25 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community

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• Blog Influence: How to Maximize the Return on Your Blogging Efforts
• 5 Employee Groups That Should Access Your Online Customer Community Daily
• China: The Future of Social Commerce
• The Top 5 Devious Lies You Hear About Social Media
• Social Media Automation: It’s All About Striking The Balance
• Using Social Media to Produce Better Content
• How Marketers Can Take Advantage of LinkedIn’s New Targeted Updates and Follower Insights
• What Is Negative SEO? The Rise of Competitive Google Bombing
• Pandas and Penguins – Google’s Recent Updates
• Social Media in Business, Part 2 – Build Relations Not Just Connections
• Google Plus Tools to Simplify Your Social Media Activities
• Social Actions Beat Social Proof
• How To Leave a Facebook Group
• Google’s Panda And Penguin Updates Are Great For Bloggers, Marketers And Businesses
• How to Measure Your Facebook Campaign ROI
• Steps To Proper Blogging After Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty
• Google’s New Anti-Webspam Update
• How to Schedule Tweets From Pinterest using Buffer App
• How to Use HubSpot to Measure Your Social Media Marketing
• How American Express is Integrating Social Media into its Marketing DNA
• Infographic: The Dark Side of SEO Techniques
• 3 Lessons The Tweeting Chief Can Teach You About Social Media Engagements
• The AEIOU Reasons for You to Blog..
• Twitter Influence: How to Maximize the Return on Your Tweeting Efforts
• How to Create and Grow Your Influence on a Global Social Web

Blog Influence: How to Maximize the Return on Your Blogging Efforts Posted: 27 Apr 2012 03:00 PM PDT Last week, I wrote a blog post on how to effectively measure online influence and offered some insight in terms of how to plan out your influencer marketing channel strategy. This week, I will share 8 tips to increase your blog influence by increasing both blog subscribership and level of influence amongst your readers. Long-term readership is the key to blog influence, as return visitors and those who engage with you are the individuals who actually look to you as an authority in a given subject matter, and consequently are the individuals that you have the opportunity to influence. Below are 8 tips to increase your blog influence: 1. Understand your target audience and focus on a limited set of topics/industries that are relevant to your target audience's interests and needs. Below is a chart demonstrating a typical B2B blogger's target audience. 2. Clearly define the blog's coverage and target readership in the blog's description, so that your readers know what to expect from your content and know that your content is intended for their interests. 3. Engage with your readership and draw attention to this fact. – Adopt a blog layout that clearly highlights the blogger comments with a comment button or a different color that calls attention to the blogger's participation in the comment section of the blog. – Respond to reader comments within 24 hours or less. Responding to reader comments quickly shows that you care about what they are saying and view their input and involvement in your blog as an important component in the overall development of ideas. – Make your blog interactive, so that readers feel welcome to comment and engage with you. – Clearly post your email and all social media contact information in the blog description or About page, and encourage readers to reach out via any of these channels. 4. Generously reference previous posts, so that new readers and occasional readers are exposed to multiple posts every time they visit your blog. Long-term readers result from multiple touch points and continued satisfaction, so encouraging multiple page visits every time they come to your page will increase your blog's RSS subscribership. 5. Cross-promote your blog content via Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media channels, so as to ensure maximum exposure of each entry. 6. SEO optimize posts, so that new readers have a higher likelihood of stumbling across your content when executing searches in Google and the other search engines. 7. Write guest posts and articles for important community publications and participate in important community forums, blogs and discussions, so that you can expose new readers to your content and knowledge and hopefully inspire them to check-out your blog. 8. Make your content predictable, so that readers know what to expect. Top bloggers use the following tactics to do so: – Post in regular intervals, so readers know when to expect new content. – Foreshadow the next topic that will be covered at the end of each entry, so that readers can get excited about your next post. – Write series that cover multiple posts that encourage readers to visit your blog on a regular basis. – If you post more than once a week, write weekly and bi-weekly series to generate reader anticipation. Next week, I will share tips to increase your influence via twitter based on tactics we uncovered while creating the top 10 venture capital online influencer report. For more great tips on improving your marketing (and growing your business), sign up for the OpenView newsletter. Image provided by: openviewpartners.com

5 Employee Groups That Should Access Your Online Customer Community Daily Posted: 27 Apr 2012 02:20 PM PDT Online Communities in Business Are Not Just For Social Media Geeks Online customer communities, private social networks where customers, partners, and employees are brought together by companies for the success of their customers, are often thought of as the domain of the social media team. As they become more central to a business's sales, retention, and customer management goals, online customer communities increasingly play a vital role in multiple departments. While community managers are still the quarterbacks of online customer communities, successful organizations use a matrixed approach to community management where several employee groups are active in the community without needing approval from the community manager for each interaction. Some departments will be more active during certain parts of the year than others and not everyone from a specific division will participate in the community. However, it is important that the interests and knowledge of each department be present in the community at all times. The following groups of employees should be in your online customer community daily: Employee Group #1 Marketing The marketing group includes the community management team and is responsible for segmented marketing to existing customers. What are they doing in your online customer community? Listening to changes in the industry Managing the content plan Posting content Responding to discussions Sending targeted email communication Engaging both brand advocates and disengaged customers Measuring customer sentiment and satisfaction Employee Group #2 Sales The sales department has a strong interest in keeping customers engaged, especially when using the community to convert leads into customers and when additional sales opportunities exist with the current customer base. What are they doing in your online customer community? Helping prospects and leads get the most out of the community Upselling existing customers Engaging customers for targeted add-on sales or additional services Ongoing account management Checking in on reference-able customers Conducting customer evaluations before engaging in the renewal process Employee Group #3 Customer Service & Support The customer care group often includes the implementation group and is the primary department responsible for making sure that individual customers are successful with your products and services. What are they doing in your online customer community? Posting content, documents, and videos Answering questions Connecting customers with questions to people with answers Listening to peer-to-peer support activity Identifying trends in support needs Proactively addressing the concerns of customers in trouble Employee Group #4 Product Management Your product management and product development teams want access to your online community to create more profitable products and services by making sure that they are solving the right problems in the market. What are they doing in your online customer community? Listening for market trends in discussion groups and listservs Gathering data in focused product discussions Confirming market needs using surveys Validating product or service concepts Tracking enhancements and prioritizing features Recruiting beta-testers Employee Group #5 Partner Management This groups managers the partner relationships and revenue streams for the online partner program. They ensure both partners and customers are getting value from partners' presence in the community. What are they doing in your online customer community? Recruiting partners Partner nurturing Marketing relevant partner information and services to customers Monitoring partner activity Tracking customer engagement with partners If you scan down this list knowing that particular departments in your company are not engaged in your online customer community, then who is managing those tasks in your online community? If the answer is nobody, then chances are, you are not getting the full ROI from your online customer community. Online Customer Community Takeaway In order for your online customer community to be central to meeting your business goals, it must be seen as a strategic tool across your company, not an extraneous website feature. Choose an online community software platform where multiple non-technical employee groups can monitor activity and participate with minimal hand holding. Set guidelines for participation and conduct ongoing strategy and community management training for each department. As you can see in the list above, the benefits to your company of having core business units engaged in your online customer community are very real and can play a significant role in the growth of your business. Which departments, from your organization, are accessing your online customer community each week? Tell your story in the comments below.

China: The Future of Social Commerce Posted: 27 Apr 2012 01:35 PM PDT We recently highlighted the surge in 'Chinese Pinterest clones' on this blog and when asked by the BBC to comment on an article on the same topic, I mentioned "I am looking to these Chinese clones to provide the next key paradigms in social commerce." Two days later, we excitedly read the McKinsey China report on 'China's Social Media Boom'; the results were impressive. Chinese netizens China's internet audience is huge – over 500 million – and growing rapidly. More importantly, this audience is active with over 50% spending more than 12 hours a week online. 95% of netizens living in cities with a population in excess of 2.5 million are registered on a social networking site and Chinese internet users spend an average 46 minutes per day on such sites. Trust in Chinese e-commerce This has great significance. This is already the largest internet population in the world and it looks like the most actively social. The Chinese internet population is also heading towards forming the largest e-commerce market in the world by 2015. When I lived in China 2006/2007, it was nigh impossible to order physical goods online – trust in infrastructure was simply not yet there. The impressive growth in e-commerce sales indicates a greater trust in China's postal network and e-commerce sites. The issue of trust is important in marketing to Chinese consumers. Peer-to-peer recommendations have a more profound impact, as the McKinsey report says this is likely due to a distrust of formal institutions. Building networks of trusted influencers – not as a commodity but as groups of people who can and will trust your products and messages – will be crucial to online interaction with Chinese netizens. Social Commerce This leaves the issue of social commerce. One of the more interesting insights into the rise of Pinterest clones is that they tend to have closer links with e-commerce. While Pinterest has had trouble implementing its revenue model, Chinese sites like Faxian showcase what can be bought and funnel users to a purchase. Per McKinsey: 'As e-commerce rises, a compelling opportunity for brands will be to prompt immediate purchases online by consumers searching for product information using social media.' The key to unlocking these immediate purchases will be through harnessing netizen recommendation.

