Optimistprrime

[optimistprrime]

I am now counting down the days I have, before I leave. It’s crazy how fast time has gone by. You know your time is coming up and that you’ll have to leave, but it doesn’t really hit you until it’s right around the corner. Lately when I think about leaving, I just get so sad because I think of all the things I’m going to miss. I’ve found the last week to be extremely hard as I’ve had to meet up and say goodbye to my friends one by one. There’s been lots of hugs and even more tears and I know I’m going to miss them so much.

I just wanted to take a moment and thank all of you MKMers for your friendship over the last year. My life has been blessed for knowing you. You are all wonderful, special and unique, and I've been made a better person just by knowing y'awl. You've made my year unforgettable. And I don't think I'll ever forget the time we spent together. Everybody expects from their family because they are the people sent by God for us. However, it’s very difficult to find people outside family from whom you can expect and I am one lucky person that I found love, care, happiness and joy in y'awl, almost forgot that I am millions of miles away from home. 

Anyways, the end of our semester doesn't mean the end of our friendships. I hope that I get to see all of you around and about. Doesn't matter how many miles keep us apart. I'll always be there for you. You are a great group and I want to thank so many of you for all of the kind words and support that you have extended to me over throughout the semester. It meant more than you can know. I wish you all the best for you in your future endeavors! Please stay in touch!

[optimistprrime]

ALTERNATIVE TOOLS TO SIMPLIFY YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Google Alerts: Google Alerts is free, easy to use and an efficient method to stay up-to-date of news or learn what people are saying about you or your brand. It is a free service that sends users an email or RSS alert, when the search engine indicates new material associated to exact keyword expression. Many businesspersons are using this service to supervise their company's reputation online. Students can also use it to monitor their personal brand reputation online. Few handy uses of Google Alerts are: (i) Monitoring a developing news story. (ii) Keeping current on a competitor or industry. (iii) Getting the latest on a celebrity or event. (iv) Keeping checks on your topics of interests. (v) Monitor your name/domain name. (vi) Monitor keywords. Google Alerts is tremendously easy to set up and use. You can set up several alerts in a matter a seconds. All you need to do is verify your email address with Google and this simple reputation management tool is ready to go in an instant. You can set up Google Alerts to send you links to the pages it detects related to your query either once a day or once a week, and if there isn’t any new information, you won't get an alert at all. However if you use the RSS feature, you will get instant notifications as and when the new data is discovered. Because the RSS feeds track information as it occurs, allowing you to be much more active. And also, with feeds you can manage your feed reader the way you like, without having to worry about several emails (if you have several alerts established). Google alerts help, guides you in setting-up the alert by showing you how to compose a good search in order to receive pertinent alerts. You can also use advance option section, whilst creating the alert. By selecting advance option, you can choose a delivery rate, specific source, set the volume, deliver to RSS feed and you can also manage your alerts page. All in all, it is a decent and simple way to monitor your personal brand and it helps you to simplify your work to a great extent. Price: Free. Sprout Social: Sprout Social is a social media management tool designed to help businesses find new customers and enhance their social media presence. This application incorporates facebook, twitter, linkedIn and other networks where consumers are continually engaging with brands and companies. Sprout Social is an integral social media management tool that coalesces the abilities of: (i) Analytics: It shows impressions, engagement, shares and the demographics of your followers and influencers, which allows you to: (a) Gauge which posts are the most influential. (b) Modify your message to your most eminent demographic. (c) Know where to lift ad spend on social media platforms that aren’t warranting the engagement you’re looking to attain.

(ii) Social Feed Aggregation: The capability to see your Twitter feed, Facebook newsfeed and RSS feed reader integration on one screen.  This abridges your efforts by having all of your social media updates fed into one site.

(iii) Social Media Publishing: It also allows you to post directly on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles from the Sprout Social dashboard.

