Social Media Calendars: To use or not to use…

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Content Marketing, Marketing, Online Marketing, Uncategorized

You’ve heard of social media calendars before, but do you know what they are and how to use one?

Chances are you don’t. And that’s okay… I didn’t either when I entered the realm of social media marketing. But once I learned about it and how to use it, it change how I marketed my businesses on the social web.

Here’s why you need a social media calendar and how you can create one:

Why You Need a Social Media Calendar and How to Create One

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

A social media calendar can help you consistently promote high quality content, cut down on the amount of time you waste, and organize and curate content.

If you aren’t using one, you should reconsider. It’s helped me almost double my Twitter engagement over the last six months.

Shared courtesy via Quicksprout @ NEIL PATEL on APRIL 24, 2015

The Optimal Blog Post Length to Maximize Viewership

03 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

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Best Practices, Online Marketing

Bhutan, the world’s largest book at UWashington Library

Anyone who has ever penned a blog post has asked, how long should this post be to maximize viewership? I’ve often wondered the same thing, particularly in the moment before I click the publish button and broadcast a perhaps-too-short-perhaps-too-long post into the Interwebs.

I’ve written 256 posts in the past 18 months and I sought to understand the impact of word count on every metric I could measure: page views, time on site, time on page, bounce rate, exit rate, retweets and favorite activity.

Here’s the data. In short, post length has no meaningful impact viewership, engagement or sharing.

Below is a chart depicting the correlation of word count to six key metrics. In each of these cases, the correlations are small (<25%) and relatively speaking insignificant predictors of traffic.

Metrics

Bounce rate	The fraction of visitors who came to the site to view a post and left without reading any others
Exit rate	The fraction of visitors who came to the site on another page and left on this post
Time on page and site	Self-explanatory
Page views per visit	The number of other blog posts read during a visit
Retweet frequency and Twitter favorite activity	The number of times a post is retweeted or favorited on Twitter, which often means saved to read later.

My posts vary from 100 to 1100 words, with the majority between 300 and 750 and a median of 461 words. These posts aren’t exceptionally short or exceptionally long, but I imagine they are comparable with most blogs that post near-daily. Below is the distribution of the 256 posts by word count.

Plunging into the finer points of the analysis, below is a box plot demonstrating the relationship between page views and word count. I’ve bucketed posts by keyword in 200 word increments. Note the Y-Axis is Log10. The boxes show the distributions of page views in each bucket. The middle line in each box is the median, the borders of the rectangle show the 25th and 75th quartiles and the circles are outliers. More on reading box plots.

There is no difference in the traffic generated by longer or shorter posts. Though the ranges of the box plots vary, the medians are all very close to each other and while the 200 keyword bucket does seem to indicate a narrow distribution of page views, the three outliers at the top indicate the conclusion is likely a product of the smaller sample size.

In the end, the data reaffirms what I probably already knew to start. The best length for a blog post is the length required to capture and convey the message. No more, no less.

Written by

My client acquired a large company and I went along for his initial meetings with his new employees.

In the afternoon he planned a company-wide address. That morning we met for several hours with top executives. (Talk about emotions on full display: ego, anxiety, obsequiousness, defensiveness, fear, excitement… when the new sheriff comes to town all the icy-cool corporate masks quickly come off.)

The meeting ended at noon and when we walked out fifteen minutes later he noticed a big buffet set up on the other side of the atrium. There were plenty of people standing around in white coats and black slacks but no one in line or sitting at tables.

“What’s that for?” he asked a person walking past.

“The company arranged a meal for after your meeting,” she said. “A local restaurant closed for the day to come here.” She paused. “I think the chef and her staff were really excited about it,” she said, her voice trailing off at the end.

“Has anyone eaten?” he asked.

“Um, I don’t think so,” she said.

He stood looking a few moments. Even from a distance it was evident the catering staff was confused and disappointed.

“Come on,” he said to me. “We’re eating.”

And we did.

But he did more than just eat. He spent a few minutes talking to every — every — member of the staff. Many already knew who he was and while initially hesitant they quickly warmed up to him.

And why wouldn’t they? He complimented the food. He complimented the service. He joked and laughed. And when we had finished eating he said, “We can’t let great food go to waste!” and borrowed two white coats so we could serve them. Then he made the rounds of the tables and happily leaned into all the selfies.

When we finally left, he waved and smiled.

They smiled bigger.

Sure, it took a lot of his time. Sure, it took him off point and off focus and off schedule.

Sure, they loved him for it.

I already knew the answer but as we got in the car I still asked. “I know your schedule,” I said. “You didn’t have time to stop to eat. Besides, no one else did, so no one would have noticed.”

“I felt bad for them,” he said. “They tried hard to do a good job and everyone blew them off. How bad must that feel? So it was the least I could do.

“Maybe my staff thought they were too busy,” he continued. “Or maybe they thought they were too important. But clearly they were too self-absorbed to notice they were hurting other people’s feelings.”

He thought for a few seconds. “And maybe they’re the wrong people for the job, ” he said.**

Much of the time we want famous people to be so humble they don’t recognize there’s a fuss, or a special buzz surrounding, or that people are excited to see them. We want them to be oblivious to their fame or importance. (After all, if they’re tooaware… that means they’re too full of themselves.)

But what we should really want is for famous or notable people to recognize that in the eyes of others, they are special — and that other people might want something from them, even if that something is the simple recognition that what they do matters.

Because it does.

Picture a CEO walking into a building for an important meeting. Maybe he says hello to the receptionist. (Maybe.) Otherwise he only has time for the people at his level. It’s like no one else exists; they’re just unseen cogs in a giant machine.

