Category: Social Networking

Social Media Metrics That Actually Matters

July 5, 2013

Social media is the hottest and widely discussed topic in the entire globe right now. Worldwide growth of Facebook is increasing rapidly where USA stand 1st followed by Brazil 2nd and India is in 3rd rank. Samsung became the most successful brand in Twitter, Coca-cola in Facebook.  That magic was not happened overnight. It is really important to know now; what tools or statistics is really working behind that revolution, globally taken place.  There are some extremely important metrics working behind those success factors that really matter for the social media marketers. A few are here to be noticed with all your attention: Like vs. Unlike: A simple ‘thumbs up’ symbol, known as ‘Facebook like Button’, has changed the world forever. It is good to have huge number of Facebook likes, even better to build up a well defined ‘Fan base’ in your brand page. Once you have it all, you have to make your Facebook page more active and informative to keep your page like towards a increasing graph, otherwise your fans are wise enough to find the unlike button, once they will get bored. Engagement factors: Right now approximately 1.11 billion people live in a manmade virtual world, called Facebook, they share, they like, they comment, they poke, they do it all in that virtual world, with their Facebook friends, so give them some social element every time to engage themselves with you, your brand name. Reply when they comment, thank when they participate with the social activities done by you.  High resolution images: Images really count on when you are talking about sharing factors or virality in social media, If your business deals with fashion garment or dark chocolate no doubt everyone is going to like and share the image, what if when your business deals with HTML/CSS ? Simply keep your updated information in a catchy template backed by awesome graphic design to drive the attention of your audience. Frequency of posting: If your friend messages daily you really feel good, if he messages you 1000 of times daily you are surely going to block him. Just like that post engaging content, images, videos daily on your timeline once or twice or thrice but not more than that. Keep a time gap of 3-4 hours between each posting otherwise it feels annoying. Reach vs engagement: Keep your eyes open to make your social media activities reach throughout your desired location, group and interests. Also be sure that atleast 20% of your total reach is converting into engaged user in your social media page. It is better to target 100 people interested on you than to target 2000 people who are not interested to get engaged with your business. Building Relationship: Make a fan base on social media who will get friendly with you, comment on your every content, shares images, likes whatever you do, appreciate their activities or they will leave you. Never forget to thank your participants. Virality: Your fans always have a good bunch of friends and a better bunch of jealous competitors; convert them into your audience, go viral by creating something new everyday. It really counts on. Handle Negative Feedback: Handle the objection tactfully to convert the social threat into brand opportunity. Always listen to your audience, find out problem, solve it soon Manage your social campaign: You can run ads on social media to promote your business online, yet there should be clarity of communication between you and your target audience. Manage your ad campaign and Precise your targeting when you are running your ads, as you cannot sale Chicken Hotdog to a vegetarian. Treat audience as princes The old marketing theory says customer is the king; new one should be Customer is like princes. They need to be appreciated of whatever they do. Facebook contest can help a lot to appreciate their participation and they can be pampered well by winning attractive prizes from contest. Social Apps: Have you Noticed, your kids always likes to visit someone else’s home next time when they offer colorful Toys and video games happily. Your audience is also like that, offer them beautiful image apps like ‘Photo Mash Up’, crossword etc they will go crazy and always be connected with you. So always listen to your customer happily with a smile.

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Using Social Media for SEO and Top 10 Strategies for Social Media Optimization

