Google Plans to Index Tweets in Real Time: How This Could Impact Your SEO

 

Years ago, it was commonplace to find real-time tweets in Google Search results. Twitter and Google had inked a deal that gave the search giant access to the social network's data stream. In turn, Google would display tweets in search results in real time. But that agreement expired, and in the middle of 2011, Google lost access to Twitter's data stream. 

 

Now, nearly four years later, the gang's back together.
Recently, Google and Twitter announced that they are working together again to index tweets as soon as they are posted.

 

How should a marketer to react to this news? In this post, I will focus on how you can benefit from the new deal between Google and Twitter. You will need to be active on Twitter to obtain these benefits, but I will include some tips for those of you who are just getting started -- you can still benefit from this development if you're doing the right things. The good news is that it will take some time for Google to implement changes based on the new data they will be getting from Twitter, so you have some time to get ready. But the sooner you get started, the better.

 

So let's dive into what the deal actually is and learn how you can take advantage of it.

 

What's the Deal With This New Deal?

 

Basically, this deal gives Google real-time access to tweets via a data feed, commonly called the Twitter Firehose. While the agreement seems to be in effect already, the two companies are saying only that it will take effect in Google Search sometime in the first half of 2015. The reason it will take some time to implement is that Twitter needs to figure out how to prep the data for Google, and Google needs to look at this data stream and decide what they want to do with it. However, one thing we know they will do is increase the number of tweets that they are indexing. What that means is that your tweets could start showing up in the search results.

 

Google actually does show some tweets in its search results today, but it's only a very small portion of what's on Twitter. My company, Stone Temple Consulting, recently did a study of 133,000 tweets to see how Google indexes tweets, and what we found is that Google indexes less than 8% of all the tweets we tested.

 

 

That's not a high level of indexation at all. To make matters worse, it also appears that Google is quite slow to index tweets, as you can see in the chart below:

 

 

Currently, that means tweets have little chance of getting indexed. In fact, the people whose tweets were most likely to be indexed, according to our study, had much higher than average followings. For people who are just starting out on Twitter, chances are that the indexation rate is near zero.

 

The new deal between Google and Twitter may well change all that. It's hard to predict just how many more tweets Google will index, but you can count on it being a significant change -- otherwise doing this deal makes no sense for Google.

 

As a result, you may have an opportunity to use Twitter to increase your presence in Google's SERPs. However, remember that Google will need a few months to implement changes to leverage the Twitter data feed, so don't expect instant results.

 

How Will Google Choose Which Tweets to Index?

 

Google has made no statements about what their plans are, so we don't know for sure. But, based on their history, we figure that Google is going to work hard to find the tweets that offer the most value to their audience. They will also most likely implement strong anti-spam measures.

 

While the new Twitter data feed will be valuable to them, frankly, it's an add-on. They will be conservative in what they allow into the results, and they will only include things that they have a very high degree of confidence are not spam.

 

As a consequence of that, trying to game this new arrangement will likely be very difficult to do. Google is going to look for signals that certain tweets have greater value. Here are the types of signals that could be available to them:

1. Links from third party web sites to the tweets. (This signal is already available to them today.)
2. Links from third party web sites to a user's profile. (This signal is already available to them today.)
3. How many times a tweet is retweeted, and by whom. They may get this info directly from Twitter, or they may use their own means to determine it. (This will be new data for them.)
4. How many times a tweet is favorited, and by whom. They may get this info directly from Twitter, or they may use their own means to determine it. (This will be new data for them.)

I don't see how this deal makes sense for Google unless they get the info on points 3 and 4 above, or at least number 3. This would mean that Google can use retweet data, and the knowledge of who is performing the RTs to determine which tweets have the most value. This is the source of where I see significant potential value for companies and publishers.

 

Maximize your engagement on Twitter, and you are sending out signals that your tweeted content is valuable. So how do you get more engagement?

 

How Should You Maximize Engagement on Twitter?

 

This was the subject of another study my company did recently on Twitter engagement. This particular study focused on what factors within your Twitter content cause increases in retweets and favorites. By far the most significant factor was the use of images in your tweets:

 

 

Here you can see that your chances of getting at least one retweet are more than doubled for most low and moderate social authority accounts. That's quite a significant difference. Our data also showed that you can also get five to nine times as many total retweets by including images. That's a big deal!

 

Other factors that matter, though not quite as much as images, were the use of hashtags and implementing longer tweets. Factors that mattered less were time of day, including links to content off of Twitter, or mentions of others.

 

While the above info can definitely help you optimize your own presence, you can't forget the importance of developing relationships on Twitter. Focusing on key friendships and relationships with influencers is a big key to success, especially if your presence on the platform is not currently that strong. 

 

Imagine someone with a highly influential account retweeting your most important content. This could be gold for you, as it can make Google aware of the content very quickly. The influencer's tweet with the link to your content may appear in search results and help expose it to much wider audiences. Of course, this may also result in more links to your content as well.

 

Even if Google does not get information in the Twitter data feed that allows it to understand who is retweeting whom, Google could still use link data to better understand whose profiles are most important. Then, they can place more value on their tweets, and place them within their index, driving traffic and exposure to that tweet. If it contains a link to your content, your traffic and exposure could go up.

 

Summary

 

Will this fundamentally alter the digital landscape? No, but it does mean that a strong presence on Twitter will have more value than it did before. To capitalize on this shift, do the following:

1. Increase your time invested in Twitter.
2. Create engaging content that people will want to retweet and favorite.
3. Build relationships with others who will help amplify your content.
4. Make sure to build relationships with influencers whose tweets are more likely to get indexed by Google.
5. Watch the indexation of your tweets grow while you build your own influence on the platform.

