Twitter has had a rocky road since its rise to fame in 2008. It first had issues when its growth outpaced its ability to handle the load. Then, it started getting a bad name for being irrelevant. Then, the spam started to dominate. Users are hot and cold on it depending on what day you ask them, putting the shortened update social network in a constantly precarious state. Still, they’ve managed to thrive through it all. Some point to the streamlined way the company has been operated over the years. With under 200 employees sustaining a site that has over 190 million monthly visitors, they don’t need…

In the early days of search engine optimization, the pitch that many companies used was very appealing. “We’ll get you listed on thousands of search engines so that everyone can find you.” Today, this seems like a ludicrous statement. There’s only three real search engines that account for 97% of the search traffic and it’s been like that for some time, but back as recently as 2008, many companies were still pushing automated search engine submission as their primary selling point for search engine optimization. The same thing is happening today, only with social media. There are companies out…

Going viral today matters as much as having a hit record. But you don’t want to do it in the wrong way. Social media platforms are the world’s kiosk, and any artist would be foolish not to dedicate himself to building a viral presence. But as important as it is to gain new followers, it’s even more crucial to keep them . . . and keep them engaged. Here are five social media don’ts for aspiring musicians.   1. Don’t let your online profiles collect dust You’ve heard it said that idle hands are the devil’s playground. Or how about this one: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to…

In 60 seconds, Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, and their friendly carjacking cohorts can boost a high-dollar ride for sale to their fictional employer/nemesis. This is nothing compared to the things that happen on the web in any given 60 second period. The folks over at ixtract put together a visualization that demonstrates some of the millions of activities that happen on the internet every minute. They include: 12 websites hacked 14 Spotify songs uploaded 20 victims of identity theft 50 blogs created 70 domains registered 100 LinkedIn accounts created 320 Twitter accounts created 411 Facebook…

Oh, Google and Facebook. Thanks to the two giants of search and social, you can’t really hide very easily anymore. If you have things in your past that you don’t want known, businesses considering hiring you don’t have to hire an investigator to go beyond the standard background check. They simply need to find you online. Your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest – they’re all available. Sure, you can go private or choose not to participate in social media in the first place, but there are challenges with that as well. Since everyone is on social media (at least from certain peoples’…

Every time a social network makes a change to their layout, design firms around the world groan about how they now have to redo a ton of different artwork. Social media is big business and companies will pay big bucks to look just right on their pages and profiles. Google had a change of their own recently on Google+, including one major change to profile and page layouts that made the cover photo extremely large. This added a new wrinkle to the mix because now pages had different through which they had to operate. The whole cover image isn’t immediately visible when people visit the page, so there are…

One of the most important lessons you can learn in Facebook marketing for your business is that you can have a much greater impact on your performance online through Facebook by focusing on what’s happening in the real world. Facebook is virtual, but that doesn’t mean it has to focus on the virtual world. Make it real. If your business is out there doing things in the real world, you have plenty of potential Facebook content to post on your page (as well as you other social media pages and profiles). Do you participate in charities and local events? Do you sponsor a little league team? Do you have a monthly…

Pinterest has grown tremendously. In December of 2011 it had 7 million users. Just a year later, there are over 20 million monthly active users. It is the third most popular social network following Facebook and Twitter. Even more interesting, it refers more traffic than Google +, LinkedIn, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube.  Get the most out of your Pinterest today!   Is your Pinterest optimized? Use top Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keywords in your “About” section. Search engines index this page. You have 200 characters to communicate who you are and what you can do for your audience….

Those in social media marketing as a profession realize that there are certain unknowns when it comes to the new web. We know that people are on social media. We know that they don’t want direct marketing. We also know they’d rather get direct marketing than pay for the services, so there’s at least a little room for something. The question is, “what is that something?” Whether from B2C or B2B, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn give marketers the ability to try to reach the target audience and generate leads. The vast majority are trying. Most are failing, or at least not meeting…

We are vane creatures. LinkedIn has been on a roll, lately. They seem to have come to grips with their status as a resume- and professional-connection-distributing social network (even though they still look too much like Facebook). They are beating The Street’s profits and revenue expectations and they haven’t had any major scandals lately. 2012 was a good year for them and they’re starting off 2013 with a bang by getting many of its most active members to promote the service by promoting themselves. In a perfectly designed email, LinkedIn informed their top members last week that they were…