Bloghttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40.aspxixl studios social media development's blog is used to distribute valuable social marketing and small business tips and advice. Check for daily updates to free social advise to help your website achieve its highest rankings.contact@ixlstudios.com (iXL Studios)support@viestly.com (Vesta Digital)Fri, 18 May 2012 23:33:06 GMTFri, 18 May 2012 23:33:06 GMTViestly60It's Not Goodbye.................It's Till I See You Again!!!!!http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/334-its-not-goodbyeits-till-i-see-you-again.aspxIt’s Not Goodbye…..It’s Till I See You Again!!!!

Wow! What a wonderful journey I have been on for the past 1 ½ years living the dream in Park City, UT. As most of you know I came to Park City in June of 2010. Having driven 2,500 miles from Palm Beach Gardens, FL to UT was just the first of my challenges. So here is how I have spend my time here. This is my Park City story......

Well, since I did not know a person here I needed to meet and befriend some new people for both business and personal relationships. Where do you start when I could barely navigate my way to Salt Lake City? I searched the Internet for business networking groups and used classified ads to find friends who enjoyed mutual activates. Now would be a good time to point out if you do not love outdoor activities this is NOT the state for you! I quickly made a few friends who loved tennis as much as I do. Through these relationships I was able to meet other people who liked other activities I also enjoy. So step one was getting accomplished. As I began to really look at the people around me in Park City I noticed some significant differences between me and them! First off I do not mean to generalize an entire town of people but it seems to me almost everyone was (extremely) fit , wealthy and white! Well, I was batting 0 for 3 in the scenario. I took a hard look at myself knew of one of the three scenario’s I could change. When I got here I was a bit overweight. Over the course of the next couple of months I was able to shed almost 30 pounds! So now I am hitting 1 for 3 not bad for a middle class tan kid from FL. Now fast forward to Summer 2011…..

Having been here for an entire year and having friends and business associates I was feeling much more like PC was where I should be. The lifestyle out here  revolves around being out in nature. Hiking became more than just something to do to stay fit it became a lifestyle. I have hiked to places probably only about 1 percent of people of this country have seen. I have sat on the edge of cliff and watched an  Bald Eagle glide by within 10 feet, hiked to hidden lakes in the middle of nowhere and ventured upon a couple getting amorous at 11k feet (oops sorry….Awkward). I have seen moose and deer and other wonders of nature. Many of you have seen the pictures on FB I have posted and made comments on beautiful isolation the place offers. I will be the first to tell you that you must earn every great photo opportunity out here. I have fought hikes so steep I wanted to give up and retreat but I never did just knowing the reward is in not only the struggle to get up the mountain but what awaits your arrival at the top. So, now as I get ready to depart for Florida for the winter I would like to sum up what have been my most rewarding moments here in Park City.

The first most rewarding is on the business level. This fall in found a BNI chapter here in PC. Over the last 4 months I have been welcomed into the Park City business world. Each and every person I have met in this group means something very special to me. They have made me feel like a local! PC is a very close knit society and I am now a part of that group. So I want to dedicate this paragraph to everyone I have met at Business Elevated! I will miss seeing you at Park City Hotel and PC Roasters. I will not forget what you have done for me and I will miss you.

Next greatest moments I have enjoyed was earlier in this summer waterskiing with Luke and his family and Matt. Now, let me be honest the first time I jumped into the 65 degree water at Jordanelle State Park I thought I was going to die! Having lived in FL and enjoyed the 80+ degree water there is nothing like a true reality check once you body hits 65 degree water. We spent hours on the water just skiing, tubing, exploring our surroundings and talking about life in general. Good times and look forward to a repeat next summer. Till I see you again!

Let me try and summarize my experience here in Utah. When I first began to share my plans on moving to UT with some FL friends they felt this quiet sometimes shy kid did not have to tools to make it here. I think they are dining upon their words and thoughts now.  

Here is my summation of my last 1 1/2 years in UT. It has been the most rewarding, challenging, exciting, frightening, enlightening and most exhilarating experience in my entire life! I have a new found love of life and I thank everyone who I have met here that has helped me find this new life both personally and professionally! I am no longer just living my life I am achieving my DREAM life. It’s not goodbye It’s till I see you again!

