Anyone—anyone—can make a website. Anyone can create a Twitter account, start a blog, or launch a Facebook fan page. And anyone—from 13-year-old girls to 45-year-old men—can pretend to be an attractive 20-year-old woman on the Internet. In the world of Internet spam, scams, and shams, we’ve learned to be wary of what we find online. Search engines are no different. Too often we forget that search engines aren’t just a tool to help us find news articles or guacamole recipes. Search engines are running a business—a business whose success relies on providing you legitimate, rel [...]

Related Topics: How To | How To: SEO | How To: Social Media Marketing | Intermediate | Search & Social

Earlier in the year, YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the world’s second largest search engine. In June 2011, ComScore reported that in the U.S., YouTube attracted 5.6 billion viewing sessions per month and the average U.S. visitor frequents the site 23 times a month with each visit lasting on average 26 minutes. And, just today, ComScore also reported that YouTube passed 20 billion video views during October 2011 alone. No matter how you look at the data, that’s a lot of eyeballs and a lot of time spent on a single site that a marketer can take advantage of. But creating a video is only hal [...]

Related Topics: Enterprise SEM | Google: YouTube & Video | How To: Social Media Marketing | Paid Search | Search Ads: Video | Search Engines: Video Search Engines

Today, Google launched Google+ Pages, allowing businesses to take part in its social network. Here's a walk-through on how to create and manage these pages: Creating A Page Within two days or sooner, everyone is supposed to be able to make pages by using the Create A Page tool. Availability is rolling out now, so if you get an "Google+ Pages isn't ready" error, keep checking back. (NOTE: Google now says everyone should have access). Assuming you do have access, I'll start with what you see when making a page for the "Product or Brand" category, though the steps work the same for any c [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Google: Google+ | How To: Social Media Marketing

Image fatigue is a huge issue in Facebook. In general, people tire of seeing the same Facebook advertising images. Facebook also understands this and after 72 hours or so, they tend to decrease ad impressions to "old" ads. As a result, advertisers need solid strategies to help develop and "freshen" ads so they continue to appear in Facebook. In this article, I’ll cover ways to effectively and systematically incorporate new images into your Facebook advertising. I credit many of the tips in this article from a recent conversation with Jennifer Sheahan from FBadsLAB. Note: CTRs in Facebo [...]

Related Topics: How To | How To: Facebook | How To: Social Media Marketing | Intermediate | Paid Search

If you're not using these tools to measure social media, you're getting it wrong.  These  tools enable you to measure social media properly, in a way that will lead to building stronger relationships, getting more traffic and converting more. What Social Media Analytics Includes ... And Excludes The purpose of social media is to interact with people, thus building relationships. From a business perspective, there are many reasons to do that, chiefly that people buy from people they know and like and because it opens opportunities - hence social "networking" - you're getting the same benefi [...]

Related Topics: How To: Analytics | How To: Social Media Marketing | Search Marketing Toolbox | Social Media Marketing