Zline Media Group

Indiana University SPEA

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Spay-Neuter Services of Indiana

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Using Facebook’s Open Graph and Social Plug-ins

Leslie Wiser — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:39:02 +0000

A popular topic in meetings lately is the rapidly increasing role Facebook is coming to play in helping people find your site and the experience they have once they arrive. Many of our clients have noticed the rapid spread of the familiar “Like” button to third-party sites all over the web. However many are confused about what this – and other recent changes – really mean in terms of their overall online strategy.

A Little Background

Facebook launched Facebook Connect back in late 2008. This now familiar feature allowed for users to login to other people’s sites with their existing Facebook account. Since then, Facebook has continued to evolve its APIs (application programming interfaces) to introduce additional ways websites are able to integrate Facebook’s social networking capabilities.

Then, at April 2010’s F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, Facebook unveiled a powerful new addition: the Open Graph API. This new API seeks to extend the social nature of web applications to a whole new level by giving websites the ability to leverage Facebook’s social graph of over 500 million users with a few simple adjustments to their markup. Essentially, the API can turn a third-party website into a Facebook app or page. According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, the API will make the web more inclined towards social networking.

How the API Works

The API gives every “object” (profile, album, photo, event, link, etc) on Facebook a unique identifier, and that identifier can then be used to fetch the data associated with that object. While this may sound complicated and confusing to those outside the industry, the important thing to understand is that it potentially allows for visitors to essentially “bring” their personal network of Facebook friends with them to your website.

Web Developers can tap into this API in a wide variety of ways to create custom applications and functionality. For example, retail giant Amazon has been generating lots of buzz with the launch of a new application that allows shoppers to receive personalized product recommendations based on their Facebook activity. These recommendations are influenced by content they have “liked” as well as the Facebook activity of his or her friends.

The Social Plug-ins

The launch of the Open Graph API coincided with the launch of several new Facebook plug-ins. These plug-ins enable developers to add specific Facebook functionality to third-party websites in a less complicated manner then programming that interfaces directly with the Open Graph API. Some of the plug-ins associated with the new API are:

The “activity stream” plug-in, which allows users to view updates from the websites they like;
The “recommendations” plug-in, which suggests content to users based on their profile information;
The “social bar” plug-in, which creates a toolbar that can be used to embed Facebook Chat in a website; and
The “login” plug-in, which allows users to log in to a website using their Facebook credentials – much like Facebook Connect does – but also lets the user know which of his friends have already joined the website.

The advantages that can be realized from these new developments are obvious. The “Like” button has the potential to bring many new visitors to any website that uses it, since any user who clicks on it effectively notifies all his friends that he likes the website.

The pace in which this seemingly simple “Like” button has spread is phenomenal. More than 50,000 websites added it within the first week of its launch.

It is very likely that Facebook will add advertising and/or other such moneymaking features to the Open Graph API some time in the future. But even if that happens, this API and the new social plug-ins are too powerful to ignore. It opens up an exciting new dimension of the web, with many gains for both website owners and users.

Content Marketing: Increasing Website Visibility and Traffic

Leslie Wiser — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:12:45 +0000

Content Marketing is a concept that is going to become increasingly popular as the costs of PPC, SMM and SEM continue to rise. Search engines are now placing more value than ever on content that is topical, relevant and fresh and it appears that content – yet again – is truly set to become king.

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing consists of using targeted content to increase a website’s search engine visibility. This is achieved by providing more relevant, informational content to boost exposure and reach a larger audience, therefore attracting more traffic from general, but still topic-related, search engine queries.

This may seem like a very simple and obvious concept, but the fact remains that many websites overlook the importance of content and opt either to buy their traffic with PPC, and other forms of paid advertising, or focus all their efforts on building backlinks to influence a top SERP position for their primary keywords.

These tactics do work and can all play a important role on in driving traffic and conversions. However, what is often overlooked is the importance of providing relevant, quality content and ignoring this strategy can mean missing out on thousands of visitors and throwing away increased search engine exposure.

Why Content Marketing will Turbo-Charge any Website

No matter how comprehensive a website’s keyword research is, they will never truly understand the mindset of every potential visitor. Whilst SEO and SEM have swayed towards the use of a few primary keywords in recent years, content marketing prefers not to put all the eggs in one basket.

Search engine users will choose the strangest terms and phrase combinations when trying to find what they need. Not everyone looking for a tree trimmer in Indianapolis will use that particular search query. Relying on a few keywords, and keyword phrases, and then basing the websites whole search engine strategy on these selective terms means neglecting the thousands of searchers that choose not to use them.

Content marketing allows a website to have thousands of keywords and to allow for irregular search queries. A search engine highlights keywords within content that is relevant to a search query and the more informative, relevant content a website produces – the greater their chance of greater search engine exposure.

