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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Monday, June 17th, 2013
Are you taking Facebook and LinkedIn for granted? If so, it’s time to get your head out of the cloud and start thinking about how you are going to preserve years of social data that you’ve been sharing on your favorite social networks. And just in case you don’t believe me, you should read this article about a recent MySpace foible. It seems that MySpace may be plotting its own early demise.
Think about Facebook or LinkedIn ten years from now. The traffic is dwindling and your favorite social media website – the one you use for your business – decides to undertake a redesign.
What if, during the redesign, Facebook takes away the ability to create groups and build pages? On top of that, they delete all of your posted data from the past ten years – no more photos, no more videos, no more wall posts, no more comments, no more Likes, and no more group or page information. It’s all gone. Wouldn’t that just leave a bad taste in your mouth?
Well, that’s what happened at MySpace. And how did MySpace handle it? By shrugging its shoulders and saying,
We know that this is upsetting to some but it gives us a chance to really concentrate on creating a new experience for discovery and expression.
They apologized for limiting the features, not getting rid of the personal data. And that stings.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see a mass exodus of MySpace users. Why should they stick around? There’s no incentive any more if they feel like everything they’ve done for the past few years is lost. And if you think it can’t happen anywhere else, you’d better be prepared. Start backing up your own data as soon as you can – just in case.
Tags: facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Social Media
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Thursday, June 13th, 2013
There has been a pretty strong contingent on Facebook trying to avoid hashtags. Unfortunately, for them, Facebook started supporting them yesterday. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
You can actually do some pretty cool things with Facebook hashtags. Such as:
- Click on hashtags, even if they originate on other services, such as Twitter.
- Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar.
- Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.
It’s not really a big surprise to those of us who keep an eye on social media developments. Google+ started supporting hashtags just last month.
Probably, the most powerful feature of Facebook hashtags is being able to click the hashtag and see what people on other social media services are saying with that hashtag. You’ll also be able to click through to those services as well as to personal blogs and other websites that mention the hashtags. This makes social media a cross-platform communication tool, which can be very powerful for your business.
One way to use hashtags is as a branding element. Start your own hashtag around your company brand or a product brand that your company owns. Get people to using it and you can follow that hashtag to track how people are using your hashtag. You can start the conversation, follow the conversation, and track the conversation. There’s nothing more powerful than that.
Tags: Branding, facebook, hashtag, Social Media
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Friday, June 7th, 2013
There’s a new trend among Internet marketers to explain social media in a way that makes it synonymous with search engine optimization. To be truthful, the lines between them are getting blurry, but they aren’t the same. I think the confusion stems from a misunderstanding about link building.
If you believe that link building is the most important SEO activity and that Google’s algorithm updates – Panda and Penguin – are primarily designed to hamper link building activities, then you are more likely to believe that social media is SEO. You are likely to perceive social media marketing as primarily a link building exercise when, in fact, it isn’t.
So what is it?
Social media is another channel of online marketing that allows you to make a direct connection between your business and potential clients. It really serves two primary functions: Audience engagement and traffic generation.
Audience Engagement
Audience engagement is about creating content that connects with your target market. It can be anything as long as the end goal is to reach the people you want to do business with. You are building relationships. That’s an important distinction.
Traffic Generation
Traffic generation is an extension of audience engagement. Your goal is to connect with people who make prime prospects for your business, then to drive those prospects to your website where you hope to close the sale. This is what social media’s real purpose is. If you manage to gain some inbound links or derive other benefits from it, then it’s a bonus.
Tags: audience, link building, social engagement, Social Media, social media marketing, traffic, website traffic
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Tuesday, June 4th, 2013
Pinterest has something new they’re calling Rich Pins. These are pins that you can add to your website that will give additional information to people who see your pins on Pinterest. There are three types of Rich Pins.
- Product Pins – These are great for e-commerce sites or websites with shopping cart items. You add information like price and availability to your product pins, which can lead to more traffic and more conversions on your website.
- Recipe Pins - Recipe Pins include ingredients, serving sizes, and preparation times to your recipes.
- Movie Pins – Movie Pins add director and cast names, movie ratings, release dates, and other information to the movie pins.
This is just a start to the Rich Pins addition. There will likely be other pins coming in the near future. Most likely, you’ll see Rich Pins for books, music, auto and travel categories, and possibly for other categories as well.
Adding Rich Pins to your website involves the use of Schema.org tags, oEmbed code, or hRecipe tags. If you have a Shopify store, you can add Rich Pins there too.
You can get more information about Rich Pins from Pinterest’s help website. You’ll need to validate any Rich Pins you add to your site, and there is additional information on Pinterest for Developers.
Tags: e-commerce, Pinterest, Rich Pins
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Wednesday, May 29th, 2013
There are a lot of ways to make social media work for you, but it’s important in this age of search + social to approach social media with the right frame of mind. There are some good reasons to believe that a sound social media strategy is the best link building policy of today.
For that reason, I think there are three specific things you can do today to improve your social media presence.
- Develop relationships with authority – Let’s start with authority. In order to become one, you have to say something that other authorities in your niche agree with and promote. That is typically done through social media. Search out authorities in your niche and friend them on your social networks. Share your content with them.
- Establish Google Authorship. Google Authorship is a program established by Google that allows you to become a trusted authority by publishing content associated with your name. Get familiar with it and make sure your content follows Google’s guidelines. HINT: You need a Google+ profile.
- Use Twitter cards. Twitter cards are HTML documentation you put on your website to make your tweets and shared content on Twitter more trustworthy.
