Partnering with DigitasLBi and VaynerMedia, Mashable revealed the launch of the new phase of the Social Lift product at Cannes Lions this week. The new version of the product allows brands and agencies to publish their social assets on to Mashable through a self-service interface. So, over the next months, be prepared to see content showing up on Mashable through Social Lift by partners as well as their clients. After the limited access beta testing phase has ended, the product will be rolled out to more agencies and brands. Per Mashable, the constant core to this product’s development has always been to help brands become content creators. Through the Mashable Branded Content teams efforts, the branded content has reached 50% higher audience engagement than the organic content published on the site.

Mashable also recommends working with The Bran Lab team to have the most creative and innovative social assets to share with its readers; finished social products that the Mashable viewership wants to read and share. Mashable is also launching a new blog, MashableBrandLab.com where they will share  their favorite work and comment on trends they find important and inventive brands. What do you think of the new Social Lift product and Brand Lab team? How likely would you be to try it out for your own brand?

The post Mashable’s New Social Marketing Platform for Brands Wows at Cannes Lions appeared first on Be Found Online.

This new tool, which is similar to Tweetchat, streams tweets from chats to allow a more efficient way for a host to moderate conversation around the topic. Twubs’ new tool was developed within the guidelines of Twitter’s most recent updated requirements to its API. In the past, Twitter has taken a very strict stand against third party app developers piggybacking off of its API, so there should be no disturbance in the force.

Because Twubs’ chat tool was deployed in the Amazon Web Service cloud, it can handle a heavy load of conversation inducing spikes in traffic. Built to stimulate a bond between hosts and participants, chat organizers can create a public-branded homepage for the chats with ease. Being able to monitor the conversation allows for hosts to join in with participants while the conversation is still relevant. I don’t know about you, but I know there have been plenty of times when I tweeted something about a hot hashtag only to hear something back from the host days later. It’s great that they reached out, but it’s a little late at that point, as I may have forgotten what I even tweeted by then. With Twitter being in real-time, it’s often been difficult for brands to stay in the game without having multiple interns glued to trending topics all day long!

What’s more, Twubs’ president and CEO, Tony Ferraro says that the tool makes it easier for late participants to see the host’s tweets at the top of the feed to know what’s been discussed and join in without needing to be caught up. “Our tools will make it easier for chat participants to engage in the conversation. We have created a separate area above the feed so that host tweets can be clearly identified. This will allow any late-arriving users to immediately understand the discussion topic.”

Trolls are some of the most loathed users on any social platform. Twubs has a great tool to allow for abuse blocking. Without risking security problems, the host can assign more than one admin or assign a separate host role with out giving Admin and editing access. The current tool is out now, but new features will be rolling out across 90 days. Ferraro predicts that the tool should revolutionize Twitter chats. This will make building a community and archiving chats simple and finding new chat even easier, rendering the need for rolling master Google docs obsolete, and bringing the conversation to real-time events.

Not only does this tool seem to be the answer we’ve been looking for in organizing and hosting chats, but it is a real time saver! Those of us who work as Twitter chat moderators, whether full-time or on a freelance basis, by creating the reports of the conversations for us. With any hope, this new functionality being rolled out can help make our jobs so much easier and our brands’ connection with Twitter contributors even closer than ever.

The post Twubs: The Next best tool for Twitter Chat Management appeared first on Be Found Online.

Let’s talk about Link Juice.  No, it’s not a gross energy drink; instead, it’s the equity or authority of a page that flows through hyperlinks, to your deep site pages, and eventually back out to other domains your site links to.

So, how do you use links responsibly to increase your site’s rankings and traffic?

The key word in the last sentence is responsibly. Inbound links matter. The anchor text of those links matters. The authority of those sites that the links come from matters. Whether or not you share the juice and how you do it matters.

