Category: Marketing

Using Twitter is undoubtedly the first step a company or enterprise would make towards digital marketing. Twitter is undeniably the most important social media tool out there and probably the most efficient of them all. An often neglected aspect about Twitter is the profile picture, which shows up each time you tweet or engage in a conversation. Why Is a Twitter Profile Picture Important? Psychological research has consistently proved that profile pictures can elicit subliminal responses among users which can make or break initial opinions. With this in mind, Twitter users must ensure that they put their best foot forward. The profile picture helps you and your brand to be recognized by even those who do not follow you but read your tweets when someone else tweets you often. Thus, a Twitter profile picture is crucial to brand identity and personal identity of the Twitter user. Should You Use Your Real Photo? Most people tend to wonder what the Twitter profile must be, and if it should be a real picture. The answer is, yes. A Twitter profile picture has to be your real picture and must clearly be the photo that you would choose to best identify with. Twitter Profile Pictures of Companies and Organizations If we are talking about an official Twitter account of a company, one can either use the logo as the profile picture or the picture of the company’s headquarters, especially if the building is classy enough. However, if the office space is rented and if you plan to move your headquarters soon, it may not be a great idea to upload the picture of the actual location. In such a circumstance, it is best practice to use the logo of your company or enterprise. Twitter Profile Pictures of Individuals If you are an employee or have a Twitter account that is professional/personal but is not the official Twitter account of a company, you must your clear face picture as your Twitter profile image. This is extremely crucial in ensuring trust, confidence and reliability among your followers. A person who uses graphically designed images as a Twitter profile picture will have less credibility and may even be mistaken for spam. For this reason alone, it is important to use an image that clearly shows your picture in a professional and stylish manner. How to Choose the Best Twitter Profile Picture? You do not have to hire a fashion photographer to set up your Twitter profile picture. You could just ask one of your friends or colleagues to take your picture on a Smartphone against a professional looking background. You need to make sure that you are dressed in formal attire and not a T-shirt, as that can send a message of you being sloppy or laidback. No one who wants to project an image of professionalism should wear a t-shirt and take pictures for their social media profiles. This doesn’t mean you need to wear an expensive suit for your picture, but that you should wear collared shirts and be clean shaven (if you are a man). The key is to appear as trustworthy and professional as you can. Twitter users do judge you by the way you look, and it is crucial for you to ensure that your followers think you are professional. No matter how much we try to deceive ourselves, the way we dress and carry ourselves leave lasting images. Creating a Professional Twitter Persona Carl Jung spoke about persona, which is an image that we use to hide our real identity. This persona need not be a fake one and must in fact be the best image you can portray to your followers. Your Twitter persona should thus elicit positive responses and should encourage people to follow you. Whether we like it or not, many people follow or unfollow us based on how our profile pictures look. We cannot afford to lose even those biased followers who may one day turn out to be prospective customers. The key is to appear as professional, pleasant, and appealing as possible and avoid images that hide the person you are. It is one of the simplest actions that could catapult your Twitter account to success and all it takes is a professional looking profile picture.

