25 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community |
- Color Commentary and Play by Play: A Well-Rounded Approach to Facebook
- Why Your Marketing Team Should Focus on Web Optimization over SEO
- Are We Overvaluing Social Media As A Marketing Tool?
- How Google Search Works, As Explained By Google Itself
- 5 LinkedIn Marketing Features Your Social Strategy May Be Missing
- Confessions of a Silicon Valley CMO
- How Are the Top Hotel Brands Innovating in Social Media?
- Biz Stone On The Powerful Role Of Social Media In Business And Social Change
- New Top 3 Social Media Challenges
- Google Penguin Impact and Reviewing Your Website
- The Social Media KISS
- 5 Truths About Brands On Twitter
- Employers May Not Need Your Facebook Login After All
- The Rise and Growth of Visual Social Networking
- Does Size Really Matter When It Comes to Klout?
- Everything You Have Ever Wanted To Know About Twitter Search
- Easily Measure Your Pinterest Virility and Value To ROI
- Why Facebook Rocks for Developers, Marketers and Users
- Penguin Update Blues: Recover from Being Over Optimized (Personally)
- Facebook IPO: May 18, 2012
- Facebook’s FBML App for Fan Pages to End on June 6, 2012
- Your Quick Guide to Using Social Media in a Crisis
- What To Do When Affected by Google Penguin: Is Penguin Killing SEO and SEO Optimized Sites?
- Social Content Creation – Domino’s Social Media – Future of Publishing
- Pin It, To Win It
| Color Commentary and Play by Play: A Well-Rounded Approach to Facebook Posted: 02 May 2012 03:45 PM PDT I watch and listen to a lot of sports, particularly baseball. In fact, as I write this, I'm sitting and watching the Phillies play the Braves. If there's a Phillies' game on, there's also a good chance I'm watching or listening to the game. My love of baseball, combined with my love of radio (and radio history), often has me thinking as much about the announcers as about the game itself. Sadly, there are very few announcers left who I can really enjoy. I've spent some time studying the greats of the game. I had a chance to interview Red Barber. I spent time with everyone from Harry Kalas to Bob Costas, and a few I don't even want to mention. I had the great fortune to get to know Bob Wolff, who did the radio call of Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. And I've had the chance to listen to archival recordings of greats like Vin Scully, Ernie Harwell, Russ Hodges, and more. There's nothing better than listening to a baseball game with a great team of announcers in the booth. Traditionally, there are two announcers, one designated as the "Play-by-Play" announcer, and the other the "Color Commentator." In general, the play-by-play announcer is the one who calls the balls and strikes and all the action in the game. They tell you what's happening when it happens.This is a role that is much more important in radio than it is in television, since you can see what is happening on television. A great radio play-by-play guy truly paints a word picture as he describes what's happening in the ballpark. The color commentator, on the other hand, fills in the gaps. He's a storyteller. While the play-by-play announcer is describing the play, and rattling off numbers, the color commentator might be telling us a story about the player that adds a level of interest for us, and gives us a more well-rounded picture of the participants of the game. Both of these are integral to our listening experience, and when done well, we are educated and entertained. This is the approach we should be taking with our Facebook business pages. Too often I see businesses doing too much play-by-play of what's going on (merely talking about sales, specials, and constant mentions of how many fans they have. On the other hand, there are those businesses who go a little too far on the color commentary, offering up non-stop "inspirational" quotes and general mundanery (no, it's not a word, but I'm going to claim it as my own). A well-rounded approach mixes it up. Tell us what's going on in your business, while also telling us the stories. Be conversational. Tell us what's happening, while also telling us why we should care. It's good to have a consistent voice, but it's also helpful to have a team where the members can play off one another's strengths and deliver a steady stream of varied and interesting content. And this cuts across all social channels. Think about your audience and what will hold their attention and bring them back for more. Both the play-by-play and the color commentary are important. Just play-by-play is boring; "just the facts, Ma'am". But just color commentary, while interesting, leaves wondering what is going on. As you approach Facebook and other social channels, how are you allowing both of these voices to have their say?   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Why Your Marketing Team Should Focus on Web Optimization over SEO Posted: 02 May 2012 02:30 PM PDT Many organizations put significant time and money into their search optimization and neglect web optimization. Big mistake. While SEO can increase inbound traffic and search rankings, it's equally important to spend time optimizing the content, design and user experience of the website site. If you don't, your website could be a dead-end for would-be prospects. Your SEO initiative could drive more traffic to your site. But once visitors get there, they won't be able to find the information they're looking for. After a few seconds, they may leave your site and go hunting for what they need on your competitor's website. In working with our clients here at Crawford/Mikus Creative Marketing & Design, we have found that the best websites have a lot in common with large-scale retail or wholesale distribution centers. Step inside a distribution center. You'll find a sophisticated inbound and outbound hub for procuring, managing, distributing and tracking products across the entire supply chain—from the point of production to the point of sale. Unfortunately, too many websites are like outdated warehouses – with aging content and idle inventories. Does your website provide an effective distribution hub for inbound and outbound marketing, brand-based messages and valuable interactions with prospects and customers? To determine if your website is optimized, ask yourself these 5 questions:
If you answered "Yes" to more than one of the above questions, your website could be a candidate for a redesign and content update. With the right design, the right content and the right capabilities, your website can become a high-functioning distribution center for driving your integrated marketing and sales initiatives. What other tips can you offer on web optimization? Welcome your comments. Posted By Beth Crawford & Scott Mikus   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Are We Overvaluing Social Media As A Marketing Tool? Posted: 02 May 2012 02:27 PM PDT
This is just one of many studies you can uncover that shows the projected increase of digital media ad spending. As with all these studies, the growth curve is dramatic. You can't swing a dead cat in a room of CMO's or Marketing gurus without getting the exclamation that ALL marketing is inexorably moving in the direction of being purely digital. After all, the consumer now controls the conversation. We have precise metrics that show exactly what people are clicking on. It is now a given fact that people spend more time on Social Media than anywhere else on the web. Surely, the logic goes, this means the best and only place we should spend our marketing budgets is in digital. Except when this logic flies in the face of facts. Take, for example, the recent Nielsen figures showing on-line usage in the US. Astoundingly, over 212 MILLION Americans were on-line is March. That is one gigantic audience. Clearly, any company worth its salt needs to be doing its best to reach those people. Since most companies do not expand their marketing budgets this new spending stream needs to come from traditional media. Why advertise on television or radio when EVERYONE is on-line. EVERYONE is using their smart phone and EVERYONE has a tablet. (Of course, the reality of this is false but since EVERYONE who works at an advertising agency or in a corporate marketing department has all these digital toys, it must be true….right?) According to the most recent Nielsen figures, those 212 Million on-line Americans spend an average of an hour a day on-line. Further, they are on any given web page for about…a minute. Where they are likely looking for something besides an ad. Compare this to the time we spend with "traditional" (that is to say, "old") media. Americans spend – on average – 4 hours a day watching television (that's real TV, not streaming stuff) and about 2 hours a day listening to over-the-air radio. clearly, they have not gotten the message that these media are no longer cool. Assuming all these averages are accurate – and do not happen simultaneously – that means we consume about 8 hours of some level of electronic media a day. About 12.5% of our time is spent on-line. I'm no math wiz but that tells me any marketing budget should align relatively close to those numbers, doncha think? Now, this is where reality intrudes. Most small and medium businesses do not have the multi-million dollar marketing budgets that Coke or Ford has, so often television cannot be part of the equation. Heck, production costs alone preclude many from participating. Radio, while cost-effective – takes a true time commitment to be effective. This is what makes digital/social marketing so attractive. It is relatively cheap, the production costs are ridiculously low and you can actually track how many times your ad is shown. (Quick caveat – "shown" does not mean "seen". An on-line ad that has one million impressions could be one million people seeing it once or one person seeing it a million times.) And, this does not take into account the coolness factor of digital/social advertising. Pardon me for being simplistic, but, in order for people to buy from you or donate to you – they need to know who in the hell you are! They need to find out what you offer, where they can find you and why what you have means a ball of wax to them. Yes, you can pump up a Social Media presence, buy ads on Facebook, promote tweets, place display ads on various networks. You probably should be doing – or considering – all of these. However, if you think that just by doing this you'll achieve critical mass in their attention spans – you're nuts. Generally speaking, well thought out digital/social campaigns support, amplify and enhance traditional media marketing. Creating and maintaining a regular presence works – frequency sells, after all. Though there are many who will say the age of "intrusive" marketing is over – they are dead wrong. People are not placidly lying in wait to "interact" with your messages. You need a bull horn and a sledge-hammer to get their attention. I'm not saying you should ignore digital/Social Media marketing. Just put it into perspective. Make it a part of your marketing strategy. Understand the medium – as you would TV or radio – and maximize its effectiveness. Just don't get caught by the undertow of the buzz. Your thoughts?   