Google have just announced that they are going to start showing author information in search results. This is great for author awareness and can help Google raise the rankings of pages written by authority figures. It is also great for SEO‘s who are worried that al the great content they are writing is getting ripped off or assigned to the wrong author!
Even better, Google are replacing ‘rel=author’ and ‘rel=me’ tags and are instead automatically linking your Google+ profile to content you have written. All you have to do now is add the URLs of the sites you write for to your Google+ profile, and then when scanning those sites, Google will attribute any posts with your author name to you. Then when those posts appear in search results they will come with a ‘Written by’ box including a link to your G+ page. It should end up looking like this:
When it comes to social media there is an ever-increasing number of online channels which can be used to quickly spread the word about your projects, products and services. But the wide range of choices available and the software available to manage social media can be daunting.
When it comes to managing your social media, consider what your business priorities are and what areas you need to focus on daily, weekly or monthly. Planning your social media activity is crucial!
Daily social media tasks are crucial for maintaining your image and conversing with others. While it is not time effectively to always be on Twitter and Facebook you want to make sure you respond to any communication quickly.
Twitter – Tweet and respond to tweets and retweets – Tools such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are great ways to manage Twitter and if there’s a topic you want to keep an eye on you can create a search column using the related hashtag.
Google+ – respond to mentions and comments on your posts, scan the feed for interesting content to +1.
Facebook – check your profile, pages and groups and respond as appropriate.
LinkedIn – respond to private messages and posts/comments in your groups if you have any.
Blogs – Respond to comments on your own blog posts – this opens up a dialogue between you and your users/followers, maximising opportunities for business relationships and reciprical marketing.
Bookmarking - Scan what’s popular on bookmarking and recommendation sites such as Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg and then add your own bookmarks accordingly.
Analytics – Google Analytics is the main choice for clear and concise information and it now features real time reporting. This is great as you can monitor your traffic from social media channels during campaigns to find our what elements of your social media strategy are the most successful.
We’ve written a lot about Facebook changes and Google+ updates recently so we thought it would be a good time to check back with Twitter.
Every Friday our Twitter feeds are filled up with posts using the hashtag #FF. Everyone should be familiar with Follow Friday by now (but if not read ‘What is #FF or Follow Friday?’) and many (like us) simply turn a blind eye towards most #FF tweets. We decided to conduct a poll to see if Twitter users still use #FF and looked at which tweets are most successful.
First started by Graphicly CEO Micah Baldwin in January 2009, #FF was a way for new Twitter users to find out who to follow based on recommendations. This was around Twitter’s boom period when a huge number of new users were signing up but didn’t know who to follow – #FF solved this issue and soon became a popular way to advise followers on who to follow. Here is the first ever #FF tweet:
However, nearly 3 years have passed since Micah first started the trend and Twitter now has over 200 million users – do people people still care about #FF?
We asked our Twitter followers their thoughts and – based on just over 100 responses – got the following response:
Our results seem to indicate that few people actually value #FFs these days. Of the 57% who don’t post Follow Friday recommendations only 12% follow others and of the 43% who do post recommendations only 12% think they’re actually useful. Despite our results showing that only 24% of respondents found find #FF genuinely useful, Twitter feeds on Fridays are still crammed with #FF posts. So why do people still use them and which are actually useful? Read the rest of "#FF – Do you Follow Friday? Poll Results Write Up"
LinkedIn groups are a great way to make connections and drive traffic to your website.
As the leader of social media platforms for professionals it is all about providing content to targeted groups.
However, as you can only subscribe to 50 groups and you are reaching out to like minded professionals the use of LinkedIn groups needs careful consideration.
Here are our top tips for effective use of LinkedIn Groups.
6 Top Tips for using LinkedIn groups effectively
Finding LinkedIn Groups - This is the first step and is important to get right before anything else. As you can join a maximum of 50 groups you should think about what you are looking for in a group. Do you want to reach out to potential clients, to other businesses, to leaders in your field? Once you have established your goal you then have to be picky with your search terms. Anybody can start a group on LinkedIn so a bad choice of keywords is likely to result in thousands of results. So – decide on a specific goal from joining groups and then narrow down search terms to produce the best results.
