I have been on Instagram for quite sometime now and have posted almost two thousand photos - from food photos which I link to my food blog, throwback photos, down to random interesting ones I manage to capture as I go about each day. 

I love Instagram for it is a truly social network. And I say that for the following reasons:

• Its visual nature attracts both users and non users. With its numerous filters, and the third party developers linking to it, photographers, both amateur and professional can create and recreate their own one of a kind photographs.
• The mobility factor of the app itself allows users to view photos on even the smallest of smart phones and on any mobile device. 
• It attracts non-users to join in the bandwagon - it feeds on non-users’ curiosities of those posting on bigger social networks such as twitter and facebook and allows them to download the app as well.
• My favorite reason: It is very interactive. Even those outside your network are able to react to your posts (assuming your account’s on public) and you can be assured that your interactions are not limited to your friends but those around the world who are actually interested in your photographs.

Being that, my favorite brands on Instagram are mostly limited to luxury brands - because they tell beautiful stories through their photos and don’t just encourage you to interact by posting random things. Worth noting is my favorite, Tiffany & Co., with its #timelesstruelove campaign and the Great Gatsby collection.

Unless you’re in the business of managing a brand, you don’t necessarily need to be online 24/7.  After all, we all need to be more efficient and effective in our respective business focuses - and social media has turned into a distraction for many.

Sure, everyone wants to, in one way or another build their digital footprints - but it doesn’t need to take a full day to actually do that. Also, with the growing number of social networks growing each day, you will still need to keep your sanity.

Pardot, an ExactTarget Company, has created an infographic on how to rock social media in just 30 minutes each day  - and stresses that “A winning social media strategy is all about working smarter, not harder.” Click here to find out how. 

Still overwhelmed? It’s not so bad, isn’t it? Now, depending on how deeply you feel the need to engage, that is where you will need to adjust. But 30 minutes a day is not so bad - and as with all things in life, if you’ve got a strategy planned out, you will be able to manage all this, easy peasy. 

Soon, it’s not just gift cards to Macy’s, free six packs of Red Bulls or even phones that social media influencers will have access to. For a Klout score of over 60, users can give AA access to their page in order to verify their scores and they are free to access the lounges (in select airports - list to follow) for a day. Well isn’t that nifty!

American Airlines is not the only travel brand that has partnered with Klout. The Palms in Vegas and Virgin America offers preferred, VIP treatment to social media influencers reaching a certain score. 

Exciting! So don’t forget to integrate your social media accounts with Klout. You never know what’s in store for you!

Sure, vanity metrics are all about - vanity. But use them to your advantage: take away insights, intimidate your competition and know that those good figures mean that your followers know you’re onto something.

Quite frankly, I am a bit put off by Twitter users who ‘hide’ or keep their settings to a select few because for privacy purposes. I find it incredibly dubious, even downright seedy.

Twitter is by no means a chat platform. It is a very powerful social media tool that allows you to converse relevant issues, encourage ideas from others outside your network and could even result in follows from some very important influencers who share the same ideas as you.

Hashtags allow for searchable conversations on the same topic, allowing you to index and refer to in the future. Lists allow you to arrange your feed according to topics, interests or even which part of your life these contacts are a part of. In many cases, these tools allow you to be found for career and other opportunities, depending on what ideas or thoughts you put out there.

Save your chats to platforms that are specifically for that purpose. And for those who decide to still keep their twitter accounts hidden from the rest of the world - think about all that lost opportunity, that job you may be missing out on.

Totally relatable, I can hear myself talking in this video. Watch this . 

The following post is an essay on Skittles that I turned in for my Digital Marketing class under Professor Camilo La Cruz Smith. I’m happy to say I received high marks for this essay which made it a no brainer to post on my social media blog.

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Skittles has been one of those brands that have been extremely successful in redefining and reenergizing their business and digital strategies. In the recent past, they were able to successfully define their problem, and address it by simply understanding their consumer. They recognized that their consumers embraced social networks and were responsive and interested in being engaged with their brand. As a result, they were able to reach out to them in ways that put them ahead of their competitors. By experiencing the rainbow instead of their old functional strategy of just tasting it, they were able to reach out to a wider scope of their consumer and saw what their brand can do and where else it can take them.