Companies and businesses usually encounter a lot of difficulties while trying to promote their products and services on Facebook. While it is easier and more effective to engage customers and clients on Twitter, Facebook isn’t without merit. However, most companies tend to use it wrongly and not optimize their content correctly. Facebook Is Different from Other Social Networks Facebook requires a different kind of engagement and is inherently a very different platform when compared with LinkedIn or Twitter. Facebook is more personal, and requires a certain sense of affection towards those who are fans of your business page. The page administrator needs to understand that Facebook optimization depends upon many factors including the kind of post that is shared, the time when it shared and the language that is used. Facebook is a very visual platform. IT may not be as visual as Pinterest or Instagram but it certainly started as a place where people shared each other’s photographs and left comments or liked each others photographs. That tradition still continues to this day and it holds good for business pages as well. Sharing Photos Is the Most Important Way to Optimize Facebook Engagement Morgan J. Arnold wrote in a post titled “Optimizing Facebook Engagement – Text, Links, Photos or Videos?” that photos are the single most form of media that received the highest number of likes. Strangely, most companies tend to share links and let Facebook extract a thumbnail and an excerpt to do the rest of the work. According to his article, links received the least number of likes though this is the most preferred method of sharing content on Facebook. Obviously, you will need to change your paradigm and begin to share images more than anything else. The second most popular form of content was questions followed by status updates. Videos did not fare well and stood almost next to links in terms of being unpopular. Thus, companies and business may want to share photos of employees, of events and parties, of conferences, of any other situation that can creatively substitute a link. While sharing a photo, a link can be attached alongside, and a direct request can be made to fans to click on that link and visit that page for more information on that photograph. You might even want to ask questions about your fans preferences, likes and attitudes, as questions receive a lot of engagement from fans. When to Share Facebook Updates While sharing photographs and questions is a great idea, the time when it is shared is also very important. Most fans tend to be online on weekends and posts that were shared during weekends received 16% higher engagement. Also, sharing contents during evenings is better than sharing them during business hours. In order to share content at the best time possible, you might want to use a service such as Buffer or Hootsuite, which allow you to schedule your social media messages. Moreover, Hootsuite and Buffer App allow you to understand your audience and track social media engagement. Last but not the least; direct communication with your fans is very important. It is not wrong to directly ask your fans to like your status or photograph. In fact, research shows that when you directly request for likes, people actually like your photograph or status message. Using Instagram to Optimize Facebook Engagement One of the better strategies is to employ Instagram while sharing images. Though Instagram is not used often by companies to share images and worthy photographs, it is a powerful social image editing tool that can be sued for your benefit and cross posted to Facebook. Any image that you plan to share on Facebook can be shared on Instagram first and set up auto-sharing so that it appears on your Facebook page as well. This allows your photographs to be given a touch of vintage effects, while utilizing the powerful social medium that Instagram already is. Of course, you can always customize your captions and messages to suit your Facebook fans. The bottom-line is, you should share content that is interesting and make sure that is more often in the form of images. Links do not fetch as many likes as photos do, and it matters at what time you post your updates on Facebook. Weekends and evenings are the best times to share images on Facebook. One can utilize social media tools like Hootsuite and Buffer App to automate updates. It is also advisable to directly ask fans to like statuses and photos.

No matter how many phone calls and text messages we send, as business owners we tend to send and respond to emails more frequently than ever. Even in 2012, email continues to be the most preferred way of communication. Unlike social media, an email is not transient and teh recipient will certainly open it and read it. This alone makes customizing your email to promote yourself or your business more important. This brings us to the topic of optimizing email signatures, which most business owners, entrepreneurs and even employees find difficult to do so. Why Is An Email Signature Important? An email signature allows the recipient to know what your brand is, where you can be reached and how important you possible are. Before we discuss how best we can customize our email signatures and optimize them, we must understand what should be included in an email signature. What an Email Signature Should Consist of An email signature must contain the sender’s complete name, contact details, social media details and business information. Most importantly, an email signature should not have a lengthy tail and must contain as little information as possible. The lengthier the email signature is, the more likely you will not be taken seriously. It is just not professional to provide 3 telephone numbers and confuse the email reader when only one can do the job. Likewise, there is no point in including unnecessary details that serve the purpose of boosting your ego and vanity but will likely turn off the email recipient. When it comes to the content of email signatures, the most basic information is what is required. Email Signature Styles Apart from the actual content, the way that content is presented, the unique style in which it is presented is also very important. For