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Five for Friday: Facebook Aims to Please, Amazon Goes the Way of Uber, & More!

1. Facebook Update Takes Into Account Time Spent Reading Stories – Search Engine Journal

Facebook looks to be taking the next step forward in studying user behavior. The social networking giant is now directly measuring user activity and engagement, even when the user isn’t interacting with content. How important to us are news stories that we just want to skim? The next time you stop scrolling to look over a story, you are casting a silent vote for that type of content in comparison to other stories in your feed. Facebook has already rolled this update out, which means you no longer have to comment on or like a story for your feed to be modified. If you feel like you’ve been seeing more of what you want to see, well, you probably are.

2. Twitter Makes Your Conversations Easier to Follow – Mashable

Having trouble following that long chain of tweets and retweets? Good news! Reading Twitter discussions will no longer test your mental sorting abilities. Dialogues are now conveniently grouped for maximum readability. If you have frequently wondered who is talking to whom, fret no more! Talks are joined by a single solid line.

3. Google Uses Sitelinks Based on Significance – SEO by the Sea

Google, acting as the undisputed market leader in search, is continually looking to improve the way their search performs. In a patent granted earlier last week, Google now seeks to identify the most “visually and/or functionally significant hyperlinks within the document.” This means that the location a link points to isn’t the only attribute considered when Google thinks about links, but where a link visually is on a page matters as well.

4. Amazon Debates Paying People for Deliveries – The Wall Street Journal

A big part of Amazon’s costs come from shipping, so it seems only natural they should be seeking to cut costs. Only, this time it isn’t drones: Amazon would like to turn every potential income-seeking individual into an Uber-like delivery driver.

5. European Sites Are Declared Liable for User Comments – Techdirt

On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that sites can be declared liable for what any random user posts on them. This has massive implications for sites that allow users to regularly post content. What lies in the future of censorship?

Image sources:

Cell phone image

Delivery image

June 19, 2015
Unlike Your Dad, These Guys Know How To Use The Internet

The other day, I was trying to remember why I had posted a curious image on my friend’s Facebook wall in 2010. In a stroke of brilliance, my friend suggested we do a “reverse Google search” to see where the picture originated from, all while we were using Google Chromecast to watch this search unveil on my TV screen.

In the middle of this (pretty standard) activity, I thought to myself about how incredibly bizarre this whole process would sound to someone just 10 years ago. Facebook walls? Reverse Google search? CHROMECASTING? We’ve all grown so blasé about these daily—yet bewildering—Internet tactics that we’ve lost sight of the magic and brilliance behind them.

So this Father’s Day, I’m here to remind you about the extraordinary minds behind all this wizardry. The men whose ideas have allowed me (and probably you, too) to stream Game of Thrones while Facetiming friends across oceans and also maybe simultaneously perusing Instagram (because what are we if not all impressive “multitaskers” these days). I present to you the fathers of the Internet:

Leonard Kleinrock

Before the Internet, people had to gain an understanding of how computers could communicate (or network) with each other. That’s where Leonard Kleinrock, an American engineer hailing from Harlem, came into play. Kleinrock pioneered the mathematical theory of packet networks, which, essentially, is the technological backbone of the Internet. By figuring out how to send “packets” of information across networks, Kleinrock was able to develop the ARPANET, which is the bare bones seedling that grew into the Internet we all know and love today. In fact, on a historical day in early September 1969, a team at Kleinrock’s Network Measurement Center connected one of their computers to an “Interface Message Processor,” thereby becoming the very first node on the ARPANET, and, perhaps more importantly, the first computer ever on the Internet.

Tim Berners-Lee

These days, it seems like there’s a browser for every kind of taste or personality. Are you over the age of 50? Internet Explorer. Do you enjoy plain bagels and go with the flow? Safari’s got your name all over it. Back in the day, though, there was only one browser, and it was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. The World Wide Web (sound familiar?) was the first web server and also marked the advent of HTML. Through the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee was able to bring together the concept of the Internet and hypertext, which now establishes web pages as you know them. Today, Berners-Lee remains the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, a Web standards organization he founded in 1994.

