Excerpted from article: "Timeline presents brand-new challenges (and opportunities!) for staying top-of-mind.
Since page admins can no longer designate a default landing tab (also referred to as the “default welcome tab”), businesses need to get more creative and use custom apps to direct Facebook page visitors to take action.
One way to make up for the loss of engagement with a default landing tab is to drive visitors to your custom apps instead. Custom apps are prime real estate when optimized.
To get the most out of this real estate, you need to create a custom app strategy for your page. Here’s a simple 3-step action plan to help you get momentum quickly with your new Timeline layout:
#1: Define Your Custom App Strategy: Do you want to create lead generation opportunities? Or create a welcome page? Or perhaps you want to turn your app into a mini-storefront? There are endless strategies for your custom apps. - Video within custom apps is a smart strategy to connect with your fans on a more personal level. - Another custom app strategy is to use them to display your best content. - Another useful strategy for custom apps is to create an e-commerce opportunity.
#2: Use a Third-Party Tool to Create Your Custom App: The good news is that you have many third-party tool options. Some options are free, others charge a fee. For some of my custom apps, I’ve used Lujure.
#3: Promote and Drive Traffic to Your Custom App: To grab your fans’ attention, make sure to use strong calls to action in both the custom app name and the app thumbnail image. The thumbnail image specs are 111 x 74 pixels. Quick Tip! Here’s a free tool (http://www.timelineimagetool.com/) that will help you create your custom app thumbnails without ever having to hire a designer...."
Excerpted from article: "With the rise in inbound marketing, more and more blogs are using white papers to promote themselves effectively.
A white paper is a cross between a magazine article and a brochure. It possesses both the educational qualities of a magazine article and the persuasive qualities of a corporate brochure. This combination of education and persuasion makes it one of the most powerful marketing tools.
How do white papers differ from guides and reports? Guides and reports are helpful documents that usually dwell into the solution right away. There’s a brief paragraph or two as to why the guide is helpful and why they need to read the guide, and then the helpful information starts. A white paper, on the other hand, dwells into the problems first. The white paper goes into detail about every problem faced by the reader and how it affects them and their business. After making the problems clear, the white paper discusses the appropriate solutions in details.
If you want to write a white paper for your blog or to promote your business you need to be clear about your aims, your audience, your topic, etc. and then decide if it would be better off to use a white paper or to stick with a guide.
How can an independent blog and a blog that is part of a company use white papers? The different ways in which standalone blogs, and blogs that are part of businesses, can use white papers include: - Get more subscribers; - Rejuvenate old blog posts; - Increase blog traffic; - Attract backlinks;
How can blogs that are part of a business use white papers? Below is a list of the benefits of white papers to blogs that are part of a business. These advantages usually don’t apply to independent blogs: - Spread expertise; - Generate leads; - Sell products;
How to create white papers from your blog posts: A white paper usually consists of: > headline
Each element is analyzed with more information. Read full article here:
There are two types of strategies that revolve around existing customers on the social media channel. The first is to offer customer service help through the social channel. The second strategy is to attempt to increase value to the customer experience through the social channel.
We’ve all heard that it costs more to get a new customer than to keep your existing ones. One often-overlooked opportunity is to use social media to strategically drive incremental revenue from existing customers.
These 5 tips provide a framework for how you can adjust your strategies to ensure they capitalize on the most frequently overlooked opportunity for increased revenue: customers.
Tip #1: Give Customers Incentives for Making More Frequent Purchases: You can offer deals and specials that are exclusive to your social media followers based on the level of customer or the frequency of purchase.
Tip #2: Give Customers a Reason to Spend More at Each Purchase: Service industries can look to promote package deals for their services that bundle offerings together. In this case, the social channel is used to drive awareness of the offerings with a clear call to action, versus promoting deals or coupons like we typically see for product-based industries.
Tip #3: Combine Email Marketing Offers: Keep in mind it’s important to maintain a balance of content on your social channels. The general rule is less than 20% of your content should be about your company. Therefore, a mix of your own content with information from relevant third parties is important.
Tip #4: Educate Your Customers about Your Other Products and Services: You can do this by featuring a product or service profile of the week, which provides you with the opportunity to highlight premium services and explain what they are and why customers should care.
Tip #5: Provide Consistent Value: As you consider how to grow your customer base through the social channel, it’s important that you create a win-win. Find a way to combine your desire to increase revenues with the thing that motivates your customers the most.
