SEO for Smarter Social Media

Social media and SEO may not look like brothers in arms, but they cannot succeed without each other either. While social media stimulates off-site conversation and interaction with your customers, SEO aims to pull traffic to your website. However, these two marketing disciplines have more in common than you may think. A recent article in presented a nice summary of the intersections. Here’s a summary:

• Social media is all about generating interesting content to share with social audiences. As this content is shared, distributed, and discussed on forums, it creates linking opportunities. The quality and quantity of these links can have a big impact on your SEO
• Social media can help you draw traffic to your website for less competitive keywords.
• Social media users tend to search for terms that are lower in the sales funnel. You can use this knowledge to optimize your PPC spend.
• Social media can offer deep insights into search terms that are popular and useful to your audience right now. This kind of real-time optimization can be rich dividends on SEO.
  

At the end of the day, we have to stop thinking of search and social media as two separate marketing silos. Just as online advertising may affect the in-store customer experience, social media impacts brand awareness and SEO in online marketing. It is essential for marketers to integrate SEO and social media in the right way to leverage greater benefits.

Packing the Social Punch to Search

The fine line between search and social media marketing is fading rapidly. Marketers are now toggling between Google, Facebook, and Twitter to find deals, connect with brands, and start the purchase process. Here’s how you can unite the search and social power for greater marketing results.

Multiple Agencies are the Key to Social Marketing Success

Interactive marketers need agencies to keep them ahead of the social marketing curve, reveals a new Forrester research. The interactive marketers have a wide range of responsibilities and multiple agencies help them cover a wide range of services including creative, Web development, search marketing, and social media. Read More

Social Media is the Buzz Word for Marketing Future- Forbes Summit

As we get ready to usher in a new marketing era, CMOs are piling more resources behind their social marketing efforts. No wonder then the buzz word during the recent Forbes CMO Summit was social media. Discussions during the summit revealed that marketers now recognize that social marketing affects nearly all forms of digital marketing, and what they need now is an umbrella strategy that covers all of e-mail, advertising, search and Web marketing.  Here are some suggestions that emerged out of the summit for devising a comprehensive marketing strategy. Read More.

The Synergy of Search and Social Media

A new market research has indicated that the synergy of social media and search campaigns can yield results that are a sheer marketing pleasure. The report provides evidence to believe that search campaigns gain a lift of over 19-percentage-points for a product when its paid search advertisements are supported with a mention of brand across social media channels.
Read more

Time spent on social networking up 3-times

Social media is at its all time high with over 17 percent Internet time being spent on social networking and blogging. A report by the Nielsen Company suggests that the time spent on social networking has gone up by 3-times within a year’s time. Jon Gibs, Vice President, Media and Agency Insights, Nielsen’s Online Division feels that though video and text content remain the focal point of the Web experience, the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the growth of social networks. Read the report here.

Introducing Google Sidewiki: A Boon for Marketers

What is Google Sidewiki?

Google Sidewiki is the latest Google offering that can be developed into a potential touch point between marketers and customers. This Google toolbar application enables you to put in helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. Anyone who uses the FREE Google toolbar with Sidewiki enabled can use this application. You can also download this application from the following URL:

http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/install.html

How Can Marketers Leverage it?

By writing Sidewiki entries that are informative and relevant, marketers can leverage the space for interacting with their customers and prospects. Moreover, since Sidewiki allows visitors to submit their comments, it becomes an excellent platform for promoting a service or products and gaining feedback at the same time! In addition, the Sidewiki space can also be used for guiding visitors about your website, upcoming events/offers, industry trends and much more.  Another advantage is that the comments or information that you share vie Sidewiki can be directly promoted through Twitter and Facebook.  The way you use Sidewiki would vary with the type of website or blog you have, however, the application certainly presents a unique opportunity for interacting with your audiences directly from your websites.

How Add Google Sidewiki to a Website?

Here are a few simple steps that would guide you through the process of    adding Google Sidewiki to your website:

Install the latest Google Toolbar with Google Sidewiki. The tool bar would look something like this: Visit your website or the web page where you want to run Google Sidewiki.

Ensure that Google Sidewiki is turned on in the Google Toolbar. You then need to log in to your Google account to be able to see the Google Wiki sidebar on the left side of your web browser.After signing in, you will see the name of your site, as well as the field to “Edit your name”. You can modify your display settings or add relevant keywords etc. here if you wish to.

Next, you make an entry about what ever information you wish to share  with your audiences and click the Publish button.

The entry can now be seen on your website.

From instigating discussions, to prompting offers, marketers can utilize the Google Sidewiki space in multiple forms to spur interaction with their audiences directly from the website. The application promises not only increased web traffic, but also ensures multi pronged benefits for marketers.

Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is an integral part of all social media campaigns. Social bookmarking allows you to save and organize web pages by using popular tabs or meta data.  Raging popularity, ease of use and low cost has made social bookmarking a sought after marketing metier. Here’s a collection of top 20 popular social bookmarking sites that you can consider for promoting your business across social media.

Twitter

Digg

StumbleUpon

RedditYahoo! buzz

Del.icio.us

Mixx

Technorati

Propeller

Twine