How to use social media to create happy employees

Did you know companies with happy employees outperform their competition by 20 percent? LinkedIn has carried out research to say that 58 percent of employees are proud of their company and are glad to tell others about it, especially on social media. This is great news, as happier employee’s means happier customers, because they pass on their energy & passion in everything they do, including customer support. But how can you create happy employees on social media? In this article, we will go over six ways your business can create happy employees on social media that will help to boost your productivity, customer support & employee satisfaction. 1. Embrace your company culture The first thing your business needs to do to create happier employees on social media is to embrace its company culture. This means sharing a culture in the office that supports your company’s vision and values. Part of showcasing this culture involves spotlighting your employees. This not only helps your employees to feel valued, but also shows others outside the organisation what the company is like to work for and attracts those who share the same vision. Here are some ideas to help you out: Share content of the office environmentShare behind the scenes access of what your employees are working on (with approval)Share new ideas your employees have come up with for the businessShare facts about your employeesShare events & special occasions that happen within the companyHere’s how Shortstack have embraced their company culture & shared a special occasion in their office when one of their employees had just got engaged.2. Empower Employees A happy employee is one who feels appreciated by the company for what they do and their contributions. On social media, a great way to show your employees this appreciation is to empower them to make key decisions in the customer’s best interest. When communicating with customers on social media – especially with support – this means giving your employees the freedom to resolve the customer’s issue in their own way. Of course your employee will still be following company guidelines, but they are now able to add their own personality and flair to enhance the experience. This helps to reduce response times and increases efficiency, as the employee is not waiting for approval. This also allows employees to then create a unique experience for the customer that they did not expect. This positive experience leads to increased word of mouth, trust, and loyalty. Here’s how the resort Gaylord Opryland created an unforgettable experience for one of their customers by empowering their employee to take action by surprising her with two spa radios while she was at a conference. 3. Spotlight EmployeesAnother great way to value your employees is to encourage them to share their thoughts and expertise with your social media community. After all, the company has done the hard work in training them, now it’s time to have a little faith in the job they’ve done. You can achieve this on social media by giving your employees the spotlight and allowing them to showcase their expertise and personality through content creation on your social channels. You can also give them creative job titles in line with their personality to let them really own the process (i.e., Chief of Customer Awesomeness). However, you want to make sure before they create any content that it is in line with the company’s culture & values. This is not only a great way to please your employees, but it also helps them to get more involved with the company and its goals. Here are some ways you can get your employees more involved on your social channels today: Live Q & A via video or status updateGive them an opportunity to blogShare their new ideas & thoughts with your community Here’s how Post Planner have adopted this practice and spotlighted one of their employees, allowing them to share their expertise on their blog. 4. Establish Clear CommunicationHaving clear communication is key to creating happy employees on social media, as this helps to streamline their tasks & increases efficiency. Open communication means the employees should be able to communicate with all departments or individuals in the company, which helps them to escalate queries or tasks that need approval to the correct individual or team without any delay. One way to establish this is to create an escalation policy. This is simply a document that will outline the key contacts and their job roles in each department or team. Having open communication on social media also means the company should be transparent with their employees about any developments and their vision. This means letting employees know about all changes, news, events, or even launches. Having this transparency in the company helps to build employee trust, as they know exactly what to expect from the company, rather than hearing it elsewhere online. 5. Do Not MicromanageTrust the employees in the organisation to carry out their roles effectively, which means not micromanaging every task they do. It’s understandable that companies want to protect their reputation on social media, and therefore want to approve all comments and content. However, adopting this practice actually uses up more resources, wastes time, and becomes counter-productive. To create employee happiness in your company, you want to give employees the freedom to carry out their role to the best of their ability. This means giving them the freedom to engage with your community on social media. This is a great way to build rapport with the company as well as humanise the brand, as it allows the social media community to get to know the employees in the process, which also helps to develop those long-term relationships. To ensure everyone in the company is on the same page, the best way to start this process is to create a social media policy so all employees are aware of best practices on the company’s social channels. Here’s how Best Buy have adopted this approach by giving their employee the freedom to talk with fans: 6. Welcome FeedbackIt’s not enough to just listen to the views of your employees to create a happier workforce. The secret truly lies in taking action on the feedback they provide about your social media community. Your employees offer the company the perfect way to get direct feedback on how well your company is performing on social media. They engage with fans and customers on a daily basis and are therefore able to gather insights and feedback on what is working and what can be improved. Taking action on this feedback is the perfect way to not only show your employees you value their contribution and opinions, but to also allow you to find new ways to innovate & engage your social media community. This method is far more effective than carrying out market research, as it allows the company to gather feedback in real time. A tip here is to collect this feedback from your employees on a regular basis to help ensure you keep up with demand & the latest changes on social media. Source

