How Social Media Can Be Used for the Greater Good

Can you use social media for good? Can it be used to help and support people? Can it be used for more than business promotions and uploading selfies?

Yes, it certainly can.

Social media can be used for any number of good causes:

·  Fight starvation and homelessness.

·Provide guidance to those struggling with addiction and recovery.

·  End bullying in schools and domestic violence in homes.

·  Protest against fracking or other environmental causes.

·  Speak out against sexism, racism, or job or housing discrimination.

Ineffective Use of Social Media

Social media has frequently been used to bring attention to a good cause, but for the most part it has been ineffective. It has been ineffective because random posts by concerned individuals quickly get buried under an avalanche of new posts on other themes.

Sometimes, social media posts do go viral, creating a movement, but these ebb and flow. Ultimately, once the outrage has passed, people move on to discuss new themes, and the cause begins to slip out of awareness and public concern.

Social Media Management

The only way social media can be effective in improving society is through using the same methods that businesses use—social media management.

Businesses have used effective social media campaigns to raise awareness of their product, build a brand, drive traffic to their websites, sell more of their products and create flourishing communities.

These work to create massive results because they are not random outbursts of zeal, but sustained, strategic initiatives.

Why Use Social Media?

Traditionally, efforts to do good have usually come about through fund raising events, community meetings, formation of local chapters, and using television, radio, and print advertising. Online efforts have been modest—usually a website to describe the work and to collect donations or emailing ezines to subscribers.

While there is nothing wrong with these methods, it would be easy to dramatically improve results through adding more social media to their efforts.

According to Futures of Palm Beach treatment center, a growing number of Americans are beginning to use social media: “As of 2014, 74 percent of US adults who use the Internet participate in one or more social networking sites. Out of this group, 89 percent of young adults age 18-29 and 82 percent of adults age 30-49 use social networking.”

If social media represents a growing medium that could rapidly bring about more awareness, raise funds, and even promote positive social action, how can it be used by a charitable organization or activist group to create positive change locally and even globally?

How to Use Social Media to Do Good

Here is a five-step plan that corporations use to establish their presence online and that will work equally well to do good on social media:

Step 1: Set Clear Goals and Make Definite Plans

As the saying goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will take you there.” Only when there are goals and plans, can effective action occur.

In order to set a clear goal, decide what you hope to achieve, define short-term goals and long-term goals, and narrow down a broad social cause to something specific and actionable.

Step 2: Assemble Your Team

One reason corporations are so successful at social media marketing is that a number of people work on a project. Similarly, you need a team of people to draw attention to a social cause.

If you already have an organization, then begin to sift through your staff to find suitable candidates. If you want to start an organization, then decide who you will ask to join you.

Look for people who enjoy technology rather than simply people with good hearts but almost now technical aptitude; look for people who are already good at posting on Facebook, creating hashtags on Twitter, and writing blog posts; and look for people who are comfortable with public speaking and can be your spokesperson on video-sharing websites like YouTube.

Step 3: Use Branding

Branding consists of a number of elements ranging from colors to logos and from images to mission statements. Branding works because it creates an identity and people can get behind it. Without a brand, it’s difficult to recognize who is behind a message or promotion. So borrow branding elements from the corporate world to use for your social media organizational work.

Step 4: Make Your Mess Your Message

The reason why people get behind something is because there is a good story behind it. These stories have to be true and verifiable to be effective. Ideally, these are personal stories from people who have experienced extreme loss or hardship and now have become spokespeople against that type of injustice happening to other people. Their lives were a mess, but they have now made that mess into a message. A woman who has experienced domestic abuse, for instance, will have a much stronger impact than a well-intentioned man with the same message.

Step 5: Deploy Content Creation

Finally, you must continually generate content. This can be in the form of regular blog posts that are shared on social media, YouTube channels, and other ways to develop consistent content. The content is to describe your message in a hundred different ways.

Summary

Social media will be effective in creating action for a good cause if it uses many of the same techniques that have proven effective for businesses. Interests in social causes tend to be short-lived because there is insufficient organization behind getting the message out consistently.

