New Virtual Search Tool from Pinterest

There’s something new in Pinterest, and it is called the Visual Search Tool. If you’re the artsy and creative type who prefer working on images instead of texts then Pinterest is one social media network that you must explore and use for marketing your business.

Pinterest is “the visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas”. As of September 18, 2015, Pinterest has over 100 million users. 30% of US social media marketers used it and its estimated value is worth $11 B. There is an overwhelming 87% Pinners who bought something because of Pinterest and this can still go higher because of the new virtual search tool.

Have you ever found yourself looking at images and find some objects in that image particularly interesting? Have you often wished that you could just zoom in on that particular object and be able to search for similar objects, patterns, designs and even colors on Pinterest? The new visual search tool allows you to do that.

So what is this new visual search tool from Pinterest?

According to Pinterest, the new visual search tool allows the pinner to zoom in on a particular object on the pin to get similar images (including patterns, designs and colors) from other pins. This is particularly helpful especially when you want to get similar images immediately.

Pinterest knows how frustrating it could be if you find something you like, and you do not even know the name of that object.

With Pinterest’s zoom capabilities, you can close into the desired object.  In this example that Pinterest has given in their own blog, the pin is an image of a dining/living room. When zoomed in on the lamp, it will give you visually similar results including the name of the object you have selected (in this case, the lamp) and where you can find or purchase it.

You can also do other similar searches for the other objects found inside the pin. All that you need to do is to click on your selection to produce search results.

Just like any new features from any social media sites, the new visual search tool was under intense scrutiny from the heavy users of Pinterest.

Is the new feature really necessary? Will this new feature affect the way you market your goods and services? Is it something worth checking out?

Pinterest would like to think so. The tool was developed in cooperation with USC-Berkeley  Vision and Learning Center using techniques that helps the reader finds thousand of similar images from other pins thus making searching for related images simpler for you. It also allows your reader to know where they could find the object.

For example, you found a cabinet whose design you really like but you wanted it in a different color and would love to know where you could get it. You just need to zoom in on the object and Pinterest will search for visually similar objects for you.

Based on comments from users who have already tried using the new visual search tool, one would like to know if this feature can be disabled because it “ruins the picture’s integrity”.  Another user said that this should just be an option that can be turned on when needed since it is distracting to get other images when not needed.

For a business owner, the new Pinterest Visual Search Tool is an advantage since it allows locations where the images or objects can be bought or found. You may include the physical address of your store (if you have any) or provide the link to your website that can be visible when the pinner zooms in on the object.

For the user, Pinterest should take into consideration that not all users would like to use the tool. Therefore, it would be preferable to have this feature optional only. The different social media networks are really doing a lot of changes and innovations to stay relevant. Your responsibilities as a business owner and a marketer is to use all options available for you to promote your brand.

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How To Post To Facebook And Keep Your Account Safe

Depending on how much you post on Facebook you might have noticed that they changed their algorithm yet again, they have been on a penalization spree for a couple of weeks now, setups that were working fine prior to the recent update (November 2015) stopped working and many accounts got penalized for 1 or 2 weeks.

They are constantly tuning their algorithm but I think this time they over did it. We’ve talked with a lot of clients and we’ve heard a lot and let me share some of the extreme things that happened, it really is something you should know if you want to keep your account safe while posting to Facebook.

Accounts got penalized even though they were posting manually to 5-10 groups. Yes, we also keep testing that and it happens, a few of our clients share the same stories with us as well. People that manage accounts for a lot of clients and had this happen.

We had one of our devs do a test and he received a “slow down you’re posting too fast” message from Facebook after posting to 1 (yes that’s right only one) group and that was a test group that belonged to us, so no one could have reported the post.

They also started checking the image that you use to post, people received “slow down” messages after posting the same image a couple of times, not even with a link, just text and an image. The problem wasn’t even the link of the image, we’ve tried with posting the same image hosted in several different places and the result was the same, Facebook recognized the image and took action.

Links haven’t escaped this check but, to be honest, they were there already. If you post the same link with two accounts at the same time there’s a very high chance that both will get a verification step soon. Using url shorteners doesn’t help with this as Facebook simply follows the shortened link and sees where it leads to.

As you can see they started to check a lot of points from your posts, it might sound bleak but it’s not that bad, as the more we know about this the better we can bypass their checks. This will probably trim the people spamming Facebook to death and only the ones marketing the right way and with quality posts will remain.

1. First of all, you might want to lower your expectations a little. I know, we too have been posting to 500-700 groups per day a couple a month ago, it’s simply not feasible anymore, you should concentrate more on quality rather than quantity.

For this reason we’ve recently introduced UTM parameters so you can track your traffic, if you figure out what group is actually sending you traffic and which one is a waste of time, you simply only post where it matters and ignore the rest. The days of the shotgun tactic are approaching their end, blasting as much as you can in the hope it works is no longer the way to go.

2. Try to leave no footprints in your posts, I understand sometimes this might not be possible but you should try your best. Here’s what I mean:

always use spin syntax for your text and make sure it’s a high quality manual spin not some automatic spin that will give you away, people will still read your post and can report it if it looks like spam.If you’re going to post to a lot of destinations (50+) do a spin of your link as well, instead of using just one link, make it a spin of 2-3 or even more links. As I said using an url shortner won’t work. There are a couple of thing that you can do, you can create a couple of subdomains on your main domain for example, and post the same thing there or simply redirect them to the main page or iframe your main page in the subdomain page. Just make sure the actual urls that you post are varied.A couple of people tried paying for Facebook ads and it seems this helps too, so if you have some money to spend promoting a post on  your page from time to time seems to help in case you’ve posted too much, they’ll let you get back to it soon.As I said Facebook looks at the images too so just make sure you vary your images as much as you can, we also have an extra module that will change the images you post a little, the human eye won’t see it but check from facebook and other platforms should think the images are unique. You can do this on your own as well, even if you have the same image, edit it a little a couple of times and save it, make it smaller, bigger, cut off parts of it and so on, after that use all of those in a spin if you’re hosting them somewhere.

