Blog Comments And Spam
Blog comments for SEO get a lot of flack – and for good reason. If you spend your time leaving comments on blogs within various niches just so you can get a coveted link back, then there’s a pretty high chance that you are a spammer. Many of your comments may not even get approved. If that the case, then you are wasting your time.
So what would cause a blog comment to get deleted without being approved by the blog master? Here are some reasons your blog comments might get trashed with barely a read:
- It is obvious spam; the blog comment contains multiple links with unrelated anchor text and is even written in such a way that it is mere gibberish. If you can’t take the time to write a cogent comment, don’t expect it to be approved.
- It appears on an unrelated blog or unrelated blog post. If your comment is about rotating tires and it appears on a dentistry blog, it’s likely spam. Or, if your comment about rotating tires appears on an auto mechanic’s blog but the blog post is about changing spark plugs, then that could be considered spam.
- You don’t use your name. Rather, you use a keyword phrase like “Tire Rotations” within the name field.
- Your comments contains multiple links within the body of your comment, each one trying to garner keyword anchor text juice.
These are just some of the reasons why your blog comments might be considered spam and deleted. Take the time to leave good comments on the right blogs and they’ll be approved.
Get Your HubPages Subdomain
Google Panda has all sorts of websites trying something new. And about every 3-4 months now, Google updates its update and you’ll hear a little murmur ripple through the blogosphere. Well, HubPages is taking a different approach. They’re assigning subdomains.
Assigning is correct, unless you claim your own subdomain by August 10.
This is a great article marketing opportunity for Hubbers. If you’re not currently a Hubber, then you can still get the online reputation management benefits.
The way HubPages works, you can put links in your articles, but your articles better be quality articles and not spam. If your articles are low quality, then your subdomain will be low quality and will likely have low search engine rankings if any at all. Bottom line: If you want your subdomain, and your articles, to rank well, then you’d better write high quality articles. Period.
That’s the way article marketing should be. Your high quality articles will produce links for your web pages, send traffic to your website, and provide you with a strong voice of authority with an equally strong reputation.
Start building your HubPages now. Be diligent in your efforts and you will see a huge increase in your reputation and get the traffic and links you want.
What A Video Press Release Can Do For Your Business
The Internet has changed forever how public relations is done. And that includes how press releases are written and distributed. One powerful emerging trend is the video press release.
There are multiple applications for the video press release. One very popular application is to use the video to accompany a written press release through online distribution. This method is powerful because it incorporates the traditional elements of press release writing with search engine optimization, social media promotion, and video or multimedia enhancement.
Another way to make video press releases work for you is to publish them on your own website. If you do a lot of public relations work, then you can have a page of your website set aside for press releases – and that includes video releases.
Of course, video press releases can also be distributed online as standalone public relations pieces. YouTube, Vimeo, and many other video promotion websites will take your video press release and make it available to their website visitors.
A multi-pronged approach is always best online. The more widely you distribute your content – whether it be SEO content, social content, or videos – the more likely you are to drive targeted traffic to your website. And you are likely to reach different segments of your market by making your videos more widely available.
Video press releases are powerful because they engage people on various levels – by sight, through audio, and visually. They are apt to spark an emotional response, a necessary component in any PR campaign.
How Google+ Is Winning
WebProNews reports that Google+ is beating LinkedIn for referral traffic on several websites. But it’s still trailing Twitter and Facebook.
That’s pretty astounding when you consider that Google+ has only been rolled out for a month or so and then as a limited beta test. Not everyone is using it yet.
When it finally goes public, what will the statistics be then?
One important point to consider was made by a commenter on the WebProNews article:
If the second trendline is significantly higher than the first then you have internal synergy and true growth in social media exposure. If the second trendline is equal to or lower than the first, then all you have is Google Plus siphoning off referral numbers from other sources.
That’s an important point and I think even the folks who conducted the initial study on this probably didn’t gather enough data to make a conclusion regarding that point. If Google+ only takes away referral numbers from other social networks, that’s not enough to say it’s a worth the effort. But if your Google+ traffic increases while your other social network traffic remains the same, then it could very well be a force to reckon with.
Then, of course, there’s the increase in spam that going public will likely draw. That will be a force as well. Bottom line: The jury’s still out on Google+.
