Monthly Archives: March 2014

Social Media Vs Social Networks As Marketing Strategy

Future oriented planning is a must have when you are planning to start up a business. Very few researchers make targeted goals. In such situations, two things that play in the mind are social media marketing and content marketing. While content marketing refers to the quality of briefing that you can provide for your products and services, social media just helps to gather more people and generate the prospective within them. Many times, social media is not limited to just the ‘known circle’ rather expands to unknown people who can be befriended and won over.

In the same perspective, one may also hear social media and social network at the same time. However both are completely different from each other and are the two faces of a single coin.

Social Media and Social Networks- What is their role in content marketing?

Social media plainly refers to creating strong quality content so that they can be read on and passed across different people. Social media just creates a tighter bond wherein the people interacting among each other, be it the owner or the public interact among each other. WordPress is one of the best social media used widely nowadays as here people can even leave comments and discuss on a topic as a forum and share reviews. The content even sometimes gets passed over to several other networks which increase its popularity.

Social network on the other hand is a form of social media. The term is also sometimes simplified to social media marketing which means promoting your stuffs on someone else’s website. Few best social media marketing websites are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. This type of media marketing is quite fast and gives you immediate results, sometimes within few hours.

When we already have so much of ballyhoo for social media marketing, it is sometimes a myth that only promoting your stuffs and ideas through social media will give the best possible results. The results are not up to the mark or are unexpected at times. Here is a description about how the social media marketing sometimes gets flopped.

A Case Study

For example, you have generated a website and you are trying to work hard on bringing traffic to your page. For that reason, you keep writing straight-out for long hours in a day. All you need is large number of hits on your link. The larger the numbers of page clicks are the more is the site’s eCPM (effective cost per mile). Suppose, initially your page gets 3,000 views in a single month which can even be increased by uploading the content in social media marketing portals such as Facebook or Twitter, which have several members in them who keep on hovering the mouse for long hours in ennui.

If you keep on continuing writing your content on different social networking sites, then it certainly can help you to gain more profits. On the flip side, it might also be quite irritating for many people. Ultimately, what you get is increased number of page hits. Suppose the page hits increase to 35,000 per month. Isn’t it really fascinating?

However when you look into the deeper aspects of things you may notice that while promoting you spent few extra minutes every other day. The total number of hours spent on promoting is directly proportional to the number of page hits you get. Now the irony is when you go on diving 35,000 page hits from the initial 3,000 and then divide it by the time you took for promoting, you might sense the losses.

On a conclusive note..

Initially it is super exciting to observe more traffic accumulating over your webpage, but gradually the cumulative hours you spend over internet for just promoting your content is not worth it. Sometimes the traffic generated doesn’t perform and it becomes a red ink for the time you actually spent on it and sometimes you don’t even get paid enough for the per hour work done.

Content marketing is the newest trendsetter which has helped a lot to win the prospects over. Through content media you just provide knowledge to people in their field of interest. This is also a part of social media, but much developed and fruitful. The benefits of content marketing are vast as these can be used for a combined action for posting, publishing, promoting and popularizing content, all in the same time.

Brainstorming Content Ideas In A Visual, Fast, Easy Way

Even as an “experienced” content writer nothing makes me suffer nausea quite like creating a new draft only to stare at that damn flashing cursor . If you plan to get rid of that horrifying experience, you got to be prepared with an idea every time you open a new Microsoft word to write a content- meaning you have to be flooded with ideas.

Brainstorming can be really scary and the biggest question is, where to begin with? Where to get the ideas from? This is the most common concern among marketers. To help you brainstorm some ideas, here is a little hack: the actual key to brainstorming.

Making use of brainstorming key

Before you actually get into the how-to of this ingenious tool,don’t forget to download his brainstorming spreadsheet. If you are ready to rock, let’s begin.

The tool will ideally mimic how a creative mind turns a single idea into many. How to change one topic of your content into countless ideas, here are few steps below:

Box 1: Place your initial topic in the first box

Your topic	“All about fitness”
The idea or theme you wish to write about.

