Category Archives: social media

You Got Fans Well I Got Followers Facebook vs Twitter

No my friends they are not the same as much as they seem alike! Don’t make the mistake of gearing your social media marketing towards them exactly the same, as marketers it’s our job to adapt.

For experienced users/members of both networks, the statement above is understood. But for marketers and brands new to either network, they just will not “get it.” Marketing is very different between these two social giants. Even the users react differently to marketing ploys promoted on the two networks.

In this article, I want to compare the two against each other, a social networking fight to the death! Which should you use for your business or marketing strategy? Should you use both? Let’s break this down and see whats what.

How Does Facebook and Twitter Compare?

While most marketers use these two social platforms for the same things i.e. to build a large and engaged audience, to raise brand awareness and drive targeted traffic to their brands or webpages – the way to do this differs between the two. The users interact differently on each network with brands and people. I know, it’s weird.

Facebook and Twitter have many similarities including: Usernames, Profile, Picture, Statuses, Tagging, Feeds, Comments

Both networks also provide an outstanding way for businesses to market themselves to users which is great for us. So let’s dive a little deeper and see how the two differ from each other and how we as marketing professionals can leverage this to our advantage.

Different Sizes

Perhaps the most important difference between Facebook and Twitter is the size of the respective networks and members. As of January 2013, Facebook said it had over 1 billion registered users. Twitter is more dodgy with the release of its user data but one can speculate based on estimations the network has around 200-400 million users. That my friends, is ALOT of people for us as marketers to expose our brand/business too. I know it sounds crazy but people have literally built multi-million dollar companies utilizing social media marketing alone. Social=$$$$$$$

Post Frequency

It’s pretty well known that Facebook is a little more popular than Twitter in regards to daily use and interaction with its users. I know personally I am on it Facebook like 4 hours a day :/ Friend me! Robert Salvatore. So let’s talk about Facebook pages. Popular Facebook Pages typically post 1-4 updates a day. Whether a Page’s fans see that post is determined by the Facebook news feed algorithm. This algorithm is designed to show users the most relevant posts in the default top news tab of the news feed.

Our goal as marketers with Facebook fan page posts is to attain the most Likes and comments, which will increase a post’s rank (not unlike Google), and drive re-shares of posts, which expose branded content to the friends of fans therefore gaining you MORE fans. Can you see where we’re going with this? Pretty cool stuff.

Popular Twitter profiles typically post much more frequently, sending out closer to 6-12 “tweets” or statuses a day. Twitter is essentially a “micro blog”. Twitter’s news stream displays tweets in strict reverse chronological order. Profile followers are therefore only likely to see the tweets if they’re reading Twitter within a small time frame after an update is published, or if it is retweeted by a high volume of people they follow. This can make it more difficult to see what the people your following are up to since the news feed is constantly changing with new information making it hard to keep up with all the tweets.

The goal for marketers with Twitter updates is therefore to publish as much solid content as possible in order to catch followers when they’re reading. The real-time nature of Twitter also favors breaking news. The first profile to post about breaking news or something important will often receive many retweets. Retweets are what we as marketers WANT to have! This will expose our brand/business to many more people than we can reach alone. Therefore marketers should try to churn as much relevant content about their brand into tweets as possible.

Paid Marketing On Both Networks

Facebook & Twitter both share paid marketing options. Of course they would as it’s a great way to fund the two networks and keep them profitable. Everything’s a business guys, don’t ever forget that! Twitter is more new to the paid marketing strategies for it’s users so let’s break them down first.

Twitter Paid Marketing

There are a few different options with going the paid route on Twitter…

1.) Promoted Account – Essentially this option is featured in organic Twitter search results and within the “who to follow” section of the website. Promoted accounts are suggested profiles to follow based on the followers a user already engages with through Twitter. This can be a great option to get followers.

2.) Promoted Tweets – This option appears in the timeline of user’s news feeds. Essentially your tweet will be promoted by someone who has a very large list of followers who will see your message.

3.) Promoted Trends – Twitter and the company’s mobile application both show trending topics to its users. Marketers can now promote a “trend” and the topic will now be featured in this section of the website. This option is a great way to get users to talk about your brand, company or service. Very powerful stuff.