As the full partnership takes effect, we may discover other ways to optimize our Twitter strategies for search, but until then, preparing for the shift using the steps above is a wise move.

 

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-twitter-indexing-tweets-data

 

How to Write an Irresistible Headline

Let’s start with a fundamental question: How are posts shared?

 

It’s not the blog post, tool, or resource that gets shared. That might be what motivates the person who is sharing it, but all that ends up getting shared is the headline. The headline is what you share with your subscribers, it’s what people see in search results, and it’s what gets passed around

.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a good headline is going to help your traffic prospects.

 

What’s less obvious is that sometimes the best way to come up with an idea is to start with the headline. Here’s why: If you start with the resource, you might end up putting a lot of time into it before you realize that there’s no way to summarize it with an irresistible headline. This is a lot like the death sentence most products face if they don’t have an “elevator pitch” on which to build.

 

 

What Makes a Good Headline?

 

According to a study published in The Guardian, these changes help your headline’s click-through rate:1

• Headlines with 8 words do 21% better than average.
• Using a hyphen or colon will add 9% to your CTR.
• Thumbnails and images boost clicks by 27%, so use them on every platform you can.
• List posts tend to do better. They do even better if the number of list elements is odd instead of even. In fact, odd-numbered posts do 20 percent better than even-numbered posts. I suspect, however, that “10” is an exception to this rule.
• Headlines that end with a question mark do better according to this study. On top of that, a university study has also found that question headlines do better. They also discovered that question headlines did even better if they referenced the reader with “you” or “your,” as opposed to rhetorical questions or other types of questions.
• Headlines that end with three exclamation points get twice as many clicks as headlines with any other punctuation!!! Obviously, you can do this too much!!! You’ll start to lose your credibility after a while!!! But if you’re going to use an exclamation point, you might as well use three instead of one!!!

 

What Do the Top Blogs Do?

 

Using a script, Startup Moon scraped several blogs and organized the posts from most to least shared on social networks. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the most shareable headlines, but it’s probably a good indication that these posts attracted more traffic than usual. Posts in the top 20% tended to use the following tactics:

• Startup Moon was looking at tech blogs, but some of the most successful posts used words like “kill,” “fear,” “dark,” “bleeding,” and “war.” It looks like violent language gets attention, even when the subject isn’t about violence at all.
• The negative spin on a post tends to do better. Words like “without,” “no,” and “stop” showed up in a lot of the top posts. A study by Outbrain reached a similar result. They found that the negative superlatives “never” and “worst” performed 30% better than average and 59% better than positive superlatives. I’d bet that this all comes down to the human bias called loss aversion. Even when the outcome is the same, we pay more attention when the outcome is framed as avoiding a loss instead of gaining something.
• Obviously, people like seeing numbers in headlines. But it’s not just list posts that do this. Numbers of any kind apparently add credibility to headlines by adding specificity. Bigger numbers also tend to do better because they make things sound more dramatic. Use digits to represent numbers, not words. Time units also help, probably because they indicate exactly how much time it will take to learn something new. Finally, it’s best if the headline starts with the number.
• Guides do very well. Using words like “introduction,” “beginner’s guide,” “in 5 minutes,” and “DIY” will help your CTR.
• Piggybacking on big brands and hot topics also helps, even when the articles are only using those brands or topics metaphorically to make a comparison with something very different.
• A few random words also seemed to help: smart, surprising, science, history, hacks/hacking/hackers, huge/big, critical.
• The study also found that these words seem to hurt: announcing, wins, celebrates, grows.

 

Finally, if you want better headlines, your content needs to be built on a broader base of subjects and topics. This is where you look for inspiration from the top brands and widen your content strategy to include as many themes and ideas related to your industry as you can.

 

In another study, Ripenn analyzed 2,616 headlines on sites known for their ability to elicit clicks: BuzzFeed, UpWorthy, ViralNova, and Wimp. Here’s what they recommend as a result of their findings:

• Reference current trends, celebrities, and popular movies but with a unique spin on them.
• Inject headlines with curiosity. Elicit an interest, but don’t give it all away in the title.
• Use emotional words.
• Use action words. This is backed up by Dan Zarrella’s research on Twitter click-through rates. More adverbs and verbs will help CTR, while more nouns and adjectives will hurt it. We like to hear stories about things that are being done or learn how to do things. We don’t like stories about things just sitting there.
• Make bold claims.
• Write relatable, human headlines, and don’t get too formal.

 

Working together with Ripenn on that study, BufferApp was able to discover that these were some of the most popular phrases in successful headlines:

 

Image via BufferApp

Image via BufferApp

 

What If You Just Want to Sell?

 

While these are great tactics for sparking interest in a subject, many of them will backfire if you’re trying to target users who are already looking for something specific. Several case studies from ContentVerve at Unbounce demonstrate that, when it comes to landing pages:

• Question titles almost always perform worst. (“Need a Free MP3 Player?”)
• Loss-aversion titles tend to come in second unless there is a very clear thing people are trying to avoid. (“Don’t Waste Money on Expensive Mp3 Converters”)
• Titles expressing a very clear benefit tend to do best. (“Get Your Free YouTube Converter”)

 

The business of writing headlines for landing pages is very different from the business of writing headlines for blog posts. With landing pages, you’re trying to capture the attention of people who are already looking for something specific. Clever headlines just force them to think harder about what you’re offering.

 

With blog posts, on the other hand, you’re usually trying to elicit interest in a subject.

 

Over to You

 

Think carefully about which goal you’re trying to accomplish before you write your headline. In fact, this will probably depend on the platform. You’ll usually want to write more creative headlines for platforms like Facebook and Twitter, while you will often want to use more straightforward headlines for paid search or email.

