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#HowTo: An Overview of Using Vine for Brands and Businesses
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, the list goes on…

Everyone knows keeping up with the current trends is important when it comes to marketing your business, especially on social media. It seems like each year there is a new social media craze that everyone is using, and it sometimes gets difficult deciding which platforms are the best for your business.

Most social networks perform in a way where businesses can share written or visual content with their followers. Think of how Facebook and Twitter perform – brands share interesting text or pictures in hopes that followers will “like” “comment” or “retweet” the posts.

However, there is nothing quite like watching an interesting, funny, or moving video. That is where Vine comes in. Created by its parent company Twitter in 2013, Vine brought a whole new way to market your business through videos.

Well, Isn’t That What YouTube Does?

Vine Profile

Vine is similar to YouTube in that they are both platforms where users and brands can share video content with their followers. However, there are many differences that make Vine unique.
- In the same way that Twitter limits users to 140 characters per tweet, Vine limits videos to a mere 6 seconds. This causes users to be really creative in getting the message across to viewers because there is such a limited time.
- “Vines” are looping videos, meaning they will continue to play continuously as long as you are watching them.
- Vine also has stop-motion capability, allowing users to record a portion of the video, stop recording, then start again at a different time.
- Also similar to Twitter’s retweet, Vine has “revine” capability that allows users to share videos that they think are interesting to their followers.
Interestingly enough, because of the creative nature of the app, many ordinary people have become “Vine Famous,” acquiring millions of fans since its inception in 2013. However, many businesses have also branched out and started using Vine to market their brand.

How Can Vine Help Your Business?

Vine can be beneficial for both new and loyal customers of your business.

For new customers, you can gain awareness for your business through Vine. Millions of people view the popular pages and the trending #hashtags each day. Participating and getting your Vines exposed to more people could introduce your business to someone that didn’t know about it previously.

For already loyal customers, Vine can offer a different way for them to see your business. For example, if you are a clothing store, making Vines of backstage action at a fashion show would be interesting to people who already have an interest in your brand.

Tips for Getting Started

Now that you know what Vine is and why it is important, here are a few tips to help you get started!
- Use Hashtags: Join the conversation with other users on Vine and make videos relevant to the trending hashtags. An always popular one is #HowTo. Getting your business seen on these trending subjects increases the probability of your video getting seen, liked or even revined by other users.
- Cross-Post Vines to Twitter: Vine is still such a new technology that not everyone is using yet. You can post your Vines to your brand’s Twitter account to get even more exposure.
- BE CREATIVE: Vine is not the platform to just make videos just for the sake of making them. Because of the looping and stop-motion features, you can really make something unique and interesting that other people will find shareable. The best Vines are the ones that are funny or extremely visually appealing (think optical illusion or magic).
Have A Call To Action When Applicable: Contests on Vine are popular. Have your followers create a unique video of themselves using your product, and revine the winner! This makes loyal customers feel special when their favorite business is actually acknowledging them.

Above you can see an example of a great Vine from GE. They encouraged their followers to be creative and make a #6SecondScience video, and in return they would revine a winner.

Finding out how to use Vine can be difficult at first, but finding your niche and posting to this app can definitely be beneficial when it comes to keeping loyalty among customers and finding new ones. However, just like any other social media platform, it is important to keep up with the updates of the app and stay current with this ever-changing technology.
May 29, 2014
April Showers Bring May Influencers!

Search Influence continues to grow! This month, we are happy to welcome seven new faces to our team.

Breanna Gussoni (Part-Time Administrative & Accounting Assistant):

Breanna was born and raised in New Orleans. She is currently attending Herzing University where she is pursuing a B.S. in Accounting. This is Breanna’s first job in business and marketing. She looks forward to learning all she can from working with Search Influence.

