4 Shocking Facts About Social Media For Small Business

 

Running a small business is much easier when you incorporate Internet marketing into your strategy. One way entrepreneurs are successfully doing this is with social media. There are so many different networks to test and try out. The nature of your business and the audience you cater to will determine which venues are the best. So before you shrug off the idea of using social channels, it’s good to give it a try. Or at least do a bit of research to see why your SEO company is recommending your brand to go social.

The following stats taken from the Social Media Marketing Industry Report help to prove that small companies can and are using these channels to market their businesses on successfully.

Facebook is the Most Widely Used

Small businesses just love Facebook. Numbers show that a whopping 93 percent of survey respondents use Facebook for their social media marketing. This topped Twitter, which was at 79 percent. Sixty-two percent of the small business owners surveyed also stated they would be increasing their Facebook marketing efforts in 2016. Sixty-six percent said they planned to increase their activity on LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter.

Entrepreneurs Agree Social Media is Essential

Not all small business owners are on the same page, but more than half of those asked stated they strongly agree that social channels are indeed a critical component for their business (58 percent). Another 34 percent agreed. Only seven percent were uncertain and two percent disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Many Entrepreneurs Spend Six or More Hours On Social Media Weekly

If this sounds like too much interaction on your channels, you’re setting your campaign up for failure. If you don’t have the time to dedicate to your social media marketing, you can hire an SEO company to do it for you. An Internet marketing agency can set up tools to streamline your brands interactions across your social channels, such as Hootsuite and Post Planner. Small business owners can also use these to schedule future messages, videos and posts in advance.

Thirty-three percent of respondents in the survey said they dedicated between one and five hours to social media marketing and management each week. Another 25 percent said they committed to between six and 10 hours weekly.

Small Brands Build Exposure

One of the top reasons small businesses like social channels is because it helps to increase their exposure. It’s the medium that is affordable for small businesses and allows visibility just as great as television and radio. Exposure was voted the top benefit of social media for small businesses over increased traffic (77 percent) and creating loyal fans (69 percent).

10 Crazy Tips To Become Viral on Facebook

Going viral refers to the number of unique people who see some posts from a story that is published by a friend. This story comprises of comments, likes, responses to an event, sharing and answers to any questions. All businesses want more views, more traffic, more subscribers, interactions and followers for their online presence. If they have something that goes viral then it can easily get huge customers following in just a short span of time and without much effort. A viral Facebook post is something that all digital marketers dream about and is totally free. The next section highlights some secrets that can help you go viral on Facebook.

Content should not Be Boring

For going viral, you definitely need something unique. So, the content of your post should not be boring or similar to what is already present on other sites. Make people excited or offer them some things that force them to think. Do something that affects their feelings. If your post is some kind of story, make it inspiring, powerful and moving. Use a tone that is real and authentic. Its quality can be like casual conversation but it has to be touchy. It is assured that if you use these things in your post it will go viral within no time.

Focus on Current trends and Events

If any post is current then people would be interested in it. People love new content and often such content is viewed over and over again by many people. Therefore you need to check latest Google trends and its news section. You may also want to look for keywords as they are vital for your post to get discovered. Just like Google, Facebook’s search bar also gives options about the types of phrases and keywords you type. Be sure that your ideal keywords are in headlines, text body and in the description. You can get tags and information about keywords through different available online platforms.

Integration

Post your content on different online platforms like YouTube and Twitter and start driving huge traffic to your site. This can be done from anywhere and will provide the opportunity for people to share the content. It is important that you never forget to integrate this content. For instance, once you have posted a video on YouTube, you should integrate it on other social platforms as well to enhance sharing.

Get Noticed by Some Celebrities

Celebrities have massive audience and so the Facebook content often goes viral just because a celebrity shares or comes across it. Unfortunately, getting attention of celebrities is not an easy task but still you can do this by the quality of your content. If your content has something which they require, they will definitely notice it and in this way you can get their attention. This is a positive sign for posts or product promotion.

Videos

There are no guidelines on how your content must look in order to go viral. So you can use any of the unlimited ways. One of them is the use of videos, which are the biggest part of web. If you have uploaded any video on Vimeo or YouTube and it is easy to discover by others, people will do the entire task of promotions on their own and they will share it in all other social networks.