The Top 5 Devious Lies You Hear About Social Media Posted: 27 Apr 2012 01:00 PM PDT By now everyone and their dog knows I love social media. I gave up my full time job at a national law firm to pursue my passion and it's pretty incredible to do what you love (and get paid). But, it's not all rainbows and unicorns as some portray. Like any other job, it takes a lot of hard work, dedication and consistent engagement. Social media marketers come a dime a billion these days and you must differentiate yourself. Or die trying! Here are my top five lies about social media: 1. Social media is free. This is one of the biggest misconceptions of them all. Social media is NOT free. First, it takes time. The last time I checked time equals money right? Even if you decide to keep your social media marketing in-house you will always be paying someone to monitor your accounts. Social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are free (unless you have premium accounts) but you need to quantify the time invested in learning about these tools, and how to use them properly. If you decide to use an outside digital marketing company for your social media endeavors, be cautious of anyone that gives you a quote up front without a conversation first. You get what you pay for in this business! 2. You need influencers. Sure it'd be nice to have Justin Bieber tweet about your new product and/or service to over 20 million followers, but you don't need influencers to be your brand advocate. One of favorite peeps, Danny Brown, said it best: "the influencer will only share your brand or product for reward. Hard cash, or a large mount of swag (sign me up please!). They'll write about you once, and then move on to the next brand." He goes on to talk about brand advocates. These are the people who love your products and services and they love to write about it even more. I was one of these people for a local hair shop that guaranteed a fully styled, fully dry head of hair in 30 minutes. Anyone that can do that to my mane is perfect in my mind. I told everyone I knew about how amazing these guys were. I wrote online reviews, told my friends and I continue to use their service today. 3. You're guaranteed a new client within X amount of days. The bottom line is important. We all want to land new clients through Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and LinkedIn and Pinterest. But you should be very weary of someone that says they can get you a new client through social media in two days, two weeks or any time period for that matter. Digital marketing can help your business in a multitude of ways. It will increase brand mentions across the web, create communities based around your products or services and yes, it can bring in new business. But there isn't a set timeline. It takes dedication, consistency and skill. 4. You need to be happy all the time. There are no rules when it comes to social media. Yes, you should mind your manners most of the time but feel free to act yourself once in awhile. You know why social media marketers get a bad rap most of the time? It's the ones that act like everything is amazing 24/7, you know the type – they make me want to run for the hills. Seriously, you can't be that happy all the time! Act human. We all have our ups and downs. Don't rant about your clients and/or your relationship mishaps but feel free to vent about what gets you down. Get it out in a blog post. Other people are probably having the same issues and maybe your words will help. 5. You should give up your real life for your online life. Everyone I know online has gone through this at one point or another. We get that aha moment where everything clicks. We land our first client through a Twitter exchange, or get a referral through Facebook, and we're hooked. Instead of setting aside a set amount of hours per day to use social media, it becomes our life. Even when we leave our house, we're checking in online through our smart phones. This is when your real life relationships start to fail. You know those people that check their phones 55 times through dinner? Don't become one of them. Unplug. Detach. Untether. We'll be here when you get back, promise! So there you have it, my top five lies about social media as told from someone that experienced every one of them at some point. Have any more to share? Please share them in the comments below.

Social Media Automation: It’s All About Striking The Balance Posted: 27 Apr 2012 11:50 AM PDT I'll come out honestly and say that I've been using automation software for a long time now. Social media purists, go ahead and hiss at me if you will. I only ask that you hear me out. For the last two years or so, I've used automation software to schedule posts for this blog and tweets for Twitter. Just last week, I went a bit farther and purchased an automation tool to help me grow Twitter communities. And you know what? I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about it. As a social media enthusiast and community manager for multiple accounts, I find it a necessary time saver. Let me be quick to say that I do not use automation software for everything. In fact, I only use it for those menial, repetitive tasks like hitting the "post" and "follow" buttons. All the important work, including crafting messages and direct messages, engaging with others, searching for quality articles to share and locating those key industry influencers is done manually by me. In no way does the automation software deplete the quality of my accounts. It's because of the automation software that I have time to engage with good people, which, while essential and the most fun, is often the most time consuming part of social media. With great power comes great responsibility Using my automation software, I can uncover thousands of Twitter accounts for a chosen keyword within just a few seconds. That doesn't mean I'm going to click the "start" button and follow every single account on that list. Not only would that be irresponsible, as a number of those accounts are likely to be spammy, outdated or otherwise distasteful, it would dilute the relevance and influence of my accounts, as my follower-following ratios would be greatly imbalanced and not all of the accounts will be significant simply because they contain the chosen keyword in one way or another. Instead, I spend some time going through the lists and selecting those that I think would be relevant, based on profile information, tweets posted and follower-following ratio, which is what I would do anyway using the Twitter web-based client. The only thing the automation software does is search the mass of accounts quickly for focused keywords and put them all in one convenient place. I also only select a number of accounts that won't offset the follower-following ratio too severely. Once the selected accounts are followed automatically, I go through them again as part of my other client work to ensure only the best were followed. Each account that follows back receives a personal direct message. I would never in my wildest dreams use the automated messaging system. Automation gone wrong I spend a great portion of my day irritably sifting through the heaps of web garbage sent out by automated messaging systems for those content gems worth sharing. I wonder, what on Earth do companies get out of messaging systems? The typical automated tweet I see either comes from a well-endowed young woman who is pouting at the camera, an animation, or the default Twitter egg. In each case, they have an obscure Twitter handle that is usually followed by some randomized numbers. The Tweet is usually a mix between upper and lowercase letters and often refers to an article or post that isn't there. When you go to their profile pages for more information, they're usually following a large number of people, have very few followers and have sent out lots of Tweets that are either consistent with the first one I came across, or empty of content entirely. Social media is about striking a balance As Danny Brown bluntly puts it, "social media is just another toolset, or platform, or information base, or whatever tag you want to give it, to help you manage your needs better, whether they be personal or professional. It works for people the way they need it to work, not how someone else uses it." I couldn't agree more, and I would go a step further and say automation software is the same. Automation software is neither good nor bad. It's just a tool intended to help you further your goals, whatever they may be. For me, social media is inherently social, so I use automation software to do those not-so-social tasks so that I have more time to engage with others and add value to my communities. Mitch Joel argues that it is disingenuous to recommend content automatically to connections without taking the time to consider if it would add real value to the people he is connected with, adding that gaining credible connections and trust online is something brands struggle with. I also agree with Mitch's position. Automating messages is messy and discredits businesses tremendously. There's nothing that grinds my gears more in social media than an automated direct message from a company telling me to follow its Facebook page as well. And automatically sharing content is dangerous. I can't tell you how many times I've read the title and introduction to an article thinking it would be great for a client to share and then dismissed it entirely because it mentioned a competitor or its product further to the bottom. As I do the heavy lifting for my clients, social media automation does the heavy lifting for me. In neither case is the integrity of the content or community jeopardized. What's your position? Thumbs up to social media automation or thumbs down? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Using Social Media to Produce Better Content Posted: 27 Apr 2012 10:00 AM PDT At the start of every content marketing campaign, you've got to do a little bit of strategizing with your team. During that time, you will inevitably discuss social media and how you can leverage it as part of your content strategy. And really, social media is a gem when it comes to this because not only can you use it to promote your content, but you can use it as you strategize and plan, as well. It's Friday, your brain is in weekend mode, and maybe you need a little nudge with the ideas. No worries – you'll find a few in this post that you can take to your meeting with you. #1: Use social media to find good content Reading up on current trends is one way to be sure your ideas are sound – plus these are the sources you will use to support your content. Surely you are aware of sites like the Content Marketing Institute, HubSpot, and Marketing Profs. These popular sources are great, but what if you're ready to expand? Use your social media channels to find excellent content. This seems like a no-brainer, but with all of the information and resources that are shared every day on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, you're sure to be able to find something that is informative, well-crafted, and not the eight zillionth re-tweet of the latest Mashable post. (No disrespect to Mashable at all. They've got superb, authoritative content. And everyone follows them on Twitter, so everyone retweets them and… well… echo chamber?) Keep your eyes peeled on these platforms for fresh ideas – set up alerts or lists, whatever works best for you – but use those sites to find sources that will bolster your own content. #2: Use social media for outreach efforts By now I'm sure you know the basics: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn. And yes, those are all great for making connections and saying a quick hello, but how do you use them to dig a little deeper in both the planning and promotion stages? If you're looking to make or nurture connections, one option to consider is featuring a certain individual or business in a piece of content that you're creating as part of your overall content strategy. Remember that you should only do this if you truly believe in the business or individual – don't fake it just to get some promotion. That's not cool. It's one thing if opportunities crop up naturally, but it's another thing to force them as a means to an end. Don't be that person (or that business). But genuinely nurturing your relationships can pay off for your content (and the benefits can be mutual). Contact the business or individual during planning stages to get some information for your project. In doing so, you establish yourself as someone who is genuinely interested in what they do and wants to learn more. This is the perfect situation because if they're willing to provide you with this information, it virtually guarantees further conversations, which means more opportunities to nurture that relationship. Also, they'll be interested to see what you've got to say about them. Later, after you have the information you need to proceed with your own content, maintain your presence through comments on their blog posts and recommending their material across various social media platforms. This keeps you in touch. Drop an email or tweet just to say hello. After all, not everything has to be about business. Eventually, as in all friendships, as your relationship builds, you might discuss collaborating on projects or how you can help each other out. Let this happen naturally, though. Don't force it. Again, a friendship is not a means to an end, social media or not. After you've established these higher-level connections, continue to use social media to promote and leverage. For example, if you write an article about XYZ Company (whether you've established a relationship with them already or not) and their killer blog or an annual event they hold that raises awareness for a worthy cause. Spread the word. Don't just tell your friends, but tell the company too. You can do this easily on Twitter: "Hey @XYZCompany, I've featured you in my article about _____. ." Easy as pie, and it can be used to nurture or establish relationships. Remember, too, that because most companies are monitoring their mentions, there's a good chance they've seen your article or that they're at least aware of it. You could also send a tweet and ask what they thought. Engage in some conversation with them, and keep building upon it. As I mentioned before, once your relationship is firmly established, then you can discuss guest posts and collaborative efforts. And even if they aren't interested just then, stay on their radar (dropping off of it immediately after would indicate that you were only in it to get something in return). #3: Consult your audience Using social media to consult your audience is another way to produce better content. Who better to tell you what they want to see than the people themselves? If you've got an engaged community, ask them what they'd like to see you write about. What other kinds of content would they like to see? This serves a few purposes. It shows that you care what your audience has to say, which is endearing (I mean, unless you ask for their opinions and then take absolutely none of them into consideration). It also means that if you give them what they're looking for, you know they're going to show up to see it. Give them what they want and what they need, and you'll all but guarantee they'll be return visitors. How do you use social media when planning your content strategies? Let us know!

