Seven North Web

Phil Woods in this article makes the very defensible point that wrangling social media like Facebook, Twitter, et al. is no more difficult than using email, once you are used to it. And he tells you why it is best to keep a firm grip on your social media accounts, as you would any other marketing effort.

Why do I urge clients to keep social media in-house? 1. I’m not you (or someone else in your organization). I don’t know your business. I cannot field detailed customer inquiries. You’re more likely to build strong relationships for your business than I am. But I can help your organization develop a social strategy, get established on the appropriate social channels, and provide training. 2. You (the business) need to demonstrate a commitment to social media. Someone who understands the value of meaningful customer interaction needs to be involved in social media. If you’re not committed to social media, I don’t want to be your consultant.

Read the whole story here. Via Digital Marketing For Small Business

• Fortune 100 Companies Jump on the Social Media Bandwagon [Infographic] (onesocialmedia.com)
• Should You Outsource Social Media? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Meet The New World, Same As The Old World. (makemarketinghistory.blogspot.com)

Over a period of time, it is easy to forget the why and even the how of business blogging and social media marketing. The article by Pam Moore excerpted below will help bring you back on course with its peppy directions.

11. Engage your audience. Every page should have specific objectives for engagement. You want your customers to read, listen, watch and learn about what you have to offer. You want them to tell their friends about it. You want them to scream from a mountain top how awesome you and your company are and all the wonderful things you can do to help their life. A visitor that visits your site and leaves within seconds is not going to do this. Draw them in with a relevant and inspiring experience based on content that connects them to you and others in your audience (i.e., community!)  Bring them in closer with social links, surveys, video, comment plug-ins, audio, and of course rockin’ content!

Read the whole article here.

Via: PamMoore

• The 10 Minute SEO Checklist for Captivating Content (fathomseo.com)
• How to Engage and Grow Your WordPress Blog Readership (BuildMySiteforFree.com)

Check it out by clicking here. Or Use this direct link to the first podcast mp3.

The podcast will be available on iTunes shortly, and this post will be updated with subscription information. Until then, enjoy the player in post, or the MP3 download link. If you would like your email read on a future WPCandy podcast, send an email to podcast@wpcandy.com with your question, comment, or thought and we’ll do our best to read it on the show.

Thanks to : Chad Warner of Optimwise.com

Also– remember, the barriers to entry to podcasting can be  low, and the marketing potential can be high. Think about it.

• Updated: Podcasts about podcasting (trafcom.typepad.com)
• Learn How to Podcast! – How to Make a Web Show – GeekBeat.TV (techburgh.com)

The idea that social media like Facebook and Twitter are used mostly by the young and impecunious is wrong and, worse, hard to eradicate. My observation is that young folks are busy texting on their mobile devices with their fast and flexible little thumbs. We, the older and more business-minded, are the ones using social media consistently, and adoption by the middle-aged and elderly is sky-rocketing. The takeaway is that social media marketing is increasingly as or more effective with the older demographic as with the youngsters. The reasons for this adoption are not at all mysterious, either.

This year, Pew says, almost half (47%) of adults between 50 and 64 years old use social networking sites, and more than a quarter (26%) of senior citizens do the same. Among all adults, social media usage jumped 33% over the past year, with nearly two-thirds of all U.S. adults involved in social networking online.

More specifically, Twitter usage is also on the rise among older adults. Pew says that 11% of the 50-64 crowd and 5% of the 65+ crowd use Twitter or a similar service to post status updates about themselves or read updates from others.

Read the whole story, which was penned by Matt McGee for the always-interesting Search Engine Land.

• Social Media is Affecting Our Communication Patterns Online (socialmediatoday.com)
• Senior Moment: Tweetin’ Grannies and Gramps Outpace Social Whippersnappers (fastcompany.com)
• “New Report From Pew Internet: BIG TIME GROWTH for Older Adults and Social Media” and related posts (resourceshelf.com)

Use this link to get short video tutorials about your WordPress site delivered via email lnks–

WordPress Tip of the Day is a video podcast that delivers high-quality video training for WordPress in 5 minutes or less every day in a format that is easy to follow, easy to understand, and always free!

–OR you can subscribe for free to this video podcast (vodcast) via iTunes, which is even handier. Just search “WordPress Tip Day” in the Podcast section of  the iTunes store.  As you are doing this, you might as well sign up for more WordPress podcasts. Wouldn’t hurt. You’ll learn stuff. I’m just sayin’.

