YNOT Business Woman of the Year Nominee
Our CEO, Lauren MacEwen, has been nominated as the YNOT Business Woman of the Year 2013! We are so proud and excited to be nominated for the award and to be included with such an amazing group of women.
Strategy
Word of mouth marketing has always been the best marketing because it is marketing you can’t buy. It is the recommendation of a friend. It is the suggestion of a colleague. It is the preferred choice of a family member. The reason “word of mouth” marketing is so effective is because it is authentic. Social media is the new word of mouth.
Social media has the ability to reach more than just the people in your inner circle. It has the ability to reach every person in every persons inner circle. It goes beyond your friends, beyond your town. Social media is truly global.
7 Veils focuses on engagement marketing. What does engagement marketing do?
- Build brand recognition
- Establish authority
- Become a valued community member
- Develop quality relationships with your followers
Engagement marketing builds a quality based social strategy rather than a quantity based social strategy. It is better to have 100 people who take action than 1000 who do nothing.
Why build an engagement marketing campaign?
- Create lifetime customers vs. one time customers
- Turn your fans into brand advocates
- Generate quality traffic with lower bounce rates and higher page views
Engagement marketing paired with integrative technology and and understanding of analytical trending creates a social media powerhouse!
Engagement is keystone to any successful social marketing campaign, however, analytics is key to understanding ROI (return on investment). To develop a successful social marketing campaign you have to understand:
- Growth trends
- Amplification (number of impressions, or reach, of your post/tweet)
- Converse relationship between tweets and engagement
- Traffic patterns
7 Veils Media builds you a strategy that is a combination between engagement and technology. Through continual statistical analysis of your social marketing campaign, we create social media strategy that bust through the ceiling of diminishing returns. They are responsive to your growth patterns and predictive of overall social media trends. We ensure that the engagement marketing and analytics work cohesively to create an unbeatable social media presence.
Contact us to discuss your social media strategy.
Facebook Ads Suggest Slurs
In a recent update to the Facebook ad system, Facebook started suggesting other key terms that were related to the ones you entered. This was designed to help you get more bang for you buck when setting up ads. However, this seems to be back firing on them. The ads are suggesting racial and gay slurs.
So if you targeted “gay” they will also suggested faggot and sissy. Oh yes, seriously. Now Facebook made a very quick fix on this issue. But if you target “faggot” you get suggestions like sissy and cunt. But the terms are now being categorized as slang and only come up when you are targeting other slang terms.
Interestingly enough if you tag “gay” or “lesbian” you get a suggestion for the tag “white people”. Not a racial slur, but an interesting social commentary on the part of Facebook ads.
The Facebook prejudice does not stop here. You might be able to use the tag “gay” but if you say gay in your ad, it will very likely not be approved. So target your ad, jut don’t talk about it.
Fake Porn Ninjas
Fake porn ninjas are taking over Youtube. So what is it? We wish it was something as funny as Fake Purse Ninjas from the movei Bowfinger. Sadly no. Basically the video thumbnail looks like the video will offer some hot steam free porn. Users click on the link hoping that this is a video that Youtube has not flagged yet and removed, and then are horribly disappointed when they get not-porn.
When I first heard about this trend. I was hoping that the fake porn was going to be just that, a parody of porn. That would at least be funny and worth the viral video click status. But no. The videos are generally commercial, and not even commercials for shakeweights. They are commercials for fertility treatments, or anti-porn advocacy. Basically nothing you want to see if you clicked a porn thumbnail hoping for something sexy…or at the very minimum funny.
The most notable thing about these videos is that some of them are garnering over 174,000 views. What does this tell us? That people want to see porn on Youtube. The problem is, Youtube does not allow porn. Hell, they don’t even allow the insinuation of porn. And if you have links to a porn site, you are likely to get flagged and deleted very quickly.
Does this mean that the opportunity is lost? Nope. You can still post you PG-13 rated videos on there. Show us some side boob. Give us some behind the scenes that don’t show your behind! The trick seems to be to have a provocative thumbnail and to have a catch, though cheesy, title.
There is an audience and it is hungry for it!
If you want to see some of the fake porn, Gizmodo has a great list
Start Talking on Google Plus: Boost Your SEO
SEO for social networks is not the same as SEO for your website or blog. A large component is the social element and Google Plus is no different. Not only do you need to optimize your profile, link your website and optimize your posts, but you also need to talk to people. This is one of the biggest issues with adult brands and social media, an overwhelming lack of engagement with fans. But it is time to get over it because it is vital to your social SEO.
