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8 Ways to Create Shareable Social Media Content

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Original post by  via constant contact

JfGTYeXHV4According to Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, creating content people love to share is the key to success.

This year, I was lucky enough to attend the interactive conference at SXSW in Austin, TX. I spent five full days attending a ton of awesome sessions. One of my favorites was “The Big Shift in Media” featuring the BuzzFeed founder.

Self-titled as the ‘hottest, most social content on the web,’ BuzzFeed features content ranging from breaking news to cat pictures that make you ‘LOL’ (laugh out loud).

Peretti emphasized one important rule for content, “You need to spend 50% of your time on the idea and 50% on how you spread it. Not 95% and then only a tiny portion on how to spread the idea.” Quality alone is simply not enough to making something spread, you need a strategy.

When it comes to creating content people will love to share, anyone can do it. Keep these eight helpful tips in mind next time you’re thinking of what to post.

1. Have a heart

Emotional intelligence is important when it comes to creating relevant social media content. The formula for success, in regards to social media marketing, begins with showing your fans and followers that you genuinely care about them. Focus on starting a conversation, not advertising your services. Listen and pay close attention to what your customers have to say and get to know them. This is what builds strong relationships. By recognizing the things your fans and followers care about (relevant to your business), you can create a meaningful community.

Also, don’t be afraid to add personality to your content. Prove to your fans that there is a living breathing person (or people) behind your brand. Content should never be dry and lifeless. Your audience may be professionals, but that doesn’t mean they’re not human. Remember, people use Facebook to make social connections with friends. Make your brand feel like a friend.

2. Discover what drives them

People use social networks to build profiles that express who they are. Consequently, people share content that helps them share their identities. This may sound harsh but it’s not likely that people are passionate about your actual product. It’s what your product enables them to do or what it allows them to express about themselves that’s important. What does your business’s product or service say about those who use or buy it? Tap into these insights and tailor your social content to speak to the unique personalities of your customers. This will create a vibrant, engaged community of people with common interests and passions.

3. React fast

During the Super Bowl blackout, Oreo got so much buzz from their on-the-fly Facebook post. The ad said, “You can still dunk in the dark.” It was incredibly simple but so successful because it was timely and subtle. Oreo reacted to an unexpected event and in turn created the most powerful ad on one of the most expensive advertising days of the year, for free! When your posts are timely, they feel more authentic and genuine. As a small business owner, you can use your smartphoneto instantly react to breaking news or simply share an in-store exchange.

4. Walk a mile in their shoes

Cute animals deserve respect. ‘Huh?’ What Peretti meant is that you should be human and empathetic. Put yourself in the shoes of your fans and followers. The best content is content that is emotional. Use the perspective of your audience to shape the nature of your community.

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Rev!Up your Marketing to accelerate your Startup! #TMURevUp

May 2, 2013 |

Twitter’s 6-Second Video Sharing App, Vine, Goes Live In The App Store

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Original post by JORDAN CROOK via TC

Twitter has officially launched its Vine video sharing app in theApp Store, as announced on the company blog.

With Instagram taking the world by storm, and subsequentlyselling to Facebook for $1 billion, the question on everyone’s minds has been who will be able to do the same thing with video?

Twitter’s been thinking this through for a while, proven by the acquisition of video-sharing app Vine in October.

The app isn’t built directly into Twitter, but rather acts as a standalone app.

It integrates with Twitter in the same way that Instagram does, except that Vine never turned off permissions randomly, meaning that Vine videos can be embedded directly in tweets, showing up in followers’ streams.

Vine videos can also show up in a separate Vine web page, like this one.

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TechMeetups Drinks & Demo at #MobileWorldCongress Barcelona 2013

January 25, 2013 |

7 WAYS ROCK A STARTUP ACCELERATOR MENTOR DAY

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Original post by RocketWatcher

I spent the day yesterday at FounderFuel for their Mentor Day. If you aren’t familiar with FounderFuel they are a very successful startup accelerator based in Montreal. And what a day it was – 8 startups pitched and then did roundtable breakout sessions with over 50 mentors including VC’s, angel investors, entrepreneurs and senior executives. Here’s my mentor’s perspective on how a startup can really get the most out of a day like that:

1/ Pick your Target Mentors Ahead of Time: 50 mentors is a lot and they represented a wide cross section of folks that have deep experience in different consumer and business markets, and have a range of skills from technical expertise to sales, marketing, finance, and legal experience. Selecting a subset of the mentors with experience relevant to your business will help you target your discussions.A handful of the teams that needed marketing help reached out to me by email before the day and that helped to make sure that we connected at the session which I thought was pretty smart.

