Step 1: How Can I succeed In Social Media – Social Media Goals Setting

Financial Social Media Today’s question how can I succeed in social media – Goal Setting ? The reality is, all discussion in social media happens in the open, in public, so if you make a mistake and you’re in a company that is regulated, you can cause lots of trouble for yourself and for the company. So it’s very important to go through the ten steps of success in social media.
The first step is goal setting. You should always think of what are you goals? Goal setting means success in Social Media and it will also magically let you see who other than you has succeeded in the same field and what they have done. I will give a very fast example. If you want to buy a red corvette, you will start seeing who are the people who are driving a red corvette around you.
The second thing about setting goals is that they have to be reachable and they have to be tangible, which means it [a goal] has to be small so you can achieve it in that time. So if you want to go to the moon, your goal wouldn’t be how to go to the moon, it would be how can I build a shuttle, how can I be an astronaut.
By setting small social media goals you will achieve them and succeed . I hope you get the point of how to set goals, and that will be the first step in your way to succeed in social media.

The question that we are addressing today is: what social media network should I use: Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn? The reality is that there are four major networks — there is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube. Which one should you decide to use? If you are the type of person who likes to make friends, and wants to communicate fast online, within 140 characters — that means that you don’t like to write too much — then Twitter is the social network that you should use. If you’re the kind of person who likes to communicate and write longer updates, and to be able to write a full essay or full blog post and notes to people, then Facebook is your Social Network that you shoudl use and Facebook is the largest of the networks. And if you are a business or person in business who offers services to other businesses, then LinkedIn is your social network because LinkedIn is not just for finding jobs, it is for businesses who are looking for other business providers to give service. Finally, if you are the kind of person who does not like to read, and you know there are many people who do not like to read, and you like to convey your message via a video, then YouTube is your Social Network that you shoudl use. The best of all, you have to be — and my recommendation is — you have to become very active on all networks, that is, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube because all of them together will give you an advantage over all of your competition and will give you not only a social existence and proof but give also to your website and business an SEO advantage.

Why Social Media Strategies Are a Must Today

90% of people born before the year 2000 have at least one profile on a social network. 60% of those active users are about 25 years old. These users spend at least 6.5 hours daily on a social network, compared to 1.5 [hours] on a search engine. With more than 800 million users on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the business opportunities are limitless. The advantage of being active in social media is that you can dominate the search engine result page. You can achieve better ranking for your money-making website. Social media for business is the space where you as a business would go, and establish yourself as being the expert in your domain and in your niche. This is the place where you connect with people, have a conversation, get introduced to new people, and offer solutions. Social media is the space where you connect, converse, convince and convert people into loyal clients. So diving simply into Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and using them without any proper training or knowledge, [not knowing] what are the goals and what are the strategies that you want to follow as a business, is not acceptable. It is a necessity today that you sit down with an expert in order to lay down the proper strategy that would serve your company’s goals and  your brand and your business objectives, and respect at the same time your business regulations and policies. If you want to discuss in depth your social media goals, or if you have any questions, please give us a call now and we can help you.

Social media platforms, while similar in many aspects, differ slightly in function, feature and fan base – yet these slight differences can and should majorly affect your marketing efforts.  Indeed, LinkedIn, by virtue of its difference in purpose, is actually the better platform for businesses even in comparison to the social media platform giant, Facebook. For while Facebook may be the most popular of the social media sites, is it the most effective channel for your business needs? Facebook is often viewed by many professionals primarily as a site for more personal uses, best for connecting with friends and family. In contrast, LinkedIn is often the choice for professional purposes. Such differences in purpose accordingly affect what networks you’ll be able to tap into; many experienced professionals might not be very active on Facebook, or even use it at all for their business purposes.   Moreover, the users that LinkedIn attracts are ones with the focused professional purpose of networking with other B2B companies and like-minded individuals.