Facebook Paid Marketing

This is pretty cool stuff I’m not going to lie! With such a huge database of users the possibilities are endless with what you can do with Facebook marketing…

Sponsored Ads

Fortunately for us, the interface designed for promoting your Facebook posts is very easy and user friendly. Underneath every post in your timeline is a “Promote” link, even for posts that aren’t your own, meaning you can promote other people’s posts if you choose to do so. This can be a really powerful tool to add to your marketing arsenal.

Clicking the promote link will give you a pop-up screen where you can set your desired budget for your promotion, anywhere from a few bucks to several hundred bucks. Facebook will inform you how many people your promotion will reach at the given dollar amount (pretty awesome technology). If you have a few hundred fans, then you may be able to reach them all for under twenty bucks. Reaching several thousand may take a lot more, it really depends. There’s no real way to know until you actually try to promote your post and look at the numbers for yourself.

Once you’ve successfully promoted your post, Facebook has analytical tools that let you monitor how well the post is doing, who’s seen it and when and all kinds of different stats to track the success of your ad. As before, this information can be accessed directly from the post itself: where there was a “promote” link, there will now be a link called “Sponsored,” which you can click on to see how many paid and unpaid views the post has gotten!

Facebook Advertisements

Setting up Facebook ads is considerably more involved than simply promoting a single post. So let’s dive in and see what’s what! Facebook ads are handled through the Facebook Business Center. When putting together your ad, you’ll need to know your budget, your target audience, and how long you want the ad to run. You’ll also be in charge of the graphics and text for your advert. Facebook offers tons of demographic options to target making it very easy to only display your ads to targeted users!

Once your ad is in place, you can monitor its performance in Facebook’s advertising back office and even do some A/B testing, swapping one ad in exchange for another and seeing which of the two gets you better results. Test, Test, Test my friends! The picture above is what you see when you click “create an ad” on your home page. The picture below are the ads after their setup on Facebook.

The major difference between a promoted post and an ad is that a post will generally stop being effective after a day or so when it naturally works itself out of the news feeds. Ads can run longer (depending on how long you’re willing to pay for it), but you do have to contend with the possibility of ad-blocker software and user “ad blindness.” As long as an ad is giving you a positive ROI then there really is no need to take it down, let it run and make you money! The hard part is all the tweaking it takes to get it there.

Facebook’s decision to restrict the visibility of posts has not been popular with many users. While the decision to monetize what used to be free might not make everyone happy, the marketing tools Facebook has provided are straightforward and simple enough for anyone to master. Once you master Facebook marketing you will uncover a very profitable traffic stream that you can tap into at will!

Friends Or Fans? Which Is Better?

While both offer great medians of marketing and you definitely SHOULD be using both, in my opinion I would have to say it’s better to have Twitter Followers. I say that because Twitter followers tend to be much more engaged, than Facebook fans. Build your following on both networks and i guarantee your business will start to grow. What do you guys think? Leave some comments below, and always remember…keep on building that traffic!

Author: Robert Salvatore is highly trained in Pay Per Click & Social Media Marketing. He is an employee at Seo Hop and partner at Panfecta. With his services businesses can see immediate growth using Rob’s strategies for converting Pay Per Click visits into leads and sales. You can contact Rob personally on the Seo Hop home page. Try Panfecta for free now. Use discount code… free

How To Build Buzz Online With Social Media Marketing

2 Replies

Luqman – SEO Leaders Ltd Wimbledon, London, UK

In the age of digital, one thing that seems to have both enchanted and baffled companies the most is social media and how to effectively use it.

Social media is one of the top tools that should be in any company’s marketing tool box, and there are plenty of online marketing agencies offering their services in this area. However, before you take the plunge, here is a guide to how social media can be used to create a buzz online:

Listening Carefully Is Key

Social media is a large conversation, and as with any form on conversation it is wise to listen to what is being discussed before diving in. So before a company starts posting on social media and trying to gain loyal followers and shares, it is imperative that they to listen to what your target audience are buzzing off currently.

