OH CANADA! How our neighbors to the north feel about Social Media!

Looking to expand your business “near shore”? Canada is a great market to start. Our neighbors to the North are more like us Americans then many think. Here’s the run down – InternetWorldStats.com estimated Canada’s total population in 2011 at 34,030,589 million and about 79% of those Canadians are Internet users (26,960,000 million internet users). Canada’s high online activity, cultural similarities to the U.S., and close location make it a great market for your business to connect with Canadian consumers, but that’s just it. A recent report by Edelman.ca shows us that although trust in social media has increased in Canada, it is still low. Companies should use Social Media as a way to bring Canadians together around a common interest and not a channel to implement traditional marketing campaigns. (more…)

The Rise of Facebook in the “BRIC” Nations

Until recently, Facebook has been in the shadows of other social media sites within the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations. Brazil and India favored Orkut. While Russia has Vkontakte and China has Weibo, Qzone, and Youku. With world dominance in every other international market, Facebook is slowly taking over each major market – one by one. (more…)

How To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Increase Your Twitter Followers

Alongside Facebook, Twitter is the largest, most impactful of the social networking sites that are slowly taking over the world. Whether you are a private user or a business service, Twitter has become an essential platform for speaking your mind and making yourself heard. But finding people to follow you is not always an easy task. Luckily, there are a couple of ways in which you can make sure that your tweets reach a bigger audience. You need to keep your tweets: (more…)

How Starbucks Built an Engaging Brand on Social Media

Starbucks has a big brand presence online. Not because they have millions of dollars for Marketing and Advertising, which they do have, but because they are one of the most engaging companies online. If you are fan of Starbucks coffee, and a bit Internet savvy, then chances are you have come across one of if not all of Starbuck’s Social Media Pages. Starbucks has made it a point to take its successful offline branding strategies and implement them online. Its online image and messages have stayed consistent with their brand values, which are honesty, sincerity, and connecting with its consumers on a level unlike any other brand. The offline Starbucks Culture has taken to the airwaves of the Internet and Social Media. Lets take a look at how they became one of the most engaging brands online. (more…)

How to use LinkedIn to Promote Your Business

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has grown beyond its original purpose of connecting professionals with potential clients and employers. While Facebook and Twitter can be (and definitely are) used for business, LinkedIn is specifically geared toward building valuable business connections. The professional social media site has also become a terrific business-to-business marketing tool. In addition, it’s likely that LinkedIn recommendations will be taken into account for search engine rankings in the future, similar to how Facebook Likes, Tweets and Google +1s are today. There are many benefits to building and using a LinkedIn company page, but it can be tricky trying to get started. A poorly planned LinkedIn company page is worse than no company page at all! (more…)

Increase Website Traffic with Stumbleupon

Are you looking to get more traffic to your web page? Have you ever considered a social bookmarking site like StumbleUpon? Stumbleupon is a great tool for increasing web traffic, and will also increase back links to your page. It’s great for SEO! It’s extremely easy to get started, let me show you how.

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Foursquare: Are you still under the Radar?

With the much-anticipated release of IOS 5, we have seen many new updates to Social Media applications for the Iphone. One in particular is the new update to the Foursquare application. With the arrival of the new IOS 5 software comes new the latest version of the Foursquare application.  Now the location-based application brings us even more location based features.  The latest of these is called “Radar.” (more…)

Klout Perks: How to Get Them

Now that you have an understanding of what Klout is, lets talk more about these perks and how to acquire them. (Please refer back to the last post on Klout, entitled Klout: What’s your Score? if you don’t have a clue as to what I’m talking about.) Now that you know what your score is, lets see if you qualify for some free stuff.

Scores?

A common misconception by new users to Klout, is that only those with higher scores get all the benefits. Wrong! This is entirely untrue. Klout offers perks to its users who are in the best overall position to speak about a product or service to an engaged and interested audience. In some cases, those people will have high scores, but just as many people with lower scores get perks too. It’s all about how much influence you have on a relevant topic/product.

What topics do you Influence on?

The topics in which you know and share a lot of information about are the ones that help Klout determine which perks are right for you. The greater knowledge you have on a topic, the more likely you will receive benefits based on something within that topic. Klout has also just released the +K system, where users can give their peers +K based on the topics in which they have influenced them on. The more you check your topics page and ask friends for more +K on those topics, the more Klout will offer you perks based on those topics.

