A random blog post about my new hobby.

Please feel free to humour me with compliments on my new found hobby of taking random photos! Lol http://t.co/txGadLHMHg

A Tour Inside Twitter's Stylish New San Francisco Headquarters

The building Twitter calls home previously stood vacant for 50 years. See how the social-media company revamped its new headquarters. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/entrepreneur/latest/~3/fRfapZemKU0/232889

Putting Together Your Social Media Team

Social media teams can range from one person to hundreds of employees. They can be part of the marketing division, public relations department or a specific team hired solely to handle social media. Regardless of structure, someone needs to lead the way and take charge of social media output

Your social media manager's level of responsibility will depend on how experienced they are with social media, the size of your team, and the size and reach of the company. Obviously the one-person team has to take on the full load, so it may be smart to limit the number of platforms you can cover well so your manager can respond to people promptly and post accordingly. If you don't have the budget or manpower to be on several platforms, stick with the top one or two on your list, the ones that best meet your needs and are used by your target audience.

You need to select the right people for the right tasks and train them. People who want to work in social media must be ready, willing and enthusiastic about learning about your business, your products and your services. They'll need to absorb a lot of information about the company and be very good listeners. While they're on your platforms, each team member's social media identity must be that of your business and brand. They need to make sure your followers, fans and customers are happy.

Your dream team should include:

People who are social media savvy. You want people who are comfortable on at least one social media platform and preferably more. Because everyone claims to be an "expert" because they spend time on Facebook, ask tough how-to questions, as well as what they might do in a certain scenario. You can tell pretty quickly if someone knows about social media or is making it up as they go. For instance, if you ask the candidate what they thought of the new (and fictitious) social network "Fourblog" and they punt with something like, "I can't believe how fast it's growing!" you know they're not being honest.

Knowledgeable team members. Make sure everyone is very well versed in what your business does, its products or services, and the brand you're trying to convey. If they don't know an answer to a customer or follower's query, make sure they know where to find it quickly. Nothing is worse than giving people wrong answers or no answers. 

The right people in the right positions.Patience and the ability to remain calm even in situations where people are nasty, obnoxious or just plain rude are important attributes if you're going to handle customer service. People who aren't as comfortable engaging on a steady basis but have terrific design or graphic skills may be marvelous designing the look of your pages and choosing the best images. Utilize the skills people bring to the team accordingly.

The right people on the right platforms.Your Twitter platform will need people ready to think fast and respond quickly, because Twitter is an ongoing conversation. Facebook reps will have a little more time to respond, so you may have people who are better at research and giving more detailed answers handling your Facebook page. If someone is more visually oriented and excels in video production, put them on your YouTube platform.

Interaction and consistency. You have a brand and a social media voice (and tone) to present that brand. Some businesses are more lighthearted, others emphasize their culture and history; some are trendy, and others are more elegant or refined. The brand and voice need to be in sync and consistent from platform to platform. Therefore, your team members must interact with one another to make sure everyone's on the same page. Meetings to brief everyone on the latest news and activities are also vital so that fans and followers get the same overall message from each platform.

Out-of-the-box thinking within the box. Your style and your message are encompassed in your overall brand. But within that box, you don't want everyone saying and doing the exact same thing, reading from scripts or putting up the same posts like robots. Empower people to be creative, think out of the box, and come up with new and innovative solutions within the brand parameters.

People who help one another. Rather than throwing new employees into the fray, have them team up and work with more experienced staffers who can help them decide what to post or how to respond before they do it on their own. Encourage people to learn from one another and ask questions.

A team that knows and follows your own best practices. You may already have well-established working solutions that have served customers well. Make sure your team knows the manner in which things have been done successfully in the past so they use such solutions when necessary, because many problems and customer questions will come up again and again.

Caring and enthusiasm. You want a team who genuinely likes what they do and cares about the people with whom they're engaging. The goal of social media is engagement, and you want everyone to have a positive experience when dealing with your business and your brand. Caring and enthusiasm creates a positive experience, especially when someone on your team goes above and beyond for a customer or potential customer.

By Scot Levy

This year, I have read that 40% of the globe will be using the internet to sell us something or gain new clients , all of which are trying to gain a competitive edge on the world wide web.

Digital Marketing gets more difficult each year, as marketers across the globe continue to change their strategies all the time. In a survival situation, the right skills and tools will ensure your safety, security, and comfort. For internet marketing, the secret to survival is no different. With intuition, a passion for knowledge and using helpful tools.

1. Change

To be faced with change we need to adapt, success depends on your ability to learn new techniques. Google is forever looking to change the boundaries of search, keeping us on our toes and earning the money Internet Marketing companies charge, so its only fair you learn, adapt, change and try to keep your clients ahead of the game.

2. Stay Tuned In

Maintaining awareness of your competitors is the most important aspect of surviving. Rapid adaptation is balanced on the ability to notice change in the webs ever changing market. With the latest changes from Google's algorithms and new industry trends and current events flooding the internet market place prepares you to take action. After major Google updates, you must remain aware of their link profiles and be proactive and not panic deleting links with link removal. To complete post-update link audits are a must but use Google webmaster tools (which will tell you if you have spam links) first and if it aint broken,

don't try and fix it!

3. Best Practice

Surviving is largely about knowing the rules. With the mass of suggestions Google provides, it can be difficult to stay in-the-know about the latest webmaster best practices. To avoid penalties from Google, carefully review Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Certain strategies are considered best practices for webmasters, including sitemap submission, clear site hierarchy and the creation of content written with the reader in mind, not search engines. A great way to stay informed is by following Matt Cutts’s blog and their Google Webmaster YouTube channel. Matt is the head of Google’s Webspam Team.

