We sometimes find that clients get confused between the “Follow Us” icons added to digital media and the “Share This” functionality that allows visitors to directly share web pages through social media. These 2 things are not interchangeable.
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Follow Us vs. Share This
Get Your Videos Ranking: Video SEO for YouTube and Google
YouTube is much more than a video site. Google enjoys 63% of the search engine market and of that, YouTube (owned by Google) accounts for 25%. With Yahoo at 11% and Bing at 9%, YouTube is the second largest search engine. It has over 300,000,000 user accounts and is the second largest social media website after Facebook.
YouTube’s search algorithm includes: title, description, tags, number of views, user rating and incoming links. All of these elements can be influenced by either the video producer or the viewer, and will determine the placement in YouTube and Google’s search listings. YouTube and Google absolutely influence each other. The higher your video ranks in Google, the more views it will receive, and the better it will rank on YouTube. The better your video ranks on YouTube, the higher it will rank in Google.
The Other White Meat: Creating Landing Pages for Search Engines
Take some time to investigate landing pages and you’ll see that close to 100% of results will be talking about using stand alone web pages to drive conversions coming from email or sponsored listings. The purpose of these landing pages is to “Buy Today!” and “Sign Up Now!” – to convert every visitor into a buyer. Often these pages don’t even link to the main website. Its entire reason to exist is to sell.
I want to talk about the other kind of landing page – the kind that is built for search engines. The purpose of these pages is to earn a high organic ranking for a specific product or service. This gets you click throughs from organic search engine results that lead directly to your website.
Blog Content Creation Schedule
One of the best things to help your brand is to engage your audience with a blog. One of the worst things to jeopardize your brand is to let your blog go stagnant.
What does having a blog say about your brand if there’s nothing to read? Nothing at all. Taking the time to plan your blog strategy makes tasks transparent and easy to execute.
Negative Comments on Your Blog – Deal With It
Comments on your blog are awesome and you want to encourage people to respond as much as possible. It gives your blog life and offers an opportunity to interact with your readers/customers. Comments provide feedback on what customers think about your products, services, organization or opinions, all of which is valuable information you are receiving absolutely free.
How you respond to their comments, especially negative comments, is an extension of your online brand and people will take note. As in life, whenever I receive opinions or comments that differ from mine, I use some basic strategies to take the heat out of the situation and improve communication.
Foursquare and Gowalla Takes Social Media to a new Level
Everyone knows that Twitter is today’s social media darling. Twitter allows you to share links, news or status updates to your friends. This immediacy and the sharing of information to your network is the heart of social media. But with Twitter peaking everyone is wondering what the next big social media push will be and how it will affect business. Foursquare and Gowalla are making that push and businesses should be keen on trying these services out. Some businesses are already offering special deals for active users of these services. Why is this a good idea? Geotargeted marketing not only allows businesses to target an audience in the same city, but it also allows business to target an audience to the square-foot. But what do Foursquare and Gowalla do? Rather than explaining their functions, consider the following story:
You and your friends are waiting in line at a restaurant. Bored, you take out your iPhone and turn on your Foursquare or Gowalla app. Before you check into the restaurant, you notice a wings place listed near by. Curious, you take a look at that location’s profile since Gowalla and Foursquare lets locations have their own profile page. Then you notice a tip left by the owner: “Tired of waiting? Next 10 people to walk in get free wings tonight.” It was posted just two minutes ago. Awesome! You and your party leave the never ending line and get the free wings.
