Inspired by the UNFORGETTABLE Rochelle Moulton, I created my own 'Manifesto' which is now shared on my About Us page. As Rochelle reflects in her post about creating our own 'manifesto', we need a bold presentation of our mission, our purpose and identity through our company focus. I wish I had seen this idea fifteen months ago on launching Lasting Impressions Editing. This is certainly not a new concept but one I will reflect on daily as a measure and powerful focal point for everything that my client services are all about. I have printed this visual and now have it conspicuously posted where I will see it frequently each and every day while I am seated in front of my computer editing, proofreading, writing and creating on behalf of my clients. Our greatest and most essential aspect of pursuing for any type of endeavor is our focus on those things, concepts and principles that drive our product and service quality to the best possible place among, above and beyond all others. We want to excel in every possible way to ensure that our customers and clients are fully satisfied with what we have provided to their benefit. Our manifesto is indeed our very own declaration of all that has its rightful and deeply meaningful place among our core set of beliefs and best practices and should be shared with anyone and everyone and as equally important...an ongoing series of touch points for us as entrepreneurs to focus on...constant reaffirmations about what we do and why! Today I have a full slate of client services on the agenda and it feels great to begin the day with refocus on power points that make it all happen. Create your own manifesto, even for your own personal benefit and focus! You can recreate any time. Think about those things that mean the most to you as an individual on the personal side and/or as a business professional who engages in critical concepts each and every day. ENGAGE CONSISTENTLY AND WITH PERSISTENCE AND PURPOSE EACH AND EVERY DAY. BEGIN YOUR DAY WITH....I BELIEVE...
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How best do we as business groups or individuals and those who have products and/or services to sell most effectively get the message out to the masses in an efficient, targeted way so that we are not simply throwing darts aimlessly in the air instead of highly focused, targeted audience reach for that ever-elusive bullseye? The time and cost factors involved are crucial to our success. Whether a small business startup, a corporate entity, a publishing author, writer or an individual wanting to gain exposure for what it is we have to share through our online presence, our websites and blogs, the challenge of how best to market our content, how best to strategize going about getting the word out is foremost in our minds. In this article I will share a host of articles, as posted by Social Media Examiner, an outstanding resource for maximizing our social media tools and strategy to our best advantage, through their article post 31 Must Read Social Media Marketing Articles. Perhaps the single most important lesson that I have learned over the years is that through researching those who have succeeded and achieved levels of expertise in their respective industry we discover through process and execution of those proven methods that it is much better to emulate success rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel in terms of marketing for brand awareness and recognition. Adaptability to change is key to moving forward as the dynamics of search engine algorithms change with frequency. Optimization of our website content, the website or blog itself, article titles, headings, subheadings and body text, meta tag descriptions and more all have to change as new search parameters are introduced. Much as most of us would love to see this as a one-off effort on our part, far from the reality. From the 31 articles shared in the linked post by Social Media Examiner we find a generous resource of best practices written by experts in the social media marketing industry who share ways to zero in on what will work best for our respective targeted audience. Here is a shortlist of ten of the thirty-one articles found in the post and all thirty-one of the informative articles are most certainly worth a read and actionable response:
Social media continues to be an effective tool in our content marketing strategy and the content we share on our social media space also must evolve in best practices and be optimized for critical market and search exposure. If we do not establish solid search engine visibility our site ranking will suffer terribly and we will be virtually invisible to the searching community that wants what we have to offer. Please share your thoughts on this post and the linked articles through comment below. What were your highlights from the articles presented? If you have found this article useful please share it with others. Best wishes are extended to all marketers in their endeavours and if you have any questions feel free to submit them through our contact form on the Contact page and I'll be happy to respond. SEO in the here and now is a reality better left out of sight, out of mind you say? What is SEO anyway? Run a Google search using the term “search engine optimization” or “SEO” and the results are in the dozens of millions and for many it may read like science fiction but it is the cornerstone of search engine visibility today more than ever.
