Page One Business

Market to Teens by Switching from Facebook to Twitter

warner — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:00:34 +0000

If you are taking advantage of social media platforms in your marketing efforts, you probably already know the kind of traffic you can create by linking to Facebook and Twitter. Recent news, however, suggests that a large percentage of teens in the past year have left Facebook for Twitter. And, with the buying power of the teen and college-age population growing steadily, businesses might want to take note of where these kids are spending their time online. Twitter has slowly crept to the forefront of all social media outlets, so any marketer looking to promote to teens would be well-advised to jump aboard. Why?

1. Use Twitter to Monitor Your Brand
More than any other social media site today, Twitter gives you the ability to watch exactly how users are experiencing your brand in real time. You can see who follows you, who un-follows you, where your followers come from and what types of devices they are using to access Twitter. This is a huge amount of free marketing information at your fingertips, as long as you know how to use it. Try building a base of followers by following teens that seem like they might be interested in your products or services. Once you have a nice sized group, you can sign up to receive information on your trends and followers by searching for un-follow apps within Twitter.

2. Make Connections
Obviously the entire point of branding through social media is based on making social connections. But the great thing about Twitter is that connections are easily made. You don’t have to request users to befriend or follow you. You can follow them first and hope they return the favor. You can also check out who follows your followers and reach out to them as well. Twitter is also a great way to connect with similar brands or entities that will have your best interests at heart and built-in teen followers.

3. Make Announcements
Sure, it’s cool to post your newest product on your Facebook page and see the “likes” rack up. But, how do you know whether or not your customers are even aware that you have posted something new? Unless they check their newsfeed, they probably aren’t, and it’s looking like less and less young people are tuning in to Facebook updates. Twitter is a great way to make announcements that your users are much more likely to see in real time. Also, try mentioning some of your followers or re-tweeting things from popular sources and watch as your teen following grows.

4. Set Your Tone of Voice
Because Facebook has become more of a static platform than Twitter, it has already begun to feel a little dated. With Twitter, you can communicate directly and in real time to all your users, or just one. Twitter provides a more dynamic way to create a tone of voice for your brand and encourage young people to interact with it. In other words, to a teen, a Twitter profile is going to seem much less stuffy and distant, and they may be more likely to interact.
By-line:
Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com.

Market to Teens by Switching from Facebook to Twitter is a post from: Page One Business

Link Building Highlights January 2012

warner — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:38:14 +0000

Included below are some of the latest 2012 Link Building posts and guides, a video on link building from Affiliate Summit and a couple of pictures I liked.

Link Building Highlights January 2012 is a post from: Page One Business

Four Easy Ways to Market in Facebook

warner — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 07:08:51 +0000

In just a short span of time, Facebook has already become a force to be reckoned with. It currently has about 250 million users in more than 140 countries worldwide. According to cnn.com, Facebook is now the number 1 site online. With such a huge number of registered users, it is no wonder why online marketers all over the globe have started using Facebook to promote their products and services. Facebook marketing is all the rage these days. The thing is many neophytes are doing it all wrong. Yes. There is a proper way to market using Facebook. Here are four easy ways to market in Facebook.

· Create a Facebook fan page. Making your own fan page is a practical way to market on Facebook. There are business owners who create a personal account for their brands. Don’t make this mistake. With a personal account, people would have to go through the trouble of adding you up or approving your friend request. Plus there is a 5000 friend limit for personal accounts. Pages, on the other hand, don’t have a limit to the number of likes it can have. Plus people won’t have to “add” or “approve” you. All they have to do is click “like”

· Make them “like” you. Once you have a fan page, the next step should be to market your fan page. Make some noise on Facebook. Get people to “like” your page. Now there are many ways to do this. You can do it the hard way. You can campaign individually to your friends and request them to like your page. You can chat with them, send a PM or post on their walls. This can work. However, it’s a very time consuming process. And remember that time = money. Or you can hold a contest or a promotion. Give them an incentive for liking your page.

· Put large photos on your page. Check out the fan pages of Chanel, Kitkat and McDonalds. They all have one thing in common. They have tall profile pictures. If you want people to notice you, don’t put miniscule pictures on your page. Make them big, bold and eye-catching.

· Put a welcome tab. Check out the pages of Ben and Jerry’s and Coca-Cola. They have a huge welcome tab that just grabs your attention. A welcome tab is important because it tells people in a nutshell what your page is all about. You can put a video of your latest product or a picture of your current promos.

