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Social Media
5 Content Curation Tools for Social Sharing
November 28, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Many of us use popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Yet there are hundreds of others, most of which you likely have never heard of. Some of these lesser known digital outposts are worth discussing, however. Over the past few weeks I have reported on three: Stum...
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Social Media
How to Create a Google+ Business Page
November 16, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Google announced last week that it has launched Pages for business in its Google+ social network. I addressed this topic in my "Social Retailer" blog last week and listed what I suggested are three possible benefits. Direct connection to search. Through the use of the "+1" button, ...
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Social Media
Using the New Delicious.com; 5 Advantages for Businesses
November 7, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Delicious is a longtime social bookmarking service for storing, discovering and sharing links to online resources. The site was founded in 2003, sold to Yahoo! in 2008, and sold again in 2011 to AVOS Systems, a company owned by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the founders of YouTube. Soci...
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Social Media
StumbleUpon: Social Bookmarking Traffic Generator
November 1, 2011 • Paul Chaney
StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to share a website with others in their network. People use the tool to "stumble upon" web pages recommended by others that are matched to their personal preferences. How Does it Work? StumbleUpon uses a "thumbs up, thumbs do...
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Social Media
9 Tools for Mobile Blogging
October 24, 2011 • Paul Chaney
The world is moving toward an increasingly mobile lifestyle, and blogging is no different. No longer do you have to be constrained to a desktop or laptop to create posts.
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Social Media
Understanding Facebook’s New ‘Insights’ Analytics
October 18, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Facebook recently launched a new, enhanced version of Insights, its analytics package for Fan pages. The old version contained lots of information — demographics, the total number of Likes/Unlikes, number of average daily users, and total page and post impressions — but nothing that hel...
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Social Media
Social Media: Become a ‘One Percenter’
October 10, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Years ago, usability expert Jakob Nielsen developed the "Community Participation Pyramid," which some observers now call the "90-9-1 Principle." It states: 90 percent of web users are lurkers — read or observe, but don't contribute; 9 percent of users contribute from time to time, bu...
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Social Media
Facebook Platform Changes, Part 2: Pages
October 4, 2011 • Paul Chaney
At its recent f8 developers' conference, Facebook announced extensive changes to its platform, including changes to personal "Profiles" and business-oriented "Pages." I described the changes to Profiles in last week's article. This article, below, addresses changes to Pages. 1. Intera...
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Social Media
Facebook Platform Changes, Part 1: Profiles
September 26, 2011 • Paul Chaney
At f8 2011, Facebook's annual conference held last week for developers and entrepreneurs, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a series of changes to the social network's platform. Most of the changes affect personal profiles, but some have to do with how Fan pages work. I will o...
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Social Media
5 New Facebook Shopping Carts
September 19, 2011 • Paul Chaney
It has been more than a year since I wrote about Facebook shopping carts. That article was titled “Six Facebook Applications to Sell Your Products.” In this article, I’ll review five ...
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Marketing & Advertising
7 Keys to Managing Online Communities
September 12, 2011 • Paul Chaney
In last week’s article, "3 Inexpensive Tools to Build Your Own Social Network," I reviewed three platforms to build niche online communities. However, making a community a vital part of your marketing efforts takes more effort than selecting the platform. It needs active management. Thi...
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Social Media
3 Inexpensive Tools to Build Your Own Social Network
September 6, 2011 • Paul Chaney
When we think of social networks, large communities like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn typically come to mind. There is, however, another type of social network that often goes overlooked: niche communities. Ecommerce merchants should consider creating their own niche online communit...
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Social Media
Understanding EdgeRank, Facebook’s ‘Quality Score’ for Wall Posts
August 30, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Just because you post a status update to your Facebook Wall doesn't mean it gets syndicated to each of your Fans. Last year, Facebook created an algorithm called EdgeRank that determines which posts get shown to whom in the Newsfeed. Thanks to EdgeRank, every post that gets published ...
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Social Media
10 Tips for Integrating Email and Social Media
August 25, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Is social media diluting email marketing? For many ecommerce merchants, email marketing remains a staple. In a recent interview with Practical eCommerce, Listrak CEO Ross Kramer said, "We just came back from Etail [trade show] this week, and from the retailers that I was talking to up...
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Social Media
Facebook’s Business Playbook: 4 Educational Portals
August 22, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Facebook has assembled four educational portals to help businesses manage their use of the platform. The portals cover topics such as creating Facebook pages, advertising on Facebook, selling products on Facebook, and using Facebook for marketing. I'll review each of the portals in t...
