3 Effective Ways To Measure Social Media ROI
One of the biggest counter-arguments to social media has always been “What’s the ROI?” After all, does it really make sense to spend time, money and other resources on something whose results can’t actually be tracked?
Though a lot of different metrics have come and gone in the social media world, there’s still no definitive way to measure the return on investment in the social sphere.
So is social media worth the investment? The key thing to remember is that social media really isn’t a ROI-based activity. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re trying to decide whether or not social media is a good investment for you.
#1: You’re Beginning a Relationship
Think of social media as if you’re paying to go to a party where many of your customers will be at. How do you measure that in terms of ROI? 
It’s extremely difficult, in large part due to how difficult it is to quantify relationships. Someone you meet at the party could introduce you to a new friend, who 6 months later refers you to a big client. If you had never gone to the party you wouldn’t have met this person, but it’s very hard to quantify that client as a “return” on your investment in going to the party.
Social media is very similar. It help you create and cultivate social relationship, which can have a domino effect that can’t always be measured.
#2: Learn From Your Customers
Social media differs from traditional media in one important way: You get to learn from your customers.
If you were just running TV ads, you’d get the same branding effect, but you wouldn’t get to hear back from your customers about how you’re performing. You won’t get to hear suggestions about how to improve your product or get early warnings of potential problems.
Social media is one of the purest ways you can stay in touch with you customers. It’s just not realistic for most businesses to stay in one-on-one contact with their customers; but through social media you can easily stay in touch with a lot of people at once.
9 Tips & Tricks for Better Google+ Brand Pages
This article is a follow-up to our earlier post How to Use Google+ to Promote Your Product or Service.
In social media, Google+ brand pages are the way of the future. Using Google+ brand pages, you can create an informative, interactive profile for your fans on Google+ to connect with you. Few companies today are taking full advantage of what Google+ brand pages have to offer.
The easiest way to access your brand page is to go to your own Google+ page. Just click the drop down menu under your username to switch to your brand page’s view. Here you can edit the page, add people to circles and post status messages.
Here are top 9 tips & tricks for using Google+ brand pages to their full potential.
#1 – Creating an Easy to Reach URL
By default, Google+ gives you a custom URL that’s fairly difficult to read or remember. For example, your URL might be something like “plus.google.com/8723570370197390157.”
To make this easier for people, create a redirect on your own website to your Google+ brand page. For example, people should be able to reach this page by going to www.yourwebsite.com/googleplus/
You can also use Google+’s URL shortener to create a better URL on Google’s domain.
#2 – Add Buttons to Your Site
Want to make it easy for people to find your Google+ page on your site? Want to put live feeds of your status updates on your sites? Want to make it so people can re-post whatever you said with one click of a button?
It’s easy. Just add the respective Google+ buttons or widgets to your site. Access these under the “Get Started” menu in your brand page.
#3 – Don’t Share Your Visitor Count for the First Few Months
If you see that a page only has a handful of visitors, chances are you’re not going to want to visit that page. In other types of social media, like Facebook or Twitter for example, there’s not a whole lot that you can do about this.
However, with Google+, you can choose to hide your follower count. While this isn’t a good long term strategy, it can be very useful in the short term.
#4 – Give Great Resources
Google+ gives you the ability to add as many links as you want to your profile. The links can point back to content on your own website or to other people’s sites.
Make liberal use of this feature to point your users to the best possible resources for their problems.
7 Effective Tips to Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Social Media Battle Winner
There’s one thing that separates LinkedIn from all the other social media networks out there: Everyone who comes to LinkedIn is there for a professional purpose. Your future employers, your future investors and your future business partners all likely have a profile on LinkedIn.
If you want to network professionally online, there is no better place than LinkedIn. Spending time to perfect your LinkedIn profile is therefore a high ROI activity.
Here are seven quick tips to help boost your LinkedIn profile.
Tip #1 – An Attention Catching Headline
Your headline should be written so that anyone who sees your profile in the search results would want to click on your profile and learn more about you.
It should say something either unusual or incredible about you. It should stand out from all the other results. It should speak directly to your target audience.
Tip #2 – Have Someone Proofread Your Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is your chance to make a professional impression. Having misspellings, grammar mistakes of factual inaccuracies on your LinkedIn profile is like going to a professional networking event with a mustard stain on your shirt.
Don’t blow the all-important first impression. Even one little mistake you miss could cost you a future job or client. Hire someone to proofread your profile before going live.
