Unless a person is deep in search engine optimization work the concept of social signals and their use is probably lost on something to do with saying the right things in professional meetings and events. However, in reality social signals are now becoming an important tool in improving website traffic and search ranking.

Background

Two of the big search engines, Yahoo and Google, recently disclosed that they were reconfiguring how they determine search engine rankings. Social signal measurement is to be used going forward. This metric involves the interplay of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and how users are connecting specific website links to their network lists. It represents the next generational evolution of traditional HTML linking and driving traffic to a specific website target.

As a result, companies and marketers are now worried that the impact of social signal measurement will affect a website’s new position in search engine results. Too little social signaling and the assumption is the website will now fall down to irrelevant search result pages where online searchers hardly every go (most people just click on a link in the first two result pages of a search engine).

Considerations

The challenge of social signals, unlike other influences that can be used to boost a website’s ranking, is that social media connections take manual time to create. As a result, someone has to physically write up the social message, connect a link, and post it to the social media system. Doing so takes time, energy, and personal commitment. Social signal-building is not impossible for small businesses or writers, but it does come with some serious parameters. This caveat is particularly important if a business outsources the social signal work instead of taking care of the linking personally.

First, other efforts such as marketing and back-linking and traditional search engine optimization (SEO) should not be left by the wayside. The overall focus is to increase comprehensive use of the website. The more traffic that references the website, then the more important it must be from the search engine perspective. Social signal-building is part of a comprehensive plan to achieve better search engine ranking and traffic for a website destination. It does not work only on its own.

Second, search engine parameters and measurement factors will change from time to time. A business or writer should not assume what works today will still be the criteria in the future. So ongoing maintenance of the website to maximize a search engine’s review needs to be performed. Otherwise, a website could easily be relegated to the status of content farm or worse, irrelevancy.

Third, the website content needs to be updated regularly with new material and linking. If the website material is stagnant, it will score far less in search engine rankings.

Tom L is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.

Social media networks offer essential tools in building brand awareness for your business. A Facebook page or Twitter account can offer a company exposure to countless potential customers outside its natural geographic boundaries. These are not the only social media networks a company should be using for marketing purposes. If your company is not taking advantage of LinkedIn, it is ignoring a powerful marketing tool in the social media realm.

LinkedIn has emerged as the leading business social network with more than 100 million members worldwide. A company that joins LinkedIn and creates a detailed profile will see immediate benefits. Their page will get listed in search engine results and give the company a brand new outlet to offer news and updates or to promote products and services.

How can LinkedIn build your business? Simply put, it can open doors to new customers, new employees and new relationships with peers in your industry.

One way to make LinkedIn work for your business is through linking your profile to the company blog and other social media accounts. It will help increase your number of followers on those networks and make it easier for everything from blog posts to tweets to reach a wider audience.

Getting involved in specific LinkedIn discussion groups related to your industry is another great way to build brand awareness. You can build up a network of contacts through these groups. Some contacts could become future business partners. Others could form a talent pool from which you draw future employees. When you create connections, make relevant ones. All connections on a LinkedIn company page should ultimately serve the purpose of building your business.

You can take matters into your own hands by creating your own LinkedIn group specifically related to your industry. This lets you build a network of professional contacts on your own terms since you can set the parameters for belonging to the group. It also gives you a chance to initiate discussion topics, answer questions, promote your company and build a strong reputation within your industry.

Perhaps one of the most effective ways to build your business using LinkedIn is to obtain recommendations to put on your public profile. These can be from customers touting your products or services. Recommendations can also come from suppliers or business partners who have worked with your company on past projects. One thing recommendations will do almost immediately is build your credibility with potential customers and business partners. They will see your company as an industry leader that can get the job done

Once you have established your business in LinkedIn, your company will take several steps forward. Sales will increase and your customer base will grow. Your influence will expand and result in helpful professional relationships within your industry. There is no limit to what using LinkedIn as a tool can do to grow your brand. For that reason, there is no reason to neglect using it in your social media approach.

John C is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.

While surfing the Web the other day, I stumbled across a recent article from the Newswire section of the “Sacramento Bee” announcing that BrightEdge, a search engine optimization (SEO) platform company, had just been awarded a patent for one of its SEO processes. The patent covered a unique process that measures a company’s share of “voice” in its particular industry across multiple types of media, including social media, blogs, mobile content, and video sharing. Reading this, my first thought was, “Can they patent an SEO process?” Two other questions quickly followed: “Can that kind of patent be enforced?” and “How will this affect small businesses using SEO techniques to optimize their own page rankings?”

My curiosity had been piqued; this topic definitely warranted some research. Here’s what I found:

Can They Do That?