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How Google Search Works, As Explained By Google Itself Posted: 02 May 2012 11:30 AM PDT  Image via CrunchBase Improving your company's search engine ranking is the crux to inbound marketing. If your page doesn't rank highly, your chance of getting found and therefore generating business is much lower. The first step towards improving your inbound results is understanding exactly how Google works. Google's head software engineer Matt Cutts gave a brief explanation of how Google used to work and how it currently works, including how it crawls the web, indexes pages, ranks them and handles search queries. You can watch the video in full below, where I've also summarized Cutts' main points. Google used to crawl the web for a month before taking an additional two weeks to push out the data. Now, it crawls a significant portion of web pages daily, to keep its search results up to date. "Instead of waiting for everything to finish, you're incrementally updating your index. And we've gotten even better over time. At this point, we can get very, very fresh. Anytime we see updates, we can usually find them very quickly," Cutts said. The next step is indexing pages by what words and phrases appear in them. "The whole process of doing the index is reversing so that instead of having the documents in word order, you have the words and they have it in document order. So it's these are all the document the word appears in." The toughest part of the process, and probably the most important for inbound marketers, is ranking the pages. Cutts explained that things like word proximity, page reputation and links to it are among the most important factors when ranking pages. "Once you've done what's called document selection, you try to figure out how should you rank those, and that's really tricky. We use PageRank as well as over 200 other factors in our rankings."   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 LinkedIn Marketing Features Your Social Strategy May Be Missing Posted: 02 May 2012 11:10 AM PDT When you think of generating leads through your social strategy, platforms like Facebook and Twitter probably come to mind first. However, in a study of 5,000 B2B and B2C companies, LinkedIn surpassed both Facebook and Twitter in terms of lead generation effectiveness, resulting in a surprising 2.74% conversion rate (as compared to Twitter at .69% and Facebook at .77%). So why are you still treating LinkedIn like the stepchild of your social strategy? Don't let LinkedIn's marketing potential pass you by. Reap the benefits and generate more leads by taking advantage of these five LinkedIn marketing tools: 1. Products & Services Tab You should have noticed by now, but your LinkedIn Company Page includes a tab whose sole purpose is to showcase your products and services. Look at the analytics for your Company Page – the amount of traffic to that tab may surprise you. So if your Products & Services section is still empty, you're leaving a lot of potential leads on the table. Take advantage of this tab to highlight your offerings, link to internal pages on your website and request recommendations/testimonials from viewers. 2. Products & Services – Target Specific Audiences Also within the Products & Services tab, you have the opportunity to develop multiple versions of this page to target specific audiences. Based on LinkedIn profile information, define a persona and create a variation of your Products & Services page that speaks to that specific audience. By displaying more relevant products, services and information based on audience, you'll increase the likelihood of a click-through to your website. 3. Status Updates Every marketer should be familiar with status updates, as they're also used to communicate via Twitter and Facebook. Use this LinkedIn marketing tool to post links leading back to your website. 4. Company Page Stats Another tab within your Company Page is Page Statistics which offers you (very limited) insight into who is visiting your page and what they're doing once they're on it. Regular data analysis will help you determine areas where you're thriving on LinkedIn as well as those areas in need of improvement. 5. LinkedIn Ads Just like search engine marketing, organic and paid efforts are more effective when used together. LinkedIn's self-service ads allow you to drive additional traffic to your site by using specific targeting options, such as geography, company, job title/function, seniority level and more. It's time for marketers to stop putting LinkedIn on the back burner – it might just prove to bring your business more successful leads and conversions than other platforms included within your social strategy.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Confessions of a Silicon Valley CMO Posted: 02 May 2012 11:01 AM PDT  When I joined Jive about 10 months ago, I had several interesting revelations. Having been in Silicon Valley for my entire career, I thought I was plugged in. I was at Intel and lent a hand to the creation of what is now Flash memory. As a member of the original Mac team at Apple, I learned about changing the world. I was CMO of one of the earliest tablet companies and most recently ran transformational technology startups as CEO. So I’d been around the block, as they say. But Jive was the biggest company I’d never heard of in the hottest market on earth. No awareness, but lots of blue-chip customers. It was weird.I learned that Jive’s customers were driving massive change in their organizations with the courage of early pioneers. They were bent on a mission to transform the way work gets done – and they were fervent in this objective. Fervent. Jive also had the most powerful technology, but the market was asking for something simpler and easier. Competitors seemed to think that if you gave away bite-sized social experiences, users would like them. But users found that those solutions wasted time instead of saving it. And we all need more time. Jive, on the other hand, was focused on delivering proven results for the whole company at once and built a franchise for 700 key customers as a result.I quickly became passionate about these areas of opportunity for Jive, and as a result was asked to lead a team of great colleagues from across the company to help me on this charge. We all took on night jobs (and in most cases day AND night jobs), so to speak, to transform much of what we do.Why am I so proud? Jive launched a major innovation initiative, not only centered on accelerating the pace of our technology leadership in the social business market, but also in the way that we expand the value we deliver to customers.Our launch has three major components:
For more information on this news, read more here: Jive On! But you don’t have to take our word for it. Check out this testimonial from HP’s Trisha Liu: Video Case Study: Learn the Story of HP’s Social Business Journey I AM proud, because with this launch, we now have a fast on-ramp to the power of the Jive platform, making it simple; we’ve extending the platform to any employee in a company who uses web apps, mobile, Office, or Outlook technology, making it pervasive; we’re making it available for free trial, allowing the power of our product speak for itself to teams of 25 and more; and we’re communicating all of this through a new brand emphasizing the ubiquity that Jive’s Social Business platform provides. These initiatives were the result of tremendous work by our engineering, data center, product management, professional services, sales, and marketing teams. While I’m the lucky one who’s writing the blog post, I do so acknowledging and thanking all of Jive in this tremendous effort. Now, I would like to hear from you. Please share your thoughts, ideas and questions in the comments below. What do you think of our new platform? How about Try Jive? How can Jive serve you better? What more can we do? Thanks again for driving the New Way to Business through Jive, and we look forward to continuing, together, to change the way work gets done.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How Are the Top Hotel Brands Innovating in Social Media? Posted: 02 May 2012 11:00 AM PDT A recent report has ranked the digital performance of 52 global hotel brands. The latest L2 Hotels Digital IQ Index rated brands according to the performance of their sites and use of digital marketing, mobile and social media. The top 20 brands:
How hotel brands are using social mediaKeeping things localThe study notes that 95% of the brands have both global and property Facebook pages, increasing from 73% in 2011. Twitter saw an increase from 56% to 70%. Taking a property-centric approach allows for a higher degree of relevant content to be shared and thus keep an engaged audience. An additional benefit of property-level presence comes in terms of immediate customer service and local expertise. One brand which has been innovative for adding value with local knowledge is the The Ritz-Carlton, who have taken advantage of Foursquare to share tips from the concierge staff at 75 properties. User reviewsOnly 17% of the indexed brands offer on-site ratings and reviews. The report suggests that these sites send 39% less traffic to online-travel-agents, indicating increased confidence from customers, and presumably a lower need to navigate away to other pages for research. Two noteworthy example of sites that feature reviews are Starwood and Four Seasons. Starwood have opted to create their own, independent reviews site, which requires a reservation code to ensure authenticity. By taking reviews in-house, the brand is able to monitor and respond to customer comments in a controlled environment. Four Seasons have taken a different approach. Nine of the indexed brand sites link to TripAdvisor, but the Four Seasons has gone beyond by integrating reviews directly on their property pages, allowing customers to see them at a glance and without having to navigate away from the Four Seasons site. Emerging social platformsAs for new social platforms, Google+ and Foursquare are the most popular, and offer clear value for SEO and local representation. The visually rich nature of travel content means that there is clear scope for further use of sites such as Pinterest and Tumblr. The Four Seasons and Hotel Indigo are noted as pioneering Pinterest brands. I would expect to see further use of Instagram, yet again the Four Seasons are leading the way with property-specific accounts. I expect to see more brands joining Instagram, especially following its acquisition by Facebook which demonstrates the importance of images in social media.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Biz Stone On The Powerful Role Of Social Media In Business And Social Change Posted: 02 May 2012 09:21 AM PDT Source: CXO Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking in New Orleans at the First Data conference. It was a fantastic event and the other speaker was Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, who said something that struck me deeply. He put a sentence up on screen, which said, "Change is not the triumph of technology, but the triumph of humanity." I completely agree, and while I have talked and written a lot about this through the We First lens, when it comes from someone like Biz who has shaped the social media world, it is that much more persuasive. Too often, companies make the mistake of seeing social media as an end in itself, when in fact it is really just another channel through which to emotionally connect with your customer. As Biz explained, the Arab Spring revolutions and the Occupy Wall Street movement are driven by human nature and emotion, and the technology simply provides the connective tissue to give people with shared values a voice. The same is true of your company and brand, and the benefits can be enormous. When you frame the role of social media in terms of humanity and the emotional connections that unite us, you can have a profound impact on your customers, employees and the world at large. With your customers, you can bring your corporate purpose to life in a way that makes your brand more meaningful to them, inspiring loyalty, goodwill and ultimately profits. You'll also motivate them to become partners in telling the brand story, co-creating the products and services that will drive your bottom line success. With employees there are just as many benefits when the role of social media is framed in terms of humanity rather than technology. When you bring your purpose to life inside a company, you'll connect with your employees on an emotional level. This will give you the ability to attract top talent, to maximize employee retention and productivity, and to inspire your employees to use their own social media channels to be ambassadors for the brand. Finally, by framing the role of social media in terms of humanity, you can impact the world at large. By taking actions to bring your company's purpose to life and demonstrating your commitment to your core values by supporting causes such as the environment, education or healthcare, you can not only shape the future of your company, but the future of the world at large. So this perspective on social media offers both professional and personal benefits. On a professional level, you will be able to build a community of brand ambassadors with your customers and employees and have a positive impact on the society and economy on which your company's success depends. On a personal level, you will find deep satisfaction that will inform your relationships at home and at work, allowing you to enjoy a better quality of life. Do you believe most brands do a good job of using social media to celebrate humanity, or do you think they still apply an old mindset that is only concerned with the bottom line?   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Top 3 Social Media Challenges Posted: 02 May 2012 08:50 AM PDT It's a new world, where technology is dynamic and information is only a click away. For businesses looking to connect with the new generation of potential consumers and the highly informed digital natives, having an online presence is not an option; it's an absolute necessity. Looking at the various social media sites out there, the top three social media sites where a business presence is a must are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Of course, other social sites as LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest offer valuable presence and varied options for the digital savvy businesses. There have been numerous posts written about challenges that businesses face when it comes to making social media work for them. Read this and this … oh and this too. This infographic documents the history of social media. It is quite obvious that social media has been around the block for a while now. In this post we will look at the NEW challenges that brands are facing (now that social media has become mainstream) and the solutions. Brand Jacking When I first read a tweet from @AlfredMutua on my timeline, I was marvelled that the good doctor was on Twitter. Going through his timeline I was in stitches due to the satirical and funny nature of his tweets.Take the example of the tweet below (which you can retweet, reply or follow from this post. Try it!). Does anybody know where the offices of Social Media are? — Alfred Mutua (@alfredmutua) April 20, 2012 It was only after reading the bio that I realised it was a parody account for the Gov't of Kenya spokesman. The fact that it's a parody handle is not immediately obvious and may lead to a certain amount of confusion among non-informed followers or would-be followers. Wikipedia defines brand jacking as an activity whereby someone acquires or otherwise assumes the online identity of another entity for the purposes of acquiring that person's or business's brand equity. In social media, this could simply mean online users hijacking a brand – could be a celebrity, business or government bodies – and pass it as the real thing for their own purpose. The not-so-bad news is that brand-jacking is not yet a big deal in Kenya among the business community (but it is rampant with our celebrities and media personalities); many brands are just discovering the power of social media. However, to avoid a brand-jacking scenario of your brand, it always helps to get an account – which distinguishes the real brand from the copy cats. It helps to be active, making your consumers aware of your online presence and guiding them to these accounts will help a business maintain an authentic, trustworthy social media presence. However, the online presence from the Kenyan business community is quite minimal. The dearth of this minimal online presence is due to another challenge; Resistance to change It's painfully obvious that many businesses are stuck in the past, clinging stubbornly to old methods of doing business. A consumer revolution is coming in Kenya, and social media will be the weapon of choice – Sunny Bindra Sunny Bindra writing in his post here cautions businesses on the consequences of ignoring the power of social media and urging them to join, not for fun, but as an extension of their customer services options. Safaricom and Zuku are examples of companies with a strong social media presence, even having Twitter accounts for their customer care (which is waaay faster in response and more efficient than calling). The converse to having too little online presence is having too much leading to; Hyper-connectivity The secret to personal touch in social media is sticking to one or two social sites which are manageable for the brand. You can determine the best social sites to reside on through testing, monitoring and analytics. Spreading oneself out too thin leads to a situation where the brand is on so many social media sites that they can't keep up with interactions thereby letting down their followers/potential customers with dormant accounts. Excelling in social media marketing and managing one's brand online effectively requires three things; time, personality and the concept of what you're stelling. Just ask @bobcollymore if you don't believe me. Psst… stelling is a word we have coined in-house when we are defining selling through story-telling! What are other challenges you have faced? Share with us.