This is the core idea around which you need to brainstorm. The subsequent few steps will help you frame the reference point more narrowly, so you can effortlessly come up with numerous related topics to create your article, blog posts, graphics, guides and lot more. For eg: the topic here is “all about fitness” that we wish to write about.

Box 2: Selecting the understanding level: Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced- depending on how familiar your readers are about the subject

Audience

Beginner

Intermediate

Advanced

How familiar is your audience with the topic above?

Simply drag the STAR in the section that represents your audience for which the content is envisioned. Deciding on the skill sets in important because it is obvious that an advance level reader would not be interested in the basics of a topic- distinguishing skill level helpstay focused on the piece you are creating.

Box 3: Deciding the content structure

Content structure	List	Q & A	How-to	News	Definition	Data Analysis	Why/Opinion
What exactly is your content all about and how do you plan to organize it

Content structure will help you organize the content. If you choose “list” for the first set of ideas, means you need to brainstorm on list-type of content. Your topics would be like “10 best ways to stay fit this winter” rather than “Why to get in shape this winter”. If you think you are not able to find more content this way then you could probably switch to something else and create something relevant.

Box 4: Picking the format/medium

Medium	Blog post	Slideshare	Graphic	Video	Guide/Ebook	1-Sheet	Podcast
Randomly select the medium of your content that you will physically create

The next step is to narrow down your process by specifying the format or medium that you need in the content. This can be a random selection-or something mentioned by the client. With this you do not have to decide through various types of content and stick to a single medium such as blog post, podcast or video.

Remember, some ideas lend themselves better to a particular medium than others.

Box 5: Actual time for brainstorming! Think of as many headlines possible till you run out of ideas.

With a neat and nice visual reference, you can trace down as many headings possible. When I’m short of ideas, I simply amend something in the boxes, let’s say. I switch from blog post to a podcast-brainstorm even more and will an all new focus.

Ideas	Put your ideas here. Here it will be for “All about fitness” + Beginner+ List+ Blog post=
Ideas	10 easy steps on how to get fit this winter without much effort
Write as many headings as you can? If you get stuck? Move the star to another box in step 4 to refocus	7 questions to answer when beginning your fitness regime.
	10 Beginners tip to stay fit
	10 best workout tips this winter
	5 basic terms for cardio fitness

As mentioned in the image above, use the criteria picked- a list based content offers tips of being fit for beginners- my brainstorming led me to these ideas.

Check that I focused on the standards above and took tangents from the ideas of “All above fitness”. Next time if you feel hit by an inspiration, don’t just start creating something out of the blue and rather practice this exercise instead. You will have long list of content ideas that you will never lose focus and you don’t have to spend time wasting time staring at that blinking cursor.

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Optimize Your Social Media Marketing With Free Online Tools

Digital marketing is nothing without potential visibility and if you are on the social media then you need some tools to do the job for you. Are you in search of a no nonsense tool? Do you need a way to get more productive to find time for other business related activities? Well, then you are not the only one. The popularity of assistive technology has boomed in the social media marketing and proving to be the mainstream channel for internet marketers.

With the effective participation of social media, came the tidal wave of social tools, each with its own distinguished feature. Professionals who took social marketing to an all new level needed something that was simpler and quicker.

Reasons that you should give these social marketing tools a try:

For increasing efficiency
For increasing effectiveness
For increasing productivity
Better responsiveness
For collaboration
For continuity
For increasing scale and scope
For easy execution

It is quite obvious that pros are making use of these tools to make the most out of it, so what are you waiting for?

On social media, improvement is equal to success and no matter what your service or business is; success on the web could mean bigger profit. But if you are like other social media users and not interested to spend a big amount testing these applications and software then know more about the tools that can give you great results. Though there are no free tools available that covers all the aspects of social media marketing, so a combination of specialized tools can cover everything you need for your marketing campaign.