By offering more informative, fresh content, containing topic-relevant keywords, a website will show up in more search results. Search engines now place greater importance on recent, quality content that enhances the search user’s enjoyment.

Utilizing content marketing can improve a website’s quality score and may even lead to the site being seen as an authority – both of which will mean more search engine interest and better overall rankings.

How to Utilize Content Marketing
for Increased Visibility

A website should never discount relevant keyword alternatives when performing any keyword research simply because they do not fit their idea of what a perfect keyword should be. These irrelevant and seemingly unpopular keywords, and keyword phrases, should be retained for use in content marketing strategy. There are two reasons for this:

These terms may not be popular now, but they could be in a month’s time and by including them now a website gets a jump on its competitors.
Each minor keyword phrase may only get a few hundred searches, but by targeting 100 of these keywords a website can increase its traffic exponentially.

This is where content marketing really makes a difference. Not only will a website enjoy more search engine visibility, it will attract masses of traffic from search queries that would normally have been dismissed as irrelevant and ineffective.

This keyword diversity allows any website a much greater analytical opportunity. With more keywords, any analytical program will clearly display the top search queries that visitors performed to reach the website. These will include queries that may have eluded the website if they neglected content marketing. Patterns, and new popular queries, may emerge and these can be factored into regular SEO and SEM strategies, leading to a healthy SERP position for these newly discovered search queries.

Search engines look for new content and with Google Caffeine let loose, fresh content has never been so important. Search results now regularly feature the latest content within the top results and by simply having more content than the competition, and therefore more listed content on the search engine, a website will attract a greater percentage of the traffic.

Keep it Relevant and Easy to Find

It is important for a website to remain topical and offer content that relates to their product or brand. Content can be time consuming and creating content that is not relevant is a wasted effort and will attract non-targeted visitors that rarely convert.

Adding a tag cloud, or tag tree, to a website is an easy method to organize data and instantly visualize what keywords a website has targeted with its content marketing strategy. This has the additional advantage of offering any visitor easy access to more of the site’s content.

Content marketing is a strategy that is overlooked and underused. It is a free source of traffic and will greatly improve a website’s appearance in the eyes of the search engines. Offering quality content will not only improve visibility and traffic – it will provide an enhanced user experience that can lead to return visits, improved conversions and free word-of-mouth viral promotion.

Twitter: How to Gain Targeted Followers

Leslie Wiser — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:56:25 +0000

Twitter is quickly becoming one of the most used internet websites by people of all walks of life. Using Twitter to help market your business can be effective IF it is utilized properly. To do so, you want to get people to follow you that have a high potential of becoming your customer and then deliver targeted VALUABLE messages to them regularly.

Too often, Twitter is treated like a popularity contest, with the focus on the number of followers. However, 100 people who are truly engaged and potentially lead generating can outweigh 1000’s of “spam” followers who will never contribute to your business goals and objectives.

Below are some tips to help you develop a targeted following on your Twitter account.

Create a compelling KEYWORD RICH bio-

Your bio gives you a few sentences to tell potential followers a little about you and your business. Make sure to use keywords that people may be searching to locate things of interest to them. Also, make it INTERESTING…you only have a few words to grab their attention, make them count!

Develop a quality background for your Twitter account-

Make sure it includes reasons why people should follow you and your tweets as well as some interesting facts about your business. If you have a default background, many will pass you by. The same goes with your profile picture. A logo is OK, but a picture really helps others to see you as a real person.

Create and post tweets that contain keywords your clients may be searching for-

If you are Tweeting about selling real estate, many who collect coins may find you simply by entering REAL ESTATE in the search bar…that is of course as long as you are using popular keywords in your tweets. People search for topics everyday so try to tweet using keywords you think others will search for…chances are, they will find your tweets and click to follow you!

There is a handy feature called FIND PEOPLE. This will allow you to enter names of people or businesses to see if they have a Twitter account. Your job now is to find businesses that are as close to yours as possible. Why, you ask? This brings us to our final tip:

Follow your competition’s followers-

That’s right, simply follow the followers of your competition. Chances are, if they are following your competition they might be interested in what you have to offer as well.

Now that you know how to start gaining followers you should concentrate your efforts on creating and submitting quality tweets that your followers will be interested in. Gaining followers is one thing but keeping them interested is another. The higher the quality of your tweets, the more your followers are likely to stay around for more and retweet your tweets as well. This activity can lead to hits to your websites and potentially landing some new clients. Use Twitter wisely by following the tips above and you will be well on your way to building a targeted following and succeeding with Twitter.

