Posts tagged Social
Using Social Media Profiles to Build Up Your SEO
Aaron Wheeler over at SEO Moz recently posted Rand’s whiteboard about using your social media profiles for SEO purposes. We’ve summarized the transcription for you here:
Most people know that social media is extremely valuable for SEO, but even some advanced marketers are at a loss for how to harness the power of this medium. Here five ideas are presented for making the most out of these profiles.
- Direct Links. When my Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook account put out a link they point to other sites. Those sites in turn point to other sites and when you follow the chain you realize that there’s some pretty powerful link juice floating around. Making sure these links are followed and actually point back to somewhere is critical unless you’re just counting on people seeing your link and using it, which is unlikely.
- Dominating SERPs. The race to fill up the top spots can be aided by getting social media sites in the mix – they tend to do well in rankings. The key is to fill these profiles up with good information and not create them just for spam’s sake. That never works and a million people out there are doing it. Make sure to participate heavily when you first get your profiles off the ground. Tweet, comment, send out friend requests – anything to get yourself noticed in the search results. Additionally, make sure to get others to link back to your profile…this will also help your rankings. Give out the same bios and same links everytime you contact anyone.
- Brand Context. Make sure that everything you do in terms of your social media profiles positively reflects upon your brand, especially if you’re acting as a representative. More marketing than SEO, branding is the biggest way to drive traffic and get quality links out of social media. Good branding also leads to sales and additional networking opportunities as well.
- Drive Your Links. Remember that everytime you participate in the social media conversation you have the opportunity to direct a link. This means, each reTweet, each Facebook post, each message should have some sort of link purpose in mind. Don’t forget that formatting and link context is very important, so choose the way you form your content carefully. Also remember that each link you put out has the ability to become a secondary link, that is, one that’s posted on an additional, non-social media site as well.
- Social Media as a Content Source. Use social media profiles as a source of content for your own site. If someone posts a YouTube video, repost it and start a conversation around it. If there’s an interesting Twitter conversation going on, take screen shots then turn the whole thing into a blog post. It’s simple, really. Have other people do the heavy lifting and then repurpose their content, siting them, of course.
Follow these steps and see your link count soar…using social media to your advantage is one of the quickest ways to develop a well rounded SEO plan.
Summary written and edited by Heather Hendrick
Location-Based Social Networking for Events & Conferences – An Interview with Foursquare
Posted by Sam Crocker
Hi there folks!
Today we are going to take a look into Foursquare and, more specifically, we’re going to check out how to use it for events and conferences and uncover some of the answers to the questions that aren’t as easily avilable through the Foursquare site.
Quick Background on Foursquare
So, we’re not going to waste too much time on an introduction to Foursquare, because hopefully you’ve already been focussing on ways to incorporate this into your marketing plan. The implications for any business with a storefront or actual address are fairly straightforward, though the implications for online brands are a bit more difficult to tap into.
It’s Not just for Stalking! (Image via: Geek and Poke)
I had originally prepared a post dedicated to Foursquare and its impact on local and small businesses, however it seems SEO Doctor was one step ahead of me and produced this impressive guide before I was able to get my post out of the drafts folder here on SEOmoz. His post is extremely comprehensive though, so be sure to check it out!
I’ve been hearing loads of people talking about how “they don’t get it” in reference to Foursquare and it’s worth pointing out how many people were having trouble understanding Twitter as well. I would definitely recommend familiarising yourself with Foursquare now – especially if you work with any local companies.
The growth of Foursquare, Gowalla & Facebook Places has been extremely convincing, and the limited number of people making use of the “Specials” available by claiming your local business (for FREE) with Foursquare seems like an obvious missed opportunity – ignore Location-Based social media at your own peril.
Using Foursquare for Conferences and Events
At any rate, as you know, Distilled and SEOmoz have been busy over the last several months preparing for the #mozniar and the PRO seminar in London ( for which I would be remiss not to quickly let you know that tickets are still avaialble). In this preparation we have been looking heavily into ways to spice up the event.
Given my mild obsession with all ways to earn seemingly meaningless points and my new found hobby of Foursquare Roulette (jump off a tube station and randomly try whatever looks entertaining in the area) I proposed we look into Foursquare and what sort of things we might be able to do with it for the conference.
