Stephen Darori is a Social Media Expert,Author, Publicist,Finance and Marketing Whiz , Strategist ,Journalist, Editor Prolific Blogger. Editor. You can follow Stephen Darori on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other Social Media Platforms.
Stephen Darori & Associates has led major Social Media and Digital Campaigns for wide ranging clients that have included Hilary for America, the Democratic Party ,Democratic Alliance ( South Africa), Fortune 1000 companies and Shabbat.com
Showing posts with label Darori Foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Darori Foundation. Show all posts
Social Media sites being used by 1/3rd of the entire world, they’ve clearly had a major influence on society. But what about our Mind?
Here are 5 crazy ways that social media and the internet are affecting your mind right now
1. Can’t log off? Surprisingly 5 to 10 % of net user are actually unable to control how much time they spend online.
Though it’s a psychological addiction as appeared to substance addiction, brains scan these people actually show a similar impairment of regions that those dependencies have.
Specifically, these are a clear degradation matter of regions that control emotional processing, attention, and decision-making. Because Social Media provide immediate rewards with very little effort required, your brain begins to change itself, making your desire this stimulation.
2. We also see a shift when looking at multitasking. You might that those who use social media are constantly switching between work and website are better at multitasking, But studies have originated that when comparing heavy media user to others, they perform much worse during the task-switching test.
Increased Multitasking online reduces your brain’s ability to filter out interference, and can’t even make it harder for your brain to commit information to memory.
3. Like your phone buzzes in the middle of productive work. Or wait did it even buzz? A phantom Vibration syndrome is a relatively new psychological phenomenon where you think you get your phone go off, but it didn’t. Studies show sometimes itching is a vibration from your brain.
In one study, 89% of test subjects said they experienced this at least once a week. It perceives an itch as an actual vibration from our phone.
As crazy as it seems, technology has begun to rewrite our nervous system and our brains are being triggered in a way that never have been before in history.
4. Using MRI scans, scientist found that the rewards middle in people’s brain is much more active when they are talking about their own views as opposed to listening to others. Not so surprisingly, we all love talking about ourselves right?
But it turns out that while 30 to 40% of face to face conversation involve communicating our own experiences, around 80% of social media communication is self-involved.
5. But it’s not all self-involved, In fact, studies on relationship have found that partners tend to like each other more if they meet for the first time online rather than with face to face interaction. Whether it's because people's are more anonymous or perhaps more clear about their future goals, there is a statistical increase in a successful partnership that started online.
So while The Internet has changed our verbal communication with increased physical separation, perhaps the ones that matter end up even closer.
Snapchat Tricks and Features You Probably Didn’t Know About
We call them Snapchat hacks because many of the app’s best features are either hidden or just not intuitive. We’re looking at you, black paintbrush. But if you can learn these tricks you’ll have a powerful new arsenal of tools to help take your brand’s Snap game to the next level.
In this guide we’ll teach you how to access these lesser-known features, and uncover a few more that are available only after manipulating the settings on your device.
Let’s get started.
1. Record video without holding down the capture button
This makes it easier to hold your phone steady and flip back and forth between the front and rear camera. You need to be on an iOS device to use this hack.
How to do it
Access Settings
Select General
Go to Accessibility
Under the Interaction section, turn on the AssistiveTouch feature and a small icon will appear on the right side of your screen
Tap Create New Gesture
On the New Gesture page, hold your finger on the screen and let the blue bar at the bottom max out
Tap Stop
Save and name the gesture
Open Snapchat and before you start recording a video tap the small icon
Select Custom and a circle should appear on the screen
Now simply tap the capture button and your Custom gesture will take care of the rest
2. Draw impressive detail by turning on your phone’s zoom feature
If you fancy yourself more of a da Vinci than a doodler than this Snapchat hack is for you.
How to set it up it
On iOS
Go to Settings
Select General
Tap Accessibility
Under the Vision section, Enable Zoom
Select Show Controller
Choose your Zoom Region preference (Window or Full Screen)
Set Maximum Zoom Level to 15x
On Android
Go to Settings
Select Accessibility
Tap Vision
Tap Magnification Gestures
Enable Zoom
Using Snapchat on a tablet, where the screen is much larger, is another helpful trick for creating intricate masterpieces. Draw with a stylus to really impress people with your works of art.
3. Apply up to 3 filters on a single Snap
Add a sepia filter, broadcast your location, and the current temperature all at the same time!
