Happy Social Media Saturday! Listed below in my Weekend Update are links to interesting things I found on the web this week: cool tools, great blog posts, or questions/comments from one of the SchneiderB.com online communities – anything that stuck out to me and I think is worth sharing. I encourage you to check them out for yourself!

Blog Post: How to Claim & Set Up Local Profiles: From Google+ to Yelp – Claiming and setting up local profiles is an important branding activity that has tremendous SEO value. Most websites that offer local business listings follow the same listing process, with a few points of differences here and there.

Last year I took on the position of Director of Marketing at Ogle School, a .EDU that has over 8 locations in the Texas area. As you can imagine, local SEO is incredibly important (as is local social) so claiming, setting up, managing and updating all of the local listings for our school is quite a task.

This article will take you through the process of claiming and setting up local profiles across diverse online platforms, and help them get a better idea about what they need to do to connect with local customers. I’ve put together tactics and tips for Google+, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Yahoo Local, ChamberofCommerce.com and Yelp.

Let’s begin…

Blog Post: Google Authorship Beyond Webpages – In last month’s post about authorship, I shared that Google has been experimenting with inferring authorship for PDF documents in addition to webpages. This piqued my curiosity to see if any other indexable filetypes could also have inferred authorship…

Blog Post: SEO Tactics Die, But SEO Never Will – This is a post that has been gnawing at the edges of my brain for years, and I think the time has finally come to write it. Our recent Moz re-brand launched the inevitable 4,789th wave (and that’s just this year) of “SEO Is Dead” posts. This isn’t a post about our reasons for broadening our brand (Rand has talked extensively about that) – it’s a post about why I think every declaration of SEO’s demise misses something fundamental about our future. This is going to get philosophical, so if you’d rather go make a sandwich, I won’t stop you.

Your Turn

I’m always on the look out for great content so I need your help! Please share the links to great articles that you found this week by posting them in the comments section below.

The post Weekend Update – June15 appeared first on Internet Marketing For Schools.

Brandon Warren via Compfight

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stuck in traffic, but that wasn’t the reason I was angry. I was angry because all the radio stations I had programmed into my car were playing complete and utter trash. Either the music was too poppy or too metal or too… too… I don’t know. I’ve got needs, and they don’t involve a lot of the music I hear out there. Maybe I’m just getting old, and should switch over to talk radio.

Of course, talk radio is even worse. On the FM band you’ve got the occasional public radio, but that’s a crap shoot if ever there was one. Tune into the AM band and it’s even worse: either you’re listening to political blowhards who do nothing but jack up your blood pressure, religious broadcasts that leave you in an existential dread, or sports broadcasts that remind you why radio is dead.

I could switch to satellite radio, but that’s no better; you’re still force-fed whatever they happen to have on their program for the day. This is the 21st century, and I demand jet packs, hover cars, and the ability to listen to what I want, when I want. Fortunately, the latter is a reality, thanks to the initially innocuous innovation of the Podcast.

Not the best name for what amounts to an on-demand, mostly-free radio show, but there you have it. Podcasts, primarily available through iTunes but made widely available across the web, are basically pre-recorded radio shows. There’s a Podcast for just about every possible topic out there and then some, many of them from lauded talents and celebrities.

There’s comedy, there’s dramatic teleplays, there’s political and economic commentary… just about every part of your brain can be stimulated through Podcasts. Best of all, once you find something you like, you don’t have to settle for something else when your Podcast finishes up. You can download entire seasons of a single Podcast; some have been running for hundreds of episodes, which means you’ll basically never run out of material to listen to.

Apple makes it easy by allowing you to subscribe to particular Podcasts, which means that whenever your favorite show comes out, your computer will let you know. You can upload it immediately into your iPod or whatever mp3 device you prefer, and then plug it into your audio device in your car.

This is a serious improvement over the AM/FM radio model, or even the satellite radio model. You choose what you want to listen to, when you want to listen to it. You can listen to old episodes, episodes that you’ve heard a long time ago, and just feel like going over again. (Because if it was great the first time, it’s probably great the fifth time too.)

It’s easy, it’s convenient, and best of all, it gives you complete control over what is happening in your car. You no longer have to turn off your radio and stew in silence because you’re fed up with whatever was on the speakers and there’s nothing else on either.

When you tire of one Podcast that you still absolutely love, just switch right over to another one and keep on listening. As your moods or needs change, you can easily navigate through your different downloaded Podcasts and match them to fit whatever you need. Finally, a way to satisfy all my whims immediately, what harm could there possibly be?