Part of the algorithm that Google uses to determine the value of web content is the number of links that point to it from authoritative, trusted web domains and pages. A link to a page is a vote of confidence for the content that page contains, and the domain/subdomain that is hosting it.

Ever since webmasters began to appreciate the value of inbound links and the link juice that comes with them, some shadier webmasters or SEOs have sought ways to boost inbound links by gaming the system.

There are scores of people whom would like to find a shortcut to the top of the search engine results pages. Among the highly questionable shortcuts to gather link juice that people have tried are these:

• Link Rings or Link Wheels — A technique that involves linking multiple microsites — usually UGC sites with little oversight, such as Squidoo,  Blogger, Tumblr, etc. — to one another with the final microsite linking back to the main domain. All these microsites funnel their juice down to the main domain.
• Blogrolls — This tactic usually involves hunting blogs with a similar subject matter to your own site (though this isn’t always the case), and requesting a link in that sidebar that typically includes a list of links to blogs that author appreciates. This isn’t technically black hat, but the tactic has been dramatically de-valued over the past year or so.
• Reciprocal Linking — “I’ll link to you if you link back to me!”
• Sponsored or Paid links — A sponsored or paid link is fine; heck, that’s how Google makes all their money — it’s called AdWords. The caveat is that you must, MUST indicate as such in a conspicuous location. If you are paying for links, you need to disclose that info to your viewers and Google.

I just need to throw up another disclaimer here. DO NOT DO THESE! Many of these are considered black hat, and perpetrating them will very likely cause Google to strike you down with great vengeance and furious anger. No, not really. In most cases it’s strictly algorithmic, but you can get penalized by a real Googler, so just don’t do it.

Are You Worthy?

So, how do you get good quality inbound links? It’s the Internet’s worst-kept secret. Think about the sites you link to. You link because there’s something worthy of directing visitors to. The not-so-secret secret of getting links is to create link-worthy content.

Not only should your content be link worthy, but it should also be engaging. Are your blog posts raising questions that spark debate in the community you serve?  Are they insightful enough to get comments from other experts? Are you providing an answer to a question where none previously existed? Is your content good enough to break through the noise?

Not Just About You

Do you have the right amount of social interaction in your social media accounts so that you look like someone worth talking to, or who would even answer? You would be surprised at how many people or brands that ignore opportunities to engage with their followers. Do you engage your community on topics that go beyond the business of finding prospects and selling goods and services? No one wants to pull up a chair next to the guy that is pitching all the time.

Do you add value by contributing to other blogs, forums, and communities? Do you look for other experts who could bring something of value to your blog’s audience and invite them to guest blog? Do you offer insights on other blogs so that such invitations can come to you? If you have a hard time answering these questions, there’s a good chance you now have an idea of what to do next.

Share the Link Love

Are you generous with those you borrow from?  Ever since “rel=nofollow” links, which allows you to plug up any juice that might flow to that link, webmasters can keep all of the juice to themselves. Sometimes nofollow may be the right course of action. For example, someone linking to www.google.com; Google’s doing just fine without your help. However, when you reference content created by someone else in your posts, why not give them a little link love? Share the juice. It feels good, and those on the receiving end of a followed link appreciate it. Even if they don’t, it’s good Karma, baby.

Mine Your Analytics for Content Insights

A close look at your analytics can tell you which author or type of content on your site is getting the most visitors. Use this data to craft future content. Where applicable, you can also look at comments on your blog posts for ideas for new content.

Tweak Your Failures

Look at the posts that are not so sticky. Why didn’t your content capture attention? Which keywords brought people to your site? Which keywords led people to bounce (exit the site without interacting with anything)? Could you provide something that meets a need and offers an opportunity to begin a dialogue?  Make use of your analytics to tweak content that is not working for you, or your audience. Sometimes something as simple as re-titling a post to make it timely or adjusting the focus can make it link-worthy and sticky.

The post The Juice is Loose – Responsible Linking appeared first on Be Found Online.

