Category Archives: Twitter

How much do you really know about your Twitter followers?

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment
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Do you know where they shop? You should. Here’s why, imagine you’re creating a new marketing campaign that is focused on Twitter for a new product, and you’re looking to offer coupons for this new product but you’re not sure which features will redeem the most coupons. If you know where your customers shop, you’d know which stores you should offer coupons at, and drive your customers where they want to shop. Which in turn will help you build customer loyalty.

How can you determine where your followers shop? Our new Twitter demographics chart in Engage121, enables you to glean this type of marketing intelligence. Our new chart provides users aggregated opinion data about your followers’ preferences for brands, hobbies, sports, schools, restaurants, travel and more. So, you can better understand your customers’ habits, profiles and preferences.

 

This new feature provides you with powerful info-graphics describing your Twitter audience, revealing:

  • Whether they are male or female.
  • Their interests.
  • Where they like to shop and eat.
  • Who they follow.
  • How active they are.
  • The languages they speak.
  • Their family status.
  • …and much more.

What do you know about your Twitter followers?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Engage121 Product Features, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

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Twitter entices advertisers, branding is made easy on Facebook, Pinterest recommendations, and more

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment
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This week’s Social Media Recap is chock full of great stuff. First up is Twitter’s new campaign tools which target your ads based on Interests, Device Or Sex. In addition to the targeting options, Twitter has opened up its advanced campaign tools to all US advertisers.

Facebook wants you to personalize your profile so they’re making it easy. You can now change your cover photo on your iPhone.

Google+ says they know you want to capture images of your hangouts not just video so they’ve made the Hangouts Capture ap. With it you can take pictures of your Hangouts-in-progress, including a number of features not available in the usual screenshot workarounds. Google says it will soon be worldwide, and I normally only talk about things that launch during the week but it was too cool not to mention.

Pinterest acquired the Livestar team. Livestar is a recommendations mobile app. I think it would be awesome if you could receive recommendations when you were pinning on Pinterest. Really excited to see what they come up with.

But the highlight of the week goes to Twitter because they turned 7 this week. Twitter created a great video highlighting the biggest events since 2006 as they were told through tweets, check it out below!

 

 

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Social Media News, Twitter

How to increase your Twitter followers, the right way

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Jennifer MacDonald| 1 Comment
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I recently read an article from Business Insider, which previewed a study outlining what really matters to your Twitter followers, and what you need to do in order to increase your followers. There’s some great information and I suggest you read it, along with the following points on building your Twitter community.

This post isn’t only focused on numbers but on building the right type of community, which in turn will increase your number of followers.

Twitter is my #1 favorite social network, I like to say “it breaks down the barriers.” What do I mean by that? Twitter allows you to have a direct connection with a CEO of a fortune 500 company, and you can build relationships with some of the biggest brands on the planet. If you use Twitter correctly it can be the biggest networking opportunity you’ve ever experienced. However you need to use it “correctly.” How should you “tweet” in order to build the right community & gain new followers?

Here are a few tips:
1. Search: Find conversations that are happening in your industry or about your brand. The easiest way to do that is by using search.twitter.com, enter your industry or brand in the search box and look at the results to see if any of the conversations are relevant, and if you could add helpful advice by joining the conversation. For Engage121 clients you can do this in your Explore tab.

2. Provide informative & relevant information: Make sure you’re giving your followers a reason to follow you. Provide them with links to helpful articles in your industry or around your business. Make sure the information you tweet mostly mirrors your Twitter bio. This will ensure you are building the right type of community. It is annoying to follow someone on Twitter because their Bio is interesting to you but they never send any tweets that are relevant to that information.

3. Be consistent: Like any social network you need to be consistent with your publishing, and with Twitter it’s has to be more frequent. It will be hard to gain new followers if they look at your feed and you haven’t tweeted in 2 months.

