25 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community |
- Sports Authority Of India (SAI) Joins Facebook
- YouTube SEO Tricks And Reply Girl Treats – Demystifying Optimization With Teddy Lyngaas
- Optimizing Facebook Engagement – The Effect Of Post Length
- Business Owners : SEO Your Site In LESS Than 600 Seconds
- Social Influencers Are Dead – Long Live The Instigators
- 5 Killer Strategies to Dominate Social Media’s Big 3: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Infographic)
- Does Your Company Blog Get The Love It Deserves?
- 3 Ways to Incorporate Video in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
- Custom Post Types – WordPress Evolves Closer to a Content Management System
- Using Social Media to Address Consumer Feedback
- The Best Time To Post On Twitter And Facebook (Infographic)
- Penguin Penalty for Over-Optimization
- Social Task Management & the end of the Project Manager?
- Facebook’s Latest Status Update: Diversity
- How To Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign: Step-By-Step
- On the Importance of Having Social Media Guidelines
- Getting Over The Social Media Creep Factor
- Which Comes First Social Media Or Social Media Culture?
- How to Remove a Yelp Complaint
- Pinterest Image Optimization: 5 Tips To Increase Visibility In Search
- Put Some SEO Back Into Your Twitter Experience
- The Community Manager’s Guide For Using Twitter To Market Your Business
- 5 Search Metrics that Truly Matter – Tuesday’s Tips & Tactics [Video]
- Employee Social Media Policies That May Violate Federal Law
- Compelling Content: Will You Survive the New Google Era? (Part 1)
| Sports Authority Of India (SAI) Joins Facebook Posted: 26 Jun 2012 04:00 PM PDT I was pleased to see this article on the Times of India site, relating to the Sports Authority of India (SAI) joining Facebook. It is good to see a reclusive authority like SAI opening up to social media. Manjushree Roy who is the Assistant Director, Media Division and International Cell for SAI has started the Facebook page with the intention to create a community of sportspersons where they can share their thoughts with each other and visit photo galleries and watch videos by the sports body. This got me excited to explore further. The Facebook page 'Sports Authority of India Head Office' is a brand new one and already has 28 fans. The cover page seems to be similar to the header on their website. It needs to be tweaked to reflect the new Facebook cover photo size. As I browsed through the timeline, I came across many interesting updates about the activities at SAI. In addition to this, I was happy to see pictures of athletes and some of their quotes. Although the page could do better with a change in design and content, it also shows a lot of promise in terms of fulfilling its objective of building a community of sportspersons. The one thing that stood out for me was the response from the page admin to a fan. SAI is open to feedback I also learnt about the Sports Ministry's 'Come and Play scheme' through this jingle posted on the timeline. Is there room for improvement?Indeed there is just as in any task of life! From a visitor's viewpoint, the page is dull and majorly lacks information about what it stands for and why you should join the community – the two vital reasons that are a must for a Facebook page. I would really be happy if SAI could work on these points: Design & Appeal:
Content:
These could be the early days for SAI and I'm certain that with these changes, the page would grow and achieve its target with time. Nevertheless, SAI's intention to open up on Facebook is commendable. What do you think?   |
| YouTube SEO Tricks And Reply Girl Treats – Demystifying Optimization With Teddy Lyngaas Posted: 26 Jun 2012 02:00 PM PDT Welcome to the second installment of the series Demystifying Optimization With Teddy Lyngaas. You can check out the last installment on Gaming The System here. This one deals with YouTube SEO manipulation and, well, dudes-who-like-cleavage-on-the-Internet manipulation. JM: Now in that email you also talked about other ways to hack the system as far as video goes. You mentioned the creators or marketers uploading a video and paying a bunch of money to promote it.
TL: Yeah, to try to get it to be considered a hot video and go up on YouTube's homepage. If something is on the YouTube homepage it's gonna get a lot of views just because it's on the YouTube homepage. But the way that that's determined is changing as we speak, basically, with the new channel redesign. Part of how it works is if I upload a video today and then tomorrow I have a bunch of views on it, YouTube has an algorithm to figure out how popular that video is. And if it is getting a lot of views in a short period of time it can trick that algorithm into thinking it is really more popular than it really is. So, this is one of those things that YouTube is trying to figure. If a blogger or tastemaker is embedding a video on a website that's probably legit whereas if you look at where your video views come from and it's a solitary source or, you know, a couple of essentially paid sources, it's probably a sign of someone trying to game the system. A little story – So, I have a blog where I sometimes write about YouTube and other online video topics. And one day, this guy from California called me and he was like, "What do you know about really hard core YouTube SEO?" And I basically told him what I knew. And he was like, "Oh, I mean not like that corny shit," and he kind of belittled me. "I mean the really hardcore stuff." And I said, "Oh… what do you mean?" That's how I heard about this. His company would upload a video and then if it didn't perform well after a couple of days, they would take it down – and upload literally the same video again. They are just trying to get at that algorithm. And he said they will do that five or ten times, and it usually works. Then they get all those views and more just by being on the YouTube home page. So, YouTube is trying to change that with their new channels. What they're doing is putting more value on who you actually have subscribed to and what you have actually watched before. That's instead of just a generic "this video's really popular right now" approach. So I mean that that is just one more way that they are trying to change that
Really, the big thing that is going on right now on YouTube is those reply girls, which I am sure that you have seen. It's just a cleavage shot [laughing] of a buxom young woman and the meta data is whatever the most popular video game or television show is at the time. And that isn't to promote anyone or a video of any kind, it's just set up to create ad revenue. So, the only reason that Reply Girl video exists is because they put ad words on it and the more people to click on it the more money they get. JM: Right, what is the, like if you click on those, what is the video that comes up? Is there a girl in a low cut top kind of thing? TL: Oh, don't pretend you haven't clicked on it, John. JM: I have not! [pause] I have. TL: No yeah, it'll have, it might even be about the game, because they are getting better at this, where it is like this girl talking about "Halo 3″ but the camera will never move from the cleavage. JM: [laughing] TL: She's probably just reading some script that this company handed her. And she'll talk for 5 minutes about the game. On YouTube, when you when you upload a video, you only have three options to create a thumbnail, right? And there's all these people trying to figure out exactly what that algorithm is – how YouTube determines the three options they're giving you – because everybody wants custom thumb nails. If you're a YouTube partner you can have your own choice and if you're on Vimeo you can upload your own. But if, in YouTube's eye, they just let every uploader go and pick their own, then it's just going to be misleading Thumbnails are, at the end of the day, the most important bait for people to click on and watch a
video. So if the camera never moves from this shot of the Reply Girl's cleavage, the thumbnail is going to be a shot of the cleavage And guys just can't help themselves, they can't. They want to see some… well, you know. JM: [laughing] TL: But the weird part is that YouTube is pretty good about policing their content. Where, you know, you're not going to see anything too bad on YouTube. These guys might as well just watch porn. JM: Right, right. TL: Which is also readily available on the Internet. This one is also in the related videos for Minecraft – note it’s posted by “ReplyGirlsReviews” JM: Is it? [laughing] TL: Yeah. JM: I'm gonna write that down. — In the next installment, we (Teddy) will talk less about pornography and more about the difference between a bad (or "junk") view versus a smart, targeted view, and why clients shouldn't be fooled by big numbers of the former. Demystifying Optimization With Teddy Lyngaas. Teddy is our Optimization expert here at AboutFace. This is where I ask Teddy about stuff I don't understand and he explains it and then hopefully I understand it (and if not, I will definitely pretend I do so that no one thinks I'm stupid). If you ever have any topics in Optimization you'd like us (read: Teddy) to tackle, email me at murphy@aboutfacemedia.com and we'll see what we can do.   |
| Optimizing Facebook Engagement – The Effect Of Post Length Posted: 26 Jun 2012 12:57 PM PDT Size matters when it comes to Facebook Engagement. People on Facebook are tired, busy, bored, hungry and utterly bombarded with a wall of chatter from friends, acquaintances and brands. They don’t have more than a few seconds to glimpse a message, mentally shrug, and move on. Brands need to use every means at their disposal to catch people’s attention, and draw them in. One method is using images – a picture is worth a thousand words and our previous article dramatically showed the benefits of Photo posting compared to other types of posts on Facebook. However, what matters equally dramatically is the length of the text message you include with your Post – be it a Photo, Video, Link or plain Status Post. We used the Track Social platform to analyze the effect of Post Length on response level. Smaller messages show a significant increase in response levels. We point out that writing a small post is no guarantee of success. Nor is a long post destined to fail. It is also true that the benefit of succinct posting varies from brand to brand, depending on many factors such as the nature of their product and the attitude of their audience. However: Post Length is amongst the most consistent factors that we see having an impact on engagement levels across the board.
