360DigitalInfluence

Remember the excitement you felt when your website finally went live? All the design, development, revisions, and debugging were finally completed. And with a click of a button, you launched your brand presence.

Getting a brand.com or corporate.com website off the ground can require a massive team effort. It can be so challenging that the mantra becomes, “Let’s just get through Phase 1.” For the moment, that makes sense.

However, content (and keeping it up to date) is as critical to the life of your website as the launch that excited you so much.

But when was the last time you reviewed and updated the content on your website? If you haven’t touched your site since the “let’s get through Phase 1” launch, you’re not alone. And if it has been more than six months, you may want to surf to the dot.com featured in your email signature and check things out.
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Show of hands time. Have you been asked in the past month  “So what are we doing with Google+?”

And did you know how to answer?

Fear not, there is a Strategy For That. And one that is already in market that you can easily adapt. This is the Five Platform Social Media Strategy.

Today many brands are executing across multiple social platforms because they understand their consumers are also engaging across multiple platforms. They also know that the nature of how these consumers engage with each other in social spaces continues to evolve. They know they need to fish where the fish are, and this might mean casting a line into multiple ponds.

So What Has This To Do With Google+?

Well, the June 28th launch of Google+ meant there is another platform we will soon need to include in this framework. So consider this a guide to being ready to integrate G+ into your Five Platform Strategy framework when the time is right.

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It seems like just yesterday that I was sitting in my dorm room sending my college roommates links to YouTube videos and someecards on Facebook. Fast forward four years later; I never expected I’d be starting a career in social media. In those four years social media revolutionized communication, and a career in the field means the opportunity to be part of one of the most exciting, rapidly changing areas of marketing and PR today.

For new college grads, we’ve been using the Internet as another social layer of our lives since high school, and the lines between personal and professional use can often be blurry. When pursuing your career, it’s important to make sure that your passion for sharing content via the social web will help you get hired — not turn employers off. Here are a few things I’ve learned to keep in mind:

1. Be careful of your online footprint. Don’t underestimate what employers will be able to find about you online. Be aware of what results search engines return, and keep this in mind whenever you post updates, upload photos, or comment online. Make sure what employers find reinforces a positive impression of who you are, from anyone’s perspective. Creating a personal website or public resume on LinkedIn, starting a Twitter handle with your full name in the profile, or blogging about your professional interests can be good ways to control the information that comes up about you in search.

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We often suggest Facebook advertising as an easy way to let your target audience know about your brand, your Page, or your campaigns. Advertising inside and outside of Facebook is especially important for acquiring new fans who may be new to your brand or your campaign, it catches those who wouldn’t see the promotions in store or on your website.

It can seem a bit complicated to new users and I’ve seen people compare it to Google’s keyword advertisements but it’s totally different. This post explains the basics of pricing, targeting, placement, and targeting for Facebook advertising.

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The title of this post might make you shudder since commenting policies and risk mitigation seem like heavy subjects for something as fun as Facebook; but setting simple, straight-forward guidelines should be an essential part of your Facebook strategy. These guidelines (which you can post or link to on your Info tab) are part of facilitating an open sharing environment and have the added benefit of coaxing you to figure out exactly how you want to use your Facebook brand page.
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We often get questions about if and when brands can edit a Wikipedia article and I’d like to provide some background on Wikipedia’s format and clarify what is and is not an acceptable edit. I am not morally against brands editing Wikipedia articles and there are no rules against it but the acceptable instances are few and any edits should be done transparently and by someone educated in the format and citation process of Wikipedia. continue reading

This is the final post in a five-part series exploring the trends laid out in our webinar, Facebook Bootcamp for PR. Look out in the coming weeks for some interesting updates to the original presentation!

One of the oft sited benefits of Facebook is its ability to keep us connected to friends and family who may be thousands of miles away, but there is a missed opportunity to better connect with the friends and fans in our own backyard. That’s why we’ve identified geolocation and mapping as a Facebook trend we’d love to see blossom in the near future. A hat tip to Trendwatching.com is due here- they’re January piece on Mapmania was an inspiration to notice all of the ways that virtual maps make daily life easier and with maps and social networks both growing in use on mobile phones, the two trends must eventually intersect. continue reading