As heard on AMERICAN UNDERDOG

Listen to Kendell Lang, Social Media Professional being interviewed on American Underdog and sharing the – Social Media Tip ‘O The Week on American Underdog Radio

Our first week we talked about “Claiming Your Social Name”

Our second week we talked about “Content & Keyword Selection”

Our third week we talked about “Which Social Networks Should I Use?” Now that I’ve Claimed My Name and Produced my Content with the correct Keyword Selection…where and how do I post that to the ‘social network sphere’ in a way that is most effective and efficient?”

This week we’ll talk about “Social Media Time Wasters”

Are You Maximizing Your Investment in a Social Networking Strategy?

Everywhere you turn someone is talking about how fantastic social media is. We hear how people are spending six hours a day on Facebook.  They are responding to Twitter tweets all day and all night.  Facebook’s 850 million users collectively spend more than 57 billion minutes on the site each day. That’s amazing.

Many of these people think that social media will help them grow their businesses. They expect to make tons of money by using MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, and LinkedIn as marketing tools.  But the truth is that the vast majority of people are NOT making money with social media and are just wasting their time.
That begs a very important question. What are they doing and how are they going to convert that activity to a Return on Investment?

To get you on the path of profitable social media use, we are going to share some contrarian ideas about how to be successful in social media, along with some of the major ways businesspeople are wasting their time with social media. For each time waster, we have a solution to immediately provide an answer.

Here they are:

TIME WASTER #1

Many people think that being on social media is, in itself, a business model. They just go out and try to start build a following. That’s a really bad idea — just like when you started your business, you had a business plan which included a marketing and sales plan.  You need a comprehensive social media marketing plan. You need to quantify a strategic plan, establish goals and know how you are going to make money with social media.  If you can’t create a plan with a specific set of goals (which should be between 3 and 6 Major Organization Objectives or MOO’s), and if you don’t know how to measure your MOO’s and quantify the results…don’t even bother.

ACTION STEPS TO FIX IT

Just like with your core website, you need to identify the exact product or service you want to sell through social media. Define, in detail, your target audience, specifically…what keywords are they going to be typing in to find your product or service.  Your social media strategy should mirror your website SEO strategy in terms of CONTENT.  Content is KING!  Social media is no different and relevant content matters. You certainly need to know who is your ideal customer, but do you know how they’re going to be trying to find you?

TIME WASTER #2

Another mistake is listening to supposed social media experts who will tell you that you need to segment your activity and focus on just the social networks that support your vertical market. They will tell you that some businesses work better on LinkedIn, some are better on Facebook, and some are better on Twitter.  Quite frankly that is a crock and we take a contrarian view on this subject.  You are wasting your time if you don’t hit ALL the social networks.  There is crossover and chaos in the social networking world and you just can’t afford to miss ANY of the social networks as you just don’t know if your target audience is potentially in a social network you might have missed.  You may not think your target audience is participating in VampireFreaks.com, but with 2 million members in this gothic and industrial subcultural social network are you willing to risk that just one of your best repeat customers isn’t in there getting his or her freak on?

ACTION STEPS TO FIX IT

Get familiar with all of the major social media websites. You should take a look at our Master Social Network List to understand exactly how big the social media realm really is.  Once you understand what the world of social media and social networking sites consists of, then you need to ask yourself, “how am I going to participate in the Top 10, the Top 50, the Top 100 or how in the world could I possible invest in being present in 350+ social networks?”  The answer to that is the WorldClassID Social Network Software Service.

TIME WASTER #3

Yet another mistake: Social media participation. You are spending your own time or you’ve hire a social media coordinator to build your friend list, post activity or tweet your activity.

ACTION STEPS TO FIX IT

Learn the reality of social networking as it relates to impacting your search engine optimization and how that impacts your lead generation goals.  How Google ranks your Facebook page has nothing to do with how many friends you have, how many postings you make and it completely ignores how many much time you spend on the site.  What matters is the CONTENT you publish on Facebook, just like the CONTENT you publish on your website.  The more relevant the content is to your target keyword mix, the higher your social media content is going to rank and the more relevant linking is going to happen to your core website.

You are going to need to shift your focus AWAY from social networks actually being a place where interactive communication is required.  The reality is you need to be brutal about this being a one-way broadcasting communication and forget about responding to every post or question.  One of the best examples of an individual who profited from social media is Gary Vaynerchuk, the star of Wine Library TV. Gary effectively leveraged the power of social media to explode the profits of his family’s wine business. He developed a Twitter following of more than 800,000 people and used his following, his blog, and his videos to skyrocket the business from $4 million a year to $60 million year in only five years.  He did that by broadcasting and focusing on his outbound message, not by being friends with 800,000 people.  It would be ludicrous to think that responding personally to any portion of those followers was in any way part of his success.  Radical focus on the outbound message and maintaining high quality and relevant messaging was the key to his strategy.

