small businesses are run by one or two key players it is easy for them to inject the personal touch into what they do. Larger organisations need to work harder at it and it takes lots of planning to get it right. As usual Hubspot have pulled together some great examples in this post. I particularly like how General Electric are tackling Pinterst.

You Are Who You Say You Are – Building A Brand Identity

This post ties in rather well to the last one. Almost all businesses should think about their brand personality. Even a small business may have a number of people updating their social media sites and it’s important that your brand remains consistant in all it’s communications both off and online. This post from The Next Web addresses the first steps you need to take when developing your brand identity. It makes interesting reading.

4 Ways To Succeed With Your Pinterest Brand Page

Those of you who follow this blog on a regular basis will be aware at my pledge to embrace Pinterest in 2013. I’ve still not been brave enough to convert to a business account yet but I’m almost there. This post on Jeff Bullas’s blog is a good guide for beginners like me. You’ll see another Pinterest tip I picked up during the week below.

And From Spiderworking.com This Week

How To Find Out If Your Website Is Being Pinned To Pinterest

As promised here’s the Pinterest tip I picked up this week.

How Are You Doing On Facebook?

This weeks cool tool is a fun way to get some headline stats on how well you are doing on Facebook. Likealyzer takes a few minutes to evaluate your performance and recommend how you can do better.

How To Find Out If You Are Getting Negative Feedback On Your Facebook Page Posts

When the edgerank algorithm changed at the end of last year the negative feedback that you got on Facebook posts, that could be someone hiding the post, marking it as spam or unliking yuor page, started to effect who sees them. But how do you know if you are getting negative feedback? I made a quick 1 minute video to show you.

Guest Blogging – The How, Why and Why I Don’t Very Often

Guest blogging and accepting guest blog posts yourself are both valuable. I look at the benefits of guest blogging, how to prepare to write one and how to ask someone to write for you.

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Oreo, The Superbowl, The Applebee Crisis and Vine Inspiration - The Social 7

This week I take a closer look at Vine, how marketers took advantage of the blackout during the Superbowl and how to show your community love.

Oreo, Blackout & The Superbowl

The SuperBowl used to be something that happened in the US, I was vaguely aware of it because of all those movies I’ve watched but it’s not until I started getting in to Internet marketing that I really started to pay attention. This year it seemed to be even more widespread. I’m not sure if this is because Twitter and other social media have made the world smaller, because there are a lot of sports fans on my timeline or because it’s become almost as big an event for social media marketers as it has for sports fans.

I didn’t stay up to watch it evolve but apparently there was a black out during the event and some of the more creative brands used this to their advantage. One of those was Oreo, here’s what they did as reported on by Krishna De.

5 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Blog Using Pinterest

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know I’m taking a stronger interest in Pinterest this year. I’m still finding my feet so this article from Ching Ya on driving more traffic to your blog using Pinterest was very welcome. There’s a WordPress plugin amongst her tips that I will be trying for sure.

8 Ways To Show Your Community Love

Social media couldn’t be social without our followers, some are customers who will keep coming back to us, others will share our content and our story drawing in new leads and customers. It’s important for us to nurture these contacts, to reward them and encourage them to share more. This great article from SteamFeed is full of ideas of how to give them the love they deserve.

How 15 Real Businesses Are Getting Creative With Vine

If you have somehow missed out on the phenomenon that is Vine it’s an amazing new social network powered by an iOS app. Some are calling it the Video version on Instagram. The app allows you to record six second videos. It sounds short and complicated to start with but as soon as you download the app you’ll be hooked. I think the biggest selling point is the interface that allows you to record short shots by touching the screen of your iPhone. Still confused? Don’t be here’s some examples collected on the Hubspot blog. I particularly like the Animate & Create flipbook.

The First Ever Vine Contest?

It hasn’t taken long for us marketers to try and find marketing ideas for Vine. I’m not sure if this is the first ever Vine contest but the Cavendish Hotel have been very clever to be so quick off the mark. It’s getting lots of attention on social media but I’ve seen very few entries. If you have an iPhone and could get to London by the 15th of Feb it’s worth giving it a go.

Six Tips for Managing an Out-of-Control Social Media Crisis

It’s only when a brand has a really big crisis that news spreads this far. Yes there are small disasters all the time on social media but it seems when it hits a big brand in a big way we all like to take a closer look. This time it is American restaurant chain Applebee that is in the spotlight. The crisis started when a staff member was fired after posting a photo of a receipt and the message scrawled on to it by a customer on social media, it got worse and worse after this. Here’s a good outline of what happened and how it could have been avoided.

For Those Who Love Chain E-mail

Do people still send chain emails or have they migrated to those viral status updates we see on Facebook? Either way this video from “Weird Al” Yankovic made me smile.

And From Spiderworking.com This Week

Filter Your Twitter Timeline – Cool Tool

I’ve been looking for something like this for ages, it’s a tool that filters my entire Twitter newsfeed meaning that when I need to take a break from business stuff I can focus on the fun Tweeps, or when a breaking news story unfolds I can watch it easily without having to jump in and out of search. Tweetdig acts as a full Twitter client and is great fun to play around with. I can’t see me abandoning Hootsuite for it but it could become a handy addition.

