Social Media Marketing Trends And Best Practices 2014

#SocialMediaImpact

Creator Playbook for Brands

Introducing the VR Dashboard: HootSuite Announces Oculus Rift Integration - HootSuite Social Media Management

Introducing the VR Dashboard: HootSuite Announces Oculus Rift Integration - HootSuite Social Media Management: "When Facebook announced its two-billion-dollar acquisition of virtual reality company Oculus Rift, the big question was, how will they integrate virtual reality with the Facebook experience? With our new Oculus Rift integration, HootSuite has the answer.

Engaging with fans and customers is the bedrock of a successful social media strategy, and there’s no better way to connect than with an immersive virtual reality experience. When so many businesses struggle to include social media as a part of their business reality, virtual reality becomes the perfect environment to easily improve engagement.

With the HootSuite-Facebook-Oculus Rift integration, you can:

Collaborate in virtual command center environments to handle high volume or sensitive social media responses
Test messaging in simulated scenarios
Immerse yourself in customer feedback
Stylize analytics reports in augmented reality
Avoid carpal tunnel by pushing virtual buttons, not real ones"



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Ten Creative Real Estate Marketing Ideas

Ten Creative Real Estate Marketing Ideas: "Selling real estate requires energy, creativity, perseverance, optimism and a fantastic marketing plan. The most successful real estate agents know how to target the most likely buyers, and shape their marketing campaigns to favor both buyer and seller markets. Here are 10 of the most useful real estate marketing ideas.



 1. Sell the Lifestyle
When you attempt to sell a home, you´re not just selling the walls, ceilings, floors and rooftops; you´re selling a whole new lifestyle. If you want to get a leg up on your competition, stop marketing properties. Everyone reads the same MLS listing. Stop trying to market yourself. No offense, but nobody cares. To make the sale, you must appeal to the client´s desire for a fantasy lifestyle. Consider the headings you might see in International Living Magazine: “The Joy of Living in This Medieval French Town.” Without going into detail, this headline sparks an immediate fantasy of a particular type of life."



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StarBuzzOnline.com

Klout Joins Lithium - starbuzz.ca@gmail.com - Gmail

I am proud to share the news that Klout is joining forces with Lithium Technologies. We started Klout in 2008 with the crazy idea of measuring the world’s influence. We wanted to help people understand and be recognized for the impact of their voice. It has been amazing to watch this happen. The Klout Score has grown into the standard of influence and our platform has evolved significantly to help users share their passions online. As Klout takes the next step toward helping our users, I believe that Lithium is the ideal partner. Lithium powers many of the most vibrant communities online for leading brands like Spotify, Skype and Sephora. Together, we can do more to help you share your passions, measure your impact and grow your reputation. I want you to know that our mission has not changed — Lithium shares our passion for empowering every person to understand and maximize their impact online. Klout will continue helping content creators be great online. You will still be able to get insights about your social media performance, find new content to share, and be rewarded with Perks on both Klout.com and our mobile app. On behalf of the Klout team, I would like to thank everyone who has ever checked their Klout Score. We are humbled by your passion, curiosity, excitement and support. We look forward to continuing to serve you as we begin this new journey.

Sincerely, Joe Fernandez CEO & Co-Founder, Klout

Klout Joins Lithium - starbuzz.ca@gmail.com - Gmail

9 Small Business Twitter Marketing Examples to Study | Social Media Examiner

By Eric Sornoso
Published March 25, 2014 

Are you debating whether your small business should invest time on Twitter?

Do you wonder how Twitter can help your business?

By being an active part of the Twitter community and sharing the right mix of content, you can reach a larger audience, generate more leads and become the go-to source when customers are ready to buy.

In this article I’ll show you how nine small businesses use Twitter to cater to their audiences, find prospects and expand brand recognition.

Why Twitter for Small Businesses?

Twitter has evolved a lot since 2007. It used to be about conversations, but these days some would say it’s just another way to push out marketing messages and links without true engagement with customers.9 Small Business Twitter Marketing Examples to Study | Social Media Examiner:



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StarBuzzOnline.com

Top 10 Social Media Tips for Small Businesses - HootSuite Social Media Management

Top 10 Social Media Tips for Small Businesses - HootSuite Social Media Management: "Social media marketing is an important aspect of promoting your small business. In order to set up an effective social media marketing strategy, a basic understanding of the relationship between business and social media is needed.