June 22, 2012

While no SEO professional would deny the importance of social signals when it comes to optimizing websites for search engines, there is still certain confusion about the strategies that need to be followed. Social signals, or the metrics that help in assessing web user behaviour on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and a host of others are inextricably linked to traffic and link building. Let us understand how social media optimization is inextricably linked to search engine optimization. The second part of the article shall provide you with the top 10 strategies that you should use to optimize search engine ranking. How Search Engines Assess Link Credibility Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo try their best to provide users with the most relevant and credible search results based on the search keywords. Search engines just do not trust any website that may seem relevant, and they follow their own algorithms to assess the importance of a certain webpage. The more inbound links that point towards a web page, the more credible and trustworthy it seems to search engines. Link Building and Sharing on Social Networks Link building is increasingly dependent on social networks, as people tend to share what they link. These links that are shared on social networking sites not only drive traffic but end up becoming “references” themselves, as they are thence used on blogs, or even other news websites as sources. The importance of social media is such that, instead of robots and algorithms deciding what is credible and what is not, search engines have begun to realize that what is shared most often must be more important than what is not shared on social networks. An interesting article or a good piece of content always gets shared on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms in real time. Social Signals and Search Engine Optimization Google and other search engines have realized the importance of sharing of social media, and that when something goes viral on social networks, that link has to be important and credible. The data from social signals decide the importance of a website or webpage and understanding social influence and community impact is more relevant to search engines than mechanical link building and activities that may actually work against the credibility of a website. Thus, one can say that search engine optimization (SEO) and social signals are mutually inclusive, and shall remain so in the future. The Basics of Utilizing Social Signals If you plan to optimize a website, the first step is to explore social media and gain ground. The next step is to assess social metrics and social signals to learn where your inbound links are coming from, and who is sharing and talking about you the most. The third step is to engage the identified audience, and try to use the social platforms to get other people interested in your website as well. Engagement involves actively participating with your target audience and building social relationships online. Engagement of your audience is a continuous process, and building trust is equally important. Once trust is built and you are actively participating on social networking sites, you can begin to see more inbound links from several places, most of which would be referred by people on social media. Social promotion helps you to generate natural links, which are very important in search engine optimization. A large percentage of tweets contain a URL and the more number of times a YRL is retweeted, the better it seems to search engines. Similarly, on Facebook, the more number of ‘likes’ a link generates, the more important it seems to search engines. Thus, social promotion generates natural and organic links, which are very important in SEO. Driving traffic to a blog or any published content depends on how viral a link has gone in Twitter or Facebook. Sharing links and a little part of the text ultimately leaves your followers on Facebook and LinkedIn to click on the link and visit your website or blog. The most important goal of SEO is to generate targeted traffic, and it is only possible to do so on social networking sites. Such sharing leads to a steady stream of traffic that is well targeted. If you searched for your favourite company or product on Google, it is quite possible that along with their business website, their Facebook page, Twitter profile and LinkedIn page appear too. Curiously, these appear on the first page. Thus, social networking sites rank very high in search engines and increase a company’s online brad presence. Links shared by the company on their Facebook page or on Twitter appear in search results too, in a higher degree of preference. Key Strategies in Integrating Social Media with SEO Efforts Mashable writes that there are 5 key strategies in integrating social media with your SEO plans. Identify Audience: Like we mentioned earlier, the first step is to identify the audience and understand their quirks, behaviours, what they like and dislike and how they share content and who they share it with. There are software programs available to monitor social media, and help you to identify keywords, conversations and influencers. Define Objective: Once the audience is identified, it is important to define your objective. Social media can’t be about direct marketing. While sales and marketing are very important in SEO, in social media it takes a covert role. Presence on social media must be utilized for defining and achieving objectives. They may include marketing and sales, but has to be covert. Establishing a Gameplan: The author continues to state that a combined social media and SEO effort must focus on content building and interaction. Active promotion of objective content and sharing them on social networks is very important. Tactical Mix: Lee Odden defined this as doing homework to find where your desired audience spends time interacting and sharing content. You would need to invest time and build relationships in social networks where your target

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How to Use Social Bookmarking for SEO