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google Penguin Impact and Reviewing Your Website Posted: 02 May 2012 08:25 AM PDT So there's been a lot of talk in the industry recently about the recent Panda Update and Google's new Algorithm change, Penguin. And having seen that this has been live since the 24th April now is a good time to review where you sit in the rankings and if there has been any impact to your rankings following this change. Having a look at your core keywords have you noticed any changes to your rankings? Are these changes large or small? Following the go live of both Panda 3.5 and Penguin there seem to be a large number of sites which have seen a couple of place changes for their keywords, both increases of a couple of places and drops of the same. However, some sites, although only a small amount, have seen some large drops in their rankings with many of their core keywords. So what are the sorts of things which we are noticing that the Penguin update is frowning upon and what things are we finding are working? As we know Panda is about quality but Penguin is more about stamping out of manipulative over optimisation of sites. As mentioned previously there are some things which are clearly against the Google Website Guidelines and these seem to be some of the things which Penguin is cracking down on. This is great as it means Google themselves are using the guidelines as a meassure (and so these mean something for webmasters), but I do wonder why they've not done this before as these guidelines have been around for ages! Here is a sample of the things which we've noticed that might be causing issues for your site if you've been hit by Penguin. Hidden text An example of hidden text is having white text on a white background. This sounds really old school but we've seen sites with this on recently. This is frowned upon because it means you are showing things to Google to get them to rank you which your visitors can't see. Remember; your website is for your visitors and not for Google as your visitors are the one's who spend money. Cloaking or Sneaky Redirects This happens when you have content in your code which is not presented to a browser. This can be done by IP serving content specifically to Google. Keyword Stuffing This is where you've used your keywords too many times on a page. Content should read naturally and not have the feeling that keywords have been shoe-horned into the page to artificially manufacturer relevancy or even links. They way to review this is to make sure that content reads well out loud and doesn't sound artificial. The other thing to do is to consider if a link in your content is actually a link that someone would follow. If you just link your keyword and main service pages changes are people won't follow it. However, linking to a related blog which you mention in your content or to your contact form ("if you want more information about this Contact us now") is a good idea as these links are things people are likely to use. Keyword stuffing can also be seen as having a large footer at the bottom of pages as these can also be seen as false methods of promoting your content. Now is also a good time to review your on page optimisation. Keyword Spam is also something which can be seen in over manipulated Title Tags (with the same keyword in multiple times). Your meta descriptions can also have this over use of keywords so review these too. Remember your meta descriptions are seen by potential customers in the SERPs and so making sure that these are well written and compelling is important. Some time ago Google also announced that they are no longer using the Keywords Meta tag to define what pages are about and now that Penguin is live this could also be seen as something which stuffs keywords onto a page to influence the rankings. Look at your keywords tag and consider what message this is sending, this could be perceived as a list of keywords and what's more a list of very similar keywords… Personally I'd be removing these from your site now. Spun content is also an issue as it is something which can be seen as low quality and is somerthing which Panda picked up on. However, with Penguin now live, this is also something which could be considered spam. Make sure that all of your content is useful for visitors and delivers something unique to their experience, rather than having multiple pages which are very similar and are designed to make a keyword rank and create links to another page or series of pages. Back links This becomes an issues if your back link profile contains links from link schemes, blog networks or site wide links from other sites. Paying more attention to your back links is important as Google have also been emailing people about "unnatural" links as Stu mentioned in his blog last week. Keep an eye on your back link profile and check Google Webmaster Tools to make sure that you have not received a message from them about these links. Now, there has been a lot of talk about sites which should have been hit by Penguin and weren't, including one site which Matt Cutts used as an example of web spam which doesn't appear to have been penalised. There are also sites out there who aren't doing things wrong but have been hit and found their rankings have gone. So, if you feel that your site has been penalised unfairly or if you have corrected the issues you think were a problem then Google has a form to provide feedback with which can be found here. One note on this though is that the Penguin update is an algorithm change so it's an automated process rather than something which has been manually reviewed so be aware that you might not see the results from this that you would like. My key tip post the launch of Google's Penguin update is to make sure that you are reviewing how you are presenting information on your website including the optimisation and to make sure you aren't link building using any techniques which Google frowns upon. I'm quite sure that like Panda, the Penguin update is going to be a regularly applied set of rules that Google will refine and update on regular intervals so watch this space for the next Penguin update.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 02 May 2012 08:20 AM PDT No, this isn't a post about some new romantic movie that involves two Twitter accounts that fall madly in love. Actually, this post is about what the acronym "K.I.S.S." and what it means when it comes to your social media efforts: Keep It Simple Stupid. For years I have seen companies stress about their social media or marketing strategies. Endlessly trying to connect the dots between resources and budgets, goals and objectives and, finally, measurement. What I've also learned over the years is that the best avenue for social media is simplicity. Your customers aren't complex. They have simple needs and wants from you. So, your strategy should reflect that notion. None of what I'm about to say is ground breaking. I'll be the first to admit that. However, it's surprising how often people forget as they get caught up in the buzz of super successful viral campaigns portrayed by the media. So, with that said, here's my suggestion for figuring out how to keep it simple (stupid):
Like I said, not ground breaking, but definitely a few things to keep in mind when thinking about your social media strategy and keeping it simple. If you have any other pointers that are good reminders, feel free to drop them in the comments section.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 Truths About Brands On Twitter Posted: 02 May 2012 08:10 AM PDT To see how businesses are evolving in their use of social media, we analysed the Twitter presence of 258 brands and compared it to this time last year. In this post we run through the key findings but you can read the full report here. The brands were selected manually by taking a cross-section of major sectors (retail, travel, electronics etc) and picking a handful of the top brands operating in that sector. 1. More brands are on Twitter in 2012 than were in 2011.In 2011, 84% of brands monitored were active on Twitter. In 2012, this number has increased to 91%. 2011 was the year that saw Twitter become genuinely mainstream. It was responsible for breaking several monumental news stories, saw extensive coverage on global media and tweets per second records were broken again and again as the world provided commentary on events such as the Royal Wedding and the announcement of Beyonce's pregnancy. For many brands still without a Twitter presence, this dominance in the media has clearly persuaded them to start taking the social network more seriously. 2. Some of the biggest brands are still not using Twitter.Apple, 3 Mobile and Primark are among them. Despite its ubiquity, certain brands are staying away. While Apple have accounts to promote certain products and services (@appstore and @itunesmusic), they have no official brand account, nor do they use any account to engage with customers. Some commenters have suggested Apple should invest heavily in, or even buy out, Twitter. 3 Mobile and Primark steer clear from the network altogether – is it that they fear it will do them more harm than good or simply cause a massive strain on their customer service efforts? Either way, in today's social world of communications, brands that shy away from opening up will struggle to build trust and loyalty from their customers. 3. There remains a slant towards broadcast rather than engagement.While 75% of brands used Twitter for both broadcast and engagement, 13% solely broadcasted with only 3% solely engaging. Businesses have been trying to incorporate social media into their communication strategies for several years now, but there is still much discussion about brands not "getting it". Whilst strategists and thought-leaders have done a lot to encourage businesses to think about social media as a new way to interact with their audience and not simply another marketing channel from which to broadcast, our analysis shows there is still the tendency to use Twitter as just that. 4. More brands are using multiple accounts.The proportion of brands using more than one account has increased five-fold on last year, with over 40 brands having 3 or more accounts. It's become apparent to many brands that using the same Twitter account for promotional messaging and for customer service can prove problematic. Savvy businesses are creating separate accounts to achieve separate objectives. There is the brand awareness and community building aspect of Twitter which requires a certain approach, and then there is the increasing significance of handling the many customer issues posted through Twitter which demands a very different tact. Trying to promote your products and services and deal with customer problems on the same page is, unsurprisingly, not something brands have found easy. 5. Focus has turned to quality not quantity. 50% of brands tweeted fewer than 19 times a day in 2011. In 2012, 50% tweet fewer than 7 times.