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]]>Chet SlaterSat, 17 Dec 2011 18:16:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/334-its-not-goodbyeits-till-i-see-you-again.aspxLink Building Tactics To Follow In 2012http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/331-link-building-tactics-to-follow-in-2012.aspxStandard practices of building links to your website have now shifted considerable from the old days of FFA’s and other illegitimate practices; webmasters have the latest Google Panda update to thank for that. If you were one of the unlucky 35% of the world’s websites to receive some form of penalty in Page Rank or organic placement, I’d be willing to wager that your linkage had perhaps better than 40% of the reasoning involved with the penalty. Sure, before you could buy your links from anywhere, place them anywhere and Google would deem your site popular simply due to the quantity of links regardless of relevance. This trend is over, and leading into 2012, webmasters better be slightly more ‘pragmatic’ in link building or face a certain organic demise.

Simply put, you must immediately evaluate your incoming and outgoing linkage and first check the relevance of the anchor texts in both, along with the landing page on both sides. Somewhere down the line, you may have contracted links from porn sites, malware or software downloads, Aunt Mable’s recipe site, and many other irrelevant sites or pages. When the respective sites containing your links are deemed dirty, the domino effect will ensue; now, you could have a beautiful site that is visited daily and contain relevant outbound links, yet the penalties you’ll suffer when irrelevant inbound links exist will incrementally destroy your site. A few days’ worth of research and webmaster contacting can nip the issue in the bud and sever the unneeded link ties.

In terms of your outbound links, it’s imperative to match your links with anchor text relevant to its destination, anchor text to keywords, place correct keywords into meta tags, and optimize meta data to match the page. Content must match all of the above; images need to have keyword optimization; when all is done, make sure that each page has its own canonical URL to differentiate each page on your site to the index bots; this will prevent Google from indexing content it believes to be duplicated and identify each page as its own entity. Once you are done with each page, you’ll see organic placement happen much faster since the pages are completely legit and ready. As a side note, you’ll need to avoid excessive scripting and frame breaks as well; this causes hang-ups and time-outs on the spider side.

Now that the above links have been fixed, follow the newest social trends into 2012 to promote further link health. Keep the Facebook wall updated as you do your site, engaging readership while slipping links onto your content though wall posts or FBML usage. Tweet the same link from your wall, including a keyword present in the content. If you have a Lens, continue a conversation from your wall or site with retribution back to one or the other; keeping all areas where you have links updated with content relevant to the link’s location will increase importance, promote targeted traffic, and naturally boost organic placement.

Finally, the newest hot ‘toy’ webmasters can play with while relatively new is the bookmarking site Pinterest. This site is almost like a Stumbleupon-Delicious sandwich as you can share bookmarks, or in this case ‘pins’, with other people or sites that are similar to you; these pins come in the form of pictures on your site. Should you have correctly anchored images with text relevant to your site, expect to get infinite PR6 backlinks from Pinterest IF you can catch on to the concept of image pinning with keywords and linkage. It’s new, hot, and easily makes the top five newest practices for SEO link building practices for 2012.

All old bets are off for link builders in 2012, so pick up your chips and be ready to move to the high-stakes table. Take the last few weeks of 2012 to evaluate what you have done thus far to promote better link building practices and assess your company or small business’s goals for the future. Comment spamming for links will soon die (if it hasn’t already to most webmasters), so throw that idea out. Link building needed a facelift, and with timely practices, webmasters can be the surgeons who administer the new skins for these newer and more frugal link building practices.

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 16 Dec 2011 18:13:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/331-link-building-tactics-to-follow-in-2012.aspxSocial Revolution Videohttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/330-social-revolution-video.aspx

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 14 Dec 2011 19:10:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/330-social-revolution-video.aspxThe Future of SEO: 5 Clear Facts You Should Knowhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/329-the-future-of-seo-5-clear-facts-you-should-know.aspxSure, no one has a clear crystal ball that can predict what the search engines will and won’t do in the future. However, it is possible to extrapolate from their activities over the past few years and identify the trends that are pretty much guaranteed to continue going forward, and that’s what we’re bringing you today – five clear facts about the future of SEO that we believe will heavily influence which sites that succeed in the long run.

