HOW TO GET MORE HIGH QUALITY, NATURAL LINKS

Recently a number of our clients have voiced a similar concern. With all the talk of the changing face of SEO, how do we adapt? How do we get those high quality, natural links that will determine if we thrive or die in a future where quality matters more than ever? It’s a challenge not all businesses are equipped to handle, but here’s one dead simple way you can embrace the changes and benefit.

Be Honest – Is Your Business Worth Talking About?

In the last six months, did your business create anything that caused people to turn their heads and take notice? I mean a product, a piece of content, a video series, a service, or anything else at all? If you can’t honestly answer yes, then why would anybody want to link to you? Duke Cannon is a perfect (but crass) example of a company that gets this, and boy are they getting links for it. Forgive me for getting so basic, but we have to get this out of the way. Natural links go to businesses that are making people talk. Do that.

Ok, that’s out of the way.

Go Find The People Talking About You

Assuming you create some kind of buzz with your products or content, you’ll come across people talking about you. If you’re big, invest in social media monitoring like Trackur to see what they’re saying and where they’re saying it. If you’re just getting going, set up a few Google Alerts around your brand name and keywords. Stay on top of what they’re saying because you might want to reach out to one of them (I’ll give you a good example of how to do this in a minute). And also, you should be where they are. If people talk about you on Twitter, you need to be there too.

Contact Those People

When you come across that glowing review of your new product, promptly contact the author. Tell them you’re grateful they wrote the review, and be generous with your praise. They may have even linked to you in their review, but if not, find a nice way to ask them to. They already love what you do, so they’ll probably support you if you tell them how much a link would help you.

Give Them Something

If you really want to make the person happy, send them some swag. Ask for their address, shirt size, etc., and tell them to expect some free stuff in the mail. This will take their reaction from “Oh how nice they thanked me for the mention” to “Wow, I didn’t expect that!”. Will they be more willing to spread the word about you? Probably.

Here’s how this works in the real world.

Some time ago, I bought a burrito at the local Sunflower Farmer’s Market. In a frozen section full of mediocre packaging, this burrito stood out. I took it home, ate it, and marveled at how delicious it was. I checked the wrapper and found information about ingredient sourcing, which prompted me to go to their very attractive website to learn more. From store to website, the brand experience was great, so I blogged about it.

Shortly afterward, I received a nice comment from a company representative. She thanked me for writing the generous post and asked for my address so she could sent me free stuff. I was thrilled! I assumed a sweet t-shirt was on its way, so imagine my surprise when I opened the mailbox and found a load of coupons for free burritos! They wowed me, and I told people about it. If I hadn’t already included a link to their site from my post, I would have done it right then. I’ve since connected with them on social networks, and I continue to buy their products.

And here’s how this all ties together.

I started out by writing I would show you a way you move toward getting more quality, natural links. You’ll get those links by creating amazing things, and what’s more, by making people happy. I don’t know if the burrito company has a social media manager that tracks company mentions, or even if they get 100 reviews written about them every day. What I care about, and what caused me to link to them and spread the word, is that they made a great product and they cared enough to reach out and reward me handsomely for my post.

If your business is accustomed to doing things like they’ve always been done, it’s time to change that. If you can’t create a new product right now, then write content that rises to the top. Make videos that you would share socially if you were the customer. Do those sort of things and people will give you attention. They’ll make it easy for you to reach out and thank them (and ask for the link if you like).

You deserve the links you get. If you want more, be better. Do you have examples of other businesses doing it right?

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ONE BUSINESS’S SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING MISTAKE & WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM IT

The (True) Storytory 

It was late on a Friday night. My wife and I had been busy all day and all night. Now it was nearly 10:00pm, and we had not had dinner. I called into a favorite local place for takeout. We were both starving and were excited to have a late dinner date at home together.

When I got back home and opened up my meal (chicken), I found an incredibly small amount of chicken. I was very disappointed. In my opinion, I would have gotten more chicken in a kid’s meal from McDonalds.

The Thing This Business Did Right (Social Media Marketing)

When I was picking up the meals, I had to wait a few minutes for them to finish it up. While waiting, I noticed something on their counter, by the registers. They were promoting the fact that they were “now on Facebook,” and asking for people to come and like them on Facebook so that they could be notified of Facebook-only specials.

