Thursday, April 21, 2016

Social Media Monitoring


In this chapter I will discuss the practice of social media monitoring. Social media monitoring, which is also known as social media listening, is an important part of social media marketing.

The majority of social media marketing involves posting attractive and relevant content, and initiating conversation with followers; but another important part of social media marketing that many people may not think of is listening to what people are saying. For example, one great way to see how effective your social marketing has been is to see what people are saying about your posts or advertisements. These people are who you are targeting with your posts and advertisements, so their reactions to them is most important when measuring effectiveness. There are tools out here that can help you see how your social media marketing actions are going. An example of this is social analytics which will allow you to measure impact, such as number of likes, conversations, and performance of a web page or a social media account. This can also help you effectively allocate your time and resources.

What is social media monitoring and social listening?
Social media monitoring and social listening are terms for basically the same thing, and they can be divided somewhat into owned media and earned media. Owned media is the actual social media page that you can control such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. This is where you post content and have the ability to engage in conversations with followers. If you only have one social media page that you are operating, then you can simply log onto that account and look at what people are saying about your posts and content. But, if you have multiple social media accounts that you are operating, then you may want to find a tool that can help you monitor each account easier.  A tool like Hootsuite will allow you to do this and it will save you a lot of time.

"Earned" media is everything that does not fall under your owned media. People starting their own conversations or someone sharing a post of yours with someone else is described as earned media. You do not control this media but you'll definitely want to generate because it will help you generate more "buzz" about the content or advertisement that you created. This type of media is also often refereed to as "word of mouth" marketing which is  the type of marketing that people are most willing to trust and believe. This media is not going to be on the social media account page that you will be able to control. So again, there are tools out there that can help you with this and make your life easier!

For more information about Social Media Monitoring, I suggest taking a look at Chapter 8 of CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing.








Thursday, April 14, 2016

How Much Time to Spend on Social Media



In this blog post I am going to talk about how much time you should devote to social media. There are many time plans that you can choose from, those of which I will list below.

"Pardot's Rock Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day"
  According to Pardot, most social media marketers do not know how to monitor their social media presence. The people at Pardot developed an infographic that outlines how to monitor your social media marketing in 30 minutes per day. Below, I will briefly go over how much time to spend on each social media sites.
  • Twitter: You should devote ten minutes to Twitter each day to respond to any tweets or messages your followers send to you. You should also promote any recent blog posts, content, or events, and you should scroll through your feed to retweet or share any content that your followers could be interested in.
  • Facebook: Facebook should be allotted six minutes of your time per day. On Facebook you should respond to comments, and scroll through your news feed to see if there is any relevant content to share or comment on. Lastly, and most importantly, you will want to share and promote your own content that consumers will want to see.
  •  LinkedIn: LinkedIn should also be allotted six minutes of your time per day. On LinkedIn you should share content and engage with your groups and company page
  • Pinterest: You should devote four minutes to Pinterest.  The four minutes should be spent pinning new content of your own, and repinning others content that is relavant to your brand.
  • Google: You should only spend two minutes on Google sharing content and posting questions.
  • Instagram: Like Google, Instagram should also be allotted two minutes to post interesting photos. Also, as I mentioned with the other social media sites, you should scroll through your feed to comment on any images that are relevant.  
If You do not have a presence on some of the social media sites listed above, devote extra time to the profiles you do have. The most important thing is to engage with your followers, and create relevant content on a weekly basis.

"Chris Brogan's Social Media Time Management"
 Chris Brogan is the CEO of Owner Media Group. Brogan recommends that you break down your social media marketing into four chunks. Brogan believes that two hours per day is the minimum  marketers should spend on social media. Americans spend an average of three hours per day so spending two per day on marketing to the targeted consumers seems about right. Below I will show you in bullet points how Brogan divides up the social media time.
  • 1/4 time= listening: You should start each day finding out what the world is saying about you, your competitors, and the market place. Scanning a few social media sites will allow to see what people are saying. This will help you see what is working or what is not working for your company and competitor companies.
  • 1/2 time= commenting and communication: Commenting and communicating with your targeted audience is important.  People will appreciate you taking the time to engage with them and answering questions that they may have. Most if not all companies have someone commenting and communicating to targeted consumers.
  • 1/4 time= creating: Again, creating relevant content is very, very important. Creating content may include blogging, posting photos or videos, or even creating email newsletters.


Tuesday, April 12, 2016

11 Ways Your Site's Server Can Kill Your Rankings

According to John Heard and Kristi Hagen (searchenginenews.com), servers are often the last thing that marketers think about when it comes to attaining a number one spot on Google. However, at SEN, one of the first questions that will ask a client is "who is hosting your site and what type of server is it on?'. According to SEN, a server is like an engine of a race car, meaning that you want power, speed, and reliability. When visitors are on a website, they expect "a fast ride" that will take them exactly where they want to go. So, if you are looking to help visitors have a great experience on a website, I recommend you take a look at the topics discussed below.

 Below are the 11 essential topics to consider when focusing on a server:

1. Platform
 The two choices for a web host server are Linux based or Windows based. Unix based is the the system of choice for small to medium business websites because of the lower cost. The Windows based platform is used by larger businesses because it takes more tech knowledge and also makes it almost impossible to run a WordPress site.

2. Hosting Package
 Examining the hosting package will be very important because you will be charged fees if you run over your allotted disk space, or limitations. The cost for a hosting package will very depending on how much disc space and bandwith you need.  The lowest cost per month for a hosting package will start at $.95/month.


3. Secure Certificate
A secure site will get definitely get more favoritism from Google when it comes to ranking boosts. The amount of support surrounding a secure certificate will vary dramatically. So, it is important to do research on what the costs and services are available to upgrade to a secure server with the host you choose.


4. Shared or Dedicated
 In most cases, you will want to use a shared server space that will run multiple domains in the same box. Dedicated servers cost a lot and are often overkill unless you have a high traffic website. However, dedicated servers do allow some more room for control and customization.


5. Security 
 Security should be one of the most important aspects of choosing a host. You will want to find a host that does a great job with security, but you also do not want one that will make your site a nightmare when trying to install new software. The best way to find a host with good security will be by talking to people who have used hosts with good security.

