Social Media
5 Social Platforms to Put on Your “Fadar”!
Over the last several years lots of social platforms have come and gone. Some are slowly fading away. It’s really hard to keep track of where to spend your time and energy! 2012 will remain a big year for big players such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn and similarly, we should also expect to see exponential growth for newcomers like Pinterest. However, as newcomers gain momentum, we will start to see other social networks fizzle off. Here are 5 social platforms we think you should put on your “fadar” (aka fading radar):
- Quora: The question and answer platform was predicted to be the next big thing in 2010. However, half way through 2011 the big buzz surrounding the site slowly started to fade off. The site still receives decent traffic, with an estimate of 500,000 users, however, as new social sites emerge Quora might not be at the top of social minds.
- Digg: The once beloved site-sharing website has been dying a slow death for several years. It hasn’t been able to compete with sites like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. It is my opinion that it is just a matter of time before it completely fizzles off. A few months ago it did launch a new version of the site, however, it doesn’t seem like users found it very appealing. A couple of years ago a great article would have received on average 3000 Diggs, now you’re lucky if you even get 100.
- Delicious: This social bookmarking site had everything going for it back in 2005. It was new to the scene and had no real competitors. What happened? As new bookmarking sites started to saturate the market Delicious didn’t reinvent quickly enough. Rumors are it might shut-down or sell its technology.
- Gowalla: This location-based site was once a fierce competitor for foursquare, both entering the market at about the same time 2 years ago. However, foursquare quickly gained momentum with over 1 billion check-ins to date, leaving Gowalla in the dust. Gowalla’s leadership has now joined forces with Facebook. According to industry insiders, Facebook has not purchased the technology, only the talent. Gowalla will slowly fade out.
- QR Codes: There’s a huge online debate about whether QR (Quick Response) Codes are slowly starting to die off before they’ve even had the chance to really take off. Some people may think, why would QR Codes be on the “fadar”? I see them everywhere? Well, that’s exactly my point. The ubiquitous use of QR Codes in often ill-conceived marketing efforts, is what might lead to its demise.
What do you think? Do you take issue with any of the above observations? Are there networks or tools you feel should be on the fadar?
Maryam Mehrtash
@socialmaryam
Tags: cool, Delicious, digg, facebook, foursquare, google, gowalla, LinkedIn, pinterest, QR codes, reddit, Social Media, technology, Twitter, youtube
5 Tips For Your Foursquare Explore Social Strategy
If you haven’t claimed your foursquare profile yet, you might want to get on that asap! If the fact that the site’s database has 1.5 billion check-ins logged into the system isn’t enough of a an incentive, then perhaps knowing that foursquare has gone “search” online with their newest feature Explore with the website garnering 1 million unique visitors per day already could entice you.
By claiming your foursquare profile you can personalize it to suit your business and take advantage of integrating this platform into your social media (geo-location) strategy. In addition to checking-in, claiming badges and mayorships, now users can search for locations, deals, and places on their desktop using the Explore feature. Some people don’t like having a Foursquare account on their mobile phones and “checking-in” all the time, but would like to use this feature to see where their friends are checking-in and what they recommend. Foursquare Explore allows you to go online and search without having to use the platform as a check-in tool. It is useful for the end user to go through the 15 million tips that are gathered on the site already when deciding on where to go and what to eat… or drink!
Here are five tips to include in your strategy in order to ensure increased visits from Foursquare Explore to your company’s profile page:
- Regularly monitor your foursquare account. Review check-ins, comments, and tips to see what users are saying.
- Use QR codes to encourage check-ins, tips, and submissions.
- Promote Foursquare ads to encourage check-ins.
- Include sentiments and adjectives in your foursquare ad strategy (i.e. romantic, Friday, sweet, summer, wine list, etc…)
- Use keywords when posting deals on your foursquare account to help with search queries.
Happy searching!
Maryam
@socialmaryam
Tags: badges, explore, foursquare, geo-location, SEO, social, strategy, tips, visitors
What If…Your Twitter and Facebook Posts Were Deleted After 24 Hours?
What if … a new feature was introduced where Facebook Wall posts and Twitter tweets were automatically removed after 24 hours?
If you did not post anything new in a 24-hour period, your Facebook Wall and Twitter profile would be empty, showing just a blank page. If you’re managing a Facebook Page or a Twitter account for your company or client this would be a big deal. It’s equivalent to having a company website with no content.
Would this give you more incentive to publish content more frequently?
This hypothetical scenario isn’t very far from reality, considering the effective lifespan of the average Facebook post is 22 hours and the lifespan of the average Twitter tweet is 1 hour.
It’s a balancing act. Publish too infrequently and you’ll gain minimal benefit from your social media profile. Publish too frequently and you risk annoying your followers.
Keep this in mind the next time you are developing a digital strategy. Is your publishing frequency maximizing your impact online?