Read full interesting article here: http://j.mp/Lpe7qs
Giuseppe Mauriello: Yahoo Small Business hopes to grow by offering small businesses an integrated marketing dashboard to manage and expand their digital marketing efforts. The Yahoo Marketing Dashboard provides a consolidated view of a business’s marketing results and reputation. It is a free solution that helps you discover new marketing opportunities and determine what works best, so you can grow your business.
Here are key features: 1) Business listings: Find out how many search engines and directories include your business and discover new listing opportunities you may be missing.
2) Online business reputation: Learn what customers are saying about you across the Web, so you can be responsive to their needs and provide better customer service.
3) Web site traffic: Discover how many people are visiting your site and where they are coming from by viewing Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, or Google Analytics site traffic reports.
4) Marketing campaigns: Track key metrics from email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, so you know what is working.
5) Online sales: Know how your daily sales are doing with order and revenue reporting from your Yahoo! Merchant Solutions online store.
6) Marketing ideas - Learn about new marketing approaches and leading marketing service providers who can help your business grow.
The Marketing Dashboard is specifically designed for small business owners, not marketing experts. Content is presented through colorful charts and graphs so you can quickly and easily get the information you need to grow your business. Short how-to videos and a practical “to-do” list help guide you as you use the Marketing Dashboard.
Try out it here: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/marketing-dashboard
Excerpted from the article:
"Despite Panda, Penguin and maybe someday “Zebra?”, updates from Google to further filter out what constitutes useful content and links on the web, links will always be valuable for attracting traffic.
Some online marketers chase exploits, tricks or shortcuts only to get spanked by a black and white named-animal update from Google. Why not spend that creativity on something of value and competitive advantage that withstands the advancing filters applied by search engines?
Here are a few timeless tips for building natural links that will attract and engage customers to your business blog:
1. Create content worth linking to... 2. Competitive Link Research... 3. Engage... 4. Make Sharing Easy... 5. Guest post... 6. Write testimonials or case studies... 7. Event and Job listings... 8. Distribute optimized news... 9. Contribute Op Eds or Articles... 10. ABN – Always Be Networking... 11. Sponsor content... 12. Hire bloggers...
Bonus tip: When others link to you, THANK THEM! Building good will is one of the most underrated marketing skills online. Be genuine, thoughtful and courteous...."
Each point is explained with more information and very well. Read full interesting article here: http://www.toprankblog.com/2012/04/timeless-link-building-tips/ 
Excerpted from the article: "Landing pages are the heart and soul of an inbound marketer's lead generation efforts, so why are they still so underutilized? The number one reason businesses don't use landing pages is because their marketing department doesn't know how to set them up or they are too overloaded.
First, let's start with a simple definition: A landing page is a web page that allows you to capture a visitor's information through a lead-capture form (AKA a conversion form).
Creating landing pages allows you to target your audience, offer them something of value, and convert a higher percentage of your visitors into leads, while also capturing information about who they are and what they've converted on.
Landing pages can make your marketing and lead generation efforts more effective. Here are 6 more compelling reasons:
1) Easily Generate Leads! If you could do one thing right now to drastically improve your lead generation efforts, it would be to use landing pages on your website.
2) Give Your Offers a Place to Live: The idea is to require your website visitors to 'pay' you in contact information for something valuable like an offer, and your landing page is the collections tool.
3) Collect Demographic Information About Your Prospects: Every time a lead completes a conversion form on a landing page, your marketing and sales team is collecting valuable information about your leads.
4) Understand Which Prospects Are More Engaged: Landing pages not only enable you to generate new leads; they also allow you to track reconversions of existing leads, which you can then use to identify which prospects are more engaged with your business.
5) Provide Fuel for Other Marketing Channels: Landing pages are a great addition to any marketer's content arsenal since they can be shared in social media, used as the focus of dedicated email sends and in lead nurturing campaigns, be linked to in PPC ads, and get found in organic search.
6) Offer Insights Into the Effectiveness of Your Marketing Offers: Every time you create a landing page, you're creating another data asset for your marketing program.
For now, let's just briefly review a landing page's main components: - Headline...
Landing pages should always be followed up by what's called a 'thank-you page,' that confirms receipt of the lead's information and either provides the offer, or details the next steps for receiving the offer..."
Read full article here: http://j.mp/IhHRHz
Giuseppe Mauriello: This is an article by Neil Patel, the co-founder of KISSmetrics, published from SEOmoz Blog about semantic keyword research to help you focus your content and and improve your rankings.
