So I have covered the top social media sites for businesses to use to connect with their audience, but what about Instagram? Should businesses create an Instagram account as well?

Let me tell you more about Instagram. It is an online social networking service that allows its users to share photos and fifteen second videos with their followers, as well as edit their photographs with digital filters and include a caption of 140 characters. Followers can like and comment on uploaded photos and videos. Once a photo is uploaded, the user can easily share is on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. Instagram was launched in October 2010 by creators Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The app is downloadable on Iphones, Ipads, Ipad touches and Android camera phones.

With more information on what Instagram is, do you think is would be a worthwhile tool for businesses? I believe that it would be a helpful device for some businesses but not all. It depends on two key factors.

First, it depends on the demographic that the company is focusing on. The majority of users of Instagram are of a younger generation, I believe. Ages ten to thirty years old. The expression “selfie” emerged from the creation of Instagram. The most popular posts by individuals are of selfies, food, fashion, scenery and inspirational quotes.

These types of posts bring me to my second key factor. Businesses should only create an instagram account if they believe that they can post photos and videos that would be beneficial to their brand. If they can’t, do waste you energy on Instagram and put the effort towards the main social media sites that will benefit your brand and customer interaction. Universities can upload photos of campus activities, retail companies can post their products, design companies can post their portfolios and finished products, and so on. But companies that provide a service or sell something like commercial appliances should not use Instagram. the majority of Instagram users will not be interested in following your brand.

The moral of the two key factors is to think about your focused demographic and is Instagram is actual worth the energy. If your company does decide to pursue a Instagram account, know that a post at least everyday if not multiple times a day is necessary. Check out Instagram today to see if it is worthwhile for your brand!

Any brand company most likely has issues balancing all of their social media networks. You have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.  Ryan Holmes, the creator of HootSuite, was having that exact problem while working for a digital service agency called Invoke Media. So in 2008 he and his fellow co-workers created HootSuite.

It is an online social media management system specifically for brand management. The services it provides is to manage online brands and allows them to submit messages to various social media services including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, FourSquare, MySpace, and many others. It is a free service for the most part, it does require customers to pay for additional features beyond basic services. A few well known companies out there that use this  service are Facebook, HBO, SXSW, Martha Stewart Media, Zappos, The Gap, The Obama Administration, and Virgin Group.

My favorite feature that HootSuite offers is it allows companies to write tweets and Facebook posts well in advance and set the date and time of when HootSuite should tweet or post it. It makes things very efficient for a brand.

HootSuite, although the first social media management system, is not the only one anymore. Their largest competitor is TweetDeck. There is also Oktopost, which provides social media marketing platforms designed for B2B platforms.

So if you are frustrated with managing all of your companies various social media sites, make it simple and efficient for yourself by signing up for one of these multiple social media management sites.

I recently created a LinkedIn profile. As a soon to be graduate I decided it was about time I connected with people in the real world. I have become obsessed with checking my LinkedIn, I even downloaded the LinkedIn app on my phone to make it easier.

LinkedIn is a business oriented social media site and is mainly used for professional networking – hence why it was important for a soon to be graduate to create a profile. But how can LinkedIn help someone who already has a job or their own business?

As of 2013, LinkedIn has more than 259 million followers in over 200 countries and territories. Since it is strictly a business oriented social media site, LinkedIn is great for finding and creating business opportunities with people all around the world. Users can follow their favorite companies or companies they are interested in and get updates on new joining and updates. Employees can list job openings and search for potential candidates.

This social media site differs from Facebook and Twitter and other sites because of the fact it is very business oriented. People who have a LinkedIn profile connect with you to see how they can be apart or further your career, not to know how your day to day personal life is going. Twitter and Facebook are great for campaigns for the public to get involved in and to make a brand for yourself. LinkedIn is more for the people behind the scenes and gives you and your company the chance to network with professionals who could potentially further your business.

Some fun facts about LinkedIn are; the site is available in 20 languages including English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Korean, Maley, Indonesian, Danish, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, and Tagalog. LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California but has offices in Omaha, Chicago, New York City, London and Dubai.

Every professional needs to have a LinkedIn in order to stay connected in the business world. Remember, LinkedIn is strictly a business oriented social media site.

