People are familiar with Facebook and Twitter, some of them may also be tired about these two major social media. As a results, more function adding to social media constantly. What will be something new that social media can bring to us in 2015?

• Social media could be our wallet. The world is entering into a generation of killing the credit card. For example, Apple Pay is a payment that people can pay stuff through their phone. Similarly, Facebook is going to release a payment feature that users can send money to others through message.
• As people is reducing their interest on Facebook and complain about Facebook issues, more and more new social networks come out to target special group of users. They may be site for food interest group or site that pay attention on privacy protection.
• People now shopping more and more online, and there is a trend that people are able to shop through social media when they are browser the sites and shop with one or two clicks.
• Smart devices could apply to home appliances such as wash machine, fridge and smoke alarms. They will be endowed intelligence and contact you through social media about the newest messages, and welcome to the noise world.
• People now consider more their privacy, some niche social medias promise not to sell users’ data in a way to gain users. However, it is almost impossible to keep this promise once information goes online.

Resource: 5 Trends That Will Change How You Use Social Media in 2015

Now, a lot of marketing campaigns are through social media, so it is being more and more important to know the ways to optimize the social media. The link at the end of the blog offer 5 tips to help people optimize their social media marketing posts. I will comment on each of the guide according to my experience and thoughts.

Tip 1: Don’t underestimate the importance of your headlines

Certainly, a headline could affect people’s next decision whether to read the posts or leave. A good and attractive headline is necessary and encouraged. However, these headlines should base on the true that the posts would show. Some people use misleading and exaggerated to induce users click on its posts. Yes, the number of clicks will increase due to the headlines, but when users found that they get into a content that is unexpected which will cause their negative emotion that for the company or product in the posts.

Tip 2: Optimize your social media profiles, for example, making sure you’re including an URL to your site in an obvious place.

This is a very good advice, since online people are often quite emotional, especially when they have trouble in finding out information that they want.

Tip 3: Include strong calls to action in your social media posts

This is also an advice that taught in class. The purpose that we want users to read the posts is to make them do an action either buy product or share the information. And a simple way let people do action is simply ask them to do or lead them to do such as “click here”.

Tip 4: Images must be part of your strategy

Images are important as it can catch users eyes. It is helpful to combine posts with a relative image. However, it takes time for people to find or create a best suit picture. One reason could be that there are too many choices and which one is the best? Sometime it cost over to consume too much time in selecting the image. Actually, the time that we use in making a image should depend on the important of the post and the image to the post.

Tip 5: Hashtags are a great way to reach new audiences on social media

Hashtags could be efficiency in finding information, but the abuse of them could be just annoying. Control the number of hashtags at 1-2. In addition, hashtags are useful in twitter because it has search function for hashtags. However, in Facebook it does not work.

These 5 tips of optimizing the social media would help in market campaign, but we should use them appropriately according to the real content and situation in order to avoid the opposite effect.

Click the link to read the original article A Guide To Optimizing Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Christmas is coming, and giving gifts to family members and friends is one traditional activity. People are being busy in selecting suitable gifts. This could be a enjoyable process but also could be disaster. Sometime, I prefer to give up holiday as I have big trouble in searching and deciding what gift and to whom? Beside shopping outside for couple time, I also spend time online to find gifts. Actually, today more buyers looking for gifts online than walking around on retail stores. A well develop media strategy could help companies stand out in this most intense festive season.

The major idea for a media strategy is to post the right content on right place at right time.

How to decide the content? Primarily, companies need to identify their business objects, as the content will change base on different goals. A target to increase sales and an aim to increase awareness is quite different from in content include its context, voice, and structure.

Which social media site is the best channel to post the content? Facebook and Twitter are two major sites that people are familiar with and used, and they both have their own feature. However, more and more people are getting interest for image base site such as Pininterest and Instagram. Especially for Christmas holidays, people’s purchase behavior would more like to be aroused by products that showed with nice pictures. Therefore, it is important to select the right platform for promoting product.

When is the best time to post contents? Although, research found several period to release information for various platforms, which is the best time can catch up people’s attention, the real best time should be tested out by each company themselves since results probably would change according to the content.

Read more content from How to devise a festive social media marketing strategy

When I see the title The Next Big Thing You Missed: LinkedIn’s Quest to Get a Job for Everyone on Earth I do not believe this Exaggerate statement, but it still a title that can gain people’s attention at least my attention.

I do not believe the title because it is impossible for get a job for everyone on Earth. Currently, LinkedIn is a well known profile networks which help employers and employees found each other. Most of its users are in professional class. Then, it lack of advantages for people who with few or without work experience. For people that do not have a OK profile, I recommend them post their information on LinkedIn as it probably does not work for them. Furthermore, sometime, it could bring negative effort when employers search you online and find your empty profile on LinkedIn. Some users may create fake profile in order to gain any chance.

As LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said he wants to get everyone on LinkedIn, which I consider just as a “goal”, LinkedIn needs to change its professional graph to economic graph to accept more users into LinkedIn. However, a large amount of users could also be a problem. The unbalance of demand and supply in labor market. The match of skill for people who hire or be hired. The technique support for service global users. These are all problems that LinkedIn need to think about and rarely can be solved.

In addition, Facebook is also has trend to be in LinkedIn business and want to be better than LinkedIn either by cooperating or competing.

