Online Content

Anything you see online is content - the written words, images, video and so on . Content can amuse or inform but it is also a powerful tool for catching the attention of search engines and customers looking for your products and or services. Many Small Business' are discovering how to use the different types of content to reach customers and raise brand awareness with results.

There is no better time than now to do business online, thanks to the web you can use endless tools to promote your business and or brand and many of them are FREE . All's you need to do is tap into your creativity ! It is important to remember that not all content is equal . For example, blogs are usually text or image heavy while video requires recording equipment and more technical knowledge. However , all are easy to maintain and have the ability to drive traffic and sales to raise awareness for your company.

Social Media Buttons

Social Media buttons have two functions , the first is the Follow button that cross-links visitors to multiple elements of your web presence . The Second is the Share button that enables visitors to easily share your content or website with others. It is important to place these buttons near the top of a page or article where you place key information .

Optimizing your Facebook Page

Next to blogs Facebook Pages offer the highest number of opportunities to use Search Engine Optimization to reach customers who don't already know your brand.

Try the following techniques when creating your Facebook Page .

• Use an easy to remember version of your business name along with or combined with search term/s
• Once you establish a fan base of 25 you are able to create a custom URL or Facebook Page name instead of seeing a string of random numbers in your Facebook URL.  Be careful when selecting your name as it cannot be changed . 
• Complete the About Section of your Business page and list all relevant website links including your blog and other social media profile links.
• Place keyword content in the first paragraph of each of the boxes, all of which help with on site product searches.

Remember - The more Facebook fans you have the more internal links you have to your own page. When fans comment or share your content Google see's reciprocal links between your page and your fans pages which could increase your page rank.

The Importance of updated content

Search Engines like Google love to see that a website is updated regularly . Updates are a sign that a website is cared for and providing that most current information to customers. Easily updated content is one of the reasons for having a company blog. It is important to change a paragraph of content on your website monthly.  If you follow no other Search Engine Optimization tips , make sure that you at least update often and optimize the first paragraph of text on every web page.

Importance Of Keywords

Your customers enter search terms or phrases into search engine query boxes, websites or social media search bars to locate information they seek . The trick to online success is to identify the most popular search terms that your customers are likely to use.

For visibility on a search term , your site or social media profiles need to appear within the top 10 positions on the first page of search results for that specific term . It has been said that only researchers and obsessive compulsive's are likely to search beyond the first page. It is important to remember that everyone's brain is wired differently leading to different choices of words and different ways of organizing information.

Try to come up with a list of at least 40 search terms that can be used among different pages of your website and or social media profiles. You will have to continuously juggle these terms to see which ones provide the best results .

Here are some tips for building your list of keywords:

• Ask your customers , friends , employees or co-workers for ideas
• Include the names of your products or services
• Incorporate all industry specific terms and jargon
• Incorporate your local in terms - Calgary Bakery or Calgary Plumbing
• Go to Google and start entering search terms, then click related seaches option to see other phrases users have tried 
• Look at your analytic results and see which phrases people are already using to find you
• Consider using a keyword search tool like Google keyword tool or Word Pot 
• Check your competitors search terms - 
• Visit Competitors Web page 
• Right click to view source code
• Keywords they use are usually listed near the top of the source code

Social Media and Search Engine Optimization

No matter how important Social Media is ,Search Engine Optimization must be a part of your strategy for a successful web presence. The goal of Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is to get various components of your online presence to appear near the top of search engine results- preferably in the top 10 .

You can accomplish this by selecting keywords , optimizing your content and by structuring your web page or profiles so that they are search friendly for your selected search terms . Thankfully you can optimize your Social Media profiles and blogs very much the same way you optimize a webpage.

TIPS : 

• Optimize your website and all your Social Media for the same search terms

• Use Social pages to grab a good position for some rare search terms that your website doesn't use. 

• Put your standard search terms on Social Media profiles and the more rare ones on individual posts or as photo captions or updates . 

• Ignore those spam emails about submitting your site to 2,000 different search engines, and concentrate on the top three (Google , Yahoo and Bing )

SEO Started Guide @ https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Social Media Monitoring

Social Media Monitoring is finding our what is being said about your brand, your products, servics and your reputation .

If you didn't have more important things to do you could choose to monitor everything , but that is not at all realistic, so it is important to set constraints. It is important to start with your goal and ask yourself what you want to accomplish . For Example, you may want to :

• What negative or positive things are being said about your company , products and or services
• What negative or positive things are being said about your competitions brand , products or services
• Stay up to date on what is going on in your specific industry 
• Watch for trends of mentions , topics of interest or volume of comments
• Monitor infringement on trademarks or intellectual property
• Obtain customer feedback to improve your products and services

After you decide your goals , it should be obvious what information you want to monitor . This list might include:

• Your Company Name 
• Your Domain and or Company URL's
• Your Competitors Name, Domain or URL's
• Names of staff who may have an impact on the organization
• Specific Products and or Services you supply
• Industry Keywords or Phrases

A few of the Social Media Monitoring Tools you may use for this purpose are listed below : 

• Google Alerts
• Google Trends
• How Sociable
• Klout
• Social Mention

Social Media ABC's

Find a word missing ....comment below and we can add

Aggregation - The process of gathering and remixing content from blogs and other websites that provide RSS feeds. 

