If you’re still feeling intimidated by Google+, Eric Welke has the answer to your social media prayers: a cheat sheet.
Via EricWelke.com.
Tag Archives: Social Media
Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Are you wondering how your peers are using social media? Wondering if you should focus on Google+ or Pinterest?
Three Phases of Social Optimization
Three Phases of Social Optimization
Onsite Optimization – Social Buttons are CTA Buttons
Why do it?
Why should you care about where your social buttons show up? For the same reason you care where you place your buy button on your landing pages; optimal button placement leads to higher conversions, whether the conversion in question is a fresh share of your blog content or product page, or a new Facebook Fan or LinkedIn group member.
In this sense, social buttons need to be viewed as calls to action. Find places on your pages that are the most visible and drop your social buttons there. What works best for your readers? Scrolling sidebar? Above and below the posts? All of the social buttons or just a select few? Test it and find out.
How to do it:
There are several ways to go about testing your social button placement. I’ll suggest a few here for you to start with, but feel free to expand and investigate alternate methods. If you find any good ones, let me know in the comments!
- Use heat/click maps to see where your visitors click. Use a service like CrazyEgg to see where your visitors are lingering on a page and then place your social buttons accordingly. Once you’ve got your buttons in a spot that you think will convert well, run another click map to make sure you’re getting the focus on those buttons!
- Just because the new button placement worked on a blog post doesn’t mean that it will work on a product page. Test your button placement and track the social action over a number of new posts and pages to see which works best.
- Get creative with your social button placement. If you find that it converts best in the top-left corner, try putting the buttons in a scrolling sidebar. Or, if above/below the posts works best, make it a scrolling footer or header. Do users click social buttons at the bottom of posts rather than the top? Have your buttons pop up in a dynamic window once they scroll past a certain point in the post.
- As always, only put social buttons where they make sense; you don’t want to pull people away from the final steps in your checkout process so they can look at your Facebook page. Buttons that allow you to share should be placed in locations that will attract more visitors: product pages, blog posts, the homepage, testimonial pages, etc. As a general rule, the further down the marketing funnel you go (IE: the closer you are to a conversion), the less you want to include social buttons.
While you’re testing your button placement, be sure you’re adhering to basic A/B testing practices. Don’t put too many social buttons on your site. For me, I’ve found that placing three key sharing locations works best for me. It’s like the holy trinity of social sharing.
But don’t take my experience as law; test your site and see which works best for you. If you overload your page with social buttons, your conversion rate will drop significantly. As a general rule, don’t put social buttons on your page for networks that you yourself are not active in. If someone shares your article on Orkut, you’ll never know and you won’t be able to engage with them.
2. Profile Optimization – Your Profile is a Landing Page
Why do it?
Your profile is how people find you. Several social tools making their way onto the scene are mining your profile to find topics you’re influential on, for example, Followerwonk. Examples of people who have increased their fans or followers abound. Rand Fishkin, well-known co-founder of SEOmoz, increased his Twitter follower accrual rate by just changing his profile picture.
Beyond the profile picture, your bio and description are critical to attracting new fans and followers. Whether it’s your Twitter bio, your Facebook fan page description, or your LinkedIn group’s description, you’ve got to make sure your description attracts new people. Optimizing your profile increases the likelihood that you show up higher in the search engines for the keyword you’re targeting (as should be obvious for anyone working in SEO). If your potential follower finds you through Twitter’s proprietary search engine or a fan runs a basic Google search to find sites in your niche, having a profile that is optimized for the correct keywords will help you show up higher in the results. Easily identifiable interests in your profile attract targeted followers.
How to do it:
First, before you can gather any quantifiable results, you’ve got to establish a baseline. Monitor your profile’s performance for at least two weeks and tally your follower/fan/member accrual rate. Now try modifying your profile (changing logo, profile pic, etc). Do keyword research, just like you would for any other piece of content you’re trying to promote on the web. Monitor your accrual rate for another two weeks. Repeat ad nauseum.
A sure way to alienate potential followers or fans is to stuff your bio full of strong and identifiable keywords. Limit yourself to two or three that describe what you do, what you share on, and what they can expect to see. Steer clear of overused phrases like “[subject] ninja/guru/expert” in your bio. Tell your fans what you do and allow them to decide how good you are at it. This may be more subjective than the other points here but hey, test it and see what works best for you!
3. Sharing Optimization – Sharing Content IS Content
Why do it?