If any of you are as nerdy as I am, then I’m sure you will have noticed how some of the biggest brands as well as some of the largest events in the tech and music industries have been able to get their own Badges you can unlock by checking-in at various locations.
Screen Cap from Tony Felice
The first thing you’ll notice is that these are not small affairs and there are potentially obvious reasons why these clients were potentially able to strike a deal to get a badge. You might also notice – if you’ve looked into this previously – that it can be fairly difficult to find any information about how these deals are struck, and it can be equally difficult to get in touch with the folks at Foursquare about striking up a deal.
Getting to the Source – An Interview with Eric F.
After enough prodding and digging through my own social networks for any potential “in” I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to get in touch with Eric, who happens to be the Director of Client Services – and was incredibly helpful and happy to speak to us.
Rather than be selfish with the responses I thought I would provide some of the answers he provided to my most burning questions about it all. Here are the responses I was able to dig up, I’ll include a brief recap of the implications afterwards:
What would be your top tip(s) for making the most of Foursquare for conferences and Events?
EF: Setting up goals ahead of time is the best way to plan for a conference. You may have a single-day event and encourage people to check-in early, or you may have an event spread out over a few days or weeks and have people check-in early, in the middle, and at the end. We look at foursquare as a flexible platform, depending on event planners’ needs. Some folks have found success with contests or tips to visit different booths. Others use foursquare as a way for attendees to connect and to see who else is at their event.
One recent conference used foursquare to show which events had the most people attendants, and then gave the speakers a chance to connect to their audience via Twitter after the fact.
There is a very robust API available as well that give event organizers the ability to show live check-ins and other interesting data about the event in real time.
In the past we’ve have seen badges from events and conferences (e.g. CES, Bonnaroo, SXSW, etc.) in the past- how does that work? Is that a service that people pay for? Is there generally a threshold about how “big” or “cool” an event is? Or is it more just about getting in touch?
EF: We’re still in the early days of this, and have been testing different approaches around partner and event-related badges. Sometimes, we choose a venue because of a cool use of the platform; other times, it’s to reach a new audience
In the future we hope to roll out a more structured plan for event planners and conferences – but for now we are inspired by the ideas and implementations we have seen from these events.
Is this a market Foursquare has considered? There seem to be loads of conferences and events and it seems like partnerships (with badges and such) could be a real opportunity.
EF: We are concentrating on the best user experience possible. If this comes at events and conferences, we are doing our job right.
What things can/should any event organiser do with Foursquare in the short-term? Obviously there is more to be done for a massive festival or conference, but what about one-off events or smaller time affairs?
EF: We look at our loyalty offers (in the form of special offers and mayor offers) as a big win for anyone with a physical location. These reward people that go somewhere for the first time, or are loyal customers. This also lets merchants track success with redemptions and foot traffic.
We know that business accounts are free, but how do your partnerships work with larger brands? Is there a general price range on these? How much does it cost for a brand to get their own badge? What if they want more than one?
EF: All business partnerships with foursquare are totally free. This includes someone with a single location such as a bar or restaurant, to a national retailer with 10,000 locations. To be 100% clear, we offer the ability to see analytics, run specials, and interact with new and loyal customers totally right now.
Badge programs have either a monthly cost associated with them that is directly tied to promotional consideration and reach, as well as the longevity of the campaign.
Who should large brands try to get in touch with if they want to team up with Foursquare?
EF: We have a dedicated support area for businesses: http://support.foursquare.com/forums/177952-foursquare-for-business
This ensures that the proper person will be able to answer the proper question whether it comes in from a local merchant, large chain, agency representing a brand, event question, or anything else that may arise.
What about smaller brands?
EF: Same as above – funneling requests through one system ensure that someone on the team gets back to people quickly, correctly, and promptly.
Finally, any previews/things in the works for business/marketing uses of Foursquare you’re willing to share?
EF: Knowing where events are happening, or where people are gathered, is a great metric of discovery. We’re all about letting folks know when something is happening, and most importantly where it is happening. We are looking at ways to empower users and businesses by giving them this knowledge at their fingertips.