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Social Media Without Borders

Many major socio-cultural upheavals have been caused by social media. It has changed the way families, colleagues and friends communicate with each other and even the way communities form and individuals find sexual partners. These all have massive implications for the future of the human race, but I think perhaps the most significant effect of social media is that it has to some extent rendered the traditional nation state redundant.

There are a number of complicated geo-political phenomena that have contributed to a growing disdain for nationhood, particularly among Westerners, but I won’t describe those here. The rise of this attitude has coincided with the arrival of an easy and effective way to connect with like minded individuals around the world. Diasporas have successfully existed for millennia prior to the advent of social media, one need only look at the Hebrews for proof of this, but social media has led to a great many “artificial” diasporas arising around all kinds of peculiar cultural concepts and interests, many of them utterly bizarre or trivial.

The internet, particularly social media channels, have provided diverse peoples with a means to circumnavigate government censors and cultural taboos that normally restrict communication in other forms of media. New special interest and sub cultural communities are emerging, available for anyone willing to look. We have learned how small the world is and that a few teenagers with what starts as a passing interest in an infantile pursuit, might suddenly create a new online culture with its own nomenclature, rites and customs, attracting millions of like minded individuals who would never otherwise have regarded each other as anything but strange foreigners.

These segmented communities may be even more introspective and exclusive than conventional nation states, and their cultures at times equally as impenetrable. The question of whether or not this revolutionary development in human group mentality is positive falls outside the scope of this article. I only wish to illuminate such developments and to point out that there remains one huge barrier from the real world that has been preserved online and continues to prevent new communities from connecting. Language.

However, recent technological developments may tear down even these ancient walls. Skype’s new translator service heralds the beginning of the first widely available real-time translation technology. Just like the Babel fish from “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” or Star Trek’s Universal Translator, this software translates your speech and speaks it in another language as the words leave your mouth.

The software is still in the beta stage and only works in two languages, but this will no doubt change in the near future. There are also problems with the voice recognition software and the translation rarely meets the standards of a professional translator, but the kind of online communities I previously mentioned aren’t the sort who ever recruited translators anyway.

This may seem like a sensationalist opinion piece, but who in fact can deny the vital role social media has played over the past few years in all kinds of events; from the “Arab spring” to the riots in Turkey. The emergence of such technology will undoubtedly feed the growth of online communities without borders and give rise to a plethora of unforeseen global Diasporas. This will have far-reaching cultural implications which have yet to be fully considered.

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Awesome Things Brands Did on YouTube, Facebook & Twitter in 2014 [INFOGRAPHIC]

Facebook organic reach may have tanked, but that didn't stop brands from doing awesome things on social media.

Here's an infographic timeline, created by Unmetric, that highlights the most shared advertising campaigns, tweets and videos.

Laugh, cry and cringe at the best Facebook, Twitter and YouTube highlights of 2014: how many can you remember?

H/T [Adweek]

ORIGINAL POST

How To Engage Your Email Audience on Social Media, And Vice Versa

As new technologies and platforms join the marketing mix over time, it can be tempting to put your tactics into separate silos. While many marketers keep their promotional channels running on parallel tracks, the truly powerful messages are actually those that intersect.

There is a lot to say about what a brand is, and what it is not. But for now, just make sure that you know that a logo and a company name do not a brand make. A business does not become a successful brand until it becomes integrated into the lives of the people the brand is trying to reach. One way to achieve this is to surround your target audience with your message across multiple channels. Interacting with your brand on multiple and varied platforms means that you are with them when they are doing different things and are in different states of mind.

For example, if a prospect only ever interacts with your brand through their business email address, you probably only ever reach them during the hours of 9am to 5pm, when they wearing their ‘professional’ hat, and have their attention divided over many tasks. However, if you can get that prospect to also interact with you on social media, you have the opportunity to deliver messages to them when they might be more receptive.

So, how do you get your target audience to branch out and engage with your brand on different platforms? Start by giving them a compelling reason to – the more clever the better.

A great example of this comes from the smart folks at EAT24, the food delivery app. I am personally a big fan of EAT24, not only because their service is convenient and efficient, but also because their marketing team is, quite frankly, hilarious. I actually look forward to receiving emails from EAT24 because I know there is a good chance they will make me laugh out loud.

