Tag Archive for: Social Media Marketing

Will The Yahoo Answers Update Give Marketers A New Opportunity?

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Brands looking to extend their user engagement and find new ways to reach out to the public may have a new avenue out of an older web property. Yahoo has totally revamped their Answers site, attempting to bring it back to relevancy and making it more social and mobile friendly.

Answers used to be a thriving Q&A network, but over time it has really fallen in terms of quality, reliability, and general usage. Greg Sterling argues that it is still the most successful “help engine” though in my opinion that is questionable. One issue that led to Answers’ downfall was lack of quality control.

Either way, the years have not been kind to the property, just like numerous other Yahoo properties. Now CEO Marissa Mayer has decided to update and revive Yahoo’s products and Answers is the most recent to get the treatment.

The new features on Answers build in more social aspects, as well as making the site mobile friendly. Users will notice they can now add images and videos to their posts. The hurdle they have to overcome now is curating and improving the quality of the property.

If Yahoo follows through with quality control, Answers may very well offer some lucrative opportunities for audience outreach. One of the best services a brand can offer online consumers is to answer their questions reliably and honestly. It builds trust in the brand as well as cementing your reputation in your field.

It still remains to be seen if Answers will prove to be valuable, but it is something to keep an eye on.

Yahoo Answers Screenshot

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Twitter Announces Their Submission For IPO

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Twitter LogoIt may not come as a surprise to those who have been watching closely, but this week Twitter put the rumors to rest by officially filing for their IPO. Twitter was naturally assumed to be the next major online technology company to file for an IPO after Facebook went public.

Twitter announced their submission of an S-1 to the SEC exactly how you would expect; they tweeted the news yesterday. The announcement read: “We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.”

One of the most interesting factors of the filing is that Twitter filed a “secret” IPO, and the terms will be kept secret under new regulations from the JOBS Act, which allow small businesses to keep their financial information from the public.

According to The Verge, Twitter is the first well-known web company to file for a “secret” IPO, but it also confirms that Twitter has less than $1 billion in revenue. They will eventually have to release their financial information, but not until “the road show part of their public offering,” as Search Engine Watch explains.

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4 Ways Small Businesses Can Create Valuable Content

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Blogger Portrait

Source: Marisa Vasquez

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ve likely heard how important creating content is to your SEO strategy. For larger companies, it isn’t hard to find resources for solid content creation, but smaller businesses see a much larger hurdle. Smaller businesses means smaller budgets, but these businesses still need to find a way to market themselves.

Social media and blogs have made it easier than ever to create and share content with your audience, so small businesses have many more feasible options than in the past. This content creates a relationship with your audience and cements your brand as a trusted resource, and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg as long as you focus on the right types of content. Phillip Thune highlighted four of the best ways small businesses can deliver quality content without destroying their budget.

Blogs

No matter what your marketing strategy, if you have on online presence (which you should) you need to have a blog. A blog is the cornerstone of any SEO or online marketing plans, and it offers you a convenient way to share new products, industry news, and interesting facts with your consumers. Not only does a blog give your company a voice, it also improves your SEO so that more people can find you. Plus, when something gets posted, it can be easily shared to all the most popular social media platforms.

Ebooks

Ebooks are digital books or publications that people can easily receive via the internet. They can then be read on your computer or any tablet or smartphone. These publications share information and establish credibility by showing your expertise to your clients. Most businesses request information such as an email address for these ebooks, so they also generate leads. These require a bit more effort on a single concentrated piece of content, but they often gain more traction than blogs so long as you create something valuable to readers and you share it enough to be seen.

Slide Presentations

You have no doubt put together a few slide presentations throughout your career, and are familiar with their easy-to-read format. They are used for sales presentations and conferences, but they can also be used to share educational content. These slideshows are easily shared on SlideShare, YouTube, or Vimeo, and will help gain trust and reputability within your field.

Press Releases

Press releases have long been the best way to spread information and establish credibility in your market and your local community. They announce information about new products or services, while also showcasing your brand’s place as a respected part of your community. Traditionally, these are shared with journalists or newswires, but they also encourage bloggers and other publications to share your story. Sharing your press releases will help small businesses establish relationships with journalists within your community, but you can also share them online to spread directly to your customers.

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6 Ways To Use YouTube to Improve Your Local SEO

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YouTube Graphic

With the popularity and direct user engagement of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, many online marketers forget the potential for YouTube to improve your brand reputation and enforce your SEO efforts in a single move.

YouTube has a surprising amount of opportunity for optimization, especially for efforts focusing on local search. There is a relative lack of videos from small or local businesses aimed at informing the public and promoting themselves, leaving a wonderful widow for many local businesses to make an impact on their audience.