This was a great way to help people become aware that they were now on Facebook, and gave their customers incentive to like and follow them. To learn more best practices, see this post about best social media practices for 2012.

My Social Media Action

In my disappointment that night, remembering that they were now on Facebook, I snapped a picture of my disappointing meal, “liked” them on Facebook (it killed me to do that, but I had to), and then posted my picture on their wall, explaining my displeasure.

Their Social Media Reaction (Social Media Marketing Mistake)

I got up the next morning anxious to see if they had replied. What I found was not a reply from them, not a direct Facebook message, but that my post had been deleted from their wall! “Are you kidding me!!” I said out loud (and by out loud I mean LOUD). I am pretty sure that I startled my wife who was not completely awake yet.

My Social Media Reaction to their Reaction

Needless to say, I was not happy about them removing my post. I emphatically and rather quickly, reposted the picture with my displeasure of the portion size and then made a comment asking them to “please not remove my post” from their wall.

Their Reaction to my Social Media Tirade

It did not take them but 1-2 hours before they found my post and removed it once again. They still did not contact me privately either. No apologies, no trying to make things right and no explanation. They simply removed my post once again.

Now the Gloves were Off

Now in all fairness to them, they had no idea I knew anything about social media. However, that shouldn’t matter. The fact is there are going to be unhappy customers and you need to address them in your social media channels as well as converse with those that are happy. It could have been a simple apology, and a message along the lines of “we will contact you to resolve this.” Then everything after that could have been behind “closed doors” as it were; but that’s not what they did.

I was more than just an unhappy customer at this point, I was angry. Instead of reposting on their Facebook wall where they would likely take it down yet again, I simply went looking for online review sites to leave negative reviews for them and to tell of my experience with their “customer service”.

Lessons You Should Learn from This

• Your social media properties are an extension of your customer service. DO NOT IGNORE your customer’s complaints on these properties.
• Engagement is key to success with social media, with both good and bad experiences. Here are some interesting facts on small business and social media marketing.
• With unhappy customers, address them quickly on the “public” forum in which they posted and the contact them to handle it “behind closed doors.” If you handle it right, you will not only have a customer for life, you will have an advocate telling everyone about how professionally they handled your complaint. For the record, I have also had this experience as a customer, and I am an advocate for that business now because of the way they handled my experience.
• Addressing bad experiences professionally and promptly with social media is a great way to advertise your commitment to a high level of customer service. Every company gets complaints, so don’t feel like you have to hide anything.
• Like it or not, customers have a power over your business that they have always had – wait, did I say “that they have always had’? Yes, I did! Word of mouth has always an incredibly powerful factor in hurting (or helping) businesses. The difference is you have a chance to be part of that conversation now.
• Some customers will be angry enough to leave negative reviews on review sites, such as Yelp, Google Maps, or Foursquare, when you ignore their outburst on the internet.

If you’ve seen any similar examples of bad social media, share your experiences of social media marketing mistakes in the comments below and start a discussion on what could have been improved.

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BRAND IT: FOUR WAYS TO BRAND YOUR BUSINESS VIA PINTEREST – PART 3

What do Chobani Yogurt, Drake University, and Oreck Vacuums all have in common?  They are all rock stars at leveraging Pinterest to brand their business. Each plays to their unique demographic – Chobani dedicates their pins to delectable treats, Drake boasts boards of bulldogs and study guides, and Oreck features re-pins of furry friends that their vacuums will be cleaning up after – just to name a few.

As you have read from Lauren’s and Suzanne’s past Pinterest posts, this social network is quickly becoming a major contender within its realm, as evidenced by a 429% increase of unique visitors to the site from September to December 2011 via 11 million monthly visitors, making it the fastest growing website to surpass the 10 million mark.

In this final piece of our three-part puzzle, I will be discussing how to take advantage of Pinterest’s potential to build your brand. Branding is all about the real estate you take up in someone’s mind and Pinterest occupies this real estate like no other social media tool. Allow me to discuss four monikers (similar to the site’s “Pin It” mantra) for successfully leveraging Pinterest’s branding potential.