Location, Location, Location

Another major factor that Klout looks at when determining which Perks you qualify for is, Location. Location is key for Klout, because you’re most likely influential about things in your area. For example, If I’m looking for a good Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, I am more likely going to listen to my friend that lives there rather than one that is far removed from there. The more you check-in to places on social media, the more Klout knows about where you like to hang out and what you like to do and will focus more specific perks for you based on your habits,

Focused Perks

Lastly, Klout isn’t one of those websites that offers daily deals.  There is already a bunch of annoying ones out there for that. Klout really strives on providing the right perks to the right person at exactly the right time, and they work at perfecting it every day. They do a really good job at targeting the right influential people to help promote various products. If you haven’t gotten a perk yet, that’s fine, it just means you need to become more social on topics in which you know decent amount on.

So our advice is to get out there and share information with your friends and engage in conversations on the topics that interest you. Remember its not how many followers, but the quality of your followers!

Facebook teams up with Skype for Facebook Video Chat

I don’t know if you have gotten the new Facebook chat yet, or if you have, if you’ve even noticed the video button near the top of the chat window. Recently, Facebook announced that it has teamed up with Skype to bring users a new Video Chat feature in their newest chat update. Facebook is excited about this new service, and thinks that this will be a huge hit. Now users can simply call their friends right on Facebook and have conversations face to face.

In order to use this new feature, you need to set it up. To get started, first you must visit http://www.facebook.com/videocalling. Once you’ve arrived at the page click on the “Get Started” button. This will begin the installation process, where you will be asked to download and install the new video chat plug-ins. This should take only a few of seconds, it may ask your permission to install depending upon the browser you are using. Yes, Facebook Video Chat is supported on all browsers, so there is no need to worry.

Once you have finished your install, open up a chat box to call a friend. There are two ways to initiate a Video Call. You will now see a Call button on the top right of your screen in-between the Message and Poke Buttons. You can click there to start a video chat with someone, or you can also start a regular chat with someone and then click the video button in the top right of the chat window. It’s really that simple, no need to worry anymore about people’s skype names or ichat names anymore. Just simply find them on Facebook and click the video button to begin chatting face to face!

Here is a video brought to you by Facebook on their new Video Chat!

Google Plus: What is it? How do we use it?

I’m sure the majority of you have already heard about Google+ by now, but for those of you that haven’t, here is a little tell all about it. Google+ is Google’s new Social Media Platform. In layman’s terms it’s the new Facebook. Since Google is already the “gateway” to the Internet, it made sense for them to develop their own social platform to keep web traffic up on their site.

Organize your Friends in Circles

Google+ allows its users to bring together all of their friends in one place and easily organize them into different groups. These groups are what Google likes to call “Circles.” You can create different circles for different contacts such as one circle for close friends, another for business contacts, and another for just family. The possibilities are endless! They are extremely easy to make, all you have to do is just click, drag, and drop that contact into the circle of your choice, it’s that simple!

Huddle, Group Chat with your Buddies

The Google+ platform has upgraded a few of the most common features seen on other social media sites, for example the ever famous chat feature.  Google+ has taken the chat function and taken it to a whole new level with its huddle feature. Huddle is a group messaging system that allows you to chat with a number of friends all at once on your mobile phone! Huddle allows all its users to see what everyone else is saying so that everyone can take part in the conversation.

What exactly is a Hangout?

Another way in which you can converse with friends on Google+ is through the “Hangout” feature. This feature allows you to “hangout” through a video chat. You can hangout with just one person or multiple people. While in your hangout, you can converse by old school chat as well as by video. There is even a place where you can share YouTube videos in a way that everyone can watch at the same time. It even allows you to select then next video as well as change the video for everyone at anytime!

Sparks, Google’s new RSS Feeder

Another cool feature, that Facebook lacks, is a kind of RSS reader called Sparks. Sparks allows you to designate your interests, and then has Google+ scan the internet and collect various articles, videos, and photos of the things you love, so that you can read and share them when you get a chance.

Overall Google+ has revolutionized a new way in which we can interconnect socially on the web. It has taken some of the old, “Facebook,” added some new features that totally appeal to the avid social media user. This is just the beginning for Google+ and we expect more great features to roll out as more and more people migrate on the site.

Here’s a quick look at Google+