If you’ve been considering social media for a while but keep putting it off or indeed cannot see it’s value, you may like to read this latest blog.

Here at Little Big Voice Search Engine Marketing, we’ve always got our finger on the pulse and felt it would be useful for you to see why you should not ignore what is fast becoming a core element of your online presence.

To make Social Media more accessible and to perhaps allow any small business to understand its real value, we thought we would provide you with some statistics and numbers from the Social Media world that should help you see just why Social Media is so valuable now and in the future.

We’ve also included some fundamental strategy based directives, which will help you see how social media fits in to your SEO and Search Engine Marketing efforts and why it’s so important.

Despite many saying it would come and go, Social Media in terms of growth is still doing very well indeed and has seen absolutely no sign of stopping!  Here’s a few numbers:

• The top three social networking applications currently are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In the past year alone have seen more than 2.5 billion visits in a month and all three have seen increases year on year since 2009.
• For one month last year in fact, Facebook actually received more visits than Google.  This was of course an exception but should go to show just how relevant social media is in today’s society as the biggest social networking site tackled the world’s biggest search engine with success!
• The amount of blogs that have been indexed is now well over the 140 million mark and we’re now seeing over a million blog posts created every single day.

What is perhaps more interesting is that in terms of Search Engine Marketing, many businesses can still benefit greatly from having a blog as a medium to generate good fresh content for your website that the search engines love!

• You Tube consistently stands at between second and third place as being one of the most popular search engines in the world and Flickr (as predicted) is slowly making ground as it sees more than 3.8 billion user generated images.
• If you’ve seen our previous blog on bookmarking submissions, you may also be interested to know that Delicious has more than 5 million users and more than 150 million bookmarked URL’s that are unique.

Here’s the important bit…

We’re all after the best position on Google right? Matt Cutts the head of web spam at Google announced at the end of 2010 that Twitter and Facebook do currently play a part in their real time search results, and that in the future this is to become a much more important factor in the prominence of websites within the Google standard search results page.

So when looking at these facts, if you’ve got no social media presence at all, you are missing out on a gigantic chunk of the online industry and good positioning on Google for your website in the future.

So here’s what we think you should be doing:

• Spreading your content and expertise across the net. This should really be part of your Search Engine Marketing Strategy as you can utilise bookmarking submissions, Twitter, blogging and more.
• Network to find the right kind of people.  This is where Twitter can help you find new contacts.
• Get people supporting your brand.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a medium business – you will be surprised how much interest people will take.
• Creating your ‘voice’ and allowing people to see exactly how much knowledge you have in your field.
• Listen to what people are saying about your brand.  Don’t ignore it and don’t assume because you don’t look that it’s not there.  If you want to try this out, put your company name in to You Tube or on Google to see what comes up.
• Become the very best source of information for your clients and prospective clients.
• Ensure you co-ordinate your efforts with your Search Engine Marketing Strategy, PR and off line marketing to ensure consistency.

There are a number of other things you can be doing but in all cases do seek out professional advice before doing anything drastic!

Paul

One of the biggest and perhaps underutilised elements of social media is the use of social bookmarking.

For a long-time, social bookmarking was the main stay of avid Internet users who spent most of their time online and who perhaps had a better understanding of the Internet than most, but over the last few year’s in particular they have become more mainstream and with the onset of social media we are gradually seeing more and more websites and blogs with numerous share options that surpass the usual Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn sites.

In terms of your Search Engine Marketing they can really help you gain website traffic and exposure and most importantly are a good way of gaining links using large sites such as Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Stumbleupon and Technorati.

So what is it in basic terms?

Effectively social bookmarking allows us to share, search and organise web resources very easily using the social bookmarking sites.

What this means is that if you have a website that offers top advice on the products or services you sell, a user can come along and use their Digg, Reddit, Delicious account to ‘bookmark’ you for use at a later date and as a way to share your information or website with their online communities.

This can result in your blogs posts and website covering a lot of miles online and as we’ve previously said, it can gain you some really valuable and credible links.

However, there is a lot more to sites like Digg and Reddit than just bookmarking and potential sharing.

The Internet as we all know these days has become a gigantic information hub with both good and bad content showing up on the web and it seems we all have a lot less time than we did before.  Therefore, this is why social bookmarking sites are actually so clever!

If someone bookmarks your site they can also add descriptions to that bookmark in the form of metadata so other Internet users can understand the actual content itself – without the need to download anything.  These descriptions can be very diverse as well and include things like ‘votes’ to ascertain quality of the content but also very importantly key worded descriptions.

This is why as a Search Engine Marketing option they can be so important to you as a business.

I still don’t quite get it!

Perhaps surprisingly for things that are effectively very simple, they can be a bit tricky to understand but this may help…

Internet users save links to web pages they want to remember or share.  These bookmarks like Digg or Delicious are very often public, which means that other people and groups can see them.  This is why they are valuable because someone may share a link that attracts attention, which is why they end up being good website traffic drivers.

