How Social Media Privacy Can Build a Team Atmosphere

Social media privacy can build a team atmosphere when inside of a business. This is because maintaining social media privacy is not an easy job. There are many mistakes that can happen on the social networks that will reveal information that was not supposed to be revealed. Therefore, it can take a lot of people checking and double checking posts before they are sent out. However, the time that a company spends on maintaining this social media privacy is time well spent because the amount of information that a business can protect is the amount of time and effort they may be able to use to stay ahead of their competition.

There have been many celebrities on the bigger networks who have accidentally posted messages to their friends and families on the social networks. This means that they have accidentally released information that they were not intending to release. This can happen to anyone and has happened to regular users of the social networking systems. However, this could be fatal for a business, because there are certain things that businesses do not want their customers or competitors to know about their businesses. Revealing any of this information is a massive problem.

This happens because most of the social networks that exist are set to release all information to everyone. They are not set to default to total privacy. This is a problem because it is far too easy to release information that is not supposed to be released on the networks because of the settings on most of the social media systems. A business needs to use a network that has their default settings set to private. This is the only way (via the system) to make sure that the message is only seen by those who are supposed to see it and not seen by those who should not see the message.

The only other way to make sure this does not happen is to have an army of people behind the post who make sure that the settings are right. This is because everyone will check the post before it goes out. This system makes sure that the post is safe for consumption for those it is supposed to go to on the social networking program. This system of checks and balances makes sure that the business has the privacy that they need even if the program cannot support them (it is still important to note that the workers are human and there is still a potential for them to fail at checking everything in a post).

In conclusion, a person should never try to run a social media campaign on their own inside a business. There is far too great of a potential for that person to post something that was meant for certain eyes only. The only way to handle this situation is for a team to handle the post. The team will grow closer because they manage the social profile together. Therefore, a social media program for privacy and effectiveness is a team sport.

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Has Pinterest Got You Pinned?

Pinterest is described as an online pin board, to organize and share things you love. The site lets you add your own personally created virtual pin boards of things that you like and interest you. You have the capability of naming each of your pin boards which creates categories such as Recipes to try, Crafty, Art, Things that make Me Smile, New Workouts, etc. The site is set up in a very organized and simple manner and puts all of the "pins" that other people have found or like in categories, as well. You can follow people and "repin" things they like. You can even search something specific instead of manually looking through a category. If you know of a great recipe or want post information about SEO internet marketing that you want to add personally, then you just copy the URL from that particular website page, head back to Pinterest, select 'add a pin' and paste it in the space provided. Voila! It's an endless cycle of evolving eye candy and addicting discovery.

The site launched in March of 2010 by two college friends that wanted to create a place where people could share their interests. Initially, they experimented with people that were close to them. Today, the site has caught on and the growth has got big companies taking notice. Over 5 million people are now pinned to Pinterest. It is a big marketing melting pot that has struck a chord with people all over the world. When will you join in the addiction?

I have heard friend after friend tell me that they have been on the site and are anxiously awaiting their official invite that they requested from the home page. The site does allow you to search through pins without being a logged in member, but this does not allow you any of the fabulous benefits that Pinterest has to offer. So, how do you become an official pinster? The easiest way is to ask a friend that is already a member to invite you. Kind of makes it feel like an exclusive club. Maybe this is Pinterest's way of adding to the intrigue.

To make things even more heavenly you have the ability to report a pin that you find questionable or offensive. This will immediately pull the pin from public view and send it to a team that is in charge of deciding whether it is appropriate or not. The goal is to make Pinterest a safe place and the members of the site, in a sense, help police the content that is posted.

So, with explosive growth there has to change, which means better and more user friendly features. You can always access the Pinterest Blog and see what's new. Just recently the free downloadable iPhone app has been enhanced. Rest assured that if you are not a mobile Apple user, you can still access the site from your mobile web browser. Just today Pinterest unveiled a makeover to their site. It is subtle, but if you click on something that catches your eye from one of your followers, you will get a snapshot view of some more of that person's pin, the original pinner and the URL that the pin came from all in one well organized screen.

So what will they come up with next? Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure- The future of Pinterest will be an interesting one.

