Why should you backup all of your social media? – Valerie Khoo answers this question.

It takes time to find content, images, links and data for daily social media on a variety of accounts and platforms

Social media as a whole is very labour intensive and time spent online, building a community, building engagement, creating content and uploading information often means that people who are managing social media are at the job 24/7.

If you ever need to find something from a few months ago such as reuse an image or rewrite a blog post based on changes in the industry – all you have to do is access your backups rather than searching for (and possibly not finding) the information you created or used online.

You are creating an easy paper trail

And while you’re at it, back up all your documents, folders, files, photos, passwords, emails, contacts and accounts – so you can keep and have records of all the work you have done over the past year.

7 simple solutions to your backup on
1) Purchase an external hard drive – this will expand your computer’s storage capacity and back up your data. It’s great for making sure you don’t lose anything important and is useful as a great storage system in case you buy a new laptop or need to restore your computer.

2) Use https://www.backupify.com to backup Your Personal Online Data. There are a range of options to choose from and provides backups of your personal Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Sites, Google Contacts, Flickr, Picasa and Blogger accounts.

3) Use SocialSafe to archive your Facebook timeline, Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+ and Viadeo profiles. Everything is stored locally on your PC or Mac.

3) An alternative for Twitter – go to http://www.allmytweets.net/ – copy and paste a yourworth Tweets into a Word document for easy access and a later search if necessary. AllMyTweets is also a fantastic resource if you are searching for a specific Tweet on Twitter.

4) For a Facebook Business/Fan Page – you can either use Backupify or SocialSafe or you can simply copy and paste ALL of your Facebook posts into a Word document – to save for a later search or analysis. It is best to backup all your Facebook links, updates and images to have a record of your work done over the year.

5) Use Instaport to backup as well as sync all your Instagram images to other accounts – http://instaport.me/

6) Use DropBox to share images, files and documents at workplaces. DropBox will also enable you to pull up any information you might need to access down the line and you can safely lock all your data in your mobile phone – https://www.dropbox.com/
5) I’d also use copying and pasting as an option for all your Blog posts and use an Excel spreadsheet to insert all your links for a later stage – especially if you have a social media team (or person) who should be making use of a weekly/monthly social media editorial/content calendar.
This Excel document or calendar will help you track your social media on all accounts – month by month.

6) Save all your images into a social media folder for 2013 and backup those images onto an external drive. If you have purchased images or created your own images; these can always be reused at a later stage. If you need to import images from your phone to your computer (or save elsewhere) – try using the PhotoSync App – it is an easy way to transfer and save photos!

7) I have found a few options to backup your Pinterest pins by using one of the following tools – http://socialwebnerd.com/blog/20-tools-to-backup-your-social-media-content/

And, in case you’re not convinced, here are two more good reasons why you should back up all of your social media content and data over the year:

1) It is good to have and keep the data for your own records and to assist you if you need to search for anything at a later stage. I’d advise that you look at this data in 3 month’s time and it will help inspire you to write blog posts about changes in social media, business growth and it will help you keep track of your social media as a whole.

2) This will help with social media training. By having accessible data from the past year; this could help a new employee view all of your content on each account and review your brand image online. By having access to a wide variety of information; your new staff member will be able to see exactly how your brand comes across online and what is expected of him/her.

Keep records of your social media each year and this way you can easily analyse your data and track changes from year to year.

Mine are all in simple Word documents saved in an external hard drive for easy access!

Here are 20 Tools to help you BackUp all your social media accounts – http://socialwebnerd.com/blog/20-tools-to-backup-your-social-media-content/ 

Here is info on how to protect your social media data: http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/big-data/protecting-personal-social-media-data-028492

And here are internal ways to backup your accounts through the platforms themselves – http://www.howtogeek.com/139940/how-to-backup-your-social-media-accounts-facebook-twitter-google-and-instagram/

My advice is to backup all your data on a monthly basis; especially if you work in social media or/and digital marketing. Not only  will this help you generate reports, but it could save your entire online profile from going MIA in the World War Web of security threats!

