Promoted Tweets have revolutionised the way in which social media marketing campaigns can be conducted on Twitter.
Purchased by marketers, they allow what would normally be a standard Tweet to reach a far larger audience than ever before.
Writing for Search Engine Watch, Ron Schott has created a short guide detailing tips on how to use the aforementioned Promoted Tweets to improve brand visibility.
Here are just a few of Schott’s tips in a summarized form:
Promote your best content - Using Promoted Tweets to promote content that is dull and uninteresting is a complete waste of time. The content should inspirational in tone rather than with a tone that goes directly for the hard sell.
Tweeting great content is something that will need to continue both via Promoted Tweets and standard Tweets if your social media marketing strategy is to heed great results.
Use the Promoted Tweets to draw people in; use links and the offer of access to exclusive content to keep people engaged.
Control the Hashtag - With Promoted Tweets you have a great opportunity to bring new Hashtags into the Twitter-sphere. If you create engaging content that is shared around on the micro-blogging site, there is a far greater chance of your Hashtag trending – resulting in an even greater level of brand exposure.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Microsoft and Mozilla have joined forces to develop a new version of the popular web browser, Firefox, which instead of utilising Google as its default search engine uses Bing – in both its home page and search bar – according to an article published by the International Business Times.
A popular platform for search engine marketing initiatives, Bing’s new Firefox browser can be downloaded from www.firefoxwithbing.com.
Those users already operating a standard Firefox browser will be able to gain access to the new features simply by installing a plug-in.
While Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is the world’s browser of choice, Firefox has gained significant ground since 2004.
However, it has been predicted that Google’s – who previously held close ties with Firefox – Chrome browser could become the second most popular browser by the middle of next year, according to a number of web statisticians.
According to StatCounter, Internet Explorer is used by 42 per cent of users worldwide, whilst Firefox lies in second place with 28 per cent of users choosing it as their browser of choice.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Although social media marketing has become extremely popular with business in the past year, a new study has suggested that around a quarter of owners of small businesses remain unsure about the benefits of social media, according to an article published by Corp Comms Magazine.
The study, carried out by iContact, found that many were way, as they believed any such initiatives required a large amount of maintenance.
iContact’s study displayed a number of trends.
For example, popularity levels for the micro-blogging service, Twitter, tended to fall with those businesses amongst those businesses with a lesser amount of employees; whilst businesses making above £620 million in revenue on annum were more likely to hold the site in a much higher regard.
Three in every five surveyed also displayed their love for LinkedIn, while Google+ received a much more mixed response from those surveyed.
Chief executive of iContact, Ryan Alis, commented on the study results.
He commented: “Small business owners are a great barometer for these social products and platforms, because when something helps them hire, sell, or otherwise proves valuable, they’re passionate proponents.
“But when they are strapped for money and time, they’re quick to say if something is not worth investment either,” Mr. Allis finished.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Although the majority of SEO strategies are employed purely to drive traffic from standard searches, image search services such as Google Image Search shouldn’t be discounted – as a valuable traffic source.
Dave Davies, writing for Search Engine Watch, has produced a number of tips that can be used to optimise images to rank better on Google Image Search.
Here is a summarised version of the tips provided by Davies in the article:
Image Name – Images, when downloaded from an original source, will usually be pre-assigned a file name made up of a mix of letters and numbers.
To optimise the image for Google Image Search, the file should be given a more relevant name.
Alt Tags – Alt tags will provide your image some text with which it can be directly associated with; they also according to Davies give “engines a set of information to use a quasi-anchor text if the image is used a link.”
Page Copy – To determine the relevancy of an image on a page, Google will also crawl the text on the page. Therefore it is important to add some text to a page of images – as this will reinforce to the crawlers what the content of the image is.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Search engine giant and popular search engine marketing platform, Google, has changed the way in which advanced searches are conducted – preventing the use of the previous “+” operator – according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
When a search containing the “+” operator is made, a message reading “the + operator has been replaced” is displayed.
Instead Google is now advising users: “To search for an exact word or phrase, use double quotation marks.”
The move has drawn a significant amount of criticism from users in some sections.
