Social Media Blog | Internet Marketing
Social Media Blog (13) Many companies in South Africa employ what I call the 'Ostriching' strategy, which follows the theory that if you stick your head in the ground (ignore what is being said), it will just disappear after which you can carry on as if nothing has happened. Unfortunately this strategy is inherently flawed and now with the channels of communication being easy to access and even easier to spread, you want to make sure that you are informed about who is saying what about you and then take the appropriate actions to deal with it – unlike Hyundai.
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Saturday, 03 July 2010 08:52
How to participate on Blogs and Forums, without seeming like a spammerWritten by Candice WinterboerThe saying goes: 'There are many ways to skin a cat' and the same applies to Social Media. You can set up your Fan Page or group and your Twitter account and interact on those platforms, but if you have all of that running like a well oiled machine then I'd suggest stepping it up a notch with blog and forum participation.
One of the best ways to get your name out there is to participate on industry related blogs and forums. The aim of participating is to try and build a network within your industry, there are people on these blogs and forums who are asking questions and looking for answers which you may have – they just need to know that you are out there.
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Social Media Blog
 We really have to let the entire world know what we are up to. If we are not being seen or being seen to being present then where are we? The meaning to be loud and proud has broken on the net through social media. I say this is cool! And damnit you will listen and if you don’t like it, leave a comment. This is about Facebook which has calmed down a lot but still leaves a lot of space for angry taunts, people justifying their freedom of speech and yet being held directly liable for the things they say online. Ok i have gone off on a major tangent here but the social networking tools we use are getting more personal and more in depth in our lives today.We spend hours updating our profile, looking for things to buy online. Trying to find a certain something or someone special and we think that the more we put ourselves out there, the further we cast our nets over different networks it will satisfy our desire for attention, or to just see how far we can reach. And yes this is partly true and partly exploitative. But while we’re talking about the use of social networks here is my 2 cents on a new tool that has got everyone IM’ing, messaging, texting, blogging, tweeting, skyping and hopefully blasting your brand through cyberspace faster than ever before.
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Social Media Blog
 We are always on the lookout for the next big thing on the internet. It is a non stopping freight train from here to eternity. This colossal tidal wave is sucking us all in and if we don't know how to handle it, we won't end up surfing the tsunami. Not the greatest analogy but i hope it makes some sense when we're all caught by surprise and Google has just added a left hand search tool. To help you define your search more accurately. At least this new addition makes some space for the users input. Whereas my latest twitter discovery comes right from the commercial vein when we need our daily ad-fix. Promoted Tweets are the non traditional Adwords for the twitter bugs that need to update more than a few times a day. So that is the first sign of how Promoted tweets will work, they will not be invasive and the best measure of using the Promoted tweet is how often people will Retweet it. Giving it their stamp of approval, this measure is infinitely important as it gives the engineers a sign of how well their ad is doing. Measuring efficacy was the focal point of adding an advertising platform to Twitter. The quality shouldn't detract from the main objective. I think this actually has some potential in it. I read on and found that the companies that are beginning the promoted tweets are all the biggest in the business. So effectively we're helping the fat cats just get fatter. Starbucks, Sony Pictures, Best Buy, Virgin America and a few more are following the twitter bird and leading their followers to the stores. Hopefully this will be used to advertise for good and not just cheap coffee.
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As I'm sure you all know Facebook is an amazing resource with its over 300 million users – of which every person has put in some sort of demographic information to create a profile. This information is all pulled together and is available for you to draw on from within the Facebook advertising platform.
 Facebook ads appear on the right hand side of your profile. Their appearance is due solely to the fact that you or your profile falls within the advertisers target group. The Facebook advertising platform can be used for a number of things, namely:
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No, this is not something which will give your computer a nasty virus that will eat through your hard drive and render your computer useless, it is something which has been published online which then gets shared between networks and becomes popular. Now I want to stress that not ALL content has this ability, only content with a certain mix of fundamental factors gets it right. These fundamental factors usually include content which is funny, emotive (elicits emotion in the viewer), unsuspecting, shocking and short. The content also usually has to be visual, so a video clip or image is the content which most commonly becomes viral, but informative blog posts (usually lists) can have the same result.