3. In case you’re not already doing this, you should remember to have your account do other things as well, not only post to groups as that’s a dead giveaway. Set up 1-2 rss feeds from news sites or anything else you like and post on your wall, like other people’s posts, make some friends. Make your account look as human as possible.

4. Post less with one account, instead post with several accounts. Think of it like this – instead of trying to post to 400 groups with one account why not try to post to 40 groups with 10 accounts? This will spread the load and you won’t have to worry about your one account being penalized.

Just make sure you do not post with 2 or more accounts at the same time for the same link as that’s a clear giveaway, instead spread the posting over the whole day. You can set up a campaign for each account and set it so each campaign can only post during 2 hours of the day, for 10 accounts that should be 20 hours and even if you add many posts to all campaign they will never intersect.

5. Another tactic you can use is – post only clickable image links. This is especially good if you got your site banned on Facebook and cannot post that link anymore. Also it might even allow you to post links towards the same site at the same time. The settings should be done like this. Take 5 accounts for example, you should set 4-7 clickable image servers for each account and add those servers in Social Profiles – click on each account – “Show advanced profile settings” – clickable image servers.

This way each account will use its own servers. Where to get that many servers? You can get a cheap domain for each account a .info should be around $1, create a couple subdomains on it and you have the 4-7 clickable image servers you need for an account as each subdomain is treated different by Facebook.

You should also use a spin sintax for your images and host the same image in a couple different places. Someone suggested you could use an AWS S3 account which is free to host the images – haven’t tried that so it’s up to you to give it a try.

6. I know many of you are promoting your site but you might consider changing your tactic a little. Create a page for your site on Facebook. Promote that page on group using the share function. You can then funnel the traffic from that page to your site and you only have to post a link to Facebook towards your site, to your page that is, no more spamming hundreds of groups – at least not with your main link. You just be posting/sharing your Page’s link instead, which should be a little safer to do as it’s part of Facebook.

This is pretty much it, as you can see, there are many ideas you can try, some of them will require a little setup at first, that’s true, but if it were easy then everybody would do it! If you want to be successful you do need to put in a little work all that matters it that it will pay off.

If you encounter any other problems or if you have any solutions for the existing problems that I haven’t listed above be sure to add a comment below and I will update this to include everything that works.

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The Beginner’s Guide To Blab

By now you probably have heard about Blab, the latest social media platform for video conferencing with 2-4 people. So what is it? Blab is a social conferencing platform that allows anyone to run their show. It is used for recording podcasts, for coaching & teaching, for interviews, for after shows and even discussions.

Blab started out a few months ago as a simple Slack integration. It is the product of a barside brainstorming session of the team who were supposed to relaunch Bebo and who were unsatisfied with the 500k downloads. According to their own statistics, the average user spends 65 mins/daily watching blabs. Their milestones include hosting a live commentary and after-show of the 2016 Republican debate and the Spyson Hour Podcast to talk about Big Brother 17. It is initially available for desktop and IOS users.

This is a fun way to do video conferencing with up to 3 different people at the same time. Using it is pretty simple.

1.Go to www.blab.im and sign up using your Twitter account. For now, the only way to use it is to sign up using your Twitter account. No other option. Not even using your email address or other social media accounts.

2. Authorize Blab to use your account.

3. Wait for application to redirect back to Blab

4. You can start using the application either by starting a new blab, viewing, or listening to other blabs.  There are separate tabs for On Air, Scheduled and Replays. On the left side, you will see the tags commonly used in association with the blabs.

5. Customize your Blab or use your default Twitter profile. Take note though that bios in Blab are 20 characters shorter than Twitter so if you want a longer introduction to yourself or your business.

6. Watch and learn. Navigate your way through your Blab dashboard before you start one. Familiarize yourself with how it works both as an audience and a participant to someone else’s blab. That way, you can also familiarize yourself with the proper etiquette for using this platform.

1.You can start by following people so you can receive notifications when they have a new blab. You can just do a search lookup using the Twitter name or handle.

2. To start a new one, you can just click on the Purple button near your profile picture.

3. Give your blab a catchy title. For example, if  your blab is about recycling your old dress, you could use: “Ten Ways to Recycle Your Old Dress & Look Like A Million Bucks”.

4. Add three tags so people can find it quite easily. In this case, you may use- fashion, clothes, and recycling

5. Go live or schedule it to go on air at a particular date ad time.

6. As the owner of the blab, you can record it. After the airing, you  are given 2 links to  download- for your audio and your video. You can upload your video link to YouTube while you can upload the audio link as a podcast on iTunes, Libsyn or any preferred podcast host. All your blabs are also archived so you get to keep a record on your account. These recorded sessions are called replays and there are a lot of things that you cannot do like follow people, chat or send feels.

7. Treat this the way you treat your normal events. Promote it in other social media networks. You can tweet details of your blab, create a Facebook events page and post it as a status update on your other social networks.

8. Moderate your video conferences. Just like your blog or Facebook page, you need to moderate your blab. As Blab allows up to 4 participants at a time, you can allow anyone to join in once a seat or a window has been vacated during the duration of the blab.

Blab can be likened to a late night talk show with you as the host. Once a new participant arrives, the rest of the guests can take the back seat and just observe the going ons.

9. There are several commands that you need to know though the most important ones are “/Q“ for the grey question box to appear and “/Topic“, to change the topic of the conference.

10. Audience members can give their appreciation to the participants by clicking on the pair of hands which is similar to hearts and likes in other social media networks.

11. At the end of the session, the screen will show the rankings of the participants based on the number of feels (a pair of hands) they received.

In many predictions for 2016 for social media marketing and content marketing, video streaming is the way to go and what perfect timing to start working on your Blab, follow industry leaders and create a follower base than now? What’s good about video streaming is that it gives you face to face real time interaction with your participants from all parts of th globe.