June 15, 2012

When you mark a webpage that you want to visit later, read later or simply share with your friends or acquaintances, it may be described as social bookmarking. There are several services that offer social bookmarking, beginning with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to specialized services like Instapaper, Digg, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Delicious, YouTube, Flickr and many more. In fact, there must be more than 200 services out there that help you bookmark socially. Socially bookmarked links go viral or at least they receive more traffic than links that are not shared socially. Why Use Social Bookmarking Sites for SEO? As SEO professionals, our utmost priority is to drive traffic to the website and to increase the ranking of the page. This can only happen when there is a surge in the traffic and when the target audience click on links and arrive at the designated page. By making sure that the link is being shared on social networking sites, we can ensure a steady or even exponential traffic to the page. SEO professionals thus have to ensure that apart from traditional search engine optimization, they must take Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest and other social networking sites into account. Links that are shared from credible social media accounts add to the relevance and contextual importance of that link. Here are some important tips and tricks while using social bookmarking for SEO. Identifying Target Audience It is important for SEO professionals to identify a target audience and connect to them via social bookmarking sites. Since social media is a two-way communication, participating in communication and discussion may help in promoting your own bookmarked links. Using Tinyurl It may become necessary to shorten your URL before sharing, as it adds to the visual appeal and also makes sure that precious character-space is not wasted. A disadvantage is there is no way one can brand a tinyurl. However, spending money on customized URL shortening services may help. Temporally Optimized Sharing One must bookmark or share links only when followers are most likely to be online. There are several services like Buffer, SocialBro and HootSuite that help in addressing this issue. Automated Sharing You could use automated social bookmarking services but it may not be a very good idea. People recognize when social media accounts are automated and it doesn’t take too long for people to unfollows or unfriend you. Rather than using automated tools, hiring an employee on a part time basis to do your social bookmarking may be a better idea. Using Keywords and Keyword Phrases As an SEO strategy, even while sharing or bookmarking links on social media sites, it is important to utilize keywords in a non-intrusive manner. By doing so, readers will know what your link is all about without having to guess. Moreover, links that are tailed with descriptions with keywords have a higher chance of being ranked well. Choosing the Right Social Network Depending on the context of your content, you could choose the right social bookmarking service. If t is something personal or something that taps the goodwill of your reader, you may choose Facebook. For business and professional related posts, LinkedIn or Twitter can be more useful. Images can be bookmarked on Flickr or Pinterest while videos can be bookmarked on YouTube. Issues with Social Bookmarking for SEO For successful social bookmarking, one needs to be hard working and patient. It simply does not make sense to bookmark your own sites across all the social bookmarking sites as no one would be interested to click on such links. On the other hand, it may become impossible to create a social bookmarking account that is genuinely active and has thousands of relevant and worthy links that are updated regularly. Many people have tried to bookmark the same link from a hundreds of different accounts. However, if they all come from the same IP address, it may never help you drive traffic to the link you have shared and instead may get you banned from the social bookmarking site altogether. Another method is to collaborate with many people and begin social bookmarking on a team basis. However, this is very time consuming and may ultimately not be successful either. If you are a company or individual who would like to use social bookmarking sites for your benefit, you may approach SEO professionals who have the tools and software to bookmark sites and promote your links on social media.

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How Google Plus May Influence SEO Strategies

June 15, 2012

Google+ is a social networking entity that was launched way back in June 2011. Initially, it was touted to be the Facebook killer that would change the world as we knew it. Within a few days, it gained a massive number of users who later seemed to dwindle down in terms of active usage. However, Google+ continues to be an important social networking entity that influences the way we engage in Search Engine Optimization. Being a product of Google, Google+ has a tremendous impact on search results and the plus button is the key to success in SEO. Let us take a look at how Google Plus is going to change the future of SEO. Search, Plus Your World A few months ago, Google integrated Google+ with its search engine function and called it ‘Search, Plus Your World’. Though initially criticized by many, Google+ integration into search results changes the way we look at SEO. The idea behind ‘Search, Plus Your World’ was that users rely more on their friends than a search engine, when it comes to search results. If a friend or acquaintance deems a link to be worthy, a user may click on that link more often than he would click on a link suggested by search engines. Google thus creates a map similar to Facebook’s Open Graph and helps connect people with their readers, content and websites. It helps people to evaluate how content and relationships with people are interlinked. Thus an author who has more connections on Google+ may be more reliable than someone who does not use Google+ actively. Contextual Information The most appealing factor of using Google+ is that search results become more contextual. With all Google products now housed under a single umbrella, all your account activity will influence your search results. Depending on the context of the search, the results would appear. Indirectly, we may assume that content producers who have an active audience on Google+ will have a better SERP, especially in niche areas. Thus, rel=”author” and rel=”publisher” tags become increasingly important. SEO professionals will then need to concentrate more on the context of a business in terms of its target audience than mere link building as was followed earlier. Importance of Social Signals After the advent of ‘Search Plus Your World’, everything that appears in search results is influenced by social signals. What is important to people who are relevant to you (friends, acquaintances, thought leaders you follow, etc) is important to you as well. Thus, your results are more relevant to your account activity than domain authority and links. This is not to say that domain authority is not relevant anymore. It just means that Google now considers your social signals when providing you with search results. SEO professionals will thus have to concentrate more on social media optimization of websites and blogs along with old school SEO. The Importance of +1 Button The +1 button needs to be implemented in every blog or website that you own, so that visitors click on that. It is similar to Facebook’s Like button, but only, Google uses this button to recommend content to your followers or contacts when they search for certain keywords. This is particularly useful in carving a niche for yourself in the area chosen. Moreover, a +1’d link has a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR). This means, it might be shared later on Twitter, Facebook or back again on Google+ increasing social signals and driving traffic. SEO professionals need to remember that a Google +1 button can indirectly lead to higher ranking of page. While traditional SEO practices can’t be ignored, it helps a lot to integrate Google Plus and the +1 button into social media optimization efforts. Thrust on Content Google has always reminded us that content is king. With Google Plus and the +1 button, we may take it for granted that if the content is not up to the mark, your website or blog will not be ranked high. The idea thus is to write great content within your niche, use social media to share what you have written and then do the basic groundwork of SEO like you always have. Personalized Search At the end of the day, it can be summarized that Google Plus and the +1 button will lead to more personalized search results. What matters to your contacts and friends are assumed to matter to you. What matters to you will thus be assumed to be important for those in your network. All that personal data will influence your search results. SEO professionals will then need to place more emphasis on active social media engagement, instead of link purchasing and submitting to directories alone. Google Plus, SEO and the Future Analysts and thought leaders who have been studying the effects of Google Plus on SEO have noted that email marketing will become more important in the future. SEO may be divided into two categories: personalized and non-personalized. For the personal SEO, social signals will need to be evaluated and optimized. For non-personal SEO, traditional SEO strategies will need to be employed as usual. Low quality linking and link purchases will no longer be relevant in niche areas unless SEO professionals are dealing with a very generic topic that has no audience. It will become important to seek the support of those who have social authority. Probably, having a higher Klout score or Author Ranking will become more important.

