Category

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.

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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Social Media
14 Brands on Pinterest

February 8, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Business is booming on Pinterest. According to data from Monetate, a testing and personalization firm, from September to December 2011 estimated unique visitors to Pinterest.com increased by 429 percent. Total same-store referral traffic from Pinterest to five specialty apparel retailer...
Social Media
10 Useful WordPress Plugins

February 7, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Many ecommerce merchants publish blogs to connect with their audiences and enhance their search engine optimization efforts. WordPress is a robust blogging platform. Part of its appeal is the thousands of plugins that enhance its functionality. Here are ten popular plugins that I consid...
Social Media
Google+ Scrapbook: Creative Examples from Top Companies

February 6, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Google's new social network, Google+, is woefully lacking in customization options. One feature, however, the Scrapbook photo album — the row of five images across the top of the business page — is something merchants can utilize to showcase products and build brand identity. This art...
Social Media
You Can’t Buy Real Followers and Fans

February 6, 2012 • Armando Roggio

You cannot buy real Fans and followers. The practice of purchasing Twitter followers and Facebook Fans is called "cherry blossoming." It will not improve an online store's business and could destroy a merchant's reputation. Social media marketing has become a requirement for many retai...
Social Media
How to Use Google+ Scrapbook Photo Album to Showcase Your Products

February 3, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Google's new social network, Google+, is experiencing phenomenal growth. In just seven months since its inception, the network has more than 60 million users, according to published reports. It took Facebook four years to reach that amount. At first, Google+ was available only for indiv...
Social Media
Facebook’s Open Graph and Timeline Could Help Ecommerce Merchants

February 2, 2012 • Paul Chaney

People don't go to Facebook to shop. Many large companies have accrued millions of Fans, but — with a few exceptions — retailers don't generate many sales there. Two recent Facebook developments, however, could change this. The launch of "Open Graph" may allow retailers to better inte...
Social Media
Google Integrates Google+ in Search Results

January 27, 2012 • Paul Chaney

We all expected Google+ would factor into Google's search results. Now we know how. Google recently announced in its blog the integration of its new social network into search by including results from the searcher's Google+ friends and interests. This only works for searchers who ar...
Social Media
Top 20 Brands on Google+ for Jan. 2012

January 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Google+ launched brand pages in November. Already many companies, groups and organizations have established large numbers of followers on the social network. To check Google+ brand page rankings, you can now use Zoomsphere, a statistics site for major social networks. Track followers, ...
Social Media
5 Ways Blogging Is Better than Social Networking

January 19, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Blogging has long been an online marketing staple among businesses. In recent years, however, many businesses have focused on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But blogging can benefit businesses in ways those cannot. This article outlines five such methods. 1. Blog...
Social Media
6 Innovative Ecommerce Uses of YouTube

January 18, 2012 • Sig Ueland

With over 3 billion videos viewed every day, YouTube is a great place for online merchants to find customers. However, there are many different ways to engage those customers. Here is a list of innovative uses of YouTube by ecommerce merchants. Some provide product information; others...
Social Media
How to Use Pinterest for Your Ecommerce Business

January 16, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Learning the ins and outs of popular social sharing site Pinterest takes only minutes, but can have a positive effect on ecommerce marketing. Pinterest may be the hottest property in social media sharing, with a growth rate that rivals Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. It also has the po...

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