Here is some key points that I excerpted from the article intro: "From Google’s Panda, Search Plus Your World and Venice updates, in the last year alone the SEO landscape has changed. And while that means your SEO strategy will change, too, there is one thing that remains the same…keywords.
Keywords remain important to your content and link strategies. But there is one change coming down the Google pipeline that will change keywords…semantic search technology and the human element.
Semantic search is technology that tries to determine what users mean when they type in a certain keyword.
In your SEO campaigns semantic search means you will have to identify the right keywords based upon user intent in the real world…and then create content around those terms.
Having a database of semantic keywords to create high-converting blog posts is one advantage…but there are other benefits: - Higher click-through rate... - Lower minimum bids... - Higher quality score...
Employing a semantic keyword plan is crucial. But how do you come up with those keywords? Here are five approaches to use…including recommended tools.
1) Using Google advanced search... 2) Semantic keyword research with bookmarking tags... 3) Building a semantic keyword cloud through social monitoring tools... 4) Optimizing semantic keywords around trends... 5) Gathering semantic keywords through social search...
Keep in mind that as much as semantic keyword research is about finding actual keywords you can use in your SEO campaigns…it’s just as much about building a complete profile of your target customer. And the better you can understand your target customer the better your campaign results will be!..."
Each element is analyzed with more information, examples and many tools. Check out the full and interesting article here: http://j.mp/IsHyWX
Giuseppe Mauriello: BROWSEO was developed by agency based in Germany and was initially developed to show clients what their web pages look like to search engines, then opened it up for the general public in March 2012.
View any web page like search engines see it. Browseo helps you to identify issues with your site and with competitors' sites.
From the official site: "BROWSEO is a web app that allows you to view any webpage without distractions caused by styles. Additionally, the browser highlights features of a web page that are relevant for SEO.
The output focuses on pure HTML, similar to what search engines see when they visit a page. You can quickly determine a page’s structure as well as its relevance for specific search terms by toggling options such as: - Server response code;
Internal and external links can be highlighted separately on the page, as can links with the rel=”nofollow” attribute."
Nothing to install or download, and Browseo is 100% free.
"Have to admit that this is pretty great. Similar to the old seo-browser.com, but a great modern update." Rand Fishkin, CEO & founder of SEOmoz
Read more and try out it now: http://www.browseo.net 
Excerpted from article: "Landing pages are a critical tool for meeting your ever-increasing lead generation goals.
Actually, only 8% of marketers reported that dedicated landing pages were ineffective, but the effectiveness of landing pages for the other 92% of marketers hinges on one component that isn't often discussed - visitors have to trust you enough to give away their personal information on your landing page forms to obtain your offers.
What are those landing page characteristics that kick in our feel-good senses and also help to reduce landing page friction? There are at least 10 of them that I know of, and this post will break down what they are so you can earn the trust of your landing page visitors and capture more of them as leads.
1) Ensure your call-to-action (CTA) offer and landing page offer align. 2) Write clear copy that explains what visitors will get with offer redemptions. 3) Include contact information for your business. 4) Make sure your forms fields aren't too intrusive. 5) Include a link to your privacy policy. 6) Display third-party seals of approval. 7) Give purchasers the chance to review the details of their transaction. 8) Include reviews and testimonials on your landing page. 9) Use proper spelling and grammar. 10) Maintain an overall professional appearance..."
Each tip is analyzed with more information. Check out the full article here: 
Excerpted from the article: "How should I host my videos for SEO purposes? Is it better to use YouTube, Vimeo or third party hosting?
All hosting solutions have their own set of advantages and disadvantages:
Third party and self hosted: -Easier to get video rich snippets for your own domain; - Can customise video player; - Can build links back to your domain through embeds.
YouTube & Vimeo: - Gets the content in front of more eyes; - Content will invariably rank well (albeit often not for your domain).
There are 3 major functions for video from an SEO perspective: 1) Ranking, traffic and conversions; 2) Brand impressions and notoriety; 3) Links.
Approach 1: Video for Ranking, Rich Snippets and Conversions
#Location - Include the videos on a page targeting a term likely to receive a video rich snippet; - Ensure your videos are being built into a page where there are a variety of other media types; - Include only one video per page.
#Hosting Either self host your videos, or use a paid secure hosting solution (options detailed at the end of this post).
#Embedding - Ensure the content cannot be embedded outside of your own domain; - Embed the content with HTML5 and JavaScript or Flash, but not an iframe.