How to do it
Take a picture in the app as you would normally
Swipe left across the screen and choose your first filter
Once you’ve landed on the one you want, hold your thumb anywhere on the screen to secure the first filter in place
Now use your free hand to swipe through the other filters
Once you’ve chosen your second filter, lift your thumb off the screen for a moment before tapping and holding it down again. Now you’re ready to start swiping left and choose a third filter
If you’re not happy with your combo, simply swipe right to delete all three filters and return to your unfiltered image.
4. Memorize your Snapchat profile’s shareable browser link
And then you can easily post and promote it across other social networks. Here’s the format: www.snapchat.com/add/YOURUSERNAME
5. Give your Snap a soundtrack
This one requires a bit of timing if you want to capture a specific part of a song, but it’s a simple trick otherwise.
How to do it
Open a music app on your phone
Play the song you want
Go back to Snapchat and start recording
6. Record video without sound
If you’re worried about loud and jarring background noise ruining the experience for your viewers, you can send a Snap without sound. After you record a video, simply tap the microphone icon in the bottom lefthand corner of the screen before hitting the blue send button.
7. Turn an emoji into a colorful filter
May we suggest 🎾 ?
How to do it
Choose an emoji with your desired color
Move it toward a corner of your screen
Increase its size and continue to shove it in the corner. The pixelated, semi transparent edges serve as the filter
If you’re feeling particularly adventurous you can try layering different color emojis.
8. Swap between the time and date filters, as well as metric and imperial measurements
All the simple text filters—speed, temperature, time, and altitude—have variations. Miles per hour becomes kilometers per hour, fahrenheit becomes celsius, feet becomes meters, and the time becomes the date.
Simply tap the text filter of your choice to access the other options.
The “0” creates a nice oval frame and the “A” will give you a bold triangular border, for example.
How to do it
After you’ve taken your Snap, create a one-letter caption with the largest size text (tap the “T” icon)
Enlarge it so that it creates a border around the picture
Position it until you have the frame you want
10. Change the color of individual words and letters
How to do it
Type your caption and tap the “T” icon to get the largest size text
Select one color you want to use from the color palette to start with
Then tap any word in your text and click the select option to highlight the word
Move the highlight over any word or letter you want to change the color of
Choose the next color from the color palette
11. Switch between the front and rear camera while recording
This one is easy. When filming a video simply double tap the screen to switch from selfie mode to point of view.
12. Pin an emoji on a moving target
Because the stuck-out tongue/winking eye emoji is more charming than any human face could ever hope to be.
How to do it
Record a video that focuses on a moving object
When you’re finished filming tap the emoji icon at the top of the preview screen and select the one you want
Resize the emoji before you pin it
Tap and hold the emoji to drag it over the moving target (which should be frozen at this point)
Hold it over the object for a moment
Snapchat will reload the video, and the emoji should follow along
13. Add drawings and captions to “Discover” content and share it with your friends
When viewing content from Snapchat’s Discover partners, tap and hold a Snap to share it with friends. It’ll automatically open as a draft, where you can add to it the same way you would any of your own Snaps. These can only be sent to individuals via chat, not shared to your Story.
14. Get all the colors and shades—including black and white
On an Android, all the colors are built into the palette, but iOS users have to do some additional swiping to access them.
How to do it
To draw in white, tap the rainbow color palette and drag your finger to the top-left corner of the screen
To draw in black, tap the color palette and drag your finger to the bottom of the screen
To find lighter or darker shades of colors, tap your prefered color and then drag your finger across the screen until you find the shade you want
15. Add multiple lines of text to your Snaps
How to do it
Open the Notes app on your phone
Tap the return button four or five times to create empty lines
Highlight and copy the empty lines
Open up Snapchat and take a picture or video
Tap the “T” icon and paste the empty lines into the caption box
Place your cursor on any line and type away
16. Share and edit photos stored on your phone in Chat
As a brand you can ask followers to message you and then reply with a pre-constructed image containing a discount code or some other call to action. It’s a fun, time-saving engagement tactic.
How to do it
Swipe right on a user’s name to open up Chat
Once there, select the image icon and choose the photo you want to work with
Add text, doodles, and filters as you would a regular Snap
You can also share video stored on your phone, but you aren’t able to edit the clips within Snapchat.
17. Use the volume buttons to take a photo or record a video in Snapchat
Yep, this is the same trick that works with your phone’s default camera app. If you have a pair of earbuds or headphones with volume control then you can use those to take Snaps as well. You don’t even have to be holding your phone!
18. Turn on “Travel Mode” to save data and battery life
If you enable Travel Mode on your Snapchat app, instead of downloading automatically, Snaps and Stories will load only when you tap them.