Tip #3 – Make Liberal Use of Recommendations
Recommendations are one of the most powerful things you could have on your profile. It’s the 
one thing that people trust the most on a LinkedIn profile, because it involves other people recommending you.
Getting a few good recommendations can change your entire profile. Contact a few former employers, employees and co-workers to ask them to leave you a recommendation. Most of the tie they’ll be happy to do it.
How to Use Google+ to Promote Your Product or Service
Google+ is the newest social network in town and the fastest growing social network in history. As more and more people come onto Google+, it’ll become more and more important for businesses to be well versed in Google+ marketing strategies. 
By learning about Google+ today, you’ll put yourself ahead of the curve. Not only will you be seen as progressive, but you’ll be able to establish your brand long before others have even realized the importance of Google+.
Here’s how to use Google+ to promote your product or service.
Create Meaningful Circle Segments
Perhaps the most valuable thing Google+ offers that Facebook doesn’t is the ability to sort your market by different segments. Using Google+’s circles, you’ll be able to choose exactly who gets to see what messages.
So how should you segment your customers?
Ideally, you should create a different circle and therefore a different segment for each different kind of “mindset” of customer that you have.
For example, you might have one circle for people who’ve bought your product, one circle for people who haven’t bought yet, one circle for people who’re affiliates of your product and one circle for people who’ve entered into a contest but didn’t win.
Each of these people might respond to different messages. For example, offering customer-only discounts to your past buyers could be a stellar strategy to get repeat buys. On the other hand, with people who haven’t bought yet, you might want to provide primarily trust building content.
Take Advantage of Google+’s Posting Features
One thing that’s inherently different about Google+ than Facebook is the length and style of your posts.
On Facebook, you can only post 420 characters in a status update. That really puts a limit on what you can post. Essentially, you can only post short thoughts, short content and links.
On Google+ however, the limit is well over 2,000 characters. (There’s no set limit yet.) In addition, you can link to several videos, links and pictures within your post.
That means that unlike Facebook, on Google+ you can post entire pieces of content for your network to see. You can use Google+ as a direct way to publish useful information to your circles without having to refer people to an outside link.
Use this feature liberally. If you want to build a brand as an expert, Google+ offers a much more suited style than Facebook does.
Digg, Tweet & Like Your Way to SERP Heaven
Social Media Marketing (SMM) a tool for getting across the right information to your target audience through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, has truly arrived and is here to stay. Top search engines worldwide, like Google and Bing have already begun crawling for data from such social networking sites and are even using them for the final search ranking.
This was recently witnessed by the website SEOmoz.com, which not only got a huge surge in traffic after one of its posts “Beginner’s Guide to SEO” was tweeted by Smashing Magazine and then retweeted by followers, but it also reached among the top results (No. 2 in the 1st page as of today) in the Google search for the unusual term “beginner’s guide”. While the initial surge subsided after the first few days, the page nonetheless continues getting consistent traffic weeks after the initial tweet by a figure of authority such as Smashing Magazine.
The more number of times a particular page gets linked through the “Share” feature for various social websites, the higher the chances of a better search ranking. In fact, for the search engine Bing, the higher the number of “followers” or “friends” for a particular account or website on a social media site, the easier it is for the website to achieve a higher search ranking.
It is clear then that the importance of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter can no longer be ignored. SMO thus has to be a crucial component of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. Let’s take a look at how you can optimize your activities on websites like Facebook and Twitter to get the best search ranking.
• Stay Active
Having a presence on social media alone is not enough. You need to add meat to the bone of your online presence. This can only be done by staying active consistently, by posting or tweeting content, relevant images, and informative videos. You can also supplement this activity and stay active without too much effort by responding to comments, commenting on other relevant posts and pages, using the “Like” feature on Facebook, and retweeting. By investing a few minutes every day (as opposed to being online only once in a while) you can see really good, long-term results.
• Yes, Content Is Still the King
For an optimal search engine optimization strategy, content is still king. Ensure the content you publish is good quality content. While posting often is good, ensure you don’t lose grip on the type and relevance of your content. If the content is interesting and informative, the hits will appear. For example, the Travel Channel has managed to make the most of their Facebook profile by asking readers who enrol as “Fans” to share their Facebook-related travel stories. Needless to say, the content is interesting, unique, and highly relevant to the readers themselves.
