'Net Features : social media

Which Social Network is Best for Merchants?

Michael Garrity — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:00:00 GMT

For the most part, e-commerce and marketing professionals tend to agree that social media plays an important role in the success of an online retail business. That’s good to know, but one tiny problem remains: With so many social networks and ways to interact with consumers on the World Wide Web, which site is THE BEST one to invest your time and energy on?

This is a question that has plagued marketers for a few years now, but since social media has officially been around long enough for every facet of it to be thoroughly examined (in most cases, more than twice), the pros and cons of the various social networks out there are well documented. This means finding the one that is going to be best for merchants should be a cinch, right?

Facebook
When it comes to social media, the first thing that pops into most people’s minds is their Facebook profile. Mark Zuckerberg’s famous website may have a questionable privacy policy, but there’s no doubt that when it comes to growing and engaging with your audience, advertising and even selling your products (through “f-commerce” services from companies like Volusion and Ecwid), Facebook has all of its competitors beat. With more than 1 billion users, Facebook has the largest collection of potential consumers out there, and plenty of ways to get your brand in front of their eyeballs, including its various advertising programs (display ads, Sponsored Stories, etc.) and the new-ish Graph Search feature.

Twitter
Twitter is a great platform for marketing your brand and sharing your unique message with the world. Since you only have 140 characters to say what you need to say, it really ensures that you stick to the essentials (something most marketers would be smart to do more of). It’s also an excellent platform for accepting and responding to customer queries and complaints (and retweeting compliments) in an efficient manner. Plus, with new services like Chirpify, in-stream Twitter-commerce is starting to become a reality, although a shaky and certainly immature reality, for the time being.

Google+
Google+ has yet to come out with a really feasible, useful shopping option like Facebook or Twitter, and it certainly doesn’t have the audience reach that Facebook can offer, but it does do one thing: help you get found. Since G+ is so closely integrated with Google Search, setting up a Google+ Page for your online e-commerce business is a great way to improve the way your business shows up on the world’s most popular search engine (by a long shot). Google+ also offers the added benefit of Google Authorship, which is great for online merchants with a blog, as it will provide their content with more credibility and authority in the SERPs.

Pinterest
Merchants love Pinterest, because it allows them to share images of their products to interested consumers, and we all know how much people on the Internet love pictures. The huge surge in popularity that Pinterest has seen in the last two years has been a dream for retailers, particularly those that sell products that lend themselves to being looked at repeatedly, such as apparel or home décor. And although interested consumers can’t actually make purchases on the social pinboarding site, Pinterest does allow them to click and link and be taken directly the specific page on their website for the product their interested in. So, since it is basically the online version of “just browsing” through a store, and can thus lead to impulsive purchasing decisions, Pinterest is certainly a favorite among online merchants, for good reason.

So, which is best?
Well, I guess that depends on what you’re looking for. Having a presence on the “Big 3” (Facebook, Twitter and Google+) is more or less imperative for different reasons (brand recognition, search visibility, customer engagement, etc.), but finding the one that works best for your business is really a matter of what your company’s unique needs are. While Facebook currently offers the largest selection of audience targeting and advertising options, as well as third-party services that allow you to actually sell your products through the search engine, making it the most solid, go-to social network for most merchants. But with that being said, don’t discount the power of Pinterest as a way to drive interest in your products and help browsing consumers find your offerings while they’re already searching for similar items.

20 Terrific Tumblr Themes

Michael Garrity — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

The biggest Internet news this week was unquestionably Yahoo’s massive purchase of the popular microblogging website/platform known as Tumblr.

Once considered nothing more than a haven for angsty teenagers and aficionados of unmentionable content, the site has quickly become an effective marketing platform for numerous major brands over the last couple of years, particularly content providers, although many e-commerce companies and service providers are slowly getting on board as well. In some cases, Tumblr blogs even serve as the primary websites for writers, artists and other creative professionals.

A big part of the appeal of Tumblr is the wide variety of available themes and looks that people can incorporate on their blogs that are visually appealing and conducive to sharing all types of content. The website itself hosts a number of great free and paid themes that users can put on their blogs, but other websites, such as ThemeForest, also have additional themes that users can implement if they don’t like what Tumblr has to offer.

So if you’re looking to get started tumbling, or you have been and just want to change things up, maybe you should consider one of these 20 terrific Tumblr themes.

