The world has gone mobile! - Social Live

How do consumers seek information via the web today using mobile devices?
According to Online Publishers Association / Frank N. Magid Associates:

99.5 percent access content/information
63.1 access the Internet
62.1 percent check email
49.2 percent listen to music
46 percent play games
41.7 percent download and use apps
15 percent make purchases
15 percent read a book

Shift to Mobile Impacts B2B Significantly

 If you imagine that the mobile usage is merely a reflection of consumers logging onto social media, checking email or conducting search, or shopping, think again.

Executives lead the way in mobile adoption, validating the theory that digital assets for a business or brand must serve target audiences 24/7, and not just during business hours.

Meeting your customers wherever they work is no longer a luxury – it is a necessity. If you wish to convert interaction to action you must compel the decision-maker.

B2B Decision-Makers Rely on Mobile Devices

Mobile is preferred over the PC for executives conducting research during and after office hours, according to the IDG Global Mobile Survey 2014.

92 percent of executives own a smartphone used for business.
77 percent of executives use their smartphone to research a product or service for their business.
93 percent of executives will purchase that product via the Internet using a laptop or desktop.
86 percent use their tablet and 72 percent of executives use their smartphone to conduct research for products or services for their business.
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Instagram might not be worth the effort for every business - Social Live

It’s important to remember that Instagram might not be worth the effort for every business.

For instance, it’s only the 6th largest social media site, trailing far behind networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. If you have limited time to devote to social media marketing, you’ll have access to more users with the Big Three of social media, and Tumblr.

Instagram is also a largely mobile-based social media network, with most users perusing through photos via a smartphone app.

This means the demographic tends to skew young, making Instagram the perfect choice for a custom skateboard shop but perhaps less useful for a medical supply retailer.

You’ll have to consider your own customer demographic in order to figure out if Instagram is worth the effort.

However, effort can be reduced by linking your online store’s Instagram account to Facebook and Twitter so that any images you post are automatically posted to your other social media accounts. With this in mind, one could make the argument that Instagram is very little effort for the exposure it offers.
‪#‎sociallivellc‬ ‪#‎sociallive‬ ‪#‎instagram‬ ‪#‎socialmedia‬ ‪#‎tipoftheday‬

Facebook 2019 A Privacy Focused Company

On March 7, 2019 - Facebook announced that secure, private messaging services will become more popular than open platforms in 2019.

The social media giant has come under fire for a series of privacy scandals.

In 2018, it emerged that the data of about 50 million users had been harvested and passed on to a political consultancy.

The changes in place: Last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data. We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find and that we must do more to keep people informed. So in addition to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcements last week – cracking down on abuse of the Facebook platform, strengthening our policies, and making it easier for people to revoke apps’ ability to use your data – we’re taking additional steps in the coming weeks to put people more in control of their privacy. Most of these updates have been in the works for some time, but the events of the past several days underscore their importance.

Making Data Settings and Tools Easier to Find

Controls that are easier to find and use. We’ve redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to bottom to make things easier to find. Instead of having settings spread across nearly 20 different screens, they’re now accessible from a single place. We’ve also cleaned up outdated settings so it’s clear what information can and can’t be shared with apps.

New Privacy Shortcuts menu. People have also told us that information about privacy, security, and ads should be much easier to find. The new Privacy Shortcuts is a menu where you can control your data in just a few taps, with clearer explanations of how our controls work. The experience is now clearer, more visual, and easy-to-find. From here you can:

Make your account more secure: You can add more layers of protection to your account, like two-factor authentication. If you turn this on and someone tries to log into your account from a device we don’t recognize, you’ll be asked to confirm whether it was you.

Control your personal information: You can review what you’ve shared and delete it if you want to. This includes posts you’ve shared or reacted to, friend requests you’ve sent, and things you’ve searched for on Facebook.

Control the ads you see: You can manage the information we use to show you ads. Ad preferences explains how ads work and the options you have.

Manage who sees your posts and profile information: You own what you share on Facebook, and you can manage things like who sees your posts and the information you choose to include on your profile.

Tools to find, download and delete your Facebook data. It’s one thing to have a policy explaining what data we collect and use, but it’s even more useful when people see and manage their own information. Some people want to delete things they’ve shared in the past, while others are just curious about the information Facebook has. So we’re introducing Access Your Information – a secure way for people to access and manage their information, such as posts, reactions, comments, and things you’ve searched for. You can go here to delete anything from your timeline or profile that you no longer want on Facebook.

We’re also making it easier to download the data you’ve shared with Facebook – it’s your data, after all. You can download a secure copy and even move it to another service. This includes photos you’ve uploaded, contacts you’ve added to your account, posts on your timeline, and more.

