Search Influence’s very own Will Scott gives a brief how-to on the essential methods of owning your search engine results page. The main points he hits in the post are the importance of branded SERP ownership, branded AdWords campaigns, branded organic results, Google+ and local optimization. But the “real win” of owning the whole SERP is obviously taking over your non-branded ranking page. One of the more surprising tidbits for PPC naysayers is “It may seem crazy to pay for clicks to your site, especially if your site shows up in the first position organically, but the data shows that having both the first and “zeroth” positions increases clicks by up to 89%.” Now, that’s a big increase!
This informative post briefly touches on the importance of content marketing (it’s the future!) before moving on to some examples of companies that are doing it right, with “it” being what the author calls “phenomenal content.” What these examples all have in common is that they are bite-sized and easily sharable examples of content that is pinpointed to the intended audience. Probably the most useful thing in the post is the detailed step-by-step content strategy.
We’ve already talked about why your business should be on Instagram, and these reasons also apply to Pinterest (and maybe its smaller, more bro-tastic counterparts like Gentlemint, Manteresting, and Dudepins). And now with analytics for business profiles, you can get data about how your followers are interacting with content. But how do you build trust and loyalty among those followers? This post is a great how-to. Main takeaways: tell your company’s story with humor and portray it as fun and friendly; recognize your loyal customers; make your boards a resource for your followers by including useful information; verify pins have valid, working links before sharing them.
This post telling you how to enhance your content marketing is itself great content marketing. What’s not to love? From the click-bait title down to the excerpts from his book, the author has made a great point about the usefulness of illustrations in your content and promoted his own product, making this whole post an example of how to do it.
How to Create and Promote Successful Social Media Giveaways (and build SEO Links) — Search Engine Journal
The title of this post really says it all. This is a fantastic step-by-step guide to setting up and executing a giveaway. Any business can benefit from the added exposure, but as the post mentions, you can also use this as an opportunity for link building. When you add the giveaway to an existing page on your site, the value of that page increases, even after the giveaway is over and you remove the code.
As the Paid Search Manager, I often recommend posting exciting content to increase engagement on Facebook fan pages. However due to algorithmic changes (which always reminds me of Pool’s Closed), just posting to Facebook will not reach all your audience. In fact, it has recently been shown that organic posts only reach about 16% of your audience! Facebook “solution” for this problem is sponsoring your posts. Sure, this isn’t new, but sponsoring your personal posts is (kind of…not really). So after I made the above post, I decided to open the can of Alpo and dig in.
Getting Started
It is a pretty painless process. You just click the Promote link at the bottom of your post, FB determines how much you can spend based on your total reach, and then you choose an payment option (either credit card or PayPal).
Due to my limited number of friends (I’m pretty exclusive), I was only able to buy 70 Facebook Credits.
Results
So what do I get from my $7.00 USD investment?
21 comments (6 unique commenters)
14 Likes
1 Share
That’s 19¢ cost per action* *<filler text>There was once three exclamations after the word “action” but then I realized it read like I was more excited than I really was </filler text>
To give you some reference on cost per action, it can range from $1.59 – $3.00 for some advertisers.
How do you know you wouldn’t have had the same reaction from just posting organically?
I don’t. BUT, I do know my previous ten posts averaged 2.7 actions per post. Which would make this a +1233.3% increase interaction total and +307.40% if we just look at uniques.
“That’s that $#!+ I don’t like” – Pusha T
One major thing I didn’t like about promoted profile post was the lack of reporting. Having the total impressions, reach, and frequency would give users the action rate which can be used to gauge what content should be promoted in the future. Instead Facebook thought a notification was enough reporting.
Hey FACEBOOK, I need more than this. Notification ≠ Results.
Why Does This Matter? A wise man once said, “Just because you paid for it doesn’t make it less satisfying”. This perfectly explains the Facebook landscape. It is no longer just about good content; it is also about how much you are willing to invest in that content. This also shows that people with major followings, like gay Star Trekker George Takei, can stop being so frustrated with their lack of reach. If you are so invested in your audience you should be willing to shill out a few coins to stay top of feed. I mean Facebook has to pay their code monkeys and keep the lights on somehow…right?