In this article I’ll talk about SEO and why it plays such a critical role for the successful engagement of your website and how search engine visibility comes into play. I can’t tell you how often I come across client websites that are seriously lacking in SEO for organic searching. When I raise the issue with those clients my initial question is most often followed by a moment of silence. Mammoth search engine mogul Google leads their industry by a landslide and their ‘algorithms’, essentially a set of rules for online presence which are defined by problem solving in a finite set of steps such that when followed as best practice by anyone with an internet purpose, define how we develop our website and related online content and brand marketing. Clients frequently ask me questions about whether on page SEO is really all that important or that effective and if it is so important, how do they go about changing their website and marketing content to achieve better results. Are you, like those clients, extremely frustrated that you have invest so much time and energy into developing an attractive website with stellar product or services content presentation and you simply are not getting the website traffic that you had expected? SEO Works Rest assured that employing SEO techniques does indeed work. There are critical steps to follow in developing your online content effectively incorporating SEO strategy and the results are telling. Research from the experts will help guide you through the steps to ensure a sound organic search optimization framework is in place. If it all seems just too complicated and time-consuming consider hiring a professional to get the job done. SEO is an ongoing process and you need to understand the basic principles to apply. You will also need to stay abreast of the frequently changing dynamics of the algorithmic playbook or risk falling perilously behind. SEO Is Here To Stay For the foreseeable future SEO will remain on the forefront of online technology and critical best practice. Search engines have their differences when it comes to the whole subject but Google being the powerhouse that it is, the other players march pretty much the same tune and regardless, if you want to be visible online (and isn’t that everyone’s greatest desire?), playing by Google’s rules becomes essential. ‘Keywords’, the buzzword on everybody’s lips in recent times, is the online language application that makes search engine visibility become a reality. Without effective development of keywords and keyword phrase implementation throughout our websites and all related online presence including blogs, marketing articles, our social media and professional networking platforms and more, the search engines cannot effectively connect with our content as it is interwoven online like a complicated web of intricate touch points all relative and relevant to our hub web and blog site locations. And without essential keyword implementation those touch point locations do not interconnect in a meaningful way that display collectively in organic search results. SEO Return On Investment When comparing costs related to implementation of effective SEO with various other available methods of online marketing including paid advertising, social media marketing, lead generation through purchased leads for email marketing platforms, we find that search engine optimization generates a considerable ROI. Given that we can even develop skills necessary to implement SEO independent of professional services, that ROI can become incrementally more productive in terms of ROI. Search Engine Reliance on Product/Service Decisions A huge majority of pre-purchase decision making now begins with customers referring to online information including product and services reviews. The internet has evolved into our daily resource for virtually every aspect of pre-purchase research in terms of which products best suit our needs to who offers those products and services and where they are located whether locally or through online purchase and shipment. In that regard, just consider for a moment where your web content needs to be in terms of visibility to capture a solid market share of your own vs. staring at a telephone that rarely rings. Without putting SEO into place wherever you exist online you will experience great difficulty getting found and that being the case internet searchers will simply go to your competitors instead. Mobile Devices and Local Search The reality of the day is that use of mobile devices has exploded. Take a look at percentages of those using their mobile technology to search for markets of interest, especially locally, is astounding though not at all surprising. People’s lifestyles today are fast-paced and demanding. They don’t have time to locate a phone book, especially where publicly telephone service is virtually non-existent. They are carrying their mobile devices for fast and ready communications and as a reference tool of choice. When they want something they want to find it fast, connect with the merchant and make a fast, informed purchase. The bottom line here is to make sure your website or blog are mobile friendly with high quality, ‘responsive’ content that has suitable presentation for the mobile technology that is quickly coming to dominate the marketplace. Quality Content Rules A close suitor to search engine optimization is the need for high quality content that is optimized with keywords, keyword phrases and anchor text. Keep your site and marketing content updated, fresh with new and relevant, useful information that site visitors can take action on right now. Suggested keyword density of 3% of overall content quantity is the current standard that should be followed. Exceeding that density level will run you the risk of negative search engine ranking and even being penalized for perceived keyword ‘stuffing’ or spam-like activity. Loading up your content with keyword elements virtually without restriction was once an acceptable practice but not anymore. Beware of best SEO practices to avoid costly penalty that could render your online presence virtually nonexistent. Make sure that you have carefully researched for best and most relevant keyword implementation as it directly applies to your market, otherwise your online presence will show up in non-relevant search results which again looks bad to search engines. Ensure that your content is carefully thought out in advance, informative and reads in a way that captures your viewer’s attention and compels their response in a positive way. Dull, overloaded content laced with redundancy only serves to frustrate a reader who typically skims through content to first of all determine if it is what they are looking for and secondly whether or not to read on and make a decision to contact you for more information or make a purchase decision. Remember, Google and the various other search engines crawl your content with frequency to evaluate your relevance and search visibility. SEO Practices; An Ongoing Process Keep this principal in your sights moving forward. Keep you content updated, highly relevant and informative