Author: Christian Karasiewicz

Make 2013 Your Best-Ever Year: A 12-Month Plan For Social Media Success [INFOGRAPHIC]

2012 was the year of social media.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest all experienced tremendous growth in social media.

So how can you as a business, capitalize on the success of these growing social networks in 2013? First, you need a social media plan.

No, you don’t have to get your calendar out and start feverishly writing. Instead, there’s a handy infographic that can help you figure out what you need to be doing each month to reach social media success in 2013.

A few of the key steps include:

  1. Assessing your social fitness
  2. Revisiting your social goals
  3. Becoming a better listener
  4. Integrating all of your social platforms, and
  5. Planning for the future
  6. ….

Continue reading Make 2013 Your Best-Ever Year: A 12-Month Plan For Social Media Success [INFOGRAPHIC]

Facebook Graph Search, the Next Big Thing In Social Media?

Facebook Graph Search

Today, Facebook unveiled Facebook Graph Search, a new way to search through your Facebook connections and to help make them more useful (outside of just providing updates). What this means is that instead of searching through your Facebook news feed, you can use Facebook Graph Search to help you get more granular within your existing connections and make new connections in the process.

What is Facebook Graph Search?

Continue reading Facebook Graph Search, the Next Big Thing In Social Media?

5 FREE Twitter Analytics Tools

Everywhere you look these days, it seems someone is coming out with a Twitter Analytics Tool.  While I’m all for using Twitter Analytics Tools to help measure the success of your social media campaigns on Twitter, there is a lot of redundancy in the market.  As a result, a number of people (and businesses) are overpaying for social media tools they either don’t need or can get for free.

I’ve compiled a list of 5 Free Twitter Analytics Tools that I often recommend to clients or people who want to measure their success on Twitter. One thing to note, there is no all-in-one solution that can tell you how well you’re doing.  Instead, I prefer a bevy of different Twitter Analytics Tools – to help measure followers, Twitter reach, who to unfollow, and more.  Together, these Twitter Analytics Tools can help provide better insight into your Twitter account and the areas you need to address in order to continue growing your Twitter network.

In no particular order, here they are – 5 Free Twitter Analytics Tools that you can use to get better insights on Twitter.

Continue reading 5 FREE Twitter Analytics Tools

How to create Pinterest secret boards to surprise your competition

Do you wish you could create Pinterest boards ahead of time without other users seeing them?

With the introduction of Pinterest secret boards, now you can.

This means you can curate content on your Pinterest boards and keep them private until you are ready to publish them.

What are Pinterest secret boards?

Pinterest secret boards are boards that are only visible to the person who creates them and the people they invite to pin to them.

When you create Pinterest secret boards, they don’t show up anywhere else on Pinterest.

This includes: categories, search results, your feed, as well as the activity pages.

To create your own Pinterest secret boards, follow these instructions.

How to create Pinterest secret boards

Continue reading How to create Pinterest secret boards to surprise your competition

Foibly and John Titus Aggregate Facebook Offers In One Place

John Titus - CEO of Foibly

Foibly and John Titus Bring All Facebook Offers To You

This interview with John Titus, CEO of Foibly is the first in an interviews of interviews with professionals who are doing amazing things with social media.  

I am very honored to have the opportunity to interview John Titus.  I first met John about five months ago when doing some research on Facebook Offers and instantly fell in love with his product, Foibly.

Right now, social media is an extremely crowded space and there is a lot of overlap when it comes to social media tools.  Everyone seems to be offering a similar solution.  What helps set Foibly apart is that they have gone off on their own path and created a social media tool that helps customers find the best offers on Facebook without having to sift through hundreds of Facebook Pages or be glued to their news feed 24/7 looking for the best deals on Facebook.

So enough about me telling you about Foibly, let’s have John Titus fill you in on his amazing social media tool.
Continue reading Foibly and John Titus Aggregate Facebook Offers In One Place

Twitter protected tweets – why they’re not a good tool for engagement

What are Twitter protected tweets?

Chances are, at some point you’ve come across the following image on Twitter.  What this means is that this Twitter user has turned on Twitter protected tweets.

Twitter protected tweets

In order to be able to view their tweets, you’ll need to request to follow them and have wait for them to accept you. Once they do, you’ll then be able to see their tweets. Sounds complicated doesn’t it? It is.

In fact, whenever I come across someone who uses Twitter protected tweets, I keep moving. That’s because to me, it shows they’re not active, they have something to hide, and they don’t value my time because they’ve made it so difficult to connect with them.

With so many barriers of entry just to see their tweets, why would I want to go through that much work just to follow someone? Sure, if you want to be on Twitter, but have this fear that someone can see your tweets and you don’t want to them to, then Twitter protected tweets are a great tool for you.

For the most part though, Twitter protected tweets, really don’t serve much purpose if you’re serious about using it as a social media tool to build and grow your online presence.  Not only does it make Twitter frustrating to use if your tweets are protected, but there are a lot of other things you need to consider before turning on  Twitter protected tweets as well – things that could stunt your growth on Twitter before you even begin to use it.

What happens when I protect my tweets?

Continue reading Twitter protected tweets – why they’re not a good tool for engagement

Facebook Groups – The Definitive guide to privacy settings

When it comes to creating Facebook Groups, it is important to know about the different privacy settings that are available.

This way, when you’re setting up your Facebook group, you’ll know exactly what type of privacy settings to use.

Knowing the right privacy settings on Facebook Groups is important because this is how you’ll control who can see your group, who can join your Facebook Groups, and which members can see updates from your Facebook Groups.

The key thing to remember is that there are three types of privacy settings for Facebook Groups; open, closed, and secret. Here’s a breakdown on the privacy settings that you can use for Facebook Groups.

3 Types of Facebook Groups

Continue reading Facebook Groups – The Definitive guide to privacy settings

50 employers who are hiring on Twitter

With this mornings December jobs report, you could say that job growth is pretty flat. Sure, numbers didn’t look all that bad, but the biggest issue is that people stopped looking for jobs (for whatever reason).

To help you out, I’ve compiled a list of 50 employers who are hiring on Twitter.

50 employers who are hiring on Twitter

 

Continue reading 50 employers who are hiring on Twitter

Everything I Need to Know About Social Media, I Learned From Football

Blue 42, hut hut, hike.  Who’s ready for some Football? With the NFL Playoffs set, I put together this fun (and handy) infographic to help explain social media in terms of Football.

Continue reading Everything I Need to Know About Social Media, I Learned From Football

Embed This Image On Your Site (copy code below):

The State of Social Media in 2012

2012 was a HUGE year for social media – especially for mobile.  Twitter revamped their mobile app, Facebook followed suit and overhauled Facebook for iOS (which was sorely needed). Then, not to be outdone, Pinterest launched business pages for Pinterest, which allowed businesses to create their own accounts that didn’t require a complex way to squeeze your business into the first name and last name fields (finally).

Besides mobile, 2012 was also big for investors as well, as Facebook went public – and who can forget about Facebook Timeline, which also launched in 2012 – I know, it’s hard to remember all the way back to January 2012.

So what else happened with social media in 2012? Take a look at this infographic on everything that happened in social media in 2012.

Continue reading The State of Social Media in 2012