The post Ultimate Cosmic Listening Choices, Itty Bitty Digital File appeared first on Internet Marketing For Schools.

luke chan via Compfight

Happy Social Media Saturday! Listed below in my Weekend Update are links to interesting things I found on the web this week: cool tools, great blog posts, or questions/comments from one of the SchneiderB.com online communities – anything that stuck out to me and I think is worth sharing. I encourage you to check them out for yourself!

Blog Post: Six Steps to Mastering Online Stats – As a competitive youth golfer, I compulsively tracked everything from fairways hit to sand saves to putts. Every stat provided an insight that helped me improve. But as I grew older, I discovered one stat — greens in regulation — provided the most useful and actionable information. By watching that one stat, I became a more consistent golfer.

Stats can become a very useful tool, if used properly and not abused. That goes for marketing as much as it applies to golf. Here’s six ways you can begin to leverage stats to improve your marketing and communications, both offline and online…

Blog Post: Are Your Social Media and Other Accounts Secure? – A few days ago, I noticed that my long-time nonprofit technology colleague, Ruby Sinreich, had her digital life hacked and stolen from her.   The hacker accessed many of her accounts and locked her out, and took over her Twitter, deleting her followers and changing the profile.    Chronicled on her tumblr blog,  it took her days to reach humans at different platforms to get help, faced many challenges, and all the while the hacker teased her and tried to sell her Twitter account on a hackers forum.   She was able to finally take back control of her accounts after a very stressful ordeal.

This could happen to any of us.   So, how can you make your social media and other account more secure?

Blog Post: 10 of the World’s Best Storytellers [SlideShare] – Since before blogs were created, people have told stories.

Shocking. I know.

But long predating the clickity-clacking of our keyboards were generations of people finding creative ways to communicate meaning with one another — to try to bring understanding to a complicated human experience. We painted on cave walls, carved pictures into trees, sorted images out of rocks, sang songs, danced, told stories … the best of those stories being passed down from generation to generation.

Storytelling is a cornerstone of human existence, and it’s what enables successful people to communicate and connect with anyone — and I mean anyone — to this day. Whatever your goal, whether to initiate social change, make a sale, or make a friend, the people who are best at it are the ones who can tell a story that makes you sit up, listen, and understand. The best storytellers’ messages are heard.

What exactly makes a great storyteller?

Your Turn

I’m always on the look out for great content so I need your help! Please share the links to great articles that you found this week by posting them in the comments section below.

The post Weekend Update – June08 appeared first on Internet Marketing For Schools.

I have been a huge proponent of word of mouth marketing. Why? Because word of mouth works and is the most effective way to reach customers.

Many of my blog posts and presentations focus on this concept as it relates to word of mouth marketing in independent and faith-based schools. Word of mouth is always the number one way that a prospective parent discovers a private school.

As I have thought about word of mouth marketing in light of the current discussion on Inbound Marketing and its differences from Outbound Marketing, it is time to refer to word of mouth marketing in a new way.

WOMbound.

I first introduced this new term for word of mouth marketing in a webinar I facilitated for the Association of Independent Schools Admission Professionals (AISAP) on Tuesday.

Let me explain.

WOMbound is your Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing strategy. It is how you get your customers talking. It is how you harness the power of word of mouth and turn your satisfied customers into active promoters.

This is my working, draft definition:

“WOMbound is the intentional and proactive strategy to generate, facilitate and inspire word of mouth through your customers, advocates and ambassadors. It is how brand advocacy works by harnessing the power of word of mouth to reach your potential customers most effectively in today’s market.”

It is simply another way to say “word of mouth marketing” which has been popularized, and rightly so, by Andy Sernovitz in his bestselling book, Word of Mouth Marketing.

WOMbound is different from Inbound and Outbound marketing strategies but it can involve both. Let me explain.

Outbound marketing describes the traditional marketing strategies that we push out to the market we are trying to reach. Print, radio, TV and direct mail fall into this category of interruptive marketing strategies.

Inbound marketing, as developed by Brian Hallagan and Dharmesh Shah in their break-through book, Inbound Marketing, describe this as a strategy that “pulls the prospect or customer toward the business and its products.” Inbound marketing utilizes web-based marketing strategies that dominate our focus today from websites to social media sites to video and remarkable content.

WOMbound marketing can utilize both Inbound and Outbound marketing strategies to help inspire word of mouth. A print or television ad may evoke emotion and brand awareness and help to start a conversation. A Facebook page or website may tell the story of the business, school or organization, which will, in turn, inspire word of mouth.

I believe that WOMbound should be the driver in your marketing strategy. It should be the starting point for your marketing strategy. Your goal is to get word of mouth moving in the right direction.

