"71% of internet users will access social networking sites regularly this year."  source

One of the great challenges and great truths of social media is the quick speed at which everything changes. Whether it is your Twitter feed, the social news cycle or the speed at which each network grows, we can all count on everything changing and changing often. And the latest change is the stong push and focus on native social video by major social media channels.

It is always interesting to me to watch the ebb and flow of major events on social media. It is natural to see themes on our Facebook feeds as the news of the days becomes relevant in our daily lives. We’ve all seen news stories take over our feeds. It can be done well and it can be done in poor taste. The organizations who do it best make sure their shared or original content is relevant to the larger topic and is consistent with their overall mission.

In today's social media marketing world, it's hard to stand out.  It's even harder to stand out and connect with your community at the same time. One opportunity for social media marketing made its debut this year, Facebook Live.

Maintaining a successful social media presence can be a daunting task — juggling your profiles on multiple platforms while keeping pace with the ever-changing social media world is intimidating. Fortunately, there’s a ‘golden rule’ of social media strategy that involves a simple formula, but one that is often overlooked: The Rule of Thirds.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported in June of 2015 that Millennials are now the largest generation, outnumbering even the Baby Boomers. Thanks to the Millennial Generation the social media revolution has a large army of foot soldiers.

Fall in Vermont (or should I say autumn?) is chock full of delightful distractions, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on special treats. Here are our monthly top picks from around the web in September, plus the top five stories from the Change Conversations blog.

It’s frustrating to be a small business advertiser or nonprofit advocate today, especially if yours is a visually driven world. The return on your promotional tools just keeps getting smaller. Television is weakened by DVRs that let your audience record shows and fast forward through commercials. There has been a 25% drop in newspaper readership for ages 18-24 from 1999 to 2014. In fact, there isn’t a newspaper readership age group that hasn’t dropped at least 20% in that time frame. And the “banner blindness” audiences have developed in response to website banner or pop-up ads has been well documented for years. But Instagram may be your best visual marketing tool ever.

Over the course of my internship at Marketing Partners, I’ve learned about a variety of different topics and acquired some important real-world skills. Working with a mix of clients has exposed me to all sorts of different industries, but here’s one of my biggest takeaways that applies to all of them – social media isn’t a choice for your business anymore – and, as we’ve written about before, using social media for business is very different from personal social media use.

While we often write about social media in this blog and how businesses and organizations can use it strategically as part of an integrated marketing plan, it's not often first-hand field research on social media use by tweens and teens can be shared.

Ever feel like there will never be enough time to use social media effectively?

In the real estate sales world, the mantra is “location, location, location.” In the social media world, it’s “relationships, relationships, relationships.” Any social media strategy – whether for a nonprofit organization or a for-profit business – needs to focus on relationship building and relevant content.