Guest blogging is a win-win strategy used by websites and blogs owners in order to increase their pages’ visibility on the web. The host bloggers see it as an opportunity to obtain fresh content without having to write it themselves or to pay a ghostwriter for the job. Moreover, guest blogs bring a different perspective and new topics. On the other hand, guest writers are rewarded a number of backlinks towards their own pages. This helps their SEO and drives more traffic to their website.
Despite its great potential for both parties, guest blogging is rarely properly done. Here are a few tips to help you build a successful guest blogging strategy:
1. Take the time to study the host website
Guest blogging is not only an optimizing strategy. It is also a way of getting your voice heard across the web. Browsing the website you are planning to submit your post to will allow you understand what its readership is. You will thus be able to choose an interesting topic and to adapt your writing style accordingly. Take the host website’s architecture into consideration when picking your topic and check whether the subject hasn’t already been approached. If this is the case, ask yourself the following question: Can I bring a different perspective and new pieces of information? If the answer is negative, brainstorm for another topic.
2. Write for your audience
A common mistake bloggers frequently do is writing for search engines and losing sight of their readers. If they want to increase their pages’ position, most webmasters will reject over-optimized keywords stuffed articles for a simple reason: Google penalizes such blogging behavior and no one wants to fall in the disgrace of the virtual world’s major player. Research your keywords and introduce them naturally, without overdoing it.
3. Turn the author’s bio into a marketing tool
Craft a detailed bio, providing the relevant pieces of information that position you as an expert in the field you are writing about. This increases your words’ credibility. With the amount of information currently available on the World Wide Web, anyone can write about anything. However, this does not make them experts in the topic they are blogging about. Therefore, when writing the bio, explain your readers why they should take your opinions into consideration.
4. Respect your quality standards
If your article is meant to be uploaded on somebody else’s blog, this does not mean that you don’t have to respect your usual quality standards. Structure your ideas, pick your words, and check your spelling and grammar as if you were writing for your own website. After all, each guest post takes back to your pages. A poorly organized article or one filled with typos is not likely to persuade readers to click on the links you inserted. Such a guest post will bring little benefits to your blog.
5. Check your facts
Informative well written articles are more likely to be accepted. Do your homework, make a proper research and check your facts. Nothing could be more embarrassing both for you and for the webmaster who has published your post than a comment proving your sayings wrong.
6. Avoid self promotion
It is true that guest blogging is meant to make your pages more visible and to drive traffic towards them, but too much self promotion will only decrease your post’s chances of being accepted. The best strategy is to find blogs and websites focused on an adjacent topic. For instance, if you have a photography blog, you can look for travel, wedding or party planning websites.
7. Choose your host carefully
Just like in the offline world, the entourage says many things about you. This is a crucial criteria search engines use to calculate a website’s page rank. Therefore, evaluate your relationships carefully. Spammers are the worst alliance within the blogging world. A glance at Alexa toolbar will provide you with valuable information about your potential host. Check out the website’s rank, the back links redirecting to it and the traffic flow its pages have been driving.
8. Introduce yourself
When pitching a guest blogging opportunity, start by introducing yourself. You don’t have to send over your curriculum vitae. Keep things simple. Provide your potential host bloggers with the pieces of information they need in order to trust you. It is advisable you use your real name, but even if you don’t, be persistent. Pick a suggestive pen name and stick to it. When approaching a blogger for the first time, show samples of previous posts you have published and come up with a topic. You could also mention the social media channels through which you are planning to promote your post. Proving that you have a good number of Facebook likes or Twitter followers may give you more chances to have your post accepted.
9. Create a personal relationship
The first step is to personalize your message. Canned e-mails put people off and this will decrease your chances of getting an answer, left aside having your article published. Then, try to engage with your peer webmaster on topics that would concern you both. You may not get together for a beer, especially if your host blogger lives on the other side of the Earth, but it will help you open new doors and discover new opportunities.
10. Don’t take no for an answer
Although the above mentioned pieces of advice will certainly decrease your chances of rejection, nobody’s perfect. If your peer blogger does not accept your post, ask for details about the reasons. Remain polite and take the rejection as an improvement opportunity. Brush up your article and re-submit it, letting the host blogger know about the amendments you made and thanking for the chance.
By following these simple tips, you will increase your chances of having your posts accepted from the very first submission, even if you are approaching the most demanding webmasters. This will help you create valuable relationships within the blogging world and build a successful guest blogging campaign.
Search engine optimization (SEO) agencies, professionals, and in-house teams have difficult jobs. They must obtain improved organic search results as quickly as possible given a limited budget and timeframe, while Google changes its algorithm on a daily basis and competitors continue to optimize their web presence.
It’s pretty safe to say that managing the clients’ or boss’ expectations in this turbulent environment are almost more difficult than the moving target of SEO itself.
Over the past three years, the SEO landscape has changed for the better, with Google’s continued and unwavering focus on the concept of relevance. However, three aspects of SEO haven't changed at the same pace. The outcome is often a gap in expectations between the team delivering SEO services and the client literally banking on the results.
The three aspects of SEO that haven't changed at the same pace as the SEO industry include:
The way SEO services are marketed and sold.
The processes around how SEO is delivered and reported on.
The ability for agencies and in-house teams to prove the ROI of SEO efforts.
But the importance of SEO in the digital marketing mix remains unchanged and unchallenged. There are consistently 1 billion Google searches performed every day with 94 percent of those searchers clicking on organic search results over paid search results. Patience will continue to be a virtue to the marketer who invests in SEO over the long run.
Here are 10 SEO truths, based on conversations with agencies, in-house marketing teams and end clients over the past 12 months
SEO Truth #1: Rank Doesn’t Matter, Conversion Does
If I had a dime for every time I heard the statement, “Oh, we don’t need SEO, we already rank number one for [insert keyword here].”
I witness many SEO conversations where improvement in rank or position is the focus without any consideration given to web page visits and conversions. Many prospects, clients, and bosses are lost in the infatuation of ranking first in Google. Unfortunately, because that’s what they want to pay for, that’s what they are sold and/or what we attempt to prove to them.
The more important metric is conversion.
It could be that a client wants to rank first for "HR Software", and they currently rank fifth for that keyword with a conversion rate of 5 percent, while a similar keyword phrase, ‘HR Software for SMBs’, has a conversion rate of 10 percent and is ranked ninth. Clearly the latter should be the focus since it already has a higher conversion rate with a lower rank.
Assigning resources to understanding the opportunities throughout the web presence, and optimizing content for the keyword "HR Software for SMBs" is a better investment of time and money.
SEO Truth #2: Great SEO Results Require Great SEO Data
SEO is the ongoing process of understanding a web presence, how it compares to the competition, which keywords are driving organic search conversion, and optimizing for those keywords by producing fresh, relevant content. This process is impossible without access to accurate, timely data about that web presence including:
Page-level rank.
Backlink and social signal data.
Organic search keyword research.
Competitive intelligence.
Analytics conversion data.
Basing SEO decisions on old, inaccurate SEO data will yield corresponding SEO results. SEO data is the starting point to the entire SEO process and outcome.
