BLOG = Better Listings On Google
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B = better
L = listings
O = on
G = Google
Marketing today is different. Yet, there is no need to reinvent it all. Think about how to integrate what you are already doing into today’s marketing mix. You should incorporate social media marketing into an overall marketing plan just as you do Internet marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), events, advertising, specials and public relations.
Your online interactive strategy is built on stories, messages, and events, with ample space to encourage conversations and spontaneity. However, a sound social media strategy ends, rather than begins, with social networking sites. First, you must create an optimized website and blog. Whether you want to build brand or manage your reputation, you must create a plan, measure results, and focus on milestones. Milestones could include launching a blog, optimizing the blog to become a top five referral source to your website, or getting 200 new fans on Facebook.
Integrating social media into your overall marketing mix will streamline your program and make it more effective. Think of your blog or your blog/website as the engine of your program. Your editorial calendar will center on your blog and the blog will pull the entire program together.
My friend Paul Chaney says that BLOG stands for Better Listings on Google. Your blog or your blog/website links all of your sites together and provides your program with the necessary search engine optimization to improve your listings on Google, and all the other search engines for that matter. You blog or blog/website are the center of your program, much like the center of a wheel or a car’s engine. No matter what sites come and go, if you have built your program around the one piece that you own (your blog), you will have a strong program for years to come and great search engine optimization.
Contact mRELEVANCE to build your optimized blog and complete social media marketing program.
Who Should Write the Company Blog?
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Often people ask me, “Who should be the author of the company blog?” And like so many things in life, there is really not just one right answer. It could be someone in sales or marketing, or even the company president or CEO. Maybe it is even all of the above. Your corporate blog can be a team effort.
One of the fun things about having a group of bloggers is that your blog will have multiple authors and multiple voices. This allows your readers to identify with one or more of the writers. Each author should post under their own name so that they are easily identifiable. You will discover that each blogger develops their own own group of followers over time due to different writing styles as well as their humor and personality.
An additional benefit of having multiple bloggers is that it removes the burden of all having all the writing fall on one person. However, one individual should manage the blog. The blog manager could be an employee or you could outsource this task to an interactive marketing firm like mRELEVANCE.
The blog manager will:
- Oversee the blog schedule
- Review the editorial content
- Ensure that writers post content regularly
- Moderate the blog
Moderating the blog entails checking posts for proper SEO (keywords, anchor text, and links), monitoring and responding to comments, and forwarding comments that require a response from someone else to the appropriate individual.
If you are interested in learning more about blogging, contact Carol Flammer at mRELEVANCE for more information. We’d love to help you set up an effective company blog and social media program.
Just Let Your Fingers Do the Walking. . .
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Remember the old jingle to “let your fingers do the walking” its a snap? Our fingers are still doing the walking, but it certainly isn’t in a printed phone book. A recent survey from Yelp! shows that only 24% of business owners consider the yellow page phone books relevant today. Business owners believe that only a very few customers find them by looking in a yellow page phone book. Instead business owners say that their customers’ fingers are doing the walking on keyboards, tablets and smartphones as consumers turn toward online and mobile directories to find businesses.
Online Search
With 85% of shoppers using Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or another search engine to start their online searches, a sound search engine optimization or social media optimization plan starts with identifying the search terms buyers use to find you or companies like yours online. Next, you integrate these search terms as keywords into your blog posts, online public relations, and other online content you post as part of your social media marketing program. When these keywords are used as anchor text, search engines will identify your site as relevant for these words and phrases.
You must think like a search engine. This is especially important when blogging and posting to social media sites. One place to look to see how Internet shoppers are finding your website is in your analytics account. Yikes! If you don’t have an analytics account, then set one up immediately for both your website and blog. Google Analytics is free, but there are many other programs (both free and paid) available. You may be using Yahoo, Webtrends, Allstats, and or Urchin.
Make sure that your business is reaching today’s consumers where they start their searches for products and services – online.
If you need help with your interactive marketing including search engine optimization, contact mRELEVANCE, we can help!
Duplicate Content on Your Blog is Bad, Um…K?
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Duplicate content on your blog is bad. Why? Because Google tells me so; and when Google speaks, I listen. Besides, don’t you want to provide your readers with thoughtful, unique and relevant content? You should be providing information that keeps your readers on the edge of their seats and coming back for more!
Well, maybe your posts about your new project, advancement, award or service aren’t as enthralling as the latest celebrity gossip, but you DO want to be seen as an industry leader in your subject area—something that won’t happen if you constantly repost material from another company’s site or even your own. Below, we’ll explore duplicate content and why you should avoid this pesky annoyance at all costs.
