Small Business

In Toronto, Canada, for the very first Social Mix Conference is hosted by Jugnoo. The conference has ended and boy was it a hit. When it comes to industry events, most of us know what tends to happen. We listen to long speeches that bore us to tears, and rarely learn anything new. I'm not tooting my own horn here, but it takes a lot to pique my interest when it comes to social media and digital marketing. Social Mix accomplished that. Especially because the conference host Jugnoo introduced their brand new Tweet Visualyzer tool that is sure to impress, I'll get to that soon!

Last weekend, I did something that I don't usually do. I took my kids to see a movie, Ice Age: Continental Drift. I don't usually attend the movies because I can't stand sitting through all the inappropriate previews that my kids shouldn't see, but that is another blog post altogether. The day before we went to see the movie, I called our local Regal theater to ask some questions about ages and pricing. I wanted to pre-purchase our tickets so that we could skip the long and boring line.

At this point in the in the digital world, we all know that we need a website. Most of us are quickly getting on board that we also need to have a mobile version of our website. "Shift Happened" and people find us suspect if they can't find us online. But did you know how detrimental a poorly made website can be?

This is a blog post by one of our favorite people in the world, Jennifer MacDonald aka @jennimacdonald. Jennifer did a blog post (video blog post) for us exactly one year ago today about blogging tips. Because she's super organized, Jennifer remembered this important date and did an anniversary post about even more blogging tips!

By now, most of you have probably already heard about Danny Brown's unfortunate weekend. Although no lasting damage was done because of the time and effort Danny puts into building relationships, it is alarming that someone could hack into his Facebook account, pretend to be him and try to cause mayhem. What's even more alarming is this is one of our own. Danny is an intelligent man who knows his way around social media (understatement). He's not someone absent-mindedly falling for those phishing scams that are all over Facebook. If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone.

You've conquered the bounce rate. You're the master of referring links. And you definitely know how to produce a polished analytics report. Hold on to your cotton socks, I'm here to share how you can become an even greater analytics pro. This is the first of a three-part series on 7 habits of expert analytics you're probably missing out on.

There are two groups of people that will always have the best perspective on your business: your customers and your ground level employees. Any business owner that ignores that fact and doesn't learn from these two groups is shooting themselves in the foot. When it comes to social media, the best content comes from where the rubber meets the road, not from marketers who haven't a clue about the day to day operations of the business.

Did you know there's a way to have someone's public posts show up in your Facebook News Feed or have people follow yours? Whenever I talk about the Subscribe button, I usually get blank stares. After Facebook Lists, it's probably the most misunderstood Facebook feature that you should probably be using.

Today while I was reading American Express OPEN Forum I came across another article with some bad advice to small business owners. Barry Moltz's "How to Calm Your Social Media Anxiety" article misguides business owners into the type of thinking that actually makes them ineffective with social media. Here are his points, and my thoughts on the advice he should be giving to small business owners that are feeling overwhelmed.

The Airtime story is the current video platforms are designed to talk to only people you know. But Parker and Fanning met in a chat room 15 years ago, not knowing one another at all, and that turned into creating more than one business together. They missed the serendipitous nature of these kinds of meetings so decided to recreate them using today's technology.

Have you ever wanted to post something on Facebook and the immediately thought of someone that might not apreciate the post? Maybe it's your mom, or your boss, or your girlfriend. Well, lists make it easy to categorize the people in your life and share information that would only pertain to certain groups of people in your life.

Have you ever wanted to share a blog post on Twitter but couldn't find share buttons? Or maybe you wanted to subscribe by email but couldn't find the proper sign up form? These days, more and more people are penning blogs for business development and marketing purposes, and I think that is great, but a few critical mistakes can send readers screaming for the hills never to come back.

LinkedIn is the professional social network for business development and marketing purposes. If you haven't created your profile yet, make sure you read my previous post, The Ultimate LinkedIn Profile Cheat Sheet as soon as possible, and get started growing your network. With over 161 million members to date, you can't go wrong.

Last week, Beatriz gave us some great reasons why we should take control of our Facebook privacy using lists. This week, I'll give you some simple instructions on how to create custom lists in Facebook, and how to do it without spending hours on Facebook. The easiest way to create lists is to roll your mouse to the right of the Friends section in the left sidebar of your Facebook page. Or, you can go to https://www.facebook.com/bookmarks/lists.

Facebook promoted posts. I don't know whether to be grateful or annoyed. I'm sure rumors will start circulating that Facebook is starting to charge pages to post, so I figured I'd get ahead of the rumors. Is Facebook going to start charging pages to post to their own fans? The short answer to this question is: NO. Facebook pages are free for businesses to use just like they always have, and it's free to post updates to those that like your business page.

Two weeks after launching the terrible Facebook Page app for the iPhone, Facebook is launching another new feature which promises to be much better for companies utilzing Facebook pages for business development - five new different administrative roles for Facebook Pages. These roles include Manager, Content Creator, Moderator, Advertiser and Insight Analyst.

Trying to decipher Facebook privacy settings can be a mission. There are so many options it can be more confusing than quantum physics. One of the best ways to take control of your Facebook profile and your privacy is by creating lists. This post is the first in a series where we'll walk you through one of our favorite Facebook features: the list.

Trends are Twitter's way of helping you discover popular and emerging topics people are talking about within Twitter. They are located on the homepage of your Twitter account and are located on the lower left hand side of the screen.

It's not enough in today's culturally and socially aware market to provide customers in the QSR industry with a superior product; they want more. Consumers in today's day and age want deals, coupons, and they want the best possible product for the least amount of money they can possibly spend. They also want their opinions to be heard and treated with respect.

When Social Cam first came out, I thought it was spam because of all of the weird videos that were being posted - and from people I did not expect to be watching them. Now that I know it's not spam (though I could still argue that it's a form of spam), I am embarrassed for my friends that were naive with their Facebook privacy settings and allowed Social Cam to have full reign of their Facebook account.