Our overall advice to brands is:
Track Social offers enterprise clients a customized analysis of Facebook Engagement as well as many other aspects of social media performance. For more information, and to apply for a free assessment of your brands posting patterns, go here. Stay tuned for the next article in our series, which will look at additional variables that impact Facebook Engagement. To learn more about the methodology of this study go here. To sign up to receive alerts for our Facebook Engagement series and more, go here.   |
| Business Owners : SEO Your Site In LESS Than 600 Seconds Posted: 26 Jun 2012 11:55 AM PDT Despite what the experts claim, startup businesses do not need a PhD in SEO to get their small business websites to attract traffic. In fact, startups that have fewer than fifty webpages and only want to rank for a handful of keywords can implement a few SEO basics to become an online prescience. You can SEO your site in less than 600 seconds.  The SEO Easy Button SEO for Startups First, select between www and non-www in your small business website domain name. Use a 301 redirect to move web traffic permanently in Google index searches from the source to the target site. You may ask, "Why Google?" Google comprises most of the searched performed online. Your focus as a startup is to utilize all of Google's free webmaster tools. Verify ownership of your site in Google's Webmaster Tools to receive information that will help you fine-tune your content and enhance security features. Email forwarding allows Google to send you information that includes hacking attempts, unreachable URLs, malware detection, and crawling data. You can also use Webmaster Tools to ascertain if your domain was previously a spam site. Spam websites receive much lower search engine rankings that legitimate websites. If your domain was previously a spam site, then submit a reconsideration request through Webmaster Tools to get your primary keywords listed in Google search engine index. SEO Basics Your first goal in creating a small business website is to make navigation as easy as possible. One of the primary reasons people leave websites is that they have difficulty getting to where they want to go. In addition, ensure your domain includes the keywords that potential customers use to find your business online. This involves utilizing an analytics tool to review your website's effectiveness in attracting visitors. Google Analytics is a free service that analyzes your site and provides the data you need to make changes. You will have to define some parameters, before you even write your first web page. Who do you want to visit your site? Do you want to focus on loyal, lifelong customers or do you want to attract new customers. Will your content appeal to parents or children? Does your startup require more investors and, if so, does your content provide potential investors with a call to action? Remember that your target demographic will change from page to page. Define your conversion goals. You can monitor newsletter sign up, product purchase, or service sharing conversion rates. While many small business websites want high product purchase conversion rates, you will not achieve that goal until you convert visitors into newsletter or email subscribers. Remember not to stuff relevant keywords into your content; Google ranks websites that stuff keywords deep within their search engine result pages. Every one of your startup's web pages should include unique content, unique titles, and unique Meta descriptions. The Importance of Outbound Links Many small business websites fail to incorporate links into their online strategy. Every one of your web pages should have at least one external link to a website that has considerable traffic. These types of links will increase you chances of your website ranking high in Google's search engine. Select a few words and submit the words in Google's search engine. You should link to any site that ranks on the first page. Think of external links as the search engine tiebreaker: Google will rank a page with quality external links higher than a page that has no outbound links. The acronym SEO scares many small business owners away from creating a compelling website that increases sales. You do not have to invest any money, nor do you have to invest much time to build a strong online presence. You can implement a powerful SEO strategy by learning SEO basics in under 600 seconds.   |
| Social Influencers Are Dead – Long Live The Instigators Posted: 26 Jun 2012 11:41 AM PDT Social influence. The need to prove how wonderful you must be to get such a high Klout score. The golden nugget for brands looking to tell their story to the masses. Yep, social influence – and, by association, social influencers – are a hot potato and continue to divide opinion. On the one hand, you have the likes of Klout, Kred, PeerIndex and others allocating scores to you based on your perceived influence, according to their algorithms. Included in this camp are the evangelists for these services – the score bleaters, pimping themselves looking to score freebies from brands that have bought into the unscientific scoring systems. On the other hand, you have the naysayers and doubters, who believe it's impossible to allocate a score to an individual, because no individual can truly be measured. There are way too many variables involved – I may be excited by something tweeted to me online, but if my wife says no, my wife says no. And not one of the influence ranking platforms knows a single thing about my wife and her "influence". However, it's clear we're looking at the wrong people. There will always be tools like Klout to offer those needing validation for the stuff they do online, just as much as there will always be people whose validation comes from the results they get for themselves or their clients, both online and offline. And it doesn't matter – because the term Social Influencer is pretty much dead. The real power online lies with the Instigators. Influence Comes And Goes, But The Instigator Thrives IndefinitelyBefore the term "social influencer" bastardized the origins of influence, it was a mark of respect to be known as an influencer. Now, though, the term has lost a lot of its marquee, because it's tied directly to who can be the noisiest online to try and improve influence scores and grab some freebies. It's why many people are pushing back on influence scores, by dropping out of the system altogether, or simply refusing to care. And while some brands are still willing to take a risk on signing up to offer free perks to those that play the game in the hope of getting more return for their money, many others are bypassing the score takers and going direct to the source. This is where the Instigator is the new power, and the one that should be followed and courted. Because the Instigator has always been around, long before any social influence "metric" was thought of. The Instigator has been the real influencer, and caused actions and reactions far larger, and in greater numbers, than the perceived influencer. And they continue to do so, long after the last Klout Perk has shriveled up and become the butt of online jokes at the irrelevance. So who are the Instigators, and why should you (as a brand or business) care? The Trust of the Instigator CommunityInstigators are the drivers of actions and conversations, and it's down to one simple fact – they have the innate ability to create conversations and actions based on those conversations, as opposed to being a shill for a brand. And their community knows this. Instead of slapping the latest affiliate ad on their site for a product they'll never use, Instigators always show both sides of the coin. They offer the good and the bad of a brand, product or service. They treat their audience as equals – because their audience are equals. And, by being treated as equals and partners in the conversation, the audience of an Instigator takes the message further than any brand could (arguably) hope to see from an influencer campaign. Because many brands are focusing on the wrong platforms. They're looking to Twitter and Facebook, and throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars into Sponsored Tweets and Stories. In the meantime, the real action is happening on blogs and inside forums – and only the smartest brands have cottoned onto this. And it's (more often than not) not just the "accepted influencers", or usual suspects, that are driving this action. Take a look at Ken Mueller, who drives lively conversations across his blog comments and Twitter around his ideas. Or Jack B., who also gets smart people, that would be classed as influencers, discussing the merits of his thoughts on his blog and across the social web. Because here's the simple fact any marketer worth their salt will tell you – word of mouth and getting people talking about you is the real relationship to the sale. Ad spend may get you awareness; great customer service will keep customers with you. But getting the buy? That's the final step between desire (ads) and decision and – again, more often than not – this is where the conversations, pros and cons around your brand influence that decision. The Social Influencer Is Dead – Long Live the InstigatorsYou can still chase the influencer model if you wish. After all, there's some merit to knowing how someone is perceived online, and if they can drive interest in your perk, giveaway or new promotion. But if you want real results and real long-term buy-in, you'll be chasing the wrong crowd. The term influence has already been tainted to the effect that people are now wary and gun-shy when they hear it. That's an issue that won't go away until the algorithms are more solid and locked down. But that's okay – because influencers are short hit affairs. The Instigators – the people that instigate immense conversations and let them run free, and then see them propagate even further around the web – are the real influencers. They're the folks that are making people think. And when you think, you look for a solution. And if you're a brand with that solution, you'll be instantly on that person's radar – as long as you know where that person has come from. And, chances are, it's not going to be a social influencer. Time to rethink who you're looking to connect with.   |
