Clean up your Linkedin account

The next few blogs are going to give our readers tips for cleaning up your social media accounts, looking at all the platforms.  Here are some quick tips to clean up your social media accounts, you should do this quarterly, spring, summer, fall and winter.  

Linkedin

• Your tag line is important, people will see your headline first with your profile image, so make sure it’s well-written and contains quality keywords.

• Replace or update your profile photo with an current professional headshot, these can be fun but remember Linkedin is professional.  

• Work on your summary to highlight your most relevant experience and skills, this should be your resume pitch, or company pitch.

• Update responsibilities, expanded set of skills and experiences you have gained or roles your are taking on.  

• Make sure all contact information is updated so clients can get in touch.

• Personalize your profile’s URL with your business name.

• Use keywords to make sure you’re coming up in relevant searches for people looking for someone like you. Include them in your Headline, Summary and Experience sections.

• Ask clients and contacts for recommendations to share on your social sites and profile. 

• Remove people from your network who are spammers, people who constantly ask for help without returning the favor, etc.

• Have you been to any conferences, meetings or other events where you’ve met interesting contacts? Add them to your connections.

* Social Live LLC - Social Media Marketing 

Social Live LLC

1861 Mckinley Street

Ferndale, WA  98248

Grace MacDonald - President

Phone: 970-773-0379

Email: Grace@sociallivellc.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/SocialLiveLLC

Twitter:

@sociallivellc

BlogSpot: http://sociallivellc.blogspot.com

Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/sociallivellc 

Twitter Updates You Need to Know About

Twitter has decided to switch off millions of accounts linked to SMS services. In fact, popular Twitter accounts with a million or more followers may see a drop of 8-10% in their total audience due to the ax of SMS service. 

Twitter announced the vulnerabilities linked to SMS and have since decided to purge the accounts altogether. The privacy concern is linked to a method of swapping SIM cards and even the company’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, was hacked via an SMS-connected system. 

SMS tweets are not commonly used by the majority of Twitter users, therefore the impact is expected to be minimal. However, the implications for users in developing countries may prove to be much larger as SMS service is far more prevalent in these regions

Searching for old comments of Twitter can be, well, impossible. Luckily, the platform has recognized this downfall and has implemented a listing specifically for ‘Retweets with Comments’ – on iOS at least. 

The newest listing feature no longer considers retweets with comments to be a unique tweet, which previously excluded comments from the total retweet count. Instead, listings now include two separate categories to make finding comments easier than ever before. 

Furthermore, the additional retweets added to the total tweet count may boost many users’ engagement status. If you’re an Android user, don’t worry! This listing feature is being tested on Android devices as well and should be rolled out before the end of the year. 

Inactive social media accounts can harm your online reputation

Having an inactive social media account sends the message to your customers that you are either no longer in business or just don't care about your online reputation.  

Typically, problems occur when managers of a company place their social media marketing responsibilities in the hands of their own employees, who usually have little or no experience in this type of work.  Sometimes, employees even will take it upon themselves to create accounts without asking, operating without management's permission or knowledge.  This can hurt reputation, as there is no consistency in the message or proof reading from the eyes of those in charge. 

This is further compounded when companies allow in-house employees to create and keep the pass codes to social media accounts.  If that employee quits, is let go, or walks off the job, he/she take the social media accounts with them.      

When socially active customers search your business on social media sides and come upon a page that is inactive or littered with unhappy posts from customers, they get the wrong impression of your business (and it's usually not a positive one).

Usually, this is a turn-off for customers, as many use internet reviews they find on social media sites as an aid in their decision-making process.  These customers start searching other companies immediately, meaning you have already lost the opportunity to capture them.  The old adage, "you only have one opportunity to make a first impression" rings especially true today thanks to instant exposure and easy access of information in the social media world.    

An easy way to avoid all these pitfalls is by hiring a professional third party to control your social media accounts, passwords and security settings, establishing a stronger and more secured, positive online reputation. 

Basically the same rule of thumb applies when creating new accounts for your business, as companies need to be careful not to duplicate pages.  More than one page associated to your specific business, store, brand, or product confuses and frustrates customers, making them jump through unnecessary hoops to access the information you want to provide.  Most companies with the problem of duplicate pages have many other of the social media issues outlined above, making it a sure sign that a company is disinterested in this form of marketing; this isolates their business and keeps them detached from the modern world that exists in large numbers over the internet on a daily basis.