Since word of mouth is the number one way that parents first learn about a school or a customer first learns about a business, it is critical that you look through the lens of WOMbound marketing when you are utilizing Inbound and Outbound strategies. WOMbound is the concept by which you can develop your word of mouth marketing plan which should should include the tools of inbound and outbound strategies to reach your target audience.

Every school, business, and non-profit organization needs to go WOMbound.

What do you think about WOMbound as a way to describe word of mouth marketing? 

Do you have a WOMbound marketing strategy?

The post WOMbound: A New Term for Word of Mouth Marketing appeared first on Internet Marketing For Schools.

Thomas Hawk via Compfight

Happy Social Media Saturday! Listed below in my Weekend Update are links to interesting things I found on the web this week: cool tools, great blog posts, or questions/comments from one of the SchneiderB.com online communities – anything that stuck out to me and I think is worth sharing. I encourage you to check them out for yourself!

Blog Post: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Crafting Engaging Ads - In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. We’re in week four of our six-part blog series in which Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson lay down the knowledge on best practices for achieving PPC success. Follow along to pick up tips on how to build your first PPC account like a PPC superstar…

Blog Post: How To Make Sense of Your Social Media Metrics – I’ve been facilitating a peer learning group with Packard Foundation grantees during the past year with a goal of improving measurement practice for social media and based on my book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit.”    Each organization is working on an action learning project that is a small, doable measurement project that applies the frameworks and steps in the book.   Each month, we go deep into a practice step – both on the individual practitioner level as well as the organizational practice level.    As the facilitator and SME,  I provide some content, but participants do a lot of sharing and presenting as well.  This helps spread good practices…

Blog Post: Disavowed: Secrets of Google’s Most Mysterious Tool – To many webmasters, Google’s Disavow Tool seems a lifesaver. If you’ve suffered a Google penalty or been plagued by shady link building, simply upload a file of backlinks you want to disavow, and BOOM – you’re back in good graces. Traffic city!

Or nothing happens at all.

Few Google products have produced more fear, rumors and speculation. No one outside Google knows exactly how it works, and fewer understand how to succeed with it. To better understand, I used the tool myself to disavow 1000s of links, and talked with dozens of SEOs who used it in attempts to recover from Google penalties…

Your Turn

I’m always on the look out for great content so I need your help! Please share the links to great articles that you found this week by posting them in the comments section below.

The post Weekend Update – June01 appeared first on Internet Marketing For Schools.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Nathan Jongewaard

Independent schools are flocking to social media and with good reason – promises of improved marketing, branding, and engagement at little or no cost is pretty appealing. The problem though is once independent schools create their social media accounts they aren’t sure how to proceed.

Below I’ve compiled a list of 21 ways that independent schools can use Twitter. My list is not exhaustive and I encourage everyone to offer at least one additional way to use Twitter in the comments after this post.

1. Automatically feed your school’s RSS news feed to your school’s Twitter account using a service like TwitterFeed.
2. Post your school’s sports scores and results.
3. Tweet photos and descriptions of your new teachers using yfrog.
4. Post your daily lunch menu.
5. Tweet school cancellations due to weather.
6. Tweet articles from local newspapers that discuss your school.
7. Post changes in the daily schedule.
8. Tweet a school picture of the day.
9. Take a series of photos of dress rehearsal for a school performance and post a short animated image using Vine to encourage people to attend.
10. Tweet quotes from school meetings that are informational or memorable.
11. Tweet job openings at your school.
12. Tweet upcoming admission, alumni, and scheduled calendar events as reminders.
13. Individual teachers can post Questions of the Day for extra-credit.
14. Conduct research using Twitter Search. (Watch a screencast about searching Twitter.)
15. Create a PLN (Personal Learning Network) by reaching out to colleagues at other schools through Twitter.
16. Create a Twitter List of Alumni.
17. Create a Twitter List of Faculty and Staff on Twitter.
18. Tweet items from your other social networks.
19. Tweet new additions to your library.
20. Share educational news and articles germane to your school.
21. Follow other teachers, schools, alumni, and people in your community and listen to how they use Twitter.

Your turn

This list is not meant to be exhaustive. Please share one or two additional ways that schools can use Twitter by posting them in the comments section below.

The post 21 Ways Independent Schools Can Use Twitter appeared first on Internet Marketing For Schools.

Happy Social Media Saturday! Listed below in my Weekend Update are links to interesting things I found on the web this week: cool tools, great blog posts, or questions/comments from one of the SchneiderB.com online communities – anything that stuck out to me and I think is worth sharing. I encourage you to check them out for yourself!

Ian Phillip via Compfight

Blog Post: Google Penguin 2013: How to Evolve Link Building into Real SEO – Google has just rolled out Penguin 2.0, a large algorithmic update promising to go “deeper” than the 2012 Penguin release, which put a hurting on websites with number of manipulative links in their profile.

