Think you can get away with not responding to tweets directed at your brand’s Twitter account? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that ignoring those tweets or even putting off responding, can be terribly damaging to your brand. Social media users have come to expect brand interaction, and Lithium Technologies has released findings that say more than 70 percent of Twitter users have come to expect a response from any brand they’re interacting with. On top of that, 53 percent expect that response within the hour.
Twitter users expect responses even more when they are complaining to a brand. When users are upset, 72 percent think it is reasonable to expect a response within the hour. On the other hand, responses are less expected when users are giving positive feedback or comments.
If you’re dealing with complaints, putting off responding can quickly turn damaging. Over half of the respondents said they would begin to create negative consequences such as telling their friends about their bad experience and expressing concerns through even more channels. One complaint on Twitter can turn into terrible word of mouth rather quickly.
Search Engine Watch has more details from the survey, but it is fairly clear that Twitter users expect interaction, and you’re hurting yourself by not engaging them back.
00Maxhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngMax2013-11-04 16:14:062013-11-04 16:14:06Twitter Users Expect Responses From Brands Within an Hour
Everyone knows about Facebook and Twitter, and even the smallest business owners tend to feel like they have a pretty good idea what they are doing on the two biggest social media platforms. But, some social media isn’t as easy to understand as the two giants. Instagram poses an especially difficulty problem for many business owners, who haven’t been able to figure out how you can turn a pictures and hashtag only platform into brand building and customer outreach.
You can do just that, if you take the time to understand Instagram and who is using the site. Once you’ve gotten down the basic features, you’ll find yourself sharing pictures and videos to thousands of followers in no time. Alexandra Burnett has some tips to help you get started.
Complete Your Profile – Just as in real life, first impressions matter. Your profile is your chance to leave a good first impression by showing viewers who you are and what you do. It also won’t ever hurt to include a link to your Facebook or Twitter page and website. This way, any prospective customers can easily find out more about what you offer.
Find Your Customers – You should have a pretty good idea what your demographic is by this point. If you don’t, start basic by looking for those in your city (#Tulsa) or share interests relevant to your market (#soccer). These people are all prospective leads. It is up to you to look for them and interact with them.
Be Engaging – Don’t be afraid to make the first move. Reach out to everyone you can. Tag others, talk to those who reach out to you, show support for your community, and use your location. Everything you can to flesh out your online identity will help reaffirm to your viewers that you are the real deal.
Be Consistent, but Don’t Be Spammy – It is important to post regularly. If followers notice you haven’t been posting, they may be inclined to unfollow you. The catch is, you have to show some restraint. Any more than a few posts a day is overkill. Try to set a limit of 2-3 at most.
Show Off Your Products – Everyone loves to window shop, and Instagram is a great platform for consumers to idly browse for things they like. Highlight new products, and show off your services. If users are following you, chances are they want to know more about your businesses and what you offer.
Make It Personal – Humanize your business by showing off the people who make it all work. Introducing employees to the public puts a face to your brand and shows you care about everyone involved.
00Maxhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngMax2013-10-30 13:58:332013-10-30 13:58:336 Tips for Getting Your Brand on Instagram
Facebook advertisers using the social platform’s API and Power Editor tool have had access to their Custom Audiences ad targeting tool for a short time. But, many advertisers have yet to get access to the targeting tool until now.
Starting yesterday, Facebook will has begun rolling out the ad targeting tool to a limited number of US advertisers, with a global roll-out beginning next week. Amy Gesenhues says all advertisers around the world can expect to see the feature by late November.
This is especially of interest to small businesses who will be able to use their own customers lists to directly reach out to people on Facebook. You will also be able to use MailChimp lists with Custom Audiences for the first time.
Facebook already claims thousands of advertisers are using Custom Audiences, but this will open the door for countless other advertisers to access the feature via Facebook’s ad interface. You will even be able to access the feature from Facebook’s mobile app, assuming you have already uploaded your contacts.
00Maxhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngMax2013-10-24 14:52:202013-10-24 14:52:20Facebook Rolls Out Custom Audiences To All Advertisers
Advertisers on Facebook won’t have to go through demand-side platforms (DSPs) to manage their retargeting campaigns for much longer. According to Search Engine Watch, Facebook is creating new retargeting options that won’t force you to go through FBX (Facebook Ad Exchange) or any other platform other than Facebook’s own interface.
Up until now, Advertisers using FBX have only been able to serve their ads on desktops within the news feed or right sidebar and they must buy their ad space through separate DSPs. Considering how many Facebook users are accessing the social media platform via smartphones or tablets, it is surprising it has taken this long for Facebook to allow advertisers to target individuals on mobile devices.
