Barbara reminds us that:

• Social media engages with a community, not a specific generation. The point of Twitter, for example, is to give relevant information that will be helpful for your followers.

• To continue the topic of Twitter, it is generally used for specific information and/or as a news filter. When people realize that you are consistently sending them to pages and links that they consider relevant, they start to trust your company.

• Social authority does depend on the quantity of fans and followers you have, but they MUST be relevant and active as well! In other words, having 100,000 followers where 50% of them are irrelevant spammers will do no better than having 1,000 followers that are completely relevant, and actually engage with your content (RT, @ reply, etc.).

• Social Media for B2B is less about marketing and more about thought leadership. The best way to get people on your brand’s bandwagon is to have great content that will make the ride much more pleasant.

Ben reviews:

• The links you share on your Twitter or Facebook have a direct impact on your rankings. Why? Because they can be shared and Re-Tweeted, which impacts the level of authority you have.

• With enough social/author authority, your company will be indexed. Getting your website pages mentioned on Twitter, for example, is synonymous link building.

• Another important component of authority is not just the amount of friends or followers but also how often they visit your site, or ping it!

• Make social waves through Bing and Google’s discussion tab. This allows real time tweets to be in the feed if you are well-followed and connected.

• A product page can be crawled by Google spiders up to three times quicker if it is tweeted (tested in-house at Webmarketing123).

The main point in integrating social and search now lies in your social authority. If you are a trusted authority with decent amount of fans/followers that all repurpose & engage with your relevant content, your rankings will benefit from social media. Repeat after me: trust, repurpose, engage, relevancy, rankings. Therefore, get social to get noticed!

If you would like a copy of the slides from this week’s webinar, e-mail Mark Powers at mark@webmarketing123.com. Ask him to hook it up with that good social/search knowledge—he should know what you’re talking about .

]]> http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/social-influence-on-seo/feed/ 0 http://blog.webmarketing123.com/social-media/social-media-wishlist-for-2011/ http://blog.webmarketing123.com/social-media/social-media-wishlist-for-2011/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:46:54 +0000 Webmarketing123 http://blog.webmarketing123.com/?p=572 Social media is such an adaptive space, constantly changing in form and functionality—lately we’ve been thinking about a few capabilities that we would like to see included on our various social platforms in 2011:

Better Facebook Analytics. We’re sure Facebook is working hard to improve their insights, but considering how much Facebook Pages has grown in the past year for business use, you’d think they’d get a quicker move on this feature! ‘Impressions’ is a start…

Facebook Video Chat. Recently, Mashable ran an article about how they’ve spotted references to Skype popping up within the coding framework of Facebook. This is definitely one thing that we would like to see from Facebook in the near future—video chat! We’re surprised they haven’t rolled that out already…

Embedded video within Tweets. The same way that you are able to watch videos hosted by Youtube and other such websites, directly from Facebook’s newsfeed/profiles, we would like to see Twitter incorporate this functionality into the display of Tweets that contain video.

‘New ReTweet’ Accommodations. Some 3^rd party Twitter applications (cloud and mobile) don’t display any RTs that use the new button, which might make you miss an opportunity to reach out. Other apps also only allow you to RT with the new button, leaving you no chance to add a comment on RTs *ahem Twitter for Blackberry*

Accurate Facebook Ads. More accurately targeted ads on Facebook’s display network. No, we’re not looking to “Meet Single Christian Girls in your (my) Area,” but thank you anyway.

iFrames—STAT! Not to discuss Facebook too much, but we’re interested to see how the new ‘iFrames’ (rolling out in January 2011) for business pages will compare to the old FBML structure—it’d be great if you didn’t need as much knowledge of web development to create a highly functional, and elegantly designed Facebook application. Anywho, we hope this really does roll out in January 2011.

Twitter Police. Can we find a way to put all the Twitter-using spam artists in check? We wish that people wouldn’t use Twitter to flood the world with, “get rich quick on the internet” schemes, and silly “get a million-billion followers in one month” advertisements—as marketers using social media, we would just like to say to all the spammers out there that what they’re doing isn’t effective, but good effort.