Posted on: 30 October 2015 | 2:33 am

The 4 Worst Tips I Got When I Started My Business

I started my company, Headbands of Hope, as a college student. Having zero business experience, I leaned on outside advice to get started and all my questions answered. During this time, I received some of the best advice that I’ve carried with me since then. A lot of the success we’ve had today is because of the incredible people who lent their voice and expertise to help build my vision. But with so many people talking in your ear, there’s bound to be some bad advice. I didn’t know it at the time, but below are four pieces of advice I’m glad I didn’t listen to: 1. Start with funding.A business professor told me to start talking to investors and get funding to start my business. Instead, I did everything I could to be as frugal as possible and use my own money to grow organically. Looking back, I’m so glad I didn’t jump at the idea to give up equity so early, especially when I didn’t need it. I started with minimal inventory and as we got bigger, was able to buy more. There are a ton of businesses where funding is a necessity in the beginning, but really take a good look at your idea to decide if yours is one of them. 2. Find a partner.I came up with my idea by myself through a summer internship. One piece of advice I got was to find a partner who I trusted to go in with me on the business. A lot of great businesses are run by partnerships, but I don’t think it’s a necessity to a successful company. If anything, I really enjoyed being 100 percent in control and building my idea exactly the way I envisioned it. Having a business partner can be great for productivity but if it’s not there, don’t force it. 3. Have an exit strategy.Before I even made my first sale, I was asked what my exit strategy is. I haven’t even started, and I’m supposed to know how I’m going to finish? I had goals and dreams for the business and where I wanted it to go in the future, but I didn’t have an answer to if or when I wanted to sell it. One of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs make is using the potential sale of a company as a primary motivator. If the heartbeat of your business is to eventually cash out, then your decisions are based on that and not your values or customers. Focus on creating the best company you can. If you end up selling your business down the road then that should be just the cherry on top of your career. 4. Don’t dream too big.I remember sitting in another business professor’s office and telling him about my idea of a socially-responsible company that gives headbands to kids with cancer. He asked what my dream was for the business. I told him I wanted to be the leading headband company and eventually donate headbands to every children’s hospital in the U.S. (which we just completed a month ago). The professor told me I needed to think smaller and more realistic. He suggested I think of Headbands of Hope like the LIVESTRONG bracelets -- a one to two year fad with only one style of headband and then call it a day. Today, we have over 100 items and are releasing new designs monthly. We’re in more than 300 stores across the U.S. and Canada and have a booming ecommerce site. I understand he wanted me to simplify my idea and be more “realistic.” But I try to keep my reality close to my dreams instead of separating the two. As an entrepreneur, almost everyone feels compelled to tell you how to run your business. No matter if this is your first business and you’re starting with a blank slate (like I did) or you’re a serial entrepreneur, it’s important to be open to ideas, but also tp develop a filter for the pieces of advice that should be let go. Source

Posted on: 23 October 2015 | 8:24 am

Facebook Adds Public Posts To Search, More Frequent Updates May Be Coming

Facebook has announced some incremental search improvements and a new “channel” for its newsroom (Search FYI) that will provide updates on the evolution of search at Facebook. This suggests to me that we’ll be seeing more “search activity” going forward. In a blog post announcing the improvements, Tom Stocky, Facebook’s VP of Search, said that the company sees “over 1.5 billion searches per day and over 2 trillion posts in our index.” Facebook said that as of today users will see or be able to:More timely and more personalized search suggestions (There apparently will be a real-time dimension to the suggestions, as with big stories or news events) The ability to search public posts, as well as friends’ posts (In December, the company rolled out the ability to search friends’ posts) Search public conversationsAbout the latter item, Facebook said, “When a link gets shared widely on Facebook, it often anchors an interesting public conversation. Now there’s a new way to quickly dive into that discussion. With one tap, you can find public posts about a link, see popular quotes and phrases mentioned in these posts, and check out an aggregate overview of sentiment.”These updates are going to be first available in (US) English for iOS, Android and the PC. It’s mostly about mobile, however, which drives 87 percent of daily active usage and 76 percent of ad revenue (Q2). Source

Posted on: 23 October 2015 | 8:14 am

Social Signals & Search – Reading the Tea Leaves

Social media is a focal point for brands. One of the most compelling reasons is because their marketing team, agency and/or consultants have convinced them that being social is required to compete. Brands are also pursuing social because search engines are paying attention to social signals. This leads to two important questions: Do social signals matter to search? The simple answer is yes.How important are social signals in search? This is the burning question many are attempting to answer.Due to the nature of search, there is more speculation than definitive direction on how search engine algorithms are weighing social signals in search. So, as with any other new trend, we're left to dissect the information available to us and interpret it as we do for any other aspect of search. So, let’s take a look at what we have to work with. Google and Social SignalsGoogle launched “social search” in 2009. Although Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts hasn't written about social signals as part of Google Plus Your World since January 2012, there is evidence that Google is paying close attention to social signals, on and off Google properties (Google+, YouTube, etc.).Read Full Article

