Long live Social Media and all that it can provide a company when it comes to brand awareness, customer service, link building, and website referral traffic.  The strength of social media and social bookmarking sites grows every day.  Just as your company needs a solid website, so does it also need a presence in the social media world for users that are searching here as opposed to the more traditional search engines.

While each business must determine what networks are best for their company to actively participate, LinkedIn should never be one to cast aside.  LinkedIn’s organization has grown to over thirty-three million members in the United States, and over 60 million world-wide in less than ten years. Recently the company announced its 60 millionth member via a Tweet.

Create / Claim Your Company Profile

Like any other networking site, you want to establish your presence by first creating an account, and then by spreading the word that you are there to get the attention you need.  Once your company profile is created or claimed, you now have the advantage of being indexed by search engines and be able to be presented in the organic search results for your brand.

Any employee if granted access can edit their company page if they are a current employee with their position listed and linked to the company profile page and has a confirmed email address at the company registered to the account, so if you are using a personal email address to access your personal linked account profile, update it to be your company issued email address. If your email address connected to LinkedIn is already your company email address try the below steps:

1.      Click “Companies” at the top of your home page and search for your company name.

2.      Click “Edit” in upper right of the Company “Overview” tab.

3.      Modify information as needed.

4.      Click “Publish”.

If the “Edit” link is not visible, take the following steps to make sure the position on your Profile is properly linked to the company name:

1.      Click on “Profile” towards the top of your home page.

2.      Click “Edit” next to the position in the “Experience” section of your Profile.

3.      Click “Change Company” and begin to type in your company name. A drop-down list will appear.

4.      Click on the correct company name. This step is very important.

5.      Click “Update”.

6.      Follow steps listed above to edit your Company Page information.

If you are still unable to edit information on your Company Page, contact LinkedIn at https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask.

Enormous Profits

The world was profoundly changed. A web connects the country and a communications giant controls almost 80% of the market share of that web. Huge amounts of information are delivered at speeds never before seen by mankind. The costs involved in creating the infrastructure to create this spider-like system grant it a near monopoly and the company makes enormous profits with margins approaching 30%.

This company is held in the public mind as providing an invaluable service and projects the belief that the information it provides is not tainted by preferential bias from outside parties.

The “Victorian Internet”

The name of the company is Western Union. The year is 1869. It is the age of the telegraph and the “Victorian Internet“.

On August 16,1869, Western Union puts out its monthly journal that states, “There has been, unquestionably, much progress made in the promotion of greater efficiency in telegraphic operations,” and further states that, “The difficulty in making such a service as this possible…which requires that no such message shall have preference over another, and that each must take its turn.”

A Financial Empire

Just a few years earlier in 1865, a Western Union telegraph operator had provided news of President Lincoln’s assassination to a favored Oregon newspaper ahead of other competing newspapers on the west coast. The Oregonian newspaper that had paid off the telegraph operator scooped its competition and enjoyed higher sales.

The owner of that newspaper built a financial empire, in part, by gaming the system.

Paid Links and the Lincoln Assassination

Jump ahead 146 years from the Lincoln assassination to February 12th, 2011. The New York Times breaks a story about fortunes made by a company gaming the system of another company that controls a web of links. Paid links artificially boosted the rankings of a company that, no doubt, enjoyed considerable profits for a time.

This time around, the offending links were found out.

Today, that company that is concerned about its public perception is Google.

Why should you optimize your videos for search?  Because search is the #1 referrer to web videos, that’s why.  A video is 50 times more likely than a text page on the same topic to appear on Google’s first page of search results (Forrester Research: The Easiest Way to a First-Page Ranking on Google, January 2009).

To get the best results within the search engines, make sure you upload your videos into your website as well as your YouTube channel or blog.  Videos are a natural link builder and this backlink will help increase the juice flowing to your website.  The more places you upload, the better.  Make sure the name of the video matches the title tag of the page, and that your video is no longer than 2 minutes to keep your audience engaged.  Surround your videos with keyword-dense content and or a summary section as well. If your video will be housed within flash, make sure you have backup content to help the search engine better identify what is there.  I would also recommend having the last frame of the video be your company logo and contact information to increase conversion rates and traffic to your website.

After the video has been posted, test your thumbnails and headlines to see what grabs your audience’s attention to achieve the most optimized results.  As of right now, Video SEO is a long tail kind of approach since Google can’t determine the actual content of the video off only a one word video title.  You are not very likely to see your video for “jeans” in the top search results, but if your video is titled “blue jeans to make my legs look longer” you have an excellent chance of topping the rankings.  If hosted within your company’s website or blog, make sure you have an easy and obvious share button to help your video spread to other social media networking and bookmarking sites.

