Category

Social Media

Dec 03
0

12 Twitter Search & Marketing Tools

By | SEO Tools, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments

Helpful Twitter Search and Marketing Tools for your Review

The Every Merchant Network uses Twitter as a social network marketing platform, where we target online conversations by keywords. Simply stated – We help Businesses Find, Keep and Bring Back Their Best Customers. I also personally use it as a marketing research tool. Recently I was asked to write an article for a publication on how to use Twitter for business marketing research, and in the midst of that writing I discovered the following search tools available for Twitter.

I am listing below the top 12 tools that have helped me use on a regular basis. So of the tools have recently been acquired by twitter and hopefully will resurface  even more effective. I’m sticking with the top 12 because it’ll be easier on you to read and copy and it’s easier on my poor fingers (it’s the typing the descriptions that was getting to me…and hey! I’m in the middle of a really intense marketing research project for Arthur Murray International!) Anyway, here’s the list and I hope you find it helpful. Feel free to link to it – copy and paste to a Word document – return to this post as reference –  and if you find it helpful, let me know by leaving a comment.

Top 12 Twitter Search & Marketing Tools I Use

1. Backtweets: http://backtweets.com
Search app which can search for links and short urls on Twitter. You can use
this tool to see how many people have tweeted a specific link. It doesn’t
matter if the link was shortened using a url shortener. This tool will show
that in the results.

2. Nearby Tweets: http://nearbytweets.com
Lets you discover tweets from local users. It uses Google Maps to find your
location and then shows the tweets by Twitter users near you. Handy for
businesses looking to expand their local footprint. They can check what’s
buzzing among the local community.

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3. Tweetmeme: http://tweetmeme.com
The tweetmeme is the retweet button on blogs. This search app shows the most
popular tweets across the web and has a search function.

4. Areaface: http://www.areaface.com
Lets you search location based tweets via keywords and phrases. You can
pinpoint a location on Google Maps and it will show recent tweets as well as
Twitter users from that area in a visually attractive interface.

5. Twellow: http://twellow.com
The yellow pages of Twitter. It organizes the information it has gathered
from Twitter in a yellow pages format. You can search for services, for
people in different professions, etc. Like a twitter directory.

6. Schmap Picks: http://www.schmap.com/picks
For searching reviews on Twitter about restaurants and bars. So far only
covers major cities in US, i.e. New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc.
But useful.

7. Monittor: http://monittor.com
Well known reputation management tool for Twitter. It can display different
keyword and phrase searches on Twitter, all parallel to each other in a neat
interface. And it’s real time.

8. Local Follow: http://www.locafollow.com
Aims to simplify your search for Twitter users by giving 4 main search
fields – Bio, Location, Name and Tweets (if you remember the tweet but not
the tweeter). Uses Twitter’s API and Google search to produce a list of
profiles based on your keywords.

9. Snapbird: http://snapbird.org
Search the timelines of friends or through your direct messages for a
keyword.

10. Searchtastic: http://www.searchtastic.com
Easter and faster than Snapbird for basic searches. You can export your
search results to a spreadsheet.

11. TweetScan: http://tweetscan.com
If you’re trying to find specific content, this search engine tracks
keywords or phrases for you then delivers what it finds to you via: onsite
search results, email or RSS.

12. Topsy: http://topsy.com
A search engine that follows conversations around the Web based on a Twitter
springboard of over 30 million users and what they’re talking about. It’s an
amazing way to find out what people are talking about in real time.

Nov 22
0

Being on Facebook Wont Maximize a Brands Revenue

By | Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments

Are you surrendering your search juice to social media?

Yes, certain things do work better in social media sites. Voter polls, contest etc… However, simply being on Facebook won’t maximize a brand’s revenue and traffic. Businesses must stop surrendering their online juice – content to social media first and take what works on Facebook and other social media sites and apply it to their own sites and the wider web in general.

Brands Need Friends, Not Fans on Facebook

Facebook and social media offers brands access to its vast audience with minimal  cost of entry. Therefore, one would presume that brands would develop strategic and forward-thinking campaigns to maximize their reach. Not so.

Instead, brands being gullible quickly entered a popularity contest for the most facebook Likes. It seemed companies were simply content with growing audience numbers. Until lately, they’ve been comfortable measuring ROI by the number of fans alone. Now they’re beginning to question the value of such a one-dimensional strategy.

