All posts in social media

Each year, webmasters and marketing managers are faced with new developments and technologies, and it can be hard to know which to adopt and which to ignore. But Google Authorship is not one something to casually disregard.

Google’s AuthorRank can strengthen the SEO value of pages published by a particular individual and now is the time to climb on board – before your competitors do.

Google plus communities

If you’ve been on Google + recently, you might have noticed Google’s latest feature called Google+ communities. It’s probably too early to judge its success just yet, but based on my personal Google plus news feed (so not scientific at all) I am certainly seeing quite a lot of engagement on the platform.

The concept and the objective behind launching Google+ communities is to create a platform within Google+ where individuals, organisations, and business can meet and engage, based on shared interests and passions.

This is meant to enhance a user’s ability to find others with similar affinities or interests, and be able to connect and learn from experts. Organisations, businesses, and brands can leverage topics, interests, and causes that they’re passionate about and share them with their audience.  Thus, communities provide a place for all of these groups to converge.

It’s only 140 characters, so it should be easy – right?  Well, not necessarily. Twitter’s ‘microblogging’ approach has become well established in the last few years, and many companies are finding it an excellent way to keep in touch with customers, while reducing the administrative burden of doing so. After all, typing 140 characters can be much faster than typing out a full email – as long as you know what you’re saying.

Following reports over Limited Run’s Facebook ad tests and their need to spend a minimum advertising budget of $2,000 a month in order to change their Facebook page name from Limited Pressing to Limited Run, we’ve been getting many inquiries from our clients.

We contacted Facebook and a spokesperson for the social network responded with the following:

According to Facebook, users upload more than 300 million photos, generate over 3.2 billion ‘likes’/'comments’, and have 526 million active users on average per day. But do we stop to think about where our information is being shared and what happens after an image or a post has been uploaded? To show users just how easy it is to access user’s status updates and share it to the world, 18 year old Callum Haywood set up a website called ‘We Know What You’re Doing‘, pulling public status updates via Facebook’s Graph API that contain references to hating your boss, getting drunk, using drugs and changes to your personal phone numbers. The site created a massive media stir with questions being asked once again about online safety on social networks. We caught up with Callum to find out more about the man behind the website, and to ask what inspired him to set up the site as well as what users can do to ensure online safety.

Callum Haywood

Hey Callum, firstly, congratulations on your experiment, it’s gotten you worldwide recognition; did you ever envision that this project would get you this much media attention? Thank you, I had never envisioned that the site would get anywhere close to the number of visitors it has had in its entire online life. I had certainly not expected the media to pick up on it.

Could you tell us a little bit about your career background and how and when you got into coding and web development? I’ve recently finished my A level studies, and will be starting university later this year. I started coding when I was about 13 years old, just learning basic HTML out of an old book. I then got into web design using CSS, and this lead me onto PHP which is what the site is written in.

What inspired you to set up “We know what you’re doing?” Two things inspired me. First was Tom Scott’s video “I Know What You Did Five Minutes Ago” in which he demonstrates, using live data, the amount of personal information that people put online. Secondly is the simplicity in which this information can be obtained; within a few lines of code you can query Facebook’s Graph API for public posts and output them.

Lately, you might have noticed Google’s aggressive and frequent product announcements. With so much going on at Google during the past few weeks such as Google’s Penguin algorithm update, the Google Plus iPhone and Android app redesign, Google’s Knowledge Graph, Google acquiring Motorola Mobility, Google Maps being replaced by Google Plus Local and Google Shopping; it’s become so very hard to keep pace with the changes (or future changes) that are bound to affect SEO and SEM strategies in the near or distant future. Therefore, I thought I’d take a step back and use the Queen’s Jubilee weekend to gauge how all of this will shape your future SEM strategy. Google has always maintained that search is at the heart of everything they do. So it’s safe to assume that all of their major updates, will in some way have an impact on search.

The second day of SMX started with a panelist discussion on social shares, and top tips on how marketers are truly going to be influential.

Here are the top takeaways from the first morning session with more to follow later on today!

