Social Media | Akira Media Designs

Twitter Image Crop Algorithm Experiments

What faces are preferred by Twitter?

Instagram Hiding Posts?

I am, by no means, not a master of Instagram. However, I know a social media false info campaign when I see one…

Meet Miquela, the Instagram fashion/social cause influencer who is completely virtual. While some of us struggle to break the one thousand mark, she has no fewer than 572 thousand followers. I imagine that current fashion is a lot more popular than muffler installations or lunch specials, so we’ve got that to comfort us. There’s an […]

The Best Time for Social Media Posts

From Brafton Content Marketing, a handy infographic for the optimal time to post on various social media platforms for the most exposure.

Yes, Your Twitter Wallpaper is Gone… Sorta

You noticed something different when you looked at Twitter yesterday ( if you even login to the web interface anymore. Something. was. off. Suddenly, it hits you; your carefully crafted wallpaper with links no one can click on is no longer there. Whaaaat? Yes. It’s gone. Well, mostly. It is still visible on individual Tweet […]

Unamused with our conduct, Facebook cracks down

Facebook made an announcement last week that made me pretty happy. I’ve got a really big pet peeve about Facebook business pages that try tricks and manipulations to boost their reach. It bothers me a lot when I see posts ending with things like: “Like this post to show your support for this fallen soldier.” “Comment […]

ADT Allegedly Caught Buying Endorsements

ADT has reached an agreement with the FTC after they were allegedly caught paying bloggers for endorsements of their products on TV without disclosing the relationship. Aside from it just being plain creepy and obviously wrong, the laws are very clear on this matter. If there is any sort of payment made, it must be disclosed. […]

Attention vs. Connecting

I frequently bemoan the state of online marketing today. We have such a great opportunity as small businesses to really connect with our customers to make them more than just anonymous one time consumers of our wares and make them part of our families. Unfortunately the way most social media streams are managed, we seem […]

Facebook Contest Rules

We all know that more “likes” on Facebook means better value for our Facebook business pages. In the never ending quest for more likes, it’s tempting to run a contest, but before you do, you need to know that Facebook has a few rules for such things. Some are obvious (“you are responsible for the […]

Icepocalypse2014

Duke Energy Outage Map Just under forty THOUSAND of us are without power here in Southeastern North Carolina with the bulk of that here in New Hanover County. It’s 2013. We can buy shoes in our underwear from the comfort of our own homes, but a day or two of ice will still bring […]

ThinkUp

ThinkUp is a open source social media analytics tool used by the Obama administration to manage their twitter feed. Installation is fairly simple ( no more difficult than WordPress ) and they guide you through configuration steps for Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and Foursquare. I’ve created a little test install on my own server and […]

Bryson City takes to YouTube to say that they’re still open.

[youtube.com/watch?v=29Am1m9hzMk] Bryson City, NC has taken to YouTube to let everyone know that they’re open for business even tho the government isn’t. I’m not going to harp on the production value here. Instead I’m going to point out that this is something anyone could do with their smartphone. I might even go so far as […]

Twitter on the Ferry

Spotted on the Ocracoke-Hatteras ferry over the weekend. Twitter is a given if you want to push information out these days. The problem isn’t channels. We’ve got plenty of those. The challenges are 1) choosing the right one(s), 2) letting people know you’re there, and 3) generating interesting & useful content.

Someone tell Britt’s Donuts that they’re doing it wrong

**This was originally shared over the summer on Facebook (Like Meeeee!), but I thought it’d be good to share it here too. Someone tell Britt’s Donuts that they’re doing it wrong. No web page. They have Facebook ( Britts on Facebook ) & Twitter ( Britts Twitter ) but never update either one. But, hey… […]

Before You Pull The Trigger On A Groupon Deal

Facebook is launching their deals platform in the US today. If they can beat Groupon’s pricing structure and offer more flexibility for business owners, I think they’ve got a good shot at dominating this particular end of the market. Oh, before you think about a Groupon campaign, you should read this article: Entrepreneur.com :: Groupon […]