Is HTML Or A CMS Superior?
The debate has been going on a long time. Some proponents of web design prefer to design their website using HTML. Others prefer a content management system, or CMS. But which is better?
I think it depends.
First, some CMSs are better than others so you have to be careful which one you use. Do you go for a paid CMS that you have to spend oodles of money on or do you opt for the paid open source version?
Here are some things to think about before deciding to use HTML or a CMS.
- Security is better with an HTML website
- Designing a website from scratch is usually easier and quicker with a CMS
- You have more control over design with HTML
- A CMS can be enhanced with plugins and add-ons
- Traditionally, SEO has been more effective with HTML, however, many CMSs now rival HTML with search engine optimization
- CMSs are often code heavy and can slow down your website, which diminishes your SEO effectiveness
- You don’t have to know any coding languages to work with a CMS
- If you design your website with HTML, it can be very tedious; one character out of place can mess up your entire website
There are pros and cons to using either a CMS or coding a website with HTML. Weigh your options and choose the one that is best for you.
5 Non-traditional Article Directories
Article directories have been around for a long time. Traditionally, they look like any other directory. You show up, look at a list of categories, and publish your article in the appropriate category. Then e-zine editors come along and pick up your article for publication. However, in recent years, article marketing has moved off into a different direction.
Here are 5 non-traditional article directories to try:
- HubPages – Let’s start with HubPages. You write articles in “hubs,” which are clumps of articles in the same niche, each article covering a different aspect or topic within that niche. What makes HubPages unique is that you can monetize your articles with Amazon affiliate links, Google AdSense, and other strategies.
- Squidoo – Squidoo Lenses are highly focused single-page resources on a tightly-knit topic. Build links to your website by focusing your Lenses on narrow topics.
- Knol – Google Knol pages are usually longer and more technical, but you’re allowed to include photos and links from your knol pages to other pages on the Web – even your own website.
- Helium – A place for authors and writers to build a loyal following for their articles on any topic.
- Triond – Triond doesn’t just publish your articles on its own website. There is a network of niche websites where your articles can appear as well, allowing you to expand your audience.
Article marketing is alive and well. We’re just doing it a bit differently these days.
5 Ways To Make E-mail Marketing Work For You
E-mail marketing has been around since the early days of the Internet. It was one of the first firmly established Internet marketing tactics and is still today one of the most effective ways to reach an audience and earn an income online. Here are 5 ways to make e-mail marketing work for you.
- Use your website to collect e-mail addresses. Give something away in exchange for your website visitors’ e-mail addresses, then mail them periodic offers for your products and services and affiliate products.
- Get your website visitors to subscribe to an ongoing newsletter or e-zine, which you mail weekly or monthly with unique content they cannot get anywhere else.
- Use your mailing list to promote your online website and blog content. When you post something new, send a note to your list and guide them to your new content.
- Provide an e-course for your site visitors. Use your website to sign up new members for a free or paid e-course.
- Send out coupons for your products and services to members of your e-mail list to encourage the purchase of more products and services.
These are not the only ways to use e-mail marketing effectively, but these 5 techniques are ways that successful online marketers have used e-mail marketing in the past. I’m sure you can come up with your own creative way to market to your list using e-mail.
Do Social Media And Competitive Intelligence Cross?
Most online marketers see where search and social media cross. Heck, even Google is starting to employ social media tools to make its search engine better. But what about competitive intelligence? Does it intersect with social media at all?
You bet it does.
In fact, if you aren’t using social media for competitive research, then you aren’t using social media to its fullest potential. The first thing that comes to mind is following your competition on the top social networks. At a minimum, you should be keeping tabs on what your competition is doing at
And if you are a local business with local competition, then you should consider looking at what your competition is doing at
- Foursquare
- Meetup
- Google Places
Just to start.
Social media is a tool with many uses. Competitive intelligence is just one of them, but it’s an important one. You can spy on your competition through any social network just by following them and learning what they are up to. If you want to be sneaky, you can set up anonymous accounts or proxies and spy on your competition that way.
Any way you do it, social media is a great competitive intelligence tool. Don’t ignore it.
The Relevance In Google Maps’ Algorithm
Googler Jeremy Sussman explains in the following video how Google Maps uses location, relevance, and prominence to rank a business in Google Maps. Watch the video and we’ll talk about what the relevance factor means.