If you are unsure of how social bookmarking might benefit you, then seek out advice!  Although the concept is simple it needs to be handled professionally and that’s why it’s a good addition to your Search Engine Marketing efforts.

Paul

If you’ve been reading our latest series of Social Media blogs and how they relate to Search Engine Marketing, you won’t want to miss this one, which focuses on Blog submissions.

For a while now, blogs themselves have formed an important part of the social media landscape, not only because they offer your business a way to voice your opinion, experience and guidance to clients, but also because they can drive traffic and considerably increase your rankings when operated alongside any current Search Engine Marketing activity.

If you’ve read our previous post on blogs and their importance and you’ve got a blog ready to go, then you should not ignore the need to have it submitted to the right kind of directories.

Launching a blog is actually very easy, but it’s the way it impacts on your Search Engine Marketing and also how it differs from your website that’s important.

So what does this mean to you?

If you have perhaps had a blog built for you then the next step once you want to launch is going to be their integration with XML technology and of course RSS.  Because of these factors, this makes them a little different to a standard website because the submission process is different.

Whereas your website can be submitted to normal directories by your Search Engine Marketing Specialist, the blog needs to be listed in the major feed aggregators and this is why it’s important to get it right.

Although blogging has been around for many, many years, it is only now that it is beginning to form an important part of your Search Engine Marketing presence, as more and more companies are seeing how relevant fresh new content is to their online activities.

Therefore the biggest piece of advice here is to ensure that if you are having your blog submitted to the right directories that you ensure you use a company who have researched the very best places to submit your blog to.  This is so they gain maximum exposure and have the most effective results.

So if your provider doesn’t know the difference between Google’s Blog submission process and a standard website submission process, they just don’t know enough to enhance your Search Engine Marketing efforts.  So do make sure that you check these rudimentary things before spending any money as you do not want to waste budget on poor efforts and bad results.

If you choose the right Search Engine Marketing Specialist then you will find that you will see substantial increased rankings for a variety of search terms but also more importantly a steady increase to the traffic going to your website.

What is an RSS feed?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is generally associated with Internet based works such as blogs, news and videos that are known to update regularly.

It is a ‘feed’ first and foremost that allows you to collect information and updates from a number of sources around the web without having to go to each individual website, which can be a time saver but also allow the individual user to keep track of their favourite web sources in one place.

All computers have some kind of RSS capability (which can be found via your browser – but this may be located in different places depending on what browser you’re using)

Therefore, if you have a blog with an RSS capability (see your Search Engine Marketing Specialist to ensure you have one working on your blog) then any user who visits your site will be able to add your ‘blog feed’ to their RSS reader and keep track of your updates.

Paul

Continuing on with our Social Media for Small Business theme, today we’re going to focus on an extremely important element of social media that has a direct relationship between your Search Engine Marketing and its relevance within the social media landscape.

A blog these days is becoming a standard addition to most small or medium business websites.  There are many reasons for this such as the way that end-users interact with websites now, but a blog can also provide a convenient way of communicating news quickly or sharing information across a broader space so it has a lot to offer you.

However, all of that said a blog will play a vital role in terms of your online presence which we aim to guide you through in this blog.

How have things changed in the digital space?

The Internet as we all know has grown significantly over the past few years and now more than ever the desire for ‘immediate’ information or answers to a variety of questions and needs is very high.  Therefore, what end-users tend to look for when they surf the net is more dynamic content – which is where a blog can provide a significant opportunity for small businesses.

Additionally, there have been recent changes to the way that Google now ranks websites which also factors in to the blog and whether you even have one.  We have already mentioned that social media is going to play heavily in the way that Google ranks your presence online (see our previous blog on social media) and that it really wants to improve the quality of results returned when you search, so now more than ever you should not be asking ‘if’ you need a blog but ‘where can I get a blog?!’.

So what’s changed with Google?

Panda (termed Farmer by many sections of the digital world and press) is a significant update to the Google search algorithm although as usual this is has not been spelled out by Google but it has been confirmed – with some suggestions as to how it is going to work!

They are now targeting ‘content farms’ (which are basically websites that take content from other locations or websites that produce sub-standard content) that still ranks very highly in Google.  In basic terms, Google does not want this to happen as it devalues the good content that may not necessarily be at the top when someone searches, so possibly the theory is that by removing the bad or useless content means the better stuff will get seen more easily, resulting in a better experience for the end-user.

Currently it is the US and UK results that have been affected.  In fact, if you are a small or medium sized business that has suddenly seen a big change in your website rankings or traffic, now could be the time to look for why this may have happened, so please come back for our next blog, which will focus on at least some things you should consider.

