How to market content

1. Use your social media outreach

The best content will connect with people, it will get them to think about the subject matter of the content, whether it is an editorial, infographic or video and encourage readers to form their own opinion. Whenever we create content, that is always the end-goal – to get people to think, and hopefully to like it. The most difficult part for smaller businesses is getting content to be picked up by the community and read by people, but this is why social networks have the potential to be so effective.

Even small businesses with a relatively limited social media outreach might be followed by other highly influential people with extensive outreach. The key is getting people to share it, so just make sure you post great content at an optimal time and make relevant people aware of it.

2. Have a marketing strategy in place

Don’t simply create one single link on your social media networks and expect it to go viral within 30 minutes. Have a plan in place before you release the content to extend its visibility beyond that of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Research the most active industry forums and decide how you are going to discuss it and generate buzz around it – what is the hook of the piece? Will it create controversy? Does it promote your products or services? Try to answer these questions and build a marketing strategy for your best content because this will help it achieve its full potential.

3. Time your release

In the ‘Science of blogging’, Dan Zarrella conducted a series of experiments aimed at discovering how the most successful blogs function. One of these experiments was testing when the optimal time to create a link on a social network was – when is the best time get retweets on Twitter, or the best time to get likes on Facebook etc. The results were surprisingly significant, and the vast dataset that the results were taken from makes them reliable, but obviously there might be some variations depending on the niche of the industry.

The results showed that the best time to post a link on Twitter is around 4pm on a Friday, whereas Facebook activity appeared to be much more prevalent during weekends, and generally during the mornings. Timing to launch your content at peak times is another great tactic to optimise your content for success.

4. Be Patient

Great content doesn’t always explode within minutes of its launch – of course there are exceptions, but generally it could take days, weeks or even months before a piece of content really achieves its potential. It can be frustrating because obviously a lot of time and effort is taken into producing high-quality content, but the best thing to do is have faith, and let it share and spread organically. Don’t repeatedly spam your social network profiles with repeated links to the same content if it doesn’t start attracting traffic instantly because you risk alienating your client base or damaging brand awareness.

Creating superb, original and creative content is one of the best things a company can do, no matter the size of the business. It is the best way to communicate directly with your clients and keep them informed about brand products, services and offers as well as achieving higher rankings in the SERPs. Hopefully these short tips can help you develop the reach of your content, but if you have any further comments then please feel free to comment on this blog.

Related posts:

1. Incorporating Social Networking Into Your Web Design One of the most powerful forms of Internet marketing these...
2. Optimising Your Site For Social Media Optimising Your Site For Social Media If you’d like to...
3. Hate Socialising but Love Money? You still need Facebook The growth of Social Networks in the last couple of...

Google’s own definition of Rich Snippets can be seen below:

“Google tries to present users with the most useful and informative search results. The more information a search result snippet can provide, the easier it is for users to decide whether that page is relevant to their search. With rich snippets, webmasters with sites containing structured content—such as review sites or business listings—can label their content to make it clear that each labelled piece of text represents a certain type of data: for example, a restaurant name, an address, or a rating.”

Read more about Rich Snippets by going to: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170

Here at Click Consult we have been doing some digging around and found that a large number of different types of Rich Snippets are now being used by a wide range of sites.

Below is a list of the Rich Snippets we have found that are currently live in the SERPs:

At this stage Rich Snippets have no effect on SEO or rankings. They can however help to improve the Click Through Rate (CTR) of a site significantly by giving the searcher more information at the decision stage. Basically a searcher is more likely to click on a site that shows 10 Reviews than a site that shows none.

Judging by the growth of Rich Snippets we predict that some of the following things could soon be appearing within the search results too:
-    Primary Image on Webpage (primaryImageOfPage)
-    Movie, Music and Event durations (duration)
-    The base salary on Job Postings (baseSalary)
-    Menu Snippets or Link to Menu for Food Establishments (menu)
-    Nutritional Information, including calories, fat content, carbohydrates and more (calories, fatContent, carbohydrateContent)

Related posts:

1. Using Rich Snippets to capture more traffic Rich Snippets are becoming increasingly common in modern SERPs. Google,...
2. Understanding Search Engines Part 4: Algorithms In order to determine which pages rank where in their...
3. Keyword Rich Domains All SEO professionals know that domains that are rich in...

