This past Friday was the release of the highly anticipated summer blockbuster Superman: Man of Steel. The film brought in $125.1 million in its opening weekend – more than any other movie ever released in the month of June. On Twitter, the words “Man of Steel” are still trending as fans flocked to their computers and mobile devices to share their thoughts on the movie. With all the buzz surrounding the man in blue, I thought it’d be good to see what superheroes best represent our favorite social media sites. So here it is: the @Social #LeagueofJustice! Facebook: Superman Everybody should…

In my recent exploration of various social media profiles being used by local businesses, I found a disturbing trend. While there are definitely those who are doing it right and utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest the right way, there are also plenty who are simply failing at it miserably. They are forgetting the most fundamental aspect of managing their profiles, namely posting the right way. There are components of this infographic by MyCleverAgency that I don’t fully agree with, but they are minor points, opinions really. For the most part, the advice is sound. You should…

If there’s one thing that plays well, almost universally, on social media, it’s animals. From pets to wild beasts, animals dominate social media pictures and references. Some go so far as to become celebrities on social media. It isn’t just Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Even some of the edgier social sites like Reddit and Fark have an affection for the other inhabitants of the planet. It’s to the point that people are making up videos to get attention for one reason or another using animals such as the golden eagle that digitally snatched a kid. In the infographic below by Equestrian Supply…

When Google+ first rolled out their change, we called it “Twitteresque”. After exploring it further for the last couple of weeks, we believe that it’s actually better than Pinterest in many ways… and worse. One of the ways that it’s definitely better than Pinterest is in the display of large photos. The algorithm that drives the way that posts appear in your feed is beginning to reveal itself to be more complex than EdgeRank. It may have been that way all along but we never noticed because there wasn’t enough activity. In any case, it’s there now and we’re liking what we’re seeing. First, you’ll…

As Tumblr users cope with news of a new overlord, many are voicing both concern and annoyance at the $1.1 billion deal. The most vocal are getting their message heard and it’s spreading across Tumblr as well as other social networks, but it’s not enough to make Yahoo or Tumblr concerned. Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg noticed something Sunday after the rumors of a done deal started surfacing: “Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000.” While some are saying this is just the beginning…

If there’s one major flaw with the way that many businesses use automation tools, it’s that they’re not able to properly control the flow of content from its longest form down to it’s shortest form. This is unfortunate because using RSS feeds to post to Facebook and Twitter from a blog, for example, doesn’t save much time at all but minimizes the effectiveness of the networks. It’s all about flow. It’s about taking advantage of the strengths of the various networks will not falling into the traps that each allows. Let’s take a look at an example of content flow. In this case, we’re going to work it down…

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…

It’s not the hip, new thing anymore. That much is clear as Facebook approaches a decade of existence, but the appeal of Facebook doesn’t seem to be slowing for anyone else other than teenagers. That’s the premise of the infographic below and it seems to have some legs. Parents are getting on Facebook. This is a major downer for teens who once viewed Facebook as the online venue that they could “be themselves” without interactions or even knowledge from their parents and other adults. That isn’t the case anymore. As parents learn how to keep tabs on their kids online, kids are learning new ways to interact….

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’…