There will be similar themes, opinions and tones recurring throughout the buzz, which will give some insight into the target audience and give an advantage. This can be used tailor your company’s social media voice to fit in with that of your target audience.

Be Professional with Personality

The key is in the name ‘social media’. It’s a place where people want to communicate and connect with other people, not brands. However, if your brand is seen to have a personality, it is far more accepted by the community.

Each company needs to find their own individual balance of brand and personality in their social media marketing, and it is advisable to seek the advice of online marketing agencies to help get this right.

Read: 2 Rules For Social Media Best Practices To Create A Following

Social Media Policies

Due to the fact that when a company posts on social media, they potentially reach millions of people globally, it can only take simple mistakes to severely damage or even completely ruin a reputation. If a business plans to encourage staff to have input into their social media channels, it is important to set out clear rules and guidelines.

Even if staff aren’t contributing directly to the company social media channels, things posted on their own social media could still impact. This is why you commonly see employees of companies stating that ‘their views are their own’ on personal social media accounts.

Measuring The Buzz

Measuring social media optimization methods used to create a buzz and the substantial results (such as increased website traffic, etc) achieved from this is the key to the ongoing success of your brand’s social media presence.

By measuring these results you can isolate areas for improvement and aspects that worked well and can be increased or continued and areas that altogether flopped.

You can also look at the elusive results (such as positive associations with the brand, increased awareness, etc.) which cannot be defined or measured but can still be an indicator of how well the campaign has worked.

In summary, social media marketing is a cost effective and beneficial form of digital marketing that must be monitored carefully to ensure the right message is being conveyed.

With the help of online marketing services provided by seo agencies, many companies are able to discover the innumerable pros of having an active presence on social media.

Author

Luqman – SEO Leaders Ltd Wimbledon, London, UK

Creepy, Evil, Genius – Elf On The Shelf Facebook Advertising

Leave a reply

Robert Salvatore @InsuranceLead4U back once again SEO-HOP subscribers! This is the time of year where big brands and companies go hard pushing their products on everyone and begin marketing like mad men. So I wanted to take some time out today and talk with you guys about something I’ve recently discovered….the Elf on the Shelf! I have to admit when I first saw this thing I was creeped out. Some elf sits in a different place each night, watching your children to make sure their good or Santa Claus won’t bring them any presents. This product is GENIUS!

Not only do they market it as “starting” your own family tradition, but also as a way to keep your kids inline or else Santa won’t bring them presents because the elf is watching for who’s naughty or nice. This idea is a total winner. Now that you guys know what the elf on the shelf is, let’s break down how we could leverage Facebook Ad’s to push this product during its season. I’m going to stick with Facebook marketing only today, for time’s sake.

First and foremost, I would build a killer squeeze page for my brand new elf on the shelf product since I will want to capture as many hot leads as I can! Second I would get dirty, combing through the different demographics that Facebook has to offer when using their marketing median. Let’s brainstorm for a minute here…I would definitely target (men & women ages 27-60). Remember we want to target people a little older and more established as these are the people that are most likely to have kids and grandkids.

Next, I would move on to targeting categories and most likely choose (family status- parents all). Ok, so right there we are only marketing to parents! Our perfect target audience. Moving on, next I would simply set my budget, bid pricing, etc.. and create a killer ad. You want your ad to really stand out since people aren’t on Facebook looking to buy stuff usually; we want to grab their attention as best we can. This can be accomplished with a funny picture and ad copy! Below is an ad I would play with for this.

Ever Hear Of Elf On The Shelf?
Keep your kids entertained & behaving
this Christmas season! Start your families
next Christmas tradition with the elf on the shelf!
Yoururl.com

Maybe just something simple like this. I always create two ad’s to test against each other to see which performs best, and I recommend you always do the same. Once you find your winning ad keep tweaking and let it run. Remember how I said in the beginning of this post we would have a lead capture page? Well sending all this Facebook traffic to a lead capture page will build a super targeted list of parents interested in the elf on the shelf even if they don’t buy from this ad.