Unfortunately, at times, we all do the same thing. We talk to the people we’re supposed to talk to. We recognize the people we’re supposed to recognize. We mesh with the cogs in the machine we’re expected to mesh with, but there are many other important cogs.

So go out of your way to smile to everyone. Or to nod. Or to introduce yourself.

And when someone does something to help you, even in the smallest way and even if it’s their job to do so, go out of your way to say thanks. Make it your mission to recognize the people behind the tasks: the people that support, that assist, and that make everything possible.

Even though most of us aren’t famous or notable, by recognizing people —especially those who have been conditioned not to expect to be recognized — we add a little extra meaning and dignity to their lives.

And that’s the best reason to go off point, off focus, and off task.

Although, when you think about it, you really aren’t taking yourself away from an important task. You’re just shifting to an equally important task: showing people they matter — especially to you.

** Six months later only three of the original 22 remained.

Now it’s your turn. Any stories where a simple act of kindness made a huge difference in your life?

Five social media skills millennials don’t have

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, community manager, Content Marketing, Hootsuite, Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Listening

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Best Practices, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, social media networks, social media tools, social sharing

Shared from Ryan Holmes

Don’t assume younger staff will know everything about running a clever social media campaign.

They’re the generation brought up on Facebook. Some have never known a world without the Internet. The innermost details of their lives have been exhaustively Instagramed and they get their news from Twitter, not TV.

But when it comes to using social media in the workplace, millennials – the generation whose birth years can range anywhere from 1980 and 2000 – can be surprisingly, even dangerously, unprepared. “Because somebody grows up being a social media native, it doesn’t make them an expert in using social media at work,” says William Ward, professor of social media at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “That’s like saying, ‘I grew up with a fax machine, so that makes me an expert in business.'”

For students and recent grads, some social media 101 is definitely in order.

Lacking in critical areas

According to Ward, who teaches a series of popular undergraduate and graduate courses on social media at the university, millennials are lacking in a number of critical areas. While they’re very good at connecting with people they already know, they often fail to understand the professional opportunities and pitfalls posed by networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

“Companies hire millennials because they think they’re good at social media. Then their bosses discover they don’t have those skills and get frustrated,” Ward says, noting that social media expectations are often higher for millennials than for older workers, who may be just as inept.

For students and recent grads entering the workforce, some social media 101 is definitely in order. In particular, career-minded millennials desperately need to brush up on these five social media skills:

1. Knowing when not to share

Recently, Business Insider attracted attention for firing its CTO, Pax Dickinson, because of comments he made on his personal Twitter account. While Dickinson’s Tweets on women and minorities were especially offensive, the situation hints at a larger issue. Millennials sometimes fail to appreciate that personal profiles can have professional repercussions. Twitter, Facebook and other networks are largely public platforms; comments made can – and often do – get back to bosses. As the Dickinson case shows, few employers are eager to associate themselves with off-color or offensive content, even when it may be intended as a joke.

2. Using social media to actually save time

According to a 2013 Salary.com survey, the most frequently visited personal website at work is – you guessed it – Facebook. As networks proliferate – and millennial employees not only check Facebook but post on Twitter, browse Instagram and more – social media has the potential to be a devastating time-suck. Yet it can also be a time saver in the office. A recent McKinsey reportnotes that social media has the potential to save companies $1.3 trillion, largely owing to improvements in intra-office collaboration. Internal social networks like Yammer enable employees to form virtual work groups and communicate on message boards. Instead of endless back-and-forths on email, co-workers can post and reply in continually updated streams. None of this is revolutionary, but millennials are often still in the dark on ways Facebook-like innovations are being taken behind the firewall.

3. Understanding how to crunch the numbers

While millennials often have an intuitive understanding of what resonates on social channels (hard to go wrong with cat GIFs), quantifying what works and what doesn’t is another matter. Should the success of a Twitter campaign be measured on the basis of retweets, mentions, replies, referral traffic or sales leads? What are the best times of day to post on Facebook and what is the optimum post frequency? Which analytical tools are best for crunching the numbers? While social media is about authentic, human interaction, it’s also an arena where data can easily be collected and applied to improve results. Knowing what data to look for, where to find it and what to do with it separates real experts from mere social natives.

4. Mastering the multi-network shuffle

It’s one thing to be a Twitter guru or have a huge LinkedIn following. The real talent lies in orchestrating different platforms to work together and in understanding the niche each fills. Visual networks such as Instagram and YouTube, for instance, are increasingly the foundation of campaigns by social-savvy brands such as Nike, Red Bull and Mercedes. Catchy images and videos are, in turn, seeded onto traditional text-based networks such as Twitter and Facebook. From there, links lead viewers back to blogs and company pages, sending customers spiraling deeper into the sales funnel. Meanwhile, uniform hashtags across platforms help unify and track the overall campaign. Even millennials with deep social credentials often fail to understand the profound multiplying effects of integrating different networks.

5. Networking professionally on social media

By the time millennials graduate, many have dutifully filled their LinkedIn profiles with part-time positions, internships, extra-curriculars and academic accomplishments. But the network’s true job-finding power is often overlooked: Hiring managers and CEOs who would normally be out of reach are often just a connection or two away. In fact, you don’t need to be connected at all. A paid feature called InMail, for instance, enables users to send emails directly to any one of LinkedIn’s 277 million members. Truly enterprising job seekers can hunt down big fish like Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Deepak Chopra, then send a pitch straight to their inbox. Notoriously footloose millennials – forever in search of the next job opportunity – might well take this tip to heart when searching for greener professional pastures.

