25 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community

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• How to Avoid Being a Social Media Neanderthal
• The Best Blog Post Length Test
• Is Your Social Network an Online Community or Club?
• Effective Content Creation Strategy for SEO That Works
• Control The Visibility of Auto Posts Made By An Approved Facebook Application
• Why Use Social Media?
• One Billion Active Users On Facebook. Challenges Ahead?
• Why Isn’t Your Business Blogging?
• Why and How We Blog: Part Two
• The Art of Questions for Engaging a Facebook Community
• 64 Google+ Marketing and Branding Tips – Infographic
• Google Hangouts: How To Host Awesome Live Events On Google+
• How Many Employees at LinkedIn Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?
• Pinterest Image Optimization [Infographic]
• Local Business Social Savior? Social Media Expertise Meets Daily Deals
• How Strong is Your P@$$word? [Infographic]
• Klout Deserves Your Attention
• 3 Benefits of SEO Services for Small Businesses
• Beginner’s Guide to SEO Marketing (Part 2/3)
• 3 Shocking Social Media… Ahem… Errors of Judgement
• Surprising Results on Social Sharing Techniques [Infographic]
• The Next Big Social Network
• Visualization on Social Media for Social Good (Infographic)
• How Content Influences Personalized Search – and SEO Rank
• What Works in Social Media for B2B vs. B2C?

How to Avoid Being a Social Media Neanderthal Posted: 05 Oct 2012 02:44 PM PDT For many of us, the phenomenon of social media began with the simplicity of a wall post, the careless ease of a blog entry, the creation of a short (albeit heartfelt) tweet. Now, these methods alone render you a neanderthal. As long as I am sharing something within the social media community, I will be heard, and reap the benefits of these global networks. Yet as technology has evolved, the social media community has matured, and a single entry into the expansive social media universe no longer holds the weight it once did. People want stories, multilayered entertainment, knowledgeable findings, and perhaps above all, the promise of interaction. In today's social media landscape, the success of our personal and social business networks relies on reciprocity, on being active and fluid in our engagement within our bustling, online communities. Today, we are expected to go beyond the promotion of our own agendas and listen to the motivations of our audience. If we hope to leave our mark – in social business or otherwise – we must initiate and maintain a healthy dialogue. Below are some articles (I hope) help to dissect the intricacies (and sometime volatility) of our online communities, as well as tips for engaging large and diverse networks. We take a look at where we were, where we are, and where – it appears – social media engagement is headed. Putting Money in the B2B Bank: Why Social Media Engagement is Imperative Dialogue: A Social Media Acronym Marketing Strategy: From Minority Report to Shawshank Redemption How to Find Your Social Business Stage The Various Social Media Personas: Understanding Personality and Communication This article was originally published on exploreB2B.

The Best Blog Post Length Test Posted: 05 Oct 2012 02:25 PM PDT One of the most common concerns for new and experienced bloggers alike is the length of the post. Finding the Right Length Some folks will not read a blog post that is more than 500 words. That's understandable, because many of them are puffed up pieces that dance around a topic and never clearly make a point. Blogs where the posts are typically short, because they are racing to be first to report the news, also fall short of expectations. They only give you a taste, thereby sending you away hungry, and on a search for more. Is this what you want for your audience? In our post Panda and Penguin digital world, quality content that thoroughly covers a topic is highly valued by Google and your audience. This is why lengthier magazine style articles, such as those published by Social Media Examiner and Copyblogger are well received and often highly ranked in search results. These longer posts are a complete meal – but you don't have to consume it all. When a topic is covered completely everyone feels satisfied, regardless of their appetite. It's the completeness of the message that matters – not its length. There are a few rare authors that have mastered the skill of accomplishing this in very few words, with Seth Godin being one of the more notable ones. Choosing the Best Content Authors like Seth Godin defy definition. Many of us have endeavored to imitate his style, but here's the deal. Seth has practiced his craft like no other, having published over 10,000 blog posts in the past decade. How about you? By his own admission, he doesn't just sit down and lay down those pearls of wisdom in a matter of minutes. He is "writing" them days in advance as he thoughtfully considers the topic, words, anecdotes, and stories that will capture it well. This takes time – time to think, practice, learn, and express. One of the most well received keynote speeches I've given in the last few years was one in which I had to cut my usual keynote in half to accommodate the allotted time – and on only two weeks notice. The challenge is always what to leave in and what to leave out. I consulted with a more experienced speaker who suggested cutting out my normal opening and close. What? That's the cornerstone of any great speech. Start in the middle, she said. Think about it. If some bloggers are leaving you hungry for more, it's usually because you are only getting an appetizer. In contrast, other bloggers leave you feeling bloated because you are overserved. Isn't it better to go to the middle and carefully carve out the most tender center cut and serve it up just right? That's not something you can just throw together. It takes patience and practice. A great blog post is like a great meal that nobody would consider measuring by its volume. It is a work of art that is admired and readily consumed, thereby leaving the patron with one feeling – completeness. That's what really matters. Completeness. That's the opportunity. What's your measure of the perfect blog post length? Leave a comment below and share this with your community. Photo Credit

Is Your Social Network an Online Community or Club? Posted: 05 Oct 2012 01:25 PM PDT Successful social networking depends upon a number of factors, with your personality, values, and beliefs being some of the more highly relevant ones. Social media is social, and that means your personal values and beliefs will eventually be expressed, whether that is intentional or not. Knowing that most people are looking for agreement in social situations, there is an important question that many of us have considered. Should we express our personal beliefs when you know they may be controversial? The answer is it depends. Notwithstanding personal consequences, the effects on your business could be either favorable or unfavorable. In most situations, leading with purpose is better than trying to be all things to all people. So, the challenge is determining if taking a wider or narrower view is better for your business. Clubs are Smaller and Exclusive Several of my friends take very strong and controversial positions online that effectively exclude the views of others. There is nothing right or wrong with this, but it does have consequences. If your business is selling high dollar items for a limited demographic, then a strategy of exclusivity may be the right one. Exclusion tends to narrowly define a group, thereby giving it an identity that is congruent with all of its members. As a result, it is easier to know precisely what this group values, and your business can command a higher price by creating products and services that are uniquely desired by them. If this is how you operate, your market is best defined as a club, one whose value is derived by exclusion of others who do not share their predominant values or beliefs. Think of a golf club. Some consider golf to be a complete waste of time, while advocates believe it is the ultimate social activity. Communities are Larger and Inclusive Communities by definition exist to equally serve the needs of everyone within them. Social media in general tends to encourage this inclusiveness. Is this right for your business? A larger community may be more beneficial to your company if it can easily grow and scale to accommodate additional business. For small businesses, this requires strategically planning for growth and having systems in place should it arrive ahead of schedule. When my new book comes out in March 2013 I want to reach every possible mainstream small to medium sized business. That's a lot of businesses, but the proven marketing and distribution capabilities of my publisher Wiley are in place to handled the unexpected – something that I am indeed planning on. A book is a item with a low price point that nevertheless is designed to serve the needs of a specific audience. In this situation, that audience is inclusive of a range of industries, all of which share many of the same challenges and opportunities. The Best Online Communities are Hybrids Trying to be all things to all people is a surefire way to fail because then you have nothing distinctive to offer. Thus, you need to define your community to achieve the optimal degree of exclusivity and inclusiveness. It's a balancing act. Start by excluding people with your community guidelines. The more I work with social media the more clear I am about what I will and not do. You will need to determine what that is for you and your team in order to accomplish your objectives. One suggestion is you can and should take a slightly different approach for your respective media channels. For example, your newsletter may be a club, while your blog that feeds subscribers to your exclusive newsletter may nevertheless be a community. People tend to come and go as they please within communities, so the growth is fluid and organic. Whereas, clubs grow progressively because membership tends to be stable. People tend not to leave clubs. The best approach is often one that combines the benefits of both to achieve a digital media channel for your business that concurrently builds growth while sustaining earned loyalty. What's your approach? Club, community, or hybrid? Leave a comment below and share this with your community. Photo Credit