Google’s response hasn’t gone down particularly well either. Search Community Manager, Kelly Fee, trying answer a question posted in Google Web Search Help was accused of not answering the question in a full manner.
In a rather diplomatic response to the criticism, Fee responded: “One thing I’d like to add to my original post is that, as with any change we make to our search engine, we put a lot of thought into this modification, but we’re always interested in user feedback.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
The most popular social networking site – and platform for social media marketing campaigns – on the Internet, Facebook, has announced that it will commence the construction of a new data centre in Sweden, according to an article published by Agence France Presse.
Set to be located in Luleaa, the centre will consist of three buildings – housing a number of servers – measuring around 300,000 sq ft.
A spokesperson for Facebook commented, stating: “After a rigorous review process of sites across Europe, we concluded that Luleaa offered the best package of resources, including a suitable climate for environmental cooling (and) clean power resources.”
According to a statement released by the social networking site, the new data centre will create around 300 new positions.
The Swedish government will subsidise construction of the centre with enterprise minister, Annie Loeoef, revealing that a total of $16 million would be invested.
The first of the three buildings are due to be completed by next year, while the rest of site is to be finished by 2014.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Despite possessing the wealth of the search engine marketing and being a popular platform for search engine marketing initiatives, Google has come in for criticism from Facebook executive Ethan Beard, according to an article published by the Telegraph.
Speaking exclusively with the newspaper, Beard stated that Google and other large search engines were failing to provide users with the desired results.
He argued that for search to really kick on, it needed to go social – allowing people to gain recommendations from the sources they trusted and respected most, their friends.
Currently taking part in a world tour, Beard forecast: “I think search will go social, but I don’t know if I am smart enough to answer that specific answer… friend referrals are a really powerful way to discover information and search is another way of discovering information and layering the two together seems like its going to be a significant improvement over keep them apart.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
The Internet is packed with web copy – largely in part due to the massive use of it in search engine optimisation strategies. Just last year it was estimated by Technorati that the Internet was home to around 215 million websites and around 152 million blogs.
Erez Barak, writing for Search Engine Watch, has produced a list of tips that can be used in web copy writing to ensure more people are reading the content you produce – rather than someone else’s.
Here is a summarised version of some of the tips that Barak provides:
Keep your content optimised for social, not just search -
Regardless of whether your content is fantastic, if it isn’t easy to share, people just aren’t going to bother – seriously limiting your opportunity to have you content viewed within the social sphere. You should ensure that your content is at least sharable – using share buttons – on the most popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Don’t go back and update old stories, create new ones -
When covering a story that is continually taking new turns, don’t go back to the original story to add an update; instead you should link back to the original story in a completely new post – doing this will also ensure that your site ranks better.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Already holding the majority of the search engine market – and also a popular search engine marketing platform – Google has become the latest potential suitor for Yahoo!, according to an article published by Hexus.net.
Microsoft are said to be discussing a deal with a number of partners, however Google has now emerged and is rumoured to be talking to private equity firms about funding a potential bid.
With Google already holding a 65 per cent share of the search engine market, it would be unable to directly takeover Yahoo! – who themselves have a 14.7 per cent share.
Google would, however, be able to take over their struggling rival with a shadow bid.
If any Google takeover of Yahoo! – currently said be valued at $20 billion – was to come off, it could deal a serious blow to the ambitions of Microsoft and its search engine, Bing – which recently formed a Search Alliance with Yahoo!
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Following the product’s launch in the US earlier this year, Google has now announced that those in the United Kingdom and Germany will be able to get their hands on Google AdWords Express, according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
Google AdWords Express originally launched in July as a tool aimed at helping small businesses direct increased levels of traffic not only to their websites, but also to their Places pages on Google.
Offering a smaller version of Google AdWords – a tool much used in PPC marketing – Express requires just a small amount of basic information – including business details, a monthly budget figure and ad text – before getting the campaign off the ground – which is also managed by Google.
John Rampton, writing for Search Engine Watch, stated that the set-up process was one that took around five to ten minutes – a factor that has been praised by many – although this can take longer depending on whether you have pre-prepared your ad text.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