Making Sense of it All
No surprise that the Foursquare team are keeping some of their cards fairly close to their chests, but there’s definitely some key takeaways from this.
1. You don’t have to be a global brand to get the hook-up. It seems pretty clear that any creative uses of the API are a definite way to grab attention from the folks at Foursquare, and is potentially a clever way to get your own badge.
2. There is no doubt that Foursquare and other location-based social media platforms are growing and now is the time to make sure that if you work with any local businesses: get on the ball, get your venue registered, and go to town. I would not be the least bit surprised if in some fashion or another this sort of data (rankings, tips, check-ins, etc) becomes quite valuable to the team over at Google when it comes to looking at local ranking factors.
3. If you decide to make location-based social networking part of your plan – let people know! There’s no sense building the most incredible API to date to be used at your event, venue, etc. and not letting people know about it.
4. Even if you can’t get your event/conference its own badge there is still plenty you can do to engage Foursquare users.
Examples for Short Conferences
- Be sure to set up your venue(s) as locations
- Create multiple venues for the same location (e.g. “Conference Room 1″ “Bar” “Exhibition Hall” etc)
- Rewards for check-ins (forget about Mayor’s – focus on the short term)
- Make use of Existing Apps. Check out ScreenScape, LocaModa, 2Know and if you’re in London tell people to try out FourTap
- Create a new App
- Encourage early check-ins and sharing via Twitter
- Splash some cash and get your event a badge
Examples for Longer Conferences
- As above
- Have incentives for multiple check-ins
- Encourage check-ins from multiple venues
- Offer a prize for the mayor of the conference
Where exactly we end up along the spectrum of “things you can do” for London PRO for this year is still a work in progress, but you can bet I’ll be championing for meaningless points and our own spin on the thing – and you can be sure we’ll let you know what we come up with.
A very big thank you to Eric F. and the Foursquare team for taking the time to answer our questions!
Please let us know your thoughts below and any successes/hiccups you all have had using location-based social networking in the comments section below.
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Will 2011 Be The Year of a Social Media “Bubble?”
As Eric Brown recently reported, a lot of voices in the SEO field are starting to talk about the possibility of seeing a “bubble” around social media in the coming year. We’ve summarized his article for you here and discuss the reasons why this topic is getting so much airtime, one of which is that it falls directly on the heels of the well lauded real estate bubble of 2010.
Weeding
Maybe it’s time for the web to do some social media “weeding” of sorts, that is, get rid of the extraneous sites. Nowadays every business has a social media strategist, a term that’s lost a lot of meaning. This strongly echoes the pervasiveness of subprime loans before the real estate crash.
Easy to get into
When the barrier for entry into a field is low, risks of overexposure is high. When there’s no cost to get in and the reward is guaranteed, much like in low-end real estate ventures, there’s no doubt people will take advantage that see an easy opportunity for gain.
Low cost
Costs of running an internet business are incredibly low, as in, just the price of a laptop, which makes the industry wrought with stragglers. Once real results are required from these start ups, many simply move on to the next client, of which there are many.
Looking for Correction
Like in any business, social media requires that a problem be corrected through the help of experts. Since there wasn’t much of a problem in the first place, results are often easy to manufacture and it’s difficult to measure the success of a true social media campaign.
Social media marketing is much more than Twitter and Facebook…it’s all about engaging consumers, making connections, and thereby increasing sales. With so many companies in this new business, it’s inevitable that some will be weeded out.
Summary by Social Media Expert Extraordinaire Heather Hendrick
5 Easy Ways to Optimize Your Social Media for Ranking
Search Engine Guide put out an interesting bit last year about how to optimize your pages for ranking…it was so insightful for SEOs and multiple web hosting companies we’ve summarized it her for you.
With social media pages now becoming more and more important for online marketing campaigns, SEOs everywhere are trying to figure out how to get their social media pages to rank highly alongside their main brand pages.
Social media is a great way to further dominate the top 10 Google listings for your brand, and additionally for the keywords you hope to target. The idea is that using social media, you can work in some of the keywords you hope to rank highly for, incorporate your own content such as press releases, then fill out the SERP results for those terms.