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How to Improve Your Brand Impact Through Color

Want to make your product or service really stand out from the competition? Looking to increase your sales? Chances are you need to review your colour palette.

Our minds instinctively respond to colour. Have you noticed how the bright blues and greens of spring have a more positive psychological effect on us than the bleak grey tones of winter? We also automatically associate different colours with particular circumstances. For instance, red with danger and heat, blue with cold and calmness, and so on. As well as influencing our mood, colour has the power to impact our purchasing decisions, with many of the major brands using it to evoke very specific emotions.

How you can use colour to improve your marketing

o   Brand recognition

Studies have revealed our brains prefer recognisable brands, which is why colour is key when creating your brand identity.

Colour increases brand recognition by up to 80% (University of Loyola). For example, Apple introduced colour to unchartered territory. By introducing its colourful, eye-catching range of iMacs, Apple was the first to say ‘it doesn’t have to be beige’ and reinvigorated its brand (it’s since brought us iPods and the iPhone 5c in a range of colours).

o   Standing out from competitors

Many organisations specifically focus on logo colours to ensure they stand out from the competition. For instance, if your competitors use blue, then you can improve your chances of standing out from them by using purple instead.

o   Target audience

If you’re targeting women, then research has revealed they prefer purples and greens, while blues, greens and black are most preferred by men.

How to choose your colour palette

Before you start selecting or rethinking your brand colours, think about these useful common colour characteristics:

Black

• Highly versatile colour
• Can be modern or traditional
• Often used for luxury products
• Used by the likes of: Chanel, Nike, Mercedes-Benz

Red

• Is the colour of power
• Grabs people’s attention
• The most effective colour used by marketers to attract consumers’ attention
• Symbolises good luck in Asia, which is why it’s one of the prominent colours in Japan Airlines’ logo
• Used by the likes of: Virgin, Christian Louboutin, Coca Cola

Green

• Is the easiest colour for eyes to process
• Warm and inviting
• Represents environment, health and good will
• Used by the likes of: Starbucks, BP, Land Rover

Blue

• Viewed as a professional colour
• Can have a calming effect
• Creates the impression of trust and security
• Often associated with corporate companies
• Used by the likes of: Twitter, Samsung, PayPal, Barclays

Yellow

• Has the same power as red in capturing people’s attention
• Conveys confidence, happiness and optimism
• Often used to attract window shoppers
• Used by the likes of: McDonald’s, Nikon, Kodak, DHL

Branding and colour are inextricably linked. Once you know the emotions you want to inspire in your target audience, then you can select the colours that will enable you to achieve this.

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How Facebook Left the Business of Social Media

For the last 10 years, the topic of ROI in social media has sort of been a running gag. On one side, social media specialists were fighting for a deeper measurement equation (action A + action B do not necessarily drive to a result C, but to many other consequences). In a sense, they inherited the burden of what all advertisers had not been able to prove in a whole century: the impact of communications in general on sales.

On the other hand, direct marketers were sophisticatedly demonstrating why social media was at best a gimmick for cool kids, and at worst, a waste of time.

Simplifying social media measurement generates consensus, business… but it’s wrong.

Yes, social media specialists still have a problem explaining the tangible impact of actions to their clients. Even if facts-proven case studies can a posteriori demonstrate the usefulness of a good social media framework, there’s a problem to put a figure before the value chain and another figure at the end.

As marketing is integrating all specialties in a “digital first” model, it’s a Pandora box for simplistic models. Basically, before Facebook advertising, marketers had to split what they were doing in content strategy and what they were investing in media buy. Whereas now, things seem easier to explain: as media-buy and content to feed Facebook pages or Facebook ads are on the same equation, the justification to invest is obvious - you get what you invest.

A lot of stakeholders seem pleased; direct marketers own a tangible figure, media-buyers justify their salaries and social media specialists are finally busy working on other topics.

But this is just absurd and wrong.

Automation is killing real ROI.

As Dao Nguyen (Buzzfeed) recently explained:

"Every piece of content is judged by itself. Did it reach an audience? Were people interested in it? What was the best way of it getting there through sharing? So that's why we use social as a metric."

