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
Google+ Adds Multiple Administrator Capability

January 9, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Google's new social network, Google+, has added a much needed capability to its businesses pages: multiple administrators. This feature functions similarly to Facebook Pages in that it allows a business to have more than one "manager" — to use Google's term — who can update its Google+...
Social Media
Using Social Buttons to Enhance Search Engine Optimization

January 4, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Social "signals" increasingly influence search results in both Google and Bing. The search engines are coming to consider social signals as more indicative of how searchers value a page than traditional link signals — though links remain very important to search engine optimization. In ...
Social Media
Social Media Users Look for New Products and Offers, Survey Finds

January 3, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Social media users connect with companies on sites like Facebook to learn about new products, find exclusive offers and contests, or just play games, according to a new survey of about 1,300 consumers. Consumers also have high expectations for online customer support. The Chief Marketi...
Social Media
Facebook Replaces Profiles with Timelines; Implications for Merchants

December 28, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Facebook will soon make a dramatic change to individual user Profiles, turning them into “Timelines,” which Facebook calls “a new kind of Profile.” Rationale for ‘Timelines’ Facebook says its motivation for the ...
Social Media
Understanding YouTube’s New Redesign

December 21, 2011 • Paul Chaney

The major social networks are all in redesign mode. Facebook is rolling out "Timelines," a more picturesque version of user Profiles. Twitter has completed a major redesign, which I covered last week in "Understanding Twitter's New Redesign." And now YouTube is changing its appearance a...
Social Media
Understanding Twitter’s New Redesign

December 14, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Twitter has just launched several enhancements that include a major redesign of its layout, the introduction of Facebook-style brand pages, embeddable tweets and a redesign of its mobile and Tweetdeck apps. Dubbed “Let’s Fly” — Twitter describes it in a blog post — the goal of the rede...
Social Media
21 Twitter ‘Brand Pages’

December 14, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Twitter has launched "brand pages" as part of its recent redesign. Brand pages feature large customizable header images and highlight a top tweet with an embedded photo or video. Twitter is launching brand pages with 21 marketers: American Express, Best Buy, Bing, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola,...
Social Media
5 New Social-Shopping Sites and Apps

December 12, 2011 • Paul Chaney

When it comes to making product purchase decisions, customers are increasingly relying on each other for information and advice. That is not a new behavior, as people have always relied on the influence of friends. It's just that social media technology has given it wings. Consumers ar...
Social Media
Add the Twitter Tweet and Follow Buttons without Hiring a Developer

December 8, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Twitter is an important site for ecommerce marketers that want to encourage shoppers to share products and pages. Fortunately, the service is easy to integrate into a retail site without even hiring a developer. In this article, you'll learn how to add both the Twitter Tweet and the Tw...
Social Media
Using LinkedIn for Your Ecommerce Business: Pros and Cons

December 5, 2011 • Paul Chaney

LinkedIn appeals primarily to business professionals. It does not have as many consumer users as Facebook. But its social media strengths can still help your ecommerce business. This article will outline the benefits and limiations of using LinkedIn as a social commerce marketing platf...
Social Media
3 Ways Social Media Affects Brands

December 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The continued growth of social networking and blog sites is having an effect on brands and how those brands are marketed. According to an October study from The Nielsen Company and its social media affiliate, NM Incite, “60 percent of consumers researching products though multiple onli...
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...
Social Media
20 Top Brands on Google+

November 25, 2011 • Sig Ueland

A new study by social management company BrightEdge found that 61 of the top 100 global brands had a Google+ page the week after Google let companies create brand pages.
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, ...
Social Media
8 Businesses on Tumblr

November 9, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Of a Kind, the first store built on blogging platform Tumblr, is one year old. The site, which sells fashion items commissioned from emerging designers, is a mash-up of blog and ecommerce, providing personal content on its designers and their goods. While Of a Kind is still unique as ...
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...
Social Media
13 Crowdfunding Sites for Social-Cause Entrepreneurs

November 2, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Crowdfunding websites help entrepreneurs fund small businesses with financing from the community. For social-cause entrepreneurs, who venture to create a positive change in the world, crowdfunding sites can also provide financing and resources. Here is a list of crowdfunding sites that...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
Social Media
Google’s +1 Expansion Boosts Search and Social

August 31, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

The Google +1 button now plays a much more visible role in promoting content in search and social marketing. Much like Facebook's Like button, Google's +1 button allows — as of last week — Google+ users to share a comment, an image, a headline and a snippet of text when +1'ing a page. C...
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 ...
Social Media
6 Tools to Manage Your Social Media Marketing

August 29, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Social media marketing is one of the most-discussed marketing tactics in the ecommerce industry. Many companies are devoting a greater percentage of resources and effort into engaging customers and prospects ...
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...
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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