Fact #1 – Content is king


When the Google Panda algorithm updates first rolled out, plenty of people cried foul. After all, if the intent of the changes was to clean up the SERPs by ridding the search engines of the type of spammy articles found on content farm sites, then why did it seem like so many low quality sites jumped in to take their places?
While you could see this as indication that it simply isn’t important to provide high-quality content, smart marketers know that content is now – and always will be – king to the search engines. Here’s why…
The primary goal of the search engines is to make money, and they can’t do that if people avoid their services because their results are perceived as being low-quality. For this reason, the search engines will always be engaged in the process of refining their algorithms to provide the best possible results. And – newsflash – low-value, spam content is never going to win out over well-written, authoritative content in a battle over which text should be served up in the SERPs.

So while Google and the other search engines might not have definitively cracked the code on how to weed spam pages from the SERPs yet, rest assured that they’re working hard on it. And when that day comes, it will be the site owners who focused on providing good quality content that succeed in the long run.

Fact #2 – Natural backlinks will always win


Yes, I know you think you’re so clever with your “10,000 backlinks for $10” package that’s guaranteed to fool Google into ranking your site higher. But here’s the thing – Google is now, and will always be, smarter than you. Google and the other search engines employ some of the top PhDs and technical minds in the country, whose sole purpose is to weed out link schemes like these and devalue them.

So while you might temporarily succeed in earning a high ranking despite a link profile that’s stuffed full of profile links and paid links from spam sites, keep in mind that your progress is likely to be short lived. In the long run, it’s a far better strategy to focus on obtaining the good-quality, relevant backlinks that will stand the test of time.
But how do you get these prized links? Well, the solution actually goes hand-in-hand with Fact #1 listed above, as publishing great content is one of the best ways to build natural backlinks from authoritative sites. Guest blogging on other popular sites in your niche, encouraging your readers to share your content on social sites and deploying legitimate press releases are also good ways to keep your link profile squeaky clean and appealing to the search engines.

Fact #3 – Personalized search will be a reality


Plenty of traditional SEOs have been up in arms over the integration of personalized search features, which adjust the standard SERPs to reflect the viewer’s personal interests and connections.
For example, if you’ve subscribed to several popular SEO blogs through the Google Reader program, you might find that results from these sites appear in your SERPs with a note that the content was recommended for you because of your subscription to the originating site. These personalized results bump sites that would have appeared in the natural SERPs if you weren’t logged into your Google Profile – a fact that’s pretty frustrating for the marketers who have invested time and money into achieving high traditional rankings.

But despite these frustrations, what we’ve seen so far in terms of the integration of social profiles into search results is only the beginning. In fact, personalized search results are anticipated to expand in scope, as creating unique SERPs based on your preferences provides the most relevant results (at least, in theory) that will keep you coming back and using the search engine’s services (consequently, making the company more money).
The result is that these changes make building your professional network critically important. In fact, this shift may even represent a powerful opportunity to jump in to some highly competitive SERPs, but only if you take the time to build a large network on popular social networking sites (as this will increase the number of people that are exposed to your content).

Fact #4 – Optimization for multiple platforms is key


Although the traditional search engines have long been the default access point for people looking for information online, the number and scope of methods we use to navigate the web and parse results has increased dramatically in the past few years.

For example, while you’re certainly still likely to conduct standard Google searches from your desktop or laptop computer, you might also browse for information on your tablet computer or smartphone – or even make use of voice command technology programs like Apple’s “Siri” system. Given the rapid growth that we’ve seen in these alternative platforms recently, there’s no reason not to assume that this trend of expanding internet information access won’t continue in the future.

As a website owner, you need to be aware that people might be looking for information about your business on any of these platforms, making it crucial that you optimize your site for as many of them as possible. Key action steps at this point include launching a mobile-ready version of your website and maintaining profiles on sites like Google Places and Yelp, which are likely to be used as information sources by third-party programs like Siri.

Fact #5 – Social activity will increase in importance


Late 2010 brought the unprecedented announcement by Google that social signals were being used as a ranking factor, and as the web shows no signs of slowing down in terms of activity on popular social networking sites, it’s likely that the relative importance of social signals will continue to increase for web businesses.

