Why?

 

Well, it is frequently said that social media marketing has been a great added quality to traditional SEO done on your web site. Yet, it does not replace a good SEO work.

 

Knowing a few secrets about social media and social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, you will have the opportunity to take advantage of including your web site in a viral market through the “buzz” that can be created. Additionally, you can actually create a conversation with your target audience.

 

But, first you have to define who your target audience exactly is, then you have to look into what is being looked up in search engines, and finally plan how your website can provide your target market the useful information they need.

 

Now, generate some buzz and traffic!

 

It can help you to build credibility and improve your reputation or image in the market. In addition, through your participation in social media marketing and your social networks it may increase the sales of your products and services directly or indirectly.

 

But, of course, it’s not the same for every kind of business model! The more dependent you are on the traffic or ad impressions your site has, social media marketing could be more important and powerful for your business.

Micro-blogging platforms may be useful for people looking into optimizing their sites for search engines. An important benefit that you have when you use Twitters containing Keyword the Traffic this can send to your website, particularly since it allows for embedding links in tweets. Furthermore, Twitter can help you raise your SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

Exchanging Twitters with friends and customers to help promote your business with messages of 140 characters or less. Posts should sound natural and simple without keywords all over. Results can be shared and therefore a process for many social media sites can be built.

Don’t spam! Be authentic and transparent. Use different techniques and test which methods work best, it can be URLs in your twitters, keywords within these URLs, etc.

Last but not least, try helping others; don’t try to simply sell a service or product. When you help people, they will not just visit your site, but you should thank them too. Respond quick to people’s questions, the day after maybe just too late.

If not, you should!

Online Video may be an interesting way to implement your online marketing campaign and may strengthen your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) too. Why?

Well, in first place Google Universal Search has upgraded its searches, so they work with Organic SEO techniques. Searches can be narrowed down through different criteria and enabling users to choose different views with, Web sites, forums, videos, reviews or images. Therefore, now more than ever Online Marketing gives businesses a chance to do better in search engines.

Additionally, it is important to know that early this year 72% of US Internet users watched video clips monthly which makes video bigger than blogging or social networking, said the study “The Global Web Index”  from Trendstream and conducted by Lightspeed Research.

How to start?

• Define your target audience.
• Define your objectives.
• Think about that your target audience wants to watch.
• Include videos in your Web site that respond to those steps.
• Produce and broadcast online video blogs related to your Web site, your business, your products in a creative way with an embedding code.

Keep in mind that Nielsen Online reported that there were almost 117 million US online video viewers in April 2009. Proportionally online video is as used as network TV in the US!

What are some of the benefits?

• Videos reach larger audiences in an entertaining way.
• The video are easier to share.
• The video can be embedded and posted on weblogs, Web sites, social networking sites, among others increasing the buzz.
• The video viewers may find subjects of their interest in them and become potential customers.

The team of Weboart can offers website design and SEO techniques to ensure that you get good ranking in search engines and increase the traffic to your Web sites. Our belief that our customers should have reliable support from us, is taking us to the next level of reliability in result-oriented service. If you need any help, just call us today at 1-800-932-2580.

Source:
How People Share Online Video

Global Web Index

This possibility of having the world in our hands calls millions of users to the web all the time. All we have to do is catch their attention with an effective social media strategy.

• Be present. Have an attractive blog with useful information for your costumers. Update it constantly, divide it by sections, have a news supplier with everything it has to do with your business. Have diverse social networks accounts (like Facebook or MySpace), and never let them rust. Be aware and participate on micro-blogging applications like Twitter, where you can make quick advertisements about you and learn about others.

• Be promoter. Make your audience comment and participate. That’s what social media is about. Create discussion boards; give your customers the opportunity to express themselves.

• Be creative. According to your brand concept organize original expression forums with video, photo and audiovisual material sharing. Surprise your users anytime!

• Be thorough. Tag everything; you never know what about your firm and philosophy can call someone’s attention. Use social bookmarking!

• Be innovative. Look for the new possibilities of advertisement that social media offers and use the best ones for your brand concept. Choose something your competitors haven’t even imagined. Mix digital potential with brand awareness.

