Social media and the needs of the self

The social web is a place of conflict and excess where we can both hide behind usernames and computer screens to be feared and hated or present ourselves as masters of our art to be loved and revered. What part does ‘the mind’ play in our social interactions?

When I wrote that participation on different types of social service may be constrained by our own vanity Will Berard directed me to a post where he compares our behaviour and needs on social networks to our needs and wants with regards to food.

The art of turning “likes” into purchases

I recently came across a Nielsen report on social media that has a few illuminating statistics about online engagement and shopping. It turns out that Americans spend three times as much time on social media as on e-mail. Specifically, they report that Americans spend 7.6% of their time on traditional e-mail and 23% on social networks. In addition, more than 70% of social network users shop online, about 12% more than the average adult. And these social network users are 47% more likely to be heavy spenders on clothing, shoes and accessories. Wow.

The Reporter’s Guide to Customer Experience

What a reporter can teach you about sticking to the basics in customer communication.

Congratulations! You did all the hard work, studied your options and embarked on a social media program for your company. You’ve already accomplished the second most-difficult part of maintaining a social presence that will keep your customers informed and engaged. The hardest part?

The rest.

We often got lost in the bright and shiny glare of the tool-of-the-day, and lose track of what’s important.

When Does Social Media Interaction Become Human Expression?

Is a "Like" an endorsement, free speech or both?

How many pages, comments and various shared pieces of content have you “Liked” during your time on Facebook? Dozens? Likely hundreds and even thousands for some Facebook users. Clicking “Like” has become akin to flashing an affirming thumbs up in support of whatever content happens to be associated with it, but how much weight does it really hold? Can something that takes so little thought and effort really have any meaning?

Lie to Me: The Dirty Truth About Online Manipulation

The world around you is a lie.

Virtually every aspect of online presence can be manufactured and really, you’re none the wiser.

In this article I’d like to expose some of the online manipulation methods that are used, are taught, and I have used in order to manufacture a more successful looking online presence. It must be noted that if done correctly, good online manipulation is virtually untraceable, but if done poorly will damage your reputation faster than you could possibly imagine.

5 Best Social Media Tools To Manage Your Business

Maintaining a business’s social media can be a daunting task. It is vital to take advantage of every opportunity to increase customer awareness. Smaller companies used to use Twitter alone to post updates, but this no longer can be done. There are newer tools that can be used from one dashboard. Here is a look at the top 5 social media tools which will help to manage a business.

3 Underutilized B2B Sales Strategies in Social Media

People we know in midmarket companies tend to do what works – until it doesn’t work so well any more. Most companies are not proactive to research what is on the horizon – they simply don’t have time or resources to do so.

When it comes to integrating online and social activities into their marketing and sales strategies it seems like there are two camps – those that “get it” and those who will wait till there is more “proof” that social selling actually works. Black and white. Right or wrong.

Top 10 ways to create a social media dashboard

Social media and all of the noise these sites create can take up a lot of your time if you are managing a social network, and if you are keeping tabs on multiple networks, this gets even more difficult. The hardest part is finding important conversations and vital comments that require action among all of the noise and other junk clogging up social sites.

A great way to help manage these accounts is through a social media dashboard. The dashboard isn’t another network, as some tend to think, but it is a tool to help you get and stay organized, productive, and efficient.

Paradox of Online Influence

I spend my time analyzing the world of social media influence and helping clients use it effectively to achieve their marketing and communications goals. I’ve noticed that a hotly-debated topic in the digital world is online influence. A huge myth is forming which says that online popularity equals online influence. Based on this myth, tools which purport to measure online influence are popping up like mushrooms on a rainy day. The paradox is that these inferential tools can be just as damaging as they can be helpful when marketers and brands buy into this nonsense idea of online influence, and waste time and money using these tools to build marketing strategies for their brands.

A New “Rethought” Digg Will Launch August 1st

Last week, betaworks bought the remaining assets of Digg after the once-prominent social site sold. The Washington Post acquired the Digg team, LinkedIn purchased 15 patents and betaworks was left with the Digg.com website.