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Tumblr vs. Pinterest for Web Designers

April 20, 2012

The hottest social networking site right surely is Pinterest and it is known to drive a lot of traffic to websites. Tumblr on the other hand is a popular microblogging platform, which has been around for quite a while. There are similarities among both the services, and each works for different purposes, users and situations. Differences between Tumblr and Pinterest Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform that can behave like Twitter, act as a simplified version of WordPress and is a place to engage in discussion. Pinterest on the other hand is a visual bookmarking tool, that allows you to collect images and videos (and the links therein) on various categorized boards. Both of them depend more on media than text, but are fundamentally different. However, people do use Tumblr to collect pictures and images much like Pinterest. Both the tools can be astonishingly useful to web designers and developers. Let us compare the two services in order to understand which one could be better than the other. Team Collaboration Pinterest allows users to add contributors, which means collaborative collection of images found on the Internet or images that are originally taken can be easy. Pinterest can allow web designing companies to allow several designers to pin images that they like, in a form of visual brainstorming. Commenting and liking images, or pinning them back allows for socializing as well. Tumblr on the other hand is a fully functioning blogging platform that allows for lengthier discussions in the form of comments, and also in the form of text posts. As it follows a blogging structure, web designers can easily publish their strategies, ideas, tutorials etc easily. Collaboration in the real sense may be easier on Tumblr if we were to talk about combining blog posts, images, textual content and videos. Pinterest can be used as bookmarking tool or a place to showcase templates and designs you have created, before or after brainstorming. Marketing and Promotion Pinterest discourages self-promotion, whereas Tumblr doesn’t frown upon it. It is easier to promote oneself explicitly on Tumblr than on Pinterest. On Pinterest, you will have to use tricks and covert methods to promote your products or services. It might be a good idea to drive traffic from Pinterest to your Tumblr blog, where you actively promote your products. Pinterest has a majority of female users, where as Tumblr’s target audience is mostly youngsters. It depends who your target audience is before launching a marketing campaign. However, Tumblr seems to have a better marketing traction. SEO and SMO Both Tumblr and Pinterest are valuable SEO tools. They drive traffic to your company website, help you to generate organic traffic, and also achieve better search engine rankings. Interface Tumblr has more freedom to publish content, and doubles up as a blogging platform as well. Pages can be added and a simple website can be created within the Tumblr platform. On Pinterest, one can pin images found anywhere on the website, or upload original images and categorise them under various boards. Pinterest is more visually oriented than Tumblr, where as Tumblr is more of a publishing platform. Engagement, Discussion and Participation Tumblr allows better engagement and discussion. Thanks to its micro-blogging platform, it not only allows likes and re-blogs but lengthy discussions can happen in the comments section. Pinterest on the other hand allows commenting too, and images can be re-pinned or liked, but lengthy discussions are just not great enough. Web designers who need to discuss projects, tricks and tips, cheat sheets would do better on Tumblr. Web designers who need to showcase their templates, and basically offer visual eye-candy would gain more on Pinterest. Handling Design Projects Web designers can collect templates they like on Pinterest and also pin websites, portfolios of other designers and logos that they come across while browsing the web. Pinterest can serve as a place where web designers can find all the images that inspired them to design their own website. Tumblr on the other hand can be used to promote and market one’s own design projects. It could also be used to upload HTML5, CSS and other coding files in order to discuss with clients or team members. It serves as a collaborative, publishing and media sharing platform, all put together in a minimalist environment. It all depends on which part of the designing process one is handling. Both the tools are equally important and are not mutually exclusive.

