Social Media Optimization News | Social Media Marketing Tips

Today, organizations have started to think different and have taken to social media to increase revenues. Social media contributes to millions of dollars worth of business annually. This is why many businesses have started using innovative and cutting-edge approaches to further their aims through social media. Surveys have shown that more than two thirds of companies are now using social media to handle their day-to-day business activities, and have received some very important results that contribute to their success. Most small businesses do not have the kind of budgets that larger corporate’s have for communications and marketing, which is why social media channels are now considered to be encouraging as far as generating value is concerned. Effectively using social networking sites, forums and blogs is a great way to increase annual sales. Such a boost can help companies expand and grow and invest in more businesses or hire more staff. Surveys have also shown that as many as 9 out ...

Social media sites like Facebook can really enrich your kid’s lives, but they can also be detrimental to their physical and mental health as well. Reports on kids and social media have studied kid’s usage of social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs and video gaming sites. Reports have shown that social media sites can be beneficial for kids as it helps them stay in touch, socialize, entertain and even do their homework well. These sites can enhance your kids’ creativity and help them develop various technical skills. However, on the flipside, social media can lead to depression, cyber-bullying and exposure to inappropriate content also. Too much time spent surfing through social media sites can lead to kids neglecting their studies, physical activity and even sleep!

There is a new button in the world of Facebook! And no, we’re not talking about the Poke or Like buttons. After years on end of sharing links to blogs, videos, articles and more private information, Facebook has finally rolled out the “Send” button that allows users to share links privately. By clicking on the button, users can now share information with each other through email without the mass fanfare of the Like button. Some of the early adopters of this Send button are People.com, Huffington Post and Gilt Groupe. Currently, the Like button is being used by nearly 2.5 million website to better expose and integrate their products on to Facebook’s vast platform. The Send button will enhance popularity. The Send button is Facebook’s attempt to be seen in a favorable way by the skeptics who feel that the site is going too far as far as sharing user’s private information is concerned. Facebook is also going to be launching major improvements in the future.

Everybody makes mistakes. Companies, employees – everybody! Services sometimes don’t live up to expectations and products sometimes malfunction. Once the press gets an idea of your misfortunes, you’re just about done in for. The best way to maintain your reputation is through social media! Catapult your social media team into acknowledging online that your brand is aware of the allegations being made. Talk to your audience through Facebook and Twitter and don’t just limit it to this. When a PR crisis occurs, your business is at stake. Here are a few ways to use social media to overcome bad press: Let your boss do the talking: The public doesn’t want to hear from the employees in the case of a PR crisis. They want to hear from the head honcho – the big boss. So, ask your CEO or brand manager to show up in front of the masses and assume responsibility for the mistake made while at the same time offer a plan of action and a solution. Use YouTube: Apart from discussing the matter with your...

Measuring your Returns on Investment from your social media campaign can be a bit difficult, what with all the real world business performance metrics failing to give accurate results. Measuring your social media ROI is indeed very challenging; however studies have shown that nearly 65% of the companies who use social media are also using engagement data as the top metric to measure ROI. 22% of the companies on the other use product revenue to define performance. Here are 5 tools to help you measure your social media ROI: Viralheat: This is a social media analytics tool that is enabled with Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz and offers analysis based on sentiments to identify the moods. It helps companies to discover supporters and detractors who are talking about you. It monitors, informs and shows you which of these conversations are going viral. It also provides insights about your social media campaign. Social Networking Media ROI Calculator: This is a free tool that helps to calcul...

Today, everybody seems to be tuned into social media, through their computers or mobile phones. Everybody seems to commending social media for its various uses. But what can the flipside be? Here we will talk about the pros and cons of social media. Pros of Social Media Although a lot of people say that social media is killing our psyche, it is however in fact working wonders in a number of fields including journalism. It opens new windows for new opportunities in every field. The most important aspect of social media is that it is easy to access and made specifically for the audience. Getting the latest news on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is easy now. However, it can work wonders for journalism in many different ways. Blogging is a reliable source nowadays. Blogs are probably the fastest way of spreading news and can do so even before a reporter published or broadcasts a story. Twitter is another great way of spreading news. In the latest Japan disaster, Twitter feeds...