If you keep these time wasters in mind while developing your social media strategy, you’ll be on your way to building your own social media success story.

The following steps provide a clear cut path for you to follow and implement some fundamental search engine optimization and to give you a proper foundation to start optimizing your website.

1. SEM vs. PPC vs. SEO: WTH?

You’ve probably seen these acronyms floating around as you were doing your research (the first 3 at least). Here’s a refresher on what they mean:

SEM/PPC: Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click usually refer to a form of online advertising that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising and paid inclusion. In some instances, SEM is used as the umbrella term for both PPC and SEO. Paid results can be found at either the top or right hand-side of search result pages.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in search engines via unpaid search results, otherwise known as “natural” or “organic” results. In general, the earlier or higher a page gets ranked on the search results page, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. Unpaid results constitute the main portion of these results.

Here’s a visual that shows it in action:

WorldClass Web Design Google Search Screenshot

Above is what you typically get when typing “World Class Web Design” into a search engine. In the red boxes are the paid search results, and in green, the organic ones.

2. Create Brief, Unique and Accurate Page Titles

Let’s go back to our previous search results:

World Class Web Design Page Title

When your web page comes up in the listings, the title tag will appear in the first line and link to said page. You can also find it at the top of your browser window.

When writing a title tag, try to keep these best practices in mind:

* Make sure it accurately describes the page’s content and effectively communicates its topic. For example, you can list the name of your website/company and a few bits of information about what the company does, using keywords that are likely to be typed in user search queries. In our case, “world class web design” or “world class social media” would be good options.
* Make your title tag unique for each page so that “search spiders” (the programs that “crawl” websites on behalf of the search engines) will know that given page is distinct from the others on your site.
* Keep it brief and to the point as users want to be able to scan through results and click on what seems most relevant to their query in a hurry. Also, as with email subject lines, if your title is too long the search engine or browser header will only show part of it.

3. Paint the Picture with your Meta Tags

A page’s description meta tag gives searchers and search engines a summary of what the page is about. It’s usually the paragraph located below the title tag in your results:

World Class Web Design Metatag Descriptions

Notice I said “usually.” Sometimes the search engine might decide that another portion of your page is more relevant to the query and show it instead of the actual meta tag. To make sure that doesn’t happen and your carefully crafted description gets the attention it deserves, here are a couple of tips:

Accurately summarize the page’s content. Write a description that both informs and interests users enough to draw their mouse pointer toward your link.
Use unique meta tags for each page. Just like for title tags, each page should get its own distinct description, especially in cases where multiple pages from your website show up in the same search query.

4. Clean Up Your URLs

In addition to the title and meta tags, simple to understand URLs will be more click-friendly to users, while informing them of the exact content of your page. For example, if given a choice between http://www.worldclass.com/web-design-services/web-design-services.html and http://www.worldclass.com/0123456789/9876543210, which one would you click? My thoughts exactly.

Use relevant keywords in your URLs. Not only will this help visitors remember your links better and make them more willing to click on them as mentioned above, it will make the URLs easier for spiders to crawl as well.

Provide one version of a URL to reach a document. Use and refer to one unique URL for a given document to avoid splitting the reputation of that content between different URLs.

Allow for the possibility of your URL being truncated. Consider what might happen if a user removes part of your URL, either voluntarily or accidentally. For example if a user were to shorten http://www.worldclass.com/web-design-services/web-design-services.html to http://www.worldclass.com/web-design, you’ll want to make sure it actually takes him/her to an existing page. This, however, is tied into your website’s navigation structure.

5. Throw Away the Ariadne Thread

The term “Ariadne Thread” harks back to the mazes and labyrinths made famous in Greek mythology. While making for great narrative, getting around your website should not be as complicated. A website’s navigation is important in helping visitors find the content they want quickly, while at the same time helping search engines understand what the webmaster thinks is important. So to avoid either group getting lost, you can follow these few basic steps:

* Create a simple, naturally flowing directory structure. Your site’s directory structure should organize your content well, allowing users to go from general to more specifc content and letting them know where exactly they’re at on your site.
* Use mostly text for navigation. This will help spiders crawl and understand your site better, unlike Flash or JavaScript.
* Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file. The former will help your human visitors find what they’re looking for, the latter will do the same thing, but for search engines.
* Have a useful 404 page. If a visitor lands on a page that doesn’t or no longer exists, instead of serving a generic “404 not found” page that will irritate him/her more than anything, why not create a custom one that provides links directing back to the more helpful content on your site?

