Google Penguin Recovery

The battle of webspam against Google again has yielded a new update, update Google Penguin, the successor to the Google update panda. The new update work with names like About optimized penalty update and Webspam algorithm update is currently being rolled out globally.

Google the Penquin is the most advanced algorimte update that should go there for sure that websites who do not comply with the Google webmaster guidelines are removed from the index.

What factors are reviewing the Google Penguin?

Exact match keyword domains

Try Google exact keyword domains for years to better assess their quality and therefore the correct value for them there that fits with them. At the moment it is not yet clear whether the US Google Penguin update to this fix to take effect. Our expectation is that it will succeed.

Many links with exact anchor text to your website

An important part of the SEO of your website are the links that you've gotten and collected. Google analyzes continuously the number and quality of those links.

If you have good content offers to the visitors will come with a good variation of obvious natural links your anchor texts (link texts) therefore you don't have to worry, but the moment you get very many links in a short time with an exact anchor text than can Google from now your ranking go correct it.

You must always ask whether the website where you as an entrepreneur on company want to go places is the right place. In the near future, backlinks from low quality sites are negative for the determination of your link value.

Comment spam

Unnatural meaningless responses on blogs stuffed with keywords and links should be punished with this update. If you choose to post a comment on the blog do this then only on topical messages, so not only on articles from 2007 and place useful responses and not to obtain a quick link.

Post articles on multiple articles websites

If you as a company what to sign up you can do this via article marketing and your article post on websites like Digg .nl. Unfortunately, there are many bad here much abuse of created articles stuffed with keywords on very many articles posted by websites.

With the Penguin update is there less value from these articles and it will have a negative effect on your ranking.

What to do if you are affected by the Penquin Google update?

• Stop with About Optimization


• Care for natural anchor texts


• Write better content


• Analyze your internal links anchor texts and make them more naturally


• Avoid exact keyword domains


• Think longer term than short term


• Doe not meet Blackhat SEO


• In the extreme case, moving all good pages to a new domain

Finally,

With SEO you shouldn't want to go for the quick success, this is always short-lived. The algorithm of Google is getting smarter and there will always be new updates are that the Black Hat SEO techniques detecting and chastising. So always go for the longer term, create a SEO strategy and keep your to the Google webmaster guidelines.

Eventually your rewards the visitor on the right content you and offers natural links come naturally.

This road takes longer, but the result is permanent.

Penguins & Pandas Poetry

By Duane Forrester Senior Product Manager with Bing’s Webmaster Program

Animal kingdom hurting ROI?

Pandas and penguins, oh my!
Take control and tell the fauna "Bye Bye",
With these helpful suggestions to diversify!

In short, it’s time to fear nothing when building your website.  Every business has decisions to make, and adding more to the mix never makes life easier.  But what are you to do?  You cannot control when a search engine makes an update, or what that update will impact.  That much is obvious.  But what many websites fail to take action on is forecasting change, preventative work and exercises in the obvious.

Reality Check

Algorithms change.  Rankings change.  Competition happens.  The fact is, you need to be prepared.  So, when your single biggest source of traffic sudden loses steam, what do you do?  If your plan was to make sure your content ranked well across all the major engines, then your plan of action would already be in effect, protecting you from the loss in one area.  True, its not an offset that matches what could potentially be lost at the same level, but the option is losing everything and having nothing suddenly.

And while you're thinking of diversification as a way to protect your website from future changes, ask yourself this: is search, all up, my primary traffic source?  What other sources of traffic should you be cultivating?  Social traffic, direct traffic, affiliate driven traffic?  Search will, for the foreseeable future, continue to be the major driver of traffic to most websites, but this doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking to other avenues as a way to augment your traffic from search...and potentially protect yourself should a future change upset the balance of rankings in some way. 

And just to be clear folks, we're all in the same boat.  Change happens at all the major engines, and from time to time, those changes don't work well with individual websites, so let's take a look at ways to protect yourself and your business from change.  Think of it as future proofing.

Forecasting change

Yes, it’s hard to gaze into the crystal ball and see where things are heading, but if you look back a bit, you often see clues.  Search is influenced by social today.  Who didn’t see that coming 3+ years ago?  Similarly, what’s a best practice in SEO today, could end up a tarnished relic tomorrow.  We all remember when the <meta description> tag was the be-all-to-end-all.  Today…ah, no.
The point here is it pays to spend some time thinking about these things.  Are you employing any tactics today that could become the next big spam tactic tomorrow?  Worse, maybe they’ve already become the next big spam tactic and you’re simply unaware.

As an SEO, your job is to dig through the details to find incremental gains.  To help fix fundamental problems that block success.  And not we’re not taking anything away from the importance of that focus, but you cannot forget to stick your head up and look around every now and then.  Sure, this should be done by the Director or VP in your group, but if they lack your level of SEO savvy, they may not make the connections you would.  So, as an SEO, it pays to stay on top of the latest trends and watch for broad signals of adoption around new things to help you forecast where to invest next.

Preventative work

This section encompasses all of those projects you know should be done, yet linger unfinished.  It even includes things that are less a project and more and ethos for your organization.  Sure, your company prides itself on its content, but do they have the skill son hand to truly produce quality content?  I don’t mean the ability to make that content appear online, I mean people who know how to write, people who know how to segment an audience to understand what motivates each segment, people who understand the concept of building authority.  Building authority is not a passive task that catches up with you, it’s an active process which leads to results.

Add to this focusing on the user experience and you have to ask how you’re stocked for usability talent/skills.  The technical side cannot be overlooked either, so you’re going to need people covering page load times, integrating new features and so on.

The bottom line on this is to be successful in search today, we’re so beyond just SEO that most businesses don’t even realize it.  They are standing on the dock wondering when the ship will arrive.  They don’t realize it left ages ago and is already over the horizon.  Their next best hope to reach the promised land of search/social success is continental drift.  Hardly a solid plan.

Exercises in the obvious

Pinterest.  It didn’t take long for the Pin It button to start popping up on websites.  And it didn’t take a passing grade on the MENSA quiz to see it coming, did it?  Rapid growth, huge adoption, media buzz, your friends recommending it, and so it goes.  An exercise in obviousness that you’d better pay attention to this little gem.  So what else is obvious?

Take a look at your analytics and see where people are entering and leaving your site.  Anything you can do to improve retention or page volume consumption?  Look through the data and try to spot the trends, because I guarantee you the trends are in the data.

Some other obvious stuff stands out, too:

• Do you have a webmaster account activated at the engines?
• How’s your robots.txt file doing?  Blocking the right stuff?
• Got clean sitemaps?
• Still have duplicate content issues?
• Have you integrated social sharing features across your site?
• Got the best practices of SEO covered (remember, we like SEO…)
• …and the list goes on.

Seriously folks, if you want to lay a smack down on the animal kingdom that’s taken over your life, you can do it.  Get the basics covered, leverage your unique strengths (or create new ones) and focus, like a laser, on the single thing that matters most: your visitors.  Get religion on this point and never let go.  The engines are very focused on those visitors:  what they like, what they dislike, what they click on and what they avoid.  We're watching them closely so we can learn what they want and bring exactly that to them every time.  You should be, too.

As your portfolio manager tells you, diversify, diversify, diversify

If your business suffers when an algo gets tweaked, insulate yourself from that.  Any first year marketing student will tell you this: having all your business in one basket is bad news.  You need to diversify.  When things are ticking along well in one area, start ramping up efforts in another channel.  Over time you’ll see metrics increase from all inbound channels, insulating your from dips and spikes in other channels and allowing you time to react, adjust and test ways to rebound.

Here’s a great two-part article (part 1 & part 2) I recently came across.  They are a bit long, but it’s worth reading them.  Yes, there’s a less-than-positive slant against the #1 engine, but she’s very constructive in helping you understand what she did and why she did it.  She’s not a nutter who simply blocked an engine to “prove a point”.  Oh no, this was a much more savvy, long term approach to ensuring her business remains successful.  Bottom line, this is smart business planning and its planning like this that could help protect you from the next critter to crawl your way.

How to Find new customers with LinkedIn - PART7

Before you start with these tips, you need as you in the first part of this series may have read good first to define your target market and your LinkedIn network to build. Even though the previous weeks we shared strategies one and two, three and fourstrategies, strategies, strategy five and sixand seven eight, nine and ten strategy.

4 Strategies to contact people after you've found Them

After you have applied one or more of the 10 strategies, you now have a whole laundry list of potential customers.

