Twitter Ad Users Can Now Schedule Tweets a Year in Advance

Many marketers use third-party social media dashboards to schedule their tweets ahead of time. But Twitter advertisers may be able to give those tools a rest with Twitter’s new scheduled tweets option. 

"All marketers using Twitter’s Ad Products can schedule organic or Promoted Tweets for specific dates and times up to a year in advance," Twitter said in its announcement. "These can be coordinated to go live with new or existing Promoted Tweet campaigns to enable you to plan your real-time campaigns at your convenience."

Scheduling tweets starts at the advertiser’s account at ads.twitter.com. There, a person can access the option via the "compose tweet" button or within a new "creatives" tab in the top navigation.



When scheduling tweets, the user’s time zone is displayed to guide the process, and tweets can be scheduled a year in advance in increments of one minute.

"Tweets can be delivered organically to followers, or set up to publish as part of a Promoted Tweet campaign where you can select specific targeting criteria to make sure the right users see your message," Twitter said. 

For more information, check out Twitter’s help files on scheduled tweets to get started. 

Original Article Post by Jessica Lee @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Twitter Analytics: A Beginner's Guide

Have you looked at Twitter Analytics? Assuming you don't use any other analytics tools for Twitter, you'll find some very useful information.

Everyone can access this by going to Twitter Analytics and signing in with your usual Twitter credentials. Here's what you can learn from the official Twitter Analytics.

Timeline Activity

In the Timeline Activity section of your analytics, the first thing you'll see is an overview graph of your last 30 days on Twitter.



Next, you will see some basic stats for your tweets including clicks, favorites, retweets, and replies. You can use this section to see which topics resonate the best with your audience and the most popular times you tweet.



If you use Buffer, you can get similar stats in the analytics section of your dashboard with the added bonus of seeing who retweeted your posts.



The two added bonuses for Twitter analytics over Buffer's data is that you can filter your tweets to see just the best ones, and you can export the data to CSV.

Follower Demographics

In the followers section of your Twitter analytics, you'll get some good insights about those who follow you. First, you will see your change in followers over the last year.



Next, you'll see a list of topics your followers are interested in.



This can be helpful in determining whether the audience you are building is relevant to your business. If not, then you need to re-evaluate your Twitter audience building strategies.

Next, you can get see where your Twitter followers are located.

This is especially useful if you have a local business as you want to make sure you're growing an audience in the right region. It can also help if you're trying to determine when to post status updates.

Last, but not least, you can see the gender distribution of your followers and discover who your followers are also following.



If you have less than 10,000 followers, you can learn more about them by running the free Twitter Follower Report on Simply Measured. A few things on the free report include the top keywords in your followers' Twitter bios.



You can also see the top time zones your followers are located within.



And your followers with the most followers.



If you want to see your Twitter growth over a longer period of time, try TwitterCounter. If you subscribe to a premium account, you can see your follower growth for up to five years.



You can even add a competitor's Twitter account to see how your follower growth stacks up to theirs.

Website Analytics

Last, but not least, Twitter analytics allows you to add your website to see analytics in relation to tweets of links from our website in the websites section. To set up your Twitter website analytics, just click on the Add Website button, add a piece of code to your website's header tag, and verify. Then you will be able to see the following.



This graph shows you the number of tweets including your URL for the past 30 days. The chart below shows the individual tweets plus popularity data (favorites, retweets, and replies). You can use this section to see your top engagers on Twitter.

In addition to seeing those who tweet links from your website, you can see the tweets that get clicks under the Link Clicks section.



If you want to learn more about tweets for content on your domain, you can also try a search on Topsy for your domain.



If you want to know what tweets drive the most traffic and conversions on your website, sign up for a premium account to the Campalyst Tweet Lookup Plugin. This Google Chrome extension will allow you to see individual tweets within your Google Analytics account by looking at the referral paths under the t.co referrer. It basically turns the ugly t.co URLs into real tweets.



The only unfortunate part about using this plugin / extension is that it doesn't pull historical data, so you will have to wait for new tweets to start generating traffic to your website before you will see extended information about them.

Do you find Twitter's official analytics useful? Please share your thoughts and alternative Twitter analytics tools in the comments!

Original Article Post by Kristi Hines @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

YouTube's New Comment System: 7 Things Video Marketers Should Do

 
YouTube has announced that better commenting is coming. In a post on YouTube's Official Blog, Nundu Janakiram, Product Manager, and Yonatan Zunger, Principal Engineer, said:

Starting this week, you'll see the new YouTube comments powered by Google+ on your channel discussion tab. This update will come to comments on all videos later this year, as we bring you more ways to connect with familiar faces on YouTube.

They added a couple of interesting details:

• You'll see posts at the top of the list from the video's creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles.
• You can choose to start a conversation so that it is seen by everyone on YouTube and Google+, only people in your Circles, or just your "bestie" (a best friend). Like Gmail, replies will be threaded so you can easily follow conversations.
• You'll have new tools to review comments before they're posted, block certain words or save time by auto-approving comments from certain fans. These can help you spend less time moderating, and more time sharing videos and connecting with your fans.

This is a significant development.

Lee Bell, a reporter for The Inquirer, said, "The change means that commenters won't be able to leave anonymous remarks any longer, as you'll have to be signed in to Google+ in order to comment."

Steve Cooper, a contributor at Forbes, said, "What's particularly interesting about the new system is how it will combat ‘trolls,' as in those nasty commenters who drag the conversation into the gutter without offering up any insight or value."

Carla Marshall, the Managing Editor of ReelSEO, said, "Account holders are being given the facility to ban commenters who consistently leave negative remarks as well as filter out comments that contain certain trigger words."

