MerlinUWard.com Content Audit as of 2013-14-08

The content matrix below describes a 27 types of content that you can create that fit conveniently into 4 categories; Entertainment, Inspiration, Education, and Convincing. Whether your brand is B2B or B2C, you can create a variety of content that ignites action in your consumers.

Merlin U Ward is an passionate marketeer and strategist. As a serial entrepreneur he has built multiple companies in a variety of industries including tourism, nightlife, video, business networking and marketing.

Optimizing content is one of the largest tasks on social media. Everyone is trying to get the farthest reach with their content. Twitter is one of the simplest and easiest to optimize. It has minimal features and is touted as being a pivotal part of information sharing for many industries.

Customers often go online to talk about their brand experiences posting on brand Facebook pages and reaching out to brand Twitter accounts. Customer service goes well beyond fixing issues with current customers. It includes helping new customers make purchase decisions and returning customers getting the most out of their purchases.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with spanish wine enthusiast and gardening pinner, Mary Ann Rounseville, to talk about getting the most out of Pinterest. Mary Ann is passionate about communities and brought together passionate pinners on Pinterest.

Facebook launched their new insights platforms for brand pages this week. The insights come with the promise of more up-to-date information and a number of new features. There are a few features that really stand out and that help you stay away from excel number crunching analysis.

As a marketer you should always be trying to figure out which content is connecting with your audience best. Once you find successful content, you want to recreate those desired results as many times as possible. However, when you content goes viral, you have to be careful how you attribute that success.

There are a multitude of social networks that are beneficial for marketing your business, and all of these sites have introduced new features that can help you further your advertising efforts. Twitter has been on a bit of a spree recently between the forthcoming Lead Generation Cards and Vine.

Instagram released the ability to share videos on June 20th in the wake of Vine. There's a lot of mixed feelings with this launch, but let's first break down the features before we get out of focus. Vine, owned by Twitter, launched early 2013 as a specialized app that gives users the ability to record and share 6 second micro-videos.

We all know that Al Gore invented the Internet to connect people from all over the world. So, if the Internet is for connecting, why do so many businesses fail to achieve this goal? Some may not know the recipe for marketing success. Others may not know how to tell their brand's story.

This infographic is presented with the caveat that all Facebook statistics such as engagement vary by industry (not just page size). There is also a diminishing time value of engagement with Facebook fans, which might explain why larger pages have lower engagement rates.

If you are in marketing, its likely you have a lot data floating around you on your clients or on the channel your work with. You may be inclined to create a nifty infographic your data to show the rest of the world you are smart.

Earlier this week Twitter released their analytics platform to the public. It's a nifty tool, that allows you to see your 30 day follower gain and loss. It shows your last 500 tweets with stats like link clicks, faves, retweets, and replies.

First of all, who cares about "Likes" on a post? FB engagement is the low hanging fruit in the social world. It also doesn't mean ANYTHING unless you have a specific goal in mind for the stories it generates about your page.

Yesterday evening, Facebook announced that it will be changing the they way and types of ads that its offers on the platform. I had a really great four-part blog series on Facebook ads and strategy planned for the next 3 weeks, but since the announcement, it's all been ruined!

Many people ask me how I manage my social media accounts (and others make stuff up rather than figure out what I do). Here are the gory, inside-story details of what I do. Perhaps you may find some of my methods useful to help you get the most out of social media, too.

During Social Media Week 13, I had the pleasure of testing the Nokia Lumia 920 for the whole week! A few tweeps and I, forever dubbed the #EpicNewsTeam, received a set of phones for a trail. Their campaign came with no strings attached, simply use the phone during the week and let them know how it went.

A new platform claims that it has found the formula for viral videos. Well, sorta-kinda. Through a year-long study of viral videos on Youtube, TubeRank has discovered a few insights on the seemingly aloof viral video. I've discussed that there is NO formula for viral videos before, but TubeRank claims the secret is "audience triggers" and "communities of interest."

The USFitties in partnership with Money Supermarket, started the ' Get Fit, Feel Epic' contest for a chance to win both the Fitbit Zip and Fitbit Aria, worth £150 ($240). All I had to do is write about what I do to get fit and feel epic.

A Facebook user Nolan Daniels posted a images of himself holding what appears to be the winning lottery ticket worth $588 million dollars. At the time of this post, Powerball has yet to declare the winner from Arizona. Huffington Posts makes the unsubstantiated claim this is a hoax, although it is plausible.

A brand mashup of Hip Hop and product is nothing new to the market. Toyota pulled a stunt like this with The Parents campaign. The mashup of Hip Hop and Hotpockets actually seems like a natural combination. Who other to "rep the Co." than munchies enthusiast Snoop Dogg (err, Snoop Lion, if you listen to Reggae).

During Hurricane Sandy, @ComfortablySmug sent out a series of tweets, which received many retweets, that were entirely misinformation. He made claims about the status of power, flooding and other public services. He blatantly abused the anonymity the internet provided.

Everyone has a passion and often times we want to share this passion with others. Your message is important to you, but when you are delivering your message to others, you must consider where you deliver it, to whom you deliver it to, and how you deliver it.

Adobe recently launched a new metrics tool for social media and they are putting marketing dollars behind the launch. One of the commercials are running on Hulu.com and pokes at possibilty of social media ROI. How many social media consultants have you wanted to do that to?

The big name restaurant chain gets the last laugh after comedian Rob Delaney tweets about his experience in one of their establishments. .@ applebees we ordered your signature dish & the bees got angry & flew out of the apple & killed my beloved wife - rob delaney (@robdelaney) October 26, 2012 @ robdelaney Rob, so sorry that had to happen.Gift card?