What to do now? There are four options:

You know this person himself.

That is the easiest: you can contact him directly.

You know this person is not itself and he is a 2nd degree contact.

Call someone of your common contacts. Yes, via the phone!

Explain your purpose and mentioned that they know someone you want to achieve. Ask him how they know each other. On LinkedIn you can see that they are linked, but not what their relationship is and how well they know each other. If he knows that other do really well, then thank him and call the following common contact. It is important for your result that the Know, Like, Trust factor between the ones you want to achieve and your own contact high enough!

When your common contact agrees to help you, ask him to introduce you to the person you want to reach and vice versa in an email, what we call the Magic Mail.

You know the person is not and it is a 3rd degree contact.

Go to that person's profile.

At the top of the right side click on "Get introduced through a connection" (represented by a connection).

Choose the 1st degree contact where you have the best relationship with it.

Write a message to the final recipient why you would like to contact him and ask your contact to 1egraads this message forwarding.

What happens, is that you 1st degree contact receives both messages and then decide whether or not to send them. If he then forwards them in the 2nd degree, the person can also decide whether or not to forward it. So this process is sequential. What many people don't know is that everyone in this "chain of messages" can read all previous posts. So be sure professional in your communication!

This approach works for many people not really good. The first reason is that they write a message too intrusive that afknappen one of the people in the chain is doing. The second reason is that you might be an excellent relationship with your 1st degree contact, but that he is the person in the 2nd degree not so well know. Usually the result is that your message remains stuck on the road somewhere. It's so much better to devote more time to search for 2nd degree contacts instead of 3rd degree contacts and to build your network first. We therefore recommend to build your network before you need it.

You know the person and he is a member of the same group.

You can send him a direct message (if he has not dropped off that option). Make sure you have enough Know, Like and Trust factor in the group have built up and preferably also with him personally. For instance by his messages or comments to respond.

If you Know, Like, Trust factor not yet high enough, you want to use a different approach than a "cold message" to send. Search for common connections and let introduce yourself via a Magic Mail. If you still have no common contact, you may prefer to further expand your network first. Because you both belong to the same group, it would not be difficult to find common contacts.

Now you have not only the right people 10 additional strategies to find your goal to achieve, but also 4 strategies to contact them. If you have downloaded the document of the Magic Mail, then you also have a better understanding of how such a Magic Mail works and how to ask.

You get the best results when preparing yourself and take action when you first the right people have found. Two crucial steps that are often overlooked or minimized!

PART - 1

How to Find new customers with LinkedIn - PART6

Before you start with these tips, you need as you in the first part of this series may have read well you first define target group and your LinkedIn network to build. We also shared the previous weeks one and two, strategies strategies already three and four and five and six and finally strategies strategy 7.
Below you can find eight, nine and ten to strategy to find new customers:
Strategy 8: look at "Network Updates"

An interesting source of information is the "Network Activity" or the "Network Updates". You see them on your "homepage" and you also receive via email, if you have that option not deposed.

There are many "Network Updates" that you can click on or off. These are the ones for you ever might be of interest:

New Connections in your Network (new connections in your network). Not so long is also the "Professional Headline" shown when people link with each other. That way you can often discover new potential customers. Another way this can help you when you see that a customer links with one of your counterparts, you then could contact to insure that you are still "top of mind".
Status Updates from your Connections and Posts from your Connections. By a message to comment or "liken" do you love yourself on the radar of your network.
When connections change Profile information (when connections change their profile information). You can congratulate them on a new project or a new position. When you contact of position changes, can you ask him to become his successor proposed. If they change of organization, you can ask them for an introduction and possibly supplier of their next company. Or when a connection comes suddenly in a position in which they appear in the possibility to buy your products or services, then you will want to know this. As a recruiter, you can discover that someone who does not fit in the picture (for example, because they lived in a different country), now known as a suitable candidate.
Groups your connections have joined or created (groups who have established or joined your connections). This is another way to find interesting groups join itself.

Strategy 9: change your Profile Settings

When we ask people in our workshops or presentations to agree who the "who's Viewed Your Profile" feature, confirm that she has looked most have already done so. With the following question: "who wants to know who those people are with a description like" someone from the bank industry in the region of Amsterdam ", go almost all hands in the air. And if there is asked how she can find, this most replies: "you need to upgrade your account paying".

However, that is not true and one of the biggest misunderstandings regarding LinkedIn. You can never see unless they allow you somebody's profile, whether you're a basic (free) account or a paying.

Since we have no direct impact on what others are doing, it is interesting to reverse the situation. When you allows others to see who you are when you visit their profile, this may be to your advantage.

Our personal experience is that in some cases potential clients call us after we have visited their profile and they can see who we are. The difference is that they take the initiative, which is much stronger than when you do that yourself.

Does this happen often? No, but many little ones make one great and it is a strategy that no money and very little time.

This Is a good strategy for everyone? No, not always. Sometimes you want more remain anonymous. LinkedIn gives you that possibility. But, if you're in that "mode", you can not see who has visited your profile.

To change the settings around what people see, follow these steps:

At the top of the page, click on "Your Name/Settings".
Log in again (this is a security check).
Scroll down and in the middle of the page click "Select what others see when you have viewed their Profile".
Choose "Your Name and Headline".
Click "Save Changes" (save changes).

If you're not into the anonymous mode you can see a few profile statistics (if you click on "who's viewed my Profile" on your "homepage" or on your own profile). What you will see depends on whether you have a basic (free) account or a paying account.

These are the statistics that you will see:

Profile Stats. Available for free account holders just like you your name and Professional Headline shows up when others view their profile. It shows:

To 5 results of whom has viewed your profile.
Number of visits to your profile.
Number of times that you're featured in search results.

Profile Stats Pro. Available for all premium account holders. It shows:

The full list of who has visited your profile (Note: you will not see additional information about that visitor if they have elected to remain anonymous in their "privacy" settings).
Trends.
Total number of visits to your profile.
Number of times that you're featured in search results.
Classes of people who look to your profile.

These additional statistics about who has viewed your profile if you have a paying account, are therefore still reasonably basic and General. For us, it is certainly no reason to upgrade our account. But who knows, LinkedIn still comes with interesting extras in the future.
Strategy 10: create "Alerts"

We have the most powerful strategy for last kept.

LinkedIn allows you to create so-called "alerts" every time so you don't need to go to LinkedIn to search again.

How to make these "alerts"?

Go to "Advanced Search" and create a search with the parameters from your preparation.
Watch the search results you get. If you've found the right people, go to step 3. If not, then refine your search until you are satisfied with the result.
In addition to the number of results you click on "Save". You're going to save this search. In other words create an "alert".
Enter the saved search ("Saved Search") a name.
Choose the frequency for your "email alert": weekly, monthly or never. Weekly means you get an email every week, monthly each month and never should go to the website that you go to the search results look. We suggest that you select "weekly" (weekly) and then on "save" button.

What will happen now? LinkedIn will automatically wrap and this search for you your results emailed to yourself. Clicking on the link, you simply need to look at their profile and find out who you know common!

With a basic (free) account you can keep up to 3 searches. If you pay and your account "upgrade", you can have more (this is depending on which registration model you choose).

If you go to the results of the searches that you want to watch or have kept them customize/erase: you can find them via: "Advanced Search" ("Advanced" link on your "homepage") and then button 4 "Saved Searches".

PART - 7

How to Find new customers with LinkedIn - PART5

Before you start with these tips, you need as you in the first part of this series may have read well you first define target group and your LinkedIn network to build. We also shared the previous weeks one and two, strategies strategies already three and four and five and six strategies.

Below you can find seven strategy in order to find new customers:

Strategy 7: use the "Company Profiles"

Another approach is to find the right people to search for them via the organization where they work or through the company where she owns his.

There are several ways to get the information in the "Company Profiles" to use to find the right people.

Step 1: find the right Organization

The easiest is if you already know the name of the organization. Go to "Companies" (top menu) and enter the name of the organisation you are looking for in the search field.
If you do not know the name of the Organization, but a few parameters, use the "Search Companies" function. Which can be found under "Companies" (top menu) and then the second button. Immediately get a "results list" of all the companies on LinkedIn. On the left you can refine the search. These are the parameters that you can use:
Keywords (key words): free text.
Location(location):
"Headquarters only" (only the head office): "Yes" or "No" (default).
"Locations": enter the city name in or refine it afterwards if you the results of your search.
Job Opportunities (vacancies): choose whether you want to select only the companies with vacancies on LinkedIn or not (default).
Industry: enter the name of a class or refine later if you zoekresutaten the back.
Relationship: all LinkedIn members, just 1st grade 2nd degree contacts, contacts, just just 3rd degree and beyond. Or a combination.
Company size (company size): you can make a selection between self-employed (1-10 employees) and very large organizations (10,000 +).
Number of followers (number of followers): you can make a selection between a few followers (1-50) and organizations with many followers (5,000 +).
Fortune: you can refine the search results of the Fortune 50 to 1000.