And Amanda Marcotte, a journalist who writes for Slate Magazine, said, "Clearly, the whole world is out to get the angry dude. If he can't cause ordinary people to accidentally glance at the comments on a video and then look away in disgust, what does he have left?"

So, now that better commenting is coming to YouTube, what should marketers do?

1. Seize the Opportunity

B2B and B2C marketers for both large and small businesses should seize the opportunity! This will transform YouTube from an anti-social into a social medium. In fact, it will turn YouTube into the second largest social medium in the U.S., behind only Facebook.

According to Compete PRO data for August 2013:

• 163.4 million American adults visited facebook.com
• 162.5 million American adults visited youtube.com
• 59.3 million visited blogspot.com
• 41.2 million visited linkedin.com
• 34.1 million visited twitter.com
• 33.2 million visited wordpress.com
• 33.1 million visited plus.google.com
• 29.6 million visited pinterest.com
• 25.6 million visited instagram.com
• 23.5 million visited tumblr.com

So, if your social media marketing campaigns didn't include YouTube before, then they should now. YouTube gets 4.8 times more unique visitors a month than Twitter and 6.3 times more unique visitors than Instagram, just to pick a couple of names out of the hat.

2. Enable Comments Now

If you have disabled commenting on your YouTube videos, then enable comments now. Here's how to do that:

1. Click the arrow next to the Upload button at the top of the page.
2. Select Video Manager.
3. Click the Edit button under the video you wish to edit.
4. Click Advanced Settings.
5. Adjust your preferences under "Comments", then Save changes.

And don't worry: You can still require approval for comments before they're posted. If you want to be able to do that, follow steps 1-4 in the instructions above. Then, under "Allow comments", select Approved. When somebody leaves a comment, you'll receive an email notification that directs you to a page where you can approve or remove the comment.

3. Enable Your Discussion Tab

If you have disabled commenting on your YouTube channel, then enable your Discussion tab now. If enabled, you can then select if channel comments need to be approved by you to display on your channel.

If the Discussion tab is enabled for your channel, other YouTube users can post comments on your channel. And don't worry: Since it's your channel, you have some tools to moderate the discussion.

To see your options, click the arrow in the upper right of a comment on your channel. You can:

• Remove deletes the comment from YouTube. If the comment has any replies, they will also be removed.
• Ban from channel blocks the user from posting comments on your channel. You can remove the user from the banned list later.

In addition, you can require approval for all new comments before they're posted to your channel. When someone comments, a blue banner will let you know. You can then review the comments to approve, delete, or flag them for abuse or spam. You can turn this on in your Channel Navigation settings.

There are also a couple of automated filters:

• Approved users and banned users. In your comments settings, you'll find a list of approved users and banned users. Approved users' comments will automatically be approved and shown. Banned users' comments will never be shown. You can add or remove individual users or Google+ Circles.
• Blacklist. In your comments settings, you can specify a comma separated list of words and phrases. Comments closely matching these terms will be held for your approval.
• Spam filtering. If someone leaves a comment that looks like spam, a yellow banner will let you know. You can then review these comments to either delete them or approve them if they're not actually spam.

4. Build Your Community

Build a genuine community around your channel and what it stands for.
People are drawn to online video because they can interact with the channel in ways that they can't with television. So, speak to your audience, and listen to what they say. If you actively engage with your audience through your channel, it will pay off in the long run. Your fans will become your social advocates and spread the word about your brand.

Here are some tips for building a community from the ground up:

• Develop relationships with top contributors.Think of each viewer as an individual. Respond to frequent commenters, and take a genuine interest in them.
  • Respond to comments in the first few hours after you publish a video. These first commenters are your loyal community members, so keep them engaged.
  • Your own comments on your uploaded videos get pinned to show up at the top of the comments section, prominently featuring your engagement with the fans.
• Recognize the contributions of individuals in the community. People love to be recognized; responding to first-time contributors is a way to encourage ongoing engagement. Consider recognizing your community through in-video shout-outs, or by offering other rewards like fan merchandise or exclusive content shared through unlisted videos.
• Create content about your community. Whenever possible, include your community in the video content itself. Shout them out by name, acknowledge that you're reading their comments, or even let viewers choose the direction of a special feature. Many creators find ways to work-in their fans, letting the whole community know how much they appreciate their viewership.
• Spur conversation. Create relevant content that generates conversation among your community. Ask for their opinions and feedback. Remember, good debates are a part of a healthy community; only remove / flag hateful comments targeted at an individual or group.

5. Set up a Google+ Page

If you haven't already created a Google+ page or profile to engage with fans and other YouTube creators, then set one up now. Google+ allows you to organize people into different "circles" to help tailor your engagement to a circle's specific interests. Engage your fans directly in Google Hangouts, and broadcast live Hangouts on your YouTube channel via Google+ Hangouts on Air.

If your channel represents you as an individual, and you personally manage the channel and plan to manage your Google+ presence on the same account, then a G+ profile is the way to go. However, marketers should link a Google+ page to their channel to access the features below:

• Better name: Change your channel name through Google+ or even add spaces and punctuation.
• YouTube Tab: Feature nine of your most recent public videos in a tab on your Google+ profile. The videos play on YouTube, and the tab links to your channel.
• Google-wide notifications of YouTube video uploads shared from a channel merged with Google+.
• Channel and video recommendations to your Google+ followers on YouTube.
• Recommendations to channel subscribers to follow your connected Google+ page.
• Improved YouTube comments on your channel's Discussion tab and the Watch page – when this feature arrives later this year.

6. Obsess on YouTube Analytics

YouTube Analytics is your channel's pulse. It helps uncover key channel insights based on real viewer data and the content they engage with most.

