Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

How to Measure Social Media Success

June 24, 2013Facebook Marketing, Instagram marketing, Pinterest, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter MarketingPeter Marino

Social media is a rapidly growing platform for marketers. Those who don’t embrace it are facing an increasing need to do so or fear being left behind. It has the opportunities for new, start-up brands or services to get the exposure their business needs, and it can equally serve older established brands by allowing more personal interaction with customers and clients.

However, with so much *noise* on many social media platforms, how do you know if your voice is going unheard? How do you know if you efforts are actually paying off? In essence, how do you measure social media success? It is essential to be able to directly trace any business garnered from social media, otherwise all your efforts might be in vain and essentially become one big time sink.

Below are five effective ways at measuring social media success (or failure).

1. Use Analytics

Analytics is essential for all websites and businesses regardless of social media. By being able to see a breakdown of your website’s traffic and interactions, and determining what percentage of that comes from social media, you will start to get a decent insight into the value of your social media efforts.

2. Tracking IDs

Like Analytics, using tracking IDs for any links you include on your social media marketing will give a very clear sign of success. Sites like bit.ly or goo.gl are the easiest way to shorten links and receive stats on how many clicks each link received.

3. Special Offers

If you use a special offer for your business, such as a coupon, a prize give-away or similar, and only promote that via social media, you will be able to directly trace any sign-ups or visits to those offers.

4. Finding Out Your Bottom Line

At the end of the day, social media efforts are usually for one purpose, increasing sales. If your bottom line sales do not alter much despite starting a new social media campaign (or pausing one temporarily), then chances are, your efforts are not necessary.

5. Significance

How significant a part in your business plan is social media? Some businesses rely almost solely on social media to get traffic, sales, and business, while for others, social media represents only a small aspect of business versus a large amount of time needed. If you can work out how well your business functions with or without social media, you will be able to analyse whether or not it is successful.

I find that newer businesses tend to rely more heavily on social media to get themselves heard, whereas the larger, established businesses have social accounts just as token gestures, almost like they are there to keep up appearances.

Conclusion

Depending on the needs of your business, there are different effective ways at measuring social media success.

If you are purely interested in traffic and generating interest, then tracking IDs and Analytics are going to be a simple, clear way of determining success, while large, already established businesses might have to do more testing and tweaking in order to find out the concluding results. In the end, it comes down to testing and tracking.

Our guest blogger: Naomi Vega is a freelance writer with interest in mobile marketing. She has more than five years experience in mobile and text marketing industry. She is currently working as a freelance writer for Trumpia.

The Use Of Rel=’Author’ In SEO Posts And Articles

June 20, 2013Blogging, Copywriting, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media MarketingPeter Marino

Search engines like Google are always on the lookout for ways to identify websites with authentic high quality content, from spam sites using poor keyword-stuffed content in an attempt to increase their rankings. Google’s most recent algorithms were created to help improve the quality of search rankings, ensuring that users are always privy to the best and most relevant results for their searches. One of the latest tools Google has used to improve search quality is the Rel=Author attribute. In this article we are going to discuss how it works and the impact it has had on SEO posts and articles.

What is Rel=Author?

The Rel=Author attribute is used by writers to let Google and other search engines know that their work is legitimate. Basically they tag the content they have written with a link back to their profile. It is fairly straight forward to set up and is particularly useful for writers than produce guest posts on other websites and blogs. All you need to do is insert the attribute with a link back to your Google Plus profile at the bottom of your post. For example the author will write ‘By Joe Bloggs’ using the Rel=Author attribute to link their name back to their profile. You then need to add a link to the website or blog you contribute to, to your ‘contribute to’ section on your Google Plus profile. It could not be simpler!

How does it help search engines?

Using Rel=Author helps search engines to understand the authority of a website and trust the person that has written the content. It also makes it much easier to identify spammers that have stolen content from other websites. If a spammer takes the content from a website using the Rel=Author attribute, this will be picked up by Google, as the link will be visible within the content. This attribute can also help to improve search experiences as even if a website has a low page rank, if the author (marked as Rel=Author) has authority, the content will be valued higher by search engines.

Benefits for the SEO content writer

Along with improving a website’s credibility, using the Rel=Author attribute can also benefit the website in terms of visibility. Displaying the image of the writer of the content next to the search result is likely to generate higher click through rates. Using the image gives the search result authenticity and gives it a greater chance of it being clicked on by users.

For writers of SEO articles and blog posts, the attribute is also beneficial in terms of personal brand building. Readers will begin to associate your face (displayed in your author image) with your blog and the content you produce for other blogs that you guest post on. Connecting the content you write to your profile will help you gain recognition for your opinions on niche subjects of interest.

Conclusion

Search engines like Google appear to be attempting to transform the World Wide Web from a place of anonymity to a place made up of identities. Google’s latest use of algorithms like Penguin have shown that they are keen to filter out spam and move away from keywords and meaningless backlinks in their consideration of websites’ search engine optimisation. Rel=Author has already proved to be very popular with SEO content creators looking to gain recognition for their high quality work and build up a credible reputation online. The recent emphasis on author ranking suggests that it will play a significant role in future organic search rankings and is something that all businesses looking to improve their SEO should consider implementing into their content.

