Social Media Optimization News | Social Media Marketing Tips

Reports have shown that YouTube was the fastest growing social media site in the month of April for the second consecutive month. This online video sharing website now accounts for nearly 1 out of 5 visits to a social networking site. YouTube is now established as the third biggest site, overtaking Hotmail recently. However, Facebook on the other hand has lost market share of the number of visits for the second consecutive month in a row, dropping to below 55% of market share for the first time since last year. The fastest climbing social networking sites were Twitter, Yahoo!, Tumblr and Answers. MySpace and Club Penguin have noticeably dropped in market share.

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!

In the latest news to come out of the social media market , Facebook has recently announced that it will be improving its search methodology. This move has been designed to allow users to locate the results that they are looking for easily. Every day, the search market is literally abuzz with different kinds of activity. Greplin, for instance, is a startup that recently left Beta. All Greplin users can now conduct searches across their Facebook, Gmail, Twitter and LinkedIn connections. The search company’s primary services are to support queries in Google Docs, Google Reader and Google Calendar. It also hopes to follow tweets very soon. Google also released a tool to battle online spam. This tool allows its Chrome users to filter out unwanted websites from their search results. With this block option, users have to simply click a button and add all the undesirable sites to a list of blocked links, and these will never appear in their search results again. Facebook also redesign...

Freedom Communications, Inc. believes in encouraging its staff and associates to participate in social media, as it believes that this can be used to generate more interest in the company’s products and services and has the capability to increase the business opportunities. However, the company also aims to ensure that these social media communications maintains integrity and brand reputation, while at the same time reduces the number of potential legal risks. All employees of the company are required to sign this new policy. This new policy applies to all the Freedom Communications associates. The company believes that the Internet provides businesses with a large number of unique business opportunities, what with interactive discussions and shared information taking place on Facebook, Twitter, chat rooms, blogs, etc. However, allowing staff to use social media freely can also be risky for the company, as confidential information, brand reputation, etc. can be jeopardized. To ...

What with everything going virtual, why leave Valentine’s Day behind? On this special day, some of the biggest brands like Mattel, Victoria’s Secret and CBS are turning to social media to market their products on Valentine’s Day. Many brands have been pushing the Valentine’s Day hype on many of the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as YouTube. Companies are vying to get the best and most exposure for Valentine’s Day. On an average, a person would usually spend about &116 on Valentine’s merchandise. These estimates show an approximately 12.8% increase since last year. Valentine’s Day is about being social. So, let your loved know you love them and let your entire network know about a Valentine’s Day gift on Facebook and Twitter. This creates a lot of brand resonance.

Roots Canada is a major Canadian retailer that has recently started using Facebook’s “pop up” store feature to preview its current spring collection. Today, there are more and more retailers and businesses that are taking to social media to promote their products and services. This web-based store was first launched on Tuesday, and is similar to any other pop up store in the real world. It has a small, temporary site that offers a limited selection of products to increase brand awareness. By using Facebook to launch their digital store, Roots has instant access to millions of Canadians who are already signed up with Facebook to connect with friends across the globe. Tanja Zelko, the manager of online marketing and customer experience at Roots has said that if you are already signed up with Facebook and spend many hours browsing and connecting with people, then you no longer need to leave the site in order to shop. Although it is very difficult to measure the value of social media, ther...

Facebook, Google, yahoo, Twitter, Yelp, Skype, YouTube are just some of the social media toys in vogue today. They have successfully opened up the lines of communication between millions of people like never before. However, the vast capacity of their tools and features like chat, instant messages, texting has opened gates to multiple conversations that can sometimes be head spinning. The good news is that now these companies are trying to streamline their users' online experience. Facebook and Google have already started doing this with features like Facebook Messages and Google Buzz, respectively. The sea of data is drowning people. A research carried out in 2010 revealed that corporate users receive around 110 messages on an average per day. Twitter says it has around 110 million tweets per day. These consequences can be major for all the big companies that ignore conversation overload. AOL executive, Brad Garlinghouse, says, “Consumers don't have bandwidth to proce...