This is an ideal platform for sharing your products. You can promote events, host contests and share on scene video footages.

As a business owner and as a social media marketer, it is up to you to keep track of the latest trends in social media and learn how you can use it to promote your products and services. Though it is still on its Beta version, it has already surpassed other video streaming platforms like Google Hangout, Periscope, and Meerkat in the  sense that it can allow up to 4 people to do the group video conferencing. Using it is not complicated as most of the steps are self-explanatory and very easy to follow.

An effective social media marketer knows how to take advantage of the latest trends, use it to promote her brand and stay competitive with same niche rivals. As most people live and breathe the internet, it is only fitting that you adapt to the latest trends when promoting your brand via social media. So what are you waiting for? Start using Blab for your business now.

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How to Leverage the Marketing Power of Your Facebook Cover Photo

What if I told you that you have a valuable marketing tool at your fingertips that you’re not using? And then, what if I said that it doesn’t have to cost your business anything to use? Would you jump at the chance to leverage the power of this tool?

Of course, you would.

That marketing tool, ladies and gentlemen, is your Facebook cover photo.

You may not think it does a lot for you. It’s just another branding tool after all, right? Slap your logo into place, and you’re good to go.

Wrong.

It’s a chance to drive action, to make a sale or earn a like. Here’s how you can leverage the marketing power of your Facebook cover photo.

Companies like Coca-Cola understand the value of creating intrigue on their page. They do this by getting creative and making their profile page one-of-a-kind. Here, it’s not about the cover photo itself but rather about how all the elements on the page interact with each other.

Here’s another example from Paris where the company preserves their logo in their profile picture but still makes the background look as if it’s part of the cover photo’s design.

According to Inc.com, a professional web design helps people put trust in your brand. Your Facebook page is no exception to that rule.

In many cases, your Facebook page will be the first time people interact with your brand, so it’s important that you make a good first impression.

This tactic of combining your profile and cover photo is one way to do it by creating an attractive, unified theme throughout your profile.

If you’re trying to draw “likes” to your page, your cover photo is the perfect tool to do that. By developing a clear call-to-action like this, you’re going to see more people take action than if you just had a generic picture as your cover image.

You can accomplish this in several ways:

Have a picture of someone on your team pointing to the “Like” button.Have your cover photo mention the perks of liking your page.Use other design techniques that draw the eyes to the “Like” button, such as a maze that ends there or an arrow pointing to it.

Before you jump on this tactic, however, make sure you’re pointing to the action you want people to take most. If you have a primary call-to-action button, such as “Contact Us” or “Shop Now,” you don’t want to be pointing to your “Like” button and competing against the action you really want your visitors to take. However, you can use the same concept of “pointing” to a button, but arrange your cover photo to draw the eyes to your main CTA button rather than your “Like” button.

If you’re not using this tactic, you should be. When you’re ready to launch a new product, include a picture of it as your cover photo. You might add some supportive text, especially if it’s a digital product. That way, you can entice people to learn more and sign up for your offer or purchase your new product.

To make this option more efficient, create an image that is interactive with the page. Your photo might point to your page’s call-to-action button, which you could set up to send viewers to a sign-up page for your latest eCourse, for example.

Ask yourself this:

What is the number one thing you want viewers to do once they hit your Facebook page?

If it’s to visit your website, then why not make that call-to-action clear?

Unfortunately, you can’t make your cover photo directly link up to your website. What you can do is share your web address in your cover photo to get more people to check your site out.

If you didn’t know already, you now can rearrange the tabs straight below your cover photo. To do so, click the “More” tab and then choose “Manage Tabs.” From here, you can also add custom tabs. Now, decide what offer you want to advertise, and arrange it appropriately in your tabs.

Now that you have that done create a cover photo that points to that particular tab. You can call attention to it through text, arrows, or other elements that point to the specific offer.

If you have a new coupon offer, this is an excellent tactic to make that offer known. According to Lab42, promotions and discounts are the number one reason people follow business’s Facebook pages. You’re likely to drive more traffic and “Likes” by promoting your discount prominently in your cover photo and making the coupon offer easy to redeem in your tabs.

If you don’t know what you’re doing with your cover photo, it’s best to hire a designer or to assign the task to your in-house designer. Otherwise, follow these tips to properly format your Facebook cover photo:

Design your photo at 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. This is the optimal desktop size, and with it, you won’t have to do any readjusting when you upload it.Save your file as sRGB JPG and less than 100 kb for the quickest loading power.Pay attention to where your profile picture lays. You don’t want to cover up important information behind it!

Here’s how your cover photo size breaks down:

With all of these ideas in mind, you can use your Facebook cover photo to make a huge impact on your page. Whether that’s attracting more visitors to your timeline through an attractive, clever design, or it’s getting more people to sign up for your offer with a prominent call-to-action, your cover photo can change the tune of your business’s profile.

Which one of these ideas will you test out first?

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Demystifying LinkedIn Ads

Have you tried using LinkedIn Ads?

LinkedIn ads are self-service advertising fixes that allow you to place business ads on specific pages on the LinkedIn website. You can shortlist your target audience by any of these requisites: job function, title, industry, gender, age, seniority, geography and LinkedIn group.

You can create your own budget and you only pay for the actual clicks your ads get.

With over 400 million users as of Oct. 29, 2015, you can’t go wrong with promoting your business with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the largest professional social media network available in over 200 countries and territories. Total revenue for the 3rd Quarter this year is up by 37%.

What makes LinkedIn ads great is that you do not have to enter long-term commitments to run your ads. You can stop them at any given time, and you only pay the impressions made on your ads. Ads formats on LinkedIn are pretty easy. You could either use Sponsored Updates or text and image ads.

LinkedIn is a very powerful platform to use in promoting your brand especially if it is in the B2B category. Using it is very easy even if you have not used it before. Just follow these steps:

headline – up to 25 text charactersdescription – up to 75 text charactersfrom – name of your business or companyimage – 50 x 50 pixels pictureURL- the link of your website or landing page that people can click.