Great insights will lead to great outcomes. SEO data and SEO software should be considered a cost of doing business or executing a campaign just as email marketing campaigns require an email marketing platform.
SEO Truth #3: Report on Social Signals Just Like Backlinks
Think of social signals as the new backlink. Now don’t get me wrong, backlinks are still important to organic search and should continue to be reported on, but social signals also deserve ongoing focus and integration into an SEO strategy.
It has been two years since Google and Bing announced that social signals now account for 8 percent to 10 percent of their organic search algorithms. Agencies and in-house SEO teams need to demonstrate that they are increasing the number of Likes, shares, +1s, tweets, retweets and YouTube Views at both the web page level and the network level. Social signal metrics should be included in the monthly SEO report as well.
SEO Truth #4: SEO Technology is Telling
Just as a sales consultant hired to improve sales processes and ultimately conversion rates would not attempt to do so without customer relationship management (CRM) software, neither should an SEO agency or in-house team attempt to effectively improve a web presence for SEO without some support and assistance from technology.
There are many SEO software and tool options – from full software systems to standalone tools. The technology and tools you select can make or break you, too.
SEO technology is required more today than ever before in order to assist in the ongoing efforts of keyword research, rank checking, competitive analysis, backlink discovery and tracking, content tracking, analytics, social signal monitoring and monthly reporting capabilities.
Going it alone, without the support of a technological foundation to track a web presence on a daily basis for the purpose of ranking higher organically in the search engines is like trying to do email marketing by BCCing your list from MS Outlook – your deliverability rates, open rates, and conversion rates will be immeasurable and less than expected.
SEO Truth #5: Daily Insights into SEO Metrics is Essential
The SEO reporting cycle is still very much a monthly process (although I’m seeing this standard move to weekly with larger agencies and marketing teams). Having daily and weekly insight into all the SEO metrics included in an SEO campaign is important to understand how your efforts are tracking towards the ultimate goal.
Having the insight and intelligence to adjust the goal if more or less progress is being made than anticipated can only be accomplished with daily insight into accurate SEO data and metrics.
SEO Truth #6: A Backlink Strategy Without a Content Marketing Strategy is Just Plain Scary
Even after all the Panda, Penguin and Freshness updates, it's still amazing to see some agencies providing quotes to clients where the main thrust of the contract is a promise to build x number of backlinks per month. SEOs should continue to deliberately build backlinks in directories that are industry or locally specific to the client, but that’s where deliberate backlink building should end.
To build long-term, non-spammy backlinks, an optimized content marketing strategy is required where fresh relevant optimized content is being produced on a consistent basis.
Content may be in the form of blogs, press releases, case studies, and whitepapers wherein the content contains keywords that are driving organic search conversions as well as naturally occurring backlinks to the main corporate website. Not only will this approach to backlink building withstand the test of time, it will also create social signals which will also positively impact the web presence.
SEO Truth #7: Spend Less Time on Reporting, More Time on SEO
A typical SEO contract consists of analysis, recommendations, implementation, and reporting. The most painful of which is reporting – mashing together end-of-month reports from multiple data sources to demonstrate progress to the end client, never mind trying to make it look pretty. Laborious, repetitive reporting takes away too much time from what will really pay off – the doing of SEO.
This reinforces truth #4: SEO Technology is Telling. Making use of technology for weekly or monthly automated reporting will allow for more time being spent on the task of SEO which will yield better results for the client and will allow you to scale your business.
SEO Truth #8: Think Outside the Google Search Box
Yes, Google continues to be the entity that SEOs attempt to please, and rightfully so. I can’t see this focus changing in the near or distant future either.
With the continual convergence of social media and SEO, we also need to think about the prospect of searchers starting their searches directly on social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. A web presence should be represented for its branded keyword phrases within these sites as well.
Test your branded keywords and test your clients’ branded keywords to see if they return the expected search results on these social networks. If not, optimize!
SEO Truth #9: Communicate the CTR Opportunity Gap by Keyword
Once there is an understanding of the high-converting keywords, it is worth the exercise of applying paid search volume data with organic click-through rates (CTRs) to communicate the opportunity gap between ranking ninth versus third.
Let’s use the keyword “HR Software” as an example. The total Google search volume (U.S., Canada, and Australia) is 2,120 searches per month, combined with the fact that 94 percent of searchers click through on organic search results (GroupM UK and Nielsen, August 2012). Given Optify’s CTR data for positions 1 through 20, the opportunity gap can be communicated to the client.
2,120 monthly searches * 94 percent = 1992 * 3.0 percent /30 days = 2 daily click-throughs for Position 9 in Google.com for the keyword "HR Software"
Position 9 will yield 60 clicks per month (2 clicks per day * 30 days) while increasing to Position 3 will yield 180 clicks per month (6 clicks per day * 30 days) presenting an opportunity gap of 180-60 = 120 clickthroughs per month. What value does this translate into for the client?
SEO Truth #10: It’s About the Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization
Search engine optimization is now more about web presence optimization. As the ways we sell and deliver SEO services continue to evolve, the hierarchy of web presence optimization is a model that may help structure sales contracts and service delivery tasks while ensuring that keyword metrics are focused on conversion, backlinks are built out effectively, and social signals are integrated into the overall SEO strategy.
Where is Digital Marketing Heading in 2013? Find Out at SES New York.
The brightest and most insightful marketing minds in the industry will be gathering at SES New York, March 25-28. SAVE up to $1000 on an All Access Pass now through December 13. Register today!
Search engine optimisation, albeit often rumoured to be dead or about to die, is getting more and more popular as a career path. It’s hardly taught anywhere formally, one of the reasons being its ever-changing nature (by the time you get a University course prepared and approved it’s already largely outdated). The bars to entry into the industry are ridiculously low – or insanely high, depending on how you look at it. There is no formal certification but there are plenty sources of information and too many of them are either outdated or complete garbage. There is no lack of SEO conferences and workshops – but many of them are quite expensive, speakers sometimes pitch their services rather than provide useful information, and travel costs do add up as well. So how do you learn SEO without making costly mistakes and spending a fortune?
Believe it or not, there are ways to do it completely free or almost free. The ways listed below range from easily doable by anyone to ones requiring certain skills/knowledge, but it all depends on your character and how willing you are to learn. Majority of these ways also require serious social skills – so while our industry is known for stories about making millions from home in your pyjamas never having to meet other people, you probably cannot afford not having social skills at all.
So let’s see how SEO education costs can be cut down to 0 or close.
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1. Start by reading a good introductory guide – SEOMoz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO would do. However, this is just the very beginning – don’t stop there. This is just an introduction to help you learn the lingo and be able to understand what it’s all about further on. I find it bewildering with the increasing complexity of our trade how an increasing number of people claim they know SEO after sitting in a two-week course or attending a basic conference. Don’t be like that, keep learning.
2. Read worthy industry blogs. Right, this begs the question which ones are worthy. Use the same judgement you would use evaluating any other information online – what do experienced people in the industry consider reliable sources of information?
3. Follow reputable SEOs on Twitter and read what they share. Look at lists of Twitter users by topic some people are putting together – whoever is included in most of the lists is typically the SEOPs most worth following.