How Marketers Can Take Advantage of LinkedIn’s New Targeted Updates and Follower Insights Posted: 27 Apr 2012 09:45 AM PDT Earlier this year, LinkedIn rolled out a "follow" button that allowed users to connect with a company with just one click. Now, LinkedIn is broadening its appeal to marketers, rolling out two new tools to help make the connections between businesses and followers more personalized and meaningful. Targeted Updates With LinkedIn's new Targeted Updates, companies will be able to interact with their followers in a more effective and relevant way. In a nutshell, the new tool allows company page administrators to fine-tune how they share content. Using Targeted Updates, content can be delivered to either "all followers" or to a specific "targeted audience," and company page administrators can select those specific targeted audiences based on company size, industry, function, seniority or geography. Adding even another level of refinement, LinkedIn also will provide impression and engagement metrics for the targeted post. This data will appear 24 hours after the content was shared, and from these results, marketers will be able to determine which content resonates . . . and which needs revision. The goal of Targeted Updates is to increase engagement and brand loyalty –and it appears to work. According to LinkedIn, examples have shown a 66 percent increase in audience engagement as the result of targeted updates. Follower Statistics Savvy marketers realize there's tremendous value in tracking engagement metrics for social media fans and followers, and LinkedIn's new Follower Statistics is designed to provide exactly that kind of detailed data. The new Follower Insights dashboard provides follower demographics, as well as information about likes, shares, comments, total followers, number of new followers month-to-month, etc. Marketers can use these insights to create strategies to gain followers and optimize engagement. As social media networks become more and more crowded and noisy, it's becoming increasingly vital for companies to make their marketing messages as customized and meaningful as possible. Businesses that use LinkedIn's company pages will be able to use each of these new tools to communicate with followers more effectively –and less obtrusively. Have a job opening at your company? Use Targeted Updates to send that info only to followers associated with certain industries. Maybe you're running a special promotion in one region of the country? Targeting your followers by geography can help make sure you find the right audience . . . without "bothering" others. Note: For now, these features are in limited release, available only to early release partners.

What Is Negative SEO? The Rise of Competitive Google Bombing Posted: 27 Apr 2012 09:30 AM PDT Negative SEO – have you heard this term before? To be perfectly frank, it's new to me as of this week. "Google bombing" has been around for years, a kind of hack using links and anchor text to manipulate the search results as a prank – the famous example being a biography of George W. Bush returned as the first result for the query "miserable failure." But negative SEO is a slightly different animal. It's the practice of trying to destroy your competitors' rankings in the SERPs – for example by purchasing large amounts of spammy links to the site, damaging their link profile. (You may recall that some people suspected JCPenney was the victim of just such a scam.) Is this possible? Are nefarious SEO tricksters pulling it off? Yes, according to a case study featured in the forum TrafficPlanet. Poster "Jammy" writes: "Pixelgrinder and I conducted a little experiment on whether negative seo was possible in the current climate – we felt it was important to know whether it was possible for a site to be negatively affected completely by outside influences." The targets were seofaststart.com (run by "self proclaimed 'seo guru' Dan Thies," targeted because he's "a suck-up-brown-noser, smugly bad mouthing everyone … we don’t like him") and (ironically) negativeseo.me, a site "selling services for negative seo under the tagline 'destroy your competitors'." He then posts a timeline of the case study: 15th March – Dan Thies posts smug tweets to Matt Cutts and pisses off the entire internet. 18th March – seofaststart.com – blog posts started – anchor text “seo” “seo service” and “seo book” 22th March – seofaststart.com – 1 million scrapebox blast started – 100% anchor text “Dan Thies” 24th March – negativeseo.com – 1 million scrapebox blast started – 100% anchor text “destroy your competitors” 26th March – Dan Thies posts in Twitter that he has received an unnatural links message. Note: 18th March – seofaststart blog posts started. This was NOT US. We had previously decided that it would be risky to ‘out’ the blogs that links were getting placed on and agreed not to include blog posts in our experiment. We don’t know who did this, how many links they built or what network/s they used. We discovered these links in ahrefs and have estimated that about 5000 links where built, probably with ALN between the 18th-23rd March. As well as the results after a month: seofaststart.com dan thies – number 1 (still number 1) seo – not in top 1000 (down from number 11) seo service – not in top 1000 (down from number 34) seo book – number 34 (down from number 3) negativeseo.me negative seo – number 6 (down from number 2) destroy your competitiors – number 13 (down from number 1) And follows that up with a "personal message" to both Matt Cutts ("Negative SEO is possible. Sort it out!") and Dan Thies ("Next time you want to smugly throw your holier than thou 2 cents into the ring, think before you speak.") Ahem. These are some guys you don't want to piss off. But did it really work? At a post on Hobo Web, Dan claims the results are inconclusive. In fact, he thinks the additional links may have helped him slightly. Aaron Wall Speaks Out Against Outing and Negative SEO We talked a little about the practice of "outing" a few weeks ago as it relates to the ethics of SEO. Aaron Wall clearly falls on the same side of the line as Joe Hall, who said SEO outing is immoral. Here's Aaron (we can assume the blanks stand in for something he is too polite to say): Anyone who outs or link bombs smaller businesses (small enough that Google punishing them destroys their livelihood rather than just giving them a bad quarter) is a _______. Anyone who advocates outing or link bombing such businesses is an even larger _______. Any of the ________ who promote competitor smoking or competitor outing as somehow being “ethical” or “white hat” never bother to explain what happens to YOU when someone else does that to you. Building things up is typically far more profitable than tearing things down & if SEOs go after each other then the only winner is Google. Some interesting questions are raised in the comments. For example, "Kokopoko" asks, "How can you protect your site from a negative SEO campaign? Is it impossible?" How would it be possible? Can there be any definitive way to determine if a bad link profile came from inside our outside your company? When JC Penney was outed for bad links, they claimed to know nothing about it. Of course, that's what you'd expect them to say in a PR cover-up if they were responsible. But maybe it was a case of negative SEO? Maybe they really didn't have any clue what was going on? What do you think? Should Google address negative SEO, and if so, how? More Web Marketing Highlights At Search News Central, Mike Wilton says Pinterest is a search engine, not a place where people "socialize or catch up with old friends." What's more, "21% of Pinterest users have purchased an item they found on the site." So start optimizing your site for Pinterest search. Facebook advertising rates are apparently skyrocketing. In other ad news, Tumblr is getting ads soon, though the CEO said "We're pretty opposed to advertising" in 2010. Looking to beef up your blog reading? Unbounce offers 75 great marketing blogs "to make your RSS reader fat"! And just for giggles: Read about a physicist who used his nerd power for good (to get out of a traffic ticket). Also: the Web Economy Bullshit Generator (thanks to Larry for that one!). Have a good weekend (and stay positive).

