Are you looking to get the most out of the time you spend posting updates to Facebook and Twitter? Unless your social media efforts are already fine-tuned and producing results for you, then you may want to read on. In this article we are going to give you some quick, simple advice on how to maximize efforts on the top two social media networks – Facebook and Twitter.

A Little Data Support

With social media being so new it is important to look at all advice and take it with a grain of salt. That said, every now and then a legitimate source will share some of their data that proves to be extremely useful due to a significant data sample size.

Bitly, our favorite URL shortening service, recently released some very interesting data on social media posting. If you’re not familiar with Bitly, then you may be wondering why they should be considered as a reliable, legitimate resource for providing social media data so allow us to explain. Bitly, a fantastic service that we would encourage you to check out, is one of, if not, then most popular and widely used web services to shorten URLs.

Shortening services, like Bitly, became popular with the advent of Twitter and their 140 character limit on each tweet. Users, looking to maximize their limited character count, didn’t like long URLs using up the majority of their tweets. In came Bitly, and many other services, to easily shorten URLs and provide valuable tracking on URLs shortened with their service.

Why are we boring you with all of this background information? Well, because recently Bitly kindly released some very interesting and useful information, collected from their aggregated data across their user base, that helps social media marketers to better pinpoint the most optimal times and days to post updates to Facebook and Twitter. The results, which we can most definitely confirm as being accurate, are below.

When to Post to Facebook

Whether you use your personal profile or a professional Facebook Page (recommended) to post updates about your business the following findings may be able to help you get more out of each update.

• If you want more click throughs, on average, post your updates (with links) from 1pm to 4pm EST Monday through Thursday
• The best day / time of the week to post, on average, is on Wednesday at 3pm EST
• Avoid posting on weekdays between 8pm EST and 8am EST
• Avoid posting on weekends

When to Post to Twitter

If Twitter is part of your social media promotion process, then you may want to consider following the advice derived from the data provided here.

• For the most clicks, stick to tweeting earlier in the week (Monday through Thursday) and from 1pm to 3pm EST
• Peak traffic times on Twitter are 9am to 3pm EST (Monday through Thursday) so try to keep your posts right before this time to avoid competing with increased noise
• Avoid posting on weekdays after 8pm EST and don’t even bother posting after 3pm EST on Fridays
• Avoid posting on weekends

Putting this Data to Work

We recommend that you try some of these suggestions from Bitly on your social media accounts for at least 15-30 days to make sure they apply to your business and content. The best piece of advice we can give is to simply track everything you do, especially when you make significant changes. This data may not apply to your business and the only way to find out is to try and track them.

We would love to hear your opinions, experiences and questions on Bitly’s findings. If you feel like sharing, then please drop your comment or question below to keep the discussion going.

If you’re looking for a little extra help or advice on social media marketing, then we would be happy to provide further assistance as well.

“All I am I owe to my mother” – George Washington

We are very grateful for all of our own mothers and would like to extend our

respect and appreciation for those customers of ours that are mothers themselves.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Truer words could not have been said than those of comedic artist, Mort Walker…

“Seven days without laughter, makes one weak”

In an effort to remind ourselves, and everyone else, how important laughter is we have put together a meme of Internet Marketing Humor that we have collected from across the web. Consider this collection to be part 1 of many more to come. We hope you get a few chuckles out of what we have found and feel the need to share your laughs with someone else. Enjoy!

Funny Internet Marketing Jokes and Cartoons

Want to see more? Check back in as we will post future memes of some funny Internet Marketing Humor we find from across the web.

If you have ones that you think would make someone laugh, then we would love to add them to our upcoming collections. We will even be sure to give you credit.

Search engine optimization continues to be one of the most difficult things for the masses to understand when it comes to online marketing. Its technical aspects, ties to constant updates from the search engines and its blurred lines with social media, content development and website usability all add to this confusion.

If you’re one of the many that don’t clearly understand SEO yet, then we encourage you to check out these resources:

• What is SEO?
• Finding the Right SEO Strategy
• How much does SEO cost?
• Can I do SEO Myself?

