I’ve happened upon several posts lately talking about how little social media has helped this or that individual or company. Most of these posts tend to lay the blame of failure on the concept of Social Media, which is a huge misstep. More often than not, an SMM campaign fails because of the execution, exacerbated by these six factors:
Strategy is Integral to all Social Media Campaigns
The title of the press release from Webguild for the Social Media Strategies Conference in San Francisco caught my eye today when I was browsing my daily search media news:
Businesses Embrace Social Media to Survive Economic Downturn Read more
Check out these 8 cool networking sites
Here are 8 cool tech-related social networking sites you can check out if you’re looking for communities dedicated to everything from web technology and development to gaming.
They all bring something interesting to the table and are all excellent resources for both major geeks and total noobs. Please comment below if you have additions:)
These are generally geek sites, but they are also great for newcomers and for people interested in expanding their horizons on the web.
- Slashdot – Highly popular social networking site focused on tech, web and gaming.
- Advogato - Free and open source software community for developers.
- Dzone – Great social networking and news site for developers of every stripe and color.
- CSS Globe – Community news site dedicated to CSS and web development.
- Pixel Groovy - Community based tutorial site for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, 3D Applications, Web Development, Operating Systems and more.
- Design Float – Social networking community dedicated to web design.
- DevelopersNiche – Social community dedicated to web development.
- Gaia – Great online community dedicated to all aspects of gaming and more.
While One Link May Help, Another May Be Broken
Here are the top 14 highest ranking do-follow social bookmarking sites as of right now.
None of these sites are below a PR7, and all of them allow “follow” links. For those who don’t know, there are two kinds of links, “follow” and “no-follow.”
“Follow” links mean that the site you link from adds juice to the site you’re linking to.
For example, if I link to a blog from Propeller, hopefully Propeller will pass some link power to my blog.
“No-follow” is what sites do who don’t want to pass on any of their link power to other sites. An example would be if I added a link to my Stumbleupon profile – it would still link to my site, but I wouldn’t get any power from that link.
Without further ado, here are the top 14 do-follow bookmarking sites (which I consider PR7 and above) I’ve found; please add a comment below if you think I forgot one.
- (PR9) Slashdot
- (PR8) Digg
- (PR8) Propeller
- (PR7) Furl
- (PR7) Backflip
- (PR7) Hugg
- (PR7) Mixx
- (PR7) Ma.gnolia
- (PR7) Connotea
- (PR7) Mystuff
- (PR7) Reddit
- (PR7) Dzone
- (PR7) Folkd
- (PR7) Multiply
Don't abandone your Facebook Fan Page, or its no better than an empty can - Photo Courtesy of Michael Lorenzo
If you’re a business creating a profile on Facebook and decide you want to add a fan page to the mix, there are several very big “don’ts” you need to watch out for. Contrary to what you might think, its not enough to slap your logo in the picture area, add some info about your business and let it sit, hoping someone will see it.
In this case, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come, especially in today’s web environment where attention spans have whittled down to nothing. However, I’m going to give you a quick and dirty list to check against your Facebook fan page to make sure you’re not making some huge mistakes:
1) Don’t use a stock photo or logo. Use a real photo. If you want to add your logo or brand somewhere on the photo, that could be ok. I tell this to all my clients, with the exception of groups like non-profits, as they can usually get away with some kind of logo. If you’re a business, use a picture of a real person (don’t be silly and take it from a stock photo site either), someone visitors can relate to. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is this one. Read more
“Corporate America is evil” “Big companies only care about themselves” “Corporations are ruthless and corrupt” ” Big business doesn’t care about consumers…”
Sound familiar?
cmypitch is a social network for small and medium businesses. It is essentially a startup that tries to help your company connect with people who can help your business.
I love the concept, especially since its heavy on video. Read more
Jonathan M. Gitlin of Ars Technica posted a great article about open-source text books going to battle with the normally sky-high prices of textbooks.
Gatlin’s article got me thinking about where people could find this type of information if they need it, so I’ve compiled a list of the top 20 sites who offer free full books/texts/journals. Read more
Really, its not. Nor is it all about MySpace and Facebook. Or even Twitter. Social Media Marketing, like any other type of marketing, is all about time, strategy, planning and execution. Anyone can ‘do’ social media, but there are definitely ways to do it better and more effectively. Read more
