SnapHawk Blog

The Inspiration

A few weeks ago I read a great story about a coffee house in Houston that uses social media marketing (SMM) to personalize customer service in order to compete with larger franchises. The owner of the coffee house received a direct message via Twitter from a regular customer saying he was in a hurry and could he pick up a breakfast burrito as he drove by? The owner Tweeted back “What do you want on it?” Sounds pretty convenient to me.

With an abundance of social media sites out there, and new ones cropping up all the time, it has become difficult to differentiate each site. After a while they start to blur and it can become frustrating and tiring to try and keep up a presence on each one and to keep up to date on the newest social media  and Internet trends. One site that is sometimes overlooked and is becoming increasingly important for professionals who want to be "plugged in" is LinkedIn.

Over the past few weeks, as I myself have become even more familiar with LinkedIn, I have noticed there is a lack of understanding of the benefits of LinkedIn and how the site is in fact different from other social media platforms. The questions, “Isn’t LinkedIn the same thing as Facebook?” and, “Do I need to be on LinkedIn?” are common ones. This may come as a surprise to some but no, Facebook and LinkedIn are not the same thing, and yes you need to be on LinkedIn if you are in the college phase of your life or beyond. Here’s why:

In the past year or so, the world of gadgets, devices and consumer technology products has expanded and astonished shoppers around the world. Time and time again we learn that technology keeps advancing faster and doing more exciting things than ever.  Here’s a quick look at the coolest, most revolutionary products to hit the market in recent memory:

Smartphones that are even smarter. We all know it: smartphones have been on the market for a while now.  But there’s no doubt their presence is growing, and they’re getting more advanced every day.  Touch screens are becoming the norm, and there are over 70,000 “apps” available in the Android Market and 200,000 available in Apple’s App Store which can do pretty much anything you could want or imagine (within reason).  Now that 23% of all mobile subscribers have a smartphone, people are using these devices more and more for Internet searching and browsing.  And even though Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android are getting most of the buzz, RIM’s BlackBerry is still the U.S. market leader.  The growth of the market size and fierce competition leave us with no doubt that smartphones will be hot gadgets for a long time.