Under Threat Of Being Blocked Google, Facebook Comply With India's New Internet Censorship Rules

After China and the US, India is the third largest internet market in the world. But India has philosophically aligned itself more with China in pursuing a policy of censorship toward publication of content deemed “offensive” or “objectionable” by individuals, groups or the government.

A recently enacted law seeks to remove all such content from the internet in India. Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were sued under the law and had been arguing in Indian court that it was all but impossible for them to comply as a practical matter. The law makes online publishers potentially liable for the acts of individual users and third parties (think “offensive” blog hosted on Blogger or “objectionable” video uploaded to YouTube).

According to a BBC report Indian Communications Minister Kapil Sibal said the following in December about the desired impact of the new law:

My aim is that insulting material never gets uploaded. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue. [The companies] will have to give us the data, where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it.

Google, Facebook and others had argued that they had no control over individuals and should not be held liable for their conduct accordingly. They said they cannot “pre-filter” material generated by millions of users. This is what would be called a “prior restraint” against free speech in the US.

Indian courts have been unsympathetic and demanded that the companies comply or be blocked entirely “like in China.” The BBC says that the companies have now complied and removed offending material at issue in a particular civil lawsuit.

However the overly vague nature of the statute on which these claims are based almost guarantees that Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and other online publishers in India will face a steady stream of litigation from individuals or groups “offended” by this or that image, article or video.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-facebook-comply-with-indias-new-internet-censorship-rules-110377

8 Tips to Avoid Social Media Disaster

Amber Mac's Keynote at SES Toronto 2011 was almost renamed How to Avoid Weinergate in light of the recent social media scandal named after, um, Weiner's weiner. The key theme of her presentation was authenticity and provided best practice on how to plan a corporate social media strategy and tips on how to avoid a social PR disaster.

Below is an outline of some of the key takeaways from her presentation.

1. Have a Social Media Policy

Social media sites have a home in today’s workplace, but each company needs to develop its own rules for its employees about how and when social media should be used at work.

Does anybody like writing policy agreement? Nope. So use Policy Tool, a free web-based policy generator that will write your company’s policy based on a 12-question survey. You can customize it from there.

Can’t get employees to read the result? Try making video privacy policy like this one from the Victoria Department of Justice.

2. Be Authentic

You don’t have to hire an actor to appear in your marketing videos. Let the company speak for itself.

Would an actor have been as charming as Blendtec Founder, Tom Dickson, using his high-end blenders to blend high-end electronics? Sales at the company (whose blenders will set you back $400) increased 500% along with their viral videos.

3. Be Original

Amber cited a number of original online marketing campaigns. Among them were Charmin’s support of Sit or Squat, an app that locates and assesses the quality of public restrooms so you always know where to go to go, Footlocker’s Sneakerpedia, an online authority on sneaker history, and Ben & Jerry’s Fair Tweets app, which adds messages to the ends of users tweets in support of Fair Trade.

4. Avoid Social Media Done Wrong

Dave Carroll’s viral “United Breaks Guitars” video has attracted over 10 million views on YouTube. Amber cited a recent study that concluded United Airlines had lost 180 million dollars and 10 percent of their share price as a result of the damage to their reputation. That’s enough to have bought Dave 80,000 of the Taylor guitars that United refused to replace.

5. Assess your Associations on the Web

Use Wefollow and Klout to assess the digital influence of the businesses and individuals you are building relationships with online. Remember, influence scores only tell you so much. You’ll need to do some research to discover whether someone’s influential message is one you want your brand associated with.

6. Keep up on Trends: What’s Hot This Year on the Web?

• Group buying: Groupon and others have become the fastest growing web sector. Watch out for Uforce, a reverse Groupon business model that allows customers to band together and propose bulk buying to businesses in return for discounts.
• Quora is a crowdsourcing question and answer resource that’s gaining traction. Your brand’s presence could position it as an authority on topics related to your products.
• Qwiki is a popular resource that gathers information for a search term and assembles it into a multimedia presentation accompanied by a spoken narrative. It’s a good resource for building infographics. Amber said she is addicted to exploring the different data visualizations.