Sharing your Posts
When you write a post, make sure that you are sharing it to the public. You do not have to do this with every post. In fact you can create a sharing strategy. Share your more provocative post with your circles and then your more generic, aka “safe”, posts with the public.
You have a choice of what circles and with whom you want to share your content. You can make it as limited or open as you would like. But if you want people you don’t yet know to access your content you need to make sure it is publicly available. You do this by selecting “public” when you select your circles.
By making your posts public, not only will people be able to find you in searches but when they go to your profile they will be able to see what you have posted. Many people like to “browse” profiles before they circle someone. Think of this as your Macy’s window and they are window shopping.
Respond Back!
So many people ignore the people who engage with them. This is bad. If you want to grow your network, your exposure and improve your SEO you need to engage back. If someone pluses your post, add them to your circles. If someone comments on your post, respond back…and add them to your circles.
Tag People
A great way to initiate conversation with someone is to tag them in a post. You do this by typing + and then their name (which will auto-populate when you start typing). This creates a tag, or linked text, in your post. Doing this also gives a notification to that person that they were tagged.
This is a great way to start conversation or let someone know that you are talking about them, or their content.
Comment
Comment on other peoples posts. It really is that simple. Stop only looking at what you are putting out there and start looking at what other people are sharing. If you post thoughtful comments on other peoples posts you might make a new contact, create a conversation or debate. You will all be introducing yourself to all their followers who saw that post, because when they see the post they will now see your comment. If it is good they may circle you or look at your shared posts.
Circle People
Circling people is one of the easiest and fastest ways to grow your network. Go out and find people in your interest area. Find people you might want to talk to. Add them to your circle and start engaging with their content. Many people will circle you back just because you circled them.
Finding Content
Finding people can best be done by finding content. You do this through G+’s real time search. Type in a search term and your results will stream in real time what people are currently posting. You can keep this search list auto-refreshing or pause it for easier reading. This is a great opportunity to comment on people posts and find people to add to your circles.
All of these things will help boost your overall SEO. Google+ will rank you higher in their internal search engine, getting you more exposure, and thus helping your overall SEO.
Facebook (Insights) Fails…Again!
I am a geek. So I spend a lot of time pouring through data and looking at analytics. Its just what I do. If you have a Facebook page for your business or brand, you should be doing this too. Thankfully this is easily done through Facebook Insights. Insights is the reporting system for all you Facebook data. It tells you how many page views you had, who is clicking, liking, sharing. You can get age and gender demographics. How many times your story appeared in the newsfeed. How viral your content is. And a lot more. There is so much information in the downloaded excel spreadsheet that you go well into the double alphabet column. You can also view a synopsis of your Insights right on Facebook from you page. The link is on the left side menu, under your profile pic.
Normally insights is behind real time by 2 days. This is not a big deal. 2 days still gives you an accurate picture of what is happening with your page. However, for the past 2 weeks insights has pretty much been down. It has provided some spotty information, but for the most part it is not actually reporting anything useful. For a data geek like me, this has been enormously frustrating.
Thankfully, despite being quiet about it for the past few weeks, Facebook has finally admitted that they are aware of the problem and are considering it high priority.
Now, usually when their is a big FAIL on Facebook it is because they are making some changes to the site. Of course, they don’t let anyone know of any potential changes so when they drop and then the site is working again, we all get to have an “A-Ha” moment.
There is a marketing conference at the end of the month, so maybe they will be announcing some big new changes coming to the site.
SEO Optimize your Google Plus Snippet
Having an interesting image will help your snippet
The most important part of SEO optimizing your Google Plus posts is making sure your content is easy to share. Your social snippet is integral for making your content easy to share. A snippet is also known as a SERP, or search engine results page. This is the description that Google associates with your page. So your SERP is the summary description that people see in a search engine that helps them determine if they want to click on your link or not. In Google+ the snippet is what helps people determine if they want to read your post.Having a strong snippet can help determine if people read, comment or plus your post.
How to optimize your SERP
So now you are likely thinking, yes this is something I need to do! But how? Thankfully for blog writers there are a number of easy plugins you can use:
If you need to optimize a website you will need to go into the html code. If you are not comfortable or familiar with this, then ask a web designer to do it for you.
In your html you will need to optimize your “Meta Description”, this is what sets your SERP:
<head> <meta name="description" content="This is an example of a meta description. This will often show up in search results."> </head>
Your meta description is where search engines will pull your snippet from. This is on every page of your website…and yes you want to optimize ever meta description.
Images Matter
Though everyone in porn knows this: we are all visual people. So what does that have to do with SEO? Well, this is another important element of your optimization. If you want people to read your post you want to make it as attractive as possible. So using an image that helps captivate people’s attention is important.
