Social networks, and Facebook in particular, allow companies to interact with current and potential customers, spread company news, and eventually convert virtual “friends” into paying customers.

There are many effective strategies for gaining likes, boosting user engagement, and growing a Facebook community. Read on for three simple ways to achieve success in the realm of social media and learn how to improve your company’s online image on a shoestring budget.

Use pictures

Images, more than any other type of media, tend to be liked, commented on, and shared across social media platforms. Photos are eye-catching, informative, evocative, and often humorous. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” isn’t far off when it comes to the power of imagery across online forums.

When it comes to business, post photos of products, employees, or relevant industry news, and you are likely to increase the edgerank score of your page and appear in more newsfeeds. The more newsfeeds your picture post shows up in, the more exposure your business page receives.

Ask questions

This is a valuable tactic both from an engagement standpoint and a customer service perspective. Questions get people involved with the page – and any interaction is a plus. Edgerank is highly dependent on the conversation that surrounds each post. Comments rank higher than likes, so if you can get people talking about a post, you’ll boost page visibility. Even if the Facebook community doesn’t seem to translate to sales in the short-term, the mere exposure effect suggests that increased visibility of logos and company imagery can improve brand recognition and lead to potential consumers feeling positive about the business.

Take a look at the image below.  It is of Online Trading Academy, a company that teaches people how to day trade.  They have ~1,500 Likes currently, and this simple ‘fill in the blank’ question received 34 comments, which is about 2.5% of their total likes.  That is really good interaction.

Additionally, if you ask questions about the products and services the company offers, you can actually glean crucial insight about your customer-base. While it might be an informal method of surveying a crowd, it does provide valuable information from a sales and marketing perspective.

Update the cover photo regularly

Updating the cover photo is a great way to keep friends engaged and active on your Facebook page. When you update a cover photo or profile picture it is considered an important move by the EdgeRank algorithm, therefore it ranks highly and tends to garner more likes than a basic status update or link post. You can also get creative with the cover photo. If your business is “boring” or specific to one industry, take advantage of the cover photo to broaden your audience.

High Risk Pay, a high risk credit card processing company, struggled with gaining “likes” from people beyond the industry. They decided to think outside the box and created a cover image with a seasonal theme that included a credit card flying through a wintery skyline. They abandoned a more technical, “geeky” background and found that they actually attracted a larger audience with the new image because the page appeared less industry-specific. The updated cover photo was more relatable.

There are many more tricks and tips for growing a business’s online presence, but taking advantage of Facebook’s complex ranking system is the best way to build a community of followers. Try these three tactics and be patient. With time and effort you can increase consumer engagement and gain a loyal following.

The post 3 Ways A Small Business Can Dominate Facebook first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Who’s Behind Third Tribe?

There are some well known names in the online marketing, social media, and blogging world who have collaborated to create this extremely knowledgeable and experienced community, including:

• Darren Rowse of ProBlogger
• Brian Clark and Sonia Simone of Copyblogger
• Chris Brogan,

Who’s in the Third Tribe?

There are some notable members inside the Third Tribe, including:

• Johnny Truant
• Leo Babauta of Zen Habits
• Chris Garrett of the Business of Blogging and New Media
• Lewis Howes, LinkedIn marketing expert
• Dave Navarro of the Launch Coach
• Pamela Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation

What’s Inside the Tribe

So besides the awesome people, what else is inside the tribe?

Forums

There is a great forum community in the Third Tribe. Can you imagine a forum that is not only troll-free but also helpful? This is that forum. There are rarely any questions left unanswered – and I don’t mean useless replies, but actual, meaningful answers, sometimes from the expert owners of the forum themselves.

There are over 3,000 threads and 30,000 posts, including sections dedicated for member meetups, partnership and join venture opportunities, an accountability bar to set goals and have others help keep you in check, and a variety of niche topics.

Seminars

As of the end of August, there are 17 seminar archives, complete with audio download and PDF transcript, as well as an action sheet on how to apply the knowledge in the seminar to what you are doing today.