LinkedIn allows you to select your audience. When you access campaign manager, you are given two options to choose.

When you select “I want to reach LinkedIn members right in the LinkedIn feed“, you are choosing the option with the sponsored updates.

This is what you get when you choose the first option.

When you select sponsored updates, you must have a Company or Showcase page. You need to create one if you don’t have it yet. Otherwise, select the text ads options.

The second option, “I want to drive targeted leads across multiple LinkedIn pages” is for text ads. You just need your account name and the currency that you will be using. Company or showcase page is just optional.

You can select the audience for your ads. You just need to set your criteria for advertising and LinkedIn takes care of narrowing down the audience for you. Targeting options include the following:

You can select your bid and your daily budget that is the maximum amount you want to spend on a daily basis. Ads may cost between $10-1000 daily. The minimum cost per bid is $2. You will get a suggested bid range that is the current competing bids estimate of your competitors for the same niche. The higher your bid is, the better your chances for clicks and impressions.

You can either select per clicks or impressions.  Impressions are the number of times your ads are shown in LinkedIn. LinkedIn ads can be paid through credit cards. There’s a one-time $5 activation fee. Promotional coupons will be honoured by LinkedIn ads.

The ads will be shown strategically on different LinkedIn places including:

Profile PageHome PageInboxSearch Results PageGroups

You can only measure how successful your ads are when you constantly monitor your performance. A better way to do ads is to create at least two different kinds of ads and continue the one doing better in terms of number of clicks and impressions. Create a new one to replace the less performing ad.

You don’t need to monitor the performance of your ads from time to time. However, you can check your statistics by the end of each day. The only way for you to know whether the ads are working in your favor is when you have set your goals and results have shown that you are hitting your targets.

Your ads are compelling enough when your conversion rate can be justified with your click rates or your number of impressions.

Even novice marketers can create effective ads even without formal training or a writing background. You just need to remember the following when creating your ad:

Choose attention grabbing wordsDo not forget to use effective call to action phrases like buy now, try this now and grab your product nowInclude a 50 x 50 image of your product or companyYour ads must meet LinkedIn advertising guidelines.

Effective ads are compelling reasons why businesses sell. Without a powerful copy, your ads are not going anywhere. And if your ads are not going anywhere, you cannot expect your business to grow. Your business will only grow when you are hitting your sales targets. Give people enough reasons to care. LinkedIn ads cater more to the B2B community whose needs and requirements are more specific. Seth Godin has ranked the B2B heirarchy of needs and this include:

avoiding riskavoiding hasslegaining praisegaining powerhaving funmaking a profit

Are LinkedIn ads worth trying? LinkedIn ads are definitely worth trying especially if your business is gearing towards the B2B community. No other social media platform is as perfect as LinkedIn in promoting your ads when your brand is for B2B audience.

How do you capture leads for your ads? There are many ways you can do it, but the most feasible one is by giving out free trials and samples on your landing page. Customer mindset has always been to get something for free in exchange for patronizing or supporting a product, brand or business.

Trends do come and go and as a business marketer, it is your duty to use the latest social media features to convert sales. Grow your business today. Give LinkedIn ads a try now.

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The Beginner’s Guide To Choosing The Best Social Network For Visual Content

How can a social platform play a significant role in distributing your content? When introducing a new product or service; it is not as easy as it seems, especially that competition is rather stiff. Your content tells your future customers what your brand is really all about.

Now how can you let other people know what your business is all about? That’s where social media becomes your life saver.

There are probably about a hundred social networks; about a quarter of that has been useful to business owners and marketers, and you would only need a handful of these networks for your content.

Listed below are the social platforms you must use to distribute your visual content:

This is one social media network that under any circumstances your business could not go without. With over 1.4b users, Facebook is the greatest social platform success story whose humble beginnings is a far cry from what it has become today.

Who doesn’t know the history of Facebook? Of how this social networking site founded by Mark Zuckerberg and a few of his fellow Harvard University schoolmates in 2004 changed the way people connect and stay connected with other people from the rest of the world?

With so many subscribers and users, it cannot be argued that visual content posted here will be syndicated fast. Most people prefer to stay connected with family and friends using Facebook compared to other social media sites.

Facebook is the ideal platform for content distribution simply because:

It allows you to set up a Facebook page for your business that makes it easy for you to be discovered and get connected.It helps you identify your niche audienceAllows you to promote your post, business or website via Facebook adsHelps you measure and adjust metrics that work or did not work for your business

Twitter is another social media account your business must have. The first tweet  was sent by Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006, and ever since then, Twitter hasn’t looked back and has continuously been a favourite of celebrities and sports athletes in giving real-time updates to the public.

Twitter is a microblogging tool that helps you present your brand by sharing tweets about it 140 characters or less at a time. Twitter has become even more relevant with its renewed partnership with every marketer’s friend or foe (depending on your website’s rank)- Google. With that partnership, Twitter will provide content to Google so that the latter need not crawl all over Twitter. In exchange, tweets with content and URLs will have a speedy Google indexing.

Aside from that, Twitter is a very effective listen and learn tool. As most of the updates and interactions here are real-time engagements, you may check out the competition or what people are talking about your business by monitoring mentions and conversations. Though its 270M active users are a far cry from Facebook, so many influencers are active on Twitter. 37% of Twitter users will buy from brands that they like to follow.

This is the social platform specifically designed for the entrepreneurial industry. This is the go-to place for people to establish and maintain networks in their chosen niche. LinkedIn currently has 332M active users with over one billion endorsements.

While Twitter has that limit when it comes to tweets, LinkedIn, on the other hand, encourages long posts in their Pulse network. Plus with its acquisition of Slideshare, LinkedIn has become the expert in B2B content marketing platform.

Pinterest is the social networking site where you can pin images to your visual boards. This is THE social networking site where you can post pictures of your products and services.

