Social Media
Our social media marketing coverage addresses management tools, educational courses, platform tips, social analytics, and strategies for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more. We’ve interviewed merchants who rely on social media traffic, and vendors who provide specialized services.
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Social Media
Does Pinterest Help with SEO?
September 20, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
The intersection of organic search and Pinterest is actually very small. Still, Pinterest does have a place in search engine optimization as a way to expand a site’s search result ...
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Social Media
25 Helpful Facebook Insights Definitions
September 19, 2013 • Kunle Campbell
Facebook Insights offers metrics to analyze your audience beyond age, gender, country, city, and language. You can discover what your audience likes about your page, where the visitors were before they came to your page, and otherwise monitor reach, virality, and more.
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Social Media
Twitter’s Lead Generation Ad Format Captures User Data
September 18, 2013 • Paul Chaney
In May, Twitter announced the release of Lead Generation Cards, which are designed to help advertisers highlight specific offers, products, or services and capture user interest directly from within a ...
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Social Media
Top 10 Social Media Marketing Application Providers
September 11, 2013 • Paul Chaney
I conducted a roundup of top social media marketing app providers nearly a year ago and much has changed since then. Many have added new features and apps, integrated with ...
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Social Media
Facebook Promotions Change Likely to Benefit Smaller Merchants
September 6, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Facebook recently announced a change to its promotions policy that is likely to have a major impact on the way retailers run contests and sweepstakes on the social network. Promotions ...
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Social Media
SEO: 5 Reasons Not to Ignore Google+
August 30, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown
Two years ago when Google+ launched, I had high hopes for its value as a marketing platform to rival Facebook and Twitter. Read my enthusiastic missal, “Google+: The Beginning of ...
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Social Media
Using Owned, Paid, and Earned Media — on Facebook
August 21, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Social media has redefined the way retailers market products. Direct response advertising is still useful, but it is now accompanied by an ever-increasing emphasis on content creation and word-of-mouth, which ...
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Social Media
10 Brands on Vine
August 20, 2013 • Sig Ueland
Vine is Twitter’s video sharing app that allows users to record six-second looping videos on their iOS or Android smartphones. Many brands have embraced Vine as a fun tool to ...
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Social Media
10 Ways to Use Pinterest for your Ecommerce Business
August 14, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Social networking sites have become more visual. This is especially the case with Pinterest. The site, which consists of images and videos arranged in a bulletin board style layout, has become one of the largest social networks. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which rely on content from ...
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Social Media
Facebook Announces Updates to Algorithm; Advice for Merchants
August 8, 2013 • Paul Chaney
In a press event on August 6, Facebook revealed how it determines which content gets displayed in users' News Feeds and announced changes to its algorithm. The event was held in response to criticism from both the media and Facebook users about the lack of visibility surrounding how t...
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Social Media
Facebook Launches New Version of Insights
August 6, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Facebook just launched a new version of Insights, its analytics engine. One new addition is comparative, scorecard-style reports that enable businesses to evaluate positive and negative metrics together. Also, some elements in Insights have been renamed and the overall structure has ...
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Social Media
How to Target Facebook Ads to your Audience
August 5, 2013 • Paul Chaney
One of the benefits of advertising on Facebook is its ability to target ads. Options include location, age, gender, interests, broad-range categories, and connections. This article outlines the different options in terms of their applicability and usefulness. Location Location incl...
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Social Media
LinkedIn Launches Sponsored Update Advertising Program
July 31, 2013 • Paul Chaney
LinkedIn's new Sponsored Updates is a form of advertising that resembles Facebook Page Sponsored Posts. Sponsored Updates are paid Company Page status updates that, according to LinkedIn, appear in members' home page news feeds along with organic posts. Sponsored Updates can be seen o...
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Social Media
Create a Social Hub for your Ecommerce Site
July 24, 2013 • Paul Chaney
The number of social networks in which merchants participate is on the rise. In addition to the big three — Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — we now have Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and many others. Keeping up with all these from a merchant perspective is difficult enough, b...
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Social Media
7 Keys to Facebook’s ‘People Talking About This’
July 18, 2013 • Kunle Campbell
In "10 Ways to Improve EdgeRank on your Facebook Page," my previous post, I covered how Facebook sorts content in users’ News Feeds using its EdgeRank algorithm. This article is a follow-up and covers a metric that closely ties with EdgeRank: "People Talking About This," or PTAT.
