Promotion is nothing new to the internet, but it hits new levels with social media. If you push the right message through the right channels you can reach a lot of people.
The key here is that you have to already have a lot of connections, especially with people that are willing to push the information to their followers as well. Twitter’s Retweet (RT) feature is very useful for this. If someone finds a story, blog post, or promotion interesting, they can just pass it on by doing a simple Retweet.
Social media is also a great way to have a lot of links built to your site. As a page is promoted on different networks people are going to be linking to it. These links will include tweets, bookmarks, and even blogs. All of these links can help improve the authority of your site and lead to higher rankings in the search results .
Social Media Monitoring
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Friday, September 4, 2009
I read Matt Leonard’s post on 10 Ways to be a Great SEO a while back and thought it would be great to put a social spin on it. Without further ado, here are 10 ways you can help build your social network/portfolio.
1. Socialize Remember when your mom dropped you off for Kindergarten and told you to go make lots of friends? This is essentially the same thing, choose your social portal and use it for the reason it was made: SOCIAL NETWORKING. If you’re working on Twitter, be sure to speak with those you’re following and get to know them. I’d much rather have >1000 followers that I actively engage with than tens or hundreds of thousands of people I’ve never said word one too.
If the social news sites are where your focus is, be sure to network with the friends you find there. Go beyond just voting on their stories, comment and share them with others in your group. Not only will your friends begin to notice, but they’ll reciprocate.
2. Diversify If your goal is better brand yourself or just simply to network, choose more than just one outlet to do that. Twitter is probably one of the best ways of interacting with your followers, but adding those same connections to Facebook or LinkedIn tends to take that relationship to a different level where you can share connections, photos and more. In my opinion it helps to solidify the friendship that you were building on the other portals.
3. Participate It’s one thing to have a Twitter or Digg account, it’s another to use them. Twitter currently has over 70% of accounts that are considered “inactive”. I’ve had periods of time where Twitter was the last thing on my mind and with the myriad of ways I could update my status, I just didn’t want to. I feel like I’ve missed out on a bunch of things and have let some relationships stagnate because of those deserted periods.
One way to make your Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon account obsolete is to ignore it. I’ve unfortunately found that out the hard way, but I’ve also talked with many people who’ve had the same problem. Accounts just aren’t as strong and don’t garner the votes they used to when you socialized and participated in the past.
4. Contribute Sites like Digg and other social news sites wouldn’t even be around with the submissions of its users. I’ll take this a step further and say you should really contribute quality articles (there’s enough spam as it is already). Along with supporting your friends’ accounts, build up your own by constantly looking and submitting good articles. Digg/Reddit/SU users notice someone who submits quality over quantity.
5. Be Real Whether the account is your own personal one or business’s, don’t be fake…anyone can smell a fake from a mile away. A great example of this is the @10e20 account, there’s a great mixture of comedy, news-worthy links and communication amongst its followers. I gather the added snarkiness has come from bringing @rebeccakelley to the team :) Be who you are and who you know how to be and you will get REAL followers that want to follow you because of what you say and what you share.
6. Consistency As I stated above, I highly regret the depressions in usage on Twitter in the past. Hubspot did a pretty interesting article on the optimum number of tweets per day to gain the most followers . While those graphs are nifty, I think this goes back to my previous mention of being real. If you’re a talkative person, tweet to your hearts desire. Don’t feel obligated to tweet/digg/submit a certain amount of times per day because it’s “statistically better”, that’s when things can get sloppy. Find what works best for you and stick with it.
7. Be Meaningful Above all, the thing that will make you shine the most is to show people that you actually give a crap! So many people out there are trying to reach that 10,000th follower or reach a certain number of front page stories they’ve submitted. My philosophy is, if you continue to do the simple things listed in this article, you’ll eventually get there. It may not be the path that gets you there the quickest, but it’ll be a path filled with meaningful relationships and friends that will gladly share your stories, upvote your submissions, have a conversation with you on Facebook chat or whatever. I love the piece Lisa Barone wrote on How to Be Remembered . It really struck a cord with me not in just networking, but it blogging and client work as well. Make it a priority to genuinely care about the people you’re interacting with and you’ll build more than just a number on a follower’s list.