So what is meant by “relevance?”
Relevance in Google Maps means you have done everything you can do as a business to ensure that your Google Places profile matches the search queries that people use to find businesses like yours. Factors that determine relevance include the category you put your business into, keywords you use when writing your description, and other traditional SEO factors.
Of prime importance is category. If your business is a restaurant, you don’t want to categorize it as a butcher shop. That’s a no-brainer. But even subtle differences can make a big difference in Google Maps. For instance, an auto repair shop that does not do body work does not want to list itself as a body shop.
When you write the description for your business, be sure to use keywords that are naturally associated with businesses like yours. Don’t spam, but use natural writing methods to describe your business using the right keywords.
Other items that could affect relevance are how you write your offers within Google Places, whether your domain and business name have a keyword in them, and whether or not you use your business address in your listing.
Relevance is an important factor in Google Maps search. Learn how to make it work for you.
Google Places Just Got Better
If you own a local business and you’ve been wondering how you can use the search engines and social media to attract more customers to your business, then I highly recommend Google Places. It just got a whole lot better.
More and more, Google has been embracing social media. And Google Places is becoming a nice blend of social media with search engine optimization benefits.
The Lat Long blog outlines some of the recent changes that Google Places adapted to make it better. I must say, the changes are a welcoming upgrade. Here are some of those changes and how they can benefit you.
- Google Places is now more personalized. You can upload your photo and all of your reviews will appear in one location for easy referencing.
- You can make friends on Google Places – not a bad idea. Your friends don’t have to be local. If you travel a lot, you might have friends all over the planet. Each friend is a connection to more local places in every area of the world where you have friends. You can share each others reviews through any Web interface including your mobile phone.
- It is now a lot easier to rate and review local businesses of any type.
- You can search for specific types of business in any location and review the ones you want.
- The new Google Places web design is a 100% improvement.
The best way to use Google Places is to be a reviewer. If you are a business owner, don’t just sit back and wait for reviews. Be proactive. Review other businesses and you will develop new contacts in your local area. Those contacts will see that you own a business and are more likely to visit your business if they like and trust your reviews.
Business reviews just became a lot more social and those social benefits carry more search engine optimization benefits. Thank you Google Places.
Is Your True Reach ‘Out There’?
True reach is a social media metric that many social media marketers use to determine how effective they are being at reaching their audience. There are various ways to determine true reach, but one way that I have seen used by online marketers is to measure your most loyal followers and the level of influence and interaction they have among their followers.
For instance, if you have 500 followers on Twitter and you interact with 10 of those on a regular basis and those 10 followers each have an average of 10 followers, your true reach is 100 (10 X 10).
Let’s expand the numbers a bit: You have 1,000 followers on Twitter and another 2,000 on Facebook. Let’s toss in another 2,000 connections on LinkedIn for a total of 5,000. If you have a network of 20 people across all three social networks who are influenced by your content and those 20 people have an aggregate of 250 followers and fans among them, then your true reach is 270.
So how do you know if your true reach is high or low? You can only measure it against your potential reach (your total number of followers plus their total number). With 5,000 social connections who among them have a total of 250 connections, your potential reach is 5,250.
Your true reach should be somewhere in the range of 25%-50% of your own total follower count. But I wouldn’t get wrapped around the numbers. Keep an eye on them and understand that the true reach metric is simply one of many social media measurements to watch.
How Direct Mail Is Dying
Direct mail marketers have enjoyed a long hey-day of success and profits thanks to the U.S. Postal Service. But Postmaster General Patrick Donahue is predicting that mail delivery will move to three days a week – within 15 years. That makes me wonder, how much will postage cost then? Probably over $1 per delivery.
With postage expected to go up to 45 cents at the end of this year, direct mail marketers can’t afford to cling to the paradigms of the past. It’s high time to move into the future.
And what is the future? Well, I think we can safely say it is now.
Internet marketing is here to stay, and it’s replacing the old paradigms. If you wait 15 years before you start on your plan for marketing online, then your business will be as dead as the U.S. postal service. You should be online right now, and you should be marketing your business online right now – even if you still use direct mail marketing.