6. Support
You will want to find a support team that is staffed 24/7 and offers both email and phone support. It is also suggested that you call their tech line to see how long you have to wait on hold before you sign up with them.

7. Subdomains
 You can have your subdomain be hosted on the same server as your root domain or SEN also suggests that you can use an "A" record DNS entry to point the subdomain to another IP, which could be on another server. It would also be helpful to do some research on costs and what is required to add a subdomain.


8. Speed
Speed will always be near the top of a priority lists when selecting a server because speed effects conversion rates, bounce rates, and your search rankings. Google has even mentioned that speed of a website is part of their algorithm. Therefore, it should be at the top of the list for your site's SEO as well.


9. Canonical
If the www and the non www versions both serve your site's page you may be in trouble because that means you are serving two different sites to customers and search engines. To correct this, you can visit 301 permanent redirect when setting up your website and domain. If you plan on using a Windows Host you should make sure that they can address this issue for you.


10. Location
The actual physical location for your server is important. If you have a multi-national site you need to give the search engines as many possible indications tying your site to the correct country. For example, if you have an American site you will want a server hosted in the U.S. or as close as possible to the U.S. Having a closer physical location will help improve your load times and it may also avoid having to resort to Content Delivery Networks.

11. Uptime
 Last, but not least, is uptime, the measure of the time your site has been working. Uptime is perhaps the most important metric that you will want to measure. If your website is down, customers won't be able to gain access to it, and search indexes will not be able to index it. Many of the top web hosts that show their servers status at all times.  If they do not, be careful with working with them. If you visit www.pingdom.com you can find a package for $9.95/month, that will monitor your site's performance and uptime.


If you want more information on this topic please visit the following link: https://www.searchenginenews.com/se-news/content/11-ways-your-sites-server-can-kill-your-rankings



Thursday, April 7, 2016

Connecting and Posting to Hootsuite

I promise, this will be  my last post about Hootsuite. I first gave you a background of Hootsuite and talked about how it can help you with social media marketing. I then talked about how Hootsuite works and how you can get started with it. In my last post I briefly covered the steps that would help you manage your social networks. Now, I will further describe how you can add, reconnect, or delete social networks, and I will also help you with publishing and scheduling messages.

Add, recconect, or delete social networks
So, now that you have created a Hootsuite account, you are most likely interested in adding, reconnecting, or deleting a social network. The social networks that you can add to Hootsuite are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. To add a social network, do the following steps: 1. tap the main menu, 2. tap settings, 3. tap social networks, 4. tap add+ and finally, select a social network and enter your credentials to authorize the account. To reconnect a network: 1. tap the main menu, 2. tap settings, 3. tap social networks, and 4. tap the social network profile. Finally, if you want to delete a social network: 1. tap the main menu, 2. tap settings, 3. tap social networks, 4. swipe left on the social network profile that you want to delete, and tap delete.

Publish messages
Once you have connected some social networks to Hootsuite, you will be ready to publish messages via your profile. You can pick whichever networks you want to post to from the "Social Profile Picker" to publish the same message to several profiles at once. It is important to note that LinkedIn posts have a character count maximum of 685 and Twitter  has a limit of 10,000 characters per message. To send an actual message, select a social profile from the "Social Profile Picker", and then click "Send Now"

Schedule messages
Now that you have a brief understanding of how to publish messages, it would be helpful to schedule your messages. You can manually schedule messages to publish on a specific date and time, or you can use Auto Schedule to schedule your messages. You can edit, reschedule, or delete scheduled content from the "Publisher" section of the Hootsuite dashboard. You can choose to manually schedule messages or use the Auto Scheduler that is offered on Hootsuite. If you want to manually schedule messages, do the following: 1. click scheduling, 2. select date and time to publish the message, 3. click schedule. If you want you can check a box to receive an email when a message is sent, and you can view the date in publisher to review other content scheduled for that day. If you would rather auto schedule your messages, do the following: 1. select a  profile from the Social Profile Picker, 2. click compose message and enter a message, 3. click scheduling, and 4. click the toggle button to turn Auto Schedule on, and then click Auto Schedule. If you are one that often times forgets things, I would definitely recommend using the Auto Scheduler so do you don't have to worry about remembering to post a message every day.






Tuesday, April 5, 2016

9 SEO Tasks



SEO can be a confusing for people who are not familiar with it. In this blog, I am going to list nine things that you should plan to do if you are working on SEO for a website.

1. Setup Google Analytics
The first step is setting up Google Analytics for your website. Web hosting pages often offer analytics, but they are usually unreliable. Google Analytics is a great choice because of everything it offers, and it is actually free! Once you have Google Analytics for your website, make sure you understand how to check your organic search traffic volume. The following screen shot show where organic search volume is shown.





2. Setup Google Webmaster Tools
Setting up Google Webmaster Tools will allow you to see things that Google has observed about your site. Some of the interesting things it provides are: backlink data, rankings data, most common keywords on your site, crawl data, and much more! You can view an example of a crawl report by clicking on the following screenshot.




3. Check Your Indexing Status
This is very basic and easy to do as it only requires two steps. The first step is to to estimate how many pages you think your site has. You don't need to know the exact number, but it is important to know if you have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of pages. The second step will then require you to go to Google and type in the following "(site:yourdomain.com)". When you click search, the results will show you how many pages Google has in their index for your site. If you think that the results are way to low or high, it is time to get some more SEO help.
4. Run a Crawler on Your Site
Xenu and Screaming Frog are two options you can use for this. Xenu is more of a general purpose crawler and Screaming Frog is more targeted at SEO. You can choose either one, but the most important thing is to make sure that you fix all of the "page not found" errors. If Google sees a lot of errors it will believe that your site is of poor quality, which you will definitely don't want!
5.Pull Keyword Volume Data
 It is important to find out which keywords most relate to your business and which are most searched by users. You can use Google's Keyword Planner (this does require you have a Google AdWords acount), or Wordtracker. It is very important to understand what users think about when they think of your product or products similar to yours. You will want to be speaking in the language of your customer because it will lead to good results.

6. Optimize the Title Tags of Your Site
 On your website, you should try to have a specific page that contains each major user need you help address. This is described to be an important because it is hard to close a customer if you don't bring them to a page that addresses their need. The last step (pull keyword volume data) will help you pick out title tags for your site. This will also help you understand how to structure the content on the page.

