Popular Articles on Business 2 Community

---

• 13 Blogging Statistics You Probably Don’t Know, But Should (Infographic)
• 10 Things Companies Can Do to Inspire and Engage Employees
• 10 Tips to Get More Retweets on Twitter
• Google AdWords: 25 Glossary Terms You Need to Know
• Top 5 Most Effective Online Lead Generation Ideas According to Experts (Infographic)
• #PRStudChat Co-Founder Warns Against Spamming Millennials
• 9 Reasons Why WordPress is the Perfect Option for Most Small Business Websites
• 10 Must Follow Social Media Pinterest Boards
• Did You Read That Article You Just Tweeted?
• How to Get Your Employees Engaged on LinkedIn
• The Internet of Things & Big Data – Is Technology Thinking For You?
• LinkedIn Expands Blogging Platform To All Users
• How Long Should Your YouTube Videos Be?

13 Blogging Statistics You Probably Don’t Know, But Should (Infographic) Posted: 21 Feb 2014 07:33 AM PST Are you making the most of the latest blogging statistics to build a better blog? You can easily find hundreds of blogging statistics around the web. Some of them are stats that mainly state why blogging is important and the others can help you create powerful blogs. I prefer reading the latter ones and implementing them on my blog to get better results. So I looked around for studies and graphs that contain stats that can be used to build a better blog and created this infographic. I also included some of the stats from research I had conducted in the past, like this one on How to Build a Credible Blog. Along with the blogging stats I have provided some tips on how they can be used to create a better blog too. Check them out below… Sign up to have our latest blog posts emailed straight to your inbox and get the Free Video Tutorial "How to Use Pinterest for Business?" What is your favourite blogging statistic? How has it helped you? Please leave your comments below. If you find the infographic helpful, please share it with your friends and followers by clicking on the social media share buttons below.

10 Things Companies Can Do to Inspire and Engage Employees Posted: 20 Feb 2014 09:00 PM PST Image Lic. via GL Stock Images Have you ever looked closely into a really successful project? Have you considered the person leading out on it? Looking closely and scientifically at those projects that achieved great results and comparing them with projects with less than great results and what do you find? Results don’t depend on your boss or your resources. Results don’t depend on your age, youth, your gender, tenure, or even your company’s size. In fact, even your tendencies at work that people usually hire for, like proactivity, interest, helpfulness, outgoingness, and having a sense of calling only affect project results half as much as something else—what you do. According to research by the Corporate Leadership Council, highly engaged employees were 87 percent less likely to leave their companies than their disengaged counterparts. That's a winner no matter how you look at it. Why would you want to keep having to hire, train, fire, rehire and retrain over and over again? Ask yourself another question: What would you do with your time on the clock to improve your odds of achieving great results?  Let me give you some advice courtesy of people who know… Starting Points Last week, I interviewed the people at O.C. Tanner—a company that develops employee recognition strategies and rewards programs that help companies appreciate people who do great work—for the second time in six months because what they do is impressive and refreshing to me. During my interview with O.C. Tanner's CTO, Mark Cook, and with Kevin Ames, Director of Speaking & Training, I asked them what kinds of questions they put to those organizations who take advantage of their services. Based on the company's years of experience, here are five questions you should ask yourself that will give you an answer because they are tied to great results on thousands of real projects mathematically: Did I jump right into this project or have I paused to ask myself the right question: What difference could I make that those people would love? Have I stayed in my office or did I go see for myself the work used in its environment, maybe a cool similar environment? Have I only brainstormed with my own team or have I asked adjacent experts in my outer circle? Is what I deliver the same set of parts or have I added or removed an element or two? Did I just “send” and move on or did I deliver the difference to make sure the people loved what they got? Do you see what's happening? The manager becomes a partner in getting these difference-making skills developed and used. One at a time, the manager "version" of these questions relates to the employee "version" within the typical one-on-one between the two throughout the project. [And guess what? The two "versions" are the same...] The manager assumes positively that the employee has done these things and simply asks: “Tell me what you came up with when you did [insert skill]?" If the employee hasn’t used that particular skill, the manager asks with encouragement if the employee is going to do it this week. Get the picture? It's the total opposite of the standard "don't think, just do as I say" mentality that ruins employee after employee by dint of ignoring their needs in lieu of yours. What these kinds of ballistic bosses miss out on is the fact that they are all in it together. The owner may have started the business, but eventually they need others to partner with them for continued growth and success. "A motivated employee is one who has been engaged," says Ames. "The best way to motivate your employees is to empower them. This means giving them the room to take positive, beneficial action when problems occur, when things could and should be done better and when extra effort is required. In other words, you want your employees not just to punch a clock, but to take ownership of their job. I’m not saying you do this all in one shot, but little by little while you assess the employees ability to act on their own initiative." Sadly, most managers lack the skills to engage and encourage their employees, which is why many start working solo—they claim to be "sick of employees," yet the blame is usually at their feet—not the employees. If you start as you mean to go on, meaning positive reinforcement and true managerial structuring as well as considering the needs of your employees, most likely you’ll be fine. But those who assume others will "get it" usually become the worst and unhappiest of managers/business owners. And the pattern continues again and again through the years. But it does NOT have to be that way. "When an employee feels as though they're part of making decisions, they're motivated," says Cook. "A slave driver doesn't achieve loyalty or the efforts required to go the extra mile. We're driven to go to work every day and do our job by virtue of financial need. Most of us will do our jobs well. But when you want the next level—someone akin to an Intrapreneur—you have to lay the right groundwork and follow it up. Not just once, but on a day to day basis." It's all true. How many employees can take ownership of their job when they feel unheard and disempowered? In my experience, none. They very quickly become unhappy, and this leads to the dreaded higher turnover rates, absenteeism and an overall lower quality of work. Is that what you really want?  So, What Can You Do? As a business owner or manager or supervisor, you can either continue to be a part of the problem or be the change you want to see—and it starts with you. It is your business to manage your business—isn't it? Below are ten simple tips you can follow in order to achieve something above and beyond the usual "do as I say" routine that, more often than not, never achieves the kinds of success with employees every owner and manager seems to crave: In the words of the people at O.C. Tanner, it’s “how to achieve Great Work” as opposed to good or mediocre work. Embrace the idea that appreciation drives great work. "Effective recognition is not a reaction to great work, but the cause of it." –Marcus Buckingham, First Break All the Rules Engage leaders in sponsoring and modeling the principles of effective recognition. Equip employees with a range of innovative tools to help appreciate great work. Make it intuitive, easy, and fun by leveraging the power of technology and mobile experiences. Encourage day-to-day effort, reward results and outcomes, and celebrate team member's careers. Empower managers through ongoing communication and training. Enlist champions to inform and inspire peer-to-peer recognition. Measure recognition's effectiveness in achieving cultural and financial results. Apply best practices in conducting highly effective moments of recognition. Tie recognition to organizational values; recognize what matters most to the company. Understand that nothing is as loud as the silence where a Thank You should be! For an example of how well these axioms work, here is a short video courtesy of O.C. Tanner. It's a revelation…or it should be. Change for the better doesn't happen overnight. But if you start today and do things wisely, not only will you have better, more engaged and more effective employees, you'll be a better business manager. What have you got to lose?