The plug ‘n play myth

Of course, amassing these skills is no short order, and millennials aren’t the only offenders. “The real problem is that we expect people to know these skills without providing any training,” social media professor Ward says. As the number of social networks expands and platforms are used in more sophisticated ways, it’s unreasonable to expect anyone – even the most plugged-in users – to just intuitively get it.

But there are options for millennials hoping to brush up on social media skills. “There are lots of online training programs out there,” Ward explains, “though some are better than others.”

He cautions learners to stick to programs offering industry-recognised certification, like the most widely used offering, Hootsuite University, an offering from my company which has seen 50,000 people enroll since it was started in 2011 and is also used in 400 higher education programs.

For millennials competing in a tight market, these skills – unheard of just a decade ago – can mean the difference between finding and keeping a job. “Students using digital and social media professionally in an integrated and strategic way … have an advantage,” Ward says. “[They’re] getting better jobs and better internships.”

What does Google say about keywords, should they drive your blog or should content?

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Bloging, Content Marketing, Google SEO, Google+, Online Marketing

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Best Practices, Blog, Blogging, Engagement, SEO, social media tools, Trending

Form over fashion, chicken or the egg, and keywords before content are just some of the intellectual debates that have raged as humankind attempts to come to grips with the big questions that plague our times. While the relative merits of comfort over appearance are well known, the chicken versus egg chronological lineage is still up for debate when people bend their thoughts to more esoteric contemplations. What is not up for debate is the importance of quality content over keywords when it comes to writing engaging online copy that will appear high in search engine results. Indeed, the old days of stuffing a 500-word article with 122 examples of the exact same keyword are long gone thanks to changes made by Google to their search algorithms, which punish the practice of keyword stuffing and rewards content that it perceives to be relevant and helpful to the end user.

Rise of the Machines…

In the “Wild West” of early internet interaction, it was discovered that the search engine rankings could be “gamed” into recognizing, and singling out, websites that practiced the art of keyword stuffing. Simply stated, keyword stuffing is the practice of writing online copy to be read by a machine rather than copy designed to be consumed by a human user.

This old formula was predicated on the notion that search engines scan the internet looking for certain keyword density in response to search inquires. When the engines located articles displaying such keyword density, they posted the results in search rankings for the end-user to consume. Unfortunately, this practice dictates that copy be written for machines rather than humans, and the results rarely offered compelling or helpful information.

Recognition that People Are Using the Machines…

Search engine giant Google sought to change this reality by tweaking their search algorithms in early 2012. Known as a Panda Update, the changes affected nearly 12% of all search inquiries, and the results have transformed the way people write copy on the internet. Under Google’s new protocols, the sure fired methods that drove search rankings in the past, no longer guarantee the lofty heights that they once achieved. In much the same way that you cannot discount the movements of an elephant when you are sleeping together in a twin-sized bed, the shear size of Google has assured that their changes are felt throughout the online search world.

Google based their changes on observations of social media. The propensity to share valuable information on such platforms as FaceBook, Pinterest, and Twitter drove the recognition that the yardstick for high search ratings is quality content rather than the ham-fisted tactic of keyword stuffing.

The Nuts and Bolts of a Panda Attack…

If your site is negatively impacted by a Panda update, you will know almost immediately, and it will manifest itself in the form of dramatic drop in traffic. It is possible to bounce back from a panda hit, but it takes some diligent work and a little time. Google recommends reviewing your site for substandard material as that is the new yardstick in determining high search rankings. Further, it should be noted that quick fixes would not provide a solution:

Panda is not about back links and anchor texts.
Tidying up a messy back link profile will not help.
Reconsideration requests won’t help.
Recovery will be re-measured once Google rolls out another update.

Webmasters can expect a Panda roll out every four to six weeks on average, and continuously upgrade their sites in the interim to achieve better results. Specifically, they should keep an eye out for content that would draw Panda’s ire:

Remove material that would probably not be shared by readers.
Get rid of duplicate material on your site. This might apply to content that has been pilfered from elsewhere on the web, or it could mean pages have been duplicated across your site.
Scour the site for thin material with an eye towards replacing pages that only have a sentence or two with quality engaging content.

Improved Literary Frontier…

These new rubrics have resulted in a marked improvement of the quality of online copy. While the use of keywords has not been removed, their use is within the framework of a natural, in-depth discussion of the topic that leads to their use in a naturalistic way. As such, copywriters and SEO professionals are scrambling to develop superior copy that represents an improved literary frontier for those looking for quality online information and content.

Written by Danny BenDebba

CEO of http://www.daasn.com and http://www.daasnlocal.com

Insight into the state of Social Media Marketing 2014

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, community manager, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing, Online Marketing

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Audio, content marketing, Podcasting, Rich Marketing, Sales Conversion

There are three times during the year that I step back and spend some time evaluating my social media marketing efforts. One is right at the beginning of the year. I always have high hopes to do this in the first few weeks of January but as the saying goes, the best laid plans… The next is May which is roughly a third of the way into the year and once more in September.

When May came around this year I decided to document some of the steps I take to evaluate my social media marketing health so to speak. These will change from year to year as the tools of the industry change so plan on doing a little pre-evaluation research each year to make sure you are keeping up with trends and the ever changing landscape of social media.