8. Get Creative I know this isn’t necessarily the most hyped of the group, but another way to stand out as just another Twitterer or Digg user is to be different. If you’re trying to get the attention of a certain person or group of people, do more than just Retweet their story…make comment on the blog or attempt to strike up a conversation regarding the matter. Take a great story you saw on Digg and submit it to Reddit or Stumbleupon and help to get that story some more attention there through cross-pollination.
Probably one of the best examples of creativity on Twitter is @darthvader’s account! I don’t think I’ve seen a funnier set of tweets for another account than his, taking somewhat of a Robot Chicken-ish approach to his tweets, like this:
9. Monitor This may be more for a business than for a personal account and probably more so for Twitter than most places, but listen to those who talk to/about you. Comcast did an awesome job of this by creating their slew of Comcast employee accounts as well as the main @comcastcares account. They were able to turn the majority of bad tweets into solutions for those with the issues.
One company that I think has failed in this area is AT&T (of which I will thankfully no longer be a customer of in 3 hours). Toward the beginning of August, AT&T was a trending topic on Twitter for nearly 3 weeks straight (on and off). If the tweet wasn’t about the iphone, it was usually something about how AT&T screwed up their bill, being on the phone with tech support for over an hour or some other negative tweet. Unfortunately, for AT&T, they have done little, if nothing to quell the barrage of negativity online. And while it may not be a big deal now to a large corporation, I’m sure there will come a time where no company will be safe, large or small.
10. Relevance Staying relevant can be a key factor in why someone does and does not follow you. It’s understandable to be random on your own personal account, but if you’re looking to brand yourself or your business account, it’s important to share and promote stories within your industry. This will lead to more followers that talk about what you talk about and can help in further promoting your stories and building beneficial relationships with those who you share common interests with.
So there it is…10 ways you can personally become better at social media. Not the standard, by any means, but one that has worked for myself and many others I’ve spoken with. I’d love to hear of any ideas and practices that you have used to better your social accounts. Note that each social portal is different and users on each will likely be so (like when I was on Plurk a long while back), so find what works best for you.
By Vince Blackham Source: SearchEngineJournal.com
Posted by Stewart @ 9:40 AM
Social Media Monitoring
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Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Below are twenty excellent techniques and design elements you can incorporate into your designs to create a beautiful, polished website. Combine them or pick and choose which ones you want to use for each project you do. And we’ve also included plenty of examples to give you real-world examples of how designers are using them to create gorgeous website designs.
Vivid Colours Gradients and Lighting Effects Transparency. Grunge. Hand-Drawn Designs. Muted Colors. Watercolor Effects. Nature-Inspired Elements. Photo-Realistic Backgrounds. Oversized Typography. Decorative Typography. Bold Backgrounds. Retro and Vintage Elements. Eye-Catching Headers. Collage Elements. Textured Backgrounds. Tabbed Navigation. Black and White. Horizontal Scrolling. Cartoon Elements.
20 Techniques
Posted by Stewart @ 10:24 AM
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Monday, August 31, 2009
Make a dummy purchase - get a friend on family member to go to your website and make a purchase tell them to evaluate there visitAsk for feedback - Place a link on your website to ask for feedbackAdd more keywords - increasing keyword density can dramatically increase search rankingsKeep your homepage changing - A fresh new image every few weeks will let visitors know your site is contently being updatedGive incentives to affiliates - a 10% kick-back on purchases from referrals can do wondersAdd a new page of content each week - gives you more pages people can search google and find you, it also increases your page rankings for your existing page including your homepage!Change the colour of your buy now button - Make it bright opposite colour to the rest of your site so it stands outMake sure your phone number is easy to find - and listed on every page and that all the numbers listed on the website are workingAdd mis-spelling to your Paid search campaigns - people often search for misspelt words, you might get the benefits. Upsell other products - Add a upsell on your add to cart page, gift wrapping, related products, accessories.Read more tips to increase your online marketing
Posted by Stewart @ 10:41 AM
Social Media Monitoring
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Friday, August 28, 2009
Are you looking to increase conversions, gain more blog subscribers, amplify your authority and extend your bottom line?10 Tips For Writing Effective Web Copy 1. Make sure content is easy to read so its at a high school level would be bestclick here Think before you write Complete a draft before you edit Edit before you publish - Proofread by reading aloud. Publish Read more on this
Posted by Stewart @ 9:23 AM
Social Media Monitoring
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The publishers that charge advertisers the highest rates are those in the travel, tech and automotive verticals, according to Adify, which buys media on 12,000 publishers for 200 ad networks.