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Top 10 Blunders You Must Avoid on Twitter

April 17, 2012

While Twitter is an amazing tool to drive traffic to your website or to market yourself as a professional, it can also become a liability if you do not follow certain rules. In fact, there are certain blunders that many people commit, and end up wasting their time on Twitter and worse, harming their own business and credibility. Here are the top 10 blunders that you must avoid while using Twitter. Being Impersonal One of the biggest blunders on Twitter is bring impersonal. Agreed, that it is a micro-blogging service where you do not need to engage in personal conversations. However, it is still a social network where certain aspects of who you are need to be projected. First off, it is important to have a clear picture and then have links to your blog or website. Secondly, do tweet at times about your life and not just about the product or business you want to promote. Try and be nice to people, and maintain cordiality and a degree of familiarity. Not Customizing Background There are several great businesses and professionals who just do not use a custom background for their Twitter profile. This is a unique space where you could give out a lot of information that is not possible within the 140 characters bio. Also, don’t go overboard and write a story about yourself in the background image. That really is a blunder. Not Being Active There are great Twitter accounts that I unfollowed because they were just not tweeting anymore. It is very important to remain active and tweet at least a few times in a day. Consistent tweets that are informative, fun and useful are always appreciated. However, tweeting 10 times within a span of 10 seconds and not tweeting for the rest of the day is a blunder too. Space your tweets across the day. Don’t be Noisy One of the most annoying blunders is to tweet too much. How much is too much? Well, that is a difficult question but no one likes to see your tweets and links constantly appearing in their stream. It is important to resist tweeting all the time. If you really have to tweet anything that comes to your mind, have a different Twitter account for that. Do not confuse your business, personal and anonymous Twitter accounts. Each has its special purpose! Following too Many People The idea is not to follow everyone you see on Twitter. The trick is to follow only the most useful people in your industry and a few others from other areas of life. Following too many people will send a wrong signal that you are not an important business who has authority or influence. Being Full of Yourself Of course, Twitter is a great place to market yourself. However, it would be a nasty blunder if you tweeted only about yourself, your business or what you want to market. 70% of the tweets must not be self promotional. Only around 30% of the tweets could be used to promote yourself. Otherwise, you will come across as a hustler. Being Cold Many twitter users tend to be cold and non-responsive. It is not only rude, but a big blunder not to engage with your audience and talk to them. If you do not connect with your followers and audience, they will eventually get bored of you and will unfollow you. It is important to engage in Twitter conversations and participate in them. Not Being Helpful One of the most selfish acts could be to not help others on Twitter. Whether they ask for it or not, if you come across questions in your stream that you are in a position to answer, make sure you do so. Otherwise, you might be mistaken for a cold and profit minded business that cares about no one but promoting oneself. Not a great strategy to drive traffic to your website. Spamming Your Followers No matter how tempting it is to share links related to your products, your blog posts and just about anything that is related to you, you must not overdo it. You will come across as a spammer who has more malicious intent than just self-promotion. You can get blocked for appearing as a spammer. Being Irrelevant There is nothing worse than being irrelevant. If you are a design company and start tweeting about politics, you will confuse your followers, who may eventually unfollow you. The idea is to stick to what you claim is your mission on Twitter. If you need to tweet about other things, you can always have a second Twitter account that can be used for non-professional purposes.

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Top 10 Tips to Optimize LinkedIn Pages to Drive Traffic