For example, you can use YouTube Analytics to learn which videos your audience interacts with most. This can help you craft more successful content and promotional strategies. You will want to examine the Likes & Dislikes, Comments, and Sharing Reports on standout videos to understand what type of content resonates best with your audience.

Then, here are some sample uses for these key reports:

• Determine how many Likes and Comments per View various videos generate to inform what types of content you should consider creating in the future.
• Read your community's thoughts on highly Commented videos and consider addressing, incorporating, or otherwise referencing them in future videos.
• Determine which videos your audience is most likely to share and increase the number of Shares via in-video calls-to-action.

7. Roll With the Punches

Comments can provide valuable feedback and additional information about your videos and your audience. Viewers will tell you what they like and don't like about your videos. But, better commenting features don't guarantee that you will always get plenty of positive comments. So, you'll still need to roll with the punches.

This means you need to have a bit of a thick skin – even if your informal corporate motto or slogan is "don't be evil." In fact, YouTube's Community Guidelines, which ask users to "respect the YouTube community," also go on to say, "We're not asking for the kind of respect reserved for nuns, the elderly, and brain surgeons."

So, even if YouTube's better commenting features miraculously manage to defeat all the spammers, haters and trolls later this year, YouTube will continue to encourage free speech and defend "everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."

That's why you still need to create content that is unique, compelling, and entertaining or informative. You also need to dedicate time to interact with your audience and develop relationships with top contributors. And you should respond to comments in the first few hours after you publish a video.

No one said it would be easy. They just promised that it would be worth it.

Original Article Post by Greg Jarboe @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Online Reputation Management (ORM): A Quick Guide

Most people don't give a lot of consideration to online reputation management until the time comes when they think they need it.

In actuality, you need to institute an online reputation management program before negative mentions of you or your company appear in the SERPs. It's much better to take a proactive approach to owning the real estate on Page 1, as opposed to clawing your way in, after bad news is attached to your brand.

Reputation Management Can be a Dirty Business

Ironically, online reputation management has had a bit of an image problem itself of late.

Earlier this month, New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, busted 19 different SEO companies for creating fake reviews (a.k.a., astroturfing). This is actually fraud and not reputation management, but when a half-star change in Yelp rating can make or break a restaurant, it's easy to see how a business owner could succumb to the temptation.

Reputation management can also be a dirty business.

In the past, prospective clients have approached me about cleaning up mentions of financial scams they've pulled, duping people out of their life savings.

A convicted pedophile even approached me to help him clean up his reputation. This guy was a contractor that entered people's homes – presumably homes with kids. Creeps like this disgust me and I refuse to give them cover. You should, too.

The majority of online reputation issues that we deal with originate from disgruntled customers, clients, patients, or employees. Their comments typically show up on review sites or hate sites created for the sole purpose of generating ill will.

Even the best organizations will have some customer or personnel issues. Due to the nature of the web, a single complaint can find its way to Page 1, and potentially cost a business a lot of customers. That isn't fair.

I don't see an ethical problem in helping a good business mitigate this risk. Neither does Google. Here's their official position on managing your reputation through search results.

Claim Your Profiles

Not surprisingly, Google suggests publishing positive content as a method for reputation management. Thanks to Google's brand bias, using a parasite hosting strategy still works for getting user profiles ranked.

Parasite hosting refers to websites with high trust and authority that allow the self-publishing of content. The benefit lies in the ability to leverage the host domain's authority and trust to get your content ranked.

Some of the best parasite hosts for online reputation management include:

• Facebook
• Foursquare
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Quora
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Yelp
• YouTube

This could vary by niche, country, and industry.

Pro Tip: It's advisable to claim all available profiles, but essential to actively manage and participate in the top 10 or so. Use a tool like HootSuite to manage and schedule multiple social media accounts and track brand mentions.

Create & Optimize Content

In addition to parasite hosting, you should leverage the value of your own website:

• Create or optimize a bio page.
• Add sub-domain(s) and ORM optimized content (e.g., Reviews.YourDomain.com).
• If you haven't implemented Google+ authorship, do so.
• Add content to your blog (create a blog if necessary).

When creating new content, optimize it to address any ORM issues. This usually means creating content about:

• Brand Name(s) + Category.
• Brand Name(s) + Top Products.
• Brand Name(s) + Google Suggest Phrases (Ex: Brand Name Scam, Brand Name Reviews).

Promote pre-existing content on the web that has the potential to move up the SERPs:

• Sometimes you will find positive content on Page 2 that can be pushed up the SERPs to Page 1 with nominal effort. Take advantage of these pages.

Guest posts:

• As with all guest posting efforts, the post needs to go on a real blog that is related to the niche. The only difference is that the post is optimized for ORM phrases.

EMAT defense:

• Consider purchasing the .com, .net, and .org versions of the exact match Brand Name(s) + ORM Phrases (e.g., BrandNameReviews.com). At minimum, this keeps the domains out of the hands of evildoers. Depending on the situation, you might consider building out mini-sites on different C-class IP addresses.

Defamatory domain defense:

• Consider registering variations of domain names that could be damaging to key employees or the brand. It wouldn't be very nice to stumble across the domain YourNameSucks.com or YourBrandSucks.com, would it? Take away those TLD options for individuals looking to create a rant or hate site.

Link building:

• Some of the pre-existing pages that you will try to push up the SERPs reside on authority sites. Most, if not all, of the phrases will be non-competitive in nature. What this means for you is that it will only require a few links, in many cases, to move or rank a URL. Grabbing easy links that are Penguin-approved and require no outreach will often be enough.

Create a Social Media Policy

Having a program in place to dominate organic search is a good start, but social media has added a whole new dimension to ORM. As crazy as it may seem, a significant number of social media "disasters" are self-inflicted.

