How and Why a Social Media Manager is Essential for Your Business

In today’s cutthroat business world, it is not easy to stand yourself. Getting success in business is highly competitive today but the new social media applications are making it simpler to get in touch with the potential clientele and to expand the local business globally. In this editorial we will discuss about the ways to maximize the business opportunities using the social media.

Social media is growing exponentially and has almost revolutionized the mode or promotion and advertising. It has now become the most wonderful mode of expression between business to costumers as well as business to business. The very popular social media sites such as twitter, facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Digg have engaged more than 300 million business people. However, not all of these know how to exactly use the social media to promote the business worldwide through these amazing social networking websites. On the other hand some are doing really a fantastic job at using social media and have taken their business to a new horizon. [Read more]

How to Conduct Multiple Social Media Searches with One Lookup

The social media search engine normally lets a person carry out searches of multiple of dozens of social networking sites. Social media can be described to be the social networking system  where people get to interact on a social forum. It is meant to keep the friends updated about their social affairs. The social media may also be used by companies to to communicate about their products, recruiting new hires, receiving feedback about their products among many more. There are huge companies which have enrolled so many employees through the interaction on the social media. There exist numerous search engines today which are free that gives one the opportunity to search several search engines with just one look up. So just how does this happen? [Read more]

Google+ Raises the Bar for Bloggers

Not to imply that every blog you write isn’t chocked full of relevant, well-written content, tailored for just the right audience, I’m sure it is, but understanding the real implications of Google+ should have you thinking twice before you hit any publish buttons. More than ever, especially with the advent of the search engine giant’s most recent, most misunderstood social networking offering, content quality and relevance to a target audience count. Here’s why.

Jumping to conclusions has been the common response to Google’s latest entry into the world of social media. Comparisons to you-know-what are legion as are dire predictions of failure linked to previous false starts by Google, Wave and Buzz to name the last two. More cynically, others have assumed that the companion +1 button is nothing more than a rip off of the Facebook “like” button, again comparing Google+ to the dominant social media site, with the sole, rudimentary utility of upping rankings. These exercises in overlooking the subtleties that make Google+ very unique and innovative are not the stuff of sound analysis. [Read more]

The Complete Guide to Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing

Search Engine Optimization often is a difficult topic and not every blogger agrees that much time should be spend at it but too often people discussing the topic do not know what it all entails. So we sat down and created a What is SEO? infographic.

The graphic covers all basics of SEO and explains the different components of search engine optimisation: link infrastructure, keywords, social media campaigns, PPC and linkbait.

[Read more]

Will the New Digg 4.0 Bring Back Bloggers?

Digg used to be one of the foremost ways to promote Web content, though after a series of changes in algorithm, many users who were bloggers, publishers, or SEOs fled. While it may not be used as much for content promotion as in the past, at least amongst my blogging and Web publishing colleagues, it still has some life in it yet. There’s a brand new version around the corner, Digg 4.0, and it has a number of new features, including several that tend to the social. But is it enough Will it bring back all the lost power users? Can it gain ground over the volume of content sharing done through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter? Or is it too late?

How Digg Used to Factor in Blog Content Promotion

As someone who used to write 3-5 anonymous linkbaits per week a few years ago, Digg was crucial to the success of my work; if my content didn’t get the home page, I’d be in less demand. As soon as people started gaming Digg, and Digg reacted to that by changing their algorithms, there was a domino effect. Many smaller publishers and bloggers felt that they were getting cheated while certain sites still got their content on the Digg homepage, even if a lesser known site had a better post on the same topic. Incidents of domain banning also seemed to go up.

In other words, things had just gotten worse for some bloggers and publishers. So why use Digg for promoting content, wasting time, money, effort?  My own services became less and less in demand, at least at the rates that I used to get, because publishers were not willing to spend money on campaigns that might fail on Digg. That ushered in cheap linkbaits cranked out with little quality (though some still do well thanks to voting networks). I in turn stopped using Digg regularly, as did many of my colleagues. I’m not bitter; I just don’t use Digg all that much anymore unless someone asks me.

A typical approach a few years ago, to promote content, might be to use some combination of Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, Stumbleupon, Delicious and other social voting/ bookmarking sites, depending on the niche. Regardless of the combination and the sequence of submission, Digg was often a crucial part of the promotion for some publishers, and it wasn’t working for them anymore.

