Despite all the buzz about social media these days only 49% of marketers have fully integrated it into their internet marketing strategy. This is according to a study done by Forrester Research based on 99 CMOs and marketing VPs in February of this year. The odd thing is that the same study also reveals that the same people are very aware that social media is extremely important. 92% agree that social media has “fundamentally changed how consumers engage with brands.” And yet less than half are actually using it fully in their marketing strategy.

Tracy Stokes principal analyst for Forrester, says marketers are just now “stepping back to see how the jigsaw fits into their marketing plan.” Although it is encouraging that they accept the importance of social media why are they not starting to integrate it yet? Luckily this leaves the door wide open for startup social media marketing companies to swing in and provide an important service that ad agencies seem to be neglecting.

In the rest of the report Stokes reports that 59% of online consumers are active on social media sites and a third of them have become fans of a brand on Facebook or Twitter. This number could easily swell though if companies knew what they were doing and had proper social media marketing strategies in place. The most telling statement in the whole report is that half of the marketers polled agreed with the statement “Social media has the potential to build my brand, but I’m not sure how to capitalize on it.”

Is your marketing company letting you down with social media? Need some help developing a powerful and effective social media strategy? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your current process as well as advice and help with changing it for the better.

Having a mobile compatible site is not something you can ignore any longer. A recent study shows that 40% of mobile users will turn to a competitors site after having a bad mobile experience. More and more people are using mobile web browsing whether they’re on the go or just too lazy to get off the couch to look something up, businesses have to make sure they’re taking advantage of every online marketing opportunity.

Making your site mobile friendly is not as hard as you may think. If you are on WordPress it can be as simple as downloading a plugin that will take care of it for you. For those not using something like WordPress there is now an equally easy option available. Google officially announced a partnership with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder. In a press release Google said, “Google can help. We recently teamed up with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder.  In three easy steps you’re able to get started with mobile: (1) enter your site’s URL, (2) customize your site and (3) redirect mobile users automatically to the new mobile-friendly version.  It’s free and takes just a few minutes to complete!”

This is an excellent tool, and true to Googles word it is very quick and easy to set up. One thing I should let you know before you get started, it isn’t completely free. Don’t panic though it will be free for your first year of use and then if you choose to continue it will cost you only $9 a month.  One whole year of free service sounds like a great idea to me, and if mobile keeps growing at the rate that it has, who knows what other free options you might have a year from now.

Having trouble optimizing your site, mobile or otherwise? Need some pointers on best practices for SEO? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your whole online marketing strategy and tips on how you could improve.

It used to be that you needed big bucks to advertise via video.  The internet has certainly changed that, but you have still always needed a substantial investment to get a quality commercial completed and actually scene by anyone.  Well, Google is working to change all that, and it should make a big splash in the world of online marketing.

Google has announced their new AdWords for video advertising on YouTube.   The system will work similar to the traditional paid search, where you only pay for actual clicks to your website regardless of how many times your ad is shown.  With AdWords for video’s TrueView system, you will only pay for complete views of your video.  If anyone skips ahead or doesn’t get through the full 30 seconds, you won’t be charged a dime.

In previous years, it was difficult to market to any specific demographic on YouTube.  This was because most visitors to the site were simply casual viewers with no log-in information, but that is no longer the case.  Now, Google and YouTube accounts are linked, creating between five and ten times more logged-in users visiting the site.  This results in a large swath of demographic data to pull out and market to.

For those of you who want to give it a try, Google is making it relatively painless.  All you need to set-up is an active YouTube account.  You simply go to AdWords.Google.com/Video and link AdWords to your YouTube account.  To incentivize people to give it a try, Google is also offering up about $75 per account of free advertising to early adopters. Just remember to make sure your ad is immediately engaging, or it’s going to be skipped every time.  Sure you won’t lose any money that way, but you wont make it either.

Need help with your online marketing strategy? not sure how to make the best of a Google AdWords campaign? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your marketing strategies and advice on how the get the best bang for your buck.

A new bill proposed by New York and Illinois Democrats Eliot Engel and Jan Schakowsky will change the way employers use Facebook when searching for new employees. The bill is known as the “Social Networking Online Protection Act” or SNOPA and it addresses the growing practice of pre-employment Facebook screenings, intending to make the practice itself illegal. Many employers have started requiring their employees to submit their social media login credentials as a requirement for employment.

The two congressmen proposing this bill think that this is an invasion of privacy, and will make employers who continue this practice, subject to a $10,000 civil penalty.
“We must draw the line somewhere and define what is private.  No one would feel comfortable going to a public place and giving out their username and passwords to total strangers.  They should not be required to do so at work, at school, or while trying to obtain work or an education.  This is a matter of personal privacy and makes sense in our digital world.”
SNOPA has been receiving support from other congressmen who agree that privacy is a right and not a privilege.

