Indianapolis Social Media Square One

Blog traffic tip five:Get someone influential to endorse your blog.

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:51:10 +0000

Hopefully you trust us on technique number Four (Hot Topics) and are ready for technique number Five:

Get someone influential to endorse your blog

Finally, you can get others to visit your blog by first getting someone influential in your niche to endorse you (and your blog). You can do this indirectly, such as by offering to be a guest author on the other person’s blog. Or you can ask your joint venture partners to directly endorse you on their blogs and in their newsletters (and you’ll return the favor).

It’s free advertising. But it’s also extremely powerful, because you’re using social proof to increase your readership.

You’ve just discovered five proven ways to get others to visit your blog again and again!

Your next step is to take action.
Starting today, apply these tips… and then keep an eye on your traffic logs!

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place! The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!

The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914

Blog traffic technique number four:Cover Hot Topics

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:58:46 +0000

Hopefully you trust us on technique number three (Regular Features) and are ready for technique number Four:

Hot Topics

One way to get a surge of traffic and increase comments on your blog is by writing about hot or even controversial topics. You can include relevant keywords and “ping” the blog directories (like technorati.com) to make sure that those who are searching for the hot topic see your post.

Another way to leverage a hot topic is by joining in on the blogosphere conversation. Simply find a popular blog discussing a hot topic, and use a trackback to add your response.

Please join us tomorrow for technique number Five: (Get influential guests)

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place! The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!

The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914

Blog traffic technique three: Regular Features

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:54:56 +0000

Hopefully you trust us on technique number two (Update frequently) and are ready for technique number Three:

Regular Features

Here’s a great way to turn a one-time visitor into a repeat visitor. Specifically, by creating “regular features” and multi-part blog posts that your visitors can look forward to.

Example: Maybe you create a seven-part article about how to make money with pay per click marketing. And maybe you space it out so that you’re posting one or two articles per week. You can bet that your readers will return at least once a week just to finish reading the series.

Another way to get more visitors is by creating a regular feature, such as a “tip of the week” feature or even a “questions from our readers” feature.

Please join us tomorrow for technique number Four: (Cover Hot Topics)

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place! The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!

The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914

Blog traffic technique two: Update Frequently

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:34:40 +0000

Hopefully you trust us on technique number one (Good Content) and are ready for technique number Two:

Update frequently.

Sometimes people start a blog, post a flurry of articles and then abandon the blog for months at a time. If you allow dated posts, then your visitors aren’t likely to come back again if they notice that you don’t update regularly.

What you need to do is commit to posting to your blog at least once a week. If you don’t want to be chained to your blog like this, then create the content ahead of time and “schedule” your posts. Or, hire a ghostwriter to both create the content and post it. However, we do not believe this is the most effective way to engage an audience over a long period of time. The best technique is an honest, genuine commitment to providing valuable content on a regular basis.

As an example, think of your blog as a restaurant. Then try imagining a restaurant that keeps changing its hours of operation. We are sure you would agree that the restaurant would have a difficult time generating repeat diners. Point is, you need to post often to keep your blog from looking like a deserted island. Let your audience know you have a consistent schedule and they will tune in. Post on random days and at random times and no matter how good the content, the audience will lose patience.

Please join us tomorrow for technique number Three: (Regular Features)

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place! The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!
The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914

How to get others to visit your blog.

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 03:49:51 +0000

The number one question we get from beginners is; “How do I get started?”
There are so many social media websites out there, and we understand it can be very intimidating. The Social Media Square One objective is to reduce those stress levels, and make the online process not only profitable for you, but fun too! We would like to share with you 5 tips for getting started with your blog.

Offer Good Content- .
Update on A Consistent and frequent basis
Create Regular Features
Write about current topics
Build Relationships

In fact we believe these five techniques are important enough to cover in depth over the next five posts.

Let’s start with GOOD CONTENTWe know this sounds like a no brainer, but we are amazed by the number of blogs that recyle content or offer outdated information.

By “good” content, we mean topics that your audience want to know about. To find out what they want, just follow these steps:

Be Curious-Find out what types of information products they’re already buying – then write unbiased blog post reviews.

Do Research-Use a keyword tool to find out what topics people in your niche are looking for.

Be Social-Drop by busy niche forums and other blogs to see which topics are generating the most views and discussion.