Effective Content Creation Strategy for SEO That Works Posted: 05 Oct 2012 12:55 PM PDT 'Content is king' is an adage that is very familiar for people who are working as Internet marketers. It simply means that in a site or blog, the role of content is very important. It comes as a wonder though that many marketers fail to recognize this importance and instead, chose to ignore its value. On the brighter side of things, the quality of content in many websites and blogs are improving. Text though is not the not the only kind of content. The term can also be used to describe video and audio in any website. Below are some of the things that you can do to improve content in your site. Plain Content is not enough Gone are the days when all marketers have to do is craft a simple article populated with keywords. Now, you actually need to do some quality writing if you want to succeed in the world of Internet marketing. It is impossible to ignore anymore the need for quality content. In the first years of Internet marketing, it is still forgivable to take good writing for granted. But now, it is a mortal sin. Give readers poor quality and your site's popularity will plunge almost instantly. This is a good thing. This means that Internet marketing is moving forward. Nowadays, websites cannot survive based on looks alone. They need to have substance. Outsourcing is a good thing So you can't write, you say? Well that's what outsourcing is all about. Outsourcing is a great leverage giver in this day and age and some of the most successful online entrepreneurs know how to use it well. You can find great writers almost anywhere. You can search in freelancing sites. You can also find some in forums. Should you use content mills? Only if you are on a budget and you are desperate for content. Otherwise, you should really hire good writers who can be part of your team. Never think twice on paying premium for quality writing because the return can be great. Aim for relevance No matter how good your content is, it will not be read if it is not relevant. Put things on your blog or site that you know people will be interested in reading. Look around. Try to observe what the hot topics are nowadays. Do not simply reinvent the wheel. One of the things that you should ask yourself when trying to develop topics for your blog is: what are the most common problems of people today? The more relevant your content is to people's lives, the more popular your blog or site will be. Build a good reputation To build a good reputation, you must show consistency. Remember, you are always as good as your last post. Good posts can draw readers to your blog but it is your reputation that will make them stay and anticipate for your future posts. Be careful and be responsible for what you write in your blog. One bad post can have a significant impact on your site. This original article is made possible by Extreme SEO Philippines.

Control The Visibility of Auto Posts Made By An Approved Facebook Application Posted: 05 Oct 2012 12:50 PM PDT Keep Facebook App Postings Private! Like everything else we create in the social media space… There is often certain content that is either inappropriate for a broader audience or simply better for a more specific audience. An example of this might be the dozens and dozens of photos you might shoot on your smartphone and upload to a photo app from a enjoyable business conference you are attending this upcoming weekend. Now, while one or two of these photos might be no big deal to your family and school friends… fifty of them flooding the stream is likely to be another story! So what to do? We've talked in a prior post about how to use Facebook (custom) Lists to control post privacy… and hopefully you're already taking good advantage of lists. Unfortunately, unless we tell them otherwise, applications that can publish to Facebook will use the default post setting… which generally speaking is the last privacy setting we published with manually. So… if I made a public post, on my profile, so that my subscribers could see it… and then I installed Instagram on my phone and sent a photo from Instagram to Facebook… the resulting post would be public with very little ability to change that "on the go". I ran into this recently when I was trying to get Cardio Trainer to publish from my phone… to my wall.. but not quite to everyone! In most mobile apps, you'll find that you can't configure the default post visibility, from your phone. (Working from a desktop/laptop is different as the authentication dialog box usually offers you that option.) Fortunately, if you're near a PC any time BEFORE you need to let the app do it's magic… the setting is easy to adjust. In fact, you could even set it to one setting "just for this conference" and then adjust it back to its usual setting after the business stuff is finished. How To Set and Control The Visibility of an App's Auto Postings On Facebook (click on the image for a closer look) Step 1: In your upper right hand menu, on the far right edge, you will see a small white down-arrow. Click this and then select "Account Settings". Step 2: In account settings, use the left hand navigation menu to select "Apps" (app settings) Step 3: Scroll through the apps you have approved (remove any you won't need within the next 30 days to reduce hacking troubles) and then find the app that we need just adjust. Step 4: To the right of the app name will be a link that says "Edit" (click it). This opens the permission settings for that app. Step 5: Find "Posts On Your Behalf" … and to the right of that, open up the permission drop-down box. (By default this may say Friends, Friends of Friends, or Public unless you customized your default post settings). Step 6: Select "Custom" and in the "Custom Privacy" box you can explicitly show it (only) to certain people (or lists!) and you can hide it from certain people (or lists!). Hide overrides visibility so is used to refine visibility. For example: Show it to all of my coworkers who are in list name "CoWorkers"…. but, hide it from Mr. Boss Man. Another example: Let's say we're planning a party for a family friend….. Show it to all of my "Family" list… but, hide it from "Becky" (the birthday girl). Have a small group conversation: Show the post only to Dan, Stacey, Beckie and Cathy Click "Save Changes" and you're done! There is lots of ways to take advantage of customizing your post visibility settings – even for remote app postings as we see here. Once set, the apps will not automatically grab your more recent post privacy setting and risk stuff "doing it's own thing"! When combined with controlling post privacy and good use of Facebook custom lists, you have excellent control over "who sees what" as long as it's written on your own timeline wall. Share this post with your friends, family and colleagues… they will thank you!

Why Use Social Media? Posted: 05 Oct 2012 12:45 PM PDT Are you considering using social media at work or in your professional life? Are you trying to figure out what social media can help you achieve or see if it's worth your while? Read on to help you understand the value social media can bring to your career and some examples of how easy it is to start getting results. Most people I talk to about social media fall into two categories: those who think it is important but don't use it much if at all and those who don't see the point because they don't think they can get anything out of it. I want to share some tips on what I have done to achieve a few milestones of success in a fairly short time frame. If you follow these tips you will be able to define what it is you want to achieve and get results a lot quicker than I did. My social media goals Establish credibility inside and outside my company Build up my personal brand so people know who I am before I meet them Communicate my thoughts and ideas to more people Build up my industry knowledge so that I can be perceived by others as an expert Connecting and conversing with like minded people If you share any of these goals then read on and I will give you some tips to help you achieve them. How can you achieve these goals? You need to figure out who you are trying to target and what you want them to think of you Using the analogy of a magazine editor – you need to create and curate information to share with and appeal to a targeted audience. Try to figure out what you can do to add value to other people's lives. You need to write your various social profiles from the perspective of "what do people want to know about you, so that they will want to work with you" and not "what do I need to tell people so they offer me a new job". None of your customers or clients need to know how many times you have achieved above your sales quota. They want to know how you can help their business. One of your objectives might be that you want to be the go-to resource in your field. You should write a blog to help educate people by sharing all the things you have learnt. You should aim to be the answer that pops up every time your customer or prospect asks Google a question. My social media milestones I cannot say these things have made a million or has helped me become a vice president (YET!). These are some of the milestones which I have passed that make me feel that I am doing the right thing. Some of which you may want to achieve and some you may not. Never the less, these are some of the soft reasons which give me reassurance I am on the right path. You still have a job You may be going against the grain of tradition. Social is a cultural change within a business. The honest, open, transparent way of doing business that comes with social is a bit of a shock to some. Although the road may not be a smooth one, hopefully the end result is that you are still on the pay roll. Your good intentions will be acknowledged (even when others may perceive you are in the wrong) and eventually even the doubters in your organisation will see that what you are doing is mutually beneficial. It will take time, maybe even years, so stick with it and don't give up. Increased visibility on LinkedIn If you want people to know who you are, then it is a good idea to have a good LinkedIn profile which people can easily find and want to look at. If people find you in a search, then they are more likely to visit your profile. If they view your profile, they are more likely to do business with you. These pictures show both the number of people who have seen my profile in search results and the number of people who have visited my profile. By the look of it, I have a ratio of 5 search hits to every page view, although not everyone finds me through search, so the ratio is actually a lot higher than this. This shows the number of times my profile has been viewed in the last 3 months This shows the number of times my profile has been seen in a LinkedIn search in the last 3 months Page view of your blog – talk to more people Blogging gives you a channel to help share your ideas and thoughts with more people. Since I wrote my first blog post the number of people visiting my blog has increased significantly. I am not sure how sustainable this almost exponential level of growth is but I hope the overall upward trend will continue. In August and September I had 3400+ chances to talk to people. Compare this to the average person in business. Do you think they have had the chance to tell people their thoughts and ideas over 3400+ times in two months? I would be amazed if most sales people, who sell high value goods, do that in a year. Even if you were working in a high volume telesales/inside sales role making outbound calls all day every day, you may dial a large volume of numbers per day but how many do you actually have a meaningful conversation with? All the people who viewed my site came through wanting to know more about me or what I have to say. Most of those people found me with a search engine or saw a link on a social network site and thought it looked interesting enough to click on. These are my blog stats since I started my blog Through other websites (listed below) I have received approximately 10,000 more page views, bringing the total for the 9 months I have been blogging up to around 17,000 views. Twitter followers The number of followers you have on Twitter does not equal success. @theotherhef twitter profile At the time of writing this post I have around 455 followers. Potentially, half of those may have little interest in what I do or say and probably followed me with the hope that I will follow them back. Even if I have half those people are interested in what I have to say, it gives me a great platform. How else could you feed your knowledge, thoughts and ideas into the minds of your colleagues/customers/prospects on a daily basis without twitter? If you emailed 455 people a couple of times a day I doubt you would achieve the same objective, people would hate you! Through learning to use twitter I managed to get one of my blog articles retweeted to over 90,000 people in 1 hour. How else could you get eyes of 90,000 people for free? Third party accreditation By association you can get yourself additional credibility through being published on other sites. You can do this by submitting the RSS feed of your site to repost your blog on their site or by guest posting on other people's sites. Some of the sites that have published my work include: SAP's innovation blog Social Media Today Business2community.com thesocialcustomer.com mycustomer.com These websites put my work in the same place as the CMO and CIO of my company plus many of the world's most well respected thought leaders in my industry. By association this helps to raise the credibility of your work if they want to it on their site. It is just like getting your work published in the Daily Telegraph or the Wall Street Journal. Speak at events In the last 9 months I have built up my own personal brand and used my blog to share my views and opinions on social. I have been privileged enough to be invited to be involved in not only my organisation's biggest events but also the biggest social media industry events in the UK. Full listing of these events are on my website speaking page. These a handful of the events: Social Media Week Social Media World Forum SAP Forum SAP user group annual conference Google me and see what comes up Even if you haven't googled yourself, you can bet your bottom dollar that your customers have. "Who the hell is Chris Heffer?!" I am sure a few people have thought to themselves. Through the work that I have published on-line, I occupy 9 of the 10 (6 directly and 3 indirectly) links on the first page of Google when searching for "Chris Heffer". The top two are a direct link to my blog and there is a link to the blog I write for my employer. Other links are to Chris Heffer LinkedIn directories, my twitter profile, my professional Facebook page and my Google + page. Google search results for "Chris Heffer" This is the first place most people will look when they are trying to find out anything out about anything so you need to make sure when they search they can find you. Hopefully it will be good things they find. If you faced with this challenge, look out for my future blog post which will tackle this problem. What else are people typing in Google? For every person who asks you a question at work there are many more who will ask Google the same question. You should try to publish answers to as many questions as possible. That way you stand a good chance of coming up as a source of knowledge when people are looking for information. Here is a bunch of questions where I usually rank on the 1st page of Google (if you ask it nicely!). I aim to provide the answers to help educate people in the field I am trying to be known for. How to use social media at your event What is the future of social media Why complain using social media Can social media replace email Why should you write a blog How to find ideas to write in your blog Summary There is no end goal with my efforts, if I make a million or become a CEO, that will not signify I have reached the end destination. I will know I am heading in the right direction, if I continue hitting the goals that I set myself and those given to me by my employer. It is a project I will be working on till the day I decide to hang up my business hat or until someone comes up with a social network that operates telepathically. Your turn I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this article. How have you used social media in your career? What are your goals? What have you done to work towards or achieve those goals?