4. Use Keywords: People search on Twitter more for keywords that are relevant to them than hashtags. Make sure you are using relevant keywords for your industry or business, this will help you get found. If you are providing relevant information for your industry you will not need to worry about using keywords, they will already be in there.

5. Branding: You know the saying “no shirt, no shoes, no service?” On Twitter if you have no bio, no picture, then you get no follow from me. Use a professional picture for your profile image. Create a bio that is relevant to you and what you’ll be tweeting, and provide a link to your website or a site where people can learn more about you.

6. Promote: You need to put yourself out there in order to be found. Put a link to your Twitter profile in your email signature. List your profile on websites that help you gain new followers by subject, such as Twellow.com. Also put a link to your Twitter profile on your other social networks, such as Facebook.

Do you find Twitter to be a valuable tool?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

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Twitter goes out on a Vine, and Facebook can prove they sell your T-shirts

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Jennifer MacDonald| 4 Comments
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This week Facebook doesn’t steal the show. Twitter launches their new video-sharing tool and 24 hours later it has privacy issues. Wow, that didn’t take long.

Facebook’s conversion tool went live for all advertisers this week. You can now add HTML code to a landing page on your website to determine whether a visitor bought your T-shirt from a Facebook Ad or not.

What was the biggest update for you this week in the world of Social Media?

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media News, Twitter

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Facebook’s billion users, Tumblr analytics and NASA’s check-in on Mars

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment
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It’s Social Media Recap time. This week there are a lot of new changes in your favorite social networks. For starters LinkedIn is rolling out video ads to beta users, don’t get too excited, your video can not be longer than 30 seconds in length.

It’s not just that everyone in the world has a Facebook account but that a billion of those people are actually active every month. Wow.

Twitter tries to get more brands on board with their Promoted Tweets by offering Promoted Surveys. They’ll need to reduce the cost before I get on board.

NASA becomes the Foursquare champion when they check-in on Foursquare from Mars. Beat that!

What did you discover this week?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing, Social Media News, Twitter

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Facebook Offers are here!

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment
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…but will they be more effective for brands than Facebook apps currently are? That is my highlight this week for my Social Media Recap.

Facebook offers have now rolled out to all business pages that have more than 400 likes.  You can create an offer the same way you create a status update. There is now a small Offers icon in the status box. Once you click on Offer, Event + you can select In Store Only, In Store & Online, or Online Only. In Store Only allows you to upload a thumbnail photo, a bar code, a headline, the # of participants allowed to claim your offer and your terms and conditions.

 

 

 

When you select In Store & Online, as well as Online Only you have 2 boxes to fill: Enter the web address where people can get your offer & Add an optional redemption code. Once you have created your offer you can select Preview to see a screenshot of your offer, and a sample of your offer will be emailed to you. Next up is Set Budget, I can currently send my offer to an audience  of 1K – 2K for free, for $5 I can reach an audience of 2K-4K. Since the higher number is crossed  out, I’ll assume that Facebook is giving “Offers” at a discounted rate currently and they will increase the price in the future.

 

If you would like to know all of the Facebook Offers currently available there’s an app for that! Foibly is a new service that lists all of the current offers on a single webpage, accessible via your PC and phone. You can sort the Offers based on whether they are new, popular, or expiring. Best of all, Foibly lets you do it all without actually going to Facebook.

 

Twitter makes an announcement this week as well with their new design layout for users. You can now upload a Cover Photo for your profile page on Twitter. This is great for branding, and it allows users to be creative. However are enough people really visiting Twitter.com for your design to be noticed? I know that I never visit Twitter’s website, I always use the Twitter app or a third-party application such as Engage121.

Will you be experimenting with Facebook Offers?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Facebook, Social Media Marketing, Social Media News, Twitter

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How will the new changes with Twitter affect Engage121?

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Jon Victor| Leave a comment
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The changes you have read about affect us just a bit. It is important to recognize that we are “Social CRM,” and as such, an industry participant that Twitter wants and needs to support – especially since we are a potential source of significant advertising revenue. And, applications like Engage121 are really not part of the problem(s) that Twitter is trying to solve.