You can use Pinterest as your company board. This is the kind of visual content that uses words as little as possible. Pinterest can be compared to your old photo album.

Tracking or monitoring is very easy with Pinterest because of its Analytics. You can keep track of your pin’s popularity.
In September 2015, Pinterest has 100 M users, 85% of it are females and it has a reported $11B value. One interesting thing to note about Pinterest is that a staggering 93% of its users have done their shopping online in the last six months. Unlike in other social media networks where only your followers and friends can view your posts (unless you have set your profile to public), the number of people who saw your pins and boards will outnumber your actual followers in Pinterest.

Instagram is the mobile social networking, photo and video sharing platform that allows users to post pictures and 15-second video excerpts. It has over 300 M members and a staggering 70 M videos and images get shared on a daily basis. Brand engagement in Instagram is the highest among all networks at 4.21%.

Whereas Pinterest is composed of pins (of images) and boards (categories), Instagram is another image based networking site that allow your followers to like your photos.

Do you know that Google+ has just been launched in 2011? Plus is just another layer added to the different products and services that Google has already made available to the public like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Hangout and YouTube.

Google+ also has over 300 M active users. 13% of the businesses belonging to the SOHO (small and home) use Google+. 17% B2B marketers use this to launch new products while 64% of the marketers distribute their content here.

Stumble Upon is like a social platform where you can find different interesting stuff that you can thumbs up or down. Based on their description, “StumbleUpon is the best way to discover great websites, videos, photos, blogs and more.”

According to Nick Robinson, co-author of StumbleUpon for Dummies, it’s a bookmarking, content and search engine site that gives your online content exposure. You just need to click on the Stumble button so content about your interests will be laid out to you. The content you have posted will work exactly the same way wherein people will stumble upon your content if it matches their interests.

Fact- Slide Share has over 70 M users, 17% of its B2B marketers use it to launch their new product while 41% distribute their content here. Slide Share could be compared to a Power Point Presentation, but it’s so much more than that.

If you happen to be the artsy, creative type, then you could curate portions of your content and make a series of slides that are visually more stimulating than the usual article. Slide Share helps you get higher rankings with the use of tags.

Who doesn’t know what YouTube is? YouTube is that video sharing site where you can find an abundance of Dubsmash videos and a whole lot more. YouTube has over a billion user and has an estimated revenue last year of $4 B.

Approximately 300 hours of videos are uploaded every minute while there’s an average of 4 B views per day.

If you are intent on sharing several videos to your readers, then it is advisable to create your own channel. YouTube is perhaps the busiest website on the planet right now.

Reddit is an entertainment social networking site that allows its registered users to submit content. It was established in 2005 by University of Virginia roommates Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman. It has a total of 36 M users in 209 countries.

Reddit is almost always on the front page of the internet that is why popular websites like Buzzfeed and most internet memes were also born here. If you have fun and satirical content that boggles the mind, then Reddit is the perfect place for it.

Tumblr is not just a microblogging tool. It is also a social networking site that houses 262.1 M blogs and 123.3 B posts. It was founded by David Karp in February of 2007.

What makes Tumblr appealing is it is a combination of a lot of things:

it has the clean blogging functionality similar to WordPress,allows you to find new content with hashtags like Twitter,it encourages sharing its post like Facebook via its Reblog pin or button,and popular with images like Instagram and Pinterest

Your various social media accounts are the most inexpensive way for you to distribute visual content. You don’t need to have access to many social networks. You only need a handful social media sites.

Facebook caters to a broader audience. You may repost your visual content to your own Facebook profile, your business page or to FB Groups you belong to. You can do Facebook ads targeting a specific audience. Twitter is great for curating your long articles to 140 characters or less. You can create slides of your list posts in Slide Share and so many more.

For every visual content you have, there’s the appropriate social network (or more) for it. What’s important here is you do not forget that every content you make has a particular audience that’s why keywords, meta tags and hashtags are very critical for your content to get noticed. Content works when you know how to use these tags strategically and at the righ time.

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What Is Twitter Hearts And How It Will Affect Your Marketing

Last November 3 netizens were agog that upon login, instead of the star icon for Favorites their other option aside from ReTweet is the Twitter hearts which is now called likes.

What could be the reason behind this change?

According to Twitter’s Official Announcement, the change was brought by the fact that they want to make Twitter easier to navigate especially to newcomers.

This is the excerpt of their official announcement:

“We are changing our star icon for favorites to a heart and we’ll be calling them likes. We want to make Twitter easier and more rewarding to use, and we know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers. You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.”

#Cartoon for the weekend about Twitter #hearts “That’s no star” http://pic.twitter.com/AlumnFeV4i

— Andrew Fraser (@cartoonsidrew) November 6, 2015

This move is just one of the efforts that the management of Twitter thinks they need to do in order for them to recapture a bigger percentage of the market share in this continuous battle among social networks. All throughout summer, Twitter has been testing the hearts icon, and this has been widely received which prompted them to roll out the change weeks after they officially launched Twitter Polls.

The icon change is not only limited to Twitter but to its sister company, Vine, as well. The change did not come abruptly. The heart is considered as the universal icon that conveys a lot of positive emotions which makes it easier to connect with other people.

However, Twitter’s numerous influencers do not seem to share their sentiment regarding this change. Still in the early stages of its implementation, the power users are very vocal about their dislike of the heart icon.

The normal question when such change happens is: will this affect your marketing? Will getting a heart instead of a star affect your sales conversion via Twitter?

Most social media accounts already have the Like button- Facebook has it. Pinterest has it. Even Instagram has it and a whole other bunch of social platforms. The Like button is popularized by Facebook while Instagram has dibs on the heart icon.

Listed below are just some points that active Twitter users have for the Twitter heart that most likely will cause some changes in how you do business using this platform.

