Offerpop; the social media campaign tool

There are various different marketing campaign tools on the market that allow you to run social media events, contests, giveaways, etc., but there aren’t many that allow you to customize your campaign to the extent that Offerpop does. Built in to the platform, Offerpop offers instant landing pages

This web-based marketing platform presents the opportunity to fully engage and interact with the consumer allowing brands to create effective marketing campaigns. Upon registering on their website, you will receive a fourteen day free trial to run the campaign of your choice. This includes; tug of war, sign up, referral, photo contest, fan faves, exclusive, and many more for Facebook and various other campaigns for Twitter. The best part about Offerpop, is it’s extremely easy to use!

After logging in, you will be brought to your dashboard, which lists all of the possible campaigns available for Facebook and Twitter. From there you simply choose the type of social media campaign you’re interested in running and enter in the necessary information, select fields for a sign up form, and bada-boom. Launch your social media campaign, engage with your consumers, and watch your statistics grow.

What sets Offerpop away from its competitors, is the wide variety of campaigns, extremely user-friendly dashboard, and their competitive pricing.

The New Facebook Timeline: If You Can’t Beat Em’, Join Em’

As I am sure you are already aware, Facebook has once again forced us into a new version of the reining social media network. Thanks Mark Zuckerberg for influencing me to spend more time updating my Facebook timeline than trying to promote world peace. Facebook’s profile has now been replaced with the new layout called Facebook Timeline. Frankly, I was not thrilled about this change because I did not feel like going through the mundane task of updating my Facebook, however I have come to embrace this new concept. This new layout provides its users with a timeline of their Facebook history, from photos, events, apps, etc. arranged in the order in which they happened. Essentially making Facebook “stalking” much easier to manage.

And so it goes that with any new change, there is always hesitancy and the big question “how will this impact our business?” Well other than the fact that social media companies now need to put in the extra effort to update these changes for their clients, this new timeline proves to be advantageous for business users.

With change, come new opportunities. The new Facebook timeline gives businesses the chance to capitalize on their marketing campaigns and customize their timeline accordingly. My major hang up of this new timeline concept was what the heck I was going to use as my “cover photo”. So I chose a picture I had taken of a flower (I know, I know, so cliché). However cliché my photo might be, this cover photo in conjunction with the profile photo provides the opportunity for businesses to really advertise their brand and logo. As a billboard would show off the main product and point of the advertisement, so should your businesses cover photo. Make sure the photo grabs your follower’s attention and showcases what you are all about!

Captain Morgan has melded their logo into their cover photo to make one cohesive piece that clearly represents the product they are marketing for.

Another advantage to this new layout is it enables businesses to highlight the milestones of their business in an easy to view timeline. Photos now appear larger on the timeline, essentially overshadowing the text info. This can yield huge reward for businesses with catchy photos, because lets face it, people would rather look at a picture to sum something up than read a paragraph.  So promote away via your most market worthy photos!

Designer, Kate Spade, has also capitalized on showcasing their brand in the cover photo along with their tail tale logo.

Now to touch on posting, status updates and more goodies. The timeline displays the top 4 most used apps front and center beside the “about me” section. So choose the apps most important and essential to your customers, however the photos app will always appear first. One of the new features of Facebook, is the ability to post a story to your timeline. This story can be “starred” and made to either stay at the top of your page or it can be displayed along the width of your page, essentially making it pretty darn hard to miss. This is something businesses should take advantage of if they want their followers to acknowledge a new event or product.

So now you can sleep at night knowing your business is not in jeopardy from the new Facebook timeline. It’s here to stay (well at least for the next 6 months until they figure out a new way to frustrate us all over again) so embrace it and use it to your businesses advantage!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Links

As a newcomer not only to Web Talent, but also to the SEO world, I have been delving into the many facets of link building and search marketing. With all of its publicity, it was very hard not to be sucked into the social media world and how it is incorporated into the marketing realm. Social media proves to be the most persuasive of strategies when looking at how to reach your target audience. However, keeping up with the social media “flavor of the week” is never-ending.

One social media site in particular has been stealing headlines and traffic. Pinterest is a new form of social bookmarking modernizing how websites are bookmarked using pictures. Users can “pin” their favorite products, pictures, pets, etc. to different categories or thematic “boards” for others to follow. Photos can be “pinned” and “repined” and shared with all of your followers.

With all the hype surrounding Pinterest, it was only a matter of time before this social media platform was integrated into SEO strategies. As reported in a February article on Search Engine Watch, in January 2012, Pinterest accounted for more traffic than LinkedIn, Google+, Reddit and YouTube combined! So it is only natural that businesses should be looking into ways to utilize this site.

