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Persuasive Picks for week of 6/11/12

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Facebook Engagement is a critical issue for social marketers, not only because consumer interaction has become a cornerstone of the new marketing landscape, but also because Facebook Engagement is critically tied to brand visibility on the platform. Morgan J. Arnold at SocialMediaToday examines how the type of Facebook Post – Photos, Videos, Statuses, Questions and Links – impacts engagement in Optimizing Facebook Engagement – Text, Links, Photos or Videos?

Consumer brand interactions have come a long way in the past couple years. The social web has turned into a consumer’s playground to talk about or interact with brands. People search for the best deals, assess product reviews, share the positive or negative insights with their social spheres of influence, and find locations — whether online or brick and mortar — to purchase a product. iMediaConnection contributor Nicole Rawski explains that every brand can benefit from understanding online engagement in her latest post How to really measure engagement.

10 Social Media Tips From a Top Media Agency – Whether your company is just getting its social sea legs or excelling in the digital world, there is a niche and opportunity for every brand on social media. While Facebook and Twitter are the building blocks that a brand should start with in the social sphere, your level of understanding impacts your brand’s ability to perform on social media. Mashable’s Christine Erickson spoke with a one of the top media agencies in the world to provide helpful tips for brands at any level.

With a predominantly female audience, Pinterest is a popular place to share photos for wedding planning, home redecorating, recipes, vacation destinations, and books. However, despite popular belief, your business doesn’t need to be product-based in order take advantage of the benefits that Pinterest offers. Stephanie Chandler shows Forbes readers how to get started in Pinterest Power: How to Use the Third Largest Social Media Site to Promote Your Business.

Persuasive Picks for week of 6/4/12

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Go ahead and throw out everything you used to know about SEO, such as link building, keyword-rich content, internal links, and tracking results on SERPs. It’s time to start over. MarketingProfs‘ Aaron Dunn writes that in a little over a year, Google has rendered 10 years of SEO dogma mostly useless in The New Google Search: Six Changes That Rocked the SEO World.

Everyone knows Pinterest is one of the fastest growing sites of all time, shooting up to No. 3 among social networking sites in less than two years. Bonnie Kintzer, CEO, Women’s Marketing Inc. and iMediaConnection contributor, explains that it’s also the first design-focused site to reach mainstream working women with children in large numbers – the sweet spot of many brands and retailers in 7 reasons why Pinterest is unique for marketers.

You’re a small business with very limited resources (time, money, and employees), so how on earth can you incorporate a social media strategy into what you’re already doing – especially when there are so many avenues out there to cover? Liana Evans provides some helpful tips to get the most out of Social Media on a Small Business Budget on ClickZ.

Social Media Marketing success is based almost entirely on how well you engage your customers. James Meyer would like to qualify that by “almost” reasoning that if your efforts are not supporting a quality brand, product or service, you could do most everything perfectly and still not get great results. On SocialMediaToday he provides a number of great tools that create visibility and allow you to monitor your effectiveness in Measuring Engagement Levels in Social Media

Persuasive Picks for week of 4/30/12

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Women Are More Social – When It Comes to Social Media, That Is writes Entrepreneur’s Mikal E. Belicove reporting the results of Nielsen’s latest State of The Media report that shows women are the alpha players on the social media playground.

In How Products Participate In Social Media, expert blogger Matt Compton explains that the evolution of the Internet and smart devices has created an amazing fabric of connected lives and now weaves together people’s connections with things, and brands are starting to “participate” in new and meaningful ways. – via FastCompany.

Freelance writer Michael Estrin says there’s no longer a question whether a brand should have a YouTube channel. Instead, the question is, what should a brand do with its YouTube channel? Here’s his 6 lessons in launching a branded YouTube Channel on iMediaConnection.

Many businesses see their social media following as a list, without acknowledging there’s a human being on the other end. James Debono at SocialMediaToday thinks that they just aren’t “getting it” and gives 10 guidelines for Marketing with Social Media – Grow A Loyal Community by Increasing Your Worth.

Persuasive Picks for week of 4/16/12

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When Deborah Sweeney, CEO of MyCorporation, started to run her own business, she never would have guessed that a day would come when she’d be expected to update the internet on her life in 140 characters or less. To help CEO’s aspiring to join the Twitter-sphere, Deborah posts her advice on Becoming a “Corporate Executive Tweeter” on SocialMediaToday.

A strong referral network is imperative for small businesses. Thanks to social networking, businesses can now connect directly with customers, enabling them to market in new more cost-effective ways. MarketingProfs guest blogger Pamela Springer provides some tips to Build a Strong Referral Network to Boost Your Business and parlay those social networks into business opportunities.

Pinterest isn’t only for women – despite its heavy concentration on all things girlie, it’s for guys, too! Pinterest has a growing audience of men who like the site – for many of the same reasons women do explains Jennifer Waters in her latest MarketWatch article Why men like social-media site Pinterest.

Doug Schumacher takes a look at some numbers around Facebook content and what kind is the most shared, and finds that video and photo posts are far more likely to be shared than status updates or links. Find out more of What consumers share on Facebook – and why in his iMediaConnection post.