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New Business Advantages of Social Media Optimization Techniques

Ever since social media has gained the access in the online marketplace, online business owners get another way to promote their business online. Now they have a great tool enhance their business presence across the market place using digital media. The process of social media optimization is pretty similar to the viral marketing. This is most likely a process to use social bookmarking, video and photo sharing to promote the business website. SM Optimization is most likely the best method to get visitor traffic to a website. In the world of online business, this process is also known as web 2.0 marketing.

Online business owners always want to achieve massive visible traffic on the business websites. They make use of certain social tools like Digg, Furl, Stumble Upon and Propeller etc. These social tools also help to generate one way links from high-ranking websites. The process of SMO is very helpful in offering a great leap in traffic. Social media optimization experts cite a number of strategies to avail best ranking and exposure in the market place. These experts suggest a number of book marking services to ensure tangible results for online businesses. SMO always offers a great opportunity to businesses to have easy and quick linking with inbound links.

The world is a growing place and filled with a digital media revolution. Social networks play a significant role in this revolution. Social media optimization therefore plays an important role in improving the growth prospects of the online business. Facebook and Twitter are two major pillars in the domain of Social networks nowadays. Business owners across the verticals use these two major tools to promote their business in the upcoming market place.

If you also want to harness the true benefits of digital media, you can consult an experienced Social media service provider who can provide best consultation on the strategies. It will also help you to get high-ranking and one way links for your websites.

The technique of SMO takes the help of advertising through the means of major networking forums like social bookmarking, photo sharing websites and micro sites etc. Some of the experts also believe that blog writing and RSS Feeds are also necessary to promote the services among the targeted customer base.

The major benefit of social media optimization includes brand awareness across the social networks and a nurtured platform for fully optimized SEO and internet marketing campaigns for the website. The strategies also ensure good quality traffic to your website and improved non-reciprocal links in the long run.

The Facebook Timeline Covers - A Brief Introduction to the Newest Facebook Feature   Twitter Users Prefer Information to Being Social   Busting The Myths About LinkedIn   Benefits of Having a Neighborhood Network Site   Improving Your Facebook Timeline Fanpages   How to Link to Your Pinterest Pins and Drive Traffic to Your Site   

How to Maximize Facebook Timeline for Your Business Page

Ok, Ok, I know that Timeline looks a little bit like a scrap book your grandmother had in her spare bedroom. Filled with family photo's, recipes, and old letters (remember when we use to actually send those things). I also know that it's a little confusing and quite a bit different then the traditional Facebook Profile Lay-out. Many of us are lost trying to figuring out which post came before which video and so on. Not to mention that it has completely confused the Facebook Stalkers who only use the site to look at other people's photo's and videos!

So knowing all of this, why am I so Hyped and pumped that there will be more Timelines taking over Facebook? Let's break it down, from a business perspective.

First of all, we'll all laugh in a year from now (as our eyes have adjusted to viewing only Timeline pages) when we look back at what Facebook use to look like. I firmly believe that much of the resistance to Timeline is simply people resistance to embrace change, but the fact is that change is hard to live with and impossible to live without, we just have to accept it and adjust to it! So knowing this I'm not worried about the scrap book looking design, we'll all get use to it soon enough.

What excites me are two HUGE benefits to Timeline!! the cover image, and the story telling ability.

Let's start with the cover image. People pay big money for a banner image half the size of what Facebook is giving us with this banner image. This is prime real estate to display the products that you sell, your store front, your address and phone number, or a collage of images from your business. Business pages currently have 5 banner images, that are thumbnail size, and you have to constantly be managing your images every time you upload a new photo to your page (seriously, this is a pain in the A$$ if you upload a lot of photo's). Just from a maintenance point this change will be a relief and a major time saver! I love the cover image, it can also be interchangeable, so you can have 5 different ones made, and occasionally change your cover image to keep your page looking fresh!

Now, let's get down to the meat and potatoes, the story telling ability!!

