Posts Tagged ‘social media’

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Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Keep Your Social Media Content Flowing in 2012

new years resolution for marketingAnd so it has begun.  Another year in the world of the wide web we call the Internet and while you may be cheating on your personal resolutions, it’s time to set your goals for social marketing in the New Year.  Certainly indulging in that one high calorie drink or irresistible chunk of chocolate and breaking your own vows to change is an event that you can usually counter with an extra trip to the gym, but when your social media marketing plan falls short of your 2012 social marketing resolutions, you may have missed an opportunity to connect that can’t be corrected. 

We talked in a previous post about the value of content in your social media marketing campaign and moving into the New Year the value of content has only grown more.  With search engine indexing changes the power of author authority and the credibility, share-ability and readability of the content you send out into the cyber world relates directly to your online success or failure.  For this reason, this year, you should add one more step to your social media marketing resolution for 2012 and resolve to plan out your Social Media Content for the whole year.

Now don’t go into a tizzy.  This isn’t to say that you should plan out every word you intend to share right here and now.  We all know that world events, personal challenges and the unstop-ability of the ever changing world around us will always lead to spontaneously insightful content generation, but it is for those moments that are without spectacular elements that you should be prepared in advance to conquer. 

In actuality there are other reasons to plan out your social media content distributions in advance.  Besides providing for consistent posting, planning your content ahead also helps you maintain a cohesive tone and even keeps you in line with your social marketing message.  In effect, planning your content in advance helps to keep your campaign on track.  There is also the appeal of knowing that you’ll have a variety of engaging content planned out for the year. 

Now the content that you supply in your social media marketing should also have some variety and setting out your schedule will help to set the tone for this approach.  Making plans for when to include 3rd party articles and links, when you will create a poll or trivia post, when you plan to add visuals like photos and videos and finally when you intend to share your own blogs, articles and company news will help to create the variety most of us seek in our social.  Another tip for keeping your posts and feeds fresh is to plan to repost items from previous months or years.  Not every post has to be news from today, especially when the things you post aren’t even relevant to your business, industry or neighborhood.

So planning ahead can save you from having a dull social existence this year and even next.  By planning out your social content and always choosing and writing content that is worth sharing you can meet all the goals of your social media marketing resolution and give your business the momentum to achieve social success this year.

No point in sharing your content when no one knows where to find you.  Make it part of your New Year plan to add the free Follow Me button from Social Follow so every visitor can find you on the social network that they hang out on.

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Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

The Short and Skinny on Short Urls

short urls for social networkingI realized only recently that a lot of newbie website owners, which actually encompasses a large percentage of total website owners, don’t actually know of or understand the purpose and uses of short urls. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a web novice and to be honest there is so much ever-changing information to know and catalog about maintaining a web presence that it is no wonder most people just jump in the pool naked and blindfolded and hope to find their way to the shallow end with their head above water. Fortunately, the story behind tiny urls or short urls is well, short, so I thought I would take a few minutes to explain how they can not only help in social media marketing, but in building your brand as well (even those are really things of the same, hmmm…).

The first question a lot of website owners ask is why would I want to shorten my urls? This is a totally legit question especially when you consider that your SEO Company probably just got you to switch to all SEF urls to help with organic search ranking and increase your site relevancy. So here is an example of why you might want to shorten a url:
I want to send a client direction to my Studio98 office in Clearwater, FL. Which would be better to send to them?

Example A: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&sugexp=kjrmc&cp=25&gs_id=u&xhr=t&q=studio+98+clearwater+florida&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS317US317&biw=1280&bih=479&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&ion=1&wrapid=tljp1318962472910018&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=N8WdTtHnCqPWiAK1nYiQCg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=3&sqi=2&ved=0CBUQ_AUoAg
Example B:
http://bit.ly/mapstudio98

Most people that receive a link like example A in their inbox are going to hesitate before clicking on it that is if their email client even keeps the link intact. Those who are newbies to the Internet or live in a state of constant virus-phobia are likely going to think it goes to some malware or malicious identity theft site and delete the email all together. Hence Example B is the better option for delivering a big url in a short and sweet way.

Now then, overall length is just one of the reasons, but it is for more than just emails. Consider your posts to social networks. Twitter gives you a limited amount of space so wouldn’t it be better to fill it with a great call to action or interesting traffic driver than to hog it up with a giant http code? Facebook and the other social media platforms without message size restrictions give you plenty of room, but what about the look of those long urls and, even more importantly, what about the branding value and recall of your longer url?

If you are running a contest on Facebook or any social networking site and you have your contest registration set for a particular url, but it is a lengthy url, wouldn’t the word of mouth about your contest be easier to pass if the url was easily recognizable, easy to share and easy to recall? Wouldn’t it be foolish not to use a short url that adds to your branding efforts rather than a long url that could be mistyped and visitors lost? And don’t forget about all the mobile devices being used for social networking today. There is no accounting for speed typing on those tiny keypads and keeping your urls short means less typos and faster accessing for your valuable information.

