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
Ecommerce Marketing on Google+
June 5, 2012 • Armando Roggio
As Google rolls more features and functions into Google+, marketing on the new and fast growing social media network is increasingly important. Last week, Google announced the launch of Google+ Local, which provides users with recommendations and information about local businesses incl...
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Social Media
Who is Using Twitter and Why?
June 4, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Mobile adoption may be driving a surge in Twitter use, according to a major research firm. A report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project released May 31, 2012 said, “Twitter usage is highly correlated with the use of mobile technologies, especially smartphones.” This find...
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Social Media
3 Ways to Integrate Tweets on Your Ecommerce Site
May 29, 2012 • Paul Chaney
Twitter offers several ways to integrate tweets into a retailer's website. Showing tweets increases the number of followers. It also keeps the website updated with new content. And it serves increase the community around the retailer's brand. With that in mind, here are three of the m...
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Social Media
18 Tools to Develop Your Brand on Facebook
May 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland
If you’re look for a place to develop your brand, Facebook is the spot. With over 500 million daily active users, it’s a great platform on which to engage followers and promote yourself. It’s also an ideal environment to monitor how successful you are at engaging and promoting. Here is...
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Social Media
Using Facebook’s Insights Analytics to Expand Your Audience
May 22, 2012 • Paul Chaney
This article takes a closer look at ways merchants can utilize Facebook's administrative console and Insights analytics platform for marketing purposes. These newly revised sections contain information that can help merchants gain a deeper understanding into (a) who is visiting their ...
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Social Media
How to Install Social Sharing Buttons from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest
May 17, 2012 • Paul Chaney
All major social networks provide merchants with the capability to incorporate social sharing buttons that allow visitors to share content. The process of embedding these buttons is simple, can be done in a matter of minutes, and requires only a basic understanding of HTML. Below are ...
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Social Media
8 Social Shopping Sites for Ecommerce Merchants
May 8, 2012 • Paul Chaney
Today's social shopping sites are the online equivalent of old-fashioned swap meets and flea markets. They bring thousands of buyers and sellers together in a social environment where shoppers can rely on friends to help them shop and connect with merchants. These social marketplaces ...
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Social Media
20 Most-Shared Marketing Videos
May 7, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Online viewers share compelling content. A marketing video that makes an impact can go viral, whether the video is funny, sad, inspiring, or cheaply produced. Here is a list of the most-shared marketing videos, based on the amount of times content is shared on Facebook, Twitter and in ...
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Social Media
Using Twitter to Promote Your Ecommerce Products
May 2, 2012 • Paul Chaney
Twitter is a largely untapped promotional channel for ecommerce merchants. According to social commerce company ArgyleSocial, only 26 percent of retailers include calls to action such as "visit a website" or "purchase a product" in their tweets — here's ArgyleSocial's infographic. In a...
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Social Media
Survey Says: Pinterest-like Sites Drive Sales
May 1, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Some 32 percent of respondents to a March survey reported making a purchase after seeing a product on Pinterest or a similar picture and video sharing social media website. Bizrate Insights, which sells customer feedback and ratings solutions to online retailers, surveyed 3,741 online ...
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Social Media
3 Examples of Contest Marketing
April 30, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Contest marketing seeks to give shoppers a positive retailer-related experience, create an affinity for the products a retailer sells, and collect information about shoppers that may help with future sales-oriented marketing campaigns. The idea of giving away hundreds of dollars worth ...
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Social Media
10 Marketing Examples of Facebook Photo Albums
April 23, 2012 • Paul Chaney
There are many ways for ecommerce merchants to use Facebook's photo gallery. My article last week — "Facebook Photo Albums: Maximize the Marketing Value" — outlined a number of them. Here are 10 examples of ecommerce merchants and small businesses that are taking advantage of Facebook...
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Social Media
Facebook Photo Albums: Maximize the Marketing Value
April 17, 2012 • Paul Chaney
In last week's article, "Using Facebook's New App Icons to Promote Your Business," I discussed how to modify Facebook Page app icons, which are located just beneath the cover image. The first icon that appears in the row of four is "Photos." It cannot be moved from this first position...
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Social Media
23 Twitter Chats for Small Businesses
April 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland
One of the best ways to harness Twitter is by participating in chats, scheduled hashtag discussions that focus on specific topics. Small businesses can utilize chats to develop a social media plan, discuss brand strategy, and take advantage of free legal advice. Here is a list of chats...
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Social Media
Using Facebook’s New App Icons to Promote Your Business
April 9, 2012 • Paul Chaney
Now that Facebook has transferred commercial Fan pages to the new Timeline format, links to custom tabs — now called "apps" — reside in a row below the cover image. These were previously located in the left-hand column, with small icons. No matter how many apps you have, only four appea...
