The Role of Social Media and Technology in the Boston Marathon Tragedy

Great article on the role of tragedy and social media.

Jason Douglas's Life Blog

April 15, 2013 is a day which will not be forgotten for generations to come. A terrorist attack occurring at mile 26, near the end of the Boston Marathon has changed countless lives and altered history. 

Social media played a significant role in the tragedy. That was not the surprising part. Many people found out about the evolving tragedy on a social media channel (including myself). Quickly, images of the first and second explosion surfaced followed by images of the seriously injured. Video of both explosions were spreading fast through Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Vine videos even made an appearance. 

The act of sharing photos and videos was not a surprise. The location of the blasts coupled with the mass amount of people watching the final steps of the marathon looking for loved ones with their phones and cameras out created a perfect storm for documenting the tragedy. The average…

View original post 329 more words

Social media monitoring tools and why they are important.

Since social media is one of the most respectable forms of marketing today, it is important to know some good tools to use to help you monitor them. Social media can be used as a marketing tool to discover new customers, have conversations with established customers and sell products. Below you will find some that I think are good tools to use for these purposes.

Hootsuite allows users to monitor a large number of social media accounts in one place allowing one to do all the social functions in one web window. You can use it to manage multiple social media accounts for your business.

Klout is a great social media tool you can use to measure social impact. It gives the influencer score on social media, helping you learn from your competitors and what they are doing right.

Social Mention monitors online mentions on social media. This tool monitors the specific individuals who mention you on social media, enabling you understand their needs, or become part of the conversation.

Twitalzer is a tool which helps you analyze Twitter activity for your business account. For instance, the tool states what engagement, influence and general impact on Twitter. This tool isn’t free but there are several plans you can pick from to help you achieve your business goals.

Topsy is a real-time social media search engine. It collects all information happening in your industry in real-time, enabling you know what others are talking about. This can be very helpful in success of your business.

20 free, awesome social media monitoring tools gives even more recommendations on some of the best social media monitoring tools available, and the best thing is they are FREE! Who doesn’t love free? 🙂

Five articles that address Pinterest for business

Pinterest is an online Pin board that allows users to share graphics and other things they find interesting. There’s a little bit of a different strategy for using it for business purposes. In this post you will find five links to articles I think are helpful in using Pinterest for business purposes.

The Social Media Examiner has an interesting blog post called 6 Tips for Using Pinterest for Business. These six tips will help drive more traffic to your pinterest page and your website. It addresses things such as using original photos, creating catalogs and getting fans involved. Check it out if you want to try to boost your traffic, its a great article with great photos.

This article by Jeff Bullas called 10 Strategic Ways to Optimize Your Pinterest Page – Infographic talks about how important it is to use the ‘about section’ and the importance of board placement among other things. There is a very helpful Infographic included on the blog as well.

The next article called Thou shalt use Pinterest for Business Like This has an Infographic that addresses 10 ways to use Pinterest for promoting your business. It’s a very easy to read and understand Infographic and addresses things like how to plan, create content, create buttons and use call to actions on your pins.

Pinterest Finally Rolls Out Business Accounts: How to Set Yours Up Today addresses how to how to convert your personal Pinterest account into a business account or how to set up a Pinterest business account from scratch. This walks you step by step on how to open a Pinterest business account with photos and graphics to help out. This is very helpful if you are just getting started.

Pinterest Launches Free Analytics Tool for Business Accounts shows you how to get a Pinterest analytics tool and how to use it. It shows photos and graphics on what potential analytics will look like.

Five social media blogs I follow.

1. The Social Media Examiner is a great website to follow and subscribe to for up to date information on all your social media sites. It’s a fun, colorful site that is simple to navigate and easy to read.

2. Duct Tape Marketing is a blog that has great tips and articles on blogging. It is very easy to navigate.

3. Jeff Bullas blog is very helpful with social media articles and easy to subscribe to for daily updates.

4. Techipedia is a website that I follow that has information on digital and social media.  The content is useful and easy to understand.

5.  Social Media Revolver is has information on all the social media websites, with easy to find tabs that direct you to all the necessary links and great photos to go with the blog posts. I find this site fun and entertaining as well as informative.

Five Interesting Blogging Articles

This first article on blogging I found interesting is called Blogging and Advertising: Where Should You Start? It gives three of the best services where you can obtain ads for your website. The most popular is Google AdSense, another is Chitika Ads and the last one mentioned is Amazon Associates. You can find links to each service and the full article here.

The next article that I found useful is called How to Write a Blog People Want to Read. Since it is important to actually write blogs that people want to read this article is important because it shows examples and provides links to various good articles with good tips on how to write good blogs.

The third article is called Science Behind Converting a First Time Visitor into a Loyal Reader. It talks about color, design, why loyal readers matter and not to get too greedy with ads.

The fourth article is an excellent read titled Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips. This is a great article that helps to setup and optimize a blog. It has links to all these tips and are very useful.

The final article that is very useful for blogging is titled The Blog Post Checklist: Use Before Hitting “Publish”. There is a list of 13 things you should do before you publish your blog. There is also a description of each of the items listed. This is very useful to read, especially for new bloggers like myself.