Posted on: 28 February 2013 | 10:05 pm

How to Generate Quality Traffic With Display Advertising

For a few years it seemed that “display advertising” had become something of a dirty word for many in the Internet marketing community. Perhaps they only tested contextual targeting on the Google Display Network (GDN) – throwing a few keywords up and hoping for the best? Maybe they tried some large buys from a demand side platform (DSP) and didn’t see the best ROI? Or maybe they signed on with a self-service DSP only to find the platform was confusing and lacking in features? Whatever the case, there are so many options available for display advertising that you should be out there testing. Google is pushing the envelope with their offerings on the GDN. But that is just one display network! Peel back the curtain and you will find a big world of networks, DSPs, and remarketing services – all of them offering their own special sauce of algorithms, self-service platforms and generally raising the bar for the entire industry. Google AdWords – Google Display Network (GDN)The GDN is the most well-known display network given that it is a part of the Google AdWords platform. However, the consensus among an alarmingly high percentage of advertisers is that GDN doesn’t work. My gut instinct is that the advertisers crying the loudest know the least about how to leverage the range of GDN features to target their customers. So, if it has been a while, here is a sampling of the myriad ways you can tweak GDN campaigns to generate quality traffic – and yes, conversions: Contextual Targeting: This is the basic foundation of the GDN. Input some keywords that are relevant to your product or service, and Google will match your ads to websites. This is where a lot of advertisers stop. But you have to dig deep. Segment your keywords. Google has given us the ability to bid on individual keywords. Review placement performance reports and exclude poor websites. Add demographic settings to gain another layer of relevancy.Placement Targeting: Cherry-pick the websites that are most relevant and/or convert the best. Layer on keywords, demographic settings for even more detailed targeting.Topic/Category Targeting: Need to increase your ad reach? Try Topics or Categories relevant to your product or service. This will open you up to a much larger portion of the GDN. Be sure to control performance with site exclusions, keyword targeting, and demographic targeting.Remarketing: Where do I start? The possibilities are endless! Tag your website and landing pages. Segment those visitors into audiences. Create targeted ads. Voila! – watch the conversions come in!Search Companion: Bridging the gap between search and display, Search Companion is a unique feature for the GDN. You create a campaign leveraging keywords you would normally target on search. Google will cookie anyone searching for those keywords on Google.com – regardless of whether they click your ads. You can then target ads to those searchers on the GDN. This is an extremely relevant way to run display ads!RLSA: Otherwise known as “remarketing lists for search advertisers.” This is another way Google is bridging the gap between search and display. RLSA functions like typical remarketing, adding a cookie to anyone who visits your website. However, instead of triggering ads on display, your ads are remarketed to these visitors on Google.com. Unfortunately, this beta test is closed. Ask your Google rep for more details.Similar Audiences: Already running remarketing? Great! How can you gain even more impressions, clicks, and conversions? Run ads on audiences that are similar to your existing remarketing audiences. Google reviews your audiences and will match you to an audience that expands far beyond those visitors who have already been to your website.Read Full Article

Posted on: 28 February 2013 | 10:04 pm

5 Ways to Use Video to Connect With Customers

You’ve probably noticed the surge in online video. It’s being touted as the hottest content marketing trend, Harlem Shake videos have saturated the Web and it makes us all wonder if more video isn’t just what we need to stand out.But there’s a difference in seeing the power of video and truly using video to push your brand further and make it more connected.I sit in a lot of conversations about online video. It’s not only something I’m particularly interested in, but it’s something my agency considers a core and beloved part of our marketing mix. So I’ll admit, sometimes when I hear the current conversation about video I get a little stabby. Because while marketers are starting to understand how great video is, they’re not truly using it.It’s time to push your video marketing to the max. Sure, video is a great vehicle for those unboxings, the product views, and your customer testimonials, but that’s not all video is capable of.Below are five different ways to use video.1. To Recognized Your AudienceHave you heard of Vsnap? If not, it’s a tool that allows you to record short video messages to share with your audience. The company views these video snapshots as a way for businesses to feel and act more human. And you know what? Vsnap actually practices what they preach.Every time someone follows Vsnap on Twitter, community manager Trish Fontanilla sends them a video recognizing them and saying thanks.When one of their community members tweeted they were having a bad day, Trish sent him a video message to cheer him up.(If someone is chatting about them on Twitter, Trish will hop into the conversation and say hello when it’s appropriate, of course).She’s actually become a little Internet Famous simply by using video to connect with the company’s friends and users. These videos may only take :30-:60 to create, but they show users Vsnap thinks they matter.Using video for customer support or just to say “thanks” may not be scalable or appropriate for every business, but when can you use video to be more human?Maybe it’s a video sent at the end of an event you’ve hosted where you thank people for attending and invite them to keep in contact. Maybe it’s a video message when someone completes their first order. Or their 10th. Or after they’ve left an impactful blog comment. Look for opportunities to be human.Read Full News