These seminars cover a wide range of topics including product launches, SEO, blogging, copywriting, Google Adwords, public relations, video marketing, affiliate marketing, and much more, and all are led by experts in the industry.

Live Q&A

Twice a month, you will get a chance to ask questions during a live Q&A call, generally with Brian Clark, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, and Sonia Simone, with occasional guest appearances by the one of the seminar interviewees. As of the end of August, there are 13 Q&A call archives.

Pricing

So it sounds too good to be true, which means there is a catch, right? Well, of course there is a fee involved to join the Third Tribe. The signup cost is $97. You can essentially download all of the available seminar materials and live Q&A recordings, as well as try out the forums.

If you want to stay and continue receiving new seminars and Q&A calls, the membership is only $47 a month. But that isn’t really that much considering you have access to industry experts and a plethora of educational content geared to help you make money online.

So if you want access to valuable information from leaders in the industry, why not join today and dive into the seminar archives. You will be amazed by what you learn!

Affiliate Program

Also, don’t forget that you can recoup some of your membership costs by simply referring others to the tribe. Only current Third Tribe members can sign up for the affiliate program, and you will receive 33% recurring commissions for members who sign up and stay in the Third Tribe. So essentially, if you sign up three people, your monthly fees are taken care of!

Your Third Tribe Thoughts

Are you a member of the Third Tribe? Let us know how much this community has benefited you in your Internet marketing efforts!

The post Third Tribe Marketing Review first appeared on StayOnSearch.

But after awhile, you start to dig into your analyitcs, only to find that while you are getting a lot of traffic, that traffic isn’t staying on your site for long. This is the bounce rate – the goal is to have a low percentage bounce rate, as a high percent means that people are getting to your site and then leaving shortly thereafter.

So what are some ways to lower your bounce rate?

1. Look Into Your Google Analytics.

There are a few things you can look at in your Analytics that will help you determine why people come to your website.

Content and Keywords

First, take a look at the content with the highest bounce rate, and the keywords that bring visitors to those pages. If you go into your Google Analytics, and navigate to Top Content under the Content menu, you will see the top ten pages on your site that receive the highest volume of traffic (one of which is usually your homepage).

Click on one of the pages with the highest bounce rate, and then on the next screen, view the Entrance Keywords. Now take a look at the queries that brought people to your site, and the bounce rate associated with those search terms. A high bounce rate means that your page did not help the searcher find what it was they were looking for on that page related to that keyword.

Once you know what people are looking for on a particular page, if possible, try to add that information to that page. Most importantly, make sure that the information related to the search query is near the top of the page, that way people see instantly that the page has what they are looking for. If they need to go to another page for more details, be sure to make the navigational path to that content clear and near the top as well.

Site Searches

Setting up Site Search within your Google Analytics allows you to see what people are typing into your site’s search box when they arrive. This is another great way to see if your site is providing the content that your visitors are searching for because, if not, that is a good indicator of why they are leaving.

Once you have Site Search setup, you can easily see what pages visitors are on when they enter search queries, as well as the phrases they are looking for. If you notice that a particular search is being entered on a page, chances are that for every person who actually searched for it, there are a lot of people who simply left. Therefore, if you make that content available on that page, there will be less bounce rate from there and more satisfied visitors.

Traffic Sources

If you look at the Referring Sites under the Traffic Sources menu, you will see the main sites that bring traffic to your website or blog. If particular networks you have been sharing your content on have brought higher bounce rates, it might be a good idea to focus on other ones that bring visitors that stick.

2. Lowering the Bounce Rate

The following are some items you can add to high bounce rate pages to hopefully lower the likelihood that people would leave.

Great Content

This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Each webpage on your site and each blog post on your blog must have great content in order to retain new visitors. If you have a page with a high bounce rate and little content, this should be the first thing you focus on fixing.