Whether you don’t understand, or don’t want to understand SEO, it’s very difficult to ignore the value that SEO can bring to a website or blog. Even if you have been burned by one of the many shady SEO companies in the past, it is important that you stay the course and keep SEO as an integral part of your online marketing efforts. The statistics below should reinforce this statement even more.

Statistics that Support the Value of SEO

Thanks to some fantastic resources, we are able to provide you with 8 SEO Stats that are Hard to Ignore when you’re trying to justify whether or not you should be investing in search engine optimization.

• 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
• Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share.
• 70% of the links search users click on are organic.
• 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results.
• 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
• Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
• For Google, 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% of organic clicks go to the #2 position, and 7% of organic clicks go to the #3 position.

Taking Advantage of these Stats

Knowing and understanding the significance of these statistics is one thing. Acting on them and keeping a consistent, effective SEO strategy in place for your business is another. Make sure to take advantage of these opportunities with the proper SEO strategy.

If you’re not sure where to start or need assistance improving your current SEO strategy, then we are here to help.

If you are trying to promote yourself, your product, your service, and/or your company online, then you are most likely familiar with the term SEO. Whether you consider yourself a complete novice or a seasoned expert, reviewing the fundamentals and basics of SEO is always helpful.

The following training deck we put together contains the following:

• What is SEO?
• Why is SEO important?
• What are the key SEO signals?
• Where to focus your SEO?
• What is involved in SEO?
• What is the future of SEO?

Explaining What SEO is All About

Additional SEO Resources

If you’re looking for more information on search engine optimmization, then check out some of these additional resources:

Matt Cutts on where your SEO efforts should be focused

Useful SEO Articles

• How to Leverage Google’s 2012 Search Updates
• Finding the Right SEO Strategy
• How Much Does SEO Cost?
• Can I Do SEO Myself?

LinkedIn, the social network built specifically for professionals, continues to prove itself as a viable source for finding new business. Ever since the company went public back in May 2011 the social network has been pumping out some fantastic features to help its users leverage their connections, new and old.

Connections Just Got Better

One of the newest improvements is how users find and connect with other professionals. The “connections” feature has been pretty basic up to this point. LinkedIn would display a box for “People You May Know” (usually with 3 possible connections) and then you would have the option to connect or see more possible connections. Filtering by mutual friends, company, title, etc was never really user friendly….until now.

Check out the short video below, which shows you exactly how the new connections feature works and how you can use it to connect with the right people in the right places.

As you can see, you can get pretty granular with who you decide to connect with. This granularity helps you to tailor personalized messages to each new connection so that the probability of them accepting becomes much higher.

With Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+, consuming most of our social media time it is difficult to work in another network. However, if you’re looking for a viable source of new business for your company, then we highly recommend that you find a way to work LinkedIn into your social media efforts.

If you find that you need help understanding LinkedIn better or would like some more specific tips on how to generate leads from LinkedIn, then get in touch with us as we would love to help.

You can also follow imFORZA on LinkedIn to stay on top of the most pertinent industry news and learn how we use LinkedIn for our company.

If you have worked with an SEO agency, then you can be sure that you have been categorized as one of the following types of clients at some point – the vain client, the awkward client, the drama queen client and the perfect client. You have probably even shown characteristics that exist in each of these buckets – something we have all been guilty of as consumers at one time or another.

Types of SEO Clients

We came across a humorous, but pretty accurate, [INFOGRAPHIC] that visually depicts and defines each type of SEO client that many agencies, like ours, have worked with at some point or another. Give it a read through to see which bucket you fall into. Are you the vain client? Are you the awkward client? Are you the drama queen client? Are you the perfect client? Are you a little of all of these?

[INFOGRAPHIC] courtesy of TekNet

We believe that clients that may not be the “perfect” client to someone else could be possible “perfect” clients to us with a little education, transparency and training. With that said, we would love to talk to you, no matter what type of client you are, if you need SEO help.

imFORZA wishes you a safe and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

And don’t forget, if you see someone not wearing green, then make sure to pinch them.