10 Tips to Get More Retweets on Twitter Posted: 20 Feb 2014 08:10 PM PST Boost Engagement on Twitter With These Simple Steps Twitter has become one of the most prominent social media platforms, and one of the most important to brands. There are more than 360 million Twitter users worldwide and 230 million tweets posted daily. That is a lot of tweeting. But how can a brand leverage the conversations on Twitter to their advantage? Just like other social media channels, one of the best measure of  social media success is how much your network is engaging with your content. On Twitter, engaging could mean retweeting (RT), favoriting or responding back to tweets. These actions are similar to sharing, liking and commenting on posts published on Facebook. When someone retweets on Twitter, they are sharing that tweet with their entire network. That tweet includes your original info and your Twitter handle. If the tweet is relevant and interesting to others, they will also share it, and potentially follow you, building your credibility, your audience and ultimately, your reach. So how do you get people to retweet your tweets? Here are a few simple tips to increase your retweet potential: 1. Write Shorter Tweets Although Twitter is already limited to 140 characters, the most effective tweets are even shorter, about 65-100 characters is the optimal range. Twitter users will often add their own comment on tweets when retweeting, so a shorter tweet leaves room for their own thoughts. 2. Ask for a RT Put a call to action in your tweets by asking for a retweet. This may seem overly simple, but asking for an retweet motivates your audience. According to this infographic by Visu.ly, tweets with the phrase "Please Retweet" had a 51% retweet rate while "Please RT" had a 39% retweet rate, compared to tweets without which only had a 12% retweet rate. In many cases, simply asking for a retweet will result in a much higher engagement rate. 3. Tweet Links Lots of Twitter uses are looking for information. Become a resource to your audience with good content, information, and relevant news by adding links to your tweets. Of the 28% of tweets containing a URL, 21% get retweeted. Tweet the latest info, relevant news, informative blog posts and surprising developments for more retweets. 4. Include a Hashtag Hashtags started as Twitter's simple keyword system and have since spread to take on a culture of their own. Certain hashtags are prevalent across Twitter such as #FF (Follow Friday) or #TBT (Throwback Thursday), but each industry has specific hashtags that signal certain kind of tweets or information being discussed. Even though only 10% of tweets have at least one hashtag, nearly 20% of retweets have at least one hashtag. Do some research and see what kinds of hashtags are being used in your industry by followers and competitors. 5. Include a Photo Although Twitter started as a mainly text-based micro-blogging platform, it has evolved to favor added content such as photos and videos. Recently added features allow better visibility to tweets with photos in the newsfeed. This boosts engagement on tweets that include visual content. Social management tool, Buffer, found that their tweets with images contained 18% more retweets and 39% more favorites than without. 6. Tweet at the Right Time Users have to see your tweets in their newsfeed to retweet them, so make sure to tweet when your users are likely to be online and active on Twitter. Although data suggests that Fridays between 12-2 p.m. is a peak time to tweet, the best is to test out when your tweets get the most interactions. Spread out tweets during different days and times to see when your tweets get the most retweets and engagement. 7. RT Others One of the best ways to get more Twitter users interested in your tweets is to retweet their tweets. Keep an eye on users who follow and engage frequently to retweet their tweets as well as users you want to start conversations and potentially relationships with. A retweet is a great place to start. 8. Tweet More Than Just Yourself Although it may seem counterintuitive, the most engaging tweets don't contain self-references. Only about 1.5% of retweets contain a self-reference, meaning those are very few and far between. Instead, try tweeting things that your audience will appreciate. When asked what type of content they retweet, 80% of Twitter users asked said informative or entertaining. 9. Make Tweets Helpful Just as your tweets should contain other information than just about yourself, engaging tweets offer value to their audience. To amplify the retweet potential of your tweets, post information, facts, tips, quotes and information relevant to your audience. 10. Build Your Network Your tweets are mainly seen by your followers, so cultivate your following carefully and thoughtfully. Create a solid Twitter strategy and start with good content. Build your network by connecting with and following other users in your industry. Retweet their tweets, respond to their questions and start conversations. This will often prompt users to see that you have similar interests and to potentially follow you as well. By creating a simple Twitter strategy and following these simple tips, your tweets will be more engaging and better suited to earn more retweets from your audience. What tactics are you trying to gain retweets? Share your thoughts below or tweet me @ErinSRichards! Read more on the Excelerate Media blog