• Be fun. Remember users are just a click away. You can lose them as easy as you got them if you’re not interesting enough. Get to know your costumers’ likings and combine them with information about your firm to make your strategy attractive to your target. Remember social media is primarily about friends and community; align your business plan with your people and your social media ideas. (Collings, 2009)

But the most important thing about an effective social media strategy is to really want to do it and dare! If you don’t know how or where to start, we are the experts. Call us today at 1-800-932-2580 and we’ll be pleased to make your strategy a hit!

Sources:

• OREILLY, T. (2007, First Quarter). What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. Communications & Strategies, No. 1, p. 17.
• COLLINGS, O. (2009, March 6). All that Twitters… B&T Magazine, 59(2686), 8-8. Retrieved June 18, 2009, from Business Source Premier database.

When interacting online, it’s easy to forget we’re actually treating with people from all over the world; this situation makes us liable to commit, without meaning, some social blunders that could offend or disturb other users. This possibly innocent misbehavior could create a negative idea about us in the other users’ conception.

Some tips for international netiquette to bear in mind:

• Keep it human. Always remember there’s a person behind the user contact icon. Not to be rude or unnatural seems obvious in real life, but it often happens in cyberspace. Think if you would say the same thing to a person’s face. Be organic, there’s no need to sound like a robot!

• Characters talk. Writing is one of the most common ways of communicating online. CAPS LETTERS LOOK AS IF YOU’RE SHOUTING. Emotions are easily expressed by faces , but use them sparingly. Asterisks are used to rectify meaning (*). If you want to emphasize something, _use underscores for underlining_. And ever more important: no matter who will read it, watch out with orthography!

• Render onto Caesar. Always give credit to your source of information if there’s any. Respect others’ ideas and quote them. It’s an ethical issue; it will make you look wiser than just posting information as it fell from the sky!
Pay when you’re supposed to. Rarely is the information expensive online, but it serves to encourage qualified web materials. That benefits everyone on the long-term.

• Remain short and simple. Don’t saturate your e-mails with complicated subjects, over-elaborated sentences, and long signatures. Remember the Net is all about speed and saving time and money.

Regardless of what your online activity is, if you’re hosting a web forum on politics or just commenting on a random YouTube video then netiquette is your way to express respect and politesse. Use it in your favor!

Sources:

• Virginia Shea quoted on Albion.com and Seth T. Ross. (2005). The core rules of netiquette.
• RFC 1855. Netiquette Guidelines.
• Usenet News. Zen and the art of Internet.

Since its launch in 2006, it’s become a global phenomenon with celebrities, athletes, politicians and common people using it to share out updates on their status. Even Barack Obama took advantage of it including Twitter as part of the social media strategy in his presidential campaign. No wonder why companies are now turning to it as the latest way to promote their firms.

Twitter rough numbers display the network as a growing company. On February 2009, it exceeded seven million visitors; while a year earlier, that number barely reached up to 475.000. The hottest media platform is causing that much expectation that there’s even an auction place where bets are made guessing which Web giant will first buy Twitter.

Why any brand should tweet?

Web users usually get so waterlogged by digital information they just stop paying attention to advertising. Twitter forces us to say no more than the essential, so twitters are much more opened to receive messages, they’re certain it will be quick and painless. The secret for a firm to succeed twitting is to have interesting posts.

This social networking and micro-blogging service can be used by companies to post their updates such as promotions, discount codes, new product launches, sales, corporate information, links to other kinds of media.

Due to its real-time running, Twitter is also appropriate to spread an idea or collect fresh information about the consumers’ interests, expectations and thoughts.

In spite of all the good reasons to use Twitter for advertising, it is extremely important to set it in a clear social media strategy framework. This social networking site offers a chance to reach consumers easily and quickly, but the tricky thing is to engage them. If you’re already thinking how to do so, call us today and get the twitting started!

Also check us out on Twitter!

Sources

McCARTHY, C. (2009, March 19). Nielsen: Twitter’s growing really, really, really, really fast. Cnet News.