Here are a few ways to finagle the social media pages you choose to use so that they reflect your intent:
Get More Followers –
The more followers you have via Twitter, Facebook, etc., the more weight your social media page carries for search engines. While the algorithm is hard to discern, it’s important to have lots of relevant followers while at the same time following relevant people yourself. Google will connect the dots here and relate the two web properties.
Optimizing the Pages’ URL and Meta Tags –
Check to see which parts of your page and description are being used as Meta Tags by social media sites and plan your profile accordingly. Don’t waste this valuable chance to claim your meta data the way you want.
Link to Your Own Content –
New content seems to be indexed much faster when it’s linked to on social media sites, so point to your own stuff to get it to show up in SERPS! The added benefit to this is that your content will also gain exposure much more rapidly when it’s been spread virally.
Make Your Updates Count –
Especially important for Twitter, be sure to optimize your Tweets (and any other social media content) so that search engine results show what you want them to. In the case of Twitter, only about the first 30 characters show in results, so use those for your keywords. On Facebook, keep your status updates relevant to your brand as this helps build association for the engines.
Build Links –
When you’re creating a linkbuilding campaign, be sure to include links to your social media pages as well. Inbound links to these sites are extremely valuable, so include them in the header or wherever possible. Be sure to remember that just as with regular SEO, the needs of the user are the first priority. Don’t spam up your social media just because you’re trying to benefit your SEO efforts. Thanks to Heather Hendrick for the summarization
How to Fix Your Social Media Campaigns with Metrics
When crafting a social media campaign, as Jennifer Laycock at Search Engine Guide points out, it’s important to focus on micro goals in order to assess success. Here are a few ways to accomplish that goal…
Seeing What’s Working and What’s not
The best thing about tracking goals on a micro level is the ability to quickly assess which elements of a campaign are successful and which ones aren’t. The great thing about metrics and data is that they help you discover what changes to make, so use them. Line them up with your campaign goals and watch carefully to see if your campaign’s on track.
Find the Problems
Pretend that you’ve just launched a new campaign, complete with social media tie tins, linkbait, and the like and it’s working! Links and visitors are streaming in, but sales are staying flat…what’s going on? If you’ve done a good job of setting metrics before the campaign launched, it should be easy to tell. For example, is engagement (comments, reviews, feedback) down while your visits are up? This could mean your consumers are no longer invested the way you want them to be.
Compare What Happened to What you Wanted to Happen
So you’ve got the visits and hits you were looking for but not the sales to match…what’s wrong? Dig a little deeper to discern the problem, say, that your price point puts you focused at a really small target market. If you were marketing to a broad audience you may have widespread appeal but the number of people willing to actually buy is small. Next time around, it may make more sense to create marketing that’s more focused and accessible to the target.
Metric Variations Mean Something
If you’ve got a metric setup that tells you everything is going the way you planned, that means something. Let’s say your marketing is out, the links and traffic are coming in but you’re just not converting…all signs point to something unexpected. Reviewing this data simply does not match with the results – increased visitors and flat actions don’t make sense, so it’s time to revisit the site. Perhaps the issue is usability – is it hard for customers to act once they see your marketing? Test it! A few nips and tucks to the interface may mean that customers can interact more easily and therefore convert on the site.
You Can’t Fix What’s Not Understood
If you don’t know what metrics to track, you won’t understand what to look for when your campaign falls flat. There are so many different factors that could affect performance, you’ve got to measure them all to even have a chance of determining what needs tweaking. Staying on top of your campaign means staying on top of all metrics, not just conversion.
Thanks to HHendrick for the summary
Setting the Right Micro Goals for Your Social Media Campaign
Search Engine guide’s Jennifer Laycock recently wrote about how to understand the small goals you’ve set for your social media campaign. The article served as a tandem piece about developing goals, breaking them up into smaller pieces, and matching goals to the tactics that work.
The process she described meant starting with one large goal, then breaking that goal up into more manageable pieces, after which you’d determine what media to use to accomplish the goals. After a couple of months you’d evaluate how well you did in accomplishing the goals. This is a good strategy, but a few more details certainly couldn’t hurt.
