Instead of waiting for a new SEO change to take effect, get ahead of the curve by offering a better user experience now. A focus on improving certain aspects of your site will ensure that you don’t drop down in the search results when new changes are rolled out, which means that you’ll still be visible to the people you want to reach. Waiting until changes are implemented will put you behind—and improving your Web presence now has the added benefit of creating a more relevant, attractive and secure website. [Read more…] about Getting Ahead of SEO Algorithm Tweaks By Offering a Better User Experience
mobile
Is Your Company on Instagram?
Does your company have a marketing presence on Instagram? If not, it should be looked into. For companies that can share interesting images related to their business, office, products, or services, Instagram might be a great way to get more exposure online via this booming mobile social network.
Instagram Marketing
It is possible to do some marketing via Instagram, but it needs to be done in the right way. Instagram is a place for users to share images in a creative space, and over-spamming this space with company advertising and promotional material will be met with a negative response. However, finding out what your target market is doing on Instagram and then joining them can help you become successful.
Finding Your Niche
For instance, an athletic apparel company can comment on users who are posting on Instagram about their recent workout, diet, or activity. They could hold contests for users to post an athletic-related post with a unique hashtag (e.g. the company’s name) for an entry to win prizes or free company merchandise. Additionally, the company could post models in their apparel, inspirational health and wellness quotes, or photos they’ve taken of their own employees getting active. These types of posts will be of genuine interest to their target market.
For ecommerce websites, ask customers for photos of them using the products they have purchased from the website. Then (with their permission) post them on Instagram! This is a visual testimonial and gives current and potential customers the benefit of seeing the company’s products in action.
Staying Connected
An easy way to gain exposure when creating a new Instagram account is to link it with Twitter. If a company already has an active Twitter followership, automatically posting links to Instagram photos can help Twitter followers then start following their Instagram profile. Also adding an Instagram icon to the company’s website, blog, newsletter, and other online marketing materials can get the word out about their new profile. Also including the company’s profile on online Instagram and social media directories, like Followgram, can help increase exposure as well.
Just like with any social media profile, it is important to keep Instagram updated, as users will only be exposed to new posts and are less likely to find a company’s profile when they only update on a weekly or monthly basis. Instagram is a great way to reach customers as a new digital medium, but it’s important to be respectful of the space and not crowd it with advertisements!
The Best Free iPhone Applications for Social Media Marketing
More and more consultants and professionals in the internet and social media marketing realm are using their smartphones (especially the Apple iPhone) to stay connected and maintain their online presence. There are several social media marketing applications available for the iPhone for free that can allow a social media marketing consultant or professional to stay connected and updated on the go.
Popular Social Media Applications
Twitter: Twitter allows the user to add multiple accounts and switch between them. You cannot post on two accounts at one time. However, the interface is easy to use and loads quickly.
Facebook: The newest Facebook update allows users to write wall posts and publish photos onto the pages they are administrator of, but they cannot delete posts or comments.
LinkedIn: However, the LinkedIn application only allows for one account to be logged in at a time. The LinkedIn application is good for reading posts by other users, accepting requests, and sending InMail. Users cannot edit groups or company profiles.
Blogging Applications
WordPress: The iPhone WordPress application has a lot of versatility and allows users to add, update, and view posts on multiple blogs through the one application. Users can also view and edit pages and approve blog post comments. Additionally, if users have added the stats plugin, they are able to view basic stats about their blog, including traffic.
Tumblr: Tumblr iPhone app users can post photos, video, audio, quotes, links, and text from their phone, as well as handle multiple blogs via the single application. Tumblr posts can also be scheduled or tweets can be customized. Users can search the iPhone contacts to see if they have a Tumblr account.
Blogger: The Blogger application allows users to monitor and edit more than one blog and add photos instantly to posts. Users can also labels, save drafts, or automatically publish posts.
Social Media Marketing Applications
Sendible: The Sendible user via an iPhone experiences a similar interface to the online computer version of Sendible.com. Users can send the same message from multiple accounts as well as schedule when messages go out. Sendible has a free account version, as well as paid monthly membership, depending on usage and accounts.