Google AdWords: 25 Glossary Terms You Need to Know Posted: 20 Feb 2014 07:37 PM PST The vernacular of Google advertising can be pretty daunting. If you're like most small business marketers, you've got a lot of stuff on your to-do list – and figuring out this maze of PPC, CTR and Impressions doesn't rank high on your priorities. But you know you need to get your message to your market where they are – online. Here's 25 Google AdWords terms you need to know, to get you started and increase your conversion rates with your paid campaigns.   Setting Up Google AdWords Terms 1. Campaign – An ad campaign on Google AdWords is made up of your ad groups, and has the same budget, campaign type and your other ad settings. It's generally what you first set-up when you advertise, and it helps you organize your different paid advertising efforts. You can run multiple campaigns at any time from your Google account. 2. Ad groups – An ad group is your set of keywords, budgets and targeting methods for a particular objective, within the same campaign. For example, if you are running an ad campaign for a shoe sale, you could set up ad groups to target for online sales, women's shoes and men's shoes. You can have multiple ads in each ad group. 3. Campaign Type – Your campaign type is where you want your ads to be seen. Google has: "Search Network only" (which means Google search only) "Display Network only" (which means your ad shows up in Google's Display network of websites, videos, YouTube, Blogger and more. This is also known as AdSense) "Search Network with Display Select" (which is a combo of search and display) If you have a Google Merchant Center account and want to use Product Listing Ads, you can also choose "Shopping" as a campaign type. 4. Keywords – Keywords are very important in your Google Ads. They are the words or word phrases you choose for your ads, and will help to determine where and when your ad will appear. When choosing your keywords, think like your customer and what they would be searching for when they want your product, service or offer. Though you can include as many as you like, I suggest a maximum of twenty keywords. Here's Google's explanation on how to build the best keyword list: 5. Quality Score – A quality score is the measurement from Google based on the relevancy of your ad headline, description, keywords and destination URL to your potential customer seeing your ad. A higher Quality Score can get you better ad placement and lower costs. 6. Impressions – An impression is the measurement of how many times your ad is shown. 7. Ad Rank – Your Ad Rank is the value that's used to determine where your ad shows up on a page. It's based on your Quality Score and your bid amount. 8. Mobile ad – Mobile ads are what your mobile searchers see on their devices. Google AdWords has WAP mobile ads and "ads for high-end mobile devices". 9. Ad extensions – Ad extensions are extra information about your business, such as your local address, phone number, and even coupons or additional websites. They're what shows up in blue below your ad descriptions. General Ad Related Terms 10. Call to Action (CTA) – A CTA is literally the action you want your searcher to take. Good CTAs in your ads are short, action oriented words such as "Buy", "Get", "Act Now", etc. 11. Click Through Rate (CTR) – Your CTR is an important metric in your account settings. It measures how many people who have seen your ad click through to your link destination. 12. Landing Page – Your landing page is the page on your website to which you're driving traffic from your ad. 13. Optimization – Optimization in Google AdWords is like optimization elsewhere in marketing. It means making the changes in your ad that get you higher results for your objectives. 14. Split Testing – Split testing includes A/B and multivariate testing. It's a method of controlled marketing experiments with the goal being to improve your objective results (such as higher CTR's, increased conversion or even better Ad Ranking). Cost Related Terms 15. Bid Strategy – Your bid strategy is basically how you set your bid type to pay for viewer interaction with your ads. 16. Daily budget – Your daily budget is what you're willing to spend per day per ad. Your daily cost is based on a daily average per month, so don't be alarmed if yours varies from day to day. 17. CPC – Cost-Per-Click is the most common bid type on Google AdWords. It means you pay every time a person actually clicks on your ad. You set your "maximum CPC" in the bidding process, which means that dollar amount is the most you'll pay for a click on your ad. 18. PPC – Pay-Per-Click is the same as CPC. 19. CPM – Cost-Per-thousand impressions is a bidding method that bases your costs on how many times your ads are shown (impressions). 20. Billing Threshold – Your billing threshold is the level of spending that triggers a charge to you for the ad costs. It applies to automatic payments, and the threshold level starts at $50. It you reach that within 30 days, you'll be billed, and your threshold then raises to $100 and so on. Learn more about Google AdWords billing. Ad Creative Terms 21. Headline – Your ad headline is the header of your ad copy. It generally shows up in blue when your ad is live. 22. Destination URL – Your destination URL is the landing page your ad is directed to when it's clicked. Your destination site can be a specific page. You can change it for differing ads within ad groups. Your audience does not see it in the ad. 23. Display URL – Your display URL is what shows up in your ad copy. You can keep this simple and clean to increase your brand recognition, trust, and conversions. 24. Side ad – A side ad is the ad that show up on the right hand side of a search engine results page (SERP). 25. Top ad – A top ad is the ad that shows up in a shaded box above the organic search results. Note: Your ad will likely show up as both a side ad and a top ad – so write your ad copy to optimize for both. Conclusion There you have it – all the basic terms you need to get started with Google AdWords. You can talk like a pro! It wasn't that hard, right? If you want to know even more terminology, check out Google's own AdWords Glossary. To learn more about Google AdWords strategies, check out 10 Google AdWords Mistakes You Need to Avoid: Beginners Guide Written by Krista Bunskoek @ Wishpond

