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Author: Search Influence Alumni

  • 5 for Friday – Links, Stories & Posts for Your Weekend

    • Twitter Inching Closer To Giving You All Your Tweets, But Search Has A Long Way To Go – Search Engine Land

    Twitter’s finally giving the people what they want: a way for users to search through their own history of tweets. While it seems like a pretty basic function for any blogging platform to implement, Search Engine Land’s list of current Twitter search engines shows how the company has been bafflingly negligent thus far.

    • The USA Basketball Team’s Instagram Shots Are Ridiculously Awesome – Mashable

    The U.S. Olympic basketball team invades social networking platform Instagram, thrusting themselves into the spotlight just before the games with a set of fantastic personal photos. Consider taking a page from their playbook, and see what a little creative photography can bring to your business.

    • Google to open YouTube studio in London – The Telegraph

    This week in “I want to go to there…!”, The Telegraph brings us news of YouTube’s upcoming ‘Creator Space.’ Opening in Google’s Soho offices, the Creator Space studio gives amateur UK film makers access to some serious production equipment. Check out the amazing tour video, and maybe consider booking that flight to London soon (as if you needed another reason).

    • 15 Helpful Link Building Tools – Search Engine Watch

    Fuel for the behind-the-scenes SEO associate in your life: Garrett Finch has a list of fantastic tools (some paid, many free) for building your links, and a few extras thrown in for increasing productivity.

    • Are We Addicted to Gadgets or Indentured to Work? – The Atlantic

    And while we’re on the subject of productivity… The Atlantic points out that you might be missing out on the “real world” experience by bringing your work home with you. The recent uptick in gadgets and productivity apps makes carrying your world with you easier than ever before, keeping job managers and taskmasters close at hand (literally) with their employees, around the clock.

  • Facebook Scheduling Tool for Business Improves EdgeRank

    Tiny clock

    Maximizing Facebook Fan engagement and excelling at the ever mysterious “EdgeRank” are top priorities for both business owners and marketing firms in this digital age. Unfortunately these lofty aims often take the backseat to more pressing demands, like actually running a business, rather than just writing about one online. Even if businesses have dedicated staff members available to not just to post but also to actively interact with fans, it can be difficult to coordinate posts for the right time of day for maximum fan engagement. Enter the Facebook scheduling tool for pages, which takes some of the inconsistency and stress out of posting regularly.

    How To Use the New Feature

    Teach me how to schedule

    The feature is easy to miss inside the update box, and was added with little fanfare or acknowledgment from Facebook in late May. It appears as a tiny clock in the bottom left side of the box, and offers you the ability to backdate or schedule posts. In order to use the feature, you must first set up a Timeline event for the founding date of your business. After finishing this simple step, you are free to schedule posts in 10 minute increments within a window of more than a year into the future. You are not limited to simply scheduling written posts, as you can also schedule links and images, which appear exactly the same as if you had posted them manually. There have been some issues with the new feature, but most of those were resolved rather quickly by the Facebook development team.

    Facebook Scheduler vs. Third Party Scheduling

    This new feature is great because it replaces any need to use third party scheduling sites, such as HootSuite or Postling. Many users have reported decreases in EdgeRank when using 3rd party scheduling sites, not to mention the fact that the post is clearly labeled as coming from an outside source. Pictures never looked quite right when scheduled through a third party, and links often seemed to be truncated or dead when the posts finally appeared through Facebook.

    Activity Log

    One of the major initial complaints about the Facebook scheduling feature was that there was no way to go back and view the posts after scheduling them. This is untrue as a full list of scheduled posts can be obtained under the Admin panel, but is rather difficult to locate unless you already know its there. Once you’re within the “Activity Log” you can change the date of scheduled posts, cancel them, or post them immediately. At this point, there is no way to edit the posts that have already been scheduled, but hopefully that feature will be added eventually.

    What We’ve Found

    Organic FB increases

    We began using Facebook scheduler instead of HootSuite to publish updates on many of our clients’ pages around June 15th. Over the course of the last few weeks, we have seen a dramatic increase in fan engagement and “likes”, as well as sharing. Here is a screenshot of one of our client’s organic reach over the last month. You can see that it has steadily increased (with a slight and expected dip on July 4th!) and is currently reaching about 500 more fans per week than it was in mid-June. These results are great, but we find something even more remarkable when we look at viral and total reach for this timeframe.

    Total FB increases

    As you can tell from this graph, we do not do any paid fan-building for this client, so this data is based entirely on the increase in visitors and shares on the page. Our organic reach has increased by about 500 fans per week, but our total reach has increased to over 15,000 people per week. This number is especially remarkable because this page only has about 3,400 fans.  Not only does it appear that this client’s EdgeRank increased dramatically, but that increase has had a huge effect on the viral nature of our posts, photos, and albums.