Is this because, although businesses feel they should be on Twitter, they have been unable to prove its worth after signing up and have all but abandoned the channel? This seems at odds with the success so many brands have enjoyed through Twitter and the percentage of brands with active accounts is still higher now than a year ago – they simply tweet less often. So, perhaps more likely is that companies have evolved in their use of Twitter including greater focus on: a) The quality of broadcast messages, rather than simply quantity. b) Replying to existent customer issues. Summary It's evident that brands have progressed significantly in their use of Twitter in the past year. We can make some predictions about the next 12 months based on the trend data, but what do you think will happen?
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| Employers May Not Need Your Facebook Login After All Posted: 02 May 2012 08:05 AM PDT When news broke of some employers asking current and potential employees for their Facebook logins, many reacted intensely to what was widely perceived as a gross privacy intrusion. But the problem with social media is that by its nature, it's not meant to be a private communication medium. Even though Facebook offers a multitude of privacy settings, all it takes is for one friend to screen capture or share something that you shared for it to be made public, as The Christian Science Monitor points out. Some employers, the Monitor reports, are going the simple route, by just friending their employees to gain access to their page: Human resources departments will simply switch to sending "friend requests" to applicants and presenting this view of the individual during the interview process, says Charles Palmer, executive director of the Center for Advanced Entertainment & Learning Technologies at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania. "It's a little less overt and completely legal," he says via e-mail, adding that he expects "to see more investment into 'social forensics' to help weed out the applicant pool." The main thing for potential – and current – employees to remember is that any information that can be accessed on a computer is potentially going to be used in a hiring process, says Deborah Sweeney, CEO of MyCorporation.com. Most people with time and the right knowledge and technology "can access information that's been posted online, even if it's been posted to a social media profile that's been made private," she says via e-mail. Both employees and employers need to realize that anything they put online, could end up being public, she adds. If you act like everything you do and say on social media is being broadcast on national television, then you should be fine. This might dissuade some from using social media all together, but it's important to know what the consequences might be of putting out potentially compromising information about yourself on the web.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Rise and Growth of Visual Social Networking Posted: 02 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT I would like to start by quoting a popular Tweet by @instagram (not associated with the actual product) that has been retweeted over 2,100 times since it was first published on April 16: "Myspace Died, Facebook Is In Critical Condition, Twitter Is In The Waiting Room Chillin' & #Instagram Is Being Born!!!" Well, this is obviously not true, especially since Facebook has already bought Instagram. However, the change of perception is noteworthy. The last couple of years have been paving the way for new "image or visual-based social networking". The signs for this are all around us and we hope you haven't missed them. However for those still catching up, read on. A quick run through of important factors that point to rise of visual social network: - Photo sharing, commenting on pictures have been popular features on Facebook since the time the networking site came into existence. A general scan of statistics shows that over 250 million pictures are daily shared on Facebook. Now, keeping in mind the somewhat drastic rise, a few questions come to mind. Is this a fad? What is the future of image-based networking? While most experts in digital and the social media sphere are raving about timeline and social networks such as Pinterest, there are also sources that have shown some amount of distrust. Here is why I believe this emerging trend is not a fad.
