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Social Media Optimization

Social Media Etiquette for your Business

Businesses who effectively use their social media accounts are able to build unique relationships with their customers. However, social media is eerily similar to your real social life: good manners often go unnoticed, but make one wrong move and become forever infamous among your fan base. Big names like Ashton Kutcher, Kenneth Cole, and Nestlé have made it onto Mashable’s Social Media’s Biggest Screw-Ups list . So, how can you and your business stay off future lists like that one? Thankfully, social media specialists and journalism experts are constantly working to better define the loose rules of social media etiquette. In fact, the Online News Association’s 2012 conference in San Francisco put together a panel of the top social media editors, “Social Media Debate: Best Practices vs. Bad Habits.” Watch their video to learn about some of the biggest changes social media is experiencing today.

Check out this list of our own favorite do’s and don’ts of online manners:

DON’T ignore negative comments (and don’t be argumentative).
Not everyone is going to agree with everything you have to say. You might discuss a piece of recent news that brings up a heated debate or receive a comment from a dissatisfied customer. You would not hang up on these people or shut the door in their faces, so don’t ignore them online. Maintain your cool business etiquette and attempt to redirect your followers towards a positive conversation. Realizing that you care might be enough to gain these customers’ loyalty and support.
DO be social.
It is no longer acceptable to have a social media profile that you don’t use. The point of these online platforms is for conversation. That’s why they’re called social media. If your fans reach out to you, don’t be rude. Answer them. Post multiple times a day and always be engaged (but be careful not to flood your followers feed!).
DON’T talk about you too much.
Obviously, your main goal in putting your business on a social media platform is to raise brand awareness and promote your product. But just like you would get bored listening to someone talk about themselves 24/7, you’re customers want to learn about a wider variety of information than just your business. Offer information of value that your target audience will enjoy following.
DO be real.
People don’t want to befriend robots, nor do they want to engage in conversation with your autoposts. Social media management applications like HooteSuite and TweetDeck are great options for businesses that need to manage multiple pages, but should not be used to send out automated messages to followers. Companies that autopost tend to lack authenticity, ignore responses, and lose followers.

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Event / Event planning / Facebook / internet marketing / Social Media / Social Media Optimization / Twitter — 1 Comment
2
May 12

Time Line Event Planning Using Social Media

Whether you need to work with organizers, generate buzz, or share post-party photos, social media should be a primary tool for event planning. With the power to share comes the ability to spread the word, increase awareness, and accomplish your goals.

Step1: PLAN

As with any event, the first step is to plan. This goes beyond the simple logistics – it’s about locations, agendas, and the people that will help you make it happen. Whether you’re inviting people over for a small BBQ or you’re planning a bigger event, you need to plan it right.

Step2: ORGANIZING & INVITING

This is different than promotion. Invite key guests, speakers, family, and whoever else is important to the success of your gathering, conference, or party.

• Facebook:
Invite people. Create a public event and invite everyone that has “liked” your page. Not only will this give people the logistics of when and where the event will be held, but this Facebook function includes a “wall” where people can post updates. This allows you to create a dialog and converse with donors. It also empowers supporters to invite other people to attend the event with them.
Share photos. In the days preceding the event, post photos of decorations, raffle prizes or any other items you think would entice people to join you at the event. Furthermore, you can also encourage attendees to take photos during the event and tag your agency in the post.
Update your status. This seems like simple advice, but Facebook is only a powerful social networking tool if you use it. Don’t forget to let people know what’s going on and consistently update the status on your page.

• Twitter:
Create a hashtag. A hashtag is found at the end of a tweet and is a phrase with a pound sign at the front of it. Why is this important? Hashtags make searching Twitter easier. Creating a hashtag is as simple as typing, nothing special needs to happen. Twitter will just highlight the hashtag and link all tweets that contain it. By creating a hashtag for your event, you can easily see what people are saying about it. Also, if you get enough people to tweet with your hashtag, it may become a “trending topic” and show up on the twitter homepage.
And as with Facebook, share photos of decorations, raffle prizes or any other items you think would encourage people to join you at the event. You need to connect with people that will attend the event.

• E-mail:
Use e-blast, newsletter to invite people.
Share the link to the event page (Facebook and website) from your e-mail signature line.

• Website Event:
Create an event badge and post it on your website home page. People can embed it in their blog sidebars or on their websites. Share the link to your landing page using a custom URL.