This results from "well meaning" owners or employees, who aren't savvy in social media, reacting inappropriately. A classic example is Dark Horse Espresso in Toronto:



This isn't an awesome response, but it could be much worse.

Having a social media policy in place and communicating that policy to every employee can often prevent missteps like this. Rather than reinvent the wheel, take a look at the extensive Social Media Governance database of 247 different policies assembled by Chris Boudreaux. Review the policies of businesses similar to your own and take away the best practices for yourself.

What to Monitor

After you've established some common sources of reputation problems, it's time to address the best way to manage these issues. The first step is assessing the current situation.

Generally, you'll want to monitor the following:

• Company Name
• Brand Name(s)
• Key Employee Name(s)
• Persona / User Name(s)

How to Monitor

Here are some suggested tools:

• Google Web Alerts – found in the Google Dashboard > Me on the Web
• Yahoo Alerts
• Mention.net
• Naymz
• Rankur
• Twitter Search
• Google Search

Pro Tip: Manually review on a regular basis any "scam" or "review" sites appearing on Page 1 of the SERPs you're tracking.

How to Handle Alerts

Alerts should be reviewed promptly and a determination should be made regarding how to handle it. Appropriate responses include:

• Do nothing: This will be the most common response, as most mentions will likely be positive or neutral
• Respond: If your social media policy dictates a response, determine the best forum for the response. Will a one on one conversation be more productive than a back and forth online exchange? Never respond with negative emotion. Never say anything "privately" that you would be concerned about seeing online.
• If you're in the wrong: Accept responsibility. Apologize. Explain what will be done to rectify the situation, take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. Communicate with all parties involved in the mistake, so they are aware of it and can prevent the same mistake from happening again the future.

Bottom Line

Make customer service a top priority in your organization and communicate this to everyone on the front line. Have a social media policy in place and follow it. Exercise the principles of the Golden Rule every time you deal with the public. You can and will avoid many reputation problems by following this simple advice.

Original Article Post by Chuck Price @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Google Overhauls YouTube Comments Using Google+

Google will soon change the way comments are displayed on YouTube, and will drive them with Google+.

The changes will see comments that are more relevant moving to the top of the comments list instead of the most recent. Google said this means that comments from people you care about will rise so you can see them.

Here's what they will look like:


"When it comes to the conversations happening on YouTube, recent does not necessarily mean relevant. So, comments will soon become conversations that matter to you," according to the YouTube blog post. "In the coming months, comments from people you care about will rise up where you can see them, while new tools will help video creators moderate conversations for welcome and unwelcome voices."

However, the change means that commenters won't be able to leave anonymous remarks any longer, as you'll have to be signed in to Google+ in order to comment. We're sure that won't stop some people from opening fake Google+ accounts in order to troll, however.

You will be able to join conversations either publicly or privately, or start a conversation that is seen by everyone on YouTube and Google+ or just people in your Google+ Circles.

"Like Gmail, replies are threaded so you can easily follow conversations," Google said.

The updates will also add new tools that will allow moderators to review comments before they're posted, block certain words and save time by auto-approving comments from certain commenters.

Google said that it will begin rolling out the comment changes "starting this week", with the new Youtube comments powered by Google+ on the channel discussion tab.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

Read more »

6 Tips For Hiring a Real Social Media Marketer

 
Never have I written anything that has inspired such response as my last article on Search Engine Watch on how to hire a social marketer.

Both lovers and haters responded in droves. Today's article addresses the major questions and issues that arose.

Perhaps the number one topic of commentary was to further define the skill sets and education of a social media marketer (SMM). A number of SMMs wrote to say that their college studies and prior jobs did not fit the mold I recommended, but they were doing just fine.

So, let's drill down.

1. Writing & Design Experience

If your company has limited resources and is hiring just one person to do it all, at a minimum you need to hire someone with strong skills and experience in writing and design. There simply has to be a portfolio of work that you can review. Otherwise, how can you judge an individual's ability to represent your company in the media?

I personally hired a team member who had a theatre degree and a background in theatre management. But then she went into PR and events.

This latter background made her great at outreach: She knows how to engage people, manage communities, inspire groups, and pitch ideas. This experience enables her to recognize and implement good social media content.

2. Support & Training

A solo social media manager needs to be supported by other resources. Yes, there are people who do absolutely everything themselves. However good their work may be, think of how much better it would be with support from a content development person, a PR person, and a designer.

Outside training can really help. Even in a department of one — or especially then — the company should consider budgeting for external training.

It's not just an investment in the employee; it's an investment in achieving the marketing goals. As a result of the initial article, I was contacted by a company who had just hired a social media manager. I'll be working with her for her first 30 days to train her to best achieve the company's marketing objectives.

3. Editing & Proofreading

You need an editor or proofreader to support the social media marketer. Someone needs to check what they're putting out. Otherwise, the errata reflect back upon your brand.

Granted, as a nation we're dumbing down on proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Even million-dollar-a-year newscasters tell us that, "A man that saw the fire called 911." Ahem. That's "A man who saw the fire." Don't believe me? Look up interrogative pronouns.

4. The Time Required to Manage Social Media Varies

Your industry and what your constituents expect from social media will determine where and how often you publish.

If you're in any field related to Internet marketing, you should be spending all day on social media. If you're in financial services, you don't need to be shooting out content 24/7, unless it's somehow germane to your product or brand.

5. Old School Methods of Managing Media Work

Good social media marketers have an understanding of classic marketing in general, the buying cycle, the media mix, and how brand equity is developed. Social media marketing is just another channel in the media mix.

6. Real Community Management Experience is Key

If a social media marketer interviewee has never managed an online community or offline event, you should think twice about placing this person in the social media manager role.

Social media marketing isn't about being active in all the channels. It's about understanding where to connect in the networks and how to engage, not once, but on a frequent basis which then becomes expected of your target audience.

