It seems as if every big event nowadays is live tweeted by brands seeking to gain free marketing on the back of these popular events. This last Super Bowl saw brands literally setting up war rooms filled with social media professionals, graphic designers and even lawyers, simply to post content in reaction to real-time events. For most events targeted by brands in this…

When considering the successful use of social media by a business, the first thing that pops into many people’s minds is quantity. Not necessarily quantity of posts, but how big their audience is. Many judge social media success by the number of fans they have on Facebook, or followers on Twitter. If that number is large and/or growing, they feel as if their efforts are a…

In yet another move by LinkedIn to create a more engaging user experience, the company has decided to penalize any users of the InMail feature that send mail that is irrelevant to the recipient. As LinkedIn cannot read the messages, it had to formulate a way to determine which messages are more likely irrelevant – namely those which receive no replies. LinkedIn used to offer…

It’s no secret that the FTC has been monitoring brand usage of social media. The hammer finally fell when the FTC ruled last week that companies and agencies utilizing social media must include disclaimers. This is regardless of the social media platform and whether or not the account is a brand account, an agency account, or company employee’s personal account – and yes,…

Content marketing, in general, can provide many valuable benefits. It can help create and maintain a brand presence; assist in search engine optimization; and position executives as thought leaders. It can also serve as a valuable source of information for both customers and potential customers.

There are many types of content marketing. Technically speaking,…

In the past, a business could increase per post reach on Facebook simply by creating unique and engaging quality content. That has now changed and, for the most part, ads are the only real posts creating any significant reach. Organic posts on Facebook pages have seen reach drop into the 1-2 percent range, down from 12+ just 2 short years ago.  Since Facebook’s IPO, and the…

Customer complaints happen. No matter how much a business wants to provide great customer service, there are times when the dominos aren’t lined up exactly right. The chain breaks somewhere, preventing the last domino from falling. For the most part, customers understand that businesses aren’t perfect. It certainly helps when the customer that is having a poor experience is…

While I love to be active myself, I certainly could not call myself a big fan of watching and keeping up with sports. It seems, however, that you cannot turn on a television, read a newspaper or use any social media recently without hearing about continuous misdeeds and wrongdoings of NFL players. I’m sure that you’ve seen them as well. So this is not designed to rehash,…

It’s widely accepted that content created by third parties in general holds more value for businesses than content they create themselves. Many have felt that consumers better trusted product information and reviews written by neutral persons. According to new research by Vibrant Media, however, that thought process may no longer be the case, if it ever…

Throughout history, public relations professionals have assisted companies in gaining exposure and getting the right message to the right audience at the right time. In the past, PR agencies relied on connections with journalists, media contacts and industry publications to relay relevant company news. With the arrival of social media, and digital marketing, PR agencies have…

Social media can be a tricky thing. Finding and publishing content that a business’s audience will both enjoy and interact with can be challenging. And as Facebook exposure for business pages is increasingly diminishing, businesses are more dependent on audience engagement than ever for those elusive likes, shares and comments. The type of content posted is highly important…

Things change. There’s no getting around that. The most effective marketing strategy in the world can be rendered ineffective in a day by an algorithm change. Or your thriving Facebook page could become a ghost town due to the monetization of Facebook. The only constant in the world is people’s desire for content. Content comes in many forms. In fact, everything you put out…

As a PR professional, my primary goal is to assist my clients in achieving the most exposure possible and build top-of-mind brand awareness among their potential customers. To help better understand how to best position my clients for success, I did a little research on how dealers perceive vendors and their practices.

I reached out to…

When writing content – whether that content is a short, social media post or blog article, or a full-length feature article – form is just as important as the content itself. Proper spelling and grammar can dictate whether your content is received well or not. It’s not uncommon for readers to start reading an article or social media post that initially grabbed their…

Just like any business, I have potential clients that I reach out to in an effort to see whether my services are a good fit. Recently, a potential client, who I had been talking to but hadn’t heard from in a little bit, suddenly “liked” one of my posts on my personal Facebook profile. While this does happen occasionally, I have always used LinkedIn as my primary method of…

In a heartbreaking video titled “The Importance of Appearances,” a social experiment unfolds that sets up the same scenario with two very different people. In the first scenario, we see a person dressed as a homeless man collapse in the middle of a busy sidewalk, as if he were ill, and begin to cry for help. The pedestrians look curiously, but continue to walk by the man as he lies there for over 5 minutes with no assistance. The second scenario shows the same incident, but the person is…

Last Thursday, Facebook launched Facebook Newswire. In partnership with Storyful, a social media content verifier and aggregator, Facebook has entered the business of delivering news to its community. This service is designed to identify hot news topics and articles. It does this…

It’s been widely reported by social media experts that organic reach for Facebook pages has plummeted in the past 6 months; from as high as 15%, to the current 1-2%.  As a public company, Facebook has a need to appease its shareholders by monetizing its platform as much as possible. Facebook knows that there is a fine line between delivering relevant content that users want…

Unless you’ve been living in a box for the past couple weeks, you’d undoubtedly heard about the now infamous selfie taken by Ellen DeGeneres during the 2014 Academy Awards. Ellen DeGeneres, who hosted the show, took a moment to compose a selfie in the audience with the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie, amongst others. She then proceeded to ask viewers to retweet it. The results were…

The growing importance of content marketing is clear; small businesses that post unique and relevant blogs, videos, press releases and social media on the Internet can gain significant competitive advantage in their industries. Increased web visibility, more visitors to websites, improved SEO rankings and brand recognition as a thought leader are just some of the benefits…