Editorial Note: Mr. Coleman’s official title at Search Influence is Online Advertising Supervisor. However he will answer to Paid Search Manager and money.
Many, including big brands, are convinced that Facebook Ads are a waste of money. Under their assumptions, even high rates of fan interaction don’t correlate to new business. However, it’s clear that promoting strong organic posts beyond the natural reach of a page drives the expected post interaction and page likes, while delivering real, money-making conversions.
By focusing on the psychographics, i.e. interest groups, who might be interested in each individual post, a marketer not only saves time and energy by merging organic and paid advertising campaigns, but also leverages the better position and higher click-through rate of Sponsored Stories to expand the business’s reach among its target groups.
If a business is regularly posting good content, a marketer will have no problem finding enough material on which to base his psychographics. Every post, even one somewhat unrelated to the business, has an inherent audience. When we noticed we could do more for one of our low-spending fanbuilding clients, we moved them over to a Sponsored Story-only advertising strategy.
Marketplace Ads for Like-Building
In most cases, Facebook ad campaigns center around “Marketplace” ads, traditional display ads that link to a website or Facebook page. These ads compete with retargeted FBX. On average, 1 of every 2000 to 2500 impressions will lead to a click, where the landing page experience takes over to call the user to action. That means that for a campaign that targets 100,000 people who see the ad 4 times each, an average advertiser only has 160 to 200 chances to get a like from a user.
Despite low interaction rates, Marketplace ads are still an effective generator of Likes. For our client, one of every thousand impressions led to a click, doubling the average rate, and one of every 625 targeted users Liked the page.
Sponsored Stories for Engagement-Building
Sponsored Stories, with both their prominent placement in the sidebar and their engaging display in the news feed for both mobile and desktop users, are by comparison click magnets. Like quality content marketing, Sponsored Stories seek mostly to increase user engagement; however, with the granular interest targeting available in Facebook’s ad platform, marketers can laser-target their content to people who are nearly guaranteed to actually enjoy the content and want more of it in their feed. It’s not uncommon to see 1 of every 100 impressions lead to a click, and many Sponsored Stories can attain a 10% click-through rate from significant audiences of brand-unaware people.
Facebook Actions, the measurement for engagement on the platform, is a major factor in the EdgeRank algorithm that drives placement in the News Feed. By paying for actions at a cost of less than $20 for 1000, marketers create social views for content and boost the overall page’s quality in Facebook’s eyes.
Sponsored Stories can be 95% cheaper per click than Marketplace Ads…
Even though most Sponsored Stories use a Cost per Thousand Impressions bid, Costs per Click are usually significantly lower, likely due to a less competitive auction and stronger bid effects from EdgeRank than in the Marketplace. However, it’s important to understand what a Sponsored Story Click really measures: content views, as opposed to Page or Tab views for Marketplace ads.
Campaign Strategy: Which is Best?
Changing a campaign strategy can obviously radically alter the way users interact with whatever ads are displayed to them. In the case of pivoting from Marketplace to Sponsored Story ads, the shift from page to content views ensures the need to slightly change metrics and goals. Comparing the Reach, Actions, and Page Likes allows a marketer to understand what strategy is best.
Reach is largely unaffected by type of campaign when spends are equal.
Reach gives a marketer a basis on which to judge all other metrics – on Facebook, Reach trumps impressions because the target is users, not something like search terms. Sponsored Stories and Marketplace ads have about the same overall reach at the same spend; however, it’s important to understand that typical Sponsored Story campaigns run more ads at once, reducing the overall Frequency of each individual ad.
Sponsored Stories drastically reduce Frequency of individual ads.
This has a twofold effect: users don’t feel overwhelmed with ads from one company, while the ads can more reasonably masquerade as organic content. As we look at all metrics, remember that the same amount of people are seeing ads and the same cost constraints were in effect.
Sponsored Stories can boost Actions by over 500%!
