Google Introducing Credit Card For AdWords Buys

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Starting on Monday of this week, small business owners in the UK became eligible for Google’s newest service, AdWords Business Credit. Essentially, Google created a credit card that can only be used for paying for a businesses AdWords account.

As Ingrid Lunden reports for TechCrunch, the program launched in beta 1400 U.S. companies last year and nearly three-quarters of those companies now use AdWords Business Credit as their “primary form of payment.”

Now, Google shifts its focus to the UK, where revenue in the 2nd quarter made up about 11-percent of the companies total revenue.

The card will carry an 11.9-percent APR in the UK, which is up from 8.99-percent in the U.S. during the pilot program. No annual fees will be included. You may note that this is lower than major credit cards. This is likely because Google intends to make an increase in profits by driving more businesses to AdWords and increasing the investment their, not from interest rates.

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Dispelling the 5 Lies About Building an Audience

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The internet is awash with tips and suggestions for SEO, but there aren’t many articles that clear up those pesky rumors and myths of the industries of optimization and blogging. So I’m here to help tear down those lies people hear and tell themselves about building an audience.

1) Making good content before you have an audience is a waste of good content – This is totally untrue. First impressions are all you get online, and if you are “reserving” all your good stuff for when you have a bunch of visitors, you will never get popular.

It is like selling a product before you’ve made the actual product. If you have just a few people coming to your site but they see good content, they will keep coming back as well as spreading the word. If you have a large amount of people visiting because you are advertising widely, but your content is worthless, they’re all going to leave and never look back.

Yeah, it isn’t fun to make great stuff that only a few are reading, but you have to keep an eye on the future. Great content attracts people eventually, as long as you put in the extra work to promote it. Plus, once you have an audience, they can always still find that great content no one was reading a month ago.

2) Great content will bring an audience – I emphasized that quality content will help attract an audience above and that still rings true, but there is other important work to be done before you’ll gain a crowd. You have to “pound the pavement” so to speak. Neglecting to actually promote the content can end up costing you links in the end.

Rae Hoffman at CopyPress has a full list of strategies for promoting great content, but the biggest emphasis is only push your awesome content. Spending energy on mediocre content won’t go anywhere, but if you can back up your promotion with quality content, you will get the launch you need.

3) Having a unique voice isn’t always possible – If you can’t find your specific voice, then you are doing the wrong type of work for you. Your site will never gain traction if you can’t have your own identity. You need a point of difference, or POD.

Finding your own POD can be as simple as combining seemingly seperate interests into your blogging, such as the girl who runs SkinnyTaste. She was just another amateur photographer who also loved making tasty low fat recipes. Both of those areas are flooded with contributors, but by combining the two into a blog with great recipes and enticing high quality pictures of the food, SkinnyTaste became a contender.

4) I’m not a great writer, so I’ll never be a great blogger – If you have found your own voice or POD, being a technically great writer is irrelevant. Many bloggers would have not gotten great grades in school if they turned in work in the style they blog in because they often make grammatical errors. Readers don’t care however, as long as the writer has a unique voice and interesting information.

5) Once I’ve got an audience, the rest will be easy – Rae Hoffman’s article earlier mentions Perez Hilton in this situation, and I can’t imagine a better blogger to express this point. Perez Hilton became a cultural figure for a short period because of his strong opinions and voice. So where is Perez Hilton now? Still blogging, but his television appearances have fizzled out, and you rarely hear his name brought up anymore. This is because Perez’s blogging became less celebrity journalism filtered through Perez’s voice, and more about why being Perez Hilton is wonderful. His focus left the gossip people were craving, and moved to the benign stories of a psuedo-celebrity.

The point of Perez’s story is once you gain popularity, you can’t rest or slack off. People are coming to you for whatever special information or content you are offering, and if you start slipping that audience will be gone faster than you could ever dream of.

Most of these myths are the type that people tell themselves when they are scared of making the leap into blogging, or the lies people give for why their site is floundering. Don’t let them keep you from getting started making a name for yourself, and if you are struggling, consider whether you’ve found your voice or POD or not.

 

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Study Finds Students And Phones Joined at the Hip

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A recent study on the way youths around the world use mobile devices found that college students use their phones to text and interact over social media much more than any other use, such as surfing the web or gaming. The study, conducted by Prof. Paul Mihailidis of Emerson College in Boston, tracked 800 students of 52 nationalities attending universities in eight countries across three continents for a 24-hour period.

As Susan Moeller reports for Huffington Post, Mihailidis made five key conclusions:

  1. Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are the dominant form of communication and new sharing.
  2. The content that is most shared is not thought-provoking articles, but rather viral videos and music.
  3. There is an addiction to mobile phones and these phones are tied in to a student’s identitiy.
  4. Connecting with friends online through a mobile device has become “more real than the real world.”
  5. Students demand a large number of options when it comes to apps, but only utilize a select few.

The upside to the study’s findings is that these mobile devices allow students to comment and share content more readily, making them better informed and feel more a part of issues.

The downside, of course, is the issue of privacy. With so much of a student’s life online, there’s a significant risk that somone other than a friend could collect and use their information.