This very clear statement goes totally against the current market trend. As all measurement models should be tailor-made to what a brand has to say and to who it has to say it, there’s a tendency for homogeneity. Good sense would forbid brands to invest all their money in a one-stop social network shop. Yet, 92% of brand marketers plan to spend the majority of their social media marketing budget on Facebook during the holiday shopping season. 

At this game, if Facebook is a big winner, brands are the big losers.

The reason lies in the summary of a brilliant L2 report, comparing community size vs. engagement:

It’s a paradoxical fact: brands are going to invest massively in the platform where ROI might be the lowest ever in terms of engagement.

The Facebook long-term affair: time to think beyond immediate results.

Marketers have been discussing for the last couple of months about the end of “free” organic reach. Facebook created a system that Don Corleone would love: you make clients less numerous and you impose the business owners you racket to pay to get your clients back.

I haven’t met a client in the last six months who was happy with this matter; big Fortune 500 as well as small business owners. For the latters, the issue is so bad that they’re now going back to good old direct marketing, with a twist of in-store digital activation. Good news, but the change is a bit brutal for them. For big brands, millions are less of an issue as it’s now part of a balance between investing in display banners or Facebook reach. And unsurprisingly, Facebook is no longer in the business of social media, but in the industry of media.

The big issue might rise in the next 2 years - the goal is not to justify if buying Facebook is better than investing in banners or other media offers. The objective is to convert and generate sales. As salesmen are keener to understand “social”, they might quickly realize that if you don’t grab emails, mobile phones, digital identities beyond a Facebook avatar, the millions that have been invested are random. Have you recently visited Kit-Kat Facebook page? On a 23 million fan-base, there are only a few hundred likes here and there, despite a great attempt to go bold from a creative perspective. It’s not because what the brand does is bad - it’s actually very good.

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Social Media Usage at World Travel Market 2014

Last week was the 35th annual World Travel Market, the leading global event for the travel industry.

To mark the occasion, we looked at how the four-day event at ExCeL London played out on social media.

With more than 50,000 senior travel industry professionals, government ministers and international press in attendance, we analysed social media activity around the official #WTM14 hashtag on Twitter and Instagram from the 3-6 November.

The Umpf team created a daily social media report which looked at the previous day’s most influential contributors, hot topics, most shared tweets and images, as well as day-on-day trends (see more: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4).

Now that WTM has ended, we have produced an in-depth, 12-page report which looks at social media usage at the event in more detail.

The data tracking, research and analysis was managed byEllie Hallsworth and Matthew Balmforth. It was produced by Umpf in association with TTG, the UK’s leading media business for travel agents and the travel and tourism industry.

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The Importance of Consumer Insights in Today's Marketing Strategies

It may sound funny to even ask this question, but how many businesses really understand their consumers when it comes to developing new products and services, or marketing those products to potential customers? This does not refer to just understanding consumers in the traditional sense of how a product appeals to a specific demographic group. It means really getting down to the nitty-gritty of understanding why consumers act a certain way, how they share information with each other, and what cultural influences are at work in shaping their perceptions and understandings.

This is one area in MARKETING that is grossly under-represented in contemporary academic and media discussions. Today's consumers have changed dramatically in how they choose to work with the companies and brands they patronize. They have different backgrounds and cultural foundations, receive and process information in new ways, and want to interact on a more personal level. Businesses and MARKETERS that do not search for consumer insights, or who fail to understand their anthropological backgrounds, will not be able to connect or engage with prospects and won't be able to motivate them to become customers.

The anthropological approach to marketing is all about understanding culture. Instead of trying to change behaviors, marketers can learn how to play into them and utilize them to their advantage. Since building a brand is based upon establishing an intellectual and emotional relationship, business planners, product developers and marketers must all take the cultural context into consideration. Culture is not just language, but a combination of historical, tribal and mythological characterizations. A greater understanding of cultural insights and anthropological factors increases the marketer's ability to motivate action and effect behavioral change.

