Nov 21

Politics, Meet Social Media

by Bethaney Wallace

Screen shot 2011 11 21 at 3.42.03 PM 300x152 Politics, Meet Social MediaIf you’re anything like me, you could really give a crap less about the upcoming presidential race. Yes I vote, but it’s still a year away; I’m not spending my free time looking up potential candidates or what celebrity will run for office this year (Roseanne Barr). I’ll wait until they’ve debated and fingernail scratched their way to the top of their respective parties’ bids. But, in light of a website I recently found, one that integrates politics with social media, I thought it’d be worth giving politics another look.

The website, OhMyGov.com, is dedicated to monitoring presidential candidates’ social media profiles. With a simple search I can find that Mitt Romney has more than one million followers on Facebook, and that Michele Bachmann is losing more followers by the week than Rick Perry is bringing in. And then there’s Roseanne, who seems to be stuck in the decade when her self-named sitcom was popular, as she has yet to join the cult which is Facebook. Twitter, however, she’s made an attempt at with more than 82,000 followers – a far cry from the number one presidential candidate in Twitter fans, Newt Gingrich, who has pulled in over one million.

On this politics/social media aggregation site, senators, governors, states, and federal agencies are up for evaluation as well (out of the large industries, the Navy has the most social media fans, while their supplier (NAVSUP) has the least.) But the site doesn’t stop there. A user can also see how many news mentions a category or candidate has gotten per week, also showing the difference and the percentage change.

As far as aggregates go, this one is fully equipped and leaves little to be left for debate (for those interested politics that is). Whether or not they know the site exists, office runners have an inside look at the competition’s social media activity … without having to do the legwork themselves. While the rest of us are checking Google on a regular basis, Oh My Gov has taken months of data and tied it together with a sparkly, immaculate bow. Ans while its efforts probably won’t get me excited about politics any time soon, it has kept me checking in each week to see who is winning the most exciting race of all: the race in social media.

 

Screen shot taken Nov. 21, 2011.

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Nov 17

An Easy Guide to PPC Traffic Remarketing

sale thumb An Easy Guide to PPC Traffic RemarketingPPC campaigns can be big traffic drivers to a website; however, what makes that eventual click into a conversion is making sure that the content on the website is targeted to the user. This means that whatever the user was looking for when they clicked to a website, the content and information needs to be there. Having relevant information increases trust in a website and can increase user loyalty (e.g. unique return traffic and page views). For instance, if an ad is offering Free Shipping, then users expect to get free shipping once they click into the website.

However, even though users may find exactly what the PPC ad promised, it doesn’t mean that they are guaranteed to complete a sale. For whatever reason, they may leave the website without completing the final conversion step (whether that is purchasing a product, filling out a contact form, or signing up for an email newsletter). This is why company marketers need to set up a remarketing strategy, especially when it comes to PPC. The great thing about PPC is that many programs allow for additional tracking and remarketing opportunities, such as ads on websites hosting Google Network ads from companies whose websites the user has visited in the past. These banner and image ads are based on cookies via the Google Search Network or via other portals and attempt to drive previous traffic back to a company’s website, completing the conversion and bringing it all full-circle.

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Nov 09

GIVEAWAY and REVIEW: Kingston DataTraveler urDrive Software

KingstonLogoSmall GIVEAWAY and REVIEW: Kingston DataTraveler urDrive Software

Thank you to Kingston for sponsoring this review. Please click here to learn more about Kingston. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own. –Kelsey

Kingston was kind enough to send me an 8gb DataTraveler pre-loaded with the urDrive software to review. They are also giving an USB gift pack to one lucky Social Robot reader! Read the review and then scroll down to get the details on how to enter to win!

urDrive Image thumb GIVEAWAY and REVIEW: Kingston DataTraveler urDrive SoftwareThe UrDrive software is pre-loaded software that works on PCs. According to Kingston, “The urDrive is a free, pre-loaded application for organizing and exploring apps, games, and music. It transforms Kingston USB drives into active storage devices– rather than the ‘old school’ device used only to store and transfer data.”

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Nov 08

5 Easy Ways to Keep Your Blog Full of Fresh Content

Guest Post by Frank Anderson

Readers regularly go to and bookmark blogs that consistently deliver fresh content. So, the conclusion is pretty simple: Blogs that provide quality content on a consistent basis are most likely to enjoy the greatest success.

But, consistently providing fresh, informative content is probably one of the biggest challenges you as a blogger will face, especially if you publish posts daily or even several times a week. Keeping your readers interested and your content current are both possible if you’re willing to put in the work.

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Nov 07

Using Twitter as a Press Release Outlet

3213679186 4678fd1bfc 202x300 Using Twitter as a Press Release Outletby Bethaney Wallace

Earlier this year, after logging into my Twitter account, I learned that Bin Laden had been killed. It was the highest-trending topic of the week. Just days ago I learned, yet again through Twitter, that Kim Kardashian was getting divorced. (Another No. 1 trend.) Both pieces of information were taking with a grain of salt, but they got my attention – enough so that I did some internet research for proof. And as any Washington, D.C. citizen would say, both were true facts. Twitter has outgrown its initial purpose of “What are you doing?” and grown into a much larger pair of shoes: acting as the future of the press release.

Have strangers’ hasty tweets also lead me to question whether or not Justin Bieber was starring in the debut season of Teen Dad? Or whether or not Katy Perry’s account was ran by an anti-marketing communist? Absolutely; it comes with the nature of the site. It’s not only news breaking nuggets that have been made via twitter, it’s in-the-moment statements as well. It’s also why Twitter has more than 175 million users. (How many of those users would sign up for a press release-only site? I’m guessing not many.) But despite any alleged content, Twitter has the ability to release and spread information faster than any other market.

Last week on Halloween, Jessica Simpson told the world she is expecting by tweeting a picture of herself as a very pregnant mummy. Of course, the internet isn’t the only way to spread the news. There’s still the old fashioned interview, whether it be on a talk show, in a magazine, or over the air waves – Jenna Fischer announced she was having a baby boy on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. And if you’re Beyonce, you announce a pregnancy by showing up to the VMAs while clutching your baby-filled belly for the cameras.

Will the future be press release-less?

For those of you in the sharing information field, you know what a watching-water-boil process receiving a press release can be. Press releases are meant to spread info on a wide basis. And because it comes from the source the news is about, you only hear what they want you to hear and when they want you to hear it. In my days as a college paper’s news editor, I would spend hours checking email for any new messages. There may have been a robbery on campus, or a wreck 20 feet away from the building I was working in, but until there was a press release, I couldn’t share a word. Police officers and dispatchers alike are trained to give the same “You’ll have to wait for the sergeant’s statement.”

However, with the ease of information sharing, it’s only a matter of time before celebrities aren’t the only one using Twitter for their press release needs; the rest of the world will be doing it as well. Whether hard-hitting or mundane, the use of online announcements allow for more internet hits, traffic, and user interaction. And because Twitter is one of the only social media sites to verify high-profile accounts, as far as the internet goes, it just may be the most reliable source of instant information.

This photo courtesy of Flickr.

 

 

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