Top 5 Most Effective Online Lead Generation Ideas According to Experts (Infographic) Posted: 20 Feb 2014 05:05 PM PST The 2014 Global Digital Statistics, Stats & Facts report indicate that there are approximately 2.5 billion people online. Just imagine tapping into this incredibly large market. Capturing merely a fraction of such a tremendous source of customers could lead to considerable profits for your brand, products or services. How can you tap into this very huge global market? The answer to that is Online Lead Generation. This is now the age where cold sales calling and elaborate sales team efforts are slowly ebbing away into the past. What business owners need now to tap into this bountiful market are effective digital marketing tools specifically designed for maximum lead generation results. There are many tools of these kinds available for businesses to use, however it would be best for business owners to select which lead generation technique will cater to their unique business needs and environment. Digital Marketing Philippines takes you into this journey of exploring lead generation ideas that were specifically tested and proven to deliver results. These ideas were intended to guide you in making your ultimate goal of increasing sales and revenues through effective online lead generation techniques. In no particular order, here are the top 5 most effective online lead generation ideas as recommended by experts in the field of Digital and Internet Marketing. The infographic (click to zoom): Embedded from Digital Marketing Philippines

#PRStudChat Co-Founder Warns Against Spamming Millennials Posted: 20 Feb 2014 08:18 AM PST Immersed in a dialog with college-age kids who hope to become PR pros has taught Deirdre Breakenridge not to generalize about the work ethic and social traits of millennials. It's also earned the author and adjunct New York University professor status as an expert on how of PR services suppliers should interact with the new generation of prospects and customers. "Sooner or later, students … graduate. They go out into the world," says Breakenridge, who is CEO of Pure Performance Communications. "If they trust you, they may buy services from you." Along with co-founder Valerie Simon, Breakenridge used Twitter in 2009 to build an online community of thousands of young people aspiring to work in PR, social media or a related field, along with those who have already built a career in the profession.  Dubbed #PRStudChat – short for PR Student Chat — the community's purpose is to foster "a dynamic conversation about the Public Relations Industry and to provide opportunities for learning, networking and mentoring relationships." Breakenridge is quick to dismiss critics of millennials, calling them eager learners with a strong work ethic. "These are folks that care," she said, adding that generalizations exist about every generation, including her own Gen X peers. "If we don't accept spammy messages, well certainly millennials are not going to, either," cautioned Breakenridge, who recommended that brands seeking to strengthen ties with millennials join in the #PRStudChat dialog and produce relevant content like e-books and infographics. A prolific business book author, Breakenridge teamed with Brian Solis in 2009 to publish Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR.  She was sole author of the 2008 title, PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences, and, in 2012, wrote, Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional. Insights provided by Critical Mention’s media monitoring service