    Have you tried the Facebook scheduling tool yet? Try it out and let us know if it’s successful for your business in the comments!

  • Pinterest For Men: Infiltrating The She-Ra Club With Smart Marketing

    Pintrest-banner

    A digital corkboard where people can collect links to their favorite recipes, dapper clothing, and adorable cats with their heads stuck in something, Pinterest allows its users to effortlessly share evocative photos of their hobbies and interests. Launched a little over two years ago, this image-focused sharing site has taken the Internet by storm. (Just check out this infographic!) With over 10 million likes on Facebook, Pinterest has quickly inserted itself in to the inner circle of mainstream social media sites. It isn’t exactly a man-eating no-boys-allowed club — but with women making up nearly 70% of its users and a distinctively twee and vintage look to its features, it is unarguably lady-friendly. However, while it’s easy to write its possibilities off in a haze of vintage cloches and desaturated wedding schemes, Pinterest can be used to engage a wide number of demographics. If you’re looking to target male users, then, what to do?

    Create A Goal

    The first thing we must do as a business is to create the message we are trying to convey. It does not need to be overcomplicated, but something that lets our followers know where we are coming from. This can be accomplished through a theme of our posts or certain boards that show what a particular company does, sells, or is interested in.

    Keep in mind that the average person spends about 15 minutes at any given time on the site, so our boards have to be concise and engaging. In addition, the boards have to keep the target audience in mind. Whole Foods accomplishes this with tantalizing images of recipes that add to the food-porn addiction of many male Pinterest users. This can also be accomplished by making more male-dominant boards for male clients. By doing some demographic research and creating boards about less-trafficked topics such as cars or gadgets, a business can connect better with its male clients through shared interests.

    Personify Your Company

    Social media is filled with generic company pages or profiles that really only sell their products. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but these companies overlook the fact that social media is supposed to be social — it’s in the name! So it’s important to take some time when setting up a company profile on Pinterest to imagine if your company was a person. What would that company-person do with their time? What is it interested in or passionate about?

    When the Pinterest profile is humanized, audiences have an easier time identifying with the message of the company. For example, if you are a men’s clothing store, you wouldn’t want to saturate your posts with images of kittens; instead, use things relevant to your consumers, such as types of formal suits or images of vintage men’s fashion.

    Interact With Your Fans

    Pinterest is a social site. I would be lying if I didn’t pursue it at least a few times a day to look up things like delicious Old Fashioned. (Click the link. I have a fantastic one already pinned for you.) Pinterest consists of about 90% repins, which translates to a lot of people sharing what they’ve found on someone else’s board. Because of this, it is especially important to take the time to see what people are pinning about and give them incentive to share your brand. For instance, Confused.com designed a contest to have its followers pin a picture of them driving with high-heels on for a chance to win a pair of high heels. This type of competition can be easily converted to fit any target: power tools for men, toys for kids, or rubber chew toys for pets.

    With the generation of traffic to your site, it is especially important to remember to keep your boards concise and organized. This will entice viewers to take a look and repin your posts, spreading your name your name all over the site in the process. In addition, remember to try offerings something for everyone. Even if you’re trying to appeal to a non-majority demographic, there’s no need to offend the site’s main user base by being gratuitously crude or racy.

    Be Creative

    Feel free to let your creativity shine when you design your boards. After all, you are competing with numerous collections of food and wedding planning, so feel free to do something simple that will appeals your male demographic. Think Geek, a nerdcore eCommerce site, does this with boards of their products and also other boards showcasing things they love — Star Wars, Dr. Who, and all things nerdy. This further proves that Pinterest can be used to appeal to your customers’ dorky sides, no matter what gender or walk of life.

    Don’t just stop at the contents of your boards! Peugeot Panama went as far as to cleverly design their boards to puzzle piece their cars to create an engaging board covers. This is successful because not only does it creatively engages the viewer, but also it appeals to its male demographic.

    Uniqlo gave the viewer an experience of a motion graphic that encourages the viewer to scroll down and watch as their pins animate to showcase their dry fit wear. This is a great way to create a gender-neutral board that appeals to both sexes.

    So no matter what kind of business you are in, Pintrest can help you better connect with your clients, whether they are male or female. Also, there’s no better way to discover some interesting ways a shipping pallet can be converted into a coffee table

    July 24, 2012

  • 5 for Friday – Links, Stories & Posts for Your Weekend

    • Link Building From Scratch – Search Engine Watch

    Besides developing your brand, generating content and ensuring usability, building a quality site is difficult enough already without having to worry about links — but with Penguin now in effect, we are now forced to reconsider sites’ foundations. SEW’s Julie Joyce offers a checklist of things to consider when it comes to setting up links for your site to keep it in the game.