| 5 Killer Strategies to Dominate Social Media’s Big 3: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Infographic) Posted: 26 Jun 2012 11:39 AM PDT Our latest whitepaper, 5 Killer Strategies to Dominate Social Media’s Big 3: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, serves as a best practice guide for marketers. We examine each platform and share five strategies marketers can apply to guarantee success for increasing brand awareness, fostering brand advocacy and generating leads and sales. Use this infographic as a quick-start guide for social marketing on the Big 3! Marketers – let's hear it! How do you leverage the big 3 platforms to generate awareness and grow leads? Do you apply the 5 strategies above or do you rely on others? Share your favorite strategies with us on Twitter by tweeting to #AwarenessTips.   |
| Does Your Company Blog Get The Love It Deserves? Posted: 26 Jun 2012 11:38 AM PDT
For many business owners, their attention is normally directed towards sales and not on online content, social media and other means by which to promote the company. The problem rests with the fact that not giving enough attention to blogs, online content, social media etc. means your brand is not getting the necessary publicity it needs. In the event your company is looking for ways to bring more traffic to your site, along with increasing the stream of revenue coming in the door, take some time and look at your blog. As you review the blog, ask yourself and/or the person/s in charge of it the following: * Is the blog relevant to our industry? If you answered ‘no’ even one time in reviewing these questions, then you need to reassess what you are doing with the blog. Trust me, turning a blind eye to issues with your blog is like throwing money away. I have spoken with numerous blog owners over the years and one question they oftentimes have problems answering is what is the goal behind their blog to begin with? It seems like a simple enough question, but you would be surprised how many of them have trouble answering it. Keep in mind that the company blog is just one component of an overall sales pitch for your company. The blog can and should be a great tool for your sales team when they are out in the field trying to sell. The bottom line is they can point back to the blog to show current and potential clients how your business can help bring them more attention. Lastly, your blog should be a strong educational tool that informs any and all traffic that comes to the site. You may not sell someone on your business this time around when they visit the blog, but there is always that next time when they stop by. As you place more pertinent content on the blog, you begin to stand out from the competition, meaning your site will be a “go-to” destination over time. Company blogs should not take up an entire day’s worth of time and effort, but they do need attention. In the event your company blog has not been receiving the necessary attention, take some time today and show it a little love. Photo credit: wininginweb.com   |
| 3 Ways to Incorporate Video in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Posted: 26 Jun 2012 10:50 AM PDT A successful social media marketing strategy needs to incorporate a number of different aspects. One tool that some businesses fail to take advantage of is the use of video. Users connect with images on social networks at a high rate, and videos have the same effect. As the saying goes, motion creates emotion. Creating video for your company’s social media channels can serve many purposes. The creation and success of Viddy for example has made short clips easy to create and share. Let's take a look at three ways video can boost your social media strategy. 1. Case Studies: What better way to display a company's successes than with case studies? Whether a company follows a business to consumer or business to business model, potential customers and clients want to know that your methods work. Animated case studies can not only be more engaging for people to watch, but it gives you an opportunity to highlight specific parts of the project. The short lengths of these videos make them perfect to share on social media channels and they will increase interaction with fans and followers. 2. Behind the Scenes: Social media is all about interaction and engagement. For some, the transparency that is necessary for businesses to engage on social media can be a deterrent. The point of this honest communication is to build trust and loyalty with clients that will translate to sales and profit for the business. Giving fans and followers an "unscripted" look at a company is a very effective way to nurture these relationships. 3. User Videos: Testimonials are another significant means for businesses to build their reputation. In social media, users are more likely to purchase a product that a friend or family member has recommended. Word of mouth is now no longer restricted to face to face interactions, but is an important aspect of social media that creates opportunity for businesses. User generated content cultivates a genuine online personality for a business which is crucial in order to be successful in social media. With the rate at which technology is constantly changing, there will continue to be new and creative ways to use video to interact with users. These three tips just scratch the surface of the possibilities. To be successful in social media, businesses must focus on the customer, and what their wants and needs are. Creating video clips helps foster a business's persona with the public, and therefore makes the business a reliable source that users will buy from. Have you seen any social media campaigns that are using video particularly well? Let me know in the comments.   |
| Custom Post Types – WordPress Evolves Closer to a Content Management System Posted: 26 Jun 2012 10:30 AM PDT There are many reasons I love WordPress, but the main reason is the simplicity of creating, updating and maintaining your site. WordPress keeps adding more and more powerful features, turning the platform into an effective content management system for small businesses. One of these powerful features is Custom Post Types, first introduced in WordPress 3.0, that allows you to create blocks of reusable content. This capability enables you to create, edit, and store information as you do with blog posts but with much more creative control. WordPress comes standard with five post types that are used by default:
Although most users of WordPress may never recognize the last three as post types, they are used by the system to manage the organization of your content. Theme developers can now use custom post types to create an array of content that can be edited through the visual editor and used anywhere on the site. By using the more simple method of creating the content, users are able to do more without complexity. Great examples of using WordPress custom post types include any website that needs a formatted post for displaying repeatable information such as a:
Simplify Creating Custom Post TypesThe WordPress plugin developers never cease to amaze me with their expertise. They turn something complex into an easy to use feature. There are many plugins that use the WordPress Custom Post Type, but the Custom Post Widget plugin is my new favorite and one to check out! The Custom Post Widget allows you to set up content blocks that are easily edited without knowing HTML. Using this plugin, you can create the content once and use it in multiple areas of your site, including widget areas and pages and posts via a shortcode. The shortcode can be found by clicking an icon next to the Upload/Insert add media icon. Even though you give each custom content block a title, you can choose whether to use it, giving you flexibility in where you may need to use it.