7. Key Social Media Statistics

Here are some stats from the presentation that caught our eye:

• 66 percent of women don’t check in with Foursquare due to the “creepiness factor.” Simply put, many women don’t want to constantly publicize where they are out of concern for their safety. This might be something to consider if you're trying to find appropriate social channels for a brand with a largely female customer base.
• 35 percent of people use mobile applications before they get out of bed in the morning. No word yet as to how many of those applications are alarm clocks.
• On Facebook, only 10 percent of people engaged with a brand will interact with the brand page. Ninety percent of engagement happens in the news feeds. Success depends on your use of “the blank box,” so keep up with your updates! 

8. Recommended Tools

Here are some of the tools mentioned that will help you manage your Social Resources.

• For free Facebook monitoring, Amber talked about Facebook Insights as the best option.
• For monitoring all of your social media resources, she spoke about Radian 6 as the paid tool she uses.
• For a social media dashboard, she recommended Hootsuite.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2079684/8-Tips-to-Avoid-Social-Media-Disaster

Social Media Study Shows Increased LinkedIn Popularity

Increasing popularity for LinkedIn, highly visible brand loyalty to groups that are liked or followed on social networks, and increased reliance on social media to receive product announcements, PR responses, and company information are among the key findings of a new study from ROI Research. 

The ROI Research study, sponsored by Performics (a search engine marketing company), involved surveys of 2,997 individuals who actively use social networks. Titled S-Net, the study looks to see the impact of social media and understand how today's users interact with it.

Only an abbreviated version of the study has been released. More in-depth findings, including information for several specific industries, will be released later this summer.

LinkedIn: The Star of the Study

The major name that surfaced in the study is LinkedIn. This business-oriented social network was seen as the most important network according to 59 percent of those surveyed.

Of the participants who have an active LinkedIn account, half visit the site at least once per week and one-fifth visit at least once per day. The active use of LinkedIn spiked dramatically during the height of the recession, when more than two-thirds of active users visited at least once per week, and the increasing popularity of LinkedIn has been blamed on the slow job market.

As Daina Middleton, Performics's CEO, stated, "Individuals have embraced social networking as a means to actively manage their personal viability in the global economy." Middleton sites recent additions to the site as well the increase in unemployment rate seen in May as reasons for LinkedIn's current appeal.

Other Social Media Findings

While LinkedIn is seen as a vital tool, it may not be the most financially valuable asset to brands. That's thanks to the increasing trust of brands and shared content in social media. Here are some of the social networkñbrand findings from the study.

• 50 percent of users actively seek purchase advice and 50 percent of users actively give advice on social networks
• 60 percent of users are "somewhat likely" or more likely to take action on product, service, or brand recommended by a social contact.
• 59 percent of users who follow a company or brand are more likely to recommend that company or brand, and 58 percent are more likely to buy the products of that company themselves.
• 53 percent of users use social networks at least "frequently" to provide feedback to a brand or retailer.
• 53 percent of users state that companies should communicate using social networks at least once a week.

What you should take from this is simple: If you haven't already, you need to get onto the social networks – and especially LinkedIn – and communicate with your potential employees, partners, clients, and customers. Loyalty on social networks has become a substantial part of the decision-making process for many consumers.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2077977/Social-Media-Study-Shows-Increased-LinkedIn-Popularity

Social Content Seeding for SEO

Social media budgets often takes a backseat to search. After all, it’s easier to measure the ROI of search, so marketers see it as a safer bet.

First, it’s easier to tie SEO and PPC directly to sales than, say, tweets or Facebook likes. Second, search offers an element of intentional targeting: whereas social users log-on to socialize, search users are actively looking for something – and probably that much closer to a purchasing decisions.

But the social evolution of SEO has brought search and social closer together. Specifically, now that social signals impact rankings, marketers need to invest social as part of their SEO strategy. 