I will be using results shared via the 6th annual social media marketing industry report. You can download the entire report from the link at the end of this post. Here are the gauges that I used this May to evaluate the state of my social media:

Visual Storytelling:

No surprise here. This point of view has been on the rise steadily since the beginning of social media and continues to be a cornerstone of content marketing. With the introduction of platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and even Google+ it has gained popularity in leaps and bounds. What has become more prevalent however is the use of both audio and video in the visual arena. While social media has always recognized and rewarded rich content it is now critical. It is by far the main advantage that social media has over marketing channels.

Facebook advertising is a must:

Gone are the days of unlimited organic reach on Facebook. It was a great ride while it lasted but if you want to be effective or even noticed on Facebook you will have to pay. When Facebook first introduced “paid” advertising it was a extremely cost effective way to really get the jump on your competition. As marketers and businesses began to see the advantage of Facebook advertising and increased their budgets according, Facebook took notice and like any good free market company they used it to their advantage. I personally have no problem with the paid advertising model that Facebook is using and that others are sure to follow. It helped to weed out the players from the dabblers. Accordingly Facebook advertising has become more sophisticated, targeted and effective. If you have not spent time learning the new tools that Facebook has added to their advertising tool box you should do so, it is well worth it.

Google+ learn it, use it, embrace it, it’s not going away:

I have been telling my clients for the last 3 years that although Google+ may not appear to be a significant player in the social media arena, you ignore it to your own detriment. The primary reason Google+ is important is due to the general understanding that Google+ presents unique opportunities for building your online identity and authority.

If you have not heard of Google+ recently change in leadership, well you might be living under a rock but that aside this change has some questioning its future. Let’s be clear about one thing: All of the social networks should be considered “rented land.” So, be sure you are building an online presence on a site you own and control. When it comes to Google+, I’m confident of two things. The nature of Google+ will change just as the other networks will. However, there is no question Google+ will survive as a resource for growing your business. Why? Google is in the content business, and social provides valuable context that adds value to that content. This is why Google co-founder Sergey Brin took over the CEO role at Google in 2011 to focus specifically on social search.

Email Marketing is alive, thriving and the preferred tool for sales conversion:

If you think of social media in the same terms of the “circle of life” you begin to understand how email marketing plays a critical role in your content marketing circle of life. The majority of leading marketers name their email newsletter as their number one sales conversion tool. This is why everything else is designed to drive subscriptions to it. Podcasts are great for getting information out to the masses especially if they are free, but you will find statically that they very rarely convert. On the other hand email, good email does convert. Now it has to provide inherently great value for it to convert, after all subscribers want and deserve your very best. If you consistently honor that, conversion becomes a natural by-product of the ongoing conversation.

Podcasting the great differentiator:

Serious marketers are getting into podcasting so if you consider yourself a serious marketer read on. Podcasting is on the rise for a variety of reasons, with one of them being that its much easier for audio content to stand out because there is far less of it available than other formats. On a practical level, every person you interview for your podcast becomes a willing marketing partner, at least for that show. Podcasting is also a great way to meet other industry leaders as you effectively collaborate to help each other. Probably the best reason for creating audio content is that it tends to be more personal. Think of it as the future of talk radio. Your personality will naturally emerge as you communicate your message to your audience that is giving (nearly) their full attention as they commute, exercise, or just pass the time.

That is my process in a nutshell, now as promised, here is where you can download the 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Check it out, as there is a whole lot more to learn about the myriad questions that small business marketers share.

What is a winning blogging strategy

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Google+, Marketing, Online Marketing

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Best Practices, Blog, Blogging, Google Analytics, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing, SEM, Social Media, social media tools

t’s pretty much common knowledge that these days, any business, particularly an online business, should have a blog. But how? And why? What is this platform going to do for your brand? Are you selling products? Are you building a community? Is it about building awareness? And most importantly, who’s it for?

These are all questions you should be asking yourself before you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboards. Now let’s get onto the how… Check out our first five easy steps to a winning blogging strategy below:

Brainstorm

Whether you’re starting from scratch or you’ve already got something up and running, stop and get your team together! A brainstorm between your writers, marketing gurus and whoever else might be involved is a must for any successful blogging strategy. This brainstorm should be happening about once a month. If you’ve been blogging previously, get your analytics up in front of everyone – what posts have been successful? Which have been the most shared on social media? Take these factors into account when you’re coming up with topics for the next month.

If you haven’t started with content yet – no problem! This next tip’s for everyone: Have a close look at your competitor’s posts. Jot down any articles that have high share-rates. You should take inspiration from these, and write a related post.

Another one for the newbies: if you haven’t already decided on how many posts per week you’d like to publish, now’s the time to do it. Keep in mind you’re going to want to stay consistent, posting the same amount each week and on the same days too. Knowing these details will help you come up with a content calendar.

Schedule

Once you’ve decided on the number of posts you’ll be publishing per week, and per month, you’ll be able to create a rough plan for a content calendar. Do some research! Look into when your target audience is online the most. This is when you should be posting and promoting.

Clients

We know that we’ve talked about knowing your audience and clients before, so we’ll keep it brief. If you know your clients, you’ll know what they’re after in a blog. Whether it’s craft DIY tips, quirky ‘behind-the-scenes’ footage or informative marketing advice, you’ll know it and you’ll be able to provide it. Knowing your audience is also knowing the purpose of your blog, which is something that should be decided straight away in order to get your strategy underway. Check out these 5 Critical Tips for Identifying Your Target Audience from Technori.

