There are friends and then there are some special friends. Until now, Facebook has weighed them all on the same scale. In fact, Google Plus exploited this very weakness to great effect with its circles feature. However, that’s all set to change with Facebook’s new Smart List and Special Friend List. The underlying principle is simple – the one size …

A social media profile represents a business’ online identity. Therefore, it’s crucial for businesses to spend time and effort in order to ensure that their social media profiles are informational, interesting and appealing to their fans/ followers. However, building an impressive profile and building a large follower base is only half the battle won. The other and perhaps equally important …

Facebook has over 600 million active users, and nearly 50% of those users are active on a daily basis. If Facebook was a country, it would be the third-largest in the world. Though hard to believe, it’s a reality that social media didn’t have any takers few years back and now there seems to be no room left on the …

Twitter has grown by leaps and bounds. And the world’s leading microblogging social network is getting more business-friendlier than ever, it launched a revamped online business center a little while ago. Despite the phenomenal popularity of Twitter, certain features such as “Lists” are grossly underused, especially amongst the business user fraternity. Twitter lists feature has been around since November 2009 …

When Twitter launched, critics questioned the limitation of 140 characters to make a meaningful conversation, especially for businesses. Over the years, Twitter has improved by leaps and bounds, added several business-friendly features and now ranks amongst the league of formidable social media tools for businesses. Businesses have realized the value of messages limited to 140 characters and have thronged to …

Facebook started off as a pure social network. As time passes, its creators and users both begin to realize its value proposition in the business world. So, Facebook launched “Pages” for business users analogous to “profiles” for personal users. In the business world, profiles became pages, followers became fans, the user interface changed to have a more business-centric appeal but …

Geolocation services are all the rage these days and the location based services market has gained amazing popularity amongst people from all walks of life. Though Foursquare and Gowalla have been great advocates of how businesses can leverage geolocation services for targeted marketing campaigns, they’ve now been overshadowed by the big boys of the social media world – Facebook (Places) …

In April this year, my fellow Smedio blogger Jay Adams wrote an interesting story on “10 Ways to Build Social Media Clout” for your business. Building a useful and impressive social media clout is only half the battle won. The other and equally important challenge is leveraging the social media clout into a business’ success story. How does a true …

Locating and building a target audience is one of the biggest challenges for businesses pondering to take the plunge into the social media world. While building any audience is easy, it offers little value unless it’s ‘well-targeted’ and willing to engage with your business. You may be about to launch the next big-game changer campaign, but unless you have a …

There’s little doubt that Twitter ranks amongst the most powerful business tools in today’s modern-age web 2.0 world. Given the immense business potential of Twitter, it is easy for new businesses to be overwhelmed with the wealth of information and features available. Therefore, time management forms a critical aspect of the Twitter strategy for any business. While being regarded as …

Tweets are the lifeline of Twitter. Any business planning to use Twitter for business purpose needs to have an effective tweeting strategy in place. There is no doubt that Twitter has redefined how businesses spread information online. In fact, retweets is one of the most common ways by which your business gets introduced to prospect customers on Twitter. Viral tweets …

Social Media is increasingly becoming a norm rather than an exception in the business world these days. Low cost, wider reach and real-time communication are some of the most obvious business benefits of social media. There’s no doubt that social media is an immensely powerful tool for businesses. However, with power comes responsibility and social media is no exception to …

What is Twitter? Is it a micro-blogging site, a social network or a hybrid of both? Either way, how does it help from a business perspective? These are perhaps some of the most common questions that business owners tend to ask before they join the Twitter revolution. I personally believe that Twitter thrives on simplicity so it’s no rocket science …

If you’ve good intentions, it’s never too late to start afresh. I come across several successful online marketers who aspired to be social media icons but they feel they’ve missed the bus. The immense power of social media is now viewable to one and all – it’s already ranked as the most popular online activity in less than half a …