Steve Case

You may not have heard of Steve Case, but you (and just about anyone living in the 1990s) most likely became acquainted with the Internet thanks to his brainchild: America Online. In February 1991, after a few trial and error test runs, AOL was launched, and with it came online games, chat rooms, AIM, and a whole new way for people everywhere to interact online. Its goal was to focus on making the Internet a part of everyday life. To say he succeeded would probably be a huge understatement.

Mark Zuckerberg

Perhaps the first name you immediately knew on this list, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most recognizable Internet names, surpassing even the infamous Tom of Myspace. Just in case you somehow have yet to hear, Zuckerberg and his college friends founded what was then known as The Facebook in June 2004. By the end of the year, the site had 1 million users. Today, the site has more than 1 billion monthly active users. You can thank Zuckerberg for turning social media into the cultural phenomenon and world changer that it is today.

Larry Page

You’ve likely learned more from Larry Page’s creation than your own father. This guy revolutionized the way we use the Internet, and even our brains! In 1996, Page and his friend Sergrey Brin began collaborations on a search engine called BackRub. Fortunately, that name didn’t stick, and instead they decided to name their website Google, which they officially launched in 1998. Since then, the company has become the world’s most popular search engine, an everyday verb, and an overall technology powerhouse. In fact, today, Page is the CEO of Google, which now processes more than 40,000 searches every second (!) on average, more than 3.5 billion searches per day, and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Thanks, Larry Page, for giving us access to more information than we can even fathom.

So this Father’s Day, take time to thank these men for all the ways they’ve made your life easier. No more flipping through encyclopedias to understand what the plural form of “beef” is, significantly fewer phone conversations, the beauty of Netflix?! Thank you, all you great fatherly geniuses. Without you, I wouldn’t even have a job.

Image sources:

Leonard Kleinrock

Steve Case

Mark Zuckerberg

Larry Page

June 18, 2015
A Dream Job is Still Within Reach! Here Are 3 Ways to Find it

We’ve all been asked at one time in our young lives: What do you want to be when you grow up? For most of us, the dream of being a cowboy or an astronaut (or for me, a taxi driver) are long gone, but the essence of the question still applies and is an important one. It’s also empowering. It implies that the decision is up to you, and all you need to do is pick something and go after it.

Although it might not be as simple as that, you do have this kind of power when choosing the company that is right for you.

As a new college graduate or a young adult looking for a job change, there are a lot of possibilities, and the job search might even seem overwhelming. Where do you begin? I am neither a young adult looking for a job change nor a new college graduate, but there are a lot of things I wish someone had told me when I was one. Primarily, that if you break down your interests and work habits, you’ll be much more equipped to recognize your dream job when you see the description.

Hopefully you’ll find these tips helpful during your job search.

Tip #1: Figure out what you’re actually interested in.

You have probably thought about what you should do or the most popular jobs for your major or even what your family thinks you should do, but have you really thought about what you want to spend your time doing?

For me, I’ve always been interested in tech. My favorite college class was “Communication in Technology.” I love being online and reading updates about best practices for online marketing, and I can set up a complex entertainment system like nobody’s business. When I was fresh out of college, I didn’t realize jobs existed where I could indulge these interests.

So ask yourself: What classes did you enjoy in college? What articles attract you when you’re browsing the news? What online newsletters do you subscribe to? What kind of catalogs do you look forward to browsing? What magazines do you read?

Let’s say you’re crazy about travel. You save all of your money for your next adventure, you have Wandertab installed on Chrome, your DVR is packed with Travel Channel shows, and your inbox is full of flight deals. You might want to start your job hunt with industries that incorporate travel, like a cruise line, travel agency, or tourism board.