Wikipedia Blackout

SOPA working together with PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) propose that anyone found guilty of streamlining copyrighted content without permission ten times or more within 6 months should go to jail. Furthermore, any site found enabling or facilitating piracy could be shut down. The acts will basically give more power to the American government to take down any site that it believes has copyright content regardless of who uploaded it which means that if the bills are passed, sites would have to closely monitor what exactly users are posting on their site.

If these new laws are to be granted the internet without doubt will not be the resource it once was, allowing people to share information openly and freely (that’s right, goodbye YouTube!)

On the other hand, the entertainment industry argues that the legislation is going to be a vital for protection in their battle against piracy accusing the likes of Wikipedia and Google of over exaggerating the impact that these laws will have.

But the question still remains whether these bills are badly written? Is SOPA being too irrational? With the internet being the ‘most powerful tool enabling us to create a more open connected world’ (Zuckerberg, 2012), will it be possible for anyone to do anything online without fear and apprehension?

Learn more about the issues discussed above and let your voice be heard http://www.netcoalition.com/sample-page/.

Related posts:

1. Wikia Built to destroy Google Is Wikipedia about to knock Google off the top of...
2. Google Knol the rip-off of Wikipedia Some of you may have seen that Google are launching...
3. Wikia built to destroy Google Inc? Is Wikipedia about to knock Google off the top of...

The world’s most successful search engine has crushed bitter adversary Facebook in the scuffle to become the most viewed website of 2011 after it received on average a staggering 153million unique visitors every month in the US alone, whereas Facebook managed only 138million unique visitors a month.

What does this mean?

According to the market research company Nielsen, http://tinyurl.com/72cc66b the two internet leviathans were well in front of third placed Yahoo which had 130million unique visitors per month, minuscule in comparison. So what does this mean exactly?

To put it blunt Google rules the entire internet kingdom, or does it? it must be said that while it is extremely impressive to be the most visited site on the web, Google is primarily a search engine and despite their success they are without doubt in second place to Facebook in the rankings for most popular social networking site, with their still wet behind the ears Google+ failing to deliver the levels of success previously anticipated by the California based organisation.

Despite Facebook leading the way in the race for social networking nirvana, Google still has an opportunity to boast in this internet tug of war with Mark Zuckerberg’s group as YouTube (owned by Google) is still the world’s most popular online video site. Google 2, Facebook 1.

What is next for 2012?

So how can Google build on this for 2012 or is it just an irrelevant survey that is forgotten about by mid January?

As mentioned above while Google is dominating in search sites and online video sites, the tough nut they still have yet to crack is social networking. Is this the year Google invests heavily in its social networking platform by putting page rank and links on the back burner for the time being in the pursuit of social media success? Ask me in 2013.

Related posts:

1. Incorporating Social Networking Into Your Web Design One of the most powerful forms of Internet marketing these...
2. Will Facebook Drive MSN PPC higher? The recent change in the layout of Facebook probably annoyed...
3. The Search War continues This week we saw yet another example of the continuing...

At the moment, the changes are only going to apply to signed-in users at Google.com, who are searching in English.  They will be notified that the changes have been made to their SERPs when they see a notification that looks like this:

Another feature of this update is one that members of the search engine optimisation community have been calling for, for a long time.  That is the option to switch between personalised and depersonalised results with a single click.  This is easily done using this button,  located to the top right of the SERPs:

This is a great feature because it is making the effect of personalisation much more transparent, and allowing users to simply switch between personalised and depersonalised results gives them a level of control that was absent before ‘Search Plus Your World’.

How is personalisation going to affect my SERPs?