After all, search engines look for these “social signals” because they want to show human beings the most relevant search results. And what better way to determine whether something is relevant to humans than by measuring how many other human beings have said that it’s relevant?

So now, you need more than just backlinks to rank. You also need tweets, likes, and other “votes” from social users to let search engines know that your brand is relevant.

Shareable Content 101

It’s one thing to place social buttons on all your pages. But if you want to get your content (e.g. product pages) tweeted, liked, and bookmarked, you need to understand what motivates user to do so. There are a number of reasons users share content, but they usually do so because it’s: 

• Useful/Informative
• Interesting
• Unique/Original
• Inspirational
• Funny/Entertaining
• Surprising/Shocking

Depending on what vertical you’re in and what kind of products/services you sell, your content can probably be made to fill one of these roles. For instance, there are also a number of elements on a page that a user can be induced to share.

• The Product/Service
• Product Description
• Product Reviews (UGC)
• Product Images/Video
• Price

The point is that marketers should be able to find some element on its pages that can attract social signals. For example, if you sell quirky gadgets, you’ll want to make it easy for users to tweet, like, and Digg them.

Conversely, if you sell everyday products that users can buy any number of other websites, you might find creative ways to write product descriptions so that they’re more likely to catch the users attention, causing them to share it. Similarly, you might open things up to user reviews so that your page is more frequently updated with additional keyword content that users will want to share with their network.

So optimizing your content for shareability involves identify what elements of your content have the most sharing potential. Then you ensure that your sharing button are integrated in a way that users feel they’ll be sharing that element – and not just the page in general.

Facebook Seeding

The idea behind seeding content on Facebook is to build a strong base of engaged fans so that when you share a link on Facebook, more people see it, which results in more likes and shares which do support the SEO of that link and its domain.

Now, building an engaged following on Facebook is something that requires ongoing community management. But there are two things you can do to boost your fan acquisition on Facebook.

1. Design a welcome/splash tab that dares users to like your brand. This will point clearly to where the Like button is, and gives users and incentive to click it (i.e., a call to action).
2. Drive traffic to the page using Facebook Ads. Through Facebook Ads, you can target users according to a variety of demographics and send users to a customized landing tab (such as your welcome/splash tab). This will allow you to drive an influx of new fans to your page, and further grow a following of users that can send out social signals about your content. 

Social Contests 

Another effective way to attract social signals is through social contest. By running social contests, you can generate immediate social signals and build your following – both on and off Facebook.

The idea behind a social contest is simple: offer users a chance to win something cool if they follow you and share your content with their network. Social contests can also be run on Twitter, Facebook, or through a blog.

• On Twitter: You can ask that users follow you and retweet a link. The retweeting will help a link go viral, and the new followers will mean a bigger reach to potentially share more of your content in the future.
• On Facebook: You can ask that people like your brand and then write on their wall. This gains you another fan to possibly like your content in the future and whose friends will see has interacted with your brand twice.
• On your blog: Users can enter a contest by leaving a comment and tweeting or liking it. Posts with a lot of comments often gain PageRank and support your overall rankings. And leveraging their personal networks helps you attract more comments.

Social News Sites

Now, people do a lot more on Twitter and Facebook than just share content. They also do everything from interact to broadcast personal updates.

But there are other online communities (such as Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon) that are designed specifically to share content. This makes them ideal channels for seeding content and attracting social media links that directly support your SEO.

When content is submitted to one of these sites, users can vote it up or down. When a user votes it up, it gets a link on that user's profile page. Score.

If enough users vote for a piece of content, it appears on the home page. In the case of Digg or Reddit, both have a PageRank of 8. That means a link from a trusted site. Super score!

Then there's all the traffic that actually gets pushed through to your site. This usually leads to additional residual links, such as from bloggers and tweets.

Of course, you can’t just submit your product pages and expect to go viral. Rather, you need a two-stage approach.