Tweetdeck: Tweetdeck is similar to Sendible, but most users use the free version of this service.
These are just a sample of the several iPhone applications that are available for internet and social media marketing professionals.
What are your favorite iPhone applications?
Microblogging drives mobile Internet usage
If you’re in any doubt that adding geotagging to Twitter is a good idea, the latest survey from Novarra has found that microblogging services are driving the use of the mobile Internet.
In the past year, mobile usage of URL shortening services such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com — near-essential for sharing links on Twitter — has leapt by 1,068%, while page views of Twitter grew by 3,500% in the first half of 2009.
VP of marketing at Novarra, Randy Cavaiani, said that Twitter was a great viral tool for exposing consumers to new and interesting content.
These statistics are bound to be encouraging for those pushing uptake of the mobile Internet, and it’s not too surprising that Twitter is particularly popular given that interesting things generally happen when users are mobile.
Increased functionality, such as geotagging, more interesting third-party apps, and more mobile operators opening up Twitter via SMS, should propel Twitter usage even further.
Twitter geotagging: Will you be using the new service?
Do you Twitter from your mobile device while on the go, or do you tend to use the service from the comfort of your home computer?
Twitter’s recent announcement that it has added geotagging capabilities to its API means that we will soon see a number of third-party Twitter applications taking advantage of that.
Geotagging is one of the latest crazes, it seems, with many devices now containing GPS devices and making the task very easy.
Yet, while taking photos and geotagging them some time later has few privacy concerns (assuming you’ve granted permission to share the photos on a service such as Flickr), tweeting from an identifiable location raises some possible concerns.
Whereas manual tweeting means you can be a little vague about your exact location (West London, for example), broadcasting your GPS location means it’s possible for people to track where you are.
In the ideal, friendly world, this is a fantastic feature because it allows you to find your friends and other interesting people.
Without being alarmist, a slightly more sinister world may require some care to be taken. After all, unless you’ve made your Twitter account private, you could be tracked by anyone, and the fact that geotagging happens with each tweet means you can’t even delay revealing your current location.
What do you think of geotagging for tweets? Will you be using the new feature?
WordPress.Com Goes Mobile
With the popularity of the iPhone, BlackBerry devices, and other web-capable smartphones, it’s easy to take for granted the fact that millions of people read blogs on their mobile phones. However, not all devices are capable of displaying full HTML. And even those that do, not all screens are large enough for comfortable viewing of web content.
With this in mind, WordPress.com has recently launched several mobile functionalities, namely a few mobile-oriented themes, and (limited) dashboard access from mobile browsers. WordPress.com will automatically detect whether a reader is using a mobile browser, and assuming you have set your site to display a mobile theme when viewed from a phone–activated by default–the reader sees a predominantly text interface, with any header image miniaturized for small screens.
For mobile browsers capable of full HTML, there’s an option to switch to full view. Commenting and limited navigation features are also available on mobile view, making the viewing experience as functional as possible. As for the mobile dashboard, this mostly just involves stats, posting and bookmarking. This is simple enough for those times when you absolutely have to blog about something, but don’t have access to a computer.
This is one functionality I’d like to see built-into self-hosted WordPress installations. While you can usually enable mobile viewing and posting thru plugins, having this out of the box would surely be one good way of expanding readership and giving you a wider array of options when mobile-blogging.
What Are Your Favorite Social Media Tools for Mobile?
Bloggers are relatively mobile individuals. Some of us who earn directly or indirectly from blogging or writing most probably are not stuck in an office all day. Instead, we usually go about town looking for interesting things to write about, attend events, or just simply get ideas and inspiration from our environment. In some cases, we’re constrained with not being able to bring our laptops around, but there are a lot of alternatives to being connected.
Inspired by a recent Blog Herald post by Darnell Clayton on iPhone video blogging tools, I’m now listing a few tools I use myself in getting connected while on the move. [Read more…] about What Are Your Favorite Social Media Tools for Mobile?