Start Some Contest

Contests are the best way to grab the attention of people and interact with most of them. They spread words about something easily and fast. Facebook offers different questions that can be answered to grab the attention of many readers. Similarly, on a particular web page, you can hold contests about the best picture or any best information shared. This will attract lots of comments and likes and as a result make your post go more viral. In most social media campaigns, these contents are of extreme importance as they enable current viewers to engage with new people.

You may also hold an event where you invite different celebrities who will make your event even more powerful and resourceful.

Shocking and Controversial

In order to go viral, you may want to surprise your audience by comments and likes on controversial issues. This works best if you are the kind of person who does not mind being liked or hated. When seeing the content sparks the emotions of people then they will naturally want to promote it in order to see the reactions of other people. Bad or good, both cases are possible in going viral.

Use Humor

It is a fact that people come to social media sites for fun. They love laughing and feel happy to share anything that is funny. So, all those who have creative knack of comedy can use it to grab the attention and viral sharing of the humor. Use funny images and videos are recommended.

Use Images

As we all know, the average span of a general web surfer has gone down. Thus, you have a better chance to grab people’s attention by using bold photos and photos with big block text. Facebook offers this service and makes the photos look large in news feed. You can also use different online tools to make your post more authentic and appealing.

Submit to Reddit

If you can come up to the first page of Reddit then you can certainly get thousands of viewers. You just have to submit your post in the Reddit and other people vote it down or up. If the post gets maximum votes it will surely get published at the front of Reddit. This task is a bit tricky and it is suggested that you take your time to interact with the Reddit community before posting your links into it for self-promotion. After that, if your post gets at the front, it will certainly get viral not only on Facebook but also on other social media sites.

In short, a post on Facebook or any other social media can be viral but you have to apply the correct strategies as mentioned above. The use of above-mentioned strategies is recommended since they are proven to be the best.

8 SEO Trends In 2016 | All Bloggers Must Read This

Google takes quality seriously…

In the previous years, the greatest search engine on the planet has announced various updates aimed to expand the overall quality of their search results. This has made it much harder for SEO’s around the globe to rank websites today rather than earlier years.

Here are a few greatest changes we may be expecting this year:

1. More stress on the mobile audience

Google began to put a higher emphasis on their mobile audience when they brought out the mobile algorithm upgrade in April 2015. After the algorithms take off, we’ve started to see greater varieties between the mobile search results and desktop search results.

As mobile internet usage forges ahead, we can hope to see Google stretching their endeavors to better serve their mobile users. So it’s more imperative now than any time in recent memory to ensure that your site is optimized for mobile.

2. Enactment of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

Notwithstanding a focus on the mobile users, we can likewise foresee that having AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) pages will be geared to win higher organic traffic. This is owing to Google announcing they’ll start to incorporate AMP in Feb. of 2016.

This implies AMP pages themselves could surely get a boost in the mobile search results.

3. Higher straight search answers

In case you’re a persistent Google user, you’ve presumably seen that Google frequently gives you the answer you look for right there in the search results.

For instance, how about, we review the Los Angeles Basketball Squad, the LA Lakers.

That is to say, all that I have to know about the team is available forthwith in the search results. With a brisk search, I got details about their latest game, team schedule, news updates., etc.

This is called Google Knowledge Graph. That way Google has enhanced their overall user experience.

Here’s what you can do to help place your site in the Knowledge Graph:

• Set up a Wikipedia page for your business.

• Set up a Google+ page for your business.

• Ensure that you’ve legitimately administered schema markups

• Tie Up with other pertinent and related websites.

• Ensure that you utilize nouns and entities rather than pronouns to allow Google to better recognize what precisely you’re talking about.

4. Higher importance to trust and authority

Over the previous decade, the web has grown quickly. Presently, it’s much less demanding for Google to isolate trusted sites from non-trusted sites in view of the reputation built over numerous years.

Today, Google inclines toward aged sites which have demonstrated their trust over numerous years by getting numerous quality inbound links and offering huge amounts of valuable content.