Between the two networking sites there are many similarities. Both offer versions of business community platforms, known as ‘Fan Pages’ on Facebook and ‘Companies Pages’ on LinkedIn; these respective platforms allow user interaction, whether through wall postings (Fan Pages) or company recommendations and comments (Companies Pages). Both platforms also allow users to see who else among their friends or network is either ‘liking’ pages or making ‘recommendations’. However, for the serious B2B professional or company, LinkedIn strides ahead of Facebook to provide a wider range of business possibilities.

Community Building and Networking: Due to the professional atmosphere of LinkedIn, those who will end up following your LI pages will be professionals whose business interests and goals will be relevant to those of your company. The option for these professionals to recommend services or products further increases the value of their connection to you.  Facebook’s ‘Like’ option gives you followers, but on LinkedIn you can amass followers who have a more specific, professional interest or relevancy to your company.

Content Control and Community Management: LinkedIn Groups offer moderation tools to help control content, with specifics on what can and cannot be posted. These moderating features are simply not present within the Facebook settings, preventing companies from effectively managing their pages. While options for Group Admins are easily accessed in LI groups, such as managing members, Facebook page administrators do not have such options readily available. These moderating features are necessary for maintaining a focused hold on page content.

Increased Presence: LinkedIn has recently changed their group settings, allowing for previously private groups, where only members could view content, to be accessed and viewed publicly. There is even the option for public-only groups, which instantly allows for increased online presence, visibility, and user interaction. By allowing their Groups to be public, LinkedIn has succeeded in evening out the advantage that Facebook Fan Pages, by always being public, had had over their Groups.

Increased Engagement: Where Facebook user discussion and interaction is stilted by character limitations in status updates, LI Groups offer more options, and more space, for users to engage with each other and your brand. Even more importantly, Groups provide an option of daily or weekly (depending on the user’s preference) digests, allowing users to see and interact with ongoing discussions over email. Facebook Fan Pages do not allow this option of digests or newsletters; interaction and engagement is thus severely limited in comparison to LI Groups.

If you’re looking to increase your business opportunities and connect with other professionals, you must look beyond Facebook and consider LinkedIn.  More and more professionals  are realizing the clear advantages that LinkedIn provides for networking and business relationships, particularly for the B2B company.  While maintaining a presence on both Facebook is a great way to access certain social media channels, consider adding to that a presence on LinkedIn, and take advantage of the great business opportunities it can offer to you. As it has for many others, it may just turn into your preferred option for social media networking.

LinkedIn Groups give users the opportunity to connect with other like-minded professionals or companies. Depending on the size of the group, as a member, you may have the ability to connect with hundreds to thousands of these individuals, without the hassle of a mass contact email list— in becoming a member of a group, you are able to send email and invites directly to other members, and can forego the need to acquire their email addresses. This feature which facilitates smooth communication is just one of the benefits of joining LI Groups; whatever your other reasons, the singular most important reason to join up is to increase your visibility in your professional business and interest networks.

No doubt you’ll want to plunge right in to these networking opportunities, but it can be difficult to determine exactly what groups to join. LinkedIn allows you to join a maximum of 50 groups, and you’ll want to be sure the groups you choose sync up with your branding strategy. Here are a few tips on joining up and maintaining your presence in LI groups.

Use Group Search: This is a simple yet effective way of narrowing down your options, and helping you find Groups well-suited to your wants and needs. In the Group Search text box, enter keywords which describe your skill sets and interests; LinkedIn will then immediately list the most popular and active groups that match up to your search, making it quick and easy (and painless!) to find groups right for you.

Exactly which keywords should you use? This question is best answered by identifying your own networking objectives, and asking yourself who you would like to reach and why. Once you identify these, you will be better able to target appropriate groups, join up, and start connecting.