As mentioned earlier, Sponsored Stories are Action magnets, and switching to a campaign strategy focusing on those kinds of ads will rapidly ramp up measured Actions. For Sponsored Stories showing in the news feed, this is a pretty clear metric; however, Actions includes “Photo Views,” which is simply clicking on the ad if the ad is showing at the top of the sidebar. Regardless, that this interaction is considered an Action hints that simply opening images increases the overall EdgeRank of the post, providing value from even low-engagement users.
These Actions are key to understanding the true value of Sponsored Stories. Such ads are well-equipped to introduce both brand and content to a new user. Extending ideas from eBay’s recent research on paid search, these new users are most likely the ones who will respond to an ad. If a user enjoys the sponsored post, it would follow that they would enjoy more posts in their feed and would then Like the page.
Due to the more labyrinthine path to conversion, Sponsored Stories generate less Page Likes.
Regardless of marketers’ dreams and well-formed theories, that’s not always the case. Since Sponsored Stories campaigns are largely focused around EdgeRank curation through interactions and the current implementation of Sponsored Stories requires a multi-step process for converting to a Like, Sponsored Stories do somewhat worse at creating Likes for a brand on Facebook. The new display of sponsored stories may change this, as a Like button is significantly more prominent.
Sponsored Stories for Driving Real Business
What is the value of interaction if the user won’t Like the page? It’s easy to talk about social proof, exposing your brand and content to others through their friends, and other strengths of Social Media Marketing in general that won’t directly affect anyone’s bottom line.
The real value of these interactions comes from the ability for a user to get in touch with a page in a conversational way about business transactions. Though Facebook has recently implemented conversion tracking – a godsend for Marketplace Ads – there is little way to automatically count the conversions from increased reach and conversions.
Client 1’s Leads from Facebook skyrocket after switching to Sponsored Stories.
In this graph, we counted forms and calls resulting from Facebook referrals and combined those on-site conversion metrics with business-focused Facebook messages and Wall Posts. While certainly each conversion type isn’t equally valuable, all of these interactions give businesses new leads and ultimately paying customers.
Shooting Your Lead Generation in the Foot
The chart above might make it seem that Sponsored Stories are a consistently great way to drive online conversions to a business.
In short: you have to be good at organic social media to be good at paid social media.
Until we talked about leads, we showed two clients in our graphs. Here is the graph of conversions by campaign strategy:
Comparing Clients 1 & 2 paints two radically different pictures of Lead Generation with Sponsored Stories.
Why did Client 2 fail to produce leads, when it followed Client 1 in every other metric? If you’re used to social media marketing, the answers shouldn’t surprise you.
Client 2:
Posted far too often, sometimes more than 8 times a day. This didn’t allow any organic engagement on the posts and made it less inviting to talk to the business.
Blocked users from posting on the Wall. This cut off communication from existing clients or potential customers and forced the conversation to be one-way and unsocial.
Self-promotional posts were often only of interest to current customers, instead of showing off services to people who might not know the face behind the company.
These three factors are not the only conversion-killers, and may not be an albatross in every case; however, they outline the main tenets of getting ROI on Facebook: transparency, community, and openness.
How to Win at Facebook and Alienate Competitors
Any advertising campaign should ultimately be about one thing: new customers. Sponsored Stories, which demonstrates the added value to the user that Liking the page would bring, can also demonstrate the added value of the user patronizing the business. By maintaining a strong organic presence on Facebook, you boost your paid efforts while maintaining the relationships with your existing Fans. The Actions magnet, Sponsored Stories, is now an amplifier of your Facebook presence.
The Key to Real ROI on Facebook
Combine organic and paid social media campaigns into one unified strategy.
Foster a comfortable social community where your business seems responsive to client and potential client needs.
Focus on real metrics that not only affect Facebook, but your business’s bottom line.
We’re all used to the ads on Google and Facebook, but paid campaigns on Twitter are still unfamiliar for many businesses thinking about a paid advertising campaign online. Here are five different methods to get your tweets seen by more people.