Ask Questions-Create a poll or survey your readers to find out what they want.

You may have noticed we are expecting you to know some things about your audience.
Knowledge of your audience is critical if you want to engage them and give them a reason to view your blog posts.

Our heartfelt advice is: DO NOT START A BLOG WITHOUT KNOWING WHO YOUR AUDIENCE IS AND WHAT THEY WANT TO KNOW.

Check back tomorrow for information on how to maintain consistent and relevant content…

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place! The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!
The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914

Using Off-Page Optimization Tactics to Boost Your Rankings

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:29:46 +0000

If ranking high for competitive keywords was as easy as optimizing your page for those keywords, anyone could rank high for nearly any keyword.

But those in charge of Google and the other search engines are smart.They DON’T index and rank pages solely on the content that’s on that page. Instead, they look for “votes” from third-party sites. The more “votes” a site gets, and the more votes from high-quality sites, the easier it is for a site to rank high for their keywords.

So how does another site “vote” for your site?

Simple:

By giving your site a one-way incoming link.

You see, Google has devised a system called “Page Rank” (PR) that helps them determine how high to rank your page in their search engine.

The higher your Page Rank, the better your site will rank.

And generally, you increase your page rank by increasing the number of one-way incoming links… especially from sites with high PR.

In other words, all links (“votes”) are NOT equal. If you have links coming in a FFA (free for all) link farm that’s considered “spammy” by Google, that link won’t count much – and indeed, it could even hurt your standings in the search engines.

But get a lot of links coming in from related niche sites with high PR, and you’ll see your PR rise… and with it, your rankings for specific keywords.

The second part of getting an incoming link is that the anchor text – which are the words that create the actual link – should be your keywords.

Example: If you’re trying to rank for “how to quickly potty train a puppy”, then those four words should be the words your link partners use to link to your site.

How do you get one-way incoming links?

Here are a few places for you to start…

1) SWAP links with other related niche sites.

Look for sites that cater to your niche and, preferably, have a high Page Rank. However, don’t ignore sites with low Page Rank. If they look like high-quality sites, some day they might have a high PR – in which case you’ll benefit.

Ideally you should get one-way incoming links in order to achieve the most benefit. Usually that means triangulating your sites if you (or your link partner) has more than one site.

Example: You link your Site A to your link partner’s Site B. Then you partner links his Site B to your Site C. That way all sites have one-way incoming links – and yet you and your link partner effectively swapped reciprocal links.

2) SUBMIT your sites to relevant directories.

One way to get links back to your site is by submitting it to various directories. In particular you should pay attention to niche directories. So if you have a dog site, submit it to dog directories and search engines.

Of course you can submit it to other directories as well, including newsletter directories, blog directories (if you have a blog), forum directories (if you have a forum), local directories and the like.

3) SEND articles to article directories.

This is such a great tactic – not only to get backlinks but also to get traffic – that we’ll be talking about it extensively in future posts.

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place! The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!
The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914

Using On-Page Optimization to Pull in Search Engine Traffic

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:03:50 +0000

There are basically two steps in on-page optimization for your individual web pages:

UNCOVER your keywords using special tools.
USE on-page optimization tactics to rank well for those keywords.

Here’s how to do it…

1) UNCOVER Your Keywords.

Discovering what keywords your market uses to find you is actually fairly easy when you have the right tools. You can use a keyword took like WordTracker.com or use any other keyword tool that you prefer. If you’d like to look at the options, just search for “keyword tool” and you’ll find several options (both free and paid) in the search engines.

Once you’ve selected your tool, start entering some of the more common, broad keywords that describe your niche.

Example: You may enter words like “weight loss,” “dog training,” “learn to ski,” “play piano,” “tour Italy,” etc.

A good keyword tool will provide you with synonyms and other related words. Then it will create a list of words people in your niche are using to find your products and services – everything from the broad words like “lose weight” to long-tail words like, “how to lose weight over 40.”

DEFINED: “Long-Tail Keyword”

A “long-tail keyword” is one that typically is composed of at least three or more words. Because it is a longer phrase, it tends to be searched less than a two-word phrase. However, there’s also usually less competition in the search engines for these words – meaning you have a good chance of ranking high for that phrase.

