What Not to Do With Your Online Presence in 2013. 6 Chinese Online Trends You Should be Anticipating in the Year of the Snake. With the new moon in February, the Year of the Snake will be upon us. Although it won’t have the fanfare of its Dragon forerunner, there’ll still be plenty of fireworks in a year bursting with opportunities for businesses selling in China. China’s sixth zodiac animal, the Snake, is said to have many material possessions. That coupled with China’s growing appetite for shopping, ensure it will be a good year to keep ahead of the trends if you’re a business hoping to capitalize on China’s increasing consumerism.
Here are six predictions and how to best take advantage of them. 1. Most statistics are staggering in China, but few compare to the growth of smartphones. Take Away: While ensuring your mobile site is up to scratch, don’t neglect your PC website. 2. Weibo’s registered users have grown to over 400 million, although just 287 million are considered ‘active’ . Take-away: In short, if your business doesn’t have a WeChat account yet, you should! 3. 4. 5. 6. How to Use Social Partnerships to Amplify Your Marketing. Would you like to combine forces with another company in a collaborative promotion? Want to know why this is wise and how to do it? Keep reading… Going Beyond the Customer Many marketers have a relentless focus on a single dimension of social interaction: the brand-consumer relationship. Thinking that the “social” in social media marketing is all about your relationship with consumers is constraining. Rethinking the role of other relationships can dramatically improve the effectiveness of those very marketing efforts designed to engage your target customers.
While social channels facilitate new ways of tapping into “partners” and as the line between personal and professional relationships has blurred, it is important to view business relations in a new—and yes, more social—light. The concept of “partner marketing” is not new. In this ad Southern Gulf Electric uses the Kohler brand to bolster its credibility. Social Partnering Strategies So What Makes a Partner a Partner? In summary: Internet Marketing Services Company, Expert in Search Engine Optimization, PPC, Social Media Marketing and More. The year's 5 most-useful social media tools for PR and marketing. Collection of 2012 Tip-Related Articles for SEO, Social & Internet Marketing. 11 New Year’s resolutions for PR and marketing professionals. As we prepare to ring in the new year, let’s take a few minutes to reflect on what’s most important as a marketer or PR practitioner, particularly as the media landscape continues to evolve.
Below are some reminders and/or resolutions related to our practice. These are simple rules. And the best part: they’re fairly easy to incorporate into working life, yet as guiding principals can make a big difference. Resolve to be a better writer—in 140 characters or less. In an age of tweeting, being succinct is key and helps in making your content viral. Resolve to think outside the confines of “traditional” PR. Instead of relying on an age-old press release, ask if a topic is better suited to a blog or social media post. Resolve to know your audience. Resolve to be a storyteller. Resolve to speak measurement upfront, not when asked by the client. Resolve to be SEO friendly.
Resolve to be more visual. Resolve to stay ahead of the game. Resolve to slow it down and clean up your act. 11 Marketing Tips for LinkedIn. With over 135 million users, 59% of which are located outside of the United States and with 75 of the Fortune 100 companies using the network for marketing and recruiting purposes, LinkedIn has become a critical platform for building, connecting with, and growing your personal and professional networks. As the leading business social network, LinkedIn offers the chance to connect with professionals all around the world and from all industry backgrounds. But how do you convert networks into customers, and ‘likes’ into sales?
1. Learn from your peers Successful marketing is all about listening to what your market needs. The LinkedIn Groups feature provides a space where you can discuss issues with others in your industry and learn from their advice. 2. It doesn’t matter how specific your company’s product or service, LinkedIn allows you to connect with companies or individuals by industry, company size, geographic location, and more. 3. 4. You can also use LinkedIn’s polling feature. 5. 6. Why Your Social Media Marketing Campaign Can Fail Right from the Start.
Why Your Social Media Marketing Campaign Can Fail Right from the Start The study identified the fact that a significant percentage of perceived social network activity is driven by a relatively small proportion of power users who then skew perception in the way the social network really operates. The study showed that: “… between 20% and 30% of users depending on the type of activity – were power users who performed these same activities at a much higher rate; daily or more than weekly. Facebook user receives friend requests, receives personal messages, is tagged in photos, and receives feedback in terms of “likes” at a higher frequency than they contribute. Power users tend to specialize…” What this means for the average marketer who hopes to use a social network to publicise content or market a certain product is that one type of approach in a specific social network will not work. Because most marketing campaigns tend to focus on the medium and the message (i.e. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4.
8 Quick Ways to Increase Your AdWords CTR. There are times you just want to increase your click-through rates. You might need to raise it to help Quality Scores, increase traffic, or gain visibility for a new product. Often by just raising click-through rates, you might not be raising your conversion rate. You can even decrease your conversion rates with ads. However, we’re going to focus on raising click-through rates regardless of how it affects other metrics.
