3 Ways to Create a Successful Partnership between Social Media and SEO

Advertisers and marketers are always trying to find that perfect balance of traditional and digital advertising and marketing to reach their target demographic and audience. With digital advertising and marketing overtaking much of the budget, agencies are finding out that reaching their target audience isn't as simple as it used to be. With so many social media networks, advertising networks and SEO changes that must be updated or added into the marketing plan, things can get out of hand fast. Often times, all of these different outlets and networks that you joined will be for naught, as clients do not see a change in their profit margins. Below are 3 ways that can help improve profit margins, likes, and retweets.

Leverage Promoted Posts to Increase Outreach and Link Building

Everyone is familiar with the old ways of content marketing that are outdated, and in some cases, can often hurt your chances of appearing higher in search rankings. Nowadays, social media networks such as Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook allow users and companies to "promote" their posts. What this essentially does for a company is allow their status, pages, posts or tweets to get displayed on your target demographics news feed. Targeting a clients key demographic with these promoted posts using highly relevant content can help to get a product or business noticed, the content shared, and onto other newsfeeds and help lead to sales and new followers and fans for a very low cost.

Create More Effective Content

It is said over and over, but the key to gaining new fans, likes and customers is to create fresh, relevant and effective content as often as possible. By looking through your Google Analytics and determining what keywords are helping to bring people to your site along with what they are searching for, and what is the most effective content is, companies can begin to write content that will help drive more visits to their site. Along with this, having the social media data of what articles were shared the most will also help to determine what a company should be writing about. By having this and a 3-4 month plan, companies can begin to think of complementary blog posts and articles that will complement those primary posts and articles and help drive audience engagement activities to those main posts and articles.

Engage the "Movers and Shakers"

How often is the company engaging with its customers? Oftentimes companies will simply set-up a social media page and forget it, leaving the page to potentially be run over with spam messages or worse, unhappy customer reviews. So how can a company improve upon and build their social media profiles? Interact, engage and build relationships with your key influencers (i.e. those people who have a large group of followers, fans, friends, etc.). These are the people that enjoy your brand and continually post, tweet or interact with your statuses. By using services such as Klout, your social media team can begin to compile a list of influencers that your SEO team can begin to build a relationship with these people by sharing their content, retweeting tweets of theirs, answering questions, commenting on their posts, etc. Much like a real-life relationship, things must move slowly and carefully, or risk being seen as "stalker-ish" and annoying. If done correctly, these types of relationships can help build the company's social credibility and a better success rate of having influencers share your content and link back to you.

SEO and social media are no longer two separate teams within a company. In order for your client to be happy with a digital marketing campaign, these teams must work together to create a fully operational and successful content and relationship driven campaign using data from both departments.

Google Introduces "Google Tag Manager", Analytics for Mobile Websites and Apps

Earlier this year during Google I/O, Google introduced a new mobile website and apps management feature that can be integrated into Google Analytics to help improve mobile capabilities for developers, add analytics, re-market data and conversion tracking to mobile websites and apps, without having the need to update the mobile app, which can cause frustration amongst users. So what does this mean for not only mobile websites and apps, but marketers and developers?

Data, Data, Data

Similar to the time before Google Analytics was created for websites, marketers and businesses had no idea where or what their target markets and visitors did on their sites when they got there. With the invention of Google Analytics, marketers and businesses were then able to see where traffic went once they visited the site, what pages they spent the most time on and how to improve their website to improve customer experiences. With the creation of Google Tag, and the installation of the code into mobile apps, marketers can begin to track Adwords conversion tracking, remarketing and Analytics from the mobile app, helping in turn to create a more robust, user-friendly mobile app.

IT-Friendly

With marketers in mind, Google created Google Tag, however, they wanted to ensure that it was also IT-friendly for developers who were going to be using, implementing, writing and rewriting the codes within the mobile app. Through the Google Tag Manager features, developers will be able to debug mobile site's (mobile app debugging currently not available yet), and preview the mobile website or app that they are working on before it goes live within the Apple and Android App stores.

Quick and Easy Implementation

Marketers and developers can add or change tags whenever they want, helping to keep the site updated and running smoothly and quickly. Using the web interface, developers and marketers won't need to write or rewrite new code following implementations.

Google Tag Manager can best be summed up as the future of Google Analytics. As more users continue to make the switch from traditional desktop computers to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, mobile websites and apps will, and are, becoming the go-to source for search queries, e-commerce, and much more. With the features and abilities of Google Tag Manager only going to be growing as he mobile market expands, it is important that businesses integrate this system into their mobile websites and apps, so that they can ensure the business' website or app is delivering a fully capable and customer-friendly interface and experience.

3 Ways Mobile Apps Are Changing the Healthcare Industry

As the shift of getting information switches from desktops to mobile devices, the healthcare industry can reap great benefits from utilizing current mobile apps to provide for, track symptoms, and mange the time of customers and their appointments. Below are just a few of the ways mobile apps are changing the healthcare industry today.

