Social Media Archives - Page 6 of 8

SEO And Online Presence In 2011

It is that time of the year again when each one of us ponders over the decisions and follies made in the past year and plan and make resolutions for the coming year. This is applicable to our personal as well as professional lives. I have given some thought to the online scenario with a focus on SEO for 2011 which I would like to share. Firstly, at the very outset I would like to dispel any doubts and fears if any SEOs have regarding the demand for SEO services in the coming year. According to me the SEO Services will be the most sought after services and the demand curve for the same will surely show and increasing trend. Though SEO is going to have a much wider connotation in the coming year and the SEO services deliverables will include much more than just on-page tweaking of titles and meta tags. What is going to be of importance is the off-page optimization. Off-page optimization will also be much more than just trying to get links from here and there randomly. The off-page efforts shall have to be more organized and the whole process shall have to be focused on creating a brand and goodwill online. Just having a site linking to you may not pass on the much needed link juice for pushing the SERPs. With search engines confirming the use of the social media signals for rankings the social link graph and the social media parameters are fast becoming the basis of off-page optimization passing on the necessary nectar or the link juice for boosting or maintaining the SERPs. Currently the Facebook and Twitter social link graph and data are of utmost important. Social media sites is a conversational type of medium which involve a dialogue, sharing of links and now is also truly social in nature and is making the birds of a feather flock together and like minded people are seen sharing news , ideas and views. Though at present there may be a lot of noise on the social media but soon it will evolve into a platform where discussions and opinions and links shared by the authority accounts related to the concerned industry will gain a lot of weight. Hence how your social media interaction is managed will be the key to the success or failure of the online campaign. Apart from the social media - the blog posts, the presence on the community forums, the links in the email signatures, guest blogging, User generated content on your blogs and any other external link from the WWW which adds value to your website is going to establish your identity, brand, goodwill, reputation thereby increasing visibility and also will add the necessary life needed to push the SERPs. Hence you can say an overall online presence on the WWW which gives you a chance to rank on all the search options will be the key to have a successful SEO campaign. The local markets have a lot to offer and ignoring the local scene and aiming for the global scene will surely be a very big folly for any business especially for the SMEs. Think global and act local will be the needed approach that any business would be expected to have. Tuning your website and yourself for the mobile web is one more thing that needs to be focused on . With the kind of the increasing trend shown in the sale of the smart phones especially in the last quarter of the year says that the web is going mobile. In short, we can summarize as follows:

Have great content on your site
Have a social media presence
Engage and interact on social media establishing an individual and business persona
Have a blog with a focus on your main line of business which you keep on updating regularly
Participate in conversations of your topical communities
Take guest blogging seriously
Do not ignore the Local Search
Go mobile

The overall aura generated from all these efforts put together will create your online brand and identity which in turn will reflect on your current and potential online business. The search engine bots will measure all these signals according to the algorithms which the programmers have worked on, the online visitors will make judgments on the basis of what they read on the various platforms about your business and your ROI and social media mentions and comments will give you the answer to where you are heading to on the web world . All put together SEO is going to emerge as Web Presence Optimzation rather than Search Engine Optimization maybe we need to have a new term for SEO as in order to reach the search engines and SERPs, first you need to have an over all presence on the web. Hope all of you have a great time analyzing the past year and get great innovative ideas for the future.

If The Likes Are The New Links Then Paid Likes Will Magnify The Spam On The Web

In a recent article on http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/11/23/if-likes-are-the-new-links-content-quality-should-increase it was mentioned that if according to Bruce Clay Likes are the new links then the way the links are sold by many companies , the likes also will become a saleable product increasing the spam and low quality search results on the search engines.

More WebProNews Videos

According to me, undoubtedly the social and search integration with the social graph influencing the search results is something which is surely going to be woven in the search engine algorithms. In fact it already has been claimed by one of the SEOs that Twitter presence and engagement helped him in improving the SERPs.
(Read About It On: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/023315.html)

But, the extent to which the likes, tweets, blog post comments, reviews, etc. will influence the rankings and how they will be woven into the algorithms will depend on the search engines and their access to the relevant data.

But, the most important point of concern is that if the likes too are bought by the companies like the paid links then the spam generated thus will result into a noise pollution on the web.

It is a big irony that the PageRank concept which was implemented by Google to fight the keyword spam which was resorted to by the web marketers and SEOs in early 2000, actually paved the way for a spammy link building industry.

Now, the social media indicators which should help in adding an opinion or additional valuable information to the links also have a possibility of adding volume to the same spammy link building industry. The whole concept of earning links and likes on the merit of quality content is being replaced by the concept of buying links and the likes by some of the web marketers just to give a quick boost to the SERPS of their client sites.