COLLINGS, O. (2009, March 6). All that Twitters… B&T Magazine, 59(2686), 8-8. Retrieved June 18, 2009, from Business Source Premier database.

Why? Thanks to social media is much easier to promote your start-up with a low budget for advertising.

Do you think that social media is important for your business? What you can do to be more visible, but you don’t have time for this?

There are a lot of aspects of social media. If you want to become social and get exposure, you can blog, post a video on YouTube, have a podcast or just start connecting with your peers on LinkedIn. Doing so, you can:

• Connect with people, build a dialogue and new business opportunities
• look for investors and attract them
• promote your business and increase your sales
• Build brand awareness
• Increase loyalty and trust with your stakeholders
• Create inbound links to raise your search engine ranking
• Build a transparent online personality that reflects who you are
• You can even find:
  • interest-focused groups
  • potential collaborators
  • valuable employees
  • more customers and clients

In addition, when companies utilize social media during the construction process of their Web sites, they are likely to find it easier to engage visitors.

One more idea. Start-ups are using not only video and blogs, but also Twitter and Facebook. When using social networking sites or micro-blogging, try connecting with quality audiences. Do not only connect with Facebook and Tweeter users that have a lot of friends or followers, respectively.

Then, don’t forget to listen to your customers and respond quickly to them. Social media has a lot of opportunities that you can’t get anywhere else.

Sources

Social media will change your business

Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don’ts of Sharing

Is social media important for Startups?

Too Busy for Social Media Marketing?

Interestingly, 150,000 tweets that named brands were analyzed by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and they have found that:

• About 50% of tweets were just comments. This means that they simply mentioned a brand, but the focus was something else.
• 18.1% of tweets about brands provided information.
• 11.1% of tweets about brands looked for information.
• 22.3% of tweets about brands expressed either a positive or negative opinion on the brand.

Fortunately, users are more likely to communicate positive opinions instead of negative ones. The study showed that:

• More than 52% of tweets that expressed opinions were GREAT or SWELL!
• But, 33% were critical of the company or its products.

Increasing word-of-mouth, customer loyalty and brand awareness are the top business objectives of online communities, according to a study conducted by Deloitte, Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research. In this sense, Twitter seems to provide all the necessary tools to accomplish these goals.
Call our Los Angeles Web design team at 1-800-932-2580 and know more about Twitter for Business.

Sources:

Twitter Power: Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth

Penn State Live. Tweeting is more than just self-expression

Twitter acting as ‘word-of-mouth publicity’ medium

Information Ahead of Opinion on Twitter

We all understand Business Networking as the process of building a chain of people with the same commercial interests looking for a mutual beneficial relationship. Not that long time ago, business cards used to be the main symbol of Business Networking. Nevertheless, the Net has totally changed the way we communicate and this way of building business relations is not the exception. Business Networks online are getting more and more popular in the market world.

We never know what serendipity will become a business opportunity; more contacts we have, more possibilities will be waiting to happen. The viral power of Internet makes this idea a huge weapon of business expansion.

In Business Networks online, members invite friends and friends of friends, so your contact network will grow geometrically.

The most popular Businetworks is definitely LinkedIn with more than 40 million people in 200 countries. It’s massive and has lots of interesting groups to join! It focuses more on individuals than in business itself therefore is the place for personal-brands to be.

StartUpNation has, beyond the social thing, a very large amount of free articles, suggestions, forums and practical ways to find useful information related to business and problem solving.

This kind of sites are getting more and more popular, new stars in the sky like BizNik or LoopDesk are appearing, the latter was launched in May and has now members in 30 states of the U.S. and 10 different countries. They know the growing will keep on going and offer a free year membership.

Brandon Beck, the CEO founder of LoopDesk, gives us some tips to be successful on business networking online:

• Connect to members and recommend others, encourage people to connect with you and start creating relationships and reputation.
• Find service providers and list yourself in classified lists for immediate exposure. Through your profile, share everything you can offer to other members.
• Find face-to-face networking groups, connect and grow with local members.
• Ask, discuss, share knowledge.
• List all your different business to a bigger worldwide exposure.