(iv) Team Management: You can manage your team members and review posts before they’re pushed to your sites. Sprout Social offers a FREE 30-day trial for novices, which can be used to understand the system. When you sign in initially, it will take you through a sequence of steps to add in your social media accounts. Then it will analyze your online state and populate your Dashboard accordingly. The main page of your dashboard will reflect a summary of your online presence at the top left, with a screenshot of what you’ve been doing online. It’s an interesting way to have an overview before you choose to create any posts. From here, you can visit your available tabs; located at the top navigation; or, you may also scroll down to see snapshots of your associated accounts. Sprout Social offers a quick score (for Facebook and Twitter) that shows how well you’re communicating with your audience. The higher your score numbers are, the more valuable your audience is to your business. The Messages tab performs an outstanding job of combining new messages you’ve posted, comments by others and interactions from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on one feed and also, making your recent post interactions visible on multiple platforms. You can view your sent messages from specific days or by week and month in a single tab. Just like Hootsuite, Sprout Social also lets its users to publish posts via the social media dashboard. This eliminates visiting individual social media platforms and posting directly. Price: Standard $39/Month Manage up to 10 profiles (Recommended for smaller companies, teams and agencies)

All-In-One Social Inbox Real-time Brand Monitoring Advanced Publishing Features Social CRM Tools Comprehensive Reporting Tools Complimentary Training & Support

  Deluxe

$59/Month Manage up to 20 Profiles (Recommended for growing companies, teams and agencies)

All Standard Plan Features Complete Publishing & Engagement Helpdesk Integration Deluxe Reporting Package Google Analytics Integration Complimentary Training & Support

Premium

$99/Month

Manage up to 50 Profiles (Recommended for larger companies, teams and agencies)

 All Standard & Deluxe Features Social Care Suite ViralPost™ Send Time Optimization Premium Reporting Package Custom Branded Interface Complimentary Training & Support

   Mention:

Mention is an application to monitor the web mentions of your brand, company, industry, or even your competitors. You'll be informed in real-time about any mentions that happen on the web or on social networks. This smart application learns over time what mentions can be disregarded as junk and which are appropriate. This helps in saving your time as you use the application and don't have to manually sieve through the mentions each and every time. Additionally, you can utilize this application with others and even allocate certain tasks to other team members. You can also program the application to react to mentions in an intelligent way including retweeting certain mentions or sharing positive mentions on Facebook. This application allows you to create alerts in different languages, you can also select the sources you want to send to or add to your mention view. To register for Mention, you can click on the "Sign In" link placed in the homepage's upper right-hand corner. You will need to provide your full name, email address, password and accept the site's terms of use and privacy policy. You can also sign up using your Twitter, Facebook, Twitter or Google ID login. Price: Free Plan: 3 alerts, 500 mentions per month and 1 month history. Pro Plan ($19.99/month): Unlimited alerts, 50,000 mentions per month, unlimited history, access to statistics and data export tools. Team Plan ($99.95/month): Unlimited alerts, 50,000 mentions per month, unlimited history, access to statistics, multi users activation and data export tools. Social Mention: Social Mention is free, real-time social media search and analysis. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Google etc. You can search or opt to receive social media alerts (similar to Google Alerts but for social media only.) You can choose to receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, marketing campaign, competitor, or on a developing news story, or the latest gossip on a celebrity/sports team/music band. SocialMention can be used to trace mentions through the board or you can select to explore precisely for keywords identified in video/audio media, blogs/micro blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, and Q&A format. To understand SocialMention better, you need to understand it’s tools like: (i) Sentiment: It indicates if mentions are positive, negative, or neutral. This is not totally scientific data, but it gives a nice general view at how your company or search query is being talked about in social media. (ii) Strength: The probability that your brand is being talked about in social media. Calculating strength: Phrase mentions within the last 24 hours divided by total possible mentions. (iii) Passion: It is the measure of the probability that people talking about your brand will do so recurrently. The more the people talk about you or your brand, the higher will be your passion score. (iv) Reach: It is a measure of the range of influence. It is the number of unique authors referencing your brand divided by the total number of mentions. Price: Free. ViralHeat: ViralHeat is a profile based social media monitoring tool that focuses on assisting you develop and implement a successful marketing campaign by monitoring social media services like Twitter and Facebook to determine the key influencers and other networkers who are involved in conversations about your brand. ViralHeat gives you the ability to filter through uninvited mentions to get to the meat; the analytical data aids your social media optimization. ViralHeat also has an extraordinary location collection tool that permits you to enter the definite location to pull data from and select a range around that specified neighborhood/location. Price: Personal (Free plan): Suitable for managing your personal social media accounts. Pro ($9.99/Month): It offers complete Social Media Management with Advanced Publishing and Analytics. Premium ($99.99/Month): It comes with Integrated Social Marketing Suite with Monitoring, Management, Publishing, and Analytics.

