Twitter Updates Improve Experience…For Advertisers

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Twitter users have no doubt taken notice of multiple, recent updates to improve user experience. What they may not have noticed is that these updates are mostly geared toward helping advertisers engage consumers, as Romain Dillet writes for TechCrunch.

Recent improvements include a better search function. Finally, right? Well, now it’s much easier to find specific companies and follow them.

There’s also the changes to the look of profile pages. For businesses, the company name is much larger than the @username and a giant logo appears as the header. These changes affect users as well, but were clearly designed with advertisers in mind. Much like the ability to pin a tweet to the top of the timeline, which will most likely serve to let consumers know about current specials.

Certainly, there are still room for improvements to make Twitter a perfect advertising machine. However, in order to remain effective, Twitter also needs to keep normal, product-buying users happy and on-board. That juggling act is no small feat.

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Facebook ‘Offers’ No Longer Free Ride

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You’ve seen the deals in your newsfeed. “Free chips and salsa” or “15% off next purchase” claimed by friends. These are part of Facebook Offers, which launched earlier this year as a way for businesses to reward their Facebook fans. It began as a free service, but Alistair Barr and Alexei Oreskovic report for Reuters that Facebook has announced merchants will be required “to pay at least $5 on related ads to promote each Facebook Offer to a targeted audience of fans and friends of fans.”

This change is likely in response to growing concerns about how Facebook can monetize its site. 

In addition to the cost, Facebook has opened up Offers to online-only businesses and adding barcodes for easy deal redemption. 

With the included cost for each ad, users will likely get a better experience. No longer will irrelevant ads for deals from businesses with no local stores appear in your newsfeed.

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Facebook’s ‘Snitchgate’ Ends With a Whimper

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Recently, Facebook conducted, what they called a survey, to root out users who registered their accounts under fake names. In a sort of watered down McCarthyism, they asked their friends to “snitch” on other friends and answer whether the name on their account was real or not. As Kashmir Hill, of Forbes, found, those involved in the so-called ‘survey’ didn’t particularly appreciate it.

Facebook’s terms and conditions include a clause that user’s must register under their real name, so it doesn’t seem outlandish that they would want to know whether or not users were living up to that agreement. What’s drawing comparisons to Caligula and the KGB, which is admittedly a bit strong, is the way Facebook went about rounding up the fake name account holders.

Facebook spokesperson Fred Wolens insists that the survey will not be used to enforce the real name policy, but rather to teach machine algorithms to determine real accounts from spam accounts.

This claim, however, suggests that Facebook itself is ignoring its own terms and conditions and those who violate them. So how seriously should users take those same terms?

Also, the options for answering the question: ‘Is this your friend’s real name?’ were: ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘I don’t know this person’ or ‘I don’t want to answer’. Every choice carries a possible backlash and since Facebook is being so cagey about how they plan to use the information gathered, there’s no telling what consequences those answers will bring.

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Use Pinterest to Increase Your Blog’s Views

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Pinterest has become a monster in the past year, with user growth up nearly 4400%. No, there’s not a typo in that figure. Obviously, it’s time for you to take advantage of this raging trend and use Pinterest to expand your audience. Mitt Ray, of Social Media Examiner, has four tips you can use.

1. Pin Content

To get traffic from Pinterest, you need to be part of the Pinterest community. Establish boards that routinely pin great content. Some of it should be yours, but some of it should be from elswhere. Establish yourself as the go-to board for your particular area of expertise.

2. Tall Images

Because of the way Pinterest displays their pinned images, taller images get more real estate and have a better chance of getting noticed and being repinned. Rather than just stretching out an image, think about combining multiple relevant images to reach your tall goal.

3. Must Have Images

No one can pin your content if it doesn’t have at least one image that’s a minimum of 110 x 100 pixels. So, it should go without saying that each of your blog posts should have an accompanying picture.