The search results are mostly dominated by bigger brands with domains over two decades old.

5. Significance of building thematic pertinence

Notwithstanding the case above, you might be wondering how come Laptop Mag outranked the various sites despite the fact that it’s younger and doesn’t carry the kind of domain authority.

All things considered, Tablet Mag is the lone site out of the main 5 that entirely concentrates on Laptops particularly.

Why does this make a difference?

In 2015, Google announced a 160-page dossier which incorporated their Search Quality Guidelines. They expressed that supplementary pages are a critical variable in helping them identify a website’s overall authority.

In spite of the fact that other websites might rank for a more extensive range of keywords and get higher volumes of organic traffic, Google has discovered that Laptop Mag is the #1 authority to be at, for topics pertinent to laptop’s for example, laptop reviews.

That is on account of they’ve developed a high level of thematically pertinent topics identified with laptops.

6. Turning the heat on unnatural link practices

There’s most likely Google is going to keep on making significant crackdowns on spammy link practices. They even have a spam group committed particularly to doing only that.

What’s more, in the course of recent years, Google has made big leaps to taking action against wrong link building exercises. One of the most noticeable overhauls was back in 2014 when Google de-indexed individually owned blog networks. Soon after that upgrade, numerous individuals reported that their domains had been de-indexed.

7. Significance of website speed

That’s true! Site speed is a critical ranking factor. Assuming that your site performs much snappier than your opponents’ websites, you’ll have an edge over them.

Moreover, Google has a crawl budget assigned for every website taking into account their site and authority. This implies crawl budgets get wasted owing to long load times.

8. Additional push for user experience

With rivalry hotting-up and Bing gaining higher share, it must be obvious that Google will need to give their users a superior user-experience; truth be told, Google is just on a par with the website’s it has in its index.

To conclude, In 2016, and up and coming years, creating a quality website that gives worth to users will be a more vital variable in SEO. As an SEO specialist and one of the best SEO resellers around, I attempt to invest some time examining and foreseeing Google’s patterns so I have a better idea of how to map out and work out for up and coming SEO projects. What’s more, with 2016, I anticipate more changes principally spinning around quality and user experience.

Enhance Multiple Income With Facebook Video

What are people using the Internet for? After social media and email, people are spending many hours per week watching online video. Businesses have taken notice to this trend and are beginning to push out their own video content. This has also given rise to social media marketing companies and Internet marketing agencies that offer video marketing services. Combining social media and video marketing can be very useful for driving traffic and user engagement.

Think about it this way – if most people are spending hours on social media each day and like to watch online video, doesn’t it make sense to post videos to your social media profiles?

Facebook Rolls Out Video Features

You were always able to upload video content to your Facebook wall, but Facebook recently rolled out a number of tools that would enhance this feature. For one, there is autoplay, which was a genius move on their part. It also has metrics and other tools that you can use to make it easier to distribute video content.

Surprisingly, few small business owners have taken advantage of Facebook video for marketing purposes. If you didn’t already know, video happens to get the most attention on Facebook. Why? Because Facebook did something clever – they tweaked their news feed algorithm so that it would show videos more often. What did this do? Facebook now averages over four billion video views daily.

If this isn’t music to your ears, then you’re completely missing the point. There’s never been a time where producing and distributing video was so easy and affordable.

Facebook’s autoplay feature was released in 2013 and has since increased views, likes, shares and comments by 58 percent. A view is counted if the person watches for at least three seconds. So if you’re able to capture the attention of your audience for at least three seconds, then it’s very likely they will continue. And if you can get people to complete your videos, then you’re more likely to convert them into buyers.

The following tips are oftentimes used by companies that offer social media marketing and management services:

  • Your videos should be able to tell the message or story with and without sound
  • The first frame of video should grab the attention of viewers
  • The content should be relevant and contextual
  • Great content to use include customer testimonials, product reviews, behind-the-scenes clips and content generated by users
  • There should be a call to action, letting viewers know exactly what you want them to do next – buy, click, subscribe!

With the help of social media marketing companies, you can improve your online video campaigns and successfully advertise them on Facebook and other social networks.