The Squared Magazine

Timeline

Effector Theme

Rapture

Observer

Incorporated

Optic

UltraMnml

Pixelated

Vision

Pop Gallery

Inkhorn

Squared Folio

Tumbl News

Heterotelic

Polaroid

Elegantem

POPCASE

Tumblair

Create Your Own

Did you know that you can basically create your very own Tumblr theme by simply clicking on the “Edit HTML” button in the left-hand sidebar of your blog’s customization page? Once you’re in there, you can customize anything about the theme you’re currently using, or you can insert your own HTML/CSS and – tah-dah – you’ve just made your very own, totally unique Tumblr theme. Of course, doing this requires pretty extensive knowledge of both HTML and CSS, as well as the Tumblr format, but for experienced designers, this can be a great way to get a little extra mileage out of their Tumblr blogs.

Surprise! Teens Love Using Social Media to Share Things

Michael Garrity — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:10:00 GMT

It looks like teenagers love to share things more than we thought – it just so happens that they prefer to do it on the Internet.

According to a new study from Pew Internet, teens are more than willing to share a bunch of information about themselves on social media sites, although most (wisely) attempt to restrain themselves by taking steps to restrict and prune their profiles.

In studying 802 teens, Pew found that teen Twitter growth has grown by eight percent since 2011, and that the average teenage Twitter users typically have about 79 followers (and Facebook users have about 300 friends). Most teens (64 percent) also prefer to have public Twitter accounts.

Facebook, however, is waning in popularity amongst young adults, with many teens claiming adult presence, excessive sharing and “drama” as reasons for growing disinterest in the social network. Currently, about 60 percent of Facebook-using teens keep their profiles private.

Mostly, they’re all just worried about their reputations, which is why 74 percent of teens have admitted to deleting someone from their network or friend’s lists. However, just nine percent said they were “very concerned” about third-parties using social media sites to access their data.

In addition, the study found that 91 percent of teens post pictures of themselves online, while 71 percent post their school names, another 71 percent post the names of their cities or towns, 53 percent post their email addresses and curiously, 20 percent post their phone numbers. Pew also found that 92 percent of teens use their real names online, 84 percent post about their interests (movies, music, books, etc.), 82 percent share their birth dates, 62 percent share their relationship statuses and 24 percent are posting videos about themselves.

Also not surprisingly, the study found that older teens are much more likely to share certain types of information, such as photos, school names and cell phone numbers, than younger teenagers, and that boys are for more likely to share personal information than girls.

There is an upside to all of this sharing, though, as the study found that teens are much more likely to report about positive, rather than negative, online experiences. A surprising 52 percent said they have had an “online experience” that made them feel good about themselves, while 33 percent reported online experiences that made them feel closer to another person (a number that increases to 37 percent for social media users).

Klout Moves into Q&A Industry

Allison Howen — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:30:00 GMT

Does your Klout score make you an expert in a certain area? If it does, the social platform may ask you to answer questions through a new program called Klout Experts.

Klout Experts is similar to a Q&A service. It allows Klout users who are influential in a specific topic to increase their authority in that subject by answering topic-related questions that are frequently searched for on Bing. The Klout blog provides this example:

“A person building their influence in photography might be asked, 'What’s the best digital SLR for beginners?' Someone who is an expert about fitness might answer, 'What’s a great exercise routine for someone with bad knees?' We are focused on practical advice that leverages the taste and wisdom we all have about something.”

That said, Klout Experts is currently in a preview period, with the company making the service available to a small percentage of influential users. These people have the chance to share their insights to questions that will be delivered on Bing, and in return, have the possibility of having their answers seen by millions of people who leverage Bing search everyday. It is also important to note that those who are interested in sharing their expertise with the digital world can request early access to Klout Experts by signing up for the waitlist.

Echo Helps Publishers Wrestling with Real-Time Content Moderation

Michael Garrity — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Conversations are constantly taking place all over the Web, from websites to applications to mobile devices that are always on the go. And although this presents brands with more opportunities to spread their messages and create awareness, it also makes it far more difficult to monitor everything that is being said about them online.

But moderating those conversations just got easier thanks to the real-time Web platform provider Echo, which recently just announced the availability of DiscussIt Moderator, a new application designed for high-volume environments that allows publishers to moderate real-time conversations about their brands across multiple applications and websites.

As part of the Echo App Ecosystem, DiscussIt Moderator works as a centralized moderation tool that will augment the Echo StreamServer’s built-in standard moderation features, which include “bad word” filtering, spam detection and community flagging. However, DiscussIt Moderator will also let publisher teams co-moderate content from any Echo Enabled application, such as Comments, Media Galleries, Forums, Social Chattter or Lifestreams, and all from within a single, centralized interface.