How Blog Content Gets Promoted Now

Meanwhile, those who discovered the power of Facebook and Twitter for content sharing went that route. These two social networks (yes, Twitter is one, not just a microblogging service) have potentially greater power for creating viral content than social voting and bookmarking sites. Why? Because of a number of reasons:

1. Trust factor. With Facebook at least, your social network tends to be comprised of people who know you, even if only online. That isn’t always the case with a voting site, even if it allows for “friending,” because Facebook allows for conversation that helps you get to know someone better. Obviously, you’re more likely to re-share web content posted by someone you know than to vote up content submitted on Digg by someone you might know not very well, if at all. Digg did have limited interaction through their “shout” feature, though I think that was dropped a while back. But it wasn’t the same as conversation. The “conversation” is on Facebook, and to a lesser degree, on Twitter.
2. Wider audience. With 400M+ users, Facebook has a broad range of users, and ultimately, we’re all much more connected than on voting sites. I’m definitely more connected to other users on Twitter than I ever was on Digg or other social voting and bookmarking sites.
3. Ease of sharing. It’s easy to share content from a range of topics and have someone re-share it, on both Twitter and Facebook. Facebook even gives you a nice little snapshot of what to expect. That means more people are likely to share interesting content.With voting sites, before voting buttons were available for placing on blogs, if you wanted votes, you had to convince someone to sign up for one or more social voting/ bookmarking sites. The probability of success was low then and I’m not even sure it’s that great now, even with the availability of voting buttons. Now, even if friends did sign up, getting them to spend time daily checking on Digg to see if you needed a vote or ten was an uphill battle. If you voted too fast as a group, or if the same people voted en masse, or if you frowned at Digg the wrong way, Digg might punish you — unless you were one of maybe 10-15 sites that seemed untouchable.
4. Better viral infrastructure. Facebook doesn’t the restrictions Digg imposed, when it comes to sharing content, nor does Twitter. As such, interesting content can go viral sooner, and having the shortest viral loop is crucial for content to become viral. Even just a half-dozen retweets in short order of shared content can help bring in Web traffic and thus be a more valuable approach than using a voting site full of rules. If you cross-promote on Twitter and Facebook, without managing to p*ss off your friends/ followers, the potential for the success of Web content is even higher.

The Return of Digg?

But Digg has been reinvented. Founder Kevin Rose is at the helm again, and there are a slew of new features, many of which are “social.” I’m not going to get into all of them, but the relevant stuff is that you can import your social graphs from Facebook and Twitter. You can also log in with your Facebook profile, though I believe that was there before Digg 4.0′s release. You can also import contacts from GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and AOL, though I don’t know when these features were added. The other features of Digg 4.0 (which by the way is not live yet) are described in a recent Techcrunch post, but as many people are saying, they seem to be copying some of the better features of Twitter and Facebook?

Will these features be enough to bring lost users, especially bloggers, to Digg? I’m willing to keep an open mind, though don’t have the time to invest again. But before completing this post, I thought I’d synchronize my original Digg account with my Facebook account, in preparation for Digg 4.0 going live. Unfortunately after going through three or four registration screens, I got a “Yikes, we just had an error.”

The voting/ bookmarking flavors of Social Media can still work, provided you follow some simple tips, but I’m not sure Digg will be in my arsenal anymore. Me, I’m sticking to Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Delicious and a few others. Still, if you ask me to Digg and I like the content, I probably will. You can add me on Facebook; just remember to make a mention of why you’re adding in the message area or I’ll ignore the add.

Wear a Mask, Cut Loose Your Inner Blogger

Don’t or can’t use your real name when you blog? You can still build a personal brand, albeit around a fictitious character. Or maybe that character doesn’t have to be all that fictitious, and can be based on your interests, reveal a facet of you. Thus, it may be worthwhile choosing a Web moniker and building a persona around that.

Why a Web Moniker?

Blogger “Johnny B. Truant” is obviously a real person using a fictitious name. He discusses on Copyblogger today what prompted that choice, and how “Johnny” is just as real as the person behind the name. While in some blogging circles it’s believed that blogging is very personal, one on one, and real names should be used, others believe differently. I’m of the belief that if there’s no moral or legal hitch to using a moniker, then why not — except possibly when a business executive writes on a company blog? If blogging involves telling stories, as so many bloggers have written, then cutting loose a persona based on a moniker might free you up to say what you’d really like to say, without the concerns you might have about being judged by friends, family, or colleagues.