What’s New?
The big new feature will be Custom Audiences, which will allow advertisers to set up their retargeting campaigns directly through Facebook’s interface. That will include the ability to overlay standard Facebook targeting options as well.
The ability to target mobile devices is of course another huge aspect of this update, as it is undeniable a remarkable percentage of Facebook users are primarily using mobile devices for social media.
What is FBX Still Better At?
FBX still has benefits over the options that will be available through the Facebook interface. Most important of those benefits is predictive buying. If an individual continuously browses for a certain product of type of service, FBX’s predictive buying capabilities allow advertisers to show an ad reflecting that interest.
Facebook announced yesterday via Facebook for Business News that they have created a new platform which will allow advertiser to create ads and influence their impact more easily, as Kelsey Jones reported.
The news release said that Facebook has received feedback from advertisers wanting to create ads based on their overall goal or objective, not just the type of ads that would be displayed. The company identified eight objectives as being crucial for business advertisers, specifically:
Clicks to Website
Website Conversions
Page Post Engagement
Page Likes
App Installs
App Engagement
In-Store Offer Claims
Event Responses
To help advertisers meet their goals and create advertisements more based on what they want to accomplish, they released the new platform, which will help advertisers decide how they want to best serve their advertisements. Foe example, an ad viewed on a smartphone can be set so that the users are directed to the company’s mobile site, rather than a non-optimized full desktop site.
Advertisers can also see how their ads are performing based on the objective they chose when creating a campaign. If your focus is website conversion, the highlighted metrics will reflect that. This way there is less confusion and advertisers have easy access to what they consider to be the most important metric for their efforts.
The options will be available via the Ad Create tool, the Power Editor, and the API. It will be a gradual rollout, which may take weeks, but will eventually be available to all advertisers.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.png00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-10-09 14:09:502013-10-09 14:09:50Facebook Unveils New Advertising Platform for Ads Based on Goals
Many considered it only a matter of time before advertising would find its way onto Instagram, since Facebook purchased the app. However it took much longer than most expected. Instagram has remained ad-less until now, but over the next few months you will finally see that change. Instagram announced late last week that advertising would begin rolling out within the Instagram photo stream over the next few months.
This doesn’t mark the first possible attempt to monetize Instagram. Jennifer Slegg reminds us of late last year when Instagram altered its terms to suggest that Instagram would all the rights to all photos posted on it, implicating that Instagram would begin selling those photos to advertisers. The response was massive and overwhelmingly negative, as users began to flee from the service until the terms were reverted.
Since then, the waters have been quiet, but it was heavily expected that Facebook would attempt to turn Instagram into a revenue generating service, seeing as it cost Facebook $1 billion.
This attempt is a little more direct than their change to their terms, but it appears they will be slowly integrating advertisers. They are clearly more cautious this time around – Instagram even emphasized that there would be no changes to how image or video ownership would be viewed.
The company is starting with just a limited number of U.S. advertising firms only showing small and occasional ads. All ads are required to use high-quality images and videos, so they should blend in on the feed.
Seeing photos and videos from brands you don’t follow will be new, so we’ll start slow. We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community.
Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands. After all, our team doesn’t just build Instagram, we use it each and every day. We want these ads to be enjoyable and creative in much the same way you see engaging, high-quality ads when you flip through your favorite magazine.
Expect the ads to be similar to the sponsored posts you see in Facebook, but designed for Instagram. The company will also be heavily soliciting feedback from users about the types of advertising being tested and shown, including the ability to hide them.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-10-07 12:35:252013-10-07 12:35:25Instagram Begins Including Ads In Your Photo Stream
Facebook is revamping its News Feeds ads as part of their continuous efforts to make advertisements on their site more relevant to users.
They released an announcement late last week stating, “When deciding which ad to show to which groups of people, we are placing more emphasis on feedback we receive from people about ads, including how often people report or hide an ad.”
Facebook did say they believe advertisers will ultimately benefit from the updates.
“If someone always hides ads for electronics, we will reduce the number of those types of ads that we show them. […] This is ultimately better for marketers, because it means their messages are reaching the people most interested in what they have to offer.”
That isn’t the only change Facebook is rolling out though. They also announced the ability to search your posts and status updates within graph search, stating, “Today Graph Search will include posts and status updates,” which which you “will be able to search for status updates, photo captions, check-ins and comments to find things shared with you.”
You might not have access to either feature yet, but you can expect to see them within the next few weeks as they are rolled out.