Not so fast, oh wise one. You can now be fined and required to pay a fee for not getting permission from the image originator even if you take the image down. Now, do you really want to waste your resources on paying off a fine for illegal use of an image? Probably not, so please read on to understand acceptable and illegal use of images found on the internet.

Similar to plagiarizing a book, photographs and drawings have the same rights when it comes to unauthorized copying, meaning re-posting said items to your blog post. Doing so falls under infringement. Unauthorized use would be using an image without permission from the: photographer, illustrator, publisher, designer, or any other creator of an image. However there are instances of implied permission. An example of implied permission is when the source of the image has share options tied to the image. Pinterest would be a great example of implied permission. There is a caveat to this though. If you click on the share options and a link TO the image is generated that that is as far as you can go. Now, if you click on the same button and get a replication of the image then the implied permission would extend to the use of the image itself. Same thing would apply to embedded code for images.

Now on to what is considered Fair Use. According to dearauthor.com, there are four principles courts use in considering whether it’s Fair use or unauthorized:

1. the purpose and character of the use, uncluding whether such use is of a commercial nature or nonprofit purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

It’s basically a balancing act between what is fair to the image creator and public use of said image. The reason it’s a balancing act, because the original purpose for the creation of the image must be determined, therefore each ruling is different. How is it okay for us to use images of products or tools we review? Well, because the few images used in the review cover a small segment of the post and is relevant to the commentary provided on the subject. Basically, because we’re reviewing and discussing the specific thing that is in the image, and it only covers a small part of what we’re sharing, it’s okay for use. Now, let’s say you take a screen shot of someone’s photo of the Apple store and you’re talking about Microsoft, you’re not exactly using the image appropriately OR giving credit to the photographer. The reason for this is that by using the image without permission, you’re lowering the value of the image for the creator, by making it more widely available. The exception would be transformation of the images, like making thumbnails of the work, or completely editing the image to be another original image.

So what can you do to stay covered? Well, here are some ways to get around some things legally from different sites.

Deviant Art had a vast array of images, specifically art and photography based. This is one of those sites with the share buttons available for many of the images, while others may not have the share option available. They also make it rather convenient to contact the owner for permission for use of the image.

Flickr has a section on their site called “Creative Commons” for users to license them for use with certain restrictions:

• Attribution: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it, but only if they give you credit
• Noncommercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform  your work – and derivative works based upon it, but for noncommercial purposed only.
• No Derivatives Works: You let other copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
• Share Alike: You allow others to distribute derivatives works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

There are a few million photos to choose from, so you should be able to find something close to what you’re hoping to use for a post.

Stock image sites are probably the safest bet, as you’re required to purchase the image for use, which allows you to use the image in pretty much anything, since you paid for it. Just keep in mind that if you’re only thinking about using it for something you can play with the watermarked preview image until you’re absolutely sure that you’re set to use the image. Also, there may be quite a bit of searching for the perfect image. A few sites that you can purchase images from are:

• iStockphoto
• Dreamstime
• BigStock

Now that you know rules of thumb with images and the fair uses, you can blog without looking over your virtual shoulder. Still have questions or need clarity? Feel free to send us your questions!

The post Fair Image Use on Blogs and You appeared first on Be Found Online.

For this post, we are going to focus on a common question that occurs…after a transition has taken place.  “Why are my impressions or clicks dropping?”

It never ceases to amaze me how many times we review a new client’s paid search campaigns and identify that they are spending way too much on irrelevant traffic.  There are two main reasons that this occurs:

1.)   Impressions are too high due to unfocused campaigns, ad groups, keywords and match types.

2.)   Poor messaging and targeting are resulting in irrelevant search traffic.

Often times a campaign is set up to ‘test’ the reach of the client’s audience, but this test often turns into a long term, miss-managed long standing campaign.  The result is an abundance of irrelevant impressions that ultimately end up costing the client.  While high impressions have their place from a branding perspective (more eyes on a brand), they can also lead to needless costs (especially when higher clicks do not follow).  High impressions, with low clicks result in poor CTRs.  The lower a CTR, the more Google, Bing, etc. charge you for the same click.