Social media has become the perfect place for the public to express their negativity about a specific company. And these expressions of negativity do not always stay silent, they can become viral which could turn into trending. We do not want this to happen… or do we? I am going to give you a couple examples of companies getting negativity through social media and you tell me if they handled it well or if you would’ve managed it differently.

Example one: UNITED AIRLINES. Canadian musician Dave Carroll and his band Sons of Maxwell were flying United Airlines in 2008. They had a layover in the Chicago O’Hare Airport where Carroll overheard a fellow passenger say that she had seen luggage handlers on the airport tarmac throwing guitar around carelessly. When he and his bandmates arrived to their destination in Omaha, Nebraska he was saddened to discover his $3,500 Taylor guitar was severely damaged while in United Airlines custody. He reached out to several Untied Airlines employees and filed a claim with in order to get compensation for his damaged guitar. They informed with, though, that he had failed to make the claim within the “standard 24-hour timeframe” and was now ineligible for any compensation. Carroll battled it out with United for 9 months with no change, so this led to Carroll and the Sons of Maxwell to write a negative song towards United Airlines and post it on YouTube in July 2009. The song was an overnight success for Carroll and a public relations nightmare for United. It racked up 150,000 views in one day, and three days later that number rose to over half a million views! The media started reporting the story and United’s stock price fell. United Airlines was now prompted to right their wrong. They offered to buy Carroll a new guitar, but he responded that it’s too late and to donate one to charity. United $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk institute of jazz as a “gesture of goodwill”. What are ya’lls thoughts on how United Airlines handled this situation?

Example two: KENNETH COLE. On December 10, 2010, the Arab Spring began. Arab Spring is term used for the revolutionary wave of demonstrations, riots, protests and civil war in the Arab world. In the midst of it all, Kenneth Cole tweeted “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.” This went viral instantly with a surge of negativity and backlash. It’s a known fact that Kenneth Cole tweets directly himself. He does not have an employee do it. Do you think he knew that this tweet would get a rise out of his followers and that was his plan to publicity or no? The company apologized by tweeting, “We weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historical moment.” I don’t see an “I’m sorry” in that apology though. What is y’alls thoughts on this?

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. Follow me on twitter at kelseymohn.

Facebook is the world’s leading social media site. It has more than 300 million users. Facebook is a great tool for businesses because it makes your business discoverable, connected, timely, and insightful. Let me elaborate. Discoverable means that when people search for you on Facebook, they’ll be able to find you. Connected means your customers are able to send your company messages for one-on-one conversations, read your posts and share them with their friends. Timely means that your company is able to reach a large number of people and customers in an efficient manner. This is very helpful during a crisis situation. And insightful means that by having a Facebook, you’re able to track the target market that is interested in your product or business, which is helpful in coming up with marketing strategies.

Now that you are aware of the benefits that Facebook brings your company, here’s the steps to take in order to start a successful Facebook page.

1. Set up your page. It’s as simple as that. Go to Facebook.com and right on that page you are able to set up an account for free. Remember that this page is a representation of your business, so make sure it is professional looking. Your business’ logo should be the Profile Picture, and to humanize your Facebook page add a company employee picture as the Cover Photo.

2. Create an audience. Everyone that works for your company should like you page, and that will start the word of mouth to other customers to like your company’s page. Your employees can also send invitations to their friends to like your company’s page. Other ways to build a following are to put a link on your company’s website, write it in press releases, e-mails, on the company’s product’s packaging to like your page on Facebook. Remember though, it’s not about the number of likes your page gets, it’s more about reaching the company’s loyal customers because they are the one’s that are going to engage with your Facebook the most and help tell your story.

3. Generate compelling content. How will you connect with your now established audience. You want to always have something new on your Facebook page to keep your customer coming back. At first, experiment with various types of posts, such as uploading photos, useful links or relevant articles. Once you figure out what posts are getting the most engagements, replicate them. Do what works and give the audience what they want. You can also build off popular posts to keep the audience engaged. When your followers like, comment or share your company’s post, their other Facebook followers will be able to see those posts in their News Feed. Remember though to keep the information you upload on your Facebook page relevant to your business or product and that it is interesting and valuable to your customers.

https://www.facebook.com/

The above URL link is to the Facebook Homepage, click on it and start setting up your business’ page today! Also, don’t be afraid to use this blog post as one of your first Facebook posts, if it’s relevant.