Persuasive Picks for week of 4/9/12

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Relatively few brands have used Tumblr in their marketing initiatives, and only a handful have done it particularly well. Michael Estrin explains that despite its lack of traction with brands, Tumblr has a solid following with agency folks, especially creatives in Why digital marketers can’t ignore Tumblr via iMediaConnection.

Peter Himler recounts on The Flack some highlights from a recent panel of senior new graphics decisionmakers – from CNNMoney, Huffington Post, Mashable and The Associated Press – who discussed the ins and outs of the increasingly important communications paradigm of information graphics in The Rise of Infographics.

Social Media isn’t Magic – It’s about Staying Human on the Internet posts Isra Garcia on SocialMediaToday. He writes about building a process that’s aligned with business strategy and is a means of expression that makes possible for customers, communities and brands to connect and establish relationships – that is to say “staying human”.

MarketingProfs‘ Patrick Dorsey provides lessons on building successful social customer relationship management practices and explains why Social CRM offers a new way of doing business in Social Media Is Not Social CRM, but It Can Be With These Five Steps.

Persuasive Picks for week of 3/19/12

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Pinterest released a new page design for profile pages this week – Danielle Leitch of SocialMediaToday discusses the improved functionality and advantages the new design will provide for both “pinners” and businesses alike in her post Pinterest has a New Design.

This week also brought the announcement of the integration of social media into Google Analytics, bridging the gap between social media and the metrics businesses care about. Frank Reed, Managing Editor at Marketing Pilgrim, asks Was Analytics Google’s REAL Social Media Missing Link? in his latest post that predicts marketers will be looking more closely at more social media channels and see the value of being in even more places.

As Twitter celebrated it’s sixth birthday this week, Nancy Scola set out on a quest for the origins of a hashtag and came up empty handed. In her latest post Our social-media amnesia, she discusses the access and value of archival tweets – via Reuters.

Speaking of hashtags, Todd Wasserman of Mashable focuses on 6 Successful Twitter Hashtag Campaigns that effectively harnessed Twitter in a way that provoked positive discussion and action.

Persuasive Picks for week of 3/12/12

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Does social media affect how you spend money? You betcha. Drew Olanoff of TheNextWeb says that it isn’t whether social services influence how we spend money, but how they affect our habits – and gives readers a closer look at three ways social media is doing this: influence, information, and indiscretion (yes, indiscretion).

Lisa Evans gives some expert advice on How Small Businesses Can Integrate SEO Into Their Social Media Efforts. She writes that optimizing your social media efforts so that both search engines and social community members can find your content is essential, and provides some helpful tips to integrate into your social media strategy – via ClickZ

Jason Blount posted on SocialMediaToday that Facebook Is No Longer Just Social Media – rather it has evolved into a personal representation of a user’s self and pretty soon almost every application that you use on a regular basis will integrate directly with your Timeline.

A recent report published on MarketingProfs, LinkedIn Use by Professionals in Industrial Sector Surges, shows that the use of LinkedIn among engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals continues to rise; and sites that keeping up to date with the latest business and product news and technologies is the most popular use of social networking within the tech/industrial sectors.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 07/18/11

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EngagementsWhat is Engagement in Social Media?
Angela Hausman explores the definition of “engagement” via this post on SocialMediaToday. Be sure to read through the comment thread for additional definitions and view points from the SMT community.

What does Google+ mean for your social media policy?
Technologist David Reinhardt expands on the potential impact Google+ will have on the way we maintain personal and work relationships and the added complexity this new social platform could add to your organization’s social media policy.

How to Turn Customers Into Loyal, Raving Fans
Mike Michalowicz, author of “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur” expands on the value and importance of under promising and over delivering when it comes to building the ultimate customer base, via this post on WSJ.com.

Is Social Media Experiencing the Search Engine Consolidation?
Fast Company expert blogger, JD Rucker, explores the idea of a future where social platforms begin to consolidate and morph into new sources of online search.

Email Metrics: Open, Click Rates Highest in the Morning
Gain some insight into becoming a better email marketer in this MarketingProfs post that shares key findings and great statistics from a recent MailerMailer report.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 07/11/11

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circle_c.jpgThe 5 Es of Content Marketing
ConversationAgent‘s Valeria Maltoni shares five inspirational tips to help writers take advantage of the “lazy days” of summer by pushing forward and gaining traction with their content creation and marketing efforts.

4 [Social Media] Failures and a Success
Sometimes the best way to learn is through your mistakes. This time around, IT blogger Peter Thomas share four of his own failures and the lessons he learned along the way. He caps off his SocialMediaToday.com post by sharing one of his personal successes as well.

How the U.S. Army is Using Social Media
ReadWriteWeb‘s Founder & Editor-in-Chief  shares this very interesting look into how the U.S. Army uses the web and various social platforms to share stories, interact with its online community and enhance recruiting efforts.

5 Reasons Google+ Is Not A Facebook Killer
Google+ has certainly been the focus this past week as millions of users rush through the flood gates to kick the tires on the new shiny social platform. However, not everyone is convinced that Google has come up with something that can be in it for the long haul. Dave Davies provides five reasons why in this post on SearchEngineWatch.com.

The Four Fundamentals of Social Media
Digital Media Consultant Dan Taylor shares a ton of great information and advice to businesses that might be trying to do everything all at once when it comes to their social media presence.

Image Credit: Leo Reynolds