Social Media Optimization 101

The Blog of Target Marketing: 13 Tips for Twitter Effectiveness

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:48:31 -0400

The Blog of Target Marketing: 13 Tips for Twitter Effectiveness:

Photo by cobalt123 on flickr.

This time last year, I was a Twitter skeptic. How do you find the time to tweet? Who cares what you ate for dinner? I don’t care what you are watching on TV.

What I knew of the service was limited because I wasn’t a participant. My judgment of Twitter was…

2PaperDolls - Blog: Brands & Twitter Fans: A Relationship in Crisis?

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:42:52 -0400

2PaperDolls - Blog: Brands & Twitter Fans: A Relationship in Crisis? :

2paperdolls:

Brands on Twitter need to get their heads around a serious issue: They’ve become high-maintenance friends. They talk about themselves endlessly. They desperately want your attention. And they’ll manipulate you to get it.

Brand engagement is happening at the expense of good user experience, and…

Facebook Engagement

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:59:54 -0400

If you’re looking to get better engagement out of your Facebook posts, add more pictures and start speaking in the first person.

Social media data expert Dan Zarrella — who tracked and analyzed more than 1.3 million posts from the 10,000 most-Liked Facebook pages — has released details about which posts get the most likes, shares and comments on Facebook, from post type and length to the best time of day to add updates.

Photos bring in the highest number of engagement across the board, followed by text and video, according to Zarrella. News links bring in the least numbers of likes, shares and comments.

Meanwhile, posts with a high number of self-referential words such as “I” and “me” get more likes — a tactic that doesn’t work well on Twitter.

“Overall, the best strategy for Facebook, as well as all kinds of social media marketing, is to create a lot of interesting content and share it,” Zarrella told Mashable. “On Facebook, visual content does especially well. It’s also important to be passionate, not neutral.”

This means that both positive and negative posts tend to do well with engagement.

Timing is also key. Updates posted later in the day (Eastern Time) bring in more shares and Likes, but they tend to peak around 8 p.m. Shares trickle off around the end of the work day (6 p.m.).

“Publish when others aren’t, such as later in the day and on the weekends,” Zarrella advised.

For example, Facebook posts that go up on Saturdays and Sundays tend to get more Likes than those during the week. Similar to Twitter engagement, Facebook posts do better earlier in the week than later: Thursday is the least active day for Likes.

People also tend to be active throughout the week in the early hours of the day (5 a.m. ET) and during lunchtime (12 p.m. ET).

For a full look at which posts do best, check out the infographic below or sign up for Zarrella’s free marketing webinar.

What seems to be working best for you? Let us know in the comments.

multusmedia: The U.S. Survey On Mobile Marketing

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:58:42 -0400

multusmedia:

The U.S. Survey On Mobile Marketing

The Ambassador Blog: Don’t Standby, Standout! 3 Ways to Make Your Online Marketing Pop

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:58:10 -0400

The Ambassador Blog: Don’t Standby, Standout! 3 Ways to Make Your Online Marketing Pop :

getambassador:

Picture this: You’re walking down a busy street and a bus zooms by, you saw some kind of ad but you’re suddenly startled by a loud speaker blasting the newest pop song…what was the name? You can’t remember because a man dressed as a sandwich just handed you a flyer with a special one-day offer!

10 Key Facebook Marketing Features

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:56:51 -0400

10 Key Facebook Marketing Features:

sagefrogmarketing:

Is your Facebook page a component of your marketing plan? According to this article on Forbes, many types of businesses can benefit from building a loyal audience for their Facebook page.

Want to boost your results? Here are ten tactics from the article:

1. Pin to Top
2. Highlight Post
3….

10 Benefits of Using Social Media

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:56:50 -0400

10 Benefits of Using Social Media :

applesandorangespr:

According to the Internet world Usage statistics, there are currently over 6,930,055,154 (six billion nine hundred thirty million fifty five hundred thousand one hundred and fifty four) people logging on to the web. Question: are you positioned to benefit from all of this on a daily basis?

What…

Sagefrog Marketing Group: Email Marketing Still an Effective Channel

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:59:12 -0400

Sagefrog Marketing Group: Email Marketing Still an Effective Channel:

sagefrogmarketing:

With social media and online marketing becoming increasingly popular, marketers may start to feel like email marketing has been forgotten. However, according to this infographic, email marketing remains an active – and often successful – channel.