The months ahead are likely to see the introduction of groundbreaking new laws pertaining to important issues such as cybersecurity and privacy.  Currently, SNOPA looks to be at the forefront of that legislation and may make history as one of first American laws specifically regarding social networking privacy.

Need some help with your online reputation management? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation and advice on how to protect your image.

Early this month Google released another string of algorithm updates. About 50 of them to be exact, luckily we have narrowed the field down to only a few that you really should be paying attention to. You may need to adjust your small business SEO strategy so pay attention.

Anchor Text Changes
Better interpretation and use of anchor text. We’ve improved systems we use to interpret and use anchor text, and determine how relevant a given anchor might be for a given query and website.
Tweaks to handling of anchor text. [launch codename "PC"] This month we turned off a classifier related to anchor text (the visible text appearing in links). Our experimental data suggested that other methods of anchor processing had greater success, so turning off this component made our scoring cleaner and more robust.

These two new rules seem to suggest that highly targeted anchor text will be devalued in search. This probably won’t be quite as bad as you might think it is. Google is all about going after web spam and bad SEO tactics these days more than likely this devaluation of targeted anchor text will apply to key words that don’t have any relevance to the content they are a part of. In short if you have an article about an awesome new tech toy that includes a link back to your parts and service page with anchor text like “best prices on parts and service” you might have a problem.

Google Plus Updates
Better indexing of profile pages. [launch codename "Prof-2"] This change improves the comprehensiveness of public profile pages in our index from more than two-hundred social sites.
Improvements to name detection. [launch codename "edge", project codename "NameDetector"] We’ve improved a system for detecting names, particularly for celebrity names.

This is pretty self explanatory Google is just continuing to push their social platform and if you haven’t made a business page for Google Plus yet then you really need to make one now. Google is determined to make their social platform more and more relevant by integrating it into search results and other such tactics. It may work in the long run, it may not, but for now having a Google Plus profile is a must for any business if you want a well rounded social presence.

Need help keeping up with Google’s algorithm updates? Having trouble understanding how to adjust your SEO strategies as a result of these updates? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your tactics and SEO advice.

Millennials make up the core of the Facebook users, they are the people who are between the ages of 18-29 and have grown up in the age of social media. They have made social platforms like Facebook a daily part of their lives and will check in for everything from world news to what their friends are doing. So when crafting your Facebook marketing strategy it’s a good idea to be in tune with this crowd.

In a recent study by Appalachian state university’s communication department it was discovered that 75% of millennials said they had “liked” a brand page on Facebook. The interesting part is that 69% of them said that once they “liked” the page they rarely or never returned. In the study one of the professors, Dr. McCorkindale, gives us a theory on why this may be.

“In public relations, one of the basics of what we do is build relationships to hopefully get individuals to engage in some sort of behavior. It’s clear that the 18- to 29-year-olds are not as invested in an organization as the organization may think they are when they click the ‘like’ button or click ‘follow.’ It’s fairly consistent in the research that Millennials like organizations that give something back to them.”

In general when marketing to millennials on Facebook it’s important to make sure that you’re not just “giving back” by offering coupons, or products, but by offering your fans information or content that is interesting and relevant. Social media is about building relationships even between brands and consumers, so why would you cheapen that relationship by only offering up deals and coupons. To really build a relationship and engage your audience you have to offer them something more that they can actually engage with on a daily basis. As much as you may want to drag your traditional marketing into the Facebook realm it just doesn’t translate very well.

Do you need help developing a Facebook Marketing strategy that engages your users and builds a relationship with them that will keep them coming back again and again? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your current tactics as well as advice and help on what you can do better.

The Republican National Convention will convene in Tampa Florida from August 27-30. During that time they have chosen Google to be their “official social platform and live stream provider.” Google will provide coverage of RNC events, programs and interviews via Google+ and YouTube. This should have a major impact for the GOP online reputation management.

Google promises a convention without walls and will be covering the convention back to front not limiting themselves to just what’s going on on the main stage. Susan Molinari, Google’s Vice President of Public Policy, made a statement about the decision. “We are excited to work with the Republican National Convention to help break down traditional barriers and empower voters. By incorporating our tools and technology, we are offering a behind the scenes look at the convention process and allowing voters, delegates and viewers to shape the conversation.”

The GOP is excited about the partner ship and says that Google’s involvement is a way to provide voters with a virtual front-row seat to the event. “Having Google as a partner ensures the most engaging convention experience in history,” convention CEO William Harris said in a statement. “Our goal is to bring the convention to you, no matter where you are or which device you use.”

This isn’t Googles only involvement with the GOP either, recently Mitt Romney took part in a Google+ Hangout with the topic being the presidential race. He also had the pleasure of touring Google’s Chicago offices. Google also co-hosted a Republican Presidential primary debate in September with Fox News. Although it may seem like Google is being a little too biased toward the GOP they did extend their services to the other side with President Obama hosting his own Google+ Hangout earlier this year.