    • Social Media Policies: What Goes Up Must Go Higher – Social Media Today

    For better or for worse, it’s indisputable that social media is here to stay — and it’s necessary. With every business utilizing Facebook and Twitter, how do you leverage this ever-expanding force for the betterment of your company? Bryan Kramer gives us a nice guideline to consider when putting together a company’s social media plan.

    • Eyes On Pintrest: How People Look at Your Boards – Mashable

    The online digital pin board may represent a standard corkboard, but the site itself doesn’t follow conventional eye tracking like most sites. Brands are seeing a higher trust in their business with posts of products, inspiration, and the occasional cat photo. Sarah Kessler dives into how brands can use this unique aspect of Pintrest to generate more view and likes from customers.

    • Google +1 vs Facebook Like: The Similarities and the Differences – Web SEO Analytics

    Whenever we read an article on a blog or news site, we are asked the question, “How do I express my affinity for this article?” That’s where that little +1 button or thumbs-up come to play, sharing your expression and endorsement to your followers. This article explores the two iconic ways we use Facebook and Google Plus to share our discoveries with the world.

    • Who Has the Better Ad Network? Facebook Vs. Google – Being Your Brand

    Wondering which Internet giant is more beneficial for your company’s online marketing? Being Your Brand explores the benefits of advertising with both Google and Facebook and how both can help you reach a company’s target audience.

  • How To Twitter: Using Hashtags at San Diego Comic-Con

    Since I’m an Level 9000 bona fide nerd, I traveled to San Diego last weekend to celebrate Comic-Con. Of course, I took lots of pictures of what was going on when I was there. If you don’t already know, you can join the Twitter party of any major event by using the hashtag associated with it. This year’s Comic-Con used #SDCC — by hashtagging all of my related tweets, I was able to add my feedback to the public conversation about the convention, which anyone looking for the hashtag can read. If one of the people that reads one of my tweets wants to know more about me (or my business!), they might just follow me. What a neat way to network, right? (Don’t forget to check the “wrong” hashtags, too. It’s definitely not called “San Diego Comiccon“, but a lot of people searching the internet think it is.)

    Another key to getting involved in hashtags is trending. On Twitter’s Discover page, you can always see a list of the most popular hashtags for any given day. If you can get enough people talking about your topic, it will trend. While this is no small feat, it does mean TONS of exposure for you … not to mention for your business. If you have a strong Twitter following, it’s well worth it to engage your user base and ask them to use the hashtag if you are trying to promote an event. The best part about promotion like this is that it’s completely free, and you’re using one of the most popular social platforms out there today. What a deal!

    Of course, hashtags aren’t the only way to show your participation in an event. In the last few years, Tweetups have been popular, which are basically in-person meetups of your Twitter followers. It’s a great way to unify people and allow internet friends to meet in real life. It’s also an excellent way to meet business contacts.

    While hashtags like this are priceless way to be included in any event’s buzz, there’s no reason you can’t create your own as well. Geek goddess Felicia Day has put her own Twitter to work in this way, promoting several events, including her own @GeekandSundry project. Since Day has well over a million followers, plenty of people are listening.

    So how do you use Twitter hashtags on your own to best take advantage of the trend? If you’re at an event, make sure to find out what the hashtag is (and make sure its the right one!). Once you do, make a point of adding it to the end of all your tweets. That way, when people click the hashtag, they will see what you have to say along with everyone else.

    Want to create your own hashtag for an event? Make sure to keep it short. The easier it is to type, the more likely people will use it. Up to the date of your event, announce the hashtag and ask your followers to retweet it. That way, once your event begins, they will already know what to expect. If you’re lucky, they’ll use it too, and the more of them that do, the closer you are to that sweet high of a trending hashtag.

     

  • Copy This Copy – The Importance of Clean Content

    Having clean, edited online copy is vitally important. Whether we’re talking about content for a website or a blog, it can make a big impact — for better or for worse. As Mitt Romney’s campaign recently found out, even text written for mobile apps should be given a close look before going live.

    romney

    While most people assume that they have a good enough grasp on the English language to get by, the facts are simple — typos are easy to make, and a second pair of eyes can be your saving grace. As a former reporter for a daily newspaper, I know the importance of having an editor work their magic before copy is printed. But in today’s Internet-minded world, writers can be too eager to hit the publish button, sending unedited content to the masses in an instant.

