Many social networks can be broken up into many categories and most networks fall into more than one category. Knowing what category a network is classed as is vital to plan out a social media management campaign and also to have a successful return on your social media efforts.
There are seven main types of social network and every social service can be categorised into at least one of these: Blogs, Social networking services, Social media sharing, Social bookmarking, Social news services, Location based networking and Community building services.
Blogs
Blogs were one of the first forms of social media and have really evolved. Blogs are designed to allow easy content posting, and also easy commenting and sharing. Examples of blogging services are: WordPress, Type Pad and Blogger.
Social Networking Services
Social Networking Services were originally created for the soul purpose of two way communications and content sharing, e.g. videos, picture and information. Even with this category, there are three child categories: Full networks (Facebook/Google +) , Micro blogging (Twitter/Plurk) and Professional Networks(Linkedin/Xing).
Social Media Sharing Services
Social media sharing services are based around posting content such as videos and pictures, and sharing the content and also commenting on it. There are three types of these networks, video (YouTube/Vimeo), Photos (Flickr/Picasa), Audio (Podcast Alley).
Users of social bookmarking services can bookmark their favourite pages for other users of that network to see and enjoy. Recommendation sites (Stumble Upon/Delicious), Social Shopping (Kaboodle/This Next).
Social News Services
Users of social news services can favourite news for the rest of the network to see, these articles are usually voted on in some way. Examples of these services are Digg and Reddit.
Location Based Networking
Location based networking is something users have to help bring them closer together and explore their local area, examples of this are Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt.
Community Building Services
Community building services are mostly forum like networks such as Yahoo! And Google Groups, these networks can be very niche.
Conclusion
It is important to know exactly what category the network you are going to be using falls into, this way you can make the most of your social media agency and have the best return on your campaign. Whether you are using social media as an SEO company or even PPC.
Social Media is a great way to brand your business, bring in new customers and so on. However the one problem with social media is that is really difficult to measure, unless you have the right procedures or reporting software in place.
Step By Step
Using a process to record progress is extremely time consuming. There are many different factors that must be measured and for a really helpful report on your campaign, stats should be measured daily to see what works, and what doesn’t.
The more networks that your business is on, the more time you have to devote to making notes of new stats and so on. So by not using a reporting suite, you’re wasting time measuring your profile’s success and not helping it to succeed.
Choosing A Reporting Suite
There are tonnes of social media tools to help you measure your social media campaign, so how do you find out which is the best? Many of the suites offer free trials, so assign your social media profiles to the systems, and give them time to sync with stats. This can take a few days with networks like Twitter, but Facebook should sync automatically, this is because Facebook has it’s own insights available.
It is important to take note of the networks that the reporting software in question supports. If it is limited to Twitter and Facebook, it is likely that a tool that supports many others, such as Digg and Google Plus, would be much better for the present and future if your company is thinking about going from Facebook management, or even Twitter management to social bookmarking and many others.
The general layout differentiates between the suites and will appeal to some people’s tastes more than others. So it is just a case of testing the networks and seeing which is best for the job.
Conclusion
The only way to find out what is best is to try before you buy. Chances are that you will only be using one, and the prices that are charged, it is well worth making sure you are 100% happy with the services that are provided.
Whether you are using social media as an SEO company, or you are in the retail industry, it is important to be able to measure your social media activities precisely and accurately.
If you’re a company that’s recently been considering investing in online reputation management services, you’re likely to have suffered bad publicity on the web. This could have been as a result of unclear boundaries when it comes to usage of your company name or trademark, or you may even have been unlucky enough to fall victim to a malicious hate campaign, instigated perhaps by angry ex-employees or even a jealous competitor.
Some firms will go to great lengths to protect a reputation that has taken decades (or even centuries) to earn. A great case in point is the Speedo debacle in autumn 2011. The sportswear company challenged an Australian blogger about his misuse of the famous brand name, claiming that he was using the trademark “in vain” and jeopardising their reputation on the web. Speedo took the situation to the extreme by taking the writer to court for his actions – however, this really is a last resort, and there are a number of things you can do to challenge malicious individuals without shelling out for expensive legal representation.
SEO Positive is now able to offer comprehensive reputation management services that are completely tailored to your needs. We’re able to deal with all negative content written about you and/or your business online and push up the search engine entries that you want your potential customers to see.
However, you may be surprised to learn that reputation management is actually quite a new practice, and if we want to continue providing our clients with a top-class service, we need to adapt our methods and approaches depending on the latest developments in the industry.
We predict that 2012 is the year online reputation management gets big. Here are the five things we as an SEO agency need to bear in mind throughout the coming months if we’re to effectively manage and control those all-important online reputations of our clients
- Google remains the market leader when it comes to SEO and, naturally, companies want to make sure that the right kinds of results are generated when potential customers are searching for their brand, products or services in the search engine. However, thanks to quick developments within the mobile search arena, we’ll be taking a look at how we can extend our services to cover different platforms.