#Video Sitemap Submit a video XML sitemap to Google Webmaster tools.
Approach 2: Video for Links #Location As with all bits of link bait, put the content somewhere visible, with good internal linking structure.
#Hosting - Self-host the content or use a third party solution; - Allow the video to be embedded anywhere; - Create a CNAME for your video files.
#Embedding - Embed the content in HTML5 and JavaScript or Flash, but not an iframe; - Include social share buttons next to the video player; - Customise an iframe embed code for users to embed your content.
#Video Sitemap Create and submit a video sitemap per the ranking, rich snippets and conversion model.
Approach 3: Video for Brand Impressions & Notoriety....(check out it for information about this)
Approach 4: Video for All of the Above....
Paid Hosting Package Analysis and Pros and Cons about: - Wistia - Vzaar - Vimeo Pro - Brightcove
Each element in this article is analyzed with many details. Moreover, there are many video's examples and also a presentation. Check out the full and interesting article here: 
Hundreds of SEOs jumped on board the Pinterest train to take advantage of the dofollow links and heavy traffic referrals. Those same SEOs soon found themselves failing miserably.
Here are some interesting points from article:
***Pinterest Is A Community, Not A Tool.
***For Starters, Pinterest Links Are Now Nofollow.
***How many times have we had similar discussions over the years? Build connections, not links. Don’t spam. Join discussions. Be present. Get followers by engaging with others. Success takes time. There are no shortcuts — only hard work.
***Use Pinterest As A Means For SEO Benefits, Not A Direct SEO Tool. Instead of focusing on getting links from Pinterest, focus on getting links from other Pinterest users; instead of whoring your Pinterest out for traffic, focus on accruing a targeted, interested audience.
Now here are 7 Constructive Ways For SEOs To Use Pinterest:
1) Connect with relevant users. Comment on posts, cc users with @mentions, repin original content, or “like” pins when it’s not appropriate to repin. Engage with other users as you would on any other social media site.
2) Use Pinterest for linkbuilding outreach campaigns.
3) Optimize your page to get found by other Pinterest users.
4) Expand your brand-controlled search results.
5) Focus on targeted, brand-friendly pins that will result in click-through traffic. Pin only for your target audience and pin images that encourage click-throughs.
6) Use Pinterest to curate useful content for your industry.
7) Always measure your successes and failures.
In short: Add value to the community. And for Pete’s sake, stop acting like Pinterest is your SEO godsend.
Read full article here: http://j.mp/IfyIer 
Excerpted from article intro:
"Whether you're a boot-strapped startup on a shoestring budget or a blue chip company with a giant stack of cash in the bank, every company can use free marketing ideas to promote their brand, products, or services.
After digging deep into my bag of marketing tactics from over the years, I've pulled together 63 free (or almost free) marketing tips and tactics that any business on the planet can use big or small to generate publicity, buzz, and awareness on the cheap..."
Check out the article and its long and interesting list: 
There are plenty of ways to resurface your best blog content so it gets more visibility than just a day or two on your blog's homepage. We know how much time and effort it takes to create content, so why not squeeze the most ROI out of your business blogging with these ideas to resurface your blog content?
1) Recommend Blog Posts About Similar Topics: You can make this related content module a feature of your blog design, or simply include it in plain text at the bottom of each blog post you write.
2) Republish Successful Blog Posts in Social Media: Begin incorporating one of those popular posts into your social media status updates every day. This helps regenerate traffic to the best blog posts for new followers that you've acquired since you originally published the post.
3) Use Your Blog Posts as a Lead-Gen Offer: We recommend creating a "blog bundle," or a compilation of your best blog posts on a particular subject. This tactic can be used for a quick lead generation offer and to gain more visibility for your best blog posts.
4) Grow Inbound and Internal Links for More Search Engine Visibility: Increase that visibility by naturally acquiring inbound links for your most important blog posts - through guest blogging opportunities, polite requests to industry connections, and graciously linking to other people's content.
5) Update & Republish Old Blog Posts: Why not save yourself the time of writing a new post from scratch and get more leverage out of those evergreen blog posts by updating the content and republishing it to your blog?
6) Recommend the Most Popular Blog Posts: Make use of one of the simplest ways to resurface old blog content - a blog post recommendation widget.
7) Use Blog Content in Email Marketing Campaigns...
8) Include Blog Posts in Your Resource Center...