Curious about what Google+ can do for your online reputation management? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your online presence as well as advice and help on how to make the most out of your brand online.

With Google planning to crack down on over-optimization with their newest round of algorithm updates SEOs everywhere are scrambling to find out if they will be affected. Rather than speculate and face heavy penalties it is best to play it safe for now and check a few key places on your website to make sure that your small business SEO is on the level. Here are a few things to check to make sure your site isn’t over optimized.

URL Strings – The first thing to look out for is your permalink structure. There are many people out there who just cram as many keywords as they can into their URL string just for the sake of ranking a little higher. This is not a good SEO practice, instead make sure your URL’s are short and unique while still being relevant.

Content Body – I’ve talked about this a bunch of times before but it bears repeating. Key word density in your content is a huge factor and will definitely be taken into account when deciding if your site is over-optomized. If you want some hard numbers usually it is best to keep your keyword density under 2% that means you should have a keyword in your content only once every 50 words. It would be advisable to play it safe and make sure it’s more like 1 for every 100 words. You should be writing your content for the user any way rather than for search engines.

Meta Tags – Uniqueness is the key for meta tags. Repeating multiple key words in your meta tags will definitely get you a stiff penalty from Google. Make sure you review your pages meta tags closely and make sure they are not over stuffed or repetitive.

Anchor text – Anchor text manipulation has lost its value in the current Google algorithms. In years past anchor text was weighed heavily because it is there to tell the user where the link was going, but after years of manipulation search engines tend to be suspicious of highly searched keyword terms in anchor text.

Back links – Goole has started targeting and de-indexing link networks so you can bet they will be paying close attention to your sites back link profile. Any back link profile that looks suspicious i.e. over done or aggressive will raise red flags so brace yourself.

Domain Name – Many people who are obsessed with SEO use generic keyword domains to help them quickly rank well on search engines. Unfortunately, Google is starting to differentiate between brand domain names and non-brand generic domain names. Obviously changing your domain name might be a drastic move but if you start to see your page rank plummeting you may want to consider it.

Need help keeping up with Google’s constant algorithm adjustments? Finding it hard to get your website to rank well? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your website and sound advice on how you can drive more traffic to your site.

Google released an update for their social network Google+ on Wednesday which included an all new look. The update introduced a revamped navigation as well as some new features focused around hangouts. They also updated the look of the profile pages making them more aesthetically appealing (and suspiciously similar to Facebook’s Timeline look). The update is definitely an improvement and should make your social media marketing activities a little bit more enjoyable.

The best part of the new Google+ updates is the revamping of the navigation bar. Google has made it customizable by allowing you to drag and drop the elements to organize them any way you want. All of the navigation items have also been moved into a vertical bar on the left side of the page and have also been aesthetically improved. This is a huge improvement over their previous clunky and cluttered navigation effort.

Google has also completely revamped their “news feed” which now better separates each post, provides additional information, and features full bleed photos. Google has also further highlighted Hangouts, one of their main selling points. They’ve given Hangouts their own dedicated page now which will include a list of invitations, a rotating billboard showing the most popular hangouts, and easy access to public and live hangouts.

Finally Google has announced along with this update that they now have over 170 million Google+ users, although they still count people who share through all of their other various services so this number still isn’t quite accurate.

Having trouble figuring out Google+? Need help managing your Google+ profile? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of you social media strategy.

Google+ can be an excellent tool to round out your social (and search) strategy, but managing it along with all of your other social and SEO duties can be daunting. If you have a proper social strategy you’re probably also trying to keep up with Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, and a slew of other social sites. So how to you keep your head above the water with Google+ as well? Here are a few tips for your social media marketing strategy that will help you make the most of Google+.

Checking your notifications isn’t enough you need to make sure that you reply to your notifications as often as possible. As you should know from your other ventures with social media just having a profile and posting content is not enough you need to be engaging your community to get the most out of your strategy. Make sure you thank people who have shared one of your posts, and always read and reply to your comments. You should also be searching your brand name and keywords to see what people are saying about you and responding.

Ripples is a really cool tool on google that visually displays how your posts are being shared, make sure you’re always checking this so that you can see what content makes the biggest splash (see what I did there) and then adjust your strategy. You can search any URL on ripples and see how it is being shared, even your competitors ripple results could prove beneficial to you.

Another thing you should have learned from your other social media ventures is that one of the best ways to get noticed is by mentioning other people and brands directly. If you write a blog about industry leaders in SEO, for example, and you’ve posted it on Google+ why not mention a couple of the people you highlighted in the blog. Catching the attention of influential people or brands by mentioning them will absolutely help get your content more shares and more exposure.

Looking for some help managing all of your social profiles? Getting overwhelmed by all of these different strategies you have to employ? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your social media marketing strategy, and professional help managing your content.