Who Should Take Care of your Social Media?

Your new company is looking to expand to the next level with your online presence. Social media is a necessity of any online PR efforts so you want to start there. However, you’re unsure whether to handle it yourself or hire a firm to post, tweet and reply. On the one hand you’re the best person to represent the company you love, but others have way more expertise than you do. To help, here’s a breakdown of your options.

In-House

Keeping social media administration within the company comes with its own benefits. For one, a trained worker in your company is more likely to have specific knowledge of your product or service. This provides them with an edge to come up with a strategy that could be more tailored to your special needs.

Also, you’re guaranteed that an in-house social media administrator will spend their time on your business and your business alone. A social media/PR agency or professional will have several clients to dedicate their time to and thus possibly missing an opportunity someone wholly dedicated to your company might not.

Agency

A social media/PR agency will most likely have a professionally trained staff that is used to working in the specific and often quirky world of social media. The agents will be more attuned to the ins and outs of the business and may have solutions your in-house worker might not know exist.

You also might benefit from the environment they work in. If a strange issue arises, an agent can consult with the many peers at the agency to solve it. If it’s an established agency, they most likely have a database of past successes and can pull from that to best help your company.

On top of that, there’s a degree of separation that could come in handy, especially during a crisis. If your business receives negative press, someone associated with your company may get upset and do something drastic. A third party organization like a PR agency should handle it with no emotions attached.

Social Media Consultant

While not possessing the resources of an agency, a contracted social media consultant will most likely be able to dedicate more time to your company. While agents may be assigned public relations work as well as social media assignments (people assume they’re the same, but they’re quite different), a contracted social media expert works solely in this field.

As they already work with sites like Facebook and Twitter, they probably have many colleagues they consult with to get fresh ideas on how to best boost your company. With this, they tend to be a combination of an agency with an in-house worker.

That “degree of separation” the agency has may also come into play here, but potentially not as pronounced. Since the consultant’s client list will be smaller, they may take things as personally as you do when a customer complains or insults the company. However, if they’re doing their job correctly, this won’t happen.

Which option would work best for your business?

By Mickie Kennedy, founder and president of eReleases, the online leader in affordable PR distribution since 1998. Download the free whitepaper LinkedIn for Business, a must-read for the well-networked PR professional. Follow eReleases on Google+, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

How Does Google Analytics Improve Affiliate Marketing Conversions?

Google has come under fire recently for encrypting organic search referrals, so that webmasters see “not provided” instead of the searcher’s keywords in their referrer logs. This change has led to some webmasters questioning whether there’s any point using analytics at all.  That reaction is understandable, but it’s taking a rather simplistic view of the analytics service and what it has to offer.  Even with the removal of keyword data for an increasing number of searches, Google Analytics still has a lot to offer online marketers.

Social Media Tracking

Social Media is becoming an increasingly important marketing tool. Many webmasters get a huge percentage of their traffic from social media mentions, shares, likes and retweets. If this sounds like your business, then the reach tracking and social media monitoring features of Google Analytics will probably be more important than the now dying-out keyword tracking feature.

Intelligence Alerting

Intelligence Alerts are a handy feature of Google Analytics that will warn you if your campaigns go over-budget, or if you see a drop in conversions, a sudden spike in traffic or anything else out of the ordinary. Intelligence alerts are incredibly useful for busy webmasters. Simply define alerts for the things that are important to you, and Google will notify you by email when those things happen, so you can log on to your control panel and find out more about what’s going on, then fix the problem or take advantage of the circumstances that have caused the traffic spike.

Goals

Now we’re getting to the true meat of the Analytics service. If you aren’t using Goals, you are missing out on a huge intelligence advantage. Webmasters can define all kinds of goals. You can set up goals for “Subscribe to my email list” or “buy my product”, and then watch people as they navigate your site and travel along that goal. Tracking goals in this way is important because it makes it easier for webmasters to see what’s going on with their users. If you are losing a lot of customers at a certain point along the conversion process you can investigate that page and correct whatever issue it is that is driving customers away.