Here are few areas that you can improve with assistive technology:

Listening– People talk on social media and you cannot control it whether you like it or not. Listening will help you structure your content into better opportunities, identify negative conversation and find ways to minified or alleviate them.
Engagement– Social media is all about interaction, the value of your content is realized through active participation. With so many online users, it is easy to lose track but the tool allow you to maintain timeliness and immediacy.
Marketing– Social media investment is all about returns. To accomplish social media marketing successfully, the contribution needs to be planned, managed, executed, optimized and reported well to deliver results.
Reporting and analytics– Whatever marketing tactic you use, it should be measurable else you will not be able to calculate your investments. Creating a meaningful data from the marketing tools is vital, and then finding correlations and planning the net step can produce positive outputs.
Influencing– Business values are created with people’s action on social media. Creating influences on attitudes, behaviors and perceptions needs to be done meticulously. Managing social media without assisting tools is like a technician without a toolbox.

Here is a list of recommended tools that you are sure to like at the very first go. And if you have any questions, yes, they are free to use, no limitations and this does not mean promotional period of free trials.

Social mention

In the first look, the tool appears low on the features. But wait!!!

Social mention is one powerful tool when it is about listening to social landscape. When you type your web domain or article title, the in-built search engine will scan the web to search mentions for your content. There are many settings and preferences to refine the search and reach specified results.

Listening of social media is not a common practice. You will have no idea of what to talk and reply unless you understand what your consumers are conversing about. Social Mention gathers information and you can use that for future marketing. So now you can create that positive impact by knowing what is being talked about your content on social media.

Postific

This is a new management tool that has hit the market. Only few months old, it has few rough edges. The platform is free and developed continuously. More tailor-made functionalities are to be added in coming weeks. It has some set features that can assist you in your social media campaign. If it is startup marketing, this particular tool is what you need.

Hootsuite

This is one of the initial social media management tools available to internet marketers and today the most popular of all. The tool has developed with time and proved to be a reliable platform. Free plans allow you to enjoy all its features and you get to enjoy a single interface that can help you integrate 5 social profiles. The tool creates and sends content across all profiles even when you have no access to internet. Another great feature is the list function. It gives you the access to create multiple communications with specified audiences and helps target a segment of particular people.

Topsy

This is an ideal search engine for shared content and social posts. This real time aggregator is good to search published content so that you can sort out the relevant one and sees its influence. The tool is the only one that gives you the access to entire data stream of Twitter. You can easily compare your visibility with your competitors and see who is being searched more.

Topsy is an ideal tool for brand reputation. You have instant access over social conversation and analyze your content that was spread among your audiences.

CircleCount

This tool will help you understand the activities on Google and offer extensive statistics on your influences and performance. You can view the profiles that are highly ranked, communities and ages and check posts that were re-shared. CircleCount is beneficial to understand your personal data and have an insight about interaction and participation on Google+.

Create your own circle and CircleCount will track it for you. You get complete information regarding your followers and profile, the performance of your posts on the web.

Whether your social media marketing is based on reputation, brand awareness, lead generation or sales, these free tools can improve your overall performance. Research carefully and see which tool suits you the best for your marketing campaign. Every tool asks for different set of skills; if done properly, you are sure to gain success on the social media.

Making Use Of Content Marketing To Drive Commerce This Year

Content marketing is expanding. According to Content Marketing Institute/marketingProfs: North America, 93% of B2B marketers are making use of content marketing. Last year October, 60% respondents said that they decided to increase spreading of content over next twelve months. 72% have already increased the number than what they have been doing in the previous year.

With so much of competition, how is an ecommerce site supposed to show up this year?

Interactivity is what you need

Content marketing is not free from critics and most of them live under the fear of sudden changes in this industry. However, any smart marketer would recognize that these critics make some important points. Sticking to content is the key but if you are caught on content writing that doesn’t take you anywhere then you content marketing expedition in the year 2014 may not reward you well.