Optimize Pages for the Right Keywords

This is probably the best place to start – if you have a page that is losing visitors searching for a particular keyword phrase, then chances are you either need to add content that would fit the visitors needs for that keyword, or start optimizing your pages for a different phrase.

Videos

Videos are a great way to keep people on your page for longer – if you can find a related video that fits well with your page, then that is definitely one way to go.

Teaser / Summary

If you can include a short summary of your page at the very top (especially if it is a long article or blog post) including the commonly searched for keyword phrases, this will help convince people who have landed on your page that they will be able to find what they are looking for. Blogussion offers a great summary at the top of each blog post like this one that lets readers know what they are about to learn.

Related Links

For any blog or webpage, related links area sure fire way to keep visitors on your site. Simply help them find more information on your site that they would be interested based on the page that they are on. Internal links within the text and related links at the end of the page are the best way to encourage people to stick around.

Encourage Discussion

If your site is a blog, encouraging discussion is another good way to get people to stay on your site for awhile. Leaving a well thought out comment or response to your post (or other commenter) will increase their time on a post.

Move the Ads

When someone comes to your site, what is the first thing they see? I have seen several sites where the content comes well after the Google Adsense and other advertising, and if someone doesn’t see the main content right away, they may assume your site is solely built for the ads and simply leave. Be sure to put your content first, and let the ads come later.

How Do You Keep Visitors on Your Site?

Does your blog or website have a high bounce rate? What tips or techniques do you use to help lower your bounce rate and keep visitors engaged longer on your site?

The post How to Lower Your Bounce Rate Using Google Analytics first appeared on StayOnSearch.

1.  Research & Analysis Starting Point

The first thing I try to do with a new client is get as much information out of them as possible, to help with the research and analysis I will begin to start doing after the 1st meeting.  Because this is such an important piece of the SEO puzzle, I want to gain as much feedback during that initial meeting as I can.

Keyword Research Exercise:

Start by asking them “What Keywords Would You Use to Find What You Do?”, start to write down each of these words as the client starts mentioning different keywords/phrases.  Once you have that list, try to formulate some other keywords/phrases on the fly, to gain initial feedback from the client on relevancy.  Ask the client to order the 10 most important keywords/phrases, starting with 1 being the MOST important.  It doesn’t necessarily mean these will be the phrases you go with for your SEO efforts, but you can get a feel for which words the client places an emphasis on.

Once you have your list of relevant keywords/phrases, throw them into the Google Keyword Tool and start to look at the other suggestions.  Have the client look at the long list that Google provides and have them point out any words they feel are not relevant (negative keywords).  This is especially helpful if this is an industry you do not fully understand.  There could be some industry terms that are extremely relevant that you may have overlooked if you didn’t get the clients help.

Competitor Research Exercise:

Take your keyword list and start to enter them into Google.  See which competitors are showing up on the first page.  Have the client tell you which of those websites stands out.  Maybe there are a number of businesses that rank for those initial keywords, but are not exactly competitors.  Start to write down any competitors that are consistently showing up in the results, along with using the clients feedback to identify primary competitors.  Of course you can always do more in-depth research on these websites after the client has left.

2.  Website Orientation

This may seem stupid to some people, but for some websites, having the client walk you through the different sections of the site can be crucial.  Gaining a full grasp of the content, how things are functioning, and the history of the website can definately come in handy.  There have been many times that I have be working with a site and I didn’t even know about a certain section of the site, or where something is being pulled from.

Having a full understanding can help with:

• Asking Other Important Questions (that you wouldn’t have known otherwise)
• Learning About Website Priorities
• Background on the Website
• What the Client Likes/Dislikes about each Section

3.  Local Business Listing Information

This is probably the most painful information for a client to provide you, but is extremely necessary for localized brick-and-mortar businesses.  From what I have learned and experienced, if you try sending a local business listing form to a client, they end up filling out about 25% of the fields, leaving you with a semi-complete LBL listing.  The key is to do a little and holding up front and have them fill out the information during your 1st initial kick-off meeting.