Pandas and Penguins – Google’s Recent Updates Posted: 27 Apr 2012 09:20 AM PDT Google has announced that there has been a new Panda update in the last week and that their new Penguin update launched on the 24th April. As Stephen mentioned the other day these new updates these updates are aimed at negative SEO. However as these are now live and there have been some pretty big changes to some search results with some people seeing new sites on page one of the Google results. So what are some of the changes and how can you make sure that your website is performing well against these changes. Panda was primarily aimed at content farms, low quality sites and sites which offered no real value to the users which ended up targeted article sites, scraping sites and affiliate websites quite a lot. Over the course of the last year there were a number of updates to the Panda generally about once every 6 weeks or so. Generally these updates were all about "Quality". Another Panda update, version 3.5, was launched on the 19th April. One of the terms which was bandied about with the Panda update was "thought leadership" making it more important to have a good quality content strategy in place on your site, so that you could provide useful pages, whitepapers and help guides which visitors will see as a resource on your website. There have also been some other updates over the last year such as the "page layout" update in January 2012 which looked at sites which were using too many adverts making content on these pages too hard to read or even find on a page. This means that sites which were using AdSense found that they have to be more careful about how much of their page real estate was taken up with these adverts. Again this is really about "quality" as Google wants the websites it is presenting to people to contain worthwhile information which is easy to read and not polluted by too many adverts. Webmasters need to make sure that as much of their content is visible above the scroll point on the page as possible and not have this content pushed down before this point by adverts or banners. What is Google Penguin? Penguin is the Google name for the webspam or over optimisation update which has been being talked about on the internet over the course of the last few weeks. What does this mean for your website though? Well Google have said that this update is not aimed at some hard to pin down measure of what is "over optimisation" a phrase which itself doesn't make that much sense. To make something optimal is to make it just right, so how can you make it "more just right" or "too much just right". Thankfully this hard to understand concept is not what Google really meant, but instead they are looking to target techniques which are breaking the Google Webmaster Guidelines where Google have offered some advice to businesses on about best practices and although this doesn't tell us what's in the algorithm these tips do tell us some of the things Google frowns upon such as the things mentioned below . Make sure that you are not engaged in spinning content, keyword stuffing or hidden text and/or cloaking. It's also important to avoid large lists of links such as large footers or pages with hundreds of links on them – as Google have said that sites such as telephone number listing sites are being hit by these changes. So, what happens if you've been hit by Penguin? Well the first thing to do is review your site and make sure that you aren't breaking any of the guidelines within Google's guidelines and that you are presenting users with a good level of content which is easy to read and not stuffed with keywords or created just to try and get a ranking in the search engines. Look at your title tags and content and internal links to make sure that it doesn't look like you've been trying to shoe horn keywords into places where they don't naturally flow or that you've not hidden links or keywords somehow (such as the infamous tactic from the 90s of having white text on a white background). If you're currently using link networks, automated link building software or have been buying links, then now is the time to stop doing this and try and clean up your links – you may already have received a warning about "unnatural links" as I mentioned in my blog about your back link profile earlier this month. One thing we have seen following the go live of penguin is that there are still some sites which either have no content or have spammy techniques such as hidden text which are ranking well in the results. So it wouldn't surprise me if we seen a Penguin version 2 shortly.

Social Media in Business, Part 2 – Build Relations Not Just Connections Posted: 27 Apr 2012 08:50 AM PDT Tell a friend a story and if he likes it he'll spread it within 24 hours. Tell the www a story and it will spread it all over within seconds. If you have a plan, of course. In fact, any plan starts with having a plan. I'm not a plan master, but I like rising questions. So, here's a list of some of my questions for my personal social media plan (which is going to be transformed into my business social media plan): 1. what are my goals? staying in touch with people, building relations, sharing things about entrepreneurship, startups, innovation, web, mobile and other notable experiences 2. where do I find my "buyers"? mainly on the Internet 3. what channels do I use? mainly blogs, sites, twitter, facebook, linkedin 4. what is my content strategy? authenticity, fun, usefulness 5. what are the metrics? answer under construction 6. how can I have the channels working for me? answer under construction 7. do I have a social media policy? as I said, these are questions for my personal social media plan; as long as I'm the only communicating things, it's ok not focusing on a strict policy, but this is not recommended when you have a business – you must have one, in this instance. It's quite probable you don't master the answers right now. Start by taking a look at the list and thinking about the questions for 24 hours. Come back and answer as many questions as you can. Or maybe all of them. Add questions if you feel my list is incomplete. And share them with me and others. Anyway, have a plan and then publish your content! Don't let things just go because you want to build relations, not just add people to your list. Be nice, humble and helpful. And share! All the time! Sharing is the new call to action. (Social Media in Business – part 1 and 2 formerly appeared on my blog startupbeginner.wordpress.com)

Google Plus Tools to Simplify Your Social Media Activities Posted: 27 Apr 2012 08:10 AM PDT Google Plus has recently undergone a massive makeover and though it has some nagging similarities with Facebook TimeLine, it looks sleek and sharp. Since Google Plus is the most powerful tool Google ever had to gather deeper insight about users' behavior and how a website is supposedly interacting with its targeted audience, Google is spearing no efforts to promote it. So, as things stand, your website needs to have more than impressive presence in Google Plus. But this is exactly where the problem creeps in. How you are supposed to maintain seemingly unending number of social media accounts? Quite evidently, you need to get your hands on some tools that can simplify your daily tasks of updating, monitoring etc on Google Plus. However, as we all know, Google Plus is a new frontier and therefore, we cannot expect it to have some power tools. In fact, Google Plus management is now just shaping up and developers are scrambling to create tools that can take out pain from the whole job. So, locating the best Google App is certainly not that easy thing, but still here I am going to share some tools that are doing great job and may prove helpful: Social Statistics: This is a great tool for aggregating data of top pages and posts. It lets you know what the current topic in Google Plus is. Options are there to sort posts by most shares, comments or by +1s. A cool tool to keep track on big brand. But if your circle is not that large, you may feel disappointed with it. Allmyplus: This is the best tool to gather information from any Google + profile or page. It records almost all the facts and figures of a given Google plus or profile page. So, you can have all the data ranging from few days to few months at your disposal and if you hate the raw and dry data, this tool has a solution for that too. You can try its nice and interactive chart that translates all the data into graphical presentation. This is the quickest way to calculate the most active time and day of your business Google Plus page. Simply Measured: This is not a new social media reporting tool for Google Plus. This tool has been offering data on social engagement based on Twitter and Facebook for long and Google Plus is the recent inclusion. This tool is pretty good at providing report on almost any Google Plus profile or page. Here are the few things that you are most likely to get with this tool: Page Engagement Page activities for last two weeks Engagement rate based on post type and more. The best part of this tool is that you can easily import all the data in either PowerPoint or Excel. CircleCount: If your objective is to find out the most popular brand pages in Google Plus just to gather detailed information about their growth rate, users' engagement etc, CircleCount is the best tool out there to give it a try.  With this tool, you will be able to have data on gender distribution, job distribution, country distribution, top pages, and many more. Widgetsplus.com: Looking for a widget to feature your latest posts on Google + on your website just to give your social media marketing campaign a shot in the arm? WidgetsPlus is the best widget out there that can display latest Google Plus posts right on your website and that too without consuming much of the space. There are options to customize the width and height. PlusClout: It is an awesome tool that assigns ranks based on the influence one has on Google Plus. That means, you can easily find out who are the leaders in the niche by checking the score assigned against them. The score is dependent on a wide range of factors that include information-sharing, frequency of posts, number of followers etc. If you wish, you can sort influential people based on countries, employers, profession and many more similar metrics. Extended Share for Google+ : Tried of sharing the same thing manually in Facebook, twitter, Google plus and their likes? This Chrome Plug-in will let you share any posts on almost all the social networking sites almost effortlessly. This plug-in adds a simple "Share On" link below every post you update on Google Plus and by clicking on the icons, you can easily share the same update. However, there is a downside of this Plug-in. Yeah, you are copying and pasting the same update in almost all the social media sites which is definitely not ethical. This is a guest post written by James Arnold, who is a passionate writer and he has been writing for Site2You which is the best insurance website builder.

Social Actions Beat Social Proof Posted: 27 Apr 2012 07:10 AM PDT Over the last week or so I thought I would try a little experiment … after all, social media and its immediacy allows us to test and learn simply and easily, right? I wanted to test whether different phrasings would impact click through rates from social media sites to destination addresses. Now, usually I either share a link without introduction, or explain that I was "reading" an article with its link. Now we know that 90% of people visiting your website will just "read" or "lurk", that 9% will modify, comment or add to your content and that only 1% will drive activity. The 90-9-1 Principle is what Jakob Nielsen calls Participation Inequality. So, in effect, announcing that I was "reading" an article planted me firmly in the world of the "lurker". But the concept of social proof – whereby one's actions shapes the actions of those around us – suggests that my "reading" of an article would open the door to others who were also of the "lurking mindset". So what happens if we re-shape that interaction? What if I was "commenting on" rather than simply "reading"? What if I was "pre-ordering"? How are these "social actions" playing out and are they a different order of magnitude? Based on the analytics coming out of su.pr it seems that there is an impact – and it is in the 20%-25% range. Taking out the spikes for particularly hot topics I normally average about 150-180 clicks per link. But using the "commenting on" prefix I am regularly hitting higher levels of between 200-230 clicks. Over the coming days I will try variations on this theme: Tweeting at different times of day Re-tweeting the same link at different times Using different social actions The cool thing is, that a little attention to your choice of language and the framing of an outcome can have a positive impact. And I have a feeling that it may well have an impact on the types of audiences (participants rather than lurkers) that you are reaching. Now, THAT would be brilliant.