Posted on: 28 February 2013 | 10:02 pm

Matt Cutts on Finding Untrustworthy Links, Why Google Won't Kill Toolbar PageRank

After the rollout of the Penguin algorithm in April 2012, the infamous unnatural link warnings were sent by Google. It quickly became clear to SEO professionals that they would need to delete or dilute to comply with Google’s webmaster guidelines. But one question has plagued the industry ever since: “how do I know which links to remove?”Google has released two new videos in its popular Webmaster Help series that shed new light on a couple of hot topics in the SEO industry: how to you identify unnatural links and why Google wont switch off the PageRank Toolbar feature. Identifying Unnatural Links A new video by Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts announces that Google will soon begin supplying example links that were detected as being untrustworthy. “A feature that we’re working on and that we are in the process of rolling out, which I’m pretty excited about, is that we will basically give you examples. So as we’re building the incident, whenever a webmaster analyst is saying 'OK, these are links not to trust,' we’ll include an example link. You might get one, you might two, you might get three, but basically it will give you an idea of the sorts of links that we are no longer trusting.”Read Full Article

Posted on: 15 February 2013 | 2:45 am

A Guide to Getting Started With Analytics

Search Engine Watch covers a lot on the topic of analytics. From using Advanced Segmentation to get a better idea of you “not provided” and “not set” traffic to a wide array of specific subjects that are invaluable for advanced users.However, this post is intended for people who aren't sure where to start or specifically what the data means. This article will cover analytics from a beginner's perspective with explanations of five core areas, how to get to them, and what to look at while you're there. Google Analytics is our analytics platform of choice for this post, though most solid analytics software will have similar functionality – you'll just have to hunt it down. Need help with Google Analytics installation? Google covers how to install it here. We'll start from the Google Analytics dashboard for your site.Read Full Article

Posted on: 15 February 2013 | 2:43 am

Make Content Marketing Work: 3 Tips to Activate Your Top Influencers

We discover, consume, and share digital content in radically different ways than we did five years ago. This fundamental change has been driven by the rapid adoption of social media and mobile devices. Social media is both a content filter and a distribution channel. We discover and consume more content than ever because of social media. What’s more, as people engage with and share this content with others, it sends strong signals to the search engines that improve its position in search engine results, which increases the content’s reach significantly. In conjunction with social media’s impact on content discovery, the smartphones and tablets we carry around with us have expanded the time and spaces in which we read, watch, and share this content. The net result of these changes is that we have more content to consume and more time to consume it in. Sounds like a win-win for consumers and marketers right? Not so fast. The new reality is that the firehose of content consumers receive is highly filtered and curated through the digital connections consumers trust whether they be friends and/or subject matter experts. Look at your Facebook newsfeed or Twitter stream for examples of this. Making your message stand out in the stream of content rolling past your target audience is a major challenge. So although we might be spending more time consuming and sharing content, marketers’ access to that time is increasingly limited. In response to this disruption and the opportunities it creates for marketing through social media and search, content marketing is a hot topic among digital marketers these days. Content marketing involves creating unique content and driving discovery, engagement, and distribution of it through a combination of organic and paid channels.Read Full Article

Posted on: 15 February 2013 | 2:41 am

Combining Content Marketing, Conferences & Viral Content In 3 Simple Steps

As conference season approaches and content marketing receives more attention from marketers, combining content and conference strategies is of increasing importance to us all. My last article touched upon the importance of holistic content marketing strategies across all online marketing disciplines.With SES London just a few days away, these tips can help you best make use of content marketing strategies in line with your event strategy. Content Marketing Meets Demand Generation At ConferencesWhen people plan for events and conferences many people think first about specific event strategy – demand generation, networking, exhibit space, and sales goals. Conferences also provide an ideal environment to leverage creative content and align that with your demand generation goals. The end result is far more sales and a far more efficient return on your investment – no matter how big or how small.Read Full Article

Posted on: 13 February 2013 | 2:31 am

Followers of Top 100 Brands on Google+ Grow 9,400%

Google+ is establishing itself as the mainstream social network for top brands with a 9,400 percent increase in followers since 2011, according to a report by BrightEdge. The ‘Social Share' report tracked social media adoption trends for the BrandZ top 100 global brands including Apple, Google, IBM, BMW, Red Bull, and Samsung. The report also provided insights into how YouTube is performing as a social network. "Google+ and YouTube have established themselves firmly in the mainstream of social networking. A majority of the top 100 brands- three quarters- have active profiles. As more brands engage users, we expect to see those who are unconvinced to shake off reservations and establish a strong Google+ presence," said Jim Yu, BrightEdge founder and CEO. Among the findings, the top 100 brands on Google+ now boast 20.9 million fans – up from just 222,000 in 2011. Of these, the top 10 account for four out of five followers.Read Full Article