7. Eliminate Duplicate Content
 The Xenu crawler that I mentioned in step 4 will show if you have duplicate title tags or not. You should look at the title tag column and find pages that have the same title. Once you have found this pages, you will need to get a developer to help resolve the issue, but the good thing is that you will know what to tell them. This may sound grueling, but it will definitely help.

8. Create Remarkable Content
 To create remarkable content, you should focus on creating content that will differentiate you from the competition. In fact, this is what search engines will be looking for themselves. To do this, you need to study up so that you are able to write content that solves problems for others, in ways that others have not done yet, or you should hire someone to do this for you. Being able to create remarkable content is critical if you want your website to make it in today's world.

9. Tell the World About it
The last and final step is to let the world know about what you have done. People won't just magically come to your website because that is not the type of world we live in. You have to get out there and promote your brand, and most importantly the great content on your website. You can publish articles in journals or blogs in your industry, speak at conferences, and build a strong social media presence. If you complete the first eight steps, this step will be much easier than you may think.

These nine steps definitely requires a lot of hard work, but the upside to it will be well worth it. For more information on the nine steps, please visit the following link: https://www.plusyourbusiness.com/first-9-seo-tasks/

Thursday, March 31, 2016

META descriptions

Today I am going to inform you about Meta descriptions. If you have a blog or website, this post should be of interest to you. For those of you who don’t know, a Meta description is defined as an HTML and XHTML element that describes your page to search engines. Meta descriptions provide and explanation of the contents of web pages and they are commonly used on search engine result pages to show a preview of the snippets for a given page. Meta descriptions are not important to search engine rankings, but they are very important if you want to increase user click-throughs from search engine result pages. The Meta description on your page is an opportunity to advertise your website or blog to searchers, and let them know if your blog/website is what they were searching for. It is important to use the site’s keywords strategically in the Meta description, and you should also create an interesting description that a searcher would want to click. Lastly, uniqueness and direct relevance to a page between each page’s Meta description is key.


SEO Best Practices
1. Write Compelling Ad Copy
When you are writing Meta description, you will want it to be a compelling description because it serves the function of an advertising copy. It is what attracts the searchers to a website, so it is a very important part of search marketing. To maximize click-through rates on search engine pages it is important to remember that Google and all other search engines bold keywords in Meta descriptions

2. Recommended Length-155 Characters
Your Meta description can be any length, but the suggested length is approximately 150 characters.

3. Avoid Duplicate Meta Description Tags
To avoid duplicated Meta description tags, it is important to make each Meta description for every page unique.

Meta Description

4. Not a Google Ranking Factor
“In September of 2009, Google announced that neither Meta descriptions nor Meta key words factor into Google’s ranking algorithms for web search. Google uses Meta descriptions to pull preview snippets of result pages as well as returning results when researches use advance search operators to match Meta tag content.

5. Quotes Cut Off Descriptions
If you have quotes in your met description, Google will always cut off the description. So, when you are writing a Meta description remember to never include quotes or non-alphanumeric characters in your description. If you feel that you need quotes, you should change them to single quotes instead of double quotes.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Quick Start Guide for Hootsuite



In two of my previous "Social Media Marketing" blog posts I wrote about Hootsuite. I gave a background of what Hootsuite is and how it can make life easier for someone. I then briefly blogged about how to set up a Hootsuite account. In this blog post I am going to further write about Hootsuite, and I am going to give you steps that will help you successfully manage your social networks in the Hootsuite dashboard.



1. Create a Hootsuite account
To create a Hootsuite account, click the following link: https://hootsuite.com/ and then click Sign Up in the top right corner of the page. You should then click the "Get Started" button and  select the plan that best fits your needs. Lastly, you will be requested to enter your information and follow the prompts to connect social networks, add streams, and send messages.

2. Add social networks
Adding your social profiles will allow you to publish and schedule content, and monitor engagement all from your Hootsuite dashboard. Hootsuite allows you to add up to three social networks to manage on your account. To add social networks to your dashboard, click "Streams" from the launch menu, and then click "Add Social Network". When you click "Add Social Network" it will give you a list to select from to add your social networks. So, pick which your networks that you want to connect and you will be ready to manage your dashboard.

3. Set up tabs and streams
Now that you have finished adding your social networks to your dashboard, you can set up streams for each network so you can monitor content. Each social network has its own unique stream type. Tabs will help you organize your steams into groups.

4. Publish messages
If you want to engage your audience and gain more followers, you should definitely think about setting a schedule to post messages regularly. Hootsuite will save you time because you will be able to post a single message to multiple networks at once. To post a message, click "Compose Message", enter your message in the compose box, and then click "Send Now".

5. Install Apps
To install any apps you may want or need, select the App Directory from the launch menu. You will then need to click "Install App" next to the app, and then click "Finish" to install it.

6. Download Hootlet
Installing Hootlet will allows you to quickly share content to your social networks from anywhere on the web. Learn more about Hootlet by clicking the following link: https://help.hootsuite.com/hc/en-us/articles/204585060-Share-content-with-Hootlet 

7. Download Hootsuite mobile
If you want to manage social media on a smart phone, you can download the Hootsuite mobile apps for android and apple. These can be downloaded from your device's app store.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Creating a Free Website



In my SEO marketing class, we were required to make a website. The professor gave us the option of creating a site on Google, or on Weebly. I chose to create my site on Weebly.com. I have not fully finished editing my site or adding content to it. However, I do plan on adding information about myself this semester. Last semester I added a couple pictures and created a contact page that would then send people to a landing page. The landing page was a simple page that said "thank you". The goal of this was to track how many people reached this landing page by submitting their contact information. We are now again using Weebly to further help us understand SEO.


Another platform that you can try for free is Wix. I used Wix.com which is a web development platform that allows users to create web sites and mobile sites through the use of online drag and drop tools. I used this platform to make a website for a product I had to create for my marketing strategy class last semester. The product I created was a pair of heat activated football receiver gloves. Wix made it very easy for me to add images and customize the website to look the way I wanted it to. It may not look as professional as other websites look, but for a class project, I thought it was a great platform to use. If you are looking to create a website and are low on funds I would definitely suggest either of these two platforms. They are both user friendly and free to use!