4. Follow reputable SEOs on Facebook and read what they share there.
5. Follow reputable SEOs on Google+ and read what they share there.
6. Read what comes from the search engines – update announcements, interviews with engineers, help articles. But don’t just take their word for it.
7. Get a site. Some hobby site you wouldn’t be afraid to lose. Experiment with it. Track your results. Read the server logs. They make the best read once you’ve got the hang of it and provide plenty of insight.
8. Read SEO forums. Not the kind that are built around promoting a product/series of products but neutral ones where advertising is limited. Take what you read with a pinch of salt. A couple of forums to get you started: http://www.webmasterworld.com/, http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/index.php and http://forums.seochat.com/ (as you get more experienced and better connected in the community you might even end up getting invited to “secret” forums, too – but unfortunately I cannot share those)
9. Participate in Google+ Hangouts, including those run by Google reps. Ask questions – not just fluffy ones but uncomfortable ones too. You may never get a reply but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
11. LinkedIn groups and questions – many of them are spammed to death but sometimes interesting things can be spotted as well.
12. Places like AnyAsq – people including those from the search engines run “ask me anything” sessions there sometimes. Read what they say and ask questions.
13. Whenever there is a conference going on anywhere, read the tweets with the conference hashtag – you’ll be amazed how well some conferences are covered by live tweeting. However, be careful so as not to take things out of context.
14. Conference speakers usually share their slide decks – watch those. Combined with live tweets, they are almost as good as sitting in at the session.
15. Some blogs, State of Search included, publish conference recaps – read these.
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16. Not all conferences are paid – there are a few free ones. There is BrightonSEO in the UK and I’m pretty sure there are some in the US as well. The tickets are limited so you have to be really quick to get them when they go on offer but if you go to one of these conferences, you are sure to learn quite a bit.
17. Apart from major conferences, there are also less formal events out there that are also free. These tend to be more local (such as Search London or OMN London) but will typically have quality speakers, often even the same people that speak at the big expensive events. Make sure you go to these events.
18. There are even less informal meetups organised spontaneously with no regular schedule or place by SEOs here and there – listen closely on Twitter and Facebook when people you follow start talking about such meetups and try to get in.
19. They don’t say for no reason that the most value of any conference is in the networking – a lot of good stuff is getting shared and discussed not at the formal conference sessions but over a beer afterwards. If you hang out in the “official” conference bar/restaurant/hotel and know a few faces you may just as well end up catching these juicy bits.
20. If you are social enough or have been around long enough to be friends with somebody speaking at a conference, many conferences let speakers bring somebody with them (known as +1). If you are cheeky enough to ask a speaker for a +1 and they happen to have it available, you can make it to a conference for free.
21. Exhibitors/sponsors at conferences often get n free tickets. Many companies would just distribute them between people they know and some will run all sorts of competitions where you can win a free pass to the conference.
22. Apply to be a speaker at a conference! Speakers usually get a free pass and can attend other sessions, and who’s to say if you’re qualified enough to speak on one topic there is nothing you can learn about other topics from other speakers?
23. Some conferences will give you a discount (if not a free ticket) if you are a blogger and going to cover the conference. In some cases, you have to refer x people to buy conference tickets to get a free ticket for yourself.
24. Offer some industry blog/news site to blog/live tweet an event for them if they cover the cost of your ticket.
25. Persuade your employer the conference is good for your professional development and will help you achieve better results for the company so that the employer covers the ticket cost for you.
As you see, nothing is impossible for those who want to learn. In an industry as intensive as SEO, it is vital to stay abreast of all current developments so we all learn something new every day. Both newcomers and seasoned professionals should never stop learning, and hopefully using these tips you can make learning SEO a fun and pleasant experience and not that much of a burden on your pocket.
If you have a website online that is simple and attractive, then there are very minute chances that it will attract the high traffic and most importantly help you to make money online. It is important that a best website must have more excellent features than just the flashy or visual appeal. When a site is in on the World Wide Web, then there is a very high chance that it may get tough competition from the various other sites already present. The bad ranking of your website means that it has no place in an Internet World.
As a business owner, if you are seriously looking to promote your website online, then with the help of the search engine optimization tools you can achieve success and create a robust presence on the Internet. If you are totally alien about the SEO concepts, then you can seek the services of a reputed company that provides the search engine optimization and marketing services. Here are the various important tools that will help you a lot to improve your business visibility online by leaps and bounds:
If your competitor’s search engine rankings are higher than you, then certainly it is not a good news for you. You must always try to keep an eagle’s eye on the keywords of your competitors so that you can incorporate them on to your website and gain good rankings. For this very purpose, you can use a popular tool that is known as SEMRush. It is essentially a free and paid tool used for the purpose of finding keywords to optimize and driving traffic to the website. That is not all as you can do lots of other great things with this particular tool.
Besides digging out the keywords, you can also get the statistical details about the traffic; search volumes and the amount spend by the competitors on the AdWords ads. The best thing here is that you can export all the pivotal data in an Excel spreadsheet with the help of the tool. The tool helps you to efficiently analyze your competitors SEO strategy and improve your webpage positions in the major search engines.
HubSpot is a marketing software company that provides a convenient package or the tools to improve the traffic of the website, creating the unique and attractive content, converting the sale leads and analytics report. It makes every effort to drive a considerable amount of traffic on to the websites by efficiently marketing them through blogging and the various social media websites.
It is a great tool to that provides the tools to identify the SEO issues that are affecting the ranking and traffic of a website. The notable thing here is that this kit can be used in the various search engines such as the Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc to optimize the performance of your website. This tool also helps in increasing the traffic of the website and revenue, keep the search engines updated with your latest website information and discover the issues in the website design rectify them and enhance the user experience.
GTmetrix is one of the best free tools that helps you to figure out the speed or loading time of your webpage. In today’s busy time, users do not have much time to wait and if your page eats up a lot of time to get loaded, then it is not good for your business. This tool creates a test score for your different web pages and also provides the useful measures to rectify the problem. If you are into an online business and desire to attract the prospective customers and excellent sales leads, then usage of this tool is a must for you.
Ahrefs is a great collection of the various SEO tools that helps in analyzing the new and the lost backlinks. There is a site explorer option where you can get the important information about the total backlinks, referring subnets, referring pages, backlink types and referring domains. So, with this excellent tool, you can look forward improve your website’s performance and enhance your market presence.
SEOmoz is primarily a software development company that provides great SEO software’s that help in increasing the visibility and ranking of a website. Some of the best search engine optimization tools are as follows:
Campaign Manager: This tool helps in analyzing the website traffic, keyword rankings and detects the errors on the web pages.
Followerwonk: This tool helps in increasing the social presence. With this tool, you can connect with the people on various social networking websites, analyze their activities and market your product.
Link Analysis: This tool helps in analyzing the backlinks that is bringing the traffic to the website. You can also sort out the links to get more insights into the follow and no follow links.
On-Page Analysis: This tool helps in enhancing the optimal performance of the websites by providing a full report about the pages that have been optimized by using the targeted keywords.