Posted on: 13 February 2013 | 2:30 am

Google Could Make $5 Billion From Paid Search Ads on Tablets in 2013

Overall, the share of paid search clicks from mobile devices rose around the world in 2012, and people are more engaged with search results when they're mobile, according to Marin.Click-through rates and conversion rates on tablets rose sharply in 2012, and a new report from Marin Software projects tablets will account for 20 percent of Google’s paid search ad clicks in the U.S. – and about $5 billion in revenue. The State of Mobile Search around the Globe 2013, an annual report, analyzed more than $4 billion in paid search spend by brands and advertisers in 13 countries. Most of Marin’s clients are large advertisers spending more than $100,000 per month on paid search. Analyzing the average CTR across devices, Marin found CTRs for smartphones were 107 percent higher than desktops computers, while tablet CTRs were 37 percent higher. At the same time, cost-per-click was lower on mobile: smartphones clicks were approximately 36 percent cheaper than desktop clicks, and tablet clicks were about 17 percent cheaper.Read Full Article

Posted on: 13 February 2013 | 2:28 am

Facebook Introduces Graph Search

Rumors of a Facebook search product have been debated and discussed for a long time. Today, led by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Social Network held a press conference introducing the word to Facebook's new Graph Search. According to Zuck, the product is centered around "making new connections." Graph Search, not unlike a traditional search engine, is meant to have its users search for data on more than 1 billion Facebook users. However, Facebook wants to leverage all the data they have on all their members to help you find more connections. It was clearly emphasized from the onset of the announcement that this was not a product that would compete against traditional web search. This is about filtering and sorting through the 240 billion photos and nearly 1 trillion connections of the entire Facebook community. Graph Search represents the next evolution of Facebook. It started with a News feed that answered the question "What is going on with people around me?" Next, Facebook introduced the Timeline, which helped users find out more information about a particular person (in a creepy, historical way). Graph Search will allow you to fine new connections and friends like never before. Designed to show answers, not links to answers, Facebook showed two separate search screens. The first was a mock screen of a traditional "10 blue links" search. Then Facebook introduced a still of Graph Search. Read Full Article

Posted on: 16 January 2013 | 1:06 am

Google Search Market Share Slips as Bing & Yahoo Gain

Google couldn’t grow its record-breaking U.S. search market share beyond 67 percent in December, comScore reported. Meanwhile, Bing continued its incremental gains, as Yahoo’s share grew for the first time in longer than a year.In November, Google claimed an unprecedented 67 percent market share of searches conducted at home and work. Google’s rankings dipped slightly in December, however, down to 66.7 percent. In December 2011, Google still dominated with 65.4 percent share of the search market. Meanwhile, Bing grew its search market share to a new company high of 16.3 percent in December (up from 16.2 percent in November). Bing’s U.S. market share was at 15.1 percent in December 2011. Yahoo, which has seen its search market share eroding since September of 2011, actually gained a little ground in December, rising from 12.1 percent in November to 12.2 percent in December. However, Yahoo was still down year-over-year, as it had a much healthier 14.5 percent market share in December 2011. With 3 percent market share, Ask remained unchanged in December, while AOL’s share of searches grew to 1.8 percent, up from 1.7 percent in November.Read Full Article

Posted on: 16 January 2013 | 1:05 am

Yahoo Brings Flickr Images Back to Search Results

Yahoo has announced a new image search. Images are now also pulled from Flickr, the photo sharing service owned by Yahoo since 2005. The new image search allows you to find photos that are available for re-use using the Creative Commons licensing terms using a standard Yahoo Images search. The feature is available now on Yahoo Image search across all platforms – desktop or mobile. Simply look for the "Any Usage Rights" label along the left sidebar and select "Labeled for Reuse." The images below show how the search results change when you select re-use images. A Yahoo image search for [hockey]:Just like in other image searches, you can click any of the thumbnail images to view a larger version of the image. The page containing the larger image also shows the title of the image and the Creative Commons license for that image. Icons under the image allow you to view a slideshow of the images in your search result, tweet the image or view the image owner's Flickr username with a link directly to the owner's Flickr photostreamRead Full Article

Posted on: 16 January 2013 | 1:04 am

London Underground Google Doodle Celebrates 150 Years of the Tube

The first underground electrically-operated railway made its debut 150 years ago today in London. To mark the occasion for seachers in the UK, Google has posted a Doodle on its homepage featuring its letters atop the famous map of the London Underground.The color-coded Tube map can be traced back to electrical engineer Harry Beck. His original map design became the blueprint for modern transportation systems.The Transport for London website is embracing social media, enticing website visitors to follow them on Twitter and Like their Facebook page to discover key milestones from the history of the Tube and learn 150 facts via Facebook in honor of the milestone.Google Maps added public transport directions for the London Underground in July 2011.Read Full Article