If you want to make the search engines like your content and make your content more shareable on social media, start by giving your content a higher authority rating. This is the future of SEO.
Tags: authority, google, Google Authorship, Social Media, Twitter
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Tuesday, May 28th, 2013
Google+ is almost two years old. Frank Reed highlights the value that small business owners place on various social networks, including Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Interestingly, more small business owners see value in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging, and YouTube than in Google+. Google+ comes out ahead of only Pinterest and Forums.
This is head-scratching.
I think many small business owners simply do not understand the connection between social signals and SEO. Folks, Google+ is more than a social network.
But how much more?
That’s unclear, but what is clear (at least, to me) is that there are SEO benefits to using Google+. I think there are more search engine benefits to using Google+ than all the other social networks.
It’s been clear for some time that the more you use a social network (any social network), then the more likely you are to rise in the search engine rankings for your brand name. There’s a clear benefit to being active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. There’s no difference in Google+. Use it often and you increase your brand exposure in the search engine rankings.
Aside from that, there is still the engagement issue.
More social media usage equals more search engine exposure. If your audience is on Google+, then you should be too. If your audience is not on Google+, then you should at least use it moderately.
Tags: google, search engine rankings, Social Media
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Tuesday, May 21st, 2013
Yahoo! has decided, after eight years, to spend some energy improving Flickr. This is great news.
Specifically, there are three new improvements to Flickr that I think make it worth sharing photos (and videos) to again. Here they are (in a nutshell):
- 1 terabyte of space for storing photos and videos
- Access Flickr from anywhere on any device
- You can share videos up to 3 minutes in length
And, as an added bonus, Flickr looks nicer too.
Besides, these cool new improvements to Flickr, you can also share your photos in full resolution, a bonus if you are a professional photographer.
So What Can Flickr Be Used For?
Bloggers used to use Flickr as a place to store photos that they could use for their blogs. Today, WordPress makes that a whole lot easier. But if you aren’t using WordPress, or if you do other kinds of content marketing online using services like Squidoo and HubPages, then Flickr is still a great place to store and share photos. And with 1 terabyte of storage space, you should never run out of storage.
I don’t think paying for services like Dropbox is necessary unless you’ve got so many photos and videos that sites like Flickr are too primitive. In that case, store your limit on Flickr then buy a premium Drobox account.
Tags: blogging, Flickr, photos, videos, yahoo
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Tuesday, May 7th, 2013
LinkedIn has come a long way. It started out small and grew steadily, gaining a huge following in the business-to-business market. It’s also very popular for job seekers to post their resumes. In fact, LinkedIn has been seen largely as an online resume database.
There are plenty of reasons for using LinkedIn for social media:
- You can be introduced to potential prospects by your business acquaintances
- People you have done business with can endorse you
- You can answer questions and make yourself a resident expert on your niche topic
- It’s a great place to network for any professional business
A recent announcement by Constant Contact gives you one more reason to use LinkedIn. It’s becoming more visual.
Successful Internet marketers know the value of a good graphic – an image, a video, an icon, whatever. Graphics keep people interested and really do a lot of selling on their own. If you’ve stayed away from LinkedIn because it was boring, you don’t have to any longer. It is becoming more graphic.
This is one more reason to start using LinkedIn. Not only can you attract potential business partners and clients, but you can use graphics and other visuals to highlight each aspect of your social profile at Linkedin, making it more powerful overall.
I’m glad to see good things continue improving.
Tags: graphics, LinkedIn, Social Media
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Monday, May 6th, 2013
So you’ve set up a Twitter account and you’ve started following some people in your business niche. You’ve followed a few hashtags that you think provide good and useful information. You are actively tweeting and retweeting. You are involved, engaged, and having fun. What next?
One other way you can use Twitter is to set up Twitter lists of your favorite people in a specific niche, or who have a specific skill set.
For instance, let’s say you are interested in decoupage. You’ve followed everyone on Twitter who has anything to do with the art of decoupage. But you’re also following several thousand other people. How can you be sure the tweets of your decoupage connections don’t get lost in the shuffle? Create a Twitter list.
By creating a list of decoupage artists on Twitter, you make it easy to follow those people you find most interesting.
Another benefit to lists is that people who follow you can judge your reputation based on how valuable your lists are. If you create good lists, then your reputation soars. That will likely lead to more people following you. You’ll end up with a bigger list of people you want to connect to.
Twitter lists are a good way to organize your friends so that you don’t lose anyone. Google+ has circles. Facebook has friends lists. Twitter has Twitter lists.
Tags: Twitter, Twitter lists
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Friday, May 3rd, 2013
Tweetdeck is dropping Facebook like a hot potato. A beautiful relationship has come to an end.
But that’s not all that Tweetdeck recently announced on its blog. They’re also dropping some of their own apps, including Tweetdeck AIR, Tweetdeck for Android, and Tweetdeck for iPhone. That means they are going fully web-based.
Of course, Tweetdeck’s web-based platform has been increasing in popularity. Here’s what tweetdeck says about it:
In many ways, doubling down on the TweetDeck web experience and discontinuing our app support is a reflection of where our TweetDeck power-users are going. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady trend towards people using TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on their mobile devices. This trend coincides with an increased investment in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android –– adding photo filters and other editing capabilities, revamping user profiles and enhancing search. That said, we know this applies to most of our users –– not all of them. And for those of you who are inconvenienced by this shift, our sincere apologies.
The good news is that Tweetdeck is developing a Chrome app. This will be good news for Chrome users. Included in the features will be notifications. I say, go Tweetdeck!
Tags: facebook, Tweetdeck
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