Trackur: Trackur is another online reputation and social media monitoring tool intended to help you in tracking what is said about you or your brand on the internet. Trackur scans several web pages–including news, blogs, video, images, and forums to inform you, if it notices anything that corresponds with the keywords of your interest. However, Trackur comes with a few interesting features, such as: (i) Executive Insights: Swiftly see the number of new results, velocity change, share of voice. (ii) Data your way: Trackur’s intuitive dashboard data is available for easy Excel export, or you may also get results on the fly with the RSS/XML feeds in email alerts. (iii)Clarity in results: Every conversation is archived, complete with resources for viewing the original article, sharing with co-workers, or bookmarking for follow-up. (iv) White Label Branding: Trackur allows you to use your own logo, your colors/fonts along with Trackur’s URL (v) Influencer Analysis: Trackur’s proprietary InfluenceRank dashboards doesn’t just let you see the conversation about you or your brand, but also permits you to see who is behind the conversation. (vi) Sentiment Analysis: With automated Sentiment Analysis, Users can discover whether the results are positive, negative or neutral. (vii) Custom feeds: This feature lets you to monitor a particular site/Forum/Blog closely. With custom feeds, users can upload and monitor the RSS feed of any site. (Premium and Ultimate Users) (viii)  Group by Profiles: With profiles, users can segment their dashboard results based on specific keywords or maybe specific client. Users can also use profiles to provide logins for different people in a company. (Premium and Ultimate Users) (ix) CrisisShield Insurance: Free reputation insurance to help user to repair reputation in crisis. It also gives social media, Google and  Legal advices without any extra charge. (Premium and Ultimate users) (x) Unlimited Client Logins: Users can assign logins for their clients or employees. The main user gets to manage the overall account, letting the client or employee to see whatever is needed or appropriate only. (Ultimate Users) (xi) Full White Labeling: Users can use their own URL, Logo, Font or Color Scheme, without having to mention anything about Trackur to your customers. (Ultimate Users) Price: Basic ($27/Month): Recommended for individual use. This pack allows the user to save 5 searches, full media monitoring and also, influence & sentiment analysis, and offers Standard support. Plus ($97/Month): Recommended for small business organizations. This pack comes with all Basic plan features, however allows the user to save 50 searches. Premium ($197/Month): Recommended for large companies. Comes with all Plus plan features. But allows the user to save 250 searches and also offers enhanced support. In addition, Premium User gets custom feeds, CrisisShield Insurance, Enhanced support and Group by profile features. Ultimate ($447/Month): Recommended for agencies. This package comes will all Premium plan features. However, allows the user to save unlimited searches. In addition, Ultimate User gets Unlimited Client Logins and Full White labeling. Trackur also offers 10-Day Free Trial on All Plans! Radian 6: Radian6 is a monitoring tool. It helps in monitoring brand mentions across the social landscape and its Unique Engagement Console offers an end-to-end presence management tool. Radian6 offers its users complete coverage of discussions on the social web, covers innumerable blogs, comments, the public Facebook Application Programming Interface and the full Twitter firehose (Massive, real-time stream of Tweets that flow from Twitter each day.) Using Radian6, Users begin with monitoring a simple keyword or phrase and end up with a cascade of knowledge that they can drill down into, taking armloads of intensive information with them. Radian6 is very influential, as it provides complex pieces of data that users can analyze. It also allows users to customize their filtering penchants by region, language, media type etc. and collects data accordingly. It works in real time and starts to formulate data set instantly. From this data set, users can use several widgets that allow them to have an overview of all the information or even drilling it to the minutest details. Some of the widgets include: (i) River of News:Every post mentioning specific keywords gathered from social media services reflects in the River of News in real time. From here, users can choose to get into specific areas of information by sorting all posts within the River of News by Comment Count, Twitter Followers, Engagement and more. (ii) Conversation Cloud: This is a fantastic visual, as it allows users to see the top 50 mentioned words surrounding their product or brand. This monitoring widget delivers dynamic but easy-to-understand results. (iii) Topic Trend Monitor: This widget is a flawless tool for a social media campaign, as it allows users to see the mention lows and highs of their keyword. The Spark Chart enables users to see how their keyword has trended over a specific time period. If there is a drop or a rise on the chart, users can click on it and a Conversation Cloud or River of News (User’s choice) will appear, and can see the exact posts from that day. (iv) Topic Analysis: The Topic Analysis is a pie chart, which lets one to drill down to find the specifics of the specifics. Users can fragment this pie chart according to sentiment, language, media time, engagement level and region. Using Radian6, one can easily export all the collected data from the River of News, Conversation Cloud, Topic Trend Monitor and Topic Analysis into HTML, XML, PDF and CSV formats. Users can also setup email alerts, to get email notification as soon as User’s name/brand is mentioned in the social media kingdom. Price: Prices for Radian6 depends upon the contract period and varies from agency to brand. Agency pricing, 30-day commitment: $950/month: 1 million mentions, 500 users.