In all this twitter hearts brouhaha, @rstevens comes out the winner. https://t.co/cYn0OLD20C http://pic.twitter.com/f8gsMe6X3D

— Jon Rosenberg™ (@jonrosenberg) November 4, 2015

The favorite button on Twitter makes them unique. There are also a lot of people who use the Fav button as a bookmark and despite its rather positive meaning, clicking the favorite button doesn’t always mean it’s a positive idea. It could mean that you find the tweet interesting and would love to get back to it at a later time when you are not pressed for time. The star icon is pretty much generic. It doesn’t involve a lot of feelings so by “favoriting” a tweet, it could either mean you like or dislike it. And most people would not think twice of using it as some sort of acknowledgment.

In fact, many active users like journalists use the star icon to bookmark negative comments they get as well or use it to reference breaking news that they can use for their own reporting. According to the article, The 25 Distinct Reasons  People Favorite Things in Twitter, Twitter users use the star icon because the topic is relevant, they find your tweet funny or they can relate to it among other things.

If you base it on public opinion during this early stage of implementation, the Twitter heart may have repercussions for your business simply because people who live, eat and breathe the internet are always resistant to change. What Twitter is currently experiencing right now is what Facebook felt when they first introduced Messenger several years ago or when they had theI feel fat emoji that they have to take out due to public outcry.

Perhaps Emily Bell of The Guardian said it best that the design change from the star icon to the heart is minor. The actual change can be felt on what the star icon represented. It limits the actions one can do on Twitter. Sure, you can like tweets that warm the hearts but you just don’t click the heart button when you hear about the latest disaster news or political scandal. It simply isn’t done.

So, when it comes to marketing, there’s a chance user engagement will lessen until users have become comfortable clicking a heart instead of a star. Or if Twitter gives in to the public sentiment and reverts to favorite. Because people normally do not like tweets they haven’t had the chance to check out, so the possibility of people not clicking the heart icon on your tweet is rather high.

The heart icon, on the other hand, is so full of emotion frequently associated with love and happiness. If you would like to acknowledge a person that you have read their tweet, you will think twice of clicking the like button because it evokes strong positive emotion that would just not work well with people other than your family and friends.

Also, a like is similarly close to an endorsement, and this is something people with a considerable following would tend to use this icon sparingly. People might be compelled to do something just because they mistakenly assume that these influencers have endorsed the tweet simply by liking it.

This backlash on the Twitter heart could just be a temporary setback. It’s just been a week since it has been rolled out so its effect can’t be measured yet for the long term. Twitter is just one platform for your social media marketing, so if you see a downward trend with regards to engagement, it should not be that critical to your overall promotions. However, it is important to note that you still need to continue using Twitter as it is still one of the biggest social media platforms there is.

And here are some just for laugh tweets regarding Twitter hearts:

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10 Ways To Improve Your SEO With Social Media

Do you know that your site’s SEO can vastly improve with the help of social media?

Yes, your various social media accounts can increase your SEO.

SEO or otherwise known as search engine optimization is a strategic method of tactics and techniques to obtain high traffic to the site simply by appearing on the first page of various search engine results.

Normally, a search will lead to many answers, and it’s every blog owner’s dream to be on top of the first page. This is because results on the first page are guaranteed clicks. A site or a URL’s ranking will be based on the amount of traffic it gets. The more clicks you get, the better your rankings are.

Social media is one way to syndicate the information about a particular article you’ve written for your website. As most people are active on the net and usually have different social media accounts, you can inform as many people as you want about updates on your site or business.

You would often see articles or article URLs being shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites.

Does this really affect your site on search engine results?

Here are 10 steps to improve your SEO through social media:

Your various social media accounts can serve as your PR platform for informing your friends, family and followers about updates on your websites. When properly done or once you have created a systematic process, there will be a harmonious relationship between your site and social media accounts. Once this has been synergized, this is one aspect of your business that you don’t have to worry about.

Promotions in social media give exposure to your business. The more visible you are on social media, the better the chances of other people visiting your website or including links to your site o their own blogs. This is possible especially when you have already built a comfortable relationship with people like you. Sharing information is pretty normal after all.

Talking about your website and sharing articles and links about your site guarantees an increase in your site’s traffic. This is because social media has an extensive reach and information can be repeatedly shared by people interested in what you have to offer.

For example, you posted on Facebook about the latest product you are selling to your site. This may or may not attract the attention of most of your social media contacts. Those who took the time to read your post will probably visit your site AND might share it on social media if they like it enough.

Aside from replying back and forth on the comment box of your articles, there is no other way you can interact with readers on your website.  This is where social media can help you. You can start interacting with your readers through your various social media accounts. Facebook for one allows you to have a private conversation with your friends and other contacts. This makes communicating with other people so much faster and more convenient.

Do you want to know what your customers really think about your business? You can just ask them! Use social media to gather feedback from your clients.

Unsure where your business is heading? Why don’t you ask your target audience where they want your business to go to? You can even use Twitter Polls to ask for your audience’s opinions.

Social media is a very influential factor in the success (or the lack of it) of a brand’s marketing efforts and advertising campaign. You may wonder why. This is because most businesses use social media to promote and whether you like it or not, people tend to gravitate towards products or services that have been received quite favorably by people on social media.

One good example for this is the website Go Fund Me, a crowdfunding website that allows you to ask people to help fund various causes like tragedies, accidents, and life changing illness. People can even donate anonymously any desired amount that they would want. As in the case of Chris Mintz, a UCC shooting survivor, a fundraising was done to help him out, and 24,077 people donated over $816,717 in just one month. Most of these donations came from complete strangers. Social media helped raise awareness regarding this fundraising campaign as it spread the news like wildfire.

People nowadays do not depend solely on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to get the information they want. Some use their social media accounts to provide them with their needed information.

How will that affect your own SEO?

Supposing you own an online shop selling clothes. You post pictures on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. A future customer uses these accounts to look for online shops and happen to stumble upon one of your posts. They will click on your post for more details. If you have included the URL of your website, chances, are they would visit it to check for more options.