    Not only can errors be embarrassing, but also they can completely change the original intention of the content.

    blog

    People could visit your website, your blog, or your mobile app for a variety of reasons. Whether they’re looking for news, general information, or something as simple as a laugh, you don’t want them to be turned off by copy that was poorly edited (or worse, entirely untouched).

    Your content can say a lot about you, your company, and your purpose. If it’s well-written, clear, and concise, it says that you took the time to get it right. It says that you are concerned about the details, and more importantly, it says that you care about your reader.

    If, on the other hand, your copy is riddled with spelling mistakes or grammatical errors, it can convey a negative view of your organization. It communicates to your reader that quality isn’t your top priority. And if you’re in the business of trying to market a service or a product, it can be a tough sell.

    Instead of just leaving the job to spell check, consider working with an editor or a proofreader before publishing your content online to ensure that your text is error-free. If time constraints or your budget won’t allow, at the very least, have a co-worker take a look at your copy before it goes live. As the adage goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and having a pair of eyes to catch the occasional stray comma or poorly-placed participle can be a lifesaver.

  • Will Scott at Search Insider Summit 2012: Social SEO Panel

     
    We’re excited to present this video of our CEO Will Scott speaking in a panel from the Search Insider Summit 2012. Moderated by aimClear’s Marty Weintraub, Social SEO: How Search Marketers Should Think About Optimizing Social examines the increasing social aspects of SEO and how branding with these tools can grow your business. Check out the full video after the jump!



    Video streaming by Ustream

  • Twitter Ditches LinkedIn, Says It’s Not Personal

    twitter linkedin split
    I'm a fan.

    “It’s not you. It’s me.” That’s what Twitter proclaimed to LinkedIn this morning, ending a two-year partnership between the micro-blogging giant and the social network site for job seekers. Breakups are hard to do, as the saying goes, but according to LinkedIn, they didn’t even care in the first place.

    “If you had previously synced your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and selected the option to share Tweets on LinkedIn, those Tweets generated from Twitter will no longer appear on LinkedIn,” says Ryan Rolansky on the official LinkedIn blog. “There will be no other changes to your LinkedIn experience.”

    In other words, you can still post updates to Twitter from LinkedIn, but not the other way around. ‘Cause Twitter totally blocked LinkedIn, bro. So uncool.

    Jokes aside, Twitter has been getting pretty fussy lately. Developers using their application programming interface (API) have their work cut out for them — it’s notoriously tricky to handle — and the initial Spartan interface has gotten more and more tricked-out over recent months. With all these new bells and whistles, Twitter wants its branding to remain as consistent as possible, which is why sites like LinkedIn are getting kicked off the bandwagon.

    While Twitter may seem like an infallible giant to the hyper-focused social media contigent, the truth of the matter is that most people are reading it through a variety of secondary services. If you connect your Twitter stream to Facebook, for example, you can read it all there at the same time as you read about Aunt Margaret and her eighteen cats. So why go to the source site when you can get it all in one place?

    Even though the service became famous for its brilliantly minimalistic-efficient service, the company seems determined to expand. Twitter Cards, a new option that offers partner websites a way to show off more content, seems interesting, but not necessarily what I want out of Twitter as a user. Just give me my feeds in Tweet form, let me post dumb photos, and I’ll be fine. Is the majority of the user base really craving more than that? Or is the thrust of Twitter’s new direction less about what the general consumer wants, and more about how Twitter can serve as a business tool?
     

  • Read This! — July 2012

    We’re back with another edition of Read This!, our monthly series exploring the DIY tips and tricks you can use to succeed online today.

    Can eCommerce Thrive on Tumblr? One Company Says Yes

    Tumblr is a fast-growing network these days, promoting constantly evolving dialogue and trendy memes at a breakneck pace. But can a business separate the signal from the noise and promote their brand on such a buzz-heavy platform? It may be easier than you think.

    How to Prepare for the End of Facebook

    While Facebook hasn’t given up the ghost yet, a few notable missteps in recent months have had pundits publicly wondering if the grandaddy of all social media platforms is entering its twilight years. Even if the end isn’t nigh, it’s always good to have a contingency plan; check out this guide to find out the best ways to leverage non-‘book sources of publicity and turn temporary fans into longtime allies.

    Setting Up Your Twitter Account

    Is your small business just setting sail into the online world? While the process of creating accounts may seem basic for some, the intricacies of perfectly setting up your Twitter account are more subtle than you think. Check out this guide for a handy refresher!