One of the most powerful components to a successful brand is the creation story of the company. How Richard Branson started Virgin Airlines goes a little something like this:

His flight was delayed to mechanical issue with the plane. He was where none of us ever want to be, trapped in a small airport, with no word on how long the flight will be delayed, no alternate flights, no beds, Airport bars are closed, just stuck sitting in those uncomfortable chairs with his feet extended and rested on his carry-on luggage. this is where most of us would have camped and just let the airlines have their dominant way with us. But Richard is different, he is progressive, active, and entrepreneurial! Knowing that he had a long time until the plane would leave, he walked down the hallway, out of the doors and into a completely different section of the Airport. Back in those days many smaller airports had a separate wing for private planes. Richard poked around that hanger, looking for a pilot with a working plane. It didn't take long until he found a pilot with a larger plane designed for chartering flights. he got a price quote, thanked the man, said he would be back, and waked back into the terminal where his co-passengers had been grumbling about. With his entrepreneurial spirit at full strength he made a quick calculation of the number of seats and the price to charter the plane. Next he grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and wrote "Private chartered flight" with the price under it. Within 30 minutes he filled the private plane and was airborne!!!!

What an amazing story, and to know that at that moment the concept for Virgin Airlines was born!!!

Just hearing that story brings you closer to the brand of Virgin and how it makes you feel to fly with them. Now imagine if you could not only hear that story, but see images of a young Richard Branson holding up that sign. see status updates of the passengers flying in the plane. See who was tagged in the flight. Then see a video of the plane landing!!

Timeline can bring your businesses creation story to life with Video and photo!! Making it real time and personable!! You could then Chronicle the mishaps, journey, and success of your brand as it grows!!!

Don't think that this is only capable for a big brand like Virgin. Your businesses creation story is important too!! And you have a story, everyone has a story of how their business got created.

Timeline will also be great for the present, and the future. Start to be consistent in adding photo's of major events in your business. Tag customers and add photo's constantly, so your story is being told!!!

this is an amazing opportunity, Jump on board and embrace the change!!!!!

get a free eBook of the 5 Facebook Fan page Secrets, and schedule a free 20 minute Facebook strategy session webinar, and for more Facebook tips and just funny videos check out our page at http://www.facebook.com/jeffandvaden

Vaden Hoffman

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Do You Know How People Find You Online?

You probably have a Google Analytics account, but if you're not a search marketing wizard you've probably only used it to see at a high level how much traffic you're getting, and where in general your visitors are coming from. Google Analytics can do much, much more though. While this isn't intended to be a guide to using advanced features of Analytics, I'm going to show you a few tricks that can really make the info you get out of it work for you.

Knowing where your visitors are coming from, and expanding these channels, can make a huge difference to not only your traffic, but your conversions as well.

To illustrate my points I'll be using data from one of my own sites, a fledgling retail site in a developing country. The site is spending about $100 a month on AdWords, and has spent a few hundred on sponsored posts and things like that, but has done little off-site SEO due to resource constraints.

Get to Know Your Sources

The above is a table you should be familiar with - top 10 traffic sources. As you can see, Google organic traffic is by far the biggest, but there are quite a few referrals that are performing as well (about 25% of traffic).

But can you spot the anomaly? The referrer in line 9 sends traffic with a much lower time on site, which means those visitors aren't finding what they were expecting, and leaving. That's interesting, but because the numbers are so low, and it's not across the board, we don't have to worry about it.

Clearly, from this graph it's obvious that there's something to building up these referrals. We got most of them from paying around $50 apiece for sponsored posts. Over 3 months, those investments have definitely paid for themselves when our conversion rate of around 1% is considered.

Understanding Your Visitors

Next up I've got two simple sets of data you can pull straight from the Traffic Sources dashboard. The first is the browsers people are using:

The point of this exercise is to see whether or not you're effectively catering to visitors. We can see that most visitors are using IE, but that Firefox and Chrome make up an equally-large share. Since IE and the others treat web pages quite differently, we had better make sure we look good in all three (four if you add in Safari).

The site doesn't have a mobile page yet, but considering that those visitors are only about 5%, it's not really worth investing in right now.

Another good way to check if browser issues are affecting site performance is to change the dropdown "Contribution to Total" to another metric, such as New Visits or Time on Site. If you discover that one of these drops significantly for any browser, which means you have a problem with that browser that is affecting visitor experience.

