Marketing Reading for the Week: New Social Media Features You Should Use

We’re moving the weekly round-up to Monday, so you can read it as you start your week. This week, here are some social media updates you should know of.

Did you know that you can now tag (mention) people on LinkedIn the way you do on Facebook or Twitter? I’m so glad they finally rolled this out. Even Google Plus had this!

Facebook changed their guidelines to remove restrictions on using calls to action or contact info on cover photos. Now you can say “Buy Now”, “Like”, or “Call us!” in your cover photo if you want to.

Facebook also introduced threading of comments, so that replies are bunched together. In itself, this is a great idea, but people are complaining about the replies being ordered by popularity/relevance instead of in chronological order. If you are a Page owner, this might make your life a little more difficult.

Facebook announced changes to the news feed last month, which are being rolled out to users. This article gives you the five coolest changes: I especially like that mobile usability will improve and we’ll see more content in chronological order.

On to Twitter: the new Twitter cards (that allow you to add rich content in a tweet) have interesting features. For developers, the app card looks really cool. The Gallery card lets you include up to four images in the same tweet. Most interestingly for e-commerce businesses, you can embed product details right inside a tweet.

Are you excited about any of these new features?

Interview with Ed Steinberg, Expert on LinkedIn for Businesses

Edward_SteinbergWhen I first knew Ed Steinberg, he was the head of human resources at the company I was then working at. Since then, he’s gone on to do interesting things, becoming LinkedIn’s first Relationship Manager and working there for several years before moving on to training other sales people on using LinkedIn effectively.

I asked Ed for tips on using LinkedIn that small businesses can use. Read on! My questions and comments are in bold.

Let’s start by talking about you: tell us about how you landed up in LinkedIn and what your role has been.

I worked in Human Resources for a long time, 15 years or so. My primary responsibility was hiring. I realized that referral hires made the best hires and helped grow a company from 4 employees to over 500 people. I had opened up offices on 3 continents and hired a tremendous group of employees.

While working as Global Head of HR at StarCite, a LinkedIn rep came to my office to sell me Corporate Solutions. When I realized what it was, I saw that this was a large extension around the concept of referral hiring that had worked so well for me. It made perfect sense!

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Weekend Reads for Better Marketing: Sales and SEO

Little girl with make-up and rollers

This is about how fake I feel if I try to sell

Vijay Anand, the founder of the Startup Center and a well-known name in the Indian startup space, answers the question, “What will it take to build 1.000 Startups in a year?”

Tech columnist Farhad Manjoo writes about Facebook’s Graph Search (which Nilesh wrote about here).

You’ll immediately notice Facebook search’s amazing user interface and flexibility. You’ll also spot one glaring problem: The search results aren’t that good.

After just a few queries, I started asking the engine for more and more complicated things, just to see if it could keep up… It didn’t have any trouble.

I can’t wait to try it myself, though apparently Facebook is rolling it out “very slowly.”

Are you making these 9 mistakes on LinkedIn?

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Interview with Bhaskar Sarma, B2B Marketing Consultant and Copywriter

Bhaskar Sarma, B2B CopywriterBhaskar Sarma of Pixels and Clicks is a copywriter specializing in B2B technology businesses. He is also a fantasy fan, judging by his marketing blog posts that reference Tolkien and Dr. Who. He talks to us about copywriting and social media for B2B.

My questions and comments are in bold.

How and why did you become a consultant?

I came into consulting and copywriting through a pretty roundabout fashion. Before my current gig and after getting my BE in computer engineering I was a tech journalist, an infosec consultant and a volunteer with a non-profit running schools in remote mountain villages near Mussorie. I decided not to get back into the corporate rat race and opted to work for myself, travel when I want and choose my own clients and projects.

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5 Risks of Relying on Social Media Marketing

The recent brouhaha over Instragram’s policy changes brings into sharp relief the fact that marketing on social media entails a lot of dependence on the social media sites. Instagram’s users might not be in trouble right now, but do you remember the last cries of outrage over changes in Facebook’s policies?

Which brings me to the question: is it wise to focus your marketing efforts primarily on social media?

I’m not advocating ignoring social media (of course). But realize this: you don’t control Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus. Your most important content should be on your own site, whether it’s in the form of blog posts, FAQs, a photo gallery, or video tutorials.

Here are five reasons why.

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Interview with Anita Campbell, Founder and CEO of Small Business Trends

Anita Campbell of Small Business TrendsAnita Campbell is the Founder and CEO of Small Business Trends, a popular U.S.-based site for small business advice. Small Business Trends has been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and the New York Times, and Anita herself is a popular writer and speaker and is on several advisory boards. She talks to us about content creation, content monetization, and entrepreneurship.

My questions and comments are in bold.

Tell us a bit about Small Business Trends – I read you started it as a version of an email newsletter? Who was your first audience? Continue reading

Weekend Reads for Better Marketing: Website and Social Media

Do people really think content marketers don’t care about sales? This and other myths here.

Outspoken Media has an easy, excellent guide to link-building in 15 minutes a day.

And here are a few quick ways to improve your website’s usability.

If you aren’t using photos on Facebook yet, here’s more evidence to convince you: photos get 53% more likes.

Here’s another blog post laying out why LinkedIn’s Endorsement feature is awful.

Have a great weekend, and make your marketing better next week!

Weekend Reads for Better Marketing: A Wide Assortment

Cheesecake with assorted fruits

With the five links below, you can learn about blogging, websites, advertising on social media, motivation, and sales. Let’s start!

Hubspot tells you how you (yes, you) can be a business blogger.

Copyblogger tells you how to set up a WordPress website in fifteen minutes. (Though really, if you’re new to this, I think it will take you at least half an hour. Or a couple of hours — speaking as someone who’s technically-challenged but got this website up and running, with a little help from the other guy.)

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Weekend Reads for Better Marketing: LinkedIn Endorsements and Twitter Follower Count

This seems to be Tools Week! Neil Patel shares ten mission-critical tools for every modern marketer. How many of these do you use? I use only two — IFTTT and Hello Bar. But I plan to start using Hootsuite and KISSmetrics soon — these are both very popular and recommended tools, and I’m hoping they’ll help us!

Rand Fishkin, Founder and CEO of SEOMoz, shares 24 things that he wished he had known “then” (at the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey. My favorite is, obviously, #10:

“Better marketing often trumps a better product. Invest in both.”

Lisa Barone shares seven rules for writing awesome content. The first, of course, is telling stories.

I hate LinkedIn’s new Endorsement feature — I think it makes it far too easy for people to endorse others and makes it somewhat of a popularity contest. But since it’s there, you might as well use it, and Social Media Examiner has tips.

This study of 36 million Twitter users finds that the number of followers you have directly correlates to how often you tweet. So, how many tweets have you sent out this week?

Where and How Should You Publish Your Content?

So you’ve got your objectives pinned down, you know who your audience is, and you have a list of topics in mind. But what form of content are you going to create and where are you going to publish it?

Bird's nest with egg next to a wall

Create original content and decide how and where you want it delivered: like the pair of pigeons who chose my balcony to nest in

Settle down and grab a pen: I’ve got a lot of questions you need to answer.

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