This prospect creates fear for many small businesses who depend on search engine optimization (SEO) for their livelihoods. But there is also a sense of confusion as the line often shifts and the message from Google contradictory…

Blog Post: The Best Free SEO Tools for Competitive Intelligence – Knowing what your competitors are doing and how they perform is key to developing a strategy to surpass them in organic search. By doing a bit of digging, one can uncover a great deal of learning from competitors who have already tested different elements of their SEO campaigns.

In previous posts in this series, I examined the best free SEO tools for targeting target keywords and those for identifying and fixing onsite SEO issues. Now, it’s time to turn our attention to the last set of free SEO tools available to every marketer: competitive analysis.

As I explore in a new report, “10 Free, Must-Have SEO Tools,” there are a variety of excellent SEO tools you can use to gain a competitive advantage on competitors to properly analyze and tweak your SEO campaigns without having to invest any money. Here’s an analysis of the four best free tools for competitive SEO intelligence…

Blog Post: How to Add the Facebook Like Box / Fan Box in WordPress – Facebook like box also known as Facebook fan box has become a must have element for many website. It allows website owners to provide their users with an easy way to join their facebook community and get updates right in their Facebook news feed. Recently one of our users brought it to our attention that we have not covered the topic of how to add the facebook like box in WordPress. Although we have covered how to add the facebook like button, facebook send button, and facebook comments. In this article, we will show you how to add the facebook fan box in WordPress…

Your Turn

I’m always on the look out for great content so I need your help! Please share the links to great articles that you found this week by posting them in the comments section below.

The post Weekend Update – May25 appeared first on Internet Marketing For Schools.

Want in on the secret to creating content that gets shared, bookmarked, and even re-read by your audience?

Spoiler alert: This is not yet another post touting the benefits of writing great content or crafting a catchy headline. Although getting those elements right certainly won’t hurt your cause.

The Answer: Create content that caters to other people’s laziness. I stumbled across this idea when reading this post on WritersInCharge.com and I believe the concept makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons:

• People are always looking for solutions to problems. Generally, most people prefer a fast and easy solution versus a difficult and complex one when given the choice.

• Many readers are tired of “advice” or “tips” and burnt out on reading general advice about what we should be doing.

• People aren’t looking for more things to do. Most of us have more than enough tasks to easily fill the 16 hours per day we are awake. But what we’d all like is for someone else to go ahead and solve a couple of the to-do items we’ve already got.

Content That Caters to the Lazy

Just to be clear, this post is in no way meant to offend anyone. I actively bookmark and reuse numerous examples of content designed to enable idleness. Usually these pieces of content save me time, be more efficient, and just plain old get things done. Referring to these resources as “lazy content” in this post helps me create a headline that’s a bit catchier.

Below are a few examples of content that you can easily create to solve other people’s problems:

The Guest Post Resource: One of the best examples of lazy person content I know is this post by FirePoleMarketing.com. I have this resource saved in my Delicious bookmarks and have returned to use it over a dozen times to find new guest posting opportunities.

Why do I frequently return to this post? Simple. The article has made it extremely easy to find guest post targets that 1.) Get a lot of traffic. 2.) Have a similar topic to my blog. 3.) Accept guest posts.

No doubt this resource has saved me hours trying to manually locate blogs that fit all three of the above criteria.

The Make Money Resource: One of WritersinCharge.com’s most popular blog posts is titled “30 Places that Pay You To Contribute an Article, Instantly.”

This is another excellent example of content that solves a specific problem that applies to a select community of people (writer’s that want to make money). Instead of having to find these writing opportunities themselves, writers can refer to this list and start applying for paid gigs immediately.

The Blog Resource: Tom Ewer’s blog LeavingWorkBehind.com provides an excellent example of just how easy it can be to create a piece of content that is easily sharable (check out the 205 Tweets, 163 Likes, and 47 Google+ shares on this blog resource post) and solves a problem: people are always interested in finding more unique blogs on the topic they’re passionate about.

The Free Theme Resource:   Mashable.com is a master of organizing information and tools from all over the internet and making it easy for their audience of techies to find. The nice thing about creating resources of tools or themes is that you don’t need to be a great writer or particularly clever to make them. Just test out a variety of products or online tools and organize the information in a nice package for others to use.

In conclusion, if you want your content to get shared and get return visits create a resource that makes it easy for people to solve their problems first. After you do, the traffic and social shares shouldn’t be far behind.

The post How to Create Content that Appeals to People’s Laziness appeared first on Internet Marketing For Schools.