Using configurable rules, DiscussIt Moderator is able to automatically flag any questionable content for review, and then insert said content into a live message stream that can be split into various sub-streams that allow individual moderators to collaborate on different sections simultaneously. This means they can approve, deny, edit or directly respond to items through the user interface and remove any inappropriate material.

The tool also features the ability to moderate multiple websites/domains, advanced real-time search functionality, the ability to “deputize” standout community members as moderators and in-depth usage analytics. Plus, it’s made to be quick and easy to configure and launch.

One of the biggest brands already on board with DiscussIt Moderator is the global professional wrestling corporation WWE, a company that has openly embraced social media as part of its recent marketing efforts.

“WWE fans are passionate and generate thousands of comments during each live event, both on social networks, as well as directly on WWE.com,” said the company’s EVP of Digital Media, Perkins Miller. “DiscussIt Moderator enables our team to easily co-moderate real-time content across all of our properties, which makes it easier for our fans to feel connected to our content and our WWE Superstars.”

Social Media Solution Uses Twitter to Drive Traffic to Partner Channels

Michael Garrity — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:15:00 GMT

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company TIE Kinetix has added a new social element to its Content Syndication Platform with the launch of the Social Media Syndication Solution that is designed to make delivering dynamic marketing messages to a partner community on Twitter more accurate and effective.

This solution was created to allow vendors that sell through partners to connect their Twitter messages with the “right” content and lead capturing tools that will use syndication to drive conversions on their partners’ websites, and when that happens, it boosts sales and benefits both parties.

“Twitter is an extremely powerful tool in today’s business world,” said TIE Kinetix CEO Jan Sundelin. “We’re excited to be offering our customers a unique solution that enhances their marketing efforts and helps them better utilize these key social avenues.”

So, companies leveraging Twitter in their sales cycles can use the Social Media Syndication Solution to send messages from multiple partner Twitter handles, and users will not be able to detect the involvement of the original company at all. Plus, since it’s integrated into the Content Syndication Platform, when tweets include a PDF attachment, it will automatically be co-branded for each partner, and other links in tweets will direct traffic to the website of the partner that originally posted the message.

“This solution allows companies to not only tap into their own Twitter base, but also effectively access their partners’ Twitter followers,” explained Sundelin, “Which increases the number of eyeballs on their marketing material exponentially, in turn boosting sales and revenue for all.”

The first company to utilize this new solution is the longtime TIE Kinetix customer Siemens Enterprise Communications, which partners with a number of small resellers that have few marketing resources. Through the Social Media Syndication Solution, however, Siemens is able to help its partners cultivate their Twitter presence by automatically posting its own content to its partners’ followers, which helps them “find, engage and nurture new potential sales opportunities.”

Don’t Let Your Social Media & SEO Take a Vacation

Administrator — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:39:00 GMT

:: By Chris Marentis, CEO of Surefire Social ::

While summer (or any off-season for a business) might represent a downtime, don’t send your SEO strategy on a short-term vacation. Instead, take some of the downtime in your own business to re-evaluate your approach and determine what is and isn’t driving new quality customers to your website and creating increased sales leads.

Review Site Performance

By using tools like Google Analytics and your CRM system you can identify trends, issues and opportunities when it comes to website traffic. Measuring unique visits, page traffic, lead conversion rate and the popularity of content like blog posts or landing page copy gives you the chance to make improvements.

Helping you send the right signals to Google for improved search visibility, Google’s Webmaster Tools offer you diagnostic reports that let you improve your site’s relationship with Google. This includes customizing important settings, specifying URL parameters, prioritizing sitelinks and more.

Based on these analytics, tweak content and keyword strategy as needed. If your website traffic is high but conversions are low, you should evaluate which type of Web searcher is actually finding your website. Make identifying keywords a part of your marketing strategy and ensure they appear on your website’s homepage. However, remember not to abuse keywords, as search engines penalize websites that overuse keywords. If you are using keywords that potential ready-to-buy customer would use to search for your business, you are likelier to attract quality leads.

Reassess Link Building Strategy

In order to boost website visibility and rank well in search engines, look at your link-building strategy. From a Google perspective, link building is about to shift entirely with the much-anticipated Penguin 2.0. Google is now discounting links if they don’t find them relevant and trustworthy.

These low quality links might include overuse of keywords, link buying or heavy interlinking of your own website. If you are guilty of the previously mentioned, start cleaning up links now before Penguin 2.0 is released and refocus on authoritative links like contributed content, blog posts, videos and reviews. Otherwise, the negative links could hurt your page rank and visibility in search results making it difficult for customers to find you.