My last couple of blog posts have been about how to use twitter, so I’ve decided to make this post on what to tweet about once your company has set up an account. You should’ve already made an account with a username that represents your company’s brand name well and is easy for customers to find when searching for you. After that you’re ready to start tweeting and connecting with your customers. So what should you be tweeting about? Here are 5 keys things to remember when tweeting:

1. Businesses should want to make their tweets a two-way conversation, a tweet that their followers can re-tweet or respond to. Use twitter as a customer service tool and respond to tweets that unsatisfied or frustrated customers post. You can do this by having an employee or several employees monitoring people tweets about your business.

2. Link articles that are related to your business for your followers to read. The articles should be of interest to your target audience. This keeps the interest of your followers and keeps them coming back to your Twitter page for more information.

3. Make sure you celebrate your companies accomplishments. This helps your business build a credibility with their followers. Be careful with these types of tweets, though.  No one likes that friend that is constantly only talking about themselves. Keep the celebration to a minimum but definitely let it be known when your company has done good.

4. Promote your favorite charity. Remember that Twitter is a SOCIAL media site. So make sure your company is being just that. When your company has donated their money or time to a local charity, spread that information to your followers. Show them how they can become involved as well. If your business isn’t involved with  charity yet, choose one and help promote with re-tweets and responses.

5. Reward the customers that follow you on twitter. Create Twitter-only promotions or discounts. By giving discounts or other benefits to your Twitter followers, you give them a reason to follow you and could potentially spread the word to other friends. Soon you will have a large, captive audience for other business messaging.

These are just five of the many ways to connect with your followers on Twitter. Use one or use them all, just remember that the number one most important rule for businesses using Twitter is to be tweeting consistently. Your business should be tweeting at least three times a day. Follow me on Twitter @kelseymohn

Hashtags are important for beginner Twitter users to learn because you will find them in just about every tweet you read. Hashtags were created to make it easy for people to find tweets on a specific topic. For example, if you were to search the #Superbowl, you would find a list of tweets related to the Superbowl – which it’s a week later and people are still tweeting about it.

So who starts these hashtags one might wonder. Hashtags can be created and started by any plain jane. For example, when flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River a few years back, a random Twitter user wrote a post and added #flight1549. One of his Twitter followers saw this and wrote a post with #flight1549 added as well, and it escalated from there. Anyone can search #flight1549 and find everything that was written and said about the event.

The most common time or way a hashtag is used is during breaking news (like #OsamasDead in 2011) or to promote or praise a brand, person or event. To find the most trending topics (hashtags), go to your twitter page and on the lower left hand side will be a list. As of right now the top three trending hashtags are #FOMOS, #RHOA and #TheWalkingDeadMarathon.

Hope this helps you understand hashtags a little more and you can start joining in on all the fun. Follow me on Twitter @kelseymohn.

Remember in college when Professors would give you the assignment to read an article and then sum it up slash express your opinion in only 150 words? You had to get creative. Well Twitter is the professor and and your tweets are those 150 word assignments, but instead of 150 words you get 140 characters (one letter or one space equals one character).You have to get creative.

Twitter started out as a social network. It is a way to socialize and communicate with friends. You can use your twitter account to tell your friends what you are doing, share websites you find interesting, post photos you take throughout the day. Here is an example of one of my tweets:

Eggs, almonds, and a 6 pack of cream soda… I'm totally getting a hang of this grocery shopping thing! #biggirl

— kelseymohn (@kelseymohn) September 3, 2012

One of the primary purposes for businesses to create a twitter account, though, is to network online. By embedding links and using hashtags in your tweets it allows businesses, and people trying to promote themselves or a cause, to increase traffic to their website, blog, etc. The re-tweet button allows a business’ special promotions and deals to be seen by millions within a small time frame. Let me elaborate. A business, such as Southwest Airlines, tweets a promotion of a chance to win free round trip tickets to Las Vegas if you simply re-tweet and go to the website (that’s embedded in the tweet) to enter. Then Southwest Airline followers will see this, re-tweet it so all there friends will see it, and those friends that see it will re-tweet so more of their friends will see it and soon enough a million people have seen the promotion and gone to the Southwest Airline’s website. It’s so easy to increase your business or cause’s exposure with Twitter, if used correctly.

Next week I’ll be going further in depth as to what types of promotions your business can use on Twitter and how hashtags work exactly.

Follow me on Twitter, @kelseymohn, to get more examples on how to use twitter.