6. Content is King, Always

Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other optimization techniques discussed here. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site’s reputation the most with both users and search engines. Beyond creating quality and well-written content, anticipate differences in users’ understanding of your topic. In other words, keep in mind the different variations of search keywords or keyword phrases that users could type in while performing a search. For example, a seasoned website designer might look for “SEO” while a new one might use a more general query like “search engine ranking.”

If you’d like any assistance in implementing any of these suggestions, please feel free to contact us directly:

WorldClass Brand Management
1155 Camino del Mar, Suite 521
Del Mar, CA 92014
Toll Free: +1 866.347.3321
Direct Dial: +1 760.445.3315
email: contact@worldclass.com

A ‘How To’ Guide to Using Social Media, Search Engine Marketing and Advertising to Get Found on the World Wide Web

Blogging is all the rage nowadays and better yet, you don’t really need any skills or qualifications to do it! However, it’s those people with the gifted ability to write and hold their audience that can take blogging to incredible heights of success. Just look at Perez Hilton. This celebrity gossip queen made a name for his flamboyant self with his acerbic tongue and no-limits blog topics. With the incredible exposure he has gained through making famous people writhe in embarrassment and his audience laugh-out-loud, Perez Hilton takes the time to raise awareness of human rights issues. In reality, however, social marketing blogging is far more than just a means of airing your opinions and experiences. It is a fantastic way for the modern business to maintain a much closer relationship with their target market, as well as their competition. And here is how you can use social marketing blogs to supercharge your online visibility!

But first…

What on Earth IS Blogging? And How is it Relevant to Social Marketing Advertising?

A blog (contracted form of ‘web log’) is a website or a component of a website dedicated to the regular posting of information, opinions and experience; usually written by an individual about that individual. From the perspective of social marketing advertising, a blog can be maintained by a company or enterprise, and through the posting of stimulating content, can serve to keep fans, readers, followers (i.e. potential customers) intrigued and listening. Social marketing blogging is also a great way to provide links back to a business website as each new post – be it daily, bi-weekly or more infrequently – provides opportunities to reroute readers to where they can actually make purchases or become a contact. In other words, social marketing blogging provides a fun portal through which a business can become closer to their audience; making customers out of web users.

In summary, blogging is used in social marketing advertising and social media to:

-          Increase the SEO effectiveness of your website (since articles and postings can all be key-worded)

-          Is non-invasive social marketing advertising: the people who read your business blog are doing so out of an interest in what you have to offer. So, your potential customers are effectively coming to you!

-          Blogging helps a business to gain more visibility in the sphere of social media, which at present has hundreds of millions of followers world-wide.

Social Marketing Advertising: Starting Up Your Own Business Blog

In business, you should never be averse to learning. So the first and best step towards starting your own social marketing blog is to read what your competition is blogging about; in other words, what people in the same industry have to say on a daily and weekly basis. BlogSearch.Google.com and Technorati.com are great places to find blogs relating to your business, products and services. Read and subscribe to these social marketing blogs and you will learn invaluable information about what viewers – and potential customers – are responding to.

The second fundamental part involved in getting your social marketing advertising blog up and running is to get involved with the online conversation! In order to develop a readership, you need to be visible within the blogging community and you can achieve this by posting thoughtful comments on other member’s blogs, sharing links, asking questions and even disagreeing (within reason) to get the debate really going. Make sure you know what you’re talking about and get involved as an interested member with something valuable to contribute. Once other members recognize you (and your business’ name and identity), they will come to respect you as an industry authority; and the links you provide back to your business website in your posts will be the final touch in converting followers to potential customers… and then potential customers to paying customers! This is the underlying philosophy of social marketing in blogging.

Stay tuned for the next informative article in the series, PART 4: Getting Found on the Internet: A ‘How To’ Guide to Social Marketing Blogging, Continued.

A ‘How To’ Guide to Using Social Media, Search Engine Marketing and Advertising to Get Found on the World Wide Web

PART 2: Social Marketing Using Search Engines

When you search for something – anything – on the Internet, the machines that do the sifting through all those billions of gigabytes of pages out there are called ‘search engines’. These search engines find pages by following a set of protocol – or ‘algorithms’ as the social marketing gurus call them – and subsequently rank their findings according to a number of parameters. Social marketing seeks to understand and keep up with these ever-changing parameters in order to maximize a business websites’ visibility or findability (no, that’s not really a word, but perhaps it should be). The practice is referred to as Search Engine Optimization and is one of the most essential strategies in any social marketing campaign.