It’s also our responsibility to tell you how we collect and use your data in language that’s detailed, but also easy to understand. In the coming weeks, we’ll be proposing updates to Facebook’s terms of service that include our commitments to people. We’ll also update our data policy to better spell out what data we collect and how we use it. These updates are about transparency – not about gaining new rights to collect, use, or share data.

We’ve worked with regulators, legislators and privacy experts on these tools and updates. We’ll have more to share in the coming weeks, including updates on the measures Mark shared last week.

Hashtags for Social Media Use - Social Live Tips

The next few blogs will be about tips about hashtags, why and how to apply their use. Since the first use in 2007, the hashtag has spread from Twitter to almost all major social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, and even Vines.

With hashtags showing up everywhere, we wanted to take a look again at how your brand can use hashtags with success, on any kind of social media.

‪#‎WhatDoHashtagsDo

Hashtags have a number of uses, and it’s crucial to understand their purpose. You can use a hashtag to improve searchability, to tap into trends, to create a conversation around your brand, or to inject a bit of humor into your post (or of all of these at the same time!). It depends on your objective.

‪#‎Searchability

It's worth restating: hashtags improve your searchability. On social media networks, where there are reams and reams of information to sift through, users often search for certain hashtags that correspond to their demands and desires. By using a hashtag, you can tap into a popular conversation that is relevant to your brand and become a key contributor to that conversation’s sha­pe and consequences. It’s a whole new way of thinking about categorization, and a great way to give your posts more exposure.

HASHTAGS FOR BUSINESS AND BRAND - Social Live

Why create your own hashtag for brand, product and use it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms.

Businesses can use hashtags for a variety of reasons.

If the hashtag is already in use by a community, it’s can be a great tool for networking, lead generation and more. But businesses may choose to create their hashtag for a number of reasons, including:

Encouraging event participants to live tweet
Hosting a Twitter chat
Hosting an online Q&A
To promote a product launch
To show support for a charity or cause
The list is as long as there are reasons for using Twitter itself.

Be sure that you understand what purpose your hashtag will serve before your create it.

4 steps to creating your own hashtag

Ready to jump in and create your own branded hashtag? It’s not overly complicated. Here’s how:

Brainstorm. You want this hashtag to represent your brand and the way you will be using it – but you also want it to be short and sweet.

Come up with a list of several potential hashtags that could be used based on your business name, event, etc.

Including the year works for hashtags that will be reused yearly (for annual events, for instance), and including “chat” somewhere in the hashtag is common for weekly or monthly Twitter chats.

Research. Next, check to see that your ideal hashtag isn’t already in use. Since you’re looking to create a community around your hashtag, you want to start fresh – you don’t want to encroach on another community’s space.

Use Twitter’s search to see if and when your hashtag has ever been used, and go down the list you created in the brainstorm until you find a suitable, quiet hashtag.

Promote. Your hashtag is going to be pretty quiet if no one knows about it! Tell your ideal community – your followers, your business connections – that the hashtag exists, and let them know how you will be using it. You can send an email blast, write a blog post, put up signage in your store… use whatever promotional tools are available to you to get the word out.

Monitor. Once people know about your hashtag, it’s time to use it!

Make sure you monitor the chatter, and chime in whenever it makes sense. If you’re hosting a weekly chat, monitor and use the hashtag during that hour or so each week. If it’s an event hashtag, be sure to monitor it in the days and hours leading up to the event, during the event itself, and post-event for photos and feedback.

  ‪#‎hastagtips‬ ‪#‎socialmedia‬ ‪#‎sociallive‬ ‪#‎sociallivellc‬ ‪#‎ferndalewa‬

Should my business be on Instagram?

Last few posts we did a series on hashtags and we hope your using the tips. This next few days we will cover ‪#‎instagram‬

What Is Instagram?
...

Instagram is a social media network focused on visual images.
60 Million Photos shared every day.

There are no status updates or 140 character limits, and instead the entire update is one square image (and an optional caption).

Users ‘follow’ other users that they are interested in, and can then scroll through image after image on their newsfeed.

Ideally, you should caption the images that you post on Instagram to give your followers context, such as ‘New product ready to roll out in Autumn 2014! ‪#‎fashion‬ ‪#‎handmade‬’.

The caption helps users understand what they’re looking at, while the hashtags make your post searchable for anyone who is interested in that category.

For example, users interested in ‪#‎PlusSizeFashion‬ can look at only images that contain this hashtag -- if you use it, you’ll show up with thousands of other plus-sized designers and fashion bloggers.
While it was launched in just 2010, Instagram now has around 200 million monthly active users. Today there are over 1 billion on Instagram.

Using Instagram can allow you to show a more casual side of your business -- your products in use, the process of manufacturing them, the pile of boxes to be shipped out during Christmas shopping rush -- and build your brand through a visual story.
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