While their strategy is fantastic and is indeed sustainable, Skittles was constantly thinking ahead, keeping things new.  Skittles has been successful in stirring the Twitter community, spurred user generated content, engagement online and generated a lot of word-of-mouth-buzz. The difficulty I am seeing in Skittles maintaining their strategy is consumer fatigue from the pointless but entertaining activities that they constantly bombard their consumers with. This is the problem they will need to solve and should begin with.

To grow next year, Skittles must not only retain their current consumers but speed up this growth by expanding to other markets. In the consumer decision journey, they must target their consumers both in the loyalty and initial consideration stages. They must leverage the brand’s innate unpredictable personality, constantly be on their toes, watch the industry standard and then continuously disrupt it. Now we ask: Where to next after Facebook? In my opinion, Skittles should move towards 2012 by looking for ways to take their brand out onto the real world and investigate the potential of not only longer term content but of the possibility of touching the lives of those who also need it. Why not make use of free content from Skittles’ media channels to let the world experience the rainbow? In addition, curated content from consumers may also be used to create a more holistic platform where the brand and the consumer both participate in the conversation towards a social good.

The only barriers to entry that Skittles can face with is the likelihood of encountering people who aren’t interested in contributing to charity or Skittles choosing a cause that doesn’t strike a chord with the consumers. While that is farfetched, I think the consumers are willing to share the rainbow with other less fortunate people and would gladly participate in this highly engaging online activity.

Skittles must move beyond entertainment and take engagement to the next level – In 2012, a trend is seen in digital efforts moving towards having a socially responsible purpose. Gamification with a motivation or incentive for the benefit of a cause that matters for example, hungry children or in support of relief goods to a disaster stricken area, Skittles can, with the help of its online community, help these people in need “Experience the Rainbow” too. Skittles should communicate this effort across all channels (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc), since a brand should be consistent in its communications. After all, we must realize the need of the consumer to “help” others. With this, I think that Skittles’ consumers will have even more respect for the brand if they know that their favorite brand’s campaigns do not end online.

Gamification of Skittles through the purchase of Skittles packs, entering a code found (or scanning a QR code) inside each pack onto an application on Facebook is an example. Consumers can keep track of how much they have contributed to the cause through a dashboard showing how much they’ve contributed as well as how much the entire Skittles online community has contributed to this cause to visualize the progress that they are making towards supporting the cause. This dashboard can be in a form of a pixelated photo of the earth and each skittles packet code that is entered into the app adds a pixel in the form of a Skittles candy. This way, Skittles can truly make a difference in the world by letting the whole world experience the joy they previously brought just online.

There is approximately a 10% untapped market out there from competitors that Skittles can address with this kind of activity. This comes from a large market that results in not only incremental unit sales but a lot of PR and awareness especially since the application encourages the users to input a code found in the Skittles’ bags. Through this, Skittles can prove that they are not just about silly entertainment. They are a brand with a purpose, a brand that realizes that there is more to just its online community that is interested in experiencing the rainbow.

As more and more people spend time online, socializing and researching about brands, yours is vulnerable by itself. In business school, we learn that the brand is the emotion evoked in people’s minds and hearts. And how can your brand evoke that positive feeling within your consumers? SOCIAL MEDIA. Brand Managers, CEOs, Corporate Communications professionals, Human Resources, Sales, Entrepreneurs, and you yourself have a brand to protect. 

While networking and investing in keeping the press busy with something to say about your brand or product, you too have a story to tell about your brand. Through different social networks, you are able to reach out to a number of people beyond your wildest dreams. 

There is no sure way to measure sales directly coming from social media apart from deals or coupons that you entice consumers with to “like” your brand page. However, research suggests that fans are 3x more likely to buy the brand they liked thank those who don’t. 

