SMOTip - Social Media Optimization Q&A - Recent questions and answers

WHAT CAN EMAIL MARKETERS LEARN FROM SOCIAL MEDIA?

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 10:52:18 +0000

For many, email is the forgotten channel.

Despite the ability to segment and A/B test to death, many simply have a “set it up and let it run” approach.

While not the most glamorous medium, email marketers need to be like the rest of the digital marketing world – continually evolving, testing and changing their approach.

But get an email marketer and social media marketer in a room together, they inevitably end up having a geek throwdown – tearing off their plaid shirts, tying their hands together and circling each other in a sudden death knife fight.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes – this happens every single day in offices around the world. Everytime I click my fingers, an email marketer dies…

But email can learn from social – and learn they shall, through the informative writings of TSJ.

Email Edgerank

Any semi-decent social media guru/evangelist/[insert made up job title here] knows that the frequency of your Facebook posts directly affects how often your followers are likely to see them.

Post loads of updates with minimal engagement, and your chances of being edgeranked out of your followers newsfeed grows substantially. Low frequency and high engagement = big wins.

5 Social Media Stereotypes to Avoid

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 10:50:45 +0000

It is no surprise to anyone that social media is on every marketer’s mind. Yet it’s surprising how many brands forget the “social” part of “social media marketing.” To engage your audience, and build a loyal following of brand advocates, avoid becoming one of these social stereotypes:

The Needy Lingerer: You know this type: whiny, constantly is seeking attention. Sometimes you humor them, then immediately regret it, and vow never to fall into the trap again. Don’t allow your brand to be the same way. DO NOT demand all your personal Facebook friends to like your brand’s page every 15 minutes. What good does this do you? The people you attract by doing so, are probably just doing so because you told them to and most likely would have like your page anyway. Acknowledge the people that use your brand because of your association to it, but strive to attract new organic followers through meaningful content. Remember, it is the quality of your community, not the size of it.
The Snob: Oh, so your software leverages talent to utilize the cross-functionality of data-driven ROI to afford a win-win scenario for customers and clients alike? Avoid using jargon, as best you can. You’re speaking to people, not trying to win a contest for the most number of big words used in a sentence. Likewise, don’t slam another brand with a similar product saying your product was first, or is better, even if it is true. Let your community decide, but guide them strategically to that conclusion. Look at how classy Southwest and JetBlue were earlier in February, with an overwhelmingly positive response from Twitter users.
The Oversharer: Remember that time your coworker explained, in detail, the process of passing a gallstone? Or giving birth? Or their taudry recap of their 5^th college reunion weekend? Sometimes people need to know when to stop sharing (both in real and digital life). That rule also applies for brands. It’s awesome if your company is doing well financially, but don’t post insider information on your social media platforms—let that info stay in the boardroom. Even while approaching a major election, it’s best to leave your political opinions on your personal pages, and not on that of your brand’s (even then, I hid a lot of my Facebook friends in the weeks leading to November 6, 2012). There is a fine line between sharing and oversharing, so tread carefully and intelligently.

Draw customer interest with Messaging & Social Media

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 06:06:43 +0000

Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels are rapidly gaining popularity among small business owners as a means for connecting with current and prospective customers. In fact, approximately 75 percent of small businesses have at least a page on a social networking site, according to Social Media Today, an online community of public relations, advertising and marketing professionals.

But don't let social media overshadow other, equally valuable options in your marketing tool box. Each has its own advantages and features for effectively getting the word out about your products, services, and expertise. And when combined with social media, the results can be even more powerful.

For example, email marketing has the highest return on investment of all marketing tactics – about $40 for every dollar invested, according to Jeanne Rossomme, president of RoadMap Marketing, Washington, D.C. Digital and physical communications integrator Pitney Bowes also reports that more than two-thirds of all small businesses currently do some type of email marketing (e.g., newsletters, press releases, announcements, coupons, etc.).

So what happens when you integrate social media with email marketing? A great deal, says Ms. Rossomme.

"By posting interesting content nuggets and links through your social media channels you can allow this content to spread beyond your email lists," she explains. "Customers, fans and friends can pass on this information to their networks. And these links are actually stronger since they come as an independent referral, rather than a perceived 'marketing message' from you," she said.