Smart marketers measure the times as much as they measure their own efforts. It is clear that the U.S. postal service, and direct mail, are moving into the past. The question is, what are you going to do about it – for your business?
High Dollar PPC Ads
Does it matter how much you spend on advertising? Does it matter how much you spend on pay per click advertising? I’d say it only matters if you are not achieving an ROI on your investment. Or, rather, it doesn’t matter if you are achieving a positive ROI.
It seems that Google is making hand over fist on the top 20 PPC ad keywords.
No wonder. Look at the top 5:
- Insurance
- Loans
- Mortgage
- Attorney
- Credit
If you are in the banking, mortgage, credit, or legal business, then you have to pay top dollar for your PPC ads or risk big chances that you won’t get much traffic from your advertising. But the bottom line for any advertiser is, How much ROI do you realize based on your ad spend?
If you are a small insurance company, for instance, and you target your PPC advertising toward a specific niche within the industry or a geographic location, then you can cut your ad spend down based on a narrower market definition. You are also more likely to realize an ROI.
The key is to target your advertising to the specific niche you want to do business with. Narrow your market down as far as you can before you advertise. Long tail keywords are much more profitable for smaller budgets than general keyword phrases.
How To Geotarget Your Local Blog
Instead of focusing your local blog on specific keywords designed to push your content up in the search engines (what some people call spam and others refer to as SEO), why not use your local influencers – people and organizations – as well as ordinary people to geotarget your local blog?
I’m talking about your business blog, and I’m talking about an unusual way to accomplish local SEO without simply focusing on churning out keyword-based content designed solely for SEO.
There are a number of ways you can accomplish this, but here are 5 ways that you can use local people and organizations to help you SEO your website locally.
- Hold a contest in which the winner is highlighted on your blog.
- Write a community service blog post once a week where you highlight a local person or organization for its service to the community.
- Choose a customer and make him/her the Customer of the Week. Write up a feature story about that person.
- Once a week or once a month, choose someone who is not a customer and ask them to try your product or service, then interview them about it an publish what they tell you (even if it’s negative).
- Write a story highlighting the 1,000th customer of the week, or something similar.
There are a lot of ways to geotarget your website, but if you try one of these five methods, then the content can naturally be geotargeted for maximum SEO benefits. Just be sure that you say what part of town or the neighborhood the person or organization you are focusing on lives in or does business in. You’ll see your local website geotargeted in no time.
5 Ways To Protect Your Content
In this day and age of content scrapers, website owners must be diligent in protecting what is theirs. Here are 5 ways you can ensure that you protect your content.
- Add a copyright notice to your website – While this won’t protect your content 100%, it will put content scrapers on notice. Some scrapers will see your notice and leave well enough alone, but enough content scrapers will ignore it that you should do more than just state your rights publicly.
- Send a request for removal – Many websites will remove your content if you simply ask, however, many more more won’t. That’s why you should be prepared to send a Cease and Desist Letter from your legal representative followed by a DMCA complaint filed with Google. But remember, you can take them to court, however, many content scrapers are in third world countries and out of reach of U.S. law.
- Use your Robots.txt disallow – If you know specific robots that are scraping your content, block them.
- .htaccess – Block robots from crawling your content using your .htaccess file.
- Use Creative Commons – Like traditional copyright, Creative Commons has its limitations. However, you can assign a wider variety of rights to your content if you want to encourage sharing, adaptive uses, and other types of creative licenses.
When it comes to protecting your content, be diligent and aggressive.
Anatomy Of An Online Marketing Campaign
There are different ways to skin a cat, as they say. But when it comes to kicking off a brand new Internet marketing campaign, there are certain things that you definitely want to include in that effort. Leave them out at your own peril.
Here are the steps you need to take in your online marketing campaign. Some of the steps can be performed in any order while others should be performed in the proper order stated. I’ll let you know when it’s OK to veer into a different direction or rearrange the order.
- Competitive research – Start with understanding where your competition is and what they are up to. Someone was in your space before you. Find out who they are and what they’ve done and are doing.
- Keyword research – You should include keyword research along with competitive research, but it does extend beyond competitive intelligence. You want study the competition’s keywords, but you also want to do your own independent research.
- Pay Per Click – PPC advertising will be your first test of your keywords. It’s fast and gets you the information you need quickly, plus you can drive instant sales with PPC.