When taking on a new client, one of our initial steps is to identify where these irrelevant impressions are occurring and adjust match types, pause keywords and adjust ad copy.  The result is often a decrease in impression totals with little to no change in click totals.

The ensuing client question is always going to be “what happened to my impressions?”  (I’ll address this question shortly).

Similarly, it is not uncommon for us to also remove, pause or change match types on keywords that are driving traffic and not leading to a conversion, resulting in a decrease in total clicks.

This will undoubtedly lead to the question for the client “you decreased our click traffic, why?”

We all get caught up (client and paid search account mangers alike) in the idea that more traffic means more eyeballs, which means more revenue.  This, however, is rarely the case.  We have to step back and remind ourselves what the ultimate goal is: spend as little as possible, while gaining as much revenue as possible”.

While the statements above are not true in all cases, we always need to remind ourselves what the ultimate goal is.  In most cases, the goal is to increase both total sales and profit, but never to sacrifice profit for additional sales.  After all, profit is what drives growth.

The post The Answers to Your Questions about Impressions, Clicks, and CTRs appeared first on Be Found Online.

1. Keep posts to a 50/30/20 ratio. This means 50% of all Brand Facebook posts should be news, 30% Brand personality, and 20% self promotional content.
2. Be Positive, B-E Positive! Positive content is the most shareable content floating around Facebook, so make sure post it in spades. Of course, make sure it’s relevant.
3. K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Sweetheart!) Not everyone wants to leaf through Webster’s Dictionary to understand the verbiage in your posts, so make it simple to read. Not to say your audience is dumb, but no one wants to waste time reading the words from the National Spelling Bee Competition either.
4. Add a little fun to your brand’s voice! Don’t be uptight and corporate-y with all of your messaging! Showing that there is a human behind the brand helps the audience better relate your company.
5. Don’t Over/Under post. In general, author Dan Zarrella suggests on average a company should post around 4-5 times a week.
6. Shares are more validating than Likes. Getting your content shared by fans means the are willing to put their reps on the line for your posts.
7. Don’t just post when convenient for you and your office hours. Studies show that posts made between the off hours of 8:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. have 14% higher connection with fans and viewers.
8. Facebook doesn’t take the weekend off. Only 14% brands post on weekends. However, posts on weekends receive 14.5% more interaction than weekday posts. Perhaps a little shift may be in order?
9. Emoticons are more acceptable than you think! Posts with emoticons receive 52% more attention from likers than ones without. Along with being kind of cool, emoticons pull 57% higher like rates, 33% higher comment rate and 33% higher share rate.
10. Again, not going overboard is to your advantage. You don’t have to overcompensate with Facebook. Unlike Twitter, 1-2 daily posts on Facebook suffices and is much more acceptable, receiving 19% higher interaction from fans than brand posting 3+ times a day.
11. Remain considerate of others when thinking, saying and doing all things social. It’s not all about you after all! Cater to the interests of your target audience.
12. Communicate honestly and respectfully, while reflecting your brand and keeping your own integrity.
13. Always have fun with what you’re doing!
14. Allow yourself to inspire and be inspired by others.
15. Build a community while cultivating meaningful relationships. You never know how you’ll effect each other in the future!
16. Remain open and ready to learn new things and grow in your role.
17. Remember to be creative and intrepid while potentially working with very little.
18. Think BIG and remain open to see how you can develop bigger things than you’ve ever imagined.

Looking for more advice? Give us a call for a consult!

The post PR Advice for Every Community Manager using Facebook appeared first on Be Found Online.

The post The Whosie Whatsies of Conversational Search appeared first on Be Found Online.

