Janet Fouts

OCTOBER 29, 2012

Lots of people will tell you ”Social Media Influencers” are the key to social media marketing but what does that really mean? Is influence based on number of connections? Klout , Peer Index or Kred score? A combination of all of the above? How do you identify them and what do you do with that information once you think you know who they are?

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Influencer Klout URL Social Media 135

Janet Fouts

JANUARY 19, 2012

I speak a lot about Google+ as a tool for business. In fact I’ve just written a book called “ Google+ for Business Tweet ” and I’m presenting a second Focus.com Roundtable in February. So you might think my position would be that Google+ is the be-all end-all social media network for business and people should be pitching their blogs and Facebook pages out the window in favor of Google+.

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Google Facebook URL Collaboration 135

Janet Fouts

MAY 21, 2012

It would seem like a no-brainer that going the extra distance to really listen to what your customer wants and delivering it is good for business, right? Still, really listening to customers is a skill that a lot of businesses seem to have forgotten. Recently I bought a trailer for my horse and my Jeep just didn’t have the horsepower to pull it, so we went looking for a bigger SUV.

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Questions Social Media Price Skills 134

Janet Fouts

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Back in May Facebook announced they were going to allow document uploads to Facebook groups to enable file sharing inside the groups.Athough it is a good idea in theory, in practice it’s clunky at best andhardtotrack changes if any collaboration goes on at all. So today’s announcement that Facebook is integrating Dropbox into Facebook groups is pretty huge.

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Groups Groups Facebook Collaboration 134

Janet Fouts

MAY 30, 2012

There’s been a lot of noise about Google+. First it was the meteoric rise of the new platform and social media types rushed to learn it and get those tips and tricks posts out. Personally I’ve got a love/hate relationship with Google+. On the one hand it’s got the best features of Twitter like immediacy and fast moving conversations with the added plus of being able to direct conversations to channels (Circles) of people who are actually interested in that topic and exclude the

Google 133

Google Social Media Sentiment Conversation 133

Janet Fouts

MAY 8, 2012

I talk to nonprofits about various aspects of social media just about every day. By and large people get the value of building community around their cause. They get the relatively manageable expense of leveraging social media to raise visibility for their nonprofit, find funders, advocates, and volunteers when compared to more traditional marketing channels.

Social Media 132

Social Media Team Social Networking Issues 132

Janet Fouts

OCTOBER 2, 2012

When I first heard about App.net my first reaction was probably very much like yours, “I don’t need another social media network!” Of course, being the geek I am I had to take a look anyway and I’m glad did. Before I get into why App.net is worth your time, let me give you the back story. Founder Dalton Caldwell created this new network–known to fans as ADN– a mere 12 weeks ago as an ad-free, real-time social network.

Twitter 131

Twitter Vimeo Notification Applications 131

Janet Fouts

MAY 13, 2012

We tend to create the social media presence for our businesses in an organic fashion, which is the natural way to grow relationships right? New tools pop up we just HAVE to try, or our network of connections asks us to join a new network in order to communicate with them. The problem is; as you explore new tools and meet new people who invite you to join them on other networks, your messaging and your social media presence overall can easily get confused.

Social Media 131

Social Media Fashion eBook Meeting 131

Janet Fouts

DECEMBER 9, 2012

I don’t know about you but I’ve gotten more than a dozen invitations to Google+ communities in the last couple of days. In case you’re not aware of what that means, Google+ launched a new feature, Google+ Communities on Dec 6. As more and more people use Google+ we are finding a need to filter the stream a bit to focus on the content that matters the most to us.These communities allow you to filter by the topic of the community–and even more important–allow you to create sub-ca

Communities 131

Communities Google API HootSuite 131

Janet Fouts

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

As you probably know already I’ve been a big fan of Tungle.me for online scheduling for quite some time. I even did a bit of outreach and evangelizing for them once in a while. So it makes me a little sad to see that after Tungle.me was acquired by RIM they poured their talents into making the Blackberry Playbook Calendar app and now the core Tungle product is being sunsetted as of Dec 3, 2012.

Wiki 131

Wiki Meeting Eventful Collaboration 131

Janet Fouts

SEPTEMBER 17, 2012

I just got back from a trip to Atlanta where I did some training on social media with a group of fortune 50 corporate travel partners for a major banking institution. The entertainment on the first night was a dinner at Art Smith’s Atlanta destination restaurant Southern Art and Bourbon Bar. I knew a bit about Art, and being a social media geek I looked him up on Twitter as well as the restaurant.

Storify 128

Storify Twitter Hotels Travel 128

Janet Fouts

DECEMBER 1, 2012

The Commitment Engine: Making Work Worth It , by John Jantsch. Anybody who has ever read one of John’s blog posts or heard him speak knows he’s a straight shooting, plain speaking business leader who has a knack for making just good business sense available to everyone. In the Commitment Engine he shows us what commitment really means in a business and a personal sense.

