By Yvette Pistorio I recently came across an infographic about getting past your social media fears, which brought back memories. I remember when I signed up for Twitter. I had heard of it, but didn’t really understand what the point was. So, I became a lurker – I wanted to figure this thing out because everyone was raving about it. Slowly I began to tweet, but diving [&hellip... Read More

By Yvette Pistorio Storytelling doesn’t come naturally for everyone. Yet everyone has a story to tell, including brands. As marketers, we are constantly telling stories – from our organization’s history and tales of customers and employees to stories about our products and services – and we have an opportunity to share the wealth. As I said a few weeks ago in Gin and Topics, we are [&hellip... Read More

By Yvette Pistorio This week has been a crazy. Let’s just say I’m calling this week #meetingweekoctober2013 because that’s the kind of week it’s been! My schedule looked a little like this: Monday I (finally) met Amanda Gnat of Orbit Media Studios. I’ve been chatting with Amanda since I started working with Arment Dietrich, so it was great to finally meet her in person. Tuesday was [&hellip... Read More

Sharing images with your community is fun, which is why Instagram is such a popular app. It makes all photos look good, photographer or not. With  more than 150 million active users, I’m not the only one who enjoys the photo sharing site. Brands have been hopping on board and trying to master the social network. In comes TrackMaven, a competitive analysis firm, that recently released a report to [&hellip... Read More

By Yvette Pistorio As a community manager, we’re used to disgruntled customers taking to Twitter to vent their grievances about, well, pretty much anything. But this is new! A consumer turned one of these grievances into an ad! If you haven’t heard of it, I’ll recap it for you quickly: Hasan Syed’s parents flew British Airways from Chicago to Paris, and realized one of their bags [&hellip... Read More

By Yvette Pistorio Another week comes and goes…do weeks seem to be going by really, really fast or is it just me? You know what, don’t answer that! Labor Day weekend has come and gone, my tan is fading, but my favorite season is upon us! Although we did have a few 90 degree days in Chicago a few weeks ago, which was a nice, last [&hellip... Read More

By Yvette Pistorio Remember back in January when we told you to embrace changes on Facebook? We weren’t kidding! Facebook has made a number of changes during the past couple of months, including introduction of the hashtag, new Facebook Insights, calls-to-actions in cover photos, Instagram video, verified pages, ending sponsored stories, the ability to embed animated GIFs in a status update, embed your posts on a [&hellip... Read More

By Yvette Pistorio Oh Friday, we meet again. I love Friday because it means I get to sleep in past 5:30am for two straight days and get more reading done. It’s the little things (note from Gini: Apparently working with me makes everyone early birds!). But I’m sad  summer is coming to an end – although I have to say, I’m thoroughly enjoying the fall-like weather [&hellip... Read More

By Yvette Pistorio When I started working in social media (just a mere two years ago) I never even heard of search engine optimization. As embarrassing as it is to admit it, it’s true. Judge all you want, but I’ve come to terms with my ignorance! Back then my focus was learning the different ways businesses were using social media. How were they building communities? How did they [&hellip... Read More

By Yvette Pistorio I read an interesting article this past weekend on MITSloan Management Review by Gerald Kane, and can’t get it out of my head. It was about how undergraduate students have a strong procedural understanding of social media tools, whereas graduate students have a stronger strategic understanding. I’ll admit it – that’s how it was for me. When I first started working in social [&hellip... Read More