This one might surprise you, given its starchy rep:

The Salvation Army is one of the most social-media savvy nonprofits, with an established presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. The organization recruits virtual bell-ringers via Facebook and Twitter for their online red kettle program, and volunteers have to option to create a widget for their blog or connect through a Facebook app. This year, they’ve also offered a free app that lets users manage their virtual red kettle accounts from their iPhone.

The Salvation Army Facebook Page features a customized application for the Angel Giving Tree, a program presented by JCPenney that provides clothes and gifts for children and senior citizens. This year, Facebook users can participate, share their stores, and invite others to become fans of the cause on their Facebook page. And in Tulsa, the Salvation Army partnered with Social Media Tulsa to launch Tweet4Toys, a toy drive for needy children that banks on Twitter for its primary means of promotion. Participants are encouraged to use the #Tweet4Toys hashtag and to share photos, for example, a picture of a toy they’ve dropped off. The accompanying website includes a live counter that tracks Twitter mentions, and displays the profile photos of people who’ve used the hashtag to support the cause.

Read about the other three here:
via Four Charities That Rocked Social Media in 2010.

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But are they going to SM sites in the evening with work or play on their minds?

Companies almost invariably fire out their Facebook status updates during the workday. However, research from ExactTarget and CoTweet found that 65% of Facebook users do not log-in during the workday, but rather at night and on weekends. So what does this mean for marketers ? It means that you had better develop a media schedule around your posts that revolves around customers not you.

Like it or not brands are media today. This is especially true on social media sites like Facebook. It’s easy to develop a Facebook page that looks nice, the hard part is both developing engaging content to get the discussion going and keeping content fresh to ensure people come back to your page. Just because someone likes your page does not mean that they are getting your updates or coming back on a regular basis. You need to find what peaks their interests and how to get them hooked on becoming part of the community.

Read the whole story:
via Social media is 24/7 Are your posts? | Social Media Today.

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Is it a good idea to hire that bright peppy niece or nephew to keep up with your burgeoning social media empire? I think so.

Professional experience is not necessary, and not even realistic as this space is so new.” Danielle Ellis, Digital PR Evangelist, The brpr Group

“I want to see that they are already using basic tools on their own (Twitter (Twitter), Facebook (Facebook),  LinkedIn (LinkedIn), etc.),” says Ravlin, who suggests having a personal blog set up is also a good way to convince employers of your good communication skills.

Lux looks for the same thing. “We look for someone who already has a presence in social media, either active on Twitter, blogging, etc.” Although as representatives of the university, her interns also have to project a positive presence. “There are plenty of students who are active on social media but who would not be appropriate as representatives of the university,” reveals Lux.

It’s a point that people are becoming more aware of. By now we’ve all grasped that sprawled-naked-drunk pics aren’t a great idea on social sites, but taking that further, be aware that your past tweets can all be evaluated, so you have to decide a level of sensible self-censorship that won’t make you look unattractive to potential employers.

“If I can see that the applicant has been active on their social media handles, handling themselves professionally, that is a huge plus,” says Ellis.

“Basically I make sure they’ve been on the Internet (Internet) once or twice,” jokes Sexton. “And obviously I look for their knowledge of social media, especially in their personal networks. I look for that individual who ‘gets it’ or is already branding themselves and they may not even know it.”

Read the whole story here.
Via: http://mashable.com/
Thanks: Amy-Mae Elliott
St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

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Silly Rabbit, Social Media is for kids... Right? Wrong-- The kids are all texting and having lives. The real growth is geezer growth, and us geezer's are still running a huge segment of the economy! What kind of opportunities for Social media marketing to the mature demographic do you see here?

October 11, 2010 1:03 PM
Internet users 65 and older are the fastest growing group on Facebook. Katie Couric comments that while 18-to-29-year-olds are still the heaviest users, many older Americans are now catching up.

Watch CBS News Video:
Read the whole story here.
Via: http://www.socialmediamonitoring.com/
Thanks: Social Media Monitoring Staff
St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

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Here are 3 methods you can use to get your clients and browsers to happily do your work for you, the work of spreading your message and good reputation. And, knowing people whom you do not, they can probably do a better job than you can, too. I'll bet you haven't given much thought to at least two of tactics in the article from which I excerpted the following teaser:

The Easiest Win: Sharing

By far the easiest way to attract some kind of social interaction to your SEO campaign is to allow people to share content that you publish on your website with their friends, and on their websites or social feeds. Sites such as Digg are great for sharing cool little infographics (more on this below), while Delicious and other bookmarking services still pass on link juice from their pages. Being bookmarked on one of these sites can be a very valuable backlink to any given piece of content you publish.