Monday, March 14, 2016

Facebook Insights





In this blog post, I am going to tell you about Facebook Insights. Facebook Insights is a tool that can be very helpful to businesses who want to track user interaction on their Facebook fan page. If you use Facebook Insights you'll be able to see what is the best time of day to post, the best time of the week to post, and what type of content is most popular to your target audience. The Facebook Insights tool is updated constantly to reflect your page's developments and to show any patterns that may evolve on your page. It would be beneficial to check this routinely to stay up to date on everything.

Below are the six steps that could be useful for anyone who is new to Facebook Insights

1. How to Access Facebook Insights
You can gain access to your page's insights by clicking on the gear wheel and then selecting "view insights". A graph will appear like the one shown below. This graph will show you the number of likes, the number of friends of fans available, how many people are currently talking about your page, and your total weekly reach.  All of this data would be important because it will allow you too look at what content has worked in terms of gaining likes and buzz, as well as what content has not really worked.

access facebook insights


2. Virality of Posts
The virality of a post will help you what posts were most successful. Knowing the virality of your posts will help you create content that your fans may like which will hopefully increase traffic to your page and website. You will be able to sort posts by the following types: posts, photos, links, videos, platform posts, and questions. This will also allow you to see how many users engaged with a certain post, as well as how many spread the word about it, aka "buzz".

3. Likes
If you click "likes" you will be able to see the demographics of your fan base. For example, you can see the genders and ages of your fans as well as what area your fans are mostly from. Knowing the demographics of your fan base will allow you to develop personas which can be helpful when creating landing pages, and marketing messages.

4. Reach
The reach of your Facebook page will show how much of your content is reaching your fans, who is talking about your page, and whether or not your fans are referring your page to others or sharing images. This section also helps you see page views, as well as your reach in terms of organic searches, and paid and viral searches, all of which are important.

5. Talking About This
The "Talking About This" section will show who is talking about your page. It will show the demographics of the people that are talking about it as well as the percentage of people in different age groups. This is important because it will help you see how your content trends over time. It will help you better time the planning of posts and promotions on your page.

6. Check-Ins
This section will only be important if you have physical locations. It will show the demographics of the people who are checking in at your physical store location. This can be helpful in monitoring the social media impact on your sales.

If you want even more information on Facebook Insights, please visit the following link: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-facebook-insights/

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Hubspot Certification


In this blog post, I am going to talk about the Hubspot Certification that I recently passed. For those of you who don't know, "Hubspot is an inbound marketing software platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers." Traditional marketing is focused on cold calls, direct mail and advertising to consumers. Hubspot is focused on attracting potential buyers instead of interrupting them by cold-calling them or sending them direct mail. Inbound marketing involves creating content, optimizing it for search engines, and posting it to social media. You should then attract your prospects with landing pages, calls to action, and personalized emails and websites. That is what Hubspot describes as inbound marketing and the way you should market to human beings. If you want to learn more about what Hubspot is, visit the following link: http://www.hubspot.com/what-is-hubspot.

How I achieved a Hubspot Certification
I am currently taking an SEO marketing class and we were required to take and pass the exam to achieve the Hubspot Certification. I have the class twice a week and we watch approximately three videos from hubspot.com each class. For me, the videos were what really helped me pass the exam. I knew that I was required to pass the exam, so I made sure that I paid close attention to all of the videos. The videos discuss different topics that are important for SEO and inbound marketing. All of the topics that were discussed in the videos we watched were definitely covered on the exam in at least one of the questions. I was able to see what topics on the exam that I did well on and those that I did not do well on. After the exam was over it gave a percentage on how well I did on each topic. I found this to be helpful because it showed what I knew and what I should further look it to help me better understand inbound marketing. I was able to pass, however if you are unable to on your first try, you should pay close attention to these percentages. They will show you what you topics you will need to study for the next time you try to pass the exam. I suggest trying to pass this exam because it will improve your resume and be attractive to potential job recruiters.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Hootsuite 2

 

As I mentioned in my last Social Media Marketing blog, I am going to dive further into to Hootsuite in this post and give you the steps it takes to create your own Hootsuite account.

Hootsuite University
To further understand how Hootsuite works, I would suggest clicking the following link: www.youtube.com/user/HootSuiteUniversity. These videos will give you a better perspective on social media. In addition to these videos, the Hootsuite Help section is also worth looking at. Hootsuite Help will help you understand the basics and things you can try. The links in this section are "Getting Started", "Hootsuite Status", and "Live Webinars". Each of these links will help you get better acclimated to Hootsuite. If you are interested, Hootsuite also even offers social media analytics which can be very helpful in tracking your results. The analytics will allow you to really see how your social media sites are performing.

Creating and Configuring a Hootsuite Account
So now that I have given you ways to understand Hootsuite works and what it offers, it is time to get started with an account of your own! To get started, go to hootsuite.com, and click "Sign Up".(If you are already signed into a social media account the screens may appear differently) It will give you the option of starting with a free regular account and a free advanced account. I would suggest starting with the free regular account for now. It will then ask you to enter your email address, name, password, and location, and then you will click create account. Next Hootsuite will walk you through the process of adding your own social media networks, meaning that you will be able to connect your social media accounts to Hootsuite so you can use Hootsuite to post to all of them. I would suggest adding Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can add these networks by simply clicking on them on the page.

 My main goal of these last two blog posts was to give you a background of how Hootsuite works, how it will help you, and how to get started with it. If you need more help configuring your Hootsuite account I would suggest getting your hands on CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing. You can purchase the book by clicking the following link http://www.amazon.com/CASA-Marketing-Intro-Social-Media-ebook/dp/B0103LB4HS

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Mobile Devices Upend Google Search




"Mobile Devices Upend Google Search" is the name of an article that was published in the Wall Street Journal. The the main focus of the article is centered around search engine optimization, and how mobile devices are changing it. In 2010, Chimani Inc. launched a smart phone app that would help guide visitors to Maine's Acadia National Park. At the time, Google did not include apps in any search results, so Chimani had to build a website and sprinkle in phrases such as " Chimani: mobile apps for outdoors". They sprinkled these types of phrases in their website because they hoped that it would help their app get noticed. This strategy has shown how mobile devices are upending fifteen years of SEO tactics created to attract search engine sites such as Google, or Yahoo.  SEO is now more about opening apps up to Google's computers, and/or feeding the computers product information, prices, or photos.

