April 30, 2013

Google Glass: A revolutionary advance

scoble-with-glass

Google’s newest addition gives glimpse into future of technology

Guest post by Robert Scoble

robert-scoble If you aren’t familiar with Google Glass yet, just wait, you will be. A wearable computer with a head-mounted display, Google Glass is giving users access to information while they’re on the go. After using Google Glass for the past two weeks, I’m sharing my thoughts about the product. How much of a game changer is it? In the end, it will come down to the price.

Over the past wweek I gave five speeches while wearing Google Glass. I passed through airports six times and let hundreds of people try my Glass. I have barely taken it off since getting it other than to sleep. Continue reading →

April 24, 2013

Using social media to enhance your brand’s reputation

Maintain your social profiles for better search results

Guest post by Cara Aley

With your company focused on its business goals and set up on social channels, it’s critically important that your online business reputation be one that is polished and positive. As you’re likely to be in the market for new customers, clients, partners or investors, it’s important that when they run a Google search on your business or startup, not only are you properly search engine optimized but that meaningful and positive results appear.

Social media as a marketing strategy is an important method for ensuring that this happens, and should be prioritized as much as or more than any other marketing strategy. I’ll explain why.

Understand SEO

Social media profiles are critical for search engine optimization (SEO). You know what SEO is. (See Socialmedia.biz’s series on online reputation.) Now it’s time to start building those social media profiles in order to improve your SEO. Continue reading →

March 5, 2013

What’s the value of a Facebook like?

Increase your fan base with an SEO approach to social media marketing

Target audience: Marketing professionals, SEO specialists, businesses, nonprofits, Facebook administrators, anyone with a Facebook page.

Guest post by Rowan Casey

Everybody with a Facebook Page wants to have millions of likes, but unless you are a celebrity or the owner of a famous business, you’re probably still working on increasing your fan base.

However, even if you are among the least famous of people, your chances of having thousands — or even tens of thousands — of likes is still within reach. For many Facebook Pages, this is because there are a variety of methods of buying likes or obtaining Facebook fans through paid advertising and promotional methods. Still working on upping your ‘like’ count? Keep reading. Continue reading →

February 14, 2013

Why you should cross-post by hand

Why manually handling cross-posts keeps content in top form

Writing once and sharing many times is very compelling as is the sort of evergreen content that you can share repeatedly. There are exceptions, of course, but you should think twice about automatically sharing everything. Why? Well, cross-posting tools don’t make your cross-posts look as good as they could.

In this new world of Flipbook, Pinterest, and the new Google+, you need to make sure everything looks right: the correct photo or image (Facebook and Google+ allow you to cycle through the photos to find the perfect illustration), the correct post title (sometimes Facebook grabs an ugly title and you’re allowed to edit the title copy — though you cannot do that with G+), and the correct post description (both Google+ and Facebook allow you to delete or remove the description copy, though Facebook allows you to even edit the description copy.) Continue reading →

January 9, 2013

11 ideas for taking your digital marketing in new directions

Photo courtesy of marketspan via Creative Commons

Flipboard, Foursquare, Instagram, memes & more ideas!

OK, we’re in the second week of January, but most of us are just settling back into work. So now’s a good time to think about where you want to take your digital marketing efforts for the rest of 2013.

Take what you want, leave the rest and let me know in the comments where you agree or (especially) disagree.

Start a blog

1I know what you may be thinking: Blogging is dead. However, if you’ll notice, most of what folks are sharing online via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Google+ are articles via links. The only real way of creating and providing content that can easily be shared everywhere is via a blog or some other kind of bloggish platform. Continue reading →

December 20, 2012

How to optimize your Facebook fan page SEO

7 key ways to push your Facebook page to the top of search engine results

Guest post by Nathan Latka
Co-founder, Heyo

There are a lot of rumors going around about the proper ways to optimize your Facebook fan page for the search engines (SEO). Some people suggest using keywords in the filenames of your uploads, and others say you need to have every URL you own linked to your fan page. If you’re anything like me, you don’t particularly have time to sit around and search for a tip here and a tip there, only to find out weeks later that it did you no good.

This post provides a few more tips on optimizing your Facebook page for SEO right now.

Choose the best name for your Facebook page

1This may sound like a no-brainer. However, it’s the most basic step when it comes to optimizing your brand on Facebook, and is also the most important.

There is always the temptation to stuff your fan page name with tons of keywords, like “Bob’s Bakery – Muffins, Bagels, Cookies, Breads – Catering & Events.” In actuality, having a name like this can hurt your viral growth rate inside Facebook. If you appear too spammy, your fans will be less likely to engage with your page, let alone share posts and updates with their friends. In fact, people can even hide your updates from their news feed – the horror!

Don’t be too generic, either. Facebook’s intent behind fan pages is that they represent real businesses, brands, personalities, etc. By choosing something too generic, like Travel, Sports, Fishing, etc., you run the risk of Facebook shutting down your ability to post updates and reach out to new fans.

Quick tip: The first word in your fan page title is given the most weight by Google.

Continue reading →