Engineering 126

Engineering Review Case Study Communities 126

Janet Fouts

FEBRUARY 4, 2012

I doubt you could have missed it by now, but just in case; Tuesday evening the story broke that the Susan G Komen fund pulled support from Planned Parenthood across the US. Rumors abound as to why they did it.Some say it was politically motivated. Komen says it was because their policies changed and because Planned Parenthood is under investigation.

Attensity 126

Attensity Social Media Policies Sentiment 126

Janet Fouts

MARCH 13, 2012

We’ve mostly gotten comfy with the changes to our personal pages when Facebook went to the timeline model, but trust me, that was nothing compared to the changes you’re going to see for business. Let’s face it, the tab system with Pages never really worked, and it was hard to keep those really important posts at the top of your page for long.

Real Estate 124

Real Estate Facebook Discount Applications 124

Janet Fouts

OCTOBER 19, 2012

You know how it is when you run your own business, you take care of your clients’ needs ahead of your own business, and once in a while you forget to look to your own? Yep, that’s what happened to me. I migrated my clients from Feedburner some time ago because the service was getting a little sketchy. Sometimes the feed would work, sometimes it would appear to be empty.

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FeedBurner FeedBlitz RSS Syndication 121

Janet Fouts

MARCH 29, 2012

Part of what I do as a social media coach is help businesses large and small manage their facebook pages.Our social media management team is frequently asked to go to a client’s event and help live-tweet, take photos or video and post them live during the event to share with their fans. Most of us have iPhones, so we get good pictures, but we can’t upload in batches to a Facebook page from the phone.

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Facebook iPhone Feed Feedly 118

Janet Fouts

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

I spoke recently to a group of PR and marketing professionals about how to use social media in their work. One woman told me that she was trying to get the CXO’s to use social media as part of their brand awareness. She’d send them emails with links to blogs they could comment on, tweets for their information, etc. They were ignoring her.

Social Media 116

Social Media Netvibes CoTweet CoTweet 116

Janet Fouts

JANUARY 17, 2012

On January 18 websites all over the net will go dark from 8AM to 8 PM, and this will be one of them. Why? Well for one, because I still can. One of the most powerful things about the internet is that it is largely not controlled by government. Sure, I’m against piracy, but not if it means DNS filtering that could actually penalize lawful businesses.

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Domain Name Journal System Sites 114

Janet Fouts

JANUARY 3, 2012

Maddie Grant threw down a glove challenging a number of people to participate in a meme answering the question “ How are you going to change the world in 2012 ?” It’s a great question. I love the chaos theory metaphor called the butterfly effect. The idea is that a small, relatively insignificant act can created marked and sometimes unexpected change.

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Training Meme Small Business Social Media 112

Janet Fouts

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

The Hubspot brand is well known for blog posts chock full of actionable information about marketing online. Whether it’s how to create a landing page that really converts, fine tune your email marketing , or how to make sure nobody misses your next webinar , Hubspot puts out great inbound content to learn from. When I tell people I’m a Hubspot partner, the universal reaction is “Ooooh, I love Hubspot, they get it!

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Janet Fouts

JUNE 11, 2012

Pinterest has become a running joke to many. Still, the traffic reported coming from this site cannot be ignored, and the ways people are leveraging it’s popularity to market their businesses is very interesting.Here are just a few. 1. It’s not about you. You don’t need to be blatant about what you offer your customers. Be subtle. Post pins that are interesting and tangentially related to your product.

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Strategy Fashion Collaboration Widget 165

Janet Fouts

FEBRUARY 8, 2012

There’s a deep, dark secret that the social media marketers don’t want you to know. It doesn’t matter what your social media strategy is unless it includes what you expect the prospect to do after they find you through social media. You can have the biggest following on Twitter and Facebook and Google+ , the best videos on Youtube and a constant flow of repins on Pinterest and still not make a single sale.

Social Media 140

Social Media YouTube Google Tools 140

Janet Fouts

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

I admit I’m a little behind with this post. Everybody and their cousin Sally has already written a post on Pinterest by now. Its’s the media darling of the day. Or at least it was. Then we actually read the terms of use and some people are already deleting their accounts in protest. See, it turns out that not only does the TOU state “Cold Brew Labs and its licensors exclusively own all right, title and interest in and to the Site, Application, Services and Site Content, includi

Collaboration 135

Collaboration Curation Widget SEO 135

Janet Fouts

NOVEMBER 9, 2012

I’ve been meaning to do posts like this to share some of my favorite bloggers and top stories, but somehow I never actually get it done. ( Lazy blogger! ). There are so many great posts out there and lots of top stories and new tools to explore too, so here’s the short version of what I learned this week. By the way, we’ll be talking about these things and much more in our weekly Google+ hangout, so come by The Friday Hangout and add your voice to the conversation.

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Creative Commons ROI Flickr Blogger 123