Is Quora the Next Big Social Media Site?

social media toolsAre you considering using Quora? Has all the buzz got you wondering if it’s worth it? Keep reading for my full review.

When I first heard about Quora, the conversation went a little like this:

Jill: “Have you heard of Quora? It’s a question and answer site.”
Jack: “You mean like Yahoo Answers?”
Jill: “No, it’s full of experts who give you the best answers.”
Jack: “You mean like LinkedIn Answers?”
Jill: “No, the community votes for the best answer and they can hide irrelevant answers.”

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How to Use LinkedIn With Twitter for Better Networking

social media how toIf you have profiles on LinkedIn and Twitter, you may already be aware that these two networks are integrating. In fact, LinkedIn has a specific application called Tweets that can help you keep tabs on the Twitter updates from your LinkedIn connections.

As more professional LinkedIn users create Twitter profiles, I believe this application will become more and more powerful for building influence and visibility with your network connections.

The primary benefits of the LinkedIn Tweets application are:

  • Follow your LinkedIn connections on Twitter
  • Post status updates simultaneously to both Twitter and LinkedIn
  • Monitor and interact with your Twitter streams from within LinkedIn
  • Create a LinkedIn-specific Twitter list

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5 Ways to Use LinkedIn Groups to Build Influential Connections

social media toolsIf you want to build truly influential relationships online, you have to find places where you can consistently add value, spend quality time and have engaging conversations with members of your target demographic.

LinkedIn Groups offers one of the best ways to make the most of your social media engagement time, but you must adopt the right strategy to be successful. This article will show you how.

LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups, but you can’t possibly be effective and spend enough time to make a difference in 50 groups.

What works best is to focus your time and effort on a deep and narrow approach in order to build influence within LinkedIn Groups, enhance your credibility and generate new connections.

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How to Use Blog Commenting as a Networking Superweapon

social media how toWhen it comes to driving awareness through social media channels, most marketers think about using tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube videos to reach key audiences.

But very few think of leaving a comment on a blog as a strategy to driving awareness—and potentially, down the road, garnering leads.

Wait, how can leaving a comment on a blog drive awareness (or leads) for your brand? You might be surprised at how effective this strategy can be, given the right circumstances. B2B organizations, for example, are often positioned well to capitalize on this approach based on their need to establish themselves as thought leaders on various topics.

But, before we get to the “how,” let’s talk a bit more about the “why.”

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6 Reasons Why BlogWorld Was Amazing

social media reviewsSetting aside the budget to go to a conference like BlogWorld and New Media Expo can be a big decision for a solo brand, a small business or a department head. It’s important to get a sense of where your money’s going, and more importantly, where the return on investment is.

I was tasked to write about this mega social media conference. Here are 6 specific things that I took away from BlogWorld 2010.

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4 LinkedIn Tips to Help You Stand Out

social media how toVery few people ignore you in real life, face-to-face networking situations. So why do they do it to you online? The simple answer is because they probably don’t even realize that they are!

Be honest. Do you follow up on every LinkedIn connection request you get? No, probably not. I’ll bet you click “accept” and that’s as far as you go.

When someone requests to connect with you and you simply click “accept” and make no effort to carry on the conversation, you’re both simply saying hello to each other and it stops dead there. The only thing you gain by doing this is a string of connections that don’t have any real value. You become a connection collector.

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Study Reveals Why Consumers Fan Facebook Pages

social media researchHave you ever wondered why people decide to become fans of Facebook pages?  Understanding the reasons people become fans can help your business or brand develop better strategies.

In this article, I take a look at two studies.

The first reveals why consumers fan businesses on Facebook. The second one examines how marketers are keeping up with the ever-changing world of social media.

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Busting the Top 3 Guest Blogging Myths

social media viewpointsWhat’s smarter? Putting all your eggs into your own blog basket or placing a few real fine blog posts on another person’s blog?  If you’ve pondered these thoughts, keep reading…

Guest blogging has been around for a long time, but it’s an especially hot topic now. With the concept becoming even hotter daily, it’s quite natural that myths emerge.

This post looks at three myths around guest blogging that have been actively discussed recently.

Myth #1: Guest Blogging Is a Waste of Time

“Why would I spend so much time arranging, discussing and writing a post to get just one or two links from the very bottom of my article?”

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How to Cash In On Your Passion With Social Media

social media book reviewsHave you heard of Joseph Campbell?

He was the famous mythologist—author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces and many other books—who told us all to “follow your bliss” in his Power of Myth PBS specials with Bill Moyers in the late 1980s.

“That’s all well and good,” you may have thought at the time. “But I have to make a living. How do I make money by following my bliss?

If you’ve been asking that question for the past 20 years, you’ll be happy to know that someone has finally answered it. Gary Vaynerchuk has written a book to teach us how to make money by following our bliss.

Many of you may know Vaynerchuk as the host of the video blog WineLibraryTV.com. Now he has written a book titled Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion.

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Building Your Business One Tweet at a Time: Twitter Marketing 101

social media book reviews“You want me to use Twitter to market my business?” I hear you asking. “How do I generate leads and promote my business by telling my friends what I had for lunch?

Yes, many people just use Twitter to share their day with their friends. Friends who may live 2,000 miles away.

And some people use it to broadcast a breaking news story as it happens. Like the time a plane crash-landed in the Hudson River. A man in a nearby boat with an iPhone got the “scoop” on that story before the news media reported it.

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