Rank Tracking: This tool helps you to have a close tab on the rankings of your website in the major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo).
Crawl Test: This tool helps in identifying the problems in your website that is preventing the crawlers to index your web page.
SEO Toolbar: This tool helps in having a closer look at the link metrics and gets the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) results.
Keyword Analysis: This tool helps in analyzing the keywords that can boost traffic to your website.
Guest blogging is a win-win strategy used by websites and blogs owners in order to increase their pages’ visibility on the web. The host bloggers see it as an opportunity to obtain fresh content without having to write it themselves or to pay a ghostwriter for the job. Moreover, guest blogs bring a different perspective and new topics. On the other hand, guest writers are rewarded a number of backlinks towards their own pages. This helps their SEO and drives more traffic to their website.
Despite its great potential for both parties, guest blogging is rarely properly done. Here are a few tips to help you build a successful guest blogging strategy:
1. Take the time to study the host website
Guest blogging is not only an optimizing strategy. It is also a way of getting your voice heard across the web. Browsing the website you are planning to submit your post to will allow you understand what its readership is. You will thus be able to choose an interesting topic and to adapt your writing style accordingly. Take the host website’s architecture into consideration when picking your topic and check whether the subject hasn’t already been approached. If this is the case, ask yourself the following question: Can I bring a different perspective and new pieces of information? If the answer is negative, brainstorm for another topic.
2. Write for your audience
A common mistake bloggers frequently do is writing for search engines and losing sight of their readers. If they want to increase their pages’ position, most webmasters will reject over-optimized keywords stuffed articles for a simple reason: Google penalizes such blogging behavior and no one wants to fall in the disgrace of the virtual world’s major player. Research your keywords and introduce them naturally, without overdoing it.
3. Turn the author’s bio into a marketing tool
Craft a detailed bio, providing the relevant pieces of information that position you as an expert in the field you are writing about. This increases your words’ credibility. With the amount of information currently available on the World Wide Web, anyone can write about anything. However, this does not make them experts in the topic they are blogging about. Therefore, when writing the bio, explain your readers why they should take your opinions into consideration.
4. Respect your quality standards
If your article is meant to be uploaded on somebody else’s blog, this does not mean that you don’t have to respect your usual quality standards. Structure your ideas, pick your words, and check your spelling and grammar as if you were writing for your own website. After all, each guest post takes back to your pages. A poorly organized article or one filled with typos is not likely to persuade readers to click on the links you inserted. Such a guest post will bring little benefits to your blog.
5. Check your facts
Informative well written articles are more likely to be accepted. Do your homework, make a proper research and check your facts. Nothing could be more embarrassing both for you and for the webmaster who has published your post than a comment proving your sayings wrong.
6. Avoid self promotion
It is true that guest blogging is meant to make your pages more visible and to drive traffic towards them, but too much self promotion will only decrease your post’s chances of being accepted. The best strategy is to find blogs and websites focused on an adjacent topic. For instance, if you have a photography blog, you can look for travel, wedding or party planning websites.
7. Choose your host carefully
Just like in the offline world, the entourage says many things about you. This is a crucial criteria search engines use to calculate a website’s page rank. Therefore, evaluate your relationships carefully. Spammers are the worst alliance within the blogging world. A glance at Alexa toolbar will provide you with valuable information about your potential host. Check out the website’s rank, the back links redirecting to it and the traffic flow its pages have been driving.
8. Introduce yourself
When pitching a guest blogging opportunity, start by introducing yourself. You don’t have to send over your curriculum vitae. Keep things simple. Provide your potential host bloggers with the pieces of information they need in order to trust you. It is advisable you use your real name, but even if you don’t, be persistent. Pick a suggestive pen name and stick to it. When approaching a blogger for the first time, show samples of previous posts you have published and come up with a topic. You could also mention the social media channels through which you are planning to promote your post. Proving that you have a good number of Facebook likes or Twitter followers may give you more chances to have your post accepted.
9. Create a personal relationship
The first step is to personalize your message. Canned e-mails put people off and this will decrease your chances of getting an answer, left aside having your article published. Then, try to engage with your peer webmaster on topics that would concern you both. You may not get together for a beer, especially if your host blogger lives on the other side of the Earth, but it will help you open new doors and discover new opportunities.
10. Don’t take no for an answer
Although the above mentioned pieces of advice will certainly decrease your chances of rejection, nobody’s perfect. If your peer blogger does not accept your post, ask for details about the reasons. Remain polite and take the rejection as an improvement opportunity. Brush up your article and re-submit it, letting the host blogger know about the amendments you made and thanking for the chance.
By following these simple tips, you will increase your chances of having your posts accepted from the very first submission, even if you are approaching the most demanding webmasters. This will help you create valuable relationships within the blogging world and build a successful guest blogging campaign.
Is your online marketing effective? What techniques can you add that will increase its effectiveness—and therefore your ROI? If you’re not currently using these seven techniques, you’re missing out on some of the most effective campaign options.
The Press Release
Just about any event with a business can be turned into a press release with the help of a skilled writer. Submitting those press releases to highly trafficked sites helps a business in two ways. First, it provides media coverage and gets the business’s name out there, and second, it boosts search engine rankings because of the high weight of links on these sites in the eyes of Google. To start using press releases, simply hire an experienced freelancer and submit them.
Retargeting
What happens when your marketing techniques work perfectly and a visitor comes to your site, only they fail to take action? Retargeting follows these visitors and tries to get them back to your site to complete their transaction. Retargeting can be implemented through email marketing and pay-per-click ads. With email marketing, you can send a follow up email to the visitor who left the site without making a purchase. With pay-per-click ads, you can set up your ad campaign to show ads pointing the visitor back to the page if he leaves without making a purchase.
Social Media Integration
You probably already know that you should be using social media to help market your site, but if it’s not integrated the rest of your marketing efforts, including blogging, email marketing and mobile marketing, you could be missing out. How can you do this? Just add sharing buttons to your content and email newsletters, then provide people with content they’ll be inclined to share. Then, create a viable presence for your business on several major social platforms. It will take off from there.
Effective Landing Pages
Landing pages are not new as an advertising technique, but making them effective is the difference between success and failure. One way to make your landing page more effective is to offer something. A limited time offer or special discount is going to tempt people to take action. Simply showing what you offer and asking them to buy is not going to be effective. Test different types of offers until you find the one that works for your target audience.
SoLoMo Marketing
SoLoMo marketing refers to marketing to “social, local, mobile” customers. People who are visiting your site on their mobile devices are increasingly social and interested in local marketing, because they are using their phones to find out what is available to them right now where they are. Capitalize on this by integrating local search terms into your mobile sites and ensuring that your sites are fully optimized for mobile users.
Phone Marketing
Not all marketing has to be digital. In fact, with the rise of digital marketing, some experts feel that picking up the phone and talking to your target market can be quite effective. If you have captured phone numbers for customers and clients, consider giving them a call. Call to ask for a quick feedback survey, and you’ll gather important information about your customers while making effective personal contacts.
Email Marketing
Email marketing isn’t dead. If you can target it well and provide the reader with something helpful, it can be quite effective. Consider pulling together a compelling newsletter that people will want to read. If you give them valuable information, they’ll be more inclined to click through and interact with your site.