Writers

If you’re just starting out, or your business is relatively small, you may have already decided that you’ll be writing the blog yourself. That’s completely understandable! Just be aware that there are a few things you should get your head around when it comes to creating great content. Firstly, you should make sure that you’re an avid reader of other blogs. This is great in terms of keeping an eye on the competition, but also knowing what’s out there in general, and knowing what’s possible within a blog platform. Reading will provide you with inspiration in terms of both structure and subject matter. Make sure you’ve got a list of go-to blog examples to devour.

The above still applies to writers that you’ve hired, but hiring the right writer is also crucial. Obviously, the right person depends on the purpose of your blog. For example, if your aim is to sell a complicated product, you’ll need a writer who is also an expert in what you’re selling. This writer will need to provide a lot of insight, and so it may be appropriate that in this instance, your product manager take on the blog themselves, or at least train the person you’ve brought on board.

Make sure your writers are great at creating catchy headlines. Obviously, these are the first things your audience are going to see – you want your headlines to inspire enthusiasm and interest, as well as be optimized for SEO (but we’ll get to that).

It’s one thing for you to know your audience, but make sure your writers know it too. Make communication with your writers a big priority – they should know not only your audience, but the goals of the business itself, what’s it all about? Check out these guidelines for creating great content.

Style Guides & Editors

The importance of the language you use on your online platforms should never be underestimated, but in this case – this isn’t all an editor and a style guide are for. Of course you don’t want spelling and grammatical errors throughout your content, but there’s something as equally important: consistent style and tone. It doesn’t matter if you have one writer or twenty – you want all your written content to be of a similar nature, it needs to represent your brand after all.

Early on in the content creating process, put together a style guide for your writers. This can list everything from preferred spellings and topics to cover to how to format headings. If your writers follow this carefully, you will be rewarded with consistency throughout your whole blog, no matter how many writers you have.

Analytics

Installing analytics is a must for every website owner. These are brilliant tools that allow you to track and measure your success, enabling you to identify successful posts, and use this information to create similar posts. The most commonly used tool is Google Analytics, which offers an extensive breakdown of your site, traffic and audience. Some of our favourite features?

Audience. This lets you view your demographic, their interests and behavior.
Acquisition. See where your traffic is coming from – is it direct or from an organic search? Is it from social media or an email marketing campaign?
‘Real Time’. See how many people are on your site at this exact moment; what they’re looking at and where they are in the world.

It’s amazing what you can learn about your audience and your own content by reviewing your analytics on a regular basis. Did we mention it’s free?

Keyword Research

If you know your audience you’ll have a rough idea of what they’re searching for when they hop onto the world wide web. Once you’ve got this in mind, you can play ball seriously. There are a number of keyword planning tools available for you to choose from. There’s Google Adwords Keyword Planner which can tell you how often a term is searched for each month, as well as suggest similar terms to use. This is one of the few free tools available, some of the paid services include Market Samurai and Raven, which also offer SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Packages.

Another tool we’ve just discovered is ReSearch.ly. This service filters conversations from 1000 days of social data so you have insight into your target audience’s “influence, sentiments, demographics and psychographics”, allowing you to “get inside your reader’s head”. ReSearch.ly offers newbies 10 free searches before they have to subscribe, so have a play around, and see if it’s something that could work for you.

Once you’ve done your keyword research, you can get your writers on board and discuss how to integrate these terms into your written and visual content. Think outside the box here, use your keywords in your image captions and alt tags, if possible have a category title using a keyword… Be sensible though, you still want your content to be super easy to read and share-friendly.

If all of this is new to you and you’re a little confused – no problem! Check out Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO & Keyword Research here.

Link

There’s one more thing to consider before you put your blog post out into the world: Links. Your post should be an authority on whatever subject you’ve chosen, but there will always be offshoot subjects you haven’t covered, or have covered in the past… Never miss an opportunity to provide your readers with more information, whether it’s from your own site or a fellow blogger’s. Creating internal links (these connect from one of your posts to another post on your site) are great because they keep your visitor on your site, exposing them to more of your content. This also means that you and your site keep more of the ‘link juice’ (yes, that’s a real thing). Alternatively, by linking to an external source, not only are you showing your readers that you’re a good sport, but you’re also starting a relationship with like-minded bloggers and paying it forward. This encourages others in your industry to interact with you and your brand, which ultimately brings more traffic your way.

Publish

That’s right, we’re finally here. You’ve done all the grunt work; the brainstorming, the researching, the writers’ training, the style sheet and you’ve trawled through your analytics… Now’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Hit ‘Publish’ and give yourself a pat on the back, a cheeky afternoon beverage or a nap (or maybe all three). You deserve it.

Promote

Unfortunately, the work doesn’t end there. Now you’ve got to give your latest post the best shot of reaching the most people on the web. Firstly, be sure to include sharing options at the bottom (and top) of your posts. You want people to share your content quickly and easily, which means making sure there are as few steps for them as possible. Next, promote your new post across all your social media platforms – use call to actions to grab attention and prompt interest. Another detail to remember – get your writers on board with social media sharing as well. It’s equally beneficial to them, as it gets their name and work out there for readers, but creates brand awareness for you as well.

2014 new Rules for Content Marketing

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Content Marketing, Online Marketing, WordPress

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Best Practices, Blogging, Engagement, Social Media

Before you start thinking about marketing your idea or brand, a good thing to do is plan your brand awareness marketing campaign. Without a specific plan, there is little you can expect to achieve in this harsh social media climate where everyone is trying to be seen. There are an unlimited number of things you could do to get attention, but when it comes to getting the word out, these 21 new content marketing rules are something you should have a look at.