Brands, 1-year commitment: $600/month: 1 topic profile, 10,000 mentions $1,800/month: 4 topic profiles, 100,000 mentions $4,100/month: 10 topic profiles, 250,000 mentions $10,000/month: 20 topic profiles, 2.5 million mentions

Sysomos: Sysomos is based on a simple concept of Who, what, when, where and why and demonstrates how vital it actually is for social media monitoring. WHO: Who are your customers (age, income, occupation, interests etc.)? In order to run a successful social media campaign, you should know your target market. You also should know who your key influencers are. Sysomos tracks these influencers and allows you to listen to appropriate conversations happening around the globe through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other video channels, blogs, forums and traditional news outlets. WHAT: What are people saying about your company, brand and employees? Are they dissatisfied or satisfied? You should know what people are saying, whether it is positive, negative, or neutral. Sysomos monitors these web conversations, finds the common trends for you. WHEN: You can see exactly when conversations are occurring and what prompted the discussion and compare those chats historically and in real time. WHERE: Sysomos offers geo-demographic information feature, to let you know exactly where the conversations are happening, down to the specific country or city, and learn how you can better target specific areas. WHY: With sentiment analysis, all of the conversations that mention your product or brand – whether positive, negative, neutral are seized through social media monitoring and are mechanically assessed and sifted accordingly. Sentiment analysis is a strong monitoring feature that helps you see your business, product or service through the eyes of your customers. Sysomos also offers Facebook Page Central – a tool that many small businesses are demanding for. This tool enables you to: (a) Manage your fan page: You can receive email alerts within your social media monitoring dashboard when a new post or comment is made about you or your brand. You can moderate your comments, right from the dashboard. Facebook Page Central also removes unwanted posts that may make it to your page. (b) Create sentiment and analysis reports: You can generate detailed reports with data on sentiment analysis, key influence identification, number of posts/comments and overall level of engagement for your employees or clients. (c) Manage workflow for collaboration: With workflow management tools, you can assign your team members to reply to negative or positive messages, post events or highlights and manage the overall efficiency of your fan page. Sysomos follows a four steps social-media monitoring process: (i) Data Collection:  The collected data is filtered for spam and gives you "pure" data. (ii) Information Processing: Data is collected from around the globe, Sysomos translates the conversations and mentions for insights and intelligence. (iii) Data Analysis: Data is analyzed and calculated according to demographics, sentiment, key influencer and buzz volume. (iv) You: It all comes back to you and your business' success. The gathered information is now in your control. Charts and graphs provide visual confirmation of your social media campaign's process. Sysomos further offers two different types of tools – MAP and Heartbeat. MAP is an analytics-focused tool that allows for users to access up to one year of archived data. Whereas Heartbeat, only includes 30 days of search data with the option to upgrade to one year’s worth. Sysomos Heartbeat is a workflow tool, letting users to reply to mentions through different social networks or assign tasks for follow-up. These both features are not available in Sysomos MAP. But, MAP does allow for ad-hoc search queries, which can be helpful when agencies are researching a prospective client. MAP also offers Google Plus integration; Heartbeat does not. Price: Sysomos prices are different, based on MAP and Heartbeat tools. Sysomos MAP costs $2,750/Month. For $3,000/month, one can access nearly all the same features in addition to workflow management with Visible Technologies. Considering both require a one year contract, the price difference is small enough to warrant splurging for the higher priced tool. Sysomos Heartbeat is less costly and it is not intended for managing multiple clients. The starting plan is $550 per month with a $500 setup fee. This plan includes five search queries with a total of ten tags and unlimited results. The next plan up is $1,100 per month which includes with ten queries, twenty-five tags and twenty-five users. Which one Is best for your business? Without a clear strategy in place, it may feel like comparing Apples with Oranges. Each tool has its merits and demerits and the tool you select will depend on precisely what you want to use it for? Where, Who, When do you want to monitor? How would you like to do the reporting? Ease of use. Support availability, operational considerations. All in all, it completely depends upon the budget, nature of business, size of organization and requirement of business. I’d recommend that before investing into any of these social media monitoring tools, one should opt for free versions and free trials of these tools to make a wise and informed decision. Cost of these tools can depend upon the needs and requirements of the business or company. However, there are higher labor costs involved as well in order to get the desired results out of these tools. So before you decide to use any of these tools, make sure you have enough (Human and Monetary) resources. Don’t forget to consider the skills and availability of staff that will have a role to play. It’s probably worth allocating a separate budget for social media monitoring training.

