In last month’s column, I made the case for going in-house and shared my experience of switching from a successful consulting and lead gen career to joining the ranks of Silicon Valley’s startup scene. That article talks about some of the things to consider before accepting a job and what to expect as an in-house […]
First things first, let’s start with a little background…If you would have told me a year ago that I’d be working as an in-house SEO, I would have laughed in your face and told you to go do something dirty to yourself. Yet, here I am today, working as an in-house SEO, and I couldn’t […]
If you’re using Digg as a linkbaiting tool, then you’re perceived as a villain. Everyone from Digg itself, to the community, to other self-proclaimed social media experts thinks you’re the bad guy. Even though good linkbait provides value to the community (because who doesn’t like remarkable content?), if they know you’re putting up the […]
If you’ve been involved with social media at all lately, you’ve realized that getting your linkbait on Digg has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, especially if you’re trying from a commercial domain. This has left many social media marketers scrambling for ways to please their clients or find new ways to attract links virally […]
Last year I wrote a post called 5 Reasons To Put Viral Content On Mini-Sites, providing reasons why you might opt to use a mini-site rather than keeping all the content on your main domain. One of the reasons was because content might not spread due to your domain.
Getting your linkbait post, widget, or other content featured on the front page of Digg is one thing—a good thing, as this can drive a spike in traffic. Getting a whole bunch of links to that content, however, is entirely another matter. After all, the purpose of linkbait should be to attract links, not just […]
The audience that makes up the majority of Digg users tends to be very fickle. The slightest whiff of linkbait and they will bury your story into the depths of hell, where it will never see the light of day again. They hate SEO and it’s no secret. This is the reason why it’s so […]
We all know what the KISS acronym stands for: keep it simple, stupid. In this article I want to talk about how this applies to creating content for social media marketing, namely linkbait. You see, users from social news sites have very short attention spans while browsing these sites. They’re generally there to read multiple […]
One very important factor in executing successful linkbaiting campaigns is to have power accounts on the various social news sites. Having a power account increases the chances of hitting the popular pages for the content you submit. Building up a power account takes a lot of time and one of the more difficult aspects of […]
StumbleUpon is a hot social discovery site that continues to rapidly increase in popularity. With the increase in popularity comes an increase in the potential traffic that it can drive to your sites. StumbleUpon has always been great at driving traffic and links, but lately I’ve started to notice that it is one of the […]
MySpace is a great social media site that marketers can leverage in a number of different ways. One of these is building up a large audience for your profile, which can then be used to drive traffic to your site, interact with consumers, create mind share, and even empower people to brand your company for […]
The big news in social media last week was when Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Platform, which opens their API to allow third parties to build applications within Facebook. This means that companies now have instant access to Facebook’s twenty-four million members. And, even better, applications developed for the Facebook Platform can serve their […]
When it comes to leveraging social media marketing for your link building campaigns, it seems that most of us focus on Digg and Digg alone. The problem with this is that you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. If for some reason the content doesn’t get popular on Digg, then you’re out of luck, […]
As search marketers, mini-sites might not seem to make sense. Why put content on a new domain when you could just put it on your existing domain, so it can benefit from all the link love? Mini-sites have been around forever, but with a new report from eMarketer showing they provide the best results for […]
It’s no secret that having a power account on social media sites can mean the difference between a successful campaign and one that flops. It’s not everything, but it is definitely important. With more and more people trying to leverage the social communities for marketing campaigns, it’s important that you get every edge that you […]
There are essentially four different types of return that you can expect from a successful social media marketing campaign: links, mindshare/branding, sales and consumer interaction. Below, a look at each type of return and how you can tap into it, depending on your goals.
In addition to being a great standalone marketing strategy, social media marketing is also widely used in concert with search engine optimization. One of the reasons social media marketing has been so widely adopted by those in the SEO industry is because of the dramatic impact that social media has directly on search engine listings. […]
One of the most frequently asked question I get about social media marketing is "Should we try and market to all social media sites or just focus on certain ones?" There are a couple ways to answer that question, and it really depends on a lot of factors. In my opinion, it makes more sense […]
There seems to be a lot of misconception that social media marketing isn’t ethical. Almost daily, I come across bloggers who denounce SMM as spam or suggest that social media marketers are poisoning the community well. In reality, they either aren’t properly educated or perhaps only see the "bad apples" of social media marketing. It […]
Last week, Neil Patel wrote an article about the social media alphabet. It gave a brief overview of Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. While Neil did a great job of covering the social news sites, I wanted to chime in and cover some of the other letters of the alphabet that should be considered when […]