10 Mistakes We’ve All Made on Social Media (And How To Fix Them)

Whether you’re using social media as a way to keep in touch with friends and family or as a marketing tool, you’re likely well aware of how powerful social media channels have become. When used correctly and mistake-free, you can successfully promote yourself, brand, or product. If you have a major hiccup, you can harm your reputation, both personally and professionally, for years.

                                 
1. Treating All Social Media Platforms the Same

We’re almost 100% sure that you don’t have to be a social media genius to realize that every social media platform is different. Each format varies from channel to channel by offering different languages to different audiences. In fact, just take a look at your social media accounts. 

2. Posting at Inappropriate Times


We’ve all had those times when the thought process was just a bit impaired – either because we’re tired, emotional, or had one too many drinks. If that’s the case, posting should probably be avoided

In short, you don’t want to be active when no one else is online. After all, that defeats the point of being on social media. In the future, try to be aware of the best times to post. For example, on Facebook, engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. As for Twitter, weekdays have 14% more engagement than weekends with 5pm having the highest amounts of retweets.

3. Placing Quantity Over Quality

Quality should always be your focus; not how much you post or how many friends/followers you have in your network. You should be sharing great content and searching for people who will engage and support you or your brand. 

4. Not Taking Advantage of Bio

It’s not uncommon for the first item for visitors to spot on you social media page is a bio. Since this the norm, make sure that you complete this section with vital information, like location and website [URL]. And, have a little fun with it. If you’re creative and interesting, this will give others more of an incentive to follow or like you.


5. Not Posting Enough vs. Posting Too Much

As you may have picked up by now, there’s a certain rhyme and reason with how much and how minimal you post on your social media platforms.We all have that person we’re following on Twitter who will send out 20 tweets in the span of one minute. And, we probably have that friend who logs onto Facebook once a month only to vent about how awful their life is going. Neither extreme is productive. Posting too much comes across as spam. Posting too little means that you’re easily forgotten. 

6. Using Automated Messages

you should at least make the effort to interact with people as often as you can with a personal and sincere message. Knowing that there’s a real person there who took the time to respond can go a long way in establishing trust and engagement.

Also, while not always the most pleasant of circumstances to deal with, you also may have to personally respond to negative messages or compliments. Instead of ignoring the problem, try to work out your differences. If you don’t think it is important, just be aware that LiveOps discovered that 85 percent of consumers feel how a brand handles issues on its website or social channels is a good indicator of its quality of support.

7. Not Proofreading

We’ll be honest, and so should you. At one time or another, we’ve all posted a message in a hurry, which in turn, is full of misspellings. While there are occasions where auto-correct takes over – even if you didn’t ask - grrr – always take the extra time to proofread your message. You’re not writing a novel here, so it shouldn’t take that long. And, it’s one of the easiest ways to protect your reputation


8. Using Social Media Only as a Megaphone

Social media is a two-way street. This means that it can’t be just one person talking all the time. It’s a conversation. You need to be active on all platforms. Don’t just talk about yourself or only share your work. Post content that will generate discussions. Pay attention to the people in your network


9. Not Properly Using @, # and Images

When only using @, Twitter sees this a reply, which means you and the other person you’re replying to can see the messages. By placing a period, or even ‘the’, will make the message visible to everyone in your feed.

Speaking of symbols, how about #? While including hashtags can boost engagement, please, please don’t overdo it. Posting irrelevant and trending hashtags is just tacky and won’t assist in lead generation. 


10. Saying Too Much

We’re all busy people. And we don’t have time to read War and Peace every single time we login into a social media account. Keep things short and to the point. This is especially important on Twitter where the 140-character limit is perhaps its most well-known feature.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-mistakes-weve-made-social-media-fix/91549/

Are Links Losing Value in Google's Algorithm?