Alerts - Search engines allow you to specify words or phrases that you want checked periodically, with results of those searches returned to you by email. 

Archive-  Refers to topics that has been closed but saved for later reference. On blogs, archives are collections of earlier items organised by week or month.

Authenticity- The sense that something or someone is “real” or factual.

Avatars- Are graphical images representing people or brands. .

Blogs -  Websites with dated items of content. 

Blogosphere -  A term used to describe the totality of blogs on the Internet, and the conversations taking place within them.

Blogroll - A list of sites displayed in the sidebar of blog, showing who the blogger reads regularly.

Bookmarking-  Saving the address of a website or item of content, either in your browser  or on a social bookmarking site. 

Browser- The tool used to view websites, and access all the content available there onscreen or by downloading. 

Categories- Specified ways to organize content . 

Chat-  Interaction on a web site, with a number of people adding text items one after the other into the same space at (almost) the same time. 

Comments- Blogs may allow readers to add comments and may also provide a feed for comments as well as for main items. 

Communities- Groups of people communicating mainly through the Internet. 

Community building is the process of recruiting potential community or network participants, helping them to find shared interests and goals, use the technology, and develop useful conversations. A number of different roles may be involved.

Content- Any text, pictures, video and other meaningful material that is on the Internet.

Content management systems- They are software suites offering the ability to create static web pages, document stores, blog, wikis, and other tools. 

Download- To retrieve a file or other content from an Internet site to your computer or other device.

Email- Electronic mail is messages transmitted over the Internet. 

Face-to-face- Used to describe people meeting offline. 

Facilitator-  Someone who helps people in an online group or forum manage their conversations. 

Feeds-  The means by which you can read, view or listen to items from blogs and other RSS-enabled sites without visiting the site, by subscription. 

Forums- Discussion areas on websites, where people can post messages or comment on existing messages asynchronously – that is, independently of time or place. 

Friends- Contacts whose profile you link to in your profile. 

Groups- Collections of individuals with some sense of unity through their activities, interests or values. 

Instant messaging- A chat with one other person. 

Links- Highlighted text or images that, when clicked, jump you from one web page or item of content to another. 

Listening- The art of skimming feeds to see what topics are bubbling up, and also setting up searches that monitor when you or your organisation is mentioned.

Logging in- The process to gaining access to a website that restricts access to content, and requires registration.

Lurkers- People who read but don't contribute or add comments to forums. 

Mashups- The smart mixes that techies do to combine several tools to create a new web services.

Membership- Belonging to a group. 

Networks- Structures defined by nodes and the connections between them. 

Online-  Being connected to the Internet, and also being there in the sense of reading or producing content.

Offline- Not being online, that is, not connected to the Internet. 

Peer-to-peer- Direct interaction between two people in a network. 

Permalink- The address (URL) of an item of content, for example a blog post, rather than the address of a web page with lots of different items.

Photosharing- Uploading your images to a website.

Platform- The framework or system within which tools work. 

Podcast- Audio or video content that can be downloaded automatically through a subscription to a website so you can view or listen offline.

Post- An item on a blog or forum.

Profiles- The information that you provide about yourself when signing up for a social networking site.

Registration- The process of providing a username, password and other details when seeking to access a website that has restricted access. 

RSS- Short for Really Simple Syndication, this allows you to subscribe to content on blogs and other social media and have it delivered to you through a feed.

Sharing- Offering other people the use of your text, images, video, bookmarks or other content by adding tags, and applying copyright licenses that encourage use of content.

Social media- A term for the tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online. 

Social networking- Online places where users can create profiles and socialize with others using a range of social media tools including blogs, video, images, tagging, lists of friends, forums and messaging.

Tags- Keywords attached to a blog post, bookmark, photo or other item of content so you and others can find them easily through searches and aggregation.

Terms of services- The basis on which you agree to use a forum or other web-based place for creating or sharing content.

Threads-  Strands of conversation. 

Tool is used here as shorthand for a software applications on your computer, and also for applications that are Web-based.

Topic- An idea, issue - talking point - in a conversation that is made up of threads.

Upload- To transfer a file or other content from your computer to an Internet site.

URL- Short for Unique Resource Locator and is the technical term for a web address

User generated content-  Text, photos and other material produced by people who previously just consumed. 

Voice over Internet Protocol-  Also known as VOIP enables you to use a computer or other Internet device for phone calls without additional charge, including conference calls. 

Widgets- Stand-alone applications you can embed in other applications, like a website or a desktop. 

Whiteboards- They are tools that enable you to write or sketch on a web page, and as such are useful in collaboration online.

Wiki- A web page - or set of pages - that can be edited collaboratively.

Cons of Social Media

It is becoming increasingly difficult to gain visibility among the millions of social media users . The biggest downside for companies is the time they will need to invest in order to see results . Always consider how much your time is worth and determine whether it is best for you to manage your own Social Media Marketing , to hire a dedicated employee or to contract a Social Media Company like Social Admin .

How to pick a good Social Media Manager

A good Social Media Manager will have a extroverted personality , enjoy interacting with others and take pleasure in conversation. You want to look for someone who :

1. Write content quickly and in the right tone for your audience
2. Communicate knowledgeably about your company and services
3. Adapt and evolve with new social media  trends and  mobile technologies