3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology
The modern American school faces rough challenges. Budget cuts have caused ballooning class sizes, many teachers struggle with poorly motivated students, and in many schools a war is being waged on distracting technologies. In response, innovative educators are embracing social media to fight back against the onslaught of problems. Technologies such as Twitter and Skype offer ideal solutions as inexpensive tools of team-based education. Pockets of experimentation are emerging all around the world, and I hope to inspire my fellow teachers with some stories of success. From cell phones to social media, below are three schools that have chosen to go with the flow of popular technology to turn the tide for education.
13 Hot Facebook Marketing Tips From the Top Pros
Facebook continues to be the most powerful social network on the planet with over 750 million active users. Businesses simply cannot ignore Facebook as part of their online marketing strategy. We spoke with top marketing book authors and Facebook brand managers.
What’s Working for Social Media Marketers?
A September 2009 MarketingProfs survey of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers found that the marketing tactics most often used on social sites are not necessarily the best ones. The most common marketing tactic used on Facebook was attempting to drive traffic to corporate materials through status updates, followed by friending customers. But the most effective tactic for consumer-oriented companies was creating a Facebook application, which was done by less than one-quarter of total respondents. Both B2B and B2C companies also reported surveys of their fans as effective; fan surveys were the third-most-common tactic attempted. Unsurprisingly, buying ads—even targeted ones—was the least effective type of social media marketing overall. Like those on Facebook, marketers using Twitter were also most interested in increasing traffic.
How Social Media Has Changed Us
Mike Laurie works at London agency Made by Many where he helps design social digital stuff. You follow him on Twitter @mikelaurie. Over the last 10 years, we've seen social media galvanize thousands over politics, create as many industries as it has destroyed, and offer an abundance of visual and audio entertainment. But has all this incredible change actually changed us, or just the world we live in?
A Pragmatic Approach to Social Media
Given the amount of buzz, hype and enthusiasm surrounding social media, a lot of companies are scrambling to climb on the bandwagon. They’re convinced that if they don’t move now, it will be too late. Much of its anxiousness is propelled by high-profile social media success stories such as Dell, Starbucks or Comcast.
Social Media Consulting - Convince & Convert
Subscribe to our new Definitive newsletter: High grade digital marketing guidance, topically sorted, and curated to the max. You pick the categories, we deliver the content. The best content from around the web, on topics you care about and need to be an expert in. Amazingly, it seems like there’s more social media tools than Jonas brothers, with the gap growing every day. I don’t feel the need to experiment with every new piece of software that emerges from its chrysalis, but I do feel a responsibility to you and my clients to have some idea of what’s out there and what’s worthwhile. Also, at my social media speaking engagements hither and yon I’m often asked what tools I use.
Pinterest Hits 30 Billion Total Pins, Up 50% In 6 Months
Tonight at an event in the company’s San Francisco headquarters, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann announced that users had contributed more than 30 billion Pins since the service was founded, a number that has grown by nearly 50 percent in the past six months alone. Users have also created more than 750 million boards in that time. (Update: Our initial story said 30 million, not 30 billion. Big difference.)
Marketing Tactics vs. Social Media Strategy - Search Engine Watch (SEW)
Many look at social media as another outlet to pump their marketing messages into, especially companies which have found that success in other channels of marketing such as SEO, PPC, e-mail, or traditional marketing outlets like TV, radio, or print have slowed or come to a virtual standstill. They read that Foursquare is the next "Internet darling" of social media and is being used and touted by early adopters. Facebook fan pages, MySpace accounts, Twitter streams, blogs, YouTube channels, Digg submissions, Flickr accounts, Wikis, even rating and review sites are all social media marketing tactics you see commonly touted as efforts companies "should be doing." Have you ever stopped to even ask why? Why should your company have a Facebook fan page?
The 39 Social Media Tools I’ll Use Today
Amazingly, it seems like there's more social media tools than Jonas brothers, with the gap growing every day. I don't feel the need to experiment with every new piece of software that emerges from its chrysalis, but I do feel a responsibility to you and my clients to have some idea of what's out there and what's worthwhile. Also, at my social media speaking engagements hither and yon I'm often asked what tools I use. So, I took a personal inventory and created this overview of the 39 social media tools I use daily. Twitter
What type of Tweets get retweeted most? Bites of Wisdom
Screen capture here: I've been running small experiments on the art of retweeting for a couple of weeks and it's time for a reflection. My tweets usually fall into one of several types: Retweets of others: Verbaitem sharing of someone's message that I feel is important for followers to know about. Share Links w/Brief Comment: This comes from my daily scanning of resources about social media, nonprofits, and philanthropy and picking out five good links and passing them along with a 140 character annotation. These are a few gems that I've bookmarked on delicous and slightly different than those streamed on my blog.