Building Better Client Relationships

Mobile apps in the healthcare industry can help professionals keep better track of their customers and patients through special services offered in mobile applications. Whether a patient needs a reminder about their appointment, needing to track a symptom that they are having so that they do not forget it during their next appointment or simply to call and schedule an appointment, a mobile app can help patients reach their doctor or physician quickly and efficiently with a tap of their screen.

Cost Effective Marketing Tool

Unlike a Yellow Pages ad or website, a mobile application that is downloaded onto a patient or customers mobile device is within arm's reach of that person for the entire day and night. The ability to have this type of brand presence and the knowledge that patients and customers have their phone on them at all times can lead to push notifications of special offers, availability of the next open time for a visit, and many other marketing opportunities at a low-cost. The mobile app also allows healthcare professionals to share informative articles, blog posts and news to their patients and customers in a way that is easily readable for people on the go.

Improved Patient Safety

Similar to building better client relationships with mobile apps, healthcare professionals can help improve patient safety with mobile apps. Whereas today patients leave an office with a stack of papers and little memory of what they are supposed to do, healthcare professionals can add and tag relevant news articles and treatments to their blog, which can be uploaded to the mobile app. Mobile apps can also allow for a "pill reminder" to help ensure that the sick and elderly remember to take certain pills at specific times.

In the future, as more and more people begin owning and using smartphones, and technology advances, we should begin to see mobile apps that allow for tracking of blood pressure, workout routines, and many other topics that can be researched and studied to help healthcare professionals find out what are the best treatments or solutions for their patients and customers. It is important that healthcare professionals begin looking at mobile technology as an extended knowledge base and staff member for their team, as not only will it soon be something that every healthcare office has, but something that every healthcare office will come to rely on in terms of patient relationships, marketing themselves, and improving patient safety. 

3 Facebook Marketing Techniques for Businesses to Help Engage Potential Customers

Facebook, with over 1 billion users and growing, is a social network that small, medium, and some larger businesses have been slow to adapt into their marketing strategy, and use to engage their current and prospective fan bases. Below are 3 marketing techniques that can help these businesses engage, gain and build new and existing customer relationships.

Creating Engaging Content That is Shareable

Have something interesting that your company is celebrating, like an anniversary of a product launch or brainstorming new products? Create a press release or interactive poll and share it with your customers via a short and brief status update, along with the link to the article or poll. Inviting your fans and customers to engage with you on this level will not only give you better insight as to what they are thinking, but may also give you some new ideas on how to sell, promote and market your products.

Create and Share Pictures and Other Media

Instagram, Vine, YouTube, Vimeo, these are all user cultivated, media sharing platforms that either some or all of your customers are on, and they can all be integrated into Facebook. Use and share media on these platforms as ways to get out old advertisements, workplace photos or retro logos of your company via special social network days, such as Throwback Thursday, or simply how employees unwind after a day of work, and ask fans how they celebrate or unwind. This will help to create a better understanding of both who you are as a company and what a customer uses your product for.

Engage With Your Audience

Questions, Comments, and Polls, these are ways that you can interact with your fans and customers via your Facebook page. With social media becoming the new form of customer service, it is important that you like, share and respond to comments on your company page. For those that think it is unimportant to respond to negative comments, pictures or videos about your product, I offer you these as prime examples of why not to do that.

As a business that is on Facebook, it is important to view the social media network as the neighborhood your store just moved into. Whether you are a brick and mortar or e-commerce company, when a customer comes into your store or visits your website, they want to have someone help them, answer their questions, and engage them in conversation about the business and their products to help ease any concerns that they may have.

The Future of Technology and What it Means For Marketers

With all of they hype coming from Google Glasses and potential Apple iWatch coming to surface in the near future, I decided to look at a few of the current and upcoming technologies and devices that will change the marketers and advertisers reach their customers.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is defined as a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented, or supplemented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. Essentially this technology modifies your view of reality. A good example can be found in the video sample below in which IKEA has implemented the technology in hopes of enticing the consumer to purchase one of their products for their home.

This type of technology is already being implemented for everything from catalogs, advertisements, and even business cards. With smartphone and mobile device ownership only increasing in the future, look for this to be the next big thing in reaching customers.

Google Glass

Using augmented reality as one of its main components, Google Glass seems to be the next step in mobile devices. The abilities of having what is essentially a hands-free computer on your head seems to open up endless possibilities for advertisers and marketers. One example that I am excited about is the potential use of the glasses to record a "day in the life of" series. Could you imagine a sports star such as Travis Pastrana or Lebron James wearing these glasses during a racing event or NBA Finals? Fans would then be able to literally "walk" in their idols shoes for a day. Once Google Glass becomes available to everyone I would expect a massive increase in videos uploaded to YouTube, similar to when video became available on phones.

Oculus Rift

Similar to the Virtual Reality centers in the arcades of the 90's, but with less hardware and better graphics, Oculus Rift seems to be the next step in how we play games, watch TV and more. With the ability to display a stereoscopic 3D perspective to users, look for this piece of gaming equipment to quickly adapt into a way to surf the internet, watch TV and more. A good example of how this system can help marketing or advertisers is in terms of gaming and exercising. Using the Oculus Rift system, users could run through the New York Marathon route, or bike through the Tour de France without leaving their homes.