If, we want to avoid having a world wide web with social media sites ending up with fictitious accounts, search results with manipulated low quality searches, clients unnecessarily diverting funds to paid links and likes and other such influences which results in the spammers making money and an over all imbalance and clutter on the web then it is the responsibility of every web marketer and SEO to say NO to paid links or likes and educate the client with the facts about the search engine visibility and ranking ethics and convince them to take the right path to progress on the search engines.

If, this is not done then the SEO industry shall soon lose its credibility and people might give more preference to paid search which again will result into a lopsided growth on the web.

How To Measure Your Twitter Influence ?

Twitter is by and large the most popular micro blogging platforms today, being widely used for personal and professional online conversations and sharing of news, views and ideas.

The relevant parameters on this site are the followers, the people following, no. of tweets, no. of retweets, no. of lists you are listed on, no. of times your twitter account gets mentioned in tweets, update recency, follower – following ratio and the no. of power followers, etc.

As people are spending a lot of time on this social media which is a powerful internet marketing, PR and communication tool all put together , a method of calculating the influence and reach your twitter account has is very important as only then we can get to know where we are heading to.

Moreover, the search engines have Real Time Search results which list the buzz around a topic from these various social media sites. The Twitter tweets dominate the real search results scene across the search engines. Hence Twitter influence , reach and popularity is something that cannot be neglected and has to be monitored by all online marketing companies.

There are many tools available on the web to measure the Twitter influence. Some of them are as follows:

http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/

This tool’s each score is rated out of 100 – in other words, the higher your score, the more important you are. There are four result metrics:

• Influence - what you say is interesting and many people listen to it. This is the primary ranking metric.

• Popularity - how many people follow you

• Engagement - you actively participate within your community

• Trust - people believe what you say

Read more about Tweetlevel’s methodology on http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/about

http://klout.com/

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 25 variables to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. According to Klout influence is the ability to drive people to action -- "action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet or clicking on a link. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person's Klout Score.

Read more about your klout score here: http://klout.com/kscore

http://twittergrader.com/

Twitter Grader tries to measure the power, reach and authority of a twitter account. In other words, it calculates that when you tweet, what kind of an impact does it have?

According to www.twittergrader.com their algorithm factors are:

1. Number of Followers: More followers leads to a higher Twitter Grade (all other things being equal). Yes, I agree that it’s easy to game this number, but we are looking at measuring reach and I did say all other things being equal.

2. Power of Followers: If you have people with a high Twitter Grade following you, it counts more than those with a low Twitter Grade following you. It’s a bit recursive, and we don’t get carried away with it, but it helps.

3. Updates: More updates generally leads to a higher grade — within reason. This does not mean you should be tweeting like a manic squirrel cranked up on caffeine and sugar. It won’t help either your Twitter Grade or your overall happiness in life.

4. Update Recency: Users that are more current (i.e. time elapsed since last tweet is low) generally get higher grades.

5. Follower/Following Ratio: The higher the ratio, the better. However, the weight of this particular factor decreases as the user accrues points for other factors (so, once a user gets to a high level of followers or a high level of engagement, the Follower/Following ratio counts less).

6. Engagement: The more a given user’s tweets are being retweeted, the more times the user is being referenced or cited, the higher the twitter grade. Further, the value of the engagement is higher based on who is being engaged. If a user with a very high Twitter Grade retweets, it counts more than if a spammy account with a very low grade retweets.

The Grade Calculation: So, those are the factors that go into the calculation of a score. This score is then used to compare a user against all other users that also have a score. The grade is calculated as the approximate percentage of other users that have an equal or lower score. So, a Twitter Grade of 80 means that about 80% of the other users got a lower score. At the time this article is being written, over 2.1 million users have been graded.

The Ranking: The absolute ranking is exactly what it sounds like. Based on all other users scored, what’s your “position” in that list. A ranking of 5,000 means that only 4,999 other people had a higher score than you (at that point in time).

Elite List: The elite list is simply an ordered list of the top users (based on ranking) at a given point in time. This list is updated several times a day. We also maintain lists of the top ranking users based on a narrower set of users (like those in a specific geography, those that match a specific keyword, etc.).

Social media itself is in its budding stage so these tools are also at an evolving stage and give an idea about the klout, influence, reach, level and grade metrics of the Twitter Account.

It Is All About Integration When It Comes To Internet Marketing Success.