instance, if you run a start-up that is design oriented, you would want your email signature to be customized accordingly. If you run startup that handles accounts, audits or programming, you will need to use an email signature that reflects trust and reliability than creativity. The key is to identify where your business or organization belongs in a spectrum and design your email signature accordingly. Optimizing Email Signatures at Creative Organizations Creative organizations that handle web designing, typography, fashion, art or performance should make sure that their email signatures are optimized to express their uniqueness, style and non-conformity. In fact, a creative startup’s design ethos should be reflected in the email signature. You could get a typographic professional to design a custom font that looks very professional or you can choose to include a quote that expresses your company’s ethics. You might want to include a link to your Behance, Pinterest or Tumblr account along with your usual social media links. Optimizing Email Signatures at Professional Organizations Business and professional organizations that offer confidential services like auditing, legal services and counseling must make sure that there is no distraction allowed in the email signature. The font must be Calibri, Helvetica, Ariel or Times New Roman so that a sense of comfort and trust is created. Fonts can have subliminal effect on the reader and it is very important to choose the one that they can identify with. Bottom-line is, keep the information as short as possible and present it in a non-intrusive manner. Optimizing Email Signatures at Social Organizations Social organizations and startups can give themselves more freedom and choose to present information in their email signatures the way they want to. They can be more personal and present information in a less stiff upper-lipped manner. Nonetheless, the information must be as little as possible, and must be presented in a manner that is not only professional but also useful to your business and to the recipient. Things to Remember It is important to make sure that your email signature is not more than 3 lines, At most, you can have a 4th line if you think that it is impossible to avoid. It is also important not to use strange fonts, colors and symbols. Even if you are a creative organization and want to use a unique font, ask the typography designer to create a very professional and classic font. Logos can be avoided and complete URLs can be written instead of hyper linking. Hyperlinks are sometimes thought of as spam. Mailing address is not very relevant in an email and thus sticking to digital contact information would suffice. A Few Email Signature Optimization Tools Some of the tools that help in optimizing emails are Wise Stamp, which helps to being your online personality to life. It allows you to include your social media activity within your email but we recommend not doing so. Email Signature Pro is an iPhone app that lets you add a photo, text, footnote and social media information. Sig Buzz is a free service that offers several templates to choose from. There are no hard and fast rules but the best approach is to be minimalist, simple and professional.

Most newspapers have begun to realize that SEO is not only necessary for their success, but that a little effort towards optimization for search engine can go a long way in bringing excellent results in terms of engagement and traffic. If one is publishing content online, it has to be accessible to search engines in order to fetch organic traffic. Thus, Newspaper SEO is something that every major publishing house must prioritize. However, even the biggest newspapers find it difficult to understand simple rules of SEO and how best one could optimize content for search engines. In this document, the most important methods to optimize newspapers for search engines are discussed. Title and Headline One must make use of the <title> tag appropriately. The article title must be present in the <title> tag and the category must be mentioned. Joost de Valk at Yoast wrote that <title> – <category> – <newspaper name> works the best. The headline is the most important part of a newspaper article. A good headline not only helps to grab attention, but will also help in SEO. The basic rule is that a headline must not exceed 65 characters, and that includes the space between words as well. Headlines must also not be extremely short. BBC realized this and increased its headlines from 30 characters to 55 characters. Too lengthy:XYZ Unveils Online Shopping Site that Sells Antique Furniture on Discounted Prices Too short: XYZ Unveils Antique Furniture Store Adequate length: XYZ’s Online Discount Store Sells Antique Furniture Moreover, one must not waste this precious space to fill branding and marketing information like the newspaper’s name, date of publication and such other details which may not be relevant to search engines. Only 19.5% of news release headlines are optimized for SEO, which is rather unfortunate. The headline must always be relevant to the story that follows it. Though it is tempting, one must not write headlines in such a way that it misleads the reader only to get him to click on the link. Paradoxically, one may have to use the name of the company in headlines occasionally. You might also want to research your company’s top keywords and use a couple of them. Google Analytics can be a very useful tool in this respect. Moreover, it may also be necessary to not have just one headline but almost 5 of them. You would need an on-page headline and one for the HTML title. Let us say, the On-page headline is: XYZ’s Online Discount Store Sells Antique Furniture An HTML title according to Malcolm Coles at journalism.co.uk says that the typical rules to follow are “On-page headline – site name” or “On-page headline – section – site name”. XYZ’s Online Discount Store Sells Antique Furniture | eCommerce |ABC Magazine For Google News you would need a title that is optimized for SEO but according to Google News instructions. It is noticed that Google News picks up on-page headlines than HTML titles and thus, you may tweak your Google News headline a