Chris Henson (Junior Internet Marketing Associate):

Originally from Covington, LA, Chris moved to New Orleans to attend Tulane University, where he majored in History and Film. After graduating, he went on to receive his Master’s Degree in History from Southeastern Louisiana. Chris is very involved in the ever-growing New Orleans film industry as a reporter, critic, promoter, and producer. He is fascinated by the never-ending possibilities of social media.

Jessica DeBold (Junior Internet Marketing Associate):

Jessica was born in New York City and raised in Greenwich, CT. She graduated from Loyola University in early May with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy Pre-Law and Mass Communications with a focus in Journalism. Before joining the Search Influence team, Jess was the Editorial intern for Uptown Messenger and the Editorial Editor for Loyola’s weekly newspaper. She is a fourth-degree black belt in Isshin-ryū karate, she plays the cello, and she spent her most recent summer in Cairo, Egypt working on an international women’s rights project with German University and UN Women.

Marina Brazhnikova (Operations Associate):

Marina is originally from Russia, although she has lived in the US for the past 12 years. After 7 years of managing operations at a successful art gallery, she decided to go back to graduate school, which brought her to New Orleans, the city she now considers home. Marina recently graduated from Tulane University with an MBA. At Search Influence, she concentrates on special projects with a focus on process improvement and optimization.

Patrick Kolstad (Junior Internet Marketing Associate):

Patrick is originally from the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. He has lived in New Orleans for four years and recently graduated from Loyola University with a B.A. in English Literature. Patrick is excited to navigate the post-collegiate world while continuing to explore the city of New Orleans.

Sabrina Mohsenin (Junior Internet Marketing Associate):

Originally from Nashville, TN, Sabrina moved down to New Orleans to attend Tulane University, where she graduated this May with a double major in Communications and Psychology. Before Search Influence, she worked as a Junior Content Creator at a local PR and Marketing Agency, Hero|Farm, and as a PR Intern for The Office of James Carville.

Siobhan Lidon (Junior Internet Marketing Associate):

Born and raised in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, Siobhan is now working towards her Management and Spanish degrees at Tulane University. Prior to Search Influence, Siobhan was a marketing intern at Be Well Nutrition, Inc., in New Orleans. After having fallen head over heels for the music, culture, and food the city has to offer, Siobhan plans to stay in New Orleans after college.

Welcome to SI, Breanna, Siobhan, Jessica, Patrick, Sabrina, Chris, and Marina. We’re excited to see all the great things you will accomplish!

May 27, 2014
5 For Friday – Facebook Privacy, Google With Your Voice, and Yelp Videos!

1. Facebook Defaults Posts From “Public” to “Friends” & Introduces Comprehensive Privacy Checkup
– Marketing Land

Facebook has finally launched a major change that may have an impact on their real-time efforts. With the privacy updates, users’ posts will now default to only be visible by friends, and all users will be encouraged to check on their privacy settings if they have not been updated recently. Greg Finn says he expects that this update may cause hashtags and real-time conversations to continue on their decline.

2.Yelp Will Allow 12-Second Video Reviews Starting Next Month
– Marketing Land

Beginning in June, “Elite” users will be allowed to share their review of local businesses via a short video. These videos will first appear inline with the photos, but will eventually also appear along with the reviews like photos currently do.

3.Google+ Introduces New Features That Automatically Generate Movies and Travelogues
– Search Engine Journal

Google+ launches Stories and Movies that will bring together your photos and videos to highlight your favorite moments from your travel or an event. Google’s Story will arrive within 24 hours after you return from your vacation. After you receive your story, you will be able to customize it and share it. Google+ Movies will include related photos and videos along with a soundtrack and special effects.

4. Google Adds “Okay Google” Voice Search For All Chrome Users
– Tech Crunch

Users will first need to give Chrome permission to use the mic on their computer. Then you can simply go to Google.com and say “Okay Google” to trigger the voice search followed by your search request.

5. Google Paid “Dealers Nearby” Appears To Have Gone Live
– Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal noticed that Google’s new paid ads (now appearing within the knowledge graph) are live. This seems to be only the case in the US according to the comments thread on Dr. Pete’s tweet regarding this update. Mike Blumenthal suggests that we may one day see Google selling competitors space in branded knowledge panels.

