This Week: 9 Helpful Social Media Resources for Business

by Don Power - Jan. 29, 2012 at 8:00 am

This week on Sprout Social Insights we tackled guides for Facebook, Twitter, and small business to help you better reach your customers with the social media tools that make a difference.

Check out our articles below to find out more about each one and how they can help you with your social media goals.

And check in every day to Sprout Social Insights for more how to guides and breaking social media news.

4 Creative Ways Realtors Use Twitter

Have you ever tweeted with or followed any realtors on Twitter? If you have, you may have noticed the tendency for many realtors to include house listings in their tweets.

While links to specific listings might be helpful to a small percentage of a realtor’s target audience for those specific properties, it’s probably not the best way to engage a wider audience and build a sense of community with prospective clients.

So what’s a realtor to do? Here are four examples of realtors that are using Twitter creatively to engage their audiences and to use Twitter as more than just a listings engine. If you’re in the real estate industry, use these examples as inspiration as to how you might use Twitter more creatively to market your properties and yourself. [ Read More... ]

How to Use Sprout Social to Track Past Interactions With Tweeters

This week we’ll show you how to use Sprout Social’s “History” feature to quickly find past interactions you’ve had with specific Twitter members.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re trying to find a specific conversation that you’ve had with someone in the past on Twitter but when you check your Twitter Mentions, there are just too many tweets to wade through to find the conversation you’re looking for. This is one of the best use cases for the powerful “History” function found in the Sprout Social social media management application. This article shows you to use the History feature and why it’s such a useful tool to help build engagement with your Twitter followers. [ Read More... ]

How to Hire an iPhone App Developer

Not all developers are created equally. As the number of mobile devices in use expands, the skill sets of application developers can vary from device to device and from project to project.

It’s also important to note that not all apps are created equally either, even when you’re hiring someone with specific experience in iPhone app development. It all boils down to the type of app you want to produce.

Before posting that job, figure out the type of app you’re making and the skills you’ll need from the developer. A little forethought will make it that much easier to craft the job description for your ideal iPhone app developer. [ Read More... ]

How to Create a Pinterest Account

Do you have a pinboard in your office? It can be a great place to pin pictures from your latest vacation, or your favorite product shots from the latest gadget magazine. The trouble is, your pinboard can only be seen by you — where’s the fun in that? Enter Pinterest, an online pinboard that, according to its website, allows you to “organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.”

Why would you use a virtual pinboard? Well, there’s the obvious reasons, like collecting images in one place to help you plan a wedding, an event, a home renovation and so on. However, it’s the social sharing component of Pinterest that makes this growing network interesting for businesses, is the

There are some great potential opportunities in having your business represented on a visually based platform currently generating over 400 million page views per month! We’ll cover some business benefits and strategies of using Pinterest later, but for now, here’s how to set up a Pinterest account and get started on this increasingly popular social network. [ Read More... ]

Why Social Media Content Planning Is Vital

Mike is the owner of The Social Penguin Blog, a popular and well-respected social media blog based in the UK. During the day, he can be found delivering social media and digital marketing strategies for multi-national brands in his role at The BIG Partnership, one of the UK’s largest communications firms.

“Content is king” is a social media cliché if there ever was one. Cliché aside, the importance of creating engaging, useful and dynamic content should never be overlooked. It’s the lifeblood of your social media program and may well be the reason that a consumer first decides to interact with you.

Many businesses will fall at the first hurdle, but what is the key factor that trips them up? Purely and simply, it’s a lack of content planning. [ Read More... ]

10 Creative Ways Realtors Use LinkedIn

According to Quantcast, 64 percent of the U.S. members of LinkedIn make above $60,000 per year. That equates to roughly 35 million high-income members in the U.S.alone!

Given its demographic skew towards affluent professionals, LinkedIn is a great place for commercial real estate agents to connect with a very valuable target audience. However, professionals buy and sell their own houses and properties too. That means LinkedIn is also a great tool for residential real estate professionals to build relationships that lead to sales.

Of course, some realtors are better at leveraging LinkedIn to grow their businesses than others. Here are 10 creative ways realtors use LinkedIn to get better results from their efforts. [ Read More... ]

How to Put a Google+ Badge on Your Website

If you’re in business, chances are you have a website. But do you also have a Google+ Page? If so, did you know that there’s now a way to leverage the traffic from your website to gain instant exposure to your business Page on Google+?

What was once restricted to a small test group, Google has now opened up to the public, namely its Google+ Badge for websites. When you insert the Google+ Badge on your website or blog, readers can not only share your website content on Google+ and give your content a +1 endorsement — they can also add your Google+ Page to their Google+ circles right from your website.

We’ll walk you through the steps of putting a Google+ Badge on your website. Use the existing familiarity, trust, and relationship you’ve built with your website visitors to kick-start your brand engagement on Google+ as well. [ Read More... ]

How to Integrate Instagram into Your Social Strategy

By now you’ve probably realized that Twitter and Facebook are popular choices for social media outreach. However, non-traditional platforms are proving to be just as valuable, which is why marketers should consider adding Instagram to their lists.

Instagram is a photo-sharing app that allows you to snap a picture — or upload one from your phone’s library — apply one of 16 different filters, and share it through the service or through social networks. Currently it’s only available for iPhone, but the company is working on an Android app.

This article focuses on the different ways you can integrate Instagram into your social media or marketing strategies. [ Read More... ]