These are just four of the most basic ways to market using Facebook. They are easy to do and you won’t have to spend a cent! So what are you waiting for? Give these tips a try today.

“Amy C. is an interior decoration aficionado and online marketer. She also likes testing and trying new home and office decorating themes. In addition to being an interior decoration hobbyist, she enjoys designing calming solar fountains and glass art. Amy invites you to browse her delightful collection of glass vases “

Four Easy Ways to Market in Facebook is a post from: Page One Business

The World’s 10 Most Popular Company Facebook Pages

warner — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:45:38 +0000

Facebook pages work best if you are a major retail B2C brand or company.

In this list I have not included musicians, entertainers, actors & actressess or movies which we covered in the last post the “The World’s 20 Most Popular Facebook Pages“. Like Twitter the top ranked on Facebook are celebrities who attract passionate fans to their sites.

Here we look at the Top 10 Global companies or brands that are not a rock star, movie star or a musician.

Starbucks has pursued a focused social media and digital marketing strategy including making broadband wireless free in its stores and also adding value by providing digital content free. Digital marketing as a percentage of marketing spend including social media is growing much faster than traditional marketing. Ford has announced that it will be spending 25% of its marketing on digital which is 100% more than the market average of 12% according to Reutersand is concentrating a lot of dollars in social media competitions due to its success with itsFord Fiesta Movement campaign.

You will notice that Facebook is often used for promoting competitions as Starbucks, Skittles and Converse display on their pages below.

1. Starbucks: 16,366,438 Fans (Ranked 10 Globally)

They are not the top ranked Facebook page for not following best practice Facebook strategies and so this page includes a call to action (see, join and send), asking to engage with their fans and integrating and linking other social media channels in their Facebook page.

2. Coca-Cola: 15,863,959 Fans (Ranked 13 Globally)

Coca Cola displays the importance of a multiple media strategy to spread its brand images, video and content by including

Twitter
MySpace
YouTube
Flickr

in its Facebook page right near the top.

A call to action is seen with its call to “Click to become a Fan”. It also promotes their fans to drive engagement. Images and video have always been a strong part of Coca Colas traditional marketing and this brand marketing is maintained on its Facebook page.

3. Oreo: 12,616,818 Fans (Ranked 26 Globally)

Making heroes of your fans is always a good Facebook strategy and Oreo displays this with its major banner on the left with a Fan displayed from Georgia, USA (Catherine M).

Oreo doesn’t link to any other social media like Twitter or even its website.

4. Skittles: 11,912,772 Fans (Ranked 30 Globally)

Competitions or games have proven to be a great way to engage fans and Skittles does this with a Game called “Mob The Rainbow” which is consistent with its brand. Twitter is integrated and its website.

5. Red Bull: 10,634,430 Fans (Ranked 36 Globally)

So Red Bull wants you to “like our page” so provides a big image with a call to action, it is very clear that it wants to grow its Facebook fans. Red Bull with its action and sport focus also provides a Tab to take you to its athletes page. There is only one link which takes you to its website.

6. Disney: 9,227,053 (Ranked 42 Globally)

Video is centric to Disney so here on Disney’s Facebook page we have an online video promoting its latest film “Tangled”. Good to see it promoting and integrating its Twitter and YouTube Channels.

7. Converse: 6,473,795 Fans (Ranked 71 Globally)

Want to have a bit of fun. Converse put together an online tool that allows you to make a cool and maybe strange profile. No social media cross channel promotion here.

8. Pringles: 6,322,323 Fans (Ranked 82 Globally)

Engagement here is encouraged by the Facebook page asking you to join the Conga line so it is good to see the call to action being implemented, again no other social media links in evidence or even a website.

9. ZARA: 6,312,517 Fans (Ranked 83 Globally)

Images are vital to fashion so strong fun photos are an important part of ZARA’s Facebook page. They promoting other media with a Zara Fashion Magazine but there are no calls to action.

10. iPod: 5,952,748 Fans (Ranked 89 Globally)

Apple’s reinvention in the last 10 years started with the iPod. Its Facebook design doesn’t seem to match its design finesse that we have come to see on its products. Bland but obviously a successful Facebook page by making the top 10 company and brands globally.

