Social media has become one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of bloggers who want to maximize their online exposure, and to make sure that their content reaches as many people as possible. The great thing about efficient social media usage is that it is an amazing way to spread your latest news, updates and offers to both regular visitors and people who have not heard of your blog ever before. While this may sound very attractive, every aspiring blogger should keep in mind that it may take months of trying out different campaigns and methods in order to come up with an efficient and affordable way to keep your blog on top of multiple social media networks. [Read more…]
5 Instagram Tools to Help You Get More Blog Visitors
With over 500 million monthly active users, bloggers and marketers continue to increase their adoption of Instagram in their promotion strategies.
According to statistics, about 48.5% of businesses use Instagram for marketing, and this number is expected to increase to 70.7% by the year 2017. Moreover, 75% of users interact with brands and visit their websites – making Instagram one of the best social media vehicles for increasing blog traffic. [Read more…]
5 Of The World’s Greatest Marketing Blog Posts And What We Can Learn From Them
I think we can all agree that online marketing bloggers – due to the very nature of the topic they specialize in – more than any other bloggers (in general) know almost exactly what blog posts need in order to rock. It’s the marketing blog posts we turn to when we need help to be better bloggers. [Read more…]
Exploring Social Media: Security and Monocultures
F-secure reports on security vulnerabilities with Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader for reading PDF files.
While this could be seen as another day-in-the-life update, the warning came with an interesting twist:
Do note that while we are recommending users move away from Adobe Reader, we are not recommending any particular replacement.
…Instead, we recommend users to find their own Adobe Reader replacement.
This way we get more heterogeneous userbase, which is a good idea security-wise. Nobody wants to repeat what happened with the great IE —> Firefox switch. As 40% of users switched to Firefox, about 40% of the attacks switched to target Firefox.
Monocultures are bad.
In the new world of online social, more and more people using the same tools, putting us all at risk as hackers and attackers move towards the natural migration of popularity. Monocultures are bad as they open the door to mass risks. [Read more…]
The Dream Team of Blogging and Social Media Experts at Your Table
In “How to Find Your Tribe in One Word” by Liz Strauss, she wrote about how it is too easy to feel separated from society by the actions often not of our choosing.
Lots of folks have lots of reason for feeling we’re on the outside.
It’s almost overwhelming. The world can seem to be one huge tribe and we can seem to be the only one who’s not a part. Of course, that’s flawed thinking. Ever met a group of people who could agree on anything huge for very long? The whole world is too big to hold a meeting about who belongs.
It’s not how the world sees you. It’s how you see yourself that counts.
When I was young, my mother taught me to choose my friends wisely. As an innocent, I thought this meant I should pick better, smarter people, i.e, the popular kids. While it is important to be known by the “known” people, what she explained was a bigger principle. You are judged by those you keep company with.
Among all the social media tools I’ve been exploring in this series, this is one of the most important ones: understanding the influence others have on you to help define your social influence. [Read more…]
Exploring Social Media: Time for a Web App Matching Service
Lloyd Budd of A Fool’s Wisdom has asked a very important question in this economy and techno-world we currently live in:
Working on a small project with a friend is a great opportunity to check out tools in other parts of the web development stack. I’ve been interested in trying out some of the software project management services and software.
…Likely the best approach for this project would be to first identify our needs and wants and then work through the available web services to find the closest matches.
Like Lloyd, are you stymied as you look at all the available web services, especially in the fast growing open source market, that will meet your needs. [Read more…]
Exploring Social Media: Twitter is Broken, Now What?
Within the last few hours, Robert Scoble announced that “Twitter is broken” on his @Scobelizer Twitter account.
@loic: Twitter is broken and we all know it. But we muddle along anyway. Bring us better tools so we can view groups we care about.
Scobleizer – Robert Scoble
We’ve talked about Twitter a lot lately here on the Blog Herald, including Oscar ads on Twitter feeds, asking why Twitter is useful to you, explaining social media and Twitter to your parents, about a UK company offering Twitter business resources, how Norway is using Twitter to fight with Microsoft, Twitter pop celebrities, $35 Million to keep Twitter going, Twitter phishing scams, the BBC Mumbai Twitter Debacle, the US Presidential Election coverage on Twitter, and how Twitter is still a niche but moving into main stream.
Even with all this Twitter news and information coverage, at the heart of it, Scoble is right. Twitter is broken. Now what? [Read more…]
Do You Need The Best Things in Life to be Free?
Entrepreneur Magazine’s article “The Best Things in Life are Free,” featured a list of free web-based services businesses and online entrepreneurs need today to run their business and spread their message around the world.
The list of web-based services, open source, free programs, and social media tools for today’s businesses is impressive, but incomplete. It included Remember the Milk task management system, Woopra live web analytics, OpenOffice, Google Docs and Calendar, FreshBooks for invoicing, expenses, and time-tracking, SlideShare, Audacity audio recording and editing, YouSendIt for sending files free up to 2 gigs, and Oovoo the video messaging, conferencing, and chatting service. A great collection of outstanding free services, but what’s missing is more interesting. [Read more…]
Exploring Social Media: LeVar Burton Passionate About Social Media
I recently joined a social networking site called Twitter. The reason that I joined is simple. However the reason that I have stayed and made a conscious decision to become as Twitterer myself, is what has led me to this BLOG.
…After lurking for a while (not in a creepy context, simply observing) it occurred to me that I had encountered in Twitter a bona fide community of individuals bound together by common interests and occasionally, ideals….
I feel like I have found part of my tribe in my online community, my Tweeple, so to speak. It is my intention, in the days and weeks to come, to lean on my online tribe for the kind of support, advice, and good humor that any man can expect from one’s community…
For those seeking to understand the pull social media sites like Twitter has, the first blog post by LeVar Burton on his new blog summed it up. [Read more…]
Exploring Social Media: Twitter Adoption Stats and Demographics
Hitwise recently covered a variety of posts about Twitter traffic with some interesting analysis and reports.
In the most recent post on “Twitter traffic according to Hitwise,” Hitwise reports that the UK, USA, and Australia show a dramatic increase in Twitter usage and visits.
Let’s start with the UK. Twitter.com is the 291st most visited website in the UK. Internet traffic has increased by 974% over one year, see the graph below.
Traffic to Twitter from Australia has also grown significantly, 517.9% up over one year, as shown on the graph below.
…A few days earlier an analysis of Twitter traffic in the USA was also published. According to Hitwise, Twitter.com attracts more visitors than Digg. Twitter is ranked #84 in computers and Internet category, one place before Digg, ranked #85.
In April of 2008, Heather Hopkins at Hitwise analyzed the statistics of Twitter traffic to determine if this social interaction and microblogging service had hit the main steam for acceptance. Her research and analysis found that while it was increasing in usage and acceptance, Twitter ranked at 439 among “Social Networks and Forums” and was ranked at 4,309 for all types of websites. [Read more…]