Elana Bowman

[Guest blog written by social media advisor and trainer Elana Bowman]

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrosa/2451470256/”>Luigi Rosa</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>cc</a>

Well we gathered some answers from Vlad Andrianov’s “The Future of Online Digital Marketing 2012-1015”, published on the tasty Adma blog.

VLAD ANDRIANOV

What looks like its here to stay – and most gurus swear by, as a very real game changer – is the increasing power of mobile. In 2010, the mobile-online Internet population was at 14 million. In 2015, the mobile-online Internet population is expected to reach 788 million. How will this look and what does it mean day-to-day?

With this, we’ll see an increase in Location Based Services (LBSs), mobile payment, context-aware services, mobile search, mobile video, mobile commerce, mobile IM, and object recognition. Are our businesses ready? Deep breath.

VLAD ANDRIANOV, The Future of Online Digital Marketing

What’s more, in 2015 machine to machine (M2M) revenue is expected to increase 3.5 fold. The revenue of social media, which was at 3.483 million in 2010, will soar to 14.003 million in 2015 – a whopping 33% increase! And, our vertical social networks will only strengthen. So, gamers, in case you thought online gaming was already pretty sweet, it’s actually just about to boom.

We’ll also see – and fairly soon, I expect – an explosion of video on the net: multiple platforms, where downloads and streaming will replace physical distribution, with an increase in personal and social but a decrease in the familiar. Unsurprisingly, interactivity and recommendations will widely influence the audience. A lot to take in? Nah, most of this is already in motion. The question is whether to jump on board, why, and how to make it better for your business’ benefit.

The future of our interwebs will deliver one thing: a connected lifestyle for the globe’s connected nodes. These boots are made for walking, and they’re gonna walk all your steps into the cloud. What? I don’t know. Google the lyrics with your eyeballs. And think about how your business can do this too.

 [Michela Ziady is Social Media Temps' Digital Copywriter & Content Strategist. Connect with Michela on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.]

With the flood of exciting news, reviews, keynotes, opinions, launches (although fewer than critics expected), trending topics and live updates from South by Southwest (#SXSW2013), it’s been a perfect time to soak in some new ideas about our industry – and to simply listen to smart people talk about smart things. So how does this translate into business today?

Mashable’s Keynote on The State of The Internet

What’s stuck – among many things – is Mashable’s SXSW Keynote: The Past, Present and The Future of the Internet. Who wouldn’t find this important? After all, as the preso notes, the interwebs has changed the way we think, talk, joke, do business, love and respond to cats – all in one generation. Did you get that? Changed business. Yes, this is about your bottom line, CFO.

We pulled some of our favourite facts from the Mashable Keynote and put them together here. Let’s start with the figures…

Driven by our human need for information and community, we do a lot of crazy stuff in one minute on the Internet:

1 minute on the Internet = 104 million emails are sent

1 minute on the Internet = 1.3 million vids viewed on YouTube

1 minute on the Internet = more than 2 million searches are made on Google

1 minute on the Internet = 6 million searches are made on Facebook

1 minute on the Internet = 5.4 pics (of cats) are forwarded (by mums)

And if your socks aren’t yet knocked off, it’s time you know that the Pope’s “job” was listed on LinkedIn – (with dental coverage and eternity in heaven). Oh, just because the interwebs might actually do a better job of recruiting a new Catholic leader than the entire organisation’s internal and international network. That’s something huh? Yessireee. That has implications for your business’ talent search? Yes, it does.

A meme. Let’s talk about a meme… a digital punch line worth a billion views – a joke shared at lightening-fast speeds across the.whole.social.web. Yes, we share jokes with people all around this mighty beeg world, in countless time zones, often across numerous languages. Grump Cat actually into Mashable House, folks!

Scumbag Steve and Grumpy Cat… meme on meme!

What about information sharing? And collaborative information creation. Well, with more than 25 million articles on Wiki, it would take a 7 seven years to read the entire current version. And once you’d finished, you’d have to start again. All over. All new.

Hungry for some more fancy numbers?

