Reasons To Socialize Your Business

 Small and medium-sized businesses don’t need social networks to survive but if you want your business to have an edge, socializing does help. I can think of different reasons why you should socialize your business. Each of them will grant your business a huge advantage over the rest.

Build brand awareness
 

Brand awareness goes beyond people’s knowledge of your business name and logo. It also entails how people associate your brand to the products you sell or the services you provide. Generally speaking, you want your brand to be known for providing high-quality products and services. Engaging in social networks can help spread brand awareness across people who encounter your business for the first time. Satisfied customers who interact with your social networks can also help in spreading word about your company, large or small. Their positive feedback is going to leave a good impression on possible customers.
 

Free advertising

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are also means to advertise your business cost-free. Its viral, user-friendly and world wide.

 

Identify your market
 

Social media can help business owners determine which populations are actually interested in the products and services they provide. Even though businesses target particular niches and markets, social media can help them find out if they targeted the right people or if they need to make adjustments in the business strategies they use. Furthermore, social media may be used as research tools for coming up with new products and services. Conduct surveys among your existing database of followers and figure out what they need and want from your business.

 

Build the trust of your customers

Socializing can also help build the trust of customers in your business. However, it doesn’t always work this way. As a business owner, it is your responsibility to manage your social networking accounts by responding to customers who leave comments or send you messages. Not replying to them will actually cost you their trust. Apart from responding to complaints and disappointed customers, regularly interact with customers by starting conversations. Remember to keep your statements professional and be careful with what you say. One wrong message can damage the reputation of your business.
 

Drive traffic to your website
 

Businesses who own websites can use social media to drive traffic towards them. From there, customers can find out more about your business (brand awareness) and possibly avail your products and services online. Driving traffic to your business website can also increase your Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank, both of which are important in assessing the relevance of your website. Together, these ranks can help your company website appear in the first page of search engines.

 

Increase your profit

With the help of effective social media marketing, your business will get more customers. The more customers you have, the more profit you’ll gain.

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The Top 10 Social Media Apps for iPhones and Ipads

 

So you have finally obtained an iPad or iPhone for yourself? These two premier devices from Apple are amazing for doing a lot of things such as watching videos, playing games, browsing the web, listening to music and many more. But one of the best things that you can do with an iPad and iPhone is that it allows people to connect easily through social networks.

 

Staying in touch with your friends and the latest news around the world is now a part of everyday life and with the apps that are available today, this makes the ability to do it on an iPad or iPhone even easier. Below are the top 10 social media apps that are best for your Apple device:

 

Facebook

The app for Facebook is an improvement over its mobile site and it also improves the navigation and browsing in the web. The app for iPad itself is a great choice for viewing photos using the pinch-to-zoom feature. It is also possible to have videos and games played in full screen with this app.

 

Hootsuite

This app is an ideal choice for you to place all of your social networking profiles in a single location. Hootsuite will allow users to manage various accounts as they wish and allow micro-posting to many of them as they see fit. The ability to acquire photos through your iPhone and iPad camera is possible and can be uploaded instantly.

 

TweetDeck

For people that have many Twitter accounts present, this app will make it easy for people to browse between mentions, friend lists and messages. Users can also use TweetDeck to easily post tweets on their latest updates.

 

IM Pro +

This app will allow a user to make use of a platform which will combine all of their accounts for chatting into an interface that is user-friendly and makes viewing easy.

 

Flipboard

Similar to Hootsuite, Flipboard allows users to combine their various social networking accounts into a place where they can easily view it but in a unique way. The app will transform timelines more into a magazine-type of page which will make them fun to read and appealing to the eyes.

 

Sociable

This app brings all of the social media accounts of an individual together allowing them to easily manage their profiles in a simple interface.

 

LinkedIn

The social network is now in an app which will allow professionals to connect to others using their iPhone or iPad device. The app has an easy to use interface which will allow users to see messages and updates easily.

 

Gowalla

This social media app is great for locating places, as it uses the built-in GPS feature to determine the user’s location. Gowalla is great for people that travel a lot.

 

GetGlue

For social networking enthusiasts that are fond of watching television shows and movies, listening to music or reading books, GetGlue is the app for them. It allows users to share and rate what they are reading and watching, providing updates on their contacts in this way.

 

Google Apps Browser

The Google Apps Browser will let users access up to 18 different services from the company in one app. It will also allow easy integration with Twitter and Facebook, which makes sharing simple to do.

The Top Essential WordPress Plugins for Blogs and Sites

I have just listed down some of the top plugins that are essential in WordPress today. Starting out with your new blog in the platform can be quite confusing the first time you use it as there are many things that you should figure out first. Below is a list of plugins that I have come up with which I believe will be very helpful for people with blogs and websites in WordPress.

Akismet

Being used by millions, this plugin is one of the best ways that people can use to protect their own blogs from trackback and comment spam. Akismet will let users protect their site from spam even while they are sleeping. In oder to get started, one should activate the plugin, sign up to obtain an API key for Akismet and go to the configuration page save the API key. This is one of the most vital plugins to use for keeping spammers away.

WordPress Ping Optimizer

This plugin will save your blog in WordPress from being tagged as a ping spammer. This is important for people who may have made some typographical errors in their content and do this on a constant basis. The Ping Optimizer will keep the pingers away from blacklisting the website for edits.