The Online marketing scene keeps on changing at a very fast pace and every year we have new trends emerging unlike the traditional form of marketing where more than the trend it was the strategies which had to be kept on changing.The emerging online marketing trends are due to the technological changes and the improvements in the internet services which have reached even to the remote and not so developed places .

As the year end approaches we keep on hearing that one form of marketing is a passé and some new form of marketing shall rule the roost in the forthcoming year. We have heard statements like Banner Ads. Are Dead, Email is Dead, SEO is Dead in the past years but inspite of all these claims we still see that these banner ads., email and SEO are still very much alive along with the fast emerging trends like social media.

So, when you have more no. of options available the right attitude, is to make the most of all that you are offered and wisely decide which method of marketing is more suitable for the kind of product or service your company offers.

Every form of marketing has got its strengths and weaknesses and the wise thing is to select a right mix for the best way to promote your product and protect your brand image.

The main challenge lies in integrating all types of media and working out a right strategy based on the location, mindset and the product or service concerned.

All marketing campaigns, are people centric hence the people you want to reach out are the focus of any marketing campaign .

Identify which age group you want to cater to , on which sites is this group available online, work out a strategy to have the right approach, reach out to offer help and information, keep a watchful eye and ear on any negative word of mouth being generated by any social media so that you can make amends or clarify your stand accordingly. In order to do all this it is essential to be at the right place at the right time 24 X 7 X 365.

With social media becoming the main tool for communication and PR Customer Service is the new form of marketing. Right from the stage of enquiry to the stage when the enquiry gets converted to a valuable customer, the attention and service he/she gets can itself be a marketing campaign which is running subtly in the background.

The immediate response , attention, information the enquiry gets gives the impression about how serious and professional your team is and you never know he might be tweeting every experience on twitter or sharing it on facebook with his friends and relatives. Mind you these followers , friends and relatives could be your potential customers. Social media has magnified the reach and influence so when you are having one person having a good word about your brand there are so many others out there in the virtual world gathering impressions about your brand.

The very thought the social media word may reach out to exponential numbers should not make it sound that it makes the brand vulnerable to competition attacks and a bad WOM generated by maybe some psychic and irate customer. Hence it is essential to monitor the buzz around your brand to keep yourself aware of it so that the eventual control is in your hand and you can gear the complaint conversations to fruitful discussions and positive mindsets to keep up the online reputation of your brand.

In one of my earlier jobs in a reputed computer training institute one of the newly enrolled student had a bad experience and had sent me an email sending the details and I had to clarify the whole situation and make her start attending class again and it was done. But the media used here was email so the conversation and clarifications were limited to both of us and of course the team in the organization. Today, this very experience will be shared by such a student on twitter, facebook and maybe her blog also. So you can realize and calculate the damage that social media can have on your brand image if you lack a social media presence.

Well all said and done I do not think that any word written above is new to any person involved in marketing. The only thing which is new and has to be taken into consideration is the large number of people you can reach out with just one click which again has a possibility of exponential reach due to the viral nature of this media. Every media has its pros and cons integrate the various media for the optimum reach , influence and benefit.

Does your brand have a social media presence?

Is Your Internet Marketing Plan Creating A Valuable Long Term Online Presence Of your Brand?

Marketing is active storytelling , PR is reactive storytelling - Internet marketing is real time, active and reactive and has a local And global reach.

Everyone in the corporate world is aware of the need to advertise, market and brand the product of their company. Even though there are so many books, experts and plethora of online information about all this available, putting all the 4 Ps of marketing together and being at the right place at the right time with the right message is always a challenging task.

Now, it is more challenging as all this has to be achieved on the internet. Though the virtual world is the reflection of the real world and basically the same laws of ethics and business intelligence apply to both. But yet due to the aura of online marketing media which is new to most of the corporate world to chalk out the path that needs to be followed is still confusing for many.

Internet marketing is a very wide term it includes the presence on search engines , affiliate marketing, social media, Press releases, Banner ads, etc. So the million dollar question is how to decide the right marketing strategy and allocate budgets to get a good ROI?

First of all, take a deep breath and tell yourself that online or offline marketing fundamentals are the same but the only difference is that online presence is about a global reach at the maximum speed if the right online marketing mix is selected.

Next, when your internet marketing company approaches you and starts giving you the information for their SEO packages, ask him to give you a holistic marketing mix overview quote as just SEO of your site is not enough. Share your budget details with him so that he can suggest the best possible immediate marketing mix needed for your brand.

Trust me only getting ranked for organic search is not enough. Your brand should have its presence felt on the web organic search no doubt but on all the options of the search results page found on the LHS of the Google results page.