Goals and conversion funnels are an invaluable marketing tool that let you watch what consumers are doing on your website. This tool is great for fixing problems with squeeze pages and signup forms, and figuring out why your conversion rate is not as good as it should be. You can visualize your Goals using the analytics goals funnels function.

Affiliate marketing is a complex task, and you need to have everything finely tuned in order to be successful. If your keyword choices are poor, your SEO is weak, or your squeeze page ineffective, then your business will not be a success. Google Analytics, when used in conjunction with Webmaster Tools and AdWords, can help you to measure, track and understand what is going on with your website.

This article has been written by Philippa L on behalf of the Twist Forum. Philippa has a great deal of knowledge regarding affiliate marketing and has decided to share this knowledge with other affiliate marketers to improve their conversions.

How To Use Press Release Submission Effectively For SEO

SEO Press release is similar to a standard press release with just one difference. SEO press release will have content that is optimized for SEO to provide greater search engine visibility. By using PRs you can keep the journalists, prospective customers and existing customers updated about the products and services offered by you. Many businesses nowadays use press release submission as part of their SEO campaign to increase brand awareness. If you are interested to know more about what a PR is, click on the following link,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_release.

It is important to ensure that you write it properly caring the guidelines discussed in this article. It should contain embedded links that will direct users to relevant pages on your website. When a good SEO PR is submitted and distributed through a good press release distribution service, it will find its way into other third party websites and this will build a powerful set of backlinks to your website. This will improve the search visibility of your website as you have established a strong set of backlinks. In this post, we will look at a few tips that will help you to create it in a SEO friendly way.

Tips for effective SEO press release submission

Include your primary keywords

• Keywords are the most important aspect of any SEO strategy and therefore you should include your primary keywords in the press release
• Research to identify the primary keywords for your business
• Ideally, you should have your primary keywords 2-3 times in the press release.
• Ensure that the keywords are spread out and are not bundled close to each other

Create a compelling headline using your primary keyword

• Headlines play an important role in attracting users to your work
• The average length of a headline is 70 characters. So create a headline that will wow your audience within the 70-character limit.
• The title has to be short, sweet and attractive.

Create a content relevant sub heading

• Use the sub heading to provide information on the content
• The sub heading is as important as the headline and therefore it has to be attractive and relevant to the content and the headline

Use relevant links in the press release

• The content in the landing page for the links that you use has to be relevant to the content that is present in your PR
• Double check if the links you have provided work before you make your submission
• Do not link the same page to the keywords. Use different landing pages for maximum effectiveness
• Try to provide third party links inside that talk about research or surveys in your area of business. This will help bolster your work.

Provide current information related to you company

• Towards the end of the press release, add information about your company. Ensure that the information provided is the latest.
• You can add a few lines regarding your products or services as final additions to the press release.

Add images

• By adding a compelling picture, you will be able to attract more audience to your submission.
• Pick an image that is relevant and unique for maximum effectiveness.

Matthew Anton is the co-founder of BacklinksVault.com, a company specializing in SEO and Social Media services for over 8000 active businesses.

DIY SEO Or Hiring An SEO Service: The Pros & Cons Of Both

Deciding to take on the task of doing your own search engine optimization can be both a rewarding and challenging undertaking. The same can also be said for outsourcing your SEO to a professional agency that focuses on optimizing websites for businesses that are in your particular market or niche. Both sides of the fence have advantages and disadvantages that must be weighed to determine which option is right for you and the most efficient, cost effective, and profitable choice for your company.
The pros and cons for DIY and outsourced SEO are numerous and varied, but several key points for each one are detailed here to give you a better idea of what they may or may not require and how they may or may not be the best choice for you:

DIY SEO

Do-It-Yourself SEO Advantages

• Complete control over every aspect of SEO and content optimization
• Saves money by internalizing one aspect of business operations
• You alone are responsible for the success or failure of your SEO efforts
• By doing it yourself, you gain a greater understanding of the processes involved

Do-It-Yourself SEO Disadvantages

• Requires a substantial investment of time, taking staff away (or your time away) from their primary duties
• If you aren't highly skilled in SEO, you could end up causing more harm than good with your DIY SEO efforts
• You alone are responsible for the success or failure of your SEO efforts
• Without adequate skill and experience, you may end up incorporating Black Hat tactics into your own website's SEO, resulting in getting your site banned from rankings and search lists
• SEO processes take much longer than they should due to lack of experience
• Little skill or experience in content marketing writing
• Lack of knowledge with regard to search engine algorithms, constant fluctuations in the ranking process, and industry-specific forecasting and trends; puts you at a definite competitive disadvantage