4. Default Images

Your blog should also have a default image, which is an image that appears in the header, footer or sidebar. It appears on every page of your site and, although it isn’t associated with a specific post, it can be used to pin a post.

Make the image relevant to your site’s general topic. This way, you can be sure that every post can get pinned and people will start to associate your image with your site and your brand.

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Combine Email Marketing with Social Sharing [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Facebook features about 800-million users, yet there are nearly 4-times that many users of email. With numbers like that, you’re likely already using email marketing to reach your audience. If you’re not, look at that number again and get started immediately.

Shelly Kramer, of v3im.com, advises you to get the most out of your emails by combining them with your social networks. As the included infographic shows, you can improve your click through rate significantly simply by including social sharing in your emails. You can also build your audience for your online profile and, as your customers share your message through their own account, you get a larger audience for each message.

You can also include a prominent ‘Subscribe’ button on your site so that you can do the most with each email. And be sure to research plug-ins that can add links to your social media profiles in your signature and include your latest blog post as well.

As with any message, the goal here is to be seen and heard by as many people as possible. These are a few easy ways to build a bigger audience.

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Get the Most Out of Hashtags

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Twitter currently boasts millions of users, which makes it an excellent, and free, way to get the word out about your business. But it can be difficult to build and audience and ensure that your tweets are being seen. That’s where hashtags come in, as Tara Horner details on the Jeff Bullas blog.

A hashtag is simply a topic that you put at the end of a tweet with ‘#’ in front of it. For example, “You probably already knew that #obviousinfo”. This allows users to group together all tweets with a specific hashtag, even if they aren’t following the author.

There are actually two ways for you to make the most of your hashtags. First, check out which hashtags are currently trending on Twitter and decide if any of them could be relevant to your business. You probably shouldn’t shoehorn a #Kardashian tag at the end of your tweets, but you may be able to find a topic that fits with your business and ride those coat tails.

Second, create your own hashtags based on what you’re already tweeting about. Think of them like Twitter SEO and use keywords you’d like customer’s to associate with your business. Then, anyone who is interested in those topics can find you later.

If used correctly, hashtags are a great way to get lots of eyeballs on your message. Just be sure it’s a message worth seeing.

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Who’s Using Social Media Sites, Anyway?

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The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project recently released it’s findings from a phone survey of about 1-thousand US adults. As Matt McGee reports for Marketing Land, the survey aimed to discover who exactly is using various social networking sites. Some of the findings you may have already assumed, such as, Pinterest is dominated by women and those with good, higher paying careers are using LinkedIn. All of the information is valuable, however, so you can tailor messages on specific sites to the demographics that are most often found there.

Facebook

66-percent of Internet users are on Facebook, which is by far the highest percentage of users. Users are fairly evenly distributed between men and women, education level and annual income. The biggest advantage Facebook features is the captivation of older Internet users. 56-percent of those age 50-64 have an account, which makes Facebook the clear top choice for marketing to the older crowd, despite the fact that younger users also flock their.

Twitter

Though Twitter does not hold a large market share of Internet users overall, it is almost entirely populated by well-educated men and women under 50. The annual income data is well dispersed across the spectrum, which sets Twitter apart from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn

As I mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is generally used by successful professionals over the age of 30. Its clientele is made up of 36-percent of Internet users with college degrees and 34-percent of Internet users with an annual salary over $75-thousand. With the exception of Facebook, which posted large percentages in every category thanks to their sheer number of users, LinkedIn is by far the leader in those two categories.

Pinterest

19-percent of female Internet users have a Pinterest account and that number is almost certainly still growing. Though their ages tend to skew younger than 65, you can reach nearly every female group through Pinterest.

Instagram and Tumblr

These image based sites returned data that is remarkably similar. Their users are mostly young, 30 or below, with at least some college experience. Oddly, Instagram features a large number of well-off users, 16-percent of those with a salary above $75 thousand. Tumblr is more evenly dispersed and, if anything, tends to attract those with a salary below $50-thousand per year.