little bit if you choose to. Of course, it is important to submit a Google News sitemap first. It makes sense to insert words that you may otherwise not want to see in your actual on-page headline, but would be used by web searchers to get to your page. XYZ’s Online Discount Store Sells Cheap and Affordable Antique Furniture Another headline may be necessary for the channel page and that needs to be shorter. XYZ to Sell Discounted Antique Furniture Finally, one would need a custom headline for Twitter and this needs to be very catchy, informal and fun, followed by the link to the content. Grab Affordable but Great Antique Furniture at XYZ’s New Web Store! TinyURLs It is common to come across TinyURLs printed all across the web. They help to reduce the length of unsightly URLs which are not only lengthy, but quite unappealing to look at. A TinyURL looks neat and orderly, and saves space. Instead of http://www.jpost.com/Travel/Jerusalem/Article.aspx?id=272177, one could use http://tinyurl.com/7we92ca However, readers cannot remember URLs when they look at TinyURLs. Every TinyURL looks the same, and it is difficult to differentiate between each other, or even memorize them if one is not able to bookmark the link immediately. TinyURLs do not provide any sort of branding capabilities. It is also not possible to track your links and to know who has linked back to it, shared it or used the link for any other purpose. TinyURL services may simply go out of business and all the links that you have shared using that particular service may simply vanish. Business can instead build their own URL shortening services, which are customized. http://j.post/xyzxyz Then, a shortened URL may be easier to remember, as it resembles it ‘mother site’ anyway. A possible solution to making sure that all the URLs are consolidated in place is to build a page where all your shortened URLs are listed with short descriptions similar to Twitter headlines. Twitter It is an established fact that Twitter is an SEO signal. If more number of people write about a keyword or brand on Twitter, the brand will be more optimized for search engines. Likewise, it is better if more people linked to a document. Now, it is not just general people that matter but when influential people like celebrities, thought leader and those who have a lot of Twitter influence write about a brand, it creates stronger SEO signals. Likewise, influential people must link to documents that you want to optimize. The idea is to get not only followers but influential followers. The next step is to write creative, catchy and great tweets that link to great content as well. Keywords Keywords may not be as important to newspapers as they are to smaller blogs and websites. When a newspaper has more than 500 pages, it is important to make sure that all the content is crawlable and listed on search engines. Thus, SEO must concentrate on making

It is agreed, written down and emphasized that social media is central to the experience of marketing online. Using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other social media sites are crucial to the success of a marketing campaign and can significantly help in fetching revenue. With all your marketing strategies in place, how further can you go in ensuring social media success? Well, there is no dearth of tips to enhance social media marketing and here are a few tips that you must include in your marketing practice. Live Events, Webinars and Teleseminars Facebook and Twitter offer possibilities have holding webinars and seminars at a very low cost. Assuming you have a business page on Facebook, it is very important to interact with your fans and followers on a regular basis so that their questions, concerns and suggestions are addressed and noted down. There are many webinar platforms such as Linqto, LotusLive, GoToWebinar and others. You could make use of webcams to get other participants to hold webinars too. Twitter does not allow this directly, but key points from a webinar can be tweeted live, and a custom hashtag may be employed. Be Altruistic, Help Others Once you have achieved some success in your social media campaign, it is important to share your knowledge, success and expertise with those who are still budding. Also, look for opportunities to help people even if it is not related to your business. Outward displays of altruism have a positive effect in social media marketing. Twitter is extremely useful in this area, as you can easily recommend people who are unknown, retweet certain people’s tweets and leave comments on other people’s blogs even if they do not have a high ranking blog. It is important to choose your beneficiary carefully. Focus Less on Marketing Most businesses don’t understand that there is something ‘social’ about social media marketing. People do not like to be inundated with messages and tweets that shove a sales pitch at them all the time. They like to imagine their favorite companies and businesses as concerned, social and human. Thus, it is important for you to be so, genuinely. While marketing in social media is what you are supposed to be doing, you also need to be social and friendly. That also means not driving a sales pitch all the time. Understanding What Customers Want There are tools like Research.ly which help you to monitor what your fans and followers are talking about on Facebook or Twitter. These social conversations provide you with important insights that will help in discovering new opportunities that you probably didn’t know existed. Bringing Social Media to Real Life Twitter meet-ups and Facebook meets are all too common these days. It can be a great way to build relationships with your fans and followers. In fact, there can be a subtle marketing pitch in these meet-ups. By throwing contests and offers, you can meet winners in real life and engage with them just as ‘friends’ would do over coffee, drink or dinner. Other kinds of meetings include Twitter/Facebook meets where a number of people may be invited to meet at a designated place to discuss and talk about issues that concern a brand or product or even a general trend. Be Controversial There is always a shock-value attached to controversies and social networks