The infographic shows that 83% of consumers…

MySecretStaff: Using of Share Buttons

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 20:00:15 -0400

MySecretStaff: Using of Share Buttons:

secretstaff:

The Share button usually is on the bottom part of a page, a website, or even an article that you want to share. Once this button is clicked, that certain topic will be shown onto your own page and your friends and followers will be able to see it. In terms of social media, the Share button is…

KiMedia Strategies: Social Media Proves Value, Gets Budgets

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:59:16 -0400

KiMedia Strategies: Social Media Proves Value, Gets Budgets:

kimediastrategies:

Many still struggle with how exactly to measure and attribute success

Budgets for social media marketing are on the rise, with both B2B and B2C marketers proving they have generated leads and sales from their social outreach.

In its “State of Digital Marketing 2012 Report,” …

social media marketing in hotels: Twitter tweaks profile pages for business customers

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:56:48 -0400

social media marketing in hotels: Twitter tweaks profile pages for business customers:

hotelsocialmediamarketing:

Twitter changes…we all bitch, however secretly like it.

How will microblogging service Twitter make money?

Ryan Seacrest’s Twitter page.

commentary Advertisers are an amusingly needy bunch. They want your attention and ride on the back of attention-grabbing venues to steal it…

Quirler: Questing In Real Life

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 22:49:46 -0400

Boston, Sept. 16 - Quirler LLC, a Wisconsin based internet company, has been created to supply entertainment through their web venture. On the Quirler website, a character profile is created and the player gains access to quests that they can complete in real life. Completion of real life quests and submitting pictures and videos on the site give players the opportunity to earn rewards for their activities.

Main website: http://www.quirler.com
Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1015743349/quirler-questing-in-real-life

What to post

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 21:58:38 -0400

Content makes social media an effective tool for achieving core marketing goals including building brand, attracting prospects, converting customers, and supporting sales and advocates. Content feeds social media’s voracious appetite for information in a variety of forms.

Distributing targeted content across different social media platforms helps brands and businesses respond and engage with prospects and customers. This targeted information shows prospects that marketers have been listening to their problems. Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion refers to this as the secret sauce. As a result, this content provides context for future interactions regardless of the device prospects use.

Here are the seven core social media content formats laid out in a useful infographic to help you use them effectively.

Blogs are your social media home base in Chris Brogan’s opinion. Have one or more blogs to provide content that’s easily distributed and shared on other social media. Actionable Marketing Tip: Leverage the power of blogs to support your search optimization by integrating your blog(s) into your website, focusing each post on a keyword phrase, developing magnetic post titles, and creating stellar content that gets people’s attention.
Images, particularly photographs, are a quick content format anyone can create with their smartphone and share via social media. Photographs pull viewers in and engage them. Use images to show your brand’s vision and versatility. Actionable Marketing Tip: Curate other people’s images with their permission. Also create images using text.
Videos offer three options: high quality professional content (The figure mentioned at Content Marketing World was $10,000 per minute (but I haven’t checked this fact.)), the scrappy DIY approach used by up and coming YouTube celebs, and voice over presentation that’s like watching a webinar. Your choice depends on your subject and your budget. Actionable Marketing Tip: Optimize your video for search by adding text to it (since YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google.) Also, integrate a call-to-action into the audio portion of your video like a DRTV ad.
Audio, specifically, podcasts, provide a personal channel to talk one-to-one to your audience with a human voice. Audio has significant potential given the prevalence of smartphones and the ability to multi-task while listening to podcasts. Actionable Marketing Tip: Build your audience and learn to use this medium before it’s growth period. Audio is low cost relative to video. Further, with smartphones always within arm’s reach, it’s a great way to give your audience content when they’re focused on your information such as drive time.
Slideshare. According to Todd Wheatland, author of The Marketer’s Guide to Slideshare, Slideshare is a content treasure trove since it can deliver any content format including PDFs, infographics, video, and text, to a targeted audience that generally B2B focused. Closely integrated with LinkedIn, Slideshare helps get your content found more effectively than posting it on owned media. Marketo, according to Maria Pergolino (@InboundMarketer), transformed their content into the SlideShare presentation, Building a Better Inbound Marketing Machine; it garnered 145K views and and 173 comments on Slideshare. Actionable Marketing Tip: Strategically select content that positions your organization for the business terms your target audience is searching and transform it to shine on Slideshare.
E-books are a sexy way to provide information that answers your target audience’s questions regardless of business type. Sheridan compiled information comparing all of the pool manufacturers into an ebook for their customers called: How to Buy a Swimming Pool the Right Way, causing them to call him. Sheridan says, “Have a dang opinion and share it because no one likes grey today!” Actionable Marketing Tip: Keep e-books short (5 pages or less) or long (over 50 pages) based on research by Hubspot’s Dan Zarrella. (BTW-Here’s a link to my e-book, What Every Blogger Needs to Know – 101 Actionable Blog Tips.)
Infographics are a visually appealing way to present information. This is attributable to the fact that many infographics transform data into colorful charts making it faster to grasp the concept. As a result, infographics integrated into articles and blog posts are highly shareable. Actionable Marketing Tip: Use infographics to show your expertise and build links back to your blog or website.