What is duplicate content?
You may be wondering what the heck I’m talking about. Well, duplicate content occurs when you replicate substantial blocks of copy. First, it can be information that appears multiple times on your site. Second, it can be the same content found word-for-word on a different external websites. Quotes and small amounts of information are OK. Usually, small amounts of copy are replicated unintentionally.
Why should you care?
You should care because Google cares; and when Google flags your site as containing duplicate content you move farther down in search engine results. Why? Because Google wants to provide its browsers with a lot of unique content rather than the same old stuff, and so it filters information accordingly.
Steps to take to avoid duplicate content:
- Make sure each post is substantially different. If you’re posting similar information on multiple sites, then change it up. Your articles should be 40 to 60 percent different from each other.
- Be seen as the original source. There are times when you want to put the same information on multiple sites (like when posting a news release). However, to make sure your site ranks first, you should include links back to your own site in the article.
Taking a few precautions will help ensure that your site doesn’t wind up being buried in the shuffle.
Not worried about duplicate content because your business doesn’t have a website or blog yet? We can help. Contact mRELEVANCE today to begin developing your online presence. Our team builds full interactive marketing programs including blogs, websites, search engine optimization, online public relations, email marketing and more.
New Facebook Changes Affect Branding
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Over the past few months, Facebook has made lots of changes. Even though these changes may be annoying, just remember that change is constant in the social media realm. Change often provides easier and more effective ways to communicate, as well as to brand through social media. In the marketing world, just as we learn how to control our personal pages, we must also learn how to maintain our fan pages.
“The challenge for Facebook marketers is keeping up with the changes that matter,” stated a PR Daily post. “Some are cosmetic, but others will possibly impact fan engagement and number of likes.”
Here is a list of some of those changes that matter:
Insights Analytics Tool
- See how your page’s posts reach people on Facebook (the whole site, not just your fans)
- Track numbers for total like, people talking about this, weekly total reach of a page and friends of fans
- Optimize content for posts by seeing what content is reaching the most people
People Talk About This
Measures:
- New likes
- Posts on your walls from fans
- Likes, comments or shares of your page’s posts
- Answers to posted questions
- RSVPs to an event
- Photo-tags
- Check-ins at your place
Conversations of Pages
- Allows your brand to reach more than just fans by extending content to friends of fans
Premium Ad Unit
- Combines page posts with social context from your fans. So, if a person viewing a brand’s ad has friends connected to that brand’s page, Facebook will share which friends like the page.
These changes will help get your brand out to a wider audience. In order to stay up-to-date with the latest Facebook fan pages, Like www.Facebook.com/mRELEVANCE and www.Facebook.com/FacebookPages. For more help with your social media marketing, contact mRELEVANCE.
He Said. She Said. How Often Should I Post?
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Our ongoing, “He Said. She Said” column continues. Each post focuses on answering a question about online marketing from two different perspectives. mRELEVANCE managing partners offer their respective expertise in this column. Carol Flammer answers from the reader’s perspective, where it’s all about content. Mitch Levinson answers from the perspective of a search engine.
Q: How often should I post?
A: Carol – Post regularly on your blog. Keep your readers in mind, typically two to three times a week is about all they will “accept.” Think about how the content posts through to Facebook and Twitter. If it automatically posts to these sites then think about how much content these readers will accept. They want to see you as credible source of content, but you don’t want to post so much content that they start ignoring you.
b. Mitch – The more often you post, the more fresh content you have on your site, and the more often you encourage the spiders to visit your site and re-index your pages. Strictly from an SEO (search engine optimization) perspective, every single day is the best answer, but that may not be realistic. You want Google and the other search engines to notice you and you want them to keep coming back to feed on your content and keywords as often as you can get them there. But you need to maintain that balance – it is like the difference between art and science. You have to get the search engines there, but you also need to keep visitors interested in your topics.
From the science standpoint, the more often you encourage the search engines to reindex the more often they come back to site and the more relevant the site will appear. Carol, you’re right in that the media you use will determine what will be tolerated so you’re not ignored. It is easier to publish a lot of content on Twitter , and not as easy to publish a lot of content on Facebook. Your goal is to achieve a balance of the art and the science of SEO.
For more information on blogging or online content, please contact mRELEVANCE at 770-383-3360.
Go Places with Google
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Map on mRELEVANCE's Google Place page
What is the first thing you do when you want to go somewhere new? You Google it, of course. You jot down the address and hours. Then, you check out the place’s rating, reviews and even photos.
Google Place pages are the perfect resource for this information. Recently, the Google team has made many adjustments in order to make Google Place pages simpler for desktop and mobile device users.
