Wednesday, 28 August 2013

5 Tips To Effectively Optimize Your Google + Places Listing

A good Google Places listing can help you get easy traffic to your site. If you are wondering why optimizing your Google+ Places is important, then the answer is simple. Approximately a third of every search is based on location and Google Places makes it very easy to obtain a page one listing.

For example if you are a Real Estate Display Home with multiple sales offices or a retail boutique with multiple outlets, Google Places is an excellent channel to use.

Here is a look at 5 tips to effectively optimize your Google+ places listing.

1. Contact Details on Your Site


The first tip for an effectual Google places optimization is making sure that you have a
contact details page on your website. This page should have details of your phone number and business address. A map is useful as well.

2. Get Citations


You should have citation from around the internet. Citations are when your business or company is listed on other sites, you want to ensure that the right details, that is address, and phone number among other important details are on those sites.

You should make this 100 percent correct for each of your citation around the internet. If it is 100 percent correct, you will get higher ranking in Google Places listings. This will drive more traffic to your websites, hence making your business more known and ultimately bringing more sales.

But you should note that if you have different phone numbers appearing on different websites, this will have an impact on your raking as well.

3. Get Reviews on Your Google Places Listing


It is very important that you get reviews and comments on your places listings. Today, it is not easy to get reviews, particularly as people are more liable to give negative reviews. Therefore, if you have some people who really appreciate and compliment you on your service or product, just send them a link or request them to go to Google Places listing and have them leave a review. This is a great way to give your website a better ranking.

4. Connect With Local Businesses


It is important that you take the chance to post an article on other local companies in the area, whenever you get that opportunity. This way, you will be able to prove to Google that you work within the local region and you are prominent in the locality.

5. The Google Places Dashboard


If you believe there is an issue with your listing, you might access your dashboard. You simply have to log in there and you will be given any errors or other things that you should tidy up.

But at the end of the day, never depend on Google Places, never depend on Google and never depend on a single traffic source. It is good to have many different sources from everywhere in the internet. Hence again, do not depend on Google Places, you will have your listing jumping up and down for any reason. Although reviews come and go, the most excellent thing you can do is concentrate on your number one asset, which is your website. Increase it; make it the source of power. Put a lot of audio and video on it.

Monday, 12 August 2013

Why Promoted Posts Are Better Than Facebook Ads

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that promoted posts on Facebook are better than Facebook ads that appear on Facebook. There are a lot of pros and cons to both forms of advertising, yet promoted posts come out on top. Let’s explore why.

First and foremost, the reason that promoted posts are better than Facebook ads on Facebook is the number of people you can get to click on your post. The reality is, many people don’t even see the ads on the side of the Facebook page. They have become
almost numb to all of the ads that bombard them on web pages. They barely acknowledge that there are any types of ads on the page and they rarely even truly look at them to see if they’re relevant to their needs or wants. With a promoted page, you are sure to get a lot more interest in the information. People are more likely to click on a link that is promoted by a friend or a page that they like than to click on a random ad that they rarely notice. This means that you are raising more brand awareness if you are a business trying to garner attention. There is a great flow chart over at Socialmouths.com. The comparison chart shows that one of the best pros about promoted posts is that more people are likely to open them. The whole reason that someone is going to promote a post is that they want a wide audience to see it. So, promoting it is going to accomplish this very thing.

Won’t It Cost Too Much?A misconception is that you are going to spend a lot of money on a promoted post and not get the exposure that you want. This is not quite true. When you are promoting a post, you are controlling your budget. You can choose how much money to spend because you are choosing how many people will be able to access the post. It’s much better to spend money on a post that you know is going to be clicked on versus the Russian Roulette of sidebar advertising. Being cost effective is a sign of successful advertising and marketing.  Another reason to choose a promoted post over a Facebook ad is the flaw in the search system. Sometimes a person will search something because they are trying to gain information and not because there’s a true interest. A person searching puppy mills is often looking for information to shut down a puppy mill. Facebook sees this search and erroneously believes you want a puppy mill. Then you start to get targeted ads for puppy mills or store bought dogs. This can infuriate even the most laid back Facebook user. A person who has Liked your Facebook page will typically share the same opinions and outlooks. They are going to have a true interest in what you are advertising or promoting. Paying for a promoted post is a much better use of your budgeted money.