Sources: "Radian6 Review: Great for Brands, Not for Agencies." DragonSearch Internet Marketing Services Consultants.

http://goo.gl/2ybyQ Top Ten Reviews, Sysomos. http://goo.gl/PSgTi "Be in the Know, Anywhere, Anytime." Mention. https://en.mention.net/

"Sysomos MAP & Heartbeat: 2 Social Media Monitoring Tools, 1 Company."DragonSearch Internet Marketing Services Consultants. http://goo.gl/s4wqx "Real Time Search - Social Mention." Real Time Search - Social Mention. http://socialmention.com/ “ViralHeat” Social Media Simplified. A unified suite for social media marketing. https://www.viralheat.com/ "Accurate Social Media Monitoring Tools & Measurement Software | Trackur." Trackur.  http://goo.gl/MZO0 "Google Alerts - Monitor the Web for Interesting New Content." Google Alerts - Monitor the Web for Interesting New Content. http://goo.gl/Xq0Tt "Engage Your Audience & Care for Your Customers." Social Media Engagement Tools.  http://goo.gl/rJtKB

"Centresource Interactive Agency." Centresource Blog Social Media Monitoring Tools  by Larissa Sylvester on Feb 18, 2013 http://goo.gl/Qmxwq

"Francis Moran & Associates — We Bring Technology to Market." The Free Tools in My Social Media Marketing Toolkit — Part 2: Management & Measurement. By Alexandra Reid http://goo.gl/eeMNi

"Social Media Manager for Hire." Surigao Digital Services Affordable Website Design and Development Social Media Manager for Hire Comments http://goo.gl/Nbcso

[optimistprrime]

The Do It Yourself Online Reputation Management Guide Your reputation is your brand. If people don't have any familiarity with you, then your reputation is what they trust to form their opinions. And so, it is very essential to monitor your online reputation for your personal brand to ensure constant career development and success. What establishes your online reputation? There is much more involved in online reputation than just a blog or your professional portfolio website. In short, your online reputation is made up of everything about you that exists online. The variety of resources that could possibly impact your online reputation is bigger than you might comprehend at first. Some components of your online image could be: (i) Comments you make on social media. (ii) Posts and articles you publish online with your acknowledgement. (iii) Videos you share on YouTube, Vimeo or elsewhere. (iv) Images you share on Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr etc. (v) Images of you that others publish on social media. (vi) Comments that others make about you in social media or in blog posts. (vii) Comments you make on other people’s blog posts, message boards or articles. Digital communications are here for good, and communication through social media will only get more dominant until something else replaces it. Online forums, blogs, and social networking sites like Facebook/Twitter etc. have revolutionized the way people connect with each other and share their everyday experiences, their views (thoughtful, bad, absurd, poorly informed, or just plain dull), their photos, and their videos. It’s never been so simple to “publish” something, and have it read by hundreds of people, almost immediately. It could be about a specific product or service offered by a business, a meal at a restaurant, a school teacher or what time the demonstration starts at India Gate in New Delhi. And yes, people can read about you, know a great deal about you and/or write about you online before you even know about it. In today’s era, the competition is threatening; one wrong step or impression and your probabilities of getting your dream job could be in major threat. Many of us don’t realize how much information about us can be easily found online, nor do we understand the effects of that information being publicly available. A digital footprint can last forever unless you meticulously practice online reputation management (monitoring). A couple of times every month I browse on over to Google and search for my own name to see what the results will bring. While it might seem vain to search for yourself online, it’s actually an important step in shielding your online reputation. Monitoring your online reputation like this is something that every student should do on a regular basis. I wouldn't suggest ending with Google, either. You should also monitor on Twitter and on other social media sites. So You Think You Are Reputed… eh? What you once believed was your private online information may not actually be as private as you believed. So Beware! Many companies use the Internet and social media for hiring potential job applicants. So, an individual’s social presence online can have a direct effect on how an employer thinks about a candidate. What does all this mean to you as a student? Actually, it could mean a great deal to you and to your job hunt. It could mean that if an employer searches on your Twitter or Facebook user name they will see anything and everything that you've tweeted recently or included in your status. The kind of videos you post or share on YouTube, the kind of language (Profane/Professional) you use whilst commenting on other people’s post could reveal a lot about your personality. Your rants might be out there, visible to any and all of your potential employers. Believe me; a lack of professionalism on your part will not make a good first impression. In simple words, holding a bad online reputation can slay your dream of getting your desired job without you ever hearing a word from a prospective employer or getting the chance to say a single word in your defense. Better manage your reputation for your personal brand to ensure your continued career success. How? The best way to manage your online reputation is to be proactive about it. Don’t publish offensive material or make any negative comments online. If a friend tags you in a questionable photo, ask them to remove it. Frequently conduct searches on your own name, and any of your social media user names to check what appears. You may also set up Google Alerts for your own name to make sure you know about all mentions of your personal brand and can reply to them accordingly. Your online identity is not the only one that could determine the reputation for your personal brand. It is crucial to hold good references to shape good word of mouth offline, as well. Decent professional references can be called upon when you are searching for a new job, or maybe when you need to build a professional connection. Defending your personal brand is extremely significant for your longstanding career success. Checking your online reputation can assure that your personal brand remains unharmed and that you can continue to generate the image you’d like to meet the goals you have set for yourself. P.S. Fake Reviews Aren't the Answer to Your Reputation Problem.