Photo

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:58:10 -0400

Digital Media and Marketing: Maximizing the Power of Like

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:59:39 -0400

Digital Media and Marketing: Maximizing the Power of Like:

thedigitalspace:

According to an eMarketer survey, most advertisers and agencies measure the impact of their social efforts only through soft metrics such as engagement. These include data such as number of followers, comments and time spent on social pages. While these metrics are an important yardstick,…

@thewordofed: It's not an effective social media strategy unless it's integrated.

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 22:00:49 -0400

@thewordofed: It's not an effective social media strategy unless it's integrated.:

thewordofed:

It’s not an effective social media strategy unless it’s integrated.

Online Social Media Marketing

An integrated social media marketing service is my specialty. If you’re new to social media then I can create all your social media platforms, integrate them with each other for maximum…

Website Likegate

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 20:56:38 -0400

Hide parts of content from your site visitors until they like your page. (As demonstrated here: http://spoiledbacon.com/adclick.html) The code can be written by hand or found for a fee online.

This is a great way to retain your visitors, but also give them an incentive to like by offering promo codes, hidden gems, or anything else they might like! Give it a try.

Pinterest SEO

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 20:00:25 -0400

This week we expand our discussion on how to leverage Online Visual Marketing successfully in your bridal business by taking a fresh look at creating inspiration boards on Pinterest. You might think the point of Pinterest is to garner attention for your brand inside this busy social network. And, of course, it is. But the value of Pinterest to me is far greater than that. I’m also highly interested in the traffic I can build outside of Pinterest…namely, from search engines. And in my consistent pursuit of Pinterest SEO strategies, I’ve discovered a few that you might not know about.

1. Your Links Don’t Count…Or Do They?

In March 2012, Pinterest added the “no follow” code to its overall infrastructure. That’s a tag that tells search engine crawlers not to follow a link to the destination. In plain English, it means you don’t get credit for the link that is placed in the Link field of your Pin and, consequently, it doesn’t help you build up search engine authority for your domain. However, that link can still send real, live traffic to your website, so don’t stop using it. Just know that it doesn’t necessarily count toward your SEO goodwill.

However, there is a silver lining…at least, for now. If a link is placed in the Description box of a Pin, it is a “do follow” link, which means that search engine crawlers can index it and can credit your website accordingly. So, if in addition to getting Pinterest traffic, you also want to boost your overall SEO, add your link to the Description field when pinning in Pinterest.

2. Your Pinterest Profile is Powerful

Search engines are officially indexing Pinterest profiles. This means two things for you. First, if you include your target keywords in your Pinterest profile description, there is a chance that your profile could appear in search engines for that keyword…even if your website doesn’t. Second, it means even more chances for your company to appear in search engines, outside of just your website. Take advantage and, remember, visitors will see the profile description so make sure it’s click-worthy.

3. Pinterest Plays Nice

Pinterest allows you to create a social networking web by letting you connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts (only your personal Facebook profile, not your Fan Page). When you do this, you allow search engines to see that these various social accounts are associated with the same brand.

And why would you want to do that? Because search engines are beginning to use your social clout and activity to determine the importance and relevancy of your brand and primary domain. When all of your social media accounts are connected and they all link back to your website, search engines can see the bigger picture and reward you for influential social activity with higher search engine rankings for the appropriate keywords.

So, in a nutshell, make sure your Twitter account is linked and, if you use your personal Facebook profile for business mostly, then connect that too.

Nice, simple social media icons for your site. Make sure your...

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 00:05:57 -0400

Nice, simple social media icons for your site. Make sure your customers can easily get to your social media!

5 Companies With Inbound Marketing Strategies That Work

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:58:10 -0400

http://dlvr.it/28LXk