One Billion Active Users On Facebook. Challenges Ahead? Posted: 05 Oct 2012 12:35 PM PDT "I started the site when I was 19. I didn't know much about business back then" – Mark Zuckerberg 4th February, 2004, this young lad started working from a dorm room at Harvard with the intention of getting people to connect and communicate more efficiently. Fast forward to 4th October, 2012, the same young lad updated his status on Facebook saying that one billion people i.e. one in every 7 people in this world are using Facebook actively each month.(1) The milestone also reflects the rate the network has grown at since it was just 2 years back when it had reached half the mark. However, Facebook had reached this magical number on September 14 at 12.45 PM, Pacific Time but my guess is that Mark wanted to release it on the 4th! A billion users on the network also means that there are 140.3 billion friend connections, 219 billions photo uploaded, 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times, etc.(2) The network also found the biggest support from the youth coming from countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the United States(in alphabetic order). According to Social Bakers, Asia has been the largest continent that has been adding the boost to the user growth of Facebook. Indonesia and India are the top two countries followed by US and Brazil to witness faster growth for the month of September. India which ranks in the top three amongst the total number of users adds up more than 56 million users which is a mere 4.72% in comparison to the total population and 68.31% in relation to the number of Internet users. Is everything rosy? Facebook has always been under the cloud of controversy from the time it was born. Leaving aside the legal battle, the biggest buzz it created was with its valuation of $104 billion. Over the period of time, everyone knew that it wasn't the wisest decision with its shares now hanging at $21 from $38 where it started. Along with this over the period of 8 years, the social network has struggled to keep it a fun place. Today my news feed looks more like a spam to me and Facebook will have to think on it, like it has been brainstorming to remove the junk of fake users created by businesses to make easy buck. Security has always been an issue and with the permissible age coming down to 13 years, it is highly debated whether Facebook is a safe network for kids. If we look at it from a business point of view then it makes sense as users were easily fooling the system anyways. But as a parent I am really worried to see my kid on Facebook. Not that I would like him to add me as a friend but considering the amount of trolls sitting on the network, this situation will have to be addressed. Challenges ahead? I dare doubt in the capabilities of Mark but then there are challenges that anyone out there who studies the social market will know– 1) Mobile 2) Search 3) Countries like Russia & China and 4) Competition from other networks. One of the reasons that investors are having nightmares is because the world is moving from bigger screens to the smaller screens. 600 million users out of that 1 billion prefer to access it via Facebook mobile. This right now is not good news since Facebook during its IPO, had made it clear that mobile is a challenge to grow revenues. However post IPO, there has been a plethora of changes in design and trying to figure out new ways to make money from the smaller screen. In fact, Mark himself, has accepted at the recent Disrupt event that the focus right now for the company is mobile. Additionally, for Facebook to increase its numbers and revenues would mean that it makes its presence felt in countries like Russia and China. This was one of the reasons why Mark was in Moscow recently meeting the Prime Minister Medvedev and interacting with the media. With respect to competition, none stands near to it. Google Plus may be claiming big numbers but the fact is that Facebook is way ahead in terms of numbers and popularity (may be not feature wise). Salaam World, which aims to launch in November specifically for Muslim users, could be a matter of concern as it claims to sign up 50 million users in next three years. But then the fact is that it is yet to launch and Facebook has 1 Billion! To celebrate this milestone the world's largest social networking giant released a video – "The Things that Connect Us", one of the things they have done for the first time. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu the video portrays the way small things like chairs, doorbells, games, etc. connect with us, now Facebook does that, it is also a part of the tradition. So does it connect with you too? Click here to know more on how Facebook defines active users For more such interesting facts click here

Why Isn’t Your Business Blogging? Posted: 05 Oct 2012 12:25 PM PDT As a consumer yourself, wouldn't you like to have easy access to fresh updates concerning the products and services you regularly use? Your customers are no different. Customers have been conditioned to expect answers whenever they need them. When they don't get what they want your reputation erodes. Knowing this, why are so few small businesses actively blogging? I believe it is because they do not understand the practice. Early blogs were predominantly personal journals consisting of periodic communications on random topics. However, the top business blogs today are some of the most valued sources of fresh and relevant news. Think of your business blog as a digital magazine for your customers. Quality blog posts are now often considered articles. Even the word blogging is considered passé. Now we simply think of ourselves as publishers. This new mindset acknowledges that in this digital age every business is now its own media company. Your business blog should include the following, which you can easily accomplish with a self-hosted WordPress site. WordPress started as a blogging platform, but has now evolved into the world's leading CMS (Content Management System) for businesses. #1 – Organized Information Early blogs used archives and categories to organize information. Just as your business processes must adapt to changing conditions, so too have the methods for successfully blogging. Guide your visitor. Consider adding a "start here" tab that leads to your best articles organized into a series of subject matter tutorials. #2 – Up-to-Date Information Google wants what people want, and that is the most up-to-date information they can find on a particular subject. By consistently publishing fresh content to your blog, you are serving both your customers and the search engines that will help you find new ones. #3 – Relevant Information The more you blog the more you will learn how to help your customers, particularly if you are paying attention to comments and what earns greater sharing among their social network communities. You'll soon realize the most relevant issues change slowly, if they change at all. For example, last week I read a publication that interviewed several business leaders. Nearly every comment eventually circled back to one core challenge – getting new customers and keeping the current ones happy, while of course turning a profit. Customer acquisition and servicing is a problem that never goes away. What are the problems in your business that never go away? Start blogging about them. Build a content management system using WordPress – a digital business channel (on a domain you own) that regularly addresses the needs of your customers. They will love you for it. Isn't that what any business wants? What's your number one reason for blogging – or not? Leave a comment below – and share this with your community. Photo Credit