As with any other form of social media-based marketing communication, content is key. Or as Ms. Rossomme calls it, "the magnet and the glue."

Providing relevant, engaging content attracts both customers and prospects, enticing them to read on and learn more about your business – especially when you have conveniently and appropriately placed links to get them there.

In other words, you can count on investing time and energy in creating email newsletters with interesting articles, polls, stories and even videos. But the effort is well worth it. "Wouldn't you like to get even more reach and more interest with that same content?" asks Ms. Rossomme.

You can familiarize yourself with the social media/email marketing approach by studying other small businesses, both similar to yours and outside your industry. But Ms. Rossomme recommends against following the examples of larger companies.

5 Ways that Social Media Impacts SEO

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:46:35 +0000

I was invited to contribute a column to an upcoming social media guidebook from Media Industry Newsletter and Folio. I thought I’d share it here along with some links to additional resources. It is intended to be a general overview for publishers. Hopefully you’ll find it useful.

How does social media activity impact search engine optimization? That’s a common question these days as publishers try to make the most of search and social for audience development.

While the role of social media signals in Google and Bing’s ranking algorithms is still evolving there are already a number of ways that social media is having a clear influence.

Here are five ways that social media impacts SEO, or more specifically search engine visibility, rankings and traffic:

1. Annotations in the Search Results

Both Google and Bing use social data to annotate select listings on their search engine results pages.

The annotations include things like a thumbnail image or an indication that someone the user is connected to (be that a person or a brand) has shared or liked the page.

How to Increase Your Search Rank Using Social Media

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:45:12 +0000

The rules of search have changed. In fact, they change on a daily basis. But never so dramatically has rank been uprooted since the explosion of social media. Social media sites, especially the power houses of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, have become backlink central for affecting organic search results.

Social media’s influence on driving business via the web is expected to surpass search engine optimization (SEO) in 2013, according to eMarketer. Web marketers and PR professionals must pay attention to how social media affects search, and ultimately how it can change the rules of online visibility and (online) brand engagement.

Prior to Facebook’s takeover of the online universe (800 million active users today), online visibility in natural search was a sum of several measurable components: SEO site compliance on site structure and meta tags/content, directory link submissions and qualified and relevant site/blog linking.

In 2010 the game officially changed, with Google’s support of social media — author reputation, bookmarking, commenting, as well as a number of other social factors (Likes, tweets, retweets, shares, etc.) — as a major factor in how it ranks websites and blogs in its algorithm. Real-time search in Google meant that search was only as valuable as the latest blog post, social share and comment.

Today, the line is blurring. And this causes some confusion for web marketers. Should they focus on optimizing and driving traffic to their social pages? To their website? Where does their online brand live? How do they communicate their brand value proposition, whether their personal or corporate brand?

The good news is that technology has advanced so that web marketers can manage their content and sites through the use of simple and effective blogging tools. Further, those blog tool properties, such as WordPress, support integration of social plug-ins and necessary content for social sharing including video, effective product/service literature and tagged imagery. And so, marketers can use social and manage their web presence to support online brand consistency.

So, how can you use social media to increase your SEO rank and ensure that the rank and ensuing traffic will convert to web business?

1. Define Your Brand

First, you must create and understand a parallel social media optimization/search engine optimization strategy. All creators of content on your team (copy, social commenting, videos and imagery) need to be on one brand team. The approach must be holistic. A unified brand message must drive visibility across all content and all channels.

2. Find Your Keyword

To define a common strategy for execution across standard SEO practices as well as across social media content development and sharing, marketers must rethink keyword development. The questions become less about search visibility versus obvious competition and more introspective in terms of what the corporate and executive brand mean.

Ask your team questions such as: What is our brand value proposition? What do we want our audience to say about us? How will we incent out audience? How will we be leaders? Why will people follow us? Answering these questions will help you to zone in on your top branded, broad-based and narrow-based keywords.

Answered: Meebo network key?

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 15:11:30 +0000

you will need to register on meebo website and after that, you can copy the key from generated html code.

