Three Online Photo Editing Apps Reviewed

A huge part of creating good content is creating good images, or at least creating entertaining images. I have Photoshop on my work computer but am far too cheap to put it on my laptop (especially with Adobe’s latest subscription model). And for me, Photoshop is a bit over-complicated for what I want to do anyway. Here are some great web-based apps for creating and editing snappy dapper photos when you only have a few minutes to spare.

Picmonkey

Seattle-based Picmonkey has been a favourite of mine since Picnic bit the Google-buyout bullet. It has some similar features to Picnic (which is now the Picasa photo editor) but is constantly releasing new features and filters. Beyond basic edits and touch ups you can add text, borders, graphic overlays and filter effects. My current favourite is the Ombre effect which does this jazzy blue (you can change the colour) fade business.

bi polar penguin ombre

While I have a subscription that gives me access to every feature, this is more than enough to keep you happy for free as well. They also have a pretty sweet Facebook app that allows you to edit photos pulled straight from your FB albums.

Collages

Picmonkey also a handy collage tool that lets you upload multiple photos and lay them out using preloaded templates. Great for product shots and events.

PicMonkey Collage

Pixlr

Totally free and 3 options depending on how creative you want to get with your photo wizardry.

Pixlr-o-matic

pixlr-o-matic

Not quite as amazing as their mobile app, Pixlr-o-matic still has plenty of game going on. You can upload a photo, apply effects and add overlays and borders. They have quite a few options to play around with, especially if you’re going for bright and playful photos. My only complaint is that the 1:1 cropping function doesn’t allow you to edit what portion of the photo is being cropped. When that’s an issue, I crop photos before uploading them to the app.

Express

Express is basically the web version of their sweet mobile app which means you can apply cool effects like this:

bi polar penguin express

You can also apply text and make basic adjustments. It’s a great feature for someone who likes to play around but isn’t comfortable using more Photoshop-like tools.

Editor

To me, Editor feels very similar to some open source photo-editing programs. You can create new images, edit using layers, paint, burn, dodge, blur and a number of other tools that will be familiar to Photoshop users. One small drawback is not being able to resize an image that you open as a new layer. Though, it is possible that I just haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

Do you have a favourite photo editing app that you’d like to share? Leave a comment and let us know what it is!

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Great Social Tools for Social Causes

Photo Credit – Flickr infomatique

Using social media to reach out to the masses clearly isn’t a new concept so it makes perfect sense that social causes would also make use of social platforms to amplify their message. Social media is inexpensive, it has a further reach than most traditional media options and you never know, your heartfelt efforts may even go viral. Hello, KONY.

The concept might be old hat but there are some interesting applications and networks that are making it easier than ever to activate your would-be support base.

Thunderclap

This recent campaign for March for Innovation is a great example of the power this application. Find a message, add your voice, Thunderclap together. It’s basically a recipe for becoming a social army and in this case the army is fighting for smart immigration reform. What would your Thunderclap be about?

Change.org

Change.org makes it incredibly easy to rally folks around your cause. You sign up, start a petition and write a compelling argument for why it should be signed. Change.org has a great email marketing program to help support your petition and introduce it to new, previously unknown allies. It’s also a very share-friendly site which is always handy.

Causes

Causes provides a few more tools to package up your message. You create a custom page that integrates with Facebook, set up your own email campaigns and can even receive donations. Pretty much everything you need to find people to help you save the world.

Good Ol’ Facebook

Facebook really does give you one of the best platforms for drawing an audience around your cause. Setting up a page to coincide with your other efforts will help you find new supporters and stay in touch with them. Check out how some of these pages, big and small, use Facebook:

Stick it to Fast Food
Upworthy

If you have a digital media budget you can also increase your Facebook impressions and page views with “promoted page” paid campaigns. However, from my own experience, this needs to be done with caution as you can just as easily attract a boatload of haters who are happy to spam your wall with the opposite of you want it to say. My tip is to refine your target audience as much as you can and keep a close eye on the page notifications.

Well, there you have it. Now go forth and make your world a better place to live!