Labels: banner advertising , online advertising
Posted by Nick HaC @ 9:03 AM
Social Media Monitoring
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Thursday, August 27, 2009
“Once you start a social media effort, how do you promote it?”
The reason for a company or brand’s social media participation, the audience they’re trying to reach, budget/resources and the actual social platforms being used will all flavor how a social media program can and should be promoted. This can be resolved with a few key questions that should be a part of a social media strategy:
What is the primary goal? Secondary goals? Where does the target audience spend their time on the social web and what do they do there? On what social platforms is your company already participating? What existing resources can be repurposed or adjusted and what new resources will you need to forecast and budget for? As a tactical example, let’s say a fan page has been created on Facebook to promote a specific brand / product . The promotion of that fan page could be accomplished through:
On – Facebook:
Facebook advertising Contest or giveaway promotions that encourage fans to share links back to the fan page Participation in groups and other fan pages that reach the audience being targeted Leverage mailing lists of other group or fan pages for the same brand Creation of a widget that provides the ability to interact, offers value and invites users back to the fan page. Off – Facebook:
PPC on major search engines to a landing page SEO and link building to landing pages Press release optimization & promotion Email promotions to segmented lists Cross promotion to Facebook fan page from other social media properties Another example might involve a newly launched company blog . A blog should have content when it goes live, so anywhere from 5-15 posts can provide a good kickstart. Those pre-launch blog posts are great practice to iron out everything from creating an editorial schedule to familiarity with the blogging process itself for contributors.
Getting attention to a new blog with content can involve both active and passive blog marketing tactics:
Make valuable comments on other relevant and influential blogs with a similar target audience. Comment forms often include the opportunity to link back to your blog. Link out to other influential blogs from your own blog posts and/or a blog roll. They’ll notice. Leverage other social channels that you’re participating in (such as Twitter) to promote particularly useful blog content. Contribute posts to other blogs. This builds your visibility to a new audience and links back to your blog. Include the blog URL everywhere you post your web site address: online AND offline. Have employees add the blog URL to their email signatures as well as online profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) Write great content on a regular basis. There’s no substitutre for attracting attention than publishing content worth sharing and linking to. Contact existing customers, marketing partners and industry peers and let them know you’ve launched a blog. Profile them in a blog post to give extra meaning and incentive to pay attention. Promote your new blog and the value of its content via email to prospect or customer lists. With PR efforts such as media relations pitching of journalists or press releases, include a link to your blog in those communications This is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ongoing blog content marketing and promotion.
The key to answering the “how do we promote our social participation” question is directly tied to goals, audience, tactics and resources. Promotion will impact awareness, buzz and traffic directly and indirectly. Analytics and monitoring need to be in place from the start as well as ongoing to track progress and refine just like any other digital marketing effort.
Source: Social Media Marketing Basics: Facebook & Blog Promotion
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 5:50 PM
Social Media Monitoring
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Stay tuned to the blog because we are in the process of upgrading it to a brand new look and feel, not to mention a whole new Shifted website is in the works!
Labels: websites
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 5:18 PM
Social Media Monitoring
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Labels: social media
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 5:33 PM
Social Media Monitoring
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Shifted is pleased to announce the launch of the Goldwell website, we think its an amazing outcome and have really enjoyed working with the great team at Goldwell on this amazing website project!
Labels: sydney web design , web design
Posted by Nick HaC @ 1:03 PM
Social Media Monitoring
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Posted by Nick HaC @ 12:54 PM
Social Media Monitoring
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Thursday, August 6, 2009
We are proud to show off our latest project is now live, www.goldwell.com.au which is the consumer website for Goldwell a national hair care company.It all began with the production of a lotion in Germany in 1948 which enabled people to give lasting shape to their hairstyle. goldwell.com.au and let us know your thoughts on this in the comments
Posted by Nick HaC @ 4:00 PM
Social Media Monitoring
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Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Top 50 Marketing Blogs according to B&T.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:04 PM
Social Media Monitoring
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Monday, May 18, 2009
Click here to view our new portfolio
Posted by Stewart @ 2:43 PM
Social Media Monitoring
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