The Forces Behind the Rise of Consumer Insights

As business has grown and evolved, marketers are all well aware that we can no longer try to give consumers "any color they want, so long as it's black," as Henry Ford was so fond of saying. Companies now realize that they need to offer a wide variety of products, services, colors and fashions to appeal to an ever-changing customer base. But why do some products fairly jump off the shelves while others languish in obscurity? Each company may assert that it has done in-depth market research, but have they truly looked for consumer insights which would make their product more desirable?

The make-up of the buying public has changed dramatically in the past decade or two. Consumers now represent a complex mixture of Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Gen Yers, all vying for the attention of corporate planners. Each group has its own specific needs, wants and desires. Without gaining insights into these groups, businesses will never be able to develop products they want, or to promote them in a way that gains attention. Even within these groups, there can be a wide diversity of characteristics. A Baby Boomer who is just approaching retirement has an entirely different mindset than someone who has already been living in Florida for ten years.

Businesses need to culturally understand why each group is different. What was going on as each generation was growing up? What shaped their values and morals? How do they interact with each other and corporations? While an older generation might have been more open to accepting Ford's brusque evaluation, younger consumers will certainly not consent to any such arrangement.

Added to the complex demographic puzzle is the new global economy where consumers can virtually come from any part of the world that has an Internet connection. This will take a massive understanding into the consumer insights that shape buying patterns in various countries. While American consumers might value certain traits, Europeans may have different needs and desires. Even Europe can't be looked at as one giant market; anthropologists will be needed to study the differences from country to country, and even within the various regions of each country. Businesses need to understand how each population relates to the products and services it uses before marketing plans can be set in place.

All of this must also be accomplished in the blink of a virtual eye because the social media universe has made the consumer response swift and unrelenting. Products or services that are brought to MARKET without delving into the reasons why consumers might want them are quickly and unceremoniously laughed off the internet shelf. Social media influencers and advocates can quickly build up a product they like to their circle of influence, or just as easily tear it down.

Consumer-centric MARKETING is more than just a buzzword. The world has changed dramatically, and continues to evolve rapidly. What appeals to customers one day may not work the next. Businesses need to wake up to this fact and improve their insights into consumer behavior.

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LinkedIn Activity: Trying to Manage the Virtually Unmanageable

This article attempts to help intermediate and advanced LinkedIn users understand how their LinkedIn activity is broadcast and shared with other users, and provides recommendations for the best approaches to managing that activity within LinkedIn’s constraints. It provides a comparable assessment and recommendations for filtering and managing other people’s LinkedIn activity as well.

Want more control over how your LinkedIn activity is broadcast and shared with other users? Good luck with that. And good luck filtering and managing other people’s LinkedIn activity too. I first wrote about the quantity and quality challenges inherent in managing LinkedIn activity a little over three years ago, and when I revisited subject recently I found that not much has changed. In fact, the situation may actually be worse. Although there have been some positive changes (e.g., people’s tweets are no longer automatically posted to LinkedIn), it appears that many activities that were previously controllable, at least to some extent, are no longer. And LinkedIn has added more things to the home page activity feed that can’t be controlled, like Pulse news and sponsored updates. *sigh*

This situation is both disappointing and unfortunate. Encouraging and maximizing engagement is obviously in LinkedIn’s best interests. As a metrics-driven company, they need users to leverage its features so they can determine how to enhance and extend their offerings. But they seem to be missing the point that giving people the ability to control and customize their experience on the platform – and to do so with relative ease – is crucial to promoting engagement.

This article is my attempt to help other users wrap their minds around LinkedIn activity and the best options for managing it. To the best of my ability, it reflects my understanding of what you can and cannot manage, and offers some recommended actions. I apologize in advance if it isn’t helpful. Both the research and the writing made my brain hurt, so I’m sure reading it won’t be easy. It’s probably most useful for intermediate and advanced LinkedIn users.

Note: This piece is written from the perspective of accessing LinkedIn via the web on a desktop or laptop. The experience and recommendations will differ for mobile devices and tablets.