Increase Social Media Sharing

Also, review how social media sharing, infographics, earned backlinks, site blog distribution and other content is helping you move to top of search results. Informative content including blog posts, how-to articles or photos and videos has the potential to be shared and even go viral and can bring more exposure to your business. This combination of SEO, social media and content creation is needed to send positive signals about your business to search engines. Don’t forget to share your earned links through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media for increased exposure.

Try to set up a system and a workable dashboard to look at the data on a regular basis. During the summer, reassess your website traffic by taking a close look at analytics available to you. Also, look at the technology and underpinning supporting your website to ensure code cleanliness and optimal site speed. Check that keywords and site structure are aligned with your business objectives and what products/services you are trying to rank well for in Google and other search engines and directories. With this analysis, you can create a plan to make any necessary updates to prepare for a busier fall and winter.

Regardless of your business type, different seasons might represent a lull but know that just because an SEO strategy worked in the past, it might not work in the future. It is important to continually reassess whether your approach to SEO is effective, reaching your targeted customers and making a strong impact on your bottom line.

CHRIS MARENTIS BIO

For nearly three decades, Chris Marentis, Founder and CEO of Surefire Social, has been responsible for driving innovation and sales growth for large media and e-commerce brands as well as start-ups. His notable career includes creating the foundational blueprints for online marketing, e-commerce and content branding for AOL's Interactive Marketing group, where he served as Senior Vice President. While CEO of Clearspring Technologies (now Add This), Marentis developed one of the most widely adopted venture-backed Web 2.0 content distribution technology platforms in the world.

Small Businesses Technology Trends in 2013

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:05:00 GMT

Digital marketing – websites, social media and online advertisements - is the way of the future and this outlook is not only limited to big business. Small businesses are significantly increasing their online investments, according to the 2013 AT&T Small Business Technology Poll.

In fact, 66 percent of small businesses plan to invest as much or more in digital marketing than they did last year. According to the poll, a vast majority of small businesses will also expand their online and digital presence through their company website and through email marketing in 2013.

Perhaps most notably, however, is that more than 80 percent of the 1,000 small businesses that were polled nationwide, will also use word-of-mouth marketing to increase awareness and visibility. And while word-of-mouth still runs supreme with this business segment,small businesses are not ignoring the shift that has taken place in consumer consumption habits thanks to mobile. Seventy-one percent are “somewhat” or “very likely” going to increase budgets for marketing via mobile devices.

“U.S. small businesses see incredible value and opportunity in digital marketing and are clearly increasing their presence as a way to gain access to new customers,” said Cathy Martine, AT&T Executive Vice President of Small Business Solutions. “With a variety of digital tools such as email, websites and social media, coupled with the ability to both deliver and access them from mobile devices, small businesses are building new connections without borders.”

The poll also addressed the use of social media among the 1,000 small businesses nationwide, the results include:

• As a way to remain competitive with easy and affordable ways to create awareness, 36 percent of small businesses polled say they use LinkedIn for various reasons, including engaging with others in their industry and extending awareness of their business. This represents a 16 percent increase over last year.

• While LinkedIn saw an increase, Facebook participation among small businesses polled decreased from 44 percent to 41 percent over the past year.

• Use of location-based social media also decreased. For example, Foursquare decreased from 9 percent to 6 percent year over year.

Predicting Facebook Post Popularity

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:05:00 GMT

The role that social citations play in the search marketing landscape is increasing dramatically. And don't think for a moment that smart software solution developers are not fully aware of that fact.

Adobe, for example, recently announced new predictive capabilities for its social media optimization platform Adobe Social (part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite).

What makes the development so interesting is that Adobe uses historical data — in aggregate and at the customer-specific level — to predict engagement levels (as well as sentiment) around a specific type of Facebook post. The platform can recommend keywords, content types and even timing that could lead to a better response (deeper engagement et al).

Adobe Social users can see the estimated range for the amount of Likes, comments, and shares a post will receive, as well as identify other metrics that matter to them (which Adobe will then track and predict in the future). Before posts are published, the service will notify users if post elements exist that could be improved — for example, perhaps there is a better time to schedule a post.

Rumor has it that Adobe will quickly expand beyond Facebook (and that's good news as, apparently, Google+ is gaining ground on Facebook which is (also apparently) losing millions of users.

Big List of Personal Branding Solutions

Michael Garrity — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:00:00 GMT

The Web has made the “personal brand” more of an actual thing than ever before. These days, individuals can have their own websites, online portfolios, social media profiles and other online spaces where they can share work, market themselves or connect with their audiences or customers.

