The Big List of IFTTT Recipes: 34 Hacks for Hardcore Social Media Productivity 119 Flares Filament.io 119 Flares × We are all about working smarter here at Buffer. Our focus on improvement and efficiency has led us to blog smarter, share smarter, and approach problems and activities with a fresh perspective of getting more done as quickly and simply as possible. To that end, we love automation. We get a kick out of tools and apps that do some of our work for us, leaving us more time to invet elsewhere. IFTTT is one of our favorite tools (and one that I’d imagine you might love as well). How IFTTT works: An overview IFTTT (an acronym for If This Then That) connects two services together so that an action from one service triggers an action at another. You could have an email trigger a tweet, or a Facebook post could trigger a download. Once you sign up for your free IFTTT account, you start connecting different channels such as email or Facebook. Here are the major social media services that work with IFTTT: IFTTT recipes to supercharge Twitter Other favorites: P.S.
Quick & simple social media image size cheat sheet Stunning images are part of what makes social media so appealing, so take the guesswork out of image sizes with this cheat sheet by Constant Contact. Don’t forget, if you need to create graphics for your business or event, Canva offers templates in all the sizes you need to make your marketing that much easier. Via Constant Contact. Perfect images every time with infographics. Quality Rater Guide Leaked: What Businesses Need To Know Creating a local business website that Google and your users love is not always a straight-forward task, especially if you are building your own! Even gorgeously designed websites can overlook the basics. Your website is just the start of the plethora of signals that Google looks at when deciding if your local website is worthy of a place in their search results. What Does Google Want From Your Local Business? The answer thankfully is not blood (although many small business owners think it is!) I think it is important to point out that Google does not give a rat’s backside about your business, your website or what you do online. Similarly, your focus must also be on providing a good user experience when people land on your website. Fortunately, the two are not mutually exclusive! What is a Quality Rater? A Quality Rater is a person contracted to Google to review search results, websites and pages. Why are the Google Quality Rater Guidelines important? You are what you E-A-T 1. Action: 2. 3.
Social Media Metrics – Perfection Of Means & Confusion Of Goals We’ve come a long way in a very short time. The exponential growth of social media has made it an integral part of the marketer’s toolkit. Social media takes up more than one quarter of all time spent online, and is arguably the quickest, fastest way to reach millions of customers instantly. Recent research from Pew shows that 73 percent of US online adults use a social network. On a global basis, eMarketer estimated that in 2013, 68 percent of internet users around the world used a social network at least once per month, and they expect it to rise to 75 percent by 2016. Not surprisingly, social media was used by 87 percent of marketers in 2013. The breadth of social media options is growing just as fast as its user base. Perfection Of Means & Confusion Of Goals “Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem — in my opinion — to characterize our age.” – Albert Einstein Plainly, social media is an important aspect of online marketing. Conclusion
LinkedIn Invitations: Everything You Need to Know Most knowledgeable LinkedIn users would agree that best practice when sending an invitation to connect on LinkedIn should include a personal note introducing yourself and expressing why you want to connect. Although I personally don’t think it’s a crime to send a generic LinkedIn connection request, a well-crafted personal message will always increase your chances of connecting with the recipient. This is probably true for all social networks. Generally, the fact that I get generic invitations is usually not the reason why I reject connection requests. When receiving a generic invitation from someone, I always check their LinkedIn Profile to see if they’re someone who I want to connect with. If the LinkedIn profile is not complete or doesn’t clearly tell me who they are, the chance of being a connection is pretty much zero. Here’s a recent invitation I received which contained the LinkedIn generic message. After receiving it, I checked the profile. No Business Name. No connections. i. ii.