and make sure your content follows best practices of the day in every respect including SEO algorithm standards. Stay abreast of new trends and necessary practices online. If your business is not developing in a positive direction you are falling behind and your competitors are moving full steam ahead. Stay sharp and innovative…don’t copy, be creative, relevant and exceptional. Know your marketplace and your competitors, offer value and differentiate yourself and what you offer with something of value that your competitors do not or cannot offer in kind. Keyword Planning Effective SEO planning and implementation begins with finding the right keywords to adopt for your own product or service orientation. Make sure your keywords are creative yet highly relevant. Do not rely simply on your imagination to establish a list of best-use keywords and keyword phrases. There are a number of effective keyword planning tools available online. One such tool is the Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool. While the Adwords element of this Google service is paid, the keyword planner tool is free. As with any such tool, it takes a little practice to understand the dynamics of the tool and how best to manipulate your keyword search for best results. This Google keyword essential tool in the webmaster arsenal produces a host of single word and keyword phrase combinations, their relative monthly frequency in organic searches, their level of competition, suggested bid level for PPC campaigns and more. While in the early stages of your online presence, the time when you are a relative unknown, best practice suggests that you opt for those keywords from the planner tool results that are frequently/most commonly used in search terms AND which are relatively medium-level in terms of competition rating. Both of these values are stated in the keyword results page(s) which will also deliver keyword results in terms of relevant groups to target. Understanding the dynamics of this tool’s best keyword parameters to suggest and ensuing results is critical to finding and implementing the best possible keyword content for your online optimization. Where To Effectively Place Keywords/Phrases Just as important as finding the best keyword and keyword phrase combinations to implement is where to place your keyword elements. Website and Blogs: Titles and Headings/Subheadings – Including keyword elements within the context of titles and headings/subheadings on your website and blog are essential elements of website SEO. Make sure that where keywords are applied in these elements they read back naturally (as a natural component of the sentence or title/heading structure). If on reading back an optimized title or heading the keyword seems unnatural or out of place then you MUST re-phrase until that natural read is achieved, otherwise the search engines will penalize you for perceived spam-like content/keyword stuffing activity. Make such content highly relevant and compelling. The title and headings are the starting point for capturing your reader’s attention. Make the best out of creative, captivating title and heading content that compels your site visitors to want to read on rather than click out. Body Text – Incorporate carefully planned and executed keywords and keyword phrases within the context of your content, ensuring that the keyword elements are highly relevant to the subject matter. Maintain that ‘natural’ integration of your keyword elements wherever they are placed within your content. SEO analysis takes into account which keywords and phrases are used and where they are placed for greatest effectiveness in that natural presence within the context of your content. Exceed the current suggested guideline of a maximum 3% keyword density of your content to your detriment. Remember, the search engines are keeping track! Remember too, that long tail keywords work very naturally within the context of sentences. Also an effective SEO application is the use of keyword synonyms, words that are similar to primary keywords and are also picked up and favoured by the search engines. Content Tags – Content tags are a critical element of search engine optimization. As the name would suggest, content ‘tags’ are essential content identifiers that are picked up by the search engines and help to ensure that your content shows up in organic search results. Play down the importance of careful tag selection. Web writers often rush this element of content publication online having completed the blog post or article itself and feeling that the tags are insignificant or non-essential. Give tagging as much attention as the determination of keyword selection and make sure that some of those top keywords (always highly relevant to the content itself) are found in the tags as well. Tag keyword elements are as critical as implementation within body text and post titles or headlines. Meta Tags – Where you have access to your website or blog meta descriptions in your site’s dashboard, editor or settings controls, make sure your site’s top keywords are included in your meta tag descriptions. Incorporating this critical element of website SEO is extremely important. Search engines continue to include the meta tags as one of the key identifiers of online content. While some search engines give this element less significance, it continues to be a barometer of measure in the search visibility process. Sidebar Content SEO – Another often overlooked element for SEO opportunity is sidebar content. While there is less opportunity for inclusion of keywords in your narrower sidebar fields, don’t exclude them from the optimization strategy. Whether within the brief context of a sidebar element or its title/heading, infuse that content with relevant keywords as well. Always be mindful of the overall site keyword density when adding SEO to sidebar elements. Site Navigation Bar – Keywords can also be used in page name tabs within the navigation bar and site maps. Tab names are normally very brief in length, a matter of one, two or three words. Ensure the page name so tabbed reads highly relevant and natural. Header Text; Headings & Sub-headings – Whether stand alone within the header element of a website or blog or as a text overlay in the header, here is another perfect opportunity to apply keyword elements…in moderation. Headers should not be cluttered with excess textual content...case in point our own homepage header. Keep your header clean, attractive, visually pleasing and always relevant to the site’s purpose and conveyance. Maintain a high level of quality and in a few well placed words identify to the site visitor exactly what your site is all about…this is NOT the place to fall short in that respect. A brief call to action can also be effectively well-placed in the header to prompt the visitor to find out more. Remember that statistically, you have but a few minutes to engage your website visitors – they must be able to clearly identify what your site is about and what you offer with a quick scan of your homepage and within no more than five or six minutes, preferably sooner. The growing trend in