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores both sides of the argument, offering some concrete advice to SEOs on how they can navigate today's waters.Here's the link to coverage of Google's testing removing links from the algorithm, and to the roundup post where links as a ranking signal are discussed (in particular, check out Russ Jones' reply in the comments). For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

So Google recently came out and talked about how they had tested a version of their search engine, of search quality algorithms, ranking algorithms, that did not include links as a ranking signal. Of course, a lot of SEOs went "Wait, they did what?"

But it turns out Google actually said they really did not like the results. They didn't like what they saw when they removed links from the ranking elements. So maybe SEOs are going, "Okay, can I breathe easy, or are they going to keep trying to find ways to take links out of the ranking equation?" Certainly, links for a long time have been an extremely powerful way for SEOs and folks to move the needle on indexation, on rankings, on getting traffic from search engines.

I'm going to personally come out and say that, in my opinion, we will continue to see links in Google's rankings systems for at least the next five and probably the next ten years. Whether they continue to be as important and as powerful as they've been, I think is worthy of a discussion, and I do want to bring up some points that some very intelligent marketers and SEOs have made on both sides of the issue.

So, first off, there are some folks who are saying, "No, this is crazy. Links are actually growing in value." I thought Russ Jones from Virante made some excellent comments on a recent blog post where some experts had been asked to do a thought experiment around what Google might do if links were to lose signals.

http://moz.com/blog/are-links-losing-value-in-googles-algorithm-whiteboard-friday

Google Give Tips For Identifying If Your Site Has Been Hacked, And How To Fix It

A post went up on Google’s official Webmaster Central Blog last night from a representative of the Search Quality Team providing tips for how to find out if your site has been hacked, as well as fix it and prevent future incidents.

Adding spammy pages are the most common way hackers take advantage of vulerable sites, Google says. Hackers add spammy pages to redirect users to undesired or harmful destinations. For example, Google says they have seen a rise in hacked sites redirecting visitors to online shopping sites.

Here are some tips Google provides to help you identify hacked content on your site:

• Check for for shady looking URLs or directories: You can check for any kind of shady activity on your site by performing a “site:” search of your site in Google, such as [site:example.com]. If there are there any suspicious URLs or directories that you do not recognize, they may have been added by a hacker.
• Check the Search Queries page in Webmaster Tools for unnatural looking queries: The Search Queries page shows Google Web Search queries that have returned URLs from your site. Look for unexpected queries as it can be an indication of hacked content on your site.
• Turn on email forwarding in Webmaster Tools: Google will send you a message if they detect that your site may be compromised. Messages appear in Webmaster Tools’ Message Center but it’s a best practice to also forward these messages to your email.

Here are some tips Google provides for how to fix and prevent hacking:

• Stay informed The Security Issues section in Webmaster Tools will show you hacked pages detected on your site. Google also provides detailed information to help you fix your hacked site.
• Protect your site from potential attacks: Prevent attacks by keeping the software that runs your website up-to-date, sign up to get the latest security updates for your website management software, and choose a provider that you can trust to maintain the security of your site.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-give-tips-identifying-site-hacked-fix/92961/

Someone Outranking You With Your Own Content? Use The New Google Scraper Report

One of the most frustrating experiences for any publisher is discovering that someone not only has copied your content but outranks you on Google for searches related to that content. Now, Google seems to have heard the complaints and has launched a tool to help.

The Google Scraper Report form doesn’t promise any immediate fix — or any fix at all. Rather, it simply asks people to share their original content URL, the URL of the content taken from them and the search results that triggered the outranking.

Google does have a DMCA system that people can use to remove infringing content, but that can be a time-consuming process. Potentially, this allows Google’s spam team to move against infringing content by considering  it a spam offense, rather than a copyright issue.

There’s a slight negative in that potentially, someone reported for spamming as a “scraper” might have a valid copyright claim. But realistically, there are so many terrible scrapers out there, and the activity is often so obviously infringing, that removing such content on spam grounds would allow Google to apply more common sense to the problem, rather than virtual paperwork.

http://searchengineland.com/google-scraper-tool-185532?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Using Content Marketing to Build Brand Trust

Content marketing is now bigger than ever and has been rapidly embraced by the majority of agencies and in-house online marketing teams across the globe. Content creation was recently ranked as the single most effective SEO technique and marketers have jumped on it. The problem however, is that people are rushing into this new online strategy before thinking about why they are really doing it and how they are going to use it to achieve their objectives.