To be more specific:

• There will be no impact on our source(s) of Twitter data; and the content available to you will remain unchanged. We access (now and in the future) the Twitter API to support our ad hoc searches, and we connect to Twitter firehose re-seller(s) for background tasks such as measurement and analysis. That will not change.

• However, as a participant in the Twitter ecosystem we are obligated to slightly change the presentation of Tweets in our application to more closely comport with Twitter’s new standard. These changes are already in our development pipeline and you should notice changes over the coming month or so.

It seems to me that Twitter’s primary intent is:

(i) to control the user experience (look and feel) of its product – Tweets;
(ii) guide consumers who do want a platform to the Twitter-owned Tweetdeck, which, again, provides Twitter more direct control over the user experience, and
(iii) eliminate superfluous middleware that stand between native Twitter and its users.

If there is one thing we have learned about social media, it is to expect change. Today, Twitter is trying to gain more control over the product it delivers to users, but without adversely the ecosystem that is vital to its developing revenue model. Tomorrow, expect radical changes from Facebook as its users increasingly access the platform through mobile devices that are far less able to carry advertising. And the day after, who knows. We will do our best to stay on top of the changes – that’s a promise.

 

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Posted in Announcements, Engage121, Marketing Tools, Social Media News, Twitter

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Social Media Recap of the Week

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| 1 Comment
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Did you hear that Google+ is the new Enterprise Social Network? They’re making big strides in becoming the social network you can’t live without.

Want to get your inbox to ZERO? It’s possible, here are a few tools to help.

Do you believe in Social Media Optimization? I compiled a case study of our clients’ usage to prove that it works, thanks to SocialFlow. Take a look and see for yourself, data doesn’t lie. If you’re still not convinced join me on September 13th for a webinar with the head of Research & Development at SocialFlow as we dive further into the data discussion.

What did you discover this week?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Engage121 Clients, Google+, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

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Content Optimization has proven ROE

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| 1 Comment
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With hundreds of millions of users on Twitter and other social networks, how can you make sure that your message is reaching your audience at the right time? How can you make sure they are reading your tweet or post? How can you prove that posting to these social networks isn’t a waste of time?

Optimizing your Social Media publishing seems to be a great way to make sure your efforts are providing results. The day of composing an excel sheet which tracks every tweet and post published, the time of day it was published, the content type and how many RTs, likes or comments it received is OVER. There is no way big brands can perform this task, even for smaller brands it would prove to be difficult.

We wanted to prove the value of content optimization, so we integrated SocialFlow into our software to help our clients optimize their content. To prove to our clients that optimization works, we offered SocialFlow to them for free, for three months.

The Results. Overall, the average increase for SocialFlow ReTweets rose by 944%. That’s a big number I know, but we proved across more than 8,200 tweets, that optimization drove our client’s ReTweet numbers from 11 ReTweets per 100 tweets sent, to 150 ReTweets per 100 tweets! That’s a dramatic difference.

I know that some of you have been growing your online communities for years, you know your followers by name, you have brand ambassadors and you know what they like, when they like it. That’s great, for now, but what will you do a few years down the road when someone else starts engaging with your communities? How will you ensure that you brand is still resonating with your audience?

Today it seems that optimizing your Social Media publishing is key to ensuring that your message is being read and reproduced by your followers.

How do you determine when to send your messages across the social sphere?

 

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Engage121 Clients, Engage121 Product Features, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

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Social Media Recap of the Week!

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| 2 Comments
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Are you too busy to sift through all of the major blog posts this week to discover what’s new in your favorite Social Networks? It’s ok because I do it for you every Friday!

Did you hear that Tumblr got cut off from Facebook? How about that Facebook just launched Sponsored results? I’ve got a few more updates for you, such as Gzass thanks to Social Geek Radio.

What did you discover this week in Social Media? I’m going to guess the new Facebook app for the iPhone?

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media News, Twitter

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