We think that’s it for now. Check back for more additions to our Social Media Wishlist!

–Social Media Team

@coachgoot | @barbaradizon

P.S. We’ve been good this year…

This topic has been in discussion for the past month now, and after keeping up with countless articles, it all comes down to the creative mind. Yes, Google launched a few innovations that haven’t really taken off (e.g. Google Wave), but everything is a learning process. Creativity sparks innovation, but some of the top engineers that left Google for Facebook was due to a struggle with their creativity being hindered.

The most recent article I’ve read still provides insight on former Google employees feeling the liveliness of Facebook compared to Google in getting things done. Though all this talk doesn’t mean Google is going out of business any time soon, this rivalry is interesting to follow, and Facebook is definitely becoming more appealing to those with the most out-of-the-box ideas. As I was searching for a quote to relate, I came across this one, by Brian Graham: “Competition creates better products, alliances create better companies.” We’ve already seen this happen with Yahoo! and Bing, as well as Facebook and Bing, so I’m curious to see how these partnerships will flourish (or fail) in 2011.

Anywho, I’m anxious for what Facebook has in store for 2011, but I’m hoping whatever they release will spark even more innovation—from Google, Bing, whoever can keep with this rapidly moving snowball. Speaking of snowball, it’s that time of the season…hope everyone is enjoying the start of the Holidays!

-@barbaradizon

Loyalty:

Consider this when you’re evaluating your target audience’s loyalty to your brand:

Are social community members interacting with your brand a) regularly, and b) repeatedly–sharing content and links, mentioning your brand, and, most importantly evangelizing?

The key is to get as many people as you can, telling their peers about “how great” your product is—this is essentially FREE advertising, and a variety of promotion that is invaluable because people tend to trust their peers over marketers!

These are people telling one another about your brand--what are they saying?

Brand Mentions:

The term we use to describe the number of brand mentions online, is Share of Voice. Your Share of Voice is equal to the percentage of mentions you have versus those of your competitors—whoever you determine those to be. The Share of Voice figure will give you a good idea of how often your brand is being talked about on the internet–figure out where you’re being discussed, and how users are describing your brand—this will indicate users’ Sentiment.

Where are people talking about your brand?

Activity Ratio:

How active is your brand’s social network? In Facebook for example, compare (using Facebook Insights) the ratio of active members to the total number members–chart this number over time to determine the ebb and flow of your social followership. There will always be some members of your social network that are inactive, but if you initiate a campaign to increase interaction, by say, incorporating more multimedia (people love to interact with and share multimedia!), measure the resulting data and see if that doesn’t jump start users interaction!

There are a variety of social analytic tools that measure activity—one that we use at Webmarketing123 is called Lithium (previously known as Scout Labs)—check it out!

Conversions:

Everyone wants to measure the volume of leads generated by their social media efforts, but that number is only important relative to your conversion rate on those leads. While the volume of leads may not be there yet, the opportunity to convert on the leads you do have may be staring you in the face. Figure out where your leads are coming from (the flow of traffic through links) by creating campaigns in Salesforce or Marketo, then figure out how many of those clicks are turning into deals.

Over the past week, I’ve read about and experienced a number of integrations with current Social Media platforms that are pretty huge for people like me (Social Media enthusiasts). I’ve listed the most impactful ones below, along with links that provide a great overview of what these changes, merges, and additions bring to the table.

Login to Myspace (whoever still uses it) with your Facebook:

http://mashable.com/2010/11/18/you-can-now-login-to-myspace-with-facebook/

• Article includes a video that helps to make more sense of this odd partnership.
• Interests from your Facebook get transferred to MySpace, which updates your profile with a stream of your favorite music, movies and celebrities. Pretty cool–if you still use MySpace!