• You have to create compelling content that’s going to resonate with these communities. It might be a Top 10 blog post, an infographic, or a video, but it has to something that meets the “sharability criteria”, doesn’t try to sell anything, and was created just for that audience.
• You have to go out and promote that content. This means being social. It means creating profiles and building them up so that you have contacts and access to influencers. It means giving more to the community than you ask of it.

An interesting benefit of these social users, moreover, is that they tend to share over more than one network. So while if one of these users are willing to Digg or Stumble your content, they’ll probably like or tweet it, too.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2075480/Social-Content-Seeding-for-SEO

3 Key Metrics To Measure Social Media Success

Social media marketing has entered a new era. Brands are no longer content to simply experiment with a Facebook page and a Twitter account and “hope for the best.” With social media marketing budgets on the rise, marketers need their social campaigns to drive bottom-line sales, measurable brand benefit, and improved customer lifetime value.

The maturation of the social media space has created the need for simple, standardized measurement techniques that clearly show whether social campaigns are working to deliver real brand impact and actual sales. Unlike the online advertising industry, which has standardized on a few key metrics (CPC, CPA, and CPM), social media success measurement is still in its infancy and continues to suffer from a lack of common metrics standards.

Large brands are able to license powerful social media analytics software and hire agencies to help them measure social programs with accuracy. However, many smaller organizations are unsure of how to best measure their social marketing programs.

• What should we measure?
• How do we measure it?
• What does success look like?
• Out of the many numbers we could measure for social media, how do you determine which are the key metrics you should measure now and in the long term?

The answers to these questions are complex, but every company can get started with social media measurement by focusing on three simple metrics.

These metrics won’t tell you everything about the impact of your social media programs, but they will establish a low-cost, repeatable standard you can use to gauge success over time.

1. Total Online Community Size (sCRM)
Assuming your business has invested in a solid brand community presence on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and launched a few managed blogs, measuring the total active size of your social CRM program is the simplest key metric to regularly evaluate.

Absolute size isn’t as important as whether your program steadily growing over time. The sCRM metric offers insight into the value you’re creating for those communities, as well as size of the ‘captured audience’ that has granted you permission to receive regular messaging, deals, and content.

sCRM = #Facebook Fans + #Twitter Followers + #blog unique users + #YouTubeChannel subscribers + #all other registered managed community members

To do: Manually collect figures from key channels; calculate weekly or monthly; save figures in basic spreadsheet; produce sparkline graphs to depict trendline. Bonus points: calculate same numbers for top three competitors and compare monthly.

2. Monthly Referred Social Traffic to Site (sTraffic)
Many large brands use sophisticated social content sharing tools to exactly track social media link clicks, content pass-along, and other deeper metrics. However, you can start simple and focus on the total unique site traffic coming to your website from links shared through blogs, forums, and the key social networks. You can get this with a simple query through your Omniture, WebTrends, Google Analytics, or other website analytics tool.

sTraffic = monthly website Unique Users via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, owned and 3rd party blogs, and forums

To do: Export absolute sTraffic # and % of total site traffic from your site analytics tool to a spreadsheet, then produce month-over-month sparkline graphs to depict trendlines.

3. Social Monthly Impressions (sMI)
Measuring the true reach of your brand in social media is a daunting task; it can take the best analytical minds weeks and a variety of tools. But estimating your ‘social monthly impressions’, while an imperfect science, can help provide a sense of how pervasive your brand is across the Web.

sMI = #mentions of your brand on blogs, forums, Twitter, etc. within a given month.

To do: Monitor brand mentions on a regular schedule (daily/weekly) using a free alerts tool like Google Alerts. While not necessarily comprehensive, this offers a regular digest of the individual instances of brand mentions in blogs, mainstream news media sites, and on large public social networks like Twitter.


Advanced Approach: Evaluate and select one of the many social monitoring tools to track total pervasive brand mentions, or take a look at emerging tools offered by companies like Simply Measured and SocialMention.

Whatever your level of social media marketing efforts, if you measure these three numbers at least once per month and track their relative movement over time with simple sparkline graphs via spreadsheet charts, you’ll be able to regularly observe the benefits of your social investments.