Let's keep the dialogue open! Contact me here.

Original Article Post by Jasmine Sandler @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Gaining Publicity With Social Talk Shows: Google+ Hangouts and Twitter Chats

Move over Carson Daly and "The Today Show". Meet the new social media talk shows: Google+ Hangouts and TwitterChats. Brands of all sizes can now seize the hour of gaining influence and publicity channeled through today's largest social media news networks.

Google+ Hangouts and TwitterChats serve up publicity opportunities whether you're a guest, host, or attendee. While TwitterChats are nothing new to social media aficionados with the first industry chat originating in 2008, #journchat.

Google+ Hangouts On Air are the newbie evolving since the Google+ debut in 2011 and embedding a strong force that ties in the exposure of YouTube and the powerhouse perks of the world's most used search engine.

Socially Redefining Publicity

Publicity is traditionally defined as the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject and focuses on the act of attracting media attention and gaining visibility with the public.

From an online marketing perspective, publicity is one component of promotion and from a public relations perspective gaining publicity from the media, any media as long as it is relative to the business, is key. Say hello to our newfound publicity outlet: social media!

Old school publicity looks something like this:

• Event sponsorships.
• Testimonials.
• Press conferences.
• Hosting a tour of your business.
• Polls and surveys.
• Invent then present an award.
• Ribbon cutting.

All are still valid forms of publicity generators, but today we have new interactive and more organized opportunities popping up within the social media news streams. These new social PR venues such as TwitterChats and Google+ Hangouts allows brands of any size to gain that oh so coveted#FMA or first-mover advantage, the advantage gained by the initial ("first-moving") significant occupant of a market segment.

Social talk shows level the playing fields depending on a brand's agility to move fast and be daring. This new media segment opens up brands to be first in your industry, first to a topic, theme or segment to be a guest, host, or cover a special event and turn it into rich, fresh, and engaging content.

Morning Shows Go From Green Room to Orange Room

Traditional morning talk shows, notorious for lagging in social media prowess, are even turning the social corner. "The Today Show" welcomed Carson Daly, who officially joined the show as host of the brand new #OrangeRoom, a space that social connects the show and the audience.

The physical Orange Room space on the set segues into the social streams with the new hashtag #orangeroom, in essence creating a TwitterChat inside a historically traditional broadcast format. The move was received with a warm welcome as Daly was trending last week in New York.

SES Speaker Michelle Stinson-Ross, co-host of #SocialChat with Alan Knecht, took a deep dive into the steps involved in leveraging TwitterChats and Google+ Hangouts and for publicity at SES San Francisco.

What the #Hashtag?

#TwitterChats are interactive conversations at a specific time on Twitter. Similar to a traditional media talk show, there is a host, a guest, an audience of real-time attendees and a typically programmed format with a featured topic.

Twitter Chats happen in real-time with real-time issues, topics and connections; but for those that miss the rolling 140 character tweets, there are transcripts, TwitterChat's version of reruns.

Tweeting for Publicity, Gaining Influence

There are publicity benefits in participating in TwitterChats including:

• Exposure of your brand to a focused audience of influencers.
• Build relationships with influencers.
• Garner media attention by getting quoted by bloggers and covered by traditional media.
• Gain authority by seizing the opportunity to gain rank in expertise.
• Get invitations and opportunities, such as invitations to speak, or appear or write for other outlets.
• Get real-time feedback and gratification from media and influencers.

How to Find the Right Chats

If you're looking for TwitterChats, make sure you're looking in all the right places, such as:

• Discovering chats mentioned by those you follow.
• Looking for chats quoted in blogs and other media publications.
• Identifying chats curated by others.
• Optimizing and organizing the TwitterChat experience for hosts, guests and attendees using social platforms such as Twubs and TweetChat.

TwitterChats to make your social PR day:

• Mondays: #Journchat 8 p.m. ET; #SocialChat 9 p.m. ET
• Tuesdays: #PPCchat 12 p.m. ET; #SocialCafe 9 p.m. ET
• Wednesdays: #PinChat 9 p.m. ET
• Thursdays: #MyBlogGuest 11 a.m. ET; #SEOchat at 1 p.m. ET
• Fridays: #BusinessFuel 1 p.m. ET

Use these tools to find and follow more Twubs.com/p/hashtag-directory, Blog.tweetchat.com/calendar, and Twchat.com.

Tweets of Wisdom: Understand thy Chat Environment

Stinson-Ross recommends to lurk and put yourself in listen-only mode before you leap into the stream and understand that questions are as welcome as comments, so use it as a learning tool.

TwitterChat Hosts Publicity Factors

Hosting a talk show may not be that much of a reach and the publicity factors stack up.

Hosts control the schedule, the topic, the official transcript and the perception of expertise and authority! Let's not forget the potential media opportunities for hosting a Twitter Chat, your chat can get publicity in online and offline publication.
For example #SocialChat received kudo mentions in media outlets such as #SocialChat Blog Mentions, Mashable, Social Media Today, Social Times and Simply Measured, Stinson-Ross noted.

Lights, Web Cam, Online Action! Google+ Hangouts On Air

 
"On Air" has a whole new meaning and isn't reserved for broadcast newsrooms any more. For the more extroverted and social video savvy brand reporters, Google+ makes it possible for anyone with a web cam, Google+ account and high speed Internet connections can turn any moment into an instant on-air collaboration or pseudo talk show.

Google+ is boasting 359 million active users making it the second largest social network in between the #1 Facebook and #3 Twitter according to unofficial reports via GlobalWebIndex and it is used by 30% of smartphone users between April–June 2013, making it the fourth most used app.
"The publicity opportunities one can uncover by using Google+ HOA in business are limited only by your imagination! You can invite any celebrity, journalist or blogger relevant to the subject to join your hangout, and you both get the Google SEO value of the video conversation produced," said Debbie Horovitch, Google Hangouts On Air Consultant, Social Sparkle & Shine.