The keyword tool should give you a good estimate of how often each word is searched per day or per month, so that you can estimate your traffic if you rank high for that word.
Quick Tip: Many keyword tools also give you an idea of how much competition you have in that search engines for that particular word. If your tool doesn’t do that, simply plug your keyword into the top search engines (using quotes) and see how many other sites are indexed for that exact keyword.

Your goal is to find words that have a decent number of searches per day yet very little competition. While individually your long-tail keywords may not bring in much traffic, collectively they’ll add up to quite a bit of traffic.

Example: Ranking high for 50 words that each bring in ten visitors means you’ll have 500 visitors per day. Unless you’re a search engine optimization expert, you’ll find it easier to get 500 visitors per day that way as opposed to ranking well for one highly searched yet highly competitive word.

2) USE On-Page Optimization Tactics to Rank for Those Keywords.

Your next step involves sprinkling your keywords throughout the content on your pages, including using your keywords in your navigation menu and other links.

Here are two tips for creating content around keywords:

CHOOSE two keyword phrases per page on your site: In other words, don’t try to optimize each page for multiple keywords. If you try to optimize for more than a couple, you likely won’t rank high for any of them.

CREATE content around those keyword phrases: Your next step is to create articles and other content around your keywords. Use your keywords in your article title and in the body of your article.

However, don’t “stuff” your page with keywords, as the search engines may decide you’re trying to spam them and your page won’t rank high if at all.

Instead, use a keyword density rate of about 2% to 3%, meaning your keyword shows up two or three times for every 100 words of content.

While on-page optimization can help you get ranked for some of the less competitive keywords, it can only take you so far. If you want to rank higher – even for more competitive keywords – you’ll need to use off-page optimization strategies too.

Tune in tomorrow for Off-Page Optimization basics

Online population should be 2.3 billion by 2014

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:40:34 +0000

Forrester Research says China will outpace India for e-commerce spending.

The global online population is expected to grow to 2.32 billion by 2014, up 42% from 1.63 billion in 2009.

The Middle East and Africa should grow the fastest during that time, an increase of 78%, but still account for the fewest total number of Internet users, 241 million. For e-commerce purposes, the report says areas that are set to have the most growth include Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, and such countries as Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey.

In the Asia Pacific, online spending by Chinese consumers will outpace India. Brazil will continue to lead e-commerce spending in Latin America.

Forrester Research projects the online population in the U.S. and Canada will grow 3% each year through 2014, but will comprise just 13% of the overall online population by 2014, down from 16% in 2009. The European online population will grow approximately 20% between 2010 and 2014 and account for 22% of the online population.

“The sheer number of online buyers and increased online spending per capita will position several emerging markets to challenge their counterparts in North America and Europe from an e-commerce perspective,” says Forrester analyst Zia Daniell Wigder in the report. “E-business executives who want to capture the growing number of online users—and their growing funds spent online—will need to look beyond the markets of North America and Europe and think more truly globally about their online strategies,” she says.

The report recommends companies prioritize which international markets are most important to their business and to focus on how they can differentiate their business through localization strategies. Forrester says translating site content into local languages is a start, but that companies should develop their own marketing tactics for important markets within a region because user behavior can vary widely.

“E-businesses willing to translate into local languages—even if with a small amount of content at first—will find themselves better equipped to take on the increasingly diverse global online user base than their counterparts with English-only web sites,” the report says.

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place! The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!

The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914

Autoresponders and ezines.

admin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:55:57 +0000

There are many uses for an autoresponder. One such use is the publishing and distribution of an ezine or newsletter. Since these services are usually set up to send automatic responses to the people on the list, at certain intervals, setting up an autoresponder to send out an ezine can be challenging at first.

Depending on the service or autoresponder, you will need a ‘broadcast’ feature. The broadcast feature works essentially the same as the autoresponse feature, with one big difference. The messages are NOT sent out at intervals.

The messages are scheduled to go out on a certain day, which has no bearing on when the subscriber was actually added. Broadcast messages are ‘one time’ messages that are only sent to your subscribers. People who sign up after the broadcast, do not receive it, unless they specifically request it.

The broadcast feature of most advanced autoresponder services, will allow you to either type your ezine/newsletter, or copy and paste it into the editor, then send the broadcast to your entire list.