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Social Media
Pinterest: Choosing Cover Images, Tracking Pins
April 9, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Pinterest released a new feature last week, giving marketers significantly more control over how their companies' Pinterest boards are represented. This new feature allows users to choose the cover images for their pin boards, which serve as a sort of directory for a user's Pinterest p...
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Social Media
5 Creative Ideas for Facebook Timeline Covers
April 3, 2012 • Paul Chaney
This article builds on "Facebook Timeline Cover Images: 6 Pointers," my article last week. Here are five ways to creatively use Facebook Timeline cover images, which Facebook calls "Covers," with 12 examples from small businesses, large retail brands and others. 1. Integrate a Pro...
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Social Media
4 Pinterest Marketing Mistakes
April 2, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Pinterest is a fun social media service that lets users post images and videos, organized into topical boards. The site has great potential for driving traffic to online stores, but it is important not to misuse this potential or alienate users and would-be customers. What follows are ...
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Social Media
Facebook Timeline Cover Images: 6 Pointers
March 27, 2012 • Paul Chaney
Facebook states that on Friday, March 30, it will convert all Fan pages to the new Timeline format. The most obvious component of Timeline is the large cover image at the top of the page. Facebook has restrictions on these images. They cannot contain the following elements. Price o...
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Social Media
Facebook Launches ‘Offers’ for Facebook Pages
March 22, 2012 • Paul Chaney
Facebook is shuttering its check-in deals program — which worked only for brick and mortar businesses — in favor of a new feature, Facebook Offers, which will be incorporated into Facebook Pages. Unlike check-in deals, Offers can be redeemed both in-store and online. Facebook is now b...
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Social Media
8 Innovative Brand Promotions Using Social Media
March 19, 2012 • Sig Ueland
With the growing number of social media outlets, businesses are developing innovative ways to promote their products, using new tools to engage customers. Here is a list of innovative brand promotions using a variety of social media: Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Spotif...
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Social Media
10 Commandments for Effective Online Social Networking
March 12, 2012 • Paul Chaney
Here is a ten-step game plan for effective social network engagement. These are ten practical guidelines that will make you a better member of the social networking communities in which you participate. 1. Pull, Don’t Push One of the first lessons you will learn very quickly when eng...
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Social Media
Fancy Is a Pinterest-like Alternative for Ecommerce Merchants
March 7, 2012 • Paul Chaney
There is a lot of interest in Pinterest. It encourages content curation through user self-expression. With over 11 million users, the site has gained a large following in a short amount of time. However, to date, Pinterest has no model for businesses, certainly not one that actively fos...
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Social Media
3 New Facebook Marketing Tools: Timeline, Reach Generator, Premium
March 6, 2012 • Sig Ueland
At last week’s Facebook Marketing Conference, the social media giant unveiled three new marketing solutions to drive business growth using social technology: Timeline, Reach Generator and Premium. Here is a list of Facebook’s new marketing products. Access the conference videos to lear...
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Social Media
How to Shorten Google+ URLs
March 5, 2012 • Armando Roggio
Google+ business page URLs can be long and unwieldy. But there are a couple of easy ways you can create a short alias addresses that shoppers can remember. At the present, a typical Google+ business page URL looks something like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103654589540801342565...
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Social Media
Facebook Implements Timeline for Business Pages
March 1, 2012 • Paul Chaney
At its first-ever marketing conference on February 29, Facebook announced sweeping changes to its platform that have direct bearing on businesses. One of the most important was the introduction of Timeline for business pages. Late last year, Facebook introduced Timeline to individual ...
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Social Media
Using Amateur Videos for Marketing Success; 2 Examples
February 27, 2012 • Paul Chaney
In the past, if you wanted to make a video for your business, you had to hire a production company or ad agency, spend tens of thousands of dollars and, as often as not, end up with a product much different than you expected. Edits and retakes were costly, so you just left well enough a...
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Social Media
Ecommerce Comes to Twitter
February 20, 2012 • Paul Chaney
Twitter has served as a marketing and customer service channel by small businesses for years. Now merchants can use it to promote ecommerce, thanks to a third-party platform called Chirpify and Twitter's own efforts to open its advertising platform to small companies. Chirpify, the Tw...
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Social Media
5 Free Facebook Welcome Tab Apps; Pros and Cons
February 15, 2012 • Paul Chaney
A number of companies offer free apps that give merchants the ability to add custom content, such as a Welcome tab, to Facebook fan pages. In this article I review five of these apps, and discuss the pros and cons of each. 1. Woobox Custom Facebook Page Tab Facebook app provider Woobo...
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Social Media
How Does Facebook Make Money?
February 10, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan
Facebook has finally filed its long anticipated SEC S-1 registration to take the company public. The filing is straightforward, lacking any surprises or innovative accounting techniques that other recent registration statements have offered. Nevertheless, the investment community and th...