May 23, 2014
In The Game Of Maps, You Either Get There, Or You’re Using Apple Maps
When you think of Apple Maps, you probably think of the disaster that was the iOS 6 Apple Maps update.

Apple Maps is infamous for directional errors like having turn-by-turn directions that instruct users to drive across an airport runway to get to an airport. We’ve also experienced client business issues with Apple Maps.

For example, Apple Maps users were being taken to a location 50 miles away from our client’s actual listed business location when using turn-by-turn navigation in the app. We had to then figure out how to edit business information in Apple Maps, as there is no desktop way to access Apple Maps, and you can only access it through the mobile app.

The data in Apple Maps is mostly powered by data from Yelp, TomTom, Factual, Localeze, and Acxiom as you can see in Moz’s local search ecosystem. By making sure your business information is as accurate as possible on these sources, you could help avoid errors on the sites that they feed to. Often, however, when it comes to issues with Apple Maps, it’s best to figure out how to fix them at the source.

So here I’m going to walk you through how to edit information in Apple Maps via your mobile device.

Step 1:

Search for the business that you’re looking to update.

Step 2:

If you’re looking to add a business that is not appearing in search or to update directions that aren’t appearing properly, click on the ‘i’ (for information) icon in the bottom righthand corner. If you’re trying to edit particular business information like name or address, skip to Step 5.

Step 3:

From this popup dialog you will choose “Report a Problem”.

Step 4:

This “Report a Problem” page will allow you to choose to report that
- Search results are incorrect
- Street or other label is incorrect
- Location is missing
- Problem with directions
- My problem isn’t listed
Select your issue (in our client’s case, we chose “Problem with directions” to indicate that the map was taking people somewhere it shouldn’t in turn-by-turn directions) and submit your problem!

Step 5:

To make more specific Apple Maps updates about a particular business, click on the business name in the search results.

Step 6:

Then scroll down “Report a Problem” on the “Location” dialog box, and CLICK IT!

Step 7:

Choose from the list of issues (most likely you’ll want to report that “Information is incorrect”) and click “Next” in the top right corner.

Step 8:

Edit whatever details you need (obviously this page will differ depending on what problem you’re reporting) and click “Send” to send the report.

Apple maps has been gaining momentum in user numbers as it is the default app on all iPhones. Apple crushes all. It is known.

With this in mind, one can only hope that Apple Maps’ future will have a formal business portal for claiming and managing your business information, but until then, we’ll have to live with this limited access process.
May 21, 2014
May The Nola Festivals Be With You

As all New Orleanians know, this great city is known for it’s colorful and sometimes wild festivals. If you have spent any time at all here you will know that there is a festival almost every weekend of the year and for almost any occasion you can think of! These festivals can range anywhere from highbrow to downright weird.

However, May holds a special place in our hearts. It is the perfect combination of festival fun without the feeling of melting into a sweaty puddle. Check out what we have going on in the city this month and join the festivities before it gets too hot!

New Orleans Wine and Food Experience

Thousands of foodies flock to this event to eat their way through one of the best festivals of the year. You can be sure to experience every type food imaginable paired with more wine than you could possibly drink (don’t even attempt to try it all)! Taking place in the French Quarter and with restaurants all over the city participating, this festival is perfect for visitors who are looking for the best that this city has to offer while wandering the historic streets.

Greek Fest

Located at one of the oldest Greek Orthodox churches in the United States, this massive mediterranean festival celebrates food, family, music, and fun. Taste traditional cuisine, enjoy Hellenic dancers, and rock your toga (or your bedsheets). Grab a souvlaki and learn the Zorba with 20,000 of your closest friends!