You also need to ensure your content is free from plagiarism, is 100% original, and does not violate any copyright laws. In addition, your posts need to reflect an optimal density of keywords related to your business for search engines to take note of your website. Make sure your tweets or posts consistently talk about your business and do not lose focus, subject-wise. Examples of the type of content you post could be updates from your business, changes on your website, offers, deals etc. This will increase your brand value as well.
5 Compelling Reasons To Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Maybe it is a matter of convenience, or in this age of zero patience, it could be a matter of instant gratification even, but the number of people turning to mobile devices to access the web has been steadily increasing. 
The increasing popularity of smartphones only underscores this emerging trend. Last year saw iPhone sales doubling while the worldwide sales of smartphones shot up by 24%, and by the end of 2011, they are expected to outsell PCs. So, you get the picture, we are smack in the middle of the smartphone boom, (in hindsight, this should have been foreseen the minute we learnt Google was venturing into the phone business). We will more than likely, see a paradigm shift of a kind in the way people access the web. As web-forecasters predicted earlier this year, mobile internet is inevitably taking center stage, and now is the time for you to remold your Internet marketing strategies to fit the mobile space.
If you don’t want to take my word for it, here are five compelling reasons to optimize and calibrate your site for mobile devices.
1. Mobile Search is for Mobile Sites – That’s right, when one searches from a mobile device, the query accesses a separate index maintained for mobile content. And mobile search being still in its infancy, the indices are relatively smaller, and what that means is, way lesser sites to compete with. So, optimizing your site and building a mobile presence will certainly help you rank high now, and in the future too when the indices get bigger and the competition grows fiercer. You’ll still have a better chance of ranking high, thanks to the authority you would’ve built over the years.
2. Think of your Customers – Non-mobile sites or ‘full’ sites, to put it bluntly, are a pain to access from mobile devices, and greatly hamper usability. Full sites are often rich, usually include flash and video content, and do not render correctly on a mobile platform. By not making available a mobile version of your site, you are deliberately providing poor user experience to customers who may access your site through mobiles, and thereby risking customer dissatisfaction. And dissatisfied customers mean only one thing – lost sales leads.
6 Ways To Make Your Blog A Success
The whole point of having a blog is to get traffic to it, and as difficult as this may seem, your best option is to work at it. The World Wide Web can be likened to a bottomless pit of information, with an endless flurry of users trawling it, day in and day out. To get these users to consider your corner of the web, by which I mean to drive more traffic to your blog, there are a number of things that need to be done, things that cannot be avoided and have to be done with a generous dose of passion.
It is heartbreaking to see the number of blogs out there that have excellent content but can’t seem to succeed. They have rotten rankings and fail miserably. Don’t let same fate plague your blog, kick back and crack the Technorati 1000 by getting your house in order.
1. Make Your Blog Successful Or Die Trying: First thing to remember is to never give up, to keep on trucking, or rather writing, and remember that if the content is crap, no marketing effort will make it a success. No one starts a blog just for the hell of it, ensue that you have something to say. More publicity, promotion and, consequently, traffic will come your way, but only if the content is truly great. If you cannot write, get a writer to do it for you. There are loads for freelance sites online, where a blogger will write for you at a small cost. Read more
Will Social Media be the Death of SEO?
“Is the end of SEO nigh?”
To say that the question is at the forefront of the minds of several SEO mavens would be an understatement. The ever-rising popularity of various social media channels (read Facebook and Twitter) and the resultant flurry of activities (read real-time search) happening there have, evidently, been causes for concern for many in the search business (Google included). Many of them don’t just raise the question; they are convinced that there is no light at the end of the tunnel for SEO, and that the SEO-Armageddon is upon them!
SEO Vs. SMO: What They Say?
This undeclared war between search and social media has the grapevine rife with rumors – that Facebook is all set to vanquish Google, that Twitter is already beating the search engines at their own game, and here’s the whopper, real-time search on social media has all but replaced the traditional and ‘slow’ search engines!
Since I just don’t see the SEO-beast rolling over and playing dead (Google.com is the most visited site on the web), I am not holding my breath. A bunch of over-zealous early-adopters and a few million users thundering towards the latest social media sites may cause it to break out in sweat (by their own admission, Google had been a tad complacent, and hadn’t really anticipated the developments at Facebook and Twitter) but kill it? I don’t think so.