Bloggers tend to be extremely passionate and versatile when it comes to writing. But most of them spend hours on end wondering what more can they do to make their blogs more reliable, popular and useful for their viewers. In the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration that took place, bloggers received some very useful answers about how Facebook can be used to boost their blogs. The Internet is largely used to search for all kinds of information, but it is also used to make many discoveries through the people you connect with. For instance, 92 percent of mothers who use Facebook use it to keep up-to-date with their friends and family. And, 50 percent of mothers who use Facebook use it to learn about various brands and to get recommendations through friends. Every day, nearly 1 million users are being added to Facebook, and bloggers can capitalize on this to feed their blogs through Facebook or by using the Notes tool. Here is how you can do it: Start by creating a page and posting all you...

Social networking can seem very complicated to most of us, especially if you’ve got nothing but an empty Facebook or Twitter page with no friends and no followers. Building a loyal following takes a tremendous amount of time, but by taking a few simple steps, you’ll see your social media presence expand faster than you can imagine. Here are a few ways to attract more followers on your social networking site: Start by putting all your social media buttons and links on your website or blog. Make sure that all the Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn networks are clearly visible on your web pages with links to those pages. Add all of your social media links at the end of your emails, newsletters and any kind of electronic media. Invite people to become a “Fan” on Facebook or to “Follow” you on Twitter. Expand your followers through social media. Post a message on your Facebook page and invite people to follow you on Twitter. On LinkedIn, add all of your social networking links to your profile p...

Larry Page, Google’s new CEO, is passionate about social networking, and so is Google! And he’s immensely interested in getting Google onto the social networking platform. Google has been repeatedly saying that Facebook is not a real competitor to them, in spite of many of the Google employees shifting to Facebook. Does Google get intimidated by Facebook? It seem this way, what with the whole frenzy of social networking tests and activities going on in Google. Google has been making several attempts to get it right as far as social networking is concerned. They’ve tried to buy out Friendster, but couldn’t do so, and now they are encouraging their employees to work harder in this area. Google had launched Orkut a month before Facebook came on to the scene and was the biggest social networking site at the time. But with the emergence of Facebook, Google has lost its top spot. Google feels that its future success largely depends on its social networking capabilities and not on email or se...

Senior citizens has increasingly started turning towards social networking sites like Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. Social networking amongst seniors has become so popular that many of the North Shore senior centers and councils are holding workshops to teach senior citizens about how to use Facebook. Many of these workshops are booked out! Many senior citizens are now creating their own Facebook profile pages and using it on a regular basis. Most senior citizens confess to using Facebook more than actually watching television! Social networking is a great way for senior citizens to keep in touch with their friends and family. What with more and more people going social, the only thing left to happen was the seniors joining up. And now that this seems to be the case can anyone argue that social network is not a phenomenon?

Studies have shown that most students head straight for Facebook the first thing in the morning; the minute they wake up. Surveys have shown that Facebook is the most popular social media platform that students go to for their daily social media fix; the first thing in the morning. Nearly 84% of students use this site before they go to any other site and nearly 96% of students say that they have to visit Facebook every day. These findings have established that Facebook is still the leading social networking site used by students, followed by YouTube, Twitter and then the other rivals. The biggest reason why students prefer to use Facebook as the leading social networking site is because: 83% of them use social media because their friends use it too. 3 in 5 students use social media because it is fun or provides them with knowledge. Half use social media to make their lives easier.

Quepasa Corporation, the founder and operator of quepasa.com is a popular social networking and gaming platform for the Latino community. Today, it announced the results of its social media advertising campaign that was sold through its reseller partner – Sony Pictures Television Ad Sales Latin America. This campaign was Quepasa’s first such campaign and has resulted in more than 13 million user engagements – which is a record-breaking success for the company. The campaign was designed to support the launch of a new Mexican consumer product. The campaign was brought about to promote the product through a broader media than television, Internet and radio. The campaign invited people to share their entries across social profiles in order to win points and prizes. What’s more, participants could also double their points by taking part is “high value” tasks. In just a matter of 6 weeks, the campaign generated more than 13 million engagements. The DSM technology was responsible for producin...