How To Leave a Facebook Group Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:50 AM PDT Escaping the Facebook Group Trap! With overly-generous "friends" it often seems harder to get OUT of a problematic group than it is to get into it in the first place! (Remember, adding your friends to a Facebook Group auto-adds them to the group with notifications enabled, without their consent… always ask them first!) Whether you've simply changed your mind about a group or a have found yourself auto-added to one fortunately leaving it is simple…. if you know where to look! Leaving A Facebook Group click to zoom in Steps To Leave A Facebook Group 1. Click Facebook 2. Click Groups in your sidebar 3. In the page that opens, select the problematic group 4. Once you have opened the group, in the upper right (down about 2″) you will see a gear icon, click it. 5. The dropdown offers you the "Leave Group" option 6. Click the confirmation leave group button in the popup. If you found this tip useful please be sure to share it! Enjoy!

Google’s Panda And Penguin Updates Are Great For Bloggers, Marketers And Businesses Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:40 AM PDT Google’s Panda and Penguin updates mean more traffic for bloggers and quality content producers! In the meantime, SEOs are trying desperately to sidestep the Panda and Penguin updates, and recover their search engine rankings and organic search traffic. Why? Because they aren’t creating great, useful, funny, engaging, interesting and valuable content with only the recommended amount of “good practice” SEO. Why? Because creating high quality content requires not only time, effort, creativity and skill, it also takes time, effort, creativity and skill to bring that content to a wider audience via social media, relationships with other bloggers and webmasters, and so on. SEO over optimization is subversive Search Engine Optimization is a bug that allows people to create poor quality content and have it appear high up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) by utilizing a host of “tricks“. Fundamentally this defeats the objectives of Google, who needs to be able to return the most relevant and highest quality web pages to browsers – if they want to remain the number one choice for finding information on the Internet. Google tells you everything you need for SEO Google webmasters publishes SEO guidelines for everyone to use, plain and simple. If your company is paying someone to do more than what it recommended by Google, the chances are you are paying them to have your blog or website penalized (maybe not today, but Google will eventually sniff you out). Exchange SEO for quality content It would serve your business interests to find someone who: Has proven writing skills has technical skills and knowledge (CMS, HTML, possibly CSS, PHP, etc) Knows how to implement “best practice” SEO Has knowledge or experience in your industry or niche Understands social media, and can leverage their knowledge of the Internet and pay them to create and promote great content for you. It works. “My organic search traffic has doubled approximately every quarter for the last 18 months!“ As Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates roll on, my “best practice SEO” approach, combined with useful and informative content around business online pays more and more dividends. “Viva Panda. Viva Penguin“. But I digress… The SEO industry For many years, SEOs have ducked, dodged, dipped, dived, and dodged the Google’s SEO algorithm updates to make money by having their poor quality content outrank genuine, high quality content producers. What amazes me is how much effort, insight, skill and hard work goes into avoiding writing great content. SEOs spend years honing their SEO skills in an attempt to avoid writing great content for them and their clients. I hate to be the one who asks, but “wouldn’t it be easier to simply apply all these resources to creating content that people want to watch, read, share, and enjoy?” The flip side to SEO over-optimization Still, SEOs who push the boundaries play an important role in keeping Google on its toes. Google’s Panda and Penguin updates are evidence of the fact that they have to keep their search algorithm lean and mean, and this is driven by the need to close down SEO loopholes. SEOs have made a lot of money in past years foisting poor quality, ad-ridden content on the public, via Google and the other search engines. Ultimately, they have been hard at work ensuring their own demise. Don’t get me wrong. Maximizing ROI (Return on Investment) for your content is hugely important. Without generating revenue from content, it’s simply is not a sustainable business practice. Revenue from ads, affiliates, conversions, eCommerce are all great. But this revenue has to stem from credibility, hard work, and value. Ultimately quality content will outperform SEO As Google get closer and closer to providing “the best search results“, regardless of over or highly optimized SEO content and sites, bloggers, marketers, writers, and businesses that do work hard at creating useful content will start reaping the benefits. The SEOs that have spent years and years forcing Google to continually improve its algorithms will ultimately drop in the SERPs, unless they change tack and start creating quality content. In the meantime, your job is to make sure: Your business and blog content isn’t guilty of SEO keyword stuffing You aren’t inadvertently falling foul of SEO guidelines. For example, duplicating content – or using canonical URLs if duplication is unavoidable (important for Drupal sites in particular) You aren’t paying for unnecessary, and potentially harmful, SEO over-optimization You are regularly creating high quality content Your content is targeted and relevant for your niche You are promoting content via social media You are making quality connections and following the right influencers in your niche Talking of the right influencers… People to follow when it comes to SEO Do a search for “SEO” on Google. There’s around a trillion results. The vast majority of which is complete garbage. While you should always follow influencers that provide quality information on any topic of interest to you, the following people, blogs and resources definitely help to cut through the clutter and get to the heart of the matter with regards to SEO: Matt Cutts – head of the webspam team at Google Official Google Webmaster Central Blog Danny Sullivan – editor of SearchEngineLand.com SEOMoz Chris Crum Tell me about your experiences with SEO and the Google Panda and Penguin updates in the comments below, or join the discussion on Twitter, LinkedIn, or in my by interacting via my weekly newsletter.

How to Measure Your Facebook Campaign ROI Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:35 AM PDT Mashable not long ago discussed the trend towards small businesses engaging on Facebook. Although small businesses are now using Facebook in their marketing strategy, most of them don't understand how to track their results. Here are a few tips to get started. Your Facebook Campaign Before you create a Facebook campaign for your business, you need to have a set of goals and an accompanying strategy of how to achieve them. After you have implemented your strategy, you will need a system in place to measure how effectively you are reaching those goals. Many businesses measure the success of their Facebook campaign by how many people like their fan page. While social likes are important conversions to measure, you are going to need a much more detailed understanding of your customers. According to Business Insider, most Facebook fans are not local to the business and therefore unlikely to convert into paying customers. Fortunately, there are a variety of tools that you can use to fill in the blanks. There are a number of analytics tools that will tell you: How many people are visiting your page How many people are clicking on links How many people are sharing content How long people stay on the page This information is gold if you expect to understand the effectiveness of your Facebook campaign. This data will help you understand if your fan page is really working for you. If it isn't then you know you will need to start marketing your page more or changing the way it is setup. There are two major analytics tools you can use for Facebook: Facebook Insights and Google Analytics. I suggest you incorporate both of them into your page, because they provide different data you will need to measure the success of your campaign. Here is a quick overview of each. Facebook Insights Facebook Insights provides metrics on how your followers are using your fan page. With Insights, you can see how many new and active users you have in a time frame. You can also see how often your content is shared and how many comments each share receives. Facebook Insights provides very detailed information on the demographics of your users. If you are trying to reach men for your product for example, you can use Insights to see how many men are engaging on your site. This information is available through your Facebook Insights dashboard. Google Analytics Google Analytics doesn't provide the same amount of demographical information about your users. However, it does provide a much broader range of dimensions for users, including: Time your users spent on the page. The location they are viewing your page from. Traffic sources In addition, Google Analytics will tell you some of the other information that Facebook Insights provides, such as the level of social engagement. Overall though, it doesn't provide that information in as much detail as Facebook's. If you are going to set up Google Analytics into your Facebook page, you need to be aware that you are not going to be able to proceed the same way you did with your website. Facebook prohibits Javascript on its pages, so you will need to create an image with your tracking code embedded in it. This is fairly straightforward and there are a number of tutorials on how to do this. Ideally, I would suggest setting up both Facebook Insights and Google Analytics into your Facebook page. Facebook Insights provides information on a more narrow range of data, but it does so in more depth. You can get a much clearer picture of the way your users are accessing your site if you combine both tools in your report. Kalen Smith is the author of Online Rookies and has a wealth of experience in social media and web technologies. As a guest blogger for us, he describes the tools and techniques he thinks are best for measuring the success of Facebook campaigns.