 

It all comes down to the question of serendipitous discovery versus goal-oriented search.

 

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/how-to-write-a-headline/

 

36 Tried-and-True Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

There are lots of things you need to do to have a successful blog. Not only do your posts need to be well-written, helpful, and relevant to your target audience, but you've also got to make sure you're promoting them correctly so they get in front of people who could become your fans -- and maybe even your customers.

 

Luckily, you have many creative options when it comes to promoting your blog content.

 

In the infographic below from ReferralCandy, we hear from over 40 marketing experts about their favorite blog promotion tactics -- everything from relationship building to email segmentation to social media. Check it out.

 

 

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blog-promotion-tactics

 

The Ultimate Social Media Marketing Checklist Every Newbie Must Follow

Are you just starting out on social media as a platform to market your business? Are you unsure about what you should be doing in order to be a success?

 

Take a look at these handy checklists from Andrea Vahl to see how you are getting along. There’s one for Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube.

 

 

 

http://blog.red-website-design.co.uk/2014/08/05/the-ultimate-social-media-marketing-checklist-every-newbie-must-follow/

 

The Secrets to Tweets that Generate Engagement

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How Often You Should Post on Twitter and Other Social Media Networks

If you’ve been using multiple social media networks to market your business you’ll know that they aren’t all created equal. What is the norm on one network would be frowned upon on another, especially when it comes to the frequency in which you post updates.

 

For the recommended guidelines for each of the major social media sites take a look at the infographic below from Constant Contact.

 

 

http://blog.red-website-design.co.uk/2014/07/28/how-often-you-should-post-on-twitter-and-other-social-media-networks/

 

10 Quick Tips For Marketing Your Website Effectively

Marketing your website properly is just as important (if not more important) as having a properly designed and developed website. In today’s digital world, having a website that works to increase revenue and sales is crucial, especially in a time where a nonexistent (or outdated) website could cost your company hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales.

 

It’s a necessity to have a marketing strategy in line with the goals of your company or organization, and in order to increase traffic and revenue at your website, it will take a heavy dose of effort to get your website where you want it. Use these tips below, and continue to research the world of internet marketing, there’s much left to be learned!

 

 

Without further ado, here’s 10 quick tips for marketing your website effectively…

 

1. Make a BIG deal out of the launch of your website!

 

You should be proud of your new site, and use this as a tool to contact your customers to let them know things are changing, and for the better. Market the new features your site will have both online and offline, and let it be known that you’ve invested in yourself.

 

2. Start a subscription-based newsletter.

 

Every company, in my opinion, should have some sort of informative newsletter. Your newsletter should be published on a set schedule, but only one that you can maintain. Ideally, your newsletters should contain informative articles. You don’t need too much content, but the content you have should be eye-catching, easy to read, and something that people want to see. If you bore your customers with your newsletter, you won’t be helping to market your website. Create a newsletter that compels people to do something… write a how-to on something related to your industry, or a top 10 tips that people might find interest in (wink, wink).

 

3. Add your website to your company’s voicemail message.

 

Even if it’s something along the lines of, “Leave us a message, or contact us on the web at www-dot-yourwebsitehere-dot-com. Are you seeing a trend here? It’s important to TALK about your website, and if you have something people want to see (which you should with that fancy site of yours!), your work will pay off.

 

4. Put your website on your company building’s sign.

 

This one’s sort of a no-brainer, but what better of a way to get people to scope out your company in the comfort of their own home. People driving by will remember your address, especially if you have an eye-catching sign, and make your website large enough and easy to read from a distance.

 

5. Tell Google when you’ve got new content…

 

Take this tip straight from Google themselves, “If your site is very new, we may not know about it yet. Tell Google about your site. One way to expedite Google’s discovery of new pages is to submit a Sitemap. Even if your site is already in the index, Sitemaps are a great way to tell Google about the pages you consider most important.” If you aren’t sure if your site has a sitemap indexed with Google, or you’d like help building your sitemap and properly publishing it, contact your web developer.

 

6. Use an email signature in your correspondences, and make sure that a link to your website is in it.

 

Not only will this provide for an easy way for your customers (or potential customers) to find your site, but it will also allow for an easy portal for them to visit you.

 

7. Yes, your website is up and running, but now how are people going to find it?

 

Many companies build a website and forget about it… YIKES! Use social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter to broadcast your website to those you are in contact with. For small businesses and start ups, word of mouth can be the difference between success and failure!

 

8. Advertising your site offline is equally important as advertising your site online.

 

Make sure your web address is in your literature and publications (business cards, corporate branding material, fax cover sheets, etc.)

 

9. Update your website AT LEAST once a month.

 

I would say less than once a week is too little, but it’s important to keep your content fresh, especially if you have an informational site.

 

10. Make sure that your website is built with valid code.

 

Check your meta tags are properly used, and each page has a proper title. Consult your web developer about these items, as they are all important for your website to have.

 

Realize that the key to successfully marketing your website is a never-ending, integral process that you NEED to do. Take the time to properly work on the items above, and dedicate yourself to doing it right. You just invested in your website, right? Why not make the most of it and start seeing your hard-earned efforts pay off!

 

http://2marketawebsite.com/10-quick-tips-for-marketing-your-website-effectively-2/

 

17 Stats You Should Know About Visual Content Marketing in 2015

Each year in mid-January, when all of last year’s research has been published, we like to read through some of the major reports on inbound marketing, content marketing, social media and online behavior.

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, honestly, it’s amazing how fast things can change in twelve short months and 2014 was certainly no exception.