In the USA some websites have seen their traffic drop by almost half (worst case scenarios) and according to Google the new update has affected just over 12% of websites so this is big news that you should not ignore.

There are other concerns as well, but for now we’re going to stick to the blog and why it’s going to be highly relevant to you and your business presence online.

So why have a blog?

Let’s start with some real basics.  A blog is a dynamic space for your website which allows you to post content regularly.  Whether that’s every day or once a week, it means that you can add fresh content to your website (if the blog is part of it) and encourage Google to visit you to see what has changed since last time.

It also allows you to communicate with your audience, find new traffic and if targeted with your Search Engine Marketing strategy can be a good supporting structure in terms of getting ranked on a variety of terms.

However, it should be noted that a blog will NOT replace your Search Engine Marketing work and if you consider it a good alternative or a way to cut your online budget then you will risk disaster!  Therefore, if you are thinking of adding a blog to your website, speak to us about our content writing services which can be co-ordinated with your Search Engine Marketing strategy.

A small case study

Recently a client offering a service within a highly competitive industry was having trouble getting ranked for certain words.   Thus, while they were number one for some terms, they were not for others.

It was felt that the addition of a blog would ‘support’ the overall Search Engine Marketing efforts and over the course of three months, the client was provided with blog content.  The content was posted up two to three times a week and at the end of the three months they saw a significant improvement to their overall Search Engine Marketing results.

They gained first page listings on terms that were relatively competitive and achieved a higher ranking on Google for their most competitive keyword, which meant that they’d widened their digital footprint, but with good quality content.

Working in line with their Search Engine Marketing strategy the blogs were tailored to compliment the work and the business, thus the client saw increased traffic to the website.

The content itself was unique, original (which is absolutely essential) and was professionally created for the client to have the best affect on their rankings.

So try and imagine what another three months blogging work will do, when integrated with your Search Engine Marketing strategy and the results will speak for themselves.

You want to write the blog yourself…

Writing a blog is actually not that difficult.  In fact, you can write whatever you like.  However, as we’ve focused on Google’s need for ‘quality’ how do you know if what you’re writing is what they consider good content?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with providing your own content, but if you want your blogs to begin generating new business then it is vitally important that you take some professional advice on how to generate content that is original.

It may seem tempting to simply cut and paste from another site or even re-write the content but Google is getting tough so needless to say if it considers your efforts to be duplicated content you will be penalised.

Therefore, a good strategy with a blog is to get advice and at least consider getting someone to write it for you and perhaps if you want to contribute more content, also get them to assess it for you, make amendments in line with your Search Engine Marketing and you may be on a better path.

What are the main benefits to having a blog?

The biggest benefit to having a blog for your small or medium business is the fact that you can get fresh new and totally original content, which Google is always looking for.

Couple this with good quality and you will have a truly great way of increasing your website visibility online.

A blog can also be a good way of testing out new products, offering advice to your online readers and in some cases it can define you as an expert in your industry.  Thus as soon as your blog becomes a good resource you will see traffic returns regularly for new updates and new content.

Finally a blog can also allow you a chance to develop your business strategy and voice further and essentially play around with technology a lot more.

The beauty of a blog is that if it is CMS based (something like WordPress) then you can make changes easily but also add things like video into blogs, making it a place that is truly dynamic and interesting.

Remember, Google loves original content and your blog will offer you the very best way of creating this.

What shouldn’t you do with your blog?

Blogging etiquette is surprisingly in-depth and there are things you can and cannot do if you want to gain the respect of the online community.

Firstly, never steal content from someone else.  If you do this and do not credit them then you may get in to some trouble.  You may also be penalised by Google for it if they recognise it as duplicated content.

Do always give credit to your sources and check that they are correct.  You may pick up some valuable links with other bloggers this way too.

Never insult your competitors in a blog.  This is not only a recipe for potential negative responses, but you could say something that is legally inaccurate and there’s no telling what could happen.

Always try to offer your OWN advice and not someone else’s.  Just because your competitor is writing about something, does not necessarily mean you have to write about it too.  Try to find your own voice.

Do not under any circumstances feel that feeding another blog’s posts in to your posts will have any value.  It won’t.  It does not offer the end user anything new and if the feed is coming from a bigger site, why on earth would they come to you first when they can get it direct from the horse’s mouth so to speak?

Do not opt for a stand alone free blog such as Blogger and Live Journal that resides on a separate shared website if you are a business with your own website.  There is no intrinsic value to having a free blog if it is not part of your website.

Effectively you’re asking Google to rank your website for your products and then using another platform to write about the same company if you opt for a free blog. In effect, the Search Engine Marketing and SEO benefits to your main website will be greatly reduced.

Therefore, while free blogs are wonderful and allow a lot of people to communicate a lot of things – they are not good as a standalone to your business website. Go with WordPress instead which is also free and ask your developer to integrate it as part of your main website.