A Common Staging Site Scenario

For the sake of presenting a somewhat-specific example, let’s say we’re developing a new site on a subdomain (newsite.yourdomain.com) with the goal of it eventually living at www.yourdomain.com once completed and migrated.

1.) Check Your Robots.Txt File At The Beginning, End Of Staging

This simple (yet hugely-important) file allows you to block the staging site from being indexed by search engines before its ready for your search engine audience. So, make sure you’re creating a new robots.txt file that is specific to your staging site right at the start!

The correct robots.txt file directing search engines not to index any page on the staging site should live (with our established example) at newsite.yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Keep in mind that this robots.txt file will be specific to the staging subdomain, and won’t have any effect on the main domain’s robots.txt file.

Because this file tells engines not to index your site, make sure you DO NOT move it to your main domain while launching your new site. A separate robots.txt file should be created during the development process that will be ready for launch when the new site is completed. Far too often a new site migrates with the “Disallow All” directive because the staging site’s robots.txt file is accidently moved with everything else.

2.) Get Your Redirects Mapped Out For Old URLs

This is a critical step in maintaining SEO value during a redesign because chances are if you’re changing your site, you’re likely adjusting your URL structure as well.

Search engines need to be directed to where your old page content lives on your new site. 301 permanent redirects tell search engines where to find URLs that are changing on the new site. If your site doesn’t have redirects in place correctly, the old URL will return a 404 response code, meaning you’ll lose any external linking significance accrued at that old (now non-existent) URL.

For pages that are “going away” on the new site, redirect these URLs to the homepage so users and search engines spiders are still able to get to your site when following a link pointing to one of these old URLs.

Prior to launch, make sure all your redirects are in place (verifying that they are returning a 301 permanent redirect response code) to prevent any surprises upon migration to the main domain.

3.) Set Indexation Benchmarks For Comparison

Create a before-and-after launch report of the amount of pages indexed across the major search engines. If the number of pages on both the new and old versions of the site is roughly the same, make sure that number doesn’t unexpectedly dip for a prolonged stretch after the new site launches.

With that rough number of to-be-indexed pages in mind, don’t be too quick to panic if your indexed pages number fluctuates for a while after launch, as search engine spiders may take multiple crawls to fully comprehend all the changes that have occurred on the newly unleashed site.

4.) Make A Timely XML Sitemap Update

Give search engines an easy guide to your new site from the start. Make sure a new XML sitemap containing your new site’s URLs is simultaneously created alongside the staging site and launched within 24 hours of transferring the content to the main domain.

5.) Set Realistic SEO Expectations For Timelines, Results

Having realistic goals in mind for a site redesign and its impact on your natural search presence will allow you to accurately interpret how search engines are receiving the changes, while allowing you to communicate expectations to everyone involved.

Results will take time to measure – It may take several weeks to gauge how search engines are taking to your new site, so don’t put too much emphasis on the first few days of data from analytics packages and SEO software. Though Google and other popular engines are crawling faster than ever before, multiple crawls and subsequent updates to the index won’t happen right away. Be patient even if your site is small and crawl friendly.

Expect drops if top performing natural search pages are changing URLs – This is especially true in the first days after launch. Search engines accrue relevancy at URLs, and if they change (even if a 301 redirect is in place) there’s a good chance a negative net effect will occur for rankings. These can rebound over time with continued optimization efforts.

You’re Well On Your Way To Maintaining Your SEO Relevancy!

These tips will ensure your natural search presence doesn’t cease to exist upon launch of your new site. What are some of the ways you maintain your search engine presence when migrating sites from subdomains or other web properties?

The post Top-5 SEO Considerations For Building & Migrating A New Site From A Subdomain appeared first on Be Found Online.

YouTube has had this filter system previously, but it was not available in a visual format like a map. The YouTube Trends Dashboard has been around and already allows users to filter videos by the same categories: Age, gender, and location; but there isn’t a nice visual layout like the new map.

