From the category archives:

Social Media

5 Tips For Higher Search Engine Placement

by Chaosmap on July 16, 2010

Links drive the web. For users and search engines, it’s like the central nervous system. Learn how to build links for business using your personal hi-touch.

Online competition is the norm of today’s web-based world. With so many sites and users online, it’s hard to see through the clutter and to implement a necessary process for quality relationship building. But, in this current landscape, generating links, connecting with others in your space and utilizing a link building process is a key consideration for long term survival online.

Success of any kind of online business will be impacted by the visibility and ranking of specific search phrases across many platforms, from organic search results, local search, video search, news search and in social network platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Additionally, for every web property, presenting an engaging user experience once the visitor finds you, becomes a full-time job as well. It is thus advisable to create an easily navigable and conversion-driven website. Make them want more, and to bookmark and share you web site.

Are consistent, top natural search engine rankings possible?

You can and will get high SERP (search engine results pages) positions, if you focus on the right approach for link building. Google’s PageRank link analysis is well known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank). Quality links are achievable by means of organic methods and in developing partnerships in the community you operate in (niche market). It’s should not be an automated approach, but a personal one.

The more you build the relationships (offline and on), and the more quality incoming links a webmaster has to their site, the faster you will show up in searches, and stay there. These links will also receive direct clicks, and generate more traffic back to the web site. They will show up as referrers (incoming links) in your web analytics.

There is no short cut to success, however. If considering an SEO company to help you, don’t get fooled by those who offer fast visibility, as there are no guarantees. Once a company is selected, you must develop good relationships, work closely together, and even expect to lose money at the beginning of a campaign. But, each campaign and marketplace is different. Make sure to include good tracking and baseline reporting (rankings, traffic, conversion numbers) before starting, and measure as you go.

What Can Webmasters do to build Quality Links Using a Social Web Approach?

  1. Work on getting links from quality websites within your niche. Instead of mass submission to directories, research and contact fellow bloggers, journalists and websites that you could offer something useful to. Their readers will love it. You can even offer to guest-write. And, as you think about your own readers, what would they like to see as links you could add to your own pages? Don’t be afraid to link out. You should also develop short “how to” videos, upload them to YouTube, and share freely. Don’t make it sound like a sales-pitch though, keep it short.
  2. Submit quality content in the form of articles to the free, highly searched article directories. There are many article directories available where a person can submit work. EzineArticles.com, Suite101.com are considered top destinations, and you should build up your profile there, and share it. Use Twitter and Facebook to distribute. For more advanced sharing and tracking, try Hootsuite.com
  3. Link with popular websites within your market, that already has traffic. You can research some of the traffic metrics from Alexa.com, and Compete.com. See if it makes sense to pursue links from your findings. Make sure they don’t try and sell you on anything you don’t need. No spamming allowed, of course.
  4. Improve your own website. Adding and updating links internally to pages you want to elevate, can work well. PageRank (Google’s trust-voting-system of links) flows from page to page, internally and externally. Consider reviewing your web analytics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics) for pages that are already driving some traffic, view your rankings for page 2 listings, clean up your content, add some more, add that video, add social buttons, and get more links, and you’ll likely get a page 1 placement. Try setting up a contest for a viral distribution. Repeat.
  5. Upload and publish content regularly. Content is not just web pages (HTML), but business white papers, videos, special software downloads, audio, images and more. If you don’t have a blog (WordPress.com) already, what are you waiting for? You can write a topic 2-3 times a week to start. Use sites like Elance.com to get help writing. Outsourcing to the English-speaking Philippines can work for you. Try Craigslist Manila and onlinejobs.ph for some great resources, and don’t be surprised to get a quality worker for around $300.00/mo for a full-time person. Get your own domain, and host the blog there, that is preferred.

In Conclusion:

Paying attention to this relationship link building can prove very beneficial for an owner or webmaster who wants to generate quality transactions online. It will pay off over time. Just don’t quit.

Final Tip: Register with several forums (Google & Yahoo Forums) and research to understand the latest updates on the subject matters in your niche. Track activity via Google.com/alerts. The system automatically sends you the change information directly via email, or into your favorite RSS reader. Forums are also important in building relationships and visibility/links for yourself.

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How to Measure Social Media Marketing Success Easily

by GuitarMan on June 10, 2010

Tracking social media is a two-fold approach.

(contextvoice.com)

Know this: social media is a ‘media’ (press) darling. Consider how many posts and references show up for social media every hour, everyday. SEO, or search engine optimization, on the other hand – has been around a lot longer, but doesn’t get as much credit or love these days. Perhaps our friendly journalists think they are the same? Hope not. The professionals who understand the difference between user intent, tactics and overall strategies for the two forms of online marketing (drawing the line here), are clear that they both can have solid impact – for really any business. SEO tends to be easier to track for many (keywords to conversion as an example), social media – not. But, if you cannot answer the “what and the why”, you’re not doing great in either, or you are just getting started.

It’s hard to track real ROI with social media marketing. (Really?)