Make Sure:

• Standard Info (Address, Email, etc…)
• Provide a Local Phone Number
• Give a Well-Written Company Description
• Additional Info (parking, forms of payments, affiliations, awards, etc…)

If you can be with the client when verifying those listings, all the better.  This way they can call the person who answers the phone directly and explain the verification process.  I have noticed that when you call the store/business and you explain who you are, they are leery and end up waiting to talk to the person you just met with to see if you are for real.  If you have the client call, it streamlines the process.  Oh yeah, and don’t do the postcard…you will hear back from the client about 10% of the time and it takes 5x as long to get the listing verified.

4.  Access to Important Logins and Files

This can be hard to get during your kick-off meeting, but if possible ask the client to bring either a CD with logos, images, video, etc…or some way that you can access all of this info.  You will need this for your LBLs, design updates, creating profiles, and many other things as you will notice moving forward.

Logins:

• Existing Facebook Login
• Existing Twitter Login
• FTP Info
• Hosting Info
• Google Analytics/Adwords Login
• CMS Login
• Shopping Cart Login

If a client you are working with has a login for a product demo, free trial, premium access area, see if you can get setup with a login for those things so you can play around in there to learn more about what they are selling.

5.  Client Interactions/Meetings/Timelines

During that 1st meeting I will try to get a feel for how involved the client wants to be during the entire process.  Usually you can tell try off the bat, but sometimes you can’t.  Simply ask them how involved and updated would they like to be on the progress.  Some clients don’t want to be bothered or simply don’t have the time to meet frequently, thats why they hired you.  Or it could be the complete opposite, they want to have weekly/monthly updates on what is going on.  This is a good time to set client expectations and talk about an appropriate meeting frequency.

Have a rough time-line in mind as to when certain milestones and important dates should be completed.  This will help keep the project running smoothly and give both the client and agency goals to shoot for.

6.  Points of Contact within the Company

Just because you met with the president of the company during the initial sales process and kick off meeting, doesn’t necessarily mean they will be the main point of contact through the project.  You may have to touch multiple departments with in the company to get things done.  That is why it is important to have them write down the department heads contact information and what information they will be able to provide you.  Usually a big one, is getting the IT point of contact for any technical questions you may have about the website or files.

The post Client Feedback Exercise to Kick-Off a SEO Project first appeared on StayOnSearch.

The first commenter on the post (now removed) basically was dissatisfied by the fact that what I wrote was common knowledge and he wanted to see something new that wasn’t already broadcast everywhere in SEO blogs. So the question is, why do link builders not share what some may consider their juiciest secrets or sure fire link building tactics.

Myths vs. Facts

MYTH: Link builders don’t share their best strategies because they are afraid it will put them out of business.

I can almost guarantee, with certainty, that I could list out every link building method I use today for clients, and I could probably email it on over to them, and I would still have most of those clients tomorrow.

Let’s face it, if you gathered together all of the link building resources and toolkits out there, between websites, blogs, books, and seminars, you could probably find most of the best strategies link builders use today. Just organize them, and away you go – you could become a link builder yourself for your own company, blog, etc.

So why do SEO’s still have the jobs they have today? It all comes down to one word – time. Depending on your internet expertise, it takes time to learn the basics about link building – how to recognize good neighborhoods from bad ones, valuable links from worthless ones, and so on. Even if you do know how to build links, it takes time to do the link requests, the commenting, the directory submissions, and other tasks. And even if you have learned the basics and have time to do some of the link building yourself, then it takes time to keep up to date with the latest happenings in the search world (such as the recent Google Mayday updates) to know what works and what is no longer effective.

MYTH: Link builders put out mis-information in order to hurt those trying to do it themselves so they can gain their business.

Well, depending on how you look at this, it is myth or fact. White hat SEO’s actually share a lot of valuable information about the industry on their blogs and at seminars / conferences. Black hat SEO’s, on the other hand, write about more shady tactics that work only if you don’t cross a particular line, or get caught. But even white hat link building strategies can be done improperly, leading to possible penalization by Google.

