Real quick: a round-up of social media news for 5/21

Here’s a brief summary of the most notable developments at the intersection of social media and business. Whose social media account is it, anyway? Law firm Littler Mendelson discusses the gray area that arises when employees represent their company on social media — and then want to take the accounts with them when they leave. They argue that a trade secret framework is the right approach: “The secret of access to the social network account –the password– should be protectable as a trade secret.” When it comes to global brands the Financial Times reports that social media networks are not just kingmakers but are also kings, themselves: Almost a fifth of this year’s top 100
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A nice place to vacation if you only had Emphatic to do your social media for you

Yes Virginia, B2B social media is a thing

If you’re questioning whether social media is a) necessary and b) feasible for B2B businesses, read this. B2B social media: the why When we think of commodity products we normally think of raw materials like lumber, oil, and — my favorite — coffee beans. It really doesn’t matter whose tree your coffee bean came from, commodities are products that may be from different producers but are seen as identical. Commodities lack differentiation — in the buyer’s eyes they’re all the same. If you’re not an oil miner or a lumber company, and if you’re selling a product / service whose finished state is only a result of your significant input, then you want to be
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Real quick: social media business round-up for 5/20

Here’s our daily list of the most laughable and learnable news stories today in social media for business. McDonalds introduced a new mascot and it didn’t go so well. Maureen Morrison of AdAge has the scoop. American Century Investments shows financial advisers are finally coming around to the value of social media for business. Sort of. What’s interesting is they seem to be using it less for building relationships and more for building expertise: [R]esearching people went down over the past five years, from 19% in 2010 to 16% in 2014. Finally, 16% rated monitoring industry and market news as their number three use, up from 12% five years ago. Concerning future business uses,
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A snapshot of beautiful mountains you could visit if you left social media to Emphatic.co

Introducing another way to save you time on social media

At Emphatic we want to save you time and get you better results on social media. And we think the best way to do that is to actually let us do it for you. With this philosophy of letting you focus on the other important things going on in your business, we’re going to try experimenting with a daily round-up that includes just a few of the best recent pieces we’ve found about social media from others, with a brief explanation of why we think it’s worth your precious time. These could be instructive, entertaining or just plain weird, but they’ll all be chosen for their success in sparking new thoughts about the
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How Napoleon’s surgeon saved us all

If Napoleon had won you might have been reading this in French. Instead his defeat left Western culture largely in Anglo-Saxon hands. Yet there’s one French concept that outlived Napoleon, that the entire world still uses to decide life and death. It’s triage, and it’s an idea we owe to one of Napoleon’s most trusted commanders: Baron Dominique Jean Larrey.   The Baron Larrey was the chief physician of Napoleon’s armies for 18 years. He had a genius for organization and a knack for taking military tactics and putting them to medical use. For instance, he saw how Napoleon’s horse-powered “flying artillery” units sped up their fighting maneuvers and created
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You know all that stuff you think you should do? You shouldn’t.

Suppose you could erase 80% of the items on your daily to-do list and still get roughly the same results. How would you feel? Happier than an only child on Christmas morning, I bet. Here’s the story of a famous Italian economist who proved that you can. It starts in 1906, when both the United States and Europe were going through big changes in the make-up of their populations. That year the Statue of Liberty would welcome a record number of immigrants to America. And no country would send more immigrants its way than Italy as 273,000 Italians said goodbye to la bella vita and hello to the New World.
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When is it worth buying ads on Twitter and Facebook?

Have you ever wondered why there are so many Starbucks locations? Or why they have free wi-fi and comfy couches? It’s because the Starbucks marketers know that they’re not trying to sell a $5.90 cup of coffee — they’re trying to acquire and maintain a $15k customer. That simple math trick changes a lot about how you approach your marketing. -Ted Ammon The days when Twitter and Facebook were happy to have tons of users while making no money are over. Now that they’re both public companies they both have to answer to public investors who want to see big profits. To deliver on these expectations both networks, particularly Facebook,
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Here’s a shortcut to find what to say on social media

Good social media is partly about having the right mix of content: Direct calls to action only some of the time, for example: “Today we’re selling cake to anyone over 4 feet tall, stop by Emmy’s bakery today!” Subtle “I-see-what-you-did-theres”, for example: “Here’s a selfie of Margo & her new tarantula! We <3 helping our clients find the perfect pet!” And fun / entertaining stuff that may or may not be related to your business but proves you’re a human. But it’s not always easy to find good, non-sales related content for social media. So we present: 3 tips on how to use Yelp, Amazon or other review sites for content 1. Tell your audience the story
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An affordable way to outsource social media

LinkedIn was founded in 2003. Facebook took shape in 2004. And Twitter sprang to life just two years later. If you include bygones like Friendster and Myspace it has been well over a decade since social media was introduced to the world, to our businesses and to our personal lives. Social media: From novelty to necessity Today social media is a no-brainer for any large company that can afford to hire the consultants, agencies and full-time staff needed to manage it. Yet for them it remains a useful option, not a make-or-break decision. Certainly we’d all be stunned if Coca-Cola announced that it was unfriending Facebook. Or if GE said,
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