2/ Ask for Feedback on your Pitch: The mentors are both experienced pitch artists, and listen to pitches a lot. What better folks to give feedback on what worked and what didn’t work with the pitch you just gave? In this case the companies are all still in the early stages of the accelerator program so it’s a great time to get feedback that will improve the ultimate pitch you give on demo day. The feedback will also give you a feel for the differences in what an Angel investor might be looking for over what the more traditional VC’s are looking for in a pitch. “Tell me one thing that would have made my pitch better” or “What was missing from my pitch?” would both be great ways to start that discussion.

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Techmeetups launches the Guru Program to help Startups & early stage companies with mentoring on all aspects of your Business.

Limited spaces are available – book your place on the Guru Program now to attend in London or remotely from anywhere in the world.

September 11, 2012 |

Social Media Marketing Basics – Getting Your Startup Into The Social Arena

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Original post by Daniel Melo via killerStartups

Planning and implementing a marketing strategy may prove a challenge for many startups although seizing social media is essential if you want your startup to thrive. Today, thorough SEO strategies go hand in hand with social media components.

By using social media to market your startup, you have at a basic level, the potential to attract more customers by providing them with a Facebook page with photos and updates or a Twitter account, which gives customers news about your startup.

Integrating social media is key in today’s startup environment and the following article will discuss some of the basics.

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July 5, 2012 |

Google to open London Campus for tech start-ups

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Original post by LondonOffices

Google to open London Campus for tech start-ups

The ‘Campus’ in Tech City will offer work stations, events space and relaxation areas.

Search engine giant Google has announced it will open a new communal workspace for tech start-ups and entrepreneurs in East London within weeks.

Close to Silicon Roundabout, the seven storey building in Shoreditch will offer office space, relaxation areas, events space and meeting rooms to a range of online firms. The California-based firm acquired the property at 4-5 Bonhill Street, which is set to be known as the ‘Campus’ back in September last year on a 10 year lease.

Plans for the “entrepreneur community” are thought to include 200 desks, table football tables and small wooden booths for more sensitive projects. In additon to offering work space to external companies, it’s believed the search company will also have staff present within the building to give tips and advice to budding businessmen.

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June 12, 2012 |

Twitter search for new offices in London

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Original post by LondonOffices

Twitter looking for London offices.

Social networking company Twitter look for new offices in London.

Social networking giants Twitter are looking to set up their first non-US office space in London.

The micro blogging company is reportedly searching around London’s West End for suitable office space. Twitter have also been looking around ‘Silicon Roundabout’ for quality office space in the capital.

“We are considering London and other European locations to create an initial and small presence in 2011,” commented a spokesperson from Twitter.

A lot of new media companies have been attracted to the London area known as ‘Silicon Roundabout’ and ‘Tech City’ in East London. The government have promised to fund the area with £400 million to attract the interest of technology companies, creating a rise in new media jobs in the capital.

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June 12, 2012 |

Considering a Start-Up? Think Again

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Considering a Start-Up Think Again

Original post by Oliver Segovia via HBR

It’s been a banner year for start-ups. With the JOBS Act, the rise of international accelerators, the upcoming Facebook IPO, and the mind-blowing $1 billion Instagram acquisition, you can be sure that droves of young, ambitious founders will be jumping on the start-up bandwagon.

The refrain is all too familiar: If you want to change the world and get rich in the process, then just go for it. In fact, in our book Passion & Purpose, several stories from young leaders involved start-ups. The problem isn’t what the message says, but what it doesn’t. What it fails to say is that the start-up life isn’t for everyone.

In The Lean Start-Up, Eric Ries talked about vanity metrics — numbers that create the illusion of success, rather than validate actual progress. In the same way, vanity entrepreneurs have deeply held illusions and misconceptions about the realities of start-up life.

Vanity entrepreneurs start new ventures for the wrong reasons. They start companies because it’s the cool thing to do. They’re hypnotized by the enormous myth-making apparatus of modern mainstream media, the coveted slot on Techcrunch, and the likes on their Facebook updates. They overestimate the glamour and underestimate the grind. And as ubiquitous stories of success spread in social media, these illusions become powerful self-delusions. All founders have this vanity within them, in varying degrees. In a way, it’s what drives them to succeed. What matters is the extent it takes hold of their judgment.