9) Reference Your Blog Content in Q&A Forums...
Read full article here: http://j.mp/GUEja6 |
This post will give you plenty of ideas to implement that will make your marketing more solution-oriented. That way, your prospects see you as a helpful problem solver they actually like and trust ... not just a peddler of your product or service!
1) Create how-to blog content: As most inbound marketers know, success starts with content; so begin by writing blog posts that solve peoples' problems! If you'll allow me to get meta for a minute, this very blog post about how to be a problem solver is, well, solving a problem.
2) Create lead gen offers that make people's lives easier: You need to convert that blog traffic into leads, and if you've written some amazing content, your readers will probably want to learn more from you. Create lead gen content that will help your readers be more successful.
3) Source problems to feed your content: Ask all employees to document these questions and problems and send them your way to feed your solution-oriented content.
4) Leverage the brainpower of your community: Look, nobody knows everything. You're surrounded by people that have data, research, insights, and experiences from which your audience would benefit. Tap into that brainpower, and be the one to share it with the rest of your community!
5) Monitor and respond to social media inquiries: Speaking of social media, your active presence on social sites can contribute to your reputation as a thought leader, problem solver, and all around awesome business.
6) Optimize for long-tail search: Long-tail search is a critical component of any well-rounded SEO and content strategy, and it provides tremendous opportunity for marketers that are looking to be more solution-oriented with their content. That's because many long-tail keywords are centered around interrogative queries, like "what makes a good blog post," or "where should I host my blog," or "how to start a blog."
7) Nurture leads with emails based on their problems: Consider segmenting your lists and creating lead nurturing tracks that address specific buyer problems. You can identify the problems right in your landing page forms.
8) Create apps and tools that help solve a problem: When you enter your website into the free tool, you get a comprehensive report that tells you not just an arbitrary grade, but also actionable advice on exactly what areas of your marketing need improvement, and how you can do it.
Read full article here: http://j.mp/L4qPhT 
Excerpted from article by Joe Pulizzi: "In our new social media world, email assets are more important than ever before. As content marketers, it is critical that we develop our audiences and build our channels.
Your email database, on the other hand, is a significant business asset.
Here are 10 steps you can take now to optimize your enewsletter landing page to get more customers and prospects to sign up for your content.
1) Spell Out the Benefits: On the landing page, clearly list why someone should sign up for your enewsletter.
7) Tell Them What You Will and Won’t Do with Their Information: At the bottom of the page, be very clear about how you will use the information they’ll be giving to you.
Read full original article here: http://blog.junta42.com/2012/05/optimize-enewsletter-landing-page/
Excerpted from article: "Every one of us is looking for ways to form stronger relationships with our audience, especially with current and potential customers.
This article isn’t about “How to get more blog comments,” but rather how to cultivate better relationships through comments. Notwithstanding, the two do overlap, as you’ll see in the following list.
Finally, you’re going to find that some of the components of this list are nothing more than common sense. But as so many know, common sense, especially in this new culture of social media, can at times be rather uncommon, and therefore needs to be mentioned.
Here’s only full list: #1: Write in a Personal Voice; #2: Invite Reader Response by Asking Questions; #3: Don’t be a Know-it-All; #4: Admit You May be Wrong; #5: Utilize an Author Bio and Photo; #6: Say a Simple “Hello”; #7: Use Readers’ Names; #8: Show Empathy; #9: Ask Further Questions; #10: Invite Other Readers to Share Their Solutions; #11: Respond with Personal Emails; #12: Be Specific with Your Praise; #13: Recognize Returning Commenters; #14: Use a Plugin/Platform that Ensures all Replies are Read; #15: Thank Readers for Their Support; #16: Sign Your Name; #17: Refer to Comments in Future Posts; #18: Don’t be a Jerk if Someone Disagrees with You; #19: Respond!
Each element is analyzed with more information. Read full article here: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/blog-comments/
Excerpted from the article:
#1: Update Your Status Frequently and Consistently: Here are a few ideas on how to be an active LinkedIn member: - Update your status at least three times a day. - Share and comment on the updates of your first-, second- and third-degree connections at least once a day. - Send an invitation to connect to at least one new person per day. - Start and/or participate in LinkedIn Group Discussions three times a week. - Answer questions on “LinkedIn Answers” three times a week.
Be selective about the tweets you choose to send automatically into LinkedIn from your Twitter account.
#2: Build Connections Constantly: To always look for connection opportunities. LinkedIn recently enhanced its People You May Know feature.