Here’s a doozy for you! Last week, popular social bookmarking site Digg.com disappeared from Google’s SERPs! Read for the full report from Search Engine Journal.
Three Easy-to-Make Content Marketing Blunders – Blue Glass
Here are three big content marketing blunders that companies may find themselves falling into. This is a good guide if you find yourself getting stuck.
This is an interesting and engaging article on how and why blogger Neil Patel gets comments on his blogs. His methods are tried and true and it’s interesting to watch him prove his points in the comments below!
Enhancing your local search presence is one of the most important things a business can do to begin to build authority in the eyes of search engines, including Google. Here’s an easy guide for anyone looking to enhance their local search presence – no SEO knowledge required!
Around here we get new clients everyday. Among these, there is always one who comes to us with a website built and hosted by a proprietary CMS (content management system) developer instead of being an independently owned and maintained website.
Now, proprietary systems can be great and have some very real benefits. We absolutely see those benefits for the business owner. And we also see some of the challenges that may be things the business owner’s thinks about.
It’s a little like renting your place versus buying your place. Renting is awesome because someone else has to do the maintenance, someone else has to clean the gutters and mow the grass and fix leaking sinks. They own it, they maintain it. You’re just paying to borrow for a while. In some ways, I see signing on with a proprietary CMS a little like renting. You’re paying to borrow the system for a while, and you don’t own the website, the design or the content.
(Different systems operate differently so it’s a generalization to say you don’t own any of it. You might get to keep the content if you canceled your contract.)
Buying a house is a lot more intensive. You have to go through a learning curve and have money for the fees and down payments. You have to maintain your investment i.e. you have clean the gutters and mow the grass, or pay someone who will. But eventually you’ve invested heavily in something you own. Having an independent website is like buying a house in that you have to invest up front in a designer, and you have a learning curve of understanding hosting and getting that set up, and you have to maintain your property. You are responsible for it’s health and wellness; you own it.
Proprietary CMS vs Open Source CMS
Open source software means the source code is created by anyone and is available to anyone. The software is free, but of course custom design and hosting and maintenance is not free. An open source software platform site you build can be hosted anywhere you want, but you have to make sure the hosting service has the security you need to prevent hacking and to secure any sensitive data. Examples of open source platforms are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. You have to pay for design, hosting, and maintenance and version upgrades.
A proprietary CMS is developed by a firm, who will often specialize their product for a single industry. This helps them add in the security needs and hosting needs they usually see in the chosen industry. For schools which hold student information and grades, for credit unions holding account information, dentists and doctors holding patient data, having a website on an industry specific system that has nothing but schools or credit unions or doctors, is reassuring. You hope they have seen the typical website concerns specific for your industry and have addressed them for all of their similar clients. There is safety in numbers. Proprietary systems are usually a fee each month for which they provide design, hosting, maintenance and version upgrades.
Why Do Small Business Owners Like a Proprietary CMS?
There is a lot of good stuff to be said for having your website on a customized CMS.
It’s empowering. It’s the same reason why I love WordPress. It’s easy for us who don’t know how to build a website to log in and put some text in there just like we’re typing in Word or in an email, and hit a button, and it’s LIVE! Just like that. It’s always good to be able to spontaneously add in a special or a new video or whatever comes up, and I don’t have to go ask a developer to do what I know is a relatively simple edit.
It’s easy. Usually in a proprietary CMS, the hosting is part of your monthly fee. A business owner doesn’t have to understand hosting, nor does s/he have to worry with getting a hosting provider and worry that the hosting provider’s servers are secure. And design is easy. They have some templates, pick which one you want, done.
Security should already be addressed. Especially if you are going to store sensitive data which can be accessible online, a proprietary CMS is attractive. Hopefully, the system will address security concerns for all of the like businesses on their system, and the single business owner doesn’t have to worry about SSL and all of that stuff.
A proprietary system allows you to not have to manage hosting or security or system updates and maintenance. It can be a low-stress way to have a website; just be careful that you choose a development firm that will be around a while and has a solid reputation in your industry.
So Why NOT Get a Proprietary CMS Site?