Note: If you have a basic (free) account, gives you a possibility of paying the Company search options in the "Advanced Search for People" to get around. In the "Advanced Search" you can not Fortune 1000 business size or use as a parameter, unless you have a paying account.

Tip: If you don't know what the current name of the company is, you could also try a product or service into the search box. For example: Apple iPad and you will see that, type in the search results. Because not all companies their products or services in their "Overview" (overview), this tip will not always work.
Step 2: useful information on a Company Profile

The interesting to the LinkedIn Company Profiles is that most information comes from the profiles of people who work or have worked for this company. This has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that a marketing or PR Department of the information does not affect. The downside is that not all data are current, because it is to all individuals to their personal LinkedIn profile to keep up-to-date.

What useful information can we get from the Company Profile?

The first page is the summary page(Overview page). Besides some general information you may receive the following useful:
Immediately you can see the first 5 people you know within the Organization (under the button "Your Network"). This gives immediate insight into your connections. Why is this useful? Because you maybe these people forget was when was your goals or maybe there is someone of company changed without that you knew.
The tab "Your College Alumni" gives you the people with whom you go to the same school, college, college or University've been (this comes from the "Education" in both their field if your profile). In some cases this can benefit you. Why? Because a common training Institute have sometimes forge strong ties even before you've met. The other much more open to you request.
The tab "New Hires" gives you an overview of the people who have indicated that they started on their profile with this organization. This may be interesting information regarding hiring, selecting or delivers services if you're educating people. After all, you cannot deduce that there are opportunities for you. At the bottom of this field, you can click on the "See all Activity" (see all activity) link. You get an overview of what happened with all the people that work for this company on LinkedIn. You can filter this in many ways: Profile Changes (changes to profile), New Hires (recently adopted), Recent Departures (recently departed), Promotions & Changes (promotions & changes), Status Updates, Job Postings (jobs) and Products & Services (products and services). Note: we have noticed that this last functions do not always work equally well, hopefully soon there LinkedIn.
Follow a Company(follow a company). Top right you can click the button to "follow" a company. "Why would you want to do that?", was our first response until we on the small arrow next to the "Following" button pressed (= the same button as the "Follow" button once you've clicked on it). If you do, you'll see what will happen and can you refine how you wish to receive this information.
Content: "I want to be notified when"(I want to be alerted as):
Employees leave or are promoted or recruited, layoffs in the first 3 degrees of your network ("in my network" to them) or all employees ("all employees").This is very interesting information:
It helps to be informed when your contacts change position to congratulate them and to them first so ask you to propose to their successor.
If she wants to change them both to an organization you on their radar to possibly introduction questions as a supplier of their next company.
Or if you had with the purchaser and click No personal if that was the only reason why you have never done business with this buyer and that changes of position, then this could be perhaps a good impetus for you to see if you have a chance at the new purchaser.
New job opportunities (New Job Opportunities). If you're looking for a new job or someone helps to find one, this is an excellent way to be kept informed. Instead of having to search for every day on LinkedIn, you can get an overview new vacancies for all companies who follows you.
Updates of the company profiles (Company Profile Updates). This option is for most more informative than that they there is a direct benefit. But it can be interesting to see what new products and services a business to add his profile, what developments there are or what opportunities there might be for a partnership.
Notification:

I want to be notified by Network Updates (I want to be alerted by network updates).
Weekly or daily Email digest:(daily or weekly email list). This concerns all companies who follows you.

Apply these settings to match your preferences. If you're looking for work, would you like to receive this information daily, but if you're just "curious", you want this information maybe just received via "Network Updates".

Check out insightful statistics about(Look for insightful statistics about) this company (on the right). When you click on this link you will come to a new page with information and statistics derived from the personal LinkedIn profiles and their behaviour on LinkedIn. There is a lot of information available, so take a look there. This is information that may be helpful:
You can find statistics about job functions (Job Functions), years of experience (Years Experience), training degree (Educational Degree) and University (University Attended). The "University Attended" statistics may be useful for recruiters as they do you see which universities campus recruitment: first, most employees have supplied (so that the potential is present) and then you can find colleagues who have studied there and yours can help with personal testimonies and a few connections. Maybe they want to also get involved with the campus recruitingteam.
Under "People also viewed" (people also looked to) you get a selection of other business profiles that were visited by people who also looked to the company where you are now looking at. Usually this will be yours direct produce counterparts (we prefer this word above "competitors"). These could be your next prospects!
On the right side of the page you will see "where employees came from before they joined" (where workers came from before she started at) the company where you are watching and "where they go afterwards" (where they go afterwards). This may also yield new ideas in terms of prospects.

A possible disadvantage of the use of "Companies" to find the right people is that many companies in different countries have different work or independent subsidiaries and have no clear strategy on LinkedIn here.

What is the result? For example: when you view the Company Profile of an international company with headquarters in the United States, you wouldn't be able to find the right people in Belgium or Netherlands. Why? Because you might get too many results or because they are linked to another Company Profile than what you are looking for.

So keep in mind that you don't always find the right information for you, but you certainly use the possibilities that LinkedIn Company Profiles in terms of offers!

PART - 6

How to Find new customers with LinkedIn - PART4

These proactive strategies that produce the most if you're looking for new customers, employees, suppliers, partners, experts or other people who can help you to achieve your professional goals.

In this series, I share 10 proactive strategies in order to find new customers.

Before you start with these tips, you need as you in the first part of this series may have read good first to define your target market and your LinkedIn network to build. Even though the previous weeks we shared strategies one and two and three and four strategies.
Below you can find strategy five and six to find new customers:

Strategy 5: use Groups Where your target group Is Member of Linking people not only with their colleagues, but they also find ways to meet. On LinkedIn profiles, backgrounds and people with similar interests come together in "Groups".

There are 5 ways to find groups on LinkedIn. Because the search function in "Groups" still quite limited (there is no "Advanced Search" for "Groups" at the time of this writing), you will probably need them all 4 for you to find the correct groups.

Use the groups list ("Groups Directory"). So do you do that:
In the top menu click on "Groups/Groups Directory".
There are a number of groups proposed in random order. Usually, you will find not really relevant groups.
You can use the search box on the left hand side with one or more keywords. You can refine your search with the type of group you are looking for or with the language. Be careful with this last option because a group can be a local Dutch or Belgian group, but still English as language can have.

When you click on the name of one of the groups, you come on the entrance page of that group (if it's an open Group) or on the profile page of the Group (if it is a private or group exclusively for members). In the latter case you get some information about the Group and about 10 people from the first two degrees of your network who are already a member (you can find the same information for open groups by clicking "More/Group Profile"). This can help you choose whether you want to be a member of that group.
Groups that you might interesting ("Groups You May Like")
In the top menu click on "Groups/Groups You May Like".
You get presented with groups that are similar to all the groups where you already are a member of.
Similar groups ("Similar Groups").

If you have found with the search function of the groups "Groups Directory" or via the "Groups You May Like" option, you will see the "Similar Groups" link on the right side of each group. Click it again raises a whole list of groups for which you could find in any other way.

If you select "More/Group Profile" in one of the groups where you are a member of, then you may find similar groups (Similar Groups) to the one where you already are a member of.

In this new overview of groups you can again click on "Similar Groups" for each of the listed groups.
People have also looked("People also explored")
Go to a "Group Profile".

At the bottom of the page you will find "People also explored". This gives yet another series with potentially interesting groups. For "Similar Groups" and "Groups You May Like" LinkedIn used an algorithm. "People also explored" resulting from human acts. Both approaches complement each other.

Look in someones profile.
This is a totally different approach. People have the natural tendency to form groups and clubs. LinkedIn shows that information on someone's profile, which is very useful information.
So go to someone's profile that is right for you (in this case a current or potential customer) and scroll down on his profile to see which groups he is a member.
This step can sometimes be more time-consuming, but delivers better results in many cases.