While reviewing this year’s research two major trends emerged and both highlight the effectiveness of visual content marketing. As you will learn, this year’s data reveals that marketers who are leveraging visual content are seeing significant increases in their blog traffic, social media engagement, visitor-to-lead conversion rates and inbound customer acquisition results.

Let's begin by examining a few statistics that demonstrate the impact visual content has on social media reach and engagement.

 

Over the last 12 months almost every major social network, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram have increased the prominence and importance of visual content. Keeping pace with this trend, several research studies conducted over the course of 2014 point to the rather amazing effectiveness of visual content for social media.

 

Here are a few stats, specifically related to social media, that you should consider while you are crafting your 2015 content marketing strategy:
 

1) Last year the amount of video from people and brands in Facebook's News feed increased 3.6X year-over-year.

 

 

2) Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets.

3) Socialbakers.com looked at the top 10% of posts made by more than 30,000 Facebook brand pages and found that posts with photos saw the most engagement—accounting for a whopping 87% of total interactions.

 

 

4) In 2014, 39% of B2B buyers identified that they share infographics on social media frequently.

 

5) Adding a photo URL to your tweet can boost retweets by 35%.

 

6) Images and photos are the most important tactic in optimizing social media posts.

 

 

7) Visual content is a key component in each of the top 5 most effective B2B marketing tactics.

 

 

8) 70% of marketers plan to increase their use of original visual assets in 2015.

 

 

9) The top 3 content formats that B2B buyers seek out to research a purchase decision include: Whitepapers (78%), Case Studies (73%), and Webinars (67%).

 

10) B2C marketers are more likely to use original videos (63% B2C vs. 56% B2B) and original visual assets (63% B2C vs. 56% B2B).

 

11) 95% of B2B buyers agreed that they preferred shorter content formats.

 

 

 

12) In a recent study 86% of buyers expressed some level of desire to access interactive/visual content on demand.  

 

13) Social Media Examiner recently asked marketers which forms of content they most want to learn about in 2015. Creating original visual assets took first place, followed by producing original videos.

 

14) In 2014 the use of video content for B2B marketing increased by 8% to 58%, while the use of infographics topped the adoption list increasing in usage by 9% to 52%.

 

15) Interactive content formats such as Brainshark and SlideShare increased in popularity during 2014, up from roughly 21% in 2013 to 28% in 2014.

 

16) B2B marketers are employing on average 12-14 formats of content.

 

17) The popularity of whitepapers as a B2B content marketing format is actually declining in relation to more interactive, easily digestible formats such as video.

 

 

Given that white papers were previously the most widely used form of marketing content for inbound marketers I might be so bold to call this shift the birth of content marketing two point zero.

 

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/visual-content-marketing-strategy

 

20 Twitter Best Practices That Will Build Followers and Increase Engagement

Are you making the most out of Twitter? With over 645m users posting 790m tweets per day it’s a monster of a network and it can provide massive results when used in the right way.

 

The infographic below from Passion Digital gives you 20+ best practices to use that will help you to build new followers and increase engagement.

 

 

http://blog.red-website-design.co.uk/2014/04/23/20-twitter-best-practices-that-will-build-followers-and-increase-engagement/

 

5 Reasons to Use Social Media Even If It’s Not Driving (Free) Traffic

Image via BigStockPhoto.com

Picture this situation: You’ve chosen the right social media platforms for your business and are posting good content to each one of them, but you’re not getting any more than just a handful of clicks.

 

How does it make you feel?

 

Frustrated!

 

But let me ask you a question: How many, of all the links that appear in your newsfeed throughout the day, do you actually click? The fact remains that you see oodles of links you don’t bother clicking. Hopefully, you’re feeling a bit relieved after this stark disclosure.

 

However, if traffic’s been dying down (especially after the recent organic reach debacle), you may need to revamp your social media marketing strategy (if you have one already) or create a new one with the assistance of an expert or an agency.

 

Today, the organic reach of Facebook page posts has reduced by a drastic 80%–90%. For example, a Facebook page like Picsity (with close to 1.3 million Likes) that regularly enjoyed a reach of 10,000 per typical post a few months back now suffers from an incredibly low reach of 500 per typical post.

 

But should you stop using social media sites because they aren’t driving your websites and blogs enough organic traffic anymore? Well, you shouldn’t (and, actually, you can’t) because there are ample reasons to be on social media other than traffic.

 

Here are five of them.

 

1. Build Relationships

 

Consistently, social media experts have reiterated that the focus should be more on “social” and less on “media.” You shouldn’t measure the worth of a social media account by the total number of its fans or followers. Social media, at its very core, is about building meaningful relationships, which depend on the quality of the conversations you have with your community. Lack of strong bonding renders even thousands of fans and followers useless.

 

In the traditional business world, organizations or companies are connected with their clients through transaction-based associations, as opposed to relationship-based associations. Relationship building gives social media platforms their uniqueness, and it’s something that traditional advertising can never achieve.

 

A few relationship building tips include:

• Participate in conversations in a genuine way
• Exchange original ideas with others
• Pay attention to others’ hobbies/interests
• Find opportunities to help others

Social media has been helping companies or business owners find partners, customers, and investors. If you approach social media as a relationship building tool, it’s still as powerful as it’s always been.

You shouldn’t measure the worth of a social media account by the total number of its fans or followers. — @obaidulhaque 

2. Remain on Top of Industry News and Best Practices

 

For a business, social media is not just about tweeting or posting updates to Facebook. Recently, LinkedIn conducted a survey to understand how SMBs look at social media in regard to their businesses. 81% of the SMBs the company surveyed use social media.