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Social Media
Social Networking for Solo Entrepreneurs; 7 Suggestions
August 16, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Solo entrepreneurs wear many hats when it comes to running a business. One of these “hats” includes managing social media activities. To reach a point where social media engagement produces meaningful ...
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Social Media
12 Useful Ecommerce Blogs
August 8, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Finding marketing information specific to smaller ecommerce merchants can be time consuming. A Google search on the term "ecommerce marketing" returned 1,700,000 results at the time of this writing. Merchants can fine useful information on the following list of 12 marketing-related bl...
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Design & Development
13 Social Shopping Sites for Ecommerce Merchants
August 1, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Social shopping combines product sales with consumer recommendations in a social network environment. The concept centers around communities of people who share similar interests and who rely on the opinions of fellow members to influence purchase decisions. Some sites are completely ...
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Social Media
How to Create Facebook Ads, Part 2: Campaign Management, Overall Best Practices
July 26, 2011 • Paul Chaney
In "Part 1" of this series on creating Facebook ads, I showed you how to set up a campaign, design an ad, and target the precise audience. In this "Part 2" installment, I'll explain how to manage your ad campaign, offering 10 best practices. Ads Manager Each Facebook ad has to be tie...
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Social Media
How to Create Facebook Ads, Part 1: Setup, Design, Targeting
July 18, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Facebook advertising is becoming more popular. In this article — “Part 1” of a two-part series — I will describe how to set up a Facebook ad using the self-service ...
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Social Media
How to Measure Social Media Marketing; 3 Steps
July 12, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Social media marketing, like other forms of online marketing, needs to produce a return on investment. Otherwise, its usefulness is marginal and the time spent on it is wasted. But social media's effect on the bottom line is not always easy to measure. In social media's case, ROI does...
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Social Media
Google+: Overview, Ecommerce Use
July 5, 2011 • Paul Chaney
On the day news broke about the sale of MySpace for a mere $35 million, Google announced the launch of its new social network, Google+. The search giant is rolling out ...
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Social Media
5 Influence Measurement Tools
June 28, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Prior to the Internet, if consumers were dissatisfied with a company, its products or services, they would tell a few friends who might also tell a few others. Maybe the consumer would write a letter to the company or call the customer service department to complain. For the most part, ...
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Social Media
5 New Social Media Management Platforms
June 21, 2011 • Paul Chaney
A new class of social media management platforms for small businesses makes social media marketing — such as posting to Facebook and Twitter — much easier. In this article, I review five of these platforms: Postling, Breeze Social, Roost, Sendible and Social Guides. My review will add...
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Social Media
One Merchant’s Experience with LivingSocial and Groupon
June 13, 2011 • Paul Chaney
APARTStyle.com is a retailer that is focused on selling affordable fashion clothing to working women. The company — founded in September 2009 and headquartered in New York — sells ...
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Social Media
12 Popular Retail Companies on YouTube
June 6, 2011 • Paul Chaney
The most popular YouTube videos involve talking animals, pop stars and news channels. But retailers have found a home on the site, too. Here is a list of 12 popular ...
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Social Media
Selling to Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers
June 2, 2011 • Paul Chaney
One of the more controversial ecommerce-related topics is the use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter to increase sales. There is ample evidence to suggest that, in spite of its popularity, social media produces a dismal return on investment. Respondents to a January 2011 Pract...
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Social Media
How to Use Facebook’s Photo Strip; 7 Examples
June 1, 2011 • Paul Chaney
When Facebook added the photo strip to the Wall on Fan pages, it left page owners and administrators wondering just how to make use of the new feature. Not only that, the Fan page version lacked one attribute present in the personal profile version: the ability to arrange photos in a ...
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Social Media
7 Ways to Build a Brand Using Blogs
May 25, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Branding is more than just a business buzzword. It has become the crux of selling in the new economy. If the old marketing mantra was “Nothing happens until somebody sells something,” the new philosophy could be “Nothing happens until somebody brands something.” If you are not currentl...
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Social Media
Facebook’s New ‘Send’ Button: How to Use, Install, Benefit
May 24, 2011 • Paul Chaney
Facebook's new "Send" button functions similarly to a "Forward to a Friend" plug-in that you often see in broadcast emails. The difference is, in addition to sending a message to any email address, users can select specific Facebook friends to notify, and send the message as a post to F...