 

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A Guide to Awesome Facebook Posts

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“Write something…and make it count.” Daunting words that have kept plenty of marketers awake at night. Before you make your company’s next Facebook post, consider Ron Schott’s elements of a succesful post.

Rather than a broad, please everyone approach, utilize Facebook’s advanced targeting and create copy specifically for your diverse range of consumers. Study your audience and create targeting profiles filtering by: age, gender, ‘interested in’, ‘relationship status’, language, education, workplace and location down to city.

Find a relevant, interesting picture that’s ideally no bigger than 403 px by 403 px. That way, your loyal customers will pin the image and spread the word for you.

Time the relese of your brilliant post based on the activity of your audience. Be sure to consider outside influences that could cause social media to blow up. I’m talking about political debates, press conferences or sporting events. Plan ahead so your work of art doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

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Do You Need a Gravatar?

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We all use different ways to identify ourselves online. Most use their websites or social media pages. The problem is, once you go outside of your own domains and comment on blogs or forums, you become, for all intents and purposes, anonymous. Not so if you use a Gravatar, or ‘Globally Recognized Avatar’.

What is a Gravatar?

A Gravatar allows you to make a sort of ‘brand’ image of yourself by concisely providing a visual summation of the identity and personality of your choice.

The trick is choosing one that works best for your business, whether it is a standard head and shoulders photograph of you or your brand or product’s logo.

Everyone knows that blogs and forums are some of the most useful resources one can have to keep in touch with the trends and technical issues of their industry or areas of interest. What many may also realize is the comments sections on these posts are sometimes even more useful than reading the articles.

If you take a moment to look at comments sections, there are usually three different types of commenters.

  1. Spammers – The posters who leave generic comments that are often irrelevant.
  2. The Interested – Posters who appear to have a genuine interest in the subject, but are not usually very informed.
  3. The “Experts” – The people who post relevant and informative comments.

You will notice the Experts almost always have a Gravatar next to their names.

How Do I Create a Gravatar?

Creating a gravatar is as quick as it is easy and free. If you have a WordPress account, it’s as simple as logging in to Gravatar.com. If you don’t have a WordPress account, you can just associate your Gravatar with your email address.

After that, all there is to do is set up a profile with a suitable image and a few personal or business details. You can even add links to existing blogs, websites and social media pages.

Now, anywhere you comment, you will have your Gravatar next to it.

What Are The Benefits of Gravatars?

If you participate in comments sections frequently, you will begin to be recognized by others in the industry. This is why it is essential to have a professional looking image. This will help raise awareness of all of your pages, as well as their reputations inside the area of interest.

Considering it takes almost no time, and Gravatar doesn’t send you waves of spam e-mail, there’s really no reason not to sign up. You’ll be surprised by just how much your Gravatar does for you.

 

If you need more persuading to check out Gravatar, check out Alistair Harris’ article at ClickThrough.

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No Shortcuts for True Social Media Success

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Social media has exploded over the past five years, especially for the marketing of businesses. Why? The simple answer is because it’s free. But, while it is free to use, in order to be successful on social media, you have to invest a lot of your own time and effort.

There are opportunities for you to get all of those ‘Likes’ and followers you desire overnight though. Ellen Gipko, at Search Engine Journal, discovered multiple freelance job postings in search of, or offering, ‘Likes’ or followers for a price.

While having more ‘Likes’ than the competition may initially draw people in, they aren’t sticking around if your page is a ghost town. And what good are 500 Twitter followers if they don’t interact with you and create an interesting, entertaining forum?

There seems to be no evidence that having a boat-load of “REAL USA LIKES” on your Facebook page improves your SEO rankings either.

So while you may be jealous that your main competitor’s profile boasts more ‘Likes’ than yours, remember that old saying: C.R.E.A.M. or Content Rules Everything Around Me. If you put in the leg, er finger work, you’ll get the ‘Likes’ and followers and have a reputation to grow on your success.

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