HubSpot Answers Six of the Most Common Social Media Marketing Questions

Having a social media presence for your company is a given. However, once you establish that presence, getting people to notice it is an entirely different matter. That’s why Magdalena Georgieva, writing for hubspot.com, recently discussed Dan Zarella’s excellent presentation, “The Science of Social Media.” In her article “Answered: 6 Frequent Questions about Social Media Marketing,” she says that a recent appearance by Zarella inspired some very thought provoking questions:

1. When you put up a company Facebook page, how do you get somebody to “like” you? You can accomplish this by creating some form of positive interaction. One good example is creating a new tab on your Facebook page that offers something free and compelling to anyone who “likes” you. Contests for people who “like” you work well , too.

2. Can social media be anti-social? Non-social? Too social? You can certainly be anti-social by appearing rude or obnoxious, as well as non-social by not developing long-term relationships . Too social? As long as what you’re doing doesn’t overhype itself and come off as spam, it’s not easy to be too social in social media.

3. What tools should be used to track specific social media metrics? Zarella recommends the paid tools Trendrr and Radian6. Georgieva recommends Hubspot’s own social media monitoring platform and marketing automation software. She also mentions Twitter Grader as a quick, free way to evaluate your current social media influence.

4. Should the company have a landing page tab on Facebook? Most certainly. It’s a perfect way to use a call to action that doesn’t look overbearing.

5. What’s the best way to engage influencers? Influencers are those people and online connections most likely to get excited about your product or brand, who will then spread the word to their friends, etc.Sometimes simply paying attention to influencers is enough to get them talking. This can be done via direct contact or even mentioning them by name in a blog entry.

6. How do you stay personable on line without tweeting about yourself? Talk instead about things that interest you. Point out interesting articles and links that you can discuss online.

Search Engine Watch.com’s Duncan Parry Offers Tips on Staying Caught Up in Search News

The last few months are the best indication in a long time that the search business is constantly changing. Duncan Parry at SearchEngineWatch.com points out that today’s new employees in the business have never heard of AltaVista, Excite, Lycos and many of the other search engines that once dominated the field.

In his article “How to Keep Up to Date In Search,” Parry offers some pointers on what to take note of in this business, and what to ignore, since it will eventually change anyway.

1. Ignore noise. Parry says that with all the blogs and articles published every day, there are more “experts” entering this field by the minute. Most of it can be ignored. Everybody has an opinion, Parry says; whether those opinions mean anything depends upon whose saying them. He suggests sticking to sites that you find to be credible and correct. He also says to keep up to date on technical developments in the products you currently use or are planning to use.

2. Get an RSS Reader. All sites worth their salt have RSS feeds. Make sure you have access to a reader so you can add your favorite sites to it. This puts all relevant articles into one easy-to-find place, and allows you to add more at any time. Parry recommends Google Reader for its ease of use, and Feedly for its looks. (Feedly can be linked to Google Reader to give you the best of both worlds.

3. Watch the mainstream press. SEO sites are not usually the first place that you will find interesting news about developments in the profession. That’s given to major news sites first. Subscribe to the New York Times, USAToday, BBC News, etc.

4. Learn about digital technology in General. Along with Mashable.com, Parry provides a significant list of popular sites that you should be reading.

5. Some search sites are musts. Specifically, Parry recommends SearchEngineWatch and SearchEngineLand. They offer daily newsletters and feeds. They sum up the news you need to know and make it readable. Parry also recommends Search Engine Roundtable, as it often seems to be the first site with hot news from Google.

6. Don’t be afraid to cut. Culling from your Reader list over time is to be expected. If a site isn’t doing anything for you anymore, get rid of it.

Parry says that there’s good stuff to be found out there, but even the good stuff can get overwhelming. Determine which experts are worth your time and trust and take it from there.

What’s in a Word? Plenty – Click Through Rate on PPC Jumps when Google Changes One Little Word

About a week ago, Google made a very small change to its search results. Did you catch it?

If you don’t bother with PPC ads, you might have missed it, but the effect was phenomenal. As reported on TheSearchAgents.com by blogger Alec Green, Google changed the phrase “Sponsored Links” to “Ads.” That’s all it took to see an 11.4% jump in click throughs.

The Search Agents analysts performed a pre/post analysis of user behavior between the last week of “Sponsored Ads” and the first week of “Ads.” Their findings:

Across all AdWords campaigns examined, the average position increased 1.5%

Total impressions decreased by the same amount.

Clicks increased 9.7%.

Average cost per click dropped 2.3%.

Total cost increased more than 7%.

Clickthroughs increased 11.4%.

The double-digit increase for clickthrough came as a huge surprise to the Search Agents team.

So what caused the change? Was it pressure from the FTC to be clearer to consumers what PPC ads are? Then, in turn, did it turn out to be true that most people didn’t know what a “Sponsored Link” was?” This isn’t likely, says Green, since the “Sponsored Links” typeface is the smallest on the page, and reducing the term by 11 letters to “ads” would make it even smaller and harder to see than it already is. If the increase sustains itself over the next few weeks however, that may be exactly what’s spurring the growth.

Facebook Email Another Needed Volley in the Social Media Wars, Ruud Hein Says

Hot on the heels of Google’s announcement of Instant Previews last week, Facebook confirmed what many people had suspected for a while: Facebook email is on its way.