9 Reasons Why WordPress is the Perfect Option for Most Small Business Websites Posted: 20 Feb 2014 03:25 AM PST If you need an easy-to-use website to grow your business or your brand, there are plenty of options to choose from. But for last several years, when asked this question, I've suggest using WordPress in almost all cases. This came up again recently so I wanted to write down why I tend to recommend WordPress as my go-to platform for building basic small business websites. Earlier this week, a friend of mine asked me what would be the easiest way to setup a website for a non-profit she's starting. I get this same type of question from family members or other business owners too. Even though my business focuses on building custom software and custom websites using Ruby on Rails, I direct people to WordPress when its a better match for their needs and am starting to do a fair amount of WordPress related work also. Here are 9 reasons why WordPress is the perfect option for building many small business websites: Makes it easy to publish content: One of the best things about WordPress is that it makes it easy to publish content. This is more important these days since some of the most effective marketing companies can engage in is content marketing. But that means consistently publishing new information on your site – articles, posts, tips, links, etc. WordPress makes this super easy, with a familiar interface that's similar to most word processors. This makes it possible for anyone to publish new content without having to know HTML, CSS and so on. Has an easy to use interface: WordPress has a simple user interface. Whether its posting new content as mentioned above, or handling some other aspect of your site, WordPress has continued to improve on its user interface and the current layout is pretty user friendly. Is widely used: WordPress is also a widely used platform. As of July 2013, 18.9% of the web runs on WordPress. Its being used for content-based websites, e-commerce websites, simple blogs and a lot more. (Note: I am a fan of using the right tool for the right job and don't see WordPress as the ideal choice for some of these, like e-commerce sites, but for most businesses this isn't an issue). Has a large community of developers, designers, and users: One of the criteria I keep in mind when choosing a technology, especially when it comes to website/software development, is what is the community like for that technology. If there are only a handful of users, its going to be difficult to get support when you get stuck. Its also going to be hard to find people that know how to work with that technology. This isn't the case with WordPress. The WordPress community is quite large and its no trouble finding experienced folks to help with nearly any aspect of your WordPress-based website. Is easy to install: The technology WordPress uses is pretty standard and is found on most web hosts. Contrast that with something like Ruby on Rails (which admittedly is my preferred development platform). Rails requires some specific things under the hood to get a Rails site running. For a Rails application, its easier to choose a web host like Heroku or to build your own server using something like Amazon AWS. But this requires more technical know-how than most non-developers are going to want to deal with. With WordPress, you simply need Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, which you can find at places like MediaTemple or nearly any traditional shared hosting environment. And as a bonus, with many web hosts, you can install WordPress by filling out a simple form and clicking a button – no need to download files, unzip them, and then upload them. Themes: You can't mention WordPress without mentioning themes. Themes allow you to change the look and feel of your site. Its also common for themes to give you added features for running your site too. For example, some themes include support for "shortcodes" which allow you to insert simple snippets of text that WordPress translates into HTML. Other themes allow you to use "widgets" which allow you to change what appears in your website's sidebar and in what order. Plugins: To add even more functionality to your website, you can install "plugins". Plugins are modules that add additional features to your website. For example, on a site I was working on for a client recently, he needed a simple way to display customer testimonials. I did a quick search and found a good plugin for that. This allowed me to easily meet this client's need and saved him hundreds of dollars (at least) because I didn't have to build that functionality from scratch. Allows website visitors to leave comments: WordPress started as a platform for blogging. People soon realized that with a few tweaks, it could also be used for other types of websites too. But even in those cases, you can take advantage of one of the features typical of blogs – commenting. WordPress has built-in support for commenting and makes it easy for your website visitors to leave comments on your articles or posts. This is important because it gives you, as a business owner, a way to directly interact with your prospects or customers. This is much better than having a simple, static website that's never updated and where people can't interact. Allows people to subscribe for updates: Since WordPress started as a blogging platform, it also has built-in support for RSS (Really Simple Syndication). One of the main goals with any business website is that, if visitors don't buy today, we want to at least get them to come back to see any updates. The problem is that this relies on your visitor to bookmark your website and to periodically check to see if anything new has been added. It would be better if they had an option to subscribe to your website so that they could automatically be notified when new content was added. That's exactly what RSS does. And its a feature built into WordPress by default.

10 Must Follow Social Media Pinterest Boards Posted: 20 Feb 2014 03:20 AM PST Among all of the currently popular social media websites, Pinterest is one of the most interesting, presenting us with a simple way to consume content, always with an option to reach out for more. Besides helping bloggers to spread their content farther and wider, including both videos and imagery, Pinterest also offers us the ability to quickly learn more about a given subject, social media in general chief among them. Whether you're looking to stay hip to social media simply because your modern lifestyle demands it, or you need to get under the surface in order to better take advantage of the social web for your own marketing purposes, here are 10 social media Pinterest boards that we should all follow: 1. Mashable Easily the best known and most robust source for social media news, tips, and tricks on the web, Mashable is just as active on its Pinterest board as it is on its main website, providing followers with a daily dose of imagery, infographics, and photographs, each leading back to more detailed coverage if you choose to go that far. Given just how full of content Mashable is, using their Pinterest board as a buffer between you and their website is a great way to more quickly narrow down what you're reading to what best suits your purposes and interests. Check out Mashable Pin Board 2. Mari Smith Mari Smith doesn't pin often compared to giants like Mashable, but when she does, it's always worth a look! Mari Smith is a social media maven, well-known on a number of social networks, and Pinterest is no exception. Given her career as a successful marketer with a knack for thinking outside of the box, Mari's pins will open your eyes to a world full of marketing possibilities, teaching you how to truly take advantage of the hundreds of millions of sets of social eyes just waiting to take in what your blog or website has to offer. Check out Mari Smith Pin Board 3. SocialMedia.nl Infographics Everybody loves a good infographic, and that's all you'll find here at the SocialMedia.nl Infographics board on Pinterest. From learning more about yourself as a marketer to better understanding the many layers of social media that are available to you as you push your websites, products, and services, you'll find no shortage of information-heavy graphics available for your perusal here. Check out SocialMedia.nl Infographics 4. Facebook Marketing Tips If there's one thing about Facebook that you can count on, it's that it will be constantly changing and updating its functionality, and that alone makes the Facebook Marketing Tips Pinterest board an invaluable resource, as its pins help you to stay in the loop. With more than one billion users, Facebook is the place to be for social marketers, and you'll not find a better resource where truly getting a handle on the social network's potential is concerned. Check out Facebook Marketing Tips 5. Dashburst Similar in content and style to Mashable, the Dashburst Pinterest board offers up a fun and engaging way to better familiarize yourself with social media and its potential for your blog or website. From giants like Facebook to relative newcomers like Tumblr, you'll find advice, tips, and tricks to help to you scale each social network for your own benefit, with copious amounts of other web development and marketing information available on the side. Check out Dashburst Pin Board 6. ShortStack Lab Boasting more than 500 pins, ShortStack's presence on Pinterest provides a wealth of social media and search marketing information, all very visually compelling and available with the click of a button. Besides the standard social media infographics and links, you'll also find a wide variety of pins concerning the many side topics related to the social sphere, making this a full-featured place to be for bloggers and webmasters looking to take their endeavors to the next level. Check out ShortStack Lab Pin Board 7. Melonie Dodaro Considered Canada's number one expert on Linkedin in particular and social media in general, Melonie Dodaro's Pinterest board features more than 500 unique pins revolving around all of your favorite social networks, with the vast majority of them aiming to teach you something about taking advantage of each of those networks. Check out Melonie Dodaro Pin Board 8. Social Media Week Offering up not only the tips and tricks that you'd expect from such a board, but also examples of social media done right on a variety of platforms, the Social Media Week board on Pinterest provides more than 3,000 pins for your perusal, each of them aiming to make you a better social media aficionado than you were before. Check out Social Media Week Pin Board 9. Social Media Infographics Infographics have become on the web's favorite ways of conveying detailed information in a short and succinct way, and that is probably never more true than when it comes to social media. On the Social Media Infographics board, you'll find infographics helping you to do everything from gaining more followers on Pinterest to demanding more attention for the content maximizing what you learning while minimizing the time spent learning it all the while. Visit Social Media Infographics Pin Board 10. Community Board – Social Media They love infographics at the Community Board – Social Media board on Pinterest as well, but you'll also find a variety of other additions here, with each of the board's more than 3,500 pins boasting the ability to make you more web-savvy in general. Focusing on increasing engagement across all major platforms by shaping you into a better social media participant, this board has just about everything you need to up your social game online in the shortest time possible. Check out Community Board – Social Media Conclusion Whether you're looking to be a better social marketer, or you simply want to utilize social media to its full benefit on your own personal time, Pinterest can quickly prove to be one of the web's most valuable sources of information given its to-the-point presentation, making each of these boards – and many hundreds more, we're sure – well worth paying a visit to when you find yourself on the prowl for social media tips and tricks. Image Credit: Pinterest.