The short answer it, yes, they can. While the BrightEdge patent is, according to Lemuel Park, CTO of the company, the first-ever awarded to an SEO platform company, SEO patents themselves are not new. The first patent filed – though not awarded – for a page-rank process, was way back in 1997. Other, more recent, patents include one filed by Google in 2005, protecting the search engine giant’s process of retrieving information based on historical data. Business Wire, owned by Warren Buffett, was granted a patent in 2011 for a process that would optimize the timing of press releases to ensure that they were efficiently found and followed by search engines.

Are These Patents Enforceable?

That, unfortunately, is a question that has yet to be answered. Technology and its real-world applications are often several steps ahead of our lawmakers. Some SEO patents are rather nebulous in their descriptions; small changes in wording could make two nearly identical practices seem very different in the eyes of a judge. Other processes are already in general use; it would be hard for a company to prove exclusive ownership of techniques that have been around for years. SEO techniques also change rapidly in response to evolving search engine algorithms. A process that works today may be worthless long before the patent paperwork is finalized, making the question of enforcement moot.

How Does This Affect Small Businesses Using SEO Techniques?

That depends on how the patents are interpreted. If they are only applied to the outright sale of the processes – rather than their actual use – then they won’t affect in-house SEO practices. A company won’t have to worry about whether the process is patented or not unless they try to sell it or want to acquire it from an outside provider. The real downside, as I see it, is that choices will be limited. If a wide variety of processes are patented, each by a different company, then no one will have access to all of them. Businesses wanting to use the most up-to-date SEO practices will be forced to choose a single provider who may only offer one or two of the best options. Other processes, patented by competing companies, will not be available to them.

As you can see, I’ve raised more questions than I’ve answered. This, however, is fascinating stuff, and if you own a business that uses SEO of any kind, it bears watching.

Kate C is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.

Most of us have heard of an instance where a divorce case party got nabbed for indiscretions on his or her Facebook page. However, from a marketing perspective, one might not see an immediate concern to watch what is written on a social media site since it is all business. “How could someone get in trouble for writing about business,” would be the natural reaction. However, while social media resources and tools continue to be cheap, easy ways to access large amounts of people quickly for any kind of brand messaging, these sites are also becoming valuable tools for investigations as well.

From an investigation perspective, a business user of social media needs to understand there are different ways that written material on a social media site can get caught up in an investigation. It can be part of a civil lawsuit, an internal administrative review within the business or a criminal investigation. In each and every case, where the use of social media is involved, lawyers have learned to seek all related records because more often than not what is written can be used in a case.

So back to our question above – why does it matter for a business’ marketing? Being proactively careful on what is written can keep a business out of trouble before it begins. No message from a business that goes outside the office can be considered casual. Every written statement produced reflects back on the brand and the people running the business. As a result, if a business has a Facebook page or Twitter account, but doesn’t pay attention to what the assigned media staff is doing, it could find itself in hot water with an upset party. Typical complaints tend to be objections to what was written or worse, conversations that were hidden about inappropriate actions but available on the site’s records. In either case, when that upset party’s lawyer gets a hold of the material through discovery, it’s a safe bet that the material will be used against the business to win a settlement or judgment.

In some cases, snarky messages and casual statements can be used to reflect the business’ attitude as a whole when it has inadvertently injured someone with its marketing activity. A court can easily decide on a harsher punishment just because the lawyer showed everyone “what the business staff was really thinking at the time.”

There is also no immediate “delete” button once a discovery demand is served on a business. The information and records have to be provided, including from the social media site if they exist. So the best way to avoid this problem is to avoid the inappropriate statements in the first place. All communication should be vetted by the business’ management before being posted. External party concerns or complaints should be routed offsite to a complaint department rather than engaged on the site. Above all, don’t put the office joker in charge of the twitter posts. You might as well give him a gun pointed at your business’ collective head.

Tom L is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.

Do you ever feel like everybody you know is on Facebook? It’s not just your imagination. December 2011 reports show that Facebook has more than 845 million active monthly users, and nearly 60 percent of them log in daily.

That means your Facebook business page has a chance to reach almost 850 million users each month.

Do you have feel the pressure yet? Don’t let yourself get too worried; creating and maintaining an impressive Facebook business page is not as difficult as you might think. There are hundreds of different ways to make your business page rock, but we’ve decided to focus on five of the most important ones:

Include Information About Your Company

Some folks argue that Facebook is the new Google. What does that mean to you? Customers skip the search engines and go straight to the popular social networking site to find information about new products and services. Don’t let them leave without finding what they are looking for.