Personal branding is a useful tool for freelancers and individuals who own their own businesses, but it also has numerous benefits and presents marketing opportunities for people who work for larger organizations, as it allows them to share company news and information (although you have to be careful to follow SEC guidelines), personally interact with their customers and generally humanize their organizations a bit.

Luckily, the Internet won’t just leave you hanging. There are a number of useful tools available online that can help you simplify, automate and improve your personal branding efforts around the Web. Check out Website Magazine’s big list of personal branding solutions by clicking "Read More" below.

5 Tips for Taking Over Tumblr

Michael Garrity — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:30:00 GMT

While Facebook and Twitter were racking up hundreds of millions of users apiece, many of whom are largely inactive on the social networks, the microblogging site Tumblr was slowly accumulating its own large and much more dedicated user base.

Smart companies, particularly content providers looking for another channel on which they can share their work, are already jumping onboard the Tumblr bandwagon and trying to leverage the site’s inherent shareability and young, tech-savvy users to help organically expand their audience and generate some viral buzz.

Of course, Tumblr can be just as useful for online merchants, as well, giving them a chance to show off their products on the site and introduce them to interested users who may not have heard of them otherwise. Since Tumblr is such an image-heavy site, merchants can display their products, include descriptions on their blogs (and automatically on their followers’ dashboards) and then link back to their online stores or specific product pages to continue the sale.

If you’re not on Tumblr yet, you should be. But just starting a blog isn’t enough to guarantee success (just ask, uh, thousands of people); so, here are five important tips that will help you master Tumblr from the get-go.

Find Followers
The first thing you have to do on Tumblr is find followers. These are the users who will automatically see your posts appear on their dashboards without having to search tags or go directly to your blog. Also, in theory, these are people who follow your blog because they’re interested in your content (or products), meaning they represent an outline of your target audience on the website.

Normally, the best way to build a list of followers is to search for and start following blogs in your niche that look interesting. You can find them by clicking on the “Find blog” tab on the right-hand side of your dashboard, and then filtering by category to look at “Spotlight” blogs. Or, you can search for specific tags or blog names in the search bar at the top of the dashboard to look for people posting content related to your industry, and then follow the blogs that appear in the results.

Tag Like a Fiend
There is absolutely no better way to get your content found on Tumblr than by just tagging posts with appropriate tags (e.g. descriptors), so that when other users search for those keywords, your posts will appear in the results. This will help people find your content and, consequently, your Tumblr blog, as well. Once people find your posts on the site, they will be able to like them, reblog them to show their own followers, click any links included in the post or visit and even follow your blog. The more tags you use, the more likely it is that a variety of different users will find your posts.

Reblog, But Be Smart
Reblogging the posts of other users is a great way to add more content to your own blog (especially when you’re just starting out) and capture the attention of the user’s your reblogging from, which is a great way to network on the site. However, just be sure that you don’t reblog so much that it overshadows your own original content or posts.

Ask and Answer
The golden rule of social media is to be social, and that remains true on Tumblr just as much as it does Facebook, Twitter and Google+. To do this, don’t be afraid to interact with blogs you’re interested in by just going to their “Ask Box” and submitting a question, comment or compliment. In addition, try your best to respond to any Ask Box or “fan mail” messages that you may receive, to ensure that you keep in contact with your followers, and anyone else who reads your blog.

Another fun trick is to ask a question in a text post or the caption section of an image or video post. Ending the post with a question mark brings up a box on the bottom left-hand side of the post editor that asks if you want to let people answer it. Checking the box enables comments, and anyone who reads your post on their dashboard will be able to respond.

Queue It Up
If you’re posting a lot of content over a few days, you can set up the posts in your queue to publish automatically, whether you’re online, at a baseball game or fast asleep. Simply create the post like you normally would, and then in the drop-down menu next to the “Publish” button, select “Publish on…” and set the exact date and time that you want the post to go up. Once you have some future posts set, a “Queue” tab will appear on your dashboard (under the “Followers” tab), and in there you can see your upcoming posts, and rearrange them using the up and down arrows on the upper-left-hand corner of each post.

Bonus: Add Text to Image Posts
Yes, people love pictures on Tumblr, and images are far more likely to go viral than text posts probably 99 percent of the time (not a scientifically verified number). But just posting a picture, while potentially viral on Tumblr, limits the chances of other people finding it on the Internet, such as through search engines. So, get a little meta and add a brief description that summarizes the contents of the picture in the caption area. Even if it’s just one or two words, it will still give the search engines an idea of what they’re looking at.