Note: it is very important not to sell in the groups. Groups are an excellent place to you Know, Like and Trust factor to build and the golden triangle of networks to use (Give, questions, Thanks), not to dump your promotions. That works even counter-productive: people consider it as spam and get a negative feeling about you and your organization. In that case, you had better have nothing done!
Strategy 6: use Groups of persons with access to your target group

In our experience of working with large international companies to one-man businesses, we have noticed that not many people take into account the strength of the second degree.

For example: if they already think of the power of a network, then think they only to their own network.

What we propose is to do the reverse: think of the network of your target group: who and what are their colleagues, customers, suppliers, partners, media, government contacts, etc.

If you have listed, then look to LinkedIn groups where you can meet the people who already have a relationship with the people you want to reach.

If you then builds a relationship with them, they can act as an intermediary or even Ambassador for you!

Tip: this may also work for groups where you may not join. Some groups require a certain skill, experience or degree (eg. Civil engineer) in order to qualify for membership. If someone in your network that has required you can 1st grade, ask him/her to go with that group and to act as an Ambassador for you. For example: recruiters are not welcome in some groups. As a recruiter, you can ask a colleague with the requirement profile of the Group and to place a vacancy.

PART - 5

How to Find new customers with LinkedIn - PART3

In this series, we share 10 proactive strategies in order to find new customers.

Before you start with these tips, you need as you in the first part of this series may have read good first to define your target market and your LinkedIn network to build. Last week we shared even though the first two strategies.

Below you can find three and four to strategy to find new customers:

Strategy 3: Grass dunes in the network of your network

In strategy one and two we left your goals and then we looked at the people who came from the search results.

We leave In this strategy of our present network and look into their network to find the people who can help us to achieve our goals.

How do you do that?

Go to the profile of a 1st degree connection that you know fairly well, having the same function or role if the person you are looking for. Why?
People tend to link with their colleagues and peers. Chances are that they are linked with potential customers.
The Know, Like and Trust factor is already higher than with other people.
Scroll down until you see a field on the right hand side titled "name's Connections". At the bottom of that field, click "See all Connections".
Now you can look around in their network and find people who are interesting for you.

Additional benefits of in someone else to his or her network grass dunes, are:

You can discover where you yourself would not synonyms or titles are defended.

For example: If you did a search with "Marketing Manager, Banking Industry, Netherlands", when you was looking for new customers as a speaker or events Agency, then you might be discover that people are also "Marketing Director", "VP Marketing" or "Marcom Manager". They will not come into your "Advanced Search" results from strategy 2.

And you can discover features such as "Event Coordinator" or "Events Manager", titles where you would have not thought of yourself.
You can discover people that may be useful in achieving a purpose other than that now where you're dealing with. For example: If you're looking for HR Managers as potential customer, then you may encounter an HR Consultant specializing in international payroll programs. Precisely the perfect profile to work for another project.

Note: anyone can put you in his network grass dunes? No, some people are unable to access their network. Of course, that is their choice, but we ask us always wondering what they expect: they expect others to open up for them without their network that they do that? Of course, if there are no expectations of their hand, then there is nothing to worry about.

Strategy 4: look at "Viewers of this Profile also Viewed"

If you have found someone with your corresponding parameters not in their network, you can still go look. He must first be a 1st degree contact.

However, there is interesting information for you at your disposal. If you scroll down in someone's profile, you'll find on the right side a field with the title "Viewers of this Profile also viewed".

What you will see is that many of these people work for the same organization or have the same role in another organization. So you can find that in this way extra persons are interesting for you.

If you click on their profile, you will often see a common connection appear where you had not thought of yet, besides people you went for help because you already ask them had found by the other strategies to apply.

In other words, these insights give you more ways for you to access interesting people. In doing so you do not always meet the same person to introductions to go and ask.

If you're in this newly found person scroll down his profile, you can find other interesting people again via "Viewers of this Profile also Viewed" and new common connections. And the same is true for these people.

The option "Viewers of this Profile also Viewed" for each new profile that you encounter can be used (and also for all your 1st degree connections). Consequently, so it represents a wealth of information!

PART - 4

How to Find new customers with LinkedIn - PART2

These are the first two strategies to find new customers:
Strategy 1: search by name

If you know the name of your prospect, it is relatively simple: fill in the name in the search field at the top of the page. What if it is someone with a common name such as Andy Johnson (more than 4,600 hits)? Then you have a different approach is needed.

If you have "Advanced Search" and "Andy" used in the "First Name" field and "Johnson" in the "Last Name" field blank, but still about 1,600 hits.

Whence this great difference?

If you use the search field at the top of the page, search for LinkedIn to those words throughout the whole profile (this is the same as the "Keywords" field). If you used specific fields such as "First Name" and "Last Name", then it just looks in these fields.

Note: we have already seen several people with their first name in the field for the last name, and vice versa. This helps of course not to be found. So look after your profile or for you is correct.
Strategy 2: Search with parameters

When you think of your goals are left and they have specifically made, go have a few parameters that can be used in the "Advanced Search" screen (you can find the "Advanced" link next to the search field).

These are the fields available in "Advanced Search":

Keywords (keywords): Here you can fill in whatever. LinkedIn searches than in all fields (free text and lists).
First Name and Last Name (first name and last name.
Location (place): Anywhere (anywhere in the world) or "located near" (close to) followed by your own country.
Postal Code (zip code): you can search within a radius around a certain zip code. This helps to refine your search results, of course, just like that is useful regarding your goal.
Title (title): function. An interesting option is that you can choose to see just people who now have that position, people who held that position in the past, or both (default). Note: this field searches for the function ("current" or "past"), not on the "Professional Headline" (= description under your photo on your profile).
Company (company): an interesting option is that you can choose to see just people who now work for this company, people who have worked there or both (default).
School.
Industry (industry): you can search in all industries or in more specific branches.
Relationship (how far removed): you can search on LinkedIn or you search all members limit to people in your 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree network or beyond, or to people who belong to the same groups as you.
Language (language): you can limit your search to people who speak a specific language. We recommend this because you can miss, however, many people who still do not use this option.

If you have a paid account, then you get these additional search options:

Company Size (company size): different options, from 1-10 to 10,000 +.
Seniority Level: different options, currently: Manager, Owner (owner), Partner, CXO, VP, Director, Senior, Entry (Starter), Students & Interns and Volunteer (volunteer).
Interested in (interested in): any user (by default) or the specific profile with whom that person wants to connecting, as he has indicated (see bottom of the page on your own profile for the options thereabouts).
Fortune 1000: you can limit your search to the Fortune top 50, top 100, top 250, top 500 and top 1000.
Search only other open link members (just search on other "open link" members): people who take a paid account (upgrade) can send messages to each other free of charge if they do not sit in each other's 1st grade network. If you have a basic account (free), then you should "InMails" buy in order to do that. Checking this box means that you can restrict the search to those people where you can send a message to free.

After you have completed your search, you can sort the search results.

Relevance (relevance) (default): results are sorted according to calculations based on the keywords you have entered and your network of connections.
Relationship (relationship): the 1st degree, 2nd degree and groups are first shown (in that order). 3rd grade and "outside network members" are always combined. Use this option if you're not specifically looking to someone. 2nd degree contacts are easier to achieve (via the Magic Mail) than 3rd degree contacts.
Relationship + Recommendations (relationship + recommendations): agreements are shown on your level of connection and the number of recommendations (how more recommendations the higher in the list). Use this option if you're looking for a supplier or partner. The recommendations can give you a first impression.
Connections (connections): the people with the most connections are at the top.
Keywords (keywords): this arrangement gives the best agreement purely based on your question.
Views (view): how the search results are displayed: Basic (default) or extended. The difference between both is that the extended view also shows you the amount of connections, the amount of recommendations and current and past positions (functions).

PART - 3

How to Find new customers with LinkedIn - PART1

linkedin for dummies |  linkedin tricks | how does linkedin work | how to use linkedin | linkedin answers

One of the greatest misunderstandings about LinkedIn is that people and companies just use as a (passive) shield through their personal and business profiles. This often makes for disappointment regarding the results.

We need Proactive strategies that produce the most of the output, if you're looking for new customers, employees, suppliers, partners, experts or other people who can help you to achieve your professional goals.

In this series, i had shared 10 proactive strategies in order to find new customers. Before you start with these tips to get started, you need to be prepared about your goal and objective.

1. Define your target group.

This sounds logical, but hardly anyone in our workshops and trainings we see this do really well.