FACT: Link builders don’t share their top secrets for fear of them being abused.

It’s pretty common knowledge now that blog commenting, forum posting, and link requests can get you some valuable backlinks for your website. Because it is common knowledge, these tactics are becoming more abused every day by those who want to mass produce links in as little time as possible.

The result of this kind of abuse is everything from Aksimet comment moderation (where something as simple as your keyword phrase will get you caught in the spam filter), forums not allowing links until you have made 10+ posts, blogs going from dofollow to nofollow, links on social profiles going from direct to redirects, and much more.

One specific example of this is a little trick I used to use with Squidoo. A certain search query plus your keywords would bring up Squidoo lenses that had a an option to add your link to a list on the lens – most of the time without any moderation. What makes this better than just creating a Squidoo is that, using SEOQuake to sort search results, you could find lenses that had high PageRank – so I was getting dofollow links on PR 4 through PR 6 pages! Of course, this was short lived. More people found out about it, and now links in these lists are nofollow.

So, needless to say, it’s hard to determine the line between being helpful and sharing new tips and techniques with the masses vs. protecting those same strategies from those who will abuse them to the point that they are taken away.

Your Thoughts on Trade Secrets

What are your thoughts about sharing trade secrets in SEO, link building, or other industries? Do you think it’s best practice for good karma, or better kept safe?

The post Why Link Builders Don’t Share Their Top Secret Strategies first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Setting a Baseline

First you will need to have baseline metrics to have something to compare to while you begin your social media campaign.  Your baseline metrics will differ depending on what social media platforms you are engaging in.

For Example:

• Twitter Followers/Following
• Facebook Fans
• Blog RSS Subscribers
• Brand Mentions (Positive/Negative)
• Average Comments/Month
• Unique Visitors/Month
• Sales Revenue

Track Your Social Media Tactics

Keep a detailed record for each tactic you are implementing.  Using a calendar or timeline like in the graphic below illustrates, will help you put reasoning behind fluctuations in traffic/goal data.

Lets look at the example created by Olivier Blanchard:

As you can see this company has been doing a number of social media tactics, including engaging on Twitter, launching a press release, created a podcast, workshop and etc…  It is a good habit for your company to start a timeline similar to this one, so you can track all of your activities and the overall impact it has on your sales revenue.

Comparing your baseline metrics to 6-12 months later, you can see a gradual increase in engagement and traffic across the board.

** Helpful Tip:  Pay close attention to your referral source traffic and organize the data in terms of conversions by referral source.  This can help to identify websites that are driving more qualified traffic.

Comparing Sales Revenue

Like a mentioned earlier, you will not be able to measure your ROI using traditional metrics. Because a lot of social media is not going to have a DIRECT financial impact on your business, you will have to start with your initial investment and compare your sales revenue numbers with revenue 3, 6, 12 months down the road. If you have a retail store, you may want to keep track of the amount of foot traffic coming through the door.  If you notice that you have increased foot traffic by 25% since you started your social media campaign, you can tie that traffic into your efforts. Of course there may be other factors that could play a role in the increase (economy, seasonality, demand for product/service).

Looking at the above graphics you can see that you need to take many factors into consideration.  You are not going to judge your efforts like traditional ROI because of the intangible ROI and qualitative impacts.  After 6-12 months of running your social media campaign you should ask yourself a few questions.

1. Did we see an increase in positive mentionings of our brand?
2. Were we able to reduce customer service overhead because of our social media efforts?
3. Were you able to reduce your PR costs because of your social outreach?
4. Did our website engagements and goals increase?
5. Did our overall sales revenue increase?

Tools to Help Track Social Media

There are probably hundreds of tools out there that will help you track your social media efforts.  Of course, after reading this post you can see that tools are not going to necessarily tell if your social media ROI is negative or positive, but it can help track your qualitative impact.