It’s the standardization of these systems that often does not provide what an SEO agency needs to do the job you hired them for. It’s kinda like asking the landlord to fix a leaking sink but not allowing him a wrench nor any plumber’s tape. S/he would get the job done, but it would be twice as difficult and a little messier than if s/he had his usual tools in his toolbox.
Some of the challenges we have had with some proprietary platforms:
Content has a character limitation. … Informative, good content is a #1 priority in ranking on Google, and if the site owner is limited, s/he is a limited resource. We never want content that is sooooo long, but I don’t want to be cut short either.
Can’t create pretty, search engine friendly URLs. … This isn’t super imperative, but it sure is a benefit to have that ability.
We’re limited on changes to heading tags or heading tags simply don’t exist. … Again, not a make-it-or-break-it problem, but it would be nice to have heading tags.
Limited to adding new pages. … Ugh. This is a problem.
Can’t change the navigation. … Not great, but we can work around it.
Can’t change photos or images or we have to use stock images. … Bummer.
Any unique html is not going to happen – no forms, no side widgets, no extras can be added. … That’s disappointing.
But these are some of our biggest concerns that we often come across:
— We can’t set up redirects, can’t noindex pages, can’t set a robots file, all because we don’t have FTP access.
— Cookie cutter content on every page of a site. This is a killer. If a platform has 32 dentists, the thought is that the system will provide the same content for each dentist. It’s easy and cost efficient to write it once and use it for everyone, right? Everyone who went to high school knows plagiarism is bad. Google does too. Unique, relevant content is a high priority if you want your site to rank. If your site has the same content as 31 other dentists, Google knows this and doesn’t like it. Your site will see an negative effect in rankings.
— Sometimes these platforms do not use Google Analytics for website traffic tracking. Sometimes they use some other tracking system for which we may not get access. Sometimes there is no mechanisms in place for tracking traffic. I can’t prove or disprove that the website is working if I can’t show you the data.
— Sometimes the proprietary systems don’t have built in fields for standard optimization elements such as custom page titles and meta descriptions.
— On a rare occasion, we have optimized a proprietary system website as much as we can, and the system owner does a system version upgrade or some maintenance or whatever, and all of our edits are wiped out. We normally have a copy of a client’s site in a backup file internally, and we could just roll out our backup, but with one of these systems, we often can’t make those internal backups. If our work is overwritten, we have to start over, which is a significant set back for the website ranking.
A small business owner has to look at what s/he needs in a website, and how much time s/he has to devote to it. It’s a business decision, just make sure you ask a lot of questions, and hire people you sincerely trust.
(P. S. I read just yesterday that it’s because I’m Gen X that I am all-inclusive in my pronouns “s/he.” Maybe so, but I prefer “s/he” than how I was taught to switch from he to she to he with each pronoun use. That’s just confusing.)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is already complex enough—and with the many myths that have sprung up around it, it’s even harder to understand the ins and outs of page rank, keywords, and website optimization. Here are 7 myths that will help separate fact from fiction when it comes to SEO.
1. You must be in the top 3 results
Many believe that “successful” SEO means ranking in the top three or four spots on Google search results, but this is no longer true. On the second and third page of results, the top links still garner the most clicks—so that means, in some cases, being 11th might actually be better than being 9th. Additionally, author profiles and snippets with pictures draw reader’s attention, no matter where they are featured. Rank isn’t the only factor of success.
2. Your URL must have keywords
In the past, the words in the domain name (the URL) factored heavily into search results, so it was always smart to load domains with the keywords your potential customers were using. Google has wised up, however, and scaled back the importance of URLs in favor of a more balanced approach to finding the most relevant sites.
3. Meta tags are vital
Google used to also index metadata when calculating search results, but no more. However, they create the text that appears under your URL in a search listing, so they’re still an important marketing tool. Metadata is what displays your content in an attractive way, so, the more appealing your meta tags, the greater the likelihood that you’ll get clicks.