Posted on: 10 January 2013 | 2:42 am

Bird Got the Word: Hashtag is Word of the Year

In 2012, not only was a baby girl named Hashtag, but now the word "hashtag" has been awarded the title "word of the year" by the American Dialect Society.The hashtag, or '#', is a regular feature on Twitter and is making its way into the daily conversations of people who actually say things like "hashtag: awkward" out loud. No wonder then that it is "word of the year". "This was the year when the hashtag became a ubiquitous phenomenon in online talk," said Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society. "In the Twittersphere and elsewhere, hashtags have created instant social trends, spreading bite-sized viral messages on topics ranging from politics to pop culture." If the idea that Hashtag is a great word annoys you, then be happy that the rival word "Yolo" was also in the running and didn't win. Yolo is "Carpe diem" for people that wear their jeans low and their hats backwards, and stands for "you only live once". The phrase "Gangnam style" was another contender. The winner last year was "occupy". The society says that winning words must either be demonstrably new or newly popular and widely used. In 2010 the winner was "app" and in 2009 it was "tweet". Sibling organisation the American Name Society voted "Sandy" as its "name of the year" for 2012.Read Full Article

Posted on: 7 January 2013 | 11:55 pm

Google Stops Warning China Searchers About Dangerous Keywords

Google has stopped warning Chinese Internet users that some of the words they might search for could see them kicked off the Internet.Google had been offering users a warning if they searched for terms including "Freedom", and whenever someone in China had made such a move would tell them that their Internet connection could be interrupted. The firm ceased issuing the warnings in early December, according to a report from Chinese censorship monitoring group Greatfire.org, and has removed supporting information from its about pages. This raises the question of why. Greatfire speculates that it might be due to pressure from the glorious Chinese government. The Chinese government employs what is called the Great Firewall of China, and controls its citizens' use of the internet with a firm hand. Greatfire speculates that Google, which was immune to Chinese government pressure, could have decided to censor itself. "What could be the reason for Google to switch off their smart anti-censorship function and at the same time delete the help article about the same function? The developers who painstakingly constructed it only half a year ago must have screamed in protest," it said in a blog post. "Since the removal of the help article could only be done willingly by Google, the only explanation we see is that Google struck a deal with the Chinese government, giving in to considerable pressure to self-censor." Google would not divulge a reason or comment, but a spokesperson confirmed the removal of the feature. Google and China do not have a particularly friendly relationship. Google accused the country of hacking into or interfering with Gmail, its email service, and when it launched this now-gone feature in May it looked like it was ready to fight the country on all fronts. China's line is that Google should butt out of its business. "Google's accusations aimed at China are spurious, have ulterior motives, and bear malign intentions," is the official line delivered through the China People's Daily. "Google should not become overly embroiled in international political struggle, playing the role of a tool for political contention. For when the international winds shift direction, it may become sacrificed to politics and will be spurned by the marketplace." It seems that Google might have started to hear what China has been saying.Read Full Article

Posted on: 7 January 2013 | 11:53 pm

Evolving Your SEO: Moving Toward a Content Marketing Approach

The search industry is booming. Competition for keywords – organic or paid – has never been higher. All forms of digital content multiply and prosper.Underneath it all, however, tectonic plates are shifting. Slowly but surely, almost everything that used to constitute search engine optimization (SEO) has become ineffective, risky, or inappropriate for most brands. SEO tactics are being taken off the table and a gap has begun to arise between what is needed – digital visibility – and the tactics, tools, and business processes needed to achieve it. Brands that learn how to evolve their approach to SEO and content to fit this new world will emerge on top. Brands facing this challenge would do well to focus attention on the means and the ends. Brands want SEO as a means to achieve the ends of building a conversation, engaging customers, and driving sales. Thinking with the ends in mind, it’s easier to step back and look at SEO as just one way that content can impact your business. The other ways? RSSSocial media/Web 2.0 sitesBlogsPlain old web pagesGuest postsSyndicationPRWhitepapersCase studies Sharable presentationInfographicsVideosConference presentationsAnd the list goes on. The idea is to take an SEO perspective on content and merge it with content strategy, editorial, distribution, and planning. Sounds good in principle, but how does it work?Read Full Article

Posted on: 7 January 2013 | 11:51 pm

Where Link Building is Heading in 2013

The techniques and tactics I've used since 1994 are absolutely as effective today as they were then, with the added advantage that we now have even more methods to help URLs migrate and be pushed along and throughout the web. If you know what you're doing, the reality is it's actually easier today than it was back then to get attention and links for truly outstanding content.Another year has come and gone. For link builders, 2012 may well be remembered as the year that link building truly changed forever.There have been hints over the years that the engines were getting wise to certain questionable linking tactics, but nothing quite as dramatic as what took place in 2012. Several techniques that had worked for years stopped working. Link networks discovered and devalued, site after site vanishing from rankings. Warnings from the engines themselves about "unnatural" links. New services promising link profile cleansing and webmasters being given the opportunity to disavow the very links they so eagerly went after (and perhaps paid for) not long ago. And these are just some of the linking related events that took place. Indeed, 2012 was the year link building changed. Forever. We can argue about the details. I've been petty vocal that nothing changed at all other than the engines getting smarter, and this single change then caused a domino effect that impacted sites and services that some would say had no business being in business in the first place. Maybe the larger truth is that for some, link building changed forever while for others (who never ventured down darker alleys) not much changed at all. I know from my own perspective of 18+ years on link building's front line, nothing much changed at all for me. So let's be candid. The primary thing that's happened is it's gotten harder to get crappy content to rank high. And for this, we should all be thankful. I will now duck so the arrows hopefully miss me. But enough about 2012. Where are things headed in 2013 from a link building perspective? Let's take a look at several aspects of the linking ecosphere and I'll go out on some limbs and give you my best guesses as to what you might see in 2013, and what to do about it if you so choose. Read Full Article