You may be wondering what this has to do with you and your brand. Well, how do you want to target the right audience? Are you a visual person? Then, being able to peruse the new map feature may be a better reporting tool and allow you to see where you want to advertise. Knowing what’s trending where for a specific age and gender in the region of your target will make it easier to decide where to put your ads spend. Try is out and see how you like it. Currently the map feature is only available in the United States, but there will be plans to release it elsewhere in the future.

Trying to figure out where you want your ads to go? Give us a call to help you out!

The post YouTube Introduces Trending Video Mapping in U.S. appeared first on Be Found Online.

1. Retaining Current Customers vs. Acquiring New Ones

Because Facebook it better at client retention than pulling new business, Yodle’s Ben Rubenstein suggests finding other tools to guide you on the acquisition of new clients. I can agree to a degree that it can be much easier to market to your current clients on Facebook, but you don’t want to continue to inundate marketing to the same group without changing it up a wee bit. More often than not, your current customers are connected to potential new business contacts who are finding out about your brand through these customers. I think you have to balance it all out, but it’s still necessary to continue to keep messaging open to anyone who could be watching you. That being said, it’s nice to turn off the sales megaphone and communicate organically with your customers to understand them more then you have before. Balancing acts may be required, but you will get the hang of it.

2. Utilize Conversion Measurement

Using the Facebook Conversion measurement tool allows you to better match your platform likes with online purchases. Using this tool is effective in making sure your remarketing efforts are going to the right people. You don’t want to throw your marketing dollars into a black hole, right? Make sure to learn more about this tool and use it to your advantage.

3. Enable Engagement and Understand the Specific Results

 As Graph Search rolls out new tools to help better understand your audience, you will be able to engage you users who are liking, sharing, commenting, checking in and redeeming the offers from your brand’s page. Understanding who is doing what from where is a great way to be able to hone further in on your target audience and to gain the feedback needed to know you’re hitting your target.

4. Use Graph Search to better Invest Facebook Dollars

As I mentioned above, no one wants to just throw their marketing dollars into a black hole. You want to make sure you’re getting the results you’re looking for and you’re getting the most bang for your buck. Putting in the research can save you dough for other marketing endeavors. If you’re looking for Buyers in Dallas, running a quick Graph Search can help you know who will potentially be viewing and clicking on your ad.

5. Build Community Through Social Graph

If you’re looking to target your key influencers and want to bring them together within your social or in person community, then you can search for these people in Graph search, by geographic location and contact them to bring together.

6. Use Google Analytics to Track Facebook Leads

Because Facebook’s engagement tools are sub par, we continue to use the always trusty Google Analytics  to track leads to sites coming in from Facebook. I guess if it ain’t broke, don’t it, but I can foresee Facebook attempting to one-up or at least one-even the score with Google Analytics to make their social platform more beast-like to house everything in one massive social platform. Once again, with the tracking, we’re able to see conversions to engagement and determine what topics are  really the most desired from our audience.

7. Recruit with Social Graph

Most (two-thirds) recruiters are utilizing Facebook for finding relevant candidates, which is a cost saver for them, in an industry that doesn’t always offer an inexpensive clear cut solution to recruiting the right candidates. A new tool from Universum may help change things soon enough.

8. Hone Your Target Audience with Graph

(Notice a trend here?) Graph Search opens the opportunity to understanding your audience by their interests and targeting those audience members based on said interests. Instead of guessing whether or not your Golfer targets like ice cream, you can see what percentage enjoy ice cream, where they have gone for ice cream and what brand of ice cream they may enjoy best.

Taking the guess work out of the equation makes it that much easier to converse with and convert your audience into customers and allows you to plan for your approach without coming across insincere. I’m sure I may have just overwhelmed you with so many things about marketing with Facebook’s new Graph Search. Need a better understanding? Feel free to give us a shout to learn more!

The post Facebook Graph Search for Marketing appeared first on Be Found Online.