A moniker and Web persona, as Johnny B. suggests, lets you loose to write real copy, and gives you the freedom to stop censoring yourself. The moniker gives you the license to create a persona that you want to be known as, and thus gives you the confidence you need for blogging.

I’ve coached many aspiring writers over the years, and confidence is one of the fundamental roadblocks that stops people from just writing. Cutting loose with a few monikers also lets you explore different writing styles on an ongoing basis, letting you naturally choose one to build a persona around. This is the number one reason I’ve cultivated different monikers since I first started blogging in 2002, though I’ve essentially tried to build only one persona.

Picking a Moniker

Unlike Johnny B. and others — especially the Fake Steve Jobs types — my monikers were not intended to stay secret; nothing stays secret online for long. Rather, when I really started blogging seriously in 2005, with the intent of making it part of my career, I was not sure how widely blogs would be read, nor what topics would be popular. I have always had multiple interests — a fact that sometimes means I have a hard time deciding where to put my efforts. (There’s also a fear that I’ll pick the wrong niche.) As a result I’ve ended up with multiple monikers over time that revealed a different facet of the real me. But as far as a persona goes, I’ve usually tend towards favoring just one, Talespinner — though as of late, that has morphed into the UltraGeek.

In choosing your moniker to build a persona around, brainstorm off of your niche as well as your personal interests. Maybe you have a nickname you’re know by, or an interest you’re known for. Try word games that combine your interests, your nicknames, the names of celebrities, rhyming words and so on.

For example, I’ve had a long-standing interest in food from a cultural standpoint. It just so happened that in my Toronto days, I went through a long hybrid Rockabilly-Punk phase and thanks to my Elvis Presley hairstyle and the clothes I wore, I used to be known by some friends as the Punk Elvis or Elvis Parsley. The name is a double play on words. First, parsley is a common ingredient in East Indian cooking. Second, Parsley is a play on Elvis Presley’s name. Result: my “Curry Elvis” persona for my cooking blogs, when I was still pursuing the idea that I might launch a Web-based cooking show. (During my computer career hiatus, just before I started seriously blogging, I went to cooking school and worked in a dozen or so restaurants for a few years.) So this persona potentially suited me, but in reality it didn’t suit my ultimate online objectives.

Building a Persona

I never built up the Curry elvis persona, mainly because publishing cooking blogs didn’t seem capable of paying the bills, but also because it gets hard to maintain an Elvis-like persona as you get older — something that might be necessary were I to appear in video. My subsequent monikers were due to my personal interests morphing through different niches, including self-improvement, music, writing, etc. For example, Curry Elvis became Punk Monk.

I don’t want to or need to bore you further with my other monikers and personas. They’re not that hard to find, if you’re interested, but the gist is that you can use a similar approach to choosing a moniker and building your Web persona as I did. Though decide on your online objectives before you pick your moniker.

Once you’ve picked a moniker that you like, you can build a “personal” brand, a persona, around it through blogging, creating new jargon, and promoting the persona through social media — just like you would do for the “real” you. I wouldn’t recommend trying to build more than one persona; it just takes too much effort. Brainstorm a few monikers, even use them for blogging different niches, but ultimately focus on just one persona. Johnny B. suggests that you should actually become your persona, at least online — which is difficult to do if you fragment yourself into too many personas. Fragmentation, as far as I’ve experienced will hold back your blogging success.

Caveats

Now, some niches — such as entertainment, design, photography, writing, music, marketing and anything else creative — are well-suited to having a blogging moniker because they can and do often involve storytelling as well as “personalities.” The choice of a blogging moniker might not suit if you’re blogging for clients, though you never know. It really depends on the client and their niche; just ask your clients.

Image: Flickr.

Brands need to adopt social media to prosper

Roll back a few years and the main piece of advice for companies seemed to be “get a website”.

We we told that any company that couldn’t be found online would go out of business. That’s not strictly true, of course — it depends a lot on the business — but what is happening is that the stakes are being raised.

Now, it’s not enough to have a website. You need a social media presence and a strategy to drive it.

With Google and Bing incorporating social network data into their search results, there’s an even more compelling argument for brands to capitalise on the power of social, according to Reality Digital.