Posted on: 5 January 2013 | 12:19 am

Inside Bing's Spell Checker

According to Bing's data, their speller processes "tens of thousands" of queries every second and algorithmically processes and returns the corrections within "tens of milliseconds."Spell checking your queries has been a part of the search experience for a while. Auto-correcting your spelling mistakes is almost expected nowadays. Recently Bing gave a sneak peak of what goes into making a great spell checking engine and how it makes search feel like magic to its users.In a recent post, Dr. Jim Kleban, Bing R&D Program Manager explained that Bing's Speller processes tens of millions of data points that are mined from search queries, clickstream data, user actions and indexed web pages when it tried to guess what you're typing into Bing. Processing all those millions of data points and correcting misspellings or entire queries needs to happen in microseconds to be able to pass the new query to the actual search engine. When attempting to unravel the mystery of a misspelling, Bing's speller works context clues in the query. Using data models, an algorithm attempts to look at all the words in a search query to figure out what the misspelled word should be. Bing's algorithm also takes into account edit distance, what Kleban describes as the difference of individual letters of two distinct search queries. In its most common form, edit distance spelling errors occur when searchers attempt to type a word phonetically, as if they were pronouncing it.Read Full Article

Posted on: 5 January 2013 | 12:17 am

Facebook Ports Pages Manager App to Android

Facebook has ported its Pages Manager app to the Android operating system. Facebook's Pages Manager app had been available on Apple's iOS for some time, allowing Page administrators to edit their pages. Now the firm has ported the software to the Android operating system, however the app is only available in selected markets. Facebook might not be actively advertising the availability of its Android Pages Manager app but it already offers the majority of functions an administrator could want, including the ability to post updates and comments, view and reply to private messages and get notifications of activity on pages. Curiously Facebook doesn't provide any details about which countries its Android Pages Manager app is available in, however we can confirm that it isn't available to Android devices with Google accounts registered in the UK at this time. The firm didn't provide any information on when it will roll out the app to other countries. As Facebook tries to build its mobile services, it clearly is not relying on any one smartphone operating system to grow its reportedly half a billion mobile users. However the firm apparently is taking a gradual approach to rolling out its Pages Manager app for Android. Read Full Article

Posted on: 5 January 2013 | 12:16 am

How to Create a Social Media Editorial Calendar

January is always a fresh time to fine tune online marketing habits. One good place to start is the social media editorial calendar.You remember, that file you started last year and haven’t opened since? On the flipside it could be a daily master plan that you did follow that made your analytics go through the success roof. In the latter case, maybe it is a do-over or just a yearly update.The Power of the Written Word and Social MediaHow can the power of the written word impact your social media editorial calendar? Research shows that people who write down goals, share that information with a friend, and send weekly updates to that friend are 33 percent more successful in accomplishing goals than those who merely formulated goals.If you consider your colleagues, subscribers, prospects, and clients as “friends” – think about the power of a written and organized social media editorial calendar ...Originally designed for books, magazines, and newspapers, editorial calendars have been around for centuries and are the lifeline to successful publishing. Today’s editorial calendar takes into account web content, company press releases, blogs, social media news network postings in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube as well as email marketing plans and PPC, should also wrap into traditional marketing campaigns.Editorial calendars bridge together content and themes for social media and beyond:BlogsOnline newsroomsSocial media network messaging EventsEmail campaignsVideoOffersPromotions and sweepstakesWeb pagesPPCSocial Media Editorial Calendar BenefitsSocial media editorial calendars create a cohesive layer to a content strategy that bridges the benefits of:Accountability: Put it in writing where everyone can see it, touch it and live it. Commitment: Stamp a date on it, chances are, you will get it done. Accomplishment: Checking it off the list feels sooooo good and also ties back to accountability. Planning: Big picture first, start at the year, month, week and day. Creativity: Mapping out the topics first will help free up space for creativity and inspiration. Trends: Tie in the topics with keyword research and boost the SEO strategy. Measurement: Watching the results in growth and also what is popular in content via tools such as Google Analytics will give you valuable information for future editorial ideas.Read Full Article