2. Make for a basic LinkedIn network

The power of your network is in the second degree, but you must of course be a first degree network to achieve that have second degree.

The good news is that LinkedIn helps you 4 ways to build up that fast. You can find this under the menu contacts/Add Connections (Contacts/Add Connections).

These are they:

Add connections (Add Connections)

You can upload the email addresses from your address book.

Nobody can see this.

Note When you contact: If you have uploaded fewer than 50 addresses than they are all ticked to get an invitation. Moreover, it is better to invite them individually, otherwise they get the impersonal standard invitation.

Colleagues (Colleagues)

LinkedIn uses the companies that you've listed in your profile to make a match with other people who have worked in the same company during the same period.

So make sure you've worked all relevant companies where you have listed in your profile for!

Former class or study mates (Alumni)

This works in a similar way as "Colleagues".

You can be extra filter on bv. year of graduation.

People who you might know (People You May Know)

LinkedIn used 18 parameters to find people that you could know.

The algorithm behind there is a secret, but probably displays the number of common contacts, groups, sector and geography along in the calculation.

If you have completed these steps, you are ready to proactively with LinkedIn to get started. In the following articles from this series get you 10 ways to find new customers and how to contact them.

PART - 2

Why Your Content Marketing Efforts Might Be Worthless

I’ve been preaching the value of content for a long time. In fact, my original company, Voltier Digital, was completely focused on content creation and promotion services. We got into this industry because we were fascinated by the ability of compelling and remarkable content to spread virally via social channels.


Seeing our client’s content generate tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views can be incredibly exciting. However, as we grew and developed our services and offerings, we became increasingly aware of how important context is to content marketing success.

High volumes of traffic and social engagement can add almost no value to your business and provide very little ROI under the wrong circumstances.  Good content marketers understand the importance of context — both the context their content will be perceived within, and the context their content will create with new viewers and potential customers.

The Context of Content Determines its Impact

Context can be understood as the environment or circumstances in which an idea or thing is understood.  People often say something is “taken out of context” when others hear the right message, but derive the wrong meaning.

As marketers, we need to be aware that everything we create is seen within some context whether we like it or not.  The messages we try to convey don’t exist in a vacuum.

Content is still king, but context shares the throne

Gary Vaynerchuk argues that a shift is taking place in marketing as a whole. We’re becoming increasingly blind to the types of advertising and marketing that may have worked in the past. Google, Facebook and the connectedness of social media are empowering a transformation for a new marketing paradigm based on the context of our messaging.

In the future, the individual impetus for consumption will come from recommendations and the exposure we get to brands within our immediate social graph.

Businesses and services recommended by our friends will trump commercials we see on TV. Check-ins and Yelp reviews will determine where we eat our next meals.  The books we read will be the ones we see our friends quoting and listing on their social profiles.

Gary would argue this shift represents a trillion dollar opportunity, and businesses who understand how to put their message within the right context will be the winners.

As content marketers, this lesson can’t come soon enough…

Context is tied to individual perspective

All content is understood in the context of our own individual points of view and past experiences.

As marketers, we should never forget how intimately tied our craft is to understanding human psychology.  Before getting into the world of search, social media and content development, my undergraduate studies focused on human development. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my transition from psychology student to marketer was a natural and inevitable result of my desire to make practical everything I had learned.

I’m thankful for this experience and education because I’m aware of how easy it can be to stop seeing anonymous visitors as human beings.  The truth we need to remember is; we never leave our emotional selves at the door.  Consciously or not, all of our experiences pass through a filter in our minds, a filter dedicated to finding meaning and relating our experiences to knowledge we already have.

Use context to your advantage.  Trigger strong emotional reactions.

Some experiences trigger us to think.  They engage and build upon our previous knowledge or assumptions.  In some cases, these experiences challenge our beliefs, in other cases they help solidify the notions we already have.

Either way, we are always searching for ways to fit new experiences and information into the scaffolding that defines our understanding of the world.   We understand new information more completely, value it more, and keep it longer in our memories when that new information can fit into the context of a feeling or idea we’re already familiar with.

It’s our job as marketers to understand our visitors enough to realize the context our content will be seen within.

• Is the point of view we’re expressing opposing the zeitgeist of our audience?


• Is our voice being seen as sympathetic?  confrontational?  authoritative?

In any event, the content we create needs to hook our audience.  The more ideas and reactions we can trigger, the more deeply that content is embedded within our viewers minds and the more it can resonate with our viewers own unique points of view.

By hooking our audience, we make them more likely not only to interact with our brand more in the future, but we make it more likely that they’ll share the content we’ve created.

Context is tied to personal networks

Content should be seen within the context of its relationship to other people we know.

When our friends share content via social media, valuable context is automatically created — our friend has vouched for the value of that piece of content.

In many instances, our friend may do more than simply share a piece of content.  She may also comment on how that particular piece of content influenced her, made her think, or made her want.

As marketers, we should never underestimate how powerful this naturally created context can be.  In a world where we’re used to taking our cues from commercials and heavy-handed traditional advertising, the opinions and recommendations of real people we know can be highly compelling.

One of the major goals of creating content is to get people to share that content within social media.  But what we don’t talk about is how we want our visitors to share that content, and methods for influencing the context they inevitably create for their followers and friends.   In other words, we don’t take that extra step to think about the context we might help create for those visitors who consume our content by proxy of their friends who have shared it.

Influencing the Context of Shared Content

When we begin thinking about our ability to help sculpt that context, we can begin to make critical changes to the way we do content marketing.  We begin to ask ourselves questions like:

1. How can we prompt our visitors to talk about our content in the right context?


2. How can we continue the conversation with those sharing our content (to continue creating more context in a direction compatible with our brand goals)


3. Is the audience we’re promoting our content to even the right audience?  Do they have prejudices that may create negative context?


4. How can we measure and track the sentiment of our audience?  Within what context does our message resonate the most effectively?

Context is tied to audiences

Meet people where they are.  Create content that fits into the context of discussions already taking place.

As content marketers, a huge part of our job lies in finding ways to promote the content we create.

At BlueGlass, the content creation and content promotion departments work intimately together. This is because we understand how important it is to place our content within the right context.  The content we create tells vivid stories — it conveys powerful ideas and causes people to think — but most importantly, it always understands its audience.

By creating content that meets people where they are, we’re able to hook into the discussions already taking place.  This doesn’t mean all content should preach to the choir, but it does mean that great content knows how to properly speak to its target audience.  It anticipates the objections of its audience.  It anticipates the expectations of its audience.

Tying Context to Idea Generation

It’s out of this deeper understanding that ideas for content should be generated.

Consider how your content ideas might be seen by your target audience within the context of their community. This will help you predict the ways that audience will then go on to share that content with their unique audiences, and the context they will create for those new viewers.

Conclusion

It’s clear that the ability of marketers to sell is becoming more and more dependent on the context of their message.   As content marketers, we must realize that our content is perceived through the lens of personal experience, which is then further refined by additional context created through the sharing and sentiment expressed by our peers within social media.

How do you add context to your content?

How to make my posts impacting?

 

← 6. Topic Management

 

“Content is King, Context is God” says Gary Vaynerchuk. And that’s what your Scoop.it pages should reflect – developing your reputation or creating goodwill for your brand in the process. Making your posts appealing will allow your posts to be more attractive for your readers, as more useful.

Good news! You can format and edit your posts in a few clicks and make them appealing and impacting; no need to waste a lot of time to get good results.

On the view mode of your topic, edition features are available for each post to:

• Add Context: why should your audience read this? How is it connected to other posts you’ve curated on the same topic? Connect the dots, give your opinion and thoughts: the Post description area is just here for that, either directly from the publishing window or, once the post is published, by clicking on the pen icon.


• Change the size of the image and edit the layout of your post: with a mouseover on the post image, a layout feature will appear allowing you to choose its size and define which layout you want to your post.


• Choose a star post: and make it stick to the top of your topic. Be the editor-in-chief of your topic by writing a note to introduce your topic, describe your motivations or review current events related to your topic! For that, publish that post first and then simply click on the star icon below the post you want to define as the star post.


• Change the order of the posts: You can completely re-arrange the order of your posts on your topic! This helps you highlight content you consider the most important or simply vary the presentation of your topic as you see fit. To do it, click on the “move” icon below a post to change its position.

In no time you will get an appealing topic that will be the perfect showcase of your expertise and passion to a growing audience.

