15 New Social Media Templates to Save You Even More Time Imagine having a quick and fast way to get up to speed with social media or to get your work done in less time (and with more confidence). When I’m in a pinch or into something new, one of the first places I turn is toward a template. I’ve built a stash of headline formulas, social media updates, and more to help organize my mind when it comes to working fast and learning something new. Templates can be a lifesaver and a time-saver. I have my favorite go-to templates, and I was also able to dig up a huge number of others, created by some really amazing folks who are generous to help us all work smarter. I’ve collected them here below. 15 Time-Saving Social Media Templates The list below is full of a variety of different templates, some helpful in a high-level way of organizing your marketing efforts and others in a specific area of social media marketing and sharing. 1. We built this social media report to be easy to fill with just a simple Buffer data export. Instructions: 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
How to Build a Targeted Twitter Tribe of 100,000 Twitter remains an enigma for many bloggers and businesses. Many questions are asked. What can I do with 140 characters? These and many other questions bedevil the casual Twitter user who often thinks that social media marketing only revolves around the Facebook universe. Social media marketing at scale includes particip1ating on as many social networks as possible that are relevant to your target audience. On Twitter one or two tweets per day with a random message to 200 followers is not going to cut the marketing mustard. Twitter is growing and gaining traction rapidly which stems1 partly from last years inclusion in Apples’s new mobile operating system and is now embedded in its mobile menu system. On social media it is important to listen and engage. This will give you the reach you need to continue to scale. I am going to assume that your blog or website has great content already. Building a large Twitter tribe is one of the most efficient ways to distribute that content.
How to Create Moodle Badges - eClass4learning How to Create Moodle Badges Badges are new in Moodle 2.5+ . Badges are a great way to motivate users. They are an electronic way to demonstrate that you have mastered a specific skill. Moodle Badges There are two categories of badges: • Site badges – available to users site-wide and related to the site wide activities, like finishing a set of courses. • Course badges – available to users enrolled in the course and related to the activities that happen inside the course. Site Badges Badges should be enabled by default in Administration>Site administration>Advanced features and can be managed from Administration>Site administration>Badges>Manage badges. The available criteria for awarding site badges are: • Finishing a course or a set of courses with a minimum grade or by a certain date • Completing a number of fields in the user account profile • Issued manually by a specific role (Such as a teacher, or a site wide departmental assessor) Course Badges
Keeping It Professionally Real on Social Media As a working professional, social media can present an internal challenge: we want to get out there and have fun and talk about our personal interests, but we also want to play it cool for that ‘professional’ side of us. The good news is, you can do both. Keeping it professional on social media doesn’t mean you have to compromise who you are and what you like. Below I included a few of the core tips I’ve learned over the past few years – both personally and via the very public mistakes we see in the headlines. Bear with me as I proceed to sound like your social media mom. Assume everyone can see everything. The delete button is a lie. Recommended for YouWebcast: Growth at a Scale Up: How to Grow When You're No Longer a Startup Be an expert on your privacy options. That said, I would caution about being too closed off. Don’t be afraid to show personality. Be searchable. Get involved. Disclose or pay. What other tips do you have? Author: Amanda Grinavich
How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan From Scratch This post originally published on July 16, 2014. We’ve updated it here with new research and stats and a cool new infographic. When I went rock climbing for the first time, I had no idea what I was doing. My friends and I were complete newbies about ropes and rappelling and every other bit of jargon and technique that goes with climbing. I’d imagine that a social media marketing strategy could feel the same way. If you’re starting from square one, it might feel equal parts thrilling and overwhelming. It’d help to have a plan. We’ve shared before about different parts of a social media strategy—the data and research and personal experience behind what works on social media. Update: we have a 25-day long (free!) Now we’re pleased to put it all into a cohesive, step-by-step blueprint that you can use to get started. Oh, and our friends at online infographic maker Venngage were kind enough to wrap all that follows into a comprehensive infographic that’s easy to keep, share and reference: Bingo!