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How Aligning SEO Strategy and Social Media Builds Backlinks

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It is way too common for people in SEO to forget to align their SEO strategy with social media activity. Often, the two teams work completely disconnected from the other. This is in no way a comprehensive, efficient marketing plan.

SEO must be integrated into social media activity. Here are some suggestions for specific strategies you can take to bump up the effect your social media activites have on SEO performance.

1) Using Social Media for Link Development – Since search engines have begun incorporating social signals into their ranking algorithm, it has become essential for SEOs to pay attention to social media. Now Google+ has become a part of Google search, and Bing uses Facebook data to personalize what people see in their search results.

While all of that is practically common knowledge, Ray Comstock at Search Engine Watch believes “link development is the most important benefit that social media can bring to the SEO table.” Google’s Panda and Penguin updates has made using social media to foster relevant link connectivity has become as important as they could be. The most effective way to market content online is through social media.

It is critical for SEO professionals take advantage of the activities of their social media team to gain relevant links through marketing quality content.

2) Aligning You Blog for SEO and Social Media – If you can create consistently quality content, blogging is easily one of the more efficient ways to build links and authority. It attracts links within your industry, but it also becomes keyword focused content that tends to rank highly in the long-term. Most often, bloggers forget to create relating internal links from a company’s blog to their main website content. Blog posts are an opportunity to direct people to other relevant content, especially your own.

3) Aligning Your Blogging Team for SEO & Social Media – Blogging is an important part of an SEO strategy, so you want to make sure your blogging team is trained on the best SEO policies and practices, as well as giving them the most important keywords and landing pages on your site. If you do that, your team will be more likely to create content based around those keywords, and creating internal links within the blog assists with your SEO goals. Plus, it is always nice for visitors to be able to find more content on your site.

Bloggers should also be interacting with the authoritative blogs in your area of expertise by contributing in intelligent and thoughtful ways which will build relationships with other experts in your field. It builds your reputation as well as making valuable connections that can lead to guest blogging.

By making sure your SEO and social media efforts are alligned, you both streamline the process in an effective way, as well as boosting SEO performance from a link building perspective.

 

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Facebook Basics For Your Business

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Last week, I gave you my fundamentals for success on social media. Mark Thompson also has some fundamentals specific to your business’s Facebook page at Business2Community.

1. Facebook isn’t for sales

As I’ve discussed in this space before, Facebook doesn’t really translate directly into sales. But, it raises the awareness of your business and helps you build relationships with relevant consumers.

Users don’t log on to Facebook to shop for products, so a sales pitch isn’t going to make your page popular.

2. Build your audience

Instead of sales, focus on gaining ‘Likes’ and fans. There’s no risk involved when a user ‘Likes’ your page and its a one-step, one-button process.

Most of these users ‘Like’ your page in hopes of finding deals and special offers. Give them what they want.

Create an active community that includes you sharing entertaining and useful content and a forum for fans to gather and discuss. Unlike email, you can post multiple times a day to your Facebook page without wearing out yoour welcome with consumers.

3. Make Facebook work for you

With your content and fans in place, you now have to get something for your effort. Without being overbearing, streamline your purchase process so users can take the fewest steps possible to go from Facebook to checking out on your website.

The basic goal of marketing is getting your message seen by as many people as possible. Facebook is a great tool to accomplish just that, as long as you are using it wisely.


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Kids Today: Students Prefer Online Interaction

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The affect of social media and mobile phones on society, especially the nation’s youths, has become discussed at length. The claims being that social interaction online and through texting isn’t the same as real-world interaction. Who better to tackle this issue than a current student? Dakota Castets-Didier, a student at Boise State, published an article for The Arbiter agreeing that “social media is killing intimacy.”

One cannot walk across a college campus without seeing the affect that smartphones have had. However, instead of observing how today’s darn kids don’t know how to interact with each other in a traditional way, observe how interacting with each other has evolved.

For the college aged, it’s no longer socially acceptable to call friends to plan an activity. Texting is viewed as simpler and less invasive. It’s even more acceptable to ask for a first date via text than it is over the phone. Some even argue that breaking up over text is perfectly acceptable.

Students are embracing the relative anonymity of online interaction. So much so, that they’ve become increasingly more nervous when addressing crowds of peers in person. Some studies have even pointed to the immediacy of texting and social media to explain shorter attention spans in today’s youths.

While the ability to interact with friends and family anytime, anywhere, is a powerful and useful tool, it comes with a price. We have sacraficed the intimacy and comfort of face to face interaction.

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What You Need To Know About SEO Friendly URLs

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Bad URL structure is far too common of an issue in SEO. It can drag down your rankings, keep your pages from appearing in search engine indexes and destroy ranking authority from any other pages and websites you are a part of.

This is sometimes the fault of content management systems who can build poor URL structures within the websites. Elsewhere, some platforms devise URLs with illegal characters.

Search engines do try to read and index even the most poorly made URLs, but paying attention to your URL management and optimization has its own set of benefits. It’s about time you made sure you are doing your part.