Steps To Proper Blogging After Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:20 AM PDT As you probably already know, the Over-Optimization penalty was introduced the other day. If you are like me and most of the internet, then you felt the impact of the penalty. Just to give you an idea Google's, Matt Cutts said that this would effect roughly 3.1% of all English sites but from reading other blogs, forums and even getting emails I am convinced that this effected much more than that. Now, Google is not going to come out and say they are going back to the pre over-optimization days, so we all need to get ready to change our sites and do things the Google way. Below, you will see a video that outlines what you should do first in order to get your site ranking again in Google's search engine. It is highly recommended that you start there and then follow the steps below in order to blog the way that Google wants you to blog. You can also see the video on Youtube – Get Rankings Back After Google's Over Optimization Penalty Steps To Proper Blogging Write Quality And Unique Content If you are not already doing this, then you need to start right now. The benefit of writing quality and unique content is that you will not be able to get more natural links and that is what Google wants. What you need to remember is that we are all playing Google's game now and you have to follow their rules. Google loves quality and unique content and now, so should you. Create A Community Do you participate in Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and all the other community driven sites? If not, then now is the time to start. We all know that social media will be the future of the internet and Google is smart enough to consider that in their rankings. Whether they go by Twitter followers or Facebook interaction isn't sure yet, but what is sure is that they love social interaction. Build Quality Links Google has always stated that they rank quality over quality and that is a for sure thing now. Instead of creating hundreds of article links or blog comments, create one web 2.0 article and link to that. Doing this will take the risk away from your website yet you will get all the benefits from it. I know this sounds a little strange but creating one PR2 link on a web 2.0 property is much more valuable than 50 PR0 links pointing directly to your site. Blogging after this most recent Google update will be different but that doesn't mean you won't make it through. Just stick to what Google has told us already and make sure your site is compliant with Google's best blogging practices.

Google’s New Anti-Webspam Update Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:15 AM PDT You may have heard recently Matt Cutts revealed Google was working on an update that would punish "over optimization," which even had some white hat SEOs worried. However, Cutts has recently clarified this statement, saying "over-optimization wasn't the best description." Simply stated, this Google update complements its overarching goals of eliminating webspam from its search results and, therefore, the user's eyes. However, this update is said to only impact 3% of search queries, according to Google's WebMaster Central blog post. So what kinds of SEO tactics will be attacked in this update? They are the usual suspects: keyword stuffing, link farming, cloaking and duplicate content. These tactics are usually implemented by "black hat" SEOs who want to get rankings quickly (and do not care about buying real estate for the long run). SEO is generally thought of as a long-term investment, and anyone offering simple and fast solutions should be examined sharply. Oftentimes, using the aforementioned tactics will put you at direct odds with Google's quality guidelines and, therefore, open to punishment (and if you are JCPenney, a little public humiliation). Generally speaking, white hat SEO tips include cultivating quality inbound links, optimizing content on your site and keeping it as fresh as possible, and building as easily navigable site (for both the search engine robot and for the user). These SEO basics will allow you to form a good foundation upon which to build your site. Then you can rest assured that you won't have to worry about getting penalized by a Google update.

How to Schedule Tweets From Pinterest using Buffer App Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:10 AM PDT I've been finding Pinterest an excellent addition for many of my social media clients. One new strategy includes sharing pinned images that include an @mention of a Twitter follower in order to cross pollinate the engagement; however, the inability to schedule these pins has been one of the drawbacks. I'd like these tweets from Pinterest to be spread throughout the day, but unless I'm right in front of the computer this has been impossible, until now. Buffer App for Scheduled Social Media Posts The technique combines Twitter and Pinterest with Buffer App for scheduling the tweeted pins. If you're not familiar with Buffer App it's a great tool to publish articles to your Facebook and Twitter feeds right from your browser using their plug in. Sign up for a free account and visit their Apps and Extras page for the Chrome and Firefox extensions. There's also Buffer for iPhone, Buffer for your If This Then That programs and lots more. Once you get your account set up and linked to your Twitter and Facebook accounts you can begin adding posts to your Buffer. Scheduling Tweeted Pins Buffer App is cool enough, but using it for scheduled tweets from Pinterest is even cooler. Here's how it works. First, upload your pin to Pinterest and include your targeted tweep by @mentioning them in the pin description. Here's an example: Once you've pinned the image, go to your Pinterest board and double click it to bring it up. Pinterest includes social sharing buttons on the right side of each individual pin as you see in the photo below. Next, select the tweet button and bring up the Twitter connection. Here's where the magic happens. See how Buffer App is integrated into the tweet function? You can select it and add it to your buffer, thus scheduling the tweeted pin. Your targeted follower gets an @mention and you schedule several out over the course of the day to engage your tweeps. It's that easy! Do you have any methods you've discovered for scheduling posts? Share them with me here!

How to Use HubSpot to Measure Your Social Media Marketing Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:05 AM PDT Boston-based inbound marketing company Hubspot has created a comprehensive suite of marketing automation software tools that help companies efficiently manage their online (inbound) marketing efforts. Hubspot's all-in-one solution helps your business connect with prospects interested in your product or service, generate qualified leads, and ultimately drive sales conversions. They do this by providing a host of tools that integrate your web-based marketing with your social media, creating a seamless online experience. Perhaps most importantly, Hubspot's platform provides robust analytics to measure and analyze the results of your online marketing, including your social media marketing. Social media for business is still in its infancy, with many brands only now beginning to grasp its importance as an indispensable tool for online marketing. An added benefit of social media is that, because it is a digital medium, it is highly measureable. As such, many core marketing analytics principals can be applied to your social media marketing efforts: you can measure the reach your social media, your audience views your brand, how much traffic social media drives, and how many leads and sales you are generating from that traffic. Hubspot's inbound marketing software helps you measure these four critical metrics to analyze your social media marketing effectiveness.¹ Social Media Reach It is important to track the total number of people engaging with your social media channels, because the bigger your social media audience, the broader your social media "reach." With a broad social reach, you can amplify your brand's messaging and content, especially given the exponential nature of social media. Hubspot's software measures all of the interactions throughout your social media channels, from Facebook "likes" to YouTube video views and blog comments, and integrates this data with real-time graphs that are downloadable into Excel. Measuring your social reach allows you to tweak content and messaging to better resonate with your audience. Visibility and Brand Perception Listening to your audience is an important aspect of social media marketing. Hubspot's software tracks every mention your brand receives within each social media channel, and provides qualitative analysis as to whether those mentions are positive, negative, or neutral. Monitoring this information gives you an opportunity for deeper engagement or reputation management, depending on the nature of the mention. Web Traffic from Social Media One key reason to use social media marketing is to drive traffic to your online base of operations- your website- in order to attract visitors, generate leads, and convert sales. You want to monitor the percentage of unique visitors to your website coming from social media. Hubspot's software tracks this data metric by recording the referring sources in your web analytics platform. Conversion Rate from Social Media At the end of the day, conversion is all that counts. With Hubspot's platform you can track the percentage of visitors from social media that end up converting into leads and sales. This metric is indispensable for measuring the ultimate value of your social media efforts. You can track visitor-to-lead, lead-to-customer, and visitor-to-customer conversion rates from each of your social media sites, and compare this data to your conversion metrics from other marketing channels to properly assess your social media ROI. Takeaway Forbes magazine ranks Hubspot 17th in its top 20 most promising companies, and INC 500 lists the inbound marketing software provider as the 2nd fastest growing software company. In the spirit of full disclosure, SyneCore Technologies is a Hubspot VAR partner, helping our clients manage the inbound marketing platform for their businesses. We did this because we truly believe that Hubspot's all-in-one inbound marketing software platform provides an indispensable toolset for brands to get found online, convert prospects to leads and customers, and measure the results of their efforts. In short, they provide a one-stop shop, or "hub-spot," for all of your online (inbound) marketing needs.   ¹ Hubspot, "An Introduction to Marketing Analytics"