As it comes time to prepare for business strategies going into the next year, many are wondering exactly how much they should be planning for in their SEO budget. Well, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is SEO continues to yield great returns on your investment. The bad news is SEO is getting more and more expensive to do well. Jayson DeMers put together five reasons you should be asking for more for your SEO in 2014.
1)You Can’t Cheat With Cheap Backlinks
Not too long ago, you could just buy packages of a huge number of cheap backlinks and skate into high rankings on Google. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. However, Google has made it very clear they won’t let you play that game anymore. They’ve started penalizing those who try to use cheap shortcuts to a lot of backlinks, and they’ve gotten great at spotting when you do try to game the system.
Article spinning, excessive social bookmarks, paid links, duplicate content, and keyword stuffing have all been ruled illegal in Google’s book. You’ve got no choice but to go legit now.
2) Recovering from Google Penguin Can Be Costly (And You Need an Audit Anyway)
While many have already managed to recover from a drop in the rankings thanks to Penguin 2.0, there are plenty who haven’t been able to make a full recovery yet, and even more who are likely to be penalized in the coming year. But, recovering from Penguin takes a lot of time and effort, and time means money.
Usually, site owners need to undergo complete SEO link profile audits to identify all of the problems costing their site and begin recovery. Even if you haven’t been hit with an unnatural link warning within Google Webmaster Tools, it is still wise to perform an audit to spot any potential trouble links before Google does.
3) Good Content Marketing Isn’t Cheap
Google has begun to favor quality content pretty heavily, but this also means the bar has been raised. You used to be able to write just a few short blurbs every work and get reasonable traffic and authority in Google, but now every brand has a blog. You have to put in more work to stick out.
DeMers goes as far to suggest the standard minimum word amounts to rank well are going to go up, even as high as 2,000 words per article. He uses Google’s new in-depth article section as an indicator of this move, though Google’s own words paint a slightly different picture. “Users often turn to Google to answer a quick question, but research suggests up to 10% of users daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic.”
I don’t think article word count will necessarily go up as more blogging continues, but exploring your topic more thoroughly is usually a good idea. Google will still allow succinct content into the rankings for those who are looking for quick and ready answers, but that content can’t be weak. Even the shorter content you put out needs to offer a real and identifiable value to visitors.
4) You Need a Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing doesn’t simply consist of publishing content. There is much more that has to be done to get that content out in front of your audience’s eyes. That’s why many have called content marketing the new SEO, even though many SEO professionals are expected to handle content creation as well.
There is some truth to the idea however. Publishing useful and interesting content builds your brand and generates brand signals that do get your content ranking in search engines. However, this just shows how important it is to have a plan put in place ahead of time for your content marketing. If you don’t plan ahead, you’ll likely fall into the low quality content pattern with less flashes of quality unique work.
If you are expected to handle SEO and content marketing at the same time, you’re going to need more resources to ensure everything is done right.
5) Outsourcing Social Media to Scale Up
Social media appears to be ingraining itself into search engine rankings at an alarmingly fast rate, and as such it requires a lot of attention. It is gaining steam both as an outreach and audience engagement strategy as well as driving traffic and boosting rankings.
The problem is, depending on the size of your SEO team, you likely don’t have the time and means to properly handle your social media on your own. Business owners don’t have the spare time to be investing heavily into social media, and an SEO professional’s time is already spoken for by a multitude of tasks. If you’re brand can afford it, outsourcing social media means your social efforts will be focused and well planned, while your other responsibilities won’t falter.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-27 11:32:222013-09-27 11:32:22You’re Going To Need a Bigger Budget to Do SEO Right in 2014
Often, online marketers talk about search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing as if they are entirely separate. However, online marketing is often better perceived as a complex interconnected system which is best met with a more holistic approach. SEO and social media are especially compatible bed fellows and if you get the two working together properly you’ll see incredible improvements to both sides that couldn’t be accomplished alone.
A well joined strategy can see huge benefits in numerous areas such as outreach and promotion, content creation, brand management, and goal tracking. In the end, this all means more dollars in the bank for everyone involved. Purna Virji has some tips to help get the two running together instead of apart.
1) Use Promoted Posts to Scale Outreach and Link Building
SEO professionals spend a lot of time attempting to earn high-quality links, while the social media team normally aims to reach out and interact with their audience to build their brand. These may seem like unique tasks, but in reality they are very similar.
Well earned links often require outreach to begin with. You can’t just buy links (well, you can but Google won’t like it) so one of the best ways to earn links in the current field requires creating and sharing content. Just about every online brand has their own blogs these days, but they often expect them to pull their weight on their own. Writers post to the blog, and expect people to simply find their content. At best they share them directly to Facebook and Twitter for free and leave it at that.