Make sure your company’s Facebook page includes information about hours, locations, services and products. You should also include interesting tidbits about your company, preferably ones that are worded differently or not found on your website. And don’t forget contact info like phone numbers and email addresses, as well as a link to your website. All of this information belongs on the “About” section of your profile.

Update Your Page Frequently

When was the last time your business posted a new photo or status update? If you can’t remember, it’s been too long. Customers like fresh content. They don’t want to visit your business page and find a bunch of stuff from 2009.

Be careful, though. It’s easy to neglect your page, but it’s also easy to get overly excited and post status updates multiple times an hour. If you post too often, fans will get annoyed and stop subscribing to your updates. If you don’t post often enough, fans will get bored and leave. Aim for at least one, but no more than five, status updates and photo uploads per day.

Reward Your Fans and Subscribers

Some Facebook fans will “like” your page just because they love your company. They expect nothing in return and are happy to follow a brand or product that they have had a favorable experience with. Others have a “What’s in it for me?” attitude. These are the ones who will leave if they don’t get what they want.

Keep everybody happy by rewarding your Facebook fans with special discounts and promo codes for your products. Include printable coupons and information about contests or sweepstakes. Encourage fans to upload photos of themselves using your products and make sure to comment on each photo.

Post Interesting Updates

A Facebook business page is free advertising for your company, but that doesn’t mean every single thing should be about your product or business. Your fans don’t want to read post after post about how they should buy your stuff or subscribe to your services. It’s okay to plug your products from time to time, but do it discreetly. Also, make sure that your status updates are interactive and encourage feedback. Here are a few samples:

• We love our new flavors of Super Tasty Pasta Sauce. Which one is your favorite?
• Spotted: A lovely lady in our new heels and a pair of skinny jeans. What do you wear your heels with?
• Our yummy frozen dinners make it easy to get dinner on the table fast. What will you do with your extra time?

Respond to All Customer Complaints

When customers talk, they expect you to listen. The 2010 Customer Experience Report shows that 58 percent of people expect a response when they comment on a social networking site such as Facebook, but only 22 percent of consumers actually receive one. When you do respond, make sure to do so in a timely manner; 42 percent of consumers would like to hear back from your company within one day.

What happens if you fail to respond and turn an angry customer into a satisfied one? Seventy-nine percent of angry consumers spread the word to family and friends, and 82 percent of customers have stopped using a product or service after one negative experience. Also, keep in mind that complaints left on your wall are visible to the public. Responding to issues in a timely manner shows customers that you care, even if they didn’t make the complaint. It doesn’t matter how many beautiful photos you upload or contests you have if your customers aren’t satisfied, so address all issues and complaints as quickly as possible. Your customers are waiting – and not always patiently.

All you hear about is how important social media is for business marketing. You spent time and money planning your strategy, creating your social media marketing budget and putting your plan in place. The problem – social media suddenly becomes your only marketing focus. Granted, social media marketing is cost effective and gets results. However, putting all your marketing eggs in one social basket often leads to a basket full of broken marketing eggs.

The Pitfalls of Social Media Alone

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest offer a chance for you to interact with your customers and related businesses. They are perfect for making new contacts and finding out what your customers want. The problem is you severely limit yourself when you rely upon nothing but social media for your feedback.

With numbers close to a billion, plenty of your audience likely uses social networks, but how often? Many people create an account to talk to a few select people or gain access to promotions from their favorite brands. Odds are, they log in maybe once a week, maybe less. In the end, your audience is far less than the number of actual users. With privacy concerns, numbers decrease further. Social media alone can alienate many customers.

Another common problem is building a fan base. Creating a social media account doesn’t guarantee results. You have to create awareness. Some businesses have learned the hard way that even marketing on a social networking site isn’t enough to create a substantial fan base. You need outside marketing strategies to draw attention to your social media marketing campaign.

As a final pitfall, you spend so much time responding to fans and connections you forget to focus on updating your website and blog. You don’t think twice about marketing to search engines or offline strategies for local promotions. Think of other marketing strategies as your social media foundation. You need it all.

Standing Out Outside of Social Media

Yes you can stand out without focusing all your energy on social media marketing. Take a look at some of the most popular pages. You’ll notice they all have updated websites, blogs and community interactions. Odds are, they have just as many regular visitors, if not more, to these other sites and pages as they do on social media sites. They often tie the two together using social plugins, but the point is, they have alternate marketing methods.

The object is to get social outside of social sites. Community and charity events (both online and off) not only create great press and backlinks, but draw people to your brand and social pages. Another way to create a presence outside social media is to become a guest expert for other websites, online and offline classes, public speaking events and online video series.

Remember that social media isn’t everything. It is important, but you need a strong foundation of other marketing strategies to make social media truly successful.