- Search engine optimization – Next, take what you’ve learned from your competitive research, keyword research, and PPC and build a solid SEO campaign. You can do SEO before PPC, but I recommend performing PPC first so you can us it to test your keywords.
- Social media marketing – You want to save your social media campaign for later in the game. It’s a lower threshold type of marketing. It’s good for branding and building relationships, but you want to get your SEO and PPC going first so that you can use them to test your keywords and strategies.
- Video marketing – With videos, you can market with them before social media or after. It makes little difference, but you don’t want to start your video marketing campaign before SEO or PPC.
- Link building – Other forms of marketing like articles, blogs, and link building efforts are ongoing. Start them as soon you get your SEO campaign going and don’t ever stop.
Why Online Marketing Is Necessary
If you’re used to doing a lot of offline marketing, or traditional marketing, then you’ve likely noticed that it has become quite expensive in the last few years. Oil prices have driven up the cost of paper and everything else. The economy taking a downturn has caused many businesses to stop advertising altogether, or diminish their marketing budgets.
But there is hope. Online marketing is less expensive and, if done right, is much more effective. That’s why so many businesses have transferred their marketing and advertising budgets to online.
Here are 5 online marketing methods that are outpacing their offline counterparts:
- Pay Per Click – Pay per click advertising is the online equivalent to some forms of print advertising. The difference is you pay only when a desired result takes place. It can be less expensive and deliver a higher ROI.
- Social Networking – Offline, you go to business functions. You often have to buy dinner, pay for transportation costs, business cards, and other incidentals. Online, you just show up. And talk to people. Make friends and contacts. Sell them stuff. The time commitment is higher, but it’s a lot easier on the budget.
- Video Marketing – Liken it to TV advertising. Do you really want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on 30-second spots that disappear with the money? Instead, pay for one video and it stays live online forever.
- Website Design – Call them online billboards. Just like outdoor advertising, you have a limited space – your prospect’s browser window. Unlike outdoor billboards, that space can be expanded. And you can build many websites for less than the cost of a handful of billboards.
- Search Engine Optimization – Sorry, but there is no offline equivalent to search engine optimization. Yet it’s still the most effective online marketing money can buy.
Try just one or incorporate them all into your marketing plans, but online marketing is where it’s at.
5 Ways Your Blog Comment Might Be Spam
It’s hard to believe that many SEO companies, Internet marketers, and companies online are using blog comment tactics from 2005 – tactics that aren’t at all effective and could hurt your reputation. On a daily basis, Reciprocal Consulting deletes spam comments, and some of them are from other Internet marketing consults who should know better.
Here are 5 specific ways that your blog comment might be considered spam and sent to the spam folder or the trash bin:
- Your comment is generic and adds no value to the blog. I see this all the time. Comments that are written and are so generic they could appear on anybody’s blog. If you aren’t commenting on something specific within the blog post you are commenting on, then your comment could be considered spam.
- The name you add to the comment form name field is your company name or a keyword. People like reading comments from other people. Companies and keywords don’t interact well with people. You’ll get more respect for your comments if you add them under your own name.
- Your e-mail address doesn’t match your domain name. This one is particularly puzzling when I see a comment from a Web marketing company representing a client and the e-mail address is from the Web marketing company’s domain rather than the client’s. I delete them.
- Your comment is full of links. The reason we ask for your website address is so that you can get a link back for your comment. There’s no need to add multiple links to your comment. We consider that spam.
- Your comment is in a foreign language. I see this often enough that it’s worth a mention. Why comment in Japanese or Spanish when the blog you are commenting on is English? I’m just saying.
With all the valid link building strategies available today, blog comment spam isn’t necessary. Why waste your time?
5 Lessons From Google’s Panda Update
In February of this year, Google came out with the Panda Update and smacked down some very authoritative sites, including EzineArticles and several other popular article directories. A lot of smaller sites were affected as well.
Specifically, the update addressed low quality content on these sites. Many smaller sites were hit because they contained several pages of small amounts of content that didn’t really help their site visitors. For instance, an e-commerce site with 10 similar products might have had descriptions for those products where the only changes in the content were the names of the products. That doesn’t say much for originality and is definitely a characteristic of low quality.