Have you used social media for, or to support, a social cause? Do you think social media helps win the battles? Tell us about your experience!

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Banks Still Struggling to be Sociable

Photo credit – telegraph.co.uk

News that the banks are scaling back their spend on social media makes for some scaremongering headlines.

Is This The Data That Finally Proves Social Marketing Is Bunk?‘ says Robert Tyson in the Tyson Report, and ‘Businesses are right to be turning away from social media‘ says Digital Media Editor Emma Barnett in the Telegraph.

Tyson suggests that the banks will soon ‘find’ somewhere to reinvest their savings, and that it will be in email marketing.

Barnett suggests that the transparency of social media has just added fuel to the fatcat fire, following several high-profile news stories.

Are banks a good indicator of social trends? Should business be scaling back their spend as 2013 approaches?

The problem with banks, and it happens to businesses large and small up and down the country, is that they’ve thrown too much cash at it, expecting it to extract them from between the rock and the hard place.

The marketers have convinced them they need to be doing ‘social media’ without convincing them they need to clean up their act, modernise their business practices, or use it as a ‘channel for change’.

Yes, email on the whole will, for a while yet, be a better digital marketing tool. Print and TV will continue to be lucrative for banks for some time too.

Social media would have been the perfect opportunity for banks to focus on their customers and sort out some of the negative publicity they’ve attracted, but instead, the industry is still awash with story of fat cats, big bonuses and other shareable topics. Did no one tell them social media was transparent?

I’ve seen a few people raging about their banks on Twitter recently, but have seen no responses from the corporate giants and meaningless numbers have followed through their threats and jumped ship.

Yes, social media is an amazing customer service tool, is does pretty well at marketing too if you know how to sell your products.

But at the end of the day, if you don’t inspire any confidence in your customers, they’ll simply lose interest, pun intended.

Social media is an enhancer. If you’re doing things right, Twitter et al are great for spreading the good word, and if you’re doing things badly, that will spread too. Scaling down social media spend is just another knee-jerk reaction to a knee-jerk reaction.

The actual problem lies elsewhere.

Could banks have done things differently to see more success on social media? Do you care whether your bank is on Twitter or not? Leave a comment and let us know!

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Social Measurement – How Do You Track Your ROI? [SURVEY]

If you spend much time chatting about social media marketing then the question of measurement and ROI has surely come up. Are you tracking the benefits that using social media as part of your marketing mix brings? What’s more important: qualitative or quantitative KPIs? How do you put a value on engagement? I’ve heard loads of answers to these questions from a variety of “experts” but am curious to know how you go about measuring your social successes and efforts:

1 – Do you measure the success of your social media marketing?

2 – Do you care if you can tie it to a measurable KPI (like sales)?

3 – Are you more concerned about your reach or the quality of engagement?

4 – What measurement tools do you use?

5 – Are you satisfied that you can justify social media spend?

Would be very interested to hear your thoughts! Please leave answers in the comments section below. If you would prefer to email your response ( we will publish your responses anonymously in the comments section) please feel free – Click Here


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How to Deal With Online Reviews

Image credit - freedigitalphotos.net

Let’s face it, online reviews are a staple now. Often times, if you Google a storefront business, apartment rental company, or service industry company, the first page is bound to turn up review results. Be it from Google Places, Yelp, Apartment Ratings or others, people are taking the recommendations of others to judge your business. What previously would have been only local word of mouth is now quite possibly the first thing prospective customers will see representing your business. If someone searches “Your business name reviews,” it is highly likely that the reviews will even show up before your own website’s listing in the results, depending on the depth of your SEO. If you fall into the category of a company that has a customer base of raving fans, this will certainly only help you. If you are a company that has inadvertently provided poor experiences to some very vocal customers, this could potentially stave off new customers, even if those few instances do not reflect the typical experience of your customers. So what do you do? You make your presence known and join in that conversation! Let’s talk tips on responding to online reviews. The slow, painful decline from red to yellow: 