We have visited the topic of content marketing many times before, but it seems there are plenty of things left to talk about in order for all of us to reach the people that we really want to reach. I was thinking the other day about how we here at Bit Rebels could reach further into the airwaves of the Internet and reach people who have yet to discover the compact news flow that we have to offer. I had a short discussion with my partner, and we agreed that we would look into several other approaches. But that’s just it, there are so many approaches that you could sometimes get lost in the noise of it all.

When I think about content marketing, I always end up at the same place, which is original and engaging content that people want to send to their friends and loved ones because they either find it interesting, funny or even shocking. Unfortunately, any blog or online newspaper runs the risk of becoming a gossip or a surprise generator website in the bad sense of the words. Is this good or bad?

21-Content-Marketing-Rules-Infographic (1)

As you can see, the questions are many and they will most likely never end. That, on the other hand, is a good thing because that means that there is always room for improvement and refinement. When it comes to the content marketing rules we can consult a fresh infographic presented by Kayak Online Marketing called 21 New Rules Of Content Marketing.

It should be said that even though many people would like there to be sure ways to succeed with brand awareness marketing, it’s the content marketing rules that determine the outcome of your social media marketing campaign. When you know how to update, interact and engage on social media, half the battle is already won. There are plenty of examples of this where ordinary people have become social media icons in the eyes of the ordinary users.

With these new content marketing rules, you definitely have a better chance of slipping through the social media noise and actually ending up on someone’s top list. It won’t be easy to adapt all of these, but the more you can incorporate into your campaign the better. As always, when I write articles concerning this topic, I say that it’s through engagement, transparency and presence that you will reach ordinary users who are the true engine behind social media.

SEO: New Rules For 2014

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google SEO, Google+, Online Marketing, Web Site Design

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Best Practices, Blogging, Community Management, Google SEM, Google SEO

SEO rules change and if you don’t keep up with these changes you risk losing your hard earned page rank in search results. Changes made to search engines algorithms in 2013 have had a profound effect on SEO rules in 2014. These effects will extend into the foreseeable future. If you have a business or entertainment website you need to be aware of the new SEO rules and how they will affect you.

In simple terms basic, on site SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a relatively easy thing to do. The search engines have a “template” if you will of what an ideal web page/site should have and how it should be put together. The closer you come to matching this ideal the higher you should rank in search results for terms that are related to your site.

In practice though SEO rules are not intuitive enough so that following them will “just happen” if you design a visually appealing website. Many web designers only do a visually appealing and functional site, they do not incorporate SEO rules into their design. If you have an existing website you should have an SEO analysis done on it.

SEO rules require you to pay attention to every little detail when you produce content. We useWordPress as a platform on which to design websites because it is versatile enough to be easily edited to make sure it matches the ideal search engine template. In addition we endorse the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress as an invaluable editing assistant when creating new content such as blog posts.

The search engines themselves have evolved over time and continue to do so. Each of them has their own mathematical algorithm. These algorithms are not all identical. Google handles 80% of search queries on the web though and consequently it is Google that establishes the SEO rules that everyone follows as “best practices”.

We created the pie charts above to illustrate the changes in SEO rules that have occurred over the last year or so and have really permanently altered the ball game in SEO. In the past it was fairly easy for Black Hat SEO companies to push undeserving sites to the first page of Google search results. They did this by creating thousands of backlinks to a site. The backlinks could be on any site, even just on pages they created themselves or on “backlink farms” that thrived on doing nothing more than hosting pages full of links to the websites of paying customers.

Another way they used to game the SEO rules was by loading a page full of otherwise irrelevant content with every keyword they could think of that was related to a search for a particular product or service. Or they might take a single blog post, load it with keywords and then “spin” the article by randomly changing every third or fourth word in it (other than the keywords) and post 50 or 100 spun copies of the same blog post. The more times it was spun the less sense anyone could make out of what it was supposed to say.

None of these techniques work anymore. Websites that used them are finding their search engine position dropping like a stone (some of them have come to us for help). A new era has come to the way search engines function, one that is intended to deliver the best, most relevant content to each query from a user.

SEO Rules For 2014

The new SEO rules are designed to focus on content. Good quality content that gives the best possible answers to people’s questions. I know that seems simple enough but computers cant make intuitive judgement choices…yet. Until they can they have to use things that they can measure, data, to make that determination.

So SEO has become much more than just having a website that conforms to SEO rules and a bunch of backlinks. It has expanded to include input from social media networks and to making judgements on the quality of your site and your content by the quality of the sites that link back to you. “You are known by the company you keep” is as good a way to say it as any.

You see, Google decided that the best place to look for reliable data on the value of a website, blog post or video is the audience. The theory is that, the more people who like and share something the more value that it must have to them. Likewise with backlinks. The more links that point to your site from other high quality sites which deal with the same topic the more value your content must have.

This is the birth of Social SEO and Contextual Search. Google has created a fun little animated illustration of how search works at this link. As a business owner or content creator it is good to check out that illustration. Once you realize how much goes into every search that happens on the web you cannot help but realize a; how much competition there really is for the top spots in search results and b; the necessity of making your site and your content as good as possible both from the perspective of viewers and the behind the scenes requirements of the SEO rules.

In the illustration above (on this page) you see how many obvious factors there are in Social SEO that can affect the search engines perception of the quality of your site and your content. You may have great content and perfect on site SEO but any number of other sites may have content of equal quality and also have perfect on site SEO. That is the easiest scenario from which to start when understanding the value of Social Networks of various types to your page rank. It is also the perfect segue into the next part of what makes up following SEO rulestoday.

