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Social Media – What’s The Abbreviation? [POLL] – NOW CLOSED

February 23, 2011 By 15 Comments

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THE POLL IS NOW CLOSED – RESULTS WILL BE PUBLISHED 05/03/2011 THANKS FOR VOTING!

This post was sparked off by a tweet I recently sent:

@mike_mcgrail

The tweet that got me thinking...

I have noticed an increased use in ‘SoMe’ in blog posts and comments – I just plain don’t like it, it makes me cringe a little. Many responded with similar views while others stated they were happy with its use. I tend to use ‘soc med’ – people may not be a fan of it either, but I think it does the job and saves space on the likes of Twitter. With Twitter in mind, hashtags can be far from uniform, leading to numerous searches for the same content, or the adding of many to a Tweet – #socialmedia #socmed #some #SM #S&M… see the issue?

So can we try to create a standard? I’m sure it would help us all in one way or another. Vote for your favourite below and let’s see if we can take it from there…

Look forward to hearing your views! Leave deeper thoughts in the comments!

Enjoying reading The Social Penguin Blog? Why not subscribe? Also catch us on twitter and hook up on Facebook.

Filed Under: Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With:

Social Media for Cities by Todd Liss

February 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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In his first guest post, Todd Liss gives his view on social media use by cities and why they need to be further harnessing it.

If I introduced you to a geographic based organization that has their own employees, stakeholders, agendas, geographical focus, strengths, fiscal and social goals, and they need to communicate with both those inside and outside of their organizations, what would first come to mind?  I’m guessing the majority of you would think of a business of some sort, and congratulations, that’s the correct answer.

But here’s the twist, there is a different type of organization that falls into all of these categories that can find great success from adopting social media. Unfortunately, this type of organization as a whole has been slower to adopt social media than others.  It’s time that cities and towns embrace social media, and use it to accomplish their diverse but important goals.  (continued)

NYC

Time for Cities to make better use of social media? (image credit unknown)

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Filed Under: Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

Why You Need A Social Media Strategy (And Why It’s Hard Work!)

February 18, 2011 By 7 Comments

Bear with me here, this is fairly long…

  • Social media is all about communicating and engaging, right? As long as we are out there Tweeting we will be fine!
  • Our official feed has gathered 1032 followers, half of them are spam, but I only care about the number!
  • Our CEO is YouTube boring everyone to tears, so that’s our video strategy sorted right?
  • Ten people liked our sandwich related Facebook update, which is great! They were all internal people you say? Ah well, the boss won’t dig that deep, he’s not even on Facebook, what a loser!
  • Look, our blog has 10 totally freakin’ awesome posts on it, that’s enough to keep our audience busy for ages! People are visiting once and not coming back? I pity the fools!

These are all things that you may hear from businesses that are using social media for the sake of it. They may be doing this to appease their bosses or tick a box, perhaps they just like to spend their days farting about trying to make social media work with no plan in place. People may see the actual implementation of a strategy as the glamorous and exciting part, but it strikes me that too many don’t understand the work and planning required to make things truly work.(continued)

Socia media is a walk in the park!

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Filed Under: Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , ,

The Social Penguin Blog – 100 Posts and Going Strong

February 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

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So this is the 100th post on The Social Penguin Blog. I must admit it seems like a long long time since I posted ‘Don’t Get Social Network Tunnel Vision’ on November 16th 2009, but in truth I am amazed how far things have come since then! I started this as a vehicle for me to share my thoughts and advice on the world of social media marketing and it has gradually grown in to much more than a home for my ramblings. We have managed to collate a very strong collection of content, from practical guides through to interviews with some very savvy people. There is now a bank of writers who enthusiastically write some great pieces, essential in creating a number of voices and opinions for our diverse and wide reaching readership.

100 Posts and Still Beating!

Yes 100 posts is small fry in comparison to our many amazing peers but I’m proud to see it come this far with zero investment, running on pure passion that stems from all those who have helped. A massive thanks must go to Kelly Forbes who has contributed some fantastic analytics pieces and also given a big helping hand in the management of the blog when Dave and I have been away slapping down Gurus.