There are several ways that personalisation is going to affect your SERPs.  These include listing from the web that have been boosted because of your social (Google+) connections, listings that have been boosted because of personal behaviour, public Google+ posts and photos, and private or “limited” Google+ posts and photos.  The most eye-catching of these is the final point I mentioned about private content now appearing in the SERPs.  Google have provided an example of how private content will infiltrate the SERPs using a scenario where Googler, Amit Shighal, searches for ‘Chikoo’, which is the name of his dog, and the name of an Indian fruit.  In his personalised results, the SERP would look like this:

In this example, as highlighted by the Google arrow, we can see that the result is featuring in his results despite him not sharing it publically, but instead choosing a “limited” share option.  Before ‘Share Plus Your World’, Google wouldn’t have been able to list these photos when they Singhal searched for ‘Chikoo’ because they weren’t public, and therefore Google couldn’t see them.  However, it’s important to remember that this privately shared content will not appear in the public SERPs, only in your personalised ones.  Some have already suggested that the idea of private content appearing in the listings like it is public content is unsettling by its very nature, and it may take some getting used to.  To reach these photos, he would have had to use the separate Google+ Search:

Another feature of ‘Search Plus Your World’ is the ability to access only content that has been shared on Google+ or Picasa.  This can be done by clicking on the highlighted ‘Personal Results’ option that appears directly beneath the search bar:

Another new feature, that might be of particular to brands looking to Google+ for a social media marketing campaign, is the suggested ‘People and Pages on Google+’ that is suggested for certain queries.  For example, when I search for ‘Gaming’, Google suggests the following people and pages:

This is a perfect example of how having an optimised Google+ profile can give your brand a fantastic opportunity to increase visibility.  I’d imagine that the G+ profiles for IGN and G4 will get a lot of additional traffic through these listings, and as a result their main websites may see an increase in social network referral traffic.   This should illustrate to those still undecided about creating a G+ profile for their brand, that it really does have the potential to be highly effective strategy, and it is worth adopting it early to be ahead of the game when ‘Search Plus Your World’ goes global.

The final feature I’ll cover is the ability to quickly connect with other personal Google+ profiles in a way that is very similar to how ‘Direct Connect’ works for Google+ business pages, and comparable to the functionality of Facebook when you search for a person’s name.  So, if I wanted to search for Rand Fishkin from SEO Moz, this is how it would appear:

This makes it easier to connect with the people I follow, or am connected with through Google+, particularly because below this top listing, I can see what content they have publically shared because that might be of specific interest to me.  I would also be able to see content shared in a “limited” way, if it had been specifically shared with the circle I was part of.

One of the point’s I hope to cover in more detail, is how Google appear to be favouring their own product (Google+) ahead of other social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, despite them both arguably being bigger data sources.  Interestingly Google have recently stated that they’d be open to collaboration with those social networks, but because they don’t allow Google to crawl and index them deeply enough, their impact in the SERPs is limited.  If Facebook and Twitter did allow Google to crawl them, do you think they would marginalise the impact of their own product in favour of two rivals?

In this post I’ve just covered the basics about how ‘Search Plus You World’ is changing the face of the SERPs as we traditionally know them.  However, several well-respected voiced in the SEO and internet marketing industries are already questioning the ethics, and the quality of these new result pages.  In the next few weeks I’ll be covering this area heavily, but if you have any queries about how this might affect your social media marketing strategies, then please don’t hesitate to contact Click Consult.

Related posts:

1. Understanding Search Engines Part 5: Search Engine Result Pages Understanding the role of search engines and how they use...
2. Google Launch new flight service. Google have recently launched a new search vertical that they...
3. Google Toolbar Revamp In the past week, Google has been changing the colours...

In my opinion 2012 should be the year that business’ start using social media as a strategic marketing tool. New technologies have seen snail mail left behind, it no longer takes over a week to respond to a dissatisfied customer, nor does it take almost half a year to launch a new marketing campaign. Embracing the velocity of social media and the opportunities that it presents will help to build a first-class social strategy.

As social media starts to drive more business, it will be vital not to forget your content. Your strategy to-date may have been successful but remember not to get too complacent, as social media evolves and your following develops, your content will need to do the same. Could your 2012 resolution be to create unique content? There are more brands out there than I would care to mention constantly recreating their content, ensuring its uniqueness in the market, its vital to do the same if you are to get the exposure that you deserve. Or maybe your resolution could be not to lose your customers attention in 2012? Either or my point remains the same, if you are not creating unique content in order to capture your audience, somebody else will.