SCM Music Player on Joomla

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 01:54:02 +0000

1. I tested this SCM Music Player plugin on Joomla 2.5.4, but can NOT work! Why? Even on the author's demo page, it loads very very slow. I think visitors will not have too much patience to wait for its loading. Could you please make this plugin faster? 2. You can add a new feature to this plugin: ID3 Tag reading . When the webmaster use this plugin to play mp3 songs, this plugin will read the ID3 Tag of mp3 file(s) and show the ID3 tag title. In this way, the "playlist" will allow utf-8 names for song's title. Thanks.

8 SEO Benefits of Pinterest in your Web Presence

Thu, 31 May 2012 00:50:54 +0000

Just when you thought you had your social media strategy and web presence under control, yet another social networking site is becoming mainstream. Six months ago it was Google+, now it’s Pinterest and it is gaining momentum in popularity as well as relevance in organic search.

Pinterest is a social photo sharing website that has also been described as an online pin board. Its more than 10 million registered users, over 2 million of whom log in every day, "pin" photos, graphics, and videos into categories they create based on their own personal interests. Pinterest users also share their pins on Facebook and Tweet them.

"Their own interests" may indeed include images that represent your brand. Pinning images is how your visitors, prospects, clients and fans want to visually socialize your organization.

The likes of GE and IBM are using Pinterest, proving that it is relevant to both B2C and B2B.

Here are eight SEO reasons to add Pinterest to your web presence and how to get started.

1. Google

Pinterest content is being crawled and indexed by Google, therefore it will impact your SEO rankings. Think of it as an opportunity to outrank a competitor for a keyword. If you are pinning on behalf of your organization, take the time to optimize Pinterest photo comments with important keyword phrases. If you have control over image file names when originally published, take the time to optimize photo descriptions for keywords as well.

2. Backlinks & Referrals

Every image pinned to a Board has a link back to its original published source. These are valuable backlinks and can provide referral traffic as well. Capitalize on this. Posting your product and service images and videos is a great place to start. However, keep in mind that it’s important to avoid being blatantly self-promotional - remember to provide value to your audience by sharing quality content that is relevant to their interests and worth liking, commenting on, and re-pinning.

3. The Pinterest Search Box

With millions of visitors to Pinterest every day, people are looking for brands via the Pinterest search box. Is your brand available? Does your Pinterest presence represent and reinforce your brand to a prospect who might be searching?

With Social Media, an inspiring story of Shopify's Tobias Lütke and How You Can Replicate

Thu, 31 May 2012 00:48:33 +0000

Establishing a small business means that it some similar parallels, your institution will have to contend with other businesses across a multitude of market points. Competition will be stiff, rival entrepreneurs will always try to pull off outrageous stunts and tongue-in-cheek publicities just for them to stay within the game.

According to the Small Business Association (SBA), small businesses have provided the USA with impressive employment numbers
that covered 55% of all jobs in the country. This figure is projected to rise in years, and it’s no surprise why people are starting to ponder of starting a small business themselves for personal financial security and of course, sustainable employment in their territories.

Starting a small business is a challenging pursuit that does cultivate rewarding results even if the idea originated from something bold or unique. There’s a lot of process and brainstorming involved and if your business doesn’t, in any form, accelerate the needs of a growing, dynamic community, failure should be waiting outside of your doorsteps.

I’m a firm believer of inspiration. Ideas are born from something inspiring and motivating, and it is through motivation that successful brands are built. Inspiration sends a mind-pulsing jolt that makes us even more determined to try our best even though failure is just within a fingertip’s reach. Likewise, it is by personal belief that I think inspiration plays a global role in the foundation of small businesses that are taking it seriously against their larger, more profitable counterparts.

This inspiring tale of Tobias Lütke and Scott Lake of Shopify tells the frustrating side of a software with limited funding from families and investors then suddenly transform it into a sought after E-commerce solution for online merchants:

It was a rough start: The co-founders went without salaries for nearly two years, and shortly after launch, Lake departed. "It took a while and the beginning was slow, but then people started realizing we had a good product," says CEO Lütke. "The slow start now seems like ancient history. More than 21,000 storefronts are powered by Shopify, selling merchandise from loads of small business owners as well as big names like Angry Birds, the Foo Fighter and 50 Cent. Shopify stores sold $124 million in products in 2010, and Lütke says figures reached $275 million last year."