Why and How We Blog: Part Two Posted: 05 Oct 2012 12:10 PM PDT This is part two of the "Blog Blog, Why and How we Blog." Like any great sequel (the movie Blade is the first to come to my mind), you don't need to read the first part, but it makes the whole experience more enjoyable. Here is the link to part one. Reasons why we blog, continued: 3. Give you fodder for other social media efforts It's the 20th of the month, and you haven't sent out your monthly newsletter yet. You panic and eat half a package of the new Candy Corn Oreos, and while they're delicious, you don't feel any better and you still have to find content for your email. If you've been consistently blogging, you would have nothing to fear, you would have several posts to choose from. The same strategy works for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pay-Per-Click. Why do you blog? To have something to say to that hard-fought audience that has so graciously "Liked" you on Facebook. Having something to say to your customers in an email instead of just trying to sell them something one more time is kind-of priceless. Blogs are magical that way. You say it in a blog and it gives you something to say in your other communication mediums. 4. Get people on your site How are we doing? You still with me? We're almost done. If you have a passion, an opinion, a load of information, or even if you've just taken note of something, and you take the time to write it down and post it, someone will find it interesting and will read it. If your blog is consistently filled with good content, you'll start to get people to your site even when they aren't shopping. While some may say that's a terrible idea for a retailer, that's not true. The more qualified traffic you get to your site, the better. This traffic will be qualified because they are interested in the same things you are writing about. Blogging will drive people to your site if it fulfills one of these five basic marketing principles: Become a trusted source. People will start to check with you first before they make a decision. Give away something for free. Need I say more? Everyone loves something for free. The "something" is your content. It's valuable stuff. Reach people with a message that isn't "Buy Something." Instead of always asking for something from your customer, a blog post gives you the opportunity to swap the message and just give them something. Connect with people on a personal level. People respond, especially online, when they can connect personally (virtually). When you blog, your voice and opinion will start to develop and it gives a personal layer to your company. Give people something that they might even forward to a friend. That is the holy-grail after all, to get your content to be spread by others because it's so interesting. That isn't going to happen with your product or the brands you carry. It's only going to happen when you add the color. Let me wrap this up with just a couple of quick things to always do when you blog. Be consistent. Blog on a regular basis and keep your voice consistent. Like a favorite author or a magazine you renew, people will come back when they trust you and know what they are going to get. Be relevant. But not too relevant. Half the fun is spinning way out to left field with blog posts and then bringing it back to your company. For our outdoor gear guy with the student discount–he shouldn't blog about his recipe for corn-flake encrusted French toast that he made for Mother's Day brunch, but he could post camping recipes. He shouldn't blog about his crush on Mariska Hargitay (from Law & Order SVU), but he could blog about the top 10 things the contestants of Survivor should NOT do. Stay current. Seriously, if you aren't going to blog at least once a month, then take it down, don't do it. Just blog as a guest blogger with tools like myblogguest.com. Nothing makes a site look worse than a dusty post from 18 months ago as the last entry. Are you inspired? Are you going to get out there and blog now? I clocked this. This blog took me four hours and that includes finding the photos and wrestling with WordPress. They usually don't take that long. This one was longer than usual. As you can see, this blog became a two-part series and an ebook (which you can download here). It's usually about 90 minutes for me. But, as Tom Hanks says in League of Their Own, "If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The "hard" is what makes it great." In other words, for us marketers and business owners, taking that extra step is what can give us just one more competitive advantage.

The Art of Questions for Engaging a Facebook Community Posted: 05 Oct 2012 11:25 AM PDT Social engagement is the result of a number of activities, including listening, offering suggestions and other assistance, and asking good questions. When these actions are executed well, the natural result is engagement in the form likes, shares, and comments that serve to build your Facebook community. Sharing interesting, useful, or entertaining content is essential for encouraging engagement. This is best accomplished on Facebook with a photo or video with a short message and a call to action. Is it any wonder that 300 million photos are posted on Facebook every day! Most people seem to understand this aspect of Facebook engagement, but then they fall short with the most important step – the call to action. Questions are the essential calls to action that encourage engagement and community building. When you skillfully ask the right questions, an engaging dialogue among community members readily ensues. Here are 5 considerations for making that happen. #1 – Everyone Wants to Be Right Agreement and controversy will both encourage engagement, but when it comes to building a community of fans around your business, keeping everything friendly and upbeat is obviously to your benefit. Research has proven that most people are fishing for agreement when they ask a question on Facebook. They simply want to be right. We all have different opinions and naturally believe we are in the right, but when it comes to building a community, always be mindful of creating a forum that honors the diverse opinions of your community. Skilled community managers understand Facebook is for showing off. Feed that desire and you will build better support for you and your business. #2 – Leading Questions are Safe Leading questions are safe because they broadcast the desired response. This may not create a stimulating conversation, but it keeps the playground safe and encourages plenty of likes and comments. Leading questions are typically those that can be answered with a yes or no response. Here are some examples. Look at these adorable shoes. Should I buy them? Wouldn't you love to have a cozy retreat like this in your back yard? I think it's time for a vacation, what do you think? Questions that tend to encourage a positive response also generate positive comments and engagement. #3 – Loaded Questions are Dangerous Loaded questions are those that appear to be asking for feedback but in reality are fishing for agreement or favorable disagreement. A classic example is – Does this make me look fat? The reason loaded questions are dangerous is some people will speak their mind and derail or completely shut-down the conversation. I recently encountered a loaded question that had two parts – a leading question and a loaded question. I acknowledged that part of it was loaded and answered it honestly – big mistake. Fortunately, one of the community members came to my rescue. Even the best of us mess up in an attempt to provide what we believe to be helpful feedback. Don't do it. If your friend really wants your honest feedback they will send you an email and get it privately. #4 – The Best Questions Have No Right Answer What are good questions? The best questions are those for which there is no right or wrong answer. Here are a few Facebook questions that attracted a very high level of engagement. Is this a garden or a landscape? What is your pet peeve? (Not a great question but one with no right answer) What was your favorite subject in school? Always make the focus of your question about the overall event of a photo or story, not a particular person. This avoids putting anyone in the spotlight that may not want to be there, thereby minimizing the possibility of errant comments that someone may take exception to. #5 – The Last Word Questions generate a string of comments, and that opens the door for pushing a personal opinion that feeds ones ego. Avoid this one-upmanship, and don't be afraid to step in and diffuse it. It often comes in the form of a subtle counterattack to have the last word – "just saying." Let it go, or redirect the conversation whenever possible. Avoiding the need to be right allows positive conversations to breathe and negative ones to die. What's one of your favorite questions to ask your Facebook community? Leave a comment below – and share this with your community. Photo Credit

64 Google+ Marketing and Branding Tips – Infographic Posted: 05 Oct 2012 11:20 AM PDT Google+ is a social media network that most people don't seem to understand. It has now been with us in the social web ecosystem for over 12 months and has now reached over 400 million users. Despite this, it is underestimated as a tool for marketing your business and brand. Maria Peagler calls it "The Rodney Dangerfield of social networks, because it gets no respect! It has tremendous SEO and branding potential, but few people realize the power it has". Just like Facebook it has personal and brand pages that allow you to post text, images and video. It has been designed from day one to be multi-media rich and optimized for mobile. It has forced Facebook to evolve more rapidly and enhance its features such as live video, larger and higher definition images and an improved user interface. What is often forgotten is that Facebook has been with us for over 8 years old and Google+ by providing a more modern look and feel has added vital competitive pressure to the social media landscape. 3 Key Features of Google+ Google+ offeres capabilities that make connecting and engaging online globally, richer and easier than in the past. The following three features are valued by many users on Google+. Hangouts Hangouts allow you to have a live video chat with up to 10 people and many tools and and extensions have been created to make this a richer experience. Google+ hangouts have been embraced by communities globally, both personally and for business that allow real time face to face engagement. This builds sronger ties and relationships that just textual communication cannot. No Limits to the Size of Articles Despite Google+ having strong multi-media features, one of the Google+ features that is highly valued and widely embedded in its culture is the ability to add long articles. Long form content in text format is valued by many of the Google+ community as it displays thought leadership and expertise. Circles This feature allows you to easily drag and drop users into custom created circles that can be private or public. Much of the discussions and engagement on Google+ is private which has led to the misnomer that it is a Ghost Town. It is used by many businesses to have private discussions with industry groups and communities. Below are 64 more tips,tactics and features that you can utilize with Google+. What About You? Are you on Google+? How are you finding its features and functions? Are your friends on Google+ or are they mainly on Facebook? How are you finding it as a business marketing and branding platform? If you are a blogger, is it working for you to increase engagement and traffic to your blog? Look forward to reading your stories in the comments below.   Want to Learn How to Market Your Business and Brand on Social Networks? My book – Blogging the Smart Way "How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media" – will show you how. It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog. I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 110,000. You can read it now.