With the rise in social media comes the need for reputation management — seeing what people are saying about a company or brand and communicating positively with both fans and detractors.

Robert Proctor at Reality Digital said, “Those brands that employ brand focused social networking applications will stand to benefit from these deals hugely, as through this they not only have the benefit of heightened consumer interactivity, but they may also start to see some of the great content from their networks appearing within search engine results.”

5 Basic and Yet Essential Tips to Get You Started with Blogging

So you were inspired by the self-made successful bloggers that you read daily and you want to start a blogging career? The problem is you don’t know where to start.

Here are 5 simple, basic, bare and yet essential tips that will help you get started with your blogging adventure. [Read more]

Australian Court Gives Permission to Live-Tweet Proceedings

In what could be an important development in how social media affects just about any industry and field, an Australian court was recently reported to have allowed live tweeting of proceedings. Judge Dennis Cowdroy states that tweeting was fine as long as it did not disrupt court proceedings. He believes that the public “has a legitimate right to be fully informed of proceedings, particularly proceedings such as (the iiNet case), which have attracted considerable public interest. Twittering can serve to inform the public in a more speedy and comprehensive manner than may be possible through traditional media coverage.”

This has precedence in previous cases in the US. While live reportage of legal proceedings are usually at the discretion of the presiding judge, not all jurisdictions might allow direct discussion of ongoing court cases.

As with any discussions held on Twitter or any social medium, readers are advised to check and verify the information and the veracity of the sources before retweeting, blogging or otherwise helping spread information online.

5 Social Media Tips and Tricks That Work

Since social media is such a powerful tool for increasing the traffic to your blog, I’ve tried many different social media tips.  Here are five of the best tips that have worked for my sites and our clients’ sites.

1. Befriend power users.

Power users are the users that exert the most influence on social media sites.  These users regularly submit content that gets popular and they have many people that follow them.

Check out the popular content in your niche and see who is submitting them.  You’ll often find a select group of people who submit the bulk of the popular content.

Vote for their stuff, send them interesting links, link to their site if they have one, guest post on their blog, interview them.  Basically, do whatever you can to help them and get on their radar without being overbearing or obnoxious.

Once you’re developed a relationship with them, you can send them your best stuff and ask them to submit it if they like it.

2. Create more comprehensive content.

One of the things I started realizing is that much of the content that does well in social media is pretty comprehensive.  The content was longer than your average post and it covered a subject with depth.

Therefore, I started creating longer posts filled with a lot of value and I’ve done better on social media sites as a result.  Now each of your blog posts doesn’t have to be 1,500 words, but it’s a good idea to regularly publish longer, in-depth posts that stand out from the crowd of your typical 2oo-5oo word posts.

3. Add images and video to your best content.

Another thing that has worked out well has been adding multimedia to content.  This is another thing  I noticed about viral content. Much of this content is highlighted by images and video.

It only takes a little bit of  time to go to sxc.hu or flickr.com and find relevant images that will improve your content.

And I think video is the next big thing in blogging.  I know many people have made the same prediction that it seems cliche but it’s definitely true.  More and more people are making web video a part of their routine.   Many of us are already chronic TV watchers so it will only take time before we get used to watching videos on the web.

Therefore, if you have any video skills, use them!  Also, the cost and learning barrier for producing videos has come down with discount equipment, software, and training courses.  I’m actually trying an experiment of shifting one of my blogs to mostly video instead of text and seeing how that works.

4. Try niche social media sites.

Most bloggers just focus on the big general subject sites like Digg and StumbleUpon but there is a lot of opportunity in niche social media sites.  Here’s a great list of these type of sites.  These sites won’t send as much as traffic as the big general subject sites, but the quality of their traffic is often much higher.  You’ll get a higher percentage of repeat visitors, a lower bounce rate, and more time spent on your site because of the more targeted traffic.

Also, it’s easier to network with the power users because of the smaller user base.

5. Use social media widgets at the end of each post.

Widgets are a great way to encourage your visitors to submit your content to social media sites.  Visitors may like a post but without the prompting of a submission button, they won’t think to submit your content.

We added a StumbleUpon button on one blog and we’ve seen a big increase in submissions and traffic from StumbleUpon.

Performancing offers social media marketing services if you need help in this area.