Friday Facts: The Power of the Hashtag

Another excellent infographic - this time from the Huffington Post - regarding the Power of the Hashtag.  This offers advice from not abusing hashtags to other best practices regarding hashtags with the various sites that use them. It also explains why using hashtags is important and how you should pick/set up hashtags for your brand.

Check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/227431849909451172/

You might also want to check out their sources for the article. There may be additional useful information there.

Friday Facts: 10 of the latest surprising and revealing studies on social media

For today's Friday Fact's I'm sharing an article produced by The Next Web news regarding 10 of the latest surprising and revealing studies on social media. This article includes a lot of interesting stats with accompanying charts and graphs to back up the data as well as links to the original articles where the studies were pulled from.

For example, did you know, according to Chartbeat, late afternoon and evening is the best time to share things to get interaction from users?

Or, another example, Instagram users are more engaging than Facebook and Twitter users.

And ramp up your video team - surveys show social media marketing is ramping up in YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Read all the details on these facts and seven more in the article here: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2015/07/09/10-of-the-latest-surprising-and-revealing-studies-on-social-media/?utm_content=bufferc2af2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Happy Friday!

Tuesday Tips: The 80/20 Twitter Philosophy

Social Media Marketing is all about finding the right mix of engagement with that particular social media platform. Looking at Twitter, a study has shown that people marketing on Twitter should be marketing 20% of the time and engaging in conversations the remaining 80% of the time.

Engaging in conversations can be anything ranging from replying to tweets, retweeting tweets, thanking followers, or commenting on posts of people/brands you follow. Most importantly, Twitter is about interacting with other users on Twitter. Take advantage of those conversations and engage more than you would on Facebook or elsewhere.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your social media presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Tuesday Tips: Use Klout to Post, Share Articles

Klout offers you a nifty ability not only to post unique content to their sites and write those posts on their sites, but you can also share your posts from your website to there and have it push it out to your social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Klout is a platform with which you can use to measure your amount of influence in the world of social media.  It also gets you perks from various companies who are hoping by sending you items, you'll post about them and others will purchase them based on the fact you're influential.

Klout has changed a lot since it first started, but many things remain the same.  For example, you didn't used to be able to post articles there or share your articles through Klout and now you can. You can also "grant" Klout to friends who are members of Klout in various topics - for example my main topics have been Gaming, Journalism, Social Media and Video Games for a while now.  Some folks have other topics they have Klout in.

Learn more about Klout and how to share articles by visiting www.klout.com.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Wednesday Words: Retweet

If you're new to social media, or new to Twitter, you may see people talking about "Retweet this" or "This has been retweeted by: Name".  Retweeting is when someone shares your post, via the retweet option on Twitter.  It shows as them retweeting your post.

Retweeting is a great way to share content of people you follow on Twitter that may be of interest to your followers.  It is also a way to get new followers - especially if you retweet someone who isn't already a follower.  Some folks will retweet things you post if you retweet things they post.  It's one big happy family at times with retweeting.

Most importantly, though, if you want people to retweet what you post, you need to retweet their posts from time to time as well.  Reciprocity is a good thing.

Retweeting is very easy and you have a couple options to do so.  You can just click the retweet button, which looks like a square with arrows around it, or you can retweet as a quote and comment on the retweet if there's enough characters to do so.

So if you haven't retweeted posts, you may look into starting to do so. It might just help you gain followers and increase your content output.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Wednesday Words: Circles

Todays's Wednesday Word is a word that, thus far, is only associated with Google+ (G+): Circles.

Circles is how you arrange your connections within Google +.  You can group your connections into circles with which you then select the names of the circles you want to share your posts with.

You can also put people into multiple circles.  I have circles for VIPs, close friends, family, acquaintance and industry contacts.
The interesting thing to note though is while Circles can affect your personal profile on Google +, it can also affect your business page there as well.  People can add your page to circles (which allows them to see some of what you publish), but for them to see more, you have to add them to your page's circles.

And, just like Facebook, this isn't an automatic step.  You have to do this yourself.

Keep in mind, if you want certain articles you post to your page to target certain members of your audience and not others, be sure to put them into specific circles, then select that circle for the item to be posted to.

In the coming weeks, we'll be touching on Google + and how to use it as Social Media along with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

As always, I welcome questions on any of the social media platforms and look forward to answering questions of my readers.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Wednesday Words: Avatar

Avatar, not to be confused with the movie with blue aliens, is an image used to represent yourself on a forum, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  It can be a picture of yourself, a logo you like or any number of things that represents something about you.

People new to social media are sometimes confused by the term avatar.  For Twitter and Facebook, the avatar should be your company logo - that way the Facebook/Twitter post is easily recognizable while enforcing and enhancing branding of the name and logo.

The Avatar is what people will see and associate with you when scanning through their social media - so you want it to be identifiable and recognizable.

If you are unsure what you should do for your page's Avatar or your Twitter Feed Avatar, I highly suggest looking at other, similar Twitter Feed and Facebook pages, then go from there.  If you still aren't sure, consult with others.  You'd be surprised what people will suggest that just might work.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.