Responding to bad reviews

Don’t over react! How you handle bad reviews and criticism is crucial, but is also the toughest part. Someone is criticizing your life’s work, your passion, your well-thought business practices, and that can hurt. You can NOT, however, get into a screaming match online. If you can’t step back and look at the situation objectively, get someone else to handle the responses for you. This is especially important if the response has to be public (which is the case for all Google Places reviews and some user-designated Yelp reviews). Arguing online never gets anyone to a better place, EVER. You WILL indefinitely come out looking like the bad guy. Remember, people are checking these reviews because they aren’t familiar with your business, and they will inevitably side with other customers. Humble yourself, thank the customer for visiting and reviewing, and try to reel them back in. With the ability to post reviews via mobile devices, they may have hastily posted a review in the heat of the moment. Perhaps with some reflection and your calm response, they may change or remove their review entirely. Even if they don’t, you’ve shown that you care enough to make the effort, and that goes a long way in the eyes of someone who knows nothing about your business.

Responding to good reviews

Don’t ignore them! Sure, you may be thinking, “It’s already good, why do I need to do anything else?” This is where many business owners go wrong. These good reviewers are your fan club, your brand advocates, and they ought to be commended. They didn’t have to go online and tell everyone how great of an experience they had. In fact, many people don’t. Many simply expect to have good experiences and don’t feel the need to boast about them. So few businesses respond to good reviews that people are shocked when you do. Literally. I’ve seen so many people come back with “Wow. It’s so awesome to see a business owner who actually cares what people think. I’ll definitely be back now!” And that, my friends, is good old fashioned loyalty. Most reviewers just want to be heard, so stroke that ego a little. It can pay off.

Compensation

Don’t make it your first line of defense! Often times, the knee jerk reaction to bad reviews is to give something for free. I say don’t do this unless you absolutely have to. Refer back to two things I just mentioned.

1. People sometimes write reviews in the heat of the moment.

2. People often just want to be heard.

Responding to a negative review and asking the customer to give you another opportunity to WOW them can sometimes be enough to encourage another chance. Feel customers out. After an initial response, if they are still hesitant, then perhaps offer something. However, if in their review they specifically state that they would never come back to this establishment or never do business with you again, you may try upping the ante right off the bat. Most importantly, ask the customer to revise their review to reflect their new experience if they do in fact give you a second chance.

Working with Yelp’s filtering system

It’s like trying to find sasquatch riding a unicorn over a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I’ve yet to meet anyone who completely understands the secret sauce to Yelp’s filtration system. Some reviews that get filtered are obvious. Things like “posted by the business owner” or “violates terms” make sense. Sometimes, however, completely legitimate reviews from completely legitimate customers get filtered, and it sometimes seems the reason is lack of engagement with Yelp itself. There’s a great article here that offers up some tips on ways to potentially get around Yelp’s system and get some of the good reviews to be unfiltered. The thing about filtered reviews is that they don’t count toward your overall rating. If you have 2 good reviews and 10 terrible reviews showing up, with 8 more good reviews filtered, your rating is awful, even though you have 8 completely legitimate customers who gave you great reviews.

The most important part is that you are engaging with your customers and being part of the conversation. Be sure that you’ve claimed your business on Yelp and Google Places, engage users online and encourage those that visit you or use your services to give you a review. People are going to talk about your business, so you might as well be part of the conversation. The downside is that this can be very time consuming. At Main Street Hub, we can help you with online reviews and work to get your online reputation back to where it belongs by responding to reviews and working to help you get filtered reviews to show up. This is just one of the services that we offer. Check out our website for more information. Right now, U.S businesses only.


What are your experiences with online reviews? Any horror or success stories? Anything else you’d add to the list above? Chime in below!

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Friday Freak Out – People Asking Me to Retweet Their S**t

Image credit - brandstyledesign.com

Mike and I were chatting about our freaks outs of the week and it turns out that we had the same complaint. We have both been approached by people, under slightly different circumstances, asking us to tweet or retweet what turned out to be total crap. For Mike, he was sent a direct message asking him to retweet a link to a bunch of people that are trying to raise money to make a movie. Fine, who doesn’t like movies? The problem was that they had absolutely no prior relationship with Mike and the request came out of the blue. Bad idea!