How Do I Choose?

If you have a lot of friends and followers, it’s an easy choice to make. You should choose the promoted posts. Over at CooperVision.com there is another good article that details the differences between promoted posts and Facebook ads on Facebook. The pros most definitely outweigh the cons due to price and the amount of interest that your promoted post is going to reach.

Original: Promoted Posts Better Than Facebook Ads

Monday, 5 August 2013

6 Successful Podcasting Tips To Embellish Your Social Media Efforts

We have always believed that content is the king. There have been constant efforts being made by everyone to ensure their websites have exceptional content. Well, content doesn’t necessarily mean text. It could also stretch up to the other ways we have been using to communicate to the audience, like videos, podcasts and graphical representations.

The most recent technique that is being used these days is to transcript videos to make articles. However, if you want some more artistic and creative input to bring more life to your text, you might want to consider using podcasting as a tool. So, what are podcasts? Well, these are nothing but digital multimedia files that are uploaded on the for the user to
download it. The user can download it on desktop, tablet or even his Smartphone. I consider this to be a much simple way to reach the audiences, where they can not listen to your content. However, it is exceptionally important to execute podcast properly.

Listed below are a few successful podcasting tips which can help embellish you social media efforts.

    Quality Information is a ‘Must’ – People usually prefer podcasts only because it doesn’t require you to put much energy reading and understanding it. Therefore, you need to ensure that your podcast provides quality information to the users. By quality information, I mean something that is relevant to the context the user is looking for. Moreover, you also need to ensure that your podcast is interesting, apart from being informative, so that the users don’t feel waste of time while listening to your podcast. For this, it is necessary that you ensure you have a high quality podcast on your site.

    Smart Devices Make it Easy to Reach the Target – We know that podcasts are audio representations, and it is necessary that you get maximum people listening to them. You know most of your users access Internet on Smartphones and thus, you may want to target them through mobile devices. For this, you will first need to see how many of your Facebook users use Smartphones or Tablets to access their Facebook account. If you think more than half, or at least half your users do so, you can add podcasting to your social media efforts. Podcasts can be heard anywhere, anytime, while in gym, buying grocery, traveling or even working.

    Develop Content Which is Easy to Share – You will have made a great podcast, which everyone likes, but make sure that your podcast is such, which is exceptionally easy to share. Only then will it be able to reach a large number of audience. This will also embellish your podcast to be share within your community and even in other communities or networks.

    Broadcast Issues Related to the Industry – You must always determine the content you are going to include in your podcast. Nobody wants to listen to promotions. Make sure you do not make it look like a sales call. It can create a negative impact. Rather, you must include important interviews and discussions related to the industry. Make it look informative than promotional. This will give your audience some really valuable information and enable you to build your credibility.

    Don’t Unnecessarily Stretch the Podcast – Remember, podcast12 is not some upcoming song which users are waiting to be up in the market. For the same reason, make sure that you keep your podcast to the point. People are genuinely not interested in listening to lengthy stuffs. So, keep it to a 30 minute episode with relevant content. It is important to understand that all your users are extremely busy people. They may feel distracted very soon and therefore, you must ensure that you bombard all the important information in the beginning of the podcast.

    Record Your Podcast as Videos – After you have successfully made your podcast, make a video copy of it as well. People like watching videos of such interactive and informative stuffs. It is not necessary that you make a video of the entire audio recording you have. Rather, use different segments of the podcast to make an entire video. Keep it short, almost up to 3 minutes and post it on YouTube, the second most popular search engine. Ensure that you have all the related keywords tagged to the video, to make it come high on search.

Conclusion

You will notice a large number of podcast usage these days. Several large corporations and medium sized businesses are using podcasting to embellish their social media efforts. You can too be one of them. However, it is important that you follow the tips mentioned above to have a perfectly flawless strategy, altogether.

Original post: SociableBlog