Plus, when you add an image to you blog post not only does is make it more attractive to the reader, it creates another SEO opportunity. You can optimize your image information, so when people do image searches they might come across your post.
So not only is it important to make sure you optimize your Google+ but you want to make sure that if you are sharing content from your website that it is optimized as well. The quality of your snippet greatly influences views, comments, pluses and sharing.
Google Plus Search: Can you game the SEO?
SEO and searching on Google Plus, the next installment of the Google Plus SEO Series. Last part was implementing SEO on your profile.
Search+ delivers search results based on your circles, engagement and activity on your page. However you can turn the personalization off if you don’t want your user history to be factored into your search:
Click the icon of a person in the top right of the page. Then select “do not use personal results”.
Search Plus is not just being used while you are in Google Plus. Any time you are logged into to the network and use the Google search engine, your results will go through the search plus filter.
This is why making sure your profile is set up properly is important. Now you profile and your posts can show up in search results on Google.
In the results you will be given a list of potentially relevant people and pages. These will be a mix of people you have already circled and ones you have not. If they are not in your circle you have the opportunity to add them.
So how do you come up in the search results? Truth be told circle count greatly affects. So the more people who have circled you the better chance you have. Unfortunately this does encourage people to buy followers just for the SEO boost.
Powerful Searching
Google does give priority to items being shared in Google Plus, however to make sure you content qualifies for their results you need to make sure your content is easily sharable.
The most powerful element of boosting your search results is making sure you have good amplification. You want people to be plussing and sharing your posts. The more people share your content the better your SEO both on and off the network.
Not sure what you amplification is? Google helps you understand the ripple effect of your posts with Google+ Ripples. Ripples will show you the amplification of your shares. The graph below shows a post that was shared by Good Morning America. The arrows off their profile show all the people who publicly shared the post. The one big circle shows another circle inside the larger one. This means that one person shared the post and then someone shared her share. In this case Laetitia shared the original post then Ogla shared Laetitia’s post.
Notice that I did say publicly shared posts. People have the option of sharing publicly or privately. Privately means they only shared it with their circles and the post is not publicly searchable. Your amplification data from Google only includes the public shares, though they do you tell you the total shares.
If you see someone who shares a post and then has number of other people share their share, that is someone who has good personal amplification. It would be a good idea to reach out to that person and work on engaging them. They could be an influencer. If they continue to share your posts you could increase your “ripple effect” greatly.
The more people who share your posts the better it will come up in search results. So do pluses affect in the same way. Unfortunately no. This is not to say they have no value, but a share is weighted significantly more.
This is the continuation of Google Plus SEO: Search Result pt 1”
Gaming the Search
Gaming the search, otherwise known as the search algorithm, is optimizing your posts for Google; knowing what Google looks for.
First is simple text. Google does a simple text match in the search queary. Of course this leads to keyword loading your posts instead of writing for quality. However, since your post is all the text you can provide you still need to make sure the writing is quality. Because even if you show up in the search, your text is what will get someone to click your link.
ex. “pink socks. red socks. blue socks. socks. I love socks. knee high socks. ankle socks.” will not likely get you a lot of clicks, but it might get you in the search results for socks.
The good thing is the text match is restricted to people who are in your circles, which does limit the potential for SEO spammers. Additionally, people you engage with more will show up higher in your search results.
Public or Private
So should your posts be public or private? Public posts rank higher than private ones. So if you want to increase the potential visibility of your posts, and reach people beyond your immediate or extended circles, make sure your posts are public. (You can make your post public when you write the post. Where you have the option to add your circles you can also choose “public”).
Most Recent vs. Best of
When you do a search you will notice that they are sorted into two options, most recent and best of. Most recent is simply that. These will be the most recent posts. If it is an active topic you will see your search results refreshing frequently to stream recent topic related posts. You can hit the pause button to freeze the post.
The best of search results will show you the posts that have larger ripple effects. So if you are looking for viral content, you might want to look here.
Plus Button
I have mentioned that the plus button does not have as big an impact on your SEO as a share does, though this is true this is not to say that the plus button is not integral. In fact it is key to Google Plus’ SEO.
When someone gives web content a plus, it is loaded into Google+. Now that post can be found on Google+. The more people give web content a plus, the better your internal search results will be on Google Plus and there for on the Google search engine.
Make sure that your web content: web site, blogs, etc. Have the plus button added so people can easily plus your content.
Work With Us
There are many ways to work with the 7 Veils Media team depending on your social media needs. Here are some of the services we offer. Please contact us to discuss your social needs and discover how we can help improve your social media ROI.
