Exploring the Impact of Social Media
Posts tagged as:
Credit: BigStockPhoto.com
Whether you plan to use social media for better PR outreach, marketing, or just listening to what customers have to say, the social media tools you use can play an important role in your business. What’s equally important is who uses those tools in your company’s name. Should you handle social media profiles yourself, or should you turn to a professional who can help you develop a solid social media strategy? [click to continue…]
{ 0 }
Credit: Fotolia.com
When it comes to social networks these days, I sometimes feel like the big players are in the middle of a war. And I don’t just mean they’re competing for our attention. It’s starting to feel like a race to the bottom on the issue of user privacy. I have to wonder if pure social networks are dead or at least dying in favor of what Eric Schmidt calls an “identity service.” [click to continue…]
{ 4 }
Credit: BigStockPhoto.com
I’m almost finished with my holiday shopping. But many people are still in full swing. Or maybe you haven’t even started yet. No matter where you are in the process do you think social media played (or will play) a role?
In this day and age I’d be very surprised if social media didn’t affect our holiday shopping in at least a small way. How? Here are a few examples of how social media might play a role in retail sales and your holiday shopping decisions. [click to continue…]
{ 4 }
Credit: BigStockPhoto.com
Recently I’ve torn into Mashable not one, but two, times. In both cases the issue had to do with them posting either misleading or downright false statistics and claims (and readers have since made me aware of two more instances with false headlines). People have been doing that for ages, so why did it bother me so much? It bothers me because that site has a large audience — an audience that seems to believe what they say, and an audience that proceeds to pass along that misinformation until it becomes “fact” in far too many minds, or even spreads to major media outlets (although that’s an issue all its own).
These stats issues have me wondering something. Does social media stop people from thinking for themselves? Have we lost the ability to think critically with the 24 hour news cycle and occasional blurs between general blog commentary and actual journalism (not that they’re mutually exclusive)? Let’s talk about it. [click to continue…]
{ 10 }
Facebook Places Prior to Roll Out Photo Credit David_Fisher
Sites such as Gowalla and Foursquare have made a lot of noise in the last year as social media has made its way to mobile phones. Not only do these sites allow you to connect with friends and find out where they are, but also allow businesses jump into a new form of marketing.
Businesses can now create promotions for people who check-in at their business. For example, foursquare users who check-in at Chili’s (participating locations only) receive free chips and salsa. All users have to do is mention that they have checked in on Foursquare and they receive the discount. Promotions like these have caused Facebook to step up and add a new featured called Facebook Places.
Facebook Places is Facebook’s answer to location based social networks. Businesses have the ability to go into Facebook and set up a “Place” which will allow Facebook users to check in using an iPhone App or the website touch.facebook.com.
By checking into a business your Facebook friends can now see where you are without you having to connect another social network to your Facebook account or relying on your friends to be a part of another social network. If they are out with you, they can be tagged in the check-in as well, letting their friends see where they’re at. This is also a form of promotion for a business as the more people check into a location the more the business name gets out to their friends, which invites new potential customers into the business. [click to continue…]
{ 14 }
Credit: BigStockPhoto.com
A few days ago freelance writer Laura Spencer (@TXWriter) tweeted a link to a Mashable post. The hyped up headline read “Facebook Now Controls 41% of Social Media Traffic.” Before I even read the post my gut screamed “Bullshit!” It often does that. My gut is rather talented at sniffing out shady statistics. It must be that past life in PR where we all learn that statistics can say just about anything we want them to if we twist them enough (my disgust of that attitude makes me hypersensitive to them now).
Then I did read the article. What I found was baffling (okay, it wasn’t really — it was about what I expected):
Yikes. I bet you’re wondering why I haven’t linked you to the post yet. That’s because it seems to have gone “Poof!” Vanished into thin air it did. Because of that I won’t pull the actual charts to show you the problems (doesn’t seem right to publish their charts when they’ve pulled them — especially when it wasn’t even clear in the post if they belonged to Mashable or were Comscore charts taken somewhat out of context). However, I do want to highlight something from the cached version which illustrates my biggest problem of all: [click to continue…]
{ 36 }
Connect with us
