Stop wondering about Social Media Marketing for your business…

Explore: A Social Media Explorer Event A social media explorer event Exploring Social Media
What is ESM?

Social Media Explorer presents Explore – a series of one-day, intensive seminar and workshop events designed to help YOU, understand, embrace and begin deploying social media marketing in your business efforts. Sign up now! Event crowd

2012 Cities & Dates

  • Nashville – Apr. 13th
  • Minneapolis – Aug. 17th
  • Portland – Oct. 19th
  • Irvine – Nov. 16th
Upcoming Event
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As of March 30, all Facebook brand pages will migrate to the timeline format, whether you like it or not. The timeline changes present some interesting opportunities but also challenges to brands with Facebook presences. For our perspective on what you need to be aware of, check out the Exploring Social Media lesson on Understanding Facebook Timelines for Brands.

Jason Falls

About the author

Jason Falls is the founder and editor of Social Media Explorer and its companion learning community Exploring Social Media. He is a leading thinker, educator, speaker and consultant in the world of social media marketing, public relations, digital marketing and communications. Please connect with him on Twitter (@JasonFalls).

The Landscaping of Social Media: Tactics vs. Strategy

by · March 2, 2012

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Scott Yates, CEO of a new blog writing service, Blogmutt. 

No question, Pinterest is the new hotness in social media. No news there for readers of this blog. Jason Falls chose what I think was an especially apt analogy to describe what’s going on in a recent tweet: “If you’re selling Pinterest/FB/TW instead of communications, its like cutting somone’s grass vs. landscaping their yard.”

Then he went on to tweet in reply to someone who said that there’s a place for grass cutting: “Yes, there is. But they don’t sell a grass cutting strategy.”

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Everything You Need To Know About Content Marketing

by · March 1, 2012

I’m not overly impressed by many infographics. Certainly, I love ones that are more process in nature rather than just informational. That’s one main reason Mark Smiciklas writes for Social Media Explorer. See some of his awesome art here and here.

But every now and then, someone will send me one that I find worth sharing with you. BlueGlass tossed one to me recently called The Content Marketing Explosion. It covers tons of broad statistics about content marketing, dives into some cited research on why companies are using content marketing, how and the like. If anything, it’s worth reading through to remind, inspire or motivate you around using content to drive your online and social media efforts.

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Shoutlet’s New Features Blend SMMS With Marketing Automation

by · February 29, 2012

The ever-growing world of social media management systems continues to blur the lines of categories of platforms. We’ve discussed before the consumer desire for all these tools to get their feature sets together and provide us with an all-in-one digital marketing place. But in the race to make big brands happy on Facebook, we’re left having to piece meal software together to do what we want.

Shoutlet took a nice step forward recently with the addition of something they call the “Switchboard” that integrates a bit of marketing automation with social media management. Instead of setting Tweets or Facebook posts and the like to fire at certain times or days, using Shoutlet you can now set them to send based on events or triggers.

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What Are Women Saying Online?

by · February 28, 2012

My partner Aaron Marshall and I joked one day about doing some research for our upcoming industry reports product (first one launches very soon) around what women are talking about online in terms of purchasing items and calling the report, “That’s What She Said.” It got a good laugh, even though both of us then thought seriously about the project. Then I hopped on a call with Visible Technologies to chat about doing a webinar with them and I rolled out that topic as the idea.

They loved it.

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3 Mission Critical Reasons to Convert Fans and Followers into Email Subscribers

by · February 28, 2012

It isn’t difficult to put together a strategy to convert fans and followers into something you actually own — email subscribers. But too many are putting the effort on the backburner in favor of figuring out a new popular social network. Converting fans and followers to email subscribers is just smart. The benefits exceed those found with preserving your investment in social activity. The benefits are also found in what you do with the email database on an on-going basis.

Here are three reasons you should start taking email acquisition seriously and make it one of your top goals for 2012.

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A Content Marketing Milestone: Big Brand Shows Personality

by · February 27, 2012

Approximately 99.6 percent of the pitches I get from public relations folks are about social media campaigns their firm or client is launching. For whatever reason, they think we care. It’s not that we categorically do not, but that launching a campaign is not news. Finishing one and providing the metrics as a case study is normally pretty interesting, though.

Unfortunately, for competitive reasons, paranoia or simple ignorance, brands never want to share the back-end metrics on much. And alas, we’re left with few case studies that really help.

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Businesses Love Affair With Mediocrity

by · February 24, 2012

I wonder sometimes why companies hire consultants. It seems that the first order would be to help them fix something in their business that is broken or seeking improvement. Folks that sit at the top of companies are smart, and I am pretty sure that most of the time they really do know what is broke and what needs fixed in their business, even when their actions indicate differently. The business is their baby. They do not need a consultant to tell them where the problems exist, although verification is always good. No, I think many times they seek the help of a consultant to make them feel better.

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Social Media: Career Boost or Time Suck?

by · February 23, 2012

Much has been written about how social media can (and has) helped online-savvy young people find jobs with companies anxious to acquire employees with certain talents. There are presently 12.76 million unemployed in America, 2.05 million of those ages 20 to 24. Presumably, members of this generation matriculated alongside classmate Social Media. Have the young minds used the tools and trends available, coupled with accumulated “offline” skills, to edge out the competition on the job hunt? Or simply for less ambitious pursuits?

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