are great places to tap into this part of the human psyche. No matter how great your content is, if it does not attract and sustain attention there is no point in sharking it on social networks. Using negative flavored language and slightly provocative themes can help drive a lot of traffic. Everyone likes to read controversial stuff especially if it is entertaining at the same time. A title such as “How to Invest in SEO and Fail Miserably” attracts more attention than “Steps to Avoid in SEO”. This strategy works best with how-to and informational content. Research First, Invest Later Just like conducting a market research before starting a marketing campaign, you would need to study your social signals and target audience carefully. Understanding the demographics, best time to interact on Facebook/Twitter and learning your target audience’s quirks and psychographics can go a long way in ensuring that you stay relevant and in sync. Researching your target audience also helps in making sure that you are not missing any opportunities that you may find among social conversations on Twitter or Facebook. Spending decisions must be based on internal priorities, customer-facing priorities and technological priorities. These priorities can be understood well after researching the target audience. Bring Experts and Share Knowledge You could invite guest bloggers to write posts or get speakers to interact with your audience during Facebook/Twitter webinars. You may also want to have interviews fixed with industry experts right on your Twitter/Facebook account and get them to answer questions posed by your fans, friends and followers. Sharing knowledge increases your authority and influence in social media and that is precisely what you should be looking at. Of course, each company or business will also have to explore other possibilities to optimize their social media campaign in a unique and endearing way. The bottom-line is that companies and businesses must stay social on social networks and avoid being too keen on only marketing.

Digital marketing is an area that must be tread carefully. There are hundreds of examples that we could give why you must put forethought into your digital marketing campaign. This time, we shall use the infamous Swedish Twitter Experiment as an example to describe why your digital marketing campaign has to be planned well and must have a degree of control. The Sweden Twitter Experiment that Was Not Sweden decided to let its citizens take over the official @Sweden Twitter ID for a day each, as part of a digital marketing campaign. The idea was to show the world how regular Swedes are, and how they are so interesting that investors and tourists should never miss an opportunity to consider Sweden. Their digital marketing campaign backfired. Sonja, one of the citizens who got to take over @Sweden for a day tweeted bizarre content including what could be perceived as anti-semitic and homophobic. Another Swede tweeted less embarrassing stuff but at the end of the day, it was clear that Swedes are no different from citizens elsewhere in the world. The democratic digital marketing campaign backfired and Sweden did not really gain anything positive from its marketing efforts. What can the rest of the world learn from Sweden’s failed experiment? A lot, actually. The Swedish Twitter Campaign Was Not a Failure The government of Sweden continues to allow its citizens to speak out using the official twitter handle even after the gaffe. In fact, a few embarrassing tweets by ignorant citizens has not changed the way we perceive Sweden and has in fact humanized that nation. To us, Sweden is no longer that ultra squeaky clean nation with extremely liberal citizens. There are people with their own weaknesses, flaws and embarrassing traits. This only tells the world that Sweden is just like any other country in the world. What makes it different is that in spite of the gaffe and embarrassments, it has decided to stick to its digital marketing campaign. Sweden is not afraid to reveal its flaws and it is willing to accept that there may be elements in that nation who may not be exemplary. In social media, this strategy works really well. Sweden not only came to focus but has also gained mileage for letting its citizens speak even when they are seemingly embarrassing. What Digital Marketing Professionals Must Learn The Swedish Digital Marketing campaign was not pulled off and it continues to allow its citizens to tweet under the official handle. This decision has increased the respect we have for Sweden and its democratic values that insists on freedom of speech. The USP of Sweden is its liberty, freedom of speech and human rights. It has managed to tell the world that even in the most cringe-worthy situation; Sweden would not back off from its policies and beliefs. That builds investor confidence and creates positive image for those who intend to travel there. Likewise, digital marketing professionals must be ready to be creative, controversial and to an extent edgy as well. Sticking to the known territory and being conventional will make a campaign redundant and boring. It becomes very easy to ignore and even forget within no time. Digital marketing campaigns must be honest, true to company policies and mission, and tell the audience what the reality really is like. It humanizes companies just like it humanized Sweden. In digital marketing, it is all about the human factor and most importantly, the social factor. Gaffes, embarrassments and even controversies are ok, so long as you stay true to your company’s agenda and policies. Digital marketing professionals must use this example to learn that it is extremely important to be creative, edgy and social when trying to market something. Mundane campaigns that are no different from the thousands of other campaigns will never be successful. Twitter can be a great tool for marketing professionals. In fact, it is the best tool to begin a digital marketing campaign and can later be diversified to other networks. It offers the highest level of engagement and can be very cost effective. Even when a campaign doesn’t work the way it has to, it can quickly be tweaked and changed to suit changing needs.