How American Express is Integrating Social Media into its Marketing DNA Posted: 27 Apr 2012 05:20 AM PDT I remember my father gently chiding my grandfather as to his conservative approach to life. My grandfather who was brought up when the world changed ever so slowly and never lived to see the mobile phone or the internet. He was a man who was very slow to adapt to change, which was common for his generation. His conservative approach was evidenced by the "belt and braces" approach to life… If his belt broke his braces were always there to hold his pants up. My father said this was the perfect example of a pessimist! Being slow to adapt to change is not necessarily a bad thing but if business conservatism is standing in the way of innovation and company growth then it is not a positive but often a hindrance. Large global brands in traditional conservative industries very often see social media as a threat because they hear and see PR horror stories. They feel they have much more to lose than gain by participating and embracing "new media". The truth is that social media is becoming a vital asset that provides global publishing platforms with enormous reach and velocity that are searchable and available 24 hours a day. The Crowd Sourcing of Marketing Social networks additionally provide viral platforms that can create more stories about your brand than you could ever hope to achieve through your own advertising and marketing efforts with paid traditional marketing media. This is because it provides "crowd sourcing" of story telling and marketing. So how does a traditionally conservative industry sector such as financial services participate, integrate and optimize on a social web. Here is how American Express are embracing social. Facebook American Express knows that leveraging Facebook with its viral "many to many" social connections will create more stories about AMEX than they could ever achieve on their own as those followers share AMEX's content including videos, images, and text articles. In looking at the key metric on American Express's Facebook page "Talking about this", the number of crowd sourced stories at a particular moment in time is 13,406 (this is the number of actions such as likes, comments and shares by AMEX's fans). If you multiply this by the number of friends each of these stories may reach (the average user has 234 friends according to an extrapolation of the numbers in the S1 filing) then the potential reach of conversations on Facebook about AMEX is 3,137,004. American Express did not have to pay a cent to reach those 3 million plus people apart from building the Facebook network and starting the dynamic stories by publishing their content on Facebook. It did have to participate on Facebook and it did have to actively build its network of fans that currently stands at nearly 2.5 million. Essentially you have to be in it to win it! If you look at AMEX's Facebook strategy, tactics and activities you will notice how they have woven Facebook into its marketing DNA because they know the power of marketing to a social network with the scale and size of Facebook. These are the latest statistics released by Facebook and revealed by Huffington Post in its S1 Filing for its upcoming IPO. Facebook as the worlds largest social network with nearly 1 in 2 people who are on the internet being users is the primary social channel that most brands and companies participate on. Monthly active users now total 901 million (up from 680 million a year ago) Daily active users are up to 526 million (up from 372 million last year) Monthly mobile users now total 488 million 300 million photos are uploaded to the site each day 3.2 billion Likes and Comments are posted daily 125 billion friendships are forged per day. Revenue for the first quarter of 2012 was $1.058 billion, up from $731 last year Here are some key activities American Express utilize to engage with their fans on Facebook Their images and photos are not just about American Express but about their members and partners. They build their fan base by offering specials and exclusive offers to those that "like" their AMEX Facebook page. They know that a larger network gives them more reach, leverage and crowd sourced stories and marketing that money cannot buy. American Express understand that "entertaining" not just informing is essential on the social web and have one of their key tabs all about entertainment AMEX also knows that its Facebook fans need incentives to participate and one of the main reasons fans "like a page is so they can receive savings and special offers and so feature this tab in their visible tabs on their Facebook page Americans Express also prides itself on innovation and this is evidenced by the fact that they were included in the "World's Top 10 Most Innovative Finance Companies" by Fast Company. Twitter American Express uses its Twitter account to distribute its content and also uses it to engage with followers and answer questions. They understand the power of online video to engage the user and understand that an entertaining or humorous video is more likely to be shared than just a piece of text. It is obvious from the interaction I have highlighted below that they are using a community manager to interact in real time to questions inquiries by Twitter followers. LinkedIn American Express knows the value of having social networks where their target audiences are hanging out. LinkedIn with its 150 million high earning and sizable net worth professionals are a social media network channel that is worth establishing and participating on for AMEX. It also integrates its other social networks by linking and embedding other social networks such as YouTube. YouTube American Express's branded YouTube channel reveals more about the weaving of social into their marketing strategy. Firstly they have created videos that are made for social networks and traditional media like television. The success and social proof evidence is shown by the sizable number of views (nearly 18 million). Social media networks are not just about being serious but having some fun because at the end of the day they are "social" and "human" networks, they just happen to be online rather than offline! The YouTube channel is about entertainment and lifestyle not just about a corporate message. They also make it easy to click through to your social network of choice by having them obvious and linked in the YouTube home page. Foursquare American Express are using the location based technologies of the social game Foursquare to provide incentives for merchants and customers to use the American Express card to obtain savings when they visit participating merchants and use their AMEX credit card . It uses the Foursquare mobile app to power this marketing campaign. This strategy is also about creating crowd sourced conversations and stories on this social network of 15 million users. By actively participating on Foursquare AMEX have built a sizeable network of over 65, 000 followers that leverages their brand. Size does matter and should be a priority in your social media marketing strategy. What About You? Are you integrating your social networks into the marketing DNA of your brand and business? What social networks work for you with your customers and prospects? Look forward to hearing your experiences and stories

Infographic: The Dark Side of SEO Techniques Posted: 27 Apr 2012 04:55 AM PDT When we speak about the dark side of SEO, of course, we mean the Black Hat SEO techniques. There's a constant battle between the search engines and the webmasters. Each website owner wants to be ranked as high as possible and for this reason uses various SEO practices. We will stop by the so called "unethical" ones. The first one in the roots of our Black Hat SEO tree is the "spamdexing" and, as you can see from the term, it is associated with indexing via spamming. It is not the only way to manipulate search engine indexes and your website to show up on the first page of the search engine.  However, it is without doubt the easiest among all. If you want to get involved in the dark side of SEO techniques we recommend you to have a look at the following Black Hat SEO tree infographic. Now you know what are some of the most popular black hat SEO techniques. If you want to learn How Black Hat are you ? Visit SEO-meter.com and take our quiz. This infographic is created by Denmark’s leading search marketing agency – Outrider.

3 Lessons The Tweeting Chief Can Teach You About Social Media Engagements Posted: 27 Apr 2012 04:25 AM PDT In Nakuru County in the North Rift of Kenya lies Lanet Umoja Location that is demonstrating the power of Twitter. The area chief has taken to Twitter to inform and update his area residents on varied matters such as security, public baraza announcement, community health awareness campaigns and any other information deemed important to the villagers (even tweeting inspirational, uplifting messages). Every social media update should ideally elicit a response which is the first step to conversion. These responses can be comments, retweets, likes, shares, link-backs, open rates, click-throughs, pins, stumbles, +1 etc. The actions can be used to gauge the engagement level of a brand's content across various social sites over a period of time. For a social media marketer (and brands), what can you learn about killer engagements from the tweeting chief? Game plan @ChiefKariuki's main reason for Twitter usage is to keep the peace in his locale, deter criminal elements and keep criminal activities to a minimal by promptly responding to SOS calls from the villagers. Guided by this simple plan, the chief has managed to realise his goal by constantly engaging his recipients. His efforts are certainly paying off as criminal are also following him to stay abreast of his alerts. How about that for engagement!! Understanding the reason for launching a social media program will help you stay focused, align your communication outputs to that goal and zero in on your target audience. When crating your social media strategy, it is imperative to include a content strategy, messaging and distributions strategy that will aim to drive the intended engagement. These brand engagements can include buying a book, booking an event, download, calling for quote, booking a consultation etc. Tools of trade It is without a doubt a majority of the villagers have feature phones. The good chief kept this in mind and chose an appropriate tool to relay his messages. The chief uses third party mobile applications Twitter via text as provided by mobile phone companies. There is usually no cost incurred by the villagers upon receiving these messages. Once you have understood and zeroed in on your target audience, the choice of tools (networks) and medium to use should be carefully picked for an engaging return on investment. Does your product require visuals? Then guide your customers to Pinterest. Product demo? How about a Youtube channel. Are your customers busy professionals? Perhaps email marketing would work best for them. Young, trendy youth with disposable income? Maybe a gaming app. The choice of tools is endless… It is clear that the chief understands his villagers and has taken on a messaging and distribution strategy that effectively engages the recipients to (re)act in the intended way. Communication The chief keeps the lines of communication open by constantly updating the villagers as he is on call 24/7. For your brand to thrive and reap the benefits of social media marketing, ditch the monologue associated with traditional marketing. As indicated in the name, 'social' connotes sharing, conversations and dialogue. Today's consumers respond positively to open, social brands that connect with them emotionally. Remember, before launching your social media program, assign a living, dedicated person (not automated humanoids) to guide your interactions with your audience and humanize your brand. As rule, do not ignore or delete negative reactions and comment as these presents a chance to present your brand in a favourable light. Following the chief's stream one can see that he doesn't abandon his subjects after SOS calls. After his crime fighting tactics have been put in place, the chief updates the villagers on the progress of stolen cattle, recoveries of stolen properties et cetera. This has earned the chief trust from the villagers. "The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions." Donald Calne, Neurologist, University of British Columbia Takeaway The secret sauce to social media engagements is appealing to the emotions of your readers. To extend the life of your brand on social media and build an army of brand ambassadors, seek to continuously engage with your customers with relevant social media updates that will naturally elicit the expected engagement. Ultimately, this will earn your brand trust and credibility, leading to meaningful engagement which is the first step to conversion. What are your lessons from the tweeting chief?