For me, I had one of my clients  send an email with a link to a blog topic that they thought would be “interesting” to our network. It was a nice break from the usual emails they send complaining about pricing but when I checked out the link it wasn’t an interesting blog post at all but a straight up sales pitch for business coaching and offered no actual value to readers.

Seriously, it’s just plain tasteless to send requests like this and it’s going to burn you sooner or later. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a right way to ask for a retweet and studies have shown that you are more likely to be retweeted if you do ask for it. But don’t be a jerk about it!

How to ask for a RT (and not be a jerk):

1 – Make sure what you want to have RT’d is worthwhile.  If you’re asking someone to go to bat for you then it had better be something that won’t make them cringe when they look into it.

2 – Don’t send that type of request to someone that you don’t have an existing relationship with. Being on the receiving end of those requests is pretty off-putting and more likely to get you called out for it (or even the topic of a Friday Freak Out post).

3 – Ask nicely, folks! Adding ‘Please RT’ to your tweet is a direct, non-offensive way to show that you want to get your message out there and the decision to RT is then left at the complete discretion of any potential RT’ers.  If your going to directly ask someone to promote your content then don’t pass it off as something it’s not and give an honest reason why you’d like their help with it.

4 – Don’t be offended if your request doesn’t go your way. Everyone has the right to decide what they want to put out to their social networks and your content isn’t a good fit for me, then take it like a champ and get over it.

Do you freak out when you get these RT requests too? How do you go about asking for a RT?

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Social Change – The KONY 2012 Viral Fallout

I am on my third cold since Christmas so the word ‘viral’ is a touchy subject for me but the controversy surrounding the viral popularity of the KONY 2012 campaign is distracting me from coughing and sniffling right now and that’s nice!

Viral Sensation

Even if you’re not a social media addict, you probably still saw the KONY 2012 video lurking around Facebook or Twitter (or here on TSPB). Considering the video has been shared on Facebook over 2 billion times, it would have been nearly impossible to miss it. The stats showing how quickly the video and overall campaign reached dizzying heights in views, shares, tweets, mentions and pluses are nothing short of stunning. According to this post from The Drum, the video reached over 112 million views in nine days easily surpassing any kind of viral video that came before it.

Viral Controversy

And then came the naysayers! Nearly as popular as the original campaign, the droves of people and posts calling the campaign a ripoff quickly followed. It’s tricky to say if the controversy has added to the video’s viral popularity but it certainly added an interesting layer of conversation to a topic that many of us were unaware of a week or two ago.

Social Change

Only time will tell if the social media movement will bring about any kind of quantifiable change to current events (I say current since it’s now clear that the specific events from the KONY 2012 video are no longer taking place) but I think anything that brings attention to social issues is positive, regardless of controversy. I also think that this may be an indication that people are hungry for a real cause to get behind. Maybe we’re getting tired of hearing one another complain about our “first world problems”. In age of shortening attention spans and desensitisation, it’s nothing short of a miracle that 112 million people sat through a 30 minute video about a subject that didn’t benefit them in any way.

What are your thoughts on the KONY 2012 video? Do you think it deserves the attention it has gotten? Do you think that social media is a good platform for social change?

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Social Media Isn’t Free, But It’s Worth It

Don Power is the Managing Editor of Sprout Insights, a blog by the company Sprout Social, which also offers social media management software. He writes content and edits articles produced by other contributors. Don is also a Social Media Consultant and Professional Speaker. Connect with Don on Twitter: @donpower.

In response to questions about the ROI (Return on Investment) of social media, entrepreneur and social media juggernaut, Gary Vaynerchuk, is famous for his reply: “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

According to Vaynerchuk, it’s just understood that one’s mother (like social media) has an intrinsic value and trying to measure that value is unnecessary. When it comes to social media, Vaynerchuk’s advice is simply to stop measuring and start doing.