These are just a couple pieces of technology and devices that I expect to make an impact within the marketing and advertising world within the next 5-10 years or sooner. As marketers and advertisers it is important to stay on top of  the ever changing technology and social media landscape in order to provide clients and customers with unique and one of a kind campaigns, and I feel that these devices will be leading the way in those categories for the foreseeable future. What other types of technology and devices do you see changing the way we market and advertise? Feel free to comment below.

17% of Global Web Usage Coming From Mobile Phones

In a recent study done by Statista, an online statistics portal, the company discovered that 17% of global web usage and page views were coming from mobile devices. North America alone saw an increase in page views coming from mobile devices rise almost 6% over last year. While this may seem like a relatively small percentage of the overall page views, it is important to notice that it was a 6% increase over the 2012 number of 11% of the page views. As this number is expected to increase as more and more people buy smartphones, it is important for advertisers to realize the potential that this change has for its customers and the way they market to them.

Responsive Design

As noted in previous posts and several articles throughout the web, responsive design is the new trend in web development and design. Built to format to any type of device and format, responsive design allows users to view your website whenever and with whatever type of device they are on. Utilizing responsive design for a site not only allows the advertiser to create one unified template for both desktop and mobile, but also saves web developers time.

Mobile Apps

With the increase in page views via mobile devices, it is important to take into factor a mobile app for an advertiser. A mobile app not only allows you to occupy space on a customer's smartphone or tablet, but also can give them one touch or tap ability to visit your website. With a mobile app, advertisers can also reach their customers through push notifications, text messages and more.

Social Media

As customers increase their time spent on mobile devices, so should advertisers. Social media review and location apps like Yelp and Foursquare should be at the forefront of this development. By effectively creating and branding these pages, as well as promoting them on the website and brick and mortar shops of businesses, businesses are effectively creating a customer generated focus group that allows the business owner to see what their busiest days are, what time that they get the most people and so much more. This type of interaction between customer and business also helps to increase that pages rankings within search results pages, improving the businesses chances of reaching new customers.

With the numbers mentioned above only increasing as the years go on and more people switch to mobile devices over their desktop or laptop, it is important for businesses to adapt to the new platform, just like when the internet was the next big thing. Failure to correctly adapt can and will lead to losses in sales, drops in visits to the site, and potentially loss of page rank and position in the search results pages. 

1 in 3 People Now Own a Tablet – 3 Opportunities to Maximize Reach on Mobile Devices

A recent study conducted by Pew Research, a third (34%) of Americans aged 18 or older noted that they own a tablet computer, which is almost twice the amount of tablet owners than a year ago (18%). If your company has been slow to adapt, or even avoiding the move into the digital space, then now may be the time to show this survey to your peers. As a business in today’s ever changing technology landscape, it is important that you leverage each and every form of mobile technology in order to ensure a profitable company. Some of the ways to help your company maximize their reach on mobile devices are explained below.

Know Who Your Target Audience Is

Most people would assume that since tablets are a relatively new technology that it is being adapted by younger generations (18-34) rather than the older generation, right? Wrong.  According to those surveyed, almost half of (49%) of adults age 35-44 now own a tablet computer, significantly more than the 18-24 age group (33%), and the 25-34 age group (37%). So what does this mean for your business? It can mean that either A) your target audience is more comfortable with the smaller, more convenient smartphone and therefore you should begin using marketing techniques geared towards this mobile device, or B) the need to create a mobile friendly website is definitely something that should be put on top of the year’s digital marketing strategy plan. Know your target market and what type of mobile device they prefer or own can help to create a better understanding of how and where you should market your business, helping to maximize your reach.

Begin Your Move From Desktop to Mobile

While 1 in 3 own a tablet and over half of Americans owning a smartphone, now is the time to begin experimenting, working on, and improving your mobile website and brand presence. Does your website layout change to fit the size screen it is on? Or what about a mobile application for an easier purchasing process for customers on the go? These types of things can help to improve customer relationships, build brand loyalty, and make for an overall pleasant experience for customers.

Optimize Your PPC Campaigns for Mobile Searches

With the large majority of your target demographic owning either a smartphone or tablet, and mobile searches accounting for nearly half of all searches, it is important that your PPC campaigns adjust to reach your target users as well as others looking for your products. With the creation of enhanced campaigns in Google Adwords and Mobile PPC in Bing, you can now create or adapt current PPC campaigns to reach mobile device users. You can decide on whether you want to only appear on smartphone searches, tablet searches or more, allowing for your company to reach the device most often used by your target demographic.

These opportunities are available for all companies to use so that they can help to maximize their reach on mobile devices, and shouldn't be overlooked. As more and more customers begin switching to mobile devices at double the rates of years past, it is important for companies to step back and look at the potential benefits each device has for themselves and their customers, and how they can leverage that into a profitable mobile development strategy.