April 10, 2012

If you thought LinkedIn was a place to upload your resume and forget about it until someone contacted, you are missing out on one of the most important social networking tools available today. LinkedIn is a great way to make sure that organic and free traffic is driven to your blog or website with little effort. Let us take a look at how you can optimise your LinkedIn page to drive traffic to your blog. Complete your Profile Most people and companies are usually quick to open accounts and enter a few details in social media sites, and forget about them. An incomplete profile gives a very bad impression to you or your company. LinkedIn allows you to enter as many details as possible and in fact encourages you to fill in 100% of what it believes to be important. One of the most important steps for a complete profile is adding a great picture of yourself or that of your company’s infrastructure or logo. When people search for your company or your name in Google, your LinkedIn profile is one of the first results to show up. It only makes sense to have a complete LinkedIn profile and never incomplete or shabbily filled out profiles. Build your Network LinkedIn allows you to add people that you do not know personally but may have worked with you in the same company. It also allows you to add people who are your friends, colleagues, or just about anyone as long as you know their email address. The more number of people you add on LinkedIn, the more number of clicks you can expect when you share stuff on your company page. Remember to ask for recommendations whenever possible, and return the favor. Optimize Links LinkedIn allows you to share 3 links of your choice, which can also be customised to look in a certain way. For instance, you could have something like ‘My Blog’, My Company’ and ‘My Portfolio’. Instead of typing the domain name of websites, or just name them as your blog or website, it is better to describe what exactly the web link is all about. Custom headlines to these links can be altered to attract more attention of your visitors. Participation Like any other social network, it is important to participate in conversations and engage in discussions. LinkedIn groups allow people to post questions when they need information. Depending on what your area of expertise is, it helps to answer questions and help people genuinely. Not only will the person who asked the question get interested in you, but also other people who are viewing your answer. Update Status It is important to update your status at least twice a day. This helps your updates to appear in the LinkedIn stream, and people might click on the links you share in your updates so that more traffic is driven to your blog or website. Twitter updates can be automatically published over LinkedIn, which actually can be a very smart thing to do, unless you tweet a lot of irrelevant stuff. Join Specific Groups Depending on what your company or blog is all about, you can join similar groups on LinkedIn. People who are within the group you join can be easily added to your contacts, and that again builds your connections. Participating and engaging in conversations in niche LinkedIn groups will almost certainly help drive traffic to your website. Only, you must not spam the group with links to your website. Start your Own Group Starting niche groups is a great way to drive traffic to your websites and blogs. LinkedIn allows you to start a group, which can welcome those who are interested in the niche area. A LinkedIn Group can raise you to an authoritative position. This would automatically encourage group members to click on links that you share. RSS Feeds It is also important to add RSS feeds of your blog or website to the group you start. Each time you publish new content on your blog or website, the feeds show up in the LinkedIn group automatically, which helps people to click on those links. Blog Application There are WordPress and Blog Link applications that post the title and first paragraphs of your most recent articles. These widgets offer a sneak peek to your blog posts and other content, which encourages people to click on the links to read it completely. Again, this helps in driving traffic too. The blog applications can be downloaded from the “applications” link. Importance of Keywords Nothing is more important than adding keyword rich status updates, and filling your profile with keyword rich text. It is important not to stuff your updates and profile text with keywords, as that will definitely put off people. The idea is to intelligently use keywords to reflect what your company or business is all about. LinkedIn can prove to be an extremely useful tool to drive niche traffic to your websites. It is important to note that the demographics of LinkedIn are very different from that of Twitter or Facebook. You get more directed and specific traffic which would be helpful for your business goals.

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What are Twitter Hashtags?

April 9, 2012

Twitter is one of the most difficult social networks for people to learn. They say, you either get it or you just don’t. Many of us do not have the choice of ‘not getting it’, and hashtags only make the learning curve more difficult. What Are Hashtags? You might have noticed words beginning with # symbol in individual tweets. These are known as hashtags, something extremely central to the way Twitter functions. A Hashtag is a tag that is prefixed with the # symbol, and helps to categorize tweets that are unimaginably dissimilar and non-cohesive. With millions of tweets out there, it becomes difficult to categorize individual tweets, and that is where the hashtag comes to work. Hashtags are used to categorise tweets, and also to give a direction to otherwise random tweets that may eventually get lost. How to Use Hashtags? Hashtags must be used next to relevant keywords without any spaces. If your tweet is related to how HTML5 can improve the quality of websites you deisgn, #webdesign and #HTML5 can be appropriate hashtags. This helps your tweet to appear in search results when people type #HTML5. Hashtags can be used anywhere within a tweet and can even be part of the sentence. Hashtagged words that become really popular are said to be ‘trending topics’. While very tempting to do so, you must make sure that you do not stuff your tweet with hashtags. It may appear spammy or downright unprofessional. Ideally, you should not include more than two hashtags per tweet. Identifying and Tracking Hashtags Hashtags can be identified in various smartphone applications even as you type. However, if you use the computer to use Twitter, there are several tools which can help you to identify popular hashtags. Twubs uses a wiki system to disseminate information on a hashtag. It has an attractive way to display hashtags and the tweets associated. Hashtags.org has been around for a while, and suggests tags that may be relevant to what you are looking for. Tagalus is a dictionary of sorts for hashtags. There are several other tools to discover hashtags on Twitter. Monitter and Twitterfall help you to track tweets from a hashtag in real time. Twilert sends you a daily email of specific hashtag’s uses. You can take a look at some of the popular hashtags for web designers here. Popular Hashtags for Web Designers and Developers #design and #webdesign cater to web designing and designing in general. #wp and #wordpress relate to tweets that pertain to WordPress. #win and # windows are about Microsoft Windows, where as #linux and #mac are self explanatory If you are a developer, you would hashtags like #htm, #css, #htm, #xml, #java and #php would interest developers #webdesigner, #typography, #UX talk about fonts, web designing jobs and user experience. If you are looking for templates, all that you need to do is search for #template! If you are lacking inspiration, you might perhaps want to type, “Badly need some #webdesign #inspiration!” Chances are, you might meet a fellow web designer who would tweet back to you, and give you ideas. #jobs, #gigs, #freelance, #openings can be used along with your area of specialization to search for clients or jobs. For instance, if you are looking for a job and would like to offer PHP coding services, you could search for #jobs #PHP. #fail usually refers to something, well failed or is just not good enough. It can be used in a humorous or derogatory way., depending on the context. Hashtags can be used to organize your own tweets, so that you could go back and search for them easily. You would need to search for a particular hashtag within your own stream in order to retrieve earlier tweets. It can also help in organizing chats, conferences, or events both online and offline. At the end of the day, it depends on you how you use hashtags. It is now being used on Pinterest and elsewhere as well, so it helps to learn popular hashtags without having to look for them when you need to tweet spontaneously. Finally, don’t forget to use a hashtag for your own company, as that can be a powerful identifier on Twitter!