SEC Outlines Rules for Corporate Social Media Disclosure

Michael Garrity — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:15:00 GMT

Recently, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went about releasing a brand new set of disclosure rules for social media that detail specifically how businesses can use sites like Facebook, Twitter and a variety of other social networks to share information according to the Commission’s guidelines and requirements.

Now, it looks like members of a company’s c-suite will be free to write a Facebook or blog post if they way; they just have to inform their investors about their “social media strategy” beforehand. It is believed that this change will reduce some spontaneity and limit a company’s social communications to official corporate accounts.

Apparently, the SEC worried that company-related posts from chief executives may violate its Regulation Fair Disclosure act, which ensures that a company publishes all of its information to all investors at the same time, such as in a securities filing or news release.

However, following several months of investigation, the SEC decided that companies can use social media sites as “legitimate outlets” for communicating with investors, just like they would with their corporate websites or the SEC’s public filing system, Edgar. That being said, the SEC does state that corporations must make it clear which of their Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, etc. will be used as outlets for announcements.

How to Effectively Create, Market and Use Hashtags

Administrator — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:00:00 GMT

:: Tony Ferraro, Twubs.com ::

Are you struggling with the noise of social media? Twitter and Instagram are so full of people’s coffee shop stories that your message simply fights to get heard. Social media has become what “party lines” were 40 years ago, cluttered with too many people talking about different things all at the same time.

So, how can you bring clarity to your social conversation? The answer is hashtags.

Hashtags cut through the “noise” of social media, but without a clear strategy, you’ll just be creating even more noise.

I recently attended a marketing conference in Las Vegas along with hundreds of marketing executives from the nation’s largest retail brands. As I walked around the room, I asked the same question, “Do you use hashtags?” The answer was always, “Yes, we put them in our ads.” To which I replied, “Why?” No one had an answer beyond, “Everybody’s doing it.”

Hashtags can be used to move and engage your tribe, and extend your brand, but to achieve success, your strategy must include moving them to something for an intended purpose.

Here is a simple, but effective hashtag strategy you can leverage to cut through the social media noise and make your campaign work for your business.

Create Your Hashtag

The hashtag you select is important, so do your research. Make sure your tag is not being used by a great number of other folks for something completely different. If it is, searching on any of the popular tools, such as Twubs, Twitter, or Tweetdeck, will be just as fruitless as it is right now because there will be an overwhelming number of tweets that have nothing to do with you.

If possible, select a hashtag that is closely associated with your brand or industry. Every day, hundreds of hashtags are registered and the ones that gain the most traction are those that are easy to remember and naturally associated with the brand. On the other hand, some registrations come with a series of unrelated letters followed by an abbreviated year, i.e. “HFL13.” The bottom line is that it is harder for tags without a clear identity to get traction.

Since Twitter has a 140 character limit, be sure to make your hashtag short. If your tag is too long, people will not use it because it takes up too many characters, and they’ll end up using their own. If you find that your customer base has created a different tag and it is getting broad traction, do not be afraid to adopt it. There is no better way to flatter your customer than to listen to them. Adopting their tag instead of your own tells them you are doing just that. Additionally, movements are not developed, they are discovered. If one is in progress, jump in.

Market Your Hashtag

Put your hashtag on your products and ads. The more you use it, the better known it will become and this will help you for two reasons.

First, your tag will quickly become known as yours. Others will not use it because it is in use. If you fail to make it known that you are actively using it, you may find others using the hashtag for other purposes.

Second, hashtags are becoming like trademarks or URLs. They are one-of-a-kind monikers that have the power of directing a crowd. You want your users to know who you are and a hashtag helps make that happen. The more you use it, the more they’ll know how to find you in the “noise.”

Use Your Hashtag

This is where hashtags get fun. You can use yours to do several things.

First, to drive people to a relevant conversation, use an embed widget that aggregates hashtag related tweets into a brandable interface that is portable to your website. Embedding the feed into your website related to your branded conversation will provide real value to your users and allow them to participate in a conversation without having to follow each other. The benefit is that you control the branding. This is better than simply putting your Twitter account feed on your page because it creates diversity of conversation and does not automatically put all of these tweets onto your Twitter profile.

Second, create a branded hashtag landing page. It’s important to build a dedicated page that you control around your hashtag with filters to control content so that your users can better consume specific blogs, tweets, photos and videos related to your hashtag.

Finally, consider starting a tweet-chat. A tweet-chat is a regularly scheduled event that you moderate around your industry, product or service. Using your hashtag, people interested in your topic will use various devices to follow your conversation and tweet to answer moderated questions that you post at various times. To initiate one, pick a time and market it. Once it is started, you can post a new question every so many minutes during the scheduled time frame that people will follow. A great example can be found at http://twubs.com/agchat. This chat garners the audience of farmers across America, various writers and publishers within the agricultural community, and even the Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture can be found participating from time to time. Chats are a great way to cut the noise out of the conversation, while building a relationship with your core constituents.