• Blog:
Use your blog to announce the event.
Create a special blog for big events.

Step3: PROMOTION

• Use Twitter. Live tweet during the event, connect with people.
• Encourage people to share how they feel about the event. Encourage them to “tweet” and “retweet” them and respond to their tweets.
• Use Facebook. Live stream, sharing pictures, memorable moments.
• E-Mail. Remind people just few days before the event
• Listen to your audience. Do people at the event complain about a specific speaker, the food or a lack of responsiveness? Ask for people’s feedback.

Step4: POST-EVENT

Contrary to what people think, the event is not over when everyone leaves. There’s still more to do to make sure the event leaves a great impression, especially if you intend to have future events or even an annual one.
• Thank the people who attended the event and all your fans on Facebook, Twitter and website/blog.
• Send a summary e-mail to all attendees with pictures. Send people to the Facebook page and your website that hosts that embedded content. The landing page should include calls to action to register for future events.
• Set up a survey form to capture evaluations from attendees. Google Documents supports simple forms at no charge. Publish the best comments as validation of the quality of your content. Here’s a simple form I use to gather feedback on my presentations. It took 10 minutes to set up.
• Continue to use the Twitter account and the Facebook page for updates and exchange with fans.

Have you used social media to promote or plan your event in the past? What do you think is the most useful tool?

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Facebook / Google / internet marketing / SEO / Social Media / Social Media Optimization / Twitter — 3 Comments
16
Apr 12

SEO Video by HessMarketing Websearch

Did you know that nearly 200 million unique websites exist on the Internet?
Do you know where your website ranks online? Are people able to find your business using search engines?
Today just having a website is not enough because 95% of the time users will click on the results listed on the first page of search engines!

So how do you get your company found on the 1st page of major search engines like Google?
The answer is using SEO Search Engine Optimization, PPC Pay-Per-Click Management and Social Media Marketing.

Watch our video to learn how to drive highly qualified traffic to your webiste or blog!

SEO by HM Websearch from Eric Hess on Vimeo.

Thank you for watching! Feel free to comment.

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Facebook / Instagram / Social Media / Social Media Optimization / Twitter — 3 Comments
9
Apr 12

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 Billion!

This is the news of the week! Facebook just acquired the Photo-Sharing App Instagram for $1 Billion.
The deal might include a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The sale is expected to close later this quarter, and will bring the staff of Instagram to the social network.

Here is the blog post from Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram he posted few minutes ago:

And Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction is as follow:

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features, rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience, and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo-sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook, and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

So what do you think this deal will change for Facebook and Instagram?
Something sure is that the Social Media battle between Facebook and Twitter is fiercer than never!

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Facebook / Google / internet marketing / SEO / Social Media / Social Media Optimization / Twitter — 8 Comments
5
Apr 12

5 tips to increase your Website or Blog Traffic!

Having a website or a blog is not hard, but it is hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. With over 100 million blogs and growing how do you attract visitors? Follow these simple tips to drive traffic to your website or your blog.

1) Target Your Customers or Readers

When strategizing about what audience you’re writing for, consider that audience’s ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular the communities, topics, writing styles and content relevancy play a better role in spreading the word on the web.

The purpose is to identify groups that have high concentrations of what is called “content distributors” and “heavy content sharers.” Content distributors are people with accounts on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ who might share links about your business or blog topic. Heavy content sharers are extremely active social users who run their own blogs and sites. The other group, which is most important, is called “potential consumers of your website or blog content.” These people are interested in your topic and receptive to your point of view. Identifying this group will dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers.

2) Interact with existing Communities

Online communities can be greatly effective if you have value to offer and in return your potential community members also have value. But getting to the critical mass tipping point is not always simple. Many sites about online communities are full of suggestions about which tool or software package to use. You can have the best software package ever created, but if you don’t initiate interaction, your online community will not grow. Once you have determined the communities, you need to start interaction. Create an account, read what others have written and don’t jump in the conversation until you’ve have a good feel for what’s appropriate and what’s not.

Three things you need to think about:
- Tell Stories, try to make it simple and “personal.”
- Empathize with whatever market or audience you’re after.
- Engage and recognize. Find ways to ask your readers, subscribers, fans, friends and followers to interact and participate directly on your business blog as well as other social media and networking channels used to grow communities and promote useful content.