My examples/arguments are mostly written with Pinterest in mind, as we are yet to see what Facebook intends to do with Instagram. The initial growth might subside or slow down, but the visual social networking is here to stay.So, according to you will this trend continue? We would like to hear your opinion about it.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Does Size Really Matter When It Comes to Klout? Posted: 02 May 2012 07:58 AM PDT I remember the moment I learned about Klout. My good friend Jenn Dove and I were sitting at our desks at work and she told me that I had a high score. To be honest, I didn't even know what the coveted word "klout" meant. All in all, I was happy to hear that I had high score. That meant I was important. My life had meaning. Rainbows appeared and I asked myself what it all meant. I kept track of my Klout score for awhile and noticed what affected my score. It was a pretty logical process. When I tweeted and engaged more, my score rose. When I fell off the radar, my score did likewise. What is klout? Well here is the official definition right from the source: The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:
Klout provides users with social media analytics to measure a user's influence across social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more. They also analyze and measure content creation, user engagement and how large your network is. Do you know that The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas is known to give you an instant upgrade if you have a high enough score? You might even jump ahead in a call cue if you're waiting for an agent to speak with. If you use Twitter, you instantly have Klout unless you opt out. To get the most relevant score you should connect all of your social media accounts. How can you improve your Klout score? Build your network, create content, engage with your network and be consistant. Pretty simple stuff. Does it really matter? Most people will tell you no. I asked Justin about Klout and he didn't even know his own score (it was 58 the last time I checked which makes him part of the Twitter Elite in my books). Since I think Justin is an expert at pretty much everything digital marketing related I don't think you need to worry much about it either. I like checking out a person's Klout score when they claim to be an expert or guru online. Since Klout measures a person's influence in certain topics, you can do your creeper background work pretty efficiently. You can also see what topics Klout thinks you're influential in. They aren't always on par as it classified my dear friend Gini as an expert in "army" and "drugs" which couldn't be further from the truth! Here's what I'd like to know from you. Do you check your Klout score often? Do you visit the Klout website for anything else like giving other people Klout points, or checking out scores? Inquiring minds want to know!   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Everything You Have Ever Wanted To Know About Twitter Search Posted: 02 May 2012 07:55 AM PDT Twitter search is one of the most under-used search tools around. Yet, it’s a great tool that you can find very useful for numerous purposes including:
Here are 5 ways you can use Twitter search for your business: Twitter Search Tip #1 – Searching For Brand MarketingOne of the top reasons you are on Twitter is probably to monitor your brand visibility. Twitter has given companies the ability to look at what people are saying about them. Which means keeping in communication with their audience while potentially fixing any problems they encounter early on. Here are a few great search tricks to find your brand being discussed on Twitter:
The easiest way is to create a search feed, based on an RSS. Now, because Twitter uses a live algorithm for results, they have disabled the feed for their search page. But just putting in http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=(YourSearchTerm) will create an updating list for you. If, for whatever reason, that doesn’t work you can use an application like Feed43. This converts any webpage to an RSS for free. Twitter Search Tip #2 – Searching for Link BuildingTwitter is pretty much made for sharing links. With their URL shortening and the character limit, it is only natural that people would regular share links to third party sites. Which is something you can really take advantage of, building good, solid links that you would normally rely on from blogs and affiliate sites. There are many tools to do this, including those that work as a kind of database that you can search for relevant users to make connections. But two of the best are:
Twitter Search Tip #3 – ArchivingArchiving posts is a convenient way of keeping track of what people are saying to you, and allowing you to search posts well after Twitter has stopped providing access to them. Because there are constant updates on the site, Twitter only allows posts to be searched for a month or two. A great way to do this is through Google Docs. Just download this convenient spreadsheet by Martin Hawksey. You copy it to Google Docs and you should see two menus added into the sidebar, which include Tags and Tags – Advanced. This means you have correctly installed the spreadsheet into Google’s program. Go to Script Manager > Setup and run the script. This will authorize the copy and allow you to edit it. Next, hit Settings > Tags > Run Now. From here is will provide 1500 recent results, which you can keep or clean up to your specifications. If you run it regularly, you will always be able to keep a post archive. Twitter Search Tip #4 – Building Links With TwitterUnlike searching for link building, it is important to also build links with Twitter in the more traditional way. A good way to do this is by creating a network of contacts with relevant and helpful Twitter users. If you can establish a mutually beneficial set of relationships, you will have immediate access to strong links. Some ways to do this are:
Twitter Search Tip #5 – Creating a Social Media DashboardFinally, we have the easiest way to handle all of your Twitter searches and accounts. That is through a social media dashboard, which will give you complete access with a single tool. There are several, but usually I recommend three different programs: Cyfe is the most flexible solution because it lets you create a separate dashboard for all your brand mentions (this means you can create one to combine several search results from Twitter, feed any RSS in it, then include your social account tracking, etc). It supports a wide range of social media sites including Twitter, Twitter search, Youtube, Facebook. Besides, like I said, you can import any RSS feed in it which makes it a very flexible and feature-rich solution: Conclusion Easier than you thought? Thanks to the wide popularity of Twitter as a marketing tool, so many ways have been created to provide you with a simple way of utilizing the site for such ventures that it is impossible not to get hooked. Just follow the five tips above, and you will be good to go.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Easily Measure Your Pinterest Virility and Value To ROI Posted: 02 May 2012 07:45 AM PDT Delving Deep Into Pinterest Asset Value With PinPuffWith the raging interest in Pinterest comes the question of it's business value… While I have no clue where they source the pricing data from, PinPuff is a very unique way to look at voth the worth of your pins and the amount of reach you are achieving. PinPuff.com is currently free and dead simple to use. Simply visit the site and enter your email address and your pinterest username… and out comes your score! Not bad for someone that is at this time not yet using the platform aggressively…. (It has a bad habit of showing off my lack of interest and taste in visual design… unless you count cute LOL cats and good food!) Clicking the here link opens the single page report: Now, perhaps the truly neat thing is the ability to spy on the competition! You will notice that your profile is on a URL like this: Now, simply replace my ID with the Pinterest user ID of the person you want to check out… and voila! You have their details at your fingertips! (Presumably, this only works for Public non-private Pinterest accounts.) This is a nice little tool if for no other reason than that it brings your site and board basic metrics into one view for noting in your quarterly business report/eval. Enjoy!   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Why Facebook Rocks for Developers, Marketers and Users Posted: 02 May 2012 07:45 AM PDT
DEVELOPERS: PLEASE BRING US YOUR APPS As the world goes mobile, Facebook has figured out a way to cater to the app developer community at just the right time. Here's an excerpt from their developers guide: "Over 425 million users access Facebook from a mobile device every month. Facebook Platform lets you bring these users and their friends to your mobile apps, creating a more engaging and personalized experience for your users." Facebook makes it easy for users to share a developer's app with their friends using Requests, News Feed, and Open Graph. They've created a cross-platform interface (Javascript SDK) for apps to work across multiple mobile devices. Finally, Facebook Credits allows developers to accept payments for digital goods or services within the developer's app. In other words, Facebook is catering to the needs of an app developer, covering promotion, distribution, and payment. For those who need more convincing, here are some recent stats from Facebook's developers blog:
Let's not forget that Instagram is an app too, just one that Zuck wanted all to himself. Chris Taylor wrote a great post in Mashable outlining Instagram's phenomenal growth. The photo-sharing app now has more than 50 million users, adding approximately 5 million users PER WEEK. Granted, the app's recent release on the Android platform has helped contribute to growth, but it is tops in the iOS app store as well. As Taylor notes, maybe that $1 billion it cost Facebook to buy Instagram was a bargain after all. MARKETERS: PLEASE GIVE US YOUR DOLLARS Like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter, Facebook has been aggregating the profile information of its now roughly 900 million-strong user base for years, and it's able to use much of this information to provide marketers laser-focused ad targeting. Location, age, gender, precise interests, Facebook connections, sexual orientation, relationship status, languages, education and specific workplaces are some of the fields on offer for keen marketers. Another way the tech giant is trying to involve the marketing community is by offering sponsored stories, giving brands an opportunity to create stories that show up in a news feed of fans and their friends. Attempting to court big advertisers, Facebook started Reach Generator, a premium advertising solution for large clients seeking to reach a larger percentage of fans through sponsored ads. In short, Facebook wants to keep marketers happy: last quarter alone, Zuck and crew brought in a cool 1 billion in ad revenue. Unfortunately, (and ironically) as Paul Sloan points out in a recent post on CNet, Facebook is having trouble keeping up with advertiser demand. No shocker there, given their massive growth coupled with the virtual gold mine of user data they are sitting on. USERS: PLEASE DONATE YOUR ORGANS I won't bother insulting your intelligence with an in-depth analysis of why Facebook appeals to users; if you have a heartbeat (and I sincerely hope you do) you've already heard enough about that. Instead, I'll leave you with a visceral example of Facebook's intimate relationship with its user base. The same day Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg made the announcement that users can add if they are organ donors to their timelines, the Donate Life California registry had an 800 percent increase in its organ donor registrations. Social engineering at its finest (maybe we should change the old children's game "Simon Says" to "Mark Mutters"… just a thought). For all of the snarky criticism of Facebook, they've largely gotten it right. In a world that is going social mobile at breakneck speed, they've figured out how to parlay their massive social network in a way that appeals to both mobile app developers and advertisers. Moreover, by doing so they're able to offer an endless stream of new content to feed and grow their massive user base, which in turn gives them more data to leverage for greater ad revenue. Genius, plain and simple. Which brings us to Facebook's pending IPO roadshow, which begins Monday, May 7th. IPO roadshows ( in which company management presents its strategy to prospective investors) typically last one to two weeks, after which (sometimes during which) the stock begins trading.¹ Facebook is set to raise at least $5 billion in what will likely be the largest Silicon Valley IPO ever. What are they going to do with all of that cash? As Scott Sweet of research firm IOP Boutique recently noted, “I have not seen as broad-based interest in an IPO since Google. Investor demand is immense. I expect a roadshow that will rival all roadshows where investors will be turned away at the door.”¹ However expensive Facebook's IPO share price, I have a feeling that, like Instagram, it may prove to be a bargain after all. ¹ Reuters, “Update 1-Facebook’s IPO show to hit the road May 7-source“ Image courtesy of Kamukamo.com   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Penguin Update Blues: Recover from Being Over Optimized (Personally) Posted: 02 May 2012 07:40 AM PDT Let me start this post by saying that it has nothing to do with your website being over optimized or how you can recover from Google's newest Penguin (webspam / over optimization) algorithm update. If that's what you are here for, and you most likely are, go check out Danny Sullivan's post on Search Engine Land: Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice. For everyone else still reading, do Google's updates and the fast paced nature of digital marketing have you feeling over optimized? This happens to me from time to time and I'm sure it happens to all of you. It's not uncommon to feel overwhelmed. Why does it happen? It happens because you care about your clients. It happens because you are always trying to stay one step ahead and it happens because you are probably good at what you do. In one way or another, you have probably heard of a man named Cal Ripken Jr. (disclaimer: I am an Orioles fan). Cal Ripken Jr., now a hall of famer, is one of, if not the greatest shortstop to ever play the game of baseball. Ripken played 2,632 straight games spanning over 17 Major League Baseball seasons. Not one game missed. Would he have reached these milestones without constantly pushing himself? Probably not. My point here is that dedication, drive and sacrifice pays off. It doesn't matter whether you're a professional athlete or a business professional, if you aren't dedicated, constantly pushing yourself and willing to sacrifice, you better be willing to just blend in. With dedication comes stress, mental wear and that over optimization feeling. To be considered a great SEO (or anything for that matter), you have to produce. You have to show results. You have to walk the walk. I have been doing SEO for about 6 years now and have personally worked on a countless number of websites in almost any industry imaginable. I love doing what I do. I can also admit that given my love and passion for the industry, I have been one to wear down mentally. To me, SEO isn't a 9 – 5, it's much more than that. Now before you tell me to get a life outside of work, understand that without this attitude (dedication, drive and sacrifice), I would be selling myself short. But why stay so dedicated if it wears you down and causes you stress? Simple answer – it's life. My co-worker Peter Baio said it best – "we do this now so we don't have to when we're 50" (I don't know who he's fooling thinking about retiring at 50 though). It's how you deal with and overcome this mental wear and stress that defines you as a person and a professional. If Cal Ripken Jr. were to cave in to his mental and physical wear and throw in the towel at any point during his career, you can bet that he would constantly look back and think about what he could have achieved. On a side note, I do find time to enjoy the finer things in life that do not involve SEO which brings me to my point – how can you recover from that over optimization feeling? For many, myself included, it's not easy to just "put down" something you are passionate about. SEOs don't have an offseason or spring training; we are in regular season mode 365 days a year. Similar to how you budget time and resources with SEO clients, try to do this with your personal life. When you are feeling mentally fatigued, turn to something positive that you know will relieve tension and get your mind off of things. For me, I stay active with team sports (bar leagues of course) throughout the year. During my SEO career, not once have I thought about an algorithm update, clients' traffic, Google, keywords, conversions, reports, meetings, etc. (you get the point) while on the field or court. Find that something that completely takes your mind off of things and helps you relax. Find that balance. Hard work does pay off. Remember, in the end, you are doing everything for a reason. Take it from Cal Ripken Jr. and all of the successful SEOs, business professionals and entrepreneurs, hard work does pay off. When you are feeling like you can't take another report or conduct any more research, sit back and think about why you are doing it and then look for that something that will help you, as my man Martin Lawrence says, woosah (sports, traveling, drinking a beer or 5, etc.).   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 02 May 2012 07:37 AM PDT Facebook is said to be in the late stages of planning its IPO roadshow, which signals that the IPO itself is right around the corner. Are you ready for the Facebook IPO? Here's what you need to know: 1. Facebook is looking to kick off its IPO roadshow on Monday, according to the WSJ. 2. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, is expected to 'make some appearance on the roadshow,' the WSJ reports, but he won't be at all the meetings. Look for Sheryl Sandberg, COO, and David Ebersman, CFO, to do the heavy lifting. 3. Rumor has it the Facebook IPO is going to happen on May 18, 2012. Click here for FREE email alerts from Inside IPO >> Source: WSJ   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook’s FBML App for Fan Pages to End on June 6, 2012 Posted: 02 May 2012 07:35 AM PDT  Facebook removes all FBML tabs June 6, 2012 If you are still using Facebook’s old FBML tabs for your Facebook Business Page, now is the time to make the change! The final official end date when all FBML tabs will cease to work and will be removed from Facebook by Facebook is set for June 6, 2012.In September 2011, Facebook announced the end of FBML with a tiered “retirement” plan. Users have not been able to add FBML apps since last year and Facebook stopped support and bug fix monitoring for FBML on January 1, 2012. Now the last phase, removal, is slated for June 6, 2012. Those still using FBML apps on their Facebook Fan Pages should find a replacement that is a i-frame app solution. One example is a tool like TabSite. Below is a current status posting in the Facebook Developer area regarding the end of FBML. The time has come for those last holdouts still using a FBML tab on their Facebook Page to fully transition to iFrame tabs and depart from FBML coding completely. Fan Page Admins can create i-Frame apps from scratch if desired. This does require some basic knowledge of coding, or Facebook Page Admins can use a third party i-frame platform that solution where coding knowledge is not needed. If Page Admins have tabs on their Facebook business Page with the logo icon shown below, this indicates an FBML app, and Admins will want to make a change! History and Information for Fan Page Admins on FBML3 Summary Points: 1. What is FBML and who should care? The answer is that Page Admins do not need to care unless they were using FBML on their Facebook Fan Pages. FBML FBML is Facebook's original framework for serving custom content on fan page tabs. This content is served by Facebook, which, in short, means the user's browser never hits the app developer's server directly. Instead, Facebook requests the content from the app developer's server, parses and filters it, and sends it to the browser for display. The result was content served by Facebook on custom tabs. Facebook’s Static FBML App Again, FBML tabs will NO LONGER WORK on Facebook Pages beginning June 1, 2012. 2. What is Facebook’s preferred method for adding custom tabs to Fan Pages? iFrame Apps iFrame Apps were launched in March of 2011 and are the standard set by Facebook for Page tabs. 3. What should non-coders do for creating custom Facebook Page tabs? There are currently a number of leading Facebook Page Tab Builder platforms that allow Page Admins to build sophisticated tabs without knowing coding. As noted, TabSite.com is one example. Many of these 3rd party platforms offer robust capabilities including ability for non-coders to do the following:
and much more! Again, June 1, 2012, FBML ceases to work and FBML tabs will be removed by Facebook. Take time to evaluate your current Facebook Page today!   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Your Quick Guide to Using Social Media in a Crisis Posted: 02 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT
"When faced with a social media crisis, you should respond through your social media channels." Would you say: "duh!!!" with enthusiasm? I sure hope so! Ok, kidding aside, it's important to fight social media fire with social media water, and this rings true down to the very core of social media and the mindset it requires to excel in all aspects of it. The following are the different platforms that exist and how you can use each one to respond to, and get your message out in a social media crisis. * Remember that the first and most important platform to use within a social media crisis is the one that the attack initially broke out on. The different social media channels and how to use them during a social media crisis
Google+
YouTube
Blog
Things to remember no matter what social media platform you use during a crisis
What would you add to this Quick Guide? Share your comments in the comments section below!   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| What To Do When Affected by Google Penguin: Is Penguin Killing SEO and SEO Optimized Sites? Posted: 02 May 2012 06:20 AM PDT I've seen two related questions on a SEO yahoo group that I would like to make a few observations on… Regarding "I read somewhere that Google is focusing on over optimized pages (sites) Has anyone heard anything similar to this?" Why should Google do so? They created the rules for GOOD optimization (meta tags, and other indications like H1, etc), although those are of less value lately . Any over optimized pages (kw density, kw stuffing, etc…) should have been already been hit before. What Google has always wanted to do is present relevant content, and this does not mean that you should be a SEO expert; reason why first external (quality) links and now social signals are weighting stronger and stronger. With Panda and Penguin Google is valuing more GOOD and unique content again. Regarding "Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to site name", I have heard of a few horror stories when that dreaded day came across and over 700,000 sites got a message from Google in there account "Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to site name" If this was true, then I could beat all my competition by creating BAD links to them. Rest assured that Google doesn't want to get in between this battle, and provoke even more trash to be spammed all over the web. With Panda and Penguin Google is just sending a warning to the community to stop spamming the web and KILLING those that overdo it (i.e. thousands of badly spun articles pointing back to your site, BEFORE Penguin, or even worse, your site has a lot of junk. If a site gets hit by Penguin, the owner can request Reconsideration Request Tips From Google Bottom line, continue with your GOOD, not over-optimized SEO. Google needs your help in understanding what the page is all about, and until they get better with latent semantic or other artificial intelligence, the rely on clear indicators in the content (headers, kw density, synonyms, and YES meta-tags, especially the Title and Description, as this is what the user sees in the Search results (given they are relevant to the search), and few but quality backlinks. I have never used massive link-building techniques, and still have my corporate customer sites with hundreds of terms on page 1.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Social Content Creation – Domino’s Social Media – Future of Publishing Posted: 02 May 2012 06:05 AM PDT This week's Future of Publishing goes to Los Angeles, where Murray Newlands interviews Ramon De Leon of Domino's Pizza. You may be thinking "What does pizza have to do with business and social media?" Well, Ramon pioneered many of the social media techniques we still use today and he was an early adopter of real-time Internet technology in his business, which he used for customer service and customer engagement. Check out the interview below: Future of Publishing is sponsored by VigLink. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to Like Future of Publishing on Facebook!   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 02 May 2012 05:50 AM PDT By now, I'm sure you've figured out that Pinterest is a no-brainer for companies who sell clothes, jewelry, furniture or other really cool "visual" items, but it's not as clear cut for B2B or tech companies. Yet, despite this uncertainty you can't ignore the social network's rapidly growing user base. The million dollar question becomes how do you come up with a Pinterest strategy that fits B2B? Well, Rebecca Corliss offers up some great tips in her post on the Hubspot blog. A little crunched for time? Then don't stress, below are some of the highlights that I've summarized for you to quickly get on your way. Find You Most Visual ContentBelieve it or not, you are producing visual content all the time. I realize that the biggest challenge for B2B companies is that by their nature they are probably not selling a product or service that is visual by nature, however it's important to think outside the box a little and find images that align with your company's image, fit on Pinterest and are fun to share. 1. Published a white paper or ebook lately? Pay dirt! Take a screen shot of the cover and add it to a board that's a collection of ebooks for people to read. Corliss makes a good point by stating "If the covers of your ebooks aren't normally very visual, make a point of giving them a better design from on to make them pin-friendly." 2. If your company has a corporate blog, then odds are you probably have some pretty interesting visuals residing there. Corliss recommends start using clear, beautiful images from your blog posts with the point of pinning them to your pinboards moving forward. 3. Infographics, they are super viral and the rage right now. If you have any company or industry data to visualize, odds are it'll be a huge hit! Increase Referral TrafficWhen leads are your bottom line, using Pinterest solely as a way to "enhance your brand" isn't going to cut it. As with any social network, it's important to drive traffic back to your website. To make sure you are maximizing you're efforts, make sure that all your pins link back to your site. If you are uploading a photo instead of pinning something, be sure to choose a link that makes sense, and including that in the pin's description. According to Corliss, "With this strategy, each link becomes a micro traffic source." Also, it's a good idea to expand the number of corporate pinboards as you start creating more visual content. Optimize for LeadsNow that you are optimized for driving traffic back to your website, it's a good idea to try and convert some of that traffic to leads. According to Corliss, "There are two ways you can make sure your Pinterest Traffic is converting for your business to support your lead generation efforts." 1. A great idea is to start pinning images that would normally be gated. White papers and ebooks are excellent examples. In the description of the pin, be sure to include a link to the landing page to download it. 2. Corliss writes that sometimes "it might not make sense to include a landing page link in a pin's description (for example, if you're pinning an image from a blog post). In cases like that, add more calls-to-action to your blog to increase the likelihood of conversion from there." I hope these few tips help you get starting making the most out of your corporate Pinterest account. These are only some of the many suggestions that Rebecca Corliss offers up. Curious to learn more then check out her article on the Hubspot Blog.   |
Are we overvaluing Social Media as a 
MEA CULPA. OK, I have to admit I've done my share of Facebook-bashing over the past year. "They'll never survive without a search engine", I said. "They're mobile strategy is lacking, they've got no solid plan for monetization," the list goes on. With over 900 million-users, a solid ad revenue stream, a brilliant app developer program, a successful long-term social mobile strategy, and a looming IPO, I have to concede, I've become a convert. Facebook rocks for developers, marketers and users…period.
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