the day is minimal website or blog visitor tolerance for fluff or ambiguous content. They want to know within a few minutes of landing on your site that your content will provide them with what they are looking for…or they will click out fast and never return. Anchor Text – Within the context of your article or blog body text incorporate a few words of sentence wording as ‘anchor text’ linking to related content or elements on another page of your site just I did above with “our own homepage header” linking to this site’s homepage. Anchor text linking is yet another form of on page SEO which actually helps search engine crawlers understand the mapping or site layout dynamics by linking your various site pages in this manner. Anchor text is an easy application of natural SEO writing and content strategy. Social Media Optimization – Often overlooked, social media locations are yet another critical element of your SEO strategy and implementation. Start your SEO right on your social media profile whether Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and more. Make sure to extend your SEO strategy to your professional LinkedIn profile as well. This cannot be understated. Carry your SEO across your entire online presence using the same essential keyword group to ensure that an online correlation of all of those elements are picked up by the search engines. In conclusion, webmasters want to be ever-mindful of SEO implementation and the various elements of your web content to incorporate keywords and keyword phrases to your best advantage. Post a list of these critical elements for SEO best practice in a conspicuous location above or reasonably close to your computer as a constant reminder every time you update your site with a new post or refresh your site’s flagship elements that will drive traffic to your site. By Don MacIver, Owner, Editor
Incorporating the various social media and professional networking sites in your marketing efforts continues to be an important part of our business brand and marketing process on a consistent and efficient basis. By using the various social media platforms in this manner our potential audience reach (who sees and engages in our content posts) is broadened for best results. In this article I provide a series of important guidelines for effective promotion of your content following the first live publication and beyond. Getting the news out about your new blog or article post quickly and efficiently is essential. Providing fresh, informative, engaging content that immediately grabs attention and maintains interest is key to optimizing our audience reach and response levels. · Share once in the first 24 hours after your original live post. If it is business related posting set up a Business Page on Facebook. This is a highly ‘social’ site and many abhor business content on personal pages and will promptly ignore/un-follow you. · Monitor your Facebook business page analytics, in particular your ‘Reach’ data and graphical display, daily to follow notable changes and also weekly, monthly data and beyond to get a feel for flat periods and dates/times of significant increase or decrease in reach and also engagement, comments, shares. Review what was posted to your page on those dates of significant change. You will begin to see a patter for increased audience reach and engagement through the data and a thorough analysis of your content posted on those dates of increased connection. You must know and understand what information your audience responds best to and therefore wants or needs. You MUST target your audience through your content and tagging. If you post about content your followers have no interest in you are wasting your time and theirs. · Posting Frequency: Through your Insights data determine when best to post your business page content based on best results for your audience reach and engagement. Post at optimum days and times using the Facebook Post Scheduler. Experiment with different post frequencies and the day/time of postings through both scheduled and intermittent posting to see what works best for your audience. · Remember your targeted audience, their geographical location and time zone. If you post when the majority of people are in bed asleep your results diminish accordingly. Your ‘reach’ data will tell you the days/time of day when, on average, your audience connects with your posts. · Gauging Reach Performance: From your Facebook Insights data you can determine your page’s average reach experience as a baseline to compare your future reach experience. Always focus on the content that your audience responds best to and that best helps you achieve your post objectives. · ‘Pages To Watch’ Feature: This is a useful feature to monitor on Facebook. You can follow the reach experience of up to 100 other pages of your choice, your competitors and beyond, to see which pages are achieving significant audience reach in comparison to your own. Then you can connect with those pages and see how that significant reach is being achieved. · Types of Facebook Updates: Your audience responds in their own individual ways. Curate and/or create your content for updates in varied forms including blogs or articles, videos and image posts. Monitor closely your audience reach and response indicators ie likes, comments, shares and Insights data to determine which format works best overall or in combination with your general audience. Watch your new page ‘likes’ patterns as well to see what posts are generating new interest and following. · Post Sharing: Periodically, ask your page friends and followers to share your business posts on their personal pages while being aware of your relationship with them and awareness of any potential sensitivity. Generally, if a person sees value in what you post they will be willing if not eager to share your content with others. · Schedule your new content posting 3-4 times during the first 24 hrs. after original post reasonably spread out over optimum viewing hours. · Post unrelated tweets and/or do re-tweets in between your own content posting. If your posts are ALL about you (buy me, buy my product, buy my services) you will turn people off. Avoid overly self-promoting or followers will ignore your posts or even un-follow. · Hashtags, Images & Headlines: Remember to utilize these components consistently in order to achieve your broadest audience reach by capturing their attention for clickthroughs. · Connection & Networking: Engage with your followers and beyond. When someone ‘favorites’ or ‘re-tweets’ your content respond with a message or tweet of thanks and seek to engage in conversation (one on one) with them through natural, un-pushed and meaningful dialogue and stay in touch with those who appear potential new associations or customers. Add them to your ‘Lists’ on Twitter to highlight that potential relationship as a customer and/or influencer. Be acutely aware of the current day importance of networking. Results can easily translate into revenue – it takes time commitment and effective planning and execution but fruits of your labor will come to bear. · Following: Before following