In 2012 2.5 billion items were shared a day on Facebook. Booya. Tumblr has more than 175 million users and 9:1 users reblog. One of the most exciting features of the Internet and the power of its tribes is the potential for good where a viral message is shared for positive ends. Karen Klein much? So, again, how is your business harnessing the power of the social web’s voice?

Mashable’s View Of The Future Of The Internet

So, with things already off the hook because of the Internet, what does the future of our connected world look like? What is the potential for our people, planet and businesses?

Tough questions. And Mashable only gestured at a few predictions like:

• in 2015, there will be 2 times as many Internet-connected devices as people on the planet
• with the biggest traffic growths expected in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

And naturally, Google comes into this future picture; with Google Glass (which offers unprecedented voice recognition capabilities, augmented reality and the ability to easily share shaky footage of your lunch taco on G+) and with Google Fibre (already bringing brilliant Internet speeds to Kansas city: it starts with a connection speed 100 times faster than today’s broadband).

Grumpy Cat at Mashable’s Tent

More than that? Bigger than that? Perhaps backing-up our thoughts on the cloud. Scrap that. Backing-up our brains. Imagine accessing your mental to-do list from the first week of January – the time of New Year’s resolutions. Or your thoughts from that crucial board meeting. Yes, done. Well, nearly.

Tomorrow, 2015 and the years beyond will deliver one thing: a connected lifestyle. Is your business ready?

[Michela Ziady is Social Media Temps' Digital Copywriter & Content Strategist. Connect with Michela on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.]

But, there are rare moments when industry buzzwords are actually helpful — borne of trends, and, even insightful. Here are seven examples nifty marketing buzzwords:

SoLoMo: The bus stop app-lified. Image: behindthebuzzwords

1. SoLoMo

SoLoMo is a term borne of the prevalence of localised social interaction between commercial entities and consumers, enabled through mobile devices. Basically: social local mobile.

2. Crowdsourcing

The practice of retrieving needed services, ideas, or content by petitioning contributions from a large group of people. This sees the online community contribute to jobs in substitution of traditional employees or suppliers.

Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com) enables people to log a task and an amount they will pay for its completion. A body of workers  - who are the Turks, the crowd – can browse the job list and fulfill the tasks. InnoCentive (www.innocentive.com) enlists scientists worldwide to do research for pharmaceutical, biotech, agribusiness and other companies. Awards are even issued for solutions that best meet the listed requirements.

3. The Internet of Things (IOT)

The age of the Internet of Things (IOT) is upon us. Its initial use has been attributed to Kevin Ashton, an expert on digital innovation. What all of the countless definitions of IOT have in common is the idea that the first version of the Internet was about data created by people, while the next version is about data created by things. Ashton says it best in this quote from an article in the RFID Journal in 1999:

“If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things – using data they gathered without any help from us – we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best”.

We’re moving beyond being connected via computers, tablets and smartphones into a world where anything can be connected and communicated in an intelligent, hyper-speedy fashion. So, quite simply, with the Internet of Things, the physical world is becoming one big information system. Smells like singularity? Tsk.

4. IMC: Integrated Marketing Communication

Sometimes, companies implement marketing campaigns in silos. The marketing concept known as Integrated Marketing Communication reinforces the importance of a cohesive marketing plan so that all messaging, branding, advertising, public relations, etc., displays the same theme to make sure that current and prospective customers are not confused by any marketing campaigns.

5. Pain Points

Pain points used to be identified in order to solve a problem so that a business could take a specific action. Buyers were also aligned with their buying pains. Now, pain points are seen as the catalysts that make businesses take action – faster and faster.

6. SMO: Social Media Optimisation

With the popularity of social media (established, and mushrooming) companies rely on social networks to generate publicity and increase brand awareness. And with Google on board, many have said that social is today’s search. SMO uses RSS feeds, news and bookmarking sites, video and blogging sites, etc. Similar to search engine optimisation, the goal is to generate relevant and interest traffic for a website.

7. Inbound marketing

Traditional outbound tactics like advertising, cold calls, and direct mail overtly promote the business to target customers. This model is less and less effective and being aggressively challenged; Inbound marketing (a term still fairly new to Australia) makes customers find the company / brand, by drawing them into the website through search (via SEO), content marketing, email marketing and analytics. As apposed to the ‘push’ methods of sharing marketing messages, inbound focuses on ‘pulling’ target audiences into and through the content funnel, which is aligned with the sales funnel.