While it’s not a one-size-fits-all complete social media analytics solution, tracking sCRM, sTraffic, and sMI will get you started on a basic ‘measure it to manage it’ program for your core online social community initiatives.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2073592/3-Key-Metrics-To-Measure-Social-Media-Success

10 Creative Social Media Resumes To Learn From

Like flowers in early spring, new social media job openings are sprouting across industries as companies of all sizes look to create or expand their social squads.

The undeniable success and innovation of high-profile social media campaigns — from such brands as Old Spice, Google Chrome and Starbucks — have inspired this ongoing push for companies to hire people with social media skills.

If you’re seeking a gig as a community manager, public relations representative, marketing person or any other social media position, check out these resumes for inspiration on how to stand out from the crowd. Also, let us know in the comments about any creative tactics you use to promote yourself and your skills.

1. Put Your Best (QR) Face Forward

At first glance, Victor Petit's resume looks similar to any other text-based CV. But flip the document over and you'll find a full-page image of his face as well as a QR code where his mouth would be.

Once a recruiter scans the QR code and places his or her phone on top of it, a video pops up revealing Petit's mouth, ultimately completing the full-page image and allowing the recruiter to hear Petit's voice.

QR codes are easy to make and can help you get noticed, especially if you ditch the standard black-and-white QR code and opt to add some pizazz to your design.

---

2. Sell Yourself ... Literally

Shopify, an ecommerce platform, says the best resume it has ever received is this one from Mike Freeman, who wanted to work at Shopify's marketing department.

"He built an online store using Shopify where you can read about his background, experience, etc. and the ecommerce part is you can 'buy' an interview with him for '$0.00,' " said Mark Hayes, Shopify's manager of marketing and media. "We get an infinite amount of resumes here. Yes, he got the job."

---

3. Leverage Facebook Pages

Henry O'Loughlin took to Facebook to showcase his "Social Resume," including a video in which he describes how to navigate his resume on Facebook.

"I work with mostly small businesses doing social media, so I am demonstrating through this resume all of the tools out there that can be utilized without an ad budget."

Using Facebook's Page feature, O'Loughlin was able to showcase his skills as well as show potential clients what he can offer them.

---

4. Video Killed the Resume Star?

Video resumes can be a clever complement to your existing job-search materials (i.e. print resume, cover letter and website).

Graeme Anthony ditched his print resume altogether and created a fun, interactive video where viewers can click on words (see 0:34) linked to an "about me" section, portfolio, skill page, timeline and contact information.

If you decide to make a video, be sure not to just rehash what's on your print resume. Have fun with it and show your personality. Anthony sure did.

---

5. Gather Online Networks in One Place

Alisha Miranda used Flavors.me as an online hub for all of her social media networks. Her profile, which essentially acts as an abridged online resume, caught the eye of her eventual employer.

"Before approaching Alisha, I monitored her social Flavors.me profile for about three weeks and saw what she was doing on Tumblr, Twitter, etc. to evaluate her marketing effectiveness and if her style matched what I wanted," said Tracy Brisson, CEO of The Opportunities Project. "Once I saw that she had all the goods, only then did I contact her to talk. As a career coach and recruiter, I can't emphasize the importance of creating something clients and employers want, which is results and evidence."

You can employ sites like Flavors.me or About.me to showcase all of the social media websites you use. Your existing website or blog are also good spots to place your social media icons.

---

6. Add Personality to Your Print Resume

HAMSTER? Hired! It's hard to take your eyes away from Katie Briggs's visually pleasing resume, which pimps her "fancy hamster," Belafonte.

"I wanted the first thing that people notice about my resume to be that it's a little fun, but still pretty much all-business," Briggs said. "In any creative field, at least, I think it's important to make your resume a testament to your work ethic. It shouldn't look forced but it should give the impression that the work you put into constructing your resume is an indicator of the kind of dedication and hard work you'll bring to the job."
Takeaways: Make sure your resume shows your personality and represents who you really are. Also, don't bore job recruiters.