Google's Understanding of Apps
Just like Chimani Inc. had to change their strategy, Google has had to change theirs too. On the web, Google is able to see and analyze all information. However, apps which are self-contained programs are the opposite. Google needs help from app developers in order to see and organize the material inside an app. Currently, Google does have organized information inside more than 1,000 apps such as Twitter, and Facebook, however that is only a small percentage of the more than one million apps in Google's Play Store. Google also needs help assessing content even when it can see inside an app. Google ranks websites based on how many other sites are to linked to them. However, apps are not websites so they do not have links which means that Google had to find a way to rank them differently. According to Mr. Cristo (director of SEO innovation at WPP Group), Google seems to rank apps on the number of users, and how much time they spend in the app. So it seems that the best way to boost an app's SEO is to encourage product users to write reviews, give ratings, and share content because that is what Google seems to value the most.

Best Mobile SEO
According to Marty Weintraub (founder of digital marketing agency aimClear), writing a check to Google is the best mobile SEO these days. Google offers advertising that can be placed near certain search results. The Google product ads can have pictures, prices, and availability. These ads rely on continual data that is fed from the retailers who are creating the ads. It is also important to make sure that the data feed on the product ads are at least 95% correct. Correct data feed is described to be just as important as the keywords being used in the product ads. According to PMG and Kenshoo (marketing agencies) the product codes have to start with a numeral and product descriptions can't be in all capital letters.

The topics I discussed above are what I found to be most important in the article. If you would like to read the full article, you can visit the following link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/mobile-devices-upend-google-search-1456396202


Monday, February 29, 2016

Hootsuite







In my last three Social Media Marketing blogs, I talked about three different social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In this blog post I am going to move on from social media sites and talk about Hootsuite. Some of you may not be aware of what Hootsuite is and how it can help you. So in this blog post I am going to describe what Hootsuite is, and tell you how you can use it to help you manage social media sites.

Hootsuite is a social media management site that was created in 2008 by Ryan Holmes. It was created to be a system that would provide assistance with brand management by allowing someone to to develop and post content to multiple social networks. I would suggest creating at least two or three social media accounts to post to. Once you create them, I would suggest connecting them to Hootsuite. Connecting the social media sites to Hootsuite will make it easy for you to post content on multiple networks. It will save you the time and hassle of having to post the same exact content separately on each social media site. Anything that makes it easier and/or less hassle, to develop and post content it is a good thing.

Understanding Hootsuite
To fully understand the kind of things you will be able to do in Hootsuite, I suggest taking a look at www.hootsuite.com. The menus at the the top of the Hootsuite homepage are: Products, Solutions, Plans, Services, Resources, and About Us. I would first suggest looking at the "About Us" page to get familiar with the site and understand how everything works on it. Once you gain a brief understanding of it, I would then suggest taking a look at "Plans", and "Pricing". It will show you the plans they have and how much they cost. These pages will also show that there is a free version, and there is "social listening", which will help you get a sense of what people are saying about you on any of your social media sites. In my next Social Media Marketing blog post, I will further talk about the benefits of Hootsuite, and I will also tell you how you can create and configure your own Hootsuite account.





Tuesday, February 23, 2016

CTA's and Landing Pages


 




CTA's


In this blog post, I am going to first talk about the importance of CTA's. If you are unaware, CTA stands for "call to action" which is a link that is added to a page to encourage some type of action such as link to sign up for a store's e-mail list that sends special offers and coupons. CTA's are often found on websites, emails and blogs, however the call to action button should be placed at different spots. If you are adding a call to action button on a website or e-mail, it can be placed anywhere where it is not distracting to the user on the website or e-mail, but can still catch their attention. If you are adding a call to action onto a blog, it should be placed at the end of the blog post, or on the side bar. You can measure a call to action button by looking at the click rate. A good click through rate goal to aim for a CTA would be be 1-2%, and a good click-to-submission goal to aim for would be about 10%. Whether you are getting good or bad results, it is still important to make some type of change and analyze the results. You will want to know what is working and what is not. The next step in the conversion process is the landing page!


Landing Page


Creating CTA's that are attractive is important, but in order to successfully generate leads it is also just as important to create an attractive landing page. A landing page is the page that you will reach if you click on a call to action link or button. It is the first thing that someone will see once they click the link. There are two types of landing pages: click through landing pages, and lead generation landing pages. Click through landing pages are focused on persuading the customer to click through to another page. An example of this type of landing page would be a product description. The main goal of click through landing pages is to push a visitor closer to a purchase decision. A lead generation landing page is used to gain user data such as a name or an e-mail address. The main goal of a lead generation landing page is to collect one's information so that it can be used for the company to market to the person at another time. An example of this would be an e-mail list. Once you have created an attractive landing page, the last step is a simple thank you page. The conversion process will now be complete as follows: call to action, landing page, and thank you page.

Monday, February 22, 2016

LinkedIn





In my prior two blog posts, I talked about Facebook and Twitter, and discussed how they can help a business advertise and market to possible customers. In this blog I am going to talk about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is another social media site but it is much different compared to Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is a site that college students and professionals use to connect with each other. Facebook and Twitter are different because they are more for sharing pictures or posts with friends. LinkedIn is used to build one's brand image to impress possible job recruiters. It is even described by some to be the new resume. If you get involved  and establish a presence on LinkedIn it can help your career and/or organization.

Understanding LinkedIn

Like Facebook and Twitter, the best way to fully understand LinkedIn is to get on it and use it regularly. If you currently do not have a LinkedIn account, I would definitely suggest creating one. LinkedIn will allow you to connect to people that can help you with a project, job, etc. Your goal on LinkedIn should be to connect to as many people possible so that you can grow your network. It will  much more powerful than Facebook or Twitter will be. My suggestion is to get on LinkedIn, and spend time on it each day so you can start building your network!