Need more proof that there’s a good reason to invest time in building up your site’s social media presence? Consider that the 132-person panel of SEO experts that contributed to the 2011 SEOMoz Search Engine Ranking Factors study rated “Social signals at a page level” and “Social signals at a domain level” as two of the top three factors that are most likely to increase in importance as a ranking factor in the future (behind only “Analysis of a site’s/page’s perceived value to users”). If these industry experts anticipate social signals playing a bigger role in the search engine algorithms, you’d better believe that now’s the time to get on the bandwagon!

So how can you build up a social profile that the search engines will reward? Start by making an effort to spend time on the social networking sites you’re active with every day and reach out personally to your followers. By providing consistent, helpful information, you’ll build a following and begin to see an increase in the number of social shares of your work, making any investment here worthwhile in protecting your site against future changes in the world of SEO.



This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.socialmediatoday.com. The original author is Sujan Patel

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 13 Dec 2011 16:02:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/329-the-future-of-seo-5-clear-facts-you-should-know.aspxHow To Create SEO-Friendly Contenthttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/328-how-to-create-seo-friendly-content.aspxGetting your voice heard on the internet is never easy. It can be like setting up your soapbox on a crowded street, and waving frantically to get passers-by to pay attention. You might be an expert in your chosen topic, with pearls of wisdom to dispense on X particles or Z-list celebrities, but how do you get people to stop long enough to listen?

The answer is finding the right balance between SEO-friendly content and readability. It’s essential to make sure the Google (and Bing) spiders – and therefore readers – can find your website or blog. Knowing a few tricks can help you climb their rankings, without sacrificing your sparkling writing or specialist knowledge.

Choose Your Keywords

Keywords are the most important aspect of SEO , so think about them before you even start to write. It can be hard slotting keywords in afterwards without sounding clunky and forced.

Brainstorm words and phrases you think people are looking for, and use trusted tools such as GoogleAdWords to help pick the best. Consider how much competition there is for each phrase. Instead of catch-all terms such as “travel agency” consider more specific terms, such as “Italian luxury travel specialist”, to sell your particular area of expertise.

Place Keywords Carefully

Search engines don’t just analyze which words you use, but where you place them. Getting keywords in the title or first sentence is obviously a good start. Many newspapers change their pun-heavy headlines to more SEO-friendly versions on their websites.

You need to find the right keyword density – “keyword stuffing” can be penalized by search engines, as well as being a turn-off to readers!
Don’t forget “hidden places” to put your keywords, such as meta tags and image captions.

Use Free Tools

Take advantage of free tools, such as Google Analytics which can assess where your site traffic comes from and which aspects need more work. For bloggers, WordPress has various plug-ins that can help you choose the best post title and keywords, avoid duplicate content and make the most of meta-tags.

Become An Expert on Your Topic

Let’s say users are searching for “Edinburgh travel tips” or “easy Christmas recipes”. If you’ve got several articles on the same topic, then search engines will assume you know what you’re talking about. Choosing a targeted area of expertise will help you get on that coveted first page of search results.

Use Links Wisely

It’s not just what you write that counts. Clever use of links will help your site climb the rankings – including ones to other parts of your own website. If another page has relevant information or you’ve written a similar post in the past then add a link. Just don’t overdo it!

Wear the right Coloured Hat

SEO techniques are sometimes referred to as “white hat” or “black hat”. Search engines regard “white hat” techniques as legitimate ways to optimize your website and help users find the information they want. “Black hat” techniques refer to practices such as using hidden text, or having separate versions of websites to deceive search engines. They might work in the short term, but could lead to Google blocking your site – not a good strategy!

Write for Your Audience

“Content is king” may be a cliché, but it’s basically true. SEO techniques can grab readers, but engaging writing keeps them there. Don’t let your text get so loaded down with keywords your main points get lost. Giving away useful information or creating a lively, informative blog is the best way to keep readers coming back to your site. Think of your audience. Are they interested enough to plough through a long piece of text? Or do they just want the basic facts as quickly and succinctly as possible?

Make it Readable

And on the same theme, make sure your writing is easy on the eye. Break up chunks of text into subcategories, and use images effectively. Lists can be a good idea – and a way to repeat keywords without readers noticing! Use short sentences and leave plenty of white space.