9 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing Are you wondering how to add social media to your email communications? Email and social media marketing go together like Batman and Robin. They both can be effective on their own; however, when combined, their (super) powers can save the city and exceed your marketing goals. Is Email Dead? In this article I’ll show you how to combine email marketing with your social media efforts. In a recent StrongMail survey, “More than two-thirds of business leaders (68%) say they plan to integrate social media with their email marketing efforts in 2012″ (as reported by MarketingProfs on December 12, 2011). As a guy who lives, breathes, eats and sometimes dreams email marketing, I was thrilled to see email getting some mainstream love. You may be thinking, “Hey, isn’t email dead?” Think again. This blog post and infographic on the value of email by SmarterTools will quickly dispel the “email is dead” myth. Need one more proof point that email is not dead? Why Does Integration Matter? #4: Provide Incentive
10 Questions to Ask When Creating a Social-Media Marketing Plan Ever heard the saying "Failing to plan is planning to fail?" That old but wise adage often rings true when it comes to social-media marketing. Creating a detailed, goal-oriented social-media strategy is just as important as having a rock solid business plan. "If your social-media plan is to just wing it, your fans and potential customers are going to know," says Amy Porterfield, social media strategist and co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies (Wiley, 2013). Worse, it could turn them off of your brand and on to your competitors. To attract and engage social-media fans and followers -- and ideally convert them into customers -- you'll need to carefully map out a clear, effective social-media strategy. 1. Odden suggests that you first define how your social-media outreach marketing will provide value to your customers. 2. 3. The more your company grows -- as well as your digital marketing budget -- the more social networks you can experiment with. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Behind the Scenes of 4 Hot Social Media Campaigns There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for developing content that's poised to go viral. In many ways, a great piece of viral content, whether it be video, pictures or social media, becomes popular due to its alchemy. There's something about the right mix of thoughtful, engaging and emotionally driving content that just pops on the Internet. In our Behind the Social Media Campaign Series, we delve deep into why and how certain branded campaigns capture that super-sharable magic. These four brands below have certainly dominated their social media avenue of choice. 1. How do you promote a movie that attempts to give a voice to the voiceless? The film's path to theaters was a rocky one. Then, a massive multi-platform campaign to bring awareness to the movie was launched by myriad sources, with Twitter entering as a main theater of activity. Read the full story here. 2. Picture this: You walk into a movie theater and almost every seat is full of burly, mean-looking bikers. 3.
(July 2013) How Many People Use the Top Social Media, Apps & Services?Digital Marketing Ramblings… Here is my monthly, running tally of how many people are using many of the top social media, digital services and mobile apps updated for December 2015 (the best I could find, at least). This list grows pretty regularly. It began with a simple listing of some of the obvious social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, YouTube, WhatsApp, VK.com, Odnoklassniki, etc; then grew to include digital services like Amazon, Google, eBay, Netflix, Spotify and Pandora; then the focus turned to APAC social and digital properties like Alibaba, Weibo, WeChat, JD.com, LINE and Momo and lately I have been focused on updating current listings, adding in new ones along with smaller niche ones that I may have overlooked at the beginning. This post now includes over 1,000 listings and more are added almost weekly. Page 1: #-A Please note that some of these numbers are easier to find than others, so some of these are based on news reports and not official company tallies.
6 rules for better LinkedIn InMails LinkedIn is a fantastic resource for B2B sales and marketing. With over 200m users across all industries and pretty much every location, chances are your next best prospect will be on there somewhere. Of course, it’s one thing to know they’re there, it’s another to be able to engage them in a conversation. That’s where LinkedIn InMail comes in. For those that don’t know, LinkedIn InMails let you directly email any one of LinkedIn’s 200m+ users. What’s more, LinkedIn guarantees a reply – if you do not receive a reply within seven days, you’ll be credited with a new InMail. But before you dive in, let’s take a moment to explore how to make InMails work harder for your business. Don’t spam It would be all too easy to look at InMail as a way to blast out a mass of communications. Fortunately for all us other users, LinkedIn has already thought of that. Besides LinkedIn’s filtering, there are of course many reasons not to spam prospects. Keep it short Don’t pitch Be clear about what you want
Entry-Level Social Media Work With a whopping 600 percent increase in social media roles over the past five years, it’s shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear social media management is a trending career path. The demand for communication-savvy, digitally-forward young professionals spans across all industries. But landing an entry-level social media position requires a lot more than boasting a large following on Twitter. If you’re a member of the Class of 2013 or looking to transition your career into the digital realm, it’s in your best interests to understand the challenges of the entry-level job search. Today, employers require more experience than ever for those seeking entry-level employment. But never fear -- here are five tips to help you get hired: 1. Your dedication to a strong, professional and informative online presence will present you as articulate and socially-savvy to potential employers. 2. 3. No internship experience? 4. 5. Each company has their own culture and standards for hiring.