Victor
Digital Strategist
Photo Credit: JanetR3
Tags: facebook, lifespan, strategy, Twitter
What the Heck is Pinterest and Why Should You Care?
Quick. Take a stab at naming the top ten social sites.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn… these ones come easily to mind, but it may surprise you to learn that Pinterest also makes the cut. Coming in at #10, it’s clear that Pinterest is gaining traction fast. It may be time to sit up and notice it, if you haven’t already been lured by its slick and glossy look.
What the heck is it?
The name explains the essence of what it’s about: ‘Pin’ items of ‘interest’. It acts like a virtual pushpin board for things found around the web. Users can create multiple boards, each dedicated to something of interest to them. For example, a board for travel, a board for recipes, a board for home decor. You get the idea. It’s social bookmarking, revisited & refreshed.
Although still in invite-only mode, in just one week alone last December (2011) Pinterest is said to have attracted 11-million visits. It’s growing at an incredible rate, seeing a 4000% jump in traffic from just six months ago. Monthly visits are said to be averaging 3.2-million.
The website is most popular with women aged 25-44, accounting for 58% of the userbase in the past three months (Experian Hitwise). Here are some thoughts on why those who like it, like it a lot. Indeed it must be onto something when it starts spawning copycats.
So why should you care?
There is a business case for participating on Pinterest. It is reported that Real Simple magazine is getting more referral traffic from Pinterest, than from Facebook. From a business perspective, there are many opportunities for building a fan base, building awareness for products, and getting more traffic to your website, but you need to go about it the right way. Pinterest states very clearly there shall be no blatant promoting and marketing on the site. So what can you do? Some ideas are expanded on here, but I think one truth for gaining traction as a business on Pinterest is to have smoking hot photos of smoking hot products. This will inspire members to pin them on their boards, and thus increase the exposure of the business through the image. (Images link back to the original site)
So there you have it. Some pretty compelling reasons to consider Pinterest as a serious player in your ongoing online strategy.
Erin
Tags: facebook, pinterest, strategy
5 Tips On How to Filter Through The Fluff!
Marketers are constantly inundated with information on the #digitalmediasphere – felt like a hashtag was appropriate for this post! The amount of information our brains have to consume on a daily basis is mind blowing, literally. According to Mail Online, each person is drowned with “174 newspapers’ worth of information every day.” FastCompany also published an infographic in September 2010 based on the book The 24-Hour Customer, indicating that we will generate more data in the next 4 years than in the history of the world, adding that the average person is connected 12 hours a day to some form of digital media which translates to 34 billion bits of information per day (an equivalent of two books).
The biggest concern for marketers is the ability to sort through all the fluff and not get bogged down. Recent studies are showing that the level of information we are being asked to break down can cause increased stress levels. So how do we keep on top of the abundance of information and still keep our sanity? Learn how to filter through the fluff and manage your time. Here are 5 tips that can get you started:
TIP #1. BE SELECTIVE. Don’t follow every single person on Twitter who follows you, or subscribe to every blog with the word “digital marketing” in it. Be selective to what you subscribe to and who you follow. Similarly, don’t feel the need to subscribe to every single news outlet, most likely they all end up publishing the same stories within 24 hours of each other anyway. By being selective you can start filtering through the noise and choosing what you really want to focus your brain cells on.
TIP #2. TAKE TIME OFF. Set aside certain time periods when you are active on social media, reading the news, updating your blog, and so on and so forth. We spend most of our waking hours connected to some form of digital media. Sometimes it’s nice to tune out. Take a break and set rules and regulations. For example, when you are at the gym don’t be the person on the treadmill who is replying to emails and tweets. It’s okay to not reply back right away. Let your body relax and do something else. You can set time limits for yourself of when you are on and off, even computers need down time.
TIP #3. UTILIZE DASHBOARDS. Dashboards help aggregate various accounts and create search tabs to sort through specific content. Hootsuite is a great dashboard that allows you to do both. You can add all your social media accounts to this one dashboard so that you don’t have to keep switching between tabs or windows to get up-to-date on all the new content. You can also create search tabs with specific keywords such as “online marketing” or “search engine optimization” and Hootsuite will then aggregate content based on that filter. That way you can sort through the fluff without actually having to do it yourself, the dashboard does it for you.
TIP #4. ACTIVATE GOOGLE ALERTS. There are a ton of free tools available online that help you filter through the data, Google Alerts is one of them. Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your queries. You get the most up-to-date information sent directly to your mail box.
TIP #5. CREATE YOUR OWN READER. Setup a RSS Feed Reader or News Aggregator by adding your favorite blogs, and websites to it so you can keep on top of the latest content without actually having to visit the site. Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.
Hopefully these tips will help you stay on top of your content, and help save you a little time and stress!
Maryam Mehrtash @socialmaryam
Tags: data, digital, facebook, information, marketing, Social Media, stress, Twitter