Tip #2: Play to your strengths.

Now that you have an idea of the kind of work you want to do, it’s also important to consider the work environment and your own strengths. Think about previous projects where you’ve had success and were proud of the end product. Were you working in a group? Which skills were key to the result—organization, creativity, subject knowledge? By digging into your own skill set, you can be more particular about the types of jobs for which you apply.

Company culture is important as well. You spend a lot of time at work, and by extension, with your coworkers. How you feel at the company and in the presence of your coworkers will affect your job satisfaction and ultimately your performance. Consider guidelines like dress code, benefits, time off, and willingness to train new employees. Would you mind being the youngest amongst future coworkers, or is it important that you work with peers? The answers to these questions can play a big role in shaping your job search.

Personally, I loathe pantsuits. In previous positions, I was the youngest person in the room, and I prefer working with peers. I’m proud of my organizational skills, and I thrive in a collaborative, busy environment where there’s always something more to do; boredom is not my friend. When I started working at Search Influence, something just clicked. I loved learning from my intelligent, peer coworkers, and account management suits my skill set.

You don’t always hit the jackpot while starting your career, but taking a critical look at your fit with a potential employer is a very important step to take before sending in your resume.

Tip #3: Talk to people who do what you think you want to do.

This was hands-down one of the biggest missed opportunities for me when I was looking for my first job. I was so nervous! I didn’t want to bother anyone, and I thought everyone would flat-out deny me if I asked to talk to them. Being on the other side of this now, it is so incredibly not true. It’s even the exact opposite—I love telling people about my job at Search Influence. Especially younger people who think they might want to work in my field of online marketing.

A current employee of a company you’re interested in or someone who holds a job title you aspire to hold one day is an invaluable resource if you’re willing to ask. They can tell you so much more than a job description: day-to-day tasks, work environment, team structure, key skills, and even tips for getting hired.

If you don’t know someone who works in your field of interest, use your alumni group and/or any connections you might have. You’d be surprised who knows someone you might want to speak with. And when you do find the person to talk to, come to the meeting prepared with questions to discover information that would be most valuable to you.

By taking the time to think about your interests and strengths, and by taking proactive steps to talk to someone in the field, you’ll be much better equipped for your job hunt. You’ll likely send out fewer resumes, but they’ll be for positions that are a home run for you instead of hoping something sticks, making them much more beneficial in the long term.

If you’re like me and enjoy tech, search engine optimization, and online marketing, find out more information about open positions at Search Influence on our Careers page.

June 17, 2015
How to Win Followers and Influence People: Build Your G+ Following in 3 Steps

We’ve cracked the code to successfully increasing the Google+ following for a small business (or at least we know we’re on to something). Our little experiment shows that if you follow three simple steps, you can gain more followers on Google+.

Now, before you equate the importance of Google+ (colloquially referred to as “The Plus”—it’s a thing, I promise) to that of utensils at a pizza shop or a certain search engine that rhymes with “wing,” it is important to note that although Google has consistently denied any causal relationship between what shows up in a Google search and activity on “The Plus,” evidence shows there may be reason to listen up. Besides, even if you don’t drink the Kool-Aid and immediately become a Google+ fanatic, I think we can all agree that vying to be in Google’s good graces is always a smart idea. I mean, come on, you wouldn’t skip your boss in line at the movie theatre or punch Ryan Seacrest in the face after winning a trip to Hollywood (OK, I can’t make any promises on that one), but you get the point. Don’t bite the hand that feeds.

Follow and Compliment

Now that we have established that Google+ matters, let me clue you in on a little G+ secret. People on social networks are like that hyper-masculine guy on your road trip: all they want is to be followed and complimented. Following, and subsequently +1’ing a person on Google+, is like referencing your buddy’s cheese blog in the bar you are currently patronizing with a group of friends. Not only have you discovered him on an incredibly remote platform, but you’ve even followed up with a compliment! Go you, Stanley, you’re relevant, and people appreciate your knowledge of cheese.