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What Are Twitter Chats and How to Get on One?

April 9, 2012

It is common to come across Twitter Chats and not know how to participate in one of them. Most people remain blissfully unaware of what Twitter chats are, and how they could use it to their benefit. What is a Twitter Chat? A Twitter chat is a pre-scheduled and pre-arranged interaction that takes place on Twitter. Everyone who participates in a Twitter chat remain online at the designated time, and use certain predefined hashtags, which link all tweets with those hashtags in a Twitter chat. Twitter chats may have a leader, who moderates the discussion with a specific agenda, or it could be a free flowing conversation that takes place amongst those who have common interests, or it could be a combination of both. Join a Chat The first thing that you would need to do is join a chat in order to participate in it. You would need to type in the hashtag of a chat in the search box and choose the one that is most active. If you cannot find a twitter chat, you could take a look at this exhaustive spreadsheet of chats and their schedules. It has hundreds of chats, their timings and the interest areas. Once you find a chat of your interest, begin to read what people are talking. Try to assess the mood, context and the level of enthusiasm among participants. Participate in the Chat A chat is meant to be participatory and two-way. Twitter is random, one-way and difficult to organize. Hashtags do the bit for organizing a particular chat, and participation comes from being proactive, listening to what people are tweeting and responding or reflecting with your own tweets. Twitter chats tend to be very open and informal, and it is also the right place to get people to follow you so that you can DM (Direct Message) them later on. Use Chat Tools There are several tools that help you to get a grasp of Twitter chats. These tools reveal only those tweets that have the hashtag designated for the chat. Thus, you will be able to filter out the rest of the tweets that appear in your timeline. One such tool is Tweetchat. You might also want to use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, both of which are pretty popular tools. TweetChat has the advantage of adding the appropriate hashtag at the end of your tweet automatically, which can be very helpful. Start Your Own Chat While there are already hundreds of scheduled and designated chats that take place on twitter, there are chances you might not find one that suits your interest area. You can go ahead and start your own Twitter chat. You would first need to choose a time, topic and hashtag. You can then choose a format for your chat. The format could be question based, where people ask questions and you reply. It could also be a single topic with free flowing discussion. In such a case, everyone adds their opinion during a Twitter chat. Once you choose the format. You would need to launch and promote your Twitter chat. You could announce it in a blog post, tweet the announcement to your followers, or choose any innovative method available for your perusal. One of the ways that you could successfully run consecutive chats is to bring celebrities or industry leaders as guests. These guests can offer valuable information to discerning Twitter users. Take the Chat beyond Twitter It is not necessary that a Twitter chat must remain transient and be lost in the sea of tweets that appear in your stream. You could create a LinkedIn group for your chat and continue serious and lengthy discussions which perhaps are not possible on Twitter. Using multimedia attracts a lot of Twitter users to join tweets as well. Twitter Chat for Designers and Developers There are several twitter chats that exclusively take place for web designers, and web developers. In fact, one shouldn’t be surprised if one found web designing chats dedicated to a particular city or even a particular area of web designing. #devchat, #freelanceChat and #DesignChat might probably interest you. For instance, when it was active, #devchat covered software development, and was dedicated to all developers and programmers who want to learn, share and network. It used to take place 7-8PM MST on Wednesdays. There are literally hundreds of Twitter chats dedicated to web designers and developers. You just need to look around, or create one on your own!  

