Social Media is a tactic for SEO. They are complementary like peanut butter and jelly. At the very least, social media provides a great opportunity for additional inbound links and traffic. Social media, in all of its forms, creates an increase in brand exposure and exponential link-backs to your content (website, blog, etc.) resulting in higher search engine rankings, and additional rankings for your site since Google and Bing display Facebook and Twitter results. (more…)

You may have seen the announcement from Google in March about their social feature called +1. Perhaps you are patiently waiting to start seeing the +1  in your Google search results. You may be waiting forever and never see it. Following is a comprehensive list of information regarding Google’s new feature: (more…)

The New Rules of Social Engagement

With social media now mainstream, we’re experiencing a surge of consumer influence from “social shopping”, consumer reviews and online word-of mouth-marketing.   53% of those on Twitter have recommended companies and/or products in their tweets and almost as many voice an intent to buy those products or services. (more…)

Why is it so important to be # 1 (beside the fact that no one remembers #2)? According to information leaked on AOL (AOL results are fed by Google):

#1 position on Google search results page is worth 8.5 times more than #5 position. This, in terms of clicks, time spent on page leading to proportionate increase in leads,  conversions and so on. (more…)

In the world of social media marketing, we often hear of the importance of monitoring as the first actionable item. Although social media monitoring has numerous benefits to a businesses, both large and small, it may be unclear as to how to use monitoring. A recent study reveals that close to half of businesses surveyed don’t know how to use monitoring effectively for marketing purposes.
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The more that relevant websites link to your website, the better Google likes you. It is authority by association. Think of it this way: you have a LinkedIn profile and the more your colleagues/clients recommend you the better your professional standing. Similarly, when a website links to your website,  Google considers it a recommendation or a vote of confidence and increases your ranking.

The best way to get back-links is to create valuable content; create it and they will link! Additionally, you can create social media accounts that link back to your website. Yet another proven method is to submit your website URL to web-directories with decent Google page rank, ex: Yahoo and D’moz. (more…)

Whether you are a business with brick and mortar stores or a company without borders, you should be tapping into the growing number of local audiences seeking products and services in their own locality. You can increase business exposure and your web and store traffic simply by including geographical information to your digital content. Geotagging and local search optimization are two technology-based solutions that savvy marketers are using to attract the crucial local market segment.
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It was my extreme honor to be a guest in yesterday’s tele-seminar with the International Social Media Association (ISMA). My topic, in case you missed it, was “Propel your Social Media Marketing to New Heights: Strategies to Ensure a Winning and Engaging Social Presence”.

Below I recap some of the highlights from the hour long interview:

This is part 1 of a 3 part series…

ISMA:  What do you mean by “an Engaged Social Presence”?

Brian Solis describes engagement as:

“Engagement is essentially the first step in building a relationship between your customers and your brand.”

Brian goes on to explain that initially, early on in a brands social media experience, that it’s more about establishing a presence and less about strategic engagement and the engagement resembles traditional broadcasting of messages.

In it’s most simple explanation, an Engaged Social Presence is when you are actively participating in the social media platforms in which you belong.

More specifically, however…engagement encompasses two strategies.

Re-active engagement and Pro-active engagement, both necessary for  a truly engaged social presence.

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This blog post is the second in the 2 part series on brand monitoring. In case you missed the first blog post,  here is the link: Monitor Your Brand Online.

Online Reputation Monitoring can be as simple as creating alerts on Google or as comprehensive as subscribing to a syndicated monitoring service like Radian6 that  gives you a complete platform to listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web. You can hire a Social Media Monitoring company who will not only use syndicated or subscription tools like Radian6 and employ a combination of techniques and report on what’s being said but will also formulate effective response strategies and implement reputation management techniques.
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One of the main objectives for all social media marketing initiatives for a brand is to “navigate the narrative”. In other words,  to ensure that your competitors or disgruntled customers don’t steer conversations in a way that put you on the defensive.

In order to cultivate the conversations taking place in the social media arena, you need to know that they’re happening! Social media monitoring is the somewhat new but indispensable tool that all serious marketers should use in order to keep track of what people are saying about their brand, their products and their competitors.

The first step to monitoring your brand reputation is listening. Whoever said “eavesdroppers are never happy” could not have been more wrong. You might not be always be happy with what you hear about your brand but I guarantee that you will be a lot unhappier if you don’t listen in!

Social media is the speakeasy for all those incessant public conversations that you must listen in on and eventually join.

One simple way to discover what people are saying about your brand is to simply create a Google Alert so that you’ll get an email anytime your brand name is mentioned.

However, Google Alerts are limited – and aren’t designed to be a comprehensive online brand management tool. That’s why you need to use a variety of online tools to find out what people are saying.

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