On the other hand, Mark Schaefer, social media advisor and author of “The Tao of Twitter” says: “As marketers we should measure EVERYTHING. And generally, we can. It’s imperative that businesses evaluate the resources spent on social media to determine whether those resources are producing positive results. If you’re in business, chances are you are trying your best to make a profit. If you’re using social media as part of your marketing strategy, then you need to know if that strategy is paying off.

Image credit - wildfireperformancemarketing.com

So, is the investment in social media worth it? Does it provide a positive return on investment? Whether it’s in terms of person-hours spent engaging on social media, money paid for social media management tools or additional staff, there is growing evidence to suggest that the answer is “Yes!” Here’s why.

The Myth of Free Social Media

Although participation in social media is technically free, there are still costs associated with this activity. Perhaps chief among these is the physical time it takes to engage meaningfully with your target audience.

If you haven’t assigned a dollar value to the time that you and your staff are spending on social media, you’re not alone. According to a recent survey from Awareness Inc., 57 percent of marketers said that they “have not allocated budgets to social marketing, but rely on people resources”. Yet these marketers must be realizing a positive return on investment, since in the same survey 78 percent of respondents said that “expanding social reach” will be a major marketing initiative for them in 2012. Like any form of business marketing, you have to allocate an appropriate time frame before you can expect to see results; an investment in social media is no different.

Social Media Marketing Vs. Traditional Advertising

Some business owners may still be inclined to scoff at social media and the time investment it takes to produce results. They may prefer to forego the effort of social media marketing in favor of traditional advertising instead. Not Jonathan Kervin. Since investing his time into social media marketing for his inbound marketing agency, Jonathan has seen traffic to his website increase by ten fold.

“Before social media, I would have spent upwards of $1000 a month on advertising to produce that kind of traffic,” says Kervin. When asked if he’s come out on top of the ROI equation, “Definitely!” he says.

Kervin also takes issue with those who say traditional, or even online-advertising doesn’t take the same effort or committment as social media. He says, “What about the time it takes to research and fine-tune your ads, what about split-testing different versions? This all takes time and money.” No matter what type of advertising you’re doing for your business, you have to make strategic investments to produce positive returns. Now, says Kervin, “instead of money, I invest my time.”

What many business people also tend to overlook when it comes to investing in social media is that you can create reusable social content like videos, podcasts, blog articles and so on. These marketing tools continue to promote your business long after you’ve invested the initial time to produce the content. “I’ve gotten better at social media”, says Kervin, “now that I have the learning curve out of the way.” The bonus, he says, is that “now I have all this content and it’s producing traffic for me even while I’m sleeping!”

It would seem that if you compare the time commitment of social media vs. the money committment of traditional advertising, social media has its advantages particularly if your business is on a tight budget. Factor in the hands-on marketing training and reusable advertising content you produce while investing your time in social media, and the relative dollar value of social media marketing is something a business person can no longer afford to ignore.

Facebook Fans Worth $50 Million

You may have seen the chatter on the Internet asking: “What’s a Facebook fan worth?” Well, according to beer company, New Belgium, the answer is 50 million dollars. More precisely, when the company surveyed its Facebook fan base, it calculated that each member spent an average of $260 on its products. Collectively that amounts to approximately $50.7 million in annual revenue. For an initial social media investment of $235,000 “mostly dedicated to Facebook,” that equates to a very positive endorsement of social media ROI.

Of course, not every business has the social media budget of New Belgium brewery. In fact, the Awareness Inc. survey (mentioned earlier) found that only eight percent of businesses spent over $50,000 on their social media budgets in 2011. Still, as we’ve seen in the above examples, you don’t need to break the bank to get positive results from social media.

Even if you don’t generate immediate sales from social media, there is immense business value in using these social platforms. Whether it’s increasing awareness of your business to a global audience, providing transparent customer service, or establishing relationships with future customers, the results of your social media activities are tangible, measurable, and definitely worthwhile.

[Sources: watermill3, B2C, Awareness Inc., Usa Today; Image credit: D. Sharon Pruitt]

10 Steps to Running An Awesome Twitter Contest

Twitter contests are a great tactic for increasing your online presence, but are often underutilized by brands. Not only are they simple to run, but are also fantastic for increasing your Twitter visibility and an awesome way to acquire new followers.