Crazy Ways to Increase Your Traffic From Pinterest

Did you know that Pinterest has around 50 million visitors each month? This is mainly due to the fact that people see Pinterest as an easy place to find whatever information they are looking for.

Due to the high traffic volume on Pinterest, this is the ideal place to start generating traffic to your website or blog. Here are some tips to help you get started on your Pinterest campaign:

* Start by creating your own board blog. If you already have one, that’s great! However, you want to give your board blog the same name as your blog page. Having the same title for both allows people to find your blog posts and articles much quicker. Use great keywords that will show up on the first page of search engines. You can’t get better advertisement than that!

Using either a quote, or a brief summary, pin your blog posts onto your board. Adding an eye-catching image is a must if you want to get the attention of so many users. Don’t forget to put the link back to your blog posts on your pins.

* Putting ‘Pin it’ buttons on all your blog posts is a great way for your followers to share your posts with their followers. As more people visit your page, more people will share your posts with their friends.

* After you have set up 2 – 5 boards of your own, start to participate in a wide variety of group boards. Well established boards already have large, built-in, followers. Having boards of your own will let people know that you intend to be a serious contributor to their boards.

Of course, you are going to want to find those group boards that fit into your niche in some way. Once established, ask if you can contribute an article. Either send the board owner a private message from Pinterest, email them, or comment on their pin, asking if you can make a contribution to the board.

* Connect with your followers. You joined Pinterest to get people to go read your blog or website; engaging them is the best way to get them there.

Pinning often is a great way to be ‘front and center’ with your followers. Be sure you post well written, original articles that are relevant to your blog, service or product.

Spend time following those who have chosen to follow you. Comment on, re-pin, and like their pins. This lets them know that you are truly watching, and are interested in, what they are up to.

* Entertain your followers while giving them a variety of information. A lifestyle board is a great place to pin various pieces of information relevant to your business. You should include articles, products, household tips and a few lifestyle images.

Make use of free images you find online, or use your own. Eye-catching images will get you a ton of re-pins, so be sure your image is great and relates in some way with your blog articles.

Don’t forget to include links on your images. Many people miss this opportunity to drive even more traffic to their blog.

* Don’t forget about your Pinterest bio page! Pinterest users do check out bio pages, so be sure to utilize this area. Let people know what you and your business are about. Share your hobbies and interests, and your goals for your business. A great bio is your introduction to the masses and helps them decide if they want to read more of your writings.

Your avatar should depict an aspect of your business that people will understand. Make one that ‘pops’ in order for people to find you quick and easy.

Check your ‘search privacy’ setting to be sure it is open to all search engines. Making it easy for people to find your posts is what marketing is all about. You can’t generate traffic if people cannot find you.

Pinterest users come from all over the globe, and from all walks of life. They have vastly different experiences and styles, yet they all come together online to share what they know. Using some of these tips will help you make the most of your Pinterest experiences.

Because Pinterest is a large social networking site, you can be assured of a large audience reading your words. Once you hook them with your image and words, it is just a matter of reeling them in to your website. This is Pinterest campaigning at its finest.

10 SEO Checklist 2016 That You Must to DO

The goal of successful SEO is to obtain a high ranking in the organic search results of the search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

Higher website rankings mean more traffic, more traffic means more costumers and more sales.

Do you want to improve organic traffic, drive leads and improve your position in search engine results? This SEO checklist can help.

Competing for top rankings in the search engines involves two elements:

  • On-page – Optimizing and improving what is on your website pages, including Technical factors.
  • Off-page – Measuring and improving things are that are happening beyond your site, such as the number and quality of links coming into your site from other sites.

Do your homework before creating your content?

For optimization purposes, you should have one, or at most, two target keywords or key phrases in mind per page. If you are trying to rank well for four or more keywords on a single page, it’s time to step back and consider breaking up the content into several different pages so you can create page focus.

The main purpose for your content, in search terms, is answering the searchers queries.

Now that you’re ready to begin, the checklist below will guide you in creating the perfectly optimized page. No single factor on the checklist is make-or-break for getting your page to rank well, but they work in combination to raise your overall score – Google looks at more than 200 key factors when it ranks every page.