Paul

In the last twelve months, the UK has seen an increase in interest in applications like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and blogging as a marketing tool and way of reaching new prospects online.

While some have suggested them to be merely ‘fads’ for business users, there is considerable evidence to suggest that social media is in fact more a way of life and indeed a way to gain new opportunities within the online sector.

In fact, Google has recently spoken of search rankings based on social media applications as well as traditional methods, so it’s a good time if you’re a small or medium business to look at how you can benefit from this growing trend.

The good news is that as a small or medium business can gain considerable benefits from social media – not always afforded to the larger brands.

However, there are some very important factors to bear in mind with social media and it is always advisable to gain a professional perspective to get it right first time, rather than do what you THINK is right and not benefit at all.

Firstly, social media is not an alternative to anything you already do.  Therefore, if you already budget for search engine marketing, traditional marketing or PR, then social media will not be effective as a standalone effort and is definitely not a ‘replacement’ strategy.  Although some will have you believe this is the case, those in the know will be able to tell you and show you why social media is an additional arm in your business marketing efforts.

Secondly, if you are thinking of using social media as a way to generate new web traffic, create new business opportunities and grow your presence online, what you do and how you do it is going to be something that you will need to plan and gain advice on.

Thirdly, choosing the right social media platforms makes all the difference and it is extremely important to note that simply by having a Twitter or a Facebook account may not necessarily work for you if you do not navigate them effectively.

So in this series of blogs, Little Big Voice Search Engine Marketing is going to help you as a small or medium business navigate your way through the jungle of social media and hopefully assist you in identifying the right path to success.

So what are the main applications to look at?

In reality, there are hundreds of different social media platforms, that all work in different ways.  However, in order to simplify this for you we are going to focus on what are considered the main applications to start, with follow-up blogs offering some of the more diverse social media applications.

Twitter

Quite simply put, Twitter allows a business to network and have conversations with target markets, complimentary business types and of course to share regular news with followers.

It also allows you to find new leads for your business and does consistently prove to be an excellent place to generate extra traffic to your website and of course find new buyers.

However, although it is very simple to master, it’s actually very time consuming unless you know how to streamline it effectively.

In fact, there are a number of companies who start it and then leave it just as quickly, because they don’t really understand the best way to approach it.

Little Big Voice can offer a social media service that includes Twitter, adding more than 1000 followers that are carefully chosen for you.  These will include targeting of followers who are part of your competitor’s communities, but also a very effective keyword strategy, that will enable you to get a presence and increase your online footprint very quickly.

Facebook

Facebook is approaching 600 million users now and there are a number of benefits to having it play a part in your business.

It allows you to target specific demographics, gives you the ability to update your fans in ‘real time’ and you can do a whole host of things within it that can assist you in raising brand awareness and of course selling products or services.

For example, you can provide downloadable PDFs to fans, create decent video feeds direct from You Tube, sell products through a number of innovative e-commerce plug-ins and you can even integrate your blog and with new add-ons occurring every single day, it’s really important to gain professional advice.  If you don’t know they’re available then you can’t use them to your advantage.

Little Big Voice can assist you in helping you navigate this popular application and help you make it work to your advantage with the right approach and technical expertise based on your business needs.

You Tube

Amazingly still under-rated as a social media platform, You Tube owned by Google is consistently on the first page of search results on Google and amasses a major amount of hits from people looking for information, ‘how to’ videos and just about everything else you can think of.

The savvy business has already noted this and if you haven’t looked, it may be worth doing a search for your business type or a selection of products or services you sell just to see what comes up.  You may be very surprised at the results.

To demonstrate its value here’s a small case study which may put things into perspective:

A well-known, world famous retailer in the UK was looking at social media as an option to add to their marketing strategy.  They were directed to a number of videos on You Tube that represented their brand already. However, these videos had been uploaded by outside parties, not associated officially with the brand itself.  Seeing that there were a number of views of these videos, they were advised to have their own You Tube channel built, complete with their official videos to provide an ‘official’ channel where interested people could find them.

Within three months, they had uploaded 14 videos, highlighting the retailer’s well known restaurants and products and in that time, accumulated over 10,000 views of their channel, which is still rising.

There are two ways to look at this:

Firstly, had they not had the channel, where would the traffic views have gone?

Answer: Possibly to the unofficial videos with no links to the retailer’s website.

Secondly, having the channel allowed the retailer to not only market themselves but also direct that traffic to the main website – thus increasing their online presence within another digital space.

So in terms of brand awareness, by being on You Tube officially, the retailer was able to filter it’s marketing through another channel not previously there, and gain extra traffic to the main website.

There are a number of benefits to social media and Little Big Voice can offer solutions that cover a considerable part of it so do come back to see our next blog which focuses on blogging and why it should be part of your Search Engine Marketing strategy.

Paul