It isn’t difficult to diagnose URL based issues, however. You can check for errors and warnings that suggest URLs are causing the issues, and you can audit all of your URLs for proper syntax.

Google and Bing Webmaster Tools also have reports that reveal duplicate content. From there, you can examine the webpages themselves and their locations. Google and Bing aren’t even the only ones with these types of tools. Plenty of third-party SEO tools can help identify these types of issues. Also make sure to check for unsafe characters.

Tom Schmitz from Search Engine Land has charts to help make clear what characters you should be using and when. He also has many other suggestions on how to solve issues with poor URL structures.

 

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Sincerity of Facebook ‘Likes’ is Serious Business

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The existence of fake or bought Facebook ‘Likes’ has been pretty well documented, but now, Facebook is actually stepping up their efforts to stop the practice. As Doug Gross reports for CNN, last month, the social media site announced plans to improve its “”site integrity system”. Those plans include cutting out fake ‘Likes’ and eliminating spam accounts.

There are many ways a page can gain ill-gotten ‘Likes’, but Facebook claims their new system catches all of them. The selling of ‘Likes’ is a strictly forbidden practice and some pages have already seen a large number of their ‘Likes’ disappear.

A blog post detailing the new site improvements stated it best, “a Like that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with a Page benefits no one”. 

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Facebook Introduces ‘Gifts’ To Increase Revenue

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No doubt you’re aware of Facebook’s struggles since becoming a publicly traded company. Weary and wary investors want to see effective ways to monetize the social media giant, which Facebook is currently putting all its efforts into. Jon Swartz reports the latest attempt to increase revenue at USA Today.

In May, Facebook acquired social-gift-giving company Karma and, last week, announced a new service called ‘Gifts’ that will allow users to share gift certificates to retailers through their profile. Interestingly, Facebook plans to start by making Gifts available to a small group of users on the main site and through an Android app. The iPhone app isn’t expected for another few weeks.

This is the 2nd public attempt to increase ad revenue by Facebook in recent weeks. You may remember the recent announcement that Facebook Offers would now require businesses to pay to be included.

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3 Little Known Reasons Your Content Isn’t Being Shared

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Most corporate social media accounts are ignored or unknown. It is possible their audience isn’t engaged, or maybe just not sharing their posts. Either way, they struggle and rarely improve their status.

This is because most sites offer the same tips for getting out there, but they don’t address the real issues hiding behind the scenes that are really keeping you back. This is why we are addressing three less-known reasons your company’s social media pages aren’t getting any traction.

1) Your Material Isn’t Sharable – Very few people will share commercial messages or content. Social media are phobic of direct sales pitches, but the whole point of making corporate social media pages is to eventually sell with it. So what do you do?

You need to make sharable content that promotes your brand, rather than pitching the sale then and there. You want to use social media content to “bait-the-hook”, and once the public is on board, you can try the sale.

There are a few ways you can make sharable content. You can aim to market your product as being extraordinarily useful, but if it doesn’t provide incredible benefits immediately, most people will still view this as a sales pitch.

A better tip is to go for timeless content. The public is usually aware when a company is simply chasing the latest trend, and while it may earn the company some good short term PR, that attention will fade as quickly as it came. Most of all, just make sure your content is simple to spread. You don’t want to dumb it down, but you want your content to be streamlined so that it is easy to grasp.

Most importantly, don’t try to aggressively sell to your customers on this platform. Promote the lifestyle they want to have, and make it clear your brand will help them get there. The rest will almost do itself.

2) Lacking Core Benefit – Incentives are a great way to get others to participate and share your content. It is very easy, you offer them a reward for taking action, and they will be likely to participate in the future. However, this strategy doesn’t always work long term. Instead, try to focus on your audience’s pain points, and position your brand or content as the solution.

You should always be able to answer this question: why should someone interact with me in the first place? You can try to keep your page humorous, but that can take some extra skill and often the legal departments hold you back quite a bit. But, providing relief for problems and pains in your customers’ lives always benefits the audience and gives them reason to engage.

3) You Lack Positioning or Value Proposition – Another question you should always be able to answer, is what makes you unique or interesting? Claiming to be “low-cost” is transparent, and every brand in the market will claim they have the lowest cost value. Even claiming to be “better” than your competition or the “best” in the field read as empty boasts to many consumers.

Instead, your social media pages should stand for some set of values or ideas, even if it means making some enemies.

Brad Smith at Social Media Today shares the strategy of Stone Brewery, the largest brewery in Southern California, who announced last year that that they plan a massive expansion so they can brew the best organic ingredients, and accommodate their constant stream of visitors.

You see, Stone Brewery has taken a strong and vocal stance in their way of doing business, openly disparaging light “tasteless” lagers and their consumers. They even take this stance on their bottle labels, and they include this stance in their social media presence.

Being bold and original will gain you customers that are truly engaged in your brand, and find consumers that share the same opinions you do.

If you can address these three issues, you will be much more likely to get your commercial social media pages off the ground, and strengthen your brand. All it takes is being a little fearless and some originality.

 

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