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 25 Nov 2011 18:03:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/328-how-to-create-seo-friendly-content.aspxBrand Pages on Google+ Versus Facebookhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/326-brand-pages-on-google-versus-facebook.aspxA new study published BrightEdge provides some interesting statistics about Google+. The least surprising is that of all the brands that have joined the social media site since Nov. 7, Google has the most fans. But brands are establishing pages at a rapid rate. The study compares Google+ to Facebook and found:

  • As of now, 61% of the top 100 brands are on Google. 93% percent of the top brands are on Facebook.
  • Top brands like Coke and McDonalds haven’t established a strong fan base on Google+ yet. The companies have dozens of fans on Google+ but millions on Facebook. More than two dozen of the top brands had no followers.
  • Google is the only brand on Google+ that has more than 50,000 fans.
  • Google does not have a Facebook page.
  • When it comes to linking the pages, which is important for SEO, only 12% of the top 100 brands have a link from their Google+ page to their homepage while 53% of the top 100 brands have a homepage link from Facebook.

It’s been less than a month since Google officials announced brand pages so the numbers hardly spell doom for Google+. But there is a key question that needs to be explored: Are companies not getting enough fans because there are not enough users on Google+ or because there is not enough interest in their pages?

Also, Facebook has been reaching out to companies for several years. They have established programs and tutorials in place designed to show users how to succeed on the site. And they already have testimonials from businesses and organizations that have succeeded using the site.

Google+ brand pages have met with mixed reviews and social media marketers are still trying to learn what the best practices so that they can advise business owners. If you are wondering if you should establish a presence on Google +, remember that it is free, with the exception of your time. And it’s just too soon to tell how Google+ brands and the social media site itself will perform in the upcoming months. Who would have thought Facebook would have become such a force?


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 21 Nov 2011 17:02:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/326-brand-pages-on-google-versus-facebook.aspxTracking Cookies: Facebook PR Nightmare Continueshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/325-tracking-cookies-facebook-pr-nightmare-continues.aspxIn late September, an Australian technology blogger broke the news that Facebook was collecting data on over 800 million global users — even when the users were logged out of their Facebook accounts. Although Facebook initially denied the unauthorized tracking and made excuses as to why cookies were sending back information on signed out users, the company eventually changed the logout procedure to depersonalize information after a user logged out.

However, when the issue resurfaced last month, the privacy concerns and Facebook’s PR nightmare continued. The same tracking cookie was once again tracking Facebook users’ activities on sites with the Facebook plugin while the users were logged out. Now, Facebook is stating that they have corrected the problem, but many Facebook users and privacy advocates remain skeptical that the resolution is adequate.
As a result of the tracking cookies collecting data while users were signed out, the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus and 10 privacy advocate groups petitioned the FTC to investigate Facebook. In addition, Facebook is currently facing lawsuits due to allegedly violating multiple states’ wiretapping laws with the tracking cookies.

To complicate matters further, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia and chairman of the Commerce Science and Transportation Committee, told The Hill the following in an interview:

“No company should track customers without their knowledge or consent, especially a company with 800 million users and a trove of unique personal data on its users. If Facebook or any other company is falsely leading people to believe that they can log out of the site and not be tracked, that is alarming.”

In addition to the above statement, Rockefeller said that he takes “a hard line on protecting consumer privacy” and recently announced that he will be holding a hearing to investigate claims that Facebook violated users’ privacy in the near future.

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 18 Nov 2011 17:03:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/325-tracking-cookies-facebook-pr-nightmare-continues.aspxFacebook Is Tracking Your Every Move on the Web. Here is How to Stop Ithttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/324-facebook-is-tracking-your-every-move-on-the-web-here-is-how-to-stop-it.aspx
Facebook Is Tracking Your Every Move on the Web; Here’s How to Stop It
Over the weekend, Dave Winer wrote an article at Scripting.com explaining how Facebook keeps track of where you are on the web after logging in, without your consent. Nik Cubrilovic dug a little deeper, and discovered that Facebook can still track where you are, even if you log out. Facebook, for its part, has denied the claims. Regardless of who you believe, here's how to protect yourself, and keep your browsing habits to yourself.
The whole issue has stirred up a lot of debate in privacy circles over the past few days. Here's what the fuss is about, and what you can do to protect your privacy if you're worried.