Number 1: Start It

The largest and simplest way to brand your business with Pinterest is by simply starting. I mean it kindly, but the more you put in to the network, the more your business will get out of it. Create your profile, build your boards, and let the fun begin. Leverage the site to introduce new products, show off best sellers, and present your business directly to your customer.  For example,Etsy showcases 26 boards that feature products from its marketplace including Gift Ideas, DIY Projects, and Etsy Kids.

Remember, like all social media sites, content is king. Curate your brand by featuring content that is applicable, pleasant, shareable and adds value to your brand. As Suzanne mentioned in her post, Pinterest has great potential for your internet marketing strategy, make sure you utilize keyword-rich captions for your pins. As appealing as “Awwwww” or “Cuuuuute” may seem as captions, it does not add to your credibility, creativity or SEO. 

Number 2: Personalize It

Let me illustrate my next point with the archetype example of how NOT to pin. I am sure you are well familiar with the sleazy sales guy who is constantly pushing their product through your window after you slammed the door. Pinterest is not the place to be “that guy”. Nothing destroys value like the constant, straight-up sales pitch.

Don’t misunderstand my first suggestion, obviously there needs to do some self promotion, but there is a limit. One of the best statutes of social media is the 80-20 rule, and it is as applicable to Pinterest as it is with Facebook or Twitter. Let 20% of your content come directly from your site and pin/repin the other 80%.  It is essential to share content from sources beyond your website and your brand.

One of my favorite fashion powerhouses, Nordstrom, does this quite well. For every product based board, there are boards for inspirations like NYC Fashion Week, and color palette ideas. Your boards should be a commemoration of things that invigorate your business, your best services, and specific stylistic representations of your brand.

Pinterest goes beyond simply featuring your products; it is an opportunity to interpret the lifestyle of your clientele.  Feature your items together – not only does it make it easier to up-sell, it makes your posts look more organized. By doing this, you resonate with your customer’s needs.

By personalizing your brand, you humanize your business. Leverage a board to showcase employees with photos and bios, give a glimpse of behind the scenes of the office, commemorate special events, or provide tutorials. Additionally, Pinterest allows for multiple collaborators on their boards – having employee contribution not only adds to the human element, but builds office unity.

Number 3: Engage It

Next step: engage your customers. Respond to comments, feature their boards, run contests – the possibilities are endless. Pinterest is another venue for customer interface, so interact, socialize, and connect. One of the best ways to engage is to promote others’ pins through likes, comments, and re-pins. Pin images that flatter your brand and provide a diverse mix of images from your industry. ModCloth shares pins from bloggers and websites that share their mutual admiration for all things eclectic, and vintage.

As far as contests go, reach beyond the typical “Pin It to Win It”. Harness the creative power of your Pinterest followers.  Engage your followers by asking their opinion on the next marketing strategy, comment on the new office designs or vote on the trends they most want to see in your next collection. Choose the winners by awarding points based on likes, comment and re-pins.

One final way to engage your customer base: add the “Pin It” button to your product pages to help your customers build the brand. For example, Etsy includes the “Pin It” button on all listing pages, alongside the usual “Tweet” and “Like” buttons, allowing their 55 thousand followers to actively participate in the content distributed on Pinterest.

Number 4: Learn From It

Pinterest also provides ways to do some quick research that is directly corresponding from your customer base. Every pin displays consequential information such as comments, “likes,” other images in the same board and more. However, the most interesting information presented is the exact URL from which the image was pinned. Remember, each of these images could have been pinned from any page your site. Pinterest conveniently collects them all in one place for you.

Want to leverage it? Type the following URL into your browserhttp://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com” and replace “yourdomain.com” with your own web site URL . You’ll quickly be able to see the images pinned directly from your site with additional information like re-Pins and comments. Furthermore, you are able to understand how your customer perceives your product. Pinterest can give you a little insight into that by simply taking a look at the name of the boards that users have pinned content from your web site. You may see board names like “Products I love…”, “I Want”, and “My Future Home”. What are they saying about your product?  If nothing is said, a simple pin/re-pin shows generated interest. Use this free information to your advantage!

Conclude It

Successfully making branding via Pinterest is not difficult, and there are multiple ways of leveraging it. It is now your chance to go and explore how your business can utilize the newest social jewel to brand your business. Get your free Pinterest invite today.