There we go! Seven marketing buzzwords which you might have already come across, which you may use everyday, or which are entirely new to you. Whatever the case, I hope these are more insightful than lame corp cliches.

[Michela  Ziady is Social Media Temps' Digital Creative & Content Strategist. Connect with Michela on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.]

A lot of us have heard of LinkedIn before it became mainstream. Back then, most of us just shrugged it off and paid more attention to our “cyber pets” and “cyber farms” on Facebook.

Today, we’re definitely keeping a close eye on this social network because it is growing exponentially. Just take a look at these numbers:

• It has over 200 million members across 200 countries.
• 87% of registered users trust the network to be a source of information affecting decision making, while 49% believe it is a good source for word of mouth info on brands and businesses.
• Over 2.6 million companies around the world have LinkedIn Company Pages.
• More than 65% of journalists have used the platform as a research material.
• Almost 50% of members build new social networking relationships with entities who may influence their clients or affiliates.

LinkedIn is still far from the accomplishments of Facebook and Twitter. But at the rate it’s growing, it’ll surely become one of THE most sought-after social media giants this year or the next.

Now, the question is, should you use this for your social media marketing campaigns?

Absolutely!

THE PERKS

1. It’s a publicity stunt.

These days, it’s not enough to have a Facebook Page, a Twitter profile, and a Google+ account. You have to complete your social media presence by using other platforms as well, particularly LinkedIn.

Think of the big picture. The more visible your brand is to an audience, the more potential you have of attracting newer clients or affiliates and the better chance you have of increasing your “credibility” in a particular industry.

2. Everyone is in on it.

Ask your investors, partners, and even business rivals and they’ll all say that they have a LinkedIn profile. Based on the statistics presented above, so do millions of other individuals out there.

The point is, it’s getting harder and harder to find people who are NOT on LinkedIn. And if you want audiences to find your brand, you must have an account pronto.

3. It generates leads.

Lead generation, in the context of Internet marketing, refers to the process of generating interest or query from consumers regarding a product or a service. These days, there are a lot of tactical advantages in using cyberspace for leads, but none is more effective than marketing through social media.

LinkedIn is, out of all the emerging social networks, THE best in generating leads for your brand. Because of the fact that your LinkedIn Page is your professional business identity, you’ll have a better chance of driving customers to your site, responding to their queries, and interacting with them on a business level. Best of all, it is the perfect avenue to make creative sales pitches and broadcast them to a streamlined audience.

LAST WORDS

Although LinkedIn still has a long way to go before it can call itself king of social media, it nevertheless has gained a reputation in online marketing. We should all acknowledge the fact that it is making a rapid progress in terms of cyberspace interaction, business branding, and lead generation.

No doubt, we’ll see it rise to the top of the social media ladder this 2013!

About the Author

Jonny Lis is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Smart Traffic,a private company based in Bristol offering services for SEO in Australia, UK, and other countries. He oversees SEO strategies for Smart Traffic’s 300+ campaigns.

That being said, the fundamental principles of what we’re trying to achieve as marketers has changed very little over the years…

Marketing is still marketing in spite of fads

Countless marketers preach of how inbound thinking and digital have fundamentally and radically revolutionised marketing. Well, stumbling around a library of ‘archaic’ marketing books (and I don’t use quotation marks lightly), I found this definition of marketing as recorded by Kotler and Levy in the prestigious Journal of Marketing in 1967:

“Marketing is that function of the organisation which can keep in constant touch with the organisation’s customers, read their needs, develop products and services which meet these needs and build a program of communications to express the organisation’s purposes.”

Smashed it! Just like that.

In spite of the wave of inbound, the surge of crap content, and the rise of social media marketing ninjas everywhere, it shows that some things change, our decisions as businesspeople, our adoption of new technologies as marketers, and our openness to new tactics must be driven by a vision like Kotler and Levy’s.