Now you have all their emails and you can drip email market them all holiday season! The potential really begins to snowball with this because you can cross promote other Christmas products to your new email list all month long as well.I hope you guys enjoyed my crash course in Facebook advertising using this cool product as an example ☺ Happy Holidays!

Please feel free to subscribe to the blog for more tips and tricks on How To Internet Market and Drive Traffic To Your Website.

2 Rules For Social Media Best Practices To Create A Following

Leave a reply

Hello fellow SEO-HOP blog subscribers! My name is Robert Salvatore @InsuranceLead4U and I will be talking with you today about social media best practices and how to create a *MASSIVE* following for your business online. I remember when I first started out trying to build a following online, I basically harassed all my friends and friend requested 56,000 irrelevant, random people! Big no no. If you want to market on social media or build your brand you have to live by two rules.

Rule #1 Social Media Best Practices

Don’t harass or spam people. People don’t log onto their social media accounts to be barraged with spam tactics such as click here, buy this ads, and self promoting statuses. They sign on to see what their friends are up to and to interact with people. So if that’s your current marketing tactic. STOP! It’s a waste of your time and theirs.

Rule #2 Social Media Best Practices

Don’t go around friend requesting hundreds of people a day. Not only will whatever network your using most likely flag you as spam, but generally most people don’t accept random peoples friend requests or trust someone they don’t know.

These two rules I’ve outlined here are the two that most people never follow, but let’s break them down further on *HOW* to use them effectively.

Rule #1 Example

Back to rule number one, there is a correct way to build rapport and establish a relationship with your audience. It’s simple, just interact with them! Like statuses, and leave comments…interact! This how you can build a real tangible relationship with your friends and followers on social networks. It’s really that simple. Keep your marketing to a minimum and just interact with your audience on a regular basis, this will grow they’re trust, and trust is the key with social media. After you’ve been networking and interacting then it is time for you to start making moves, but that lesson my friends is for another time!

Rule #2 Example

Let’s move on to rule two. Most people have no idea that there is a much smoother way to add *RELEVANT* friends and followers to your social media accounts without spamming. Let’s try an example. I want to further expand my brand and clientele in the health insurance business. I’m in the business of selling health insurance leads to health insurance agents. How do I accomplish building my brand and networking with agents using social media? Simple, I would do a member search using keywords in my industry such as health insurance agents, insurance agents, etc…

Then when I have found relevant people for me to expose my brand and business too I will shoot them a friend request. So right now your thinking, OK Rob well isn’t this still spamming if you’re just friend requesting random people? Yes, EXCEPT, with each friend request you will send a personal message. This is the key to getting thousands of relevant followers and friends to expose your business to and ease your way in. For my example maybe I would say something like.

“Hi, My names Rob I just wanted to shoot you a personal message to see if it would be OK for us to connect since we’re both in the same industry! Hope to hear back from you, thanks!”

Don’t hold me to that, it was on the fly. But do you understand now how just by attaching a personal message it can completely change up your friending game for social media? It warms people up to you. Don’t make the mistake of copying and pasting the same message to 100 people. Most people in an industry know each other!

Seo-Hop Pro Tip – Use If This Then That IFTTT to automate your social media efforts

On a side note, you never want to request more than 12-15 friends per day. Fly under the spam radar and you’ll be good. This method has helped me build thousands of relevant industry specific friends and followers on social media and given me an audience to build my brand around! I wish you all the best of luck on your social media marketing efforts.

Please feel free to subscribe to the blog for more tips and tricks on How To Be Number 1 On Google Search.

CRO Doesn’t End With A Sale > Click Thrus, Conversions, & What To Do After

Leave a reply

Your website is your gateway to show the world how they can find more information, purchase your products, and connect with you personally. However, no one will ever see this if they do not click thru from the search results to your website. When a visitor does click thru if their questions are not answered the traffic will not convert.

Click thrus and conversions go hand in hand corresponding flawlessly to create activity that will be profitable to the website owner. There many ways to persuade an internet shopper to click thru and convert on your website. This industry term for this expertise is called conversion rate optimization.