If the competitors in the above scenario all have content of equal quality and perfect on site SEO how does the search engine decide on page rank? The page with the most links on other quality sites, social network likes and shares and traffic will have the number one spot in many cases. That is why it is as important or more important than ever to have a robust social networking presence in place.

We talk to a lot of business owners and even people who handle digital marketing for mid size to large businesses and it is surprising how many of them never took the time to learn enough about SEO rules to realize that the websites they are responsible for are sorely lacking in that area. We hear things like “oh there was a module that came with our website that does SEO”, or “we’re covered for SEO” when we have already looked at their site and seen that they are not.

The same thing goes for Social Networking and the creation of content. Social Networking is now a crucial part of SEO but too many people who manage social networks don’t see it that way so they miss opportunities. The same goes for content creation. Most people who upload videos to YouTube expect the quality of the video to get them views. But search engines don’t watch videos they depend on the content on your channel page and individual video pages to determine what your video is about and who to show it to in search results or as a suggested video. Once again SEO rules need to be followed when creating a channel page and every time you upload a video.

Some other factors that can come to bear on page rank in the above example are things like proximity (how close are you to the person doing the search). Here is where having an SEO optimized local directory listing is crucial as a component in page rank and your overall digital marketing plan. Why SEO optimized? Because if your competitors have a better local listing then theirs will appear higher than yours in that set of results and may push you off of page one.

Let’s refer back to the Google depiction of the search process that I linked to above. It is important to think about the different parts of the search process and which ones can be influenced by what you do on your site(s). Our intent is to show that relatively simple SEO ruleshave expanded to include pretty much everything you do on the web and how to show how important it is to realize that.

SEO Rules And The Search Process

Crawling: This is the initial phase of the search process. The Google Web Spider goes out into the 60 trillion (and growing daily) pages on the web and tries to index them. This is the first place where on site SEO is important. By following the SEO rules for best practices on site you show the spider that your site is of good quality and allow it to easily determine what each page is about. This is also where many people think SEO stops. This is far from being the case. Both Google and Bing have Webmaster Tools to assist in managing your site and they too can be employed at this stage.

Programs And Formulas: This is the second stage of search and the one where the search algorithms you hear so much about come into play. The tools that Google uses as examples for this stage of search are; spelling, autocomplete, synonyms, Google Instant, query understanding and search methods.

You have control over some of these factors as well. You can make sure the content on your page is correct grammatically and everyone has a spell checker so there is no real excuse for bad spelling. You can establish a unique keyword or keyword phrase for each page to be built around. This does not mean meta keywords. We don’t use meta keywords at all anymore with the exception of on YouTube. It means you know what keyword or phrase best expresses what the page is about and then you put that keyword (ideally) in the page URL, the title, the meta title, the meta description and in the body of the page. You use it at a rate of around 2% of the total words on the page and include some synonyms as well.

If you look at this page you will see that we have followed all of the above SEO rules when writing this story. In addition, you have to be sure that your site is readily accessible on multiple platforms (PC, Mobile, Tablet). The more ephemeral aspect at this stage is query understanding. The search engines are trying to understand the context of the query in better ways and you have to keep in mind how a person would ask questions related to your content and design it to answer the question the way it would be asked most often.

Ranking The Results: Google says that they consider over two hundred factors when deciding how each page given in answer to a query ranks in search results. Two hundred factors. That is quite a daunting number when you are trying to create content that will rank highly isn’t it? But it validates our earlier statement that everything you do matters when it comes to followingSEO rules.

The ranking factors that Google lists are; page and site quality, safe search, freshness, user context, translation and universal search. Obviously you have control over whether or not your site is family safe (or not). Page site and quality are influenced by following on site SEO rulesand here is also where back links and social likes and shares come into play as well as the traffic to your site. Freshness is important because it illustrates the importance of creating content on an ongoing basis. User context adds in factors like the physical location of the person making the query in relation to your location if relevant. This is where Local Directory Listings come into play, especially for local businesses and can definitely have a big influence on your ranking in search results for local users and why they are so important.

Universal Search means that the most relevant results to a query from multiple sources are displayed on the search results page. Some of these sources include; images, website, social networks, local directory listings and video. If you have material relevant to the query available in all of these sources then you could conceivably dominate the entire first page of google results for that query.

The image at the left shows the results of the simple query: “Katy Perry”. As you can see Universal Search has considered material from various sources and is displaying the most relevant results from each on the page. The result is that the performer Katy Perry dominates the entire first page of google results from the web, images, video, social networks and even news. The advantage of this is obvious if you have competitors.

How does this work for a business. The most frequent queries will probably not contain your business name but rather the name of the product or service that you offer. If you utilize all available types of media and some 3rd party services like local directories there is a chanceyou can achieve at least several first page placements on page one of Google and perhaps even dominate the entire page. But you have to follow SEO rules throughout to maximize the potential of this happening.

The image to the right is the result of searching the term “Camp Hill PA, order pizza”. That is a pretty general search about a product in a specific location. One of the businesses that we have done some SEO work for, Nikoli’s Pizza comes up as the first Google Product listing at the top of the page (with image) and the first result on page one of this search.

There are a lot of pizza places in the Camp Hill/Mechanicsburg/Harrisburg Pa area. Big chains like Dominos, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut and Little Ceasers are all over the market area as are a host of other independent pizza places and Italian restaurants. In spite of this a small, family run operation like Nikoli’s comes up as number one (and in three different listing types) in their area on a Google search done by someone who wants to order pizza! I think that is awesome.

