13 Social media & marketing blogs to add to your feed right now
There’s a lot of content out there on the Internet about any subject that you could possibly ever want to know about (turns out that woman you recognized on White Collar is actually the girl who played Kelly on Saved By the Bell – thank you, Wikipedia!). This is particularly true in the social media world, which churns out a constant stream of information through a network of tech-loving writers who are borderline obsessed with posting and reposting the news of the day. If you don’t have your own in-house social media editor to sift through the mess, let our Florida advertising agency guide you to the best social media and marketing blogs. Mashable: Tried and true, Mashable offers a constant stream of updates about all things social media. Pete Cashmore placed his bets on the social media industry early on, taking it seriously as a field that would continue to grow. Today, Mashable is the most comprehensive listing of social media news and updates on the web. Seth Godin’s Blog: As an internationally known marketing expert, Seth Godin is straightforward, honest and to the point. And it’s not just our Florida advertising agency that sees the value in Seth’s words – his blog is also typically ranked as one on Ad Age’s top 10 of the top 150 blogs tracked. VentureBeat: VentureBeat has Silicon Valley on lock. With constant updates about the newest trends in social media and tech, this is a website that any tech savvy individual should bookmark and visit frequently. It’s a great place to find out about the newest and emerging trends – the ones that will affect the future of social media marketing. TechCrunch: With such an overlap between tech trends and social media, it’s great to find a blog that gives superior coverage to both. TechCrunch, part of AOL’s digial empire, offers interesting and insightful content that’s useful for anyone in any emerging industry. And, the writing itself is some of the best in the business. Social Media Today: For anyone interested in social media marketing, this blog is a terrific starting point. This community-driven blog site is driven by experts such as yourself. The result is numerous differing views as to trends in social media, all moderated for quality to offer the best composition of blog posts in any one site. CopyBlogger: CopyBlogger offers excellent information about all fronts of content marketing. Content marketing as an industry itself has taken on all types of new directions in recent years, and since you can’t talk about content marketing without talking about SEO and social media, the blog offers a great resource for covering that area on all fronts. All Things D: The D stands for digital, and the website that purports to cover all things digital stands up to its name. While it’s more of a tech blog and sometimes just even a fun news and current event blog, the social media coverage side offers some of the best coverage in the game. Plus, the easy-to-navigate site spins circles around competitors with fancy but not necessarily effective designs. Marketing Tech Blog: Like a true marketing company, the Marketing Tech Blog emphasizes social media content, and innovations in the digital space – using lots of sharable information and infographics to sell the story. ClickZ: With a constant stream of updates about innovations in social media and digital marketing, ClickZ ultimately focuses on one thing: teaching you how to get ClickZ for your company and your business’s social media. Digital Buzz: While it’s more of a marketing site than a straight social media blog, Digital Buzz features content that our Orlando marketing agency loves. With fresh perspectives and information about new trends in digital media, true marketing professionals shouldn’t miss this site. A few more blogs to add to your feed, these three cover analytics, platform strategy and management tools. Buffer Social: This social media marketing blog covers the latest in tools, analytics and strategies, and an has an incredibly intuitive design. The blog features a wide variety of authors which keeps the content and tone fresh. Jenn’s Trends: Jenn Herman is a social media management strategist and her blog focuses heavily on strategies for businesses to use on Instagram. If you’re looking to move your brand onto Instagram, or up your InstaGame, Jenn’s Trends a must-follow blog for your brand. RazorSocial: Written by Ian Cleary, RazorSocial provides information on the latest social media tools and technology. He publishes a lot of how-to, cheat sheet, step by step and tips and tricks post that are easy to digest and apply to your business. Honorable Mention – BuzzFeed: While BuzzFeed isn’t really a social media blog per se, it’s really a blog that’s all about posting content that people can share. If you’re a marketing expert and you’re looking for inspiration, check out BuzzFeed to see what the world is talking about right now. In search of a few additional social media and marketing blog suggestions with the potential to make a big impact on your bottom line? Contact us today for more helpful tips and tricks to benefit your brand!