Social media is today’s marketing buzzword. Businesses are using it to reach out to targeted and engaged potential customers. But like all human endeavors, social media is not immune to conflict.

Take the case of Phonedog v. Noah Kravitz. Last year the tech blog company sued its former employee over the ownership of a Twitter account. Kravitz had a personal account while working for the company, and Phonedog management asked him in a very informal way — unfortunately, it turns out — to use his account to keep customers up to date on the happenings at Phonedog. Kravitz complied, and for a while all was well. Phonedog was happy, Kravitz was happy, even the customers were happy. They liked Kravitz’s Tweets — sent out under the handle Phonedog_Noah — so much that the account quickly attracted nearly 17,000 followers.

The trouble started in 2010. Kravitz left Phonedog for greener pastures, taking his Twitter account and his massive following with him. And why not? It was his private account, right? Wrong, said Phonedog. The account was started and maintained on company time and its followers amounted to a confidential customer list. Kravitz, they said, could leave, but the account had to stay.

Kravitz did not agree. He changed his Twitter handle to NoahKravitz and took it with him. His followers, he claimed, were not Phonedog clients but free citizens who chose to follow his fascinating Tweets. Phonedog sued. Not only did the account belong to them, the lawsuit claimed, but it had a monetary value as well. Each client, they estimated, was worth $2.50 a month to the company. Multiply that by the eight months Kravitz had been gone, and he owed the company a whopping quarter of a million dollars.

Like all things legal, it looks like this case will be in the courts for a long time. Suits and counter-suits are flying back and forth. Earlier this year, Phonedog, apparently tired of appearing like a heartless corporation intent on stomping on free expression, released a public rebuttal. They claimed Kravitz not only stole their property, he also violated their trust in other ways by promoting competing companies using the same Twitter account they claimed was theirs. They also claimed that Phonedog has tried to settle the case repeatedly, and it is Kravitz who refuses to cooperate.

What does this mean if you’re thinking of wading into the world of social media? It means you should plan ahead to save yourself from a possible legal headache. Outline your company policy on the use of social media from the outset. Make sure that all present employees understand it completely, and add it to every new employee’s indoctrination. Outline everything from the use of social media during business hours to the legal ownership of your company name, logo, and client lists.

Whatever the courts decide about Noah Kravitz and Phonedog, having a clear, written policy in place for your company now will keep your proverbial backside covered in the future.

Kate C is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.

Many of today’s social media companies gained their start with the heavy funding from venture capitalists and angel investors. Eventually, these companies generally aim to gather enough of a market following to make a pitch for public investment. When they do, as Facebook is preparing for over the coming months, a number of significant changes tend to happen. How those changes are implemented can dramatically affect the customer base.

From Investment to Profit

One fundamental shift in how a company transforms going public involves no longer being reliant on investor funds. Once the company has gone public, it has essentially shifted its ownership to a conglomeration of shareholders, big and small. When that initial investment purchase money runs out, the company then has to sink or swim on a true profit business model.

As a result, many of the features that attracted customers to a social media company can change drastically. The business now has to identify and expand on those features that make money and get rid of those that produce nothing for the business. Social media company owners know darn well that what makes their websites popular is the communication factor and the ability to link so much of daily life to the Internet. The sense of inclusion makes the product attractive. However, now, that product has to be monetized as well.

The Advertisement Model

One of the most basic changes that customers will see is the easiest one to implement. Companies leverage their website users as a marketing resource. Google perfected this process with its search engine and many of the social media players are now trying to emulate it. However, people utilize social media to talk to each other, not to be bombarded with advertisement. Yahoo is a perfect example where website advertising went overboard and drove users away. So page advertising doesn’t always work, especially when it detracts from the main social media product.

The Fee Model

Social media companies could very well begin charging for their services and access. At first, a number of users will grumble and pay. They’ve invested time, energy and a lot of material building up their own niche in a particular social media site. However, once they figure out how to migrate to the next free site, many will leave. Then the one thing that makes a social media site attractive begins to be lost, the people. So a fee approach could very well kill such a business that started out with free access in the first place.

The Information Model

A more subtle approach involves taking customers’ information and selling that data to third parties repeatedly. Social media companies have the capability to collect in immense amount of data that can be sorted by demographic filters, geographic criteria, buying preferences, financial data, and more. The data is there in high detail because customers have freely provided it. As long as the company has the necessary agreement terms in its user contracts, which no one ever reads, then they have permission to use the data and sell it to third parties. This can be quite lucrative for marketing-resource hungry businesses as well as nonprofit entities like government. However, this is the type of action that can create a viral panic among customers; as soon as people realize they are being spied on they will shut off access. So it’s a high-stakes gamble taking this approach for monetization. However, it’s also quite viable.

