June 19, 2012 -
Facebook page timelines offer great functionality for businesses including the ability to pin and highlight posts, add your company’s history by year with milestones, mange your page separately with apps and monitor engagement with page insights. The cover image is front and center on your Facebook page so leverage its position accordingly.
May 10, 2012 -
Instagram has been making headlines lately. Originally an iPhone app, Instagram is a social platform for mobile photos. After snapping a photo, simple filters and effects can be applied before posting to the platform or sharing to your other social properties (Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc.). The application later released an Android app, has received rousing adoption and the community is growing by leaps and bounds. Of course then, there was little surprise that Facebook acquired the company for $1,000,000,000!
Pinterest is the online equivalent of your local cafe’s community corkboard. Instead of business cards and babysitting flyers, photos or videos are ‘pinned’ and organized on ‘boards’ where Pinterest users can ‘repin’, ‘like’, or ‘comment’. Captions can be included with the bookmarked content where users can add links to direct traffic or describe the content of the media. Pinterest profiles become clean collages of aggregated interests.
May 1, 2012 -
Until this morning I could have been convinced either way on the whole debate over whether employers should be digging into employees’ (or potential employees’) Facebook and other online profiles. On one hand, what’s the harm? Do they have something to hide? On the other, there are major privacy implications involved.
April 4, 2012 -
The market share of online users can no longer be ignored by businesses. Products are being compared on mobile devices within retail establishments and service providers are being vetted in forums and on rating websites. The Internet has become the paramount place for commerce, discussion, venting, and appreciation. Users like, share, retweet and thumbs up, posts of every nature, across multiple platforms. From work computers, home laptops and mobile tablets, your next customer is likely searching for your brand on Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
September 12, 2011 -
Last Friday would have been a normal day for me at the office, except only a few days earlier I received an invitation to The White House (read how that happened here). Having been invited to the third official White House Tweetup, I didn’t know what to expect when I showed up on Friday morning. Was this going to be like some of the blown-out tweetups with 100+ people or a small (10-20 people) and intimate group. To my pleasant surprise it was the later: we counted about 12 or so of us total. By that time I knew we were going to be part of something special and very exclusive. You’ll hear me repeat this again but I was blown away at the consummate professionalism, punctuality, and thorough communication from the White House staff. (Not just anyone gets to work at The White House, after all.)
September 8, 2011 -
UPDATE (09/12/2011): Here is my debriefing from my visit to The White House
Everyone seems to have their own interpretation of “how to use Twitter,” but I have one real and very cool personal use: Twitter got me invited to The White House for an official briefing. Thanks to Twitter I’ll be spending all day Friday, September 9, at The White House getting a personal tour and participating in a briefing by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
August 19, 2011 -
I logged into my Twitter account recently and noticed some big changes to the links by the default Timeline tab. Notably, “Mentions” is now @username and the Retweet tab is gone instead replaced with the new “Activity” stream. Here’s the official Twitter announcement, but apparently it hasn’t rolled out to everyone quite yet. (I have access to the new pages on my personal account but not @Cavendo just yet.)
August 16, 2011 -
As Facebook and Google continue to compete for internet domination, the micro-blogging platform, Twitter has progressed from geeky obscurity to a viable platform worthy of corporate attention. Recent news has featured a Twitter Presidential Candidate Debate, a White House Town Hall and a N.A.S.A. Tweet Up. Each of these initiatives sparked a buzz within the larger framework of news media as it engaged the Twitter community, 140 characters at a time. Of course, engagement requires more than a registered account and an icon on your website. Your Twitter usage, like any medium worth the investment of your time and resources, benefits from a modicum of know-how and strategy.
May 26, 2011 -
Brand recognition is a staple of any company’s marketing strategy. And with social networking, that recognition has shifted drastically to the online world. Physical branding–the kind you see on billboards and letterheads–MUST be translated to the online platforms where target audiences relate and interact.
Facebook, initially known for building personal connections, is now a leading online service for corporate advertisement and communication. However, changes on the platform roll out frequently, and between profiles, groups, places, and pages, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the different options. Facebook Pages was created for brands. It allows administrations to separate their personal and professional lives by treating a company as an entity with “fans” to be “liked” instead of as a “friend” to be “added.” Out of the box, Facebook Pages provide companies the opportunity to share news, upload photos, display information, update Twitter, add video, and integrate with websites. Pages can also be promoted with Facebook Ads and metrics can be accessed via Facebook Insights. There’s even a suite of applications that can enhance your Page–but be sure to research these applications carefully.
August 5, 2010 -
As any true early adopter I jumped on the Foursquare and Gowalla bandwagon last year and have used both services, Foursquare more so than Gowalla. I know there are other location-based services out there but these are the two I’ve tried. I’ll save the Foursquare vs. Gowalla debate for another time, but for the purposes of this article I will consider them the same: location-based social networks.
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