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What? How? Why? About Pinterest and Some Useful Tips

April 7, 2012

The latest social networking site, Pinterest has attracted a lot of press lately. While many have begun to swear by it, there are many of us who still do not understand this novel tool and how it might help us to drive traffic to websites, organize design projects and add a little colour to an otherwise text-filled world. What is Pinterest? In simple terms, Pinterest is an online space where one could organize pictures that are interesting. These images can either be uploaded originally or shared after running into an image while browsing. Once an image is uploaded or shared on Pinterest, it becomes a ‘pin’. A collection of pins that are related to each other can then be organized under themed Boards. It is up to the user what the boards are going to be named, or what sort of ‘Pins’ the board would consist of. How is Pinterest Used? Pinterest comes with an official ‘Pin It Button’, which is a browser extension. Each time you come across an image you like, you could click on the image and pin it under a board of your choice. Of course, you could accompany the ‘Pin’ with a caption or lengthier text as well. At the moment, it is possible to use your iPhone to Pin original pictures. Images can be categorized for further use, or for inspiration. All the hats that you like may be pinned under a specific board, so that others may see which hat you like. Or, you might want to pin pictures of apartments that you may find interesting, and pin them under a board titled ‘Possible Apartments to Buy’. The possibilities are endless! It is also a great tool to make lists of products that you may find attractive online, which you may choose to buy at a later stage. While you can always pin all day long anything that catches your eye, Pinterest is better used with a specific purpose in mind. Moreover, Pinterest can serve as a collaborative tool, with which you can collect images, brainstorm and work on issues that may be important to you. Pinterest is an open and public network. Anybody can follow anyone, and one is not obliged to follow back. One could categorize pins under hashtags, similar to Twitter hashtags. Who Uses Pinterest? Pinterest’s power users are aged between 25 and 44, and 80% of the users are female. They also earn a lot more than most people and have some level of college education. They tend to be located in the Midwestern states of the United States. However, this demographic is quickly changing to include people from other countries, and a growing number of men who have begun to use Pinterest for design projects. Can Pinterest Drive Traffic? All said and done, Pinterest is an important traffic driver to websites. It is particularly important to retail brands, as their products depend on visual appeal. Pinterest was launched way back in 2010, but it already has more than 10.4 million users. Of course, it can’t be compared with Facebook’s 845 million users or Twitter’s 200 million users. What needs to be understood is that Pinterest targets a certain visually oriented target audience, which could be a great platform to look for niche traffic. If one were to consider referral traffic, Pinterest is almost equal to Twitter, with both driving 3.6% of web traffic. Facebook on the other hand, has a share of 26.4%. LinkedIn and Google+ lag behind at 0.2%. Why Pinterest is Important to Web Designers? Most images that are pinned lead to a source link and as Pins can be ‘liked’ or ‘repinned’, they come with a promising traffic driving potential. This is perhaps what would interest SEO specialists and web admins. When it comes to web designers, it is rather easy to surmise that they would pin templates, images and graphics that they may want to use in certain projects. Pinterest is collaborative and social, which also means that web designers can use it to present design ideas to clients. Again, like we always say with social sites, the possibilities are endless. Pinterest is being increasingly seen as a promising tool for web designers, mostly because of its visual nature. Pinterest allows you to organize links based on images that you see on various websites. These images, which might be websites that inspire you to design similarly, could be clubbed under various categories of boards. Top 10 Tips to Use Pinterest 1) Use Pinterest on Websites It is very important to make your presence on Pinterest known to visitors to your website. Pinterest has a number of goodies, which can help you to add Pinterest buttons, either on the page or on individual products that you display. This would encourage visitors to pin products on your site, and eventually drive traffic back to your website, probably resulting in sales. 2) The Right Etiquette Like any other social media website, it is important to not sound like you are over promoting yourself or your products. It is alright to promote your products, but your boards must include images and links to themes, ideas and interests that can be associated with your business. It is important to be nice, polite and non intrusive. 3) Engagement and Participation Increase the number of pins and boards, and keep them relevant to your business. Follow people who follow you, and engage in conversations about what they like and dislike. The more images you pin, the more traffic you will drive back to your website. 4) Keywords and Hashtags Just like in Twitter, Pinterest allows you to use keywords and hashtags relevant to particular pins. For instance, #Flash, #design, #CSS can be relevant hashtags to your web design projects. It is important to identify which hashtags are most relevant to your business. If you are a developer, you could perhaps link images to your blog posts that describe coding, screenshots of HTML and PHP codes, etc. 5) Interest Groups There

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