Let’s talk in the comments section – what do you love or hate about brands you’ve seen on Pinterest?

Here are the links to the previous two Pinterest Posts in the series.

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HOW TO LEVERAGE PINTEREST IN YOUR SEM STRATEGY – PART 2

In a previous post, my coworker Lauren outlined what Pinterest is, how to use it, and why it’s important. As part 2 in a 3 part series, I want to outline how Pinterest is now becoming an important element to any SEM strategy.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is not just about words, it’s about anything and everything that conveys a message to your customer. This includes images, videos, other rich media, and obviously the actual words on your website. Because of Pinterest’s appeal to aesthetics, it is now necessary for websites to seriously consider the images they use. This means stock photography is a thing of the past.

An Example

An important thing to remember about Pinterest is that images are the “hook” to your content.For example, say you have a great recipe for rice pilaf and you have just blogged about it on your food blog. Then a subscriber of yours sees it, and thinks the recipe is rice-tastic and then proceeds to Facebook it, Tweet it and Pin it. But let’s also say that you only included one image with your recipe and it’s a stock photo you found on Google images that’s pixilated and grainy. Well, when your awesome subscriber goes to pin this wonderful recipe and hits their “Pin It” bookmark (to be discussed later), the only image they can pin, to share your recipe, is the pixilated and grainy stock photo. Now, at first you may not see a huge problem with this. Well friends, here’s the issue… take a look at this example of the Food and Drink Pinterest feed.

Look how pretty! You’re pixilated grainy image will get lost in all the amazingness of other, good quality images. You won’t get any repins, or more importantly visits, because your photo doesn’t look appetizing compared to all of these great food shots. This is why images are now crucial to your content strategy.

Pinterest Share Tools

The “Pin It” Bookmark

The “Pin It” bookmark is something Pinterest has developed to make pinning new content easy. You install itby dragging and dropping it to your bookmark tool bar on your browser.

When you want to pin something you see on a page (lets continue with the recipe motif since I love food and I love to cook), you click the “Pin It” bookmark and it gives you options of images it found on the page for you to pin. For example, if I find this delectable recipe for garlic cheese rolls on RaptorToe.com and want to pin it, this is what I see:

Then I hit the “Pin It” bookmark, it gives me several image options based on how many image files were found on the particular page.

I can choose what image I want to pin, then add a description, and choose which board I want to pin it to. From there I can share it to other social networks if I wish.

Give pinners only GREAT options for images.

“Pin It” Share Button

You don’t want to leave it up to chance that pinners will choose the best image that conveys your content. Good news! You can install the Pinterest share button on every post/page of your site to give YOU more control of how your content is shared. You can specify the description to keep messaging consistent and in-brand along with specifying the image shared. Pinterest also provides an advanced code for multiple Pin buttons per page (used mainly for Ecommerce websites). How great are they?!

Pinterest “Follow Button”

If you have created a company or brand profile (if you haven’t already, you should) you can add a follow button to your website. This way, users can keep up with YOUR pins on Pinterest.

Consider This

Here are a few things to consider when implementing images:

• WHY are you using the image? Are you using an image just because? Does it have a purpose?
• What is the message you’re trying to convey and what message does it support?
• Can the image “stand alone”? Can the image convey the message by itself?
• Is the image compelling enough to draw a click?

Because Pinterest is like crack for ADD-ers, you probably have about .05 seconds to catch the eye of a Pinner. Asking all the above questions will help focus your images so Pinners will be anxious to share your content.

Search Engine Optimization

It’s well known that social media is playing a big role in Google’s ranking factors. Pinterest is now the next big social thing, and brands need to jump on the bandwagon if they are doing SEO.

Pinterest SEO Benefit

Yes, there is SEO benefit.

Pinterest recently updated their look and functionality so some of the SEO benefit has been lost. Previously with every pin, your website received one branded, do-follow, anchor text link. This is no longer that case. You now get one no-follow, image link. Some might argue the benefit is lost. I say, along with others, a link is a link is a link. You want your back link portfolio to look natural, what’s more natural than image links? And guess what, Pinterest links don’t go away.

Tracking Pinterest

One great thing about Pinterest is that is drives traffic. With most analytics packages it tracks under referral traffic. If you use Google Analytics, like me, it’s pretty simple to gather information.