Of course, before you can optimize, you need to make sure you have a quality video that offers something of value to viewers beyond simply promoting yourself. Chris Silver Smith recently wrote about how local businesses can go about creating videos that will be worth their viewers time and make your audience interested in what you do.

There are plenty of options, but chances are you don’t want to just make an ad and throw it up online. A better approach would be a series of short videos exploring your industry, your brand, and what you offer to consumers. How-to videos can reinforce your reputation in regards to your skill, while explanations of your products and services can help viewers understand exactly what sets you apart from your competitors.

Smith also explored the ways you can optimize your videos to make sure they get seen, while also helping your local SEO efforts.

  1. Link to Your Business – At the beginning of your description, always make sure to include a link to your business website. These links are automatically “nofollowed”, so don’t expect it to help your link portfolio, but there is a chance local citation value is being conveyed to Google.
  2. Name, Address, Phone Number – Every video should include thorough contact information in multiple easy-to-find locations. Start by making it visible within the first few frames of your video. Google is able to interpret and “read” text within videos, so not only will your viewers be able to easily find you, Google will retain data contained within the video. Similarly, you may want to actually state your information out loud in the video, as spoken statements are converted into subtitle transcripts by Google’s systems.
  3. Take Advantage of the Descriptions – YouTube has one of the most generous description fields out there. While the initial paragraph users see should clearly state what the video is about, you can also include a statement about your company or a biography so that interested viewers can find it with a simple click.
  4. Tag Your Video – Along with including your business category name and your location names to the tags on videos, you should also include a handful of relevant tags for each video. Tags have a heavy impact on YouTube, so you’ll want to always make sure you include them, or your video will likely disappear into the ether.
  5. Associate the Video with Google Place Listings – Business listing in Google Places allow you to associate videos easily by putting in URLs. Make sure to use the full page URL.
  6. Associate the Video with Google+ Local Page – Adding the video to your local page allows you and any other employees to easily share the video on personal Google+ streams. The number of shares is considered indicative of popularity, so this is a good opportunity to boost your shares.
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Facebook Hashtags Aren’t Seeing Results

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When Facebook announced their introduction of hashtags in June, it seemed to be a pretty big deal, especially within the social media marketing industry. Every online marketer immediately began investigating how to make the most out of the use of hashtags, and if they are even worth the effort. A few months later, it appears the hashtags aren’t faring well.

Facebook Hashtag Graph

In late July, Simply Measured reported status updates with hashtags weren’t gaining brands any extra exposure, now Search Engine Watch reports EdgeRank Checker has similar findings.

According to EdgeRank Checker’s data, viral reach and engagement were down on posts with hashtags compared to those without hashtags. They studied over 500 pages, and then compared their data to a sample of 50 Twitter accounts from Fortune 500 brands. They found that 70 percent of brands experienced an increase in retweets when using a hashtag, indicating higher engagement.

EdgeRank Checker did have an idea why Facebook users may not be responding to the hashtags:

Our hypothesis is that not many people are clicking on hashtags. If many people were clicking hashtags, we should see an increase in Viral Reach for posts with hashtags. The data is not showing that. If anything, it’s showing a decrease in Viral Reach.

We hypothesize that hashtagged posts don’t have the expected increase in Viral Reach due to how brands are using them. After examining how hashtags are being used, hashtags are often used in promotional material. For some brands, they’ve created campaigns around particular hashtags and use them in all posts associated with the campaign. By nature, campaigns are promotional, therefore more likely to drive less engagement, less clicks, and ultimately less Reach.

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Facebook Updates Their Contest and Promotion Rules for Businesses

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Facebook Sticker IconFacebook appears to be undergoing large changes to their rules for businesses as they have recently created the opportunity for verified paged, embedding posts, and even giving advertisers access to a large stock photo library.

But, the change users are most likely to notice is a huge revision to the rules for how businesses run contests on their pages. As Jessica Lee from Search Engine Watch reports, businesses will now be able to run contests and promotions directly from their own timelines without the use of third-party apps, greatly streamlining the process.

As they announced last week, Facebook has reversed their original rules to allow for users to like, comment, or create posts on a page solely as a voting mechanism or entry into contest. Facebook stated in its promotions help document, “we want to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to create and administer promotions of Facebook and to align our policies to better meet the needs of marketers.”

All of this means businesses can run promotions directly from their timeline and

  • Collect entries via posts, comments, or likes on a page post.
  • Collect entries via messages from users to the page.
  • Utilize likes as a means of voting.

Facebook did say they don’t intend to put an end to contests run through apps. Instead, they see apps as a means to “create a more personalized experience, more in line with your branding strategy.”

They explained the differentiation more, saying:

Apps provide more space and flexibility for content than Page posts alone. Promotions run through apps can collect data in a secure, structured way that may be appealing to advertisers, particularly larger brands.