Google Specific: In the last year Google has done a lot of things to integrate many of their products with each other. To do this they used Google+ as the glue that holds it all together. Now, local business listings in Google Places are by default done as Google+ business pages. You can also get a vanity URL for your Google+ business page (Example: plus.google.com/+streetpunkproductions). This helps with your efforts to bring your social network pages into line with SEO rules.

Another exciting feature is Google Authorship which is also tied to the content author’s Google+ profile. In addition, the comments on YouTube are also now powered by Google+. The advantages are that, as long as you have a Google+ profile, your content will be more likely to appear on the first page of Google results to those people in your Google+ circles. The incentive to have your customers/fans as part of your Google+ circles is obvious.

Everything discussed above is part of the new SEO rules for 2014 and beyond. To truly optimize the potential of your web assets you have to be aware of all of it every time you create a blog post or upload a video. You have to think about the URL, title, description and text content of the post. In addition you have to consider adding images and making sure to alt tag the images with your focus keyword or keyword phrase for the page. You should also research the topic on your page and try to incorporate the most popular keywords that are related to the topic. You can also add a video to the post and create a video for the purpose. Then optimize the video’s page on YouTube in the same way as you do the blog post itself.

Once you create your content according to SEO rules and publish the video and the post (with Google+ and Authorship enabled) it is time to further promote it via your SEO rules optimized social networks. The next step is to go to the webmasters tools sites and have Google and Bing spider your site and add your new page to their index. This can really speed up the process of being available to search engines.You would post links to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest etc. to reach your established fans/clients. Then also post to some news distribution services like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. This will create backlinks as well as putting your content in front of people who can further your SEO efforts by liking, sharing and linking to your content.

This article is shared courtesy of Street punk productions Posted on January 16, 2014 by Michael Johnston

Three Social Media Rules Your Business Needs to Break

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, community manager, Facebook, LInkedIn, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Yelp, YouTube

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Best Practices, Community Management, Facebook, Google Analytics, LINKEDIN FOR BUSINESS, Pinterest, SEM, Social Media, social media tools, Strategy

If you stay up to date on social media trends and advice, you have likely heard that you need to post a lot of content, get as many fans/followers as you can, and post when most of your fans are online. Rules are meant to be broken, and I’ll explain why it is necessary to break each of these rules.

1. Post a lot of content

Yes, you need to post content. A lot of it. But this stress on always posting can result in substandard content. On Facebook, you should never post more than twice a day, and even twice a day can be too much. Instead, aim for 5-7 times a week. When you post too much content, you increase your chance that you are just adding to the social media “noise”. Instead focus your effort on creating smaller amounts of high quality content. Quality over quantity.

Why to break this rule
The Facebook algorithm works in a way that it tries to guess what you want to see. One way this is accomplished is that if you normally click on a business’ Facebook page, it is more likely to show you their content. If your business is posting too much low quality content, people will stop clicking. And when you actually do post good content, less fans will see it.

Real world example
There is a restaurant I frequent that I “like” on Facebook. They post any and everything on their Facebook page (they post about 5-10 times a day), whether it is related to the restaurant or not. The result is that I NEVER see their content in my news feed because I first ignored their nonsense posts. What good is my like if they never get their message to me?

2. Get as many fans as you can

We all want more fans. But if these fans are never going to purchase your product or service, what good are they? Social media can easily become a popularity contest: “we have more fans than you.” But worthless fans are, well, worthless. Actually, they can be much worse than worthless….

Why to break this rule
Remember that Facebook algorithm? Another way it works is that when you post content, it shows it to a handful of your fans. If these fans interact with your content, Facebook then shows it to more of your fans. If you have fans that don’t actually like your product/service, they won’t interact with your posts. This means that it will be more difficult to reach your fans who actually are actually interested in your business.

Real world example
While doing consulting work with an Italian restaurant, we quickly learned that if we focused our Facebook advertising to the local area, we received two-three “likes” for every dollar we spent. When we just aimed for total likes, we doubled that number. We could have spent a relatively small amount of money and gotten hundreds of likes. The problem was that the likes all came from Italy, a demographic that was unlikely to ever visit the restaurant or interact with the content. Aim for quality fans over a large quantity of fans.

3. Always post when the most fans are online

You want to get your message out to fans, and you want that message to reach the most screens as possible. Knowing when your fans are online is essential. The Facebook newsfeed works in a way that rewards current content, and makes older content unlikely to show in a person’s newsfeed.

Why to break this commandment
You certainly need to post when most of your fans are online, but you do not need to do it religiously. Focus most of your posting at peak hours, but switch up your timing once or twice a week. This is important because certain fans have different Facebook use habits. This means that if you always post at the same time, you are likely missing fans that have different schedules.

Real world example
We found that a sports rehabilitation physician had more success with his posts after he varied up his posting schedule. He often included exercise tips, and saw his engagement increase after he started posting later in the day. By posting later in the day, he was able to reach fans that otherwise had been missing his posts. Now, these fans are more likely to see all of his posts, no matter the time of day he posts.

2014 Top Social Media Channels

03 Saturday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, community manager, Facebook, Google Analytics, LInkedIn, Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing, Online Marketing, Pinterest, tumblr., Twitter, Yelp, YouTube

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Community Management, Engagement, facebook page insights bug, Marketing, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, social media tools, Trending

My clients are always asking me “What is the best social media channel” and I always answer the same, “the one that works best for you. Truth is that not all social media channels are the same, just as not all businesses are the same. I recommend using the channel(s) that best suite your particular business. However to keep the the ranking monkeys happy here is the industry list of social media channels ranked by use, and popularity.

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~ socially savvy design

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