Jimmy Adams works at RebatesValley, a Coupon Website. RebatesValley Provides Bagking Coupon, overstock coupon code and coupons for various online stores. Please visit rebatesvalley.com

The World’s 10 Most Popular Company Facebook Pages is a post from: Page One Business

How to Build Links for SEO With Infographics

warner — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:39:17 +0000

There’s no denying that any website (yours included) lives or dies on its ranking in the major search engines. While properly keyword optimizing your site’s content, carefully constructing the meta tags for each page on your site and creating a well organized site map for the search engine crawlers are all important, they only go so far towards making your site visible to your target audience. Inbound links are a factor which Google and the other major search engines have been giving more weight to in determining page rank and as a webmaster, link building is something to be ignored at your peril.

There are a lot of different ways to go about link building, from posting on relevant forums and including a link to your site in your signature to article marketing campaigns; but one particularly effective strategy which you may not have given a lot of thought to is using infographics to build inbound links to your site, thereby boosting your standing in search results.

Infographics are not anything new; for that matter, neither is using infographics as part of a link building campaign. However, there is a very good reason that they’re still a popular tool for link building: they work. A well designed infographic which features attractive graphic design, easily digested information and appeals to the interests of readers/and or offers readers entertainment value will almost always be successful at building inbound links. Case in point: OK Cupid. The popular dating site posted an infographic which resulted in roughly 600 inbound links (and well over 1,000 posts on Twitter) in the space of about a year. Not an overnight explosion in links, to be sure, but definitely a much faster rate of growth in inbound links than you’d see from virtually any other type of link building strategy.

It’s already a good thing to be able to build links to your site, but another advantage of using infographics as part of your link building strategy is that these links tend to be from relevant websites (that is to say, high value inbound links). Any inbound link is better than nothing, but a link from a site whose content is at least partially relevant to your own is of course better.

Building Effective Infographics

There is a lot of room for creativity with infographics and no two are alike, or at least they don’t need to be. If you want your infographic to go viral and end up creating a large number of inbound links, you should take full advantage of the creative freedom that the format gives you; just don’t let it get out of hand and let the aesthetic appeal of your infographic overshadow it’s other important function: imparting interesting, useful and/or entertaining information.

It should go without saying, but any information in your infographic should be well-researched, fact checked and above all, accurate. There’s nothing which can undermine your site’s credibility quicker than providing your readers with unreliable information.

Although there are other factors to be considered when you’re putting together an infographic as part of your site’s link building campaign, there is one which is important enough that it cannot be omitted here – make sure that your infographic is keyword focused; the topic of your infographic will, in large part, determine the kind of anchor text which is used in links to your site, so choose carefully.

To review: make it attractive, make it informative, make it relevant and make it easy for your readers to share. If you keep all of this in mind, you’ll be able to create an infographic which gives your site a leg up in the SEO department.

Jeff Gross is a blogger and writer, with four years of writing experience in the fields of SEO and internet marketing. He is currently appointed as a writer for a NY real estate agency that makes Queens Condos.

How to Build Links for SEO With Infographics is a post from: Page One Business

How To Boost Your Twitter Followers

warner — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:58:07 +0000

The social networking sites have been the innovative advertising means to boost sales and uphold oneself. Twitter and Facebook are the predecessors on this means for digits. The Facebook is somewhat diverse with the system since you could throw plenty of friend requests to folks you recognize, to your friend’s friends, and even to somebody you aren’t familiar with. Twitter, on the other hand, is dissimilar. It is a micro blogging social networking site where persons calls for people to follow you and not just for the reason that they recognize you, but because they find you mesmerizing.

And why do several folks find you out of the ordinary? It may be for the reason that you write down blogs on some interesting things or maybe you have huge views on some societal stuff. Famous persons, selling persons, advertisers and every person who care for societal gathering online is using Twitter. So if you are one of them, it is vital to get a well-built hold of followers, who would tweet your tweets on their loop as well as assisting you to have additional strikes. To reveal in advance, the quantity of followers are necessary to have a powerful profile on Twitter. Yet, watchfulness should also be experiential when trying to boost your followers at once, as Twitter puts a stricter decree into practice in their follow and follow back terms.

There is abundance of customs to move up your Twitter followers. You just have to make certain that you don’t Spam. Spamming is not an excellent scheme. It’s wrong to downpour users with plenty of unwanted messages and allocates bad links on Twitter. These are a small number of techniques to boost Twitter followers devoid of being perched. You could also make use of Twitter Counter to have a footpath for new users who go after you each day. You could even find out those people who ‘unfollow’ you after a small amount of tweets or so by other Twitter applications.