How to do it
Open Snapchat and tap the ghost icon on the top of your screen
Tap the gear icon
Under ADDITIONAL SERVICES select Manage
Enable Travel Mode
19. Delete a Snap from your Story
You can do this with any Snap in your Story, regardless of where it appears in the order.
How to do it
In Snapchat, swipe right from the default camera to choose the Stories view
When your story appears, swipe up on the Snap you want to delete
Tap the trashcan icon and select Delete
20. Find out if another user follows you back
Is your competitor keeping tabs on you? Follow them and find out.
How to do it
In Snapchat, go to Add Friends
Select Add by Username
Type the person’s username
Hold down on their username
If you see their Snapchat score, that means they are following you back
21. Zoom in and out with only one finger
No more awkwardly pinching the screen! When recording, sliding your finger up the screen will zoom in and sliding down will zoom out.
22. Edit a Snap in Memories to access old community geofilters
When you save a Snap to Memories, most geofilters available at the time are saved too. When you go back to edit a Snap, you can swipe to access those community geofilters.
For example, if you took a photo while vacationing in San Francisco, you can edit that Snap in Memories to access the San Francisco city filter from your home on the East Coast.
How to do it
Press and hold on a Snap.
Tap the pencil icon to edit the Snap.
Edit your Snap normally and swipe left to access the community geofilters that were available when you took the Snap.
Tap Done to save or discard your changes.
Simply swipe down to return to Memories.
Bonus: Create your own custom Snapchat geofilter
Not a hack, but a very useful marketing tactic for you to experiment with. Try creating one for an event and build some brand awareness. To learn how, download our four-step guide.
Bonus:Download a free guide that reveals how to easily create and use a custom Snapchat geofilter to promote your business for as little as $5.
Hootsuite’s on Snapchat! Click this link on mobile to go directly to Hootsuite’s profile or scan the Snapcode below to add Hootsuite as a Friend on Snapchat.
Yes, this is another list of the best Google Chrome Extensions. You’ve seen it all before, right? Well, we thought we had too. But new extensions are continually emerging that can drastically change the day-to-day habits of social media marketers. Plus, a few classic extensions have undergone impressive upgrades.
Check out this list of 20 of the best Google Chrome extensions for social media marketers, and start saving some valuable time and effort at work.
Sitting down at work and firing up your computer only to be faced with an overflowing inbox isn’t the best way to start your day. This extension offers a beautiful way to get in the right headspace before getting bogged down with scheduling posts, replying to followers, monitoring hashtags, creating new content, and everything else a busy social media manager is responsible for on a daily basis.
The Momentum extension replaces your “new tab” homepage with a gorgeous new photo every day along with a personalized greeting. Momentum also allows you to set one main goal for the day and keep track of a longer to-do list, helping you stay focused throughout the day. You’ll see the local weather in the top right corner, a list of links you frequently visit to the left, and a motivational quote at the bottom of the page.
Just because social media managers get paid to be on the sites that other people use to waste time doesn’t mean they don’t suffer from bouts of intense procrastination elsewhere on the web. Thankfully, technology can be a source of discipline as much as it is a source of distraction.
StayFocusd is an extension that limits the amount of time you can spend on certain websites (a.k.a. the ones that you visit instead of doing work). Once you’ve used up your allotted time, you can’t visit the site again for the rest of the day. You can get pretty granular with what you choose to block as well, whether it’s an entire site, a specific page, or even certain types of content like videos, games, or images.
Social media managers typically have to switch between their creative and strategic hats throughout the day, often needing to wear them at the same time. Jumping back and forth between these two dynamics during a busy day can cause even the most organized person to feel a little frayed. Enter: Evernote.
The Evernote Web Clipper extension allows you to clip any article or web page and save it in one place. Alongside the notes and to-do lists that you can create in Evernote itself, this extension allows you to pull in key text from any website or article you find while doing research online. This is also a great way for you to collect content to share on social without having to keep 20 tabs open all day.
Publishing a post with a spelling mistake is a nightmare for social media managers—and rightly so. While the occasional error happens to everyone from time to time, consistent mistakes can damage your brand’s credibility. Grammarly can help catch them all, including the mistakes that manage to evade the usual red squiggly line: an incorrect verb tense, a missing article before a plural noun, or the misuse of a comma.
The Grammarly extension can catch over 250 types of errors, many of which aren’t typically caught by spellcheckers. Along with catching your mistakes, Grammarly can actually help you write better overall, by offering synonym suggestions in line with the context of what you’re writing.