Increase click thrus from the search results:

Add a picture to your listing on Google search. This is called Google authorship and is known to increase click thru rates by 30%. It is fairly easy to implement this on your website. Make sure to use a good picture for your specific industry.

Make a unique title tag that stands out amongst the rest of the crowd. This is what people see first, it must make an impression if you want click thrus. Adding a phone number for highly competitive niches is also a great idea especially if people will be finding you via mobile devices. Google Analytics can show you how many people visit your website from mobile compared to desktop.

Make a unique description tag that captivates and makes people want to enter your site immediately to find out more. This is the second item people will read on Google search when they see your site. Definitely put your phone number in here to build trust and make it a priority to completely express your site in 160 characters.

Increase conversions on your website:

Match the information on your website with the information from the Google search results. Have your phone number at the very top so it is clear to see. A click to call feature is great for mobile. The promise your title tag said, make sure to deliver it immediately upon entering the site. Same goes for the description.

Contact forms, the first step to ordering, or product searching should be clearly in view and immediately accessible. In today’s world people want answers immediately so give it to them. You only have a few short seconds to engage visitors or they will leave and find another website.

Engage visitors with pictures, videos, surveys. Nearly anything will work but it must be enticing. Now that you have the visitor on the website, you need to keep them there. This will take a lot of testing. Retargeting is a great way to get people to where they really want to go on the site. For example, if you have events there should be a clear link to a calendar showing these events.

What to do after conversion:

Conversion rate optimization does not end with just getting the sale or lead. Up selling and cross selling is perfect at this moment. You have already gained the visitors trust, now it is time get more products sold and have them follow you on social networks.

Up selling and cross selling can be added to your shopping cart. Remember when you went to Go Daddy to buy your domain name for your website? Now think about all the offers they tried to throw at you before you finally checked out and made the final purchase. This is a perfect example.

Thank you pages should consist of links to your top social networks. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linked In, Google Plus all of them. Guaranteed you will get more followers and fans if you do this. Not only that, your new customers can now engage with you in conversation over these social networks for everyone to see. This engagement will increase social signals. Therefore, increasing Google search rankings and brand exposure.

Before customers will follow you on social, give them more reasons to follow you. I prefer to you use a list such as, Top 5 Reason To Follow Seo Hop socially. List 5 reasons and then put the image links to social networks below the list. Informational persuasion is the key to the wording of this list.

Seo Hop internet marketing services include:
Search Engine Optimization
Pay Per Click
Social Media Marketing & Optimization
Conversion Rate Optimization & User Experience
Google Analytics
Buyer Persona Development
Content Marketing

Please feel free to subscribe to the blog for more tips and tricks on How To Be Number 1 On Google Search.

Why Facebook Wants Us All To Be Friends

Leave a reply

Facebook is a billion dollar company that will soon be going public on the stock exchange for all of us to own a piece of. The company once started out as a free college social networking site and has since become one of the most visited sites in the world. One problem has always occurred with Facebook as it does with many other sites, how to monetize the traffic. The website has created a type of adwords and image display advertising mixture, but does it in a subtle way that converts very highly.

Advertising is so subtle that this article will take you by surprise while reading it. Facebook uses the power of suggestion to guide its users into a realm of marketing that many of us have never experienced before. Suggestion as defined by Wikipedia “is the psychological process by which one person guides the thoughts, feelings, or behaviour of another.” It is just as simple as that, one person guides the thoughts of another.

As you (Mr.T) like the page of a brand on Facebook, all your friends will now see that Mr.T likes this brand. So if Mr.T a friend of mine likes it, maybe I will like it too. The whole I like it too, creates a domino effect. As more and more people like the brand’s business page on Facebook, the people on their friends list will also be suggested to like it as well. This is a significant marketing tool in the fact that people are choosing to like the brand. Therefore, it creates instant trust because not only do they have the choice to like it but their friends also trust their decisions. In sales, trust is the number one rebuttal to completing the sale.

