7 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Engagement
Is your company’s social media as stale as last month’s bread?
Would you like to get more people-to-people interaction and begin a real conversation with your audience on social media?
No matter your company’s industry or size, you can encourage these deeper connections and improve your social media engagement.
Here are some tips to help you encourage people-to-people interaction, whether you are on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Foursquare or Instagram.
#1: Use Facebook to Highlight Employees and Reach Out to Fans
Your company is only as good as your hardworking employees—so don’t be afraid to highlight them.
SEOmoz uses Facebook photo albums to highlight their employees.
The SEOmoz Facebook Page does an excellent job of this. Two examples in particular really jump out.
The “Then and Now” photo album: Employees provided photos from their youth along with recent photos of themselves. This is a great way to show fans the human side of SEOmoz. Plus, the baby pictures are adorable.
SEOmoz does a wonderful job of featuring employees, like in this “Then and Now” photo album.
The “What are Mozzers listening to?” photo album: All it took was snapping photos of employees with their headphones on and asking them what they were listening to. The result is an inside look at company culture. 
4 Ways to Maximize the Social Media Presence at Your Next Event
Does your business run events, conferences or similar meetings?
The ability for attendees to interact through social channels is a huge part of successful events.
Here are 4 ways to maximize the social media presence of your next event.
#1: Promote Your Hashtag Everywhere
A hashtag provides everyone with an easy way to find relevant social shares and take part in the discussion about the event.
When you are putting together materials for your event, everything should include the event hashtag.
How to Use Hashtags in Your Social Media Marketing
Do you use hashtags in your social media marketing?
What if someone else is using the same hashtag about a totally different topic?
Even worse, what if your competitor is using the same hashtag about the same topic?
Before you just throw any word or phrase out there and decide to use it as your hashtag, there are a few things you’ll want to consider to maximize your hashtag’s exposure.
What’s a Hashtag?
A hashtag is a pound sign (#), but it’s also used on Twitter to categorize messages.
According to Twitter, hashtag is defined as follows:
Definition of hashtag from Twitter.
Since the first person used a hashtag in August 2007, they have become one of the most commonly used symbols on Twitter. People use them to organize conversations, tweet at events and engage in conversations online.
But in order to have a successful marketing campaign using a hashtag, you have to know how to pick the right hashtag.
3 Ways to Grow an Instagram Community
Is your business effectively using Instagram?
Are you making the most of your community on Instagram?
Forty percent of top brands have adopted Instagram as part of their marketing strategy.
Instagram helps give your business a personal touch through visuals, so it’s important to bolster your community as best you can for continued growth and interaction from your audience.
Here are three tips on how to strengthen your community management efforts on Instagram.
#1: Use Tools to Manage Your Account
Instagram’s interface, whether on mobile or web, doesn’t offer the best options for brands to effectively engage with their community. Before the launch of the web version of Instagram, many tools were developed to fill in the gaps left by the network.
There’s Statigram, Instagrid, Webstagram, Nitrogram, Simply Measured and many other helpful tools for making the most of your Instagram community.
Let’s focus on just two, Statigram for community and giveaway management, and Nitrogram for measurement.
9 Twitter Business Lessons From Tennis Pros
Are you looking to improve your Twitter game?
The Twitterverse has been buzzing with the latest US Open Tennis Tournament news.
What can tennis teach your business about Twitter? You’d be surprised.
Preparing for this year’s grand slam, I began to research and follow popular players on Twitter. I was curious how these big celebrities fared on the 140-character–driven platform.
The outcome of my research resulted in nine takeaways that brands and businesses can use to help improve their Twitter stream.
Take these tips from the tennis pros and your Twitter stream will be serving up aces.
#1: Multi-Task
Great tennis tweeters, like Novak Djokovic, capitalize on their celebrity and build synergistic communities around Twitter.
Novak has created a branded page on the celebrity social network WhoSay. He then pushes photos from his Whosay mobile app directly to Twitter. The third-party app does all the work, shortens the link and allows for an active new community to thrive directly on Whosay.
Novak Djokovic has created this über-branded WhoSay page and pushes photos from this account to Twitter.
5 Steps to Hosting Successful Twitter Chats: Your Ultimate Guide
Hosting a Twitter chat is an amazing way to interact with your fans and followers, to better understand and grow your community quickly, as well as promote your brand and business.
I’ve seen the networking and promotional power of the Twitter chat, so I made up my mind to dig deeper.
It’s challenging to describe everything I learned in this one article, but I’ll do my best.
Here’s the all-in-one guide to prepare for and host your Twitter chat.
Why Twitter Chat?
A Twitter chat is a public Twitter conversation around one unique hashtag. This hashtag allows you to follow the discussion and participate in it. Twitter chats are usually recurring and on specific topics to regularly connect people with these interests.
Bloggers connect using #Blogchat hashtag.
3 Twitter Browser Extensions for Better Social Management
Do you have more than one Twitter account?
If you use social media for your business or to promote other companies, you probably have many different accounts to keep track of.
Dashboard apps can help you keep tabs on various networks at once and update multiple accounts.
However, when you want an enhanced Twitter experience from your browser, these three free tools can help.
#1: Silver Bird
A feature-packed little extension, Silver Bird offers a multitude of Twitter features in a smart pop-up box.