    Secrets To Launching Successful Pinterest Marketing Campaigns – The Experts Weigh In

    Pinterest is a hot topic right now among social media gurus, and with its ever-expanding user base there’s never been a better time to get in on the action. So how do you go about nabbing customers and getting leads through a haze of lace-and-polka-dot social sharing? Read SEO.com’s exhaustive list to find out!

    3 Ways to Declare Your Independence From Tired Sales & Marketing Tactics

    Is the same old thing just not working for your business? Take a page from the Founding Fathers and declare your independence in favor of new ideas! TopRank gives you several common challenges of sticking to the business-as-usual routine and top-notch tips on how to bust through them.

  • 5 for Friday – Links, Stories & Posts for Your Weekend

    • Google+: A Year of Missed Opportunities – Mashable.com

    Google+, the proposed “Facebook killer,” is turning out to be more Elmer Fudd than Brutus. Our blog noted the early successes of Google+ over a year ago, citing its sleek design and seamless integration of Google profiles and contacts. Yet Facebook’s de facto archenemy stumbled at the start gate, disallowing aliases and stalling for four months before allowing brands and news platforms to set up profiles. The numbers are startling: users spent an average of 3.3 minutes on G+ in January, compared to seven hours on Facebook. In the last year Facebook has grown from 700 million users to 900 million, a growth that exceeds the entirety of the G+ population. For small businesses interested in the clean, professional, design of G+, note that historically Google has added layers of complexity to augment their online platforms. With a growing sentiment that the Facebook juggernaut has shed its user-friendly coat, the question is: can Google take advantage of the sea change?

    • Understanding Google Places & Local Search – Developing Knowledge about Local Search – Blumenthals.com

    On May 30th, Google Places was replaced with Google+ Local. With 97% of consumers searching for local businesses online, having a presence on Google Maps is a necessity — if you can figure it out. MapMaker effectively took the burden of mapping the world off the folks at Google and placed it on savvy cartographers and small business owners alike. With categories functioning like keywords, a business owner can enhance their presence on Maps and keep the information up to date—especially helpful for start-ups.

    Though with Google Mapmaker lacking a comprehensive set of categories, small business owners want to know: “What is the best practice for adding categories in MapMaker?” The short answer is that avoiding keyword spam, using five standard categories (like ‘Gas Station’ if you’re a gas station), and editing the categories directly on the Place page will help create more cohesion between the two pages. As Mike Blumenthal delves into detail about the ins and outs of categories, one begins to see why Google democratized the effort. A complex list of practices to set yourself apart from the competition—if you’re willing to learn.

    • Facebook Email Fiasco: 900 Million+ Profile Updates Without Permission – SearchEngineJournal.com

    Can Facebook do anything right, or are we just too invested? While most Facebook users consider their inbox to be an extension of the chat feature, it’s actually a collection point for your Facebook email (yes, you have one): [email protected]. Check your company’s Facebook page. For if you wish to generate traffic to your business email from the email address displayed on your profile, note that the address displayed on your timeline is no longer your business email. This change has given ammunition to Facebook critics who note that changes made for “our privacy and security” seem to be made while violating privacy and security. To display your “real” email address again, navigate to your profile, click “Update Info,” then “Contact Info,” and “Edit,” then customize your email address options.

    • Hitwise: Bing Has Chipped Away 5 Percent Of Google’s Search Share Over Past Year – SearchEngineLand.com

    Though “Bing it” is still an unlikely response to the big questions (Dude, what movie is that guy from?) of everyday life, don’t think Windows’ “decision engine” is down for the count. Launched in June 2009 as a competitor (or, depending on your point of view, goat in the T-Rex pen) to Google, Bing has not yet undertaken the search engine behemoth. In the last 12 months, though, Bing has taken 5% of Google’s market share. That’s news. A bigger story, perhaps, is that Google has declined by 5%. The “sick man” of search engines, Yahoo, has dropped for nine consecutive months. With rumors of internal struggle and the floundering of Google+, the question is: has Google stretched itself too thin?

    • Google’s Developer Dilemma: Open Up Google+ Or Hold On To ‘Something Special’? – MarketingLand.com

    In related news, El Goog is displaying a stubborn side. During a “fireside” chat with developers at the 2012 Google I/O conference, several members of the Google+ team explained that their “tentative” approach to opening up Google+ to full read-write API is a result of “something special” and “magical” happening on Google+. As of yet, no news on what that means. Google’s desire to shelter their baby could pay off in the long run. After all, who got anywhere trying to satisfy everyone? The Google team reports that API access would result in spamming. If Google+ plans to remain inside the cocoon too long, though, developers and businesses alike may become frustrated. The conference was not all bad new for developers, however; Google hinted that big developments are in the team’s plans, such as adding Google+ comments to the API and making vanity URLs available to all users.