So lets do some math for Mr.T’s profile and 4 of his friends:
Mr.T has 120 Average friends according Facebook .com data
Mr. T likes the Seo Hop brand page
120 people now see that Mr.T likes this page
4 of Mr.T’s friends also like the page

The Seo Hop brand page has now been liked by 5 people and 600 people (120 x 5) have been exposed to the brand page. Most stores don’t even see 600 people a day walk through their front door. However, with the power of the internet and social networks they can have massive exposure in seconds. In addition, this is on a small scale. Imagine if one hundred people liked the page.

Power of suggestion is a very strong tool in marketing and advertising. This is why Facebook suggests friends to us on a constant basis. That “People You May Know” friend suggestion tool is always in front of your face on the site to make it easy for you to make new friends AND share your influences with these friends. The more friends you have, the more influences and advertising you will see everyday while checking updates and chatting with those same friends that just marketed to you without even realizing it.

New SEO Strategies Guard Against Google Updates Panda & Penguin

1 Reply

Panfecta© is a way to combat the most recent Google updates code named Panda and Penguin. As the search engine tries to clean up its search results, many sites have seen negative rankings because of this. The sites that have utilized Panfecta© have experienced only positive results from these updates. If a website is conducted in the correct way to Google’s eyes it will improve in rank.

Panfecta© is only performed at one internet marketing company and is a trademarked strategy at Seo Hop. By utilizing three main strategies, websites will improve their search engine ranking therefore gaining maximum exposure on the internet. Any site from local to national and so forth can use this strategy in order to stabilize and increase rankings.

Three main strategies compromise the Panfecta© execution and they must be executed correctly in order for a website to gain top rankings. About three years ago only one strategy was needed. With the world and Google ever changing all three will need to be performed to satisfy the search engine’s needs and wants. After all, all we are trying to do is teach the search engine’s the most about our websites as possible. The more they understand they better the sites will be ranked.

Panfecta© Strategy #1
Use old Seo factors to build the base of your site and the entire strategy. This includes using off page and on page search engine optimization. This will be the grounds for and 90% of the reason your website will rank well. I suggest using a WordPress website. Reason being, every time you post to your blog it updates the entire site. Also, if you have feeds being displayed on the home page every time the feed has something new, now your home page has been updated. Updating a site is extremely important today because of the new Google Freshness Factor that has been included into the algorithm. With limited updating, your site will not be number one.

Panfecta© Strategy #2
Social media will help any website rank better in the search results. A recent report even tested this theory and their research came up with a positive result. Any social media marketing is better than none especially if you know how to utilize it correctly. Twitter has been the most tested and recognized social media platform to increases rankings. Millions of users execute multiple tweets everyday. If you follow the right people on Twitter you won’t need to read the news anywhere else. Constant updates are happening every second on Twitter. Granted this not the only site Seo Hop utilizes regarding social media for clients, but it has been the most tested and talked about one when it comes to increasing rank in the search engines.

Panfecta© Strategy #3
Website marketing is the final strategy, but is comprised of the most comprehensive part. It actually breaks down to two different segments. The first is conversion rate optimization also known as CRO. The reason this is so important is because with this Panda update, Google now grades upon the conversion of your site and looks into the back end. This includes visitors time on site, how many pages were viewed, the conversion rate, and the speed of the website. All these factors and many more are extremely important to grade how a site performs and if humans feel it is useful. These factors must be graded using analytics and be watched very closely.

Secondly is content marketing, which goes hand in had with increasing conversions. Content marketing is comprised of adding new pages of value whether they are regular pages or blog pages it does not matter. People usually use blogs to increase their site and also go after alternative keywords. This is another reason I recommend WordPress websites because WordPress itself was once just a blogging platform. However, these days once a theme is bought or created the platform can be a whole entire site that is very pleasing to the user. In fact the website you are on now is a WordPress site. The trick to content marketing is to provide useful information that people want to share. The more sharing adds back links, social media links, reputation, and branding. Content marketing is a very powerful tool that is fast becoming one of the most important factors to keep stability throughout these updates.

Panfecta© creates a circular motion by constantly updating websites and creating more content to share throughout the internet. Everybody loves news and new content, in fact they feed off it as do the search engines. So if you keep your website updated with useful and helpful content and then share it on social networks as well as have your Seo 100% correct the site will gain maximum exposure and achieve top rankings.