Google Analytics: It’s free and it can provide a really powerful baseline for a variety of different factors. You can track incoming links and then the activities of the users they send, which can be helpful.

Hootsuite: HootSuite is a great Twitter client to help you manage your efforts.   It comes with fantastic analytics features, allowing you to see click-through data, referral data,

Radian6: A social media monitoring tool that will help you to track mentionings of your brand/company, along with provide a sentiment analysis to idneitfy positive/negative discussions around your brand.

Social Media Metrics Plugin: Social Media Metrics is a greasemonkey extension that adds a social media information layer to Google Analytics, providing information on Diggs, stumbles, delicious bookmarks, and more for each individual page. Be aware – it’s not perfect.

The post How To Measure Social Media ROI first appeared on StayOnSearch.

The FanDuel online service delivers daily fantasy sports games for real money which conclude on a daily or sometimes weekly basis rather than the traditional season-long period. FanDuel offers all new players a welcome bonus package consisting of 5 free contest entries worth up to $50.

FanDuel is the largest DFS site on the Internet and hosts the largest real money tournaments available.

How to Receive Your 5 Free Entries Bonus

FanDuel offers up 5 free entries to all new depositing customers. The value of the contest entries is based on the amount of your initial deposit. You will be given a free entry every week for 5 weeks from the time you make a deposit.

To get started, click here to qualify for this welcome bonus and register your new account at FanDuel.

After registering your account, FanDuel will prompt you for the amount of your deposit.

If you deposit between $10 and $24.99, you will receive 5 free entries worth $.25 each for a total value of $1.25 (12.5%).

If you deposit between $25 and $99.99, you will receive 5 free entries worth $1 each for a total value of $5 (20%).

If you deposit between $100 and $199.99, you will receive 5 free entries worth $5 each for a total value of $25 (25%).

And if you deposit $200 or more, you will receive 5 free entries worth $10 each for a total value of $50 (40%). As you can see, it’s definitely worth depositing $200 or more based on the percentage bonus you receive.

Deposit Options

FanDuel is geared toward North American participants, and that is clearly reflected in the limited selection of payment methods that it currently offers. The only Web wallet the service accepts is PayPal, and it accepts any credit card, debit card or prepaid card that is part of the Discover, MasterCard or Visa families, including Maestro and Visa Electron.

How to Use the FanDuel Bonus

FanDuel provides members a great deal of freedom when it comes to using bonus money. The only restriction is that bonus money be used for entry into competitions on FanDuel. This is not a hard restriction, but if you receive the bonus and immediately try to withdraw it, FanDuel will retract the bonus money. A good way to look at this is that you must play through all bonus money at least once even though FanDuel can be lax about enforcing it. Note also that FanDuel reserves the right to void any unused bonus money after 45 days. We know of no case where FanDuel has actually exercised this right with an active member in good standing, but you should be aware of that right nonetheless.

Wagering Requirements

The FanDuel welcome bonus is not awarded upon deposit. Instead, FanDuel releases it to you at a rate of 4 percent of any entry fee paid. In other words, if you enter a $25 daily football league, FanDuel would give you $1 of your pending bonus. Therefore, you are required to stake $5,000 in order to receive the full maximum bonus of $200.

Cashing out is allowed prior to completing the bonus requirements, and you do not have to pay the bonus back on the first withdrawal since receiving it. However, FanDuel reserves the right to void the bonus and take it from you if it feels you are not playing honestly. As mentioned earlier, if you play through all bonus money at least once, you should feel free to make a withdrawal.

Reload Bonuses

FanDuel offers a regular reload bonus that is similar to the welcome bonus and can be claimed multiple times. There are also special reload opportunities that are available on a seasonal basis. Keep in mind that FanDuel is a lot like a poker room in that your success does not come at the house’s cost, which is an important factor for members who have big bankrolls and are effective fantasy players.

Read our review of FanDuel here.