There are many reasons why people would follow a brand. Followers of luxury brands may not necessarily purchase those brands but they want to experience the lifestyle such brands exude. Some follow a brand they won’t normally buy only because they are conducting some kind of research. And others become fans because they want to share their experiences with the brand, good or bad, and need or expect some form of response. 

And that’s where you, as brand managers, as protectors of your brands, come in. I know there’s that undying question about how to actually convert your likes into buys. You must start the storytelling. Introduce the brand to your audience, add content relevant to your audience and keep them coming back for more by keeping things interesting.

Your duty doesn’t stop there. You need to network. Reach out to other users who would be interested in your brand. Converse with them and keep them engaged by responding to comments. Believe it or not, 95% of Facebook wall posts are not answered by brands. Do you talk to your consumers? Ignore them? Or are you one of those who delete negative comments from consumers that you don’t care to see on your walls? Your consumers are reaching out to you and want to be your real life brand ambassadors to their friends. Let them.

There are a lot of social media platforms that you can utilize to promote your brand. Social Media is more than just having a Facebook Brand Page or Twitter Feed. YouTube or Vimeo allow you to post videos related to your brand. You can upload ads, reviews, or tutorials on how to use your brand. Blogging platforms such as Tumblr allows you to talk about your products at length, at the same time enhancing the reading experience with photos. Slideshare and Delicious are great for individuals who want to promote their personal brands. 

There are so many things you can do with social media for your brand’s benefit and this article can never fully exhaust the full breadth of it. There are developments everyday and as long as you keep yourself updated on trends and best practices (visit my Facebook Page on Social Media), without a doubt, you can learn (almost) all you need to know about social media. 

Overnight, my Klout score has instantly increased by two points after changing my Facebook status from Ina Relationship to Engaged. Apparently, to Klout, a ring merits 2 points.

Apart from its perks, I am finding little use or benefit to Klout. I am finding it highly inaccurate, and a few months into using the service, I still haven’t figured out how it gives out or takes away points. All I can see is that depending on how active you are on twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or Foursquare, you receive or lose one or so points in a day.

But then again, Klout says I am influential about junk food, macs and get this: Miami Heat. Firstly, my food blog is hardly junk, I don’t use a mac nor talk about it, and I only found out about the Miami Heat after seeing it on my Klout page and then googling it.

So I was taking a breather on the couch this afternoon after my run and suddenly felt the floor moving. All of the 10 or so seconds that it lasted, a plethora of thoughts flooded my mind. Earthquake? Dizzy? Hungry? Terrorist attack? I hail from the land of earthquakes, volcano eruptions and flooding - this isn’t/shouldn’t be a big deal. But then again, this is New York. For some insane reason, I believed that hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes do not disturb this beautiful city - till recently.

I grabbed my phone and immediately posted on Facebook - WHOA. Was that an earthquake?

And almost instantly, I logged onto my twitter to confirm my post. I wasn’t dizzy or hungry or going crazy. There was an earthquake. From DC to Philly, to Jersey to NYC.

Gone are the days when I’d wait 20/30 minutes to confirm breaking news on CNN or the local tv station. For any news that I needed to confirm fast, I go to twitter.

And in the meantime, I’ll check in at EARTHQUAKEPOCALYPSE 2011 in case there’s a new badge. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to check in at one for a long long long time.

What about you? Do you rely on social media for your breaking news?

PS. Southern Hospitality announced on twitter a 20% discount on all milkSHAKEs to those who evacuated their buildings - Not bad for a hot summer NYC day!

***thanks to HuffPost for the photo!

Isn’t it funny that one must LIKE a brand page on Facebook before he or she may be able to write a bad review/experience on that brand’s page? It got me thinking this evening in class about how we must be ‘friends’ with some brands first before being ‘honest’ with them and letting them know what you really think.

This is a real reason why a DISLIKE button is in order. It’s an untapped metric and resource where the brand’s performance/likeability can be monitored. Likes vs dislikes at a certain point in time. What about the ability of a brand to turn DISLIKES into LIKES and the other way around?