Another metric I'm going to show you, which is a little more complex, is simply comparing the total visitors with new visits, and with returning visitors. (You can add these segments using the "Advanced Segments" dropdown above your chart).

This tells an interesting story, which I've highlighted in yellow. It's great that we're getting so many return visitors, but what's this? The return visitors are performing much better than all other segments. Much lower bounce rate, and much higher time on site. That tells us one important thing: it's really worth cultivating whatever is driving these return visits.

It also tells us what our marketing strategy should be: we're getting the return visits automatically, doing little to entice people back to the store. That means we should focus on getting new visitors. If over 20% of visitors return, that means it should be very easy to increase traffic if we just get more exposure.

The last thing I want to show you is a little more complex, and is a conversions report. For this to work, you'll have to have set up some kind of goal (getting to a page, completing an action), and even then the data might not be conclusive. In this case, it definitely is:

Here I've gone to the E-commerce section of the reports, and overlaid Visits with Conversions with Returning Visitors. Now, in this case a conversion isn't necessarily a sale - it's either a sale or a newsletter signup. But you can still see something obvious here: on days when there are more return visitors, there's a bigger chance of desired visitor actions taking place.

This confirms our initial thoughts that return visitors are the most desirable in this case. Knowing where our visitors are coming from, and what to do with that information, will now lead to us being able to exploit those visitors more effectively.

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How to Market on Social Networking Sites

Twitter, YouTube and certainly Facebook are just few of those social networking sites used by online marketers to connect and interact on a much more personalized and dynamic level to their customers. By utilizing the social aspect of the web, social network marketing occurs. So how exactly do you market on social networks?

Social networking sites provide a resourceful platform for you to promote your product. It is one of the best means for acquiring loads of viewers and thousands of page visits to your site. Through word-of-mouth, social networking sites can create a viral-effect-marketing which is much easier to harness the online users to your marketing potential and use them to market your own business.

Initially, you may write a short biography for your profile. Include any experience related to the product(s) or service(s) you're marketing. Also include a link to your website at the end of your biography. It is best to then start linking to the site from key areas of the Internet so the search engines will have no problem finding and indexing it. Then proceed to adding contacts/friends that you believe may have an interest in the products or services you're offering. Then ask them if they can invite their contacts or friends as well.

Make yourself and your product known. If they found your products or services appealing or what you share on social networks useful, valuable, funny, entertaining, new, insightful or soul-stirring, people will find you - and stay with you. Be interesting and do something positive that people will start to talk about.

If you want to boost your credibility and stand-out ask people to share your content. By simply adding a phrase that encourages sharing like "If you found this content useful, share it". The more sharing options you include on your website, the easier it'll be for users to share your site. It's much easier for readers to click one link and instantly share your content than to go to individual social media sites.

Create a blog, articles or video sharing then place it on your social networking profile pages. Let them know that you are experienced and what you're offering to your potential customers is reliable. Take advantage of the features that allow you to broadcast to all your contacts/friends. Send links to any free information you offer related to the products/services you're offering, send details about special discounts, and send anything newsworthy related to you and what you have to offer.

Respond promptly to the contacts/friends that contact you and visit the profiles of those you're connected with. Read their content and visit their website and blog. In addition, comment on their articles, and videos. Show interest and share your insights or opinions. Get involved with your customers; hear what they are about to say or feedback to your products or services.

After all, that's part of social networking.

Join and participate in the groups related to your product(s) or service(s). Not only that you can broaden your connection but you can also get updates with what is the trend or the latest on the social networking.

To smartly leverage social media marketing, you must take advantage of all the benefits of social network marketing. What have been mentioned above are just few. There are still a lot of ways on how to market on social networking sites effectively and simple. The possibilities are endless just explore and do your research.

The Facebook Timeline Covers - A Brief Introduction to the Newest Facebook Feature   Twitter Users Prefer Information to Being Social   Busting The Myths About LinkedIn   Benefits of Having a Neighborhood Network Site   Improving Your Facebook Timeline Fanpages   How to Link to Your Pinterest Pins and Drive Traffic to Your Site