4. Quantity is better than quality
Inbound links once caused pages to jump up to the top of a results list; a multitude of links from other sites was seen as evidence of your credibility. That system could easily be gamed, however, and SEO now focuses on highly relevant links in the context of applicable text.
5. Your keywords need to match exactly
Keywords are the backbone of SEO, but they are more flexible than many people realize. It’s easy to tell when you’re reading a keyword-heavy piece: the awkward phrasing and repetition gives it away. Even if it makes you rank higher, which isn’t a given, your content will turn people off.
6. You can trick Google
Some people seem to think that SEO is just about tricking Google, pushing the right buttons for a magic formula that will catapult their sites to the top of the search results. The truth is, Google has advanced to accurately reward pages that are informative, relevant, and connected, which cannot be attained with a magic formula.
7. SEO doesn’t help users
While most web admins focus on SEO from the backside, it has also evolved into an exceptionally usable tool for readers and searchers. As the name implies, the strategy optimizes a website—but with all the advancements of the past few years, that optimization process actually leaves the user with a generally reliable search results list.
SEO: Simple, efficient organization
Search engine optimization is becoming simpler, though the rules can still be tricky. The general principle in making your business golden to Google is that if you create a content-filled website that dialogues with other relevant pages, you’re already off to a good start. Keywords and links are still vital, among many other pieces, but don’t get caught up in the tangle of myths relating to SEO.
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.
1. Who is Winning the Apple vs. Google iPhone Driving Directions Battle? Too Close to Call — Mike Blumenthal
Even if you don’t keep up with the war between Apple and Google, you’re probably familiar with Apple Maps and it’s not-so-impressive emergence last fall. Well, since then, the app’s gotten its ducks in a row, and I know quite a few people that use it as their primary navigation tool. But how does it compare to Google Maps? Mike Blumenthal decided to find out. Check out this blog post to see how the two compare now that Apple Maps has matured a bit. I assumed that Google Maps was still the outright leader and was surprised by the results. Who knows, maybe I need to switch over to Apple Maps!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role of women in SEO and the tech industry in general. It amazes me how few women there are, and I often wonder how we can change that. There are several active initiatives to get girls interested in technology, and I truly hope that they can change the future demographics of the tech world. But how do we get women noticed right now? In this blog post, Rhea Drysdal discusses her idea of what it means to be a successful female in the industry and what she thinks needs to change. Drydal is currently pregnant, which adds an interesting twist to her view on the situation.
Living in New Orleans, disaster preparedness is a necessary part of life. Most people have a plan for storms, whether it involves evacuation routes or a cabinet full of MREs and batteries. While life necessities are obviously the first priority when it comes to hurricanes or any other disasters, business owners must have a disaster readiness plan in place just in case. I once heard Chris Slaughter, WWL-TV’s former executive news director, speak on what he learned about disaster preparedness from Katrina, and I was surprised by what I learned. There are so many small details that are easy to forget when you’re not actually in the situation. I recently came across this blog post from Michael Gray that touches on the subject. It’s filled with some great tips on how to protect your home business when Mother Nature strikes.
Zynga and Facebook. What a tragic love story. It seems that the divorce process continues, as game publisher Zynga relaunched its website on Thursday after previously relying wholly on Facebook for online play. Users no longer have to login through their Facebook accounts, proving further division of the two companies. By the end of the month, Zynga and Facebook will officially just be friends again. Alas, not all relationships are meant to be! And it seems that Zynga might not need Facebook after all. In this article, Reuters’ Gerry Shih gives a report on what led to this shift and what it means for the two companies.
I’m sure all of you savvy Facebook users are aware of the new changes taking place on your News Feed, but just in case you haven’t heard—or if you just want to learn more about the shift—AllFacebook, the Unofficial Facebook Blog, has you covered. Facebook’s spokespeople say the change makes for a cleaner page with less clutter, but what do you think? I like the new bigger images, but there’s not that much else that I’ve noticed really affecting my use. I’m also a little wary of the advertising suddenly melded into my feed. I guess only time will tell what this change means for users.