Video Tip – Get Consistent Sound On Your Videos

My second tip for video casters is about sound. I’ve been having issues because I record my video on two different devices and cut between them. I found a solution and here it is.

5 Content Ideas For Local Businesses On Facebook

This week I was delighted to be asked to guest post on Jon Loomer’s excellent blog. Here it is, featuring examples from lots of Irish businesses and how they are creating content that engages their audiences on Facebook.

Here’s wishing you a fantastic weekend. See you next week.
photo credit: Unhindered by Talent via photopin cc

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Vine, Facebook Graph Search Privacy And The Results Of Tweeting More – The Social 7

This week I’ve chosen a post full of great tips for using the hottest new social media tool ‘Vine’, the truth about Facebook graph search and the privacy implications, an interesting report on what happened when one brand doubled their Twitter activity and more. Have a great weekend.

10 Ways Brands Can Use Vine

It’s been over a week now and Vine still seems to be the most talked about social networking tool since Pinterest. Today I finally got time to download it and have a play and I’m totally sold on it. It’s easy to use, a fantastic storytelling tool and totally addictive. Having said that I’ve not made one I’m willing to share yet. I’m setting myself that task for the weekend.

What is Vine? It’s a Twitter owned video app for iOS devices that allows you to shoot 6 second videos. You record by holding your finger on the screen. When you take your finger off the screen the film pauses so it’s dead easy to clip a bunch of shots together. I’ve seen some really great and some really poor examples so far but am totally inspired to make a few myself. Of course being a marketer my thoughts almost immediately turn to how we can use this new tool to sell our businesses. Here’s a good list of suggestions from Steve Waddington on the Two Way Street blog.

A Marketers Defense Of Facebook Edgerank

Months after the Facebook edgerank change that saw page reach drop small businesses are still reeling. Many believe that the new algorithm is a cynical move by Facebook to force us to pay for advertising, others think that regular users now have a better experience because of the changes. This interesting piece from PostRocket takes another tack suggesting that this could actually be a positive change for business pages, it’s quite a compelling argument too.

What Happens When You Double Your Tweeting Frequency?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you tweeted more frequently? Would you get more traffic to your website or would it be overkill? Steve Shattuck decided to find out and here are the results. It looks like the effort may have been worth it too. I’m not sure I’m quite ready to up my tweeting just yet but it is encouraging to know that spending extra time can reap results.

How To Protect Your Privacy From Facebook’s Graph Search

There have been multiple memes doing the rounds since the announcement of Facebook graph search about it’s privacy implications. As usual most of those cut and pasted and shared on Facebook are ineffectual or just pure popycock. Luckily someone has taken the time to look into it thoroughly and this blog post takes you through the reality behind your privacy settings. It’s worth a read even if you are not concerned about graph search.

3 Ways To Encourage Facebook Check-Ins

I still don’t have graph search, I’m dying to get my hands on it and see what it can do but I guess Facebook have decided to keep me in suspense a bit longer. One thing that has become apparent is that if you are a local business ‘check-ins’ are becoming important again. The more check-ins you get on your page the higher it will rise in the search (of course I need to test this myself to be sure). So how can you encourage more check-ins? This post from Hubze has some good ideas, worth a read if you run a page for a local retailer, coffee shop or restauranteur.

What Does It Take To Make Content All The Time?

It’s been a while since I’ve shared a post form Chris Brogan. I’d highly recommend following his blog for lots of great inspiration and ideas. What I like about this post is it addresses all those questions we like to ask. I know people ask me where I find the time to create all the content I do, where I get my ideas from and these are common questions that are addressed to any blogger. Here Chris Brogan gives us some answers. Oh and he’s also started using Vine.

3 Ways Sharpie Is Engaging Teens With Social Media

For those of you who aren’t aware of the Sharpie brand, they are markers or felt pens popular in the States but you can buy them in Europe too. They have in the past been extremely clever with their social media. This case study from the Social Media Examiner blog looks at how they have been capturing the teen market. If your target market includes teens it’s a must read but it’s also a good reminder that each target market requires specific attention. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ for social media.

And From Spiderworking.com This Week

Seen A Font And Want To Match It – This Week’s Cool Tool Can Help

I’m a bit of a sucker for fonts, I’m always envious of the pretty ones that pop up on people’s websites. Although something fancy might not suit my branding I like to have a good selection for when I’m working on graphics for clients. This weeks cool tool WhatTheFont helps you identify fonts by uploading a screen grab or image displaying it. Here’s more.

How To Log Out Of Facebook Remotely

It’s a really easy mistake to make. You access the internet via a public computer, take a quick look at your Facebook page and then forget to log out. The next person to access that computer then can get straight in to your account. The good news is that Facebook allows you to log out form Facebook sessions no matter what device you access it from. It’s a lot easier than it sounds, here’s a quick video and a few screen grabs that show you how.