Sources: "SafetyWeb." Help Protect Your Child's Online Reputation From Damage. http://goo.gl/N8kjc "HOW TO: Leverage Social Media for Career Success." Mashable. Dan SchawbelApr 07, 2009 http://goo.gl/cINA "Reputation Management." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 Oct. 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management Image. "Online Reputation Management." Issue 26. Feb 25. 2010. http://goo.gl/pJf0g Image. "Sutro Digital - Part 3 http://goo.gl/yxVdJ

[optimistprrime]

It’s All About Influence! In management processes, we evaluate, weigh and grade a number of metrics and key performance indicators. Inexorably, as people start to comprehend the metrics by which they are evaluated, ranked and compensated, they start to change their doings in an effort to advance their position – against the metrics, against (or in arrangement with) reflections on their performance, and more-often-than-not against their compeers. It’s a competitive world, and while performance-based reward is nothing new, in an indeterminate financial climate, there is intensified observance around single and compeer performance. We’re more concerned about how we are performing, particularly in relation to how our compeers are performing. It’s all about Influence!

It’s Time for SIO (Social Influence Optimization) In today’s online marketing era, the notion of influence is way more significant than ever. It is getting progressively crucial for companies to increase their influence as a way of evaluating audience engagement. Influence measures how brands and individuals vary from other accounts, unlike other methods of measurement. Global corporations are recognizing the significance of directing high profile bloggers, journalists and personalities, and have increasingly sought to reach out to these influencers for endorsement and to drive word-of-mouth about their brand. And it’s not easy for every business organization to find an influencer. To serve to this purpose, a novel trend of influencer scoring, based on social media analytics, has arose, most remarkably Klout, Kred and PeerIndex. They are each good for dissimilar things. I’ll deal with each of the sites individually. Kred: Kred shows a real-time visual history of social media analytics, not only for individuals, but for hashtags, movies, books, television, and communities. Twitter and Facebook-centric, Kred displays a lovely but overwhelming chart of areas of influence and outreach, sharing 1000 days of social media dialog–posts, images, videos, links–on one page. Unlike many of the other players in this field, Kred offers a reflective scale on the right side of the page, letting users to zoom in on a time period to see difficult-to-find historical tweets.  Indicating an unusual level of transparency, Kred allows users to click on the metric of Total Influence Points to see precisely how those Influence and Outreach points are calculated–numbers of retweets, replies, mentions, etc. Kred puts users in communities based on the hashtags and twitter bios and keywords from users’ posts. Each community gets a Kred score and Kred users that have shown specific leadership in their community are called ‘Kred Leaders’. Kred markets to brands by rendering them with a list of Twitter users who are most influential in specific communities. Klout: Klout isa service that uses an occult algorithm to measure online influence by considering your social media activity, based on the accounts you attach to it and then measures your social media influence.  It looks at the interactions and connections you have, how many people reply to what you share, and then it assigns you a number. The greater the number, the more influential you are. A Klout score is a public rating of how important Klout's algorithm thinks you are on the Internet.  Klout analyzes your online influence by topic. If someone thinks you’re expert on a particular topic, they can visit your user page and grant you +K point, which is supposed to further enhance your influence. The formula that Klout uses, seem to be quite complex, but it is not made public. That's about it. It doesn’t take into account job, education or real-world interactions.

