Posts tagged as:

social networking

8 Ways Businesses Should Use Social Media

by Kristi on April 7, 2010 · 54 comments

Many businesses hear about the advantages of social media in terms of marketing their products or services, but some forget to look at other major benefits of social media beyond finding leads or making a sale. Here are eight ways that businesses can use social media to learn more about themselves and their industry as well as get more involved with their clients and communities interested in what they have to offer.

1. Monitor Conversation About Themselves

There are many free ways to monitor what people are saying about your company through social media, including the following:

Google Alerts
Google Alerts will send you a daily digest email anytime your search terms come up in blogs, news, or other websites.

Social Mention
Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. You can have your mentions emailed to you daily.

Twitter Search
If you want to know real time what people are saying, you can setup a Twitter search in HootSuite, Tweetdeck, or just keep a RSS feed in your feed reader using Twitter search results. Include searches for your company, business owner, or unique product name.

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Becoming More Accessible on Social Networks

by Kristi on February 1, 2010 · 37 comments

Everyone uses social media in their own way. While some people want to be connected with everyone, everywhere, others would rather keep certain profiles private for friends and family only. The following is for those who want to be found on social networks, or for the networks on which they want to be found.

Why You Want to Be Found on Social Networks

Think of your profile and activity on social networks as creating brand recognition. At the recent Social Media AZ event, the keynote speaker talked about how having a catalog on your coffee table increased brand awareness. Sure, that catalog may sit there for months and months, but one day when you are ready to purchase something that the company sells, that catalog will probably be in the front of your mind and lead you to hopping on the company’s website or going into their stores to do your shopping.

The same thing can be said of social media. One day, you may realize you need to brush up on your SEO, and the first resource that comes to mind is the SEO expert whose tips have been coming through your Twitter timeline. Alternatively, someone could be reminded to visit your site after seeing your name pop up in their Facebook news feed, simply thanks to your recent activity. Any reminder of your presence online could translate to a hit to your website, comment, promotion, or even a new client.

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How to Make Social Promotion Easy

by Kristi on May 4, 2009 · 38 comments

While there are many ways to promote your blog articles through social networks, I have noticed an increase in messages via emails, groups, and forums formatted with options to push an article via a variety of sites. They go beyond “here’s my latest article about this topic, hope you like it” to being well constructed messages with direct links to the articles on networks that the blog author would like their article to be promoted.

These messages help the blogger target the networks where they know their article will most likely be well received, beyond the major networks like Twitter and Digg.

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8 Reasons to Use Delicious for Social Bookmarking

by Kristi on April 7, 2009 · 48 comments

Social Bookmarking is a way for internet users to save, or bookmark, a website, article, image, or video to an online service. When you Google “social bookmarking”, the second result, after the Wikipedia definition of social bookmarking, is Delicious, the leading online bookmark service. This is by far my favorite service to use in terms of organizing online bookmarks, and the one that this article will be based upon. So if you do not already have an account with Delicious, take a few moments to register, and then let’s begin.

The Basics: How to Add a Bookmark to Delicious


Delicious Tag ButtonThe quickest way to add a bookmark to your Delicious account is to install the Delicious Toolbar for Firefox (always my recommended browser) or Internet Explorer (if you insist). Once installed, all you have to do to save a page that you are currently viewing to Delicious is to click on the “tag” button. Or, in Firefox, simply right-click and use the Bookmark in Delicious option.

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Fetching Friday – Inspirational Blogging, Resources

by Kristi on February 27, 2009 · 13 comments

This week’s Fetching Friday includes a review about three inspirational sites all rolled up into one and blogging resources. Also, check out previews for next week and related news about the Facebook Pages vs. Networked Blogs and my new Youtube account.

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9 Ways to Use Social Networking for Blog Promotion

by Kristi on February 23, 2009 · 96 comments

In one of my most popular posts, The Blogging Process, I compiled a list of things I do to keep kikolani.com running, including prep work for posts, social media promotion, bookmarking, interacting with readers, and other technical updates. This article focuses specifically on using social networking for blog promotion. Unless your blog is purely personal in nature and only meant to be shared with family and close friends, chances are you want to bring in more readers. Because what is the point of putting your thoughts online if you have no audience? And if your motives for blogging are fiscally driven to create a secondary source of income, or at least to cover the costs domain renewals and hosting services, then it is going to take a lot of traffic to bring in the revenue.


Read more to find out the 9 ways I use social networking to promote my blog, in order of the networks that bring in the most amount of traffic for this site.

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