Today’s marketers have a plethora of tools at their disposal. Knowing which ones to implement to effectively reach your target market is the key to success. With these seven ideas, you can create a successful online marketing campaign that will reach the modern audience.
Social media has revamped the Internet through its ability to not only build influence, but also humanize a brand or individual. This counts as much in a content sharing environment as it does to the ability to impact online reputations. What’s more is that publishing to social networks is both simple and cheap. However, as great as social media outlets are there is also a battleground mentality present for people who are targeted by negative content. No matter how this information is published—a blog post, article, press release— it affects success.
Understanding how social media factors into reputation management is key. Remember, social networks are a veritable arsenal for the savvy user. They are free tools that will give you the ammunition you need to fight back against any negative post that may surface on the Internet. But in order to make it work, you have to know the tricks used by online reputation management pros. Read on to discover some winning strategies that produce positive results.
1. Picking the Right Social Media Platforms
You don’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg to understand that some social networks are more powerful than others, which impacts rankings. For this reason, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest are the best platforms. From there, you might want to check out Crunchbase and Quora. Neither is currently the “cool kid” amongst their social networking peers, but both rank well and allow for the profiling of tech companies and professionals as well as the posting of questions and answers, respectively.
2. Up the Ante on Your Social Media Activity
So you have to do more than simply create the account. Social media is about user engagement and content creation; you have to stay active if you want the account to work for you. Google ranks compelling, updated content higher than stagnant material. For this reason, a Facebook profile that has daily activity will rank higher than one that has been long forgotten. But it can’t just be all about hyper-promotional content either. Finding a good balance between sharing information, education and inspiration also assists in driving traffic and creating great backlinks, which serves to strengthen existing, positive assets.
3. Use Keywords Wisely
It’s a foregone conclusion that search engine optimization is an essential part of using social media to improve one’s online image, but recent Google updates have also impacted this, namely in the world of keywords. A few rules of thumb: Use the keyword in the page name or in the Twitter handle for best results. Additionally, planting the keyword in static content on a page or profile works best, i.e. look to the “about” section on a Facebook page.
Let’s face it, social media is about much more than just sharing pictures of your dog. When considered as a whole, social networks are a fantastic tool in online reputation management. By using these tactics, negative information can be suppressed and positive information will be promoted, which will assist in controlling the brand image that you want the public to see and remember.
A month ago, I covered how Matt Cutts of Google said guest blogging can be good. But shortly after writing that, a client emails me about where they should place links in their guest blogs. Should they place two or one.
I sent him the video and they respond, "okay, so how many links." It is like I want to bang my head against a wall.
Now, Matt Cutts created another video about "spammy" guest blogging and how Google will take action against it. Here is the video, watch it:
Are you looking for ways to enhance your social media marketing?
Do you want new tools to simplify your job?
We asked a group of social media pros for the hottest social media tools they use today. Check them out to see if these social media tools are a good fit for you!
#1: Unlock to Share Plugin
My favorite social marketing tool of all time is the unlock to share plugin. What is it? It’s a simple plugin that “unlocks” additional content when your web visitors share your stuff on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
Make your site go viral by requiring the user to share your link to unlock content.
Why is this so valuable? Well, today everyone has a Like button on their site. But if you want your audience to share your stuff, you need to give them a little incentive! That’s exactly what this plugin does.
In my most recent experiment, I had 452 people land on a page where they had access to royalty-free music they could use in their videos. If you shared the post, I gave you an additional five music tracks. Out of those 452 visitors, 379 shared to unlock those five extra songs! That’s 84%!
These unlock to share plugins are everywhere. The one I used was found over on CodeCanyon. James Wedmore, co-founder of Video Traffic Academy and founder of Video Sales Magic and Video Copy Pro.
#2: SlideShare
This isn’t a “new” tool, but I’m amazed by the number of marketers who still don’t use SlideShare as a main staple in their social media distribution. According to the latest research from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, just 23% of B2B marketers and only 7% of B2C marketers leverage SlideShare (which now sees approximately 60 million users per month).
SlideShare is a great tool to use as part of your company's storytelling process.
We continue to integrate SlideShare into our visual storytelling, and it’s now a key part of our lead generation process. It’s a true sleeping giant. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and author of Managing Content Marketing and co-author of Get Content, Get Customers.
#3: Commun.it
I use Commun.it to help build and nurture relationships with supporters, influencers and potential customers on Twitter.
The basic service, which is free, keeps track of your most valuable followers and interactions, rolling up the data into an action-driven dashboard. One glance and you’ll know whom to follow, whom to thank and to whom you need to respond—all of which you can do directly within the tool.
Another big plus: You can quickly spot your most active conversation buddies. Commun.it tallies up the number of exchanges between you and other Tweeters, indicating whether or not you’re following each other.
Commun.it rolls up your data into an action-driven dashboard.
In addition to the dashboard, Commun.it has reporting functionality. I love the way it lists hard-to-find stats in one handy place, including new followers, the handles of who stopped following you, RTs of your content, direct messages and total reach.
Commun.it also records this social activity for your Twitter handle, so you can keep tabs on your own contributions and connections in the Twitterverse. Shelly Lucas, senior marketing manager and leader of social media at Dun & Bradstreet.
#4: YouTube’s Audience Retention Report
You’ve probably read that YouTube search is now optimized for time watched. Effective YouTube marketing demands that we understand (and create better videos based on) how our videos are watched, at least as much as we “optimize” them for SEO, etc. Those “gurus” who tell you to buy thousands of 5-second views to bump up your view count … yes, that does the search damage you always knew it would.
This is why audience retention is the new view count.
The new Audience Retention Report in YouTube is, without a doubt, the most important social media marketing tool to come around in a long time. You can now see what kind of retention you’re getting from your videos and how it compares to everyone else’s. Want to get to the top of the results? Study this Audience Retention Report like a hawk and update your video making strategies accordingly.
The following video walks you through a couple of reports and offers some insights on how to respond.
Paul Colligan, education czar for Traffic Geyser Inc. and CEO of Colligan.com.
#5: Cyfe
While there are a number of enterprise-level listening and monitoring tools available to assist brands, a new tool that I’ve been a fan of is Cyfe. It provides visibility into social channel and search metrics that typically only admins of those channels/tools have access to.
Cyfe is an all-in-one dashboard that helps you monitor and analyze data scattered across all of your online services.
For example, we’re able to set up a visual real-time dashboard for GoToMeeting, which provides brand-specific Facebook Insights data, YouTube Analytics, Twitter and Twitter Search information, SEOMoz, Google Trends, Google Analytics and a number of other social or search data points.
As a social media team, we’re often asked for such information from team members who are curious about the community, channel interactions and other related questions. Cyfe has enabled to us to make that data easily accessible to our team members.
Going one step beyond social and search, Cyfe also enables you to bring in your CRM, email marketing and blog data, with new integrations shipping on a regular basis. Justin Levy, strategic advisor on all social media activities at Citrix Online and editor-in-chief of Workshifting.com.