PeerIndex: PeerIndex is another social ranking site. Their analysis takes into account up to 5 different Social Networks including Quora, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and your blog. It uses algorithms to map your social web. Authority on the web is built when you contribute in meaningful interactions of information, through connected social networks. The sort of information you share divulges a lot about you, your knowledge and your connections – which PeerIndex attempts to measure. It also considers your speed of reply on the social network, the amount of interactions and how you share information. Your recommendations can be used to measure your knowledge (or authority) within a given subject area. Your authority increases when you are Retweeted, Facebook Shared, +1′ed or commented on by someone who is an authority on that subject.PeerIndex measures all these aspects online before giving you a score.  ThePeerIndex dashboard shows a topic fingerprint graph to show your influence in each topic, as well as a graph to compare yourself to other users you know. Is it logical? Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex are set out to accomplish the same goal: measuring how much influence you exert in the social media sphere. Each of these sites are unique in their own ways. Kred shows exactly how your score was derived and distinguishes between different kinds of influence. But it lacks consideration of influence outside of twitter and facebook. Klout uses multiple social media channels, primarily twitter, facebook etc. but also evaluates your presence on foursquare, YouTube and Instagram as well. Peer Index is also genuine, since it looks at how much authority you might have on certain topics. So in my opinion, if these sites are used together, not individually, then they can give a pretty good idea to the people about how active you are in the social sphere and what areas you need to work on, depending upon your communities and activities on various social platforms. Does Klout Have Clout? After registering with these 3 influence measuring sites, I’ve been trying to make more meaningful interactions in social sphere by asking relevant questions and sharing my views. My current Klout score is 23. I am trying to increase my score by posting engaging and pertinent content that will get people to interact with me. And also, I am connecting Klout with other social media networks whilst interacting with influential people. I am not considering to game the system by retweeting all the time or spamming posts to increase my influence as this won’t have a positive impact on my score. I believe Klout has become a vital part of securing employment.  If you are not registered with Klout, do it today and start working towards a reputable score.  Don’t be left behind as Klout is no longer considered a game but is as essential to employers as a social security number. So I am on it now. When are you joining in? How Business Can Redeem Klout's Clout or Become InKREDible? Influencers can range from celebrities to trusted reviewers to bloggers to the girl next door. There are two types of influencers: Top influencers by impression (those with the highest following) and top influencers by volume (those who frequently mention a particular brand or product).

With sites like Klout, Kred and PeerIndex, businesses can identify their top influencers and reach out to them by volume as these users are already loyal customers who talk about the brand often. Brands with a strong liking to customer service can improve customer service and customer experience with a little customer acknowledgement – an offer for a free product or discounted service for being loyal customers or expressing gratitude through kind words or thanks. Reaching out to brand’s top influencers by impact ensures the highest potential to reach the biggest audience as these individuals have a large following. A product-based company can connect with these influencers and offer samples of the product for them to review and share their opinion online. Their followers and friends are then more likely to try the product as someone they believe recommended it.

Is it safe? No matter how legitimate and credible these social media influence sites are, there are risks related with them, viz, If a customer with a high influence/score is disappointed by a brand, then there is a risk of high profile tweets causing damage to that brand’s reputation. And also, scores are not always correct reflections of user’s online influence, as people game the system to improve their score. So I believe, it will be inappropriate to make large business decisions based on these scores. And don't forget, the costs of using these sites are lower than traditional advertising and marketing; however the labor costs are higher as it involves executing the strategy, developing the content to engage the consumers, blogging, giving perks to the influencer and evaluation of the strategy. P.S. Don’t fear your PEER. Just KLOUT it loud & stay inKREDible! Sources: Social Media Influence Trackers. Who's Measuring Social Media Influence, and How? Leslie Walker. http://goo.gl/NTi0h What Is PeerIndex? Tammy Kahn Fennell. June 3, 2011. http://goo.gl/rYUCZ Blog This With David Kamatoy 7.8.2011: Twitter Klout PeerIndex Tweet.Grader Village Theater July 9, 2011 http://goo.gl/TFXZ7

Measuring Online Influence with Jason Keath. David Wells. http://goo.gl/Ae0LE Klout and PeerIndex Don’t Measure Influence. Brian Solis Explains What They Actually Do March 21. 2012 http://goo.gl/2q3Zr Is Social Influence The Truth Or A Myth? Adrian. June 24, 2012. http://goo.gl/T1gfm Image. http://goo.gl/8hakL