An interesting example is Starbucks, one of the most popular brands on Facebook, has startlingly discovered low engagement numbers, despite its 26 million fans. A recent announcement from Starbucks mentioned the company’s popular red holiday cups. Yet, its engagement rate (the number of gestures on the post divided by the total number fans at the time of this writing) only calculated to 0.28% Likes and 0.02% comments.

The challenge now is for brands to evolve from simply being a company with a product to sell to becoming a valuable source for interesting, entertaining and useful content. The real measurement of a brand’s Facebook success is relevance.

Brands would do best to approach the problem differently or, more specifically, to start acting like those super connected Facebook friends we all have. These individuals not only broadcast their status updates, connect with review sites like everybusinessreview.com, and Like frequently; they also frequently engage friends in one-to-one discussions and promote social events, thereby building broader community circles.

To date, most brand activity has focused on building a brand’s audience base and then using a simple content strategy to engage fans via Likes and comments.

Brands must learn how to create and control human sharing behaviors. Individuals strive to be the first to break news, to post photos proving “they were there,” to beat another friend in a social game, etc. Brands that mirror such activity will prove more relevant to fans. By acting like a friend first and foremost, brands will collect – and ultimately engage with – more people.

Sep 23
0

Facebook Takes Big Steps to be Social Media Giant

By | Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments

Facebook has continued to be driven by a single, unique goal. With over 700 million online users, its priority isn’t to gain more users, their immediate online interest believe it or not is not to find ways to increase pageviews. Facebooks primary goal at the moment isn’t to increase revenue, either — that will come later.

Facebook’s goal is to become the social media giant that supports, fuels and connects every single piece of the web, no matter who or what it is or where it lives. At its f8 conference in San Francisco, the world’s largest social network will take a big step toward accomplishing that goal.

What Facebook is launching is going to change the world of social media. And while I won’t talk about the mind-boggling things Facebook will be launching, I will say this: The Facebook you know and (don’t) love will be forever transformed. The news that will come out of Facebook during the next few weeks will be the biggest things to come out of the company since the actual launch of the Facebook platform.

Jul 31
0

Tips for Google Panda and Algorithmic Updates

By | Directory Submissions, Enterprise SEO, Local SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized, Web Development | No Comments

Preparing for Google Panda. Google Plus and Future Algorithmic Changes

 

Here are a few tips to consider for protecting your website against Google Panda. Google Plus and any future algorithmic updates  that will help maintain (even improve) your keyword search rankings:
  • Original Content – High-quality, unique content has been (and always will be) the way to go when publishing content on a website. One of the biggest reasons sites were penalized was due to a lack of original, unique content. Spend the necessary time to ensure you don’t violate this website “code of conduct” and strive to have at least 500 words of content on your homepage, as well as the rest of your product/service sub-pages. If you are using content that is found on a different site, be sure to link to it and give credit to the source.
  • Keyword Relevance – This one may sound like a “no-brainer” but you’d be surprised at how many websites there are that don’t match up the title tags/header tags with the content on the page. For example, if your site has a product page about insurance, make sure that the title tags, meta description, and headline tags contain the words “insurance” (hopefully a little more descriptive than that) in them.
  • Backlink Profile -Search engines still rely heavily on a website’s link profile to determine how well the keywords rank. Strive to build a diverse backlink profile – don’t try and build all of your links from the same type of source. If you need help finding relevant places to build links, there are a few quality Do it Yourself SEO softwares out there that can help. Social Directories like Everybusinesslisting.com will help build a local foundation for online visibility for your website.  Also strive to integrate social media (Facebook, Twitter, EveryEntrepreneur.com) into your business since any mentions of your brand via these mediums can lead to positive outcomes.
  • Keyword Density/Variation – Don’t try and abuse or game the system by spamming your keywords throughout your site’s content – search engines grow smarter by the minute and can almost always detect this. Instead, shoot to use your keyword (in different variations) about 2% of the total content. So if you are targeting a search term such as “weight loss pill”, use phrases such as “pill that can assist in weight loss” or “losing weight is a problem we all face. Fortunately, there are pills…”.
  • Professionalism – Or in other words, make sure that the written content is grammatically correct without any misspellings, sentence fragments, or run-on sentences. To ensure that your site maintains a high level of professionalism, consider having 2-3 people read over each page of content to check for any of these errors. Yes, search engines can detect grammatical errors and may have an adverse effect on your keyword rankings.
  • User–friendliness – Is your site easy to read and navigate, and does it offer insightful information (or helpful links)? High bounce rates are suspected to have a negative effect on rankings, so be sure to provide engaging content that will keep the user on the page for as long as possible with a desire to visit other pages of your site. Broken links are never a good thing. Be sure to update or 301 redirect them to their respective pages.

