Video is a powerful medium, and no other platform offers the community and sharing capabilities for video like YouTube. Local businesses can utilize YouTube to push videos that are informative, engaging, and ultimately convert users. Get new customers with Social Promotions Start your free 14-day trial

Live blogging – blogging in real-time during an event – is a great way to converse with readers on a personal level. It also showcases your blog as a ‘go to site’ and a leading source for up-to-the-minute details on breaking news. Being prepared with relevant information and the right attitude will allow you to [...]

Mari Smith, social media extraordinaire, recently conducted what she called a ‘flash chat’ in order to crowdsource content for the second version of her highly successful book, Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day. Conducting live chat sessions or webinars through Facebook can do great things for a company’s image and database, and are easy to [...]

Social Commerce, the use of social technologies in the context of retail, is in its immediate infancy. But as advances continue to be made to bridge the gap between social interaction and consumer buying habits, it will soon become the norm. Get new customers with Social Promotions Start your free 14-day trial

Recently Heinz launched a very successful tryvertising (advertising by sampling designed to create word of mouth publicity) campaign through their Facebook Page. They created a new type of ketchup, made 3,000 bottles available exclusively for their Facebook fans and soon after were awash in word-of-mouth marketing. Local retailers can create a successful campaign for their [...]

Shauna Miller’s fashion blog, Penny Chic, is the doing the impossible: Making Wal-Mart a purveyor of fashion. And she’s doing it well – using her friends as models, a conversational tone, creating amazing, highly descriptive looks, and standing behind the clothes – making her, and her blog as famous as the company she’s writing about. [...]

When Dave Carroll had his Taylor guitar broken by United Airlines he voiced his displeasure via YouTube where the incident was exposed to millions. Taylor Guitars (not United Airlines) took to this pro-actively by posting a response video. It discussed how they feature the TSA regulation on their website stating it’s OK to carry a [...]

Frictionless ways for retailers to close the loop between a consumer’s online and offline spending behaviour have emerged with the recent introduction of new services offered by Foursquare, AmEx, Shopkick, and Wishpond. Some examples of how these services close the loop include: Get new customers with Social Promotions Start your free 14-day trial

With the creation of seamless communication through online social networks it’s becoming much easier to create real relationships with real people through virtual mediums. Creating relationships effectively can be done by showing yourself as an authority in your industry who is helpful to others and open to collaboration: Get new customers with Social Promotions Start [...]

March Madness, the annual NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball tournamentis underway, and with millions of hours of productivity up for loss due to employees following the action online, retailers need a more effective way to deal with it than trying to block every site that talks about basketball. Instead of trying to quell your employees [...]