The service will compete directly with Google’s Gmail audience, and the upstart may just be the competition Google needs, says Ruud Hein at SearchEnginePeople.com.

Using copious illustrations, Hein presents “The Three Reasons Why Facebook Email is a Big Deal.”


1. Facebook Overtakes Everything. Hein points out that not long ago, the way people did things online was different. They got pictures from Flickr, watched videos on YouTube, IM’d on Live Messenger and made announcements on Facebook. But now, Hein says more and more people are using Facebook to do all of these things – except email.

2. Facebook’s Social Graph Gets Larger. Hein uses a social graph to show the way all social networks used to be connected (Yahoo to LinkedIn to Gmail to Facebook, etc.), and another to show how social integration will work with Facebook email . He says: “By also overtaking email and incorporating as many type of social connection streams as possible, the Facebook social graph of you -- and as a result of its whole 500 million user network -- becomes much, much more complete.”Hein’s point is that Facebook will now not only know whom you connect with on Facebook, but also whom you connect with outside of it.

3. Email is Huge. In spite of what you may have heard – that email is losing its popularity, especially among younger audiences – Hein says email is still very much alive. He points out that Email marketing is still the #1 social list-based moneymaker. So Facebook is entering the email market at the right time.

What this all means to you, Hein says, is that getting people to “like” your company will become much more important. Messages within your social sphere will be given different “weight” than those out of that sphere. What’s more, keeping your company’s emails off people’s “spam” lists will be vital. Facebook has become, Hein says, “the world’s most efficient spam filter.” Similarly, you’re going to have to target your ads even more pointedly to reach your intended audience.

Google Instant Previews: Will it Change the SEO Landscape?

The closing months of 2010 are proving to be busy ones for Google – and by extension, busy ones for the entire SEO industry. The recent release of Google’s Instant Previews, particularly, has sent waves of reaction through the search community.

By now you probably know that when you click the little magnifying glass next to a search result (or when you tell Google to do it automatically), a graphic representation of the page you’re considering pops up.

Some people, like Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand.com, took the Instant Preview release as more water under the bridge. In fact, Sullivan wonders what took Google so long to do this. He reminds us that Ask.com tried a similar tactic some years back that was not overly well received.

However, other critics, such as Patrick Stafford at SmartCompany.com, see a much more significant change coming to SEO as we know it. If people begin to click on a search result due to the “look” of the site, rather than the information in the descriptive copy, your position on a page may take a back seat to how attractive your page is to the eye.

Experts say that much to the dismay of webmasters, but much to the joy of page designers everywhere, how your page looks is now going to be important. Colors, the size and position of the logo, even your who site layout now needs to consider how eye-catching it is.

Knowing that, 2011 could be an interesting year for SEO indeed.

Looking for Links? Don’t forget your interlinks, says Caroline Bogart at FathomSEO.com

There’s no question that you need to have external links connecting back to your website in order to boost your rankings. But Caroline Bogart at FathomSEO.com says that there is one link source that many companies tend to overlook that can also be an effective source of “link juice”: internal links.

Internal linking, Bogart says, is a content optimization procedure that can both help your users navigate your site and pass page rank from point to point on your website.

In her article “10 Tips for Effective Interlinking,” Bogart adds that interlinking gives you some control over how ranking power flows through your site. Her ten tips include:

1. Make sure your link structure provides easy access to every internal page on your site.

2. Use the keywords for each page in the anchor text on that page.

3. Determine the best page hierarchy. This helps to manipulate your page flow.

4. Use calls to action. They can be before, inside or after your link.

5. Only link pages related by keyword.

6. Make sure every page links to at least one other page. This speeds up the srawl for search engines.

7. Don’t use Javascript or other applications that slow down search.

8. Don’t overdo it. Too many links makes a page impossible to read.

9. Don’t link to pointless pages.

10. Try to avoid nofollow links. They block spiders, which is not what you want to happen.

Danny Sullivan: Google is the “New California”

It’s official, says Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand.com; Google is no longer the most popular kid on the block – at least when it comes to attracting and keeping good people.

Citing the recent departure of Lars Rasmussen, the creator of the highly popular Google Maps and the not-so-popular Google Wave. Sources indicate that he’s headed to Facebook, to join Facebook COO and former Google bigwig Sheryl Sandberg.

Sullivan says that’s no big surprise. Why? Because Google is the current “California” of SEO.

Sullivan compares the Google of today to the California of the 70s and 80s. Everybody wanted to live in California back then; enough of them moved there that the state went from being a relatively problem-free paradise to an economic, bureaucratic nightmare. Still, more people want to move to California all the time. Those who get tired of the overcrowding, etc., eventually leave for more appealing scenery, until those places too become another “California.”

Sullivan says that is exactly what Google is going through right now – growing pains that any huge company eventually experiences. People who’ve worked there for a very long time are starting to get restless and are looking to move on. Still, more people want to work for Google, even though their expectations of how they will benefit are much different than those who joined before the company went public.

Sullivan points out that Yahoo was the “new California” in search before Google was, and Facebook is undoubtedly poised to take the helm at some point in the future. But his point is that these changes, while they may not be necessarily good for a company, are unavoidable as companies grow into “adults.”