New Orleans Oyster Fest

The last weekend of the May is, in my opinion, the best weekend of the year! The oyster eating contest, the shucking competition, and the largest oyster contest are just a few events that take place during this weekend event. Paired with local music and libations, the oysters are in peak seasons and couldn’t be tastier! There is no wrong way to enjoy your bucket of oysters – raw, grilled, or on a cracker. Bring your friends, your appetite, and shuck on!

May 20, 2014
5 For Friday – Backlinks, Knowledge Graph, And Privacy!

1. Matt Cutts: Google Won’t Devalue Links Anytime Soon

-Search Engine Watch

Well, you’d certainly hope this is the case with the way Google is initiating hundreds of thousands of manual actions every month…But in Matt Cutt’s recent video, he explains the value of those quality links while Google continues to better understand and define what determines quality content. As it stands, Cutts sees the value of quality links to be a relevant ranking factor for the time being. So fear not, if you are working to improve the quality of your content along with improving and diversifying that backlink profile with authoritative links, you’re certainly protecting yourself from future menacing Penguin updates.

2. Google’s Knowledge Graph Expands into Google Maps

-Search Engine Land

Google’s knowledge graph is expanding from organic search results into their map results. Much like the results from regular search queries on google.com, the knowledge graph will now pull information cards with quick facts about certain places searched in Google maps results. But hey, don’t just take Search Engine Land’s and my word for it, run a maps.google.com search for New Orleans’ own St. Louis Cathedral and check it out for yourself!

3. European Court Requires Google to Delete Personal Info

-Search Engine Roundtable

Hey SEOs! Reputation management just got easier! If you live in Europe that is. In a recent ruling, a bill so cleverly titled “the right to be forgotten” requires that search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing must remove links from search results for a person’s name if that person requests to have that result removed.

4. How to Dramatically Improve Your Google Authorship

-KISS Metrics

This article provides some great tips for improving your Google authorship. As with any authorship improvement tip article, though, do keep in mind that excessive guest blogging is a definite no no. Keep the list of sites you contribute to condensed and featuring only those important and authoritative sites you write for. Guest blogging, if done incorrectly, can be seen as a spammy link-building tactic. A definite highlight of the tips provided in this article was “feature your most flattering picture…you don’t have to be good looking. You just have to…’put your best face forward.’” So no worries—you don’t have to be Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, or Jon Hamm. You just want to ensure your thumbnail image is clear.

5. 5 New and Improved Twitter Features Marketers Should Use

-Search Engine Watch

This article is a fantastic overview of those new Twitter features and how they translate into tactics marketers can utilize. A particularly interesting, stand out feature is that Twitter now allows for engaging tweets to appear larger than others. Now “all” you have to do is make sure your tweets are always relevant, engaging, and interesting to your audience.

May 16, 2014
All The Best Ideas Are Stolen: Take Yours From Facebook’s Success Stories
I was recently introduced to the Facebook for business page and was shown some interesting and educational aspects of this informative page.

Besides giving you an opportunity to create a Facebook Ad or create a page, it gives you the awesome option to see success stories of businesses that have used Facebook to their advantage.

The Success Stories page gives you 5 options to choose from, depending on what you would like your search to include/show. You can search by:
- Business size
- Goal
- Industry
- Product
- Region
The one that I think is the most helpful is the search by goal option. There are so many different goals that businesses want to achieve when promoting themselves on Facebook, and this option lists a variety of them to choose from.

Since I LOVE to shop, I was interested in how small businesses that sell retail succeed on Facebook. When I conducted my search for a retail success story, Blake & Brady Boutique came up.

This success story stated that the boutique, located in South Carolina, uses Facebook Ads to connect with shoppers. This in return has boosted their online and in-store sales. They have achieved a 15X return on ad spend and have gained 10,000 customers through Facebook.

What Do They Have That You Don’t?

After reading those amazing numbers, I had to wonder, how do they have such great success? Reading further into the story, I came across the thing that should start every success story, a GOAL!

Their goal was to boost their in-store earnings and reach a wider audience online and offline. The first step the owner took was to use Facebook’s Start to Success Program to learn about what tools were available through Facebook.