 

Of this group, 94% use social media as a marketing tool. However, 49% of the surveyed SMBs admitted that they also use social media as a tool to keep themselves abreast of the latest industry news and best practices. By following other businesses, industry experts, and thought leaders, they learn more about individual niches and markets while also getting answers to many of their important business questions.

 

3. Generate Content Ideas

 

Social media sites are excellent when it comes to finding intriguing content ideas. By creating meaningful conversations of your own or simply participating in the existing ones, you’ll be able to gather a lot of ideas to create a variety of useful marketing content.

 

Copyblogger, for example, creates a discussion on LinkedIn after they’ve published a new post on their blog. This opens up opportune avenues for them to discuss a particular topic on a deeper level, engage with the audience, ask for their feedback, and collect out-of-the-box ideas for future blog posts and content in other formats.

 

The Twitter Search feature is another good tool for finding content ideas. It allows you to quickly track the trending hashtags and eavesdrop on existing public conversations for new topics and ideas. Social media websites, groups, and communities, therefore, offer you abundant material to help with the content generation process on an ongoing basis. All you need to do is turn on your social listening ears when you’re using social media sites.

 

4. Find Better Hires

 

If you don’t want to waste time digging through a pile of resumes or wading through a sea of bad candidates when planning to hire talented professionals from a specific industry, social media is your answer. According to a report published by Staff.com, as much as 92% of companies leverage platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to locate, screen, and hire quality candidates for numerous job positions.

 

In an interview of 40–60 minutes, it can be quite an effort to evaluate an applicant in terms of their skills and personality. With the help of social media, however, you can quickly screen a candidate and identify the traits that could affect their performance at work. It’s crucial to note that 73% of recruiters say they have made successful hires though social media. Conversely, 1/3rd of employees also rejected applicants on the basis of what they found in their social media profiles.

There are several ways to find potential job prospects via social media, from your own social referral network to special features like Advanced LinkedIn Search. Once you’ve spotted potential candidates, you can start analyzing their social media profiles in terms of current employers, skills, work experiences, joined groups, interests, connections, quality of updates, and more.

 

5. Become More Productive

 

Being on social media, if you aren’t aware, increases productivity at work. According to a recent study by Ipsos and Microsoft, 46% of people agreed that using social media enhanced their productivity. But the result depends on what exactly you use social media websites for. If you’re checking out industry-related tweets and Facebook updates by competitors, it will certainly give your productivity level a quick boost. On the other hand, using the social platforms only for personal reasons won’t help much.

 

Don’t let social traffic become an obsession. Driving traffic to your websites and blogs should be one of the reasons to use social media, but not the only one. Change the way you look at social media, and you’ll soon see that it has a lot more to offer than you could ever expect.

 

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/5-reasons-to-use-social-media-even-if-its-not-driving-free-traffic/

 

7 Really Easy Ways to Get More Twitter Followers

Some people want more Twitter followers as they think it makes them look good, some because they like to be social and engage with others, the rest know that more targeted followers means more web traffic, more potential leads and ultimately more sales.

Whatever your motivation for gaining Twitter followers here are 7 really easy ways to get more of them. Infographic brought to you by Wishpond.

http://blog.red-website-design.co.uk/2014/03/27/7-really-easy-ways-to-get-more-twitter-followers/

What Are The Best Times to Post on Social Media?

Are you sending out your social media posts at the right time? Do you feel your posts aren’t getting noticed?

 

The best time to post on social media is very common question but is quite difficult to answer. There are a number of factors that can affect this such as the type of business you are, the social networks you are using, or even your target demographic.

 

There are certain noticeable trends when it comes to timings though and QuickSprout have put those together in the infographic below.

 

 http://blog.red-website-design.co.uk/2015/01/07/faq-what-are-the-best-times-to-post-on-social-media/

 

Why Social Media Is Important for SMBs, Plus 5 Helpful Tools

The internet is an extremely powerful tool for businesses that want to build an online presence and attract customers. Unfortunately it can be overwhelming and intimidating, especially if you have other areas of your business that need attention, such as finances and overall management.

 

Fortunately, it isn’t that hard to make the jump to social media. Facebook and Twitter are both great social networks to start on, and by far the most popular. With billions of users on Facebook and over 500 million users on Twitter, it’s not too difficult a task to reach customers from around the world.

 

So where to start? First off, you should treat customers on social media just like you would in real life - they’re not robots, and neither should you be! Be friendly, timely in your communication, personable, and most of all engaging. For example, treat customer issues just like you would at the counter - and instead of marked down price tags, try promoting online promo codes and even freebies. There are literally countless ways that you can leverage social media to market your SMB.

 

The good news is that there are hundreds of available and affordable tools online to help you manage your social media accounts, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business. Some of these tools can help you schedule posts throughout the week, give you a general overview of your accounts, and even allow internal team collaboration to handle customer support tickets via social media. Below are a few affordable tools worth mentioning:

 

Buffer

Buffer is a very simple scheduling tool, that you lets you schedule social media posts as far in advance as you’d like. You no longer have to post manually to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn - buffer lets you send posts to each of these social networks, and even has a nifty queue feature so that you don’t have to manually set a post time. Other features include basic analytics and team collaboration.

 

It’s only $10 a month to start, and pays off quickly - saving you hours of manual social media posting.

 

HootSuite

 

HootSuite is an all-in-one social media dashboard that lets you manage your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Google+ pages all at once. It’s similar to Buffer in that you can schedule posts (even in bulk), but goes one step ahead by displaying your social media feeds and lets you engage by way of like, comment, mention and favorite.

 

HootSuite pricing ranges from free for management of 3 social media profiles, to several hundred dollars for unlimited team collaboration and social media profiles. You’ll probably want to start out with their $10/month tier, which includes management of 50 profiles and a bunch of cool team features.