They’re obviously not supporting imFORZA (er, we mean St. Patty’s Day), so they probably deserve it anyways.

Enjoy!

Posterous, one of the more popular and widely used micro-blogging platforms, has been acquired by Twitter. The platform, and the people, behind Posterous helped it to establish millions of users who actively created tons of content. This news must be very exciting for the team at Posterous, and also for those at Twitter, as the acquisition will most likely bring some fantastic innovations in the coming months and years.

The group of people who may not be so excited about this news though are the users of Posterous – and rightfully so.

What’s the Lesson?

Posterous is yet to provide a clear answer, or instructions, in regards to what users are to do with all of the content they have created over the years. We’re certain that they will and users will be given the opportunity to properly move their content somewhere else. What can never be certain though is how much time, effort and money it is going to take to properly move all of this work somewhere else. It was obviously not the intention of Posterous to inconvenience its user base, but this is a perfect reminder to all content creators to learn a valuable lesson….

Develop Your Content on a Property You Own

We continue to see this common “mistake” on a daily basis. People continue to spend hours creating content on sites that they do not own. We’re willing to bet that you’re guilty of it yourself as well. Think about how much you use Facebook, Twitter, Blogger or WordPress.com. These are all fantastic platforms to communicate your message or story to other people, but have you ever really thought about what would happen to all of your time and effort if any one of these platforms got acquired, like Posterous, or even worse, faded away, like MySpace?

What’s the Solution?

There are obviously reasons why so many people create so much content on these existing platforms – they’re free, they’re easy to use, they’re socially connected, etc. The risk you take in relying on these platforms though is not worth it, especially when the proper setup has very few barriers and little to no costs. Free blogs, like WordPress.com, Tumblr and Blogger, come with a cost – lack of control.

So, the solution is this…

Create All of Your Content on a Property You Own and Push it Out to these Other Platforms

There are a few different ways, and tools, to help you achieve this same solution. Here are our recommendations to help you properly setup your content development and promotion process:

1. Buy a domain name (~ $10/year)
2. Buy website hosting (~ $7/month)
3. Download WordPress (free)
4. Install WordPress through your web host (free)*
5. Setup your WordPress website / blog (free)*
6. Syndicate your WordPress content to your favorite social networks (free)

*For Steps 4 and 5, if you’re not familiar with these more technical aspects of using WordPress, then we would recommend consulting a web development professional. Or, if you’re ambitious and don’t mind learning some of this stuff then do some simple Google searches like “How to Install WordPress” or “How to Customize My WordPress Blog” and you will be sure to find easy to follow tutorials

Of course, if you need help with any of these steps, from choosing the best domain name to making your WordPress website look amazing, then we would be happy to help.

Social media and marketing professionals have mixed opinions on the usefulness and success of Google’s new social media venture, Google+. Whether you fall on one side of the fence, or the other, Google+ presents some compelling points that may just encourage you to give Google+ more consideration as an essential part of your social media marketing efforts.

We don’t consider ourselves to be heavily involved with Google+ just yet, but we are definitely noticing some of the benefits that other social networks are not offering yet. We encourage you to follow us on Google+ if you would like to get an idea of how we are currently using it for our business.

Is Google+ Necessary for a Business?

Short answer, as we see it, YES. Your business should be on Google+ and using it to promote your content and engage your customers and prospects. Whatever makes your business more accessible, like being active on major social media networks, is going to help you retain clients and find new ones.

Here are some of the main benefits we see from using Google+ …

• There are over 90 million users on it currently
• Google indexes Google+ posts, which can build brand awareness
• Google+ offers a more user friendly way to organize followers for future outreach
• 80% of Google+ users engage on a weekly basis

Don’t just take our word for it though. Check out this handy [INFOGRAPHIC] from Chris Brogan to get a better idea of what Google+ can offer as an effective tool for your business.

Are you still not convinced that your business needs to be on Google+? Or perhaps you are convinced, but need some assistance in getting your business started on Google+?

Either way, we’d love to chat.