Search online for a specific topic and you’ll get mixed results that could relate to or not relate to what you are looking for. This can be very frustrating form a browser. So, in an effort to get better and more personalized search results to online queries, most search engines have started tapping into social media sites for recommendations. This step is considered to be the most groundbreaking step in the last few years of online search, and has managed to make the online search experience a better and smoother experience. Internet searchers are constantly on the lookout for the best search results and should not be fooled by low-quality websites that take advantage of loopholes in the system. And what better way to do this than by using social media sites? Only one friend will know what their other friends want and can recommend the best and most tailored links. Online search has been a frustrating experience off late. And this is why introducing people is a great way to boost onli...

The big guys at Twitter have started using their own social networking platform to share the latest milestones that have been met by the microblogging site. The promotional team at Twitter has unleashed a whole barrage of tweets that exclusively detail some of the company’s biggest accomplishments during the first quarter of 2011. Some of the most interesting, and impressive news shared includes: The first quarter of 2011 seems to be very big with more than a 41% increase in the number of Tweets per day globally, and a 38% increase in the number of Tweets per day in the US alone. From December to March, there was a noticeable 52% increase in the number of account signups, with a 57% increase in the US alone. Mobile growth on Twitter was huge. A 50% increase in monthly mobile signups was observed. The first quarterly increase in the number of Twitter users per month include: 104% Android, 55% iPhone, 72% iPad and 51% Blackberry. Twitter is now clocking the number of tweets per day at 15...

Many organizations and public bodies have shown concerns over allowing their staff members access to social networking sites. But are they right or wrong? Many people believe that organizations that use social media gain certain benefits by using these internal systems to generate a sense of loyalty or a sense of community within the organization, but still others believe that embracing social networking in the organization can result in breach of practices, especially with privacy. This leads us to the question that does allowing your staff to access social networking sites from work impair productivity or breach privacy? Or does granting access to social networking sites provide for more useful communications and demonstrating to your staff that you, as the organization, trust them to use this technology in a healthy manner?

The biggest threat to your online activities would come from the lack of adequate security measures taken on mobile web browsers and social networking sites, and from high targeted attacks against organizations. This is a conclusion made by an Internet security threat report recently. Today, hackers are banking on gaining trust from their colleagues and are using this to launch online attacks. The biggest online attack came in 2010 and was known as Stuxnet. It largely targeted all the industrial control systems and has been dubbed as the most sophisticated malware to ever exist. It proved that malware can even be used to disrupt any vital infrastructure, such as the water pipelines, electrical power supply grids and financial trading systems. In 2010, targeted attacks were not only restricted to large multinational companies, but also included a number of smaller organizations as well. With smaller companies attempting to reduce the number of helpdesk calls being made, attackers are in...

Facebook has recently updated its iPhone application, which mainly focuses on the Facebook Places application and also gives users the ability to “unfriend” contacts from their phones. With this application, you can now check out various events like TV shows and concerts and other stuff that you may like. You can also view various venues on a built-in map. The application is not what you would exactly call as groundbreaking, but it still is a good update. If you want to “unfriend” someone in your contacts list, all you have to do is click on the arrow in the top right corner of the person’s profile and you’ll get a new menu with the option.

Google’s latest attempt to implement social networking elements into its search engines appears to not be making a mark. Google is struggling to overcome the serious threats that are posed by the Facebook and Microsoft search collaboration. Google’s latest social search feature, +1, was released on Wednesday and has received weak reviews. Many users feel that it is potentially confusing to their browsing experience, it is too weak to overshadow its strong and already established competition and it has a weak social graph anchor. From the public’s point of view, the +1 feature looks like a copy of the Facebook “Like” button, which makes Google look more like a follower than an innovator. This move is not considered to be revolutionary. It’s being seen as a move made by Google to catch up with what Facebook has already done. While Google still remains the leader in search usage and advertising, it does not have the kind of social networking and social media influence that Facebook and Tw...