I love social media. I also love staying organized. The great thing about hashtags is they bring the two together. For those who don’t know, hashtags are a way to categorize a post on social media platforms, like Twitter and Instagram, by tagging it with descriptive words or phrases. Hashtags are also helpful for businesses running specific campaigns to monitor what followers are saying about their company. Although we all love reading about the latest social media blunders, we never want to fall victim to them ourselves. That is why I’ve compiled a list of questions to ask yourself when choosing a hashtag.
1. Is this hashtag trending?
Trending hashtags are a great way to get your message out there, and even help you brainstorm interesting, relevant tweets. If you can seamlessly incorporate your message with a trending topic, others will be able to see your post when browsing that hashtag. Although trending topics are a great first step in choosing a good hashtag, you should be careful to understand why the hashtag is trending. This takes me to the next question…
2. How is this hashtag currently being used?
Before hitting the submit button, you absolutely want to see how the hashtag is being used. Learn a lesson from Entenmann’s. Back in 2011 when Casey Anthony’s trial ended with a verdict of “not guilty,” Entenmann’s tweeted the following using a trending hashtag:
Angry, Entenmann’s followers made their disapproval known causing the company to delete the message and issue an apology. 3. Is this hashtag concise, yet descriptive
You want to make sure your audience can read and understand the hashtag, whether you are posting for a business or your own personal account. This is important if you are a business trying to start a hashtag campaign, like Dominos or Edge shave gel, or simply telling friends about your new shoes. While it may seem funny to have a long hashtag (example: “Gabrielle stole my favorite sweater AGAIN #mysisterdrivesmecrazy”) it is not easily read at first sight. One way to make hashtags easier to read it to capitalize the first letter of each word in the hashtag. However, if you find your hashtag looking something like an excerpt from a Charles Dickens novel, you should probably just shorten the whole thing altogether. If your hashtag is easily read by your audience, it has a greater chance at being effective.
4. Is this hashtag too broad?
While it may be topical to your message, broad hashtags are generally not searched. If you are a business, ideally you would like your hashtags to be interesting and search-worthy, as this could bring new eyes to your message. If your hashtag is not searched, it will not help you reach new audiences. Another problem with broad hashtags, for both business and personal profiles, is that they do not add additional value to your message.
In this example, the hashtag #hat does not offer any additional insight, and causes the tweet to become repetitive.
5. Does the place I am posting to recognize hashtags?
As funny as it may seem, it is important to know that the hashtag you send your friend via text is not recognized online. That being said, here is a list of a few places that do and do not recognize hashtags.
These places DO recognize hashtags
-Twitter
-Instagram
-Google+
-LinkedIn
-Pinterest
These places DO NOT recognize hashtags
-Text messages
-Facebook (although they are working on incorporating hashtags now)
Whether your posts are seen by millions of viewers or just your closest friends, the important idea here is to think before you post. Let’s make 2013 a year with no social media mistakes!
It’s funny how quickly one can bathe when you don’t have any hair. Yet every March I reduce my normal 15 minute shower by half. This hairless journey is because of a program called St. Baldrick’s.
St. Baldrick’s is a charity that raises money to fund childhood cancer research. However they have a unique way of raising money. Throughout the year, various cities host a sponsored shaving of people. Teams and individuals put their follicles on the chopping block to show their solidarity for young children who lost their’s through cancer treatments.
Three years ago, I was sitting in a dive of a bar with a few of my friends. Through the course of the evening and after many quips of playful insults and colorful banter, my friend Geoff mentioned he only gets one haircut a year. This notion seemed absurd to me. Geoff is the pinnacle of computer programmers. Skinny, lanky, glasses, and a mop of a haircut. Upon hearing this, I was in no bit surprised at his omission, to which I suggest it was his yearly flowbee hair cut. Yet to my surprise, he simply said he was shaving it bald.
Over the course of a PBR, a high scale specimen of beer, Geoff recounted how over the past three years, he has participated in this program. He talked about how his friend and he have been slowly raising more and more money for this charity– St. Baldrick’s. As he told me more and more about this program, my interest peeked from being curious about donating to a desire to participate. An itch in my scalp had started (I bathe regularly so it was due to a philanthropy spirit, not for something requiring a flea bath.)