If you haven’t already done so, a resolution could be to join the expected force of 2012 that is Google+. It seems that many social enthusiasts think that the best is yet to come from Google+ and I agree with them. I don’t feel that we have yet seen its full potential, how many capabilities will ‘hangouts’ alone open up? This next resolution may require you to reach for your crystal ball, ‘Stay ahead of the game in 2012’. A testing resolution, yet surely worth a shot?

Related posts:

1. Optimising Your Site For Social Media Optimising Your Site For Social Media If you’d like to...
2. What Screen Resolution Should My Website Be Designed For? The different screen resolutions used on different people's computers is...
3. Include Email In Your Social Media Campaign Social media sites have changed the way business operates on...

Bearing this in mind, I thought it might be beneficial to cover some of the similarities between these two industries in a bit more detail.  It might even be worth discussing the differences as well because there are several important contrasts.

What is PR?

Firstly, it would be prudent to establish a definition of ‘PR’ or ‘Public Relations’.  PR is concerned with managing the reputation of a business with the objective of earning support and influencing the opinion of the public, particularly those that might be specifically interested in the service or conduct of an individual business.

Well, how is the comparable to SEO, I hear you say.  To achieve a higher online visibility, SEO strategists must determine the best channels of communication to distribute businesses content to an online community.  The content that the SEO copywriters create also has to be written in a very precise form that will appeal and interest that community, get shared through social media outlets and forums and win authoritative links.

In many ways the mind-set is very similar between the two professions, but because traditional PR is largely an offline practice and SEO is online, there are some differences.  I think the main variance is that search engine optimisation is ultimately about getting traffic to visit a website directly.  PR can more frequently be about simply making the public aware of a brand without implying explicitly that they should use that brand next time they are searching for a particular service.

Can I apply PR strategies to my SEO work?

There is one tactic that is employed lots by both PR and SEO professionals – that is to use press releases.  Press releases provide a great way to distribute information quickly and reliably through many reputable news channels that will be deemed as authoritative hubs of information by the online community.  They can be used to discuss new services, client acquisitions and research – anything that could be considered newsworthy by the online community.  The main difference between online and offline press releases that online ones are reliant on links and keywords to achieve maximum SEO value.  When press releases are being written by SEO agencies, they are written with increasing search engine visibility in mind.

It is also important to regularly publish and post other forms of content that are more distanced from advertising than press releases.  This can be the blog or articles that are published on a website and distributing them through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn etc.  Regularly producing content that is suitable and interesting for the online community will help a business establish a solid foundation on which to build other facets of an SEO campaign such as link building and reputation management.

Another idea that has the same principles for both search marketing and PR company’s is to host a competition.  By hosting a competition you will be directly interacting with you clients, all the while building trust and establishing a positive brand association.  Online competitions are generally quite simple to organise and host.  For example, you can say raise awareness of a social media presence by offering a free sample of a service when your Twitter accounts reaches 500 followers, for example.

To conclude I would say that there are some striking similarities between SEO and PR, and often the skills from one profession are easily transferrable to the other.  Understanding how to interact with the community in order to transfer a brand message between a business and the public is a crucial practice in search engine optimisation and public relations.  Often the best SEO campaigns can strike a blend between the two, so if you have any questions about SEO or any of our other services please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Related posts:

1. Online Press Releases To Help Your PR Your business relationships with the public will be a huge...
2. Build and Reward a Social Community One thing that is becoming clearer by the day for...
3. Web Design gives your Company a Virtual Presence Having a web site or web pages within a web...

At the crux of the book is the argument that personalisation is fragmenting the web. Websites are increasingly tailoring their services to each individual user – this means that when we search Google, or one of the other search engines, for something such as ‘climate change’ or ‘immigration’ we are likely to be served results that support the preconceptions we already have on these subjects. The search engines are able to do this through monitoring what websites we have already visited, and determining which results in relation to a query we are likely to find more useful. This personalisation also extends beyond the search engines, Facebook use EdgeRank to determine which friends updates we see in our news feed, and it is argued that the recommendations Amazon generates are causing its users to become myopic because they aren’t being offered an unbiased selection of results. In this search marketing blog, I’d like to explore the argument in a bit more detail – and hopefully at the end you can leave you view on the subject.