Things you didn’t know about LinkedIn – & probably don’t want to
Many people see LinkedIn as a way to stay connected to fellow professionals. However, the online resume platform uses some interesting tactics to help put a price on your skill set. Our Orlando marketing agency uses LinkedIn to help us find talent, but always with caution. What follows are some things you may not know about the high tech career services company. LinkedIn is a Search Engine for Resumes. Think about how a search engine works. Typically, a person keys in search words in order to filter results. From a recruitment perspective, LinkedIn allows employers like our Florida marketing agency to weed out unqualified job seekers and limit searches to only the top candidates. That means that hiring personnel can search based on your number of years of experience, prior job titles, educational background, skill set and anything else you put on your online resume. While in theory this sounds like an excellent, efficient recruiting strategy, it also has serious limitations. For examples, recruiters will tell you not to use the most recent buzzwords on your resume, but then will actively search for terms such as “creative,” “innovative” and “strategic” as they look for job candidates. In the end, it’s all about how build your profile, and therefore not necessarily about your actual experience and what you can bring to the table. LinkedIn can expedite the hiring process, saving recruiters time and money in placing individuals. Whereas it once used to cost potential employers $20,000 to place one person through a staffing company, such large companies can now manage such requests in-house to narrow the search down to a dozen qualifies applicants in minutes. It’s All about Sales. LinkedIn has a tremendous sales force behind it. The company’s representatives sell recruitment products to leading Fortune 500 corporations, and those products are quickly becoming the industry standard in recruiting practices. Companies that don’t latch on to LinkedIn’s practices will risk falling behind the industry, and therefore, will continue to shell out cash for LinkedIn’s recruiting service products. While the team at LinkedIn purports to care about helping professionals connect with each other and helping job seekers connect with recruiters, what really seems to be driving the company is the bottom line. Because LinkedIn’s revenue model actually works (as opposed to Facebook, which currently seems to be facing some challenges), the company is working hard to make money while the company is still profitable, potentially at the expense of the people it purports to help. LinkedIn Makes Millions From Users’ Personal Information. The leading professional social platform uses your information and connections to make big bucks. [quote]Data is extremely valuable, and the more that a company like LinkedIn can garner from you, the more that the company can leverage your information to build products that help grow the company.[/quote] For the executives at LinkedIn, the bigger picture revolves around using your data to help sell products to the companies it services, to offer these companies advantages in terms of competitive hiring practices, desirable skill sets and in-demand job opportunities. People Can See When You’ve Viewed Their Profile, Even if you Limit your Privacy Settings. Even regular LinkedIn users may not know that every time you visit a profile, your name, photo and job title shows up on the person’s page. Typically, LinkedIn’s privacy settings adjust to your own settings; for example, if you set your search settings to anonymous, you also can’t see who’s viewed your page. However, if you’re in an in-between setting, and someone knows that “Someone in the Publishing Industry” looked at your profile, you can click on a link that shows about ten profiles that match that description, with one of those being the person who actually looked at you. Typically, you can use the process of elimination to find out who is stalking you. This can offer some awkwardness, especially for small business owners who may be looking into their networks’ talent pool. LinkedIn May Still be Behind in Security. Earlier this year, more than 6.5 million LinkedIn passwords were stolen and published online, exposing a hole in the company’s security procedures. While technology moves fast, it’s possible that even six months later, the company hasn’t effectively worked to fix security holes that may lead to breaches. Unfortunately, the only way we’ll know is if someone else comes forward and attempts to crack the code. If You Don’t Have a LinkedIn Profile, You Might be Screwing Up Your Future. Even if all these things offer a solid case against using LinkedIn, the reality is that employers rely on it the way that teenagers rely on Facebook. For employers such as our Orlando advertising firm, LinkedIn is a gateway to your digital presence, and will continue to be such as long as the company is making money from your data. If you have yet to sign up for LinkedIn, you may be sheltering yourself from career opportunities amidst an uncertain economic climate, which could be shooting yourself in the foot in terms of future opportunities. Love it or hate it, LinkedIn is the holy grail of recruiting technologies, and is around to stay. If you’re using LinkedIn (and you probably should be), make sure to leverage your knowledge of the digital platform in a way that puts you in best light with future employers. Be sure to check out BIGEYE’s Linkedin profile here: http://www.linkedin.com/company/bigeye
Florida marketing agency suggests Pinterest for your business
Email marketing through social media is growing. Pinterest is a new online social media site which was created to drive marketing through social media unlike Facebook and Twitter. Pinterest allows the email recipient to “pin” a brand, item, or ad that they like in order to share it with their friends. BIGEYE, a Florida Marketing Agency is using this social media platform and would like to share it here. There are several ways our Orlando marketing agency believes how Pinterest can help with email marketing to make it effective. It is also a new way to ensure there is interest to view the ad email rather than log it immediately as spam. Social Media Marketing through Our Orlando Marketing Agency Florida marketing agency does suggest the use of social media marketing. This new website is designed around what customers want. Before creating any email to send Orlando marketing agency is going to answer the question about what customers want from a potential business. They will also create an ad that focuses on proper content within the email. There has been a long discussion on what is not spam when it comes to email marketing. Coupons, an informative article, and something that does not oversell a business tend to obtain more views based on research viewed by Florida marketing agency. Creative Marketing Agency Tips for Email Marketing While proper content and what the consumer wants is important, there is one other tip Florida marketing agency can provide. The tip is to place the marketing ad with care in the email. An obvious ad or a repetitive ad is going to be viewed as spam. Rather, Orlando marketing agency has found an email with something to share, such as Pinterest content will attract more attention. The idea of this email marketing is to get friends and family interested in the product being advertised. Contact us today for information on how we can help your social media presence grow!