That first year was exciting. One of my closest friends, Jacob, had pulled an “I’ll do it if you do it,” and, for the record, I was already sold on the idea. Over the course of six weeks, I set out in all the social media channels to elicit donations. Facebook and Twitter was my best means of getting the word out. I had set a goal of $300 the first year in fear I was not going to raise enough. However, my career in marketing proved to be most beneficial in this.
I created a Facebook event inviting friends and family to come watch as I was being shaved. And I also asked them to buy me a beer. I figured since most of my friends were like me and didn’t make a lot, I would ask them to donate the price of one beer to my cause. By my calculations, if I could get 60 people to give $5 that they would have spent on a beer, I would have more than enough to hit my $300 goal. This proved to be exceptionally successful. Not only did I raise my goal, but I passed it by over $135. And, with the other members of Team Hairy Shearers, we raised over $2,500. By the way, all of the guys on my team are avid Simpsons fans and chose to name the team after the long time voice actor from the Simpsons and New Orleans native Harry Shearer.
Well, the big day came and four of us with shaggy mops of hairstyles showed up for St. Baldrick’s. It was interesting how nervous I can get just before I have my head shaved, but I think it was just stage fright. However, as soon as my name was called to be shaved, all my apprehension and nerves disappeared. My fear of looking silly bald was gone. It was in sitting in that chair knowing that I had helped raise money for the fight of cancer in children that calmed me. And my fears of how I would look bald had melted away knowing I could choose to not shave where others were not so fortunate. After that, I haven’t looked back and I look forward to doing St. Baldrick’s every year.
So, next time you sit in a bar with some friends, please think about buying me a beer and donate 5 bucks.
Will Monson is a graphic designer from New Orleans who works with Search Influence. He spends his free time playing disk golf, volunteering with the Boy Scouts, and is an avid kickball player. Check out Will and the rest of the Hairy Shearers at their St. Baldrick’s page at: Team Hairy Shearers
Don’t get lost in the mix! Take a broad look at your organization to make sure you’re producing top quality content, including social media, making your site mobile friendly, and understanding the knowledge graph.
Google has just announced that on July 1, 2013 Google Reader will retire. This is part of Google’s plan to remove irrelevant and no longer useful services. If most of your audience is using this to get your updates, now is the time to transition them to a new service.
If being active on Twitter doesn’t seem to be producing the results that you’re looking for, then try being passive by listening first and then responding. Twilert allows you to create timed alerts for when certain phrases, handles, or hashtags are used. If that is too much, you can always go the traditional route by creating email notifications through Twitter itself.
Google and Nielsen recently put together a new report using data from 6000+ mobile searches to discover how it drives conversions. Did you know that 77% opt to use their mobile over a PC? So it’s important to make sure that you’re showing up in the first few results of a search otherwise you’ll never even make it onto their mobile screen.
The better the research, the better the keywords…even if Google stopped providing all referring keywords in analytics for “privacy reasons.”
Key Relevance’s Christine Churchill provides some alternatives to gathering this information because as Avalaunch Media’s Matt Siltala stressed, “you can’t skip over keyword research. You can’t get annoyed with it. You HAVE to do it.” Read on for more about keyword intent and keyword research tools.
Why Does This Matter? 
5 Ways To Pay For Twitter Exposure
1. Who is Winning the Apple vs. Google iPhone Driving Directions Battle? Too Close to Call — Mike Blumenthal
I love social media. I also love staying organized. The great thing about hashtags is they bring the two together. For those who don’t know, hashtags are a way to categorize a post on social media platforms, like Twitter and Instagram, by tagging it with descriptive words or phrases. Hashtags are also helpful for businesses running specific campaigns to monitor what followers are saying about their company. Although we all love reading about the latest social media blunders, we never want to fall victim to them ourselves. That is why I’ve compiled a list of questions to ask yourself when choosing a hashtag.
1. 
2. 