 

Feedly

 

Feedly is the next generation RSS reader - it lives in the cloud, so that it can display your feeds across several devices including desktop, iOS, Android and more. RSS feeds are great for discovering relevant content to share via your social media channels.

 

The best thing about feedly is the built-in social media sharing integration, and it even works with buffer. Feedly is free, but to make use of most of its sharing features, you’ll need to pay $5/month.

 

Mention and Google Alerts

 

Want to track a certain topic, or are you looking for media coverage about your business? Mention is a great app that sends you notifications whenever one of your saved searches finds something relevant, so that you don’t have to manually search across the internet. Mention searches social networks, websites and the overall internet for articles that include your search terms. You can then share the content directly from the Mention app. Pricing starts at $29 for 3,000 “mentions” (web results containing your search keyword).

 

Alternatively, you can use Google Alerts to track media coverage and topics across the web. It’s free, but the only drawback is that it searches for content only through the Google search engine, so it can miss important content at times. I use both Google Alerts and Mention, just to make sure I’m not missing anything.

 

Social media can be an extremely powerful outlet for your customers to get the best updates and deals from your business. That one Tweet can go a very long way!

 

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/why-social-media-important-smbs-plus-5-helpful-tools

 

The 7 Top Social Media Trends That Will Impact Your Marketing In 2015

2014 saw the world of social media take some new turns; some for better, others for worse. We’ve seen mobile use skyrocket; activity on social media during TV shows rise (according to research by Virgin Media) and the arrival of shopping via Twitter.

 

 

But with the year coming to a close, it’s time to have a look at which of these social media trends will take centre stage in 2015’s social landscape.

 

1. Mobile as Priority

 

According to Roger Katz of clickz.com, carriers’ shelf space for mobile handsets with screens sized 4.7 inches and over has grown from 4% to a third, whilst the number of daily active mobile users on Facebook has grown 15% in 2014 alone. If these stats aren’t enough to send a clear message, consider that the number of mobile-only users on Facebook grew by 34% – a startling spike that suggests mobile is no longer a secondary channel. It’s fast becoming first-choice.

 

Taking Facebook as a guide, Katz suggests ‘mobile-aware’ should become ‘mobile-first’ and think about how their social presence can cater to the mobile user. Big platforms have already been doing this, with Facebook creating its separate Messenger app and purchasing smaller mobile apps like WhatsApp, Instagram and Karma.

 

Twitter, on the other hand, recently purchased the MoPub ad exchange platform in 2013 and even Google Adwords is focusing more on mobile-centred display ads.

 

2. Paid Amplification

 

A recent Forrester report stated that organic interaction on Facebook brand posts has shrunken to just 0.073%. For a while now, Facebook has been pushing its promoted posts feature as a way to further monetize the platform and allow businesses to increase their outreach. And Twitter’s promoted tweets, have become more prevalent, attracting more users with each quarter (Thomas Armitage, site-seeker.com).

 

Katz believes brands ought to “ditch thinking about social media as a free-place market”, and instead take the time to think about audience segmentation and the needs of their particular audience.

 

Once brands have chosen carefully which social platform(s) to focus on, they can invest money into expanding their reach; capitalising on promising demographic and/or encouraging engagement from otherwise passive users.

 

3. Social Shopping

 

The idea of shopping via social media is probably an obvious one in hindsight, but it wasn’t until Twitter rolled out the idea earlier in 2014 that marketers started to consider it as a realistic possibility. With the integration of a ‘Buy’ button in certain tweets, visible only to a small segment of users, Twitter was able to test out the service through select brands like (RED) and Rihanna.

 

Facebook soon followed, rolling out a ‘Buy’ button trial of its own, and even microblogging site Tumblr recently announced it will try out the feature.

 

If engagement rates are satisfactory and there’s no decline in user-base, the chances are companies could be making more of this new feature. And for good reason too – social ‘buy’ buttons would potentially enable them to increase their sales; acquire concrete revenue figures from specific social media activity, and involve users in their brand in a whole new way.

 

4. Vlogging

 

Vlogging is becoming an increasingly common advertising channel for brands both large and small, giving blogging a run for its money as consumers’ go-to platform for reviews and advice. With the growing emphasis on unpolished, human-centred and consumer-generated content, companies are realising that customers want to hear the truth from other customers – not so much brands themselves.

 

YouTube is a platform with over one billion unique monthly visitors, and the second largest search engine according to Laura Harrison of Socialnomics. It has a wide demographic of 18-54, and videos are known to be shared “12 times more than links and text posts combined”.

 

A brand can either host its own vlogging channel or offer indie vloggers free goods in exchange for reviews and exposure. With the rise of young ‘celebrity’ vloggers like Zoella, Alfie Deyes, Tyler Oakley and Lily ‘Superwoman’ Singh, it’s now a strong contender for engagement that brands would be crazy not to take advantage of.

 

5. Social Wallets

 

Earlier in 2014, a Stanford student leaked hacked photos that revealed a line of code in Facebook’s Messenger app that suggested a payment and transfer platform could be on the cards. The payment system would allow Facebook users to not just make payments for goods over social media (hence the integration of a ‘buy’ button) but also send money to friends via direct debit.

 

The concept yet remains inactive, but if it were to come to fruition it would make social media a financial arena as well as a social one. Were users to trust Facebook and other networks with their money, these players would certainly enjoy increased power as a result (and brands would no doubt be able to cash in on this new relaxed willingness of users).

 

When we consider the rise of mobile contactless payment systems such as Apple’s iPay and EE’s Cash On Tap, combined with social media users’ shift towards mobile, the idea of social wallets makes perfect sense.