Creating a promotion with a Page is faster and easier. Additionally, as with all Page posts, Page posts about promotions are eligible to be displayed in the News Feeds of the people who like the Page and can be promoted to a broader audience.

Businesses always have the option of using both an app and their Page to administer a promotion.

On the other hand, Facebook also updated its page terms to restrict pages from encouraging users to tag themselves in content “they are not actually depicted in.” So it is acceptable to ask for likes or comments as part of a promotion, but you cannot post a picture and tag users or ask them to tag themselves, unless they actually appear in the image.

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Facebook Gives Advertisers Access to Stock Photo Library

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Example of the Stock Photo InterfaceFacebook advertisers won’t have to rely on expensive stock photo subscriptions of licenses soon, as Facebook has announced they have formed a deal with Shutterstock to allow advertisers to access millions of stock photos for all Facebook ad formats, provided at no extra cost. They will be fully searchable and accessible directly through the ad creation tool, making it much easier to add quality images to your ads.

The announcement from Facebook said, “High-quality, engaging photos often increase the performance of ads, particularly in News Feed. And now, through our collaboration with Shutterstock, it will be easier for businesses to integrate beautiful photography into their Facebook ads.”

With the addition of this new feature, Facebook advertisers will also be able to create multiple ads at a time with several images. The image uploader has been improved to allow users to select from a range of photos from your Page, as well as previous ads and the Shutterstock library. This also opens up the possibility of creating multiple ads for a single campaign and testing images to increase performance.

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Facebook Q2 Review Shows Large Gains in Click Through Rates, Conversions

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Facebook Sticker IconDespite constant detractors proclaiming the death of Facebook, advertising on the social media platform continues to show strong results for marketers according to the Q2 review of Facebook advertising by Kenshoo Social. Their statistics show significant increases for all metrics, from analysis of more than 75 billion Facebook ad impressions from advertisers using the Kenshoo Social platform.

Throughout Q2, the company saw click through rates rise 18.5 percent, with total clicks increasing by 16.5 percent compared to Q1 of this year. Engagement rates beyond the click also saw substantial increases as conversions rose 56.9 percent and revenue increased by 28.3 percent.

Todd Herrold, senior director of product marketing for Kenshoo Social says the gains are the result of advertisers continuing to refine their techniques and becoming more savy about the social media platform, as well as improvements made by Facebook itself. He told Marketing Land:

“Facebook has been steadily optimizing its ad units and launching new ad targeting products designed specifically for direct response, including Custom and Lookalike Audiences, Partner Categories and the Facebook Exchange (FBX).”

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What Social Video Platform is Better For Social Media Marketers?

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The savvy social media marketer already has a hold on Facebook and is exploring new markets, tools, and apps they can reach out to and connect with. Twitter is the second most popular social media platform, but Instagram has risen quickly and has a surprising hold on it’s niche market and function. Both have video. So, which is that social media marketer to choose?

Instagram vs. Vine Graphic

Source: Simply Measured/Search Engine Journal

If you are in the majority, you likely chose Instagram over the past few months as Vine and Instagram Video rolled out. As Search Engine Journal’s analysis shows, twice as many top 100 brands use Instagram Video compared to Vine. That’s pretty surprising, considering Instagram Video is far younger – only a few weeks old.

What makes Instagram the favored platform for marketing on social media video? What sets it apart from Vine? The basic differences come in video length and features. Immediately, one will notice Instagram Video has over double the video length of Vine, clocking in at 15-seconds, compared to Vine’s 6. They say brevity is the soul of wit, but apparently 6 seconds just isn’t enough for most marketers, but the filters may play just as much of a role.

When Instagram first came out, it became popular for its focus on photograph filters which overlay effects that turn amateurish phone pics into nice looking images. Now, they offer you the ability to do the same to your videos. They also offer a stabilization doctor to try to help minimize phone shaking in the video. All in all, this means nicer looking videos.

All of those points might be moot, if it wasn’t for sharability. When it comes to social media marketing, sharability is of utmost importance. You want content to reach as many eyes as possible. Instagram, with its 130 million monthly users, is owned by Facebook, which offers its ownn 1 billion monthly active users. Vine overall is smaller, with only 13 million users, and Twitter only has 200 million people actively Tweeting.

Everything considered, Instagram Video simply offers much, much more than Vine.

Vine has it’s own benefits, such as a looping feature which can be taken advantage of to create very unique “endless” videos. Vines are also embeddable across the web, making them easier for content sharing websites such as Buzzfeed to share. But, the sharing capabilities, extensive video options, and more comprehensive features make Instagram better for marketers and users alike. Marketing campaigns on Instagram have much higher potential to gain traction and you’ll be more likely to see some rewards.

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