It truly is critical for companies to have senior management or a contracted third party keeping a close eye on your social sites so you don't get into this situation.  The amount of work that is necessary to do this frequently surprises businesses, as year-round consistency is extremely difficult to achieve in addition to other responsibilities of employees.  A third party allows a company to allocate all this work to an individual at an affordable price, with a contracted guarantee that information will be sent out and posted on all platforms with uniform consistency, creativity, and attention to detail.  This protects the company's image, brand, and reputation while also further securing the pages themselves from tampering, spamming, or anything else that can send the wrong idea to customers.

Facebook Messenger introduced new fun video features.

Facebook Messenger introduced new fun video features.

Until now, video chatting on Messenger has been pretty bare-bones. Recently, Facebook added several features to amp up the fun factor.

These new tools allow you to add animated reactions, filters, masks, and effects to video chats, and take screenshots of your chats.

Here are a few pro-tips for using the new video chatting features:

Emojis — When you add emojis to animate on your video screen, watch closely! The effects change depending on whether your face is on or off screen.

Filters — Not sure if you look good? Test the filter before letting others see it.

Masks — Some of the masks have hidden effects when you move. Try opening your mouth with the rabbit mask…

For Messenger video chat users, the new emojis, masks, and filters should inspire some laughs from friends and family. For business, they will make your interaction way more personal. Perfect for connecting to millennials, it needs to be used with care with the rest of your audience.

Understanding "SMO" VS "SEO"

"SMO" VS "SEO" - We Are Not The Same

We at Social Live have been discussing this for a few years now, and as more of the world population is on mobile devices the switch is on as SEO is becoming less a key part of online marketing and SMO is taking on as a key part for current and potential customers.

Social Media Optimization or Search Engine Optimization, truly what’s the Difference?
Your online marketing is all about being visible. 90% of the time your business is found in 3 manners.

1. Your company comes up early due to key word buys you have made.
2. Your company is mentioned in a email, blog, link post or shared socially.
3. The client already knows about you and specifically types in your web address.
Staying at the top with key word buys is a large pool of money, which small companies do not have, nor can they compete with the big dogs who have large marketing dollars.
(SEO) Search Engine Optimization is a good way to bring more people to your web site. We are not saying to abandon SEO practices, yet their is a shift taking place with users maximizing (SMO) Social media Optimization.

What is Social Media Optimization?

SMO has to do with social media networks and the presence of your company, brand and product on these sites.

These are not limited to Facebook or Twitter, they span to online reputation, blogs, hastags, Instagram, Pinterest, social forums and the list continues to grow weekly, as social media shifts.

SMO can help you strengthen your brand and boost visibility, as well as generate leads and eventually increase sales by driving clients to your products.

Optimizing your social media builds both familiarity with current clients, and builds awareness to potential clients. It also allows current clients to speak about your, brand, products or services for you. This builds confidence and trust for your business, because consumers will see you not only mentioned, but recommended by others that actually use your product and services. 

 The end users (your potential customers) do not want to read about the details of your brand, product or services until they have seen a minimum of three actual customers speaking about it and not through a paid marketing campaign.

What Social Media Optimization is Not If you think posting your company link into every social site there is will improve your SMO your missing the mark.

Having a consistent presence and engagement on Facebook, Twitter and Google is a key. Adding a blog, pages on Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn group will also enhance your SMO. 

Do not overdue your presence by spamming your followers, that is no different than finding your message in the spam folder. At times its best to post two messages a day and allow your followers to go to work for you engaging your posts. 

Social shares hold validity when they’re coming from someone who has used your product and services.

Improving your SMO will boost your SEO in the long run, and over time will allow you to hold higher positions on search engine sites much longer and buying SEO key words.

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Good news for businesses with Pinterest announcing they are bringing back affiliate links to their site.

After a fifteen month absence from all affiliate links on Pinterest account's, they are back. 

Pinterest announced today that they have worked out all link, spam and poor user experiences from their page and board links.

Pinterest users reported ongoing issues with broken images, spam images and bad redirects were destroying the excitement on the site, so an executive decision was made to remove and cease support for affiliate redirects, links and trackers.

The decision to return to the use of affiliate links is based on the improved spam tracking technology that can help ensure that the affiliate experience does interfere from a Pinterest users experience.

Pinterest expects this to encourage businesses to again start using Pinterest as a location for services, products and brand identity as businesses will be able to link to other social media sites and share their messages.

Another objective of supporting affiliate Pins is to support the international users and encourage them to create boards and more content for Pinterest, which will also open the international markets to businesses that would not normally reach this audience.

The restoration of affiliate links on Pinterest is a plus for all users and Pinterest alone as more participation on the network will provide additional revenue sources to community members who have previously found a solid return on their time investment.

The more engagement, the more appealing the network is to just about everyone who comes into contact with it.