#3: Be Strategic about When You are Active on LinkedIn: Focus your participation activities during the times when you have the best chance to be seen.
#4: Join and Actively Participate in LinkedIn Groups: LinkedIn Groups are one of the most active areas of the network and the participation stats are quite compelling. You must jump into the new and popular conversations and add value as a member! Pick three to five groups that make sense for you to be actively involved.
#5: What You Share Matters: The key is to share news, articles and insights that are relevant to your connections if you want to attract and grow the right audience. Be a resource and be helpful to your connections in addition to finding ways to create dialogue with them..."
Read full article: http://j.mp/JErQZE 
Giuseppe Mauriello: Neil Patel writes this interesting article on his Quick Sprout Blog about the importance of images for blog posts: images explain complex information, they are easier to consume and they generate more social media shares. In addition to that, images can drive a lot of traffic to your site from search engines.
From the article: "...The following 6 tactics will help you to optimize your images so they can bring you more traffic to your site:
Tactic #1 – Optimize your images for people: - Keep them relevant; - Use super-sized images; - Optimize for the RSS feed; - Use faces;
Tactic #2 – Optimize your images for search engines: - Compress images; - Limit the number of images per page; - Use keywords; - Long description; - Alt tag;
Tactic #3 – Optimize your images for social media: - Use gorgeous photos; - Use standard image formats; - Publish your photos on social media sharing sites; - Optimize for Digg submission;
Tactic #4 – Optimize alt tag and title text of images: Neil introduces you to a wonderful WordPress plugin, called "SEO-Friendly Images" and can do a number of very powerful things for you: - Add alt tag and title texts; - Changes title text and alt tag;
Tactic #5 – Optimize image file names: he file name of an image gets weight when it comes to SEO, so it’s essential that you optimize the file name of your images, too. The tool to help you do this is a plugin called "Media File Renamer". Or you can change the image name manually.
Tactic #6 – Optimize for image load speed: Page speed is essential for success on Google, so the final lesson that you need to learn is to optimize them for load speed. WP Smush.it is WordPress plugin that will do three things for your images: - Compress the images.
Each elements is analyzed with more information. Read full article here: http://j.mp/Ij9tsd
Measure social media success: Use free powerful Google products to understand the successes and failures of your social media promotion or campaign.
Here are 4 easy ways you can use free products:
#1: Track Actions Visitors Take: Use Event Tracking to show when individuals exit your website to your social media outlets.
This information is beneficial in helping you to: -Understand how your users are finding your social outlets.
Once installed, you will be able to determine the number of people clicking on your social media buttons from your website during the length of your social campaign.
#2: Identify Social Actions Generating the Most Traffic: Although you’re able to see that the user came from Facebook or Twitter to your sweepstakes rules, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to identify which tweet or post from your social outlets generated the most quality clicks to that page?
Google URL Builder allows you to do just that and it’s a great way to see which variation of a tweet or post harnessed the most quality clicks.
#3: Find Out if Your Social Promotion Grew Legs: Another product that can be used to tap into the power of Google to measure the success of your social media campaign is Google Alerts. Google Alerts allows you to see other places on the web that picked up your social promotion and delivers the information straight to your inbox.
Identifying key individuals or outlets serves as a great way to build relationships within the social sphere and to start to compile a list of individuals and outlets to reach out to the next time you run a social media promotion.
#4: Get Real-Time Alerts: Google Analytics Alerts are useful while the campaign is still running, in that they can assist you to stay up to date with the success of your promotion. Just head into Alerts and set up an alert for a significant increase in day-to-day traffic from Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and you’ll get email updates when traffic starts falling from the sky.
Check out full interesting article here: http://j.mp/I1xEez
Excerpted from the article: "Much has changed in the SEO landscape and the practice of search optimization over the past year – from the ongoing Panda and Freshness updates to the introduction of Google+ and Search Plus Your World.
This approach to being found organically will help answer two critical questions: how do you know if you’re maximizing your SEO investment given the changes Google has introduced and how you can sell your services and prove value to your clients?
Although a lot has changed, two aspects of SEO remain certain: - SEO isn't dead, nor will it die in the foreseeable future. - The way we perform and measure SEO has to change and is changing.
The idea of building out a hierarchy of web presence optimization (WPO) comes from the belief that basic fundamentals are required before organic search success can be achieved.
There are five different tiers in The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization.
1) Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation accounts for approximately 10 percent of the SEO efforts often consisting of one-time tasks such as: ***Setting up robots.txt, 401 redirects, sitemap, title tags, etc.
2) Keyword and Competitive Research tier is an on-going process that will expand and evolve as you venture deeper into your organic optimization strategy. Approximately 25 percent of your SEO efforts should be focused on continually understanding the keyword phrases that drive targeted traffic and conversions.
3) Optimized content marketing plan is at the intersection of organic search optimization, social media, all the recent Google algorithm changes, and content marketing. Planning and creating your optimized content accounts for the majority of your SEO efforts - approximately 55 percent.
4) Publish, Socialize & Share Content: Distributing your content effectively and frequently should occupy about 5 percent of your SEO effort. The distribution of your optimized content marketing is key because it accomplishes the following goals for your SEO campaign.
5) Measure & Improve: In order to improve a content marketing campaign for further execution, not only must you master the previous tiers, but you must measure, benchmark, tweak and repeat. This is the final and ultimate tier – the remaining 5 percent of your SEO effort...."
Each tier is analyzed with more information. Check out the full article here: http://j.mp/I49ZPd 
Excerpted from the article:
"Today we’ll explore four ways to optimize your YouTube channel to ensure your videos are being discovered, watched and shared.
1. Optimize Your Videos Metadata: In terms of YouTube, the metadata makes up the title, descriptions and tags of your videos. Optimizing these key sections of your video content will help rank your videos in both Google and YouTube.
- Write a concise, descriptive title using key phrases that people would search to find your video, but also incorporate YouTube’s Keyword Suggestion Tool.
- Each of your videos should have a lengthy description of what the video’s content is all about. Always include a relevant URL to your website.
- Adding ten to twenty tags per video is an ideal way to make use of keywords relevant to your video but that couldn’t naturally fit in your title or description.
2. Use Descriptive Playlists: There are a few benefits in using playlists to organize your video collections on YouTube when it comes to achieving greater visibility to your channel’s content.
- Begin grouping videos of a similar topic into playlists. - Use keyword focused titles for your playlists. - Write a keyword focused, accurate description for the playlist.
3. Make the Most of Annotations: YouTube annotations are a way of adding interactive commentary to your videos. They act as a call to action on your content to help drive a viewer to complete a certain task, such as subscribing to your channel, watching more videos, pausing the video, adding a comment, following your brand on Twitter or Facebook and among many others.
There are six different types of annotations: - The Speech Bubble... - The Note... - The Title... - The Spotlight... - The Label... - The Pause...
4. Brand Your Page Consistently: Branding is important no matter the marketing channel. Many features for branding your YouTube channel are free and should be taken full advantage of. - Upload a Custom Background... - Showcase Your Other Social Channels Everywhere... - Custom Banners and Layout as a Brand Channel..."
In the article each element is analyzed with useful information and many examples. Read full interesting article here: http://j.mp/IJj4Im
The call-to-action (CTA) is an important tool for promoting your marketing offers and making sure your lead gen engine stays humming. In fact, we believe that your CTAs should be on just about every page of your website.
But surely there should be more of a science involved than just slapping a CTA button on any page on your site willy-nilly.
Step 1: Map Your Offers to Stages in the Sales Cycle
Before you do anything else, you need to conduct an audit of all the marketing offers you have at your disposal. Create a spreadsheet, and list all of your offers in column A. It's also a good idea to list their corresponding landing pages in column B.
Next, identify the various stages in your sales cycle. This may be different from business to business and industry to industry, but just so we're all on the same page, we'll go with the three most widely recognized stages: awareness, evaluation, and purchase.
Once you've identified the various stages in your sales cycle, add a third column to your spreadsheet, and categorize each of your existing offers by these stages.
The content assets listed in the 'awareness' stage are appropriate for that stage of the buying cycle because they help educate your lead. The content assets in the 'evaluation' stage, however, speak directly to how your company can help solve their needs. The assets in the 'purchase' stage require more action from the lead.
Step 2: Map Your Website Pages to Stages in the Sales Cycle
The next thing you'll need to do is determine how each page on your website aligns with the stages you identified in step 1. By knowing which pages more effectively appeal to visitors in particular stages of the sales cycle, you'll know where to place the offer CTAs that coincide with those stages.
So how do you know which pages of your website map to which stages of your sales cycle? You'll need two pieces of intelligence: - your marketing analytics... - and your common sense...