Creating a LinkedIn Page is different than creating a website, a Facebook, or Twitter. If it is a personal or corporate account it is important that you make it official. So, to get started with making a LinkedIn page, go to www.linkedin.com. If will require you to add your personal information, password, and e-mail address. After you have added all of your information, it will require you to go to your e-mail and confirm your account. Once you click confirm, you account will be ready to go! You will be able to make posts, add information about yourself or company, and of course, connect with other people. If it is a company that your are making one for, you may also want to consider making ads. LinkedIn has a few different options that will allow your company to target customer your ideal customers.


If you are interested in building your own LinkedIn presence, please consider visiting the following sites.
jobsearch.about.com/od/linkedin

www.powerformula.net/free-resources-for-learning-linkedin/

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Buyer Personas of an Example Sporting Goods Company





In my last SEO blog post, I talked about what a buyer persona is, and talked about the three stages a buyer may go through. The three stages were: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. In this blog, I am going to talk about the article that I wrote about for the website of the product I created last semester for a Promotional Strategy class.

The product that I created was a pair of heat activated wide receiver football gloves. The website that I created for the product can be accessed in the following link: http://erubel.wix.com/scorchers. The three personas that I decided to target based on a Hubspot example worksheet, were demographic information, what a day in the life of a person in the selected target market looks like, and where these people go for information. Some of the demographics of the target market that were important were age, gender, and geographic location. An average weekday in the lives of teenage boys who play football would be going to school, practice, and then going home and doing homework, possibly having some time to relax, and then going to bed. These boys are from the younger generation so they are most likely tech savvy. With that being said, these boys most likely use their phones often and search for information on their phones, laptops, or tablets.

Below is an example of what someone may be searching for in each stage, and how Scorchers(brand name I created) would create information that would be attractive to them.

Awareness Stage
The persona is high school football players who buy football wide receiver gloves.  This person is expressing how they need help catching the football and are unsure what can help.  The audience skill level is intermediate with the keyword being catching but football gloves most likely will be mentioned.  The buyer’s journey stage is at the awareness stage.  I would choose to post, and the format would be a video with a how-to content structure.  The video would contain the brand logo and demonstrate that Scorchers can be a solution to a player who may be having trouble catching the football.  The grip on the gloves is sticky and will make it much easier to catch the ball.  The unique feature of the heat being activated when it gets cold outside will also still be mentioned because it’s what makes the product different.  The title of this would be “Need gloves that can help you perform and keep warm? Scorchers’ has you covered!” 

Consideration Stage
The persona in this stage could be that the person knows that he wants football gloves to help him catch the football on the field, but he does not know which brands are the best.  The audience skill level is advanced and they are in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey stage.  The topic/keyword is football glove brands that are the best for catching.  This person is most concerned about the performance of the football gloves.  This will be a blog post, and the format will be a demo video of Scorcher’s athlete endorsement Antonio Brown.  Teenage kids most often look up to athletes and like to wear gear that they are wearing.  The goal of the video will be to show Antonio Brown catching the ball and the voice in the video will be emphasizing the comfort and grip of the gloves and emphasize how much the gloves can increase the viewer’s performance.  The content structure as mentioned above is the best of Scorchers.  The content title will be: “Antonio Brown shows how Scorchers’ football receiver gloves can improve your receiver catching skills.”

Decision Stage
The persona in this stage will be that the buyer knows a select number of brands of gloves he wants, but is hoping that one of them is offering a special deal or has a coupon.  The audience skill level is advanced and the buyer’s journey stage is the decision stage.  The topic/keyword that this person will type in is football glove coupons or football glove special deals.  This will be an offer instead of a blog post and the format of it will be a purchasing guide and the content structure is product focused.  The buyer knows what product he wants so this offer will be attached to the product image itself.  The content title will be “Scorchers’ 10% first pair of football receiver gloves.

Monday, February 15, 2016

Twitter

In this blog, I am going to be talking about Twitter. Twitter is a social media site that is similar to Facebook, but also very different. I will discussing the steps to make a Twitter account, and what it offers that could be valuable to a business or an organization. There is no right or wrong about using Twitter, but the most important question for a business should be: What audience do I want to address, and is this audience on Twitter?

Overview of Twitter
If you are are unaware of what Twitter is, or how it works, I would suggest talking a look at the following link: www.twitter.com/reuters. It is an example of a common use of Twitter. To give you some more information about Twitter, I will state some facts about it and how it works in a bullet point format.

  • Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters-this means that the post is a very concise comment, possibly with a link or a picture attached.
  • If you want to mention an account in a tweet you must use the @ symbol and then scan twitter for whatever account it is that you want to tweet at. The @ symbol is the way of letting someone know about something.
  • Something very common on twitter that you may have heard before is a hashtag. A # is another "tag" you would use, if your post is involving someone or something. An example would be be if you were talking about a play that happened in the Super Bowl, you would follow the comment with a #SuperBowl.
  • There are many companies and brands that have an active Twitter page to tweet information, or advertise to their target market. There are also many celebrities who have a Twitter account.
  • If you need more help or are still confused about how Twitter works, visit https://support.twitter.com/categories/281 .





How to Create a Twitter Account
Now that I have went over the basics of Twitter, it is time to get ready to create a Twitter Account! First, go to Twitter, and start entering your name, your email, and a password. It will then direct you to a screen where you can choose a username, which can be whatever you would like. Once you have picked the username, click create my account. It will then send you to a page that shows you how things work. If you want to learn more about Twitter go ahead and read each page, otherwise you may keep clicking the "next" button until it suggests people to "follow". If you see people or brands that you want to follow, click follow and you will see all of the tweets they make. Lastly, go to your e-mail and once you confirm your e-mail address and your account. Congratulations you have created your own Twitter page!