LinkedIn Activity We Should Be Able to Manage

We all have different objectives and different reasons for using LinkedIn, which in turn lead to different preferences in how our own LinkedIn activity is broadcast and how the activity of others is distributed to us. Here are some of the LinkedIn activities that people engage in that most users would like the ability to manage (as either a sender or receiver):

• Changing a profile
• Adding an update or publishing a post
• Connecting with another user, as well as following, endorsing, and/or recommending them
• Following a company, and liking or commenting on one of their updates
• Liking or commenting on an update or post from another user
• Joining groups, posting to groups, and commenting or liking someone else’s group post or comment

Ideally, the information and tools to control these activities would be centralized, easy to understand, easy to use, and granular. Unfortunately, they are none of these things.

Managing Your Own LinkedIn Activity

LinkedIn Activity Broadcasts. LinkedIn has a single, global setting (under Privacy and Settings/Profile) for managing your activity broadcasts. This setting enables you to “let people know when you change your profile, make recommendations, or follow companies.” It’s all or nothing, which means you can’t control broadcasting profile changes separately from the recommendations you make and/or the companies you follow.

You can also change this setting when you’re updating your profile, via a toggle switch in the right-hand column of the page. Having the switch here offers a convenient reminder of your default settings and provides more flexibility and control over when your profile changes are shared with others. Unfortunately, it’s not at all clear that flipping the switch means that you’re changing the default setting rather than making a session-specific choice. If you don’t want to change your default setting, you have to flip the switch back after publishing your updated profile.

Another problem with the activity broadcast setting is its limited scope. It doesn’t include things like updates you share via the home page, posts you publish, items you post to groups (which you can presumably control via group settings, but I couldn’t figure it out), and likes and comments. From what I can tell, any activity for which there is no specific setting is automatically broadcast with a default setting of “everyone.”

The only other activity you seem to be able to control is notifications when you join groups (under Privacy and Settings/Groups, Companies & Applications). This is another global switch that enables you to determine whether LinkedIn should “publish an update to [your] network whenever [you] join a group that has these notifications enabled by the group owner.” You cannot easily make the broadcasting choice each time you join a group.

Recent LinkedIn Activity. Until the end of 2013, your LinkedIn profile included an Activity section (between the thumbnail information card and your summary) that listed your most recent activity and provided a dropdown to see more. That section is now gone, much to many people’s chagrin. Now people have to click on the drop down arrow next to the Endorse or Send Inmail button on your profile page (depending on their connection to you) and click on View recent activity. Unfortunately, this shows all your latest activity, including group posts, comments and. So instead of featuring certain activities and items you might want to highlight in connection with your LinkedIn identity, visitors see a decontextualized set of actions that likely provides more noise than signal (particularly if you’re active on the platform).

You can control who sees that activity – sort of. Under Privacy and Settings/Profile you can determine who can see your activity feed. The options are everyone, your network, your connections or only you. You cannot, however, make selections based on the type of activity you engage in (e.g., updates, blog posts, group shares, comments, likes). As with everything else, it’s probably best to assume it’s all treated as public and broadcast on other people’s home page feeds since the setting specifically refers to “your activity feed” and not “your activity.”

Finally, when you post an update via the home page, you can indicate whether that update should be shared witheveryone or your connections only, but it’s unclear whether the choice also impacts your activity feed. I suspect the global setting overrides whatever choice you make for  a specific post, so even it doesn’t show up on the home page it may still be included in your activity feed.

Recommended Actions.

• Turn the default activity broadcast setting to “off.” When you make a change to your profile you want broadcast, flip the switch back to “on” right before you’re ready to publish your updated profile. Then immediately go into Privacy and Settings and turn it back off again.
• Change who can see your activity feed based on your objectives for using LinkedIn and your personal preferences. If you have a public-facing role and/or are on the job MARKET I would recommend choosing everyone or your network; otherwise, your connections is fine. I don’t really see the point of choosing only you (except perhaps temporarily).
• Change who can see what groups you join based on your objectives for using LinkedIn and your personal preferences. If you display groups on your LI profile you probably want to set this to on; otherwise, set it to off (which is my preference).
• Periodically check your recent activity and delete specific items you don’t want listed. For example, if you share the same item with multiple groups, you probably want to delete all but one of the shares. You may also want to delete likes and comments that aren’t particularly useful. If your LinkedIn activity is high, it’s probably a good idea to do this clean up weekly. If not, monthly may be sufficient. Note: the LinkedIn help item below suggests conducting the view via the home page, but that may not include all your activity. I think it’s better to access the activity feed on your profile page by clicking on the arrow next to the Edit button and selecting View recent activity. When you hover over each item, a Deleteoption should appear in the top right corner.