Monitor Membership: Check up on group membership every month, as membership numbers fluctuate – you’ll want to be sure that your membership within a respective group is still in keeping with your particular purposes and networking strategies.  As you increase your visibility on LinkedIn, you may find over time that you no longer need, desire or match up with your previous groups; you may also find that membership has dwindled or altered so as to no longer suit your needs. As your objectives may change, so must your membership. New groups will pop up that will often better suit your networking goals; constant reevaluation of your objectives and consequently, your group membership, will help you maintain an active and relevant LinkedIn presence, and get the most out of your groups.

what is double indented listings

Recently we started noticing double indented listings when searching Google. A two indented listings i s a none indented search result for a domain followed by two indented search results related to the same domain.
For example if you search “fadisemaan.com” you will notice that a 3 listings will show up in in the search result  page.

what does that mean?

Double indented listings mean that you have 3 listing results on a page 1 of Google related to your domain, which means a position 1 listing will occupy most of the space above the fold which will translates into:

• achieving market dominance easily over your competition.
• increasing the number of clicks on your listing over competition

The most interesting aspect of this phenomenon is that  Google does not count the two indented listing as three results on the page but as one i.e. on the result page there will be a total of 12 results listed not 10.

We are not going to discuss the criteria s to get double indented listings because we are not sure if it is here to remain . Only time will tell and when it will become a fact we will discuss how to achieve it.

How Is Double indented listing is different from Single indented listing ?

Single indented listing is very well known and has been around for few years, Google and Yahoo do indent listings but not Bing. Single indented listing happens when you have two indexed pages of your website are related to a same keyword. Google treats single indented listing as a result so on a search results page you will have a total of 10 listings among which you have two, while in the case of double indented listings you will have a total of 12 results on the search result page among which 3 are yours.

whatever is the case if you achieved single indented listing or a double indented listing it is all good news for your website,  since you are taking more real estate on a SERP and you are getting more attention from the prospects who are using Google .

If you want to know more about SEO visit us at our SEO toronto site and drop us an email .

In the war of inbound outbound  links between Search Engine and black hat SEO many facts get twisted or covered . Every day black hat link sellers guarantee you how safe they are but are they ?

outbound links and inbound links Facts:

1. Search Engines can Identify 2-way and 3-way links ( 3 websites linking to each other)
2. Search Engines Adjust the weight of those links or even remove them
3. An inbound link weights can depend on the type of link, the source, the target, the age of the link, or any combination of things
4. Search Engines can spot most types of paid links, they engines can run queries that you can’t
5. They have access to much more data than you and they have more people working for them then you
6. Google is known to filter by source  and then  remove a websites ability to pass reputation , Page Rank and authority through outbound links

Next time when you consider buying links or using some questionable techniques keep in  mind that Spam and black hat are a cost and nuisances to Google , so it is  cheaper for them to eliminate you than to research your questionable practices.

In our series of reviews of social media follower applications, we have tested in the last few weeks Catfood follower. Our testing result in good results, but are we convinced that Catfood is a good alternative to Hummingbird? Should we be satisfied by the Zero cost social media  software and dump the $200 software?

Our testing of Catfood showed that the application installation and setting was very simple.

With couple of clicks you can test your setup results or run live. At every attempt the software successfully auto-follow all those who already followed you and unfollow those who id not follow you within certain time frame.

Advantage of Catfoof:

1. Catfood is a desktop application which is a plus, you control when to run your follow and un-follow
2. It is for free ZERO dollar

Catfood Disadvantage:

1. When we tried to run Catfood with a Twitter account larger than 10000 followers it failed every time.
2. When We tried to run the application with two twitter accounts of small to medium size ( less than 3000 followers), Catfood only completed the task of the smaller account.
3. Catfood if passive when it come to follow. You cannot follow people who did not follow you already

After our review we give Catfood a passing grade , but if you decide to use it , you have to understand that you have to do you new following manually. Hummingbird on the other will allow you to initiate new friendships (new followers) at a large scale by a simple click of a button which gives it an edge over Catfood.

When I posted the last article about Twitter’s policy of suspending people who do mass follow and un-follow, I received an overwhelming response from readers. The largest response regarded the use of automated applications, especially Hummingbird.  Comments regarding Hummingbird were mostly attacks on the software for being a commercial product which sells for $200 compared to other products that are free. Unfortunately, we did not find any other real technical reasons that would support these attacks.
Is it fair for people to trash a business just because it is not giving something away for free? Should I start giving away my custom web design and my custom SEO for free?