• 10 Useful WordPress Plugins for Blog Marketing (quickonlinetips.com)
• WordPress speed tricks (tomaltman.com)

It’s important to remind yourself to be OF the blogosphere/social media universe, rather than a mere observer/exploiter. Think of it– you can spot a blatantly self-interested spam-meister in a single glance, can’t you? Well, so can everyone else.

Thing is, some people don’t really reach out correctly to influencers. They don’t read 20 blog posts and comments. They don’t follow guidelines on contact form policies on what will be covered and what won’t be. Influencer outreach may possibly be the most powerful outreach tactic that PR practitioners or marketers are laziest about. This turns bloggers sour, thinking that everyone in public relations or blogger outreach is just a spammer.

Read the whole article here. (Via Techipedia – Tami Weinberg)

• 7 influential thoughts on social media influence (swordandthescript.com)
• Guidelines To Becoming A Social Enterprise (webguild.org)
• Blogger outreach code of ethics (drewsmarketingminute.com)

I’ll tell you, other people make the case for using WordPress as the center of your nascent social media marketing empire a lot better than I do. So don’t take it from me…

We have all had websites that sit for months and some times years without getting updated because it’s too much of a pain to contact the original developer to make the edits, not to mention the hourly cost for their time to update a pricing page or new content.  If you can use Microsoft Word, you can update your WordPress website.  Want to add a photo or video? Add button, Select button, Insert button.

Read the whole article here (Via Clear Idea)

• Can WordPress bring your Social Media together? (blogmistress.com)
• Ten WordPress Plugins for Sharing in Social Media (globalthoughtz.com)

Call 727-894-5266 or email us to get a free quote or consultation from Seven North Graphics Web Design, St Petersburg, Tampa Bay, Florida.

Ready to roll up your sleeves and get a little technical? This piece will answer your questions about which links are most valuable if you are willing to give it a little attention and thought.

Speaking of correlation data, no single, simple metric is better correlated with rankings in Google’s results than the number of unique domains containing an external link to a given page. This strongly suggests that a diversity component is at play in the ranking systems and that it’s better to have 50 links from 50 different domains than to have 500 more links from a site that already links to you. Curiously again, the original PageRank algorithm makes no provision for this, which could be one reason sitewide links from domains with many high-PageRank pages worked so well in those early years after Google’s launch.

Read the whole article here.

St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

• What is PageRank Good for Anyway? (Statistics Galore) (seomoz.org)
• The Science of Ranking Correlations: How Does PageRank Perform? (seomoz.org)
• Increasing google page rank and gaining more visitors (slideshare.net)
• Google vs. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements (seomoz.org)

Call 727-894-5266 or email us to get a free quote or consultation from Seven North Graphics Web Design, St Petersburg, Tampa Bay, Florida.

Once again, we find that business, or at least the marketing business, is just high school with better clothes. Social media marketing can be an excuse to hang out and have a good juvenile fun while making a few bucks, or so says Mashable.

Hey there, ma and pop: Are you hip to Twitter ( ), Facebook ( ) and the myriad of other social media tools that are currently at your disposal — you know, the ones the teens and 20somethings have basically dovetailed into their everyday lives? Social media may seem like a vapid way for tweens to gossip about Twilight ( ) and the like, but it can be an effective (and fun) way to reach new customers and create stronger bonds with loyal fans. Read the whole article here.

St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

• 19 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed (mashable.com)
• How Social Media Has Radically Altered Advertising (e1evation.com)

Call 727-894-5266 or email us to get a free quote or consultation from Seven North Graphics Web Design, St Petersburg, Tampa Bay, Florida.

Don’t let this scare you, but the time to do some clear thinking about your social media marketing campaign is before you begin. This post, if read thoroughly, could lead to some very useful values clarification about your next few steps in social media presentation.

5. What feeling do we want to inspire in others through our interactions? What’s the takeaway for them beyond a “positive brand experience.” Get specific. If your brand is fun, it’s probably a good idea to extend that spirit of fun into your social web presence. 6. Will we be proactive in our conversations? Reactive? Both? If you’re using social media to address customer service issues, a reactive strategy might be best unless you’re incorporating a loyalty or rewards program into the strategy. This can be flexible, but there should be primary and secondary purposes for the presence on the social web for branded profiles.

Read the whole article here.

St Pete’s Seven North Web Design & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging WordPress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

• Running a Successful Social Media Campaign (compukol.com)
• Document 10 quick rules for using social media for artists (slideshare.net)
• More Than 50% Of Companies Admit To Using Social Media With No Strategy (webguild.org)