Facebook Messages—or rather, The Social Network’s ‘Social Inbox’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdzuFG6q63k

• Great video that illustrates how this feature can be of use to you…and your grandmother. And not to mention, the narrator is a little easy on the eyes
• Interested to see how this pans out. I requested an invite, so I’m waiting to see if I can get access to it, and probably blog about it soon. Anyone out there using it yet??

Twitter Analytics (awe-some):

http://mashable.com/2010/11/17/twitter-analytics/

• Article gives you visual insight on what the dashboard will look like—very cool.
• Just found out today that it will be FREE as well! We’ll see how long that lasts though. Or maybe, how good the analytics will be. Regardless, exciting news!

LinkedIn Recommendations:

http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/11/01/linkedin-company-pages/

• Blog from, who other than, LinkedIn themselves! Great overview of the new company page offering, how to use it for your company page and examples of companies that have already began implementing successfully on their pages.
• Great feature for more brand awareness on your products/services, and a chance to further increase product inquiry (and eventually brand loyalty) in a professional niche community.

Hope you all find these articles and videos useful in understanding all the new changes within today’s most used Social Media platforms. Stay tuned for more updates—particularly on Facebook Messages and Twitter Analytics!

-Barbara | @barbaradizon

]]> http://blog.webmarketing123.com/social-media/social-media-platform-announcements%e2%80%94when-will-they-stop/feed/ 0 http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/the-low-down-on-having-on-site-v-off-site-blogs/ http://blog.webmarketing123.com/search-engine-optimization/the-low-down-on-having-on-site-v-off-site-blogs/#comments Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:26:45 +0000 Ben Cheng http://blog.webmarketing123.com/?p=467 We frequently have clients ask us, “What’s better, having an on-site or off-site blog?” They want to know what each option means for their site. Here’s some of our insight—both the pros and cons of having an on-site vs. off-site blog, and how each affects your SEO and user traffic.

On-site Blog:

Having an on-site blog makes it easy to maintain a simple URL, such as: www.mysite.com/blog

Here are some pros to having an on-site blog:

• Great for internal linking
• Builds deep links = increased crawlability
  
• Helps add content to the site—websites with strong, crawlable content receive more traffic
• Helps build a greater theme to your site–search bots feed on this
• Great content silos—they allow you to store rich written content as well as multimedia
• Add pages to your site, creating stronger domain & authority
• Allow URLs to be increasingly keyword-rich and statically generated by title
• Beneficial for your website’s Google Universal Search results–blog search

Off-site Blog:

Having an off-site blog will require you to have a separate URL, for example: www.onsiteandoffsiteblogs.com—sometimes that’s not a bad thing, especially if it makes more sense to label your blog differently than your primary website. You can also use a sub-domain for your blog to maintain your site’s name–example: www.blog.mysite.com

Here are some pros to having an off-site blog:

• Having a blog that is contained outside of your primary website is a great way to give your site some free inbound linkage!
• If your site is built with a specific backend, your blog may not be compatible with that same server

On the flip-side, here are some of the cons to having an off-site blog:

The Rule of Diminishing Returns – Think about the links between your blog and your site like a basket of oranges on a hot summer day. You’re feeling parched so you take an orange—it tastes pretty good and is quite refreshing so you take another, and another, and another. Pretty soon you don’t want any more of those oranges. My point? You want inbound links coming from all over the place, not just from one direction–having an off-site blog that points to your site, or vice versa can result in this limiting effect.

If the purpose of your blog is to get people to visit your website, having a different domain makes it that much harder for people to find what you want them to find—having this external domain may ultimately deter users from finding your website.

In conclusion, an on-site blog is ideal for most sites unless there are specific restrictions or goals that are being targeted.

-Ben

Some Key Takeaways:

• 70% of Social Media websites affect purchasing decision in the buying cycle.
• 50% of social network users, factor information shared on their networks into their purchasing decision.
• Social Media users are 3 times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertisements.

The Importance of Social Media Today:

Social Media marketing is not about talking to different generations–it’s about creating a community based on common interest that thrives on user support.