Posted on: 28 December 2012 | 5:56 am

8 SEO Tips That Take 15 Minutes or Less

While a long standing concerted effort toward SEO can pay off big down the road, don’t forget that sometimes there are quick tasks that can turn the needle. Over the years, I have heard many times from individuals desiring success in SEO, the request could never gain approval as the resourced time was too great of a budget allocation or that an SEO vendor wasn't in the budget. This is true to some extent as a full SEO campaign involves the strategic revision to information architecture, attention to SEO design factors, creation of quality content, a blueprint for a link-building initiative just to name a few items. These tasks can take a lot of time and the thought of this can leave many companies throwing SEO on the back burner. For those of who you fit into this group, read on for eight simple quick SEO revisions that will allow you to potentially create positive affect with your organic search traffic. For seasoned SEOs this is rather elementary information but should serve as a reminder of what should be a daily check for a site as they require so little time to assess and can be implemented rather quickly. In fact, you could tackle one of these items every day over your morning coffee and in a little more than a week create the opportunity for additional site traffic. 1. Review Your Robots.txt File; Assess Your Meta Robots TaggingIf you have a robots.txt file on your site, check by visiting /robots.txt. You may be surprised to find out you are withholding pages, folders, images, etc. from search engines that can drive traffic to your site. Additionally, run a site scan with a tool such as Screaming Frog to assess if there are any pages on your site you are excluding via a meta robots tag. Both of these are a very quick fix if you do find issues. Unknowingly tagged pages or robots.txt entries are usually the culprit of a developer who forgot to remove the designations when a new page rolled live or a previous site administrator who deemed the quality content unimportant for the masses. 2. Review Your Site Organic CTR by Page; Revise the Worst Page’s Title Element and Meta DescriptionThis is both a conversion optimization and SEO tip. The new world of SEO is heavily focused on the message you send, whether it be search engines or users. Google provides click-through rate data on landing pages and keywords in your Google Analytics account. You don’t think they are providing this data out of the kindness of their heart do you? They are interested in sites that feature enticing and relative search result displays for web users. While you may have many landing pages with atrocious bounce rates, identifying the worst one or a few will allow you to revise them in a short span of time to reflect listing users want to click. Simply visit your Google Analytics account and traverse to the Traffic Sources-Search Engine Optimization-Landing Pages section. You can also perform this test through the Keyword dimension of this analytical area as well. Ultimately, You are improving your site in the eyes of the search engine and you may retain some visitors at the same time. 3. Assess Canonicalization of Your DomainIt only takes a moment to rid yourself of one of the most common forms of duplicate content and link value dilution. Do your site pages exist at www.example.com and example.com? If so then you need to create a permanent 301 redirect directing all non-www. site pages to the www. version pages of your site. Search engines don’t want to see two versions of your content. It's helpful to combine the inbound link equity of these versions into one page as many people don't always target links to your www version of site pages.Read Full Article

Posted on: 28 December 2012 | 5:53 am

Happy Holidays From Incisive Media

As the year draws to a close and we are all thinking about family, friends, and winding down for the holidays, it's time to reflect on the past year. 2012 threw us quite a few curve balls but as usual we came together to overcome all the challenges that arose as best we could. Perhaps no more challenging was when Hurricane Sandy hit NYC and we had to run the business remotely for almost two weeks while executing on disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Of course, working in such a fast-moving industry where change and innovation occur daily, the major test is maintaining our reputation for bringing you the most current information on how to manage, adapt, and grow your business online. With almost 200 contributors at ClickZ and Search Engine Watch who provide how-to information and walk-throughs of the latest technology, as well as our faculty of speakers and trainers at SES Conference & Expo and ClickZ Academy, we're lucky there's no shortage of talent. And let's not forget our full-time team of professional journalists who add outstanding industry reporting on a daily basis. For this, we are fortunate to be rewarded with such loyalty and support from our readers, conference attendees, advertisers, and sponsors. So, we want to offer our most sincere Thank You for your contributions and feedback. It's because of this great rapport we have that ClickZ, Search Engine Watch, and SES Conference & Expo have managed to remain three of the most trusted brands in the field when it comes to education, training, and industry news. 2013 is going to be an even more spectacular year for innovation in digital marketing. As people and companies change the way they consume media and create and share content, brand new opportunities will emerge. And we'll be there, as ever, at the forefront reporting on these new industry developments and technologies. For now, take a break and enjoy the comfort of friends and family. But also remember those less fortunate, like those in Connecticut whose hearts have been broken and will be missing the joy and laughter of treasured loved ones this holiday season. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. On behalf of the entire team at Incisive Media in New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mumbai, we wish you all the very best for the coming new year. May it be prosperous, safe, and peaceful for everyone! Happy holidays, Matt McGowan Managing Director, Incisive Media Mike Grehan Publishing Director - Interactive Marketing, Incisive MediaArticle Source

Posted on: 25 December 2012 | 3:58 am