Understanding the Micro
Micro goals for social media live in the gray area of a campaign, in the space where things can really go right or wrong. People who are generally new to social media focus on these oftentimes, and they consist of things like number of Facebook followers, RSS subscribers, etc. Things like this don’t mean much up front, but when they come together they create a complete campaign for an seo web hosting company.
Setting the Micros
Before you set your goals, you’ll need to decide which social media tools you’re going to employ. After that step, remember that there are some universal goals for each medium that should be met. These include things like Links for your blog, views for Youtube, Fans on Facebook, Retweets on Twitter, etc. You get the picture.
Remember that your goals are going to vary dependent upon your business, and what makes sense to track on a micro level for you may not make sense for another company. The micro goals you track will also change dependant upon the specific larger goals of a campaign.
For example, if you’re trying to get people into your store, Facebook RSVPs are a great way to track involvement. Similarly, if you want to know how many people are interested in your idea, see how many Youtube videos you have viewed. It’s important to sit with a big team and come up with all the different actions a user could possibly take when face to face with your campaign – being prepared helps you avoid surprises.
Thanks for the summary from Heather Hendrick
Social Media’s Three Primary Goals
Jennifer Laycock recently wrote a great piece about how to use Social Media in an attempt to accomplish specific goals, not just because everyone and their brother has a social media campaign. We thought it was informative, so here’s a quick summary.
The three basic social media goals are: To build and strengthen your brand, to increase conversion, or to increase your presence. Beginning so high level then working down is a good way to hone in on specific, accomplishable goals.
Goal One: Building the Brand
Social media is one of the best marketing tools available for emerging brands, particularly if your product is not exclusive or if you don’t wish to compete solely on price alone. Social media allows you to both introduce your product to specific audiences while at the same time engaging them in a focused conversation.
When you begin your social media campaign, consider what unique value proposition you have to offer your clients, then play on that. Target specific niches to gain customers in the field you’re aiming for. Tweet to them and begin a conversation among their group around your product or service.
Goal Two: Driving Conversion
One of the great abilities of social media is that it can drive goals and interactions with your product. The first step is to write down all the possible options customers have when engaging with your site such as buying the product, signing up for the newsletter, or even subscribing to your RSS feed. Decide which of these interactions you can drive by specifically marketing your social media efforts and aim for that goal. This is often the best and easiest way to get your social media campaign off the ground.
Goal Three: Increase Your Brand Presence
Here’s the biggest and vaguest of all social media goals, and it centers around increasing conversation about your brand. Social media is ripe for the picking by PR minded companies who desire to know what customers are saying about their brand, so use it to your advantage.
The best thing about social media is that it makes all these conversations trackable. You’ve got metrics at hand to measure how much buzz has been built about a new product release and you can really get specific on what you’re measuring, which will help you drive your future goals. The questions to ask yourself are who do you want to find talking about your brand? What do you want them saying? Who do you want them to be saying it to?
If you’re just getting off the ground, these three goals are a good way to start defining your social media campaign. Use them as a baseline to help determine what you need to do to build your brand, increase conversion, and up your presence and exactly how to get there.
Heather Hendrick, summary
PubCon: Thinking Big for Link Building Through Social Media
Out in Las Vegas at PubCon, Mike McDonald of WebProNews spoke with Eric Enge, who was one of the speakers at the session entitled “Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies.” You might be familiar with Enge. He’s been a WebProNews blog partner for some time. He’s the StoneTemple Consulting guy, and he’s developed a reputation over the years as a reputable source for information about link building. In fact, that’s one of StoneTemple’s areas of expertise, along with SEO site evaluation, social media marketing, blog implementation, PPC, web analytics, and local SEO among other things.
At this session, Enge talked about how companies should “Think Big” in order to get the most out of their link building strategies through social media. Mike caught up with him and talked about this subject a little bit more outside of the session.
Other link building advice Enge discussed at the session included:
- Studying what has worked before
- Writing compelling articles
- Write an interesting description
- Voting for posts in front of you on the upcoming pages
- Making sure you stand out!
3 Key Takeaways from Search And Social
Posted by Lindsay
Last week Jen and I attended the Search & Social Summit here in my backyard of Tampa Bay. This isn’t your typical conference recap post, though. I wanted to focus on the action items that still stand out for me a week later, the things will make a difference in what I do or how I do it. Perhaps you’ll rethink the way you do a thing or two as well.