 

6. Interest-Based, Not People-Based

 

The last couple of years have seen a wave of new social platforms enter the foray; from image-based sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr; to Google+ and Ello. The changing trend here has been in how we consume our updates (images over text-based; short GIFS and videos etc). But a new trend emerging is altering the kind of updates we choose to consume.

 

Newer platforms like Foodie, Fitocracy and PlantWorking are geared towards individual audiences rather than taking a ‘everything, everyone, everywhere’ approach. While Foodie is a place for chefs and cooks to share and explore recipes, Fitocracy allows gym bunnies to share workout plans and talk fitness, while PlantWorking is a social network for gardeners.

 

The main takeaway here is that new social networks are likely to be more interest-focused in 2015, uniting users through common hobbies and passions.

 

7. Continued Quest for Personal Privacy

 

With an increasing level of publicity surrounding data sharing and privacy on the internet, several platforms have tried to step it up a notch in 2014 by promising more privacy to their users.

 

Newcomer Ello, for example, promises never to sell user data, whilst Snapchat, Whisper, YikYak and Telegram have each taken a different approach to the social stratosphere. These platforms allow users to engage in conversations privately among their friends, or in some cases, connect with strangers while still keeping their identity private.

 

However, incidents such as the Snapchat hacking and Whisper’s secret compilation of posts and locations (for use in its own search database) have proven that the battle for privacy is not yet won. Ryan Holmes of Time.com has commented that the pressure for privacy will only grow stronger in 2015.

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/12/24/the-7-top-social-media-trends-that-will-impact-your-marketing-in-2015/

 

How to Create a Successful Blog Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide

Today, age and experience no longer necessarily determine your credibility. Instead, people care about your ideas, your generosity, and your willingness to take risks and learn from mistakes -- those are the kinds of things that can give you a voice in the conversation.

 

We've witnessed a blogging revolution over the past fifteen years, where individuals have become famous on the back of 500-word snippets or rants that resonate with some online audience. Many of the thought leaders of our time became well-known because of their blogs. But as more people blog, the quality of blog content is becoming more important -- and this is especially true for businesses who are blogging to get found on the internet.

 

 

It isn't enough to simply have a blog -- businesses need to spend time creating a blogging strategy that allows for high quality content creation so you can, slowly, build a reputation for thought leadership that will pay off big time in the long term.

 

It's the strategy part that trips up a lot of businesses. I've found that documenting your blog strategy is a great way to bridge the gap to successful execution. Check To help you get started, here's a nine-step process for creating a successful blog strategy for your business. Each step is marked by a question. Adapt it based on your business needs and experience. 

 

1) Purpose

 

Why does your blog exist?

 

What to document: One defining statement articulating the purpose of your blog.

 

Before you can dig in to the strategy of your blog, you need to clearly articulate its underlying purpose. Take a moment to ask yourself these questions:

• What is the greater purpose your company is trying to fulfill?
• What story supports this purpose?
• Who shares your passion for this purpose?
• Is your team aligned with the meaning of this purpose?

If you can answer these questions with some clarity and then collate them into one defining statement, you create a powerful anchor for all future blogging (and marketing) decisions.

 

2) Buyer Personas

 

Who are your ideal customers?

 

What to document: A clear, detailed description of your ideal customer(s). 

 

Ideally, you'll tailor your blog content to people who might buy from you -- after all, your blog will become a great lead conversion tool. But who are these ideal customers? Once you can answer that question in detail, you'll be able to write blog posts that are better tailored to their interests. (Here's a helpful template for creating a buyer persona to get you started.)

 

Once you've arrived at detailed descriptions of your ideal customers, you'll need to research their behavior so you can adapt and tailor blog content for their biggest challenges, interests, and curiosities. But isn’t customer research expensive, you might ask? Sure, it can be -- but if you want to bootstrap it, here are a few places to start:

• Question and answer forums like Quora, Yahoo! Answers, and Fluther.
• Social media. I find LinkedIn Groups, Twitter Advanced Search, and Google+ Communities excellent resources.
• Tools that tell you about other content being created in your niche and how popular it's been with your potential customers (at least according to social shares). Examples include BuzzSumo and Topsy.
• Blog comments on other blogs your potential customers might read. What type of content are they already engaging with on other blogs?

One main goal of inbound marketing is to build trust with your audience. If you discover the information your customers seek and then become the go-to blog for providing that information, they will likely start to trust you. This trust gains momentum over time, and before you know it, that high trust relationship will bring your customers back time and time again -- and they'll probably bring their family and friends with them.

 

3) Competition

 

Which of your competitors have blogs?

 

What to document: A list of 5-10 of your closest competitors with blogs you could conduct a content audit on.

 

Do you want your customers seeking purchasing information from your competitors? This is a rhetorical question -- of course you don’t. But if your blog doesn’t provide the information your customers are looking for and your competitors’ blogs do, what choice do they have?

 

Try conducting a content audit of your biggest competitors. If they're ranking higher than you for crucial keywords, then write and promote better content for those keywords. If you see gaps in the content on their site, capitalize on those gaps.

 

4) Keywords

 

Which keywords are you targeting?

 

What to document: A list of 5-10 keyword groups you want to rank for and their associated long-tail keywords you can include in blog content

 

Keywords let search engines understand what your content is all about. When one of your customers searches for a specific phrase, you want them to find your blog (or web page), not a competitor’s. But what are your potential customers searching for? You'll need to dedicate some time researching which keywords they tend to type into search engines, and then including those keywords in your blog posts.