"I can say that I haven't been turned down for anything I've applied for with this resume," Briggs added.

---

7. Think Outside the Box ... or On It

In 2D form, Omondi Abudho's resume goes beyond the standard text-driven resume. It even adds extra "creative juice" with a nutrition label-inspired skills column.

However, the resume can be folded into an actual three-dimensional box. It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Think Outside the Box."

Using a resume design or structure that strays away from the typical printer paper size is a surefire way to get noticed.

---

8. Pitch Electronically

Beyond Credentials believes that "finding talent based solely on a resume is fundamentally flawed." Its service allows users to build "personalized pitch pages."

For example, Nadia Kouri's pitch page lists everything she would have on a print resume as well as her story, an enlarged quote, accomplishments, personality, a Q&A and writing samples. The page also includes icons linking to her LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles.

---

9. Highlight Recommendations

While Jenn Pedde was revamping her full, multi-page resume, she used this one-page resume "teaser" on her blog. The resume puts major emphasis on the recommendations people left on her LinkedIn profile.

"The one page got so many compliments and it was so right to the point and social," Pedde said.
It's an effective way to translate your online presence to an offline print form.

Pedde's recommendation-focused resume led to her current job at 2tor where she works as community manager for the Master of Social Work program at USC.

---

10. Let Them Read Your Back

Even as a social media person, you'll have to interact with the offline world.

For those instances — if you are job hunting — you may want to make a resume T-shirt, which would have your resume on the back and something silly or informative on the front. The T-shirt pictured is from Blackbird Tees.

---

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/05/20/social-media-resumes/

Why Search Engines Should Use Social Signals as Ranking Factors

It's extremely difficult to test isolated hypotheses in search, given that so many factors contribute to ranking algorithms. Within any single factor there may be second order effects we can't separate.

You know... is it the tweet itself or the link within the tweet (or both) that seem to have an affect on ranking a content item?

In addition it can often be extremely difficult to get a clear and consistent answer from the search engines (Google in particular).

If you're new to social-signals-as-ranking-factors, then I would suggest you start by reading this post by Jonathan Allen, which collates the story right up to the end of 2010, including:

• Matt Cutts confirming the assertion that Google does use social signals, primarily referencing author authority, following reports that Twitter and Facebook signals factor into Google's and Bing's search algorithms.
  
• A patent filed by Google also suggests an interest and research in this area.

Bing states that Twitter author authority is a factor (in some way) and Facebook links shared with everyone are considered (though Facebook author authority isn't).

Google states that retweets outside of the link are a signal, plus author authority; with Facebook links (on fan pages) treated in the same way. In addition, they state that Facebook author authority is treated in the same way as Twitter: "Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don't know who anyone is in real life."

Some pretty clear and exciting statements in there, since followed up by a less convincing re-confirmation by Cutts, followed by a confusing statement later that seemed to completely contradict that links in retweets are part of ranking. Check out this interesting SEOmoz testand discussion in the comments.

Confused by Google? I am.

However, common sense tells me that social signals -- from author authority to number of re-tweets to number of "likes" -- should (if not now, then very soon) be some component contribution to the Google algorithm.

1. Lessons From History


Regardless of how long we've been working in the SEO industry, most of us know that there were search engines before Google, and such search engines used on-page factors and keywords in content to determine ranking.

It wasn't until Sergey Brin and Larry Page put forward "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" paper, that links were actually a lead component of search rankings. It seems almost daft to us now that there could ever have been an attempt to consider a pages' relative authority without any link component -- links being the very stuff of the web.

Given the functionality of social media sites and our ability to use buttons to make essentially qualitative assessments (I like this piece of content, I'm re-tweeting this piece of content), would it just make sense in terms of the evolution of the web to incorporate such data where it's available (in some part)?

2. They Know Who You Are


"Yes we do compute and use author authority." In this case in answer to a question about Twitter, but we already know from social search that Google "knows" who we are interdependent of third party data.