anyone, especially where they have favorited a post of yours without following, take a look at their profile first. If their number of followers is far more than the number they follow chances are they are only mining for follows and have no intention of following you, especially where there is no mutual relevance and/or they are so geographically distant that any new association or customer relationship may seem highly unlikely. · Tweet Visibility & Lifespan: Remember that by virtue of the scrolling post platform on Twitter, as new tweets come in after your own, your tweet gradually drops down the visible display window. The estimated visibility and lifespan of each tweet is approximately two hours. Typically, most followers do not dig ‘pages deep’ to find posts they have missed earlier in the day. PINTEREST & INSTAGRAM · Pin Blog Post Images: Be sure to only post images on relevant Pinterest or Instagram boards. Like any other social media platform it takes an active board following practice to attract their follows in return. · Age Demographics: Remember that your audience’ interests, to a fair degree, will vary depending on their age. Your Pinterest audience will typically be middle-aged or older on average and Instagram audiences tend to be younger. · Reach & Engagement: Monitor your referrals and engagement rates to identify trends among your followers to determine what image content they prefer the most. There is no sense posting images that will be ignored consistently. · Post your content link within 24 hrs of the original post going live. · LinkedIn Publisher: Post your content link via the LinkedIn Publisher if you have access to it. LinkedIn has a huge and rapidly growing user base and is THE place to be for professional networking and business content sharing. Upload a high resolution, relevant image to head your post. You can share your entire post right in the update but if your objective, like my own, is to funnel web traffic back to my hub location (blog or website) where your content originates, copy and paste the first one or two opening paragraphs followed by ‘Read More…’ linking to the original content. That way you engage the LinkedIn audience and also gain valuable exposure to your primary/hub website or blog. Be sure to include the three allowable tags to help broaden your reach even further. · LinkedIn Groups: Post your content link to groups that you have joined on LinkedIn. Make sure that what you post is fully relevant to the group itself as irrelevant content posting will be deemed spamming. You should also be actively participating in the group discussions otherwise your posts may go largely ignored. Be fully familiar with each group’s Rules or Terms of Use guidelines to avoid compromising those requirements through inappropriate posts. GOOGLE+ · Share your content within the first 24 hrs after the original post goes live. · Post your shared content and links to your Profile and also relevant Google+ communities you participate in. Again, abide by the individual community guidelines or terms of use when posting. SCHEDULE SOCIAL POSTING It is very important to establish consistent posting habits on the various social media and professional networks. Create a calendar or other means to schedule posting, preferably one that provides automatic individual or repeat task reminders on an ongoing basis to help keep you on track. Consistent posting results in better engagement and reach statistically, especially where sites like Twitter have the scrolling tweet format and no follower post notifications. In that case you need to do manual browsing through your feed or individual tweet pages of those you follow in order to see their posts beyond current feed page view. Best practice is to always monitor analytics and insights data to help you determine when best to post your content and links when it will have the greatest audience reach (YOUR audience) and when it will most effectively help you achieve your own company objectives. Use auto post scheduling wherever possible when your real-time posting is not coinciding with those best times to post. When using auto posting apps be careful about their posting dynamics to ensure your audience does not find the timing/frequency of posting intrusive, spam-like or otherwise annoying to them or you will lose followers and potential customers/clients rapidly. As you can appreciate, their tolerance for such annoyance is minimal to none. Was this article useful to you? If so please share the post. Your comments are encouraged and welcome. By Don MacIver, Owner, Editor, Writer © Lasting Impressions Editing 2015, Penticton, BC, Canada THE BUSINESS OF HELPING OTHERS Please Share This Post (vertical post share bar down left side of page) As this feature post reflects through its title, I am in the business of helping others. I won’t allow this to sound or feel pitchy but I am reaching out to each and every one of you…and beyond. Through my services business Lasting Impressions Editing, I am helping clients around the globe to raise the bar in terms of their website, document and book manuscript content quality and reader engagement. In a nutshell, here’s how I help those clients: · Content writing, editing and proofreading · Websites, personal and professional documents, book manuscripts · Content Search Engine & Social Media Optimization · SEO & SMO strategy & services, consultation and coaching/training · Website content strategy & development for increased visitor engagement, web traffic and response growth, increased followers/subscribers/customers and sales, search engine visibility and better site ranking Today’s business and publishing climate is such that content perfection is critical and demanded. I help clients everyday who are frustrated by the lack of visibility they have on the internet, the lack of new customer development and a general lack of revenue for all their tireless efforts at GETTING NOTICED. PLEASE SHARE this feature on your own social and professional media pages, to your friends, colleagues…anyone who might benefit from talking to me…no obligation. If you have any questions feel free to contact me here. **My social media links are on my website…let’s connect** Special thanks to all! View Our Services or Contact Us To Find Out More Are you frustrated about the trend of declining user sharing habits on the social media channels? You're not alone in that frustration. The landscape of brand article engagement and sharing by our readers has a dynamic all of its own and how and when we post our articles to promote our business brand is constantly changing. Not so long ago when we set up our business or fan pages in Facebook we were pleasantly surprised about the amount of engagement we were achieving and came away with a positive sense that our product or services business identity was beginning to grow, that our company's exposure metrics were realizing positive gains. In more recent months the picture has changed rather drastically on the downside. First and foremost realize that highly informative, highly relevant and easily readable article or blog post content is