Fidelity to timeless principles, from Obama

Of course, the channels and opportunities for marketers have changed dramatically over the last two decades, but marketing itself is, well, still marketing.To paraphrase Obama in his 2013 Inaugurational speech, fidelity to our founding principles is achieved with new responses to new challenges. So let’s look at two new marketing responses that execute the Kotler and Levy ideals: social media in context and social media with hyper-personalisation.

Moving beyond social for search’s sake

Because we know how search has become social, and that social media is content-and ideas-driven, we have to ask: is remarkable content the end goal? Quite simply, no. Great social content can be lost in the online abyss if it’s not distributed through the best channels, to the right people, in a circumstance-specific manner. Here’s why your blog posts, tweets and comments could be lost…

Social media marketing that your leads love

Potential customers are web savvy and more intolerant of irrelevant, noisy and spammy marketing than ever. So, the most effective approach to your social media content marketing is genuine and exciting interaction with these leads – creating social content they love and share.

Here’s the point: your leads are actual people. They’re defined by unique online behaviours that transcend their generic demographic profiles. They speak human. Their behaviour is driven by their limbic brain. And your ability to truly connect is where it’s at!

Creating and publishing social media content that your buyers will engage with is intimately related to context – targeting them in the right place, with a personalised message that responds to their known online interactions, according to their interests. And voila! We have context-sensitive marketing, tailored to individual preference.

Social media for the sales funnels and your customers’ lifetime

Jay Baer reminds us that even B2B leads consume ten pieces of content before they contact sales. Again, we simply have to get the right content across the right platforms, at the correct stations along our funnel. Doing this will empower our visitor-to-lead-to-prospect-to-customer trajectory. What’s more is that social media opens infinite opportunities for us to continue the conversation with our customer across their sales lifetime – hopefully repurposing them into customer referral case studies and advocates of our solution across social media channels.

Hang where your leads hang; know their places and personalise what you say there

When creating your buyer personas, and content for these personas, you’ll need to establish their watering holes. These are the social media channels, online directories, groups, forums, influencers, etc. that they turn to for information. Trusted advisors. This means, these are the online spaces you need to target to reach your leads. If your leads ain’t on LinkedIn, don’t be wasting your time there.

8 Tips to put context and personalisation in action on social media

Well, the possibilities for contextualising your social media content are boundless. But here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Personalise recommended blog posts according to prospects’ past reading and online activity
2. Much like LinkedIn and Twitter’s newsletters, tailor your newsletters to leads’ preferences with “stories we think you’d like”.
3. Measure personas’ online activity and automate content publishing at ideal intervals, targeting social media contact segments/individual lists at different times if necessary.
4. Make use of the favourite content types in each watering hole. So, distribute your visual content, like Pinterest company images or infographics, in forums that preference multi-media.
5. Invite guest bloggers that bolster your online credibility and from which you can leverage their social media reach.
6. Use social media as your businesses’ events directory broadcaster: tweet from industry events, announce upcoming product launches, build a social media program with a teaser of blogs and eBooks in the pipeline.
7. Personalise customer service with social media, specifically thanking certain influencers for great reviews, informative comments, and evangelical opinions. If you choose to do this on Twitter, make clear in your bio how and when prospects can expect replies.
8. Set up alerts to monitor your company’s online presence and conversations about your brand (what people are saying about you and where). As a community manager, you’ll be able to interact in real-time.

Measuring new social tactics’ successes against timeless principles of marketing 

So, new responses to new challenges here we are. What’s great about social media marketing in our era is that we can constantly test, measure and improve our social media tactics and strategies.

With closed-loop marketing software solutions, measuring the ROI on social media has never been easier. Simple analytics alone will give you a breakdown of everything from click-through-rates and total traffic to comments and inbound links gained. So, RIP the great guessing game.

A future outlook for marketers – more than today’s focus on context and personalisation

Change is a certainty. So yes, adapt. But do it with a deep understanding of your purpose as a marketer– a digital marketer, a social media marketer, a direct marketer, or any online communicator. The need for context-specific and hyper-personalised social media content is a necessary new response to the same, founding principles. Thanks, Obama.