A Look at Search Results

There are really two different kinds of results yielded by search engines. The first – paid results – are keyword-dependent listings that businesses pay money for in order to appear at the very top of the result pages yielded by a search engine. The most popular form of this social marketing strategy is PPC, or Pay-Per-Click. So, for example, if you are a dental clinic in Nevada and want to appear at the top of Google’s results pages every time someone searches for ‘dental implants in Nevada’, you can pay the search engine’s administrators to do so. Then, every time a web user clicks on your website from the results page, you pay Google a small amount of money, hence the term ‘Pay-Per-Click’.

The second kind of search results are organic results and when it comes to social marketing advertising, ranking high on these is the most desirable! In order to achieve high rankings on these searches, you need to employ a little more social marketing creativity and ingenuity than just paying Google. Search engines rank their findings according to:

• How relevant they are, or by how well they match the keywords and phrases you entered into the search bar. So, writing high quality web content that is keyword rich is fundamental to this social marketing endeavor.

• They also factor into account the number of links that lead from other locations on the Internet to your business website; in other words, inbound links.

The reason that high rankings on organic search results are so desirable in social marketing and online advertising is because (1) it’s totally free, unlike paid results and (2) research has shown web users to click on them 75% of the time (as opposed to paid results, which only receive 25% of the web traffic.

A ‘How To’ Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Now that you understand the difference between organic and paid search results and what it takes to rank high on the result pages yielded by search engines, you can go about making your business’ website ‘SEO-savvy’!

1. Finding Keywords and Phrases

There are three parameters to balance when looking for the best keywords and phrases to optimize your website with. The first is search volume, which you can think of as ‘popularity’. For example: when looking for a catering company in Los Angeles, do more people type, “Food catering company Los Angeles” or “Catering Companies, California”? Finding the key word or phrase that receives the most searches in your particular industry is the first important step.

The second parameter is search relevance. Obviously, you are going to want to make sure that the keywords and phrases you use in your social marketing campaign are as relevant to your particular industry as possible. Web users are only going to leave your website in disgust if they see you have wasted even a second of their time with an irrelevant lead.

The third parameter is search competition. While you want to use the keywords with the greatest volume or popularity, you must be aware that all your competitors are thinking the same thing. For this reason, it is often best to use keywords and phrases that balance popularity with a lower degree of competition. Returning to the above-used example, if you are a catering company in LA, type into Google search engine the most popular keyphrase you can find. If the top ten listed catering companies are multi-million dollar enterprises with a social marketing budget that could send a rocket to the moon – and you, well, aren’t – then perhaps try a keyphrase with a lower degree of competition.

1. Social Marketing: On-Page Search Engine Optimization

Now you need to take the keywords and phrases you have found and use them in a high density on your website. This will make it stand out more in the eyes of search engines, such as Google, MSN and Yahoo! Enter your keywords in the page URLs, text, titles and headings. Also use them in other ‘invisible’ locations on your website (i.e. places where your web users won’t be able to see them), such as in the alt-text images and meta-tags.

1. Social Marketing: Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

Build a massive network of inbound links! When it comes to social marketing and link-building, it helps to think of your business’ website as a population center… inbound links serve as roads, street and highways to your center and the more there are, the bigger and wealthier your population becomes. The same applies to online social marketing and SEO. The more inbound links (which are essentially references or recommendations made from other websites and pages), the more visible your business’ website will be to search engines.

Hints:

-          Establish links on trusted and respected websites. One valuable inbound link is worth 100 links from obscure websites and pages that receive little traffic.

-          Submit your website to large business directories so that people searching, for example, Business.com and Yahoo! Directory will find you listed.

-          Make use of creative and interactive outlets such as blogs, article writing and social media to keep a finger on the pulse of both your target market and your competition.

1. Measuring Social Marketing and SEO Success

A fundamental component of online social marketing is to truly understand what works for your business and what doesn’t. There is no sure-fire way to succeed in the online realm and especially none that can be applied across the board. So, the best way to achieve success is to measure the effectiveness of your various social marketing strategies – on-page SEO and off-page SEO – and to seek constant improvement. You will, through trial and error, find out what works best in your particular industry and geographical location. To analyze and measure the success of your social marketing, keep a record of:

-          The number of inbound links you have to your website,

-          Your ranking on search engines according to each keyword and phrase you employ and how it’s compared with your competition,

-          The number of visitors your website receives on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Monitoring this activity on a daily and weekly basis (and not only in the long term) is important, so that you can track fluctuations as you implement your various social marketing strategies. For example, as you increase your number of inbound links, you should be able to see a corresponding increase in your web-traffic.

-          The number of people who sign up for your newsletters, register with your business or become a member of one your social media profiles (i.e. ‘leads’ or potential customers).

-          The actual sales you made as a result of your SEO endeavors; customers that made purchases online.

Stay tuned for the next informative article in the series, PART 3: Getting Found on the Internet: A ‘How To’ Guide to Using Blogs to Supercharge Your Online Visibility.