Since the beginning of the days of blogging and content optimized websites, getting high PR links has always been on the priority list of SEO professionals. High PR links helps to get your website ranked higher in search results for a given keyword or keyword phrase. Getting ranked higher also implies that more number of people click on your link when they search for that particular keyword. All this leads to an increased traffic and eventual monetization. With that in mind, here are some of the most important tips to get high PR links. Keyword Rich Content One of the most important tips is to write content that is keyword rich. However, this does not mean that you can stuff your content with keywords as that would render your content spammy. The idea is to use keywords and keyword phrases pertinently and prudently. When you choose keywords, it is important to make sure that they are unique and relevant to your business. Once high quality keyword optimized content is published, it can be submitted to high PR article submission websites. This leads to those precious back links that cope your way and help you achieve higher website page ranking. Commenting and Interacting It is not all about writing a great keyword optimized post and forgetting about it. One needs to be active and visit other blogs, websites and web pages and leave sensible comments and engage in conversations. While doing so, you could leave a link to your blog post that is relevant to the discussion. Asking people nicely to visit your website or blog works, but leaving a link everywhere you comment will get you thrown out of forums, and comments sections. Ideally, use your prudence and leave links to your blog posts only when you know it is apt to do so. Hosting, Domains and Themes It is always important to choose a unique domain that is easy to be remembered. Moreover, host your domain on with a hosting service that allows you to have a unique IP. Always self-host your blogs, and do not host them on generic blogging sites like blogger.com or wordpress.com. Buy a domain, host it yourself and use WordPress or other CMS to publish content. Personalized themes always work better than sponsored ones. Make your website stand out from the rest of them in the market. Identifying Niche This has been repeated several times over but that is because of its importance. It is extremely important to carve a niche for yourself within the identified niche topic. Identify your interests, expertise and knowledge and once that is done, write blog posts that answer questions about a niche area. This helps in attracting back links from authority websites who may be looking for your expert opinion. Link Exchanges and PR Directories It is important for you to make sure that each link comes from a different IP. It is also important to make sure that you avoid touts and brokers who ask for money or fees in return for links. Submit your articles and links to high PR directories where do-follow links are allowed. This helps in achieving good links as well, leading to a high PR. Interviews, Guest Blogs and Features It is always wise to feature interviews with thought leaders, business entities and CEOs as that adds to the originality of your website. This leads to high PR links as well. Moreover, asking guest bloggers who are thought leaders themselves to write an article or two for your blog can take you a long way in achieving quality links. Make it a point to publish ‘features’ that add value to your website and bring traffic. These features have the ability to go viral and help you achieve high PR links. Discipline, Consistency and Timeliness of Posts Make sure that you plan your month ahead and be consistent in publishing posts. Do not make readers visit your website only to see old posts. There has to be something new each time readers visit your blog or website. Also it is always a good idea to write timely posts that reflect current happenings and news within your identified niche. These 7 tips will certainly help your blog to become credible, trusted and respected within your niche. Only when you build your credibility will you be able to attract high quality PR links. Hard work always pays well but so does consistency and creativity.