3) Use Social Media Networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+

Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Facebook pages are one of the most powerful tools for attracting potential clients or readers and involving your regular customers/readers in a constant collaboration. About 51% of Facebook users say they are more likely to buy from the brands they follow. Google+ has nearly 100 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the “content distributors” description above, meaning they’re likely to help spread the word about your blog.

Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, skill and keeping up with changes and trends by the social sites. Also, it’s important to keep a clear understanding of what content to share and how.
Always add content like pictures, descriptions of your Facebook, and Twitter accounts to keep it updated and as full of information as possible. Once you have a packed site, start connecting and sharing with your customers or fans.
The goal is to get “viral content.” Using hashtags on Twitter and jumping in on interesting conversations are great ways to keep up with the latest on your social media. And don’t forget to share exclusive content!

By following these methods, your followers and fans will increase and your ability to bring traffic back to your blog by will be tremendous.

4) Make your Blog on top of Search Engines pages, SEO!

SEO or search engine optimization has become an indispensable part of online marketing. When this tool is used properly it can actually boost your business. What web business owners should understand is having a website with great content and a perfect appearance is not everything and can sometimes mean nothing. Something that has become extremely popular in search engines is the page ranking. This is an important part of promoting your website and attracting targeted traffic towards your business. Over 3 billion online searches are performed everyday on the Internet and that number continues to grow. More than never before, your business needs to be readily available to the online community.
20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible. This means that it is easier than you think to bring in thousands of visitors to your online domain.
Don’t hesitate to contact a specialized SEO agency that can help you figure out what you should do and how you can boost your business and your sales.

5) Get an appealing design and use Photos and Graphics

If you’re someone who can produce graphics, take photos, create illustrations, then you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images), you create another traffic source for yourself via image search, which will improve the engagement and entertainment of your visitors.

Adding photos or graphics on your website or blog not only helps break up the text, but it also can make your article more interesting, friendly and easier to understand. If you are writing a blog post about a specific product, take a picture of that product and include it in your blog post. That’s an easy quick way to improve your website.

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internet marketing / Social Media / Social Media Optimization — 3 Comments
8
Feb 11

Email Marketing- Here to Stay!

We drive the importance of social media an awful lot. Well because it is important and becoming necessary in just about every industry! Although this “buzz word” seems like just that, a buzz word, it truly isn’t. I think you all are getting the idea that in order to drive success in this market, social media networking is imperative.

Even with social media taking over the way we communicate, email still remains a primary source of communication and is equally important as social media in the digital age. Back to the basics- email dates back all the way to the mid-60′s. However, it wasnt until the late-80′s/early 90′s that the general public caught on and began utilizing the new medium. Electronic mail is a natural and perhaps inevitable use of networked communication technology that developed along with the evolution of the internet. Businesses quickly figured out this was a great way to reach customers. It was also less expensive than mailing out advertisements to homes. By 1995 the number of email advertisements sent out that year was more than the number sent out by regular mail. Businesses spend a great deal of money creating email marketing campaigns that won’t be confused with spam.

Email marketing is the newest version of direct marketing. Instead of using the postal system- the traditional direct marketing tool- most of the businesses today opt for sending mass emails to consumers with information of merchandises. Email marketing is a tool for building relationships with both existing and potential customers and has proven to be more cost effective. The Process of direct email marketing is as follows:

Generate Traffic for your website,
Encourage Visitors to sign up for newsletter, etc…
Create and sending promotional email or newsletter,
Genetare sales or more traffic to your website

Now, this being said, there are some rules and guidelines we want you to be aware of to follow in order for email to successfully accomplish these goals.

You want to grab your audience’s attention while being concise, frequent, and visable. The subject line must be eye -catching and interesting; simplicty is the key.
Make it obvious why your sending your message and make it relevant to the consumer. Genreate a plan. Who you will target? Which segments of an industry will be more likely to positively respond to your message? For example, some areas of an email blast may require small changes based on the various consumers you are trying to reach.
Like social media, you must be very careful of how you approach the audience, along with the information you approach them with. You want to lure in your audience with humor, stats, facts, discounts etc…But be careful not to be too forward or overload them with a “sales pitch.”
Be conscious of the day and time in which you are sending your emails. You do not want to send out an email marketing campaign at 9:00am. People first arriving to work and checking their emails are more likely to trash anything that may seem irrelevant. But, after lunch perhaps, when everyone is settling in after break, they will be more likely to filter through and read intriguing emails.
Track your results. There are many ways via the internet to track your open rate (Campaign Monitor is one for example). These types of programs will give you the open rate, the click through rate, bounce rate, and how many remain unopened. This will give you a better idea of what is deemed interesting by your audience and what campaigns to continue with.