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Social Media
4 Tips for Better Contest Forms
July 16, 2013 • Armando Roggio
Contest marketing is a good way to engage potential customers, increase your social media fan base, give folks positive things to say about your store, and collect data that can improve both your business’s bottom line and your customers' online experiences. Consider for a moment just ...
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Social Media
6 Tools to Monitor Social Media Conversations
July 11, 2013 • Paul Chaney
It is common for consumers to seek recommendations and advice from their peers on social networks, forums, or rating and review sites when considering a purchase. Whether or not you choose to proactively engage in social media, it is important to pay attention because what people say ...
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Social Media
Podcasting: Getting Started
July 3, 2013 • Paul Chaney
One form of marketing communication that gets overlooked is podcasting. Podcasts offer several benefits, not the least of which is portability. You can listen to podcasts on the go via mobile devices and, unlike video, podcasts can run in the background while you participate in other a...
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Social Media
8 Twitter Hashtag Tracking Tools
June 27, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Twitter hashtags are a way to organize tweets into topical groups. Tools are available that make it easy to follow hashtag-related conversations, start hashtag chats, and analyze data around their ...
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Social Media
11 Twitter Pointers for Ecommerce Merchants
June 20, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Twitter is encouraging small businesses to use its service and has created a section on its website and a Twitter channel for that purpose. There are good reasons for ecommerce merchants to use Twitter. It's a place to share real-time information about the products you sell, engage wi...
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Social Media
How to Use Klout for Business
June 12, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Klout is a popular influence measurement platform that ranks people based on their prominence in social media. Klout defines influence as the ability to drive an action related to someone's comments, likes, tweets and retweets. People use Klout to understand how influential they are a...
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Social Media
How to Set Up a LinkedIn Company Page
June 10, 2013 • Paul Chaney
A LinkedIn Company Page serves as a hub where members can learn more about your company and its products and services. This is the primary way for a company to have a presence in LinkedIn. Three basic steps are involved in setting up a Company Page: Create a company profile; Add a "...
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Social Media
Using Twitter Lists to Manage Followers
June 5, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Twitter recently lifted the limits on its lists feature. Users can now create up to 1,000 lists that each contains up to 5,000 accounts. Previously the cap was set at 20 with no more than 500 accounts in each list. Though it's unlikely that smaller ecommerce merchants would ever need ...
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Social Media
10 Reasons to Consider Tumblr for Ecommerce Blogging
June 3, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Tumblr is a fast growing social blogging platform suited to the creation of short form, multimedia content. It became so popular that Yahoo! just acquired the company for $1.1 billion. Tumblr started six years ago as a place for creators to showcase their work and it retains that eth...
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Social Media
Pinterest Introduces ‘Rich Pins’ for Products
May 29, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Pinterest recently introduced a new feature called "Rich Pins" that should be especially helpful to merchants. It allows companies to include key information such as pricing, product availability, and where to buy to pinned items. The information can be updated daily. Rich Pins are also...
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Social Media
Facebook Promoted Post Generates Sales, Traffic
May 28, 2013 • Armando Roggio
Although recent studies demonstrate that social media sites like Facebook work best to augment other ecommerce marketing campaigns, anecdotal data from a small Facebook ad test demonstrated that the promotion could boost both direct traffic and sales. “In its most recent [Ecommerce Qua...
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Social Media
Don’t Focus on Social Media Traffic
May 24, 2013 • Armando Roggio
New data from a leading marketing optimization firm indicates that social media is not a significant traffic driver for online merchants, but traffic may not be the only indicator of success for social media marketing. Social media represented about 1.55 percent of traffic to ecommerce...
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Social Media
Google’s Purchase Path Tool Helps Merchants View All Marketing Channels
May 22, 2013 • Paul Chaney
The path customers take before making a purchase has become more complex due to social media. Very often, they perform extensive online research that includes reading ratings and reviews, seeking advice on social networks from friends, watching product videos, and looking at competing p...
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Social Media
Instagram’s ‘Photos of You’ New Sharing Feature
May 15, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Popular photo-sharing app Instagram recently introduced a new sharing feature called "Photos of You," which allows users to tag other user accounts in pictures they take. For example, if a user snaps a photo of a group of friends, he or she can tag each person in the image, similar to...
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Social Media
Using Vine Videos for your Ecommerce Business
May 8, 2013 • Paul Chaney
Vine is a new iOS app that allows users to record six-second, looping videos — called "vines" — on their iPhones, iPod Touches, or iPads. The videos can then be shared with followers on Twitter and Facebook. Users can shoot very short clips, then edit them together to create stop-motion...
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