5 Must-Do Strategies for Dominating Social Media Marketing

Leslie Wiser — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 05:51:58 +0000

Social media marketing has become an essential tool for any business. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are amongst the most popular sites regularly visited on the internet and can generate large amounts of visitors and new sales leads. Many businesses are already utilizing social media marketing as part of their ongoing business strategy, but a large proportion of these are not aware of the essentials required to fully maximize social media to its full potential.

Here are 5 important criteria that need to be addressed in order to run a successful social media campaign:

1) Search Engine Rank Awareness

Social media profiles now make regular appearances in search engine listings. The major search engines are placing greater importance on these profiles as they tend to possess regularly updated topical content and provide quality information that search engine users are looking for. Any social media profile should be created with search engine placement in mind. Ensure that relevant keywords are placed in titles, and content, and that any links use keywords (located within the anchor text). Brand names should be clearly visible to increase the likelihood of search engines displaying a social media profile for brand-related search queries. Having a social media profile appear in SERP listings will increase traffic to that profile and could subsequently lead to additional traffic to the main business website via that profile.

2) Additional Site Traffic from Social Media Posts

Search engines now index and display individual social media posts in their search results. The search engines consider these posts topical, relevant and useful to their users – 3 of the main criteria search engines look for when ranking a page (or submission). Posting quality submissions on social media sites and including links back to a main website, or webpage, within these posts can seriously increase website traffic – if the posts are indexed and displayed in search engine listings.Social media bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Slashdot have been known to drive thousands of visitors to websites. Submit blog posts – and website content – to these sites and there is a good chance that these submissions will capture the interest of readers and result in increased website traffic.

3) Use Social Media for SEO-Based Links

Links back to a main website can be placed in most of the social media profiles. These are useful links from high authority websites and good quality backlinks influence where a website is ranked within a search engine.Many social media bookmarking sites now apply the NOFOLLOW attribute to links due to abuse, but there are still some major platforms that continue to use the DOFOLLOW attribute. At the time of writing, these social bookmarking sites still allow DOFOLLOW links:

FriendFeed
Furl
Slashdot
Digg
Mixx

Even if a bookmarking site applies the NOFOLLOW attribute, links within posts can still pay dividend. Regardless of their SEO-based backlink power, people will still follow these links back to a main site and this means increased traffic and greater site visibility.

4) Target Specific Markets

The simplicity of creating a social media profile allows for the creation of multiple campaigns. A good business strategy should run a main social media profile and then look to create smaller, laser-targeted profiles that cater for very specific niche markets related to the main business interest.

If a business sells a wide variety of products, it should look to create individual profiles that target the different categories of products sold. This tactic allows the business to concentrate on each subset of product, as well as the potential customers searching for these specific products, or type of products. By breaking down social media campaigns, a business can provide relevant, topical information that caters for very specific individuals.

Where other businesses try to capture all potential buyers in one huge net and can only offer generic information to a wide scope of readers about the entire range of their products – the clever business, with their niche market profiles, will reach out to each subset and be able to offer them exactly what they are searching for.

5)Improved Brand Recognition

Many businesses fail to realize the importance of social media profiles when it comes to increasing brand recognition. These social media platforms have millions of daily visitors and provide an unequaled resource for rapidly promoting a brand, or product. Having a main website ranked high in a search engine for that particular brand name is great – as long as enough people are performing search queries using that specific brand-name keyword. Social media provide an easier solution for promoting brand recognition and this factor should be forefront in any social media strategy. Make sure the brand is clearly visible in a profile – include it in the profile title and bio; promote the brand discreetly in sporadic posts and if there is a brand-related business logo, this should be placed on the main profile page. It has been suggested that a person needs to see, or hear, a brand name seven times before they consider becoming a customer. Social media offers a business the best solution for reaching the largest potential audience.

By utilizing social media marketing and concentrating on these 5 important criteria, any business can potentially increase website traffic, sales leads and easily reach targeted customer bases. Social media marketing is starting to become very competitive, but not everyone has learned to optimize their campaigns and fully utilize the power of social media marketing. The business that learns to adapt its strategies and play to the strengths of social media is the one that jumps ahead of the competition.

Best Regards, Kevin

The Cobbler’s Kids Have Shoes (finally)

Leslie Wiser — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:40:33 +0000

As the old saying goes “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes.” It’s a bit overplayed, yes, but it holds a ring of truth. But at long last, that is not longer the case for us at zlinemedia. We are finally launching our new site.

Yes, I know. There is no excuse for a interactive media company to not have a website. But in our defense, we have been very busy – and having great fun – helping our clients with their interactive strategy, design and development needs. How? Please take a look at our Projects section for some specific examples.

If you’d like to know how zline can help you, please give us a call, email us at info@zlinemedia.com or use the contact form.

Emerson Network Power

zlinemedia — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:41:32 +0000

E-A-R – a 3M company

zlinemedia — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:27:41 +0000

FlashPoint

zlinemedia — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:46:28 +0000