Tag Archives: Social Media

Quick Updates on Social Media Efforts

A few weeks ago I decided to work on pushing out my blog content to social media sites via a publishing plugin for WordPress. For the most part it’s been great, and I’ve even had some interaction come from the use of it. One weird thing that I’ve seen, is that my tweets get favorited a lot, more so than retweets.

It’s frustrating, because I’ve seen little traction from both in that regard. That being said, I’d much rather have a retweet than a favorite when it comes down to it. A favorite is simply a nod and a bookmark to me, and that’s not a guarantee that the person that marked my tweet as a favorite will go back and look through my site (haven’t seen any indication of that anyways).

A retweet however, can do wonders. I enjoy it much more when I see that a tweet gets blasted out to another 400+ followers of that person’s account. Of course, that’s the logical thing to say anyways. I’d prefer the eyes of many over one, unless that one person had a 100% conversion rate.

Another thing that I’ve been trying to get into the habit of, using Google Plus and making sure I interact on a daily basis with things that interest me. It’s been a help with referral traffic and being placed within other people’s circles. It’s been great for networking and establishing a voice on that site as well. The converstations there are way more rewarding than they have been anywhere else in the social media sphere.

Facebook, is something that I haven’t done too much of. I really need to build a quality group or something and just can’t get into it. Maybe I’ll accomplish that in a few weeks and start promoting it as much as possible.

Speaking of, Facebook introduced larger images for link share posts. That’s a bonus, because I felt that if someone felt it was worth sharing, it should display a larger prominence within their timeline as a show of support to the given link.

Good Content…Does It Really Trump SEO Efforts?

I’ve been thinking about this for the past few weeks when it comes to content creation, and the constant preaching that Matt Cutts does when he discusses the value of creating good content. Cutts main concept is that good content trumps SEO efforts.

“Even if you do brain-dead stupid things and shoot yourself in the foot, but have good content, we still want to return it,” says Cutts. In fact, Cutts says that Google tries to make it so that sites “don’t have to do SEO.” – Cutts discussing how even the best HTML website still gets beat out by having good code.

At this point, the more I read and the more I look into websites, it seems that social signals have the ability to trump SEO for a limited time. However, that immediate impact is then replaced over time with the value of good SEO.

If having well written content was the end all case of being seen, then backlinks would be less important and we wouldn’t have to worry about having those important links pointing back to our site to stay number one or even on the first page for that matter. That being said, we know backlinks are still very important in the eyes of Google. While most of the discussion points come from Cutts saying that having good content can still be better than having an accurately coded and clean SEO site structure, to me that’s yet to be seen.

Body ContentIf having good content were the case, I wouldn’t have seen a site that had limited spun content rank number one for a certain keyword just by having back links and a ton of fake social media accounts give likes and shares. In the past few weeks, that site has dropped in the rankings but it trumped the thought that content was king.

What that site had however, was a boost in backlinks to the page it was ranking for, and all kinds of social signals pointing to that page. Regardless of the content that was on it, it still ranked number 1 for the span of a month based on the virility of the website using external factors. Depending on the keyword ranking, that one month could bring in more leads than anything else they do and it far outweighs the penalty that’s going to come. Especially if the site owners follow the route of buying a new domain and doing the same thing the next time to organically rank number one.

Content, SEO, and Social Media must work together

Now I’m not saying that content isn’t king, because it most certainly is. What I’m saying, is that even as much as Cutts wants to ignore it, SEO is still the queen, and social media is the prince. Without good content, it doesn’t go far in social media. However, with mediocre to bad content, you can still rank number one or even within the top five important spots on the first page by power of SEO.

The part where good content shines with SEO is if that content is helping you convert, which is something that mediocre content won’t do, even on its best day. The point of all of this is that it’s not just one or the other; they all have to be on point to create a long last effect in the rankings. Good content only gets you so far, just like good SEO does. Having both SEO and content working together along with the involvement of Social Media, can take you and your website to the next level.

Hashtag Support enabled by Facebook

As of June 6th 2013, Facebook officially became a hashtag friendly website. Facebook will now allow users to post and search by “#keyword.” The good thing about this, is that Facebook is also making hashtags searchable, even if they’re on different social media platforms like Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Facebook Hashtag SupportIf you’re new to the social media and inbound marketing game and wondering how it can work with your business, I’ll provide you a few tips to help you get started with this hashtag function.

Creating a hashtag – A ‘hashtag’ can be created by simply putting a # in front of a word, or acronym with no spaces. For example “#keyword,” or “#keyphrase.” The good thing, is that Facebook and the other social media websites all follow the uniform standard when it comes to creating hashtags.

If you’re looking to use hashtags for your business, keep the same ideals when you’re looking for keywords as well. Don’t use anything ridiculous like #cheapshoesnobodyremembers. Nobody will remember or type in a hashtag that long, so refrain from using it. Keep it simple, stupid!

Click on hashtags – By clicking on the hashtag that you posted, or clicking on another one that is relevant to you or your business, you’re then able to find everyone else posting about things like you. Doing this not only gives you more ideas to write about, but also gives you the ability to become the authority on a keyword if it aligns with your business correctly.

Personally, I’ll say to never pass up on being able to answer a question if you know it. You never know what could happen with that post and it could potentially be shared or seen by more than one person.

Check for hashtag trends – Finding trends, or being able to see trends to hashtags can help you create content and continue on with communication. Sure, hashtags don’t always translate to your business. If they do match though, you already know it’s being talked about, so you might as well hop on board and see how much traction you can create with content created for that hashtag. To learn more about what tags are trending, visit Hashtags.org.

Hashtags and the use of them are meant to be simple. Social Media is mostly unexplored with small business owners, or even used incorrectly. The use of hashtags and social media can benefit your business and help you expand out further than you imagined.

FTC’s Ruling On Endorsed Tweets

This is something I’ve seen more and more of throughout my twitter feed lately. Ever see a tweet that had the words #ad or #sponsored next to it and though “well at least they’re honest?”

That’s not because of honesty, it’s because it’s now something that you must do if you’re pushing a product through 140 characters on Twitter. The FTC updated their .com disclosure recently to included sponsored/advertisement tweets.

The new guidelines supplied by the FTC included all Social Media networks. However the FTC specifically targeted tweets and some regulations needed to keep them honest.

Sites with longer character limits have no excuse for leaving out disclosures, but twitter’s micro-posts have raised many questions about ad ethics over the years. Now any paid for endorsement must include two parts:

1. The statement that it’s an advertisement and not an organic tweet

2. The acknowledgment that the product might not work exactly as the endorser promises.

In a way, this is really good news for me, as it allows me to block tweets with the #ads. Keeping my twitter as fresh/clean as possible when it comes to the random celebrities I follow who want to peddle products.

The FTC’s updated rules show an evolving marketplace. The use of social media and smaller mobile screens have made messages smaller — in the case of Twitter, as small as 140 characters. And some celebrities and others are paid for the social messages they post.

The FTC says, “consumer protection laws apply equally to marketers across all mediums, whether delivered on a desktop computer, a mobile device, or more traditional media such as television, radio, or print.” With the new guidelines the FTC wants to cut false or misleading claims made through ads that are masked as social media posts. The rules aim to keep businesses compliant with disclosure laws, which must people to clearly show that a message is sponsored and that the poster is being paid to send that message.

I’m all for this move and am very happy the FTC is making the realization that people will literally do all they can to sell a product that they own.