critical. The big search engines, Google in particular, is gravitating more and more to this algorithmic metric. When optimizing our articles for search engine friendly language and increased visibility we need to be fully aware of what is acceptable today in terms of SEO content in article or blog titles and body content. Care must be taken to follow current day recommended keyword density so as not to appear to the search engine crawlers as "keyword stuffing" or artificial means to prop up keyword content in attempts to attract search engine attention. Websites are now penalized for that type of inappropriate activity and their ranking and search visibility will suffer as a result. Recent studies indicate growing trends in terms of current day social sharing by internet users and we must be consistently aware of what users want to see, when they are online searching, finding and sharing online content. This user sharing activity awareness is critical for optimal article or blog post exposure. Staying abreast of these trends, as they change, is crucial to establishing your own reader engagement and building a strong and responsive following/subscriber list and traffic backlinking to our blogs or websites to develop new clients, customers for increased lead generation and sales. In their recent article Social Sharing Habits, Social Media Examiner reviews current user share trends and how to engineer our blog and article content for better user engagement. Statistics reflect which of the social media channels are standing out in terms of their user interests and sharing habits right down to days and times when users are most frequently online and sharing in significant numbers. The linked article by Social Media Examiner also identifies the "list" and "why" type of articles as the dominant force engaging the highest frequency of user sharing activity. Timing of Posts: Take a close look at the data presented for the best days and times throughout the week to schedule posts for maximum audience reach, engagement and sharing. Do NOT post randomly...plan for your greatest opportunity for exposure. Research through other sources to verify these trends. Facebook's post scheduler provides users with quick and easy scheduling of posts when doing so during times that are not ideal and helps to ensure that your articles will be seen by the most possible followers. When posting your article on your Facebook Fan or Business Page, before clicking 'Post' first click on the pull down menu just to the right of the 'Post' button. You will see the post options 'Schedule', 'Backdate' and 'Draft'. Click on 'Schedule' and select the most suitable post date and time to ensure you get the highest readership and their engagement. By doing so you will maximize the potential for increased reader viewing and if your content makes an impression hopefully the readers will feel compelled to share your insights with others! Post on days and times of day that research data clearly shows are best for maximum user reach and engagement. Remember differing time zones when scheduling your posts. If you live on the west coast DON'T schedule/post at 10:00 pm when a huge segment of your audience is likely sleeping! Also remember to post on weekends when statistically people are online in greater numbers on their days off/weekends. Be aware of who your targeted audience is, where they spend their time and when and what kind of information and viewing, relevant to your own business, products and/or services, is attracting their attention most in terms of engagement and sharing. Taylor your articles accordingly with information rich, appealing content posted at the most ideal times and understand the reading and sharing dynamics of your audience for best results. Please share this post through the SHARE BAR on the left side of this blog page. Thank you! By Don MacIver, Writer, Editor Are you wondering whether Twitter engagement is worth your time and effort for business, product and services marketing? Statistically, Twitter has continued to place strongly with the other high-profile social media and professional networking sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. Their innovative Twitter Ads marketing services and support have been a dynamic force to reckon with when ponied up against the likes of the behemoth Facebook which continues to lead the pack in terms of huge advertising revenue share yet Twitter is grabbing an ever-increasing market share with impressive gains in user engagement. Social Media Examiner shares research statistics, produced by Pew Research, which point to a tremendous growth trend that is currently being experienced by Twitter. This substantial growth trend is expected to continue and for anyone looking to attract new website visitors and increased visitor engagement, click-throughs and sales conversions, you cannot overlook the importance of the social and professional media for your daily brand marketing activities. Research & Implementation: The dynamics of the social media and professional network giants is ever-changing and we need to stay informed of those changes so that we are applying these marketing and website exposure tools and their resources to our best advantage. Twitter continues to be a relatively easy medium to use with their brief Tweet post parameters and media/image uploading utilities which, used effectively, can bring a lot of attention to our Twitter profile and website. Use high quality, relevant images in tandem with your Twitter Tweets...they are a powerful draw that people connect with in a highly personal, and often viral, way. For our social media marketing efforts to capture attention and produce results what we say and how we say it is critical. Make sure that you are incorporating your chosen keyword and keyword phrases in the context of your social media posts. I cannot stress enough the importance of making sure your keywording is applied consistently throughout not only your website but extending those same keywords and phrases into your social media and professional network marketing campaigns. Remember that keywording continues to be an essential part of gaining critical traction for our websites, blogs, articles and more...anywhere we actively promote or market our business, products and/or services. We cannot afford to be passive (hit and miss, lacklustre) about what the social media and professional networks can do for our bottom line. Personal Experience: For my own business website and literary blog site marketing endeavors I have experienced ever-increasing results from Twitter in particular, comprising approximately 65% of my overall site followers and subscribers. That is significant traction for the minimal effort required. When I recently developed and launched this new website for Lasting Impressions Editing, I painstakingly established my own keywords and keyword phrases (through search engine keyword planning tools like Google Keyword Planning Tool). I applied those targeted keywords consistently across the website content and social media/professional networks and I experienced over five hundred unique site