Social Shares | New Link Building from @LisaDMyers

  • Rel=Author one of the key factors of Link signals in years to come, mixing in the need of SEO & Social Media
  • If your not there already understand and begin to use Google +, as research has shown a direct correlation for companies having better SERPs because of using G+
  • The end game has not changed in terms of link building, in essence creativity is essential to build great links
  • Examples of short term Social SEO link building: post and publish blogs, articles, breaking news, infographics, competitions and interviews
  • Example of long term Social SEO link building: create a social community, developing a blog, writing white papers and making yourself seem a social authority
  • Understand your target market in making sure they will share your items, relevancy is key
  • Makes the most of what is happening now in the market

Making Waves Not Ripples: Effective Syndicatoin to Drive Social Sharing from @mrjamescarson

After a relatively long wait, Google announced today that they have launched an update to their Google Plus iPhone app. As I type this post, my phone seems to be taking its own time in downloading the update which gives me the impression that this particular update is a fairly significant one. In fact, Google seem to almost want the Google plus app to be part of your normal day to day experience by stressing that “we’re not interested in a mobile or social experience that’s just smaller. We’re embracing the sensor-rich smartphone (with its touchable screen and high-density display), and transforming Google+ into something more intimate, and more expressive”.

The most significant line in their announcement to me, was their justification for the iPhone app upgrade, “today’s new iPhone app is an important step in this direction—toward a simpler, more beautiful Google”. I’m not sure about you, but I feel this is probably the biggest hint Google has publicly dropped of their efforts in moving toward a more  ’social’ and a more ‘mobile-centric’ strategy for their future.

Last week my colleague Shaad Hamid and I were invited to the Business School at Oxford Brookes University to talk about the rise of Social Media and what it means for businesses.

Here are the slides from our presentation:



Top Take Aways

  • Social Media is no longer restricted by region, demographic or age. We are witnessing a global, cultural phenomenon. Social media has universal appeal and is emerging as a primary communication channel.
  • Mobile phones are fuelling the rise in Social Media use. They allow users to be constantly connected and offer real-time interaction so users no longer have to wait till they get home to update their statuses. The two mediums are complimentary as they represent the two most popular ways to stay in touch with friends.
  • The rise of social media has changed the landscape for marketing and advertising as consumers now have a voice. Where before there was a monologue between brands and consumers with brands dictating the agenda, there is now a dialogue.
  • Why should brands use social media? To build brand awareness, create great customer service, conduct market or competitor research, advertise or reach more consumers. However the most valuable activity on social media is building a community and creating brand advocacy.
  • Only 14% of consumers trust brand advertisements while 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations.
  • Building positive brand advocacy with users of social media is something that competitors cannot easily replicate.
  • The biggest challenge for companies trying to implement a social media strategy is figuring out the logistics – setting guidelines and controlling the ‘information supply chain’.
  • Social Media is a function of marketing and the marketing strategy must be in line with the overall business strategy.
  • Like any marketing function it must be measurable otherwise it’s not worth doing. Every social media strategy must have KPIs for each channel. Set goals and measure performance against them.

 

Back in December last year I wrote one of my first blog posts for SEOptimise entitled “How you can get over 79 Twitter followers in under 23 minutes – and why not to bother”.

From the title of the post, you can imagine that this post is regarding a similar topic, so you will not be required to do any of the following:

  • Write a ground-breaking blog post announcing how you have revolutionised the world
  • Give away freebies in order to be liked
  • Do any sort of “Like Gating”

like

Over the past decade, as blogging and social media marketing have become increasingly popular, some companies are now even outsourcing their blogs to be written by another agency.

I was surprised the other day when talking to a friend about how they measured the success of their company’s blog, that she mentioned one of their factors was getting more “Facebook Likes”.  At that moment I cringed, but it also gave me inspiration to write this.

Learning Objectives

Today’s post will show you how to get free likes on your blog post, but will also show you that getting 1000 Likes as opposed to 10 makes no real difference. I’ll also show you alternatives to how you can better monitor the success of your blogging campaign.

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