Whether your business has 100 followers or 100,000 fans, you’ve probably already realized that your community needs to be cultivated – and monitored – on social media channels weekly, if not daily. Recent news about the Taco Bell class-action lawsuit, which was filed against Taco Bell for “misrepresenting the contents of its beef,” is nothing surprising. I’m sure most customers don’t expect they are eating wholesome, organic meals at Taco Bell. However, it’s not the lawsuit that is interesting here; it is the way that Taco Bell warded off a potential crisis by being proactive and effectual on social media. Taco Bell has already gotten some previous press for their impressive works on Facebook and Twitter; but this is more impressive, and the way they turned this particular misrepresented beef crisis into something positive is a great lesson for Internet marketers as well as for online reputation management professionals. First step: Address the issue A confident and clear message doesn’t – Read the full article
Now that you are convinced that blogging can be useful for your business, you will sooner or later face a dilemma: How often should I blog? Indeed, blogging is not a one-off thing and you will certainly have to update your blog regularly. Should you perform this form of content creation daily, weekly, or monthly? In fairness, there isn’t a simple answer to this question. Ask 10 different bloggers and you will end up with 10 different answers. I do not pretend to own the answer to this question, but what I can do is provide you with some things that you need to consider when determining your blogging frequency, and I hope that you will find these useful when it comes to making your own decision. Search engines The search engines spiders do like fresh content and posting content frequently on your blog should allow your site to get indexed better. Best SEO practices include making sure that your – Read the full article
Instant just got mobile. It was only last September that Google introduced Google Instant, a search enhancement that allowed users to view search engine results as they typed. Promising better, faster results, Google Instant also saved a lot of typing and time – about 2 to 5 seconds per search, according to the company. As covered by our very own Brandon Zeman, as well as of guest writer Phyllis Roe, the new feature introduces new implications on SEO and gives rising importance to efficiency in search. Two months later? Google has taken Instant search to mobile platforms. In an announcement made Thursday on the Google Mobile blog, Google is rolling out the beta release of the search service for mobile phones, particularly the iPhone and Android-powered devices. According to the company, Google Instant on mobile is tied to a new implementation of AJAX and HTML5, which thus allows dynamic page updates and eliminates the need to load a new webpage – Read the full article
When it comes to blog design, there are several common design mistakes that scare away your visitors (or worse, your profits). Here are seven of the biggest pitfalls. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! 1. Too Many Ads. Though you want to make money off your blog, usually through advertising, an overload of ads will be the surest way to turn off potential readers. Do not let ads overwhelm your content — people are not visiting your site to see advertisements, they are visiting it to see what your blog has to offer. If all it has to offer are ads, don’t expect a return visit. Instead, pick a few tastefully placed ads in high traffic spots, such as under your banner or one on the sidebar, and leave it at that. Ads in and of themselves are not the turn off, but if that’s all your site appears to be, that will be. 2. Large Blocks of Text. If – Read the full article
Link building is currently one of the most important methods used in search engine optimization (SEO). Websites receive high popularity ratings due to the use of search engines with relevance as a basis for measurement. As a result of this link building, a website receives quality traffic taken from relevant sites, thus making it a valuable resource. Credibility, visibility, and awareness are established and a website receives a wide search engine exposure as long as the strategy focus is with link building. The three ways in link building include a complete link, one-way linking, or reciprocal link structure. The first method is the most favorable strategy because it gets links for your site and directs those that do not require a reciprocal relationship. There is a possibility, however, that this link building method will only feature sites that are relevant to their content. This means that the link should have the same theme for search engine optimization. With the one-way – Read the full article
Search engine optimization may be difficult to effectively utilize, but it can be crucial to staying competitive in the Internet age. Your business is competing against other companies who are using search engine optimization techniques to increase their presence on the Internet and boost their brand recognition. It is important to ensure that people are visiting your website if you want to succeed as an Internet business, especially for ecommerce sites. If nobody visits your site, how do you expect to sell anything? To avoid this problem, here are some SEO tips to help get you started on your path to a larger web presence. Keywords are a key factor in your website’s ranking. In order to ensure that people are able to find your business, you should invest some time in figuring out the optimal keywords for your website. Work with a local search engine marketing company to find what keywords will work best for you. The keywords should – Read the full article
Old-fashioned PR professionals will tell you that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Well, this no longer holds true, at least not in the age and realm of the Internet. Thanks to Google, it has become so much easier to search and find customers, clients, employees, employers, readers, fans, and business partners online. It’s become so much easier to “Google” a name or a brand and find out everything there is to know about it. The downside? It’s also pretty easy to get misrepresented online. Just ask the boss who has to deal with an undiplomatically-mouthed ex-employee. Or the brand owner who’s facing an angry, dissatisfied ex-fan. Or the business owner whose troubles from many years ago have come back to haunt him. Negative search results on Google – or on any other search engine – can potentially cost companies and business organizations thousands, even millions, of dollars. A number of online reputation management companies promise to remove – Read the full article
It’s one thing to get a lot of followers on Twitter; it’s another to be able to retain them and keep them engaged and interested. To be followed is not enough, especially if you’re a small business owner looking to maximize the long-term value of the social microblogging site for your company or brand. You’ll want people to eagerly await your tweets, and to have them “retweet” whatever you have to say. You’ll want them to keep asking you for more. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should suffer from tiny little panic attacks whenever someone decides to un-follow you. But retaining followers on Twitter can be one of the most crucial parts of your social media strategy. So here are the top 7 tips on how to keep them once you have them: 1. Quality over quantity Twitter users follow you not because they want their home page cluttered with meaningless minute-by-minute updates, but because they assume they’re going – Read the full article