Google Hangouts: How To Host Awesome Live Events On Google+ Posted: 05 Oct 2012 11:10 AM PDT Google Plus has quickly gone from a ghost town to one of the largest social networks on the planet with 400 Million+ users, over 25% of which who are active. One of the breakout features are Hangouts or Hangouts On Air which allow you broadcast live a group video chat as well as record it straight to your YouTube account. Being that events were recently introduced to the social network, one can easily setup a live event. Why do a Hangout On Air? They not only allow you to reach your audience on Google+ through video, but also create great content from interviews to discussions that can then be published on a blog for example Before you put together a live event on Google+, make sure to have a rock solid action plan of your topic and discussion. A Hangout On Air with no structure will often turn out a bit rough. Have a clear focus of what you want to talk about and really bring the value by getting others in the Hangout (that is if you're having multiple people participate) engaged. What Will You Need? Webcam, preferably HD (Logitech C910 or C920 very affordable and rock solid) Microphone, either built-in to your laptop or webcam. Standalone microphone (Blue Yeti for example) ideal. Dual-core or better computer with at least 2GB RAM Good Internet connection. 3mbps or faster. Google+ account of course! Creating a live event and hosting a Hangout On Air is quite easy and over the rest of this post we'll go over exactly how to do that. Creating Your Event First, log into your Google+ account and look at the left navigation. Click on "Events" and that will load up the page. Now, instead of clicking the red "Create Event" button on the top right, look below the images on the right hand side and select "Plan your next hangout". That will then pop-up a window where you can fill in all the details. One of the first things to select is an image for the event. Using the arrow buttons, you can choose from Google's default images, or by clicking "Change them", you can choose or upload your own photo. The rest is very straightforward and make sure to write a detailed description that explains what the event is, what it's about, and what people can expect. After you're done filling out all of the details, you can choose specific people to invite and also post it to circles or publicly. If you are to invite specific people, make sure you are very targeted. Inviting anyone and everyone will annoy people and cause them to look at you like some spammer. Once you've got all of that setup, click "Invite" and your event is live. Definitely make sure to have the event post to "Public" that way everyone who has you circled can see it and then potentially RSVP. My Event Is Live, So Now What? While doing a Hangout On Air can be worrying, don't be freaked out. If you've done video in the past, it's pretty much the same thing, except of course you can't start over once you're going. Despite doing hundreds of videos myself, I still get anxiety to this day when doing a live hangout. As with anything though, the more you do it, the better you get and the more comfortable you become. Start Your Hangout As far as the logistics of it all, getting a Hangout On Air rocking and rolling is easy peasy. Heading back to the Google+ homepage, in the top right hand side above the chat is a button that says "Start a hangout". Click that and a new window will open and load up an interface that looks like this. If you're not familiar with the hangout interface, it's very straightforward. In the top right, you have several different icons. Mute your microphone, mute your video/webcam, and settings. Before starting any hangout, especially a Hangout On Air, you want to make sure your settings are right by clicking the gear icon. Once everything looks correct, click "Save settings". Going back over to the left hand side, this is where you fill in the details such as who to invite, the title, and selecting the box next to "Enable Hangouts On Air". A big mistake that a lot of people make is inviting circles or even public to a Hangout On Air. This is a big no-no and will just create a complete disaster. Make sure to invite specific people who are actually aware of the event beforehand. Creating a great title is important as it'll be one of the first things that people see. A mediocre title and people will potentially move on and not watch. Just don't forget to deliver awesome value! Once you've chose people to invite and done everything else, it should look a little something like this: Click "Okay, got it" after making sure everything is correct, then "Hang out". This will start the hangout, but not make it live just yet. You'll see some new details on the top right hand side. You'll be able to see how many people are watching and can also embed the Hangout On Air elsewhere, say your website. Before you go about starting the hangout, there are a few more things to go over. Chat is only visible to those within the Hangout On Air itself. To see the audience's comments, you'll need to pay attention to the post with the live video. Sometimes it can be really distracting going back and forth between the conversation and the conversation from people watching. If you can, have someone who can moderate and then let you know questions by posting in the Hangout On Air. This will free you up from juggling multiple things at once and allow you to focus on the topic at hand and delivering a great discussion. The invite and screenshare option are pretty self-explanatory. If, say, you forgot to invite someone or want to invite new people, you can do that there. What's great is, only the person who started the Hangout On Air can invite others. This way you don't have to worry about participants inviting random people that could then potentially ruin a conversation. Screenshare allows you to show your screen. This is especially great if you have a PowerPoint presentation or are doing a how-to that requires people needing to see your desktop. Right next to that is Cameraman which adds some nice functionality. Say you don't want someone's video to be visible on the live stream, you can scroll over their video thumbnail and click the video icon. You can also choose the option where anytime someone joins they will automatically be muted and not appear in the video. Apps Google+ Hangouts also work with various apps. The selection is currently very small, but there are some goodies in there. One app that is essential for any Hangout On Air is the Hangout Lower Third app. Hangout Lower Third puts a banner on the bottom of your video so people watching the Hangout On Air can see your name, what you do, your website, and even has space for a logo. To install it, simply find the "+Add app" button which is on the same column as Chat, Screenshare, etc. Scroll down towards the bottom and you should see it. Then to install the app, simply scroll over and click "Install hangout extension". It will then ask for some basic permissions and you're good to go. Once the Hangout Lower Third app is installed, you should see it right next to "Screenshare". Click on it and you're presented with various fields to enter info. It's best to go with your name in the title and your website in the tagline. You can also choose what color for the overlay and add your own logo. After you've down all that, click the button that is currently set to off and now people watching the Hangout On Air will see the overlay which will look something like this. Going Live To go live, simply hit "Start broadcast" and there will be a countdown from 10 before it publishes on Google+ and streams to YouTube. Streaming to YouTube In the YouTube stream, the Hangout On Air will look very similar to when you post a video. The Hangout On Air will appear on YouTube just like any other video. Anyone who is subscribed to you on YouTube will get a notification in their subscriptions that you're live. If you've got a decent sized audience on YouTube, you'll need to factor in the possibility of people commenting there and not on Google+. Currently, both comment threads don't pull into one so this is again something that you might want to delegate to a moderator. Ending Your Hangout Because of how hangouts work, you don't need to worry about selecting who appears on the live stream as it automatically goes back and forth between who's talking. To end the broadcast, simply click the red button where "Start broadcast" was and you're done. From there, the video should be available for replay on YouTube and for those tuning in late on Google+, will simply see the recording. Editing Now, say you want to edit your video and spice it up before you post it to your website. What's great about YouTube is that you can download videos that were uploaded. Go to http://www.youtube.com/my_videos and your Hangout On Air should be right at the top. Click the dropdown arrow next to "Edit" and select "Download MP4″. Right now the video resolution is only 640×360, but I've found if you bump it up to 1280×720 which is 720p HD, you don't lose that much quality. So that's how you go about hosting a live event on Google+. Hangouts On Air represent a new wave of great technology that aids not just broadcasters, but anyone who wants to create high quality content. What are your thoughts on live hangouts?

How Many Employees at LinkedIn Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb? Posted: 05 Oct 2012 10:55 AM PDT Only one to screw it up. Not to throw the people at LinkedIn under the bus, but stupid mistakes should never happen. Regardless of the size of the company deploying email marketing campaigns, it takes the carelessness of one person to jeopardize an entire campaign. Today I received an email from LinkedIn ironically, inviting me back to LinkedIn Ads for a limited time offer with a $100 free credit. However, upon scrolling down the email, I noticed that the $100 credit expired over a month before I even received the email. Talk about a waste of a campaign! What is my incentive to spend money with LinkedIn if all that I receive is a $100 credit that I can't even use? Can I even trust LinkedIn with my advertising dollars knowing that they don't even proofread their email before hitting send? This is not just a problem faced by LinkedIn. It happens to all companies out there, from those with 2 employees to those with upwards of 5,000 employees or more. Unfortunately, our inboxes are flooded with emails with such blatant, obvious mistakes that you almost want to question the legitimacy of the company name that appears in the "from" line. Although it is easy to place the blame on the entire company, it is in fact the individual running the email marketing campaign that is responsible for such a huge blunder. If you decide to invest in an email marketing campaign, would you leave the entire fate of its success up to one person? Or would you prefer to make it more of a collaborative effort to ensure that more eyes are involved on the project and the room for error is eliminated? At Email Answers, our lives are centered on organizing email campaigns from the beginning stages of email creative design to assisting with ROI calculations after the campaign has launched. Before any email campaign is set to deploy, we always test the email to the inbox of a select number of email recipients to ensure that the design, layout, images, formatting, and text content of the email creative appear correctly and that all of the links embedded within the advertisement function properly. What may seem like a minor mistake can make a major impact on your brand reputation. Don't leave it to one individual to damage your company's carefully crafted email marketing strategy.