Hashtags present a great strategic value for mobilizing, connecting and activating your customer. The strategy behind how you use them is very important. Make sure you register your hashtags, as well as offer some level of protecting your brand. But, the most important factor is that you have a clear strategy. Hashtags can be very powerful tools, if you use them correctly and with intention.

About the Author

Tony Ferraro is president and CEO of Twubs.com, the leading hashtag registrar that provides brandable hashtag landing pages and Twitter group, search and live event display tools used by more than 20,000 organizations globally. Twubs.com allows users to quickly and easily search for social media content via hashtags. After selecting groups they’re interested in, Twubs provides a central community-driven hub or “Twub” where they can access real time tweets, Instagrams, and videos without having to click on an external link (www.twubs.com).

2013: Social SEO Required

Administrator — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:47:00 GMT

By Clayburn Griffin, Organic Search Director at Catalyst

Good SEOs can no longer ignore social. It may have been possible last year, while search engines were still experimenting with the incorporation of social signals into their algorithms, but in 2013, Social SEO is required.

The Web is an evolving system. The old system of using backlinks to determine authority and relevance by the search engines has become outdated. This was the system pioneered by Google, and while links are still important, search engines are realizing that social media has changed the very nature of the Internet.

Now people online engage with content and websites in a variety of ways that all tie back to their identity. Identity is the key to Social SEO. Search engines are giving people their own authority and relevance, just as they would a website, and the signals that a user gives to a piece of content pass the user’s authority and relevance to it. These signals tell search engines that a user, a specific user with certain interests and proficiencies, approves of pieces of content. These signals range from simple votes (likes, +1’s) to shares (tweets, posts) and even commenting. Search engines incorporate these social signals into their ranking algorithms.

Social SEO is about optimizing for these social signals in order to boost search engine rankings. To get you going in the right direction with your Social SEO initiatives, here are a few tips that will help to ensure your Social SEO strategy is successful.

Optimize Your Site for Engagement

You drive traffic to your website from several channels, but without engagement from these visitors, you’re missing the opportunity to enhance your authority. You can increase engagement by making it easy for them by including proper social sharing buttons. Don’t go with one of those catchall widgets that clutter your website and look tacky. Use the buttons that matter most, namely: Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet and Google +1.

These buttons allow easy sharing and should be placed within or around the content that they’re meant to share. Don’t put these buttons in your header. People expect share buttons to be associated with the content they’re positioned around on a Web page. If you have a Like button in your header, then it may seem to be for your brand’s page or your homepage rather than the specific content being shared. And a single page that lists many pieces of content should include each piece’s associated share buttons in an intuitive way.

Facebook Like:

• Consider whether you should use Like or Recommend. Should you include Send?

• Set the proper Open Graph tags on each page so that the posts to Facebook contain the appropriate information. Always include a thumbnail image (e.g., the og:image tag to designate the specific image on the page).

Twitter Tweet:

• Set the tweet text. Use an engaging message that will describe the link and help get click-through from impressions.

• Use relevant hashtags. You can set the hashtag attribute to pre-populate the tweet with a hashtag. If your content is relevant to a popular hashtag, include it to help every tweet get more exposure and add more relevancy to the link being tweeted.

• Identify yourself as the author (via). After the tweet, users are suggested to follow the Twitter handle. So, help them connect with you when they share your content.

• To make a secondary suggestion, fill out the Related attribute. This account will be suggested alongside the author recommendation. Commenting is also important to engagement. Make it easy for users to comment on your content without the need to log in. If you include a login feature as well, provide multiple options. Disqus is a particularly good commenting system and is a social network of its own in a sense.

Use Google+

Don’t neglect Google+. While the activity numbers may not be as impressive as Facebook’s, it has a far greater impact on search results. Whether people actively use Google+ or not, many are performing searches while logged into their Google account (and in many cases this is also their Google+ account). Organic traffic from the (not provided) keyword has been increasing substantially recently, and this traffic is from people signed into Google when performing a search.

So, even if they aren’t posting to Google+, their search results will be affected and their social connections will have a big influence on those results. That means the people who are using Google+ regularly have considerable power to shift rankings.

Make sure you’re on Google+ connecting with people and sharing your content. Gain additional exposure for your brand by contributing in relevant Google+ Communities, as well.