What about SEO and doesn’t having a short url mess with my organic search ranking? Surprisingly not; if you use Google’s url shortener it actually works as a permanent 301 redirect and Google announced that they would pass the link juice right through on those tiny urls. Google isn’t the only service that you can use to make your big urls short, TinyUrl is the original url shortener and often the most popular because it was the first service picked up and used by most social networking sites. Bit.ly is also a contender of special note as they actually keep analytics on their short urls and are expected to release their own search engine based on the click popularity of short urls. This search engine will be much like Social Media Engine Topsy, but Bit.ly will have a far more detailed algorithm delivering even more accurate and focused search results as well as reputation management for shortened links.

Should you shorten your urls everywhere? Nope. Definitely not. A lot of people still don’t trust short urls. Save tiny urls for when you need to do something about a really big url, otherwise, if it fits, keep it. Well there is no need to worry about the long and short of your urls if they are only on your website. Break out of the long url chain and get on the social bandwagon using short urls to deliver your content to social media sites across the Web. The best way to connect with your followers is with the free Follow Me button from SocialFollow and Studio98-all the network buttons without all the bling; keeping your site about your brand.

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Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

Is Your Tweet Prime Advertising? Google May Think So!

Quality not Quantity in Social NetworkingIf you get re-tweets, it just might be! This was the buzz on the web just a few short months ago that has had traditional SEO companies scrambling to be sure that they have social media marketing solidly placed in their optimization game plan. These recent changes in Google’s algorithm have left many, including small and large businesses as well as search marketers, a bit confused on what direction to take their social networking and we hope to give some sound advice on the subject.

For those that aren’t completely clear on the announcements from Google, we’ll try our best to put it in the easiest to understand terminology we can. Basically the search giant announced that they will be adding author authority to their organic search algorithm. This means that content that is shared on social networks and then re-circulated by others within the network will get a higher ranking than content that is let’s say only on your blog and not hitting the social scene at all. More specifically this is content re-tweeted on Twitter and shared by friends on Facebook and other networks.

All of this sounds great right? Well, a lot of people mistook author authority for the number of people you have in your network. Don’t get me wrong, the larger networks do have a better pool for circulating their content, but the basic rule of social networking hasn’t changed; quality of followers beats out quantity any day. Oh and contrary to popular belief, content is still king.

It doesn’t matter if you have 3000 followers if only 3 of them are actually reading your tweets and sharing your content. Meanwhile your competition, who has probably taken the time to build quality relationships on their social networks but may only be connected to 300 people, those 300 connections are liking and sharing content on a daily basis. Get the connection? This too is where quality content comes into play as well. If what you are sharing in your social circles isn’t worth the read, then it usually isn’t worth a Like or a Re-Tweet.

Another twist in the Google algorithm is that who you follow and connect with as well as what you share on social networks has a direct effect on the search results you are served when you perform a search while signed into your Google account. This is a grey area still, but seems to indicate that the more people you network with and share content with, the more likely you are to show up in their organic search results. Mind you this is only when they perform a search while signed into their Google account. However as Google has introduced more social networking options themselves, more people have reason to leave their Google accounts open while doing other work online. This puts a whole new perspective on SEO and social media marketing which to date have been somewhat separate of each other.

So, our advice. Be socially accountable by building your social networks to be full of quality connections with as many quality connections you can without cheesing out and send out quality content that your connections will be willing to share with their connections too. Of course, the best way to build a quality network is to feature the FollowUs button on your website so that your website visitors know where to find you on their favorite social network.

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Posted in Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Tweets | Leave Comment


Monday, December 6th, 2010

A Fascination With Analytics-You Know You Love Them!

Social Follow AnalyticsDo you find yourself visiting your Google Analytics page regularly? Do you access your website control panel to check the traffic information on a daily basis? Well, we do and for all the other number watchers out there in the world, we now offer analytics with your free SocialFollow button. 

Web analytics provide invaluable information to website owners, SEO specialists, business owners and anyone else with the incurable desire to see it in numbers.  Why use web analytics? Well to eliminate the guess work of course.  With web analytics you can improve your advertising, learn more about your online customers or website visitors and what information they were looking for on your website and to determine the overall effectiveness of your web presence. 

For instance, if you run an ecommerce store and you have dragging sales, you can easily determine from you analytics the behavior of your website visitors by tracking how they got to your site (search engine, referring site or directly), what pages they visited, how much time they spent looking on each page and when or what made them decide to leave without buying anything.  You can tell if your keywords are bringing in the right kind of traffic or if you need to make some serious changes to your site.  From all of the information analytics provides, you can better improve the functionality, user-friendliness and increase conversions or sales on your website.

For the analytics watcher though, watching the numbers is a passion that cannot be denied.  It is for these individuals and well, anyone who wants to know how often their SocialFollow button has appeared on the web that we created analytics for our free button solution to your social media clutter.  By visiting your SocialFollow account, you can click on the analytics option and view your button impressions for today, this month and to date.  Double click on your graph to zoom in on a particular day and zoom back out to see the last couple of weeks.  The numbers never lie and you just may be surprised.  We are constantly looking at ours!

Don’t have a SocialFollow account? Haven’t gotten your free social media button for your website? Sign up today and get in on all the number watching fun while giving your online visitors an easy way to find you everywhere on the web.  Be Social!

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Posted in Analytics, Social Media Solutions | 1 Comment