Pinterest Image Optimization [Infographic] Posted: 05 Oct 2012 10:50 AM PDT By now it's pretty clear that Pinterest can bring in big bucks for your business. As a strong driver of referral traffic to retail sites, Pinterest proves to be a good investment for companies. The key is to make your Pinterest profile stand out, and your Pins are what you need to focus on. Brought to you by Pinnable Business, today's infographic is all about optimizing your Pins for success on Pinterest. Pinterest is for the most part a majorly image-based social site, so pinning great photos and content is crucial to your business's success on the website. Check out more information below! Happy pinning! Interested in learning more? Check out our Pinterest Case Studies to see how 4 big organizations optimize their Pinterest profiles and how you can learn from them!

Local Business Social Savior? Social Media Expertise Meets Daily Deals Posted: 05 Oct 2012 10:42 AM PDT I had the pleasure of being at the Social Media Strategies Summit last week in San Francisco. The guys at GSMI do conferences well–they balance theory with case studies and practical training. One such training session entitled “Facebook Advertising Best Practices,” was led by the co-founder of local start up with a whole lot of promise. In an online marketing world that’s seen the rise and decline of the daily deal phenomena, LocalGruv may have found an ideal service offering for local businesses. The company provides localized daily deals, okay, that’s neat, but with a considerable value add: social media promotion expertise. To put the significance of this into context, in the last six months of 2011, 798 daily deal sites shut down, according to Daily Deal Media, which researches the industry. The daily deal space is one of few barriers to entry, but many barriers to success, as one analyst put it. LocalGruv may very well have created an “all-in-one” offering to give local business a way to tap into the power of social and the power of collective buying power at the same time. Where the GSMI guys know conferences, the LocalGruv guys know Facebook promotion. I’m talking the type of stuff you only learn by trial and error. Things like A/B testing to know what images to use, if, when, and where to ever use Facebook advertising, and the little-known power of Facebook’s “promoted stories” feature. Because LocalGruv knows Facebook, you as the local winery in the San Francisco East Bay area, needn’t. Hook up with these guys and you get an offering something like the one below.  This is a total win for the small, local business that wants a daily deal focused more on their local community audience, and assembled by folks who sometimes already know their product first-hand. These companies now get the expertise and social media campaign management quality of an agency, for a fraction of the cost. And for the local business unsure about hosting a daily deal, the incentive of that same social media promotion gives them extra value to offset the costs of the daily deal promotion. LocalGruv is small itself, and now only serves the aforementioned San Francisco East Bay area, but look for this service model to grow, and the company’s offerings to expand. The value for businesses is there, and metrics are showing, it works.

How Strong is Your P@$$word? [Infographic] Posted: 05 Oct 2012 10:10 AM PDT (by Brian Ferrario) This week’s Infographic of the Week from SecurityCoverage details just how common the passwords we all use might be, and how easily hackers can get past them. Many people simply use their name, birthday, common words, or other easy to remember password combinations. And if you’re among the many people, this might just give you the data you need to update your passwords. Check it out below or click here to see it full size.

Klout Deserves Your Attention Posted: 05 Oct 2012 09:25 AM PDT Until this week, online influence rating service Klout failed to earn the respect of media influentials, which obviously is more than a little embarrassing. That has now changed. The Klout Controversy Klout measures online influence via such actions as comments, likes, and shares, depending upon the respective social media channel. You can learn more about how your Klout score is calculated here. One inherent challenge for Klout is that not all measured actions carry the same weight. For example, retweeting a well researched and written article is a much more valuable action than retweeting "I love my cat!" Klout recognizes this, and has made adjustments in their algorithm to accommodate higher quality actions – much as Google is doing since their Panda and Penguin updates. One of the means for accomplishing this is giving weight to Wikipedia pages. This makes perfect sense given the level of scrutiny and links associated with that source. So, what about the rest of us? While this is purely speculation, consider the fact that Google controls approximately 2/3 of search here in the United States (more in other parts of the globe) and that they are making Google+ the linchpin to other Google properties such as Places pages, in addition to links to other sources of your content on the web. If you have not already, you will be smart to invest more of your time into Google+ because it could arguably become the "common mans Wiki." Give the Web What it Wants Many of us have seen our Klout scores jump dramatically with the recent update, while others have risen just a few points. The reason is that just like Google, Klout now favors content creators. This is outstanding news for any business that has accumulated experience and a body of knowledge that they are actively sharing on the web. The web is driven by problems searching for answers. Give the web what it wants. If you have valid expertise and experience, that is your ticket to both favorable search rankings and a higher Klout score. Influence is Tangible Klout is also now incorporating offline influence into its program to better measure ones true influence. One way they are doing this is using your position title on LinkedIn. Thus, while having a perfect 100 score in the earlier Klout system, Justin Bieber now rightfully ranks lower than President Obama. Maybe there is a keyword or two you need to add to your LinkedIn profile. You may not have a robust online presence, but you still have influence where it matters most – in the real world. And in nearly every arena that influence is in some way moving online. It's inevitable. What this means for businesses is that Klout now deserves your attention. One of the more notable examples is that of a talented marketing executive who lost an opportunity because his Klout score was artificially low due only to his ignorance of Klout. As the acknowledged leader of the free world, President Obama clearly has clout, and nearly all of also do within our circles of influence – the communities we serve. It only makes sense to expand that influence by acknowledging a metric that is beginning to gain traction. Klout is not a perfect system – but it's getting better, and that's why you should take some time to learn more. It comes down to this. You may not believe in Klout, but if those who can hire you do, doesn't it deserve your attention? Do you think Klout is ready for prime time? Leave a comment below – and share this with your community.

3 Benefits of SEO Services for Small Businesses Posted: 05 Oct 2012 09:15 AM PDT Let's consider for one moment what it would be like if nobody could find your business. You have built an impressive store front, you have invested heavily in stock and nobody is walking through your door. Let's take it one step further, what if your phone is not even ringing? It's likely that it wouldn't be long before you went out of business. What would you do? This may be a little extreme but the point is this: you might have the best looking website on the planet but if nobody knows you are there then the chances of you earning a healthy profit from it, or even getting any leads, are very slim. In order to guarantee that your website gets visitors that lead in to sales then you need to position it in front of the relevant search traffic. So how do you do that? You can target a local audience You may have been in business for 10 years but you can't just rely on your regular customer base. Without fresh faces popping their head through the door you will not continue to grow and be around for another 10 years. Search engine optimisation allows you to specifically target your local community and make sure that when they need your services you are their first point of call. The chances are that very few people dig out the yellow pages or go through the local paper when they are looking for services and that is why you need to be positioned in the search engines to benefit. You can Attract Highly Qualified Visitors There are many online advertising methods that small businesses can use to drive traffic to a website however they are not all created equal. There has been much said about "click happy" people who click on pay per click or blog adverts just to see what is on the other side with no intent to go any further, purely because they want to see what is at the end of the trail. Sure, if you have a solid conversion optimisation strategy in place then you can increase the number of leads or sales. However the conversion number could still fall short of the number you could achieve via natural search engine optimisation. When a user sees a listing in the search engine results pages they automatically feel comfortable that the information presented will be relevant to their needs and therefore only click when they have a specific interest. You Can Increase Word of Mouth Marketing In order to benefit from high organic search listings your website needs to have social signals e.g. people need to be talking about, recommending and sharing information concerning your business. The more this happens the more the search engines believe your website is of high quality and will increase your position in the search rankings, resulting in a greater amount of traffic and sales. It doesn't matter how big or small your business is. What does matter is that you are properly represented to the online world through effective search engine optimisation.