4. Learn

learning new information, techniques and skills is a must. Google’s various changes and updates really keep us on our toes, link building has taken on a different form than it has in the past. SEOs intent on survival are becoming accustomed to the newly-defined best practices for link building, which include heightened focus on proactive engagement with content creators, building brand-relevant links and working diligently to get links from sites with high authority.

5. Move on

Sometimes, moving on is your best chance to succeed. When Matt Cutts quoted that guest blogging for SEO purposes outdated in early 2014, SEOs across the globe launched into action, creating new and better ways to do business. Google’s recent crackdown on MyBlogGuest is a bit harsh but proof that the internet search leader means business when they stated there is to much spam and aim to clean up the internet.

Anthony Johnson

www.search-find.co.uk

How can a social media manager stand out from the rest?

By

While most social media managers approach their job differently there are a few things that the most effective social media managers will have in common.

These seven areas should be applied if you want to succeed in your role as social media manager. With a medium that changes as often and as quickly as social, it’s important to be on top of your game.

Early Starter

The day does not start when you wake up, it carries over through the night and early into the next morning. If you want to find success in your position, you are going to have to be right there monitoring your brand and industry conversations on social first thing in the morning. A major part of the job has to do with keeping an eye out for bad press, negative comments or a social media crisis. These kinds of cases do not wait for you to sleep in and take your time in the morning.

Getting an early start means being alert from the get go. With real-time platforms like social, managers do not have the luxury of easing themselves into the day. If an issue or event comes up, you have to be ready to tackle it. So for all those morning people, you’re off to a good start. For the rest: a cold shower and a bucket of coffee should do the trick.

Great Writer

Great as in even when you throw something together quickly most people envy your innate ability to write. You don’t need to have the most eloquent of speech, but you should be able to speak well (not good, but well) and with complete grammatical accuracy. One of the most upsetting things for social media users is poor grammar from brands. That’s right – not terrible customer service, but poor grammar. (That said, don’t overlook good customer service in the name of proper grammar.)

As a social media manager for a brand or business, you are (generally) speaking on behalf of the company. That means that everything you say or do reflects not on you, but on the brand. So a whole bunch of misspellings and grammatical slip-ups means the brand looks bad and you’ll be taking the heat.

Quick on Your Feet

As noted above, a lot is happening and it is happening fast. You don’t always have the luxury of taking your time to deal with things as they come up. It’s important that you are quick on your feet when it comes to social media. When you need to respond to a tweet, for example, you should know your brand’s voice, the image it wants to maintain and, most importantly, how best to address a comment (or let it lie) in order to avoid any negative repercussions. That takes some quick, critical thinking on your part.

Of course, in the event of a crisis, the best thing to do is to bring the issue to higher ups that know how to handle these sorts of things. Try not to take on too much yourself. Which brings us to our next point:

Modesty Can be an Asset

There is a time to let your ego shine and there is a time where modesty can be your best friend. As a social media manager, you are going to have to realize (sooner rather than later) that you cannot do everything. Sometimes a senior marketing executive is going to have to take the reigns. Sometimes the PR department will have to step in. Sometimes there is an issue best handled by your support staff or the sales team.

Know the limits of your job description and recognize times where something is out of your league. Knowing when to pass things off is just as important as knowing when to take charge.

Friendliness

You were not put in this position because you are a monotonous drone with no people skills. You were likely charming in your interview and a great conversationalist. That’s a great start. That personality should extend to your brand’s social presence. Of course, you will probably be given some guidelines when you first get started indicating what you can and cannot say, but try to give everything that human touch.

People are active on social media because they want to engage in conversations with people all over the world who share similar interests. So, make the social channels highly sociable. A great example of a brand that understands this is Cadbury.

@coreypadveen Mwahahaha!

— Cadbury UK (@CadburyUK) March 14, 2014

Coolheadedness

We seem to keep circling back to one important point: social media are fast paced environments wherein a ton is happening all in real-time. You need to be able to handle that sort of thing if you plan on being a successful social media manager. Becoming easily overwhelmed means it will be tough to go far with the platform. So if you want to succeed in your role, know that you will be able to take a step back, take a deep breath and handle everything that is going on without feeling like it ‘never ends’ – because it doesn’t.

The larger and more public the brand, the truer this holds. If you recognize this aspect and still feel confident that you can handle this without breaking a sweat, you’re in great shape so far. Only one more step to go!

Born Decision Maker

In contrast to the modesty mentioned above, you will also want to be a born decision maker. Marketing, PR and advertising executives do not want to be bothered with every little thing that comes up. It might not seem like it at first (especially when people constantly ask you if you simply post to Facebook all day) but you are being given quite a bit of responsibility as a social media manager. The public voice of the brand is being put in your hands, and you ultimately control its fate. To succeed in this role, you’re going to have to be able to make some important decisions with the utmost confidence.

Know when to respond and when to leave a comment or criticism alone in the socialsphere. You need to be capable of making decisions in real-time about a number of different elements including what content to share, how to respond to messages, how to handle small crises, the best ways to measure returns, the best tools to use, the right campaigns to run, the key demographics to target and quite a bit more.

Conclusion

If all of this sounds like a walk in the park, and these seven habits identify you to a tee, then you might have found your calling! Of course, these are not the only seven habits of highly effective social media managers. Quite a bit more goes into the job. But if you possess these qualities, you are certainly off to a great start!

http://socialmediatoday.com/users/coreypadveen