Social Media Utilization Techniques

Your links, paid search, and social media acts as the icing, but your content, information architecture, content management system, and infrastructure act as the sugar and makes the cake.

Without it, your cake is tasteless, boring, and gets thrown in the trash.

vintage social networking

Excerpted from article:
"If you don’t have a good landing page, it’s like going fishing without a net: you might land a big one on your hook, but you won’t be able to drag it into the boat.

You don’t want people to just visit your page. You want them to take action once they are there. So make it as easy and compelling as possible for them by including these elements found in a landing page that CONVERTS:

C = Clear Call to Action
O = Offer
N = Narrow Focus
V = VIA: Very Important Attributes
E = Effective Headline
R = Resolution-Savvy Layout
T = Tidy Visuals
S = Social Proof

CLEAR CALL TO ACTION:
Whatever it is you’ve decided will move people further along your conversion funnel. That’s what you should be asking them, clearly and temptingly, to do. Don’t distract them with lots of other requests. The best pages accentuate only one CTA.

OFFER:
An offer is anything you give your visitors in exchange for getting them to do what you want. This can mean offers in the traditional sense of coupons or discounts, but it also can mean a free trial, a free version of the product, a whitepaper, or a matching gift.

NARROW FOCUS:
Research has shown that the more choices you offer people, the longer they take to make a decision. So the clearer and simpler you make your page, the more likely you are to get someone to take the action you want.
- Do you really need that navigation bar?
- Do you really need to talk about your company philosophy?
- Do you really need to collect all that information?

VIA: VERY IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTES:
We’ve all heard stories of companies that reserved a catchy URL, put up zero information about what the site was for, and harvested 1 million email addresses before they even launched.
You should assume that’s not going to happen to your company.
Instead, you’re going to have to give visitors some good reasons they should do what you want. Those reasons are the VIA: Very Important Attributes.

EFFECTIVE HEADLINE:
People coming to your site are going to decide in a split second if they want to go back to their game of “Words with Friends” or stay and see what you are all about. A key way to keep them is to tell them in plain language what your site is all about.

RESOLUTION-SAVVY LAYOUT:
Do you know that there are people out there still surfing the web on 800 x 600 monitors?
Keep the most essential parts of your message – logo, headline, call to action, a supporting visual – in the center top of the screen, with supporting messaging lower down on the page.

TIDY VISUALS:
As with the headline, distracting elements can work when you’re trying to get attention. But when people are on your site, you don’t want to sidetrack them with a bunch of visual junk.

SOCIAL PROOF:
As social creatures, humans tend to place greater value on things that other people have already approved. That is why most sites will tend to display evidence of such social validation."

In the original article there are more information about: "Considerations for strategy", "Considerations for design", "The cautionary tale", "Doing it right" and some examples. Check out full interesting article here:
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/c-o-n-v-e-r-t-s/

Six trends that are changing the way we use social media in marketing and sales.

Excerpted from article by Search Engine Watch:

"Looking for a nice selection of SEO power tools that will help diagnose technical issues and optimize your website, or perhaps gain insight on what your competition is doing? Below are 13 SEO tools (many of them free) to do just that.

Even if you have little to no budget, you will still able to get the job done with this selection of search marketing power tools.

1. Your Eyes
2. IIS SEO Toolkit
3. Screaming Frog
4. Majestic SEO
5. Adobe Site Catalyst
6. Google Analytics
7. SEMrush
8. Google Webmaster Tools
9. Bing Webmaster Tools
10. SEO Tool Set
11. Google Trends
12. HitWise
13. You Get Signal."

Each tool is analyzed with more information and external links.
Read full article here:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2199683/13-Essential-SEO-Power-Tools

Marketers, educators, parents, it seems that almost anyone in the Generation X or Boomer demographic is scratching their heads trying to figure out Generation Y aka the Millennial. After all, it’s the first generation to seemingly possess digital prowess as part of their DNA. And, it’s the first generation to receive both a birth certificate and a social profile or presence upon delivery into this world.

Learn how to optimize your Pinterest presence for search with this simple guide.

...if your initial trial of using Pinterest for business has yielded positive results and you think Pinterest is a viable social media marketing platform for your business, you know what the next step is, right? Optimization!

Read More: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34042/The-Marketer-s-Guide-to-Pinterest-SEO.aspx

Pinterest & SEO ...are you, like many, overlooking the power of optimizing your Pinter...

If you are having trouble trying to keep an active presence on social media, we might have a solution for you. Learn about the social sharing app, Buffer.

It's not just social media's newest darling. It could be the public relations industry's, too.

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Has SEO really changed?

"I recently re-read this great quote from a book entitled “Algorithms in a Nutshell.” To summarize, the authors wrote:

“… A good way to solve problems is to start with the big picture… [because if you don’t understand the big picture] you may solve the wrong problem, or might not explore other—possibly better—answers.”

I thought that idea neatly summarized the perceived battle between “new” SEO and “old” SEO. Search optimization professionals should know and understand the big picture before they define and tout the “new” SEO.

Instead of focusing on flavor-of-the-month/day/year optimization tactics, what are the big-picture items SEO professionals should always keep in mind?

Does each flavor-of-the-month tactic support the big picture… or is it merely a flavor-of-the-month tactic that can largely be ignored or discounted"?

Read More: http://searchengineland.com/seo-smackdown-round-2-old-vs-new-search-engine-optimization-145825