Now, according to Google’s Lat Long Blog, users wanted a more personalized experience when signed in to their Google account. They now get a focused, elastic and effortless experience. Photos are easier to upload with a more obvious “Upload a Photo” button. Review snippets from other web sources, such as Yelp, Citysearch and TripAdvisor, have been removed so that rating and reviews are only from fellow Google users. Additionally, all reviews are in a single section and a “Write a Review” button has been added to the top of each page.
Soon, Google will bring users searching for local places even more personalized results and ways to rate, discover and share. More information will be available at the push of a button—“Google Search”.
Trying a new restaurant tonight? Going to a new store? Be sure to add your reviews so that other users can go places with Google too!
Need help getting your business on Google Places? Just contact the team at mRELEVANCE, and we can assist with all of your Internet marketing and search engine optimization needs.
Google+ is Now Open to Everyone
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Google+ is now open to everyone! Look for the blue arrow on Google’s home page, it will walk you through signing up. After being an exclusive invite only site since July, this new social media site has fully launched its beta version to the public.
According to Mashable, Google’s Vic Gundotra wrote on the official company blog, “We’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups.”
Did you know that 99 improvements were made on Google+ during this field trial? Crazy!
These improvements included the ability to use Google+ Hangouts (which are way better than Skype, in my opinion) on Android devices. Gundotra stated, “We think Hangouts should keep pace with how you socialize in the real-world.”
In addition, Google+ now includes search. Not having a good search option was one of the weak points of the site, but now users can easily find people and look up different topics. Plus, you can search through Google+ and web content.
If you were one of the original Google+ users, you may remember that the site was all of the rage when it first launched. Since then, Facebook has revamped to include features that were unique to Google+. Facebook has even made changes to the News Feed and Friend Lists to make them function more like Google+ Circles.
However, since everyone can now sign up for Google+, including more of your friends, family members and co-workers, maybe the site will be the next Facebook. Who knows!
If you need help navigating through the Google+ world, be sure to click here. Once you sign up, make sure to connect with mRELEVANCE founders, Mitch Levinson and Carol Flammer. Also, contact the team at mRELEVANCE for all of your social media marketing and search engine optimization needs.
Facebook Revamps Its Dashboard
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Working at an internet marketing agency, I’ve come to expect and adapt to Facebook’s changes. If you’ve logged into Facebook today, you’ll notice it looks a little different. Here’s a brief run-down of some of the changes:
Lists
While lists have been available for awhile, they’ve been a semi-hidden feature. Now they’re prominently displayed on the left side of your screen. Smart Lists are sorted based on where you live, went to school, work and who’s listed as your family. You can also build your own lists. This concept is similar to Google+’s circles. You can share things with specific lists and filter content by list.
Top News
Facebook wants to be your social newspaper, so the top of your feed is devoted to “top news,” things it thinks you won’t want to miss. Did your cousin post about a job promotion and the rest of your family is congratulating him in the comments? Odds are that will be in your Top News, even if it was posted hours before you logged in. Read More→
Website Design
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Today your website is more important than ever. With 98 percent of consumers starting their search online for anything and everything, will they be able to find what they are looking for on your site?
Navigation:
Your website navigation tells customers how to find the information they need, so make sure it is easy to find and very clear. Try writing it in the terms that link back to why someone is visiting your site. (For example, if you are a realtor, your navigation might include: Selling Your House, Finding a New Home, Getting a Mortgage, etc.).
Website Design:
Your home page should be visually appealing, and your visitors should get a clear understanding of your business from it. This page should be simple and easy to read, and you should include content on your home page for the search engines to index. Although this content is important, keep it brief and to the point.
Contact Information:
Make sure that your customers can find you. Your contact information must be easy to locate. Include a phone number, a ‘contact us’ form and perhaps even an email address. Site visitors need to be able to reach out to you from wherever they are on the site, so make your contact information present on every page.
Call to Action:
Your site should have a clear call to action and should make it easy for customers to find the information they need to make a buying decision. Everything on your site should be accessible within two or three clicks. If you have so many layers of navigation that they can’t find a specific floorplan or pricing for a home within a few clicks, you are making it too hard.
Search Engine Optimization:
Your site needs to be built with proper on page Search Engine Optimization. On page SEO includes writing content with relevant keywords, proper links, title tags and meta data, which is the content that search engines read to know what each web page is about.
The site in our illustration is for Geordan Communities. Notice the clean navigation, clear copy and call to action. If you are looking for website design and development, call mRELEVANCE. We would love to help you build your next website for success.