Keep in mind that having just 1 bad or irrelevant page of content can negatively impact the other pages of your site. Don’t get careless! Take some time to give your website a thorough review and make sure you are keeping up to date with the latest SEO practices.

Jul 13
0

Remove Negative Reviews – The Power of Customer Reviews

By | Local SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments

Every Merchant Network Launching a New Customer Business Review Website

EveryBusinessReview.com is a new local and national business review site that will provide an outlet for consumers’ voices to be heard directly by business owners. We understand the power that comes from customer reviews – both positive and negative.

Within our network of vertical directories, we are noticing that eighty percent of all business reviews are negative. People simply do not review ordinary events.  It is my opinion that all businesses, whether big or small, should understand the value and significance that customer reviews can play in increasing or decreasing your customer base, boosting sales, and as a marketing tool in general.  By encouraging customers to voice their opinions on your company’s customer service, products, and experience, you will gain a great insight into how your business is run, it’s strengths, and its weaknesses.  When it comes to negative customer reviews, don’t be so quick to take measures to get them taken down. EveryBusinessReview.com allows you to control your negative reviews.  If YOUR BUSINESS SUCKS! you should know but it doesn’t mean the world needs to know. You need to listen to your customers and make the changes.  Our site allows negative customer reviews to be just as effective as positive reviews in that they give you a chance to learn valuable lessons, increase customer loyalty, and can actually lead to future sales.

Never underestimate the power of customer reviews.  By controlling negative reviews and responding appropriately you will not only help build your company’s online reputation, but word of mouth buzz will increase and you’ll not only earn the loyalty of existing customers, but you’ll earn the loyalty of future customers as well.

Jul 12
0

Citations will Enhance Your Google Local Listing

By | Enterprise SEO, Local SEO, Partners, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments

Adding Citations Can Double Your Google Map Exposure

Citations will help to make the most of your Google’s Local Business Search Listings in Google Places. Let our SEO Management Team create a killer listings in Google Places for every business location you have. Why? As the screenshot below illustrates, Google Local can and often will dominate what’s seen above the fold?

With Web estate like that, you can gather large amounts of traffic if you can list prominently for targeted keywords. With this as our goal, let’s take a dive into how to enhance your Google Local listings?

Google Local Map

How My SEO Management Team will set-up or claim your Ownership Instantly

Google will add listings to their local results without any user submissions. It takes some creative work to pull it off, but it can be done. With that said, we will check and see if your business is already listed in there. If so, we need to claim ownership for you and create revisions and verify all of your contact information.

I Encourage Honest Reviews

As a local business owner, you need to understand that local search is a viral or socially driven tool. The more reviews and feedback users provide, the more likely Google will be to promote your listings. Consider reviews on local search to be similar to PageRank for organic business listings. It’s not the main ranking criteria but there are enough similarities to suggest there is a connection. As the cliché goes? If there’s smoke, there’s fire.

So – Just how can you go about encouraging reviews on Google Places? First off, start by simply asking your customers or clients. You will never get anything if you don’t go out and ask for it. While asking a customer helps, motivating with an additional discount at the register can work better. Reward their positive reviews with a coupon, savings or free promotion.

These are just some random thoughts, but I think you get the idea. You need your customers to give you solid reviews, and by giving them something in return, you will accelerate that entire process.

Look At The Every Merchant Network for Local Online Business

Google’s understanding of local search results reach beyond the information you provide directly to them.

For example EveryMenu.com is a source for local restaurant information, and Google will show these sources in a listing. In a similar fashion, SuperPages can often be found providing data where Google is lacking.

The Every Merchant Network team will study your industry in other cities and try to research what tools and data sources are out there. We then check on the “Details” tab of full listings to see where data could be pulled in from. In most instances the listings that show up on Google are on the partnered site verbatim.

Since I’m throwing out clichés to help make some points, let’s quickly use the saying “You need to spend money to make money”.

There are third party services such as ReachLocal and EveryMerchant.com that specialize in local search listings and their optimization. You of course pay these providers, but in return they’ll get your listings up to par with the competition and even provide some clear reporting on how effective your listings are.

Another up and coming platform we use is EverySalescall.com that charges only for calls your business receive.