Hope you can hit upon a lot of important information which will lend you a hand to boost your Twitter followers exclusive of being suspended on the exceeding subsection. Let us all remain watchful and be moral as we go for the means that would best benefit us in terms of business or the other way. Just always commit to memory to do the right things in the right way as to either it is slow or fast.

Jimmy Adams works at RebatesValley, a Coupon Website. RebatesValley Provides overstock coupon code, drugstore.com coupon code free shipping and coupons for various online stores. Please visit rebatesvalley.com

How To Boost Your Twitter Followers is a post from: Page One Business

Looking Back At Some Hot Google Topics of Early and Mid 2011

warner — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 02:34:58 +0000

History repeats itself, especially when people do not learn from history and make the same mistakes. 2011 has been a big year for the Internet and SEO (maybe one of the most memorable of recent years) and the playing field has changed dramatically.

Obviously one of the biggest game changers was Panda. So let’s talk a little bit about that first.

Panda did what every single offline business owner, that puts up a website so that they can have an online presence, hoped it would. It gave them a chance. It killed content farms that left the writers of comapnies baffled on what they should do.

Side Note: One of my favorite articles on the subject, can be found here, as it clearly states what happened during Panda, and how to survive it. Very Interesting Stuff

Did Panda Kill Content Farms?

You know the saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” The same may hold true with content farms. They seem to be here to say, because believe it or not, they are still cost effective. They will have to adjust of course, but if a farming website can outlast a Panda update, and make the changes necessary to make it to the top of the SERPs once again, then it will just make them that much harder to knock down again in the future.

It is much like Evolution. If nature keeps throwing things at an organism that makes them fizzle out, but the strong one continue to make it, then as a species they just get stronger and stronger. The only way to truly get rid of them is to totally eliminate them – in the case of sites like Google that means outlawing them from their search engines. Newer search engines like Blekko.com have already done this and have completely banned content farms from their website – even eHow!

One route that could perhaps help minimize the effects of content mills and how they are saturating the SERPs (or were) is Google Plus. Google Plus is another event that took place this last half year of 2011 and even set some records in terms of growth for a social media website.

The website was named “the Facebook killer” by a lot of people, however this is not even close to being true. The site generated a lot of buzz, but really, do you even use it? We have a humungous Facebook addiction as a whole and it might take a little bit more innovation besides circles to get us going about Google Plus.

What they are trying to do with it however is start trying to do sort of what Bing and Facebook are trying to do with Bing’s search engine, which is create a “decision engine.” They want to turn people into their algorithms, and that will give their algorithms a little bit of artificial intelligence. This will be much harder to manipulate in the future – and may even make so that many SEO’s are out of a job!

A lot has taken place in the last year in terms of Google Updates and new products. It will give rise to new innovations for the future and the ever changing world of the Internet.

This article was written by Philip P Russell who has been working in the Internet marketing industy for the last 3 years. Philip helps to run and maintain www.CreditDonkey.com by day, where you can find credit card applications at any time.

Looking Back At Some Hot Google Topics of Early and Mid 2011 is a post from: Page One Business

Should Employers Ban Facebook in the Workplace?

warner — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 02:31:06 +0000

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become a bone of contention in the workplace, with more and more companies blocking access to these sites through their networks.

Software security company Clearswift revealed that the number of businesses that ban access to these sites has jumped to 19 percent from only 9 percent last year. Worldwide, it is estimated that almost 60 percent of managers have blocked at least one social networking site from an employee.

What’s the reason for employers’ communist stance against social networks? Facebook and Twitter are considered major time suckers, hindering employee productivity which is of course what the companies are paying their staff for.

Two years ago, IT company Nucleus Research reported that companies that allowed full access to social networking sites experienced a 1.5 percent drop in employee productivity.

Using social networks also raises concerns regarding company privacy and security breach. According to IT security firm Kaspersky, social networks are now ahead of email as the most widely used tool to spread malware.

Facebook, for one, is notoriously being used by cybercriminals to spread malware which, when installed on a user’s computer can send out information stored in the machine. Some Security experts warn that some Facebook apps, including the highly popular dating apps, can be vector for malware. Just imagine if sensitive corporate information could land in the hands of the bad guys of the Internet?

So maybe we can’t entirely blame employers for thinking that Facebook & Twitter and work don’t mix and should never ever happen simultaneously — at least not while you’re on their payroll.