For most businesses the best sales and marketing campaigns involve forming strong relationships with customers/clientele. It’s because of these relationships that companies can flourish and grow as they build trust and loyalty with their patrons. As a result, it’s no doubt social media marketing found its way into the business arena. Effective networking is a key factor to implement in order to grow a business; and social media provides that opportunity. Yet how does a business know if its social media marketing campaign is effective? How can the level of success be measured? The answer is two-fold.

The first.

This is arguably the most important task to accomplish when deciding how to use social media marketing for your business. Determine your objective(s).

What is it you want to accomplish with your social media marketing efforts? And, do you know what is going on right now in your marketplace (conversation)?

Whether your business is a PR firm, recruiting firm, nonprofit organization or a simple ice-cream parlor in a small town, there is something you want/need to accomplish with social media marketing. It could be as tangible as increased sales and profits or less tangible like getting responses from customers about how to make improvements or getting success stories and testimonials to increase your credibility profile. Maybe your purpose is simply to increase your product’s brand awareness. Whatever your objective is, that will be what is weighed in order to measure your social media marketing success. Without a clear picture of your objective, the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign can never truly be measured. We think in terms of baselines to compare with as you grow.

The second.

When you want to measure the ROI on social media marketing efforts, the second option is probably what is most commonly meant when the question is raised. That is (analytics) “tracking”.

With pay per click or sales tracking a business owner has a tangible means of measuring; however, with social media tracking it is much less straightforward and the method depends on the site and approach.

Facebook, for instance, might be measured by the number of confirmed friends; Twitter might be weighed by the quantity of retweets following a tweet; number of followers acquired in a month; a Web Forum might look at the quantity and quality of its threads. The list goes on and will continue to grow as the world of social media continues to grow and evolve. Free tools like Social Mention helps to capture “sentiment” – another metric that can be used.

The bottom line is this: measuring the success of social media marketing is subjective, and each business must identify what objective it wants to accomplish. When that aim is being met, the business can say with confidence that its social media marketing campaign is effective and is a success.

Next, try some tools that can help:

Tweetburner – BudUrl – track how many times people click on a link you share via Twitter

Twitter Search – powerful search in real time, advanced search helps to drill down and inject yourself into the conversation as well

Tweetbeep – Google alerts for Twitter – free

Google Analytics – free – ability to track traffic, content, referrers (where traffic came from) and a lot more

Swix App – Like Google Analytics – for social media properties

Listen to fellow Jim Sterne - do you agree? (Recently from OMMA San Francisco):

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Can I join your FaceBook fan club?

November 25, 2009

After finishing up a frantic day of closing up business prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to sit down and catch up on the news of the day. I don’t watch a great deal of television, but I have this habit of news channel scanning. I hop from CNN, to HLN to CNBC to [...]

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Social Media Helping Pet Owners: Pet-Based Businesses Connect

May 25, 2009

It’s official—air travel is for the dogs, and the cats too. Pet Airways, which offers flights across the country for four-legged friends only, recently partnered with the ad network DogTime Media in order to get the word out about their services and promote DogTime Media’s pet adoption at the same time. Other pet-focused businesses are [...]

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For Real? McDonalds Launches Social Media Campaign For McCafe Coffee

May 13, 2009

The current economic climate has everyone searching for ways to save money, and coffee giant Starbucks, whose name is synonymous with the four dollar latte, has been facing price competition from other chains, including Dunkin Doughnuts and McDonalds, which recently announced the launch of a social media campaign. The campaign, which includes a website with [...]

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Track and Improve Blog Post Quality with Delicious WordPress Plugin

October 13, 2008

How can you really tell if the quality of your blog posts are improving over time?  Unfortunately, while Delicious is a great social bookmarking tool, its interface does not make it easy to extract the information necessary to help track the quality of posts over time… If you’re blogging to: generate affiliate and content network [...]

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How Effective Can Social Media Marketing Tactics Really Be?

October 2, 2008

Sites like isitdoneyet.gov which provide consumers with proper meat cooking temperatures and tips are becoming more prevalent as government officials have begun to realize just how effective social media marketing tactics can be. “When you begin to work with government people on the client side, you learn just how passionately they care about the issues, [...]

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Scientifically, How Do You Write A Successful Title For Digg?

September 26, 2008

Came across this URL that breaks down the success metrics for a winning title for Digg.com. It can also reveal the keyword effectiveness, see that here. Dan Zarrella is a viral marketing scientist, and the title check for digg can be found here. It will make you think about how to create more compelling titles, [...]

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How To Do Social Media Monitoring (Advanced Users Only)

September 18, 2008

There is a lot of “buzz” and “conversation” in your industry. Are you aware of what is going on? Are you able to capture this and build upon it? You may be missing out if you have not joined the crowd of Social Media Monitoring and Alerts. Google Alerts is probably the most well known, [...]

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Reporter Twitters Funeral – Rocky Mountain News Criticized

September 15, 2008

Rocky Mountain News criticized for intrusiveness, insensitivity… September 15, 2008— In the wake of the recent hit-and-run tragedy in Boulder, Colorado, which claimed the life of three-year-old Marten Kudlis comes the highly criticized decision by the Rocky Mountain News to cover the child’s funeral using the popular social media networking site, Twitter. While Twitter has [...]

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