by Kimberly | Dec 17, 2011 | Blog, Facebook, Featured, Social Media
As promised, Facebook has made changes to the personal profile once again. Your personal profile account is now a “Timeline.” The Timeline was announced back in August. As the new Timeline rolls out, users will be prompted to change over to the Timeline. One nice feature about this change is that users will be given a 7 day review period to work over their Timeline and edit it to remove or change the privacy settings for any older items that they don’t want to show in the Timeline. Users can publish their new Timeline at any time but after 7 days it will automatically become public. (After December 21st, all users will have the new Timeline.) One of my favorite features of the new Timeline is the cover photo. The cover photo is displayed at the top of the profile and extends for the entire page width. From what I’ve found, the ideal size for this space is 850×315 pixels but no smaller than 720 pixels. Since this a large photo area, a high-res photo is optimal to avoid pixelation. Your “profile pic” is now a 125×125 image embedded in the lower left corner of your cover image. In Facebook’s help section, it details the difference between the profile pic and the cover picture: A cover is the larger photo at the top of your timeline, right above your profile picture. Note: Like your profile picture, cover images are public, which means anyone visiting your timeline will be able to see them. We’ve found that people have a better experience viewing your timeline when they see a cover that...
by Kimberly | May 17, 2011 | Blog, Featured, Twitter
So much of what we hear is that Twitter is great for business networking, engagement, visibility and making connections with others in your industry. And this is true. However, Twitter can also be a tool for having fun socially (imagine that, using a social network socially?) I’ve participated in and moderated several Twitter chats in the course of my social media addiction, but I’m really looking forward to the one tomorrow that’s being hosted by Thirsty Girl and the You Bet Shiraz tour (Peter Lehmann Wines). This is a great opportunity to not only do two things I really enjoy (tasting wine and tweeting!) but also to really see the power of social media and social networking in action as it brings together wine lovers and drinkers- many of whom are actively using Twitter. For this particular tweet chat (#TGTaste), Thirsty Girl, one of the fastest growing social networks for women, is teaming up with Ian Hongell (The Duke of Shiraz) from Peter Lehmann Wines to chat about their 2008 Barossa Shiraz (G’day mates!). This will a great opportunity to not only chat directly with the winemaker about his wine but also to tweet with Head Thirsty Girl, Leslie Sbrocco (author of “Wine for Women” and regular TODAY Show wine contributor) about all things wine and in particular her suggestions for what to pair with this wine and her thoughts about this wine. I am thrilled to be a part of this Twitter chat and am so looking forward to connecting with other wine lovers and chatting about Shiraz (or just our love of wine in general!) I received...
by Kimberly | Apr 4, 2011 | Blog, Featured, Social Media, Twitter
The news out today on the Twitter blog is that Twitter has finally upgraded their Advanced Search feature and moved it from search.twitter.com to the be housed within Twitter’s main search feature. When you do a search on Twitter now, then it will bring up the link for Advanced Search. They have also now added a tab that makes suggestions for people to follow related to your search topic. When you use Twitter Search, there will be four tabs: Tweets, Tweets with Links, Tweets Near You and People. The two things I noticed, is that promoted tweets will come up first and within the People tab, verified high profile accounts tend to come up first. You are also only given a small sample of people to follow which is somewhat disappointing since it would be nice to have the option to sort through a few more accounts as a way to find followers within the search parameters you are using. You will also notice at the top underneath the Results headline, is a link for “operators” which are a list of different operators you can use for Advanced Twitter Search to refine your results even further. You can see in the screenshot below a list of the tips they offer you if you click on the Operator link. It’s nice to see Twitter growing up in a fuller search feature which helps to make the platform even more useful for people who are looking to connect with other Twitterers. Other news posted related to Twitter’s Advanced Search upgrade: Mashable: Upgraded Twitter Search Helps You Find New People to Follow...
by Kimberly | Feb 27, 2011 | Blog, Social Media, social media marketing, Social Media Virtual Assistant
As a small business owner or solo entrepreneur you are faced with the on-going challenge of how to market your business. Very few small businesses have unlimited budgets available so any funds spent on marketing really need to be effective in landing additional sales or leads or ultimately have some value to the overall growth of the business. Right now using social media for marketing is on fire. Everywhere you go, people are talking about how your business MUST be using social media to get the word out. Just recently, leading social media professionals have said that businesses and companies who are not using social media within the next 3 to 5 years will not survive. So how do you figure out what’s the best way to spend any of your budget on social media marketing for your business? There have been many times that I have spoken with potential clients who want to know how I can help them. They know that they want to use social media (or at least they have heard that they should be using social media) but they are not quite sure how to do that so they do a search for a social media assistant. But then, they aren’t quite sure what to say about what they need help with other than they want to be active with social media. Here are my top five tips for how to determine what you want help with and how much help you will need to do it. 1) What are your goals for using social media? This is usually the first question I ask...
by Kimberly | Jan 31, 2011 | Blog, Featured, How to, Online Resources, Social Media
This post is just a quick overview of some free tools out there to help measure some of your social media efforts. 1) Facebook Insights will provide some good in-depth information for a fan page. You can download these date into Excel or you can snapshot the graphs they offer. (keep in mind though that FB data aren’t always that accurate but can provide a good overview). You will need to do a bit of analysis with these data but they can help you determine what types of content your community likes and interacts with. You can access the insights for all of your Facebook pages here: http://www.facebook.com/insights/ 2) Twitter Counter will show the growth of followers for your Twitter account the past week, month, 3 months and 6 months. This site will also graph the number of tweets per day. 3) Tweetreach will show the reach of a twitter ID, a hashtag or a phrase. The free version only offers data for the most recent 50 tweets. This is important to remember so that you run a report right after a campaign or after a certain event. 4) Wildfire has a pretty cool social monitoring tool that allows you to track your Facebook page or Twitter against competitor accounts. You can find it here: http://monitor.wildfireapp.com/ 5) Socialmention.com is a great social media search engine that will track mentions of your company, brand or a specific phrase and also provides feedback on overall sentiment of those mentions. 6) I also recommend bit.ly as a URL shortner. It is good for tracking link clicks. These are just a few of...
by Kimberly | Nov 8, 2010 | Blog, Featured, How to, Social Media, Twitter
As a Social Media Virtual Assistant, I’ve set up many, many Twitter accounts. Some for myself (I think I have 5 of them…) and many for my clients. So, it’s really second nature to me and most of the time, I don’t think twice about how to do it. However, for many small business owners and entrepreneurs who many just be jumping into using Twitter and social media marketing, it can be a bit of a daunting task. Now, setting up a Twitter account is not really that hard and most people can easily walk through the steps to get going in a matter of minutes. However, there are some important considerations to take into account when setting up a Twitter account to help your account appear professional and optimized. 1. Got to http://twitter.com and click on the big, yellow “Sign Up” button. 2. On the sign up page, it’s recommended that you put in your real name or alternatively, you can put in the name of your business. It just depends on how you’ll be using the account. If you are a solo entrepreneur or you are the person who will be tweeting, then it is generally a good idea to put in your real name. If you plan to use the account to tweet as a “business” or if multiple people might be tweeting from the account then put in a business name. Whichever, you chose, you can always change it at anytime, so it’s not set it stone. Keep in mind that this field is indexed and picked up by the search engines, so that’s something...