How To Add Maps To Your Facebook Page

I’m going to mention graph search again! Up until now it’s been just a frustration that some local business pages have had issues adding a map to their page but with the introduction of graph search it has become essential to be able to get it right. The problem has been that Facebook doesn’t recognise many addresses, particularly Irish ones as we don’t have postcodes. I had a play around this week and think I have finally found a work around. So here’s the secret that I discovered and a couple of alternatives.

Interview With Beatrice Whelan – Social Media & Content Specialist At Sage Ireland

And Finally… I was asked to interview my friend and Blog Awards Ireland Beatrice Whelan for TweakYourBiz TV about her role as Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage Ireland. She’s full of great tips about B2B marketing, monitoring and more. You can read the highlights here.

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Blogging Tips, Facebook 20% Text Rule and The Blind Instagrammer - The Social 7

It’s another blog heavy social 7 this week. Maybe because I’ve made the finals of the Social Media Examiner Top Social Media Blogs I’ve been focused on blogging this week. A massive thank you to all of you, the readers who nominated me and those who have helped me build it over the years. Here’s my pick of my reads this week including plenty of blogging tips and advice, fun Twitter statistics, and a blind photographer who takes better Instagram shots than me. Have a great weekend.

The secret sauce of a great blog post

There is a lot written and preached about writing great blog posts. I’ve been reading a lot of blogs recently and although many of them have great content I find a lot of them are missing something, that something that might want me to go back and connect with the blogger more regularly. I had attributed the missing piece to personality, some might call it storytelling but I think this article from Social Media Explorer really nails it. The secret sauce according to them is emotion and the article makes a compelling case including a remarkable blog post that seems to be succeeding for exactly this reason.

The typical Facebook post receives only 0.03% negative feedback

Pages are still reeling from the recent Facebook edgerank changes. We thought we knew the landscape of Facebook and then all of a sudden we realised our posts weren’t reaching as far and that images no longer seemed to get the most views. One thing Facebook has been clear about is that much of this is due to negative feedback to posts. The negative feedback statistic can be found in your Facebook insights by clicking ‘Engaged users’ next to an individual post in the insights interface. Any negative feedback will be listed here.

Negative feedback referrers to a user hiding the post, hiding all posts from your page, unliking your page or reporting it for spam. Facebook now uses this information as part of the edgerank algorithm to decide who to show your posts to. The good news is that in fact most posts don’t get much negative feedback. Read more on this on the Edgerank Checker blog.

How blind people use Instagram

I love this story. A blind guy who uses Instagram, and what is almost frightening is a lot of his photos are better than mine. I love that he is able to share visual moments from his life with others even though he is unable to see them himself.

How to blog with confidence

We had the first meeting of our bloggers network this week and one topic that came up straight away was how hard it had been for some of us to return to our blogs after the Christmas break. Personal bloggers were finding it particularly difficult to find inspiration. As part of our session we reviewed this post from Write On Track that gives some great blogging tips on getting your mojo back. One of the top tips was becoming part of the blogging community so it looks like those attending our blogging group had already taken one good step forward.

New Facebook guidelines – 20% text overlay on ad’s and cover photos

This week the new regulations about images you use in promoted posts and cover photos came in to effect. Essentially this means you are not allowed to have more than 20% of your image devoted to text. Facebook have a handy tool that advertisers can use to check their promoted posts but it would be handy to know in the design stage if you are going to be complying with the guidelines.

This excellent template from ShortStack will help you plan those images ahead of time.

Source: shortstack.com via Amanda on Pinterest

How to blog successfully about anything

My final blogging tip of the week is this monster article from SEOMOZ on how to blog about anything. Is it really possible to blog about something you have no interest in? There are ways and the key seems to be questions. Not just answering questions from your clients but also asking them. Reading this reminded me of the early days blogging here at Spiderworking.com, before I had found my voice I spent a lot of time researching the questions people wanted answers to and even posing my own ones. I remember a series of posts asking what the rules of social media were was particularly effective.

50 Fun Twitter facts

32% of all Internet users are using Twitter. Over the span of 16 days, the London Olympics generated 150 million tweets. I love these kinda fun statistics, they help us to put a bit of personality on the more serious numbers based Twitter stats. Here’s 50 for you to wade through from All Twitter.

And from Spiderworking.com this week

What is the reach of your RT’s and what are your most commonly RT’d posts?

This weeks cool tool analyses the RT’s that you get on Twitter and shows you who manages to push them out to the most users. What I really loved about this tool though was that it was able to show me my most RT’d tweets. It could also form a basis for identifying your best brand ambassadors although I’d be cautious on basing this on follower account alone. Read more here.

Pinterest tip – Get more blog shares on Pinterest

I’m determined to embrace Pinterest more fully in 2013 and part of that has been looking at making my blog posts more shareable there. Here’s this weeks 30 second video tip, it’s the first thing I’ve tried and it is bringing some, all be it limited, results already.

Video tips and book review – How To Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck by Steve Stockman

There is a lot of terrible online video out there. At some stage we were all told that we needed video on our sites and this spurred everyone to throw together one regardless of quality. This week I review and share some key tips from a wonderful book How To Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck. This will definitely change the way you plan and produce your online videos.

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