Posts tagged Social Media
5 Essential Website Success Tactics for 2010
May 27th
Right now we’re going back … to the future! We spend a lot of time talking about the timeless SEO and internet marketing tactics. Here are the up-and-comers for the year that will continue to be important for the rest of 2010.
Google Local
It’s like ordinary SEO, only smaller and easier! Get onto that Google Local page and start prettying it up if you haven’t already done so.
Load time
This new SEO ranking factor might not carry a lot of weight, but it really is a no-brainer. Get a good host, and keep your pages lightweight.
Do your Facebook/Twitter/MySpace pages
Everybody else is on here … and if your business has dedicated fans, they are probably actually searching for your profile.
Create a mobile site
Even small, local sites need a mobile version to cater to users-on-the-go searching for goods and services through their smartphones.
Check your analytics
There’s no sense throwing money at SEO without knowing what results it is creating…
Is Your Business Being Squatted On?
Mar 31st
Some human predictions about the future have been amazingly accurate … just check out the Paleo Future blog. Some things we never saw coming … including the idea that there could be a full-time income made from domain squatting! With the prevalence of different sites that are available to create corporate profiles, your internet marketing campaigns could be in real danger of sabotage and blackmail, from social media profile squatters.
What is social media profile squatting?
Well, for starters, although it is recognized phenomenon, it doesn’t really have an agreed-upon name. Perhaps we’ll call it social squatting 
. Much like domain squatting, this would be the process of looking for companies, large and small, that have not yet registered an official profile on one of the major social media sites. The trolls would then set up a profile with your business name, in the hope of selling it to you at a later date.
Obviously there is a subtext to the offer of sale as well – whoever registers your official profile name on a site becomes (as far as the public knows) the spokesperson for your company. Choose to deal with them in a way they don’t like, and they may find an ingenious way to sabotage your internet marketing and drive away your customers.
What sites should I register on?
Here are some of the popular social media sites that it would be wise to register an official Page, profile or account on:
- Facebook (note that Facebook is taking steps to prevent people creating non-official brand name pages)
- MySpace
- Friendfeed
- Youtube – create a company channel
- Technorati
- Squidoo
- Yahoo Answers
But I don’t want to do social media marketing right now…
That’s okay. Most social media sites will let you register a profile, and then effectively make yourself invisible to the public at large. Leave it blank if you like – just make sure the account is registered to your business. This way all that careful brand building and internet marketing effort is carefully preserved.
Successful Tweets … From Bones to Embodied
Mar 25th
Every studied cell biology? For a tiny thing, they are pretty complicated! The same is true of Tweets. They may be only 140 characters long, but they can speak volumes both within and between their lines. Today we break down what makes a good business Tweet, in terms of promoting your web marketing goals.
What type of Tweet is it?
Much like the cells in your body, having a single ‘type’ of Tweet just won’t work for your business. Every cells in your body needs most of the other cells in order to function … and in the same way, you need a well-rounded repertoire of Tweets in order to create a viable ‘organism’ of a business Twitter profile. Here are some of the types of Tweets you can, and should, be using:
- Retweets – If you come across something your followers might find interesting, you can re-tweet it
- Opinions and observations – Keep them professional, though. Be positive – don’t derogate anybody, especially your competitors or bad customers, tempting as it might be.
- What you are reading or watching: Share a link to interesting content you’ve found
- Events and plans – If you have an upcoming event for the public to attend, tweet about it often
- Content promotion – many blogs can be set to auto-tweet new posts. You may prefer to select Tweet-worthy content yourself.
- Replies: If somebody asks you a question via Twitter … answer them! (Refer to 4 Principles of Customer Service in Internet marketing)
- Quotes: I love quotes. Some people don’t love quotes. A small percentage is great to have as part of your Twitter ‘organism’.
The Control Centre
The link that you use is like the brain of many of your Tweets – the tweet itself would be useless without it. Twitter automatically uses bit.ly, but you may prefer another service. Is.gd uses slightly fewer characters, for example.
Watch out for…
These pathogens can ruin you’re the Twitter-creature you’ve created! Look out for:
- Naughty words. They make you seem angry, out of control, unprofessional, and like you have a limited vocabulary and no other way to express yourself.
- Abbreviations. Most people understand LOL and OMG, but if you’re using them more than once per tweet, you are trying to squeeze too much in! Another point here … I find that ‘WTF’ (pardon me!) is just as unprofessional as the spelt-out version.
- An imbalance forming. Check over your profile page regularly and see if you have been favouring one type of Tweet heavily. Bring a bit of balance back into your profile.
Twitter is a great web marketing tool – but even within 140 characters there is a lot of room for wasted opportunities!
Five Checkpoints Before You Start Social Media Marketing
Mar 17th
Social media marketing is going to be a critical strategy for businesses to learn to take up. Many traditional style stores find it incredibly counter-intuitive to ‘become friends’ with their customers, to share thoughts and opinions, or to remain anything but completely corporate and professional. However, in a world where everything is available to everybody, it is personality that will draw your customers to you, and set you apart in your niche. But before you start using social media to boost your web marketing repertoire, there are some things you should do …
Create a strategy before you jump into the swarm
1. Should you start social media marketing?
Do your clients use social media? Will they think its repulsive that you’ve started? Ask some questions of your existing customers if you can to try to gauge response. Also, see if any companies competing with you use social media, and what sort of response they have from people – do they have many Facebook fans or much Twitter interaction?
2. Consider the costs
Setting up most social media profiles is free. However, the time taken to administer them, to create content to submit to Digg, to contact people that send you questions through these media, all costs money. Be prepared to have dedicated web-based customer service staff if you push social media hard.
3. Set a personality and tone for your social media experience
Try to make it as close to your company’s real culture as possible, and set some boundaries regarding what gets posted or talked about. Will innocent sexual innuendo be okay … in fact what sorts of content in general will be okay and what will not?
4. Create a skills-based team dedicated to the social media marketing
Choose someone that is personable but professional, and also understands the legal and media implications of their public statements.
5. Set up a tracking system
You’ll need to know how all this effort is translating into profits for your company – decide on a method for tracking this before you start.
Marketing Potential of Social Media Tools
Feb 10th
Social Media Optimization utilizes social media tools that include bookmarking sites, social networking sites, video sharing or photo sharing sites and many others. The significance of this getting popular web marketing strategy is usually ignored because only few so far have seen its potential in making the business earn its target sales.
Originally, social media tools are created for the purpose of enabling the people to communicate–eliminating distance, territorial boundaries, and even cultural differences across the world. Recently, a number of social media networking sites have evolved into being more interactive and fun in terms of services and features. Websites such as Facebook, Myspace, Friendster and other related websites are now equipped with features more than what the social media networking sites should be. Aside from messaging features, the mentioned sites also allow their users to post lots and lots of photos and videos. These features are the main service of Flickr (or Photobucket) and Youtube respectively.
Even search engines adapt the features of social media tools. Google and Yahoo for instance, aside from offering emailing services, they also offer social media service features in the form of instant messaging or photo posting (i. e. Google’s Picasa Web Albums).
The primary reason why even sites such as search engines are adapting social media service is that social media tools are deemed to be the most effective way of online marketing strategy. It offers boundless opportunity such as unlimited audience for your business and great chances of selling more than what you are targeting.