Empower Your Employees

Having a social media policy that encourages employees to be active in social media can help create many brand evangelists on the Web for you. In addition, key members of your organization may be in a good position to lend major credibility and authority to your Social SEO campaign.

Provide a list of your social media profiles so that employees are able to find them easily. On occasion send out a company email to promote new content on your website and ask employees to share it via their social media accounts.

Read More

For a more in-depth analysis of Social SEO, you can read Catalyst’s newly published ebook “Social SEO Strategies: Mastering the Art of Social SEO.” The publication explains the nuts and bolts of Social SEO, as well as provides a roadmap for campaign set-up, strategy development, execution tactics, tools, automation and performance metrics. The complimentary eBook (PDF format) is available on the Catalyst website at:

By Clayburn Griffin

Clayburn Griffin is an Organic Search Director at Catalyst, a pioneer in strategic digital marketing services for Fortune 1000 brands. Catalyst’s services include: SEO, paid search marketing, social SEO, content strategy, digital asset optimization, e-retail optimization, and more.

9 Spectacular Social APIs

Michael Garrity — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:50:00 GMT

Like it or not, the Web is an increasingly social place, and in order to successfully market a brand and reach out to consumers, utilizing the various social media resources at your disposal is quickly becoming an essential part of running a website.

Fortunately, developers have access to a number of social media application programming interfaces (APIs) that can help them integrate the services of major social media services into their websites or applications. This is particularly beneficial for content providers, marketers or even e-commerce companies that may have share-worthy content or products.

So, if you’re looking to improve your website’s digital social life, maybe it’s time to consider one (or more) of these nine spectacular social APIs.

Facebook Graph API
As the biggest name in social media, it only seems right that you should try to incorporate as much Facebook data into your social endeavors as possible. The Graph API is the primary way that data is retrieved or posted to the social network. This API makes it easy to connect with users on your website or application and offer them a more personalized experience, as well as the ability to Like and share pages on your site or app. It can also provide site registration features and a Facebook-based commenting system.

Twitter Embedded Tweets
Using this particular API, you can take any tweet from your Twitter account and, as the name states, embed it directly into the content of your website, or a page on your website. Moreover, the tweets will display with expanded media (e.g. photos, videos, articles summaries, etc.) and real-time retweet and favorite counts. Plus, when the tweets are embedded, they will become interactive on the Web page, allowing visitors to follow the author, reply, retweet or favorite them without ever leaving the page.

Bitly Social Data APIs
One of the most popular ways to share content on social networks (especially Twitter) is by using a link-shortening service, such as Bitly, which is wildly popular with a number of Web users. In fact, millions of people shorten, share and click on Bitly links every day, and that can be a lot of information to keep track of. That’s why the company released the Bitly Social Data APIs, which provide direct access to the best available content that has been shared by users across various social networks.

YouTube Data API
With this API, developers can build a program that performs many of the operations available on YouTube.com, including the ability to search for videos, retrieve standard feeds, view related content, authenticate users to upload videos, modify playlists and much more to allow sites or apps to create deep integrations with YouTube and its content.

Yelp API
The API from the local search and online review service lets users add functionality to their app or website that will help users find up to the 40 best results for geographic searches, sort the results by the best query, rating or distance match, limit the results to only businesses offering Yelp Deals, and identify whether or not a business has been claimed on Yelp already. This allows developers to give users a full Yelp experience without have to visit Yelp.com.

Flickr API
Images and social media seem to go hand-in-hand these days, and with more than 5 billion hosted photos, Flickr is one of the leading image services on the Web today. All of those pictures, and the Flickr community around them, create a lot of rich data, which is now accessible to developers through the Flickr API. Developers can use the API to organize, store and display their digital images, and even integrate them with other social apps. Plus, the API allows them to converse, share and curate their content with others.

Google+ API
Thought it may not have the name brand recognition of Facebook or Twitter, Google+ is still an incredibly useful social network in some circles (get it?). If you’re looking to tap into those clusters of users, you can integrate the Google+ API into your app or website, which allows users to connect with one another for “maximum engagement” and use Google+ features directly from your site or app.

Ning API
Ning is a small platform upon which users can build their own niche social networks, and many brands have turned to Ning to create social networks specifically for their companies. For those who have used Ning to establish their own curated networks, they can utilize the Ning API to take advantage of all of the data that it creates.

foursquare API
The popular check-in based social media service foursquare was a major factor in the rise of geo-location-based marketing. As such, it has compiled a hearty amount of data from its mobile applications. This API gives developers access to all of that information so that they can display public check-ins on their websites, allow users to check in from their apps or websites, aggregate data from similar locations to identify their target audiences and much more.