Are we in a Filter Bubble?

I’d like to focus specifically on Google throughout this blog because, as a search engine, it plays an incredibly large part in how we receive information on any subject. It is true that personalisation affects most of the searches conducted on Google, and the majority of casual users don’t even realise that the results they are shown are tailored to their idiosyncrasies. The main argument that Pariser puts forth is that because the information we receive is suited to us, it is serving as a form of propaganda, solidifying our biases and leaving users with tunnel-vision as they are unwilling to listen, or just unaware of counter arguments against their beliefs.

Take, for example, a person that is searching Google for the query ‘climate change’ for the first time. The first link they click might be a webpage arguing that ‘climate change’ is a fallacy, from that webpage they follow links to other websites supporting this argument, and from those websites they delve deeper into this particular theory. The next time they search Google for ‘climate change’, instead of the SERPs being populated with unbiased information representing arguments both for its existence and against its existence, the results supporting the idea that it is a fallacy will be ranked higher, obviously making them more likely to be clicked. This starts a cycle where the searcher may just become unaware of arguments stating that ‘climate change’ is a reality, leaving them with a biased view and perhaps an unwillingness to accept other arguments. This is a bit of an exaggerated example, as it would generally take Google longer than one search, to really start influencing the results it shows, but it indicates how Pariser’s argument is structured.

The second part of the argument is that it creates a privacy nightmare, because websites are capable of harvesting vast data on individual users, and this is creating a ‘big brother’ level of paranoia amongst some digital and social commentators including Pariser. There is truth in this argument, particularly as Facebook have recently had to restructure their privacy settings by setting on limits on how long they can retain data on ad-clicks, amongst other things. Another argument of Pariser’s is that in authoritarian states, the algorithms that tell help filter results to suit our needs, can also filter out news that we shouldn’t see – it increases censorship. So, while there are some significant arguments supporting Pariser’s view, in the book he tends to ignore the counter claims to this argument – dare I suggest a hint of irony?

While personalisation does affect almost all internet searches, it is possible to remove all personalisation with a single click – a fact that goes unmentioned in the book. This may be because, as I stated earlier, many casual users are perhaps unaware that their results on Google are filtered. However, simply by clicking the ‘Verbatim’ search tool on Google, all personalisation filters are removed, and each Web Browser has the option of ‘private browsing’. It can also be argued that personalisation makes it more likely that serendipitous results are more likely to be favoured as interesting results are generated along with relevant results. This is supported by a study conducted by Microsoft in 2009 that states, “rather than harming serendipity, personalization appears to identify interesting results in addition to relevant ones.” This means that, perhaps as a consequence, a result we may not have come across in the deep 50+ pages of results the search engines generates, may be elevated to the first page based on our previous search history. This would suggest that personalisation is in fact opening more doors for us, rather than restricting them.

I would have to conclude that I disagree with Pariser to an extent, because I don’t believe personalisation is harming users as much as he states, however, I do feel it would be beneficial for more users to be aware of how personalisation affects them and what they can do to limit those effects. I would suspect the majority of internet marketing agencies and search engine optimisation specialists would agree, as there is also the argument that personalisation is driving digital marketing innovation and requiring agencies such as Click Consult to work harder than ever to produce the best results for clients. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please feel free to comment.

Related posts:

1. To personalise or be generic in email marketing? Good business is all about relationships. Far too many business...
2. Making Clients Feel Special With Personalised Email Marketing One of the techniques in email marketing… includes personalisation. The...
3. Why are people scared of Pay per Click? You hear the ongoing argument of SEO vs. PPC… all...

The first feature of Bing that is worth mentioning is located in their Webmaster tools and it provides a guaranteed method of having your URL or website indexed by Bing. The feature is simply the option to ‘Submit URL’ directly to the search engine itself, and it offers peace of mind to the webmaster because they can be confident that their website, or a specific webpage will be indexed. After this process, they can begin to analyse the relevant metrics related to SEO that are available in Bing Webmaster Tool Accounts.