- Social media is a great outlet for businesses who want to actively interact with their customers – but one tactless comment at the wrong time could spell disaster for the company’s reputation. We will be exploring even more ways of incorporating social media into our reputation management packages so that we can educate our clients about the best ways to manage their accounts on an on-going basis.
- We need to continue to research the latest SEO techniques and developments, as search engine optimisation forms the foundations of reputation management campaigns. Again, due to the changing ways in which people are using search engines, it’s an area that’s shifting rapidly.
- Client communication is crucial. A few years ago SEO companies could simply take the reins of an online marketing campaign with little to no conversation with the company actually paying for it. As part of our commitment to providing our reputation management clients with a transparent service, we’ll continue to consult with them as regularly as possible to establish a sense of trust between both parties. After all, you need to feel in control of your own campaign at all times.
- As an extension of the above, we also need to focus on educating our clients about the best way to protect their online identity, both now and in the future. We’re sure that we can achieve great results and knock all negative search engine entries into obscurity should companies be unhappy with how customers are perceiving their business, but ultimately, every single employee needs to be aware of the consequences of their actions online. If we ensure that our clients understand the way the web works and the footprint that they leave for customers to follow, we can provide them with a service that’s great value for money, as they are less likely to return to us for full-blown reputation management services further down the line. We offer affordable brand protection options once the initial process is complete so that we’re able to monitor the existing campaign should any issues arise.
It was a while when Google introduced rich snippets functionality to enhance search result listings. The shame is that only few webmasters are using this method to help their websites to get higher CTR in organic search result, as it is an effective tool which helps to interact with searchers and get more clicks on your search listings.
Rich snippets allow you to mark up important data within HTML code and display additional information in the second line of search listings.
The example below displays stars rating which was implemented using microformats markup language:
Rich snippets can be used to markup various information types:
You can markup your HTML content using Microdata, Microformats or RDF format. To start using them you just need to know your the CMS system your are using and some knowledge of HTML.
Once you’ve implemented rich snippets on your site, you can check them with Rich Snippet testing tool and test that Google is able to parse your markup and display it correctly in search results. Rich Snippets testing tool can be accessed here
*Please note that mark up the data won’t effect your search engine listings.
The infamous file sharing website has been taken down. Try visiting Megaupload.com, the site is no longer up. The FBI made four arrests along with the closure of the file sharing website. Many internet users are shocked by this news as SOPA’s protest was only yesterday in which a huge number of highly trafficked sites closed down in hope of taking down SOPA.
Interestingly enough, the taking down of Megaupload and arrests have caught the attention of international hacktivist group Anonymous. Anon released a message to the public via YouTube to declare the beginning of some sort of cyber-war between the citizens of the United States of America and the Government. Anonymous also urged viewers to share the video via various social media platforms. In retaliation to the FBI’s actions, Anonymous attacked many government sites which resulted in them being offline for some time.
There is a huge amount of protest going on against SOPA and also PIPA as many internet users believe this will censor the internet. Most agree that online piracy needs to be combatted, but this is not an effective method to fix the issue.
This act by the FBI shows that even without SOPA’s approval, they can take any site down and arrest whoever they want, according to Anon anyway. Whether SOPA is passed will be decided in four days, we can only wait and see what will happen to the internet.
If the bill passes it will hugely affect the web in ways that cannot be fathomed. Search engines will be forced to alter their results, which will result in biased results, directly affecting the process and general industry of SEO and PPC.
If SOPA is not approved, it is likely that the US government will find another bill that the citizens of America will be happy about and to deal with online piracy once and for all.
SEO Positive ‘s new blog has been live for a few days now but I thought it was about time we made the grand tour. The whole site has been redesigned and a few pages have been added, such as social media, whereas PPC, SEO and all of our favourites.
Fitting the site’s redesign, the blog has also been pepped up. We have added practically all of the social buttons and even an author bio for each post. We have also thrown in a really specific categorical system so the article you are searching for will be easier than ever to locate.
One of the best new things about our blog is that we have author sections, so if you are looking for an article from a specific writer here at SEO Positive, then they are easier than ever to locate. You can even get an RSS feed specifically for one author if you would like. Just add /feed to the URL. This can also be done with our main blog so you can get all blog updates sent straight to your email for you to read.
If you want to keep up to date with all of SEO Positive latest news and updates, just follow us on twitter or keep visiting our blog for all of the latest SEO, PPC , Social Media and all other industry related news.
This tutorial will give a general rule of thumb as to where to position certain elements on a website in terms of user friendly web design and even for SEO purposes.
The Logo
The logo on the site should preferably be positioned in the top left corner of the site and try to keep the logo relatively small and compact, ideally no larger than 280px wide.
Navigation
This is ideal at the top of the page, either just below the logo or to the right of the logo. Sub navigation can then be positioned on the left sidebar next to the content.
Contact Details
Main contact information, like call to actions, such as telephone numbers and email addresses should be placed in the top right hand side of the page and minor contact details should be in the footer.