Publicity Benefits of Google HOA

First let's take a step back. If you're sitting at your home office in your boxers or sweats, you might need a little primping. Hair! Makeup! Wardrobe!

Once you have the environment and basics under control, check out the publicity benefits:

• You choose the show topic that fits your brand best.
• Gain video to use over and over again.
• Promote exposure of your brand to a new audience.
• Relationships with influencers built on mutual benefit.
• Possible guest expert and speaking invitations.

Where do you start? Learn from the masters.

Eric Enge, CEO of Stone Consulting and Search Engine Watch contributor, hosts a Google+ Hangouts series appropriately named Masters of Google+ Series where you can hangout with some of the top influencers on Google+ and find out their secret sauce to Google domination.

"The reason I started doing a Hangout On Air (HOA) talk show is that building relationships and perceived authority is critical in any social network," Enge said. "The HOAs allow me to work directly with a number of influential people on Google+, and they in turn come to trust me and actively share my content on Google+.

"In addition, the people I have on the show help bring in the audience, and they help promote the show, and this helps me obtain new followers and grow my personal G+ network. And, as previously stated, the show helps build trust with the people who watch it," Enge said.

Find Hangouts at Google+ as well as submit your own. Reach more people by scheduling and submitting your Google+ Hangout in directories, forums and outlets like this one.

The Last Word

Today's talk show is changing, it's social and ripe with PR opportunities. You might not be joining your favorite talk show host on the couch next to the likes of Oprah, but your chance of getting publicity in the social streams might be greater.

Today's social media darlings, TwitterChats and Google Hangouts, make it easier to get in the limelight and create on-going social publicity in real-time.

Original Article Post by Lisa Buyer @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Top 3 Ways SEO and Social Can Work Together to Make Each Other Insanely Successful

Suspending math rules for a second, the synergies between SEO and social media working together (if done properly) can make one plus one seem like four. Regardless of whether you're in-house or agency-side, there are huge profits to be gained from both teams strategically working together.

A successfully executed joint venture will have both the social media managers and the SEO managers greatly benefitting in areas such as outreach and promotion, content creation, brand management and goal tracking, which essentially translates to lots and lots of dollar signs – for the client and in your bonus.

Here are the top three ways to set up and benefit from a powerful collaboration.

Tip 1: Leverage Promoted Posts to Scale Outreach and Link Building

Traditional link building can be made drastically more effective by tying in some strategic paid promotions.

As we all well know, the SEO team’s goal is to acquire more high-quality links, and the social media team’s goal is to engage the community and attract new audiences. While the goals may seem different, there is an ultimate way to achieve both.

Marty Weintraub, the genius extraordinaire of aimClear, has created the solution: Paid Organic Distribution. Essentially, how it works is you create some exceptional content and then post it on your blog. You then research on Facebook the right demographics who would most enjoy and thus best respond to the content. You really want to find the people who would not just engage with the content but also share it and likely even link back to it; then target them with promoted posts.

For example, for a post on traveling across Germany, some potential people to target could be:

It is amazing how low in cost this tactic can be. You could spend less than $25 a day and still see pretty dramatic results.

Paid organic has helped to dramatically scale up link-building efforts by reaching niches where the efforts would be welcome. SEO professionals can enjoy more targeted links and visits to the site:


Community managers can now successfully reach out to new audiences, get more engagement on the posts, and diversify the reach of posts. See below an example of the growth in likes as well as reach:




Best of all, the probability that this increased traffic to your site will convert is much higher, so this method could even help you hit profit goals in the short term as well.

When implementing Paid Organic on your own, be careful to:

• Be prepared for trial and error when it comes to selecting the audiences to target.
• Let the community manager and the SEO team work together to jointly pick the audience to target, with advice from the PPC teams.
• Make sure your content is really good; dull content won’t get you very far.
• Ensure the community manager responds in a timely manner to all comments to foster the engagement.

Tip 2: Create More Effective Content

 
A joint brainstorming session based on solid analytics can help ensure a steady stream of killer content that works for you every time.

By working together, SEOs can benefit from the audience insights that the community manager brings, while the community manager will be appreciative of the opportunities to continuously grow and expand their audiences with a steady stream of power-packed content produced by the SEOs.

Make your joint brainstorming session all the more effective by arming yourself with the following key data points before you begin:

• Have the SEOs put together a list of which audiences and which types of content have resulted in the most effective link-building campaigns.
• Have the community manager pull together data on what type of content has gotten the most shares and audience engagement.
• Have the SEOs bring in their outreach plan for the next three months.

Now, keeping the above in mind, it will make it easier to know which audiences to expand to, how to better engage these high performing demographics and how to best channel your creative efforts. Knowing what gets the best responses and strategically planning ways to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t allows for the most effective spend of your budget dollars for content creation and outreach.

Additionally, by looking at the SEOs’ outreach plan for the upcoming months, the community manager can plan complementary blogs and audience engagement activities to pave the way for increased success for the link building to come. For example, if the community manager knows that an upcoming SEO special content piece features an exhaustive wine guide, they can foreshadow it on social media and start cultivating the right audience who will best respond to it.

Following your monthly brainstorming sessions, have your community manager be in charge of creating and maintaining the content calendar for the company with heavy input from the SEO team. Both teams can weigh in weekly to help plan future weeks and make any edits as needed, based on the success of the ongoing efforts.

Tip 3: Engage Influencers

Encourage the social media team to build strong relationships with influencers to help with link building.

