As you seek to promote yourself and your business in the Southwest Florida region, it is necessary to define your goals. It is absolutely essential to understand the difference between social media management (engagement and conversation) and public relations (getting others to shout your praises). Social media focuses on engagement -- helping others respond to you, your brand, and your products. It takes work to define who you are and understand what comprises your brand. Public relations refer [...]

If you are attempting to expand your brand online in a new way, you may have considered Tumblr. What is Tumblr, exactly? It is sort of equal parts a photo album, a video blog (vlog), a blog, and a bookmarking tool. Basically, it is the ideal place to re-post other blogs (or anything else that tickles your fancy online). If you are a business considering a move to marketing through Tumblr, you should think of Tumblr as a hipper kind of Facebook -- a social media-ish, blog-ish platform on w [...]

How many fans do you have on Facebook? Followers on Twitter? Subscribers on YouTube? Connections on LinkedIn? (You get the idea.) Are you satisfied with that number? Having a high number of "likes" (or some other notation/gold star in the world of social media) does not necessarily directly transfer into new business -- or additional business. However, it does in certain ways indicate brand recognition and possible engagement. Some social media delinquents do not check their profiles/site [...]