Deciding which LinkedIn groups to join - Once you have found a number of groups you need to decide which will be worthwhile to join and produce the results you desire. There’s no point in joining a LinkedIn group with a handful of people and there’s equally no point in joining an inactive group as neither are likely to generate any connections or traffic for you. Try and join groups used by industry professionals that are active and prompt discussion. If a group is full of spam then anything you post is likely to be lost or ignored.
Amy Rutter, Digital Marketing Consultant at zero G media divulges her top tips for a successful email marketing campaign…
Some may think that email marketing is dying a death to social media, but it’s is still a very effective and valid method of reaching your customers that should be an imperative part of your digital marketing strategy. Of course you will need a well designed template to start with, you can learn to do this in Dreamweaver in our post - How to Create Email Templates using Dreamweaver.
You’ve already got your subscribers – you know they’re interested in your company so that’s half the battle won. The next trick is to get your email noticed, opened and then acted upon.
So let’s look at 10 important things to consider when putting together an email campaign:
For a really in-depth, hands on guide to running campaigns, check out our 1-day Email Marketing Course
Email Marketing Top Tips!
1. From field
Ensure you set up a customised email address that will appear as the sender in the recipient’s inbox. If it says the name of your marketing agency or software or worse, is full of jargon, it’s likely to be deleted more or less immediately. Consider changing it to something that is more recognisable, like your company name or even make it more personal, such as ‘Emma from XX Company’.
2. Subject line
Be specific, with your primary focus on the first few words. When your customer is scanning their inbox, it rests on the first word or two catching their eye. Keep it short and punchy. Consider asking a question to encourage them to open the email – but don’t trick them by suggesting it contains something it doesn’t; you run the real risk of losing trust and custom. We have covered this in more detail in our post - Email Marketing Tips – Attention Grabbing Subject Lines
Last year we filmed this short interview with our Social Media trainer Claire, and we’ve just found it on the iMac and thought we’d share it with you all!
Clare has tons of experience running Social Media campaigns for a wide range of clients, and her points are as relevant now as they were then.
There’s never any guarantee that what you publish will go viral (trying to ‘plan’ viral content is notoriously hard) – but if you follow some of the tips in here and consistently publish content that people will want to share, and is relevant to what you do – you might just hit on a gem
The video’s a bit rough and ready (filmed on our good old Flip camera!) – but there’s some good tips here.
A full transcript is below:
Tips for Creating Viral Content and Linkbait – Transcript
Colin – Hello, we’re here with our Social Media trainer Claire who has just finished today’s training, so we’re going to ask her a few questions. (Claire seems to be muttering something – probably sarcastic – under her breath at this point – if any lip readers out there can tell us what it is please e-mail in!) Have you got any tips on getting content out there so that it goes viral?
You can get a free @facebook.com address by going go to your Messages view in Facebook and clicking the Claim your Facebook email link. Your facebook email will automatically be your profile username. (Note you cannot set these up for Fan pages but you can for Group Pages and Personal Profiles)
Your email address will match your public username. Once it is registered you cannot change it.
If you don’t have a username yet, or someone else has already registered that email address, you will be prompted to choose one when you create your email address.
Once you have set up your Facebook email address, anyone can email you using any type of email account, and the emails get delivered to your Facebook Messages, just like an email inbox.
When you send messages to other peoples email addresses, the emails are formatted to look like Facebook messages, which include your name, your profile picture along with your message.
Why do you want a Facebook Email?
We haven’t quite worked that one out yet! However, if I were you I’d register it anyway so that you secure the name you want, than when you find out what to do with it let us know.
Silicon Beach Training provide a host of SEO Training courses and Social Media Courses.
We shot this short video interview with Claire Stokoe (@killer_bunnie) last year, and then forgot about it!
We discovered it lurking on the office iMac this week and decided to unleash it! Claire explains why Brand Monitoring using Social Media is so important – and gives some great tips on how to do it. A full transcript of the video is below.
When it comes to social media there is an ever-increasing number of online channels which can be used to quickly spread the word about your projects, products and services. But the wide range of choices available and the software available to manage social media can be daunting.
Amy Rutter, Digital Marketing Consultant at 