Ads Integrity Alliance: Working together to fight bad ads

Posted by Eric Davis, Global Public Policy Manager

Today StopBadware is announcing the formation of an industry partnership to combat bad ads. We’re pleased to be a founding member of the Ads Integrity Alliance, along with AOL, Facebook, Twitter and the IAB.

Since its beginnings in 2006, StopBadware has enabled many websites, service providers and software providers to share real-time information in order to warn users and significantly eliminate malware (such as viruses, phishing sites and malicious downloads) on the web. We believe that the Ads Integrity Alliance can make a similarly important contribution to the goal of identifying and removing bad ads from all corners of the web.

In 2011, Google alone disabled more than 130 million ads and 800,000 advertisers that violated our policies on our own and partners’ sites, such as ads that promote counterfeit goods and malware. You can read more about our efforts to review ads and also see the numbers over time. Other players in the industry also have significant initiatives in this area. But when Google or another website shuts down a bad actor, that scammer often simply tries to advertise elsewhere.

No individual business or law enforcement agency can single-handedly eliminate these bad actors from the entire web. As StopBadware has shown, the best way to tackle common problems across a highly interconnected web, and to move the whole web forward, is for the industry to work together, build best practices and systems, and make information sharing simple.

The alliance led by StopBadware will help the industry fight back together against scammers and bad actors. In particular, it will:

• Develop and share definitions, industry policy recommendations and best practices


• Serve as a platform for sharing information about bad actors


• Share relevant trends with policymakers and law enforcement agencies

Bad ads reduce trust in the web and in online advertising. The web puts the world’s information at your fingertips and has given everyone a platform to speak, listen, engage and unite. The growth that businesses generate from online advertising has enabled an enormous part of this platform. We think the web is worth fighting for, which is why we strongly support the Ads Integrity Alliance’s efforts to tackle bad actors who seek to damage it.

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Labels: Advertising

Twitter Content Strategy Guide

 

Twitter has quickly become a favorite part of content marketing strategies employed by most businesses. The 140 character limit means that it doesn’t take much work, users have little inhibition about following quality profiles and it’s already optimized for mobile. Curating a quality Twitter feed lends itself to an answer for so many marketing questions that it would be hard to list them all here.

Still yet, lots of users have no idea how to make 140 characters count. What we end up with is Twitter feeds consisting primarily of links and quotes. Quotes are an obvious place to start when you want concise snippets of text that convey wisdom and evoke strong emotions. In fact, the most successful Twitter users are almost always inspirational, funny or educational in nature. However, followers don’t want to follow a copy of someone that’s already in their feed, and as an online influencer you don’t want to be pigeonholed.

Nothing changes as quickly as online sentiment, and it’s easy to brand yourself as a one trick pony. People who followed an account to get updates from Charlie Sheen’s cat aren’t going to know what to think when you start tweeting about debt consolidation. Consider diversifying your feed with these Twitter content strategies.

Overview

Before I break down each type of content in detail, it’s important to realize that your Twitter content strategy should not match mine exactly. The key to success with any social media campaign is identifying and understanding your audience. Some content strategies will garner much better results with multimedia, while others will need to keep their tweets per day to a bare minimum. Spend some time researching the users who follow you; what  do they re-tweet? How many users do they follow? Do they exhibit strong emotions in their feed? The better you understand your audience, the easier it will be for you to engineer an optimum content strategy.

With Twitter you’re focusing on abbreviated content that is either short by nature, or is protracted with a link. Even though one type of content will often to better than everything else you share, it’s important to diversify your content to create a well rounded and well regarded persona. All of your tweets should be part of an overall Twitter strategy, which should be a part of your social media strategy, which is in turn going to be part of your online strategy, that would optimally be part of your overall marketing strategy. If you’re lucky enough to have the level of control required for that type of oversight, making sure that synergy is present in your business will dramatically increase efficiency and effectiveness. For the most diverse content profile, here is a sample of the various types of tweets you’ll see in a well constructed strategy:

• Created content


• Curated Content


• Status Updates


• Q & A


• Multimedia


• Inspirational Quotes & Humor


• Replies and Discussion

For the most part, you’ll want to figure out a ratio of each type of content that is welcomed by your followers, create a plan to implement your sharing and then follow through. Depending on your resources and the size of your operation, this could involve hundreds of employees that have the ability to submit content they’ve found or created, or just one person who takes care of everything. I recently consulted with a web development company and came to the conclusion that they should send approximately 50 tweets each week, with only 20 percent containing a link back to their own blog. 50 percent of their tweets included content curated from others, and every day they send 3 tweets answering questions from random Twitter users about web development and the Internet.

Links to Articles

You’ll most likely bridge your company’s blog or website to your Twitter account through content marketing. It goes without saying that you will be tweeting links to your own content, and probably curating additional content from trusted industry resources. By sharing the highest quality content in your field you can position yourself as a go to industry expert, and you’ll quickly become known as a tweeter that filters out the fluff.

Your own content

I suggest doing a little detective and analytics work to find out which times your audience is most active. You can request a free report from Tweriod that analyzes the tweets of your followers to figure out which times of day they are most active. The analysis excludes automated tweets sent from programs like Twitterfeed and BufferApp, so you can rest assured that your followers are actually online during the peak times.

The Tweriod report will give you suggested timeframes for weekdays, weekends, Sundays and Mondays. For a small fee Tweriod will send you a much more detailed analysis that looks at metrics such as re-tweets and @mentions to give you an even more detailed look at prime tweeting times. The premium service from Tweriod costs $2.50 for every 5,000 followers, but over time the insight into your followers’ online behavior will pay for itself.



Tweriod analyzes your followers Tweeting patterns to determine which times of day are the best times to tweet. According to my report, anytime between 9am and 6pm is optimum for tweeting during the weekdays.

An alternate service, Whentotweet.com, uses a similar algorithm to determine the best times to send out tweets. For only $4.99, regardless of number of followers, Wheretotweet will look at your followers’ tweets and send you visual depiction of their activity in the form of a line graph.

Even though using a tool like Tweriod or Whentotweet.com is easy, the best way to figure out how effective your Tweets are is by recording and analyzing the data yourself. To track click-thrus you can use a URL shortener such as bit.ly or goo.gl that keeps stats on how many people visit your links. Use a spreadsheet to record your tweets, the time they were sent, and how many visits you got. Try to retain as much control as possible by adhering to a strict schedule, and limiting variables.

If you want to get more in-depth with your analysis, Google’s URL builder tool will let you track additional data with your links, including where your visitors are coming from. Let’s face it, if your primary goal is selling American Flags, domestic traffic is going to be much more valuable than International traffic, so you’ll want to make that distinction. The more variables you can track, the better you’ll be able to isolate outliers and come to a conclusion about which ties offer not just the most traffic back to your site, but the most valuable traffic back to your site.

Scheduling

Now that you know which times of day are the best times to reach your followers, you can use BufferApp to schedule the tweets that promote your own content during peak usage times. Since you may not be available to trigger your tweets, BufferApp will make sure that your blog posts and other created content is always shared at the best time. You can go a step further and use a combination of Ifttt and BufferApp to import your RSS feed to be scheduled into peak usage tweets. Relying on a tool like Twitterfeed that imports from RSS feeds shortly after a new post is found doesn’t guarantee that anyone will actually see your tweets.



You can make a new item in your RSS feed a trigger sharing in your social networks immediately, or you can add it to the BufferApp and schedule the share for a specific time.

An accepted strategy is to send out tweets promoting your own content several times each day. Several of social media’s leading thought leaders agree that this concept doesn’t constitute spam as long as you’re careful. On the day you publish a blog post, you can tweet it up to three times without raising many eyebrows. The key is to re word your tweets so that it isn’t obvious that you’re just sharing the same piece of content. I suggest tweeting your recent blog post once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night.

Content Curation

You’ve made sure that you’re reaching your followers at optimum tweet times with your created content, but you’ll need to add some additional content to be shared throughout the rest of the day. If users just wanted to read all your articles, they would visit your blog. The idea of Twitter is that you’ll share all the greatest content, and it will decrease your viability substantially if you don’t include posts from other websites in your tweets.

You may have more followers online at 3pm than 8am, but there will be some users who never use Twitter after noon. To reach the maximum number of followers, you’ll need to send out tweets throughout the day. The idea is to reach an optimum saturation point where the majority of your followers will notice you in their streams and start to form recognition, but not be overwhelmed by your messages. Over sharing is one of the worst mistakes you can make, but it’s hard if not impossible to please everyone while still reaching as many users as possible.