Pinterest has several advantages for businesses and their online presence. Since users only “repin” pictures of things that interest them, your target market finds you! Businesses can “pin” all of their favorite company infographics and pictures to this site with a link in the picture back to their site. The best part…these links are followable! Branch out and follow people and they are likely to follow you and look at the content you have pinned to your board.

Be forewarned, this new craze is highly addictive. I can testify first hand because I too, along with 11 million other users, have joined Pinterest and cannot seem to stop pinning my favorite things! As a social media marketing company, it is only natural that Web Talent recently jumped on the bandwagon and joined Pinterest and we are quickly exploring all it has to offer.

Followerwonk – The Social Analytics Tool for Twitter

I came across a really cool social tool the other day that I can’t believe more people are not using. It’s called Followerwonk and is a miracle tool for cultivating influential bloggers, guest blogging opportunities, and socially authoritative websites. The tool has both a free and paid version based on usage and can be accessed by using your twitter account. The tool has four main purposes and allows you to export your findings to a CSV file and saves your recent searches.

One of my very favorite parts of this tool is the ability to search for twitter users by keyword and compare them based on different metrics (influence, followers, following, age, etc). In practice, if you were looking to connect with authoritative social media bloggers to  promote your content, this tool will let your search, sort, and download them based on the keywords you selected. You can also follow them on Twitter right from the application. Followerwonk also shows you if your account is following the selected twitter profiles or if they are following you.

Once you have selected a short-list of highly authoritative and relevant bloggers, or websites, you can dive deeper into their twitter statistics and then start to analyze their followers (or whom they are following) to help narrow down cream of the crop. There are a ton of metrics to take into account such as the average age, language of their followers, and how active and authoritative they are.

Lastly, Followerwonk offers user twitter analytics to help monitor the progress (or struggles) of your growing, authoritative followers. Using this feature within the tool can provide a closer look at your twitter account’s followers. It can also identify your most influential followers which is a vital aspect to any social media campaign since they are your lowest hanging fruit. You can also identify followers that are recent additions or recent loses. My suggestion would be to periodically pull up your followers that have chosen to unfollow you, identify authoritative users, and then attempt to retain.

For a social media consultant like me, Followerwonk is a great addition to the social media tools we are currently usiong at Web Talent Marketing. Of course no tool has ever created a winning social media campaign. A custom stratagy and solid reporting metrics often work hand in hand to help acheive long term success within social media – but tools like this help out a whole lot!

Google Plus Expands It’s Reach

The Google Plus Project now has the opportunity to reach a vast new demographic of users. On September 1st, 2011 Google starting converting it’s Google Apps for Business users to full Google Accounts. Yesterday evening I logged into my Google Apps for Business account and I was subsequently presented with a screen that told me that my Google Apps for Business account was being upgraded to a full Google Account.

Google touted the benefits of new services being available such as Picasa, Blogger, Sites, and Reader. I feel Google has other intentions for making the mandatory upgrade. Everyone that is currently a Google Apps for Business user will now have an active Google Account. Most Google Apps for Business users are companies that use the service for corporate email, document, and calendar sharing. Users will have to log into their Apps for Business (Google Account) to use email services. Since they are already logged in, it would be extremely easy for them to “+1″ websites and participate in the Google Plus social network.

It’s an extremely smart move for Google and presented in a very low impact manner. Who would not want the upgrade? It allows users to have access to tools (and toys) they would have not had before and they can now be part of the Google Plus social network. Only time will tell.

Information link on upgraded Google Apps for Business services:
http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=29934

Bryan Mull
Internet Marketing Manager
Web Talent Marketing

Google’s Brand New “+1” Feature: The Like Button’s Latest Rival

Our recent post about the Facebook Like button touched on how social networking and search engine results are becoming more and more related to one another. Google has now created its own rival to the Like button, which it calls the “+1” button. This new Google feature allows you to “+1″ (plus one) any Google search results or ads that you like. And to truly rival the Like button, Google plans on making this button available to place on websites in the next upcoming months.

If you are logged into you Google account, go ahead and search for something. You will see a +1 button to the right of each search result listing. After clicking on this button, you’ve “+1′d” it, giving it your stamp of approval. You have also made your support visible to anyone within your Google social network (that is, people in your Gmail and Google Talk chat list, people in your Google Contacts, and people that you follow in Google Reader or Google Buzz). Everyone within this network will be able to see what you have +1’d and, likewise, they can see what you have +1’d as well. Clicked the +1 button by mistake or changed your mind about a site? Google gives you the option to undo your +1 if you so choose.