ROI and Strategy
Just like Facebook, Twitter offers advertising. You can also include promotions, coupons, and special offers in a tweet. But again, the most important part of advertising or promoting on Twitter is including a link that will allow you to see how many people came to the company website from Twitter, and how many people purchased something. A large amount of people spend time on Twitter, and the majority of these people are of a younger demographic, and are tech savvy. They likely have the Twitter app on their cell phone and are most likely checking their Twitter feed a few times per day. So although advertising on Twitter may sound like a great idea, it is important to make sure that a large portion of the target market uses Twitter.   If you need more help with advertising on Twitter, I suggest clicking on the following link: https://business.twitter.com/marketing-twitter






Thursday, February 11, 2016

Buyer Personas



A buyer persona is described to be is a "semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers". On Hubspot, there is a worksheet that can help someone develop buyer personas. Hubsport describes buyer personas to be a crucial component of successful inbound marketing. The marketing team needs to know who the target market is and the selling team also needs to know it is to be successful. Some examples on the worksheet on Hubspot are: "what is their demographic information?", "where do they go for information?", and "what does a day in their life look like?". When thinking about your buyer personas, it is important to remember that there are three different buyer's journey stages. The three stages are awareness, consideration, and decision. Below, I will go into detail about what happens at each stage.
Awareness Stage: In the awareness stage, buyers are unaware of their problems or solutions. They are looking for information that will give them insight on finding a solution to their problem. The types of content that are often made to attract to people in this stage are research reports, eBooks, editorial content, expert content, and educational content. An example of an undefined problem in this stage is shown in the picture below.

Consideration Stage: In the consideration stage, buyers have defined what the problem actually is. In this stage, they will be researching approaches or methods that will possibly solve this problem. The types of content that are often made to attract people in this stage are expert guides, live interactions, webcasts, podcasts, and videos. An example of someone with a defined problem who is interested in finding options that will help solve their problem is shown in the picture below.

Decision Stage: In the decision stage, buyers have now decided on their solution method or strategy. They also most likely have a list of brands or products that will solve their problem for them. The types of content that are often made to attract people in this stage are vendor comparisons, product comparisons, trial downloads, and live demos. An example of a person going through their options to solve their problem is shown in the picture below.

I will attach the buyer persona developing worksheet, and content concepting worksheet that are on hubspot.net


http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/137828/file-17623295-pdf/product%20classes/buyer%20personas/developing-personas.pdf?t=1455127601637

http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/137828/file-799282870-pdf/HubSpot_Concepting_worksheet_editable.pdf?t=1455127601637











Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Facebook Pages

The main focus of this chapter is to introduce the concept of Facebook, and walking through the steps of creating one. In this blog, I will talk about what a Facebook is, the pros and cons of using it, and how to create one. If you are in the marketing side of a business and your company is interested in developing a presence on social media, Facebook could be a good place to start. Facebook will be the first of many social media platforms mentioned in my Social Media Marketing blogs.

What is a Facebook Page?
A Facebook page is a great way to establish a social media presence for your business. It is like creating a company website but within the Facebook format. On Facebook, you can post text, pictures, videos, etc., to communicate whatever it is you want to your potential customers. Customers will be able to see all of your posts if they click the like page button for your company's page. If they like your page they will also be able to interact with you by commenting on posts. Facebook pages also include web addresses which you can take advantage of to promote or advertise. An example of this is Matrix's Facebook page: www.facebook.com/TheMatrixMovie. Lastly, when you access a Facebook page, you will see a profile photo and a cover photo. You should add a picture of a company logo or a picture of a product that the company sells so customers can easily identify that it is your company.

Creating a Facebook Page
Creating a Facebook page can be fairly easy. Go to www.facebook.com/pages/create. There are a variety of page types that they offer for you to create, for example, click on company type, and then choose a category. After you have a chosen a category, it will give you an option to type in the name for the business and then you will click get started. Next, you will be led through a series of screens where you will be able to enter some basic information for your business. The titles of the four screens are About, Profile Picture, Add to Favorites, and Reach More People. The Reach More People screen will be important because it will allow you to promote your page with an ad to get more people to like it. Once you have gone through all these screens, you have officially made a Facebook page!

If you need more help in creating a Facebook page for your business, visit Facebook.com, or you can read the rest of chapter 3 of CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing.


Thursday, February 4, 2016

Skillbox-Content

In this blog, I am going to be talking about content related to social media and tools you can use to do it yourself. I'll briefly summarize what you'll want to try when working with social media. The overall goal of the chapter is to introduce concepts and tools that are worth trying so that you can have some material to work with when looking at social media channels later in the chapter.

Curation vs. Creation vs. Collaboration 
The general approach recommended by the author with content is to think about these three areas.
1. Curation- When you curate content, you are finding it, sharing it, reviewing it, and commenting on it. Even if you are not creative, you can still go out and find content that is interest or relevant for a company you are working for. This would be a good way to get started. An example of this would be to find a YouTube video that relate to a particular topic and then link it or embed it to your blog post. Then, I would suggest posting your blog on social media to try to generate some traffic and awareness.
2. Creation- In the book, this is what is said to be the most fun. It will take time, but it will alos most likely result in the highest quality. Writing a blog post or posting a video on social media can be the best kind of content to share on social media because it is more unique. The kind of content you create is going to depend on the company, but you should also ask yourself who the audience is and figure out what they would most likely be interested in. Even though you are not a social media expert, it can be helpful to try to develop some basic content. You should also ask others to review your writing and videos. Overall, you should focus on what you do best.
3. Collaboration- This one is described to be the most helpful for independent business owners, and students. It can help you possibly save money, and find people you can work with. An example given is the book is that you can find someone who is a writer, offer to co-write content or do some research, so you can still get the benefit of writing skills, or their reputation. So, if you aren't confident in some of your abilities, or can't afford to hire anyone, you should be able to find people who are looking to collaborate, even if it's only a learning experience.

Starting a Blog
There are plenty of platforms available for blogging, but I would suggest blogger.com because it is the easiest to use. If you are really interested in developing social media marketing as a skill, it would be smart to create a blog and set a goal of posting on it at least once a month. All you need to do is choose a topic or tool that you are learning about, or interested in learning about, do some research, and get in a habit of developing ongoing posts. Even if you already have a blog, it would still be smart to create one in blogger because it will allow you to learn some new tools. It can also help you help a client create a blog and get them familiar with the different tools that offered on blogger.com. You can get started by visiting blogger.com and signing in with your Google Account, or you can click the "create an account" link at the bottom.