From the plugin author, other benefits to this plugin include:
Some ideas on using this plugin:
One thing to remember – a custom post type is still a post to many plugins so some things may get a bit strange on your website. For example, WordPress SEO does recognize the various post types and allows you to eliminate the SEO form from those types. However, some social share and author bio plugins do not and will display the buttons and author box on them. This can look rather strange when the content block is in a sidebar widget. Over time I expect most of the plugins will recognize the individual custom post types and give you an option to manage how they are used. Are you using Custom Post Types? What are some good examples? Share your uses with us!   |
| Using Social Media to Address Consumer Feedback Posted: 26 Jun 2012 10:15 AM PDT Addressing consumer feedback in a way that develops satisfaction and customer loyalty is paramount to the success of a business. In previous decades, speech analytics , evaluation of phone calls, and customer satisfaction surveys have been very important in the interpretation of customer feedback. These are still important avenues, but as the internet and social media becomes more pervasive with each day, the ability to use these tools to respond to feedback will determine the success of quality management. Businesses and quality management departments must develop new ways to use social media to address consumer feedback if they intend to remain interesting and attractive to the modern internet-immersed consumer. Respond to Consumer Feedback There are many social media tools that companies can use to respond to consumer feedback. Review sites like Yelp are places frequented by customers with praise or complaints. Savvy companies today review sites to locate product deficiencies and flaws, as well as to determine product popularity. Many companies also employ workers simply to respond to those complaints, an affective (if fairly superficial) way to alleviate customer frustration and develop consumer loyalty. More and more frequently, customers are using sites like Facebook and Twitter to comment on their experiences at businesses. Often customers will comment on their own sites or directly on the page of a company. Companies can respond in several ways, from a simple return comment to a conciliatory gift or promise. Keep Track of Influence However, as I said earlier, this is rather a superficial solution. What I mean by that is, you're wielding a rather large amount of resources to address a single response from a consumer. This is an important process, but probably ought to be partnered with more in-depth analysis of customers and their satisfaction. For years, for instance, companies have been studying the credit ratings of customers and rating the customers, in much the same way that customers rate them. Online, keeping track of credit ratings is still important, but keeping tabs on another aspect of consumers, how "influential" they are, is perhaps equally important. Companies are paying attention to how many "followers" or "likes" a social network user might receive for the simple reason that consumers are also paying attention to these users. For instance, the movement and feedback from a consumer with 500 followers on Twitter will most likely be seen by (and influence) many more people than the feedback of a Twitter user who has no followers. I would caution businesses on focusing too much energy on customers perceived as more "influential," however. Word of mouth (or keyboard, in this case) is still extremely important to the reputation of a business. Analytics reviewing how influential a customer is should always be coupled with some basic good-natured, old-fashioned support. Comments stay on the internet for years, remember, and can be seen by millions of eyes over time. If businesses can remember that and use social media as a tool to honestly assess consumer feedback and turn a critical eye upon their own practices and products, consumers will remember, especially in this internet age. Author bio: Randall Gates in a business professional who specializes in quality management systems and software. He frequently writes on these topics and currently blogs for cebos.com, a provider of electronic document management systems.   |
| The Best Time To Post On Twitter And Facebook (Infographic) Posted: 26 Jun 2012 10:05 AM PDT As marketers we want to know exactly when our target audience is most receptive to the content we share in the social mediasphere but that has not always been easy to determine. Not any longer. In a recent study link-sharing service Bit.ly has found what the best time to get click-throughs on Twitter and Facebook is, with its stats now nicely laid out in this infographic by Raka Creative. So for those who try to engage their online audiences on Twitter, the best time to tweet and expect a response is in the early afternoon, Monday to Thursday. Twitter gets most traffic between 9am and 3pm but that is also the period when there's more competition for people's attention. For Facebook marketing aficionados, the click-through golden hour is 3pm on Wednesday. Facebook traffic ramps up at 9pm and fades after 4pm so posting between those hours is your best bet.   |
| Penguin Penalty for Over-Optimization Posted: 26 Jun 2012 10:00 AM PDT Penguin Penalizes Keyword StuffingGoogle's latest significant algorithm change, Penguin, was released in late April of this year. It's designed to reward high quality websites and penalize what Google calls webspam. One of the kinds of webspam Penguin is focusing on is on-page keyword stuffing. In the past it was felt that a certain number of iterations of a verbatim keyword phrase was needed in order to score highly enough in relevance and achieve a high ranking in the search engines. Search engines have since gotten much better at understanding matching pages for a query without requiring such verbatim keyword density measures. But many web pages have nevertheless gotten better rankings than they might otherwise deserve due to overly aggressive on-page keyword placement. Penguin is designed to put those web pages in their place. According to Google: In the pursuit of higher rankings or traffic, a few sites use techniques that don't benefit users, where the intent is to look for shortcuts or loopholes that would rank pages higher than they deserve to be ranked. We see all sorts of webspam techniques every day, from keyword stuffing to link schemes that attempt to propel sites higher in rankings. Have you inadvertently done some keyword stuffing?Assuming you haven't engaged in link spam, it would serve you well to examine your on-page optimization. Now a certain presence of important keywords is essential for a page to rank well, so how do you know if you've gone overboard? Respected SEO guru Dan Thies has studied a large number of websites and come up with a test you can do yourself with a printout of your web pages. He calls it The Red Pen test and it should give you a good idea of whether you've stepped over the line and are in danger of a Penguin slap-down. We recommend his keyword stuffing test to you — you'll find it here.   |
| Social Task Management & the end of the Project Manager? Posted: 26 Jun 2012 09:30 AM PDT Imagine this scenario: it's late in the game and your team is down a goal, who do you turn to? No sweat, obviously you turn to your captain. Having a solid team captain is an important cornerstone in building any championship program. The interesting thing about team captains is they may not be the best player, but they have an uncanny ability to rally everyone together, communicate the game plan, and most importantly – execute. For starters, they are looked upon to help communicate the relevant information, execute, and guide their team to success. There's a lot in common with team captains and project managers. However, with the development of new social task management tools, are they going to become a job of the past? Projects are complex.If left alone, they can quickly balloon out of control. One of the many important aspects to stay on top of is project communication. Too much and it's distracting, too little and it's debilitating. Regulating the flow of information can be complex. Sometimes making sure the right people have access to the right information may seem to be one of the more mundane roles of a project manager but, it can mean the difference between project success and failure. A post from the blog, The Project Wall, highlights the complexity that managing project communication can bring. "Having been involved in scores of projects as a project manager, we have prepared literally thousands of informal and formal communications for stakeholders…The theory driving the establishment of formal communications planning is network complexity." As the number of members involved in a project increases, the more complex the project naturally becomes. As illustrated in the diagram below, communication between members gets incredibly complex very quickly. That's where having a strong project manager comes into play. However this could all be changing. With the emergence of social task management tools, a new possibility of project management communication emerges. Instead of viewing project communication as a set of paths between individuals, social task management tools allow team members to communicate directly with the project. These social task tools allow the project news feed to essentially become a member of the team with whom other members can communicate. This opens up the new possibility of team members communicating with the project itself (peer-to-project) as well as the traditional team member (peer-to-peer) communication. This means that instead of maintaining a direct communication path with each team member; each team member has to make sure they are in communications with the project. What does this mean for the Project Manager?This process of treating the "project" as a team member may sound great. However, peer-to-peer communication will always occur outside the realm of the project news feed. Most of the time these peer-to-peer communications are informal and if gone undocumented, the rest of the project team will be at a disadvantage not knowing what transpired. Whereas in a traditional team environment, most of these informal communications are processed by individuals as part of the environment and made visible through the collaboration system. Although communication may be simplified, it's still important to have a captain to make sure the game plan is executed. So their role may change, but they are still a necessity for any winning team. Image Source: http://www.cbc.ca/sports/   |