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Friday, 30 April 2010 07:10
The Quick & Intelligent Guide to Using Facebook’s Social PluginsWritten by Dr Peter FishRecently Facebook launched their campaign to further dominate the web and it’s not only going to work, it’s working already! Facebook Social Plugins is an incredible group of plugins that’ll change the way humans integrate with the web. It brings word of mouth, social re-enforcement and peer pressure to any site that’s willing, or clever enough, to add a plugin. These plugins bring a never seen before lebvel of personalization to the rest of the web, and because the content is hosted on Facebook’s servers, it’ll do so whether the visitor is logged in or not to the 3rd party site. So how do you know which plugin or combination of plugins to use? Here’s a quick overview of the social plugins; what they do, where to use them and what you might get out of it:  Like Button What does it do? This button allows visitors to “Like” or “Recommend” a page on your site & will post a link directly into their Facebook feed. Superb for generating awareness. It will also show visitors which of their friends have liked or recommend the page already. There are a number of very powerful, but advanced features to this button – I won’t cover these in this entry. Where should you use it? EVERYWHERE! On absolutely every page on every site you have! What will you get out of it? Awareness, free advertising, free traffic and social re-enforcement, therefore.... More conversions! Like Box What does it do? See which of their friends likes the page, read the posts fed from an existing Facebook Page and like the Facebook Page without having to visit the page. It’s has a similar function as having a twitter feed piped onto your site, yet it pulls info from your Facebook Page. Where should you use it? This is very powerful if you have a Facebook Page. If you don’t, set one up. It’s even possible and maybe effective to set up an entire page on your site to What will you get out of it? More followers to your Facebook page, plus once again - awareness, free advertising, free traffic and social re-enforcement, therefore.... More conversions! Comments What does it do? This will allow visitors to post comments on any aspect of your website and also gives the ability to like. These comments can be shared on the visitor’s walls and their friends streams. Where should you use it? On any page where comments are encouraged. What will you get out of it? Visitor engagement, hopefully some constructive comments and possibly the creation of a talking-point. Facepile What does it do? This is a simple plugin that shows visitors which of their friends have already signed up on a site. The plugin doesn’t render if the visitor is logged out of Facebook or if they don’t have any friends signed up. Where should you use it? This is a useful social re-enforcer to nudge visitors to sign up or stay on a site instead of bouncing. It must be used on busy or very localised sites, where the chance of a visitor sharing the interest in the same site as his / her friends is high, otherwise the plugin will be wasted. The site should be static or have limited content, such a standard business site with only a services or products to choose from. If the site in question has lots of content, or many products I would rather consider the Activity Feed plugin. Say for instance a well known local webhosting company. What will you get out of it? It’ll increase your conversion ratios. If you see your friends did it, you’ll do it. Login with Faces What does it do? Visitors are shown which of their friends has signed up for the site and are encouraged to login themselves. Where should you use it? Any site that has login facilities. What will you get out of it? More logins! Activity Feed & Recommendations What does it do? These plugins shows visitors what their friends recently found interesting, appealing or entertaining. The Activity Feed plugin becomes useful when you want to encourage people and channel them to find content that is relevant to them. Where should you use it? As mentioned above, this is far more beneficial when there is a significant amount of content. Examples would be YouTube, CNN, blogs, online shopping sites or your local news site. What will you get out of it? This is a powerful on-site browsing driver and will keep people on your site for longer and we all know what that does for goal conversion rates! Live Stream What does it do? This allows visitors to see what is being said about a page or event in real-time. The feed displays the comments of friends and non-friends as well if selected. Where should you use it? This is a great tool for pages relating to real-time events; concerts, streaming media, sporting events etc. What will you get out of it? Social awareness and engagement. For more information and the actually plugin code take a look at Facebook’s Social Plugin pages. We've already added the plugins into our blog, just log into facebook and you can like this entry. We'll be extending the service to our client's sites over the next few weeks. Chris Jacoby our resident developer genius will be writing a blog on how to integrate the code, I’ll set up a link to the entry as soon as it’s up. Want to know how Google’s going to play in this realm? Read my blog entry on Google’s Social Search Engine. To increase your social media presence even further, I also suggest utilising a 3rd party social bookmarking button on every page. Look at AddThis. Make sure your on this bus early, it’s going to get more and more important as the world heads in the direction of a social and personalized world wide web.