LinkedIn resources

Managing the LinkedIn Activity of Others

The activity of other LinkedIn users gets displayed in the feed on your home page (as does your own). There is a dropdown menu right under the update bar on the right that enables you to change what LinkedIn activity is displayed in the feed. You can elect to view either recent activity or top activity (not sure exactly how that’s defined), and you can also select whether you want to view shares only, profile changes only, or all updates.

You can further customize the LinkedIn activity updates you see on your home page (including your own) by either selecting customize from the dropdown menu or under Privacy and Settings/Account. You can opt in or out of any of the following:

• New connections
• Job opportunities
• Updates shared by connections
• Updates from followed companies
• Trending news
• Group discussions and changes
• Profile changes
• Application updates

Note: any customizations you make here include your activity too. So, for example, if you opt out of group discussions and changes, you won’t see anything you’ve posted to groups in the home page feed (but they will be viewable via the activity feed on your profile page).

LinkedIn also enables you to block the activity of specific individuals by “hiding” them – but again, this is an all-or-nothing option. You have no ability to pick and choose what you’d like to see from folks.

Finally, there are a number of things you don’t seem to have much if any control over, including:

• The Pulse update and recommended news items
• Other users’ likes and comments
• Notifications about people your connections are now following
• Specific post types (e.g., math quizzes)
• Sponsored updates
• Suggested connections
• Anniversaries and other profile news automatically shared by LinkedIn

As far as I can tell, you also have no control over the notifications you receive (see the flag in the top bar, on the right).

Recommended Actions.

• Customize the activity you see based on your objectives for using LinkedIn and your personal preferences. Since it’s not exactly clear what each item includes, you will probably need to experiment to see what you’re opting in/out of. I would flip them all off and then flip each one on individually to see what shows up on your home page. After you’ve checked them all, go back and opt in to the activities you want to continue to see.
• If someone’s activity is dominating your home page feed with content you don’t find particularly valuable, hide them. You may to unhide folks to see if their signal/noise ratio has improved.
• Decide what you want your default feed to include (i.e., shares, profiles, or all updates) and set it up that way. I would definitely include profiles at a minimum, as profile changes create good opportunities to reach out and connect with folks. Whether you also want to see what other people share and use that as an opportunity to engage is up to you.
• Set up the feed to display recent items rather than having LinkedIn filter the content to only show you the “top” posts.

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5 Retailers Rocking Instagram

Instagram is the only major social network lacking a click-through mechanism, but it sure has established itself as a game-changer in the retail world.

It’s a channel ideal for retail brands--if they use it well. Though the grey-area in click-through trackability leaves some sceptical, the platform has too much potential to be ignored. And savvy retailers realize click-through isn’t necessary to drive engagement and brand awareness.

With more than 200 million users, 60 million posts per day, and 70% of users logging in daily, the audience and engagement is there (DMR). 90% of Instagram’s users are under the age of 35, making it a popular and promising platform for retail brands focused on the 18 - 34 age range. 68% of these users are women (Digiday). And “Young women under 36 years of age outspend their male counterparts almost 2:1” (Nielsen).

The numbers tell a very clear story here, and if used optimally, Instagram can be quite an influential source, especially for retailers targeting women.

These are some of our favorite retailers out there killin’ it on Instagram right now.

    1.         Poler

        What we love: Their hashtag game spurs fan engagement

Poler is the favorite outdoor brand instagram feed around here. Don’t get me wrong - We like the other open-air, big-adventure accounts as much as any other office desk dweller, but none of them bring their hashtag game as strongly as Poler. They’ve found this refreshingly brand-less balance somewhere between the hipster society-can’t-tie-me-down mentality and the ad agency big-idea meeting. They’ve commandeered hashtags that actually feel natural and cool to use. And it really shows - Users are uploading a LOT of photos with Poler’s hashtags. So much so, that poler can post 5 or 6 fresh photos daily on their account.