Using an autoresponder to maintain a subscriber list allows you to provide consistent content . In addition, your subscribers can easily opt-in, or opt-out, and all of the distribution is handled for you, based on the schedule that you set.

List maintenance can become very difficult without the automation that autoresponders provide. You can write each issue of your ezine or newsletter well in advance, and have it delivered to your mailing list, no matter where you are or what you are doing. Once again, allowing you to provide consistent valuable content to your subscribers.

Since all past broadcast and autoresponse messages are saved, you can archieve old issues and attract subscribers by offering past issues. You can also use the tracking feature throughout each issue of the newsletter to determine how many clicks you are getting for the various products, or websites that you promote in your ezine.

If you have not yet purchased an autoresponder or signed up with any autoresponder service, make sure to ask about the broadcast feature. As your online marketing progresses, you will find that this is one of the most useful features.

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place!

The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!

The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914

How to make the Most of Your Fan Page

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:05:08 +0000

If you haven’t already integrated Facebook into your online marketing mix by creating a fan page, consider the most recent staggering Facebook statistics:

Facebook currently has over 500 MILLION members.

150 Million of them access Facebook on mobile devices.

With numbers like these — plus the fact that Google is now using social content to help determine the ranking of web pages — it’s difficult to justify not creating a Facebook presence for your brand.

Here are 5 tips to help take the guesswork out of FB fan page marketing.

Genuine & Consistent Content Give fans a reason to visit your page by adding fresh content on a regular basis. Keep in mind that consistently updating the page doesn’t require a significant amount of additional effort. In addition, integrate your fan page with other social media channels to maximize results:
Automatically feed new blog posts to all of your social networks at once.
Set up widgets for your YouTube and Flickr feed to automatically add videos and images to your fan page.

Engage New Visitors Facebook fan page walls can be an extremely valuable tool for communicating with customers and prospects. But for first-time visitors to fan pages, the wall can seem intimidating and exclusive. Imagine walking into a room where everyone knows one another by name and are talking about a subject you know next to nothing about. Instead of sending new visitors directly to your fan page wall, send them to a more controlled landing page where you can provide them with useful information about your brand, as well as a clear call to action to become a fan.
For example– send first-time visitors to an inviting landing page that gives a clear idea of your company’s mission. The page could feature a quick video that shares the Company story, as well as links to product and other important pages.

Promote a Contest Via Facebook A great way to add value to a Facebook fan page is to offer users an incentive to become fans. Contests can serve as an enticing incentive. However, you need to be aware of the current Facebook marketing guidelines which require brands, marketers and advertisers to go through an approval process for all contests.

Give Fans a unique gift Contests aren’t the only incentives companies can offer to grow their fan base. Any item of value can entice Facebook users to become fans, including:
Free shipping for Facebook fans
An exclusive product coupon for fans
A weekly special promoted on the fan page
At the end of the first time visitor video, you could direct them to an exclusive offer page (for example) By becoming a fan, users are offered valuable coupons.
Another approach to incentivize becoming a fan is to provide inside company information and breaking news on the fan page. Fans are more likely to remain faithful to your brand – and tell their friends – when they feel like an insider who has a stake in the company.

Encourage Interaction The entire notion of social media is built upon two-way communication. Most fan pages have little to no chance of success if they aren’t interactive and engaging. However, it’s not enough to sit back and wait for the interaction to begin. Get the ball rolling by:
Posting a question to solicit fans’ opinions
Offering a poll that’s extremely simple to respond to
Integrating existing Facebook applications such as games and quizzes
Reposting relevant, interesting information from other Facebook users.

Simply creating a fan page for the sake of “Well, everyone else is doing it,” isn’t going to land you results. Like with any other online marketing strategy, Facebook marketing efforts must be well planned and constantly reinforced. By doing so, you can start to tap into the vast network of active Facebook users.

If you are ready to move forward in promoting your product or service with social media, but are not sure how to start, then thankfully you have stumbled upon the right place! The Social Media Square One team is here to help you do this professionally, ethically and successfully! Come back and visit us often, and please leave us your comments, questions and feedback so we can better serve you!

The Social Media | Square One Team

Post written by Admin – Social Media | Square One is creating the social media marketing campaigns that are making companies successful in this space. Call today and let’s get your business in the conversation! 317.660.0914