Of course there are the obvious reasons for developing a content marketing strategy, including making sure you come across as a thought leader in your industry by providing regular up-to-date content on industry news. There is also the point of telling your own brand’s story through content that you put out in your news section and the ability to promote your brand’s products and services in a more engaging way.

Content marketing is all about creating and sharing free content that is valuable to your audience and will attract new customers and retain existing ones. The content your brand needs to be sharing should be related to your industry so that you can help and educate others, this will encourage people to trust you and once you have their trust then they will work with you.

Over 2 million blog posts are published every day, which means that readers these days have a huge choice of what they read and that’s before you consider all the content sent through social media channels such as Twitter and YouTube. With a high level of content overload, it is important to make sure that your content marketing strategy makes you stand out from the crowd.Too many content marketing strategies focus on quantity over quality, but really it comes down to making sure the content you produce is going to build a trusting relationship between the brand and the audience.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/using-content-marketing-build-brand-trust/90463/

Managing Your Online Reputation: An Interview with Nick Cuttonaro

Search Engine Journal’s Murray Newlands about protecting your online reputation and offers some tips for reputation management.

      

Nick has been a part of the online marketing industry for many years, and specializes in SEO, lead generation, web development, and reputation management. He founded Hyper Vision Media, an online advertising agency that produced marketing plans for major motion pictures, and also served as an Account Executive at Future Tech Enterprise before starting The Link Builders, where he is currently the Vice President.

When it comes to brand and reputation management, Nick is a great resource for learning how to protect the name of your business, and in his interview with Murray, he offers up a lot of his best pieces of personal advice for maintaining a great public image. He talks about the importance of staying on top of your social media profiles and keeping them up to date, to also maintain a positive tone of voice, and to utilize video content and authoritative blog posts in order to help your search rankings in Google.

These are some key takeaways from the video:

• In the interview, Nick tells Murray that in order to protect your brand’s image, you should always be in control of your social media profiles, keep them updated, and be conscious of what you’re posting.
• Nick also advises that when posting content, keep it professional and keep it positive. Avoid using negative language or complaining about other brands or products and stick with the upbeat and fun content.
• Nick says that the types of pages and content that are ranking best in Google are social profile sites, video content, and authoritative, informative blog posts.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/managing-online-reputation-interview-nick-cuttonaro/88255/

Bing Takes A Stance Against Poor Spelling and Grammar, Saying It Will Hurt Rankings

In this post Forrester takes a firm stance against poor spelling and grammar, explicitly stating it has an impact on search rankings. This is a stance Google has never taken, or at least they have never expressed their position on spelling and grammar as clearly as Bing has.

Google has their Panda algorithm in place that weeds out poor quality content and allows the good quality content to rank higher, but when judging quality content it’s unclear to what extent spelling and grammar comes into play.

It has been suggested by Matt Cutts, even as recently as this month, that site owners should be mindful of spelling and grammar when it comes to the content they publish. However, he has never stated that Google takes action against pages that routinely publish content with spelling and grammar errors.

                

Forrester explains Bing is judged by the quality of the results they show so they are constantly keeping an eye on the quality of content that ranks well, which includes looking at spelling and grammar. However, he is also empathetic to the fact that occasionally content with errors slips past the editors. It happens to everyone.

It doesn’t look like Bing intends to penalize those rare instances of content being published on a site that has a history of being relatively error-free, they’re more concerned with penalizing sites that routinely publish content with spelling and grammar errors.

This stance against poor spelling and grammar is an admirable move by Bing, I can’t help but wonder if Google will release a similar statement.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/bing-takes-stance-poor-spelling-grammar-saying-will-hurt-rankings/92061/