Beginner’s Guide to SEO Marketing (Part 2/3) Posted: 05 Oct 2012 09:00 AM PDT This is part two of a three part blog.  In this portion I will be covering off-site SEO.  If you did not read the first one, I recommend that you check it out.  The past blog talks about how you can improve your on-site SEO.  On-site SEO is very important and a crucial part of improving your SEO.  However, if you are only interested in ways to improve your off-site SEO, than you are in the right place! For off-site SEO there is one main area you should be covering; Link Building Link Building is the most important way to improve your SEO.  It is the best way to rank higher on any search engine.  While on-site SEO is still very important, if Google were to only use on-site SEO than it would just be a battle of who can get the most keywords in their content.  Since this wouldn't be a very efficient way to find the best sites for the user, Google has to see which sites are the most trustworthy, the most reliable, and the most credible.  To do this, Google will look at your links from other sites and rate them.  You should strive to have either a lot of inbound links from many credible sites or links from a few very credible sites (It also doesn't hurt to have both). However, there is an etiquette that should be followed when building up your inbound links.  Here are the Dos and Don'ts of linking. DON'T get involved with SPAM links A lot of people fall into the pitfall of signing up for SPAM inbound links.  People will pay companies to give them a lot more links back to the site with the idea that the more links they have back to their site, the higher SEO they will receive.  This is COMPLETELY WRONG.  If you were to do this Google can tell!  Google will notice that the sources of those links are not credible and not trustworthy.  This will only hurt your SEO not help.  A good rule of thumb is to remember that Google is always one step ahead of the shortcuts people try to create. DO guest blogging on other sites Guest blogging is a great way to build links.  You can set up a mutually agreement between yourself and another site to share each other blogs.  It's a "people helping people" idea.  Both of your sites get an inbound link and both sites are improving their SEO, everyone wins.  However, the pitfalls of this concept are agreeing to have an outbound link to a poorly viewed site or making this deal with a direct competitor. DON'T submit your links to one large directory; DO submit your links to many web directories Using a directory can be great for link building, however, you won't get far if you only submit your link to one large directory.  There are thousands of directories that you should be submitting your links to.  The biggest advantages to this are the low cost, the ease, and the fact you don't have to do anything in return. DO Get involved in commenting on other blogs When you comment on other blogs and engage with peers in your field, you may find a great opportunity to drop a link in one of the comments.  Be careful though, don't start dropping your links in comments on as many blogs that you can.  The key here is to start a conversation, serve as an expert on the field, gain trust, and then drop a link.  If you don't do this there are very simple functions such as "delete comment" or "block user" that could affect you and your reputation negatively. See how well you are doing with link building by using our free grader! Photo by:www.ironmonk.net

3 Shocking Social Media… Ahem… Errors of Judgement Posted: 05 Oct 2012 08:55 AM PDT Your company has just dropped a huge clanger. Your logo's blasted across every news outlet and you're getting torn to shreds on twitter. That's when people always say the same thing. There's no such thing as bad publicity. That may have been true in the past. When getting your brand into the public eye was an expensive and complicated exercise. With the advent of social media, every brand uses their own online channel to access loyal customers and gain new ones. You can now create your own publicity, and make it all positive, so the old truism starts to lose its power. Social media has also created more opportunity for large community debate, and widespread criticism. Mistakes on social media tend to be picked up more quickly and attacked more ferociously than mainstream media gaffes. That should mean that brands, in total control of their own accounts, should be really careful about what they say. Which makes it all the more shocking when they're not. KitchenAid and Obama's Dead Grandma The inspiration for this list, and an absolutely shocking piece of bad taste tweeting. During this week's US Presidential debate @KitchenAidUSA, KitchenAid's official Twitter account tweeted a 'joke' about President Obama's dead grandmother. The 'joke' implied that the US President's grandmother had known his administration would be bad so she died just days before his election. Just take a moment to think about that. Let the disgusting sentiment just wash over you. The 'joke' was so juvenile, so insensitive; it's still hard to believe it actually happened. That a huge brand, with over 25,000 twitter followers, allowed it to happen during the most tweeted about event in the US is mind-boggling. KitchenAid deleted the tweet pretty quickly, but tweets don't just disappear when you delete them. There's always someone who can reproduce it. They have worked hard to limit the damage since, but they've already had a huge amount of negative press. All for a bad joke. About a dead woman. Progressive Insurance and Bad PR Bots Speaking of damage limitation, Progressive Insurance in the US found that managing bad PR through social media can be littered with pitfalls. The insurance company had received a lot of negative comments after a blog post by Comedian Matt Fisher. The post titled "My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer in Court", created a huge online response. The story is too long and complicated to detail here; this article covers it fairly well. Progressive's social media mistake came in their response to the negativity. When people vented their outrage at the post on Progressive's official Twitter account, they received a reply out lining the company's regret over the situation. The response was carefully written, clearly legally vetted and was sent as a response to every single tweet. Word for word each tweet received the same response. This attempt at PR management only served to create more outrage. The company was responding to accusations of insensitivity, with more insensitivity. As much as this is a lesson on how not to manage negative PR, it also shows that it's not just non-PR trained tweeters that make mistakes. When you market through social media, you do so on the basis that you're really in the conversation. You can't opt out of direct conversation when the topic gets difficult. Wilcoxson's Ice Cream The scary thing about this story is how innocuous it could have been. A Muslim customer contacted the Facebook page of Wilcoxson's Ice Cream, to ask what flavors of their ice cream contained gelatin. The customer was trying to obey religious beliefs and avoid eating pork gelatin, but wanted to find out which flavors they could still have. This was a loyal customer who, despite having found a reason to stop using the product, wanted to remain loyal. The response, a statement that they didn't deliver to Pakistan, caused much online outrage and accusations of racism towards the company. The owner has since claimed that he saw an icon that said the comment was from Pakistan and just responded without reading the whole comment. That reasoning might explain away the racism element, but it's still an ideal example of a social media error. Everything on social media is in the public eye. You can't afford to post anything without fully understanding the context. If you do, you run the risk of really negative PR. And like this company, losing your Facebook page. They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. They say that as long as you're in the public eye you can gain from it. But, considering how swift and passionate social media outrage can be, there's certainly such thing as bad social media publicity. Download 10 Reasons to Monitor Social Media and get that competitive edge.

Surprising Results on Social Sharing Techniques [Infographic] Posted: 05 Oct 2012 08:55 AM PDT Does punctuation really matter on social media? What about using numbers and total word count? Actually, yes. Content marketing company Compendium recently conducted a study involving social sharing statistics from more than 200 business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. They were looking to determine best practices for social sharing and discovered differences between what worked for B2B and B2C firms. The study looked at factors such as punctuation, word count, time of day, and day of the week of posting. Here are a few of the most interesting discoveries: Don’t use a question mark. This significantly reduces clickthrough on posts for consumers and businesses. Posts with question marks get between 25 and 52 percent fewer clicks than other posts. Keep it short and sweet. For all messages keep it below 25 words. Watch use of exclamation marks. They are effective on LinkedIn but not on Twitter. Include a hashtag (#) for B2B. These messages received 193% more clicks. Hashtags are not helpful for B2C. Numbers are effective for B2B tweets. They get 50% more clicks for B2B compared to only 3.5% for B2C. See the infographic below for all the details! What surprised you the most? What practices will you adopt/change based on this?