Knowing when to say something is as important as knowing what to say. Sharing your best content when none of your followers are online to see it is just as useless as throwing spam to a crowd of followers. Using tools that identify when your followers are most commonly online and optimizing the time at which you share your content can increase conversion, reshare and retweet rates.
How to do it:
There are several tools out in the wide world of social analytics that can help you identify when to share to get the most impressions and reshares/retweets. Use tools like Tweriodand Crowdbooster to find out when your followers are online and tweet accordingly. You can schedule updates via apps like Timely and Buffer. If all else fails, you can simply post an update at the right time (crazy, right?).
For other metrics, like how well a share converts based on length of the update/share, employ some good, old-fashioned Excel data tracking. Rand Fishkin (again) found that, for him, shorter updates yielded higher clickthrough rates. What works best for you?
While you’re testing, though, be sure you don’t spam to test conversion rates. There’s no quicker way to lose followers and fans than to blast the link over and over in different formats. In the linked page above, a survey found that 66% of Twitter users would unfollow someone for spam sharing, and 58% would unfollow someone if they appeared automated. Space it out, get some friends to tweet variations of your message and see which does best. Automating your profile will also get people to block/unfollow you, so don’t completely automate your sharing.
The Four Cardinal Rules of Social Optimization
- Social buttons should be viewed as call to action buttons, and just as important as getting a user to click a buy button.
- A social profile is a landing page.
- Sharing content IS content. Optimizing your content doesn’t stop when it’s published, you’ve got to make sure the copy associated with what your sharing works too.
- As with all testing, you need significant traffic numbers to quantify significant results. Ideally, your testing pages should see a total of 1,000 visitors over the testing period to make any informed conclusion.
Credit: 
You Don’t Need a Social Media Strategy
Social Media Infographics
Social Media Infographics
The explosion of social networking sites over the past decade has facilitated a transformation in the way we communicate with each other. Here we look at some of these communities with over 1 million users, both active and defunct:
Facebook is the most dominant brand in the world of social media. Ever wonder how? Click the image below to view a comprehensive infographic:
Age Distribution on Social Networking Sites
Here’s some interesting statistics regarding the age distribution across many of the popular social networking websites:
A HubSpotter’s Guide to the (Social Media) Galaxy
Learn how marketers should explore new frontiers of social media, the blogoshere and more:
Digg vs. Reddit — The Infographic
There has always been a form of healthy rivalry between Reddit and Digg, and its respective user bases. Click to find out more:
Average Age of a Facebook User? 38
The demographics of most of the social networking sites change quite frequently. Flowtown has compiled the latest statistics about general usage of social networking sites especially Facebook. The statistics show that the average age of a Facebook user is 38 and more interestingly about 61% of the Facebook users are above 38 in age:
How are Mobile Phones Changing Social Media?
Have you ever wondered about the relationship between mobile phones and social media? The mobile web is growing at an exponential rate, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down:
Social Media Demographics: Who’s Using Which Sites?
Have you ever wondered which sites attract the most educated of social media users, or those that pull in the highest income? Below we map the demographics of the world’s most popular social media sites:
How Executives are Using Social Media
The infographics mentioned below show how executives and professionals are using social media to promote their business or goods and services. According to the infographic: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media sites used by the executives:
Facebook vs. Twitter — A Breakdown of 2010 Social Demographics
Let us take a look at a breakdown of 2010 social demographics between Facebook and Twitter:
The following is a graphic that takes a look at what sites women are using, as well as how much and why women are participating in social media:
Facebook was once the “contender” against MySpace. That didn’t last too long, but soon Twitter emerged as a pseudo-social-network-competitor-thingy to Facebook and the competition heated up again:
Are you new to social media? Are you unsure about how to engage your audience via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the rest? Here’s a handy infographic that doubles as a roadmap of the social Web:
Facebook: Facts You Probably Didn’t Know
If you ever want to impress anyone with your knowledge of Facebook miscellanea, below is the ultimate cheat sheet in the form of a very large infographic. Enjoy!