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Social Media / Social Media Optimization — 1 Comment
19
Nov 10

Build Links—Build Traffic

As I mentioned in the blog earlier this week, Link-Building is one of the best tactics to gain search engine recognition via increased page rank. Link Building involves intensive work, but the results are unquestionably worth the effort. Picture link building as the coaching staff of your favorite sports team—they will not make the paper’s headlines, but are imperative for success.

What exactly is link building? From the beginning, links are clickable lines of text, that when clicked, escort the user from one website to another. For example, if you click the blue text (link) below, you will be ushered from our blog website to Hess Marketing’s brand new website…Try it! http://www.hessmarketing.com/.

In order to determine page rank, web crawlers (The Search Engine’s imaginary arm) make it a priority to review the links that each website has acquired. i.e. The web crawler will assess who has chosen to place a link to their website, on your page. For example, the web crawler will see Hess Marketing decided to place a link (back to their website) in my blog. You may ask, why does the web crawler asses who has placed links in your website and why is this important? Simple, if a company or website reveals a desire for their site to be recognized in conjunction with you, your site must be reputable. Thus, your website is deemed an excellent option to provide as a search result for their user.

There are two main types of links, one-way and reciprocal links. One-way links are much more powerful because as I mentioned earlier, they reveal a desire for other companies or sites to be recognized in conjunction with you. The second type of link is a reciprocal link (the name comes from the fact that websites can swap link placement on each other’s page). For example, let’s say we made an agreement with Hess Marketing to put links (to our own websites) on each other’s pages, this would be a reciprocal link. Unfortunately, these links are far less powerful because the web crawler recognizes the fact that a mutually beneficial exchange does not attest to the website’s quality, but more to the fact that both websites are trying to market themselves. So, don’t get carried away asking for links from millions of websites. It’s not a game of quantity, it’s a game of quality. Follow these seven steps to unleash your websites full Link Building potential.

a. One-way links (MOST POWERFUL) are accessible from article and directory submissions, social bookmarking, press release distribution, forums, and commenting on other blogs. Remember: A link pointing back to an .edu or .gov website is far more influential than 1000’s of links from free directory submission links.

b. Be sure to use deep links (these link to an internal webpage). For example, an article published on a website rather than the homepage.

c. Reciprocal links are exchanged by companies or websites for their mutual benefit (not as powerful as One-way links because of this exchange).

d. Add Links via embedded content. Ex. Widgets.

e. Viral content will attract links, if you have something interesting or can include a viral link, this will turn heads and links will follow.

f. Content, technology and API licensing- if you provide a service to a company, you can often receive links as part of your compensation.

g. Link reclamation- if you have a bad link, be sure to re-route it to a working link—no one appreciates being sent to a “page not found” screen.

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Social Media / Social Media Optimization — 1 Comment
17
Nov 10

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

Think back to freshman year of college. You’re sitting in psychology class and the professor is tactfully explaining Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. If you missed that lecture, it’s simply a pyramid of human motivation – the continuum begins with the most fundamental needs at the base (i.e. physiological needs and ends with the need for self-actualization). This theory put Maslow on the map as a great psychologist. Now, if we apply our own website optimization theory (aka Search Engine Optimization), geared to increase the traffic to your webpage through organic, unpaid techniques– your page can also be transformed from a bottom feeder into a first-page search engine result. To fully understand the techniques at hand, we must first cover what SEO is and its utmost importance.

From the top, the aforementioned technique is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. With a Goliath quantity of web pages, search engines have become imperative to navigate through such a vast universe. Us tech-savvy individuals have capitalized on the search engine’s popularity by using these SEO techniques to increase traffic to your site via first page [search engine] placement.

The search engines have devised a ranking system in order for its web crawler (the arm rifling through a website-filled file cabinet) to choose the most relevant and best websites for the searcher. Our SEO Hierarchy theory caters to every “desire” of the search engine’s web crawler. Your page’s rank can be most improved by using two powerful SEO techniques: the addition of link building and keywords density. They are the “physiological needs” of our pyramid and if used correctly, can generate a immense amount of traffic to your website. Keep posted: later this week we will discuss link building techniques and keyword optimization.

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