 

Just remember: Google's algorithm is constantly changing and is becoming more and more intuitive -- and old tactics like keyword stuffing will hurt your ranking nowadays. Instead, marketers are better off writing copy that engages humans first, and search engines second. 

 

5) Distribution Platforms

 

Where will you distribute your blog content? 

 

What to document: A list of the platforms where you will distribute your blog content.

 

Rand Fishkin, SEO Expert from Moz, once quipped: "'I hit 'publish' for the first time, and everyone just showed up' – said no blogger ever."

 

I love this quote. Writing quality blog content is a great start toward running a successful business blog, but the hard part is getting that content discovered and turning your platform into an authority.

 

But creating blog content can be time consuming, especially when you aim to command authority in your niche with well-researched posts. One tactic I've found very useful is repurposing your blog content. Take a look at the content you used to write a blog post -- the ideas, research, structure, and stats -- and using that same information in a different form. You'll reach a wider audience and engage with people that may not have read your blog the first time.

 

There are many things you can do to get better results from your blog. Here are a few:

• Take key quotes and takeaways from your blog post and schedule them across your social media networks, including links to the blog post. Even better, put these quotes into images using a platform like Canva and post them on social media.
• Split up the blog post as a string of emails to your community, with links back to the blog post.
• Create a SlideShare using content, stats, and so on from your post.
• Create an infographic. This isn't as hard as it sounds, and all you really need is PowerPoint.

 

6) Promotion

 

How will you promote your blog content? 

 

What to document: A list of potential influencers in your niche, as well as all the other promotional tactics you will use to get your blog content discovered.

 

When it comes to blog strategy, "promotion" simply means getting your content out there so people discover it, read it, and (hopefully) share it with others. There are lots of inbound marketing tactics for promoting your blog posts, but for the purpose of this post, I’d like to focus on influencer marketing.

 

Using an inbound approach to promoting your blog content requires a lot of deliberate effort up front. You need to identify key influencers in your industry -- people your customers perceive as credible and trustworthy. These influencers command authority in their field and provide access to authoritative sources.

 

First, create a list of influential people in your niche. Then, you can start placing deposits -- for example, if they have a blog, read it, comment on it, and share it. If they have an email list, sign up for it and respond to (some of) their emails with thanks, and encourage others to join up. If they have a book, read it, review it, and generously promote it to your network. In the words of Adam Franklin, “Lead with generosity."

 

It's important to remain in regular contact with your list of influencers. I schedule time into my calendar to place further deposits with certain people. Typically, this looks like a brief email message or a social share, but sometimes it might play out as something more meaningful. If you work hard on placing deposits you expand your network to a group of people that command great authority with your ideal customers.

 

Now you can leverage the combined power of an extended network next time you publish a blog post. Influencer marketing is just one component of my blog promotion strategy, but I believe it's the most important.

 

7) Headcount

 

Who will run your blog?

 

What to document: Exactly who is accountable for each role within your blog strategy.

 

You need to decide exactly who will execute on your strategy. As you can see from this blog post, there are lots of moving parts -- and if you don’t create ownership around each of those components, your chances of success decrease. Here are some examples of the roles you need to effectively implement a blog strategy. (Depending on the size of your marketing team and the skills available, you may find one person holds responsibility for multiple roles.)

• Keyword research
• Facts, stats and examples research
• Copywriting
• Editing
• Strategy and editorial calendar governance
• Creative
• Promotion
• Repurposing

 

8) Rhythm

 

How many blog posts can you commit to scheduling?

 

What to document: An editorial calendar and the number of blog posts you can commit to scheduling per week.

 

The beauty of creating a blogging rhythm and publishing that in an editorial calendar is that it’s not about frequency, it’s about creating accountability. It makes sure that every blog is optimized for keywords, CTAs and is developed and scheduled on time. This gives you a consistent stream of blog content that your readers can get in sync with.

 

Your editorial calendar should be designed to align with the rest of your blog strategy. I like to incorporate the specific promotional tactics, goals and resources required for each individual blog post.

 

9) Metrics

 

Which metrics matter to you?

 

What to document: The goals you aim to achieve from blogging and the metrics that contribute to those goals. (I recommend setting goals over a 60-day period. This gives you long enough to see whether your strategy is working, and allows you to then adapt and change your goals based on the results you experience.)

 

Traffic, likes, plus ones, re-tweets, follows, backlinks, subscribers… What do all of these metrics mean? How do any of them contribute to your bottom line?

 

Metrics are helpful, but they're pointless if you can’t track them back to a meaningful outcome. Perhaps the most important element of an effective blog strategy is accurately defining the goals you want to achieve. Here are three helpful questions you can ask yourself while defining a goal or outcome:

• Does this goal help us achieve our purpose, or is there something more relevant we can aspire to?
• Is this goal aligned with the initiatives of other parts of our business?
• Which metrics track the progress towards this goal? Are these metrics complementary or counterintuitive?

Answering these questions will help you set meaningful goals, and consequently, understand the metrics that will help achieve them. There is no exact science to measuring the effectiveness of your blog strategy, but this process creates a direct line of sight from your activity to a desired outcome. Once you understand exactly how many of a specific metric -- say, a social share -- contributes to a specific outcome -- say, a sale -- then your strategy becomes more targeted.

 

Growing an influential blog in your niche is a surefire way to nurture your potential customers. By creating regular content that solves the challenges of your readers and fulfills their biggest curiosities, you'll start to build a vault of trust and advocacy, which will inevitably contribute to the overall success of your business. Start with your purpose -- the big why -- and slowly unpack the individual levers that will contribute to your blog marketing performance.

 

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blog-strategy-guide?utm_campaign=blog-rss-emails&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=15415390