Search Options On The Search Page:

i.e on the complete list of options in the image above. The efforts required to be put for attaining a presence on all these options is a part of the complete holistic SEO project as each and every effort for attaining presence on one of these options is going to be supplementary and helpful eventually in making the presence and enhance the rankings on the other platform.

As each and every search platform links to your website in some way or other. Apart from these options it is essential to be on the local search platform also as any business would like to be visible locally and globally.

For that the website needs to be added to Google places with the required verification procedures.

Local Search Results:

Pay Per Click Results (PPC)

And if need be incase of a start up or a website with no footprints on the web initially a PPC program also can be decided upon keeping in mind the requirement and the budgets in mind.

Now, when you decide upon the complete SEO program, please do not expect results instantly. Its just not possible. A true SEO will try to establish the long term presence, help you create a brand and set the right footprints at the right place and if possible try to erase any erroneous footprints made earlier. This takes time but the brand visibility created thus generates a lot of credibility for the brand and when people see the same brand on all the search options and on the local and global search platforms it also has more recall value.

We just cannot neglect the social media as only this media can help you know where your brand is heading to and what is the buzz around your brand. In short you can monitor your online reputation by keeping a watchful ear and eye on the social media. Social media sites are many but the largely visited ones where netizens gather to share and exchange news and views are Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and YouTube for videos.

There are many ways by which these conversations about your brand can be tracked and monitored. By creating Google alerts is one of them. Though it is important to have a twitter or a facebook account but having a blog is actually mandatory keeping the current online scenario and the future trends in mind . Blogs are the only social media platform for which you have total control and the social interactions recorded here shall remain till you maintain the blog. Blogs also help add fresh content which helps in the whole SEO program. The social link graph also helps in the overall search presence.

Lately Google started ranking as many as 8 listings for organic search results for a particular brand if the search query is a specific query for the brand.

These searches reflect your online brand presence and reputation.

Hence, plan and chalk out the complete path for creating an online long term presence which will ensure that the brand value is created qualitatively on the internet.

Do not just rush for checking the rankings, the site is bound to get ranked high if you have great content, SEO optimized images and videos, have added the site for local search and maps, maintain a blog which is regularly updated with related fresh content which keeps the business objectives in mind and also creates an interest and makes the reader comment on the topics posted, issue press releases and have a voice on the social media.

Then it is certain that the Word Of Mouth generated thus is going to become the World Of Mouth in a true sense with an increase in traffic to your site for conversions.

Is Social Media The New Marketing Mantra Or Just A Fad?

By now everyone a casual net surfer or a serious professional in the web world must have seen this video on YouTube.

The prime takeaways of this video are:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers

• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year have met via social media

• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest

• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

2009 U.S. Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students outperformed those receiving face-to-face instruction

• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum

• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees

• In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

People adapting to social media sites in such exponential numbers indicates the shift to the way people want to interact and initiate any conversation or deal, make friends, keep in touch with relatives overseas, discuss about some product, service or brand, get after sales attention or make celebrities eliminate the dependency on journalists and print media and directly connect with fans.

The merging of the real world and the virtual world is a constant evolution happening right from the day people started using the internet. Some time back email management was a task which needed training and setups at the offices in the corporate world. Today majority of these corporate people who may not be tech savvy flash a smart phone with ease for receiving and sending emails.

As we all know Mark Zuckerberg started working on Facebook so that all his college mates could remain connected to each other. Other people started using the Facebook for the same reason and today it has become such a phenomenon that every one has a Facebook account and thereby an online identity. It was Facebook that created such a stir in the online social scenario. But, it could have been any site which would have offered the features and the accessability like Facebook and could have been an overnight success.

What I mean to say it was not Facebook but the idea of keeping in touch, interacting and sharing online with so much ease which was a big hit. So it created an online social culture which was accepted at an universal level. Google achieved for search what Facebook achieved for social media.

Social interaction is nothing new, since ancient times humans have been interacting. Every one must have read the sentence which is usually the first sentence uttered in any lecture on Sociology, Psychology, History or Moral Science - ‘Man Is A Social Animal’.

So the urge to communicate, connect, interact, share is very basic, normal and at the core of human psychology only it is the medium which varies from time to time.

Hence online social media is the new way people want to connect personally or professionally.

Facebook may be a fad, Twitter may be a fad as only the future developments will tell us which social media site will have a longer online life . Tomorrow it may be an XYZ site which catches the fancy of the netizens but the fact remains that using online media for personal or professional interaction is here to stay and evolve.