#6: Cloze
The newest tool that I’m most excited about is Cloze, recommended to me by Jascha Kaykas-Wolff of Mindjet.
Imagine an aggregation and curation system for your social network and that’s what Cloze provides. I’m able to view the activity of people by date in my network and then check them off, respond to them, like them or retweet them directly from the Cloze interface.
Cloze helps you increase your interaction with those most important to you.
It’s absolutely genius and is already saving me tons of time, increasing my interaction with those most important to me and reducing the clutter and wasted time of having five channels open that I’m constantly trying to stay abreast of. This is the inbox of the future! Cloze is currently in beta. Douglas Karr, founder and chief blogger at the Marketing Technology Blog, founder of DK New Media (an inbound marketing agency) and author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies.
#7: AgoraPulse
There is no shortage of social media marketing tools these days, that’s for sure. But despite the overwhelming number of tools out there, it’s still very difficult to find the ones that will really deliver while remaining accessible for a small-business budget.
When it comes to managing our Facebook Page, I’ve been very impressed with AgoraPulse. It focuses on Facebook (at least for now), but provides everything your Facebook Page will ever need.
In addition to contest and promotion applications that are a “must-have” for every Facebook Page, AgoraPulse offers unique features that really make a difference, such as:
Detailed benchmark with competitors
AgoraPulse shows you a detailed benchmark with your competitors.
Fan ranking and qualification
The fan management feature shows you fan ranking and qualification.
Advanced statistics and personalized content recommendations
You can also track average users reached by day of week.
They also offer a ton of other great features such as advanced statistics, automated moderation and even admin rights and workflow management. These are the kind of features that used to be only available in expensive enterprise-level solutions. Getting access to such advanced and useful features for a price that every small businesses can afford does make a big difference. Aaron Kahlow, CEO of Online Marketing Connect and chairman and founder of the Online Marketing Summit and its related educational arm, the Online Marketing Institute.
#8: GaggleAMP
One application that I’ve recently been exposed to and am excited about is GaggleAMP. I talk to many marketers who say, “If only our sales and business development team would share our social media postings, it would help us reach a greater—and more relevant—audience in social media.”
This is especially relevant in B2B companies where you traditionally have a large sales force compared to a small number of people in marketing. That sales force represents a potential army of internal brand advocates who can help make a company’s social media marketing efforts much more effective.
Leverage employees, partners, customers and fans to share your company's social media messages on your behalf.
With the emergence of GaggleAMP, social media and marketing directors can now utilize the reach of their internal staff to help spread their message in social media, and internal employees have complete control in deciding exactly which messages they would like to share on which platforms and how frequently.
Companies simply sign up to GaggleAMP, create a “Gaggle” (a group revolving around their content), and then request that interested employees join the Gaggle. Employees then authorize their social networks and decide which content they would like to share with their network.
GaggleAMP can send notifications when new content is available to be posted, and there is even a “point” system to gamify social sharing and reward those internal employees who are good sharers.
GaggleAMP tracks activity, allowing you to report on the impact and ROI for every message and campaign.
B2B companies are sitting on a goldmine of brand advocates who work at their company. By using GaggleAMP, they can organize and leverage their internal tribe while ensuring control over social media messages that are sent out externally.
For employees, it’s internal content curation served up on a platter to give them more timely and relevant content to share with their networks and maintain mindshare on whichever social networks the company’s customers or clients are on.
I expect to hear about more companies adopting GaggleAMP in the months to come! Neal Schaffer, founder of Windmills Marketing, is a leading social media strategist and teaches social media marketing at Rutgers University.
#9: SproutSocial
I’ve been enjoying the statistics and tools available on SproutSocial, and am using it to get good Twitter and Facebook overviews of my accounts and for some of my clients’ statistics.
You can also do some Twitter account comparisons, schedule content, bring in your Google Reader to watch for content and share accounts with others.
Deliver beautiful detailed reports to your organization or customers.
If you manage many accounts, you can easily create nice-looking reports that give a good overview of activity and growth and SproutSocial is reasonably priced. Andrea Vahl, social media coach, speaker and strategist and Facebook community manager for Social Media Examiner.
#10: Reachli
Reachli (formerly known as Pinerly) is the hottest new Pinterest analytics tool. Similar to Facebook and Twitter apps such as Buffer and HootSuite, Reachli allows users to pre-schedule pins and view feedback data such as click-through rates and number of repins. Creating social campaigns on Reachli is easy with its clean and simplified design.
Although the site is optimal for Pinterest analytics, it also allows users to post on any social platform and benefit from similar analyses. Boasting comprehensive capabilities, Reachli is an ideal page-management tool for any brand or community manager.
Reachli helps you understand what works and what doesn't to help you optimize your posts.
Social media analytics are essential in providing users with optimal content, as well as discovering hard data to support social initiatives. Offering real-time analytics and best practices data, Reachli helps you optimize your Pinterest content based on the analysis of click-through rates and repin feedback. This beneficial information can result in more effective scheduling and more engaging content.
For a low cost, brands can also employ Reachli advertising, a service that uses a unique algorithm to match content with its most relevant online audience across the social sphere. As Pinterest grows in popularity, brands will find the capabilities of Reachli to be extremely beneficial in most effectively leveraging the social platform. Dave Kerpen, cofounder and CEO of Likeable, author of Likeable Social Media and the forthcoming Likeable Business.
#11: Instagram
For the team here at Sony, one of the new platforms we are most excited about is Instagram. When we launched our brand channel (@sony) 4 months ago, we couldn’t have imagined the wealth of beautiful, funny and creative content we would find. We’ve seen everything from the cutest pups and kitties with Sony products to gorgeous, artistic shots taken by professional Sony photographers.
But the best thing about all of this content is that the community has been more than willing to let us share their work (crediting them, of course).
We’ve asked hundreds of Instagrammers if we could share one of their Sony-related photos and have never once been declined. The result is that we get access to authentic and cool content while honoring this community of artists.
Instagrammers share their photos with Sony.
We’re also exploring holding contests on the platform and have just recently launched our very first #SonyX contest. Although we’re only two days in, we’ve already received a lot of enthusiasm from the community and are building awareness for our new X headphones via the photo entries and the use of the hashtag. Callan Green, senior social media specialist for Sony Electronics.
#12: Buffer
Buffer is to social media marketers like what a wand is to Harry Potter—it’s one of the coolest and most useful social media tools I’ve ever used.
As you know, in order to benefit from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you have to actively be posting things—an account with no life is not going to be very interesting to those who follow it. With Buffer, you can schedule your tweets and posts ahead of time and create a consistent social media presence on your accounts.
Often, I’ll schedule a week’s worth of tweets, which will automatically drive traffic back to my site or keep my audience engaged throughout the week, without lifting a finger.
Of course, it’s best practice to follow up with those who reply and you may have specific time-sensitive tweets to share in between your scheduled posts, but anything that allows me to be more efficient in my business and ensure that I am posting stuff when I might not have the time otherwise is gold in my opinion.
With Buffer App, you can schedule your tweets and posts ahead of time and create a consistent social media presence on your accounts.