No matter if it is a big brand buying advertorials from Forbes or adding guest posts like crazy for getting benefits on the search engine, if you practice content marketing for a short term boost on exposure and traffic, you are surely missing on the bigger aspects. If you consider newspapers to be apt for marketing then you would be sad to know that this industry is shrinking. The real situation here is interactivity that leads to great triumph on the internet. Microsoft, Yahoo and bigger brands like Google make use of the search tools and email to keep the interaction alive. Twitter, Facebook and for say Wikipedia are doing well are popular because of interactive community that they have made.

Conclusion here is: You use content marketing to attract audiences, but if you cannot interacting well with them, you will never generate sales.

Content is actually the king

Content has always played a key role in the marketing strategy of any website. It is the core of any website and would be also an indication of the worthiness of the website. How you can keep your website ahead of all its usual competitors is an area in which you need master upon to succeed. The fundamentals to create a successful website are same but they are often overlooked. In spite of knowing the solution to get high audience view all of us tend to ignore the potential of the matters.

Get hold of your audience:

Use Email as a media to get to your target audience. Emails still have more conversion ratio than any other way of marketing. Emails are better converted into customers and audience than social media like Facebook or Twitter. Facebook and Twitter can also be used but they are used to convey small bit sized info. To get attention of your audience it is always recommended to use Emails.

Grab attention to your audience
Emails are still better than other media for advertising
Emails have better conversion ration than other forms

Expanding you influence with every post:

Reach out to maximum audience; this is quite a tricky thing one has to be very careful to disburse its website budget among different areas to get audience attention. But it can be divided like first getting attention from email and then keep on nurturing those leads with constant updates on regular intervals.

It is necessary to bring attention to more and more number of audience
In the same way the ways to reach to audience must be decided carefully
Use Emails to covey proper information and Social medias to convey bit sized information

Being Unique is Good in 2014

Completing these both steps would not just lead you to success. This is just the half battle won. You would need to prepare a rich content to hold your audience. The field of content is not that strongly built, thus there are many scopes to lead the field by bringing up the best content to your audience. You can do it by bringing what others do not have to offer. It is easy and yet it would be the most difficult step to be implemented.

Develop a rich and quality content
Create the best first impression
You may need to put your views in a better format to put best first impression always

Conclusion: It is to no surprize that content marketing has changed and continuing to do so. Only content won’t do, if you are looking for some active audiences, interaction is the key. You need your audiences to stick to you and not just attract them for once, constant communication is a must. Boost your exposure on the social media and be unique about everything you are doing. Unique content can make you a brand name and offers you the most valuable presence online.

Google’s Matt Cuts On Relevance Of Backlinks On Ranking

If you are aware of or studied SEO, you might have come across the term “backlink”. Every now knows the importance of backlinks on Google algorithm and Google searches. This one of the major reasons why webmasters focus on links in their blogs and websites to manipulate its advantage. Backlinks have gained so much importance that it is now acting as the building blocks for good ranking. Webmasters ate worried and have discussed in case Google plans upon making the use of backlinks a spam and filters in our of the search results.

A recently query posted by Matt Cutts, head of search spam, answers a question posted by a webmaster.

“Hi Matt, does the big G have a version of the search engine that totally excludes any backlink relevance? I’m wondering what search would look like and am curious to try it out.

In response, Matt says that there is no version as mention in the description which is exposed in public. Google has perform some experiment internally by turning of the linkage data but the quality is quite worse.

He even said that, lot of noise and spam enters the search ranking of Google as a part of backlink building. But most of the part of backlinks brings quality and is a huge win to the search results. Google has experimented with the idea of turning of the backlink relevance, but for now it still stands to be a vital indicator that allows most topical, relevant and best search results.

Check out the video to hear Matt’s own words on the same.

Good backlinks are quite important if you are looking for high ranks n Google or be it any other search engine. Can you think of a Google search ranking where Backlinks did not matter? For us, quality backlinks make a lot of sense. Seeing that they have given so much of time and effort to fine tune this algorithm so switching it off wouldn’t be a good idea and getting low quality as results.

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