Written by Nathan Griffiths who recommends this SEO Company Hertfordshire based in the UK.

How You Can Use Instagram For Marketing

June 17, 2013Blogging, Instagram marketing, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketinghow to use instagram for marketing, instagram, instagram marketing, Social Media MarketingPeter Marino

It takes more than just having an Instagram account to market products on the site. There’s a lot more to it than just posting a bunch of photos, too. You need to have a full blown strategy that works and that is effective. So before you start blindly posting pictures of your products and taking over your followers’ feeds, make sure that you have a good grasp of what types of photos are the best for marketing purposes. The following are some great ways to use your photos for marketing your company on Instagram.

Think of the Environment of the Photos

Not everyone has a product that works in every photo or that could really be called interesting. If you find that no matter how you shoot the picture you’re just not putting out photos that have that ‘wow factor’, then you need to rethink the photo shoot.

It may be that the item is boring but your background is boring, too. You can really boost a photo by showing an action shot of the item with interesting people using or wearing it. A great location could also be a way to turn out a more interesting photo. If your office is by the beach, try a setting with waves crashing in the background. If you live in the desert, use some cactus with a beautiful sunset to make the photo phenomenal, for example.

Show the End Result

Many people in the service industry, like beautician, car detailers and other industries do a wonderful thing for their customers. If your company is in this type of industry then you should post photos that show what you started with and how it turned out. Post a photo of the hair before you cut and styled it and then after. You can do the same with the nasty dirty car that you made look brand new. This is a great marketing technique that has been used for years and has been very effective. You might also benefit from paying for instagram followers but remember they won’t give you interaction, only a boost to your numbers.

Don’t Forget Geotags

You may not know this but you can actually geotag your photos so your fans can see your location. Even if you have a website, there will be local people who you want to visit your brick and mortar store. This is a great forum to get more people to your store or physical location by offering discounts for those who say they saw your photo contest on Instagram. You could also offer a discount to the first two or three people who show up and says they saw your ad campaign on the site. Geotagging is a great way to get your physical location out to a wide group of people that live in your physical area.

Instagram is a great marketing tool if you use it effectively. Don’t forget to make your photos interesting to all your followers by showing your products in interesting locations or by showing before and after pictures that highlight your service. Don’t forget to geotag your pictures so you can get more people to your physical location.

What other tips would you add?

Our guest blogger info:
Susan Darling loves Instagram and writing tips and hints to help others learn how to get the most from it when using it for business or for pleasure. She posts photos of nature scenes and flowers and also has an IG account for her business.

What is Evergreen Content?

June 7, 2013Blogging, Copywriting, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketingcontent marketing, evergreen content, What is evergreen contentPeter Marino

You know that content is an important factor for SEO. You might also have read about the importance of producing ‘evergreen content’ in order to give your site lasting SEO value and keep visitors coming back to your pages repeatedly. So what is evergreen content? And how can businesses use it to drive web traffic and SEO results? Let’s take a look.

When it comes to content marketing, evergreen content is perhaps the most important staple that you need to have in your copywriting diet.

However, many people do not understand the definition of evergreen content, nor why it is so important. We looked at some of the key principles behind evergreen content creation, and analyzed how it can make such a difference to your website.

Defining Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is a piece of writing that will retain its relevance long into the future, ideally for months, if not years. This means that a piece of evergreen content will attract visitors to your site, even if something has been written six months ago. If you work in an industry that is reasonably stagnant and slow to evolve, then your content could be valuable for years at a time.

While it is true that Google loves original content, if you search a particular keyword, you’re still going to be shown the best piece of writing for your needs, irrespective of when it was produced.

As a result, a piece of evergreen content will still see an initial spike in visitors when it is first uploaded or indexed by Google, but in the time that follows, there will still be regular traffic to the page, rather than a total drop off in visitor numbers.

How to Write Evergreen Content

The best approach to take to evergreen content is to look at it as a resource post. By approaching it in this manner, you will be able to build up your reputation for communicating quality information and quickly earn a regular readership for your site.

Write your content in a way that will be easy to update should anything change within the industry. For example, if you are writing resources for local SEO, you will want to be able to easily amend anything should new citation techniques, for example, become available, or Google implement an algorithm that changes how local businesses can rank.

This is in contrast to a regular blog post, where you might talk about a recent event within the industry or speculation regarding something that might occur. While this might be valuable content, it is likely to lose its relevance quickly, and regular posts of this manner will be needed to maintain traffic.

Your Content Marketing Strategy

Please do not take this as an instruction to stop writing blogs and other spontaneous posts. While evergreen content has the potential to be a long-term SEO benefit, you should remember that a variety of writing is the best approach to bringing in traffic and additional business.

Rather than making evergreen content your only strategy, make it a central part of it, and fill your site with a range of resources, from white papers to ‘How To’ guides, and you’ll quickly find your traffic and site popularity on the rise.

Peter Marino is a digital marketing specialist who works with small and medium sized businesses to develop high-quality website content that helps companies rank higher on search engines.