Showing posts with label Flickr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flickr. Show all posts

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Marketing Your Business With Instagram

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 09:  In this photo illust...
NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 09: In this photo illustration, the photo-sharing app Instagram fan page is seen on the Facebook website on the Apple Safari web browser on April 9, 2012 in New York City. Facebook Inc. is acquiring photo-sharing app Instagram for approx. $1 billion. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

While there is no capacity to allow links to various resources through the photographs, there is the option however to utilize hash tags in the comments section in an effort to further categorize any company specific photographs. These tags are extremely beneficial, as organizations have utilized them in marketing efforts to conduct sweepstakes and promotions involving users of this application. Many of these hash tag marketing efforts have gone viral and seen a tremendous uptick in user engagement and further brand communication. Since its inception, Instagram has continued to captivate millions of users and even been purchased by social media giant Facebook. In addition to its numerous features the service also has seen the birth of various spin-off services that allow users to turn their favorite Instagram photos into postcards stickers and even magnets.

The instantaneous effect and the unique set of editing features within this application really sets it apart from the rest. As such we have seen this social network skyrocket in popularity and various brands and corporations jump on this platform as a means of further interacting with their customer base. From a marketing standpoint, businesses now have another viable mechanism to promote their products and services while getting instant feedback from customers. Some organizations may see this as a more premature opportunity as they may primarily focus on more traditional avenues such as Facebook and twitter. The beauty of these social media applications in addition to some of the more prevalent Web 2.0 properties is their ability to cross-link with one another. By generating content for Instagram, companies also have a great benefit to their marketing campaigns as they can automatically set their uploads to be distributed to services such as Facebook twitter and even Flickr and e-mail. These integrated features are a terrific timesaver, as marketers do not necessarily have to visit each one of these sites individually to distribute this picture communication.

For businesses looking to utilize this social media application in their marketing campaigns is important for them to understand the effective use of hash tag keywords and the importance of consistency. While there are some resources available online today that will allow an organization to automate the posting process, having human interaction between this service and the content will be the best bet for any organization seeking to further interact with its customer base. On the Internet today customers and users want to interact with the real human being and not necessarily an automated system. Instagram represents another breakthrough in this fast growing and exciting social media landscape. The businesses that understand the marketing potential that services like this represent will be the ones who truly benefit from a greater return on investment.


Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/7270192

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Sunday, September 16, 2012

Blogging via Zemanta Social Plugin

Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

I discovered Zemanta a year or so ago, and it makes life that bit easier for the beginner to intermediate blogger. When you are writing a blog, you have other things to think about aside from the actual words. Sometimes you need good images, other times you need to quote from another blog and sometimes you will need to add references or links to explain uncommon terms.

Adding an Image - When you add an image from elsewhere on the internet, it's probably subject to copyright and needs certain things even if you have permission to use it - like accreditation and or a link back to the owner. When Zemanta is downloaded, in the right hand side tool bar will be thumbnail suggestions of suitable images. Right now it's showing me the firefox logo as a suitable match to the text I have typed so far. If you have a Flickr account, then you can add images from that when you set it up.

In text links. Underneath the text box as I type is a list of suggestions that may need explaining, so far thumbnail, copyright, Zemanta, and Firefox are all appearing.

Tags - When I have finished typing I can move back to the right hand side toolbar and have a look and see what tags it suggests for the post, if I like them then I only have to click on them and they will be added.

Related articles - if you don't use a plugin on Wordpress for related links, or use another blogging platform, then Zemanta will also suggest related articles that you can add yourself. If you click my sources, you can suggest where to get related links from. It can be other blogs you own, or blogs you like by your favourite authors. Again it's all in the right hand tool bar. It allows you to link to other blogs with ease and in time, your blogs will be added and people will link to your content if they like it - it can be a good traffic builder.

At the end of every blog post you will see a little orange icon, saying get Zemified (or similar). If you click this it will allow you to take parts of this post and link back to it, in other words it makes things very easy to quote extracts from this blog and any others you find with the little orange icon.

The last nifty little trick Zemanta has up it's sleeve is very useful to those that monetise their blogs, it allows you to add your Amazon Associates ID. Then if you write book reviews or movie reviews, then it will add to the list of in text links the most suitable Amazon links for you to use. It has the default for it's own amazon account, so if you are planning to use this you will need to add your own details as soon as you can.

Hope you find Zemanta useful, I certainly do. I started just using images, and the refining tool to search for specific images and have gradually used it more and more.

When you install Zemanta as a browser extension, it will automatically load on any blogging platform.
Currently supported platforms include: WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, TypePad, Posterous, Movable Type, Drupal. Also, be sure to know that it's only installed in the browser you are using (it will not appear on your other browsers/computers.)


Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/3507353

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