Neal Schaffer
5 Tips for Winning with Influencer Marketing
For small and even medium-sized businesses the use of social media influencers is still a relatively new area of marketing. Most smaller brands don’t even use influencers to their advantage, because they believe that it’s too expensive or likely to be ineffective. Yet nothing...
5 Strategic Tips for Creating a Killer LinkedIn Company Page
Due to the professional demographic of LinkedIn, it's only a matter of time before more businesses leverage the professional opportunities available by searching for products and services through LinkedIn Company Pages. It is in every business owner's best interest to ensure that his...
Raising Your Content Curation to the Next Level
As companies become media publishers as part of their social media marketing strategy, one topic that always confuses my clients is the topic of content curation, or sourcing information from 3rd party sources and then sharing them on your social media properties. Windmill...
How to Skyrocket Customer Engagement via Google+ Brand Pages
When it was launched last year, Google+ set out to be part of the burgeoning social networking space already dominated by Facebook and Twitter. While admittedly it has been a slow climb for the newest social network, things appear to be changing with the...
Does Your Website Have Too Much Social Media Scenery?
If you haven't noticed this website underwent a facelift sometime ago. Like most others who blog or work in social media, putting a default "Follow Me!" widget with our social media icons or even Facebook and Twitter widgets showing our latest tweets or posts...
Social Media Event Marketing – 6 Things to Do Before Your Event
I had a chance to speak at the recent PCMA annual convention on a panel covering the topic of utilizing fresh new digital media ideas for traditional event marketing. Social media can be a powerful way to promote your event beforehand, while in progress,...
Pinterest and Facebook: A Foreseeable Rivalry for Retailers?
There are so many social media networks online that you'd think that you've seen them all. Google Plus created a major disruption when it was introduced last year. And now here comes Pinterest. After reading my recent post on Getting Started...
Getting Started with Pinterest
Social bookmarking is coming back in a big way, thanks to the popularity of Pinterest (pronounced to rhyme with "interest"). Dubbed as a "virtual pinboard," it lets you organize and share photos of the many products, places, and things you find interesting online. You...
Understanding the Difference between LinkedIn Company Pages and Facebook Fan Pages
LinkedIn Company Pages are actually a combination of a number of different modules that are rarely maximized by businesses. In order to better understand how your sales and marketing team can best maximize this multi-functional part of LinkedIn, it's important to understand exactly...
Social Media 101 for Professional Associations
I frequently get invited to speak on social media for professional associations, and when I do it often seems as if the clocks in the room have been turned back 10 years since before the advent of social media. Although there are always...
The Changing Social Business Landscape in 2012: Is Your Business Ready?
In the last few months of 2011 through the beginning of 2012, the social business landscape has proven to be as dynamically changing as ever. If your business thought you were all caught up because you were beginning to see engagement on your...
How Does Your Brand Experience Translate in Social Media?
According to Wikipedia, who quote the American Marketing Association, the definition of a brand is a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers." A good brand, however, does more...
The Top 20 Twitter Clients being Used in 2012
I recently changed my main Twitter client (more information on that below) and decided to create a new LinkedIn Poll for Groups in my Social Media Strategies for Business LinkedIn Group to find out what others use. I asked my 2,500 group members: What...
Why Branch Out Instead Of Linking In?
While LinkedIn is at present the most popular social media network for professionals with approximately 135 million users, Facebook's base of 800 million users seems to offer some potential competition for professional networking. There are already several networking-related applications on Facebook, but none seem...
Expand Your Business Quickly Through These StumbleUpon Marketing Strategies (with Infographic)
For those of you who still don't "get" StumbleUpon, let me put it to you simply: I have become a new customer on multiple occasions different companies simply because I stumbled into them on SU. So, if you haven't heard of StumbleUpon, you could...
5 Steps To Connect With People Outside Your Network On LinkedIn
Once you move beyond the generic "add connections" option that LinkedIn has, you might want to specifically search for and increase your connections with people aligned with whatever connection policy you might have. The challenge is that restrictions exist within LinkedIn that may...
Top 10 Social Media Blogs to Follow in 2012
Social media has gone from being a pastime to a necessary component of any brand and business. To build up your stockpile of social media knowledge, you need to stay informed of the latest news and trends by reading the best blogs in the...
Google+: The Time is Now for Your Business
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past several months, you're undoubtedly familiar with Google+ and have hopefully opened an account on the newest social media platform. Even after trying out its interface, do you still find yourself asking what exactly...
10 Incredibly Simple Ways to Maximize Your LinkedIn Profile for Inbound Marketing
Your LinkedIn profile is the public-facing summary of who you are, what you represent, what your professional history is, and your area of expertise. In essence, your profile is a snapshot of the brand you are sharing with the entire world. It's only...
The 14 Best WordPress Plugins for Social Media and SEO Optimized Sites for 2012
The New Year is a great time to either start a brand new blog or revamp your exiting website. One of the ways to improve your blog in 2012 is by using plugins that make it more social media optimized and SEO friendly. Having the...