If you use WordPress to publish content, the job of integrating content-sharing functionality into your site is made easier. Simply installing one of the following plugins will give users a whole range of options for syndicating links that lead back to your pages:

• ShareThis: A plugin that’s compact and not too ostentatious. This can be handy when dealing with developers who dislike adding too much to pages!
• Sociable: This is a great plugin by the guys at Yoast, with a very slick design. It includes all of the major social media sites.
• AddToAny: This plugin helps users to share, save, and read your pages on any service. It’s a nice customizable application with lots of funky little options.

Read the whole story here.
Via: http://articles.sitepoint.com/
Thanks: Kristen Holden

St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

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And you get out of it what you put in. I think of social media for small business as the Big Kiwanis/Rotary Club In the Cloud, where electronic glad-handing and networking never ceases.

Don’t trust anyone who says they’ll reveal the “secrets of social media.” There are no secrets of social media. As someone who’s seen the bubble of the early web and new media business burst, I’m feeling a sense of deja vu.

There are people who make a good living off hype and the naivete of others. They see a short window of time when people are still in learning mode or “behind the curve,” and they swoop in with shiny promises bathed in snake oil, take as much money as they can get, then run.

The rest of us are left here in their greedy and destructive wake to pick up the pieces and, worse, to deal with the disillusionment of people who’ve been burned by a con artist claiming to know the “secrets” of social media that will make everyone rich.

We’ve been here before. Some new technological developments (the web, for instance) have had a major impact on how we communicated and did business. Unfortunately, everyone treated these technical advances as the silver bullet, the cure-all magic potion, the most important thing we must all now embrace lest we get left behind and suffer in a life of failure.

Read the whole story here.
Via:  http://gigaom.com/
Thanks: Aliza Sherman
St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

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Sorry to break this to you, but you must be involved and thoughtful about your social media marketing efforts, or your efforts will be wasted.

There’s more to participating in social media than getting an official account on a social network. If you treat social media like any other advertisement, you’ll get traffic, but you’ll never get the die-hard fanatics that can really drive your brand.

Read the whole story here.
Via: http://theantisocialmedia.com/
Thanks: Jay Dolan.
St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

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And it is not why you might think. Apart from the SEO advantages, writing has intrinsic values that you may not have considered. Here are two of the nine reasons presented in the excerpted article:

You Will Establish Domain Expertise
Every person is an expert in their own right at something. It might be user interface design, coding, leadership, raising money, investing, etc. By writing you get a chance to establish that domain expertise by sharing it with the world. Don't worry about people stealing your secret sauce either. Famous chefs share their secrets and hints all the time without fear that it will cause their demise.

It Helps Build Dedication
Writing on a regular schedule takes a lot of discipline, just like going to the gym or practicing a new martial art. Nothing happens overnight, including building an audience and becoming a good writer. Like most things in life, writing takes time and strong dedication. Unwavering dedication is a valuable skill in startups that many seem to forget. If you keep yourself dedicated to writing on a consistent schedule, those important values will carry over to other facets of life including startups.

Read the whole story here.
Via: http://onstartups.com/
Thanks: Jason Baptiste
St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

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Or, more to the point-- Forget SEO schemes and formulae and follow the rules. And the most important rule is-- Content Is King, and fresh original, useful content is Emperor Of The Universe. So to speak. John O’Nolan speaks truth to Black Hat and White Hat SEOs alike.

Search engines are designed to rank the best and most relevant sites highly. Again: The best, and most relevant sites. Not the “most optimized sites”.

A remarkable amount “Pro SEO Strategies for better rankings” actually coincide with what a good web developer would tell you to do in order to have a good website. Using proper heading tags, creating simple and well structured links to navigate through your site, ensuring that relevant content is well presented and has related content easily available, creating content on your site which other people will want to link to and talk about.

If you want to have a site which performs well in search engines then you need to stop worrying about search engines and start worrying about creating a really great website. Code your site properly, make it accessible, make it usable, make sure it has fantastic content, make sure you have great marketing that has other people talking about it. All of these things contribute to the factors which search engines use to rank your site.

Read the whole article here.
VIA: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/
Thanks: John O’Nolan

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The Evolution of Social Media's Role at AirSafe.com

Click here to view the embedded video.