Pinning is Winnin’: Pinterest surpasses Tumblr, Linkedin & Google+
A new report from Experian now rates Pinterest as the sixth most popular social network in the U.S., behind empires such as Facebook and Twitter. The website welcomes about 100 million monthly active users and according to comScore, visitors are spending an impressive 89 minutes per month on the site. Pinterest is a great marketing tool for brands—especially brands with women as a primary target. 85 percent of all Pinterest users are female and 62 percent are between the ages of 25 to 54. From our experience, the key to a successful Pinterest marketing strategy boils down to creating targeted Pinterest boards. Every business should have at least three to five content-filled, industry-related boards. For example, if you are an interior design firm, you may have a board for Contemporary Living Rooms, Old World Kitchens, and Trending Accessories. Fill your boards with content and be sure to add some variety. The possibilities are endless, just keep it organized and true to your brand and your audience. Overwhelmed with all the possibilities? Here’s a tip to get you started: every day of the week has a most-pinned category for the site. Monday is fitness, Tuesday is technology, Wednesday is quotes, Thursday is fashion, Friday is humor, Saturday is travel, and Sunday is food and DIY crafts. Get creative with your Pinterest posts in order to stimulate your repining possibilities and be sure to pin often. Always post links that provide value to users. Be careful not to talk too much about yourself and always follow Pinterest etiquette. We suggest using great photography with each pin you make. Pinterest is a visual experience, and users are more likely to repin you if your pins will make their boards more attractive. For help with your Pinterest strategy, give us a call. We’d be happy to help you establish a successful presence on the growing social network.
Five super mega social media moments that stood out from 2011
1. Osama bin Laden’s death first leaked on Twitter. Chief of staff for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tweeted, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn.” 2. When a cobra escaped from New York City’s Bronx Zoo in March, it soon showed up on Twitter @BronxZoosCobra, boasting about its adventures in the city. 3. From goal posts to gargoyles, people all over the world shared photos of themselves “planking” face-down on an innumerable amount of services, via Facebook and Twitter. 4. The moment Steve Jobs’ death was announced in October, social networks exploded with condolences, tributes and impromptu memorials for Apple’s founder and CEO. 5. Friday soon received an anthem of its own with the popularity of Rebecca Black’s video “Friday” that was uploaded to YouTube. The video received more than 167 million views. Have one we missed? Let us know here!
Extreme social media makeover: BIGEYE Twitter edition
On Thursday, Twitter announced it was receiving a major makeover and the implementation of Facebook-style brand pages. It seems Twitter is finally trying to shift the Twitterverse from third-party apps and back to the site itself, while drawing more users away from the business-buzzing world of Facebook Pages. For now, Twitter has only rolled out the brand pages for corporate powerhouses like Disney and McDonald’s. The sleek new design allows businesses to customize their headers and promote a tweet of choice at the top of their timeline. Businesses will also be able to keep their mentions and @replies separate. One can assume it will only be a matter of time before brand pages will be available to the general public, as Google+ just launched its version of brand pages in October … and social networks are always keeping up with the Joneses. The overall Twitter facelift is much more streamlined and you’ll find three new buttons at the top of the page: Home, @Connect and #Discover. The @Connect button shows your mentions and also suggests accounts you might be interested in following. The #Discover button shows you what’s trending and videos and stories based on your interests. Other features include a simpler way to embed videos and more. For a glimpse of this Twitter overhaul, watch the video below:
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