Although a Twitter contest itself is not that tricky, there are some recommended steps to keep in mind that will help you drive a successful and optimized contest.

Here are the ten steps that I feel can help make a good Twitter contest into a great one:

1. Set Objectives

Without objectives, it’s impossible to judge success. Consider what your goals are for the contest and how you want it to impact your brand. Is it new followers you’re after? More retweets? Acquiring email leads?

2. Check Twitter Guidelines

Be sure to read the guidelines for contests on Twitter. While Twitter are pretty flexible with their regulations, you want to ensure you avoid any complications or difficulties down the line by staying within the guidelines.

3. Make Entry Easy

The easier the entry process, the more entries you can expect. Keep it short and simple – one-click entry (just a retweet, for example) or providing a tweet for them to simply copy and paste are both great entry tactics.

4. Optimize Brand Visibility

Make sure you are optimizing your visibility by ensuring that all contest tweets include a mention of your brand. Additionally, you can consider including a link to your site and you could even create your own hashtag.

5. Join Forces

One thing to keep in mind is how you are going to get the word out on Twitter about your contest. Use a Twitter tool like Crowdbooster to determine some of your most influential followers, and reach out to them to see if they might help you spread the word.

6. Choose Prizes

Prizes are obviously an important part of any contest: will there be one big prize? Several small ones? In my experience, giving away small prizes regularly is a great tactic for Twitter – ensuring the contest remains interactive and engaging throughout.

7. Vary Promotional Tweets

No doubt that your biggest form of promotion will be via Twitter itself. One top tip is to vary the time you publish contest tweets and the language you use. Testing like this will allow you to optimize your reach and find out when your audience is most receptive.

8. Choose Promotion Channels

Other than Twitter, consider where else you can promote the contest. Can you cross-promote on Facebook? LinkedIn? Perhaps you contribute to a blog and could write a post, or know of other bloggers or marketers that can help out? Think outside-of-the-box and be creative.

9. Build Excitement

Make your community aware that you will be running the contest in order to build excitement. This could involve “taster tweets”, which highlight the prizes you’ll be giving away, or tweets which countdown to the contest start.

10. Analyze results

Finally, be sure to monitor the contest and analyze the results. The metrics you measure will depend on your objectives, but considerations would be followers, @ mentions, retweets and impressions to name just a few. Find out what worked (and what didn’t) to ensure that your next Twitter contest is even bigger and better!

Have you ever run a Twitter contest? Is there anything you would add to this list?

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Is Twitter Selling Out or Just Selling Data?

News hit the wire yesterday that a company called Datasift, the company behind Tweetmeme, has been given access to all tweets dating back to January 2010. The company, which is already known for it’s deep analysis of social media data, says that this access to the historical twitter information will allow for an “ unprecedented capability to filter Social Data, extract meaning and create insights.”

What does this mean?

According to the video that was their latest blog post, Datasift aggregates public social data which can then be dissected and analysed for consumer behaviour, trends and insights. Basically, they look at the overall sentiment of posts, the originating location and details about any linked pages.

Who would be interested in this data?

This kind of in-depth social data will be most sought after by very large brands. And, in accordance with that, it’s likely to come with a hefty pricetag. The service is still in a testing phase but you can sign up for the wait list.

Should Twitter have the right to profit off your content?

There are a few questions in all this that deserve some attention. To start, Twitter does indeed have the legal right profit from public tweets but will users be comfortable with this? Will this stir up some attention from privacy advocates as has been suggested by Mashable? Will the public embrace Twitter the same way if selling tweets becomes a major source of income for the social media site?

What to do if you don’t like it?

If you are not comfortable with your two year old tweets being man-handled for data then you should be able to opt out by deleting the old posts. Is it worth the hassle?

Do you have any thoughts on the latest Twitter news? Does the sale change your views about Twitter? Will you be deleting old posts? Please leave a comment and let us know!

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