Here’s my top 5 reasons by you need to start using Hootsuite, for those of you find it difficult to keep up with all of your social channels or if you are thinking about working for a digital marketing agency.

My Hootsuite Dashboard Setup

1) Social Media Management.  With the help of one dashboard, Hootsuite allows you to keep up with multiple channels and account for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other channels that you or your client may use.  No logging in and out necessary.  Seriously, this saves SO MUCH TIME!

2) Keyword Searching.  Want to see who’s talking about your company or a topic your company is interested in?  All you have to do is click “add stream” and type in the keywords into the search entry and you will be able to keep track of all the good and bad said about your company.

3) Geocode Searching.  If you want to see who’s talking about a specific topic in a certain geographic area, say who’s “hungry” or who’s looking for a “yoga” studio, you can search these keywords and use the geocode taken from google maps that you are looking for within a certain km radius.  How cool is that??  If you find people talking about something they’re looking for, you can go ahead and tweet them on your company’s account and let them know what you have to offer.

4) Post Analytics.  If you have Hootsuite Pro, you can generate many reports that display how well or badly your posts have done on Facebook and Twitter.  You can see which ones had the most engagement, click rate, and were generally most successful.  This way you can stop what’s not working and continue what is.

5) Scheduling Posts.  If you manage a company that posts on Facebook and Twitter multiple times a day, it is often useful to use the scheduling option that Hootsuite is so well known for.  You can type up multiple posts, schedule them in the publisher calendar and don’t have to always be working away on your laptop all day.  Time management, people!

So there you go.  I hope I have you convinced that Hootsuite is for you.  I certainly refuse to go back to the old days where

If you’re a Facebook page manager, I feel your pain of constantly wondering how to get around Facebook’s ever-changing algorithm.  It feels like organic reach is just decreasing at a constant rate these days, and engaging your followers can seem like the task that can never be conquered.  To make it easy for you, I’ll walk you through Facebook’s decision process.

Steady decline in organic reach of Facebook page posts, from Feb 2012 to Mar 2014

First of all, let’s think like the typical Facebook user.  If you first signed up for Facebook in its beginning stages, you probably remember the thrill of it being the new social media outlet where friends and family could keep up to date with what each other are doing – not a space for companies to utilize marketing tactics.

Facebook is well aware of its users becoming overly frustrated with the commercialization of the site, with the ability for pages to boost their posts and have their advertisements show up throughout news feeds.  Yes, it is the choice of the user to “LIKE” the page in the first place, but it often gets tiresome when advertisements mix in with friends’ activities.

Knowing this, Facebook has continuously altered its algorithm to weed out posts that convey push advertising, but it is okay with posts that are brand and community building that offer a chance for engagement.  These are the posts that consumers are really interested in.  So when developing a post schedule, make sure that you keep the majority of posts, around 80%, sans advertising and post regularly (avoiding spamming people – 3 posts a day MAX) to ensure that your posts will no longer diminish from news feeds from now on.

Good luck digital marketers!

When starting your own company, everything about that company is your baby.  From the service or products you provide, to the design of the logo.  So when someone insults your company, you may feel like giving that so-called “hater” a taste of their own medicine by retaliating with a snarky comment.

Before you do that, step back, take a deep breath and assess the consequences.  There’s that saying that “any publicity is good publicity” – which in this case could be true.  Obviously it’s a bigger issue if the majority of your audience is harsh on your company, but if it’s only one or two customers, don’t sweat it.  Everybody gets bad press sometimes, and at least people are talking.

Owner of Union Street Guest House, Chris Wagoner’s joke of charging $500 for a bad hotel review went viral recently when he sent out a public apology.  TripAdvisor, the website that the bad review was posted on, was outraged by this punishment as it completely went against what the site is all about, encouraging its users to give honest reviews.  So for Union Street Guest House, what was simple a bad review, turned their reputation upside down and the company could face a lack of trust from its future hotel stayers.

Learning from Chris Wagoner’s mistakes, here are 2 tips when responding to bad press about your company:

1) If the reviewer is an honest customer with a bad experience, consider replying to them apologizing and hoping to make their experience better next time.  This will make them know that you care about each and every customer, not just the happy ones, and will provide them with an invitation to try the company’s services again.

2) If the reviewer is a “troll” or a “hater”, someone who specifically goes on websites to write bad, untrue press, ignore the comment.  Other readers can see through these guys anyways.

How are bloggers able to captivate such a substantial audience? Nowadays, consumers are more swayed to buy products by bloggers than the companies themselves.  For what they are, essentially normal people writing about their lives and experiences, bloggers have developed an extreme amount of influence to the consumer.

 1) They have a voice – literally and figuratively.

After getting to know a blogger over time, you essentially put a voice to the words on the page and feel as if it’s a friend you’ve known for a long time.  Sooner or later, you become attached to this writer as if they are a trusted professional or friend whom you look to for advice about a specific topic.

2) They’re honest. 

Sure, we’ve all heard about sponsored posts.  Those posts where you’re wondering how much money the blogger got paid by the company to positively advertise and review their products.  For the most parts though, bloggers realize they’re doing their readers a service: telling them the truth to save them the costs of buying a product that just isn’t worth the splurge.

3) They know the industry.  

Since bloggers are sent free stuff and get invited to events all the time, they have exposure to trying way more products or services than us normal folk.  This allows them to get the general gist of what’s out there in the market so they can accurate gage whether a product is better than average or just terrible.

Beauty Blogger Essiebutton shares her knowledge of the best mascaras on the market.