Well, betaworks isn’t planning on sitting around moping, today they released a blog post on rethinkdigg.com that states they are launching a brand new version of Digg.

8 Steps for Social Media Marketing Success

Do you follow, friend, like, tweet, #hashtag, circle, search, share, upload, link-in, link-to, favorite, discover, connect, bookmark, filter, share, pin, post, upload, comment and connect? You should.

For business, it’s become an imperative—for marketing, PR, personal branding, customer relations—you name it. For life outside of work, it’s a ton of fun.

Is Your Local Business Doing These Three Things on Twitter?

You tweet regularly and are beginning to build a following for your local business. You’re ready to take it to the next level and truly grow your presence on Twitter and harness the social aspect of social media for your advantage.

So how do you do it?

1. Engage with Your Followers

In Praise Of Quick And Filthy

To paraphrase the late great David Foster Wallace, did you know that probing the seamy underbelly of software development reveals ideological strife and fanaticism on a nearly Godwin’s-law scale? Did you know that software development even had a seamy underbelly? It does, and its name is PHP, the world’s least-loved but arguably most-used programming language.

Let’s Get Social! 5 Ways to Build Your Employee Social Media Culture

You are working on your social media strategy and have determined your target audience, messaging, and how you plan to participate. You have even assigned a resource specifically to manage your social media presence and have begun to see some great results. Now you want to roll it out company wide and encourage your employees to participate. By having your teams participate actively in social media, you can create brand evangelists who will work to create relationships with both customers and prospects.

Unique Visitors vs Total Pageviews: Understanding Metrics

Social Media ROI and understanding blog metrics are hot topics – today I’m going to tell you the tale of two blogs in an attempt to explain why there’s more to understanding a blogger’s influence than numbers alone…

Before we get started let’s outline two key terms:

Total Pageviews: A pageview is the number of times a page on your blog is loaded within a certain timeframe.
Unique Visitors: This is number of individual visitors who come to your site in a certain timeframe.

How Social Media and Millennials Impact the Alcohol Industry

For businesses and brands today, social media is a necessary and important aspect of a marketing strategy. Certain industries adopted social media as a platform to reach customers in the early stages while others are still testing the waters.

For marketers in the alcohol industry, one of the biggest challenges they face is age restriction. Early versions of social networks made it difficult for social media marketers to determine which users were above the legal drinking age. When considering how large the Millennial demographic is, it is understandable that this is a pitfall for alcohol companies.

How Does Social Media Impact Consumer Behavior?

Most businesses, only to join the bandwagon, spread themselves overly thin by developing their profiles upon innumerable sites; creating a disconnect with consumers if the business does not respond. There will include specific things which a company ought to take into account prior to placing itself up upon social media. Here, we’ll assess a few of them:

Know Target Audience

4 Steps to Better Understand Your Brand's Social Media Relationships

Many brands have moved beyond dabbling in social media to implementing more in-depth social media strategies that require more resources. With more resources comes more scrutiny.

A well thought out social media strategy isn't complete unless there is a plan in place to measure the results. This is where many brands get tripped up because they aren't sure how to bring all the required data together for accurate analysis. One aspect of the analysis should be to focus on understanding the relationships your brand has with individuals and how these relationships grow over time.

Place Your Employees at the Heart of your Social Strategy

Having your employees well trained in social media practices is a great asset to any company with an online presence. It can prevent counter productive personal social media activity whilst increasing business efficiency and relationships with customers and other businesses.

The press has been filled with stories about employees that have been disciplined for posts on their own personal social media accounts and interviewees being asked for their Facebook passwords during interviews. Employers realise that what their employees post on their own social network profiles can reflect badly on them as a business. To combat this issue, many large companies are attempting to build an internal understanding between them and their employees around social media.

What is Your Social Media Page Saying about You?

A targeted social media strategy offers big opportunities for businesses of every size. Social media can be a channel for stronger customer relationships, brand awareness and promotions.

But social media can be a double-edged sword, creating both positive and negative images of your company with far-reaching effects. Here are some easy-to-deploy tips to create positive impacts, while avoiding negative effects on your company’s reputation and brand.

How to Make Your Social Media Page Say ‘We Get It’