In Britain, employers take the no-Facebooking-and-Tweeting-while-working policy as a serious business. Nearly half of the firms there forbid their staff from using social networking sites during company time.

In Germany, automobile giant Volkswagen and HeidelbergCement, a construction materials firm, are just two companies that strictly ban their employees from logging on to social networking sites while working. Germany and Australia are the leading countries with the highest rates of blocking social networks in the workplace.

But the threat of malware and corporate data loss aside (which can easily be skirted around by using one’s cell phone instead of the company’s computer when accessing Facebook and Twiter), does the use of social networks in the workplace really reduce personnel productivity or enhance it? Depending on which side you care to listen to, it can actually work both ways and merely depends on the user how he utilizes these sites.

According to a study conducted by the University of Melbourne, employees who are allowed to use social networking sites during office hours are 9 percent more productive than the social networks-deprived ones. According to Brent Coker, Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB), which can run the gamut from reading online news, to updating one’s Facebook status or online dating profile, to playing online games and anything in between, actually improves workers’ concentration because it allows them to “zone out a bit” from time to time.

These findings, don’t apply to those battling Intenet addiction who will inevitably be less productive at work if allowed to have their way with the computer, cautions Coker.

Coker’s argument is shared by John McTigue, executive vice president and co-owner of marketing firm Kuno Creative. McTigue says allowing employees access to social networking sites at work contributes to “collective workplace happiness” which in turn contributes to increased productivity.

So perhaps the boss who catches his secretary replying to a message on Zoosk, a popular Facebook dating app, shouldn’t be too quick to show her the door. What employers should be doing instead, says Facebook and Twitter advocates, is to empower their workers by allowing them to embrace the Web 2.0 era. There should be a clear policy, however, regarding what employees can and cannot share on social networking sites.

This article was presented by Matt Fuller. Matt writes about a variety of online dating and social networking topics including online dating Australia tips and free dating sites for women reviews and relationships advice for single people.

Should Employers Ban Facebook in the Workplace? is a post from: Page One Business

Take A Look At Your Link Profile

warner — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 05:30:30 +0000

Do you ever take a look at how your competitors are building links? When you’re competing with other sites, it makes good sense to look more closely at how they are approaching SEO.

If nothing else, such activity gives you a good benchmark. You can take a look at the top site in Google for a particular search term and see how they’ve achieved that ranking. By doing so, you’ll get an idea as to how easy it will be for you to claim the positioning that you really want.

But you’ll also get a clear idea of the way in which links are being built. How are those leading websites getting the best rankings? Have they been established for many years, allowing them to build up a reputation for having great expertise? It may be the case that they naturally attract many inbound links as a result.

Alternatively, you may find that they have aggressively been buying links, or submitting blog comments. As you can tell, this is a revealing exercise!

Holding up the mirror

But what do others see when they look at your link profile? What do the search engines see?

You may not have spent quite so much time looking at the overall picture that’s been created of your own site. It’s worth remembering, however, that your link-building efforts are also sending out a wide variety of signals. Competitors will be looking at your approach and the search engines may be taking automated decisions about your strategy.

When I’m thinking about link-building, I like to adopt an approach that will be difficult for others to follow. I work hard to get the very best links, knowing that this will make it that bit harder for rivals to copy my approach. Unless they’re going to work seriously hard, they’re not going to gain as many great links.

If you’re approach has involved building thousands of automated links, then you might want to consider how difficult it will be for competitors to replicate your approach. I would suggest that they won’t find it too hard. As a result, your link profile may reveal a serious weakness in your strategy.

High quality links

This brings us on to what the search engines will think of your link profile. Been buying up lots of links? Been busy spamming forums and blogs? If so, that’s going to be pretty transparent to the search engines. You may not have been penalized yet, but are you really willing to take the risk?

A good link profile should look pretty natural. To my mind, that means that you should be able to see a certain degree of diversity. It also means that you’d expect to see links from authority sites within your particular industry or niche.

Is that how your link-building efforts would be viewed? If not, it may be time to think about a new strategy!

You’ll want to ensure that you have a good balance. Don’t be afraid to spend more time gaining each link, as long as you really are building up a picture that involves a lot of quality. The most difficult links to gain often end up being the most useful.

Keith Barrett is a search engine expert and is a consultant with Search South, the UK digital marketing agency.

Take A Look At Your Link Profile is a post from: Page One Business