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"P!n & Win"

Being a Marketing student, I have learned that customer engagement for any company is crucial for its success and companies are using social media to mobilize customer engagement. It’s P!nteresting! I remember, not very long ago people used to attach magazine clippings of their wedding ideas, wish lists and recipes to a physical cork pin board, now they can do it all electronically on Pinterest, as it is an online tool for collecting, sharing and organizing beautiful images/videos you find and love on the web. A pin is an image/video you add or stick to Pinterest from a website using the “Pin It” button on to your own unique boards. A board is a set of theme-based pins. You’ll become a pinner, once you use the boards to pin images/videos of your dreams, hopes and wishes. People can browse through your Pinterest items and ‘Like’ or ‘Repin’ or ‘Comment’ on them. P!NTRODUCE YOUR BUSINESS: Pinterest has a heavy lifestyle focus, so what better chance is there to give people a peep into the personality of your business or brand by creating a pinboard that showcases your employees and life around the office. Letting people in behind the scenes will make your brand relatable and interesting. Show them making your products/services, show them working together, and show some of the fun activities your business participates in, viz; company outings, award ceremonies, parties, volunteer days, etc. If you have a B2B business, then too you can use Pinterest to build your professional network by creating an exclusive board out of your current clients and presenting their testimonials to your potential clients. Or, you may make a board of markets you want to serve, or clients you’d like to collaborate with. You never know who might view it and how that might help you to make an introduction. Probably the best way to use Pinterest for bringing in more and more customers to your business is to let them advertise for you and your business. By engaging with visitors to your boards, you develop a feeling of trust, faith and community. This can be your most effective tool as people will begin to advocate your boards/brands when they realize you actually are more than just a faceless company. It is about interaction with customers, not just about making announcements to them – “Be regular to stay viable.” Following other businesses and boards that have identical interests to your own, is another interesting way to increase number of visitors to your own pages. Pinning and repining the images and boards that inspire your own is a fantastic way to actively engage and promote your own brand without a lot of sales pressure. When people are sharing and talking about your business, you’ll soon see the advantages of ‘selling without selling’ on Pinterest. P.S. BE A P!NNER TO BE A WINNER. Sources: SDEntrepreneur, How To Use Pinterest For Business. Feb 13, 2012 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKQ5MZlgmAs>

Meredith, "Haute To Sew, A Place For My DIY LIfe." <http://hautetosew.blogspot.ca/2012/03/how-pinteresting-6.html> Pinterest, Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest> Meganauman, “Promoting your Products with Pinterest (the right way)” Jan 10, 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_DZEBFvvSk>

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Jump on the b®andwagon...

KNOW WHO YOU ARE! Developing a personal brand needs self-reflection, commitment, and continuous re-evaluation. After identifying the main aspects of your personal brand, you can easily understand the image you have of yourself, what you want to become, and how you want others to perceive you. Loaded with this information you can now create a true image of who you are. WHY TUMBLR? Although I’ve only been using Tumblr for a short time so far, the benefits it can have in developing your personal brand are already very evident because of its unique customization options of how and what type of content to deliver In today’s social media bedlam, Tumblr rules in many different ways as its user friendly and user oriented. It’s primarily focused on content delivery by creating, sharing and engaging with people with similar tastes and interests. Tumblr allows you to show the World what you believe in. A Tumblr page can tell you a lot about an individual. Your beliefs and interests can be communicated through a variety of visually stimulating content including quotes, links, audio, pictures and videos which all come together in a creatively charged representation of your personal brand. It also allows you to select the theme, color, background and how you want to deliver your messages. On Tumblr, you can follow other brands/people just like many other social media site and see all the content that they post. You can like their posts, comment on or reblog their posts, if you want to show your followers, the contents from other brands that have similar interest. This way you can grow your community and tell the World that you are not just focusing on the content based on only your brand. It’s a unique way of showcasing your personality, abilities and interests by having a strong online presence that reflects your personal brand. Tumblr is a diary. Tumblr is a photo abum. It is anything you want it to be because you are in control. Anything you publish is a representation of you – what you like, what you hate, and what you find funny. Thus, whether intentional or not, you are branding yourself using Tumblr. P.S. Join the b®andwagon and let the World know how fantastic and charming you are!

Sources: Levine, Ari. “How the Best Brands Tell Stories Using Tumblr.” HootSuite University. 2013.

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ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

Dinosaurs