Social Media for B2B Companies is about:

• Building loyalty and trust for your brand.
• Increasing community following and brand awareness as well as increasing traffic to your site.

Social Media is becoming increasingly integrated with customer service and influence on purchasing decisions. However, direct sales are difficult to track with Social Media. Social Media can offer direct sale opportunities, but without a defined metric for success, it will be difficult to determine its rate of return.

Integrating Blogs, Web Pages & Social Media for Optimal Search Results:

As with any form of communication, it’s important to have a plan for integrating your blogs and websites with your social media initiatives:

• A little planning goes a long way when starting a Social Media campaign.
• Map out what your marketing goals are – What does your company want to accomplish?
• Identify and understand your audience – Who are they, what Social Media platforms do you they use?
• Do not limit yourself to one Social Media platform. Determine which ones your target market use the most then establish your brand accordingly.
• Utilize/optimize Social Media profiles fully to reach your marketing goals.

Here are the Top 3 Starting Points for Optimizing Social Media & Search–where your company should start and how:

Blogs – Generate fresh, unique Content
Inbound Links – Establish your site as an industry authority

Social Media – Build your brand image with Social Media:

• Facebook Fan Pages
• Google Buzz
• Twitter
• Yelp
• LinkedIn
• Website Resources & Content

How to Measure Your Overall SEO & Social Media Efforts:

When starting Social Media campaigns, there are many ways you can measure your overall success. Here are some tips:

Blogs  = Content:

• Search engines love content–this is the single most important aspect of Social Media for SEO.
• Write casually, as though you were speaking to someone.

Inbound Links:

• Show that your site has good content and is the “real deal”.
• Also shows that your content is relevant, which is key to being well-optimized for search.

Interconnectedness:

• Social Media is about connecting and communicating.
• Social Media will help your brand/company remain transparent—increasing its credibility.
• Your website should be constantly updated, giving search engines new content to crawl. The more current search spiders determine your site to be, the higher they will rank it in search results.

Key Takeaways Continued:

1.      64% of marketers already integrate social media into their Search Engine Marketing plans today.

2.      Social Media and SEO go hand in hand.

3.      B2B is in fact equally, if not more active on Social Media sites than B2C.

4.      Social Media is more about increasing engagement and building relationships than broadcasting your message.

5.      The role of SEO for Social Media is to directly influence discovery of social communities and content through search, boosting sales and increasing conversions (conversations translate to Share of Voice).

6.      Content is king. Start with great content on your blog to increase inbound links.

-@SarahShakour

Unfortunately, getting the actual results pulled from Facebook to show up on the Bing SERP is quite the challenge. The steps to syncing up the accounts are not obvious and have changed a couple of times since the press event.

Currently, you have to go into Preferences to log in to Facebook, and until today I couldn’t find an option to sign in to Facebook without first logging into Windows Live first.
Also, there are only two types of information that Bing is pulling from Facebook:
1. People: Namely, your friends and your friend’s friends. Search their names, and get a lovely picture right at the top.

2. Things your friends “like”. Meaning, they click a button on Facebook that says they “like” something and become a “fan”. To be honest, I have yet to see this actually come up on the Bing SERP. Either it’s being rolled out reeeally slowly, or the algorithm needs some serious tweaking. I suspect results to come up more easily in the near future.

That’s me!?! Thanks, Bing!

So what does this all mean?

At this point, I think it should be treated as more of a heads up that social media is on the rise. No, this won’t affect your organic rankings, but your organic results will be sharing the SERP more and more with social media results.

My SEO advice: Keep optimizing. And don’t neglect Bing just because Google is still taking the lead. Between this Facebook alliance and the Bing-Yahoo alliance several months back, it looks like Bing is taking some pretty smart steps to keep Google on their toes.

My social media advice: Get started on it now if you haven’t already. It’s still on its way up, so best to get on now.

My overall advice: Utilize both SEO and social media. The two go hand-in-hand (see last week’s Webinar with MarketingSherpa, The Real Truth About Social Media and SEO). Hey, get PPC going, too, and you could be dominating the SERP on three different platforms!