Everyone pay attention to me, as this is the most important lesson I can teach you aside from never wearing socks with sandals.  Testing is not a way to keep your head in the clouds pondering; it’s a way to constantly improve as you laugh all the way to the bank.  Sure you can expand the keywords you are ranking for and double your traffic, but doing some testing to double your conversion rate is a smarter, easier, and cheaper way to increase the productivity of your website.  But, make sure you are testing the most efficient way possible.  Below are some quick tips to help keep you on the right track.

1)    Have faith in your tools. Thanks to easy multivariate testing sites like Optimizely, we don’t have to worry about “how to test” accurately because their user interface can handle it.  Instead, we can focus on the “what to test.”

2)    Test hypotheses, not your own opinions. To be a great web marketing strategist, you have to break away from the concept that we always know best.  A great website is not an extension of you, but rather an extension of the users that interact with the website.

3)    It’s best to approach a test from all angles. Make sure you not only measure the quantitative data from the GA and your testing interface, but that you also set up a user feedback survey or poll question within your social media profiles to get qualitative data as well.

4)    Go big first. The initial take from a user’s first impression is important since people process images faster than words.  Make sure the layout and images are good first since they have a higher impact that the content.  Big then small is the way to go.  Make sure you nail down the layout, color scheme, and font first.  Then go for the small details of button size, headline, etc.

5)    Make sure to focus on one change at a time.  If you change the button’s color and location, and the headline from ad to ad, how can you be sure what really has the big effect?  Go for one item at a time and do quick tests based on the number of users that visit the pages.

There’s in interesting war of words going on between Microsoft and Google regarding search. An article at Search Engine Land alleging that Microsoft was copying search results from Google was the first salvo in the war. Microsoft followed up by accusing Google of click fraud.

The gist of Google’s claim, seems to be that Microsoft’s uses the data collected from the suggested sites/Bing toolbar feature to populate Bing’s search engine results even if the search results come from Google’s website.

Microsoft’s defense appears to be that they do incorporate the results into Bing, but it is one of many parameters when ranking a link. That the scenario Google executed was not legitimate since Google created false links to nonsensical search terms and then had there employees click on those links.

Who’s right and who’s wrong? Well both are right and both are wrong. Google’s honeypot essentially peeled away Microsoft’s aggregating of the parameters used to rank sites. By using uncommon search terms, Google was able to populate a false relationship between the search term and the site. If a popular term had been entered, the other parameters would have minimized the ranking. Microsoft however is using the search results from a competitor as part of it’s ranking algorithm. They are just letting their end user’s be the means of populating the data. Google’s honeypot just showed that when the other parameters are not relevant, then Google’s results will appear.

As the conductor of our Social Media Transit System, I wanted to provide some quick feedback to help keep your wheels in motion.  It’s a big world out there and if you try to be everywhere at once, you will get burned out before you ever get noticed.  Listed below are some tips to help keep you “on track.”

Even if you aren’t ready to post your company photos on Flickr, go ahead and claim all of the user-names you prefer for all the social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, Linked in, YouTube, etc.).   A fantastic website to use to do this all at once is Knowem.  Once you have these profiles at least enter a bit of data with links going to your site.  Most social networking sites have great PR, so use that to your benefit.  Also, by having lots of profiles you will automatically begin to stack the search result shelves when users conduct branded searches.

With the little bit of time you can provide each week, make sure you “work smart and not hard.”  Set up a social media desktop application such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule posts, search for followers, and spy on your competition.

Take a bit of time each week to try to increase your following.  There is no point posting if no one is listening.  If you want to get followers on Twitter, follow people for the law of reciprocation.  If you want to get likes on Facebook, join groups and spread the word.

Another tip for increasing your following is to offer exclusive incentives.  People aren’t going to just jump aboard without a reason.  If you don’t have the budget to offer a promotion, or you are new to the market altogether, try to find someone big and influential and request them to tell their people about you. When it comes to posting, engagement is what brings the credibly up on your profile, so make sure to post or tweet something you know your following will want to share or comment on

Use social media to follow your competition.  Learn what are they doing to see what works and what doesn’t and then proactively leave them in your wake.  Not sure what your audience would want?  Ask them with poll questions, which in turn will increase your levels of engagement.

Remember, the biggest investment in social media is your own personal time.  By doing a little work every day, you can stay active without sacrificing other important elements to your marketing success.

Is your company currently engaging in paid display ads throughout a content network in Google or MSN?  For most of you, the answer should be yes if you are trying to increase revenue and your brand awareness.

