Remember when Facebook acquired Instagram in April last year for $1 billion in cash and stock? Zuckerberg and co. was on to something: the power of visual social media. Instagram is an online photo sharing and social media service that lets you take pictures with your smart phone and post them on a variety of social platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. And here’s the beauty…
Last year, photo-sharing social media platform Pinterest experienced a 792% hike in unique monthly visitors in Canada (comScore), while YouTube ranked as the second most popular search engine in the world (Search Engine Journal). Meanwhile, photo-sharing social application Instagram reached over 100 million active users a month, just two and a half years after first launching (Geek Hut). To say the visual web is catching…
Sharing other people’s awesome content online is an easy way to gain followers and assert yourself as an authority in your industry. Finding the awesome content is the hard part. However, Social Media Examiner contributor Andrea Vahl says it’s worth the effort: “When you can dig up great articles your audience is interested in-regardless of the source-you’ll become more respected and your content will be…
Does Twitter make you cringe? Facebook got you feeling nauseous? When a colleague tells you that your biggest competitor uses LinkedIn to get new customers, does your stomach sink in disappointment? If so, you’re not alone. While 81% of business executives in a recent Economist study agreed that social media marketing provides their company with tangible benefits, many execs still resist embracing social for their…
#Lights, #Camera, #Action: With a newly partnered app for video posts, Twitter is ready for its close up. The app is called Vine, and it’s being touted as “the Instagram for video.” Vine lets you capture and share short looping videos on Twitter. The service has quickly gained attention since its launch as a free download for iPhone and iPod Touch in January, with big…
Has your Facebook Page brought in any new leads lately? If it hasn’t, there might be a problem. You may have lost the social media marketing verve. The verve is that motivation we need to update our profiles regularly, share new content, and contribute meaningfully to conversations on social media platforms. We lose it when we believe we’ve lost touch with our surroundings. Social media…
Tablets and smart phones have changed the way consumers engage with social media. Last year, 46 percent of social media users accessed their profiles primarily through mobile devices, up from 37 percent in 2011. Shocked yet? Here’s another statistic sure to rock your Monday morning: According to a study released last December by Nielsen and NM Incite, social media usage on tablet devices experienced a…
If powerful SEO influence and a robust suite of seamlessly integrated communications tools isn’t enough to convince you that your small business needs a Google+ page, the platform now offers a feature that’s sure to have a game-changing impact on how businesses target and engage customers online. It’s called Google+ Communities, and it connects users with other likeminded people. If you’ve ever used the Groups…
Your customers are mobile. Here’s some proof: -Adults spend more time accessing media through a mobile device than they do with magazines and newspapers combined (SEOMap.com). -Consumers spent $241 billion in mobile transactions in 2011 (Business2Community.com). – More than 50% of all local web searches take place on mobile devices (SocialMediaExaminer.com). Clearly, mobile marketing is a priority for any business owner who wants to reach…
Traffic and leads. As business owners, we flock to social media, content creation, PPC advertising, and other search tactics because we want higher traffic and more leads. Every day, a new strategy rears its head in the marketing landscape. How do we maintain success? First, we accept that “the only constant in this [SEO] game is change” (Gibbons, Searchenginewatch.com). Second, we prepare strategies that fit…