In all seriousness, though, over the past few months our experimentation shows that you will receive at best a 40 percent return rate in followers. For every 100 people followed and +1’ed, we received approximately 40 follows in return. It is important to note that the client happened to be a particularly interesting and popular business. That’s not to say the inherent love of HVAC nuances isn’t bountiful across the land, but it’s just something to keep in mind.

Given the fairly low rate of return, you can see how this may prove to be quite taxing if your goal of followers is in the hundreds, especially considering Google+’s limit of 50 follows per day. So what shall we do as small businesses owners armed with this knowledge? Luckily, as your in-house guinea pig, I am here to break it down into three simple, effective steps.

3 Steps to Building Your G+ Following

1) Start by following larger, established pages in your geographic area. Think The Wizarding World of Harry Potter if you are located in Orlando. If you need help getting to the Google+ page for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, I can’t help you. If you have to ask, you’ll never know. If you know, you need only ask.

2) Once you have lost yourself in a voracious “following” spree, now it is time for flattery. The people who occupy the comment threads of your newly acquired network are relevant to you in a few ways. Not only do they most likely engage with local businesses, but they are also active on “The Plus” ← there it is again! See, I told you it’s a thing. Start following and +1’ing posts in your stream you deem relevant to your business’s interests.

3) Be sure to watch out for exceeding Google’s “follow” limitation on a larger scale. After you exceed 1,000 people/pages followed on Google+, we’ve noticed that the social network gets a little buggy. If you begin “maxing out” of follows well before your promised allotment of 50, simply take a break for a week, binge on some Netflix, and live to fight another day.

That’s all for now, folks! If my team discovers any new, innovative ways to garner your Google+ following, we will be sure to let you know. If you hear nothing, that means Skynet, ahem, I mean Google has discontinued “The Plus.”

Image sources:

Kool-Aid GIF

Guinea pig GIF

June 16, 2015
Reconstruct the SEO Strategy of Your Medical Practice

A referral by a physician used to be the most common way people chose health care specialists. However, now patients are turning to Google and other search engines for health information and to select a physician. In fact, 62 percent of smartphone owners used their phone to search for information about a health condition, according to the latest statistics from the Pew Research Center. Among those who look for online reviews to shop for doctors, roughly one-third reported choosing a physician based on good ratings, according to a national survey on the use of online physician rating sites published just last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

To make the most of this trend, your practice must show up in Google search results prominently. If your practice is getting lost in a sea of search results, implement some of these medical search engine optimization tips to attract more patients.

Create Great Content

As demonstrated by the Pew Research Center’s facts on Internet use and health care, consumers today are hungry for health information. Your practice can benefit by providing the information consumers are looking for, but there’s a strategy to this. The days of simply putting the most common medical keyword strings all over your web pages are over. With Google’s new algorithm updates, websites that have consistent, quality content are the ones that will get the bump in the rankings.

For a medical SEO campaign, create distinct web pages for related topics that prove your practice is an authority on the subject. For example, an orthopedic practice that wishes to bolster its search engine rankings, should create separate web pages for a diverse range of topics such as pediatric orthopedics and sports medicine. To offer more detail about specific treatments or procedures, these pages can then be broken down further into subtopics. On the sports medicine page, for example, include a subtopic about ACL reconstruction surgery or muscle tear prevention tips. Unsure what topics and procedures potential patients are interested in? With a personalized SEO package, Search Influence can help determine what topics your target consumers are searching for the most.

Infographics are also great content to invest in for medical SEO because infographics can help grow website traffic. Research by AnsonAlex, a tech company focusing on tutorials, found that publishers who use infographics grow website traffic 12 percent faster than those with no infographics. In fact, the popularity of infographics has surged in recent years—increasing by 800 percent from 2010 to 2012, according to research from Web company Unbounce.