visits in the first two days of launch...and that was only the preliminary basics and I continue to update the site regularly to add relative, value added content. Interactive Social Media and Professional Network Engagement: Also critical to success with the social and professional networks is to make sure you engage with those who you follow and who follow you. Take an active, interactive one-to-one conversational engagement with genuine interest in what those folks are talking about on their own pages, comment and retweet/share their posts with others and you are bound to reap the benefits of doing so. Lack of our own engagement with others will contribute to our own decline in marketing results. By the laws of nature people reciprocate for others what they receive in kind. Do NOT make social media posts all about yourself or your products or services. Today's marketing model is acutely focused on professional networking...don't hide behind advertising campaigns and clever marketing language to entice. Again, in my own personal experience, my professional networking efforts (connecting and conversing with individuals who share our own interests) through the development of a trusting and valued relationship, ultimately leads to much greater potential for doing future business together...and when that trusting customer or client is happy they tell others...THAT is the powerful catalyst to successful business. Paid advertising has its own distinctive dynamics and we cannot afford to overlook that particular avenue of gaining recognition. My focus in my comments here points to a dramatically growing element of powerful connection through the social media that we simply cannot overlook nor deny. Use it to your advantage. Stamp your socials posts with your brand through carefully researched keywording and watch your site analytics for the key indicators that reflect consistently for your efforts in social media and professional network marketing. If done effectively the numbers speak for themselves. By Don MacIver, Owner, Editor, Writer, Author © Lasting Impressions 2015 Wouldn't it be nice to see your website or blog show up in the Top 10 positioning on search engine results pages? Top 10 is the ultimate gold when it comes to where our web pages are going to show up when people are searching for our products or services and if we want to see meaningful results for all of our tireless efforts to get our websites or blogs seen we need to make sure that the content we create for our sites will be highly visible to search engines. That all seems pretty daunting and for many a frustrating part of online website marketing. The thing is that we simply cannot aimlessly practice online website content writing without including keywords and keyword phrases that will be recognized by search engines AND commonly used words and phrases that are most often used by people when they do online searches. Online document and website content strategy is a critical part of increased reader engagement and web traffic. We may have the best products or services available today but if we don't understand search engine optimization and social media optimization our sites will never be seen by the majority of those searching online. As equally important is writing high quality, clean, concise, informative and compelling content that will thoroughly interest and engage our readers and leave them with an immediate desire to find out more. Search engine visibility and website or blog site ranking by the search engines is extremely important for anyone marketing their products, services or non-commercial sites online today. Without being an expert in SEO practices there are tools available online to help find the best words and phrases to use in our web content. Google continues to be the largest search engines by far and our ultimate goal is reaching that Top 10, page 1 search results positioning on Google as well as the other major search engines. Google.com Webmaster Tools: Start off by registering for Google tools and resources. I signed up for a Gmail account and have access to Google's powerhouse webmaster tools that help guide website owners through their various tools and resources for search engine optimization and more. Google Adwords Keyword Planner: Once you have access to Google's treasure chest of resources go the the Google Keyword Planner tool site linked here. If you want to use Google Adwords there is cost involved but to simply research keywords and keyword phrases the keyword planner tool itself is free. The tool landing page shows a number of options to choose from and you want to go to the first option provided which is "search for new keyword and ad groups ideas." Next you will see a search campaign box where you need to enter what product or service (or type of site content) you are offering. Think carefully about the commonly known names or phrases that most people would use to search for your site...never use highly technical jargon/language...keep it simple. Then enter your full website address ie http:www... followed by entering your product, service or website/blog content category. Again, think in terms of the most commonly known terms for the category that would best describe what you offer on your site. What follows those first three primary fields is 'Targeting' and 'Customize Your Search'. In these two sections you want to focus carefully on geographic regions you are targeting an audience in, their language, search engine options and keyword search filters. There is a small question mark icon located just above these two fields for brief helpful information on what you need to focus on here. Once this form is completed click "Get Ideas". What you will see on the results page that follows are a series of keyword or keyword phrases which are the most commonly used terms used by people searching on the internet, a count of the number of searches made for each keyword or phrase, a competition rating and more. Important: From the results described above, you want to choose keywords and keyword phrases that will serve your own objectives best. If you are a new business startup (just getting started with a new/first business) choose the keywords and phrases that are medium competition and number of searches. Choosing higher competition ranking and the highest number of searches produces search results to highly established and ranked websites that place them in the Top 10 or 20 (Page 1 and 2) search results positions and even if you have a small search engine visibility, because of the much higher ranked sites for the chosen keywords/keyword phrases your site will never get seen (because your site is listed a multiple of pages deep in the search results). Remember that most people only click on sites listed on Page 1 of search results and a very small percentage will ever go into Page 2 results. Keyword Density: How many times you include keywords and keyword phrases (collectively) within each paragraph or web page is somewhat subjective but very close attention needs to be taken here. Google is frequently changing its methods and tolerances for acceptable use