Top 10 Social Media Tips for Small Businesses:

• Use social media to sell your product
• Join Twitter
  Increase
• Twitter followers
• Build relationships by following back
• Figure out # of tweets per day
• Tweet at optimal times
• Join LinkedIn
• LinkedIn company pages vs LinkedIn profiles
• Share engaging content on your Facebook page 
• Post appropriate content" For retailers Pinterest is a good choice

A Streamlined Look for Pages | Facebook for Business

A Streamlined Look for Pages | Facebook for Business: "A Streamlined Look for Pages

This week, we’ll begin rolling out a streamlined look for Pages on desktop that will make it easier for people to find the information they want and help Page admins find the tools they use most. Here are the key features of the update:
"



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StarBuzzOnline.com

A Streamlined Look for Pages | Facebook for Business

A Streamlined Look for Pages | Facebook for Business: "A Streamlined Look for Pages

This week, we’ll begin rolling out a streamlined look for Pages on desktop that will make it easier for people to find the information they want and help Page admins find the tools they use most. Here are the key features of the update:
"



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StarBuzzOnline.com

How to embed a video in an email – Flashissue Blog

How to embed a video in an email – Flashissue Blog: "Why GIFs are great

If you’ve never thought about including a video in your email here’s three reason’s I’ve started experimenting:

Occasionally it’s more effective to show something rather than tell.
Embedding the video “image” loses people. They are less likely to watch the video if they have to click elsewhere to view it.
A .gif automatically plays in a loop so there is less friction in getting your audience to view the content than having to click “Play”."



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5 Hashtag Tracking Tools for Twitter, Facebook and Beyond | Social Media Examiner

#tag 

5 Hashtag Tracking Tools for Twitter, Facebook and Beyond | Social Media Examiner: "Why Use a Hashtag?
Hashtags make it easier for people to find and follow discussions about brands, events and promotions. They also let brands track the performance of promotions across social media.

Hashtags can determine how easily you can target and track a campaign. You’ve probably seen many businesses use generic hashtags like #food or #chocolate. While these will get your update into a large conversation, using such broad hashtags is wasting your time.

Can you imagine how many posts (tweets or otherwise) contain #chocolate every minute? Managing the hashtag would be a nightmare. You’d spend weeks sorting through every instance of the hashtag to determine which mentions apply to you.

It’s worth the effort (and your sanity) to come up with a unique hashtag that fits with your particular campaign."



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5 Ways to Use Pictures to Tell Visual Stories With Social Media | Social Media Examiner

 "Are you sharing your stories with your fans?

Do you use pictures in your social marketing?

People want pictures in their social channels.

When done right, these pictures become visual stories.

In this article, I’ll show you how five brands are using pictures to share their stories and why that’s important.

Great Marketers Are Great Storytellers
As a marketer, you know the importance of stories, but do you know how to tell a story with few or no words at all?

“We’ve now entered a phase in which visual communication is supplanting the written word,” says Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Luminate and former SVP of Netscape.” Some are now calling it the dawn of the Imagesphere.”

Our brains process pictures 60,000 times faster than text. When your brand shares a picture, your fans decide in a split second whether they want to see more.

People upload about 250 million photographs to Facebook every day, and Twitter has become more visual, showing photos and videos right in your feed."

Read more:

5 Ways to Use Pictures to Tell Visual Stories With Social Media | Social Media Examiner



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Meena Chopra - Social Media marketing Professional

Hootsuite professional with 5 years of experience in creating effective social media strategy for campaigns, generating content with compelling messaging right from designing, branding, setting up of different media channels to the execution of social media plans. Providing online videos, pod-casting, sideshows & presentations, ebooks etc. Optimizing customer engagement and brand visibility. Community building. Define metrics & measuring. Developing vast digital, marketing solutions and interactive communities on social networks like Facebook, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn etc. .
What ticks with me is communities, stimulating conversation, people and diversity.

Groucho Marx Wouldn’t Belong to This Club | LinkedIn

Groucho Marx Wouldn’t Belong to This Club | LinkedIn: "Being a member of a club was always about being part of something exclusive.

Becoming a member wasn't meant to be easy — you had to meet criteria, jump through some hoops, prove your value to the whole — but it was worth doing because it conferred special status, gave you exclusive benefits, separated you from the merely mortal.

With American Express, the price of membership was having good credit and then paying your way to an even more special status.

The last few weeks remind us of that club called the Olympics, one reached only through immense commitment and sacrifice, and rewarded by a lifetime of a special kind of glory.

And, let’s not forget the old clubs of England, where the cost of entry was nothing more by one standard and nothing less by another than being a member of a particular social class. See Downton Abbey. Or, shamefully, some clubs of yesteryear which were designed less for inclusion than for exclusion.

But what does being a member mean today when every retailer and service provider asks everyone to join? What are the criteria. What’s the reward? What’s the value exchange?"

READ MORE AT  Groucho Marx Wouldn’t Belong to This Club | LinkedIn

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StarBuzzOnline.com

The 80/20 Rule In Social Media

The 80/20 Rule In Social Media: "The infographic gives us a ton of examples which include:

The infographic gives us a ton of examples which include:

1. Tips – Content that provide tips make people come back for more, especially if they find these to be useful. Make sure that these tips are relevant to your audience and that they may be able to use these frequently if not daily.
2. Video – Video can either be self-promotional or offer relevant information to your audience. These can also be entertaining. Great videos can increase engagement and the number of people who will return to your social media page.
3. How-To – How-To content are related to tips but are usually a step-by-step guide in doing a certain task. Again, make sure that people find value in your how-to content by making them relevant, novel, concise and clear. The goal of this type of content should be to make the lives of those who read it better.
4. Testimonials – Testimonials are a great way to encourage people to buy your product or service. What can be more convincing than a user of a product or service who tells other people that they find the product or service totally worth it?
5. Business Tools – If you make the lives of the people who visit your social media page easier, you are guaranteed that they will be looking out for content that you post, even those which are self-promotional.
6. Blog Posts – Link to blog posts through posts on your social media pages. However, not all blog posts should be self-promotional. Again, give value. A way of doing that is by posting the content mentioned above and below on your blog and linking them in a post on social media.
7. Pictures – Since people are very visual, take advantage of the visual content you already have. If you do not have a trove of photos lying around, go out and make some. Another great way to have photos for social media posts is by browsing great content from others. Just make sure that people will either be entertained or will find something useful in these photos. Also make sure to credit your sources.
8. Graphs – Graphs are a great way to summarize information, especially if you find content inside a table boring (which we’re pretty sure is most of us). Every time you have some useful data which you want to share through social media, ask yourself whether you can share it through a graph.
9. News – Be a great aggregator of news relevant to your industry and your audience and share these on your social media pages. There have been many companies who have been successful with this strategy and they keep their audience by being a great source of news from all over the web. Make sure that you give your two cents about certain developments too.
10. Products – Another thing we’d like to add here is that you should post about your products. However, this can easily become self-promotion. How does one not make it self-promotion? The answer is by sharing how these products can actually be used by your audience. Don’t include a call to action like “Buy now!” If you do great at showing that this is a really helpful product, people are going to buy it even if you don’t say so.

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Make Twitter work for you - Podcast

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Twitter Promotion, How to Encourage Others to Promote for You Social Media Examiner

Twitter Promotion, How to Encourage Others to Promote for You Social Media Examiner: "Do you use social media to promote your product, service or events?

Are you wondering how you can use Twitter to help get more visibility and sales?

To learn how Twitter can be used to encourage others to promote for you, this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast gives you insight into the subject.

More About This Show


The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing."



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LinkedIn Opens Blogging Platform for All

The Definitive Professional Publishing Platform | Official Blog: "We believe in giving our members access to the business knowledge they need to be great at what they do. To put that simply, we are making a commitment to our members: the time you spend on LinkedIn will make you better at your job today.

The valuable Influencer posts and the wide range of professional content from millions of publishers that we currently aggregate on LinkedIn are powerful, but only the tip of the iceberg. Combined, our members have extremely valuable and varied experiences; however, their knowledge and expertise has not yet been captured and shared.
Starting today,

LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled. "

Read more: The Definitive Professional Publishing Platform | Official Blog:



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Few Tips for an Effective Social Media Strategy

Few points that must be considered while getting in to social media marketing for your businesses.

• It is important that the social media efforts are integrated effectively into the clients' existing marketing and sales strategy which could include digital and traditional marketing. 
• There should be a consistency in corporate brand messaging and brand image across the web including social media channels.
•  Listening, responding, communicating with the customer using social media and help solving your their problems.
•  Social media marketing starts from within the organization and the best original content gets generated with in the organization
• Digital and social media marketing are all about sales and image building and  when used effectively provides best results.

3 Unique Ways to Use Pinterest for Business Social Media Examiner

3 Unique Ways to Use Pinterest for Business Social Media Examiner: "3 Unique Ways to Use Pinterest for Business

By Cynthia Sanchez
Published August 5, 2013


Does your business have a clear Pinterest strategy?

Have you been struggling to figure out how Pinterest could help market your business?

Pinterest represents a massive opportunity for both consumer-focused and business-to-business companies.

In this article, I’ll show you three ways to build a successful Pinterest presence for your business."



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Top 5 Trends That Will Drive The Future Tech

Top 5 Trends That Will Drive The Future Tech: "5. Consumer Driven Supercomputing


Supercomputers always does huge processing in seconds. Applying that to the service industry is the new trend. IBM, Google and Microsoft are racing to combine natural language processing with huge Big Data systems in the cloud. That makes large amount of data available at all corners of the world and that too if you literally ask your system in your spoken language. First such foray into this field is IBM's Watson which is supposedly helping doctors fight cancer by natural language capabilities, hypothesis generation, and evidence-based learning to support medical professionals as they make decisions.
"



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StarBuzzOnline.com

Case Study: Wayfair.com sells home goods with Pinterest

Case Study: Wayfair.com sells home goods with Pinterest: "How Wayfair uses Pinterest to sell home goods

Wayfair.com sells more than 7 million items from 12,000 brands. Pinterest was the ideal place for the e-commerce megastore to share striking, visual content and engage with shoppers in an authentic way. As Wayfair.com CEO Niraj Shah puts it: "Visual imagery drives inspiration, it's what makes you want to buy things."

Read our case study to learn how Wayfair.com uses Pinterest to drives high value sales and major referral traffic. 

Add a profile widget to your website
Pinterest profile widgets are a fun, visual way to show off your latest Pins and attract new followers right on your website.

We’ve made it easy to add the widget right from your Pinterest account. Learn more on our blog.
"



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