Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

Who are You Following on Twitter? 6 Creative Tweeters You Should Be Following

Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Marketing

Who do you follow on Twitter?

Twitter may be a social networking site, but it also is a resource for professional creative types who want to grow a business or build a brand. If, for example, you are designing a site for an e-commerce client, your goal is to develop a design that attracts leads. Your design lures in visitors, and the client can learn even more about its customers using various software tools. Think of Twitter as your tool for learning all you can about the latest and greatest in Web and graphic design and user experience.

Check out and follow the Twitter accounts of 6 of the best Social Media zealots and user experience experts:

Terra Walker Mrkulić @TerraIncognita

Social media manager, Red Sox fan and foodie, Terra offers her followers live support at LivePerson.com and somehow manages to be light and witty while responding to tweets that come in from customers and venders around the clock. She is an extremely attentive and creative social media guru. #keepitup!

Tim Van Damme @maxvoltar

Tim Van Damme is the creative mastermind behind photo app Instagram’s interface. Van Damme is “responsible for mobile design for both Android and iOS,” according to theindustry.cc. Catch up with Van Damme’s witty, inspirational Tweets and industry discussions by following him on Twitter.

Jason Santa Maria @jasonsantamaria

Brooklyn-based graphic designer Jason Santa Maria is featured in “Insites The Book” as one of 20 of the biggest names in the Web design industry. As he describes on his website, he has held myriad titles including “the founder and principal of the design studio Mighty,” “creative director for Typekit,” and “creative director for A List Apart.” He recently started a new venture, called “Editorially.”

Joshua Porter @bokardo

Director of UX at HubSpot, Joshua Porter shares insider secrets about interface design and social interaction on his blog Bokardo. Porter also serves the user experience community with his blog 52 Weeks of UX: A discourse on the process of designing for real people. Follow his Twitter and never miss a Bokardo posts on topics such as “What it’s really like working with Steve Jobs” and “Everything you need to know about SaaS.”

Alex Morris @aexmo

The self-proclaimed “obsessive tinkerer” Alex Morris is the user experience director for Mark Boulton Design. Morris has written a custom e-commerce platform and released a plethora of iOS applications. As described by CreativeBloq.com, “his very honest and opinionated Twitter feed” contains extensive Web design knowledge.

Paul Boag @boagworld

Paul Boag is the founder of Web design agency Headscape and host for Web design podcast BoagWorld.com. This talented user experience strategist engages followers on his Twitter feed by Tweeting about industry insights and creating dialogue with other Web design and digital leaders.

5 Tips for Online Reputation Management

Reputation, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, ,

Online Reputation managementWith more people getting all of their information online, it can be very hard to control your reputation. Information online gets passed from person to person quicker with the birth of social media marketing, plus people can put any information online whether it is true or not. It means that not only do you have to shake hands and kiss babies to maintain a positive reputation, but you also have to be very active and aware online. Here are five tips to help with online reputation management so that it matches your offline one.

Everything is Public

Even if you try to keep personal accounts and public accounts separate, it is still impossible to ensure that everything you want to be private stays that way. Forbes recommends that you do not put anything online unless you wouldn’t care if the whole world saw it. This way, even if something does get out from your personal account, it won’t cause any damage to your reputation.

Combat Negative Reviews

One of the biggest things that will impact your online reputation is the reviews that you get online. Unfortunately, people who are upset are more likely to leave reviews. The first step to combating negative reviews is knowing when they are posted. With the help of companies like Reputation.com, you can get alerts whenever a negative review is posted on a variety of sites, including Yelp and Google. That way, you can go in and address the review, leaving a comment to demonstrate that you care about their concerns.

Another way to counteract negative reviews is to get more positive ones. You can do this by asking your in-person customers if they would be willing to leave you an honest review online. Before long, Reputation.com will be able to track the results of your efforts by showing more positive reviews.

Spread the Wealth

There are bound to be some things posted about you online that you would rather not be there. While you cannot do anything to get rid of them, you can counteract them by spreading positive things about you all over the web. CIO points out that if you do this, when your name is searched, the positive items will show up over the negative ones. Have a strong presence through every facet of social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and Google+. Every keyword counts.

Be Active Online

Having a presence in social media is not enough. It is a great way to build up your search rankings, but you also need to respond to customers comments and concerns that are made via social media platforms. According to ReachCast, 60 percent of people who leave comments on social media pages expect a response. If you are not leaving responses, you are upsetting a large portion of your customer base. When you do comment, you need to acknowledge the concerns or express gratitude for the comments. Never argue.

Everything is Permanent

However you interact online, remember that everything you do is permanent. Even if the people involved will forget the instance in the near future, it is always searchable, and therefore, it can always impact your online reputation.

While your in-person actions can only be seen by those around you and can be forgotten over time, your online reputation lasts forever. It is vital that you take the time to ensure that you have an online reputation management procedure.

Social Is the New Measure of Business Success

Pinterest, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Technology

business success is socialFor the longest time, the goal of most companies has been to make more money than everyone else at the end of the day. Some of America’s most successful corporations are changing this way of thinking about business by choosing to focus not just on profits, but also on the number of people following their company.

Facebook provides a very simple and easy-to-read metric for analyzing just how well people follow these companies in the form of page “Likes.” Granted that it’s taken a very long time for these companies to amass as many followers as they have, their seems to be a clear payout from all their effort. The corporations with the most followers like Coca-Cola, Disney and McDonald’s have continued to be leaders in earnings reports each fiscal quarter.

Corporations that have chosen to ignore the impact of social media have instead found themselves behind where they should be in earnings. Some are even struggling. The benefits of creating a good customer relationship using social media is an undeniable fact in 2012, and it should continue to be just as important in the coming years.

Source: Top Business Degrees

Employee Appreciation Changes Everything

Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing
business appreciation infographic

Does your employer appreciate you?

How do you feel about the company you work for? Do you feel appreciated and needed on a regular basis? If not, you are certainly not in the minority. Recent studies show that most employees want some sort of recognition for a “job well done” every seven days, yet their superiors do not live up to that expectation. In fact, over 79 percent of employees have said they have left a job because of lack of appreciation in the workplace. It turns out that “people leave their managers, not their companies.” Even those who stay with their unappreciative jobs have a difficult time, with 60 percent of employees saying they do not feel motivated by their managers’ desires and goals for the company. Unfortunately, only 14 percent of employees claim real satisfaction with their jobs and a feeling of appreciation in the workplace.
Leaders of companies often feel that they do recognize employees, although the employees would disagree. Ironically, 56 percent of management believes it does a great job at recognizing employee efforts, while only 23 percent of staff members claim the same to be true. So what seems to be the problem? It looks like leaders simply do not show appreciation for employees for three different reasons. They don’t know what to do, they don’t know what is okay, or they don’t want to deal with the hassle. However, if they hope to keep the organization running well and they want to have motivated, quality employees, they had better get appreciation savvy. They need to come up with an easy way to recognize great work, know what is appropriate, and have a variety of tools and ideas to do so. Leaders need to recognize things including smart ideas, extra effort, team success, a job well done, and great service.
This quote from the Towers Watson Global Recognition Study sums it up nicely: “Engagement comes from the sense that my boss cares about me and appreciates my performance.”

Employee appreciation changes everything in the workplace and beyond. So if you’re not feeling appreciated look elsewhere until you do. Eventually employers will get the hint!