On-Page optimization, and technical factors

  1. Title – (Meta Title)
    Your title should be different for each sub-page. Your Keyword or key phrase should always be included in the title.
    The title must not exceed 60 characters (since search engines rarely can display longer titles in searches).
  2. Description – (Meta Description)
    Your description should be unique for each sub-page, and shortly describe what’s the page´s about. Your keyword or key phrase will need to be included herein.
    The title must not exceed 156 characters long (since search engines rarely can display longer titles in searches – each can display 160 characters).
  3. Headings – (Heading tags)
    Headings are also called H1, H2, H3 and is simply your headlines, the way your include those highly dependent on the platform your shop or website is made of.
    Each webpage should have at least one or more Headings. Your keywords or key phrases should to be included here.
    It is highly recommended not to have more than 30 Headings on one webpage. Search Engines could see more than 30, as spamming.
  4. Body – (Text content)
    The body is simply the text content on each of your pages. Each text must be unique. Just as you should not “copy paste” from other pages or texts from the web, since you could be penalized by the search engines (Google) for “duplicate content”.
    Your keywords should be included in both the Title, description, Headings and in the body.
  5. Images
    Optimize your images for the web – Before you upload and insert your images in a webpage or web shop (so they are not huge, and take an eternity to load in browsers).
    Of course, a full-sized banner image will need to have more pixels. However, even these should preferably not be more than 100 KB in size, and small images should preferable be under 10 KB.
    Remember to name the images; Do this with either a Title-Tag, Alt-Tag and/or description.
    Name the images – so it fits with the content of the image, and if possible, use your keywords to name it.
  6. Social Media
    Are your brand/domain represented in the Social Media? – The importance and benefits of social media are huge. You gain both authority, links as well as being in contact with a variety of possible customer – All this can positively affect your ranking signals to Google and other search engines.
    If not represented – Then start with placing social sharing buttons on web shop / website, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. Create a company Facebook page, Google My Business page etc.
  7. Speed
    Loading speed – is it fast or slow? Fast loading speed is a benefit – Not just for the web user, who may not have the same patience to wait for your page to load, as yourself, but also for Google (and other search engines) that can penalize your site if it is not speed optimized proper.
    Speed optimization consist of several factors among other: Gzip compression, cache of images, web pages etc., optimized images, optimized HTML, CMS, Plugins, JavaScript and code in general.
    Check your website’s speed by Google Speed Insights – Your page should preferably have a score above 70.
  8. Mobile Optimized
    Mobile optimized website. More and more people are surfing via Mobile or iPad; therefore, it is important that your pages are Mobile Optimized. You can check this in Google Speed Insights.
    Make sure that your “buttons” are large enough to press through your phone. If they are too small, they can be difficult to use.
  9. Sitemap.xml, Robots.txt and canonical
    It is important that you have a Robot.txt and Sitemap.xml file included on its website or webshop, this helps the search engines and their “Robots” when they crawl and index your website.
    A Sitemap is a map over your website. Be sure to make a link to your Sitemap at the bottom of your page (Footer) on all pages. Note! Some Web platforms generates a sitemap automatically, you might want to check if your page has a Sitemap by typing your page’s URL followed by Sitmap.xml.
    A Robots.txt file tell the search engines, what webpages they can index; is it allowed or disallowed to index. Check if your page has a “Robot.txt” by writing your page´s URL followed by robot.txt as it should be there. Avoid Duplicate Content and different versions of your site by inserting “Canonical tag” – Read more about the use of Canonical tags at Google.
    If in doubt, contact a SEO company and get them to look into it for you.
  10. Links – Off Page SEO
    Do you have inbound links? Incoming links to your domain and individual webpages is probably the most important “weapon” when you have to tell the search engines that your domain is more important than the competitor’s is. When used right, the link gives your domain authority.
    Check your competitor’s link profile, and get an insight in “what it takes”, to go past them on searches (in combination with On-Page SEO). You can talk with a SEO Specialist about this.
    To build a good, solid Link Profile is something that takes time, and you can make some links yourself, but I recommend that you contact a serious and professional SEO company or SEO Specialist and consult him.

Following this checklist will result in an optimized page and domain for ranking well in searches.