In addition, the team behind Buffer is always friendly, responsive and looking to improve, which speaks highly about the tool and what kind of company created it, and where it’s headed in the future. Pat Flynn, founder of the Smart Passive Income Blog.
#13: SocialToaster
I’m excited to see some of the advancements in using social media to increase brand advocacy. SocialToaster is making great strides in combining gamification for sharing brand-related content with superfans to drive reach and engagement.
Brands like QuickenLoans, JustFab and the Baltimore Ravens are leveraging these tools to connect with fans in an authentic and mutually beneficial way to increase brand loyalty and advocacy. It’s exciting to see social media used in a way that drives and enhances brand passion.
You can use SocialToaster to amplify your message.
Nichole Kelly, president of SME Digital, a division of Social Media Explorer and author of How to Measure Social Media: A Step-By-Step Guide to Developing and Assessing Social Media ROI.
#14: Pop-Ups
In the past, pop-ups were hated by many marketers, and rightfully so due to their unprofessional look and feel, plus the fact they were so disruptive to readers each time they came onto the site.
But if you look around today, some of the most professional websites—like Social Media Examiner, Content Marketing Institute and others are using pop-ups for lead capture.
The main reason for this shift and “acceptance” is as follows:
Pop-ups today can be set on delays and scheduled. In other words, you can set a pop-up so that once a viewer closes it out, it does not reappear on their screen again for whatever amount of time you’d like—be it a week, a month or forever.
Now pop-ups look much more professional than in the past. Great visuals can be added, they can fade in and fade out depending on how long someone has been on the site, and their custom options are plentiful.
I added a pop-up feature to The Sales Lion a few months ago and the results have been exceptional. Instead of getting 15-25 signups a day for people downloading my eBook and subscribing to the newsletter, I’m now getting 25-40 a day, which is a huge increase.
At the same time, I haven’t had any long-time readers complain that they had to see a pop-up one time, which was a fear I initially had.
The Sales Lion saw a huge increase in opt-ins from the use of this pop-up.
If you’re looking at adding a pop-up lead capture to your blog, you may want to consider Pippity, PopUp Domination or others. Marcus Sheridan, co-owner of River Pools and Spas, founder of PoolSchool.us and founder of the popular sales/marketing blog The Sales Lion.
#15: LinkedIn’s Skills and Expertise Page
What if there was a social media tool that could tell you:
The best keywords to use in your social profiles?
Who the key influencers are and how to get in touch with them?
The exact companies you should be targeting with your particular skill set? What kinds of groups you should join for optimal relationship-building?
What companies you should work for and who you know at those companies?
Of course by now you’ve probably guessed that I’m talking about LinkedIn. But the tool I’m talking about in particular is LinkedIn’s Skills and Expertise page. After entering “Facebook Marketing” in the search box there, this is what came up:
The LinkedIn Skills and Expertise page helps you find experts in different fields.
Keywords: “Related Skills” show up on the left-hand side of the Skills page when you search for a skill to add to your LinkedIn profile. Think of them as relevant keywords. LinkedIn will also show you the popularity of those particular keywords (the higher the number, the more people are using that skill) Hint: Use the less popular skills too! Influencers: LinkedIn will show you the influencers in your particular skill set by name, picture and title. It will show you how you’re connected to them. If they are a first-degree connection, send them a message. For a second-degree connection, ask for an introduction. Outside of your immediate network? You can still reach them through InMail or a shared group. What a powerful way to build your network and find mentors or advisers! Companies, Groups and Jobs: The Skills page will also highlight the companies, jobs and groups that are recognized by LinkedIn as being relevant to your skill set. This can save you an enormous amount of time when you’re looking for companies to offer your services to, for groups to engage with to build your strategic relationships or jobs that will suit you. And of course, because this is LinkedIn, you’ll see who is already in your network and can give you access to that company, group or job!
Skills is truly a doorway into stronger connections and better business. Viveka von Rosen, known internationally as the “LinkedIn Expert” and author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day.
#16: Scoop.it
I originally thought Scoop.it was just another curation tool, a platform that allows users to gather together great content that they’ve discovered online. A Scoop.it button on the browser window can now rest besides those for List.ly and Pinterest, so that as you go around the Internet and find great content, you can simply click and share.
Scoop.it is a powerful curation tool.
When you “scoop” a tweet, a blog post, or any other content, you’re creating a post that is added to a category, or a “topic.” You can easily create new topics that others can follow. In turn, you can follow the topics of others.
At any point, a post can be re-shared through a number of other social platforms. People can add comments to a post, or give it a thumbs-up. Combined, these features make for a robust content curation tool that allow you to build community around topics, and to nurture relationships with influencers by sharing and discussing their content.
When you create topics, Scoop.it suggests content for you to add. You can manage how Scoop.it recommends content based on keywords or the feeds of particular users. Those feeds can include their blogs, Twitter feeds, Twitter lists, hashtags, and Facebook.
In this way, Scoop.it becomes a powerful social discovery tool and if focused on an individual, can even act as an influencer outreach management tool.
If you’re a HootSuite user, you can now integrate your topics right into HootSuite. With or without HootSuite, though, Scoop.it can act as a central hub to discover great content, build community around that content, and nurture relationships with influencers. Ric Dragon, CEO and co-founder of the digital marketing agency DragonSearch and author of Social Marketology.
#17: Pocket
The hottest social media marketing tool I’ve discovered in the last 6 months is Pocket (formerly known as Read it Later). At first glance you may think that Pocket is simply a private online bookmarking tool, but it’s actually much more than that. Pocket is a centralized mobile content curation and social media sharing control center!
Put articles, videos or pretty much anything into Pocket for later.
You can save and tag content from anywhere (your smartphone, tablet or computer) to your Pocket account. You can even save content to Pocket from Google Reader and Twitter using the browser extensions.
Save content to Pocket from Google Reader and Twitter using the browser extensions.
The real power of Pocket, however, is that it integrates with over 300 web and mobile apps. This means that you can collect the best content you discover on any device and share it whenever and wherever you wish through Pocket.
Pocket drives my entire social and mobile content curation and social sharing system, whether I’m sitting at my desk or on the go.
Pocket integrates with over 300 web and mobile apps.
Here are three tips for using Pocket:
Download the Pocket app to your mobile device and/or tablet and install the bookmarklet to your web browser. If you have a Mac, be sure to install the Mac application. (You can now share content to your social networks directly from the new Pocket Mac Application.)
Save the content that you want to share with your social networks to Pocket from your computer, mobile phone or tablet. Be sure toadd the tag “Share” to the particular articles you save that you later want to share with your social connections (you can add as many tags as you like).
Each day, login to Pocket on your smartphone or tablet and push the articles tagged with “Share” to Buffer (my personal favorite), or literally to almost any social network of your choice. Don’t forget to insert your own insights or comments when you share!
Note: Typically I share from Pocket to Buffer because it integrates with Bit.ly and enables me to track the links I’ve shared. Buffer also distributes my social shares at optimal times so that they can be more visible with my network connections.
Pocket is a smart content collection and distribution tool that allows you to become a master social curator! Stephanie Sammons, founder and CEO of Wired Advisor, a digital strategy and marketing agency for financial advisers, business professionals and professional services firms.