I can’t tell you how many times you will need to tweet each day to maximize your reach and remain relevant without pissing off your existing customers. Not only does each industry have different expectations regarding Twitter usage, every single following will require different considerations. In the social media marketing niche I participate in, it’s not uncommon for Twitter users to send out 40 tweets in a single day, every day. High school students will often use Twitter as a sort of public text message service, sending out over 100 tweets each day. Still yet, there will be users who are used to Facebook’s status updating patterns, and will only tweet once per day.

You will however need to curate a certain number of other people’s content in order to develop your unique content sharing profile, and keep your avatar in the streams of your followers. Users will get turned off if they see you sharing 10 posts from your own website for every 1 post you share from other industry related blogs. You’ll want to at least keep your original content ratio below 25%, but I would recommend going even lower if you can. So if you’re sharing your daily blog update three times each day, you will need to curate nine articles from other blogs.

The primary consideration for curating content is quality. You are acting as a filter for your followers, so aim to be a good one. Next you need to remember that if you’re a technology blogger, your fans have likely read the posts on the leading industry websites already. It doesn’t add much to your stream to share the latest article from Mashable or Tech Crunch because not only are they obvious destinations, they’ve also already been re-tweeted a couple thousand times already. Your role is to be a content discovery agent. Some of the best writers on the net get fewer than 100 visitors each day, and it’s your job to find the best pieces from the best writers that no one else has ever heard of.

Now that you have an idea of how many posts you need to share each day, you should look into integrating your content sharing with your tools. BufferApp will allow you to space out the articles you find over the course of the day. Assuming that you stumble across 9 other high quality pieces of content every day, all you’ll have to do is add them to your buffer as you browse the web.

If you’re really busy and can’t find the time to curate the content yourself, you can set up TwitterFeed to pull posts into your Twitter stream directly through RSS. Choose mid-sized blogs that are industry specific and maintain a high level of quality. This isn’t the best way to handle content curation, but it can be effective and may be the only option for someone who is operating on borrowed time as is.

Another tool that combines the scheduling abilities of Buffer with the content discovery abilities of Google search is BundlePost. If you have an hour or so each week to handle its maintenance, BundlePost is probably the most effective and efficient way to handle content curation. You start by constructing a Google alert for industry specific terms, and publishing the alert as a feed. Import the feed in to BundlePost, and set up a schedule for your Tweets.

You’ll need to log in to BundlePost every so often to go through your feed and import the content into your schedule, but the application will handle the rest. Since you’re using Google for content discovery, you’ll never have to worry about your stream getting stale from the same sources. There are three tiers for accounts at BundlePost, but since the bottom tier is free, there is no reason why you shouldn’t use it as a possible option for content curation.

Answering Questions

One of my favorite uses of the microblog is to reach out to other users who are asking questions. Many users see Twitter as a crowd sourcing platform where they can get feedback on everything from “which outfit should I wear this weekend” to “how do I block people on Facebook”.

It’s not every day that potential followers reach out and give you the opportunity to connect with them on multiple levels, but that’s exactly what a question is. If you provide an accurate and legitimate solution or answer, the user is going to be genuinely thankful for your help. At the very least they will follow you, or you’ll leave them with a positive impression. Your answer may just inspire them to hire a professional, and since you’re standing right in front of them, your odds of getting hired just went up exponentially.

There is a plugin for Chrome and Firefox called inboxQ that will allow you to search all the recent tweets for questions that contain certain key phrases that you define. Not every result will be a viable lead, but if you are smart about your search terms you can limit the noise and target the people you really want to connect with. The secret for getting the best results with inboxQ is to know your audience, and understand how they ask questions.



When you help someone facing a problem, they are almost always grateful for your help, and will likely follow you.

To optimize your search terms you need to study the language used in pertinent questions more than anything. You aren’t going to get a great list of questions about Feng Shui by using Feng Shui as a keyword. As an expert you know the circumstances in which Feng Shui is often used, so break down the questions, and use those keywords. It has more to do with which way your home faces, re-arranging furniture and addressing your problems with superstition than it does “feng shui”.

By answering questions you’re not only educating the person who asked, you’re educating all of your followers. If you sell Vacuum cleaners for a living and answer a question about whether or not a customer across the country should buy the turbo model, you probably aren’t going to get that sale. However, when you say “The standard model only has two less horsepower than the turbo, and it’s $300 cheaper, so the upgrade isn’t justified”, a customer in your region sees that you aren’t concentrating on the up sale. They may have planned to visit your competitor tomorrow to purchase the turbo model, but now they’re going to visit your store and buy the standard one. After all, you’re obviously an expert and seeing you connect with customers on Twitter indicates that you have extraordinary customer service.

You may need to go through a dozen results returned by inboxQ to find a question that you’re qualified to answer and is pertinent enough to be valuable to your niche, but the level of authority that it adds to your feed is well worth it. I recommend trying to answer at least two questions every day of the week if possible.

Instagram Shares and Photo Uploads

A content strategy wouldn’t truly be diverse without other forms of multimedia, and Twitter is no different. If you use an iPhone or Android device you can send photos straight from Instagram to your Twitter feed (which is effectively doubling your exposure if you’ve attracted a following on both networks). You don’t have to always keep your picture shares on topic; everyone can relate to beautiful scenery or food porn. It’s a good idea to try and relate your shares to your niche anyway. A major part of marketing on Twitter is marketing yourself, so any photo that is relevant to you is going to be relevant to your followers as well. Users aren’t following your business, they’re following you. This includes pictures of yourself, as well as friends and family.

There are college aged girls who do nothing but tweet Instagram pictures they snap during the day and photos of themselves, but have attracted tens of thousands of followers. Twitter is really popular with younger generations, so keep that in mind when you get photo opportunities.

Depending on your audience and niche, multimedia shares may need to be a much larger percentage of your feed than what I would recommend for businesses. For most people, sharing a single photo every day and several photos during events is a good rule of thumb. Whether you’re on a business trip, attending a trade show, having a sale at your store or attending a parade, your followers will likely be interested. You’ll also have the option of connecting with other event attendees, so remember to tag your tweets with the appropriate hash-tags.

Ask Questions Yourself

Remember when I said that Twitter was a great place to crowdsource opinions and information? Well, that dynamic works in both directions. One of the most tested methods of sparking engagement is by asking questions. Users enjoy sharing their opinions more than they do hearing yours, so why not invite them to do just that?

There are some professionals that blatantly elicit responses with questions, seemingly to spur users to populate their profiles. It becomes obvious when the questions aren’t relevant to current news, or anything the person asking is involved in. I may run a social media blog, but if I asked “Which social platform do you prefer?” it’s obviously fishing for engagement. A lot of users recognize this type of fishing, and see it as an annoyance. Make sure that your questions are genuine, pertinent and timely.

Jokes and Quotes

Even though a feed that is completely full of jokes and inspirational quotes is limiting when it comes to engagement and business, no one can deny the emotional reverberation that quips like these can induce. People like to laugh and feel inspired. When you have hundreds of links, random updates, and Lady Gaga re-tweets zipping through your feed, a profound quote seems like Twitter gold.

Since quotes are so popular on Twitter, many quotes websites have entire categories dedicated to quotations that fit in the 140 character limit. A simple Google search will return thousands of quotes that you can fill your BufferApp with to keep your followers knee deep in inspirational goodness indefinitely. However, the best quotes and humor tweets are the ones you think up yourself. When you come across an idea on a competitor’s blog that is original and profound, quote them on it! When a friend or coworker metes out inspirational wisdom, take a note and tweet it later when you get the chance. Be sure to credit the appropriate party, and avoid quotes that are too well known.

I would suggest posting a quote 1-2 times daily. Inspirational quotes are a great way to start the morning, and something funny helps your followers unwind toward the end of their workday. The most important thing is to know your audience, and pick your tweets to compliment your niche.

Replies and Twitter Chats

I don’t reply to everything sent my way on Twitter, but that’s just because most of the tweets that mention me aren’t meant to be part of a conversation with me. If someone directs a question, comment, praise, or any other type of feedback toward me I always make sure to reply to them. Of course, the number of users who are trying to have a two-way dialogue with me is still manageable.

Even though each reply is directed at an individual, you must treat it like every other piece of content you share on social media. Try to craft your tweet so it can stand on its own without the context of prior messages. Very few followers will take the time to follow a conversation all the way back to the beginning, and some followers find it annoying when you turn their Twitter stream into a one way conversation that they don’t even comprehend.