If I set up my Google profile and add "my sites" with nice XFN rel attributes, I'm telling them straight up that /NicholaStott on Facebook is /NicholaStott on Twitter, and Quora and LinkedIn and wherever else for that matter. Given that social circle results now feature interspersed throughout my SERP, I'd warrant that user feedback (i.e., positive CTR data) has informed that change.

Google knows who we are, knows who are friends are, and knows that we like and trust the stuff that our friends are sharing. Why wouldn't our known interactions with content be taken into account algorithmically outside of social circle results?

Google is a business. Whatever increases value and relevancy of the core product is good for the business. I'd find it hard to believe that social circle data is completely off limits.

3. Product Development


Right now Google +1 is limited to my direct Google connections only (as opposed to my friends network a la social circle). Maybe there are technical or legal reasons that I can't be shown what search results a secondary contact of mine has +1'd (or maybe this is in the pipeline as it is early days after all).

Once +1 rolls out on web pages, I'd argue that there will be greater awareness and desire among web users to set up a Google profile and also connect with others via Google.

Google already takes user feedback into account when it comes to algorithm updates. Panda explicitly incorporated user feedback elements and this was explicitly communicated to us from Google. Surely +1 feedback as contributory ranking factor is on the cards?

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/3642305

10 Tips to Improve Your SEO Using Twitter

Google and Bing are constantly working on integrating the social and search results. Social media becoming the voice of the people cannot be ignored or neglected.

Twitter is the most popular micro blogging platform as of today .Twitter is a large network and has the potential to supplement your SEO activities . If the tweets from your account are focused and topical then it surely helps you to establish your online reputation and build a brand online. But, on the contrary, vague tweets do not have any SEO benefit and it is just a sheer waste of time and energy.

Below are some tips that you may consider while tweeting which will help in your SEO campaign.

1. Brand Name

Your brand name or username should reflect your site name or offered services as this is what will be mentioned and displayed as your network, re-tweeted your posts. The more re-tweets your post’s get, the higher its significance.

2. Profile / Bio

As a point of reference, put your website link on your profile page. The bio content is the information part of your Twitter. Maximize it and make it relevant to your website, and the link that you display on your twitter profile, point it to a relevant page that will help with your conversions, rather than just pointing it back to your websites home page.

3. Links

Since Google is now displaying tweets in SERPs, despite nofollow, putting your links on your posts will aid your link building activities or has the potential of giving a wider web presence. Also, accompany your links with effective keywords. You can post your links several times or in interval in order to maximize possible keywords and contents, and exposure.

4. Hash Tags

Hash Tags is a Twitter feature that works like a Meta data for your tweets. These are posts with “#” symbol like “#web” and “#development”. Hash Tags help organize tweets and determine the trending information in Twitter.

5. Mentions

If you to mention users in Twitter you need to put a “@” symbol before their usernames. It is like a retweet effect and the more your account is retweeted, the higher your relevance. It is like voting policy. Hence, whenever you tweet, or Re-Tweet other users ensure to use the @symbol before their username.

6. Be a Help to Others

Re-tweeting, other relevant posts especially those that are of the same niche with yours will help you build your brand and promote your services. Posting everything coming from your site may somehow looks like a spam. Also, as you retweet, you have been a help to others too, by giving your followers a good choice of links to view.

7. Tweet Interval

Do not post bulk of tweets at once as this will annoy your followers, clogging up their stream, but instead spread your tweets out over the day with a decent interval, I would suggest of about an hour or two interval is good.

8. Blog Site

Promoting a blog site like your corporate one is a good option too. Blog sites can provide more information to your visitors and is the best place to interact with them, help them, know their thoughts, allow them to share your articles and contribute contents via comments, and also giving them the option to Re-Tweet your articles.

9. Twitter Button

Twitter button is now a requirement to many websites. It is a great aid to share pages easier.

10. Build your online brand

An effective Twitter account does not just help in your SEO, but will build your online brand, and increase visibility of your company and brand, by building new connections.