The AEIOU Reasons for You to Blog.. Posted: 27 Apr 2012 04:20 AM PDT Blogging is a creative medium for literary expressions… The reason I say "CREATIVE" is simply because * You need to be CREATIVE in the topics * You need to be CREATIVE in the articulations * You need to be CREATIVE in reader engagement Else, you will not enjoy the blogging journey In this blog, I have listed the AEIOU Reasons for YOU to Blog : Blogging increase your AWARENESS Blogging enhances your own EXPRESSIONS Blogging compels you to INTROSPECT Blogging makes you OBSERVE Blogging enables you to UNDERSTAND All these are based on my own personal experiences and journey as a blogger over the past 2+ years! Blogging increase your AWARENESS Once you start blogging regularly, you become AWARE. Aware about what? – Yourself, Your environment, People, Events, Social Media, Tools, Technologies,… – The WORLD at LARGE! And AWARENESS is probably the single most important REASON why you should blog. Once your own awareness increases, the sky is the limit to what you can think, do or achieve! Blogging enhances your own EXPRESSIONS The one thing which REALLY MAKES a difference in today's world is EFFECTIVE EXPRESSIONS – Be it as a part of personal or professional life. And blogging can make a transformational difference here! The more you blog, the more you are compelled to express yourself in a clear and concise fashion – So that anyone anywhere can comprehend your message. And over a period of time, you will be able to witness a transformational change in your expressions. This has a definite positive implication in all aspects of your life Blogging compels you to INTROSPECT To blog, you need to be able to introspect and "connect the dots" in your head – There's lots of data, views, opinions, perspectives available today – It's the age of Information Overload. Blogging compels you to leverage some / all of this information to your own life experiences and INTROSPECT so that you have a message to share. And that's how your blog content emerges… Blogging makes you OBSERVE If you've been blogging for a while now, the one change you will see in yourself is that you are more OBSERVANT. And why? Because you will realize that after a point – what you can write about in your blogs is linked to your own observations – Can be observations of yourself, nature, friends, family, customers, organizations, people at work, children, schools, education, etc. And the more you observe, the more you actually learn.. And Learning is a key element in the journey of life.. Blogging enables you to UNDERSTAND TRUE UNDERSTANDING of anything in the world comes only with AWARENESS, OBSERVATION and INTROSPECTION. And this can be understanding on any topic – Could be blogging, to social media, to people, to yourself. Blogging makes you understand several things – because in the long run, you cannot blog quality and quantity content if you don't understand and appreciate things in you and around you… On that note, HAPPY BLOGGING! And hope this blog inspired you to leave a BLOG in the blogosphere. What are the reasons you recommend for others to BLOG? Leave a comment to let me know…

Twitter Influence: How to Maximize the Return on Your Tweeting Efforts Posted: 26 Apr 2012 06:45 PM PDT Last week, I wrote a blog post on How to Maximize the Return on Your Blogging Efforts. This week, I will share 11 tips to increase your twitter influence. Twitter influence is often misunderstood as simply having massive follower numbers. However, a large number of followers does not always translate well into large reader appeal or public-deemed expertise in a given subject matter or within an industry. Followership only measures potential reach, and the follower statistic is often biased upwards by the follow-to-be-followed game. This results in a very low transition rate from followers to content consumers. A better measure of the number of people paying attention to chattering and musings in Twitter is the number of times listed. That number tracks the number of times a follower has categorized your feed into a specific group of tweeters that he or she can look at independently of the rest of his or her followership feed. This statistic indicates that the individual is likely consuming your content. Similarly, consuming content does not directly translate into influence and neither does engagement. However, the combination of consumption by the appropriate target audience and level of engagement is a pretty good predictor of Twitter Influence. Thus, twitter influence is a function of reach, impact, and efficiency. The following algorithm for Twitter influence accounts for these 3 components and is a good place to start when developing a Twitter Influence strategy. Image provided by: Source Namopenviewpartners.come Below are 11 tips to increase your twitter influence: Understand your target audience and focus on a limited set of topics/industries that are relevant to their interests and needs. See my previous entry on blog influence for a more in depth explanation on how to hone in on your target audience. Focus on sharing high quality content that is relevant to your audience and try to add value to each piece of content you share. This will build trust among your followers, which will increase amplification of your content and demonstrate your expertise in an industry or around a given subject matter. Successful Tweeters use hash tags (#) to categorize Tweets and make their feed easily searchable. This also helps make the content you share easier for your followers to sift through. For a guide on how to effectively hash tag your tweets, see Ben Parr's Mashable post on How to Get the Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags. Make your twitter stream interesting and predictable by: Setting expectations about the feed coverage and how you use Twitter in your bio. Targeting a minimum tweet volume per a week. Creating a Tweet series that your followers can expect to see on a regular basis and can find via a customized hash tag. For example, some firms post a user tip or functionality of the week, others post facts of the week or something more fun like a trivia question or trick of the week. These types of tactics should be geared toward your target audience. Sometimes fun weekly tweets can be a great way of making a feed more personal and make the user more approachable, which should help drive increased engagement as well. Twitter is not just a content broadcasting tool; rather, it is an engagement platform. Influential tweeters try to drive engagement and not just drive clicks back to their blog or website. They will do so by tweeting questions and asking for their follower's point of view on a given issue or a piece of content. This demonstrates that you value the opinions of your followers and use them to develop and vet new ideas. Influence is not restricted to a single channel. To maximize your influence, you will also need to use Twitter as a tool to drive engagement on other channels. Twitter is great for direct questions and insights, but influencers can benefit from driving more general business or funding questions to a Q&A site where interested parties generally go to ask these types of questions like Quora or LinkedIn Answers, as this will increase exposure and hopefully drive influence as well. Share and comment on interesting content provided by other influential people in the industry or that focus in a similar topic area. By providing interesting insight to other tweeters content, you will expose a new audience to your knowledge and give them a sneak peak at what they could gain from following your Twitter feed. This will expand the reach of your account and also help establish the quality of your feed. Similarly, engage with the thought leaders in your space. By engaging with other people and companies with large followings and similar focuses, you will increase your Twitter feed's exposure to people and companies that are interested in your content. Cross promote your Twitter presence in other channels, as this will increase exposure and therefore the reach of your content. Be responsive to your followers. There is nothing more aggravating for users than an unresponsive voice behind a Twitter feed. If someone reaches out to you, try to respond to them within a short time period. Brad Feld, a prominent tweeter, has built a huge following around sharing great content and being very responsive to followers. He responds to Tweets within an hour most of the time. This shows his followers that he is interested in what they are saying and it encourages them to share their thoughts more often. For more information on engagement, see my post on Twitter follower engagement tips. A clever way to do this is to feature your twitter life stream on your blog and on other social media sites like LinkedIn. Make sure to include a reference to your Twitter handle in your contact information on your blog and on other social media mediums. Add some character to your Twitter feed. Dry content is not very engaging. Some of the most successful tweeters get personal with their twitter feed and others let their wittiness come out. This makes Tweeters less intimidating and more approachable as well, which will also lead to increased engagement. Next week, I will share tips to increase your influence via LinkedIn based on tactics we uncovered while creating the top 10 venture capital online influencer report.

How to Create and Grow Your Influence on a Global Social Web Posted: 26 Apr 2012 06:35 PM PDT We are living in a world where influence is migrating from offline to online. The ability to influence is also moving from local to global. Its reach is also transitioning to mobile devices. Reputation and influence can now be gained faster and reach further than in any other time in history. One definition of Influence is "the capacity to have an effect on the character, development or behavior of someone or something" To be truly successful you must have the ability and power to influence. Mass Media was the Platform The development and popularity of movies and mass media over the past century has provided people such as politicians, business people and movie stars the platforms for creating and sustaining influence. But we are still used to the traditional paradigms and ideas of influence. In the past it was vital to enrol at the "right" school or university, attend the right networking events or cocktail parties or belong to the right golf club These are still important but the power of online influence and new media is starting to make itself felt as the social web shares ideas and content globally in real time. The Web is now Defining "You" Have you Googled yourself lately? What do you see? Potential employers will Google you, they will check your Linked In profile. Do the results influence their decisions? We now live in a knowledge economy and knowledge is easily displayed and spread online. Using the right online tools and with focus you can define and carve out a reputation online. Why Should I create Online Influence? There are many reasons to establish an online presence and build your "brand", whether you are personal brand or a business brand. Find a new career Grow your existing profession Connect with other influencers Protect your reputation Promote and sell products and services To read and view more click here or on the image below to visit the Slideshare presentation "Online Reputation and Influence – How to Create, Grow and Maintain Influence on a Digital Social Web" that was a keynote that I presented at the BE-Wizard web conference in Italy. Credibility First Geoffrey Rush the Oscar winning actor said "In my career two things have been vital.. Credibility and Visibility" Being credible first is the foundation to any successful career or business. In an information age your online content is what people will judge you on because that is all they will see. Content that is focused and relevant to the category or subject that you want to be seen as influential about is the first step in gaining credibility. It must be remembered that influence resides within categories and specializations not generalisations. The First Challenge There are many challenges in the journey of establishing online influence. The first challenge is focus which starts with the question "What do I want to be influential about?" Essentially it comes down to the intersection of your innate talents and what you are passionate about. For a lot of people this is sometimes the hardest part of the journey and it is a lesson in "self discovery". I would recommend that if you just have an inkling of what your talent and passion is about is to just start, as the Nike slogan goes "Just do it". True self discovery is in the "doing" not the procrastination. The feedback and the momentum of commencing and action will provide what you need to refine your direction as you move forward. The other challenges are included in the presentation. Where do you Start? What has worked for me has been establishing my blog (or website) as my online content "influence" hub. I own it and control it. Facebook can't close me down! It is your soap box to the world. Once you have established a beachhead (blog or website) with defining content (it doesn't have to be mountains of articles or videos) then the next stage is "visibility" Visibility Requires Marketing So how do gain that visibility? The social media networks provide the free publishing and marketing tools to make your credibility "visible". Other important elements in the art of creating visibility are covered in the presentation. Also there is a twitter tool and secret that I cover that I have found to be very important in marketing your content and creating influence online. How About You? Have you taken control of your online presence and brand? How have you established your online influence? Could you do better? What have been the benefits for you? Look forward to hearing your stories.

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