They’re focused enough to belong to the brand and set them apart from the rest, but non-corporate enough to actually work. You know you’ve struck GOLD when hipsters WANT to use your brand hashtags. As a result, their account has no end to awesome fan-generated imagery.

    2.         Free People

        What we love: They treat their account like an art exhibit

What sets retailers apart on Instagram is the INVESTMENT they’re willing to put into a platform that has no trackable reward. Retailers’ instagram accounts cannot merely be an echo of their Facebook and Twitter content. There’s no real value there, and the platforms are expected to be used differently: Facebook for communication, Twitter for news, and Instagram for visual interest.

Free People accomplishes this beautifully - through a plethora of imagery experiences - spoken through clothing, scenery, words, moments - all strung together to form a beautifully wrapped atmosphere. There is an art to this type of account which takes thought, and the thought screams through the simplest of touches, speaking to over 1.5 million followers.

    3.         Madewell

        What we love: Their product-centric strategies

Madewell knows their denim. So much so that they are self-proclaimed Denim Obsessives. Since they’ve been studying jean-etics (see what I did there?) since 1937, I won’t question whether they wear the pants in the denim family. And no one else does. So, they held an Instagram contest this past Spring for their lesser-known specialty - Totes.

Instagram is a powerful platform for awareness and perception shifting. Users were challenged with posting photos of what was in their Transport Tote for Madewell’s #totewell contest. And nothing quite spurs participation like a $1,000 gift card or three. This encouraged other Madewell fans to get their own totes so they could play along - driving sales and building a fanbase all within a simple ask that aligned tightly with the Madewell brand. They had Instagram contest success in the bag, if you will.

It takes a gutsy retailer to focus a strategy around one singular product. But if you do it right, like Madewell did, it can really pay off and broaden your fans’ perception of your brand.

    4.         Burberry

        What we love: The all-access backstage pass

Burberry are the masters of capturing their behind-the-scenes of retail through their Instagram account. Even from the placement of the camera of many of their shots - seemingly peeking over a shoulder, from behind something, or from the perspective of a team member. It feels exclusive - a secret invitation just for me (ok.. and for nearly 2 million other fans). It’s like in the movie The Polar Express when the kid gets to go to Santa’s hood- not only does he visit, but he is thrown into a backstage adventure. He sees the workshop, the elves wrapping up presents and wrapping up work for the season, and, in the end, he gets to talk to Santa himself, who gives him a present - anything of his choosing, for Pete’s sake.

In short, Burberry’s Instagram account is like the retail version of the boy’s trip to the North Pole.

    5.         Michael Kors

What we love: Points for personalization

Beyond the fact that this account is visually stunning and detailed to the T (hey, nearly 3 million followers don’t lie), Michael Kors has also been known to go above and beyond for their fans. And when you’re already a sought-after product, that kind of “surprise and delight” (as we call it here at redpepper) can turn a fan into a walking ad(vocate).

Instagram Direct arrived in December 2013 - a welcome gift for retail brands to play with in the midst of the holiday rush. Michael Kors posted this image with “An early gift from @instagram! The first 50 people to post a pic and tag it #MKDirect will get a special message from Michael Kors tomorrow.”

“Michael Kors is taking it slower, and bets on this extended timeline to let the buzz build itself. By announcing a gift delivery to 50 people tomorrow, they’re making sure to get mentioned a lot beforehand. Sending a message only to a few doesn’t mean it won’t reach many people by getting reposted,” says Totems, an Instagram MARKETING Blog. (Totems)

I just highlighted 5 retail brands who are using Instagram very well. And they understand that it isn’t a metric-driven channel.

Instagram users aren’t looking to be sold to. They’re there for the experience. As Instagram’s agency whisperer P.J. McGregor told Digiday, “The areas that will have the most impact are on upper-funnel brand metrics — creating awareness, driving changes in perception and changes in consideration.”

It’s really anyone’s game in Instagram right now - users who had no real presence before are creating beautiful accounts that people want to follow, and brands are conforming. In the end, those with good, quality, thoughtful content are generating awareness, owning their perception, and excelling.

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