Outsource, Seriously.
Kevin Henrikson is a low key guy, and one that I hadn’t met until the Search & Social Summit. You won’t see him spouting off on Twitter or elaborating on his accomplishments on LinkedIn. He beats even me in the blog neglect category. Personally, I wish he’d publish more. He has a strong business acumen and seems to find his comfort zone well outside the boundaries that most of us create in our own DIY vs. outsource struggles.
Kevin’s presentation was about outsourcing. I expected the standard cliché we’ve all heard 100 times, “Do what you do best. Outsource the rest.” Good advice, absolutely, but now what? Kevin’s presentation was different. It outlined real, actionable strategies for outsourcing the things you’d expect – like copywriting and development – but he also spoke about his experience delegating some pretty unusual stuff like the hiring of a housekeeper for his parents out-of-state.
Kevin covered more than a dozen solid online sources for building your outsourced empire including craigslist (for local need), Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and the old standby Elance. None of those excited me like oDesk and 99designs.
oDesk describes themselves as a marketplace for online workstreams. Don’t have time to sift through your email to identify the important ones that require a response? Hire a personal assistant to do the drudge work for you. Need a new site design converted to work with your WordPress blog? You’ll be surprised by the rates. I created my account while listening to Kevin’s presentation and can’t wait to get started.
99designs provides a platform and 192K strong community to facilitate your own ‘design contest’. Open an account, outline your project in seven simple fields, pay a few hundred dollars and within a week you’ll have dozens of designs to choose from that were created by the 99designs community. I did a hack job of my own blog logo design a few years ago. I figured there was no time like the present, so jumped onto 99designs and kicked off my own contest. For a few hundred dollars I’ve received around 200 logo designs. You can check out the contest entries and maybe even help me choose a winner from the frontrunners.
If you want more information on how to leverage the outsourcing vehicles like the ones mentioned above, check out Rand’s recent post on the topic here.
Targeted Promotion on Niche Social News Sites
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If you’re like me, when you think ‘social news’, examples like Digg and Reddit stand out. Though the traffic from these sites is astounding – IF you can get your story to the front page – obtaining traction is hit or miss and the competition is intense. Brent Csutoras is a wiz in the world of social marketing, and another speaker that presented some refreshing content at the Search & Social Summit last week.
Brent highlighted Kirtsy.com as a great place to post content that would appeal to a female audience, for example. This isn’t the kind of place to post the latest puss video from PopThatZit (view at your own risk. eww) but if you take a look at the current list of most popular content on the Kirtsy homepage, you’ll get the idea of what is possible there. I was surprised to see a few listings from small personal blogs on topics like crafts and parenting.
Despite being more than a year old, Brent says that this list of niche social media sites from Chris Winfield over at 10e20 is still the best out there. Think about the opportunities for sites you represent. No doubt a few more niche social news sites have cropped up since then. If you have another one that works for you, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Get New Content Indexed Faster
Michael Gray recommends creating small sitemaps of <100 pages, in addition to your regular sitemap(s), to help get new content indexed faster.
Michael has found that for sites that add a lot of new pages, or want to get the pages they do add indexed quickly, using a dedicated sitemap for fresh content is the key. In his testing, deep pages on large sites that would sometimes take weeks or months to make it into the index took just 1-3 days with the dedicated fresh content XML sitemap. He suggests playing with the ’100′ number. That is what the need has been for his clients, but if you are working with a site that has a larger fresh content output you may achieve the same affect by including more.
I’ll be testing this one out for sure! Let us know how it goes for you, too.
Action Items
- Are you making the most of your time? Think about the things that someone else could do for you and outsource it. Check out 99designs for graphics work and oDesk for nearly everything else.
- Look through Chris Winfield’s list of niche social news sites. Maybe your content can ‘make popular’ on social news afte rall.
- Try creating a supplemental fresh content XML sitemap to see if it helps you get your content indexed faster.
Happy Optimizing!
Lindsay Wassell (aka @lindzie)
Social Bookmarking & Social Networking
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