Here are 5 specific lessons we can learn from the Google Panda update:
- Quality Over Quantity – You are better off consolidating your products into one grouping if they are so similar that you can’t produce quality content for each product description.
- Focus On Becoming An Authority – Authority sites reign supreme in Google’s eyes. To become an authority, you have to focus on consistent quality content over time.
- Use Social Media – Social media authority is every bit as important as content authority. Branch out beyond your own web properties.
- Photos Are Nice But …. – Instead of loading your site with photos, use the photos to enhance textual content. Your text is the meat of your content. Too many photos means too much fat.
- Age Is Important Too – Quality + Time = Authority. The age of your domain is an asset. If you do everything right over time, you’ll do well in the long run.
Keep your eyes focused on quality content, authority, and social media branding. These are the tools that successful Internet marketers are using to get ahead post-Panda.
Why Video Marketing Is The Next Viral Craze
Reciprocal Consulting has been an advocate of video marketing for years. There are good reasons why, and the following statistics (borrowed from this article on video marketing) illustrate some of those reasons:
- Over 40% of consumers watch videos on a weekly basis.
- Viral video marketing campaigns increase clickthrough rates by 750%.
- Product videos sell 45% more products.
- YouTube is considered the second biggest search engine online; it may someday surpass Google as the No. 1 search engine.
Video marketing is already hot. It’s about to get hotter. As companies figure out how to provide cheap videos that drive traffic to any website, you can bet that more and more videos will be uploaded to sites like YouTube and Vimeo.
Here are our top three tips for helping you produce a world class video that will market your products and services.
- Make your video creative. Give it something to make it stand out. With billions of videos being uploaded to YouTube every day, competition is stiff – and it’s going to get stiffer.
- Use testimonials, but make them real. Don’t stage your testimonials or use fake testimonies with actors. Use real customers who are excited about your products and services. Testimonials are powerful mareketing tools.
- Keep it real. Be genuine and be yourself. People will see through any veneers you create so make your video a true reflection of who you are.
Should You Go Local Or Global?
When you build your website and put it online, you’ll have to decide whether you are going to target a local audience or a global market. It’s one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make.
It’s not as simple as it may seem. Local online marketing and global marketing actually have a lot in common – online, at least.
For instance, both employ search engine optimization. You can also market both a local business and a global business through social media. You can also drive traffic to a local website as well as a global reach website through pay per click advertising. Virtually any type of online marketing tactic that can be used for one can be used for the other.
All of that said, however, local businesses do have other options that global businesses don’t. Online Yellow Pages is one example of an opportunity that local business have that global businesses can’t leverage. Craigslist classifieds is another marketing tactic that seems to work better for local businesses.
And there are global marketing tactics that can be used for local online marketing but that may need a little bit of creative tweaking for effectiveness.
When you’re ready to build your website and take the online marketing plunge, find a consultant who can help you decide whether local or global is more appropriate for your situation.
Why WordPress Makes A Good CMS
When it comes to web design, not many people can do their own. It requires special skills such as knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and maybe even other Web languages. But many small business owners and community service organizations are beginning to design their own websites now with WordPress as a CMS. Is that a good idea?
Actually, it’s a great idea, but don’t think that using WordPress is going to absolve you from having to know any programming languages. You can build your own website using WordPress, but there are some functions for which you might need professional help.
For instance, if you want to include your Twitter stream in your blog, where’s the best place to put it so that it doesn’t get in the way of your reader’s enjoyment but still provides the content benefits that you are looking for? Do you know how to map an image inside of your header? A lot of people don’t.
Special knowledge aside, there are plenty of benefits to using WordPress as your web design CMS:
- It’s flexible
- It’s free
- You can tweak it and customize it to fit your needs
- Built in search engine optimization
- Cuts down on time when designing a website
While the benefits are there for using WordPress as a CMS, you can still get more out of it if you let a professional web designer build your site then teach you how to upload your own pages. You won’t have to pay for ongoing design and management, but you can get a good looking website right from the beginning. Then, when you want to add to it, all you have to do is log in and write your pages.
Twitter Acquires Backtype
You can count on one thing for sure: Social media is going to keep getting better.
Here’s a fun fact: Twitter has recently acquired Backtype.
So what does that mean?