Image Optimization

Along with infographics, you will want to include other images on your website as well. As we’ve said before, Google rewards websites that have interesting and relevant images displayed. Images keep people looking at your site longer, which gives you website more authority in the eyes of the algorithm.

Help people find your pictures by optimizing them to include alternative text. For example, say your practice has a diagram of what happens when a person suffers from a pulmonary embolism. If you optimize your diagram, it will likely appear when people perform a Google Image Search for pulmonary embolisms—possibly appearing as one of the first images they see. When they click on this image, they are giving a hit to your site and increasing your overall medical SEO ranking.

Mobile Websites

As evidenced by the whopping 62 percent of smartphone owners who use their mobile devices to look up health information, a mobile SEO strategy is crucial. Google’s recent “Mobilegeddon,” or mobile-friendly update, was a move to further demonstrate just how important mobile websites are for SEO. It is imperative your medical practice has a mobile-friendly design users can easily access on the go.

But, be warned. Just because your Web developer tells you your site is mobile-friendly does not make it so. To see if your medical website passes the mobile-friendly test, use Google’s testing tool.

Where has your medical practice seen the most success with Healthcare SEO and content marketing? Let us know in the comments.

Image source:

Infographic from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons

June 12, 2015
The Infectious Spread of New gTLDs: Good For Your .Business?

Over the last year and a half, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, has been releasing more than 1,300 new gTLDs, or generic top-level domains. During this time, there has been a growing conversation amongst business owners as to whether or not they should make the switch to an industry-relevant TLD or stick with their current .com.

Remind me again … what exactly is a TLD?

Though you may not realize it, every time you type in a URL in your browser, you are using a TLD. It is everything that follows the dot in a website address. The macdaddy of TLDs is, of course, .com (used by 51.6 percent of all websites), with a few hundred others taking up the rest of the market share. These little identifiers help give a piece of information about the website itself, such as its purpose or geographical area. Because of TLDs, we know that websites that end in .gov are government related and websites that end in .edu are education related.

So why are they rolling out new TLDs?

Before June 20, 2011, there were only 22 gTLDs available. But on that day, the board of directors at ICANN almost unanimously voted to stop restricting generic top-level domain names. The chairman of the board, Peter Dengate Thrush, explained it like this in The Guardian: “Today’s decision will usher in a new Internet age. We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration. Unless there is a good reason to restrain it, innovation should be allowed to run free.”

Alright, I understand now … but should I get one for my business?

More than likely, no. In almost all cases, it is completely unnecessary, and switching over to one of these new top-level domains may actually hurt your company’s website more than help it. When the announcement of the rollout came in 2012, Matt Cutts, head of the Web spam team at Google, said on his Google+ page that, “Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.”

So if you are a bank and think that registering for a .bank TLD will benefit your search engine optimization strategy, think again. As Cutts stated, a website will rank because of its relevancy for a search, not because of the letters after the “.” in its URL. In fact, because the age of your domain is an important ranking factor in Google’s algorithm, switching to that new .bank domain may actually hurt your website’s relevancy in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

I have a new business and am just getting a website. What about me?

In the case of new websites, it is totally up to your preference. One important thing to remember is that these new domains are extremely new, and most people are not used to seeing them. Because of this, you will want to consider registering for the more common versions (.com, .net, .org, etc.) of your domain in addition to the new gTLD before redirecting customers to your .bank website, for example. This way, if a consumer ever types in your website but makes the assumption that it is .com, they will be redirected to your actual site.

Image sources:

ICANN image

June 10, 2015
Facebook Enters The Game of GIFs: A Feast For People, Not Pages

On May 29, Facebook confirmed that it would begin supporting animated GIFs! Up until this point, only Giphy GIFs could be used on Facebook, but they appeared like videos where you’d have to click a play button for the animation to start. For now, however, this new, universal GIF support only extends to personal profiles and not Pages.