10 Time-Saving Tools for Managing Your Social Media Following Keeping up with emerging social media networks is challenging. It's easy to feel like you're spreading yourself thin. That said, maintaining a healthy social media following on all of your networks is even more challenging. You can't help but want more followers, but if you're going to extreme lengths just to build up that number with empty names and faces, it's not worth the time and resources. If you want to streamline your following and uncover analytics that can be used to refine your strategy, you need the right set of tools. To help, I've collected 10 tools that can help you keep on top of your social media following. 1) Crowdfire Price: Free Applicable network(s): Twitter & Instagram Crowdfire started with a simple desire that many Twitter users had: an easier way to manage your followers. Nobody likes when someone follows you, only to unfollow you later to improve their follower to following ratio, am I right? 2) Commun.it Price: Starts at $9.99/month Applicable network(s): Twitter
10 Digital Tools For Enhancing Your Communication A few weeks ago, I received an email from a fellow administrator in Sydney, Australia, asking for permission to re-publish a recent blog post for their executive newsletter. Image Credit: JeffBullas.com Although he and I are literally sitting on opposite sides of the globe from one another, we were able to share ideas and thoughts as quickly as I can with school friends in my own building. Connecting with educators is just one benefit of using technology like blogging or social media. The other benefits include communicating with teachers, students, parents, and your community. What are other practical ways that technology can enhance service and communication with others? Here are 10 ideas from my own digital toolbox that may help you in reaching-out or connecting: 1. If you visit the website page for my school, you will see a short video/music montage posted there. You can play these during events, send a link to prospective hires, or display them at teacher job fairs. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
How to Handle Negative Feedback in Social Media Like a Pro When you are running a social media page for a large brand (or even a small one that sells online), people will come to you with every kind of concern, complaint, support request and random unrelated thought of which you can think. (Winston Churchill would have liked that sentence.) As a brand, when you have comments you have to respond in some way. These are the ways I recommend to make sure you de-escalate the negative comments, answer everyone’s questions and keep the brands social page to the standards you would like. Respond to Every Concern If someone posts something negative, keep in mind the possibility that it could be true. An example of a harsh, but valid complaint someone left as a comment on one of my clients Facebook ad was: “It’s a scam! For context, the ads we’d been running were working well. Comments like this need an immediate response with the kid gloves on. Be Public, Polite and Helpful You have to post a public response. Take Things Out of the Public Eye Transparently
Ebook: 25 Actionable Social Media Strategies to Try Today We’re incredibly grateful to have the chance to learn from others and experiment for ourselves with what works best on social media. And we’re so very happy to share our best strategies with you! To collect all these favorite tips in one place, we’ve compiled our top 25 social media strategies into a free ebook that you can download below. We’ve included strategies for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and more—all of which you can implement today, in just a few minutes and just a few clicks. Get your free copy of the Social Media Strategies ebook! Read further for a full list of the strategies that are included as well as a sample page from the book. 25 Actionable Social Media Strategies You Can Implement Today The full ebook includes 25 social media strategies that we’ve pulled from some of the most popular Buffer blog posts. A sample chapter from the book This is the first chapter from the book: Tip #1 – Share the same content multiple times. What to do with all these strategies
A Beginner's Guide to Social Media Strategy Editor’s Note: This is a section of our completely redone SEO Guide. Enjoy! The role of social media in SEO and the question whether SEO is impacted by social media at all is often debated. This section will briefly sum up if and how SEO is impacted by social networks and go over instantly implementable best practices that are proven to be effective. The role of social media within a marketing strategy is changing. Here are some of the most common abbreviations in online marketing: SEO (search engine optimization)SEM (search engine marketing)PPC (pay per click)SMM (social media marketing)SMO (social media optimization) All of these different streams impact each other directly or indirectly. A couple of years ago, it was widely assumed that social media marketing and social media optimization impacted SEO directly and even well executed SEM and PPC campaigns could increase page ranks. SEJ SUMMIT. Where does this leave social media in terms of SEO? Dominate Your Geographic Area 1. 2. 3.
and MIT release working papers on MOOCs/open online learning | Harvard Gazette #edtechbc #elearning Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today released a series of working papers based on 17 online courses offered on the edX platform. Run in 2012 and 2013, the courses drew upon diverse topics — from ancient Greek poetry to electromagnetism — and an array of disciplines, including public health, engineering, and law. The series features detailed reports about individual courses; these reports reveal differences and commonalities among massive open online courses (MOOCs). In the coming weeks, data sets and interactive visualization tools will also be made available. The papers analyze an average of 20 gigabytes of data per course and draw on interviews with faculty and course teams as well as student metrics. Key takeaways Course completion rates, often seen as a bellwether for MOOCs, can be misleading and may at times be counterproductive indicators of the impact and potential of open online courses. Forward thinking
Smartphones and Social Media – Where Will it Take Us The phone as a means of communication lost its initial function many years ago. The inception of the change in the way phones are used started in the 1980s, when answering machines were introduced, as supplements to the traditional landline phone. After that we saw the advent of fax machines and then in the 1990s, cell phones overtook the market, so we were able to text our friends and even play games (Snake Game rocked). Designed by Freepik Smartphone killed the desktop Although this heading is a bit hyperbolic, in the future decades even less people will be using desktop computers, on account of further popularization of the smartphone. Teens dictate trends While adults represent an important share of the Internet market, the epidemic spread of smartphones among teenage population has put this target audience pretty high on the list of marketing aims. Designed by Freepik Never-ending conversations With all these new communication trends, it seems that conversations will never stop.