The biggest challenge when working globally often has nothing to do with language barriers or cultural nuances—it’s figuring out what time it is in a different region without doing the math on your fingers under your desk.
The Figure it Out extension allows you to add up to 10 time zones to your “new tab” screen, which should help make scheduling posts or setting up meetings with different regions super easy. Figure it Out also displays regional national holidays, so you can avoid posting your best social content on a day when no one will be paying attention.
Social media marketers often run into the problem of wanting to share access to an account, be it a social network, SEO tool, Google analytics, WordPress or any other piece of software, without actually telling team members their passwords. Rather than change the password (and have to memorize a new one or insecurely write it down),LastPass allows you to share access with your team without actually giving them your password.
That’s only the beginning for this free password manager. LastPass operates on a ‘master password’ system, where as long as you remember one key password, the extension will store all of your other login information and autofill it for you when you arrive on a login page. It can also generate secure passwords, to help you avoid reusing the same ones over and over again, or resorting to the terrible “123ABC” level of password amateurism. And, should a team member quit or change positions, you can also remove access to a password you’ve shared with them. In these ways, LastPass offers a massive boost to your online security.
Many social media professionals and marketers spend a lot of time scouring the web for great content, and even more time slowly reading through it. On an average work day, I used to have anywhere between five and ten tabs open to blog posts, news articles, videos and other pieces of content. That’s on top of the seven or eight other tabs I had open. I would lose things in the mess of tabs and end up just closing a majority of the articles without ever reading them. It was slow and unsustainable, which is why finding the OneTab extension was such a godsend.
When you find yourself with too many tabs open, click on the OneTab icon. All of those tabs will close, but be saved into a list of URLs within a single tab. You can restore them all individually when you feel like reading or opening something, or restore them all at once. You can also export and share that list of links with colleagues or friends. And even if you close Chrome entirely, OneTab will save all of those links for the next time you open it up.
Not only does OneTab add order to the chaos, it also can save you up to 95% of memory within Google Chrome, making your browsing experience faster.
I have a Pinterest problem. The problem is that I don’t spend much time on Pinterest. At the same time, I recognize how important it is for a lot of people, and I want to be active on the social network as a poster, even if I’m not a browser. That’s where the Pinterest Pin It Button comes in.
The extension throws that little ‘p’ logo into the top of your browser—reminding you to pin things. Then it facilitates that process by automatically pulling up images from whatever page you’re visiting, and allowing you to pin the image of your choice to the board of your choice. You can also edit the description and add any context you feel is important.
If the tiny icon isn’t enough of a reminder, as you scroll through a page hovering over an image will bring up a tiny ‘Pin it’ button which you can click to the same effect as the extension.
Facebook introduced two new Chrome extensions in June 2016. With the Save extension, you can easily save articles, videos, products, and other links while browsing the web. With the Share extension, you can share any link on the web to your timeline, a friend’s timeline, Groups, Events, Messenger, and on Pages you manage.
Ever wonder which hashtag you should be using for a certain event or story? Are you unsure about whether adding a certain hashtag will add value to your messaging? Tracking and comparing hashtags or dumping them into your analytics platform can be time-consuming, especially when you’re sending out 10 or 20 Tweets in a single day. Get that time back with the RiteTag Social Media Optimizer.
Image via RiteTag
The RiteTag Extension provides analytics on the hashtags you use as your write your social media messaging. The six analytics categories appear right within your compose box, offering real-time insight into the hashtag’s usage within Tweets, the number of times it has been retweeted, its reach, and more. Your hashtags will also be color-coded based on their value (green is worth using, red not so much). RiteTag can even provide you with the handles of influencers who use your hashtag, so you can connect with the leading sources on that topic.
As social media professionals, we probably appreciate a good gif more than most people. Gifs aren’t an “all-the-time” thing, but when opportunity strikes and you can find the perfect gif for the situation, you can increase engagement and click-through on your social media messaging.
Image via Search in a Giphy
The Search in a Giphy extension focuses in on the “finding” part of that formula, making it easy to search for gifs from within your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and Slack accounts. Find the right gif, and either drag and drop it into your message or right click and grab the image URL. No need to leave the tab or window.
Even though social media marketers are very active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks, many of our interactions inevitably still happen within email. Though you’d like to get a conversation going on social media, you’re often stuck doing the delayed email back-and-forth, especially with new contacts.