Does Hummingbird work?

Our testing showed that with one click on a specific person’s “Followers” or “Following” tabs, you can follow as many people as you want. Similarly, if you click on your own “Following” tab (the people you are currently following), you can identify and unfollow the people who are not following you in return. You can unfollow as many as you wish.  You can also protect some people from being unfollowed by classifying them as VIP. These are the major features of the software.

Major advantages:

1. It is very user friendly, nothing to guess – just click and watch it work.
2. Their support team is always responsive and present. They treat their clients like gems and that is a great sign of a good business. They answered every question we had when we  inquired about their product for this article.
3. If you are willing to get your hands wet, you can reset the configuration file to slow your following rate to a stealth mode.
4. Future development of the software is working toward fulfilling user’s wish lists, including keyword search, auto follows and following limits.
5. The cost of the software is a one-time fee, includes lifetime updates and every user we asked said that the software saved them so much time that it was worth the price.

Major issues:

1. Most users of Hummingbird complained that it does not stop following unless if you stop it manually. Mesiab Labs sources clarified that a limit can be set by resetting the time variable in the configuration file.
2. You have to be always present during a follow process or else you will run into your twitter follow limits and you will be unable to follow people for few hours.

Based on Mesiab Lab’s present success, and the direction their new version is taking, we believe that Hummingbird will continue to be a great success.  We love the easy to use functionality and the flexibility that they are adding to their newer Version 2.

We understand in this world there are those who are willing to pay for a premium service and others who will only beg for  freebies. Fortunately to our country, there are enough businesses and people who are willing to pay for good products and services. They keep this economy growing and businesses rolling. I cannot imagine what will happen if we all gave away our services for free – we would starve.

Finally, we do not find that the price-based attacks on Mesiab Lab’s ‘Hummingbird” are justifiable.

Stay tuned for the evaluation of CatFood, Tweet Manager and SocialToo.

Some entrepreneurs believe that their limited knowledge of the market, of the potential client and a few SEO rules is enough to label themselves as a SEO Guru. They call themselves SEO copywriters and engage in writing their website content. They spend a few hours borrowing content from some other similar websites and finalize the process by sprinkling keywords randomly into their content. Finally they wait and hope for the best.

Unfortunately, the end result is not what they expect. Even though their website might rank high for their keywords, the traffic does not come in. Why?

Keyword Optimization Major Mistakes:

1. Using keywords that you think are popular without doing the research to verify that there is enough search volume to support your sales and also minimal competition that can chew at your profits.
2. Using technical keywords that are not known or used by the common web surfer. For example, using the term “subluxation” instead of “joint fusion” will attract chiropractic practitioners who are your competition rather than potential patients.
3. Spreading keywords throughout the content without knowing the importance of placement and the relationship between content, keywords and ranking.
4. Spamming the search engine because someone said you need to repeat keywords to rank higher. Such a behavior might send your website to the Google sandbox.

How to avoid the mistakes above:

1. Use proper tools to search keyword volume. A keyword that has no volume will not bring leads to your website. Among the tools that we use is Word Tracker’s Keyword Discovery.
2. Analyze the results and take advantage of keywords that have not been exploited by your competition. It is easier to rank for these secondary keywords than for those that have lots of competition.
3. Avoid using technical keywords unless your website is supposed to attract professionals from your industry. If the website is offering services to people, you should use layman’s terms.
4. If you are selling a product, use “buying” keywords that tend to convert to sales rather than “researching” keywords. A “buying” keyword phrase usually contains much more detail and specifics about your product. It drives less traffic, but it converts well, i.e.,  a surfer searching for “custom flash website design in Toronto” is much more likely to buy than someone who searches for “web design.”
   
5. Hire a professional SEO copywriter, one who will do keyword research, analyze the keyword volume as well as competition, and then write your content.

By following the steps above, you will have better luck with your website SEO and you will be able to bring in more targeted traffic that will increase your business.