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April 28, 2012 |

The 10 Hottest TechStars NY Startups,
According to Sentiment Analysis [UPDATED]

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The 10 Hottest TechStars NY Startups, According to Sentiment Analysis [UPDATED]

Original post by Adrianne Jeffries via Beta Beat

TechStars New York has had three classes for a total of 37 startups since it launched in the beginning of 2011. The guys at social media sentiment analysis startup Buellrhave arranged a ranking of the top ten of graduates from all but the current class.

“What we’re doing now is culling together sentiment analysis from a variety of data providers,” cofounder Adrian Grant explained. “We then combine them in hopes of normalizing the dataset. Then we rank them by positive mentions, number of mentions, who is saying the comment and various other components that have their own respective weights assigned to them.”

Unsurprisingly, the popular Foursquare app Timehop came in first, even though cofounders Jonathan Wegener and Benny Wong were working on another idea entirely, FriendsList, during the first session of TechStars back in January of last year.

Speaking of working on another idea entirely, that’s how Buellr came about. ”We viewed this product, social media reviews, as a ‘day off’ kind of project, in the vein of the movie ’Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’” Mr. Grant said in an email.

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April 26, 2012 |

Macomb Startup Looks to Boost
Mom and Pop Businesses Using ‘The Cloud’

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Macomb Startup Looks to Boost Mom and Pop Businesses Using 'The Cloud'

Original post by Jenny Whalen via MacombPatch

When Macomb Township resident and tech guru Aaron McCarthy found himself part of a staff reduction, he realized he had two options: search for another job or take his pet project,SoBuzzMe.com, to the next level.

“I saw this as an opportunity to take So Buzz Me on full time and see what I could make of it–to help out other businesses, and make a difference, especially with these hard economic times in Metro Detroit,” McCarthy said.

Founded in May 2011 by McCarthy and his sister, Rachelle Boudry, Social Buzz Media (So Buzz Me) provides digital marketing, cloud services and IT support to local businesses looking to expand their presence on the web.

“We thought, ‘We can probably help out these (mom and pop businesses) really easily because we use social media ourselves and we know how to use it effectively,’” McCarthy said. “We started on that premise when we formed the company almost a year ago.”

A side project for much of that time, McCarthy made So Buzz Me his full-time job just over a month ago.

“I’ve always had some sort of side business,” he said. “Being in IT, people always have questions. But then I was married, had kids, and put that on hold. Later I was talking with my co-founder about social media and small businesses specifically and saw there was a need (for this type of company).”

Utilizing his expertise in Internet technology, Boudry’s communications background and friend Dan Fuoco’s social media know-how, the brother-sister duo set out to create a business that would service the technology needs of mom and pop shops in the local area.

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April 21, 2012 |

The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past
Facebook and Invent a New Futurew

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The Jig Is Up Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future

Original post by ALEXIS MADRIGAL via The Atlantic

After five years pursuing the social-local-mobile dream, we need a fresh paradigm for technology startups.

We’re there. The future that visionaries imagined in the late 1990s of phones in our pockets and high-speed Internet in the air: Well, we’re living in it.

“The third generation of data and voice communications — the convergence of mobile phones and the Internet, high-speed wireless data access, intelligent networks, and pervasive computing — will shape how we work, shop, pay bills, flirt, keep appointments, conduct wars, keep up with our children, and write poetry in the next century.”

That’s Steve Silberman reporting for Wired in 1999, which was 13 years ago, if you’re keeping count. He was right, and his prediction proved correct before this century even reached its teens. Indeed, half of tech media is devoted to precisely how these devices and their always-on connectivity let us do new things, help us forget old things, and otherwise provide humans with as much change as we can handle.

I can take a photo of a check and deposit it in my bank account, then turn around and find a new book through a Twitter link and buy it, all while being surveilled by a drone in Afghanistan and keeping track of how many steps I’ve walked.

The question is, as it has always been: now what?

Decades ago, the answer was, “Build the Internet.” Fifteen years ago, it was, “Build the Web.” Five years ago, the answers were probably, “Build the social network” or “Build the mobile web.” And it was in around that time in 2007 that Facebook emerged as the social networking leader, Twitter gotknown at SXSW, and we saw the release of the first Kindle and the first iPhone. There are a lot of new phones that look like the iPhone, plenty of e-readers that look like the Kindle, and countless social networks that look like Facebook and Twitter. In other words, we can cross that task off the list. It happened.

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April 18, 2012 |
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