When it comes to the wonderful world of search engine optimization (SEO), one thing always holds true: you never know what to expect next. If you are going to achieve success in this area of your business, you need to be flexible enough to roll with the punches.
Peg McDermott
When it comes to the wonderful world of SEO, there is no shortage of information and advice. That being said, there is something you need to know: relying on the wrong info could point your web property in the wrong direction.
Are you interested in becoming more active with social media? Do you have questions about how to get started or how to take your strategy to the next level? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you are not alone. Despite the fact that social media marketing has taken off over the past few years, there are millions of organizations that have yet to get involved.
With Halloween quickly approaching, you may have been caught off-guard when it comes to taking advantage of the marketing opportunities in the year's spookiest holiday. No need to be afraid, though - there are still a few things you can do this week to capture the attention of your audience (and hopefully not scare them away!).
When you first start using social media to reach out to your audience, usually one particular social network stands out as being right for your business. For some businesses, Facebook seems like a natural choice; for others, it may be Twitter or Pinterest or another social media site.
Now that we're heading into the third week of the government shutdown, businesses across the country are affected to varying degrees. Obviously those business owners with direct governmental ties, for example those with government contracts, are affected the most, but the longer the shutdown continues, the further down the effects trickle.
All businesses with an online presence are trying to achieve the same basic goal - getting the largest possible captive audience so that the highest possible percentage of that audience will become (and remain) customers. Search engine optimization is one of the key ways to achieve this, because search engines are generally the first stop for people who are looking to purchase something or solve a problem. As such, the quest to rank high for particular search terms has become both an art and a science, with new techniques for optimization continually surfacing.
Facebook and Twitter are always there. You can pop in and check your accounts, disappear for a couple of weeks, and when you come back, everything is just how you left it, people carrying on the global conversation without you. What you're not seeing, however, is what your silence is costing you in followers and potential customers. Here are some reasons why it's important to stay consistently active on your social media accounts.
Most business owners know that they should have a blog on their website, but often once the blog is in place, there's some hesitation or confusion about how best to use it. Filling your blog with content isn't something to be done randomly - you'll want to adopt a strategy to make sure that you attract readers and, more importantly, retain them as customers.
The concept of a social media crisis is nothing new. Tales of people saying regretful things on the internet are nearly as old as the internet itself. The snag with online foot-in-mouth syndrome, however, is that unlike in real life, the things you say online continue to live on forever. Even if you delete the text in question, if someone has already drawn attention to it and reposted it, that text can still be spread around and read by countless numbers of people, long after you unsuccessfully tried to take back what you said.
If there's one thing we can always count on, it's that Facebook will keep changing things, and the most recent set of changes involves how the news feed algorithm decides what stories to show at the top of a user's feed page. Previously, the average Facebook user read 57% of the stories in their news feeds, but older content got lost in the shuffle as users failed to scroll down far enough to see the other stories.
Pinterest is one of those growing social networks that's still somehow elusive to many people. Sometimes, if the nature of your product or service isn't particularly visual, it can be difficult to see how to create boards with compelling content, and to build a following for those boards. If you've been having trouble getting your pinterest account to grow, here are five ways you can help get the ball rolling.