Did You Read That Article You Just Tweeted? Posted: 19 Feb 2014 07:04 PM PST If someone just shared this article with you, it may be worth asking that person if they actually read it. Why? Because according to Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile as quoted at The Verge, “we’ve found effectively no correlation between social shares and people actually reading." While the finding may seem counterintuitive, there is some merit to the idea. And what content marketers should be focused on now is positioning their most critical content upfront. Think about it: with all of the information sharing that transpires via Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other social media networks, there's no way that every article is completely digested before it's passed on. In fact, if we could be honest for a minute, we'd confess that most of our retweets occur without even reading the initial content they were based on. And this is exactly why viral content spreads like wildfire. Take the White House story last year when a hacker falsely tweeted two explosions injuring the president from The Associate Press Twitter account. The hacker knew that audiences would fall victim to the captivating and descriptive headline. After all, it provides enough information to produce a good synopsis of the story minus the details. There was no link to click – only the ability to reply, retweet or favorite. But if users could have clicked through, they would have likely read at least a portion of the article if it existed. Still though, your content is precious. And while there may not be a direct connection between social shares and reading content, it's unfathomable to think that a million social shares, for instance, has no impact on exposure to your content. Some may only read the first sentence, others may choose to take in a couple of paragraphs, and others may not read it at all but may pass it along to someone else who fully consumes it. But it's okay if your audience only reads a fraction of your content if you follow the inverted pyramid of news writing by including the most critical information first. The problem for some marketers is that they fail to identify what is important to their target audience. In the rapidly changing world of online marketing, it's less about hits to a page, but much more about the length of time spent on that page. This clearly provides an indication that your content is actually being read. But today's average reader can visually search and skim at a rate of about 230 words per minute. So, it should only take about two minutes to read this article. Advice: keep tweeting, retweeting, liking, sharing, and chatting about your content. After all, you spend a considerable amount of time perfecting it. And in the end, your content is much more likely to be read though social sharing than letting it stand on its own.