Given that Backtype owns Backtweets, the Twitter analytics service, it can only mean one thing. Twitter is headed for a major innovation that will involve the use of analytics for its users.
If you are a current user of Backtweets, then you’ll be allowed to continue using the service for free. New signups, however, have been put on hold. So here’s the question: How long will new signups be on hold and when will the new Twitter-run Backtweets go full time? Also, will it be a paid service or free?
My bet is that Backtweets will offer a free version, but there will be a paid version for businesses, and if you are business Twitter user it would likely be in your favor to pay for the analytics so that you can measure the effectiveness of your tweeting.
Another thing that is likely to happen is the integration of short URLs with analytics. You’ll have to be able to track and measure the click-throughs on your links whether they are short URL links or long URL links, and if short URL, you’ll need to be able to track and measure your effectiveness whether you use Tinyurl, Bit.ly, or another service. Backtweets might also be able to offer analytics for Facebook and LinkedIn as well.
What do you think? Is this a good acquisition for Twitter? Will it improve your social media marketing efforts?
10 Online Sources For Competitive Intelligence
Where do you gather information about your competition? There are plenty of sources online where you can keep tabs of your competition and gather competitive intelligence. Here are 21 sources of information for keeping tabs on what your competition is up to.
- Twitter – Are you following your competition on Twitter?
- Their website and blog – Are you following the competition’s blog? Do you regularly check their website? You can use SEO tools to look at their effectiveness in search engine marketing and use that against them.
- Facebook – Are you checking in on your competition’s Facebook page or the walls of their executives? You should be.
- News sites – Do you read industry news portals? That’s a great place to find out what announcements the competition is making public.
- E-mail newsletters – Do you subscribe to your competition’s newsletters?
- Forums – Industry forums are a great place to gauge what people are saying about you and your competition, plus you might be able to lurk on what representatives of your competition are saying in the forums.
- Q&A websites – Is your competition using sites like Quora, Yahoo! Answers, and Answers.com? Are questions being asked about your competition? You should be keeping tabs.
- LinkedIn – If your competition is using LinkedIn, find out if they are using the Questions format or joining groups. Go where the competition is going and watch what they are doing.
- Google and Yahoo! Groups – Is your competitor a member of any groups on Yahoo! or Google? Unless you join the niche groups yourself, you can’t know.
- Niche social sites - Are there are social sites within your niche that your competition might be a member of? Join them.
Competitive intelligence is important. Don’t be blind to its benefits. Use these tools effectively to keep tabs of your competition.
Is Rebranding Necessary?
Google is rebranding two of its products. Those products are Picasa and Blogger. Picasa’s new name is going to be Google Photos. Blogger is going to be called Google Blogs.
Why would Google rebrand these products that have been a part of its family now for more than five years? Picasa has been a Google product since 2003 and Blogger since 2004. That’s 8 and 7 years, respectively. Why the sudden change?
Answer: Google wants to roll out Google +. According to Mashable, Google Photos and Google Blogs will be a part of that social media project.
All of that’s understandable, but it makes me want to ask the question: When is it appropriate to rebrand yourself? Does rebranding really have benefits?
Of course, rebranding can and often does have benefit. In Google’s case, the products aren’t going to change. Only the names will change. So where’s the improvement? The improvement could be in how the services are integrated into Google +, so it may not be known until it happens. But if you are considering a rebranding for your Web products, then you should consider how it will affect your overall brand and marketplace position.
Keep this in mind: Rebranding doesn’t necessarily lead to a better service. That requires hard work.
LinkedIn Is No. 1 For ROI
A new report based on a survey of social network users says that LinkedIn is the most important social network for 59% of the people who use them. That’s LinkedIn, not Facebook or Twitter. That might seem unusual considering that Facebook and Twitter get most of the hype.
But, frankly, I think it makes a lot of sense.
Facebook is still a place for personal networking for a lot of people. It’s where they go to connect with friends and family. Yes, they also can set up a page for their business and network with people to attract new business. But being that Facebook is a personal space for a lot of people, and it is the most trafficked social network in cyberspace, the threshold for a high ROI is rather low. In other words, there are challenges in turning a Facebook networking plan into a profit. But it’s not impossible.
Twitter has become much more of a micropublishing platform. And it hasn’t quite caught on with the mainstream just yet.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a business social networking tool. People who use it use it for business. Period. So it makes sense that it would deliver the highest ROI. What do you think?