[Michela  Ziady is Social Media Temps' Digital Creative & Content Strategist. Connect with Michela on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.]

Digital and traditional marketing focus

Circa $65k plus super- Alexandria location

Our client is an established fashion-forward, on-trend National Retailer with over 100 stores in Australia and NZ. They are seeking a dynamic marketeer to join their close-knit Retail Support Team at head office.

Reporting to the Brand GM, you will focus on the development, implementation and ongoing marketing support for their established and growing store’s portfolio.

Your duties will include:

• Planning and implementation of all marketing activities including advertising, in-store events, promotions and ongoing campaign execution
• Developing, updating and coordinating the marketing promotional calendar, ensuring all deadlines and communication elements are met

• Supporting new store openings with graphic and visual development, launch activities and traffic-driving initiatives
• Preparing point of sale POS promotional materials for stores
• Organisation of marketing content for shopping centre websites, newsletters, catalogues and magazines
• Prepare and manage marketing budget in conjunction with the GM
• Monitoring and overseeing  social media channels working with their agency to develop content plans
• Manage the customer database and administer eDMs

• Planning and executing top-class retail windows in conjunction with VM to drive consumers into stores
• Developing and maintaining a strong relationship with all operations management as well as shopping centre managers with regards to thoroughly communicating the marketing promotional calendar.

To be successful in this role you will possess exceptional communication skills, in-depth analytical abilities combined with maturity, dedication and a proactive approach. A minimum of 3 years’ marketing experience, ideally working for an apparel retailer or for a consumer goods wholesaler. Good knowledge of Social Media / Online / Digital Marketing will be advantageous. You will also have sound computer skills and graphic program know-how.

Tertiary qualifications in Marketing Communications or Business would be highly regarded.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a vibey fashion retailer where your efforts and successes will be noticed and rewarded.

If this sounds like your ideal role, please email your resume to laurie@socialmediatemps.com.au, quoting ref.no.201389LS.

Alternatively call Laurie Smith on 0425 236 907 for more information.

If you’ve ever used Facebook search, you’ll know that it’s a pretty pathetic excuse for a search engine servicing one billion active users. But, Facebook Graph Search is set to change that. In a powerful and exciting way.

As CEO Zuckerberg explains, there are core pillars of the Facebook ecosystem like the Newsfeed and Timeline. To these, the Facebook Graph Search is being added. Another primary pillar. Yes, the vision is that big.

What’s the noise really about

Product Director, Tom Stocky explains our user desire to find – for example –  all the photos we’ve Liked, the photos of two particular people, all the photos of our family, or all of the friends who live in a particular city.

In other words, to ask personal, real-language, real-world questions. And until now, the functionality that delivers successful results hasn’t been available.

What movies do my friends like; which of my friends also like trail running; which dentist do my friends like; photos of my friends before 1995; and who works at my company and likes skiing. With Graph Search, we’ll get answers to these questions. Nuanced questions. Social questions. And, according to Facebook, questions that can be successfully solved. Check out the  Facebook Graph Search Promo Vid to see this in action.

How does Graph Search work

Unlike web search, when individuals search on Facebook their result sets are completely different – tailored to relationships and histories. And there we have it: an incredible depth of personalisation. Power search!

Facebook, the product, will act like a matrix that not only maps and connects us with people we know in the real world but also to people we should know – people with commonalities. What is the effect? Our community feels smaller… the world feels more intimate and relevant.

The crucial stuff: overall rankings will be based on top search suggestions including:

• people,
• Pages,
• apps,
• places,
• groups
• suggested searches.

Facebook will present your results in the form of text, pictures, place, person, etc. So, at large, sentiment is the secret sauce. Very much like Google’s Knowledge Graph? Whodathunk. Web searches will continue to be serviced by Microsoft’s Bing.

What does this mean for social marketers

Facebook’s Graph Search is also designed for Business Pages. This should really excite small business because users will be able to search for local companies and firms that their friends like. Social endorsements.

While there are no new ad formats, and the search will predominantly pull organic results, Sponsored Stories and Sponsored Results will show up.