and volume of keywords within our content. If overused, and when identical keywords or phrases are repeated, Google now looks upon that practice in a very negative way, commonly referred to as "keyword stuffing" and you can expect that in doing so Google will penalize your site ranking heavily or render your site essentially invisible through poor ranking and search visibility. There was a period of time where volume of keywording on a website was acceptable but NOT anymore...do so at your own peril. Search engines establish 'algorithms' for search ranking and visibility criteria which are essentially the rules that must be followed if we want people to be able to find us in search queries. Ignoring such rules is very risky and will most likely eliminate any chance we have of getting noticed, gaining a following, achieving reader engagement and ultimately our targeted new clients, customers and sales. Keyword Density Target: To ensure that your website stays in the 'safe' zone for search engine visibility and ranking you should target a keyword density of approximately 1% - 3% of your total article/web page content. In other words, for every 100 words of content, use a maximum of 3 keyword or keyword phrase applications. To easily calculate this density, while your MS Word document is open, look in the lower left area of your system tray at the bottom of your monitor screen. You will see a page count ie 'Page 1 of...' and then 'Words' which tells you how many words there are in your open article. To calculate the percentage of keywords and phrases that occur in the article, count those keywords/phrases in total and then divide that count number by the total number of words in the article. If you have more than the recommended 1% - 3% keyword density, remove some of those keywords (or other content reworded) until you are back to the density limit suggested. There is more to website ranking and search engine optimization for increasing search visibility and website traffic results than can reasonably be covered in this article but the essentials outlined above will give you a good start at improving how visible your website or blog will be in search engine queries and help those sites begin to establish ranking by the search engines. The key to establishing best results is to make sure you stay current on the methods best applied for your site as time passes and search engines change their algorithms and rules of engagement. Test Your Search Results and Ranking: Remember to frequently monitor your website/blog search results by running your own organic searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. For myself, I would use search terms like "website editing, Peachland, BC" or "document proofreading in Peachland, BC" or "social media optimization in Peachland, BC". When you see your own site search results placed on Page 3 or higher you know you're on the right track. Always use 'organic' search terms like I have illustrated here for my own searches. Don't use your site title as the vast majority of people searching don't know you or your site title and they won't get results that include your site. Keep tweaking your keywords and phrases and other relevant content wording until you succeed in Top 10, Page 1 search results position...and celebrate! Now you're talking!! Social Media Optimization: Similar keyword and phrase practices apply to social media posts. It's easy to forget keyword content in social media site posts (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Pinterest etc.) and professional networks like LinkedIn but optimizing our social media content is equally important for generating website and blog traffic. Also make sure that your profile on each of those networks has keywording because it helps users of those networks to find you (and your related website/other locations) in their searches online. When you connect or get followers make sure you interest with them individually through post comments, sharing, Tweeting and private messaging. Resources: As a website or blog owner or administrator/marketer, make sure you do research on all aspects of writing website and online document content by doing internet searches. Find the experts online that can help guide you through the processes. Emulate success...do what successful people do. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Find others who are successful on the internet, learn their methods and apply those successful methods for best results. For years I have consistently referred to two highly successful websites to learn current best practices and I have seen very positive results with my own website, blog and social media presence. SiteProNews is an excellent resource for breaking technology, social media and search engine news. SocialMediaExaminer is an outstanding resource for social media marketing, newsletters, events, networking tips and resources and live podcasts hosting interviews with many of the social media and business marketing giants of today who share how they have achieved lofty heights and their methods. Practice what these successful folks have done and you will save yourself an awful lot of wasted time attempting to get it right. Ultimately you need to decide whether to apply keyword and keyword phrase content on your website or blog yourself or hire an expert in that service discipline to do it for you. It will take some time to achieve best results on your own. Remain patient and focused! Monitor your website or blog data through analytics as you make changes to keywording to see what positive or negative affect new (or eliminated/updated) keywords have on your website's visitor traffic and engagement and search visibility. Most important of all....always focus on reaching that treasured Top 10 page 1 of search results! That is when the most significant results begin to happen! |
Don MacIver, Owner, Editor writes on his daily commitment to helping clients get results from their content Key Word BlogSUBSCRIBE
for all of the latest web and document content development and optimization insights straight to your inbox Editor/Owner Don MacIver writes about essential elements for website , document & manuscript text editing, proofreading, writing, Don MacIver, EditorI help my clients find just the right words, working together for optimum reader connection. Editor's Blog explores the process Editor's Sites Wordpress Poetry Blog Twitter Business Page Twitter Poet's Page Facebook Business Page Facebook Author Page Facebook Personal Page Archives
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Active Search Results AddURL.nu Editors Association of Canada Darlene Elizabeth Williams Grammarly Handbook Keyword Planner Tool Louise Harnby Proofreader MOZ SEO SEMrush SiteProNews Social Media Examiner Wordstream Advertising Writer's Digest Writers Market Writers Net Website & Document/Manuscript Analysis, Editing, Proofing, Writing & SEO High quality, engaging and actionable web and document content is critical now more than ever. Highly positioned visibility in search engine results pages ... |
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