This Infographics is intended to show you how different components of social media are integrated with one another:
What happens when communities don’t exactly behave the way we intended them to? Fighting and bickering is normal and actually healthy for communities. Click to find out more:
Google’s Social Media Timeline
Google hasn’t had the best track record when it comes to social media attempts. Long story:
The prism shows the landscape of social media in Germany with all the relevant conversation channels:
So much discussion in the SEO community today centers around social media because of its potential to drive traffic, increase awareness, and build links. Here we explore some ways that a business can leverage specific social sites to achieve departmental goals:
The major players in the U.S. social media world can be counted on one hand: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn. Not so in China, where the country’s 300 million online users have a panoply of popular social networks to choose from — and Facebook doesn’t even crack the top 10!
Twitter Perceptions of Google Buzz Over Time
Social media monitoring and analytics company Viralheat put together this graphic that shows the initial positive response to Google Buzz on Twitter, followed by shifts in opinion based on events in the developing privacy story:
The State of B2B Social Media Marketing
For a deeper look at the current state of B2B social media marketing, check out the infographic below:
Are We Too Obsessed With Facebook?
Is Facebook an amazing connective medium? A plague that preys on the easily addicted? A little bit of both, or something else entirely?
Twitter is one of among those brands and companies which have experienced such a fast growth. Click the image below to view the infographic:
Facebook Privacy: 6 Years of Controversy
Here is a short history of the controversies and missteps that have tarnished the social network’s otherwise meteoric success:
The Biggest Brands on Facebook
In this infographic, we explore the timeline of brand-friendly updates to Facebook itself, as well as the brands that dominate in Facebook marketing today:
With over millions of users, Digg has become one of the most reputable force in the social media world that allows you to share your favorite stories online with your friends, co-workers and relatives:
There are some interesting hidden truths about Twitter and its users. The following graphic takes a look at Twitter’s path to 10 billion tweets, what we have learned about its users and what they’ve been talking about along the way:
This infographic contains additional interesting facts about Twitter based on some numbers that co-founder Ev Williams announced at the Chirp conference:
Every day, thousands of stories are passed around the internet on blogs and via Twitter. Click here to find out more:
How are Companies Leveraging Social Media?
Ever wonder how big businesses are leveraging social media? Here is a graphic illustrating the most interesting of their findings:
Facebook is the number one app across most mobile operating systems. Flowtown.com took a look at the rise of Facebook mobile, and compiled a number of the most interesting facts and figures in the above graphic:
44% of Online Sharing Occurs Through Facebook
Impressively, 44% of shares occurred through Facebook in 2010, up 33% from last year. That number does not include shares done via Facebook’s “Like” button, which means the actual, universal percentage of shares through Facebook is likely higher:
Inside the Political Twittersphere
Ever wondered how politicians use Twitter? Who are the most active politicians on Twitter? Who do they follow, and who follows them? Who are the political strategists and media personalities that politicians follow? And within the political Twittersphere, who follows the most people, and who follows them?
Twitter Users Profile Infographic
Satire and the Internet make great friends. And the newest Internet sensation to be targeted is Twitter. While many blogs make fun of twitter you must admit Twitter does have a larger group of followers. Of course, how many are actually paying attention remains to be seen:
History of Social Media — History of Social Media Bookmarking
Social media has become an integral part of modern society. There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries:
A compass is a device for orientating oneself and guiding physical direction. The social marketing compass points a brand in a physical and experimental direction, allowing them to connect with their customers, peers, and influencers, where those users already interact and seek guidance online:
This map demonstrates the social web involvement of the users worldwide. It provides you a clear picture that every month hundreds of millions of web users create and share their content with one another. This map shows the active bloggers, social networkers, video sharers, photo up-loaders and micro-bloggers:
The Biggest Shift tells the significance and extent of social media network. If you are keen to utilize word of mouth advertising, social media is there to assist to place heighten your works at all. With focusing your marketing interest to the top social networking websites, you will see the instant results of your efforts:
How People Share Content On The Web
This infographic will show that how people share pieces of contents on the web and how facebook dominates social media:
7 Social Media Activities To Outsource
Blogging
Blogging comes in many forms from corporate blogs with a controlled message to personal blogs with information about that latest weekend retreat with friends. Businesses often find it difficult to provide the necessary resources to blog consistently with a message that is satisfactory to upper management and provide enough value to both marketing and SEO departments. This is where outsourcing can play a role in your blogging strategy.
Using contractors familiar with your industry is a great way to build unique content, open a dialog with your audience, build a community and generally step into the new form of customer communication.
Areas where outsourcing can assist in blogging include:
- Blogging ideas
- Market research
- Content research
- Ghost writing
- Editing
- Blog commenting