As Mashable so pithily put it: “…for the moment the company [Facebook] is sticking to its strategy of encouraging businesses to make more engaging Pages. For brands like Coca-Cola or Toyota, it provides further incentive to cultivate and interact with as many fans if possible, if only to come up first in a search for “Sodas my friends like” or “Cars my friends recently bought.”

The social marketing message is essentially the same: keep working at remarkable, engaging, sharable content to build real relationships. It’s really the only way to generate communities whose activity is the currency of Facebook.

Looking ahead with Graph Search at our side

The Graph Search service is in beta now. Only a few hundred people gained access on Tuesday, after its unveiling. Facebook will be using results from the initial users to tweak the service, before pushing it out to the whole Facebook community.

With an expected hiccup or two around privacy (Facebook hasn’t yet changed it’s privacy policy), we’re still unsure about, well, a lot: how Graph Search handles status updates and posts.

As Facebook continues working on this project, the resource will undoubtedly grow more dynamic. For now, it’s just pretty darn exciting to get involved in what looks like the biggest game changer in ages!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on Graph Search and what it means for you as a social media marketer.

[Michela  Ziady is Social Media Temps' Digital Creative & Content Strategist. Connect with Michela on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.]

Simply, the value of holidays for genuine vigour at work is essential for anyone working in the online space. Digital stuff happens quickly. Early adoption and critical assessment needs brainpower. As does any element of a well-structured social media strategy.

But once we’ve managed to kick back a gear over the holidays, how do we approach the New Year with the focus and drive for an effective social start?

How can we successfully psyche up for 2013’s start?

Re-energising your work focus can take several weeks, and if it isn’t prioritised it could take two or three months  – the first quarter of our business year!

Once this has happened, you risk falling behind budget and playing catch-up. Wait, let’s halt the doom and gloom because there’s good news…

With my 20 years of business development consulting, I know that a small amount of planning for the new business year and the right leadership approach will jumpstart your 2013. Here’s what you need to know.

10 tips to energise your staff for a powerhouse 2013 

1. Bring your team together for a welcome back, where the sense of community is refreshed through some fun and holiday story sharing.
2. Acknowledge those that held the fort while others were on leave, making sure to communicate that a healthy work-life balance is respected by the company
3. Remind employees of operational priorities for the first quarter, and the goals that unite and inspire each department or team
4. Review strategic social plans to ensure key areas are top of mind, because achievable priorities make for an easy way to chew the whole elephant
5. Identify likely digital industry trends as early as possible with a team brainstorm, so you can either ride the wave or stay an inch ahead — both absolutely crucial in the online space
6. Remind people of the company vision and values, because this is the cornerstone of who you are as a business – a guide for all staff conduct
7. Advise customers that all services are back on track with an exciting offer or a few insights into what they’ll get from your company this year… how you’re upping your game and staying worthy of their business
8. Introduce new starters to their colleagues, feeding your company culture and laying the foundations for a collaborative environment of support
9. Highlight sales activity to indicate gaps, positioning them as stimulating challenges for effective and smart thinking
10. Audit the social media activity of competitors – what’s the market saying? With business conduct reaching new heights of transparency, a simple channel search will give you superb insight into your competitors’ new products, promotions, and their customers’ sentiments. Handy information!

If you’re already back at your desk, this article from The Border Mail will give you a speedy low-down of news from around the globe – info to catch you up in no time: http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/1220361/your-back-to-work-cheat-sheet/?cs=12

If you’ve found any other activities, apps, or project management tools that help put people in the right business mind set for the New Year, I’d love to hear these to share with others.

Last words to get great company direction going

Simply reminding key managers of their responsibility to motivate and lead will gently encourage the whole staff infrastructure.

If you need help with enabling a high-energy start to your company’s 2013 year of social, I’d love to give you a few tips and have a chat.

Director of SMT, Colin Chodos

Colin Chodos is the Executive Director of Social Media Temps (SMT) and the Managing Director of Corporate Connection Strategies (CCS). Connect with Colin on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter, and take a tour of the exciting SMT Facebook Page.