How many of you are currently running display ads on mobile devices?  My assumptions is that not many of you are- but you all should be.  Did you know that 93% of the 307 million people within the US have mobile devices, and that 40% of these people have smart-phones, mobile internet devices or mobile-web-enabled feature phones? Mobile users range in age, gender, and income level as can be seen below.

Below are some reasons why you should begin to think about the option to display pieces of rich media or banner ads on mobile devices through Google’s Admob Network.

1. Campaigns are set up similar to other display content campaigns and Google is the king of simplicity within their user interfaces
2. Working with Admob you gain the experience they have as they help you manage the complexities that might scare you concerning the wide world of mobile, making it easy for you to target and serve ads to the complete mobile audience
3. You have the ability to target as broadly as possible given your campaign goals. You can even target by OS and have an ad serves specifically to Android users.

Click on the link below to see all the cool stuff you can do within Google’s Admob Team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV5-w1OgoeM&feature=channel

If you sell multiple products on your website remember that visitors of the different product types are in fact different, and what works on one page might not work on another to create a conversion.  Always A/B test first to find the layout that works, then begin multivariate testing to focus on the details. Once you discover which layout is the best match for you to display information that your visitors like, your next step should be to determine the best headers, images, and call out buttons on each page.  Clear marketing messages, little visual distractions, and an obvious call to action will increase your conversions.  Listed below is a breakout of tips to help you optimize your landing pages for higher conversions.

1) The structure of the page has an effect.

a.      The less distractions the better for pages conversion pages.

b.      If you remove a visible navigation or several quick links form the page, you will reduce the number of engagements you have on a page (less distractions) which could ultimately help increase your conversions.

2) Each page should have 1 goal with a centralized focus point.

a.      If you want to increase sales for socks, focus on the socks for your socks page, and leave the advertising of the other products to a minimum.

b.      If you want to sell socks have an obvious conversion point such as a call to action “buy socks” button in the content section of the page.

3) Each Page should have a specific marketing message for each product you sell.

a.      On every conversion triggering landing page you should have a message that not only tells why people need the product you sell, but also tells them why they should buy this product from you.  This will give them the boost they need to convert.

4) Images and buttons do play a role in the conversion process.

a.      Make sure to conduct multivariate testing for images used on your page to determine whether it’s better to have images with people or not.  Sometimes visitors want to be engaged by people they have something in common with, but other times it might not be best if your website visitors have a big range in age, sex, or nationality.

b.      Test your buttons to see if your buttons are too aggressive, or not aggressive enough.  A softer conversion call out such as “get started” might get more visitors into the checkout funnel than the “buy now” button you have been using.

5) Use social media to help increase your brand and product awareness.

a.      I recommend using the facebook ‘like’ button and the twitter ‘tweet’ button on your product pages to help your message spread virally.  These buttons are great because they automatically are kicked to their profiles/accounts without causing your visitors to leave the page.  The best places for these small links are in the actual content section of the page so that they can share, after they have reviewed the page.

In all honesty, I planned this as a blog post on how ineffective automated spamming is. It’s unethical and annoying. It’s poorly targeted, rarely varies anchor text, and can’t get past a site that moderates comments (as all sites should). On top of that, Google recommends against it. In light of all these, it is amazing that anybody would even waste the time to set up a program to generate comment spam that would provide zero benefit.

To prove that auto-spam is a complete waste of effort, I went through a drew a random sample of 50 obviously automated spam comments that I have received to my personal blog over the past 6 months. I compared the sites that were being represented to the anchor text that the spam posts were trying to push and I then analyzed the rankings. The results were surprising, if not outright shocking. Some sites create and push this generic (and often offensive) spam…because it works.

Results (note: given the nature of many sites that spam, and the internet in general, some of the targeted anchor text is a bit risque, so please don’t click on the jump if that is something that you would prefer not to read):

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While watching The Family Guy, I had often wondered where Stewie Griffin’s catch phrase “What the Deuce?”  came from.

Stewie will often say his catch phrase at times of astonishment.

Turns out the “What the Deuce?” was once a euphemism for “What the Devil?”.

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Using Google’s new Ngram viewer, we can see that the catch phrase began falling out of favor soon after the start of the 1920′s.

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So what happened?

Why did the phrase “What the Deuce?” fall out of favor?

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It may have been the loosening of restraint for certain topics or it may have been the overuse of the old phrase “What the Deuce?” which blunted the phrase’s emotional edge.

I can give no definite cause and effect.

Out with the old and in with the new.