Page Content
The actual page content, would then appear in the center of the page on a three column site and in the center right on a two column site. For Blogs, the sidebar is preferably on the right and content on the left.
Accreditations / Awards / Company Details
This type of information should be placed in the footer of your site as the information is important to keep placed throughout the site for easy reference but is not key to the sites function.
It has been made public as of now that Google are definitely against the SOPA act, and they definitely have just reason to be. Although they are with the SOPA movement, you won’t be sent to a black screen, Google has used their staggering traffic to the best of their ability.
If you log onto Google.com, you will notice at the bottom of the page there is a message from congress which states “Tell congress: Please don’t censor the web”, and by clicking this link, it will take you to another section of Google in which you can sign an online petition to stop SOPA and PIPA, on top of that… information about the two bills are available. More importantly the effects of these bills are explained which is something that is hard to find. Then there is a community section that proves the growing community that are opposing the movements. Internet giants such as Facebook, Twitter, eBay, PayPal and of course Google, not to mention the countless others who are opposing the censorship of the internet.
The Effects
According to Google, SOPA and PIPA will do more harm than good. This is because it will force internet businesses to closely monitor everything linking to their site and if they are in violation of any new laws according to SOPA and PIPA, then it could potentially mean the end of the business, which will leave a huge number of people jobless.
It would be different if SOPA and PIPA actually worked, according to the big G!, these acts won’t stop online piracy. The regulations written in these bills wont successfully shut down their sites, they will simply transfer them to another domain and continue until they are caught again.
Conclusion
Anyone who works on the internet frequently has had their work stolen and pirated before. Whether you’re a writer or film maker, it happens so often and there is not much we can do about it. We do need a bill or law to prevent online piracy. However we need one that will work and not end up crippling the internet as we know it. This change will have a huge effect on social media and could potentially put a stop to it, not to mention SEO and PPC as the algorithm will be a completely different and most likely biased, and that is if it hasn’t been banned by a government.
SOPA is the stop online piracy act that many sites are partaking in. Sites such as Wikipedia, eBay and even Google are protesting this act, Wikipedia are even taking their site down for the day and so are many other sites. This will show how much the bill will affect the average joe and help to raise awareness about the act.
Whether you are for, or against SOPA, we really need to consider both sides, especially before we jump into any rash decisions like take our site down for the day because of SOPA. Granted, if this act does become approved, then the internet will be a completely different place for every user. Many huge sites are taking action against SOPA and if you are against the act, you must think abou what will happen if you join the blackout movement.
Points To Consider
The first point would be the obvious “am I going to make a difference”. The chances are that you won’t. As blunt as that may be, it is the truth. Compare your impact to what a site like Google would have. If Google blacked out their site for the day, then it would have a massive effect on users of the internet. It is the most popular site on the web so there would be a devastating impact, if anything would get the word out about SOPA, then no doubt it would be by Google. That said, your site is most likely no were near as popular… Unless your name is Mark Zuckerberg. Consider how much money you would lose to having a website down for a day, it can be fatal for some sites, this loss would need an indefinite gain, and unfortunately since there isn’t, then I feel it would not be a wise move to blindly jump on the SOPA band wagon, in terms of blacking your site out.
Another point would be to think of other ways you can help the cause. You can raise awareness from other methods, whether you’re for SOPA or against it, there has to be something you can do, this is where you can use your own personal experience and creativity to “fight the power”.
Conclusion
There are many reasons in which why not to jump into the SOPA act, whether you are a supporter or not. If you are not getting traffic on a scale of Facebook, Google and Twitter, it is unwise to jump into a decision like that. The best thing you can do is use your skills, whether you are a plumber or a SEO company, there is something you can do to help your side of the argument.
If you want to increase the amount of traffic to your website, you are most likely using social media to not only do that, but increase sales and build customer relationships. On top of using social media for the above purposes, you can also use them to drive direct traffic to your site. More specifically you can use your Facebook page to drive direct traffic to your site.
Adding The Tab
The first part you will want to do is add a custom tab to your page, this is called a static HTML page and can be found by using the search bar atop Facebook. Simply add the application to your desired page then go onto the selected page.
There should be a new tab on your Facebook page which says welcome with a star as the icon. When you click on the icon, you are taken to the backend of the application, this is where you can add the correct HTML code.
The standard code that is required for pulling a website into a custom tab like this is: <iframe src= “ENTER URL HERE” width=600 height=1000> .
The width and height settings are the best specifications for Facebook because the space provided is 600px wide and 1000px seems like the easiest size to have, although this is customisable. The “enter url here” is obviously where you enter your address, but you need to keep the quotation marks around the web address.
Conclusion
Although iframes do not pass on any SEO value, as page rank is not flowed by the use of iframes. However, for customer usability and many other reasons such as traffic, they are highly beneficial. This is another case of social media optimisation and how an agency can greatly increase your social media campaign.