| Facebook’s Latest Status Update: Diversity Posted: 26 Jun 2012 09:24 AM PDT Sheryl Sandberg to shake up Facebook's all-male boardroom. The time has come for Facebook to start taking boardroom diversity seriously. The social networking site reported that Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of the company, has joined the board of directors. Facebook's announcement coincides with a report released yesterday by the Committee for Economic Development (CED) that urges US companies to add more women to their boards in order to stay competitive in the global economy. The report, 'Fulfilling the promise: How more women on corporate boards would make America and American companies more competitive,' says that the diversity efforts many US companies have adopted are not gaining enough traction. 'The percentage of women on all US corporate boards has been stuck well below 13 percent for a decade,' it says. Roger Ferguson, co-chair of CED and president and chief executive officer of pension fund giant TIAA-CREF, says that successful promotion of boardroom diversity has to start with the tone at the top. 'Evidence shows that CEO commitment is the most influential factor to realizing gender diversity in corporate leadership positions. Successful companies of the future will be those that attract, train and grow diverse talent at all levels, including the board,' Ferguson adds. Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and chief executive, nabbed Sandberg a few years ago from Google where she served as vice president of global online sales and operations at the search engine. In this role she built and managed the online sales channels for advertising, as well as publishing and operations for consumer products worldwide. Before this move, Sandberg was chief of staff for the US Treasury under President Bill Clinton, Facebook says.   |
| How To Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign: Step-By-Step Posted: 26 Jun 2012 09:21 AM PDT
Over the past few years, online advertising has seen tremendous growth; social media platforms such as Facebook have been no exception. As we all know, social media channels are a great way to engage with potential customers and reach a vast audience. With Facebook ads, your business can hone in on that perfect customer and provide new and valuable offers without burning a hole in your pocket. The following blog will provide a few tips on how to get your Facebook ads rolling, how to reach the right customers, and how to measure your results. Before diving into what factors to consider and what metrics to follow, it's important that you understand the key elements that make for an effective Facebook ad. ²
DEVELOPING YOUR CAMPAIGN Now that you know the elements that go into an effective Facebook ad, it's time to review some factors to consider before developing your first campaign.¹ Campaign Goals – What is your business trying to get out of your Facebook advertising campaign? Are you looking for fan engagement, likes, increased sales, or just trying to get your brand name out there. If you don't have any goals in place, how will you know whether or not your ad is performing as expected? Campaign Budget/Duration – Determine how much you plan to spend on Facebook ads and how long you want them to run for. Considering how much you're willing to spend overall will help determine how much daily engagement you can expect, and what it will cost you. You don't have to spend tons of money- for starters try running an ad or two for just a few days. Doing so will allow you to figure out what's working and what isn't. Click-through Rates – Determine ahead of time what your click-through goals are for the ad campaign. This way you will be able to know when your ad has become outdated and users are tired of seeing the same thing. Depending on the nature of your campaign, different clickthrough rates may be acceptable. Just remember that you can pause and reactivate your ad at any time depending on its success and relevancy. MEASURE RESULTS Once you determine your campaign goals and create that awesome Facebook ad, now it's time to measure your results. Follow these ad metrics to decide whether or not your ad is producing the results you had in mind.¹ Clicks – The number of clicks the Facebook ad received; whether it was a "like" from the ad itself or a user following the call-to-action. Impressions – Impressions tell you how many times the ad has been seen by a Facebook user. This is a great way to determine if ad has dropped out of the suggested range. CTR – (Click-through rate) how many times your ad was clicked, divided by the number of times it was shown (impressions). Actions – The number of people who took the action you had in mind when developing the ad itself. Conversions – How many people responded to your CTA. This metric counts actions from the ad, including when someone has gone to your page and clicked "like." Cost-Per-Conversion – Calculates how much you pay for a new Fan, RSVP, or new group member. CONCLUSION When developing your own ad campaign, remember that Facebook ads change all the time. Facebook is constantly introducing new and improved ways to customize and add value to your advertisements. If your ad isn't producing the results you expected right from the start, be patient. Just remember the three key elements to an effective Facebook ad as listed above, and don't be afraid to try something new. ¹ Hubspot, “How to Create Epic Facebook Ads“ ² Hubspot, “10 Examples of Facebook Ads That Actually Work, and Why“ Image courtsey of IdeaGirlMedia   |
| On the Importance of Having Social Media Guidelines Posted: 26 Jun 2012 08:30 AM PDT
Yet having a social media policy in place is a good practice, putting safeguards in place to help organizations, employees and stakeholders alike navigate in the ever increasingly evolving sphere of social media. There are essentially three good reasons to have a social media policy in place. 1. Protect the employee Many experts claim that we can simply tell employees to use "common sense" when posting things online, whether text content, links to articles, photos and videos. But truth be told, "common sense" is often a loose term, in particular when one arrives into a new corporate culture, not knowing the way things are being done or said around the office. For example, should you friend your colleague, your boss or employees on Facebook? Can you tweet with reference to your employer? If you blog, or comment on blogs, should you let it be known who your employer is? These are the types of questions usually addressed in a social media policy and in social media training for staff and providers for bigger corporations. And this is not exclusive to employees who tweet or post on behalf of a company: anybody with access to social media ought to be included in a thorough policy. A great example? Check out the US Army social media handbook. 2. Protect the organization Protecting the employee by providing guidelines helps explaining accepted behaviors, and those that are frowned upon. Intimidation is rarely accepted in the workplace, so it shouldn't be accepted either in social media between employees or with external parties. Detailing these aspects thus helps organizations take necessary action when necessary, ensuring a healthy workplace and due diligence from a human resources point of view. A good example is how the State of Victoria, in Australia, has developed a simple and effective set of guidelines, as can be seen in this video: Click here to view the embedded video. Having a good social media policy in place also helps determine who is entitled to speak on behalf of the company, who manages social media accounts, and what kind of confidential information about the company can or cannot be shared online. It can take 20 years to build a brand, but only 5 minutes to ruin it – Warren Buffett Caution: there is a fine line between guidelines and control. Some companies try to exert tight control over employees in the social media sphere, with controversial results. It was the case recently with GM, Target and DISH Networks that were deemed illegal by labor officials. Another example is the Organizing Committee for the 2012 Olympic Games that has developed a very stringent social media policy for athletes, sponsors, media and participants in the upcoming event. We can all understand the need to protect the exclusive sponsorships with the big money involved, but stringent control over photos, videos and texts during the two-week event appears simply impossible. 3- Clarify organizational structure By defining who is responsible for social media interactions on behalf of the organization, management gets a golden opportunity to define which department should be held accountable for its strategy and execution. Most companies start out with a centralized approach, where social media resides either under Marketing, Public Relations, IT, Customer Service or any other given department. But with experience comes a more decentralized approach, coordinated through multifunctional teams, accountable under a specific department or the CEO directly, depending on size of companies.