The Next Big Social Network Posted: 05 Oct 2012 08:39 AM PDT In my little corner of the world, we're waiting for the next big social network. And by "my little corner" I mean those of us who work in the areas of marketing, communications, and social media. It's what we do. We observe, we experiment, we speculate. When a new social network is announced, we check it out and weigh in on it's importance and probability of success (or inevitability of failure). We're constantly on the lookout for a potential "Facebook killer" or "game changer". We wonder which platforms will rise and which will fall. Will anyone ever topple Facebook? Will MySpace make a comeback? Is Twitter really relevant? This week's announcement that Facebook now boasts one-billion active users has us thinking about these things even more. But guess what: The general public doesn't care! Those who aren't marketers or digital communicators aren't sitting around mulling over these sorts of things. In fact, if a recent study from Insites Consulting is any indication, the general public is quite happy with the way things are now, and might even dread the "next big thing". One of the most important conclusions from Social Media around the World 2012, in my estimation, is this: The social media landscape is rather stable: the large sites are getting larger and the small ones are getting smaller. Consumers are only prepared to create new accounts for sites which offer unique functions (such as Pinterest and Instagram). Digging deeper, the study found that: Awareness of social networks is very high. Facebook is close to 100%, Twitter reaches 80%, and Google + is known by 70%. Additionally, More than 7 out of 10 Internet users are members of at least one social network. This implies that more than 1.5-billion people use social network sites. Clearly social media is mainstream, and remember, a billion of those have at least Facebook as one of their choices. But here is something from the study that is more telling: Most people want to keep their digital lives as it is. No need for something new, and no intention to quit. On average, people only join 1 or 2 networks. And yet here we are looking for the next big network, and countless others are trying to create the next big network. We are in a settling down period. People are happy with the status quo. Clearly, Facebook is king for the moment, and for better or worse, people like it, and use it. A lot. Twitter has high recognition, but rather low adoption. Same goes for Google +, but there are varying interpretations of that platforms level of success. And then there's LinkedIn for the professional crowd. Many who work in this space seem to forget the most important thing about social media, something I have to constantly hammer home to my clients and students: It's social. People aren't there for the marketing. They join social networks to be…social! Yeah, it's not rocket science. And we can only be social in so many places. People also tend to gravitate toward those things that are popular. This is why we have Top 40 radio, and why getting your book on the best seller list is the first step in keeping your book on that list. If it's popular, people will buy it. For all the complaining we do, most of those billion people really do like Facebook. They might not like everything about it, but there they are, day in and day out. And Twitter continues to see growth as well, albeit a bit more slowly. So at this point in time, I don't see Facebook, Twitter, or even LinkedIn going anywhere. They are so entrenched in our culture, that those trying to topple them certainly have their work cut out for them. But aside from being social, what are people looking for in social networks? I think there are a combination of things that draw people to these networks, and get them to stay: Functionality How easy is the site to use? If we're happy with what we have, anything new has to be fairly easy to learn. People don't want to have to work for it; they want a fast learning curve. Features You have to offer a variety of features that make the social aspect more enjoyable. And one feature that is a big issue for many is that of privacy. Social networks have to find ways to take user privacy seriously. Other features might include chat, games, sharing, and so on. Form Yes, looks matter. This is one of the things that killed MySpace in the first place. It's also what has some folks excited about the "new and improved" MySpace. But perhaps more important than any of these things is another factor: Uniqueness It's not enough to be social, with great features, functionality, and form. For every social network you've heard of, there are dozens more that come and go, trying to be the next Facebook or Twitter. But that's the problem. They aren't unique. They bring nothing significantly new to the table. Right now we have several major players. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are rather firmly entrenched in the social landscape. What makes them work is that they are unique; significantly different from one another. Yes, they might share some features, but at their core, they are different. Different features, different form, and different levels of functionality. In the end, if someone chooses to be on all three of those platforms, it can be done, and they work really well together as an integrated set. For the sake of argument, let's throw in Google +. In my mind, the jury is still out here for a variety of reasons, and while it has some great features (Google Hangouts), and has a different take on privacy (Circles), I think the platform still suffers from both external perception problems and an internal identity crisis. They really aren't sure what they are, and neither is much of the general public. Enter the newer, small social networks. What makes some rise to the top is that they are significantly different. Here I'm talking about platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and Foursquare. Each brings something new to the social landscape AND integrates well within the existing dominant platforms. In fact, the Insites report notes that awareness of Instagram and Pinterest is in the 25% range and growing. Furthermore, "users show a very high intention to use both sites more in the future." If the general public is happy with the one or two platforms they are already using, that makes the job of creating something new even harder. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think developers need to think like a Pinterest and create something new, rather than trying to be "the next ____________ (insert name of successful platform)." As for the new MySpace? Well, it sure is pretty. A far cry from the visual mess it had become when it was still king (yes, king's can be dethroned). But to me it seems like it relies too heavily on other platforms, particularly Facebook and Pinterest. If that's the case, what is it really bringing to the table? Also, I'm not saying that every social platform has to be huge. There is definitely a place for niche networks, if they are well thought out and well executed. Success can be measured in a lot of different ways. And the giants in this space also need to be careful not to rest on their laurels. They always need to be moving forward, adding functionality and features while improving their form. But more importantly, for the big boys and the new kids on the block, they all need to focus more on that most important of words: Social Like any business, these platforms are about the user. They need to focus on customer experience. The moment they forget, the reason they are there in the first place, is the moment they are setting themselves up for failure. For those of us who are marketers and communicators in the digital realm, we need to remember the same thing. It's about our customers. It doesn't matter how many old or new sites there are out there, or how big they are. The only sites that matter are the ones our customers are using. What are your thoughts on this? Any ideas on what the next big social network might be?

Visualization on Social Media for Social Good (Infographic) Posted: 05 Oct 2012 08:37 AM PDT Logan Harper, the community manager for UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Government's new online Masters in Public Administration program (MPA@UNC), reached out to me to post his new infographic on Social Media for Social Good. In it, he provides examples of successful nonprofit social media advocacy campaigns, as well as the elements of successful campaigns and emerging trends in charitable giving and volunteering. He wrote, and I agree: Social media—through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content—is a powerful and accessible tool. With these new media tools, governments, nonprofits, corporations, and individuals all have the ability to communicate their messages and participate in conversations with a global audience. Social media allows nonprofits and groups promoting social causes, even those with limited budgets, the opportunity to magnify their voices. In our hyper-connected world, individuals have the tools to effect change, raise millions of dollars, find volunteers, and make a global impact. In our new Social Media for Social Good infographic, we profile several successful grassroots and nonprofit campaigns, explain tactics that increase the impact of a message, and explore emerging trends in charitable giving and volunteering.  Great job Logan – thanks for sharing! The infographic is below. MPA@UNC: Online MPA If you would like me to share your infographic, please email me atjulia@jcsocialmarketing.com or write on my Facebook Wall. Thanks for reading!

How Content Influences Personalized Search – and SEO Rank Posted: 05 Oct 2012 08:30 AM PDT I don’t often blog about SEO because I’m not an expert, but I do understand the big picture. The fact is, if your content isn’t good, relevant and shared widely, your chances of showing up in a search are greatly diminished. Many of our clients still think that if you optimize your pages carefully with keywords, you have a good chance of ranking on page #1 of Google or Bing. Well, it’s true that if you don’t optimize your content for strategic keywords, you hurt your chances of being found via search. But there’s a lot more to the story these days. Here are some key roles that your content plays in determining your search visibility. Personalized Search According to Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, most Americans are against search engines collecting their browsing preferences and using them to personalize search engine results (SERPs) for privacy reasons. At the same time, most Americans are happy with the results they get from their searches and think that they have improved (become faster and more relevant) over time. In fact, over 90% say that they usually find what they are looking for these days, thanks in large part to personalized search. Most people don’t know how to turn off personalized search results in Google anyway, so it’s a bit of a moot point. To temporarily disable personalized search, click the globe icon in the upper right hand corner of Google SERPs. To turn off personalized results for all searches, you need to be logged into your Google+ account. Now go to the gear icon to the right of the globe icon and go to Search Settings, scroll down and select “Do not use personal results” in the Personal Results settings. How many people know how to do either one of those? Not many. So, for most of us, and to an ever-increasing degree, our search results will be influenced by our searches, browsing history and social media interactions. If you compare searches on keyword phrases that you commonly use, for example, “great places to eat in San Francisco” your search results will be dramatically different if you have managed to turn off personalized search. Otherwise page rank depends on your personal history and the people and place you engage with frequently online. What relevance does overall page rank have these days? Great question. If it’s different for nearly all Google and Bing users, it’s pretty difficult to interpret. Ideally, you want to be on the first SERP for keyword phrases that are highly relevant to your likely buyers. But how? What matters most is attracting buyers with high quality content that is optimized for relevant keyword phrases that they are likely to use in searching for your products and services. You must study your marketing automation analytics to find those phrases. Look at first touches by your customers. How did they find you via organic search, and what keywords do they routinely use to find your blogs and other content? Now you know what subject matter appeals to buyers and how to optimize it for search, but that’s not enough. You must also: Develop a unique “voice” and write consistently high quality content that solves problems often encountered by your likely buyers Publish your content in likely buyer “watering holes”, such as industry-specific blog syndication sites Share your content in relevant social networks, but do so in the context of helpful conversations and forums Be active in Google+ by engaging in relevant circles and sharing your content along with other relevant content from trusted authors Make sure that your content is easily shared via social sharing icons Personalize your blog posts and pages – add a human face to your ideas – the idea is to make it personal for your readers and followers so that they are more likely to return to your content often. Optimizing for Personal Search The trick here is simple. You need to get likely buyers to view your content frequently. Ideally, they would bookmark your website, subscribe to your blog, share your content in social media and convert on your landing pages frequently. Search engines will pick up on that and rank you higher on your buyers’ SERPs. The bottom line, if you are actively working content marketing, lead generation and lead nurturing for your company, you are 90% of the way there. Just make sure you think about targeting your content for your buyer’s personalized searches with likely topics and keywords, and the rest will take care of itself. The Content Marketing Manifesto eBook Learn how to implement the 10 C’s of content marketing, explore 37 months of real content marketing analytics and understand the landscape of content marketing for business.

What Works in Social Media for B2B vs. B2C? Posted: 05 Oct 2012 08:25 AM PDT It turns out that shorter messages work better when speaking to consumers, and including a question mark results in fewer clicks. (On LinkedIn and Twitter, at least.) The folks behind the social media marketing tool Compendium analyzed the social media statistics of more than 200 B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) companies to find out what works and what doesn't. Compendium shared the results in this infographic, broken down into B2B vs. B2C. Breaking it down in such a way is valuable, since there are significant differences in what works for one type of company vs. the other.

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