+1’d Websites Your Friends Love, At Your Disposal

Your search results are greatly affected if your friends within your Google social network have +1’d pages that fall within what you are searching for. When you search for something while logged into your Google account, any results that you’ve +1′d — or which have been +1′d by those in your network — will rank superior to other search results:

In the above example, look at the names listed under the search result. The two names are two members of the searcher’s Google network, in addition to the 16 others within their network who also like it. Google also will show the amount of +1’s if a search result has gained a large amount but not from people in your network (however, Google will withhold the names of these individuals, just revealing the quantity of +1’s). This allows the search to understand how admired or relevant the page may be for +1 users.

There are some definite benefits to this new Google feature. If you’re searching, it’s nice to see if there are any answers that are recommended by your friends. Google anticipates that advertisers will love this, expecting click-through rates on +1′d advertisements to go up, assuming that less people will accidentally click an ad’s link (costing the advertiser money) but rather click the +1 button. All ads will have these buttons, and there is no way for the advertiser to turn this feature off. However, the button does not cost as a paid ad click in the advertiser’s PPC campaign. The button can also help advertisers they can see which of their ad campaigns are the most popular (whichever have the most +1’s). For organic search results, anyone registered in Google Webmaster Central will be able to see +1 statistics for their non-paid or “organic” search listings. Google expects that soon, there will be a Google +1 button for websites, that will sit right next to your site’s Like button and Tweet button.

So what hasn’t Google thought of, at this point? Well, what’s missing in the +1 button is some connection to the people you are connected to via non-Google services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or Linkedin. That’s something that will come in the future, Google says.

‘Likes’: Now Part of the Search Ranking Currency

With more than 500 million users (30% in the United States), Facebook is rapidly becoming the primary platform for social networking. This is the direct result of its ability to further expand relationships across the globe. Facebook puts the user at the center of their own web experience, changing the world of SEO as links become superseded by ‘Likes’.

The Like Button’s Function and Value

We’re halfway through the year 2011, and already in its infancy the Facebook Like button has proved to be paramount in the world of website promotion. The year began with most websites featuring a Facebook Share option, and maybe a Like button. Facebook has recently discontinued the development of the Share feature, and has chosen instead to highlight the Like button as the sole way for websites to expose their content on Facebook. If a user Likes a company’s page, posts from that page will appear on the user’s personal newsfeed with a link back to the company’s page. This feature allows websites to gain more responses from their advertising because they can more frequently inform users who have Liked their content. The feature also shows which of the user’s friends have Liked the same content page. The Like button is quickly becoming one of the most important features to have on your website because Likes have an effect on search engine rankings, and the content page your button links to is also crawled by the search engines which adds greater authority to your site. Like buttons give website owners the chance to enhance traffic and improve engagement with recurring visitors as well as referred new users—as it becomes more and more popular, most company’s would even consider the Like button as a requirement for their website.

Since the Like button is still very new, it’s hard to calculate just how much quantifiable value it provides for a company. Analysts do suggest that a Like’s worth usually weighs more in comparison to that of a Tweet. Eventbrite.com, an event-ticketing website, has published that an average Like brought in $1.34 in revenue as opposed to $.80 that an average Tweet does, and that the value of the Like is still rising as the Facebook network and Like button acceptance expands. Eventbrite has also provided the statistic that a Facebook user who Likes a page via its Like button visits 5.3 times more Web URLs to engage with content and on average has 2.4 times more friends than users who do not Like pages. This just goes to show that not only are the Likes important in that users who choose to Like your page will engage with your content, but also that their friend-base is double the size of the non-Like user and they can refer their friends to Like your page as well. A like button is a direct connection between website owners and more socially interactive customers, and those customers have a good chance of referring their own friend base to your page if you’re lucky!

Where SEO Comes In

Search marketing and social media networking are becoming more and more interrelated because the amount of Likes and Tweets pointing to a particular website can increase the site’s rankings in the top search engines. As the value of a Like increases not only in the business aspect but in search engine rankings as well, Facebook Pages are becoming simultaneously more competitive in obtaining the attention of Facebook’s 500 million users. Facebook’s in-house search option is a great tool for gaining new prospective Likes from users searching for your company or services. There are certain ways to optimize your Facebook Page so that users can easily find it, Like it, and stay informed.

The first thing you should do is to name your page something simple and directly related to your brand without making it overly descriptive. This is because the Facebook search option is based upon results that are an exact match to the topic searched. If you try to combine words when naming your page (like CompanyOne rather than Company One), you have a lower chance of appearing under the results section because this is not your company’s true name and only the exact wording that the user typed into the search box will appear as results. Its also important to be clear and brand the page with your company’s title because this name is also the Facebook Page’s title tag, which is the linked section that will appear in outside search engines as well as Facebook’s internal search. Make sure to describe your business in the ‘About Us’ box and ‘Info’ tab. These are fields that contain content more easily indexed by search engines.