Lütke’s entrepreneurial story sounds and looks like a shot taken straight from Hollywood: guy launches product, product fails to produce revenues to regenerate funds, product gets back on its feet shortly afterwards and finally, it penetrates public consciousness. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there with the same inspiring story that never headlined traditional print resources, and it doesn’t make sense because entrepreneurship builds and fastens economies together.

Converting Inspiration into Profits: Social Media Is Free, By The Way

The selling point of Lütke’s interview is how said that Shopify has materialized into a good product. A good product means it’s innovative and intuitive. I’m not going to pick apart Shopify’s individuals features but after watching a video demonstration of it, the E-commerce platform is indeed a valuable, stand-out software that online sellers can sink their teeth into.

Now that you have inspiration circulating around your brain and executed it, it’s time launch the second phase of your plan: Use social media to let people locate your business. Social media networks are trying to overshadow the importance of costly websites since you can brand your business efficiently with a Facebook page, announce events with a Tweet delivered to all your respective followers, and collaborate professionally with other entrepreneurs with Linkedin.

10 Simple Tips For Senior Executive Struggling With Social Media Use

Sun, 27 May 2012 14:57:42 +0000

Steve Nicholls, is the author of “Social Media in Business,” and offers the following 10 essential social media tips for a top level business executive:

1. Be the architect: As the CEO or leader you need to create a vision of what social media looks like for your organization – just like an architect has a model of the building that is going to constructed. This is crucial so that everyone knows their part and what they are trying to achieve. Create a common language so that everyone can participate in the discussion, not a just a few experts who know the jargon.

2. Create the model, bring everyone together: Develop a model of how to bring social media into your entire organization. Organizations that have a social media program in place – likely in the marketing department – but to truly maximize results a company needs buy-in from the entire organization.

3. What are the business goals? Create social media goals in the context of how will they achieve the business goals. The organizational goal could be, for instance, to increase the repeat customer percentage in order to increase revenue by X %. One marketing strategy could be to have a more effective customer relationship management strategy, depending on what you already do. You would then select the social media programme that would support those goals. That would be around customer service and the ways you interact with the customer to provide information.

4. Conquer the inside first: Social media can create diversified channels of communication both within a company’s internal organism, amongst staff, departments, divisions and other parts of the company, and externally, between a company and its customers, suppliers and other businesses. Also, social media can be used for both formal and informal communication, the former owned by the company and the latter by the employees. Social media also allows the company to reach out to customers or businesses beyond geographical limits, providing an alternative to face-to-face meetings.

5. Expand Reach in Online communities: Social media can create and provide access to online communities and your target markets: it increases brand awareness, builds overall trust, taps into global and local markets, increases visible market presence, generates leads, helps to have higher rankings on search engines and increases search engine optimization (SEO).

Maximizing Video SEO: Tips and Tricks You Should Know

Sun, 27 May 2012 14:54:42 +0000

Every time Google updates its search algorithm, things seem to change for your site’s SEO. Last fall there was Panda, now there’s Penguin, and while many of the changes are minor, some of them represent major departures from the way you thought search worked.

With Penguin, it’s been widely touted as a way to improve search for high-quality sites. Panda was seen to boost online video, and Penguin hasn’t changed that. This means that since October 2011, videos and sites that host videos show up higher in the search rankings. Whether you are involved with B2B or B2C marketing, there are a few ways you can tap into this major shift in search.

What makes video so great for search?

One major factor is that the old rules still apply to video. Remember when you could title your website and stuff the header with meta keywords and search engines would find it? Now it’s about content and crosslinking, and every Google update makes you throw out what you thought you knew.

Not so with video. Video cannot include text (although a transcript will do double-duty on this), so you have few choices beyond titling, tagging with keywords, and including notes and annotations. This is what the search engines use to find video, so you can still use some of your old-school techniques for video SEO.

Answered: Any available social media optimization service around now?

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:12:02 +0000

hey,

try our free service, http://www.ilikeiplus.com