We also find a more evolved organizational model, where every employee is a brand ambassador with access to social media as part of the job definition, or encouraged by senior management. The best example can be found at Zappos. Read here for the Brian Solis post on this story No matter which organizational model is in place for your social media management, guidelines should clearly define what is expected from employees in this sphere. If a customer service employee is now expected to spend one hour a day to monitor and respond on Twitter on behalf of the company, proper training should follow, as with job descriptions reviews. This employee should then be able to tread the social media environment, whether it's responding for official purposes via a corporate account or later on during personal time, responding on blog posts via a personal account. In today's world, where transparency and authenticity are key, having a strong social media policy in place to help all parties evolve is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.   |
| Getting Over The Social Media Creep Factor Posted: 26 Jun 2012 08:20 AM PDT
When it comes to social media, and particularly when new platforms are introduced, or new features are added to existing platforms (or existing features changed), I generally hear two reactions. Either: "Hey, that's pretty cool!" or, "Ew, that's creepy…" For some reason, social networks, and particularly Facebook, tend to prompt rather visceral reactions. Just yesterday I saw a post on Mashable about a new feature of the Facebook mobile app that allows you to find friends nearby. They ended the short piece with this rather loaded sentence: Does this new feature seem useful or creepy? For some reason, people who spend a lot of time on Facebook, and love it for all that it is, also often use words like "creepy" and "stalker" about the platform. Some have even dubbed it "Stalkerbook". When I meet or talk to someone for the first time, I'll often go to Facebook to see what more I can learn about them. After all, they put that information on there, and made it available to me. My kids think I'm being a stalker. I call it research. Here's the thing folks: Any social platform you use, you are there at their pleasure. Facebook is free. You sign up and create an account, and by doing so, you agree to their rules. It's the price we pay for deciding we want to use the platform. So if you think it's creepy that someone can hit a button to find out if you're nearby, just make sure you don't put that information out there. Just about every feature on Facebook can be turned off, or even set for any number of privacy levels. Remember when we used to spend time worrying about checking in some place on Foursquare because we were sure would-be burglars are watching our every move, just waiting to ransack our homes? If you're truly and honestly concerned about privacy and "creepers", you have a few options: a) Don't go there – Seriously, if you're that worried about it, no one says you have to be on Facebook or any other social platform. I mean, most of them didn't even exist five or ten years ago. You lived without them before, you can certainly live without them again. b) Filter yourself - I know that's hard for some of us, but don't just tell everyone things. You might have this false sense of security because you're behind a computer screen, but we really can see what you're writing. Remember those times you post things on Facebook and you get upset that no one notices or comments? Well, if you want us to see those things, we'll also see the things you should probably keep to yourself. Status updates like: "I'm going to the store and my house will be empty, with the key under the doormat, for the next four hours." or "My husband just left on business and I'm an attractive young female. Whatever shall I do while I'm home all alone for the next three days?" are probably not good choices. Use your head. c) Understand the platforms and their capabilities – Every platform I've ever used has a wide variety of privacy settings. Heck, Facebook allows you to post status updates and information that only you can see and no one else. Not sure why that option is there, but the point is, there are privacy settings. Use them. It's your job to play around with the settings so that you are safe and secure. Don't expect Facebook to do it for you, or ask your friends to change their settings so they don't see your posts. That's like walking out the front door and yelling to the neighbors, "Hey, turn your head the other way. Don't look at me. I'm NAKED!" So yeah, use those privacy settings. Put some clothes on and shut the curtains. On the other side of things, if you're using social media for business purposes, or are collecting user information on your website, go out of your way to explain to people what you are collecting, why you are collecting, and how you are going to use it. Even if you are offering something great through a loyalty program, make sure people understand what you're getting out of the deal in return. Be open and transparent, and don't abuse the privilege. Think about how you like to be treated as someone who uses social media. And again, as a user, remember that you choose to be there. You are in control of what you share, with whom, and on which platform. Whether it be Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, or any of them. If you feel the need to share, but don't want people knowing, there's always MySpace!   |
| Which Comes First Social Media Or Social Media Culture? Posted: 26 Jun 2012 08:05 AM PDT For me, one of the more fascinating aspects of social media is the impact it has had on our culture. Depending on how you look at it, social media has either revolutionized communication, or made it easier to do what we did 100 years ago. What IS different is how social media has created a set of values we no longer seem willing to live without. Transparency. Collaboration. Social media culture is more about "using" social media or "doing" social media. Say what you will, social media and social media values have changed everything in our collective human culture. And business is no exception. But businesses have several cultures to contend with, including their own. A recent study by Deloitte examines the impact of social media and corporate culture. Maybe one of the biggest findings in the research is the fact that executives see that social media has an impact on corporate culture, but employees see it less so. It is ironic that we're seeing more support for the ideals behind social media from executives than by employees. In particular, 38% of executives thought that a social media presence led to greater transparency, while only 17% of employees agreed. This really stood out for me. I recently did an internal survey for a large company which showed tremendous support from executives, but less enthusiasm from staff. Why is this?