Facebook, Skype Get Married
We’ve already discussed how Facebook and Skype have integrated their services for the benefit of businesses who use both. But recently, they’ve announced that Facebook users will be able to use Skype video chat from within their browsers while logged into Facebook. I’m sure that doesn’t complete the marriage between the two services, but it comes pretty doggone close.
But what does it mean, exactly?
Currently, if you are logged into Facebook, you can click on the chat feature and chat with your friends right there inside your browser. While the particulars of the Skype video chat feature have not be disclosed, I envision is working in a similar fashion. Click “Chat” and you can engage with your Facebook friends in real time with video chat.
And now for the business application: Suppose you are using Facebook vociferously for your business. You have a page and potential customers can Like it or not. You have a habit of posting Facebook wall updates while logged in as Admin for your business page. One of your friends notices that you are running a special and up pops the Skype video chat screen on your computer. The “friend” has a question for you.
With the Skype video chat feature, you can field customer service questions and make sales calls while logged into Facebook. I think that’s pretty awesome.
Define Your Content Marketing Strategy
Have you defined your content marketing strategy or do you just post random content when it comes to you?
It’s important to create a content marketing plan. This is your blueprint for content publishing and your online business success. It entails a three-part process:
- Decide which types of content you will use in your marketing strategy.
- Plan how you will publish and promote your content.
- Execute.
That seems simple, but it isn’t. It really is hard work. But it’s necessary work.
On deciding which types of content you will use, you’ll have to ask yourself if you’ll need a blog. Will you incorporate articles in your marketing strategy? PPC? How about social media? Furthermore, what role will each of these tactics play in your overall marketing strategy and who will be responsible for implementing them?
Your content marketing strategy should consider how SEO and social media will work together to put your content in front of the eyes of the people you want to do business with. Are they local or global?
Does your audience spend a considerable amount of time on social networks? How much? Which ones do they use most often?
When defining your content marketing strategy, you have a lot to think about. Think about how it all fits together and don’t leave anything to chance.
Social Media Marketing Through Your iPhone
Smartphones have become all the rage. Both iPhones and Androids are gaining in popularity and people are using these devices in strange new ways. Businesses included.
One of the most powerful ways that iPhones and other smartphones are being utilized is through the development of apps. Apps can serve very useful functions for businesses that go through the trouble of developing them. And some of those functions are social.
For one thing, they allow you to repurpose your content. That’s always a plus. But if you can imagine your website being accessible to iPhone users who are also capable of sharing your content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social websites, then you’re starting to get the picture. But even beyond that, iPhone apps themselves can be social media tools to reckon with.
Take your website again. Instead of simply reformatting the website for mobile consumption, why not repackage it into an app?
This can be done in a number of ways, but one way that many companies are using to make their content more palatable, interactive, and powerful is by turning it into a game. People love to have fun. The interactive nature of multi-player games that can be played through an iPhone interface will keep people connected to your business as they connect to their friends. You can’t get any more social than that.
5 Ways A Blog Improves Your Website’s SEO
Successful Internet marketers know that a blog is a great way to improve your search engine optimization efforts. Here are 5 specific ways that a blog can improve your SEO.
- Fresh, original content – A blog adds fresh, original content to your website every day. Search engine spiders thrive on fresh content. Every time you write a blog post, you will invite the search bots to your website again to crawl it and look for new content.
- Improve your internal link structure – A blog on your website with the right links pointing to the right pages can improve your internal link structure. This in turn improves your overall search engine rankings.
- Attracts inbound links – A good blog will attract inbound links from all over the Web. Those inbound links will help improve your website’s SEO.
- Increases you chances at achieving high rankings – Every single web page you post is another chance to rank in the search engines. Each blog post is seen by the search engines as a separate web page. So the more blog posts you have, the more chances you have to rank for your important keywords.
- High powered niche marketing – Over time, as you write more and more blog posts targeting specific keywords, those blog posts are more likely to rank for the keywords you are targeting – and your blog as well. An aged blog with highly targeted content with an awesome inbound link portfolio is better suited to rank high in the search engines.
Now that you know 5 ways your blog can improve your search engine rankings, why not start a blog today?