Prettify

Google Code Prettify will allow users to have their codes displayed and look good with styling options that is being powered by Themekit. Dealing with Code Snippets can be a pain and this may be one of the most flexible plugins one can work with.

Widget and Icon Sharing - Simple Social

This will add a set of social sharing for icons and widgets within each post that has been published by the user. There are some which will come out to be snappier than this but it is going to help you load up your site for trackers. One example of this is SexyBookmarks.

W3 Cache

This is one of the most complete and highest rated performance plugin for WordPress. The plugin will dramatically improve the speed and experience of users within the website. People can add page, object, database and browser as well as content delivery network to their WordPress blog.

WordPress SEO

One of the first all-in-one solutions for SEO in WordPress, this plugin will include XML sitemaps, on page analysis of content and many more. It is important to have search engine optimization processes running in a website in order to maintain ranking for the blog or website.

A lot of people are going to benefit from the plugins that I have listed in this article. There is Aksimet which protects the website from spam which can be very annoying and frustrating to deal with. The Ping Optimizer gives your website a chance to avoid being blacklisted by people. And of course the SEO for WordPress which I believe is one of the most important aspects that people should focus on especially when building site rankings. Try these plugins today to get a feel of how they can benefit you and your website.

Why an Increasing Number of Doctors is Using Social Media

There have been a lot of physicians today who are doing follow ups on their patients using modern ways of communications like social media. Whether testing their patients regarding health messages, keeping track of disease trends, communicating with patients through email or identifying new medical problems, these technology-inclined doctors seem to be increasing nowadays.

As far as they are all concerned, the numbers given are not that high as of yet. There are still a lot of doctors who rely on paper and pen when prescribing meds or other agendas related to their patients and are more comfortable communicating with each other when using technology. Yet acquiring information coming from the top public health agencies in the nation up to the smaller medical clinics, it has been discovered that many patients want to spend more than just a 15-minute visit in the office and callbacks from their physicians at the end of the day.

Away from the high tech hubs of the East Coast and Silicon Valley, the pediatrician from Kansas City Natasha Burgert provides tips on rearing up children in her blog, Twitter and Facebook pages, as well as answers the questions of patients through text and email messages.

She stated that the tools that she use are all embedded within her normal work day and that she does all of these in between the checkups that she gets. Burgert said that it is much easier for her to send an email or show a blog post to a patient than it is for her to call them. The pediatrician mentioned that this is what the physicians of the old school usually do, allocating some time before the day ends to return calls to their patients.

Burgert has just received an email from her patient recently which was coming from a new mother who was asking how to wean her 2 year old child using a pacifier. In just a few clicks of the index finger, the pediatrician was able to share a blog post which provides tips on how to handle this topic.

A mother of two young daughters who are patients of Burgert, Sarah Hartley, stated that she finds it practical to have e-access with her doctor, with emails even late at night getting a response quickly. She said that it is very useful and helpful at the same time, that most parents will get concerned regarding a lot of things which may not be that big of a deal to be scheduling a personal appointment. Hartley said that it also gives her fast reassurances from her doctor which will ease off her worries the next day.

At 36 years old, Burgert does not charge her patients for communications via the virtual world, yet there are some doctors who do. She just stated that this way of communication only enhances the personal contact but in no way does it replace office visits with patients.

She said that most of her colleagues look at her and shake their heads whenever she tells them what she does. These doctors do not understand the use of these tools which is why they do this, but the doctor believes the upcoming generation that will be coming behind her will think this to be much more common.

Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist from the Cleveland Clinic, comes from an older generation but has started to work with e-technology and mentions that he is a member of the Twitterati. Yet with the help of staffs from the clinic, the cardiologist who was in his 60s was able to lead a live chat in Twitter regarding topics such as cholesterol problems and heart failure and found the experience to be exhilarating.

The doctor stated that this different way of communication opens up an opportunity to talk to an audience which can be located anywhere in the world regarding heart health. He said that the downside in this is that it is challenging for physicians because the messages that they provide to interested people are not conducive in just a few characters. Nissen said that asking him a question regarding heart health will give the asker a five minute answer at least.

But with a lot of young people today that are facing obesity, which is one of the factors that contribute to having heart problems, Nissen believes that Twitter will be an effective way in reaching his target audience and he even plans to utilize the platform even more. He thinks it is great if he is able to get through the people that need to hear his message.

Acknowledging the benefits in using social media today, the American Medical Association however warns the doctors to put an emphasis in protecting the privacy of their patients and also to keep appropriate boundaries between them.

During a case that has been publicized, the state disciplinary board has just reprimanded Rhode Island emergency medicine physician Alexandra Thran for being unprofessional last year and has also fined her at least $500. This was after she has made comments on her page in Facebook about an injury of one of her patients. Although Thran did not mention any names, some people were able to figure out the identity. The doctor declined to respond to the requests for her to give comment.

The number of doctors who are using virtual and social media communication has been expected to increase under the Accountable Care Act. This act encourages the documenting of health records as well as exchanges electronically of health information to be made.

There was a study that was published online last March which found about 60 percent of public health departments of the state are using Twitter or other social media networks in order to send out information to people rather than communicate with patients.

Through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spreads their messages in these social websites. The other services that it features involve 12 texts per month which includes automatic tips when it comes to obesity prevention and healthy eating advice. CDC has over 2 million followers on its social media websites as of today.

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