As always, you should be testing this for yourself to see what helps your overall account’s goals. Adding An Extension One of the easiest ways to increase click-through rate that also helps conversion rate is to use ad extensions. If you have yet not added extensions, do so now. Add Sitelinks Sitelinks are a type of extension so this could be grouped with adding an extension except there is one big difference between all the other extensions and sitelinks. With the other extensions, only one extension will show with an ad. Extended Headlines Take a look at these three ads: Google Plus Is A Very Big Deal Indeed For Social Media Marketers - MostHost Cloud Hosting Blog. The MostHost Cloud Blog is a repository for up to the minute blog items about what’s going on at MostHost and what we’re doing on social media and in business. We’ll update often, so stay tuned for more. Our company is devoted to cloud hosting with an emphasis on easy to use hosting automation tools from Parallels.
MostHost is home to the Easy Website Builder. Try the demo now if you haven’t already. Reliable Cloud Hosting for Business Our blog covers matters of interest such as email scanning, email encryption, email archiving, cloud hosting, web security to developers of autonomous software applications like Bitcoin lifestyle trading platform, email security, and more. We also comment on blogging, SEO, and social media at times. The MostHost Cloud Hosting Blog is maintained by: Darren McLaughlin Heather McLaughlin. 9 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing. Are you wondering how to add social media to your email communications? Email and social media marketing go together like Batman and Robin. They both can be effective on their own; however, when combined, their (super) powers can save the city and exceed your marketing goals. Is Email Dead? In this article I’ll show you how to combine email marketing with your social media efforts. In a recent StrongMail survey, “More than two-thirds of business leaders (68%) say they plan to integrate social media with their email marketing efforts in 2012″ (as reported by MarketingProfs on December 12, 2011).
As a guy who lives, breathes, eats and sometimes dreams email marketing, I was thrilled to see email getting some mainstream love. You may be thinking, “Hey, isn’t email dead?” Think again. This blog post and infographic on the value of email by SmarterTools will quickly dispel the “email is dead” myth. Need one more proof point that email is not dead? Why Does Integration Matter? #4: Provide Incentive. Search Engine Optimization or Social Media Marketing | Build-a-Blog-Site | Build-A-Blog. The New Google Analytics Fuels an On-Site Revolution. The new version of Google Analytics has been a hit-or-miss type of implementation. I personally think that most resistance to change is a type of “Professional Inertia”; where people get to know the tools they use so often, that any modification of those tools is greeted with resistance.
I myself also found myself disliking the new face of analytics when I first saw it, but then I started to look under the hood and see what they added to the code; and what is there will surprise you. Here are a few things about the New Analytics that you might not have figured out yet, or haven’t found the way to get the most out of it. Allow me to show you how getting past the design difficulties of the new Analytics is going to revolutionize your data mining.
Data Goldmine – Maximizing the Utility of Visitor Flow: One of my strengths as a Professional SEO is website architecture optimization. In SEO, I define traffic sculpting as using obvious and subliminal variables to encourage users to convert. The Essential Guide to Meta Descriptions that Will Get You Found Online. PR exec: Social media is not your savior. This might be unexpected advice coming from an agency’s lead representative for social media, but the truth is that social media will not save your marketing program. With my mind on the approaching start of spring training, here’s an analogy: The pitcher is one of the most important members of a baseball team, but pitching alone can’t carry a team to the World Series. The same is true for social media. Marketing is a team sport, and social media is just one player. Yes, I understand—and I advocate daily—that social media can be a powerful communication tool and that it has prompted a sea change in how we communicate.
A winning marketing program is integrated; it includes the best combination of channels and tactics, and although social media may be the newest kid on the communications block, the basics of good marketing still apply. Here are a few things to keep in mind: Social media is not a strategy. Clients often ask, “What’s our social media strategy?” This isn’t meant to discourage. 20 free tools to evaluate social media. These tools are not for measurement, but instead evaluation. They will give you some form of meaningful data to use in reports—plus they don’t cost anything. This is by no means an extensive list. Others exist, but even a few of them together will provide you with meaningful intelligence. Here they are: 1. Gives you stats on websites, including global rank, country rank, number of sites linking in, and good basic audience data, including demographics. 2. Like a lot of services, Amplicate operates a “fermium” model.
Amplicate also has a blog with useful information. 3. Board Reader will search for mentions across forums (including sites like Quora) and will also churn out a chart based on mentions over time. 4. Along with companies like Radian6 and Lithium, the Canadian research firm Sysomos is one of the giants in professional sentiment analysis. We’ve had periodic problems connecting to the site, but when it’s live, the site is good for a free service. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. The Best Thing You Can Do For Your Website. It’s a top list. Please don’t sigh if you’re read about them on here before, because my most recent one just got a whole load more awesome, and there’s plenty that YOU can learn from it.