For an SEO, having strong relationships with influential bloggers or site owners can make a huge difference in link building. One or two incredibly strong links will not only make the campaign more successful but can also help with sales by sending a large number of highly qualified leads to the website.

With a three- to six-month link-building plan in mind, the SEO team should provide the community manager with a list of key influencers to develop a rapport with. The community managers can then take the time to properly build up relationships with the influencers.

Use tools like Klout, FollowerWonk or Traackr to create lists of influencers for each topic.


Build the relationship slowly and carefully. Influencers likely get a lot of people engaging with them, but you can still stand out. Begin sharing their content or retweeting their posts, complimenting an endeavor of theirs or answering any questions they may pose. Be helpful and friendl – in a non-stalking way. Shared interests or passions can go a long way to breaking the ice.

Once the relationship is in place, you’ll get a better success rate of having them share your content or link back to you. It will also increase your brand perception and credibility on the social media platforms to see some engagement between your company and main influencers, so it has an additional benefit.

Do you have additional ways in which you’ve created a perfect harmony between SEO and social? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Original Article Post by Purna Virji @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

Pinterest Experiments with Promoted Pins

 
It was only a matter of time before Pinterest dabbled in the promoted content world. Pinterest announced it will be "experimenting" with promoted pins to help ensure the future of Pinterest.

"Pinterest is where you keep your wishlists, vacation plans, dream home ideas, and other things you want to do soon and in the future," Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann said. "That's why for us, it's so important that Pinterest is a service that will be here to stay."

That statement may sound like the company is in dire straits, but earlier this year, Business Insider reported Pinterest was valued at $2.5 billion. Yet, Pinterest had yet to generate revenue, according to the report.

Business Insider speculated that Silbermann's new parenthood may have shifted his mindset on Pinterest's business model, as Silbermann was quoted earlier this year saying to MIT Technology Review:

I had a kid recently, so I planned the kid's nursery with my wife on Pinterest. I plan activities to do with my kid. A lot of those things end up being the blueprint of what I end up buying and doing. I think that's at the heart of how we'll eventually make money. It would be better if it showed me the perfect crib to get and I could go get it – that would be better than Pinterest is now.

But before that statement was made, in 2012 Pinterest hired former Facebooker Tim Kendall, who served as the company's director of monetization. And Kendall's new role with Pinterest would help it grow the business. Which brings us to this week's announcement, where Silbermann was able to nicely tie in his previous reference to using Pinterest as a new father:

Just over a year ago, my wife and I welcomed our son into the world. Since his first day, I've been pinning fun things we can do together, right now while he's still little and later when he gets older. I know many of you do the same.

Promoted pins will first be tested in the search results (for example, a search for "Halloween" may show a promoted pin) and in category feeds (for example, the "Holiday" category). A Pinterest rep couldn't share a visual of what this might look like, but said the tests will begin over the coming weeks.



While Silbermann said they're still working out the details on how promoted pins will pan out, he also said they could ensure promoted content would be:

• Tasteful. No flashy banners or pop-up ads.
• Transparent. We'll always let you know if someone paid for what you see, or where you see it.
• Relevant. These pins should be about stuff you're actually interested in, like a delicious recipe, or a jacket that's your style.
• Improved based on your feedback. Keep letting us know what you think, and we'll keep working to make things better.

Silbermann said because this concept is in beta, "no one is paying for anything yet" and that Pinterest is going to "see how things go and, more than anything, hear what you think."

So far, feedback has been mixed. From the announcement's comments:


So what do you think about promoted pins both as a user and a marketer?

Original Article Post by Jessica Lee @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

How B2B Advertisers Can Win on Facebook, Just Like Salesforce

While many B2Bs focus on Facebook for organic interaction with current customers, B2Cs often look to advertising on Facebook to drive sales. But a new case study coming from Facebook's advertising unit shows positive lead gen results in a B2B social environment.

In the case study, Facebook showed Salesforce’s News Feed ad campaign exceeded goals for lead generation, yielding 3.5 times more qualified leads than the original goal with a 50 percent reduction in cost per lead from its target.

Salesforce originally approached the campaign as an experiment to see how Facebook ads could help it drive leads through a demo of its product:

In the end, the campaign drove more than 200 leads with "10 percent of those leads converting to opportunities," according to the study. After this run, Salesforce ran another Facebook advertising lead gen campaign by driving prospects to its website through ads like the following:

In addition to exceeding its goals, Salesforce saw a fan base increase of 24,000 more fans through the advertising campaign as part of an unforeseen result.

Facebook Advertising for B2Bs: Tips for Getting Started

Facebook advertising might be a new concept for B2B companies, and it could be challenging to know how to approach it. Merry Morud, social advertising director at aimClear, gave her top tips for B2B advertising on Facebook.

"Invest time upfront," Morud said. "Just like keyword research, Facebook targeting can take some time, and it should. Facebook targeting segments are an asset that you can use over and over, and use them to analyze your own community with the ad targeting tool."

Morud followed up with the following tips for B2Bs:

• Mine "interest" targeting for job titles, for example, "logistics specialist," "restaurant owner," "cardiac surgeon," "hardware engineer" and "manufacturing specialists"
• Create a custom audience. Have an email list that has never converted? Create a Facebook custom audience in "Power Editor."
• Use category and partner targeting. We love using category target, for example, "small business owner," or partner target, for example, "international business traveler," as qualifiers to our interest segments.

"Smart, focused Facebook targeting is the foundation of your success," Morud said.

What other tips did she have up her sleeve?

"Try various Facebook ad units. The traditional offsite ads found in the right column are generally more expensive than 'organic'-looking ad units. For example, Facebook is now offering News Feed ads tied to Facebook Pages to offsite content. We love these because they offer huge ad real estate in the News Feed, more characters for text copy, they tend to be cheaper than traditional right column ads, and often have better CTRs, which is great for Facebook qScore," Morud said.