Marty Weintraub from aimClear suggests taking it further and making sure your best content gets out to the public with Paid Organic Distribution. Instead of leaving the blog content to languish on its own, you can use Facebook to search out the perfect demographic that will enjoy and respond to your content. You want to look for those who are likely to share, but also seem right for your content. Then, you target them with promoted posts.
This strategy allows you to reach out to possible customers who may have not interacted with your brand before while also offering them something of value. Then, with a well-placed call to action you encourage them to share, driving more organic traffic and scaling up your link building efforts all at once. Best of all, this traffic is more likely to convert once on your site, which can help improve profits.
2) Create More Effective Content
As I previously indicated, one of the most important efforts for SEO professionals these days is creating quality content. It improves how Google perceives your site while also opening up many doors for link building and audience outreach. But what exactly is quality content?
While there are some writers who can magically intuit what their audience wants to know, most of us are secretly writing for ourselves, even if we don’t know it. Instead, using a joint brainstorming session to go over analytics and create a specific content strategy can improve the quality of your content and increase its sharability all at once.
A community manager can offer a great deal of insight into their audience to SEOs, while community managers will appreciate the opportunity to grow and expand their audience with a regular flow of great content. Virji suggests preparing for such a brainstorming session by:
Have the SEOs compile a list of which audiences and types of content have resulted in the best campaigns.
Have the community manager pull together data on what type of content receives the most shares and audience engagement.
Have the SEOs bring in their outreach plan for the coming three months.
This preparation allows you to understand which audiences you should be expanding to and how to better engage the highest performing demographics and cater content to them. You will better understand what gets the best responses and be able to plan ways to create more content that performs highly and less content flops. The community manager will also be able to plan audience engagement activities relevant to your content ahead of time.
3) Engage Influencers
While you can always go straight to your audience, you’ll often see great results from reaching out to those who already have a lot of influence in your field. SEOs will do well to connect with influential bloggers or website owners. Not only can they have a huge impact on your link building efforts, but one link from them can result in a high rate of qualified leads that can lead to conversions.
There are even tools for helping to identify the biggest influencers if you aren’t sure. Klout, FollowerWonk, and Traackr all create lists which will tell you who to engage.
Be careful not to just reach out with a sales pitch. You aren’t trying to gain a link, but build a real relationship between influencer and content creator. Start by sharing their content and retweeting posts, or helping out on community and audience endeavors. Create a reciprocal relationship where the influencer will be inclined to scratch your back in return.
Once you’ve built the relationship, getting them to share links to real quality content will feel natural. Those that see the links will also perceive your brand in higher terms of credibility, as you are co-signed by a trusted influencer.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-09-24 12:51:092013-09-24 12:51:09How To Synergize Your SEO and Social Media Campaigns to Improve Both
Pinterest may only be the fourth most popular social media platform out there, but it may become a significant part of your online marketing strategy in the near future. Last Thursday, Pinterest CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann announced the company is beginning testing promoted pins, their version of paid advertising.
The site is primarily popular with females, but it is well loved by social media marketers because its users have shown time and time again that they are more willing to purchase than the demographics using any other social media platform. Facebook may have over eight times the traffic of Pinterest, but they aren’t purchasing at anywhere close to the same rate of the Pinners. However, in the almost four years since its creation, Pinterest has never included any paid advertising.
Silbermann discussed the decision to finally venture into paid advertising in a post titled “Planning for the Future” on the Pinterest blog. He also lays out a clear idea of exactly what this monetization will look like. They haven’t established all of the details, but Silbermann does say ads will be:
Tasteful –No flashy banners or pop-up ads
Transparent – Pinterest will “always let you know if someone paid for what you see.”
Relevant – Pinterest is aiming to ensure the ads you’re seeing are relevant to the content you are actually looking for.
Improved based on feedback – The company plans to take user feedback into heavy consideration while rolling out paid advertising, as well as working to improve the experience.
The first promoted pins are being tested in search results and category feeds. If you search for “Halloween” you might get promoted pins for costumes.
Pinterest definitely isn’t leaping into the advertising options, but they are beginning a change which could be very lucrative for enterprising social media marketers in relevant fields.
Everyone knows about Facebook and Twitter, and even the smallest business owners tend to feel like they have a pretty good idea what they are doing on the two biggest social media platforms. But, some social media isn’t as easy to understand as the two giants. Instagram poses an especially difficulty problem for many business owners, who haven’t been able to figure out how you can turn a pictures and hashtag only platform into brand building and customer outreach.
Advertisers on Facebook won’t have to go through demand-side platforms (DSPs) to manage their retargeting campaigns for much longer. 