The Issue: Facebook's Social Apps are Always Watching


For quite some time now, Facebook's user tracking hasn't been limited to your time on the site: any third-party web site or service that's connected to Facebook or that uses a Like button is sending over your information, without your explicit permission. However, Winer noticed something mostly overlooked in last week's Facebook changes: Facebook's new Open Graph-enabled social web apps all send information to Facebook and can post to your profile or share with your friends whether you want them to or not.

Essentially, by using these apps, just reading an article, listening to a song, or watching a video, you're sending information to Facebook which can then be automatically shared with your friends or added to your profile, and Facebook doesn't ask for your permission to do it. Winer's solution is to simply log out of Facebook when you're not using it, and avoid clicking Like buttons and tying other services on the web to your Facebook account if you can help it, and he urges Facebook to make its cookies expire, which they currently do not.

Digging Deeper: Logging Out Isn't Enough


Nik Cubrilovic looked over Winer's piece, and discovered that logging out of Facebook, as Winer suggests, may deauthorize your browser from Facebook and its web applications, but it doesn't stop Facebook's cookies from sending information to Facebook about where you are and what you're doing there.

Writing at AppSpot, he discovered that Facebook's tracking cookies-which never expire, are only altered instead of deleted when a user logs out. This means that the tracking cookies still have your account number embedded in them and still know which user you are after you've logged out.

That also means that when you visit another site with Facebook-enabled social applications, from Like buttons to Open Graph apps, even though you're a logged out user, Facebook still knows you're there, and by "you," we mean specifically your account, not an anonymous Facebook user. Cubrilovic notes that the only way to really stop Facebook from knowing every site you visit and social application you use is to log out and summarily delete all Facebook cookies from your system.

Why You Should Care


If you're the type of person who doesn't really use Facebook for anything you wouldn't normally consider public anyway, you should take note: everything you do on the web is fair game. If what Cubrilovic and Winer are saying is true, Facebook considers visiting a web site or service that's connected to Facebook the same thing as broadcasting it to your friends at worst, and permission for them to know you're there at best.

Facebook says that this has nothing to do with tracking movements, and that they have no desire to collect information about where you are on the web and what you're doing. They want to make sure that you can seamlessly log in at any time to Facebook and to sites and services that connect with it and share what you're doing.

In fact, a number of Facebook engineers have posted comments to Winer's original post and Cubrilovic's analysis pointing this out. There's also some excellent discussion in this comment thread at Hacker News about the issue as well. Essentially, they say this is a feature, not a problem, so if you have an issue with it, it's up to you to do something about it.

What Can I Do About It?


Whether or not Facebook is tracking your browsing even when you're logged out, if you don't want third-party sites to send data to Facebook, you have some options. You could scrub your system clean of all Facebook.com cookies every time you use Facebook, but a number of developers have already stepped up with browser extensions to block Facebook services on third-party sites. Here are a few:

Facebook Privacy List for Adblock Plus is perfect for those of you who already have AdBlock Plus installed (get ABP for Chrome or Firefox). Just download the subscription and add it to AdBlock Plus to specifically block Facebook plugins and scripts all over the web—including the Like button-whenever you're not visiting Facebook directly.

Facebook Disconnect for Chrome keeps Facebook from dropping those tracking cookies on your system in the first place, and disables them when you're finished using Facebook-enabled services. It's essentially an on/off switch for third-party access to Facebook servers, meaning you'll still be able to log in to Facebook and use the site normally, but when you're visiting another site or using another application, that site or service won't be able to use your information to communicate with Facebook.


Disconnect for Chrome and Firefox is a new plugin from the developer behind Facebook Disconnect, but it doesn't stop with Facebook. Disconnect takes protection to a another level and blocks tracking cookies from Facebook, Google, Twitter, Digg, and Yahoo, and prevents all of those services from obtaining your browsing or search history from third party sites that you may visit. The app doesn't stop any of those services from working when you're visiting the specific sites, for you can still search at Google and use Google+, but Google's +1 button likely won't work on third party sites, for example. The extension also lets you see how many requests are blocked, in real time as they come in, and unblock select services if, for example, you really want to Like or +1 an article you read, or share it with friends.