The main takeaway here: Nothing major has happened yet, but baby steps are being taken and new ways of doing search are being put out there. Get your Facebook account going and don’t forget about Bing!

-@cynniebug

At Webmarketing123, we have the 5 Pillars of SEO. By following these tactics, your website will significantly improve its ranking on Search Engine Result pages. These 5 pillars include optimizing your Keywords, site content, Meta content, URLS and inbound links. Among SM users, 64% use keyword research to find what they are looking for vs. 59% of non SM users. Keyword research is one of the most important components of SEO–determining the language people use to describe products/services and what keywords they are using is crucial! In addition, 48% of SM users rely on link building to market their brand vs. only 37% of non SM users. See below:

This chart indicates how all aspects of SEO are enhanced by the integration of SM. This correlation will only become more apparent as SM evolves.

There are many unique marketing benefits that SM provides. Having a SM presence:

• Increases brand awareness
• Builds community following
• Helps establish loyalty and trust behind your brand (one of the most important benefits!)
• Offers direct sales opportunities
• Displays your SM results on the first page of Google

SEO has a lot of benefits as well that yield:

• A higher ROI
• 3^RD Party Validation (Google determining your site’s relevance to search terms)
• Improved flow of Traffic

Integrating SM with your SEO efforts will have far-reaching benefits for your website’s market presence. Your site will likely experience an increased number of inbound links, improving your current rankings and increasing click through rates on Search Engine Result pages.

MarketingSherpa research includes a mix of Social and Search data to improve inbound traffic, leads and conversion rates. Here are a few key takeaways to help your site reach its goals:

• Optimize content for keywords using SM channels
• SEO and SM work together to create a comprehensive online campaign.
• The combination yields a stronger customer community, an increase in conversions and a higher ROI
• SM will become more integrated in organic search results in the near future

-@SarahShakour

I decided to go ahead and run a quick test. I asked the question everybody has been asking for the last 14-ish years:

“Is Tupac alive?”

Yahoo insisted that my question wasn’t long enough, however, and I had to edit it slightly. Let’s check out the different interfaces.

Thank you, Yahoo, for the spelling correction. I guess Yahoo isn’t big on proper nouns.

And here is Facebook, making me incredibly nervous about my ground-breaking decision to ask a question:

Note: They also had a few pictures of friends to the left in that gap, giving it a very Facebook-y social networking feel, but I whited them out for privacy purposes.

Both platforms asked me to categorize my questions to get the most qualified people to find my question.

Yahoo actually helps you out and makes some suggestions for you, while Facebook reserves its sweet simplicity.

The thing I found most striking about Facebook (possibly tied with its terrifying message about selling my soul to the world by posting my first-ever question) was how it tried to give the question-asking a more professional tone. As the question asker, my picture and job title were posted along with the question and I was automatically made a follower.

Could this professional edge be a throwback to LinkedIn’s questions platform? Hmm.

Now how about the quality of the answers?

Within five minutes, I had 11 answers on Yahoo, mostly saying the same thing, with the style ranging from angry-sounding “NO!” to poetry about him being “alive in every word spoken by a white rapper as he attempts to become famous [and] … in the crazy as [sic] ghetto hairdos that sisters wear.” I also got some nice details of his death and a couple of links back to Wikipedia. Thanks, everyone. Now I know.

Facebook, on the other hand, got me virtually zero answers. Technically, one. But from somebody I already know, which makes it hardly count if the point is that, as Facebook so loudly declared, it’s visible to “the world” to help me out in my quest for knowledge.

So what’s the conclusion? Well, first of all, I’ll admit, it’s not the most perfect test since the nature of the question is one that most people wouldn’t take seriously. But it was an interesting test run just to see which would rake in the most responses and to see if people are catching on to Facebook questions at all yet.

And of course, according to my 12 respondents, we can further conclude that Tupac lives on in our hearts, but not in body. Rest in peace, Tupac (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996).

- Cynthia