Step 3: Use Analytics to Identify Your Best Offers for Each Stage
So now you know which stage in your sales cycle each of your offers align with, and you've also determined which pages on your site CTAs for those offers belong.
Use your landing page analytics to analyze your offers by each sales cycle stage, and pick out your top-performing offers by using metrics such as landing page conversion rate and submissions as proxies.
Step 4: Design, Test, and Analyze Add the appropriate CTA buttons for your offers to their corresponding web pages. And if you don't have CTAs for your offers, get to designing them!
Read full and detailed article here: http://j.mp/HHlLNe 
With each new overhaul of Facebook pages, there have been increased opportunities for brands to use imagery to better promote their offerings and create visual interest, and Timeline for pages is no different.
In this article, you will focus on five key areas where imagery can be used most effectively.
1) The Cover Photo: Your Biggest Branding Opportunity: In creating your cover photo image (851 x 315 pixel), Facebook advises: - Use a unique image that represents your page. - Use the cover photo to bring a strong visual impact to your page.
2) The Profile Picture: The Hardest-Working Image on Facebook: The profile picture now does triple duty and it’s important to take all three contexts into account when creating your profile picture graphic. A clever integration of your cover photo and profile picture is the challenge.
3) Custom Tab Images: Make Sure You Take Advantage of These: Now you have a maximum of four tabs prominently displayed at 111 x 74 pixels PLUS the tab name below the image. Here are a few important things to keep in mind about the custom image tabs: - You can’t change or reposition the “Photos” tab; - You can create your own graphics for any custom tab images EXCEPT Facebook’s own apps.
4) Highlighting Posts to Create Visual Interest: Many users and page admins have found Timeline’s new way of displaying user and page posts cluttered, confusing and counterintuitive. However, page admins can use the new “highlight” feature to bring a bit of order to the chaos! When you highlight a page status, it then occupies two columns in your Timeline, breaking up the monotony of the two columns as well as attracting more attention to that particular status.
5) Create Milestones to Make Your Page “Sticky”: Brands can create Milestones—incorporating pictures and text—for various significant events in their histories.
Read full interesting article and check out its many examples here: http://j.mp/HXUDaN 
This platform can generate tremendous traffic, leads and sales for your business that you otherwise would not have had. Unfortunately though, most businesses do not blog well. Why? Because they refuse to think like a consumer.
There are sound blogging practices here that could truly help your company.
1) Leverage the power of “versus”: As consumers, we love to compare. So look for ways to compare the products and services you sell versus the products and services of others in your field. Give factual information about each. The opportunities here are almost endless and the amount of content ideas that can come from this one subject could very well give you dozens or even hundreds of blog post possibilities.
2) People want the best, now give it to them: There is a very good chance the prospects and customers in your industry are online searching these types of phrases, which is why you should look for opportunities to utilize the word “best” in your content.
3) Focus on problems...
4) Reveal pricing: Pricing questions are the first ones consumers tend to ask, then we need to figure out ways to address the subject in our content. Be more open about pricing to set yourself apart from your competitors and garner respect from consumers who appreciate your willingness to address their questions.
5) Break news: If you truly want to be known as the voice of your industry, the subject of real-time breaking news can have an incredible impact on your company’s brand and authority.
Read full article here: http://j.mp/HhRkey 
In this article you will learn how to export and extract the right data from Facebook Insights to analyze and improve your Facebook content strategy.
1) Export With the Right Settings...
2A) Trim the Useless Fat Facebook provides you with an overwhelming amount of data. Let's trim all the excess fat. Delete columns bolded in black, and keep columns bolded in orange below. (check out the long list to delete)
2B) The Meaty Data After you've trimmed all the fat, you're left with three data points: Lifetime Total Likes, Daily Friends of Fans, and Daily Page Consumption. This is the meat of your data...
3) Fine-Tune the Metrics You Need Now that we've narrowed down that massive sheet to three main data points, let's insert a new column next to your "Daily Friends of Fans" column, and name it "Total Daily Reach."...
4) Make the Data Pretty Now you can go ahead and create a visual representation of your two key metrics to understand the full picture of what is going on.
5) Extract Conclusions By taking the time to relate individual posts with their clicks, you can analyze which types of content perform well on your page...
6) Constantly Analyze You have a system in place that will allow you analyze your Facebook content strategy daily, weekly, or monthly. More engagement with your Facebook content leads to better potential for traffic and leads from Facebook.
Check out the full article and attached video: http://j.mp/H3D3px
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