Social Media Content Marketing

  A new social media website wants to encourage us to  follow the advice of our friends instead of complete strangers . With perpetual skepticism, sarcasm approaching warning levels, and being named yet again to  People Magazine 's "Sexiest Curmudgeon of the Year" list, I've somehow accumulated more friends than I really should have. (O.K. so I  may  have substituted the word "messiest" with "sexiest"   in the previous sentence.) And some of my best friends are strangers I have only corresponded with through social media; ones I have never met and not likely I ever will. If you think about it, you didn't really  choose the friends you saw this weekend. More likely, they're your neighbors, your family, work associates, fellow students who sat next to you in Algebra class, or the parents of the other kids on our kid's team. We "promote" these people to friendship status due to their close proximity to our lives, their ti...

Please stand back. I'm about to adminster social media expertise. Social media content writing is not rocket science -- it's far more difficult. And it shouldn't be attempted by non-experts or someone may lose and eye. Or that's what "social media experts" will tell you. And they'll also tell you that they're social media experts right from the get go. Social media is just public relations, advertising, sales and marketing packaged into bite-sized pieces. So whoever handles those functions should be the same people who handle your social networking.I spend much of my day involved with social media and have for about three years now. I create strategies, write content, link efforts over various social networks, monitor and track mentions, identify influencers, and so on. The industry is still forming and changing so we are all perpetual students. The problem is social media hasn't been around long enough to create experts. Seasoned commun...

The etiquette on how quickly to return texts and other messages depends more upon who sent it more than when it was sent. I like attending weddings when they're not mine. To be fair, I've only had one but I was so busy making sure everyone else had a good time. And shortly after we returned from the Honeymoon, my bride was prompt in sending out Thank You notes. The etiquette is one year, though Italians usually don't give wedding gifts, we give money. Colloquially known as "ah boost," that cash always warrants instant "Thank You's."        Social media has changed the expected time of response to all messages to immediately. So what I do often think about is the accepted response order when returning a Facebook message, voicemail, text or email. For me, texts take precedence. Which text gets the first reply depends upon my relationship to the sender. My child commands the fastest response time. I think most parents would agree. I...

I quit watching television six years ago and replaced it with social media. Life's more different than you may think. S ix years ago next month I sold my house in the suburbs and moved to the top of a high rise into a swanky bachelor pad overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Newly single, I decorated the apartment best I could, painted an accent wall with burgundy and cherry stripes, collected dark leather furniture with darker wood and silver accents. It wasn't as much swanky as it was divorce nouveau. English Country meets "I'll take the couch if you don't want it or the dining room table." When it was all finished, I kicked back on my new, "they-told-me-it was-leather" couch, put my feet up on the coffee table (because now I was allowed to) and looked at the bare spot on the wall. I had left the prime spot for what I planned to be would be the home of my first flat screen television. But as I looked out over the ocean, then back to ...

Few businesses seem to "get" how to promote and post on their Facebook pages. Here are three tips to avoid putting visitors to sleep.   A s some social media start-ups get gobbled by Google (or is it Googled by gobble?) while other shining stars tumble, the naysayers are shooting from their anti-social media starting blocks faster than a Jamaican Olympic track team on Red Bull. If you’re reading some of the same articles, blogs, and Tweets that I am, then you’ve seen the recent onslaught of negative press regarding social media. Maybe I’m naïve to inner workings of Wall Street, but I’m not exactly sure how Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth going from a gazillion dollars to a measly bazillion signals the death knell to an entire industry.   Though Markie-Mark 2.0 aside, so many pundits seem convinced:   Social Media is dead. Over. Finito   Completo .   A member of the not-so-dearly departed.     To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of social ...