Yes, things may look a little worrisome, the as-yet-undisclosed search aspirations of Facebook, who is practically nipping at Google’s heels in the race for web domination (Facebook clocked 2.6 billion visitors in November, falling short of Google’s traffic volume by just 35 million) and the almost unanticipated success and as-yet-untapped potential of Twitter Search (which has seen a 477.25% increase in unique visitors in the last one year, as opposed to Google’s 11.77%) appear to paint a pretty bleak SEO-picture. But, can Facebook and Twitter push the behemoth Google out of the picture? Will they prove to be the fabled Google-killers? Let’s be real people, Google’s an old hand at search, no logic suggests that these search-wannabes can do what Microsoft and Yahoo together couldn’t achieve.
Math Professor + Social Bookmarking = ???
Richard, a senior school math professor, is known as a modern day professor by most of his peers as he follows a more unconventional method of teaching. Instead of relying on the regular text books used by every other professor, he would use the Internet extensively to update himself and keep his students abreast about the changing phenomenons in the world of math. He was on every educational institutes’ newsfeed, apart from being amongst the first to be updated by publishers on new updates via email. But this isn’t just it, he also researches the internet on a day-to-day basis for new theories, which if he finds interesting, he has the site added to his desktop’s web browser.
Photography is also one of Richard’s interests, so when not at work he’s also reading up on the latest lens in the market, apart from different photographic techniques, participating in several activity forums, to mention a few. With the desire to share these sites with his like-minded friends in the future, he saves these bookmarks as well on his browser.
With his findings running into hundreds in a few months time, Richard is beginning to realize the need for a more efficient system as with time, it’s only becoming increasingly difficult for him to locate his bookmarks. This apart, every time he steps out of home, he doesn’t have access to his system, so just in case he’s forgotten to email the researched information to his students, sharing his findings becomes an issue.
On one such day, that he’s forgotten to email his previous evenings findings, he discusses this issue with his class. At that time, Andrew tells Professor Richard about this site called Del.icio.us, which he uses to manage his bookmarks of gaming sites. Whenever Andrew finds a great gaming website that he’d like to bookmark, he just clicks on the “Tag” button on his browser to add it to his Del.icio.us account and enters a few relevant keywords that can help him find this bookmark at a future date. Not only this, since his list is public, he also directs his friends and college mates to it, which they can then find through keywords. Del.icio.us being online, also means that Andrew’s bookmarks aren’t just restricted to a single system.
On listening to this information Professor Richard’s heaves a sigh of relief, for he knows that this is exactly what he’s been looking for. He goes back home and spends the next few weeks reorganizing his bookmarks taking them online to Del.icio.us for his respective groups.
As you have understood we are talking about Social bookmarking. To summarize, Social bookmarking can very briefly be explained as a method where users of the World Wide Web save, organize, search, manage and share bookmarks of pages on the Internet with the help of tags or in simpler terms, keywords.
What is Social Bookmarking?
There was a time when we used to bookmark our favorite sites on a small toolbar on our computers or laptops. However, as you are reading this article, the age of bookmarking sites on your PC is becoming history at a rapid pace. Ask yourself the question… “Do you still carry your PC around and plug it in to check your favorite sites wherever you go?” I don’t think so!
This new phenomenon we are talking about is called ‘Social Bookmarking’ & it has taken the web by storm.
Social bookmarking can very simply be explained as a method where Internet users store their favorite pages on these “bookmark” sites online. Users also have the option of sharing these pages with their network of friends.
In other words, you store your favorite websites or web pages as ‘bookmarks’ or ‘favorites’ on Social Bookmarking sites online instead of your desktop computers or laptops, making them accessible anywhere you go. With Social Bookmarking you can store, organize and manage your bookmarked sites for social viewing and also browse through others’ bookmarks and add them to your list of bookmarks. Not only that you can also share your bookmarks with your friends or a network of people. Gone are the days when you needed to call or email your friends to tell them about your favorite sites, we have moved to better times now!
Here is a video to show you how social bookmarking works. In this video, delicious has been used as an example of a social bookmarking site. I’m sure that all your doubts about social bookmarking will be cleared after you see this video.
Social bookmarking has given people a huge opportunity to show off & share their ‘favorites’ with the world. You don’t have to go through a long process to share it with your friends & you can access the list anytime from anywhere.
So now that you know all about social bookmarking you can immediately start bookmarking your favorite sites & articles. I’m sure the 1st bookmark will be for this article right?
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