Call us 0800 088 7486
Whilst Google+ is the big story of the day, Matt Cutts has just posted on his wall about a blog post that may have fallen under the radar about content creators being credited on search results.
For anyone who creates and authors content, this is a great new way to be recognised, found, and to promote your work in the search results, including with a photo.
There are a couple of very simple steps to being found by the algorithm which will be powering this addition to the SERPs. Full details can be found on the Google Webmaster help pages, but in essence, all you need do is:
Add the content pages where you post content to your Google public profile, and then paste a Google + button onto those pages. Like this:
Your own content will be automatically +1′d so it should create an archive of all your content over time for people to easily access from your public Google profile page. (This profile page is going to become as important as your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter bio etc, so be warned!)
Obviously, it is algorithm driven so your position in the search results and even whether you are listed will be down to good SEO and making sure you are putting out all the right social signals too.
So, it is always a good idea to tweet all of your fresh content, and make sure that it appears on other social networks as well as social bookmark sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon and Delicious too.
We’ll be playing around with this far more in the future to see how we can improve content rankings on behalf of authors and clients to establish a wider range of listings in the SERPS. Content that is well-written should have longevity on certain subjects, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out as a traffic generator.
The addition of the +K feature on Klout has seen a flurry of activity on the social networks as everyone rushes to court favour with customers and contacts by scoring a +K for specific topics as requested by the recipient. “K farms” is the term being currently used, and one wonders how these farms will fare compared to all the other farms which have been stomped on over the years for artificially raising rankings etc.
But getting involved in dubious techniques such as offering to add a +K to your loyal customers’ Klout scores, despite it being the hot trend amongst social media folk, would seem unwise.
Do you have Klout?
However, the lack of involvement by the big brands in many aspects of social media activity highlights an ongoing problem for brands, corporates and businesses.
How to use social media or so-me to engage with customers, build brand and reputation and see that necessary evil – return on investment.
The problem is that learning about your audience by conducting conversations with them is a time-consuming affair. The ROI is not always clear, although the benefits of such engagement may be more apparent when metrics such as influence, reputation, authority, and the increase in social signals are considered. However, these are ‘nebulous’ metrics which are often difficult to assign £ signs to.
The problem for businesses is comprehending that a lack of engagement will have a far more negative effect on reputation etc that can carry a sting in the tail for a long time. If you switch consumers off by failing to engage at all, it is likely that the negative association with your brand in consumers’ minds will continue into the future, however much advertising and marketing budget you throw at the problem.
There are some clear examples of brands failing to engage at any level, who just seemed to have misunderstood entirely what so-me is about. The clue really is in the name!
Social media is not a one way mechanism, and it most definitely is not about broadcasting and then failing to listen. Monologues are not social! Establishing a dialogue with those you are targeting is vital; yet it seems to be one of the major problems that companies are struggling to come to terms with.
One of the red herrings that has caused this problem is “the need for followers”. Yes, you need followers, and numbers may keep the management happy. However, if this is at the cost of building customer relationships and creating quality dialogues, then it is a crash and burn technique. However large your social media team, there is a limit to how many conversations can be successfully carried on.
Whilst the vast majority may be one-time conversations eg “How do I get a refund on this faulty product?”, there will be other conversations where you are building a relationship that will help turn a single purchaser customer into a loyal evangelist of your brand. It is those dialogues which are possibly most important as they permit you to enjoy the benefits of customer retention vs customer acquisition.
The K Farms episode should highlight for all brands and companies the importance of developing strategies which can make the most of short-lived trends, where appropriate, whilst focussing on long-term engagement using the right tool for the jobs the company needs to undertake to succeed.
Empire Avenue
Whether it is Twitter, a Tumblr blog, social bookmarks, or adding +Ks to your followers as a goodwill gesture, it is important to realise that each action you carry out will build on those of the past and it is necessary to consistently add to those actions on a daily or at least weekly basis to maintain the conversations.
The founders of Youtube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, have acquired delicious.com from Yahoo!
All existing users are being asked to sign in to the service to give permission for bookmarks to be transferred to the new AVOS set-up.
Social bookmarking continues to be an important feature for many, and can also influence your rankings on the search engines. Recent additions to Delicous have included being able to tweet or email your bookmarks directly from the bookmarklet on your toolbar, as well as sending all URLs referenced on Twitter directly to Delicious through apps such as packrati.us.
Undoubtedly, the new owners will add yet more functionality to ensure that Delicious continues to play a role in both social media and social media marketing. However, the leaked Yahoo! announcement at the tail end of last year that the service was to enter a “sunset” phase saw many users jump ship to services such as SpringPad, YourVersion, historio.us, Pinboard.in and Zootool.
Delicious may need to work hard to attract users back by differentiating from the new social bookmarking and online notepad start-ups, which now offer a multitude of different solutions to the task of saving all your content into the cloud.
Which social bookmarking tool do you use, why, and will you be using the AVOS version of Delicious?
For some people, creating new content is a struggle. It really needn’t be. There is fresh content to inspire you all over the Web. However, you should always create unique content, rather than copying someone else’s work. Internet marketing, whether it is SEO, SEM, PPC, Web PR, all relies on informative, keyword rich content to work properly.
Use the resources below to find exciting content to get your creative juices flowing in no time.
Squidoo – so many people maintain their lenses (or mini websites) regularly, and there are thousands of people who follow specific lenses and encourage the authors to post more often. Look for the top ranked lenses on your keyword, or most recently updated.
Delicious – is one of the many social bookmarking sites and offers a wide variety of search mechanisms which will open up thousands of new sites for you to investigate for inspiration. Others include Digg and Stumbleupon – feel free to add more in your comment below.
Twitter – it’s really quite staggering how many Tweets are now sent each day, and the search feature is becoming ever more useful for finding latest news for particular niches. When it is working, that is!
Alltop – is a funky news site (but be warned: you can get lost in here easily, so use the eggtimer to prevent that!)
That should keep your pen busy scribbling on the paper for a while with all the news and views that are available.
Which sites help you to develop new content, write blog posts, or just get into heated debates with colleagues?! Let us know.