Last but not the least, determine a purpose for your Twitter presence. Do you want to focus on customer support or share information about your products and services or would you like to engage with your potential customers or would just like to converse with people from your own industry, etc. Only when you have a purpose you will get a direction and only then it is possible to monitor and measure the success, else it becomes a vehicle without a driver and no destination.

Optimizing your twitter account is optimizing your search engine visibility too. By managing it well, you will have a higher chance to create a bigger network, connect more to people and gain the exposure you need.

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-tips-improve-your-seo-using-twitter/28790

Top 13 Social Media Ranking Factors for SEO

Depending on who you speak to, search engine optimization (SEO) is either largely influenced or not at all influenced by social media. I'm sure everyone has their own opinions, case studies, and sites that show greater or lesser correlations between their social media engagement levels and their natural search results.

If you were to carry out an investigation into whether social media was a big influencing factor, which metrics would you want to monitor in order to base your insights on more empirical data?

Here is a list of 13 ranking factors below. Feel free to use these and any others you can get your grubby SEO mitts on!

1. Number of Followers (Twitter)

You'll need your own corporate Twitter feed, which brings its own problems around brand protection and also the potential for dealing with customer service enquiries, but the more followers you have, the more authoritative your Twitter persona and the more value will be associated with your URL (assuming you have remembered to link to it).

2. Quality of Followers (Twitter)

The best followers are the ones with their own communities of followers. The more high value people who follow you, and retweet your stuff, the better.

3. Relevance of Followers (Twitter)

It's one thing getting followed and retweeted by Stephen Fry with over a million followers, but it's also important to get the same response from accounts that are more specific to your industry. Someone with "fashion" in their description who retweets your "20 percent off the new spring collection" offer is equally valuable.

4. Number of Retweets (Twitter)

Most likely as a ratio of tweets to retweets -- the more your content is reproduced by others the more authoritative it is. Obviously the more followers you have, the more likely you are to be retweeted. However, it isn't just about retweeting other people's content or dishing out promotions. It's about engaging in conversation with people in the industry.

5. Number of Fans (Facebook)

You'll need to create your own corporate profile on Facebook, which brings the same potential banana skins as a corporate Twitter feed, only multiplied numerous times due to the sheer level of engagement of people on Facebook. However, if you decide to engage with customers and potential customers on Facebook, the total number of likes your page receives will add value to your URL.

6. Number of Comments (Facebook)

A large number of likes, but little engagement, is a sure sign of someone gaming the system. People will tend to like you if you talk to them. Successful Facebook pages include a lot of content written by other people.

7. Number of Views (YouTube)

An obvious one, but any content you upload to YouTube should link to your site in the description, and the more times it is viewed, the more value will be attributed to your video.

8. User Comments (YouTube)

YouTube is also about engaging with other YouTubers and commenting on popular videos. The more you comment, the more link juice is passed back to your profile.

9. References From Independent Profiles (YouTube)

Using YouTube can bring in some really good authority if done brilliantly -- if your link from your video passes some value, imagine how much more value would be passed if you could get other people to parody your work and include links to you from their profiles. The prime example remains the Cadbury's Gorilla, but there are lots of interesting mini-campaigns trying to leverage the above.

10. Title of Video (YouTube)

Any references to your target keywords in the title of the video will help ensure that any authority passed will be relevant to a specific theme. Keywords should also be in the tags and or transcript where possible.

11. Percent of Likes vs. Dislikes (YouTube)

Easy one. The more liked your content is, the more authoritative it is.

12. Positive vs. Negative Brand Mentions (All Social Media)

Use a tool like Radian6, or a free tool, and ensure that you have significantly more positive brand mentions than negative. It won't be 100 percent accurate as these things don't pick up on sarcasm. But Google has already made investment in this area in 2011, so it's well worth monitoring.

13. Number of Social Mentions (All Potential Media)

Total visibility across all social media shows that your content is important to all people and not just a result of a large special offer for Facebook/Twitter users. HowSociable is a simple way of giving yourself a rating here.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/3642048