How to Get Your Employees Engaged on LinkedIn Posted: 19 Feb 2014 03:01 PM PST An informative article on Forbes explains that having a LinkedIn profile promotes increased visibility for your brand. LinkedIn takes engagement of your company page into consideration when deciding where you rank in searches on their site. In order for LI to work its magic and get your company this increased visibility, it's important that not only you, but that your employees as well get on the bandwagon. It's crucial that you not only get your employees to join LI, but that you get them engaged, so that they use LinkedIn effectively to help your company. Furthermore, a study at BrightEdge reported that "companies that had a greater proportion of their employees on LinkedIn had more followers". Pretty convincing, huh? So…how do we do it? How do we get our employees engaged on Linkedin? 1. Educate: First off, if your employees aren't on LI yet, educate them. This could be by holding a department or company wide seminar on the importance of LinkedIn as well as an informative and interactive tutorial. Following the basic LI education and sign up, it's important that your employees use it and use it effectively. An article in Forbes explains that LI is important in order to encourage your employees to link to each other: one way of doing so is by educating and helping the different departments stay connected and on top of what others are doing based on what they share. 2. Endorsements: The “endorsements” feature can be helpful, in encouraging your employees in a way that acknowledges their accomplishments to a large community. These forms of public praise are not only powerful rewards for great work, but will likely increase in your employees' involvement in your  company's LinkedIn community. 3. Ask for feedback: one of the best ways to keep your employees (and other followers) coming back for more, is by establishing yourself as a source of up-to-date industry information and thought leadership. By sharing the latest articles on topics within your industry, no matter what information you’re sharing- make sure to ask your employees (and other followers) for their opinions and feedback. Like any matter, it’s important that your employees feel that they are involved in the organization. Employees are likely to feel a motivation sense of ownership for goals, when they play a major role in creating them, versus simply feeling that they are executing someone else’s vision. It evokes a sense of ownership and shareholder stake in the success of your business: Be sure to have your employees take on their own projects and postings with regard to LinkedIn (as opposed to simply posting whatever you ask them to). 4. Be Creative & Open about Content: Devote a few hours a week to brainstorming sessions with your employees. Your social media marketing manager might be the kingpin to your content but it cannot be done alone. Input from every person in your company is critical. 5. Create or Promote Brand Ambassadors: Interesting articles, tough questions and open discussions are useless without people who are willing to engage with the content. Depending on your company and your industry, this may be harder for some, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to make it happen. As always, start with your employees and people within your own network and ask them to help build up engagement by interacting with your posts, bringing people from their networks into conversations and overall playing the initial "brand ambassador" role. Once this is done, you'll have people engaging more often. With some time and effort (both on your end and for those helping you to create the right atmosphere on the company page) your company can have an engaged followers that come back to your page for information, discussions and updates. Using Roojoom, I've compiled informative websites that are helpful in being a good leader, thus engaging your employees. Understanding that your employees are your brand ambassadors is the basis to getting them to use LinkedIn. Once applied, your company will rank higher and exhibit better customer engagement. With proper workshops, you can easily and effectively educate your employees on LinkedIn's importance as well as how to use it effectively. Infographic source: http://www.ronsela.com/brand-ambassadors-influencers/

The Internet of Things & Big Data – Is Technology Thinking For You? Posted: 19 Feb 2014 02:40 PM PST "Good morning. It's 6 AM and time to wake up." These are the words that greet me first thing in the morning, spoken by my alarm clock. Instantly, my bedroom lights turn on and my electronic shades open, exposing the early morning sunlight. With one touch of my smartwatch, I could easily turn the lights off, shut the blinds and fall back asleep. I jump out of bed and open my refrigerator which informs me, "You are almost out of milk – ordering a new carton today." I select the "refrigerator app" on my smartphone and confirm the order. I slip on my running shoes with a built-in sensor. This sensor collects data from my morning run and sends it to a central server which I can later access to analyze my performance. In fact, almost all of the physical objects that I own are embedded with technology which are connected to the internet and are capable of communicating with one another. What the Future Holds Although the above scenario is make believe, situations similar to this will eventually become a reality with the rise of the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things is a term which was first mentioned in 1999 by a technologist named, Kevin Ashton. Ashton suggested that computers will eventually be capable of generating and collecting data by themselves without human interference, thus leading to "The Internet of Things." Simply put, the Internet of Things relates to the idea of physical objects communicating and interacting with one another online, an incredible technological advancement which is unfolding before our very eyes. And The Internet of Things is just now getting started, causing many people to wonder about what the future will hold. According to a Gartner representative, "In 2009 there were 0.9 billion sensors and 1.6 billion personal devices, [That's] roughly 2.5 billion things that were connected. By 2020, that will grow to become 30 billion things." This prediction conveys the possibility that technology will be capable of "thinking for us", yet is this really the case? And if so, what are the challenges that lie ahead? 2 Brains Are Better Than 1 While the Internet of Things is creating groundbreaking technological advancements, the problem of managing Big Data has become an even bigger issue. Volumes of data are being generated at blazingly fast speeds which need to be routed, captured and analyzed in real-time in order for smart devices to communicate with one another via the internet. The Internet of Things has led to an era in which Big Data analysis has become a crucial element for businesses. Data driven enterprises must remain focused on analyzing the correct data sets and absorbing data in real-time. Susan Hauser, the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Worldwide Enterprise, sums this up perfectly stating, "This strategy—understanding what data needs to be absorbed vs. ignored—is where the 'Internet of things' becomes real. It will be a big deal in 2014." Finding a Solution So, what Big Data solutions are needed to enable the advancement of the Internet of Things? Big Data analytic platforms capable of running super-fast queries are being used now more than ever before by enterprises. Data scientists are also more in demand, an occupation which is predicted to create 39,000 new jobs in the U.S. by 2015. Wireless sensor networks are also being applied which are capable of monitoring data and sending it back to data centers for further analysis. The Brains Behind the Data Don't be fooled by the Internet of Things – data scientists, data centers and superior Big Data platforms are currently still needed to piece this technological puzzle together. Yet, the idea of "technology being able to think for us" still remains. If Big Data and the Internet of Things continue to advance in the future, than it might be safe to say that this will be the outcome. Keep up with US! Follow SQream on twitter for daily Big Data tweets, like our Facebook page, join us on LinkedIn and find us on Google+.  Leave your comments below too – we can't wait to hear what you have to say! This article originally appeared on SQream Technologies’ Blog: Let’s Talk Big Data and  was also featured on Geektime.com

LinkedIn Expands Blogging Platform To All Users Posted: 19 Feb 2014 10:59 AM PST LinkedIn offers "Influencers" such as business executives and celebrities the ability to publish blog posts, and today is expanding the feature to all users. From Head of Content Products Ryan Roslansky: "One of our big, strategic bets for the company is for LinkedIn to become the definitive, professional publishing platform. We do this because we want LinkedIn to be the place where members can become productive, successful professionals – not just when you're trying to find a job, or search for another person." According to Roslansky, on average, "Influencer" posts receive over 20,000 unique views, 250 "likes," and 80 comments. To create your own post, users will see a pencil icon within the text box to share a new update. Simply click the icon, and a new window will appear: The ability to publish a blog post is rolling out now to around 25,000 users, and LinkedIn says it will expand to all 277 million users in the next couple months.