In the past, I’ve jokingly (sort of) said that Google Plus would always be better than Facebook because it supported GIFs. As a freelance photographer and creator/curator of cinemagraphs (animations that consist of seemingly still photographs with subtle repeated movement in them—example below), I’ve always been annoyed that I could only share my art on Tumblr and G+. So I was really excited when I learned about the addition of GIF support to Facebook late last week. Sadly, I realized very soon after this announcement that Facebook had not extended this support to Pages.

So What GIFs CAN Pages Use And See?

People can share GIFs in the comments of posts by Pages but not on the walls of Pages. Also, Pages cannot share, reshare or comment using GIFs. So Pages can see when people post GIFs, but if they try to reshare a person’s GIF status or post their own, it will have to be opened in a new window for the GIF to play. A statement from a Facebook spokesperson on Business Insider said “Like many features that we release on Facebook, we want to ensure that this drives a great experience for people first before rolling it out more widely. While Pages cannot currently post GIFs, we are exploring ways to enable this in the future.” This also means that GIFs cannot currently be used in ads. Here’s to hoping they mean to roll this out for Pages in the very near future.

Here’s a GIF of the previously shown cat GIF moving in the comments of a post on a Page:

There are also other stipulations to using this new feature even on your personal Page. You cannot upload a GIF; it must be hosted elsewhere. So I suspect we’ll see a lot of sharing from sites like Tumblr (who just rolled out a GIF search—perfect timing) and Imgur.

For now, I’ll just be happy that I can at least share my cinemagraphs that are already on my blog on my personal Facebook Page now.

Thanks to HuffpostTV for the dancing Tyrion GIF!

June 8, 2015
A D-Day Infographic: 15 Years at The National WWII Museum

Seventy-one years ago on June 6, 1944, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops landed along the beaches of Normandy, France to fight Nazi Germany. The D-Day invasion marked the beginning of the end of World War II, turning the tide against the Nazis.

A D-Day Infographic

On the anniversary of D-Day this year, The National WWII Museum is celebrating its 15 years of preserving the story of WWII and making some history of its own. Such an homage to history and the museum’s work demands more than just words on a page. This D-Day, The National WWII Museum is making history come alive in an infographic produced by Search Influence.

The infographic is capturing hearts and minds across the nation, proving this content marketing strategy is helping to spread the word about The National WWII Museum’s efforts to honor the courage, the sacrifices and ultimately, the victory of the American people. In just over 24 hours since launching on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the infographic received 1,284 likes, 124 shares and reached a total of 25,077 people and counting.

See the full infographic on The National WWII Museum’s website.

Didn’t know about New Orleans’ connection to WWII? Let us know what you learned in the comments!

June 5, 2015
Social Giving Success: An Intro to Online Marketing for P2P Fundraisers

Which do you trust more: an ad or a friend?

The answer is pretty clear, right? At least that’s what many nonprofits think, and that’s why the face of fundraising has changed significantly over the past decade. Instead of just soliciting direct donations, we’re seeing more and more peer-to-peer, or P2P, fundraising campaigns.

Peer-to-peer fundraising enlists a nonprofit’s supporters to fundraise on their behalf, rather than or in addition to soliciting direct donations.

Having your supporters fundraise for you offers that extra level of trust and intimacy that ads can’t provide. P2P engages supporters so they feel more connected to a cause, resulting in greater long-term support. And with today’s technology, it’s easier than ever to connect with huge networks of people and resources.

So let’s talk about ways to make an online P2P fundraising campaign successful. From search engine optimization and social media to website development, here are some important tips:

Make Donating Easy

First things first: You need a way to collect and differentiate donations. According to Network for Good’s annual Digital Giving Index, 55 percent of donations come through nonprofit, online giving pages, especially branded and personalized ones.

A successful campaign has a user-friendly and effective system for making and processing donations that participants can share through social, mobile, email and every-which-way. This means also investing in either a mobile app or a responsive website. On DonorDrive’s platform, for example, donations have nearly doubled using responsive sites on mobile and tablets.