A main focus for Bing in recent months and years has been developing their Webmaster Tools. SEO has evolved at an incredible rate in recent times and people are now realising that keyword-loaded Meta tags and optimised URLs are no longer effective in terms of achieving higher rankings. Times have changed, and this is what Bing are trying to help webmasters understand by providing them with incredibly detailed and accurate analytic reports that have one purpose – to help webmasters improve user experience.

In a recent interview conducted by Eric Enge at Stone Temple Consulting, Duane Forrester, a senior Product Manager with Bing’s Webmaster Program, spoke at length about the how their Webmaster Tools provide site owners with a holistic data set that presents a ‘world-view’ on the quality of a website, as opposed to getting bogged down in minutiae and technical detail. Forrester himself says, “The tools are a space where we have a conversation with the owner of the website. The goal is to give them something of value that will help them create a better product.” This means that Bing wants to help webmasters improve their product, because this is going to help Bing itself become a better product by offering up more relevant and better quality search results. Bing see their tools almost as an opportunity to educate the webmaster about why their website is running a certain way, and how they can modify it to improve results.

There are several other key points key takeaway points that Forrester made in that interview relating to how Bing is aiming to become a closer rival to Google – at least in terms of search:

• Forrester said the ranking of priorities for web publishers should be as followed:1. Content 2. Social Media 3. Links.
• Bing also have their own internal metric known as ‘Static Rank’, which is used to judge the value of a webpage as they perceive it.
• Bing have an allowance of 1% for what they call ‘Dirt’ in Sitemaps. ‘Dirt’ means following a URL and seeing a redirect, a 404 error or a 500 error. After this 1% allowance they begin to lose trust in that website.
• Bing are going to use RSS feeds to locate content as a cost saving measure.
• Page performance is NOT a ranking factor for Bing. Forrester states that a page with a 4 second load time may well be more useful to a user than a page with a 1 second load time – the important thing is the quality of the content.

So, is it time that we in the digital marketing industry started paying more attention to Bing as another hub to base search marketing strategies? Here at Click Consult we are able to strategize and build campaigns across all the major search engines – but please feel free to comment and give your opinion on the matter.

Related posts:

1. Bing Goes One Better The Bing versus Google war is hotting up. With Bing...
2. Don’t Neglect Bing A major mistake being committed by many search engine optimisation…...
3. Using Rich Snippets to capture more traffic Rich Snippets are becoming increasingly common in modern SERPs. Google,...

According to a study by KPMG, UK consumers are enthusiastic shoppers with more than three quarters (77 percent) of Brits preferring to buy CDs, DVDs and games online (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/internet/3322722/77-of-brits-perfer-buy-cds-dvds-online/)

Unexpectedly however, UK web users are less likely to embrace online and mobile banking with only 27 per cent saying that they had used such services in the last year. Almost three quarters (74 percent) said they would be more likely to purchase flights and holidays online, while 60 percent also have a preference to buy their groceries online, in contrast to just 21 percent in the US.

So why the sudden magnetism to online shopping, as mentioned a lot of it can be accredited to the common hassle and irritation at shopping in busy stores these days. Why put up with uncooperative staff on a busy Saturday afternoon when you can shop at your own leisure at any hour of the day in the comfort of your own home. Also many ecommerce sites have significant reduced deals and offers compared to their retail store counterparts thus proving to be an additional alluring factor.

With the online community growing bigger as each day passes the potential to earn millions through online sales is a very real possibility. Long established online marketplaces such as Amazon and Play.com have had accelerated rates of growth as they capitalise on the current trend of web based shopping with Amazon revealing $10.88 billion in net sales for the third quarter of 2011. (http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/25/amazon-net-sales-up-net-income-down-for-q3-2011/)

What effect could this have?

To those shop owners who do not have an online presence this story will come as a shock and a potential to worry, as it is inevitable that the future of exchanging goods or services for money will ultimately take place on the web. In only a few short years will there be no more physical shop premises and will the entire marketplace as we know it only be available online?

Related posts:

1. 3 Tips For Online Retailers Of all the different types of internet marketing, the web...
2. Web Hosting Glossary Terms: Shopping Cart Shopping cart software is the software that is used by...
3. Ecommerce Website Design More and more of us are conducting our shopping online....