Future customers would also like to know if your brand or company has a strong social media background. They would like to know how relevant your online presence is.

Unlike Google, which listed social media shares as just 1 of the 200 factors for search rankings, Bing, on the other hand, has been very vocal in saying that social signals factor greatly in their algorithm for search results.

This means that the more social media noise your website creates, the better your rankings on Bing.

Future customers would also like to know if your brand or company has a strong social media background. They would like to know how relevant your online presence is. If your business is quite active in social media, it gives the impression that you are on top of things and knew how to go with the flow. Most customers see a business’s social media accounts as a reflection of what the business is really all about.

Your content gets indexed based on several key considerations- relevance of your content to your target keyword and the number of social media shares it has. If your content gets shared time and again, your content gets noticed by these search engines and it gets indexed faster than those with weaker social media engagements.

Again, different search engines have different factors for consideration in their algorithms. So rankings on Bing, Yahoo and Google will differ.

Branding is the practice or the art of creating a definitive name or symbol for your business to differentiate you from other similar business. Social media allows you to promote your business in a distinct way.  When you have created effective branding for your business, specific keywords will be associated with your brand.  The more you use these keywords in association with your brand in social media, the more influential you have become in your chosen niche.

Just as the name implies, influencers are people or businesses whose voice are considered authority about certain subjects. Influencers are normally active on social media, and they enjoy many followers in their various social media accounts. Influencers can command people to follow your site.

Social media’s impact on SEO varies depending on which search engine you are using.  Google, the #1 search engine, changes their point of view regarding social media’s role in SEO from time to time. Not long ago, they swore that social signals have no relevance to their algorithms though just recently, they have included social media mentions as one of their factors in calculating search engine results

As mentioned above, Bing, on the other hand, considers social media as an important element in computing SEO rankings.

Whenever you produce content on your site, it is always your aim that aside from creating quality content full of relevant information, many people will be able to read it as well. Social media can help you promote your content. Through social media, you can share your content not only to those who follow your website but to your friends and followers as well in the fastest possible way. Once your content goes viral, it’s safe to assume that your traffic will skyrocket.

Social media is crucial for your business to stay relevant. Its impact on search engine results may not be as great as you would like it to be nevertheless it can cement your reputation as a recognized influencer for your chosen niche.  In retrospect, social media is just as important as SEO when it comes to your business.

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10 All-Too-Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes

You probably would not have noticed it but in your quest to drive traffic to your site, you would seemingly have committed several social media marketing mistakes that you must do everything in your power not to repeat. Creating too many mistakes in promoting your content would only lead to disaster, and this is something you cannot afford.

Social media sites are every content creator’s best friend when it comes to promoting your content free of charge. When you do not commit these common social media marketing mistakes, you are guaranteed an increase in traffic plus higher conversion of sales.

Many people are still under the mistaken assumption that it’s quantity that drives the numbers and not quality. This has been proven again and again that quantity doesn’t work in most cases. Your focus in the early stages of your social media marketing is to gather followers for your business. A group of 10 pre-targeted leads will have a better conversion than 100 random leads.

To avoid this social media marketing mistake, what you can do is to use all the filter tools that these social media sites have so you can specifically target your audience. These social networks usually allow you to filter based on tags, demographics, and age. By filtering people at this level, you have already targeted the type of people who would possibly do business with you.

There are so many social media networking sites out there, and you might be tempted to use as many as you can. That’s another mistake content marketers often make. It is more prudent if you focus on content distribution to social sites that have been proven to be effective in driving traffic and sales conversions to marketers who preferred to use them. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the primary sites that you must use. You can add Pinterest, Instagram, Stumble Upon, Google+ later on.

Your followers and fans are your target customers. If they provide you with feedback, you must listen to them and weigh in the possibilities of their suggestions and recommendations. It is also important for you to know what the latest trends are in your chosen niche.

There are so many times that the direction you wanted your business to take is very different from your target audience’s needs and wants. Just remember that your business will cease to exist if it cannot give the consumers what they need.

Your social media sites won’t update on their own. As a business owner and marketer, it is your responsibility to update your social media accounts with fresh and relevant content on a regular basis. The acceptable number of posts you can do on a weekly basis is 3-5 spaced apart.

Set your priorities straight. You should not lose focus on your goals which is to drive traffic to your site and to increase your sales conversions. Your actions in your social media accounts should be convincing enough for you to garner quality followers who would eventually become your loyal consumers in the near future.

While it’s nice to try a lot of strategies at the same time, it would be wiser if you just focus on a very few strategies and campaigns to gain more followers. Spreading yourself thin with too many things at the same time will only cause you problems in the long run.

It’s like going to battle without the proper ammunition or any tactical plans; you are bound to fail. Before you do a full blast social media marketing, you must have at least researched when the best times for posting on the different social networks are so you can schedule your posts accordingly. A good content marketer has already mapped out the topics and the schedules of your posts. Everything you do on social media is for the promotion of your business.

This strategy is bound to fail in the long run. While it may help in spiking the volume of traffic going to your site, it can never convert to sales, so it defeats the purpose. Plus you have to be very wary in adopting scheming tactics as the internet is full of tools and services that may check on this. Remember how powerful Google’s algorithms are. It’s not worth risking getting permanently banned from the site due to some black hat strategies that you cannot resist doing.

Unless you’re in a business with very few to no competition at all, it is a must that you must know what your competitors are doing so you can stay on top. Do your homework. You must have a firm grasp and clear understanding of how your business rivals work and operate.

Don’t be too self-centered. Social media sites were created for people to have a platform where they can network with other people for whatever purpose it may serve. One of your responsibilities as a content marketer is for you to use these social media sites to engage your audience.

Your social media marketing efforts are for you to generate sales. However, your efforts should not be focused on doing hard selling of your brand. Instead, use your different social media sites to educate your audience regarding the features and benefits of your products and services. Focus on informing your audience what they can get with the purchase of your goods.