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| How to Remove a Yelp Complaint Posted: 26 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT With 71 million unique monthly visitors, Yelp is one of the most popular consumer review sites on the planet. The site engages users with social media-type incentives, including badges and friend/follower functions. They also allow businesses the ability to offer incentives for users who use Yelp to check-in when they arrive in person. They want to hear about every positive and/or negative experience a Yelper has in order to paint a complete picture of a particular business. But what if a complaint is false or inaccurate? How do you remove a Yelp complaint? Removing a Yelp complaint Yelp prides itself on having a super-secret algorithm to help them filter the pages of reviews posted each day. For example, if a business is getting a lot of positive reviews by brand-new Yelp users, it can raise a red flag that the reviews may be a scam to earn a better rating. In this case, the reviews can be filtered off of the main page – resting in a kind of digital purgatory. A published review will only be deleted if it violates the Terms of Service or Content Guidelines established by Yelp. If you find that your business received a complaint that is false AND negative, Yelp will not remove it, but pledges to ensure that its algorithm catches onto the false post and buries the negative review. Finally, Yelp claims that advertising on the site will not give you authority to change the content of your reviews. Replying to a Yelp Complaint Yelp encourages business owners to respond directly to customers, either publicly or via a private message. The only requirement is that the business owner supplies a clear photo of themselves in their user profile in order to use either response tactic. Always treat the reviews on Yelp.com seriously, and be sure you treat every reviewer with respect. If you respond thoughtfully and respectfully, you amplify a positive online reputation. What's your experience with Yelp? Any tips or tricks for our community?   |
| Pinterest Image Optimization: 5 Tips To Increase Visibility In Search Posted: 26 Jun 2012 07:55 AM PDT
Here’s an overview that will walk through the steps to fully optimize your website and blog images to increase their visibility when users conduct a direct search in Pinterest for your product or service. 1. Start With Quality Images
2. Size Images Appropriately
3. Use Keyword-rich File Names
4. Use Keyword-rich Image Alt Tags
5. Ensure Pin It Button Is Installed Correctly
For more Pinterest optimization tips, check out our post Pinterest For B2B: Tips To Optimize Your Profile & Presence. If you’re just getting started take advantage of our FREE Pinterest Tip Sheet by clicking the image below.   |
| Put Some SEO Back Into Your Twitter Experience Posted: 26 Jun 2012 07:49 AM PDT
Some people compare Twylah to Pinterest because both are very visual. With Pinterest, you have to do the work to add your image to their site. With Twylah all of that work is done in the background for you. Here is a preview of the widget, which you an also embed on your site. It is a great tool for people to know more about you and the topics you talk about on Twitter. See @BrentPohlman's trending tweets Here are some other benefits of Twylah:
Check it out! – Go to Twylah.com and request an invitation.   |
| The Community Manager’s Guide For Using Twitter To Market Your Business Posted: 26 Jun 2012 07:43 AM PDT Just got hired to manage your company's Twitter page? The role of a community manager is one that is increasing in number and importance, and many companies, small and large, are prioritizing social media in their marketing campaigns. While the job can be stressful and fast-paced, it also gives you the opportunity to shape a brand's voice, becoming the face of the brand, as well as becoming the most important salesperson to your company. By using some of the tips offered below you will surely be on your way to becoming a community manager rockstar!
Twitter allows you to connect directly with your brand's ambassadors, casual customers and potential customers in a far more intimate setting than even Facebook. Through your tweets, retweets and the conversations you choose to partake in, potential customers are able to have a better understanding of who you are and can connect with you on a more emotional level. Twitter enables anyone from past clients to potential clients to look you up and connect with you on a daily basis. Be sure to have important information on your Twitter page, such as business hours and customer service phone numbers. Many design companies have their rates on their Twitter pages as well! Interior design services often post their wall quotes to catch consumer's attentions.
Using Twitter to build up your client base can be time consuming, but the results are worth it. By studying your follower's habits, interests and conversations, you will have valuable insight into when they shop and how they shop for your service. If you are hoping to connect with potential home buyers, you are able to cater to their needs at the exact moment of the day you think that they will be searching for things like furniture. Ask yourself on a daily basis what you can give away or offer on a discounted price, and you will be sure to see a spike in followers.
By connecting your Twitter with your site you are able to notify your users each time a discount is offered, a sale is going on or even when you post a new article. You can also get creative and offer your Twitter followers scavenger hunts using your site and offering them prizes. Scavenger hunts are often a great way to gain loyal followers, and your brand will be associated with fun and happiness, which is never a bad thing! Most importantly, it is important for you to engage in real conversations with your followers. You never want to be known as a brand that just bombards everyone with marketing messages. There should be days when you don't even mention your brand.   |
| 5 Search Metrics that Truly Matter – Tuesday’s Tips & Tactics [Video] Posted: 26 Jun 2012 06:55 AM PDT
This week's episode looks at five search metric categories that truly matter. The video explores important SEO metrics that aren't typically available in many of the most popular analytics packages today. Over the last three years, search engine optimization has substantially evolved, but the software to measure success has not. Watch the video to learn what analytics are important to track in order to account for the plethora of changes over the years and how to use Excel to monitor trends. View more presentations from Kuno Creative Join us next week for Tuesday's Tips & Tactics. Feel free to leave questions and topics of interest for future shows in the comments box below. Follow @CPollittIU Follow @Kuno The 2012 SEO Guide to Link BuildingNeed help building links for your SEO campaign? This download offers 18 white hat link building techniques, a glossary and more!   |
| Employee Social Media Policies That May Violate Federal Law Posted: 26 Jun 2012 06:35 AM PDT
Recently, the National Labor Relations Board set out to clarify and provide better guidelines for employer policies on social media use among their employees. To the surprise of many, General Counsel Lafe Solomon declared that many of the social media regulations employers have placed upon their employees are actually illegal. He mentions in particular the over-broadness of certain regulations which prohibits a vast and ambiguous scope of actions. Employees have rights as well, as the board points out, and it has emphasized that under federal law, media policies cannot compromise these rights. They have issued guidelines that will help employers discover if their policies are indeed justified or not:
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| Compelling Content: Will You Survive the New Google Era? (Part 1) Posted: 26 Jun 2012 06:32 AM PDT Do you publish content, maintain a blog or update your website regularly with new content? If you do, then congratulations…based on today's online standards, you're a publisher. As a content publisher you may have started to feel the effects of what weak content can do based on the recent Penguin Google algorithm updates. Today, "okay" content won't cut it plain and simple. Publishing: It Means WarI look at Panda as Spam War I and Penguin as Spam War II. Like a battle, there are casualties of war in this case spammy websites. To prepare for battle website owners must have a defensive plan, but in the end sometimes you still get hurt. Those that are injured, or sites that are experiencing decreased rankings, must be tended to. The uninjured and the mended must prepare an offensive plan if they want to win the war, right? Content can be part of your offensive plan. Slowly the war can be won with the right plan and content can become your sites bandages. A thick bandage, or a thick piece of content, will hold up to help your site heal. This type of outstanding content is what rises above the rest regardless of what industry you might be in. Do you know what outstanding content looks like? Content can range from web copy on a landing page, a creative video, an image developed specifically for Pinterest or a free guide behind an opt-in form. Great content comes in many forms and can obviously have varying degrees of success, depending on your industry and audience. Before you charge ahead and publish content, it's important to understand how to prepare and measure your content. The first step is understanding what outstanding content exists today and how it relates to your business needs. How else will you know when your own content is successful? Let's examine the footprints of outstanding content and how it can impact your "offensive" marketing strategy. Footprints of Outstanding ContentSuccess with content marketing is a sit and wait game. For those who aren't very patient time can be an evil foe. Users need to find your content, share it, or even use it to convert into a sale. These are actions that don't necessarily happen overnight, so each of the pieces should be examined after a bit of time has passed to measure success. When trying to find examples of outstanding content, time and many other components define the success, which can make the exercise a laborious one. So what should you look for? Jay Baer suggests there are four metrics every content marketer needs to measure:
Each have differing value as it relates to your true business objectives and goals. Baer explains that many try to overvalue the first two: Consumption & Sharing. "Consumption" as measured by page views and "Sharing" as measured by "Like"s, for example, might be overvalued as they don't directly correlate to your true business goals of making money or selling products. Find the goals and metrics that relate more closely to your business needs. By examining his "Leads" metric as measured by email subscribers who first read your blog for example or "Sales" as measured by the sales that occurred by users in that group, you're able to measure accurate information about how content measures up with your end goals. He suggests focusing your metrics on behavior, rather than data aggregation, to gather the right metrics to properly evaluate the business value of content. Unfortunately, without access to website analytics or insider information you'll have to do a bit of creative thinking to gather information as it relates to consumption, sharing, leads and sales. These items are extremely important to figuring out the true footprints of outstanding content post-Penguin. But remember to ask yourself how it really correlates to your end business goals as you conduct your research. Consumption: TrafficTools are available to help you find some data, but they can be unreliable and should be taken for what they are – third party tools. Sites like Alexa, Quantcast and StatBrain can estimate traffic figures to a site but I'm not aware of any that exist which will estimate traffic to a specific page on a site. In the past I've been able to gather traffic figures if a website uses a pageview counter on the page but those are few and far between. If you're an avid user of advanced search commands like I am, then you can find the pages where pageview figures are cached and indexed. In an industry with a lot of content, you might find a few examples. Or check out Forbes.com, some content shows pageviews – for your data consuming pleasure. The site publishes content in many niches so you might find a couple examples for your needs. Sharing: SocialThird party tools like Open Site Explorer will share with users shares on Facebook, tweets, Google +1s, and likes on Facebook. Exercises in social listening will help you to see successful content that is actively being shared right now. Additionally, data is available on a content piece itself. Retweets illustrated on a button, +1s designated on the button itself, or on Pin It buttons are all areas available to gather data. Consider examining Facebook, Twitter and other social channels to see if social media managers have shared specific pieces of content with their audience. You can see the conversation with that individual, unless it's a DM or private message of course. Are social media managers using content to help influence a sale? During your research you can find instances of this if you simply look at @ replies and outbound messages on successful bloggers or competitors websites. Sharing: Links & RankingsLink building post-Panda was hard enough, but post-Penguin it's almost impossible…without outstanding content that is. Using your onsite content to attract links is something we write about often on our blog. When done well a content piece can generate thousands of links and maintain great rankings as well. Evergreen content that drives thousands of visitors year over year can often perform better than a content piece that is shorter lived but with quicker pickup – tortoise or the hare right? Finding link footprints can be easy for us – we've got a lot of experience with link building. Using tools like Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO you're able to isolate the backlinks to any given piece of content. Understanding their value, now that's another story… With OSE you're able to examine Domain Authority and Page Authority as well as Mozrank. With ranking tools you can start monitoring the rankings of successful content, or use tools like SEMRush.com to determine the keywords to a site – some might indicate content that draws in alot of searches. These may be metrics you can utilize to determine value, but remember – how closely does it fit in with your business needs? The placement of a content piece on another website, for example one of your Infographics is picked up and embedded on a few authoritative sites, can serve a large value for your business. In this instance, however, it can be hard to measure that type of link and content placement. In your research, don't forget to examine the value of earned media as it relates to your business needs. Subscribers & SalesThe true bread and butter of your efforts can be seen in things like subscribers or sales. If you've built a successful blog and have maintained a large number of subscribers, then you have an audience and that audience can be powerful. The value for your business can sometimes not be measured monetarily, but easily monitored as a metric – for your own sites that is. For third party sites, it can be impossible to figure out exactly how large a subscriber base is and how that audience size has affected that site's content success. This is still, however, an important metric to examine for successful publishers in your industry. One way to find out how many subscribers a blog may have is to look at their media or advertising kits. Many bloggers who are looking to monetize their site will list the number of subscribers for their site. Some even celebrate when they reach certain milestones of their blog subscribers. Look for these examples and find their outstanding content that has attributed to their massive success. Sales are of course the ultimate goal of any business, but how can you find examples of outstanding content that help sales? This certainly is where things get tricky. You can search for examples of businesses whose content marketing agencies have written about their successes, or maybe they've touted their own success for a specific content piece. Look at SlideShare for presentations, you might find a few footprints. These are just a few of the footprints of outstanding content, but don't rule out other metrics that you may find more easily online that relate closely to your business goals. In the end, understanding what successful content looks like for you and how it correlates to your business needs involves a bit of research (as you can see above) – but is a worthwhile endeavor. It's your war plan in the new Google era. In Part II of my post, I'll discuss how to execute post-Penguin compelling content and provide you with an easy to remember checklist to get you ready for battle. In the meantime, tell us about some outstanding content you've developed or seen and the metrics that prove it's an outstanding piece of content. Extra points for creativity!   |
The YouTube homepage list of top videos on June 7, 2012
Here’s an innocent video about video game Minecraft
The top Reply Girl result on the side of the Minecraft video page
It turns that that Twitter got it right. There is a distinct roll-off in Engagement level beyond 140 characters. Though roll-off does begin before that point, the now traditional 140 character size limit is probably necessitated by the need to for Urls, Hashs and other references.
As small businesses look for ways to get a better return on investment (ROI), one area that oftentimes goes overlooked is the company blog.
Custom Post Types using WordPress Custom Post Widget Plugin
With a recent debate surrounding the effectiveness of Facebook ads, there has been a lot of talk regarding whether or not Facebook ads actually provide value to your business. So you may be thinking, why should my business be advertising on Facebook?
According to a 2011 survey by 
Multifunctional approach to social media management (Altimeter Group)
Cultural and Strategic Disconnect
With the explosion of Pinterest as a new tool in many marketers’ social media toolbox, it’s become more common to now see the “Pin It” button on certain eCommerce websites and blogs. But before you think it’s as easy as slapping some code into your site to display the “Pin It” button it’s important to understand how this integration gathers and references images from your site or blog when posting to Pinterest.
Tuesday’s Tips & Tactics – Inbound Marketing in 10 Minutes or Less is a weekly series presented by a member of the Kuno Creative 
Although close interaction with friends, family, and fellow employees is not a new development in today's society, the law has remained unclear and obtuse with regards to the laws that govern social interaction over the web. 
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