#18: Crowdbooster
What if you had a system that informed you exactly when your best times to tweet are in order to reach the maximum audience, based on how your followers respond? And what if the system showed you the Klout scores of new influential followers so you can follow up? And how about spotlighting @mentions that you hadn’t responded to yet?
Look no further than Crowdbooster!
Crowdbooster always shows your best times to tweet at the top of the dashboard. The times are adjusted as your followers respond.
But this awesome tool doesn’t just analyze Twitter. You can also dig into your Facebook Fan Page metrics to analyze your top posts, number of impressions, fan growth, top fans and more. You can even schedule posts via Crowdbooster for both Twitter and Facebook.
Crowdbooster displays colorful "bubbles" showing how well your tweets (and Facebook posts) are doing. Hover over any bubble for more information as shown in the black box.
You get one Twitter account and one Facebook Page for free. Upgrade levels include up to 10 or 30 total social accounts (currently only Twitter and Facebook Pages) for a reasonable fee. Give it a try and see what you think.
See at-a-glance metrics for follower growth, influential followers, retweets and more.
The nice thing about Crowdbooster is the team is super helpful, friendly and approachable… and they’re always iterating, so stay tuned for even more awesome features in the pipeline! Mari Smith, leading social media strategist and premier Facebook marketing expert. Co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day and author of The New Relationship Marketing.
#19: Lithium
We use Lithium for our new community platform. Its phenomenal capabilities allow for a lean team to rally users, influencers and our own associates to participate. From an organic growing knowledge base through the ability to reward frequent contribution, it is state of the art with WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) functionality and a truly object-oriented environment that makes it easy for a layman to customize.
Lithium helps companies unlock the passions of their customers to build brand advocacy, drive sales, reduce service costs and accelerate innovation.
Lithium also has the capability to do private moderation areas so we can all learn what FAQs need answers, solution creation both by us and by users to populate the knowledge base with good content and the ability to co-create content with guest bloggers. Kat Smith, director of social media and commerce at Petco.
#20: Tweetbot
Tweetbot is a Twitter app that allows you to do everything you can do on any other Twitter app with an extra killer feature: the ability to filter out tweets.
Tweetbot allows you to filter out tweets.
This app allows you to focus on the tweets that matter in your Twitter stream. It’s available at the Apple App Store. Michael Stelzner, founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner.
#21: PostAcumen
Facebook is one of our brand’s primary social channels. Our goal with that channel is to deliver content that begs to be engaged with. We’ve had tools to measure how well our own content performs, but we also wanted to know how well we performed relative to the competition.
Thanks to a brand-new tool called PostAcumen, developed by the same folks who made EdgeRank, we’re now able to perform extensive competitive analysis on Facebook posts. We can see how our content resonates with our fans and how those metrics stack up against our competitors for Likes, Comments, Shares, etc.
With PostAcumen you can see how your brand compares against direct competitors, or even industry leaders.
There is a nominal cost for the service, but so far it’s provided great insights, is easy to use and understand and helps us get better at delivering engaging content to fans. Liz Phillips, social media manager at TaylorMade-Adidas Golf, where she manages social media for TaylorMade, Adidas Golf, and Ashworth brands.
#22: Facebook Pages Manager App
My favorite social media tool is the Facebook Pages Manager App. This tool allows me to manage multiple pages while on the go. Not only can I post, comment and engage with my fans on multiple pages, but this app does so much more. I’m also able to create Facebook Offers directly from the app, which allows me to promote my programs and services anytime, anywhere.
In addition, I can instantly get a greater reach for my most important posts by buying Promoted Posts on-the-go directly from my mobile phone.
This is what it looks like to buy Promoted Posts via a mobile phone using the Facebook Pages Manager app.
With these features, I can make real-time decisions for my pages based on my fans activity and my current marketing goals. If you’re like me and often on the move, this app is one you don’t want to go without! Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and a social media strategist.
#23: Vocus
One of my favorite social media tools is Vocus. Vocus is a suite that helps manage your social media profiles, monitor what is happening in real time and other key functions.
One of the key elements that makes it different than other services is that it incorporates the very popular Help A Reporter Out (HARO) website. HARO is a site where reporters can post their requests for information and interviews anonymously, and where you can respond. If it’s a good fit, the reporter contacts you. It’s a great way to get additional free PR. Combined with the rest of Vocus’s platform capabilities, this provides a powerful one-two punch. Michael Crosson, founder and publisher of SocialMediopolis.com and founder of the fourth-largest LinkedIn group, “The Social Media Marketing Group.”
#24: Quozio
Can’t find an image to pin on Pinterest? No problem! I recently came across a simple, slick tool that allows you to take some text, like an inspirational quote or a particularly helpful blurb from a blog post, and turn it into a beautiful, pinnable image. The tool is called Quozio.
You can use Quozio to create cool quotation pins for Pinterest, but it also solves a common problem.
When you find a great article, or blog post, you want to pin it to one of your pinboards. But sometimes when you use your Pin It bookmarklet to try to pin it, the bookmarklet can’t find a pinnable image on the page. This is where Quozio can come to the rescue.
All you need to do is highlight a snippet of text from the blog post you want to pin, copy it, then use Quozio to create a pinnable image from that text. You can pin your new image directly from the Quozio interface.
To make sure your new Quozio pin links back to the original blog post you want to share, you just need to edit your pin after you’ve posted it. You can click on the “edit” button in the corner of any of your pins to edit that pin’s settings and add the URL of the original blog post.
When editing your pin, make sure you add the URL of the original blog post.
Then just click on “Save Pin” and viola! You’ve got a beautiful pin that links back to an awesome blog post. Beth Hayden, author of Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest.
Who are these social media pros?
The 24 social media pros who contributed to this article are all speaking at Social Media Marketing World–Social Media Examiner’s mega-conference.
It takes place at the waterfront San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina in San Diego, California on April 7-9, 2013.
Social Media Examiner recruited the biggest and best names in the world of social media marketing for this conference. Only the best for you! All of the experts you’ve come to respect and admire will be in one place. Be sure to check it out.
Why Attend Social Media Marketing World?
Join 1,000 fellow marketers at the mega-conference designed to inspire and empower you with social media marketing ideas—brought to you by Social Media Examiner.
This is a historic opportunity for you to connect face-to-face with the top social media marketing experts while breaking bread with like-minded peers from around the globe.
You’ll pick from 49 expert-led sessions covering social media tactics to content creation to social strategy. Plus, hear from brands such asSony Electronics, Ebay, Cisco, Zappos.com, Sharpie, Petco, Dell, AT&T, Whole Foods, SAP, Citrix, Dun & Bradstreet, Taylormade and San Diego Zoo.
This is just a sampling of what’s in store for you at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego on April 7, 8 and 9, 2013. Want to save some money? Reserve your spot now, before prices go up!Click here for details. What do you think? What’s your favorite? Have you found any useful social media tools recently? Please share yours in the comment section below.
Cindy King is the director of editorial of Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts byCindy King »
A month ago, I covered how Matt Cutts of Google said 