While you’re connected, be there! Answer, participate, keep in touch with people; that’s what online networking is about. You don’t shake-hands-and-exchange-cards anymore, but it’s not enough to just have a profile, reach out and look for an online hand to receive your Web contact.

Sources:

• Ivan Misner (2008). What is Business Networking, anyway?
• Craig M. Jamieson (2009, July 8). Four Business-Social Networking Sites Worth Visiting.
• Buzzy Gordon (2009). Effective Networking for Busy People. Think you don’t have time to network? Think again.

According to Mario Cuomo, a general attorney, the social networking site Tagged.com has stolen the identities of over 60 million users by raiding contact lists from their private accounts. On the other hand, Twitter’s confirmed that one of their employees had been hacked and stolen confidential documents, financial information, projections and plans. The criminal did it by just entering the employees email account. Imagine that if this happens among Social Networks creators, then nobody is safe!

There are several scams you can avoid in order to avoid the enormous risks of being part of the Social Network community. Let’s see!

1) Fake identity

As creating a profile on a Social Network is really easy, hackers and criminals frequently use it as an opportunity to attack. Have you heard the scam about the Russian girl who wants to visit America or the Nigerian fraudsters pretending to be White Knights? Believe it or not, these are common strategies by which online criminals can steal your money. So, keep your heart issues the old way and never send money to strangers!

The best way by which you can protect yourself from evil fake online characters is just by using your common sense. Check your new friends and please do not meet with them unless you are completely sure or their intentions. And NEVER send them money!

2) Profile Hacking

Hackers can also sneak into existing profiles. Your own identity may be at risk as too! So, monitor search engines —especially Google— to make sure that your name and pictures are not being used by another person. Sometimes, hackers do this just to fool around and mess your profile. But, they can install invisible codes which they can use for evil purposes.

Make sure your passwords are strong enough and change them every month! If you suspect that someone is entering your profile inform the site’s operator as soon as possible. If things get worse and you are being threatened, then call the policies or authorities who can help you!

3) Malware

Even though Social Networks may seem to be non-profitable and trustworthy Web sites, one of their main objectives is to make a lot of money through advertisement revenues. That is one of the reason they are constantly upgrading in terms of functionality and appearance.

How many application invitations such as calendars, quizzes, and animations do you receive per day?  Well, by adding them you are giving cyber criminals the opportunity of spreading malware and viruses into your profile or computer. The fact that an application or request appears under the name of a well-known business or organization does not guarantee safety!

So, the best thing you can do is to have the latest versions of anti-viruses which fight malware and to make sure that you are constantly updating them!

4) Identity Theft

This is getting even worse… At least 8.4 million people in the U.S. had their identities stolen last year. Cyber criminals can not only mess with your profile, but also steal your identity! Most profile pages contain personal data such as address, telephone or credit card numbers, etc. This information can be use by them to get to know more about you. They can use your credit cards, do fake kidnappings, and even lead you and your family to bankruptcy!

So, put a limit to the amount of information you include in your profiles. There’s no need to include all your personal data. Also, make sure you don’t enter unknown links; because it is a common way hackers use to get to know more about you.

5) Spam

You probably receive many emails from friends and relatives who denied they have ever typed them. Others can receive spam emails from you as well. If that’s the case, then a malicious code had been installed into your social network profile.

As information is really easy to obtain, Social Networks contribute to spam purposes. As we said before, limit the amount of data you include in your profile.

We cannot deny the central role Social Networks have inside the Internet world. The idea is not to avoid their use, just because you can’t stay away of the online trends… but, it’s crucial to increase safety and protection measures in order to reduce cyber crimes. Be smart enough and take the necessary time and precautions! As mentioned before, there are simple ways by which you can feel safer online. If cyber socialization is the trend, then the cyber security must rule!

Sources:

• 5 Facebook, Twitter scams to avoid
• 60 Million Victims of Social Networking Scam
• 5 types of Social Network scams
• Twitter Hacker, confidential documents stolen