The same rule of thumb goes for participation in Twitter chats. You’ll quickly alienate your followers if you treat your Twitter account like an IRC chat room. When someone asks a question, re-tweet the question and try to tag your answer onto the beginning of it. If it doesn’t fit, restate the question in your answer. Be mindful of the people who follow you at all times, and remember that everything you tweet is public.

Diversification is a must in social media for business. You keep it fresh, and make sure that there’s something for everybody. What other types of tweets do you send to your followers? Do you know if they enjoy getting them?

Adam is a veteran Web Developer and Online Journalist. He runs several web properties, a regional web design and marketing firm and is a Featured Contributor for Yahoo! Technology. You can find Adam at his personal blog, Social Media Marketing Expert.

Adam Justice

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Adams website

How Social Content Attracts and Engages More Customers

By Patricia Redsicker Published June 14, 2012

When you think of content optimization, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Do you think of keywords, links and search engines?

Or do you focus on useful content, interesting articles, engaged audiences and happy customers?

If you’re in the second camp, you’re clearly familiar with “the big picture” of optimization. But if you’re in the first camp, then stick around—sounds like you need a new perspective!

The most important thing we learned from the Google Panda updates in 2011 is that search engines are really serious about improving search quality and user experience.

Since then, the priority for site owners has been to create original, interesting and sharable content that attracts links from other sites.

Lee Odden has written his first book titled, Optimize: How to Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing. In the book, he takes a holistic approach to content and search optimization and proposes that companies should consider all of the digital assets, data and content they have to work with in order to make both customers and search engines happy.

Here’s what you need to know about the book.

Author’s Purpose

Lee Odden, author of Optimize

Lee Odden would like to change the conversation about what optimization means and help companies realize that a customer-centric approach to content that engages and inspires action is more profitable than fussing over keywords and links.

His objective is that marketers, PR professionals, small- to medium-sized business owners and large company marketing executives will think more about how to meet their target audiences’ needs with content they truly care about.

What to Expect

At 223 pages, the book is divided into three Phases.



In Phase 1, you will learn about the changing nature of consumer preferences and behaviors in terms of search, social media and content, and what that means for your online marketing strategy.

In Phase 2, you will learn some “optimized content marketing tactics,” such as content planning, measurement and developing buyer personas into topics.

Phase 3 is all about scaling. You will be introduced to the processes and training needed to grow and maintain an integrated social media, SEO and content marketing program in your organization.

Favorite Chapters

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage for an Optimized State of Mind

In this chapter, the author poses a profoundly important question: “Are you optimizing for search engines and rankings or for customers and sales?”

No doubt you’ve had this experience: You’re searching on Google or Bing, and you come across a page that is clearly “optimized” for SEO. This page has a high rank in SERP but when you click through, the actual content doesn’t do much for your overall experience.

When you see these pages, just remember that it is becoming increasingly important to optimize content for customer and user experiences, rather than for search engines. Here are some good tips to guide you:

• Use words that matter most to your customers in titles, links and body copy in order to inspire your readers to take action.


• Text used in titles should make it easy for readers to understand the topic of the page in the first few words.


• Text used to link from one page to another should give readers a good idea what they’ll find on the destination page.


• A consistent approach to titling, labeling and copy in your web pages, image captions, video descriptions and links will create more confidence for the reader and inspire sales.

These tips will help you to create an experience that is more relevant to your customers and at the same time produce content that is search engine–friendly. But if you focus only on keywords, links and search engines, you stand the chance of alienating your customers with content that lacks creativity and inspiration.

Chapter 4: In It to Win It—Setting Objectives

Before a business decides what content to optimize and socialize (or even how to do it), they must ask another essential marketing question: “What are we trying to do?” The answer should be obvious: “We’re trying to get more people to buy what we’re selling.”

A winning strategy requires setting marketing objectives that align with overall organizational goals. Image source: iStockPhoto.

This is the general objective for all companies across the board. But when it comes to practical online marketing objectives, these will be unique to each company’s situation. Some companies want to increase their number of customers, others want to focus more on revenue and profitability, and still others want to emphasize customer retention.

These are all great objectives and from a search, social media and content perspective, being able to tie them to overall organizational goals is essential.

Establishing your marketing goals starts with a good understanding of your current business performance. So an online marketing program that leverages content, SEO and social media will include key performance indicators such as:

• Search visibility


• Social mentions


• Web page links


• Citations in online media and blogs


• Social shares


• Social links


• Visitors to company website


• Visitors to company social networks


• Newsletter subscribers


• Blog and social content subscribers, fans, friends and followers


• Comments and other measures of engagement

Measurable marketing outcomes typically include:

• Number of downloads


• Webinar or other online event participation


• Inquiries


• Leads


• Sales


• Referrals


• Brand advocacy

In a nutshell, the simplest thing to do is evaluate your online marketing strategy for what has worked so far and what needs improvement. To tie marketing goals to overall business goals, think about how well your site is performing currently and what the overall online business goals are for the future.

Chapter 9: Content Isn’t King, It’s the Kingdom—Creation vs. Curation

It’s a good idea to mix curated content with original content. In fact, content curating is a great way to extend your own site, but only in addition to—not instead of—your original content.

Rule of thumb: Pure creation is demanding. Pure automation doesn’t engage. Curating provides the best of both worlds. Here are some content curation tips.

Types of content to curate:

• Content created by influential people who are important to your target audience


• Statistics, research and reports


• Compelling or provocative industry news


• Videos—YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler


• SlideShare presentations


• White papers, ebooks and case studies


• Infographics and other data visualizations


• Tips, how-to’s and best practices


• Aggregating the best comments from your own or others’ blogs

Where to publish curated content:

• Company blogs


• Ebooks


• Email newsletters


• Social media channels


• Contributed articles (or guest posts) to industry sites

Sources of news to curate:

• Industry-specific newsletters


• Google Alerts, Google News or Google Reader


• Curation tools: Flipboard, Scoop.it, Storify


• News aggregators: Alltop, popurls, Techmeme


• Press release distribution services: PRWeb, PRNewswire, or Marketwire

Chapter 11: Social Network Development—Don’t Be Late to the Networking Party

Lee Odden introduces Chapter 11 with yet another compelling question, “How long does it take to see any kind of ROI from a social media marketing campaign?”

Unfortunately the answer is a long time. Here’s why. The time to start building a social network is not when you need it. The time to start is well beforehand, because it takes time to develop relationships. It takes time to listen, participate, create optimized content and understand the triggers that will inspire sales or referrals.

It takes a long time to develop online relationships that lead to social media ROI. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Many small businesses go after the most popular social sites with a “fish where the fish are” mentality. While that is not an unreasonable strategy in itself, it’s important to know which specific social networks are relevant to your customers.

Because there are only a handful of social networks, chances are one or more will be relevant for your online marketing and there are many opportunities for brands on each network. Here are some of them.

Opportunities for brands on Facebook:

• Participate in one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many conversations


• Build connections and relationships with individuals


• Listen to what brand fans are interested in


• Create and cross-promote shareable content


• Offer promotions and special offers


• Interact with current and potential customers

Opportunities for brands on Google+:

• Google+ hangouts for B2B brands can be used for videoconferencing to answer questions, conduct training or offer creative pitches.


• Google+ allows you to upload a mix of updates, images and videos to relevant segments of your network.


• Because Google+ is integrated with Google search, the more people who add your brand to their circles, the greater the chance that you will appear in those users’ Google search results.

Personal Impressions

This book scores very high on two points in particular. First is the author’s interpretation and delivery of a very complete and holistic Internet marketing strategy that includes search, social media and content marketing. This is not a new approach, but Lee Odden delivers excellent insight, detail and practical application on the subject.

Second, I love the way he offers a fresh perspective on the conversation surrounding optimization, as well as his candid critique of the misguided approach to SEO that a lot of marketers have taken.

On the downside however, I’ve already come across several books that are very similar to Optimize. Here’s an example. Many of these authors are peers and industry thought leaders who share parallel platforms and mindsets, so it’s no surprise that their books start to sound a little similar too.

Having said that, you could probably learn everything you need to know about “the three kings” of online marketing—search, social and content—in this one book. Optimize is an excellent investment, especially if you haven’t read other books with a similar approach.

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 4-star rating.

What do you think? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Images from iStockPhoto.