Tag Archives: Twitter

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.

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.

Link Building Through Relationships

Every SEO has the ability to create tons of content for the people searching for it, and the search engines who need to rank it. In fact, I think that’s the easiest part of doing Search Engine Optimization…link building? Not so much.

The hardest part, is finding credible links to get back links from, and getting those credible sites to even give you a mention. This is the struggle that I’ve decided to work with over the next few weeks/months/forever. I’ve really got to do a better job for myself in becoming more social on sites like Twitter/Google+/LinkedIn to really try and set up a solid connection between SEO’s and myself. Link building is about being social, credible, and willing to reach out and connect with people who share the same values as you do.

More or less, I’d love to create professional relationships with people near me in the industry and then through those created relationships follow through with an agreed upon link building program. Let’s face it, and it’s something that’s debated time and time again, that backlinks still very much matter for SEO and link building is essential. No matter how much people want to get away from them, they’re going to be with us for a while longer, and while content is “king,” Google is still looking for credible sites to display that information from.

The method most used, is looking for directories and just putting your link there and being done with. I have no interest in creating this kind of action. I want to solely use relationships and Social Media to build links with friends, while working to create necessary content worth linking with them.

Also, as a quick tip in for new products. Open Site Explorer just released their “newly-discovered” back links section using the Twitter index. It’s fantastically awesome and a good way to see your Social Media link building exercise come to life.