How’d They Do That?

My next question was what did they use? Promoted posts were used to reach women who live close to Anderson, SC area in the News Feed. They also used ads in the right column of Facebook that target people based on their location, gender and interests to gain clicks to the business’s website to help boost online purchases. The owner measures ad results often and then re-invests in the campaigns that gain the most customers. The products they use are news feed placements, boosted posts, and custom audiences.

All in all, it is safe to say this small business is having an amazing experience using Facebook to promote their business. What are some of the ways you promote your business on Facebook? Let us know what works for you in the comments section below.
May 14, 2014
Clear Your Case Of Social Media Acne – Ugly Picture Links

You can go far on 140 characters, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. For the past year or so, Twitter has been enriching users’ experiences by allowing pictures and videos to be directly displayed on the feed, and with the introduction of the new profile design, it now allows users to visually enhance their profiles as well. As Twitter increasingly becomes a multimedia-friendly social media platform on both web and mobile, research shows that Tweets that include photos or videos receive 5 times more engagement than simple text tweets.

Owly? Oh No! (The Terrifying Discovery)

This week, while doing my routine account manager duties, I was looking over a client’s Twitter account and I noticed that our social media scheduler, Hootsuite, was still displaying images as ow.ly links.

One Does Not Simply Address Hootsuite (Or Does One?)

As a social media fanatic, I did what I do best and voiced out my anguish @hootsuite.

Thankfully, Hootsuite knows the value of connecting with users via social media, and they were quick to respond with a solution.

A Brief & Wonderful Solution To All Our Problems (& World Peace)

As I did more research behind the solution Hootsuite provided, I found out that just 2 months ago, the social media scheduler rolled out the option for Pro and Enterprise users to post photographs via the native pic.twitter.com functionality. This feature will allow any photograph scheduled via Hootsuite to be automatically displayed on Twitter’s timeline, and it will also be included in a user’s photo gallery.

You Too Can Have Beautiful Picture Links

Ready to make the switch? I know Search Influence is! The steps to change your image upload service on Twitter are quite simple, and as studies continue to show us, the rewards of doing this will be quite grand.

Voilá! Your scheduled Tweets will now be posted with multimedia showing up on users’ feeds.

May 13, 2014
Google Ranking: No ShortCutts to Success

More often than not, our clients ask why their keywords aren’t as high up on Google as they should be. Is it a penalty issue? Is it an algorithm change? Or is it your content? Recently, I had a client that asked these exact questions. Here at SI, our job is to diagnose the answer.

If you’re an online marketer, you know one name to be the Holy Grail of answers: Matt Cutts (for you non-online marketers, the head of Google’s Web Spam team).

Recently, Cutts created a help video to answer the question we ask every day: What really determines why you’re not ranking as high as you think you should?

The answer: It depends!

Make Friends With Webmaster Tools

According to Cutts, you should first ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS check Webmaster Tools. Here, you can see in detail what could be the issue, whether it be keyword stuffing within your content or some sort of crawl error.

“We have seen sites that will launch a new development website that was previously no-indexed, and forget to take off the noindex tag,” Cutts said. “Or there’s 404s, or we can’t reach your site…”

But what about the other algorithmic issues? How can you determine if it’s an algorithmic penalty or your content? According to Cutts, they don’t give much thought about algorithmic penalties because Google doesn’t really view them as penalties.

“It’s a tough call to make,” he says, “because the web spam team is working on more general quality changes, not necessarily things specifically related to web spam…we just think of it as the holistic ranking.”

Don’t Fear The Algorithm

According to Cutts, in 2012 Google rolled out about 665 changes to how they rank search results, so the odds that they are rolling out some algorithmic change at any given point are pretty high. In fact, they might be rolling out a few. However, if the algorithm changes they make will impact your site in a big way, Google will notify you of those changes.