I’ve written in the past all about how to write an awesome top list which will get lots of people talking about your website, but until a couple weeks ago, it had been a long time since I’d written an effective one. With my IncomeDiary hat on, I produced a new top list, and tracked the progress that my website and fan page has made since the release. Here is what I’ve found… Here’s a few statistics. It’s been 12 days since I published the post and since then it’s had over 20,000 pageviews, which is now the most popular article on my website. How it Works The only reason that top lists work is because people want to share the posts with other people, whether it’s the people featured who are doing so, or fans of theirs. Website Traffic Search Traffic Tips for Writing a Top List Top List Ideas Call to Action. 10 Wordpress Plugins, You Can’t Blog Without! | Build-A-Blog.
The Ultimate Google+ SEO Guide. This comprehensive Google+ SEO guide covers every aspect and angle of Google+ and how it impacts search. My normal TL;DR has been replaced with a Google+ SEO Best Practices section located at the bottom of this post. I will be periodically updating this post (updated January 23, 2012) as things inevitably change. Please don’t hesitate to comment or contact me with observations or when certain features change. I also thank the many people (on Google+) who helped in the research phase of this guide. Google+ Search Most of the attention is on the integration of Google+ in Google search results. Google+ Search Facets Google+ search queries return results with a standard selection of facets. Sometimes Google selects these facets for you.
You can select certain types of content using what I call the content facet. This is all pretty self explanatory. Here you can select what universe of results you want to search. At present you can search for Google Check-ins in certain cities. Yup. Search+ Slideshow: 10 Invaluable (Yet Free!) Online Marketing Resources Business on Main. 3 Successful Google+ Pages and Why They Work. Have you created a Google+ page for your business? In this article I’ll show you what three top pages are doing. Still in its infancy, Google+ has become a very hot topic. Amid concern that this “new kid on the block” couldn’t compete in a social media landscape owned by Facebook, some have opted to dismiss the platform entirely.
While Google+ and Google+ business pages are still in the early stages, there is growing evidence that they’re here to stay. You Can No Longer Ignore Google+ Google+ may be the newcomer in social media, but it can no longer be dismissed. “Search is probably the biggest reason it changes everything. Google+ Updates Coming Fast Over the past few weeks, there has been a slew of Google+ updates that should make marketers sit up and take notice. Google+ is here to stay, with updates coming out almost weekly. The Google+ team is actively soliciting and responding to user feedback and suggestions on their Google+ page, hinting that more updates are in the works. #1: Android. 33 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed. Did you keep yourself busy this week reading about all things CES? Well, just in case you missed anything outside of Vegas, it’s time for the weekly features roundup.
We have tips for navigating the dating scene with digital media, tricks for making your Pinterest cutting edge and pointers for getting the most out of YouTube. We’ve covered the coolest tech accessories, the most popular Twitter pictures and we’re even holding a Facebook short story contest. Here are this week’s social media resources. Editor’s Picks 10 Essential YouTube Tips and Tricks Here’s how to get more out of your YouTube experience, from improved search to better viewing options via cunning shortcuts. 8 Apple Accessories at CES [PICS] The top iPhone and iPod accessories we found at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. How Technological Justice Can Fight Global Poverty While the developed world takes tech for granted, billions of people still live without electricity. Tell Us A Story – On Facebook [CONTEST] Social Media. Collection of 2012 Tip-Related Articles for SEO, Social & Internet Marketing.
Tips for a Social Media Marketing Campaign. Leveraging the Power of Facebook. Online Video Marketing Tips For Brands & Websites From iVillage. 12 Google+ Marketing Tips From the Pros. 5 Valuable SEO Spreadsheets Resources. 10 Ways to Add Facebook Functionality to Your Website. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ — Advancing What Brands Can Do in the Social Channel. Pinterest: Link Building & SEO Strategies. 10 Promising Free Web Analytics Tools.
Best Free Website Analytics Tools. How to be a rock star on 8 social media platforms. Why, and An Easy Way, To Set Up a 301 Redirect on Your Blog. How to Hold a Google+ Hangout and Why You Should. Who rules social media? [Infographic] Infographic: The Authority Building Machine. How To Add Google+ To Your Social Media Marketing Strategy. Google+ opens to businesses and brands. Marketing Data, Metrics, Charts & Graphs | HubSpot. 20 KPIs you should monitor in Google Analytics. Which Web Analytics Is Best for You… and Why. SEO’s Three Stages of Keyword Success. 12 Most Critical Things Businesses Must Know About New Facebook. 10 Things You Should Include in a Social Media Plan. The 50 Best “Best-Of” Online Marketing Lists. 15 Questions for Social Media Marketing and Measurement Success. 10 Things You Should Include in a Social Media Plan. The 10 commandments of Video Marketing. SEO, social media marketing among top tools for B2B marketers.
Social Media Optimization - 4 Essential Social SEO Tips to Boost Business Results. LinkedIn Company Status Updates: A MUST Use Marketing Tool.