By Matt Holmes, @handshakin
The term “brand” is thrown around a lot these days, generally in reference to a company. But personal branding is just as, if not more, important than company branding, especially for early stage entrepreneurs.
Here’s why you need a personal brand and how to achieve it.
Social media is a key component of marketing today, and should be included in every marketing plan. If not, you’re missing a trick!
But how can you streamline your social media activity to make it more efficient, and at the same time make your job a lot easier?
Cue social media management tools. Here’s 4 reasons why you need to be using one:
By Mike Raven, @ravenswingthog
Hi, I’m Mike, and I promise the reason for this image of my asleep under a pink duvet will be discussed later.
So, you’ve decided to write a blog post. Maybe it’s for your own personal blog, or for a work one. Perhaps it’s to do with your career, a hobby of yours, or just something from everyday life.
But how do you make a good post? This isn’t a small pond – the reality is that around 2 million blog posts are created each and every day. There’s a lot of choice out there.
So how do you write a post that people view, like, and be shared?
As Facebook’s Instagram drives to oust the popular disappearing messaging app Snapchat, both apps seem to be adding features here, there and everywhere. It’s hard to keep up!
Snapchat have had a busy month or two, with launching features such as the innovative Snap Map feature and more recently, On-Demand Geofilters.
Image: Instagram
Instagram stole Snapchat’s story feature, old news… Well, now they may have 1-up on the original disappearing instant messaging platform.
Instagram is now offering even more photo and video messaging options to 200+ million Story users. It’s called Direct. Direct, launched last November, has been Instagram’s name for its disappearing messages. Now, Instagram is plugging its disappearing photo and video messaging within its Stories feature.
Image: Houseparty
There is a new player in town, Houseparty- a group chat app popular with teenagers. Houseparty, built by founder Ben Rubin and his team last year, was designed for teens who want to dip in and out of live online gatherings. It notifies you if your friends are online and hanging out online and invites you so you can go and join them at these digital “parties”. By November 2016, almost 1.2 million users spent round 20 minutes a day using the app. Currently, Houseparty is in the US App Store’s top 200 app, sitting at 152, and 14 in the social network category (App Annie,2017).
One year ago I published my views on the rise of live video streaming apps, highlighting the success of live video streaming platforms, and what I thought the future held for video.
So what’s happened since?
Over a year ago in March 2015 Twitter announced that it had purchased live-video streaming mobile app company, Periscope, at a figure just south of $100 million — among the social media giant’s most expensive purchases. A few days after this rival video-conferencing app Meerkat steals the show at the annual SXSW Interactive festival, with scores of tech early adopters using the app to stream live panels and talks from the conference in Austin. This was the beginning of the journey for live-video streaming apps. In this article I will outline what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and who has got the right ideas going forward.
When it comes to the internet it can be a scary and confusing place, and there is a lot of nonsensical content out there. Finding good content can sometimes be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, or a four-leaf clover in a six-acre field…
“The quality of user-generated content varies drastically from excellent to abuse and spam”
So what makes content high-quality, what content works when trying to engage users and potential customers on social media, and how do you get it in front of as many eyes as possible without shelling out £££ for “sponsored posts”?