For example, as Cutts says, Panda’s algorithm has become more integrated into indexing and has less of an impact on your rankings, whereas Penguin’s is still ever-changing and will more than likely have a bigger impact. In other words, Google will likely send you a notification if you were affected by some change within Penguin’s algorithm.

You’re probably wondering, what does this all mean? The reality is, it comes down to what you believe is best practice for your site. If your competitors are doing something that you think might be affecting their rankings in a great way, then use your judgement to determine if that’s something you should be doing for your site. As Cutts says, it’s difficult for Google to say that something is a penalty because it’s just a part of ranking. The good news is that it is algorithmic. As you change or modify your site based upon what you see within your competitors, you can see that these algorithms can reprocess the sites and you can and will rank again!

May 12, 2014
5 for Friday – Google SSL Warnings, Twitter & Amazon Collab, and more!
1. Twitter and Amazon Link Up, Add Items To Your Shopping Cart With A Single Tweet – Buzzfeed

Amazon is using Twitter to drive sales with the new #AmazonCart feature. This may be a major breakthrough for ecommerce businesses. It’s super simple:
1. The business tweets out a link for a product.
2. Interested consumers can then reply to that tweet with the hashtag #AmazonCart.
3. The product will instantly appear in the consumer’s Amazon cart.
The consumer’s Twitter has to be linked to their Amazon account in order to do this, but the new feature should drive sales for E-commerce businesses with products on Amazon. Twitter users can also search the hashtag #AmazonCart to see what other people are buying. Isn’t technology great?!

2. Become Your Own Rumpelstiltskin: Spinnin’ Crappy Online Reviews Into a Better Business – Search Engine Journal

This is a great article on how to approach negative reviews. There are bad reviews from people who genuinely had a bad experience and bad reviews from people who are just plain irrational.

How do you tell the difference between these people?

If you look through an irrational person’s profile it’s full of negative reviews and they usually make overly dramatic and sadistic statements. People that genuinely had a bad experience usually have a mix of positive and negative reviews if you look through their profile, there are some positive comments within their negative review and they make rational statements about their experience.

How do you deal with this?

Respond to the irrational reviewer with a generic, but genuine message without addressing specific points of concert. If they respond back, don’t respond again. Respond to the rational reviewer by addressing their specific concerns quickly and assuring the reviewer that steps have been taken to ensure that this will not happen again.

3. New App Reveals How Much Information You’re Giving To Facebook – Search Engine Journal

Scary! A new app, called Digital Shadow, was launched as a promotional tool for the upcoming video game Watch Dogs. It uses data you’ve given to Facebook to guess your location, your income, and your passwords. They use algorithms to predict your interest, desires, and fantasies. We live in an era where we like to document everything online from how we’re feeling to what we purchased to where we are in the world. It’s an eye opener to find out that there are people in the world that can use that information against you to hack your computer or to be more influential in their sales tactics towards you.

4. Google Pauses Webmaster Tools SSL Warnings In Order Clarify Them In Future – Search Engine Roundtable

Google recently sent out mass SSL warnings via Google Webmaster. They decided to pause the warning after they realized they were causing mass confusion. Now, Google is working on making the warnings clearer and tweaking the criteria before restarting them.

Google is simply providing information about the server response for HTTPS access to your URL. If it responds, but the SSL cert does not match the domain, the warning lets you know. Basically, Google wants the hosts to either serve content via HTTPS properly, or not serve content there at all. Serving content via HTTPS without a valid TLS/SSL certificate will result in users seeing browser warnings. Avoiding this makes sense, no matter how many site users actually see the warning.

5. Announcing Schema.org Actions – Schema Blog

Schema.org introduced vocabulary that allows websites to describe the actions they enable and how these actions can be invoked. You can use action schema to play a video, review a movie, or purchase a product. The new schema adds context to a link or content. It is a way of interpreting content to cite sources and authors and the type of activity that happened between the two. From what was said in the press release, the actions schema is still a work in progress and will be enhanced as more users use action schema and provide feedback.
May 9, 2014