If you are interested on learning more from this chapter, you can purchase this book on Amazon. (link below)









Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Reflection on Sports Fundriaising


In this post, I am going to talk an article that I recently wrote. The article I wrote was about sports fundraising. The website mentioned why people need to do fundraising for sports and what type of products are attractive to people for fundraising. Some of the products they mentioned were chocolate bars, lollipops, cookie dough, and pizza. All are great ideas that people would be willing to buy to help a kid with a fundraiser. In the article, I also talked about my experience in sports fundraising and I mentioned how I sold candy bars when I played park district baseball. I felt that giving a personal experience would better attract the attention of the readers and help support sports fundraising because of the great experience I had with it. Another idea I mentioned that would help generate money for a sports team was a fundraising event such as a golf outing. Below, I have attached a link to my article if you are interested.








http://www.rgbexchange.org/nonprofits/fundraising/fundraising-sports






Although sports fundraising is cool to learn about, the purpose of writing the article was to post it on rgbexchange.org to improve it's search rank. The website is for "non-profit organizations to leverage market dynamics and help people channel resources to where they are most effectively used". As a class, we are using this website to help understand SEO. Below, I have attached two pictures.  The first one is a picture of my posting of my article on my LinkedIn account. I posted the article on LinkedIn to allow other people to see the article and visit the website. The bottom picture is a screenshot of the SEO rank checker. The screenshot shows the rgbexchance.org search rank results. The website has not ranked any higher than it did when I last posted a screenshot of the rank checker. However, the hope is to get the website towards the top of search results whenever people type in the word fundraising. We hope to do this by writing articles related to fundraising that people may be interested.









































Displaying linkedin.PNG
Displaying linkedin.PNG

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Intro to Social Media Marketing

In each blog that is tagged as "Social Media Marketing", I will be discussing some of the major concepts that are discussed in CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing. In this blog, I am going to be discussing chapter one which is titled: "the basics for having fun, finding work, working better".  The main concepts of this chapter center around ROI, WOM marketing, and social media platforms,

ROI

The first concept discussed in the chapter is ROI. No, it does not talk about what ROI is, but rather how not measuring ROI can have some serious consequences. In terms of social media marketing it simply means, "when a business spends money on social media marketing, what is the return on that investment". This is important because it allows a business to see if their money spent on social media marketing is giving them positive results. When social media first came out, every business HAD to have it. So businesses were just getting their brand on social media sites without measuring the effect it was actually having. That is why people were getting hired and fired so quickly. No one knew how to measure social media ROI. Having Social Media Marketing skills will help you get hired. In fact, it was the number one skill that was getting people hired in the past year.



WOM Marketing

For those of you who don't know, WOM stands for word of mouth marketing. On the internet, WOM marketing can be very beneficial to a business. However, WOM marketing can only work if the brand and the products are great. To help a business with this, one should listen to what people are saying about a company's brand and its products. Listening to what customers are saying can help a business make or keep their products excellent. That is how WOM marketing can help with social media platforms.

Social Media Platforms


There are many social media platforms, but the only ones covered in this book are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which were the top three most visited social media networks in the past year. LinkedIn is also discussed in this book for B2B purposes. In general, most companies that do social media marketing will likely have a Facebook page or Twitter account. They will use these platforms to post pictures of their products, offer promotions, and even interact with their customers. One new network on the rise is Pinterest. So one thing to keep in mind is to first learn about the primary networks, and then do research on other networks that could be on the rise. It could also be helpful to their about the types of audiences social media networks attract. An example of this would be a fashion retailer making an effort to get onto Pinterest. If you are not really aware of some of these Social Media Platforms, go to google and search them to understand what they are all about and how they can help a business.


Google Sites

In this blog post, I am going to talk about "Google Sites". Google Sites is any easy way to create and share webpages. Google describes creating a team or website to be as easy as as editing a document. Google Sites allows you to gather information, videos, calendars, attachments, and presentations all in one place. It then allows you to easily share any of it with a group or organization. If you decide that this is something that you would be interested in you can visit https://support.google.com/a/topic/14075?en&ref_topic=9197.

Google Sites key product features:

  • Customize your site's interface
  • Create a new sub-page with the click of a button
  • Choose different page types, such as webpage
  • Centralize shared information, embed content into any page
  • Manage permission settings to keep your site as private or as view-able as you would like
  • Search across your Google Sites content with Google search technology



When visiting Google Sites, it gives you links under Overview, Setup, and Options. The links under Overview describe what Google Sites is all about in more detail, what is required for a Google Site, and any support for it. The links under the Setup heading will allow you to turn sites on or off for users, set sharing options, restrict access to new sites, change default visibility, and turn on commenting. Lastly, some of the links under are Options are manage gadget access, edit sites at your domain, change a site URL, manage page templates, create an external website, and improve site performance. I did not describe any of theses links under the three subheadings so if you want to learn more about Google Sites, how to set it up and how it works, visit the link from the last paragraph! Google Sites also gives you the option to use a 30 day free trial. So if you think that Google Sites could help you, you can try it for 30 free days and then decide if it is really worth paying for.
























Monday, January 25, 2016

Keyword Rank Checker

Digital Marketing has become very important to businesses in today's society. Technology is rapidly increasing and it seems that almost everything is becoming digital. With that being said, I am going to tell you why and how a keyword rank checker can help a company get their website on the first page of a google search result.

 SEO Rank Check can help your website both short-term, and long-term.  First, the most obvious way that this can help you is it will show you where your company website is ranked based off of a certain keyword. This is important because when people type in a word on google, they are most likely going to click the first few links that they see on the page after they click enter. To generate customer traffic to your website, you are going to want to be on the first page of a google search page. 


The Long-term strategy should be to add content, or do whatever it is possible that you can do. Write down everything you have done each week so when you go to check your results of your website you can see if and what worked best. The best tactic of website or blog is quality content. However, you need to inform people about your website so they are able to view it and see the quality content that is on there. You can try to share content and even ask people what the most important thing is that they want to know about a certain topic. You can post it to a social media site or even posting it on LinkedIn can help. The overall goal is to let people know that you have a blog or website and inform them what it is about.

How do I do this?: Below, I will list steps of an example website and keyword that you can use to see results on the SEO Keyword Rank Checker. The link to enter the example website and keyword is also below.

Keyword: non profit stock exchange
www.rgbexchange.org-sample website
npoex.strikingly.com-this is optional

http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-position.html


The above image shows that the website is not ranked to appear on any of the top three search engines.