The options out there are endless. Make sure your fundraisers have a link to share and trust your platform’s security and usability enough to want to share it.

Engage your Followers

More than half of those who engage on social media with a nonprofit take further action like donating or participating, according to Waggener-Edstrom’s Digital Persuasion Report.

Fundraising as a whole is dependent on engaging and recruiting supporters. P2P requires not only engaging current followers to donate, but also inspiring them to fundraise and recruit for you. This means sharable content! Branded images, infographics and participant stories are just a few examples. Followers need to be able to see and share the effects of their donations, along with the whole experience along the way.

Follow Basic SEO Guidelines

SEO principles are universally applicable. Do some extra research on optimizing your website without stipulating that you’re a nonprofit or P2P campaign.

That said, (1) make sure you’ve got relevant and easily accessible content on your website. Search engines are all about good content that naturally bridges the gap between what your organization does and what people are searching for. It’s no longer about stuffing exact-phrase keywords into every page of your site. (2) Submit and maintain consistent information for your organization to location- and industry-specific directories (and calendars if it’s an event). This way, you’re creating more links going to your website as well as solidifying your contact information with Google Maps and other mapping services. And (3) see if you qualify for a Google Ads Grant. Google gives out varying amounts of money each month to use for nonprofit AdWords campaigns, so take advantage of it! An AdWords campaign offers the opportunity to reach those who you might not be reaching with organic rankings alone.

These are just a few tips to get you started. Even if you don’t have the budget to implement an intensive campaign, it’s important to cover your bases and make sure you’re tailoring your website and social media to work with P2P principles. The Internet is already THE social hub; use it to mobilize your followers for a successful campaign!

June 4, 2015
Return Of The YT Channel: Moving YouTube Channels Between G+ Pages In 2015

In the early ages of YouTube and Google Plus connections, disconnecting and reconnecting channels to the correct G+ page was not an easy feat. I once wrote a blog about this lengthy workaround for LocalU. Not long after that blog post, Google released a support form that allowed you to have a YouTube support specialist do the reconnection for you. While this support was amazing and usually reconnected channels within 24-48 hours, it required a middleman to get the work done and wasn’t immediate.

Now, Google has released a way to reconnect your channel to another page within your account in the Advanced Settings section of YouTube! If everything is in one account, then this reconnection takes mere seconds. Often, however, we find ourselves in a situation where the channel is connected to a personal Google Plus page in one Google account, and we want it connected to a business page in another login.

So I’m here to walk you through how to handle both of the aforementioned situations.

Reconnecting A Channel Within One Account

We’ll start with the simple one. You’ve got a YouTube channel connected to one page (probably a person page, maybe a random brand page), and you want it connected to your official business page on Google plus. Whatever shall you do!?

Step 1: Go to YouTube.com and log in to your Google account. In the top-right corner of the page, click on the circle that shows your page icon to see a list of pages and their channels within this account.

Usually, when you first log in to YouTube, you’re automatically managing or acting as your personal Google Plus page (the profile listed first in the dropdown is the one you’re currently acting as). To manage another page, which is what we’ll need to do to move channels, you’d just click the page you wish to manage from the dropdown.

Deleting Unnecessary Channels Side Steps:

Before we can proceed with moving channels, however, note that in the screenshot above, both of the extra pages have “subscribers” listed under their page names. This means that channels have been created for both of these pages already (otherwise we’d see “Create a Channel” below the page names). So if we want to move a channel to the page “Mary Silva Photography” in this account, then we’ll have to free it up for receiving a channel by deleting the unwanted channel that is currently connected to it.

This can be done fairly easily by clicking the “YouTube Settings” gear from that top-right dropdown while managing the page from which you want to delete the channel.

Then click “Advanced” under the page name in the “Overview” tab.