SEO Services

Outsourced SEO Advantages

• Frees up a company's time, staff, and resources, allowing them to be put to more productive use
• A professional agency fully understands all aspects of SEO and how to maximize optimization on a local level (selective markets; niche-specific) and a global scale (mainstream internet visibility)
• A great deal of knowledge about search engine algorithms, fluctuations in ranking processes, and forecasting and trends; gives the client a competitive advantage
• SEO processes are completed in very short time-frames (compared to DIY)
• Full service management of website content and all aspects of site SEO
• Staff usually consists of expert content marketing writers

Outsourced SEO Disadvantages

• Depending on the vendor, outsourced SEO can be quite costly (but sometimes it does take a fortune to make a fortune)
• There are literally thousands of agencies to choose from, making it almost impossible to know if you're getting the "right" SEO firm for your needs
• Without thorough research, you may end up hiring the services of a Black Hat SEO, which could result in highly damaging consequences for your online content, reputation, visibility, and profitability

A competent and qualified SEO company will have a proven track record of success stories and an established reputation in the industry. Outsourcing your SEO services is not a cheap undertaking, but if it is done correctly your company will see the benefits through increased web traffic, higher ranking placement, and improved conversion rates. While you can do your own SEO and may even do well at it, you will likely never be as successful at it as an agency that specializes in website optimization and online marketing.

Social Media Micro-Film Wars: Instagram vs Vine

Just as you think you are keeping up with the social media trends and just as you get your workings in order everything changes again!

I don’t know if you have noticed but Twitter has had this thing called “Vine” for a while now where you can take short videos of up to 7 seconds and share them with your followers (I was just about to type friends) on Twitter as well as embedding them on other social media. Vine was initially on iOS but arrived on Android 4.0 and above on June 3 and wow did it take off! Being that the video can only be up to 7 seconds long means that you could only share a brief “moment” with your friends, just to say a little more than what a picture would.

Thing is though, this was only for Twitter, so Facebook was losing out, and fast! So Facebook who owned Instagram decided to get on the bandwagon and added video to their app a few days later, and well...that stole the market back, plus more! Instagram was out there before Vine, so all those Instagram users that used Vine because of Instagram’s lack of video was immediately ‘stolen’ back. So not only has Instagram’s popularity increased, but they have also pinched almost half of Vine’s users.

So where am I going with this? You remember I said that you could embed these videos just like what you would do with a YouTube video right? I believe that the popularity of these Micro-Film apps should be used by businesses and web designers to enhance the user experience and business exposure to customers. Businesses nowadays all have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, now it is time to expand into the Micro-Film network. Creative web designers can incorporate videos of your Instagram/Vine account onto your website to enhance the user experience. I can already see this being used in retail websites where the product as a brief 7-10 second advert just to show how the product looks, fits or works in real life. This would dramatically increase consumer confidence in the advertised product!

Which should you choose?

Ideally you should choose both! Reason for that is simple; you don’t want to alienate any of your users due to a lack of compatibility. However, looking at current statistics there is an overwhelming agreement that Instagram is clobbering Vine.

After conducting some research it was clear that Instagram is outgunning Vine, which would make sense that if you really felt compelled to go for just one, then you should choose Instagram as it is by far the most popular. However let’s not forget that little rise at the end of Vine’s trend-line; there is still a lot that could happen.

Next Steps?

I think we can all agree that the Micro-Film industry has a big future. We saw this with Twitter and Facebook when the two giants started battling for social network supremacy (and still are); we can only expect the same to happen with these two ‘newcomers’ even with Instagram’s big head start.
Web video production will be playing an ever greater role in how we approach web design. User experience with internet speeds are also getting faster and everyone having access to social media and websites via smartphones, tablets and computers. So it would only make sense that the website development industry ‘upgrades’ as well, or should I say ‘modernise!’