These social media marketing mistakes are very easy to correct. You should rectify these mistakes as soon as you can in order for your marketing efforts to get the desired result. Social media sites are mere platforms to create brand awareness. Stop making these mistakes now and focus on other aspects of your business.

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11 Reasons Why People UnLike Your Facebook Page

You are checking your Facebook Page, and you’re surprised coz it seems that the number of fans has been declining instead of improving.  Day in and day out you check your Facebook analytics yet the graph really is on a downward trend. What could have caused this? Why do your fans unlike your Facebook page?

A Facebook page is an extension of your business, brand or organization. This is the place on Facebook where you can give updates regarding your business and keep in touch with your clientele. This is where people would go to on Facebook if they want to learn about the latest news concerning your business. You cannot please all of your followers. Most of the time, someone is bound to disagree with your posts. While others would simply choose to ignore your posts, there would also be other people who would click the x mark of your post. The bad thing would be when they choose to unlike your page.

A person unliking your page is not a good thing. If it’s just 1 or 2 isolated cases, you can probably ignore it but you would be left wondering why your fans decided to ditch your page. But you can never ignore it if you’re consistently losing fans. In fact, you should be alarmed when this happens, and you have to act fast and get to the bottom of this before you lose more fans than your Facebook Page can afford to lose.

Here are the 11 top reasons why people unlike your Facebook Page:

People do not like to get updates about the business all the time. Too frequent Status updates can be equated to spam so when this happens, some people avoid it not just by clicking x on the newsfeed but simply by unliking the page itself.

So how often should you post updates on your business page?

Definitely not every couple of hours. Not even every single day. There is no known rule or recipe on how often you should update your page but too often will only annoy your fans and too little will risk your fans forgetting all about your brand. Try to limit Facebook status update to 3-5 times a week unless you have something worthy to share with your fans.

While it is true that this is your page, banish the thought that you can promote it anytime you want to. If you do not wish to risk losing more fans, then lighten up on self-promotion. Nothing turns off fans faster than the obvious show of push selling or hard selling. The Facebook page is created to pull fans to get to know your business and not to do hardcore selling of the goods and services your business is carrying,

In pull selling, you are acquainting the people about the business. You are showing them the features and benefits of your brand without doing actual selling of these goods. By highlighting the benefits of your products, you are enticing these fans to give your business a try.

Information is key to business but posting too much information on your FB page will only harm you. Same with controversial topics. While it’s true that controversy sells, it’s not always a guarantee that it will work favourably for you.

Posting an update regarding controversial topics will put you in a position to comment or take your stand. And when this happens, there are people who are bound to disagree with you. So you have to be very careful with your comments and especially in dealing with people who do not agree with you. No matter how tactful your replies might be, you’re bound to lose a few fans simply by joining the bandwagon of controversy so might as well avoid this headache.

Ignorance is bliss. Apparently not. It was reported that in an investigation done by ExactTarget and CoTweet aptly called “The Social Breakup”, an outstanding 49% of the social media users are not aware of the fact that they will automatically receive updates of your business the moment they clicked on the Like button to your page. The moment when they do know about this fact majority of these users will unlike the page.

Also, there are people who might have liked your Facebook page by accident and are really not interested with the products you are offering so they would definitely unfollow your page.

Again, your Facebook page was created to give your followers updates on anything regarding your business. These fans are after relevant information regarding your products that they can put to good use themselves. So do not post any sports related topics on your page when you are in the business of selling clothes or generating leads.

While Facebook Page fans balk at the idea of hard selling, they are actually hoping for businesses to give them freebies and special offers and when you do not provide these types of incentives on your Facebook page, they will soon lose interest in your business and might decide to unlike your page.

One good way to increase user engagement on Facebook is by creating contests or doing electronic raffle draws. Users love these types of gimmicks especially when you give free samples or free trials of the goods and services you are selling. People like certain brands’ Facebook page to get access to discounts, freebies, and special offers.

This is the direct contrast of #1. When you do not post enough updates on your Facebook page, it gives the impression that either you do not have something new to offer, your business is dead, or you do not care enough about your fans to give them updates regarding your brand that they are following. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. In this case, by not updating, your fans are in danger of forgetting your brand.

Still with “The Social Breakup”, 38% of Facebook fans have “unliked” a page because they found the updates boring and repetitive. You can avoid losing fans with these reasons by ensuring that the content you post is fresh, insightful and entertaining. You do not have to rehash old posts. Better create new ones that are socially and economically relevant to current times. Make it a habit not to post the same content, unless you have additional information or you want to correct some mistakes you might have made with your past posts.

No matter what you do, never lose putting personal touches to your posts. Your fans lose interest fast when they cannot connect on a personal level with the business. This is also what separates you from other similar businesses. Facebook fans want to see that you have put a little bit of time and effort in posting updates. These personal touches are distinctly yours and without these, you do not have anything that sets you apart from the rest.

Again, refrain from posting negative comments. Especially when it comes to talking about your competition even when some of your fans are asking for it and no matter how true these allegations might be. Nothing good is ever gained from trash talking your business rivals. You will only come out as desperate and unethical.

What you can do though is highlight your own product’s benefits without mentioning the competition at all. It’s better not to say anything at all when you do not have anything good to say.

Part of taking care of your followers is to ensure that you give them feedback in a timely manner. Address whatever issues and concerns have been thrown at you. Be tactful. Do not be condescending. Your fans will feel their importance when you take the time to answer their comments and private messages. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions so do not retaliate by insulting your customers back.

There could be other reasons why Facebook page fans have decided to unfollow you. It could be one of the reasons stated above or it could be due to a lot of other reasons. There’s little you can do about that. What you can do though is to prevent or minimize future unfollowers of your Facebook page. The recipe seems to be confusing at first but with ample exposure over time, you will get the hang of it.

So to retain your loyal followers you need to create posts or status updates a few times a week that are relevant, interesting, positive and full of value for your Facebook Page fans. In this round of social media concern, quality still wins over quantity.

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