At the very bottom of the page, you’ll see the “Delete channel” option. Once you click that, you’ll probably have to re-enter your password. Brace yourself.

You’ll see a verification page to confirm what you’re about to do. Check the box and click “Delete channel” to get one more verification dialogue, then click “Delete channel” one last time to complete the process.

Now we can get back to moving the channel. In this example, we’ll pretend that the channel connected to “RedHeadedRabbit” needs to be moved over to “Mary Silva Photography.” As you can see in the next screenshot in Step 2, “Mary Silva Photography” now shows “Create a Channel” in the dropdown, so it’s free to take on the channel from the “RedHeadedRabbit” page.

Step 2: Click on the page that has the channel you want to move in the top-right dropdown to manage the page (in this case, “RedHeadedRabbit”), and then the aforementioned “YouTube Settings” gear should appear for that page. Navigate back to the “Advanced” settings page from the “Overview” tab just as you would have to delete the channel.

Step 3: This time, however, you’ll want to click the “Move channel to different Google+ profile or page” option just above the “Default Channel” header. Google will probably make you enter your password again, so brace yourself.

Step 4: Now you’ll see the “Move YouTube channel” page. Under “MY CHANNEL (AFTER MOVE)” click the “Select desired page or profile” button.

Step 5: Choose the page you want to move the channel to from the “Available profiles / pages” section.

Step 6: Confirm where you’re moving the channel (you can click links on this page to double-check that you’re moving the right channel to the right Plus pages) and click “Move channel…” to complete the transfer.

Step 7: Click “Move channel” in one last confirmation dialogue box, and you’re done! You’ll see one last confirmation screen about the successful channel transfer.

Reconnecting A Channel With Two Different Accounts

As previously mentioned, we often find that we have a channel connected to a personal Google Plus page in one Google account, and we want it connected to a business page in another login. The steps for moving the channel will be the same as above, but first, we must get the pages all set up properly within one account.

The account that has the channel has to be the OWNER of the page that we want to move the channel over to. So we need to go through adding the YouTube channel account as a manager of the business page within the other account first. Then we can go back and transfer ownership of the business page over to the channel account completely.

Step 1: Log in to the account that the main business is claimed in and go into your Pages.

Step 2: Choose “Manage this page” for the listing that you want to make the YouTube account a manager of.

Step 3: Go to “Settings” in the dropdown. Then, choose “Managers” under the “More” tab and add the email address for the YouTube account as a manager by clicking “Add managers.”

Step 4: Log in to the email for the account with the YouTube in it. Look for the email that says “Person Name invited you to become a manager of the Business Name’s Google+ page” and click “Become a manager” within that email.

Step 5: The link from the email will take you to the Google Plus page and automatically open a “Become a manager of Page Name” dialogue where you’ll click “Accept” to complete the managership setup.

Here’s where we wait…Unfortunately, for security reasons, Google requires an account to be a manager of a page for at least one day (as seen in screenshot below) before ownership of the page can be transferred over. So wait a day and come back to me when you’re ready to wrap this up. 😉

Step 6 (One Day Later): Now log back in to the account that owns the page and follow steps 1-3 again to get back to your “Managers” settings page of your official business page. When you click “Manager” under the account name, you’ll see a dropdown with the option to “Transfer ownership to Person Name” where you previously saw “Must be a Manager for 1 day before becoming the Owner.” Once you click that, you’ll click “OK” to verify the transfer of ownership, and then the transfer is complete!

You’ll get an email in that new owner account saying something like, “Person has made you the owner of the Page Name Google+ page.” Unlike the managership process, you don’t have to click anything in an email, so the ownership has been transferred completely, and you’re done!

Now that you have everything set up properly, you can proceed with steps two to seven in the “Reconnecting A Channel Within One Account” section above.

Hopefully this extensive tutorial helps you through all of your YouTube woes. To learn more about the ins and outs of Google Plus pages in Google My Business, you can read more on the blog here.

June 2, 2015