Decorative Flower
Her Realm, Personal website and blog of Cole
Dec 16

If You’re Going to Use Social Media, Know How to Use It

I wrote a lot about how social media is an important factor ofSEO and online marketing, and I fully believe this to be true. Your customers and potential customers are on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Contacts and future employees are on LinkedIn. Pinterest is great if you have something to sell. Google+ will give you a spectacular traffic boost. It’s the facts of life in the digital age.

But–and this really is a big but–you shouldn’t join every social network, and you sure as hell shouldn’t join one and make yourself look like a fool or, even worse, completely forget about it.

Let’s break this down one by one.

Why You Don’t Need to Join Every Social Network

The social part is important. You should be using these venues to engage with people. Your conversations might be short and superficial, or they might be a little more involved, but conversations need to happen. This means you need to make time for it. If you’re trying to do this all yourself, you need to make time but also set a time limit for social networking. Otherwise, you’ll get lost in the abyss. There’s a limited amount of time and an unlimited number of social networks. Do the math. With that said, if you don’t have time and can’t afford to hire the job out, you might want to consider foregoing social media altogether. It won’t help, but it will do less damage than spreading yourself too thin and being seen as unresponsive.

The second argument for this point is that your target audience isn’t on every website. If you’re not selling something that you can visualize, Pinterest makes little sense. LinkedIn isn’t the site to connect with consumers, and Twitter is full of bloggers and marketers but isn’t saturated with everyday customers. Everyone is on Facebook, but it’s not the place to make business contacts. Pick and choose wisely.

Social Networking Is the Public Face of Your Company

It’s okay to socialize on Google+ or Twitter. In fact, your fans and followers will expect a little bit of it. There’s nothing wrong with chatting casually, but I like to think that you should keep it friendly but not familiar. That was something I was taught at my first job, and I think it helps you remember how to communicate via social media.

I’d like to point out that you should avoid text speak and annoying abbreviations as much as possible. Use proper English, punctuation and keep an eye on your grammar. Most people aren’t sticklers about it — I mean, have you seen my Twitter feed? — but your social communications still represent your brand and your reputation. You don’t want people snickering or shaking their heads because your typing skills are so silly.

I would go so far as to recommend that you not overtly let people know if you’re new to using Twitter or Google+. Instead, hit up the Internet and find some tutorials that explains what @replies, direct messages, circles and video chats are all about. You don’t have to jump in head first. You can dip a toe in the water and get used to the environment. Just remember how you look while you do it. Fake it ’til you make it.

You Have to Be Active on Social Sites

It’s not good enough just to join, you have to post. This is why it’s so important to pick the social networks that are the best fit. You need to ask questions of followers, post polls for fans, offer coupons, talk about the latest news and link to your newest blog post. If you don’t give people a reason to follow you, then they won’t. It’s more than that, though.

People search out brands and businesses on social networks because they want immediate feedback. If you haven’t signed in for weeks or months, it’s bad for branding. Consumers won’t see your profiles as resources, but it could be worse than that. They might not see your company as one that can provide answers, cares about  customers or understands the Internet. In short: they ignore your social and Internet presence. Even if you start posting, consumers may have long ago ignored what you have to say.

Getting people to come back is a lot more difficult than getting them to show up in the first place, and that’s hard enough as it.

Take your time. Do your research. Make time to be active on whichever sites you join. Do it right, and you’ll thank me later.


Jul 25

3 Ways Google’s Webmaster Tools Helps Your Site

If you’re like me, you might not like signing up for new services. I have hundreds of accounts everywhere, and if something isn’t worth my time, I’d rather skip it. However, Webmaster Tools is one of the things that you absolutely shouldn’t skip. Here’s three reasons why!

Indexing with a Sitemap

Chances are, Google won’t naturally index every page of your site, so Webmaster Tools lets you go in and add a sitemap that lists them all. If your website has several hundred pages, give it a few days. Then, when you log in, you get to see how many pages are indexed. At first, I used my RSS, but I was surprised to see how little this helped. Google only knew about 11 pages. Eleven! I opted for a WordPress sitemap plug-in, instead, and now 1600+ pages are indexed. Nice!

Google won't miss a page when you add a sitemap

Google won’t miss a page when you add a sitemap

Changing Sitelinks

Sitelinks are what Google calls all those little sublinks under your domain when someone searches for the domain name. Once your pages are all indexed, you’ll start to see them. Google automatically picks ones that work the best, but the search engine isn’t always right. You can log in to Webmaster Tools, click on a property and add certain links to the ignore list, which strongly encourages the search engine to promote other links, instead. It’s not perfect, but it does afford you some control over your website’s appearance in the SERPs.

 

Fix Those Broken Links

Four oh dear! No one likes a broken link, but I had quite a few, because my site had been around for so long. I’d transferred blog platforms and domains and permalink structures a couple times. For whatever reason, Google was still thinking that pages from six years ago still existed, when they didn’t. I could have saved some hassle if I started it on my broken links after the indexing completed, but I waded in before. Regardless, you can use Webmaster Tools to look for broken links on your own website–and then fix them! It results in a better experience for your users, and those links can help your PageRank in the long run.


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