Thanks to our contributors – James Ainsworth, Claire Field, Antonia Harler, Jennie Stamp, Lauren Cooke, Geoff Kennedy, Barry Dewar, Gianfranco Cuzziol, and Colin Gilchrist.

Further thanks to all of our interviewees!

And of course monumental thanks to our readers, commentors, re-tweeters and anyone who has shown an interest.

So what next?

Well we want to continue to grow, there will be video and audio coming your way in the immediate future, I just need to get Dave to improve his spoken English.  We are always looking for new writers, if you are interested why not fill in the form in this post.

To really take The Social Penguin blog to the next level, I feel we need to move to our own platform and with this in mind are seeking help with this in return for sponsorship opportunities on the blog and undying penguin love.  If you or your business can help please get in touch!

Onwards and upwards…

Enjoying reading The Social Penguin Blog? Why not subscribe? Also catch us on twitter and hook up on Facebook.

Filed Under: Social Penguin News Tagged With:

Social Media Metrics – Setting the Standard by Kelly Forbes

February 14, 2011 By 1 Comment

 

It feels like forever that I’ve been banging on about how important it is to measure your social media activity. In actual fact it’s only been a year but in that space of time knowledge and acceptance of social media metrics has risen astronomically. Many have even predicted that 2011 will be the year of the social media metric.

Around the summer in 2010 two separate social media measurement standards were launched; The Barcelona Principles from AMEC/IPR for PR professionals and the Social Media Measurement Framework from the IAB Social Media Council for Advertising and Marketing professionals. Both were created by representatives of their prospective industries and have set out to become the accepted standards for social media measurement.

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Filed Under: Guest Blogging, Online Measurement, Social Media Stats Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Facebook Page Changes – Our Run Through (with images)

February 11, 2011 By 7 Comments

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As you will have read, Facebook pages have now updated with a new layout and a bunch of new features that in our opinion really represents a great shift for brand and businesses using Facebook pages as a marketing tool. Read on as we run through the changes…

Commenting, liking and notifications

This is the big one – You can now post as the page on other people’s pages and personal profiles – this needs to be used cautiously, abuse of this will be classed as spam. You can also now ‘like’ other pages – bear in mind that when you do this, the fans of your page will see this. The next one is manna from heaven – you will receive notifications (as you do on your personal accounts) when somebody interacts with the page (‘likes’ a post, makes comment etc), making management of the page far more efficient.

I have liked the Hootsuite page using The Social Penguin page:

Likes appear prominently on page

You can see the fact that we have liked the Hootsuite page – meaning users of the Social Penguin page will see the network of likes we build and easily connect to them.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

Social Media – Time to Check-In & Donate? by Claire Field

February 2, 2011 By 4 Comments

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Too often, many of us  think of social media as a personal advantage tool . We use Twitter as a sounding-off platform when we’ve had a bad experience with a brand in the hope that publically venting will get the situation resolved the way we want it. Or we check-in the most times on Foursquare to claim that free weekly Mayor’s pizza from Domino’s. Too often, we make social media about us. “What’s in it for us?” we cry. “Why should we do this?”

time to give

Give a little, receive a lot?

But, shouldn’t social media be more than this? After all, the word ‘social’ is in there for a reason, and it’s not just so you and your friends can benefit. The likes of JustGiving has existed since 2000 as a tool to raise money online for charities, and various celebrities including Lady Gaga and Usher died a digital death recently to raise money for World AIDS Day. Local chap, Alex Robertson last week implored his online followers to give the price of a beer in Edinburgh for him doing the Tough Guy challenge. Individually, we seem to be harnessing the power of social media for the greater good and we’re fine with this, but let’s take this away from an individual stance. Let’s ask, what can companies do to help others?

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Filed Under: Consumer Opinion, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,