Keeping the online internet marketing aspect in mind which is one of the professional interactions which has an added flavor of reaching out to everyone at a subtle personal level, according to me Social media is here to stay as the new marketing mantra.

Just SEO Is Not Enough .You Need A Web Culture In The Organization For Overall Online Success. How Healthy Is The Web Culture Of Your Company?

If You Think That You Have Signed A SEO Contract And Now You Are Going To Win The Web Market Then You Are Wrong.

SEO is the art and science of understanding the technology, the EQ , the IQ and of course thereby the algorithms of the search engines to make the websites rank high on the search engines to tap the targeted market.

The SEO knowledge is open and anyone following the ethical way and having the right SEO knowledge, patience and perseverance can reach the top rankings for the targeted keywords sooner or later. (Thats what my experience says).

But, search and internet marketing is much more than just ranking high on the search engines. Just as in the offline traditional way of marketing just giving an Ad. on TV , magazine or newspapers is not enough to get the footfalls in your store or make your phone ring repeatedly for enquiries, there needs to be a full plan of the whole marketing and sales circle. Similarly, online marketing also needs a complete plan to ensure the success of conversions of the online generated inquiries.

An SEO can help you achieve rankings but along with that that the most important thing to focus on is to find the answers to the following questions.

• Are the clicks generated as a result of SEO getting converted into enquiries ?

• Is the landing page giving the right impression about the products, services and the company?

• Is somebody in the organization responsible for the handling these queries with a responsibility attached to it?

• Does my company have a voice and approachability on the social media?

• Who in the organization is managing the social media?

• Do we have a legal policy if things go wrong or some web online policies, rules and regulations so that things do not go wrong?

• Is my staff who manages the social media cyber savvy or is he just typing in the tweets and posts?

• Does my site appear in all the search options of the search engines?

• Does my company have a blog?

• Is it being updated regularly?

• What is the focus of our blog?

In short there has to be a web culture in the organization so that every person in every team whether marketing , technical or operations understands the benefit of web presence and becomes a part of it.

Previously, when the email culture was introduced in the organizations in mid 2000 each and every person in the company was supposed to know how to send and receive mails else they were trained for that to ensure the smooth flow of communication.

So now when your SEO company tells you that your organization needs training in getting familiar with the internet marketing culture and develop the right web attitude please listen to them and be the first ones to take the initiative to become an organization where each and every member of the organization knows what online presence the company has and is confident about what their web culture is. As every member contributes to the marketing, sales, WOM, profits culture and image of the company.

Every employee in the company should easily relate to the virtual office (the website) of the company the way they relate to systems and procedures in the offline office. After all the virtual office or store is nothing but a reflection of your offline real presence.

How Healthy Is The Web Culture Of Your Company?

Who Should Manage The Social Media In Your Organization?

Every marketing campaign involves social interaction. As social interaction online is possible through the various social media platforms like blogging and micro blogging. In an online or internet marketing campaign social media is surely something which is catching up with the netizens.

Currently, the social media sites which have gained popularity are Facebook and Twitter. Hence, most of the companies have a facebook and a twitter account but not many of them are using these accounts in an effective way.

By just having an account on social media sites and assigning it to any Tom, Dick or Harry from your organization is not going to ensure success from this media. Every marketing campaign succeeds due to its planned, systematic approach. Moreover, every marketing campaign requires constant review at every stage to see and check where the campaign is getting directed to.

Interactions on this media are not a casual chat and neither it is a soft board where you regularly pin the announcements, requirements and achievements of your company . It is neither a market or a mall where you directly sell .

Social media is all about influence and reach. It is about establishing your online reputation. It is about networking and developing an online rapport with every person who may have the potential to directly or indirectly be associated to your business.

This surely needs to have a planned systematic approach and also the identification of the right person who shall be responsible to handle this task.

In my opinion, as this medium is still at an evolving stage and all the people involved in social media are still experimenting and exploring the potential of this media, the CEOs or the top management personnel are the right people to handle this task. Interactions on this media can either make or mar the reputation of your business. People who are highly concerned about the growth, reputation and WOM of the company are the right people to be allocated this task as there is a lot of human technology involved in this interaction rather than computer technology.

Again it is the person and not the post which should be the deciding factor. As the person identified should have the care and the concern for the online reputation of the business, should have a flair for interacting with people and should have the responsibility to make commitments and claims publicly and at the same time be answerable for every word on this media if the need arises.

It is not necessary that the posts and tweets of this person managing the social media accounts for your company should have the Pied Piper's magical music whereby all the netizens start following him but should surely have the sense and the sensibility to make the followers get interested in the products and services that your company offers.

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