How Long Should Your YouTube Videos Be? Posted: 19 Feb 2014 05:08 AM PST The growing concern of audience attention spans has led to the emergence of snackable content; bite-sized information viewers can easily and quickly retain. With this in mind as content marketers, we must ask ourselves if we are pushing our luck with the length of our content, especially when it comes to video. Video is a great opportunity to visually connect with and entertain our viewers by showing them the personalities behind a business. It's also a chance to develop an industry voice online. Shaping your videos into snackable sizes is not necessarily the only option you have for retaining attention with your content though. With the use of specific metrics in your Youtube account, you can find all the information you need to cater to your audience's needs by answering the question: "How long should your YouTube videos be?" (Source: Wistia) How To Determine The Right Video Length? A good YouTube account should follow a rule of content marketing by developing diverse forms of content. Your videos should be assortment of different types of videos that relate to your company's industry. This broad approach to having a variety of video content is important when collecting the needed analytics to determine the correct length of your videos. By looking at a wide range, you are ensuring consistency across the board for determining the proper length of all of your video content as well as discovering what may or may not be working for your company. Video Manager and Video Views The first step in determining the right video length begins with your YouTube accounts Video Manager. The Video Manager has the tools to help you alter, study, and organize your videos in your account. It is important to look at your videos from the "Most Viewed" setting, so you are given a proper range to choose the videos from. Keep in mind that while selecting videos you will need to collect a diverse assortment based on their topics, as well as offering a good range with their view counts. The "Views" component in the analytics of each video will provide a graph on the view count, accompanied by an adjustable date range and an Average View Duration of the video. Affected by the date range underneath the graph, the Avergage View Duration gives us the average number of minutes watched. Adjusting the date range to see the view duration throughout the videos lifespan will provide you with a better understanding of how to create and match the right length to a topic. If the video has a low view count and Average View Duration, then you may want to ask yourself if the topic is right for your company, or check to see if the title is optimized properly and if the video uses tags. Audience Retention After collecting information on the Average View Duration, it's time to take a more detailed look at the attention span of your audience. Audience retention contains the metrics of how well your video can retain its viewers according to the date range selected on the "Views" graph. In a side-by-side comparison between a chart of your audience's retention and the actual video, you can see at what point people started opting out of your video during an ad, before the video starts, or at a specific moment or time. There are two types of Audience Retention stats that you can toggle between: Absolute and Relative. The views of every moment of a video, as shown by percentage of the number of video views is Absolute Audience Retention. Relative Audience Retention compares your videos ability to retain viewers during playback to all YouTube videos of similar length. Be careful with the Relative function, as various types of content fair differently with viewers. Ask yourself this: can you really compare a 4 minute video of content marketing to the biggest fails of 2013 of the same length? Audience Retention also measures three types of traffic that can be displayed graphically: Organic, TrueView in-stream, and TrueView in-display. Organic traffic in Audience Retention are views that are a result directly from user actions (searched for a video, browsed a channel or clicked on a suggested video). The last two are considered paid traffic. TrueView in-stream are the auto-played ads before a video that allow the user to opt out of the ad after five seconds. On the graph, TrueView in-stream shows when an ad is viewed until its conclusion or for more than 30 seconds, as well as ad playbacks where an ad is skipped after five or more seconds. With TrueView in-display, the ads are selected by the user to play. By looking at these metrics, searching for patterns in your videos as well as the peaks and valleys of an audience retention graph, you can collect the information you need to determine the proper length of your video. The next step is to utilize your collected research in a manner that creates great video content. From Analytics To Creation In addition to the right video duration, its time to look at certain attributes and examples that can supplement its length. There are several ways to develop content or even refurbish previous video content marketing efforts to meet your audience's needs. Create a video from scratch with the following attributes: A topic/headline created from search query research. Jump straight into the topic and avoid having drawn out introductions that can last 6-12 seconds. Viewers are most likely to drop off within the first 15 seconds of every video (Source: Google) Leave out the fluff and be precise with what your talking about. Audio/video equipment used to record videos are more reasonable in price than some would expect. So it may be worth spending some of your budget on the proper equipment. Especially when the quality of your video content speaks to your companies branding as well as for retaining your audience's attention. Design videos that incorporate branding at a level that is not forceful and sales-y. If using a narrator or presenter in your videos, draft up a script and time their readings in comparison to the desired video length. Tell a story. Take your audience on a journey from "A-C", with "B" the takeaway from the video. Use annotations in the video that allow you to skip ahead to certain points of the video like in this example below: Embed a video with a specific time start. Note: The times are listed as seconds, where the start time 278 seconds = 4:38 and the end time of 371 seconds = 6:11 You can argue that videos at a snackable size are the best, but whether your videos are effective at 30 seconds, 2 minutes, or an hour, truly comes down to your audience. Analyze the metrics, review the content, and craft videos that focus on what your audience is searching for and how long their attention span is.

You are subscribed to email updates from Popular Articles | Business 2 Community To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610