"Not only will these ads get your targets to the content (or landing page) on your site, but will often garner page likes and post engagement," Morud said. "Think of the social actions as a bonus, and on-going community building and content delivery because, well, Facebook distribution of your content just ain’t what it used to be."

Morud said don’t forget to customize the landing pages you drive Facebook users to, as well.

"Users coming off social have some of the shortest attention spans. Make sure you deliver on the ad copy with the landing page. Steer away from too much content and make the lead-gen form super simple. There are a lot of affordable options out there for creating dynamic landing pages."
Her final tip?

"Understand that traffic from Facebook isn't looking for you. Qualify your audience with smart targeting, qualify the click with ad copy, and hook them on the landing page – quickly.

Original Article Post by Jessica Lee @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »

B2B Social Media: Building a Cohesive Strategy

Social media strategy for B2Bs doesn't start or stop with just having a Facebook or Twitter account. Real business strategy executed through social can pay dividends beyond just the engagement factor, to business, brand, and human impact. This was the topic of the B2B social media strategy session at SES San Francisco 2013.

B2B Versus B2C Versus Humans

Relationships are between people and not businesses, said session speaker Rebecca Tann (@rebeccatann) of Regus. So humanize your brand, go where your customers are and tell the story through customer experiences.

Speaker John Lee (@lee_john) of Webtrends agreed. Knowing the psychology of users, he said, makes marketers better at what they do. Know what drives them, and understanding that users aren't approaching corporate content on social as corporate people is key.

Your users consume your content as themselves while they're at home or taking a break from their workday. And within that same social feed, you are competing with content from the user's friends, family, and beyond.

So keep in mind that a connection happens when two parties find a common ground, Lee said. If your content only comes from a strictly professional standpoint, you're cutting your brand short on social.

Lee reinforced the idea that you shouldn't think company versus customer or brand versus potential sale. Think one-on-one human interaction. If your brand doesn't have a personality, Lee asked, what can your users connect with?

To that point, Lee said define what B2B social means to your brand. It starts really with knowing that social is a touch point, not an end point. And if social is a touch point, then the conversion is delivering a positive brand experience.

Forget Social, Think Content and Connections

Focus on delivering what your audience wants in terms of the message, said Tann. What are they interested in? Where can you find them? Offer them the content that is of value to them, and start simply with the content assets you already have within your company or site.

Lee had a slightly different take on content. If you want more shares, he said, pay attention to your user's ego. It isn't always what's being shared that matters, it's that the person was part of the sharing experience.

So quality is important, but incentives and context is, too. One example of this is when you think about the popularity of memes like the Ryan Gosling meme.

Lee then walked the audience through a case study that illustrated this concept in action. At SES New York, Webtrends launched a social campaign where they branded a few pairs of sneakers and let them loose at the conference with a unique hashtag for Twitter called #didyouseethat.


Conference goers were asked to simply snap a photo of the sneakers if they saw them in passing, and share it on Twitter with the unique campaign hashtag. They would then be entered to win airline tickets and a pair of branded shoes.

Webtrends built this campaign explicitly with no sales pitch, no lead gen capture and purely for one-on-one engagement. In 36 hours, there were 4,000 social "successes," Lee said. The cost per success was 35 cents, and the cost per lead was $5.86.

But, how did they get leads if it wasn't a lead gen campaign?

Lee said 63 percent of people volunteered their info at the Webtrends booth at SES New York because they liked the campaign so much. More than 20 percent gave their info up to three months after the show.

Tackle the Plan with Structure

Start with your business goals and objectives, Tann said, and make sure you speak the executives' language when discussing how social media impacts those goals. Then, define what success means to your business. Figure out what you want to accomplish in defined periods of times and commit to them.

Lee then laid out a five-step process for tackling a social campaign:

1. Define the objectives for the campaign. Is it branding? Lead gen?
2. Define the creative concepts. Start with what you care about as a person. Chances are other people will care about it too. Just make sure it ties in with your business and branding somehow.
3. Look at the what the user's experience will be with the campaign. Make it easy for them to participate.
4. Learn how to measure the campaign by walking through the experience as a user. Define each step and then identify every step where you can capture information. Then get granular with things like campaign IDs, so you can look in your analytics to see how people got to you. Channels like paid versus organic; tweets with photos versus tweets with videos and so on.
5. Create the content. Even thought it's "king," said Lee, content is actually the easiest part. If your concept is genuine and there is an incentive for an action, then it's easy. If you get excited about the content, other people will, too.

And when you're building a B2B social campaign, think about how you're going to support it from within, said Tann. Look at in-house versus agency and what options you have for using one or more. Think about the advertising and marketing financial impact. Examine the technical aspect and what tools you'll use to carry it out.

This aspect of social operations also includes things like social media policies, workflow, and monitoring the social activities of the business, Tann said. Set up key staff with training on how to use social media, too, to make it more accessible for everyone.

Measure, Learn, Experiment, Adapt

Measuring B2B social isn't always easy when you're thinking in terms of branding and experience. But it is doable, said Lee. He laid out a simple two-step process for measurement:

1. Differentiate between value and volume metrics. Volume is engagement like clicks, retweets, etc. Value is acquisition in B2B social. You want to acquire leads and then nurture them.
2. Define tiers of success with clear cost-per-success goals. How much did it cost to acquire that lead?

And finally, don't be afraid to experiment, said Tann. Have fun with it and take what you've learned from your audience and your tactics, and apply it to what you do moving forward. Everyone can learn from his or her mistakes; it's a healthy part of the process, so embrace them.

Original Article Post by Jessica Lee @ Search Engine Watch

Read more »