The Rapportive extension helps to bridge that gap by providing you with valuable information about email contacts—including their social media profiles. If someone sends you an email, Rapportive will gather their information in the sidebar of your Gmail account. You can then easily add them as a contact on LinkedIn or follow them on Twitter.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a huge part of successful content marketing. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most misunderstood parts. People new to SEO often find the tools to be complicated or too advanced, and their content suffers as a result.
MozBar results for a search on social media advertising
The MozBar extension offers a simple alternative for people just starting out with SEO. Within Google search, this extension allows you to see the Page Authority and Domain Authority of any links. You can also click “Page Analysis” to get a list of inbound links to any piece of content. This is valuable for marketers looking to track links back to their blog posts or webpages.
You’ve just built your brand new blog post. You publish it and immediately push it out over Facebook and Twitter. Then you get your first comment: “The link in the second paragraph is broken.” Damnit.
We’ve all dealt with broken links at one time or another. They’re frustrating for you as a content creator, and for your followers who, rightly, expect better. We’re all human, we all make mistakes, which is why we sometimes need a robot that doesn’t.
Screenshot via Check My Links
The Check My Links extension for Chrome does exactly what the name says: it checks all the links on your webpage. Any broken links are highlighted in red, so you can go in and fix them before you send your content out into the world.
Every business with an online presence can benefit from knowing how customers interact with their website. Not everyone has the technical knowledge to find this information out however. If you want to know what your page visitors click and what they ignore, install Page Analytics by Google.
Similar to the MozBar for SEO, Page Analytics by Google is great for people who are just starting to track the performance of their blogs or websites. The insights it provides offer a valuable analytics snapshot that can help guide your website layout and user experience. Plus, information on active page visitors, pageviews, bounce rate and more can help you shape your editorial strategy and social media promotion. This extension brings some of the best features of Google Analytics right onto the page for you.
Social media marketers tend to be chatty. We’re constantly talking with colleagues, clients and friends, often within Google Hangouts. With that in mind, Google created aHangouts extension, so you can keep on chatting without needing to actually be in your Gmail inbox.
Reviews of the extension are mixed, with many people saying it’s buggy, so you may not want to depend on it for important business calls, for example. But as a tool to run in the background while you work, and notify you when a colleague sends you a message, the Hangouts extension is a great asset.
If social media marketers were Greek warriors, tech and internet problems would be our Achilles Heel. When IT problems arise, it can ruin your webinar, throw off your posting schedule, or frustrate customers who expect a timely social media response. In these moments, being able to quickly solve your tech issues is essential. Chrome’s Remote Desktop extension can be a life-saver during that process.
Image via Google
Chrome Remote Desktop allows you to hand over the reigns to your computer remotely, through Google Chrome. You can reach out to a trusted individual or company that you think can resolve your IT issues, and then give them control of your computer—even from across the country. Chrome ensures that this access is secured, and only the person you specifically identify can access your computer on that one occasion. No more rushing from your home office to the computer store. No annoying time delays. A huge asset for social media marketers.
If you work in social media, you are exposed to the word millennials an average of 26 times per day. That is, of course, a completely fabricated statistic, but you get the idea. With so much social media discussion and content focused on this highly overused generational moniker, sometimes we all just need a break. And now, there’s an app for that.
Image via Millennials to Snake People
The ingenious Millennials to Snake People Chrome extension replaces any text using “millennials” with “Snake People.” The results are hilarious, and result in such headlines as “Dear Snake People, We’re Sorry” and “Why Snake People Don’t Want You to Talk Like Them.” This app might not exactly help you in your job, but it will give you a much needed laugh once in a while. And, I can tell you from personal experience, it’s a lot less imposing than the Cloud to Butt Plus extension.
A time-saving social media tool like no other. We may be biased when it comes to Hootlet but that’s because we use it day in and day out for our own work. The Hootlet, at its basic level, is a social media publishing extension. It allows you to share the webpage (yes, that’s any webpage) you’re on across your social networks.
It saves you time, not only by removing the need to switch between tabs or windows and copy and paste information, but also by pre-populating your social media message with the page title and URL. From the extension you can edit social media messages, attach images, and schedule them or send them right away.
On top of all that, Hootlet integrates itself seamlessly into the rest of your web surfing experience. On Google search, the extension allows you to bring up social conversations about your specific search topic. On Google maps, Hootlet can bring up Tweets from people within a short distance of any location you choose. On content networks like Google image search, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and more, a Hootlet button will appear so you can easily share that content to your own social channels.
Google Maps search for Sochi, Russia, with Hootlet results
on the time filter, for the date to appear!
. Simply drag your