Tom L is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.

Savvy business owners worldwide are adding social media to their inbound marketing campaigns. After all, social media is a great way to connect with a targeted and engaged audience. The problem is, there are many social media outlets and each account requires maintenance and generates large amounts of data. So many questions can arise. How do you keep your content current? How do you keep up with followers’ comments and questions? Which postings have generated the most interest? The answers to all these questions can be found in social media management apps.

Social media management apps are downloadable online applications designed specifically to track multiple accounts, time the release of postings, simplify the process of adding content and track the efficacy of your marketing campaign. Here are a few of the most useful:

• TweetDeck – TweetDeck is designed to work like a desktop for social media accounts, allowing users to view multiple accounts on a single page. Originally designed for Twitter, it can also incorporate other accounts including Facebook and Myspace. With TweetDeck, you can arrange your Twitter feeds into columns, separating the different feeds by topic. You can also set TweetDeck’s sophisticated parameters to filter out unwanted tweets. Perhaps the best feature is TweetDeck’s scheduler. This allows you to write multiple tweets in advance and have them released at prescheduled times.
• MarketMeSuite – MarketMeSuite is another social media dashboard that allows for the management of multiple accounts, but it has other unique and useful features as well. It allows you to send a single post to multiple accounts simultaneously. It can send an automated welcome message to new followers. It can even aggregate incoming data, allowing users to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of their marketing campaigns. Perhaps its most unique feature is its “location targeting” which allows for real-world networking between business people with shared goals who are in the same geographic area.
• SocialOomph – SocialOomph offers tools that let you track “retweets” and “mentions” on both Twitter and StatusNet, allowing you to assess the real-time life of your postings. SocialOomph also lets you track specific keywords, alerting you whenever they show up in the public Twitter stream. This is a great way to keep an eye on the competition and to identify potential clients as well. SocialOomph also has a URL shortener – similar to tinyURL – with the added benefit of a tracking system that lets you see how often your link is used.
• Buffer – Buffer is perhaps the most unique of the management apps. Buffer not only lets you send out pre-scheduled Tweets, but it also allows you to add content instantly. Any time you come across something you want to share with your followers, you simply hit the Buffer icon and it will be instantly added to your Twitter feed. Content can be added using the Internet, a mobile phone and even Twitter itself.

These apps are just the tip of the iceberg. As social media continues to grow, more management tools are springing up every day. If the ones listed above don’t meet your needs, keep looking. Whatever your current needs, there’s sure to be an app out there that will meet them.

Most people who have used a smartphone are familiar with the concept of text messaging or SMS messaging. Now take that idea a step further into selling and you get the concept of text marketing. With the aid of people’s smartphones and their willingness to respond to electronic messages, the marketing approach gets around one of the biggest problems with sales: the cold call.

Also known as mobile marketing, text marketing starts with a predetermined plan and approach. People are already doing just about everything with their smartphones, so the text approach takes advantage of this familiarity. The setting needs to be a place where people are already stable and able to use their phones. Trying to connect with consumers when they’re driving is a bad idea. Instead, restaurants and bars, airports, malls, and waiting areas work far better.

The next part of the catalyst needs to be some kind of a trigger. The consumer is encouraged by the trigger to initiate the text communication with a business. In a bar, for example, the trigger could be game instructions on the side of a pint glass. As the consumer is having a happy-hour drink and reading the glass he sees the instructions and decides to text with his cell phone. Instantly that consumer has now initiated a warm lead. He has transmitted his phone number, cellular address, and in some cases even his name. While the response back can just be the next step of the game, the text message can also include targeted marketing. To continue the game, the consumer has to continue texting, triggering further messaging. This can lead to more detailed links that bring the consumer to specific websites with his smartphone.

The power of this kind of text marketing can be exponential. It avoids the costs associated with aggressive marketing that tries to turn a cold lead into a warm one. With all the information that can be gathered by a consumer who initiates contact, the data capture can be immense. Not only can this information send back an immediate sales message, it can be used again and again to make future contacts. Granted, a consumer can always request to be taken off future lists, and the ability to do so should be included in any message as a courtesy. However, most people don’t tend to go through the trouble.

If even 5 percent of contacts respond to the text marketing involved and generate a sale, the results can be significant in terms of revenue. The best part of this type of marketing is that it tends to be automated. While a text marketing message could include the ability to make contact with a real human representative, many such programs link to further electronic information and websites to expand upon the marketing already provided. This sort of system can operate 24/7, even when all of your employees are on vacation.