To find referral traffic in GA (Google Analytics):

• Go to the left sidebar navigation. Click “Traffic Sources,” “Sources” and then “Referrals.”
• This will give you a list of all the sites that drive traffic to your website. In that list you will find “Pinterest.com” if you are receiving traffic from pins.
• Click “Pinterest.com” in the list, it will pull open the list of all the individual pins that send visitors. If you have goals or ecommerce tracking set up, you can then see which pins actually drove leads and sales. Very cool.

Affiliate Marketing

How Pinterest Makes Its Money

It has recently come to light that Pinterest has been attaching their affiliate code to URL’s when a pinner clicks through to a website. They have been using a program call Skimlinks to achieve this. According to Adrianne Jefferies’s blog post, Skimlinks crawls through all Pinterest links and checks if the URL points to a merchant store with an affiliate program (like Amazon). When they find one, the program automatically changes the URL to include the Pinterest affiliate code.

The Controversy

The controversy has been over Pinterest’s neglect in disclosing their affiliate program. I personally don’t take offense, and honestly don’t care. But I can see how not being forthcoming can rub some the wrong way. Those that are most perturbed are other affiliate marketers that have been making money off Pinterest by tagging URL’s with their code.

So for those of you who already have or are planning on implementing an affiliate program, Pinterest beat you to the punch.

To Wrap It Up

Pinterest appeals to a very specific demographic, and that requires change in your current online strategies. Don’t miss the boat on this, Pinterest is sticking around. Part 3 of the series will address branding, and how Pinterest can benefit your brand.

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PINTEREST… WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL? – PART 1

Last summer my friends Suzanne and Hilary invited me to this thing they called ‘Pinterest’ and since then I’ve been hooked. We all love Pinterest and the ability to share ideas, get ideas and use it as a place for inspiration for the things we are doing in our lives. Since joining Pinterest, this social platform has exploded. I didn’t have many coworkers or friends using it when I started, but now most everyone I know either uses Pinterest or knows about it. With this explosion, I wanted to write a series on Pinterest.

And so begins our three-part series discussing Pinterest basics, along with how a company can use it to build its brand and reap SEO and social media marketing benefits.

The Basic Definition

So let’s get down to the basics: Pinterest is a social media platform that allows users to share and collect pictures and videos which link back to the original source whether it’s a corporate site or a blog. If you want to join Pinterest you have to either request an invite or be invited by a friend alreadyon the network. One of the benefits of Pinterest is that it is that easy. And once you join, it becomes addicting as you see what your friends are pinning, get ideas for projects or find the next meal you want to cook.

Basic Vocabulary

Pins: A pin is the Pinterest word for a post. You can pin images shared by other users (repin) or you can pin an image from an external site (pin) by installing the Pinterest bookmarklet on your browser. You can also share your pin on Facebook and Twitter. This is an example of a pin:

Boards: Users pin images to boards that are organized into various categories. This can range from ‘Fashion’ to ‘History’ to ‘Home Décor.’

You can also add contributors to your boards, meaning you can allow other people to pin or repin items to your boards. If you are planning a party with other people and you want a place to share ideas a board would be a perfect place for that. Here are some examples of boards:

Likes: Without pinning an image, users can share their opinion by ‘liking’ an image or video they see.

Comments: Users can leave comments on images or videos others have pinned

Following: Pinterest, like Twitter, allows for users to follow one another, whether they are immediate friends, aesthetic contributors or Pinterest mavens. When following, the user is also given the choice to follow all pin boards or to follow a select few.

Followers: These are the people that are following your personal boards and recieve updates in their feed when you pin or repin an image or video.

Feed: As users login into Pinterest, they can see a live feed of images being pinned and repinned . Users can choose to see a feed showing everything being pinned, choose specific categories, or just see the people they are following.

A newer feature on Pinterest is now you can allow your feed to go on your Facebook Timeline.

What’s The Big Deal?

There have been countless articles and blog posts written recently about Pinterest because the number of users has sky-rocketed. The audience is mostly women right now, but is always expanding. Businesses are realizing the potential this platform has for branding or search engine optimization(SEO).

The next post in our series will go into depth on how this growing trend can be beneficial to branding and should be a part of content strategy.

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