Lastly, remember to keep your wall as lively as possible. Keeping your Page vibrant with new and significant content that is updated a few times a week keeps the page active, and it keeps both search engines and your friend-base coming back. Your ultimate goal for optimizing your Facebook page is to create content that makes the page functional enough for people to Like it and talk about it with Friends. This makes an effect on not only Facebook’s search engine, but Google and Bing also notice high activity on Facebook Pages and considers this in their rankings.

One Tip You May Want To Consider

Since your main goal is user engagement when it comes to your Facebook Page, a great idea you may want to consider to boost community/user involvement is to host a sweepstakes, contest or giveaway. It’s an effective and easy way to track your conversion goal!

• Have a contest where users who enter will be selected at random to win a prize, for example X amount of gift cards and varying prices.
• Be sure to offer prizes that people actually would want or need. Be interesting; don’t endorse an unknown or confusing item (or service) that may only intrigue a few prospects.
• Be original, there are other contests out there that your customer may find more appealing and enter instead, so try to stand out by being straightforward, interesting, and beneficial to the largest client-base possible.

The Advantages of Using Facebook and Twitter in Your Business Endeavors

With over 300 million users, Facebook offers a small business a plethora of prospective customers to establish a client base. However, it can also be an extremely overwhelming arena to target your specific audience if you’re a small business beginning your venture in social networking. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Facebook offers brilliant, inexpensive marketing opportunities for small businesses that can truly enhance your clientele. It can be an influential platform on which your company can build a strong social presence. Join the Facebook realm—it’s a strategic business move that many of your competitors may have already made, so why wait?

If creating a Facebook account for your business is your first experience with this social network, we suggest signing up for a personal account first to understand how Facebook works before launching a company page. Learning the in’s and out’s of the site through a personal account will let you observe how other companies use Facebook to bolster their business, which will help you decide how you want to structure your page for the likeness of a customer when the time comes for you to create your own business page. It’s important to note that if you make a personal page and reserve your company name for your personal account, you won’t be able to use it for your Business Fan Page because Facebook prohibits a party from registering multiple account identities.

After understanding the ropes of how Facebook works, you should next research your competition’s Facebook pages and gain some insight from how their pages are built, how many friends “Like” their page, and what kind of posts, photos or videos they use to promote their business. If you already have a personal Facebook account, but don’t know how to extend that presence into a business platform, Facebook offers you several options. You may register your company’s Facebook identity as a Business Account, which is a very basic and straightforward way to establish your existence in the business world on Facebook. The only downside is that there are many strict limitations on what you can do through this type of account. The other option, which is generally more preferable, is to create a Business Fan Page. By doing so, supporters of your business (and prospective customers) can register as a “fan” of your page, and what you post on your company’s page will show up on the newsfeeds of your fans’ personal accounts. This is an extremely valuable option for businesses because it can track your loyal customers, update them immediately with new products and services, and inform them of relevant information regarding your business.

Twitter, like Facebook, has established one of the strongest presences on the Internet. Likewise it can be used as a valuable marketing tool for your business. When creating an account on Twitter, choose a username that represents your business; you can still choose to tweet using your own name, but reserving a username in the name of your business is important so that people can find your company easily upon searching for it in Twitter. What if the name you want to use is already taken? Try to create a name that is close to the company’s name as possible—its all about being as clear and recognizable as you possibly can.

The next step after choosing a strong and personal username is to find people who you wish to follow. If it is someone you’ve never met before, don’t hesitate to request to follow them—in the world of Twitter, its typical to follow people who you do not know. For example, search for people who share an interest in what you sell by searching for the hobby or profession that your business is founded upon. The in’s and out’s of Twitter, just like Facebook, take some time getting used to—so don’t be afraid to jump right in. Both Facebook and Twitter are informal arenas that encourage you to get involved and establish relationships with people, so do just that! Follow whomever you think is interesting…you never know, they may follow you in return and mention you in a tweet! Creating your Twitter community is important because it allows for dialogue while informing your followers of whatever you feel may interest them. That’s the beauty of Twitter: its informal, and thus takes the pressure off of promoting your business because you already have accomplished a strong group of followers paying attention to what you offer, now you just have to keep them interested!

As the amount of your followers increase, don’t get lost in promoting your business and forget about the personal connection with customers: talk about or mention your followers in your tweets rather than solely your business, it helps gain stronger support and interest by making your tweets personal. With both Facebook and Twitter, reading up on the pages or profiles of those who are fans or who follow you is crucial because it helps you better understand who your customers really are. With an understanding of their interests or other daily information, you can start a dialogue with them, or perhaps send them a link that you think they would find appealing. Opening this door of communication is exactly what you want to strive for when jumping into the world of social networking.