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There are a few simple rules to follow although above all you should remember to write as if you are speaking to real people because essentially, the people out there ARE real so treat them as such.
I’ve limited this list to what I think are the most important points to remember:
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Social Media Blog
Although social media has been around for a while now, I am still coming across people who don’t really understand what the hype is about. This could be due to a lack of understanding surrounding the concept or due to an earlier encounter with someone in the industry who spoke at 100km an hour about corporate profiles, networking, tweeting http://www.gofishclientcatchers.com/blog/Social-Media-Blog/Twitter , Facebook fan pages, reputation management and a host of other things which you kind of know something about but are still trying to wrap your brain around. So this post is going to explain in non-geek terms, what social media is.
I equate Social Media to real life all the time because in my mind that is all it is, creating relationships online, similar to those relationships you should be creating in real life. When you start a new job what is the first thing you do? I for one first get the lay of the land (office), see who hangs out with whom, who everyone dislikes and why, what the culture is. After a few days I start getting to know people and they start getting to know me, I start spotting those people who I find value in and who have something in common with me. After a few weeks I’m having lunch with people and seeing others for drinks after work, I start feeling at home and like I belong which in turn manifests itself into loyalty not just to my friends at work but also to the company in which I work.
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Twitter!! This word causes mixed reactions, or so I’ve noted over the past couple of months, some recoil as if they have just been shown a maggoty leftover found in the back of a fridge, some say that they have a profile but don’t know what to say and some look at me with blank faces and ask “What is Twitter?” For those of you who don’t know what it is (you are either in denial or have been living under a rock), Twitter is a social networking platform which allows you to send status updates to your group of followers in 140 characters or less – kind of like an sms but online. If you know what it is but aren’t sure how it can offer any benefit to you then answer these quick questions:
Right, now I’m sure you have answered yes to all 3 of those if you are your own boss, if you aren’t and just enjoy filling people in on every mundane detail of your life then read on and Tweet this post!!
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This question comes up a lot with my clients and it’s a pretty simple one to answer if you know the difference between the two options. I’m going to break down each function so that you can decide whether a page or a group would suit your needs best. Group Facebook groups have been around the longest and are similar to pages but have less functionality. To set up a group is also relatively easy since you only need to choose a category and sub-category, image and short description – then all you need is to send this out to all your friends and hope that they join. Any updates to your group members appear in their inbox as messages which may sound great but can get a bit annoying if you update regularly. If you also have other sources which you would like to publish to your group (like blog posts or Tweets), you have to do it manually, posting the URL every time.
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 09:29
Google Sidewiki – Bringing Social Media to the SiteWritten by Dr Peter FishImagine being able to get other people’s opinions on a site you’re visiting, or their input on the content and even find a few links that other people have found important on the same aspect all with the click of your mouse. Well this type of social commentary exists! Google launched its Sidewiki on the 29th September last year and it’s slowly starting to catch on...
The Sidewiki concept brings social media directly to the site in question, utilising it includes simply installing the Google Sidiwiki toolbar. Once it’s activated it sits nestled neatly and almost invisibly on the left aspect of your browser. If you visit a site with a comment a small speech bubble appears, once clicked you can view the details.
These comments can be anything from reviews to blog post announcements to educational tips. Gain expert insights, a different perspective or even a bit of background history. Install it and have a look – Google’s Sidiwiki.
Over and above this Google has also launched the Sidewiki API! This allows you to play with any content generated regarding any particular page or even by a particular author. This is great for reputation management as it allows you to monitor what is being said about your company and its products or services.
Furthermore in the land of search engine optimisation the Sidiwiki holds a few interesting tricks in the new era where social media is now king... After publishing any new content a little Sidiwiki comment might point the Googebot towards your page, allowing it to be indexed quite quickly. Over and above this placing a link on certain “resource” pages with a link back to your associated page might lend you some credibility... For example once I post this blog I’ll run through my standard blog announcement routine, but now I’ll also make a quick comment in Sidiwiki on the actual page as well as positing a comment on the url above linking back to my blog... Hmmm... Thanks Google...
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There are a myriad of reasons why a blog is important to have in terms of online marketing but that is not what this post is about. This post is on how to write for your brand new blog, which you already know is uber important for you business but you just don’t know where to start.