From left, Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner

Yesterday, I talked with my friend while we lining up for Timhortons that I have assignment of writing 10 blogs for Comm464. She is kind of shock about the purpose of this assignment. For her, blog is like  a thing that out of day and given up by most of people. I understand her feeling as I was the one with the thought as her before. This impress for blog may common for most people since today Twitter and Facebook are two major social media for people to communicate online. Is blog on its retiring road? I do not think so. Watch this TED talk video Meet the founder of the blog revolution which post on 2009, a outdated video in the social media world.  When I watched this video, I recalled several blogs that I read before which I considered as valuable content and worth to share. People who write blogs put their thoughts and efforts in their blogs, and people who read the blogs would receive and appeal to authors’ emotion. As a result, a connection is built between users and posters. This is how blogs show its value other than the fast social media food such as Twitter and Facebook. Users often scan the posts on Facebook and Twitter in a rapid speed since they consider most of posts are useless. On the other hands, they probably will slow down speed in reading blogs. Firstly, the length of content blog is longer than Twitter. Also, users would be patient in reading blog as they were interchange their ideas with posters either accept or disagree and so on. Blog has more efficiency in leading readers put effort on it than Twitter or Facebook. Therefore, blog is still a worth tool for social media marketing.

To manage social media as a marketing tool is the trend for today’s digital time. A lot of managers express that their companies will invest more capital in the social media part. To well manage a social media need plenty of input. For example, what content to post, what information is useful, how to react with visitors’ commend, ect. Furthermore, there is not only one social media, and to well manage only one kind of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ is not enough for maximizing the marketing power. Nevertheless, to manage several social medias together will multiply the work input.

HootSuite as a social media management system for brand management id created in 2008 by Ryan Holmes¹. It is a tool that can help solve the issue we concern above. HootSuite can operate several social medias in a same platform. Therefore, user do not need to sign in different account and jump from one page to another page for the mess social media pages. HootSuite also offer many management tools. For example, it can release messages in a schedule time or automatically, which favor and save users’ time in manage their brand through social media.

Recently, Hootsuite reveals a new coming function that will allow users manage and schedule paid social media marketing across channels directly from Hootsuite’s dashboard. With its analytical ability, Hootsuite is able to tell users which message to send at what time will be the most effective for them. Hootsuite is building up a new social advertising system which fit into the company’s need.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HootSuite

http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/sep/30/hootsuite-paid-social-media-marketing-ecommerce

Along with the development of Twitter and Facebook, it seems that people’s communicate behavior and reading behavior are becoming more into short paragraph reading. New generation are tend to gain information in a fast way, so Twitter with 140 characters limitation are popular among young. Blog which has far longer length of text than Twitter seems being left out by more and more people.

However, blog as a popular social media decades ago are still play important roles in people’s life. Most Twitter will post with a link to more detail report for the message. Those links often is redirected to a blog page. An simple message can give people a hint of the content, but to understand and absorb the ideas, a detail analysis and discussion is necessary. Whether people agree with your ideas or not depend on the strong of proof and explanation that you provide to them. Using blog could better explain and demonstrate products for visitors. Blog is a way to gain customers’ trust and loyalty to the products, brands and companies.

A effective way to manage the blog is actively post content on blogs. For example, If you post few blog monthly, then think about post 4 times more than your post now monthly. Also, add an old blog’s link which has relative information for the new post. Many new visitors may not reach the information in the past blog, and this is also a way to reuse the value of the old blog.

http://www.business2community.com/b2b-marketing/connect-content-marketing-let-blog-guide-b2b-social-media-efforts-01025400

Jasmine Revolution came from the Tunisian revolution in which President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced out of the presidency in January 2011 by a large group of people’s protests. An significant tool to form such a big movement in short period is social medias. The name of the revolution is start with a Tunisian joutnalist Zied Ei Hani who write it on his blog on 13 January and then spread through social media such as Facebook and twitter. The power of social media get together people’s anger about policy’s maltreatment to a young hawker, and lead people’s pretest to its government.

Recently, a protesting leaded by students is happening in Hong Kong. Less than one day, thousands of people gathered in the streets. Social medias again a very good convened tool play a important role in this movement. The young share the movement pictures through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, ect, to inform this activity, or they simple text a message said, I am going, will you come? A simple information spread through the social medias shortly caused a street protest of thousands people in Hong Kong. This is the power of social media.

We should take this kind of power as a opportunity for marketing. When we well use social medias, they could help companies to reach unlimited customers in a extremely short time.

We also should aware the dangerous in using it as tool because social media also has a feature which is its vulnerability. Once event turned out to be uncontrollable, things may turn out to be disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Revolution#Media_and_punditry

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/social-media-hong-kong-protests

I set up my twitter account due to the course requirement of Comm464. I did not use twitter because my friends and family members are not in this community circle. After I created my account and checked out its function, I found that I got a misunderstand of twitter. Before I heard that twitter is only allow people to tweet message without any reply or comment function to avoid some users leave offensive messages which bring emotional harm to tweeters. At that time, I surprised about the degree of prevention of online violence. On the other hand, I felt that it would a boring social networking without interaction among users. How come it became a popular social network in the world.

Now I got the answer. Twitter is similar to a social network, Weibo, that I frequently use. Users can tweet, retweet and reply any tweet. Also, it has trend for popular topic that people are discussing. It is design and developed well in integrating and searching information. Although I was not a person that like to involved in social networks because it took too much to arrange a social networking platform, I found twitter is a good place to gain hint of information that you interest immediately. Just type the key word and search or click on the trend for topic you like. All relevant tweets would show out. In addition, you can filter the search to a more precise result that you expect. Twitter is added to my social networks.

Welcome to my twitter https://twitter.com/0418Coral, though you may find few things there.