Ultimately, the goal of all of these tools is to give you control over what you share with Facebook or any other social service, and what you post to your profile, as opposed to taking a backseat and allowing the service you're using to govern it for you. What's really at issue is exactly how deep Facebook has its fingers into your data, and how difficult they-and other social services-make it to opt out or control what's sent or transmitted. That's where extensions like these come in.

However you feel about it, Facebook likely won't change it in the near future. If you're concerned, you should to take steps to protect your privacy. As a number of commenters at Hacker News point out, it's not that there's anything inherently "good" or "evil" about what Facebook is doing-that would be oversimplifying an already complex topic. It's really an opt-in/opt-out issue.

What do you think of the assertions? Do you think Facebook has a vested interest in knowing as much about you and your browsing habits as possible, or is this much ado about nothing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Update: Nic Cubrilovic has posted an update to his story after discussing the matter with Facebook engineers. They have agreed to make changes to the way their cookies are stored and handled so your account information is not present when you log out of Facebook.

However, while Facebook has changed its cookie-handling process, the cookies are still retained and not deleted after logout, and do not expire. They remove your account information when you log out, but they still contain some non-personal data about your browser and the system you're using. Nic still recommends you clear your Facebook cookies after every session, and we still suggest that if you're concerned, that you do the same, and try one of the extensions above, or Priv3 or Firefox to protect yourself.

You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at alan@lifehacker.com, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+.


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.lifehacker.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 17 Nov 2011 17:51:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/324-facebook-is-tracking-your-every-move-on-the-web-here-is-how-to-stop-it.aspxDo You Think SEO is Dying?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/323-do-you-think-seo-is-dying.aspxSearch engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility and rankings of your website in the search engines. It has been a marketing strategy for over 15 years, but if you believe what one technology writer said this week, SEO could be dead in six months. Many who attended PubCon 2011 this week walked out when Leo Laporte made that statement (it was a conference for search engine marketers). But how did he back up his claim?

Laporte pointed to Siri, Apple’s new software that answers questions you ask and then saves your preferences. Laporte said he thinks that people will use Siri instead of searching on Google in the future. Siri is available on Apple’s Iphones now, so it’s not universal. But Laporte also pointed to other factors such as Facebook.

Of course, Google officials responded to Laporte’s comments, saying SEO is not dying nor will it be dead in the next six years. Matt Cutts’ main point, SEO is marketing and “marketing appeals to human nature…and that’s never going to go away.”

SEO is constantly changing, as acknowledged by Cutts during his keynote presentation at PubCon 2011. What do you think? Will SEO die soon? Will it be a slow death or a quick end?


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 16 Nov 2011 15:56:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/323-do-you-think-seo-is-dying.aspxHow Web Browsers Affect Site Experiencehttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/322-how-web-browsers-affect-site-experience.aspxHow you or your customers surf the net can be just as important as what you put on the net. While many people stick with the default web browser on their computer, there are a variety of choices when it comes to browsers. And a new report by Netmarketshare.com shows that one of the most dominant web browsers is losing users.

Internet Explorer, a Microsoft browser that comes on Windows systems, now only has about 53 percent of the market. A big reason for this is because IE is not available on mobile devices such as phones and tablets. The leader of that market is Safari, a product made by Apple. Safari can also be downloaded on to a PC or Mac for free, but it only has 5.4 percent of the market for desktop browsers.

Why is this important? First, if you are redesigning or designing a website for the first time, you need to check all of the browsers to make sure the site works properly. A site that looks one way in IE may look differently or not work at all in Firefox. Never assume that everyone is using IE or Firefox. Most browsers can be downloaded for free so you can make sure your web page shows up in each one.

Second, many people are surfing the web from their phones. You may want to consider a website specifically for mobile phones. That’s what the NFL has done. While you can access NFL.com from your phone, the organization also has www.m.nfl.com which is easier to read on a mobile phone.

When working with your web designer, think about who you picture reading your website. If you see many people shopping for your products or services on their mobile phone, consider designing your website to accommodate those users or create a separate site altogether, like the NFL did.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 14 Nov 2011 14:51:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/322-how-web-browsers-affect-site-experience.aspxFacebook Salutes the Military for Veterans Dayhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/321-facebook-salutes-the-military-for-veterans-day.aspxThis Veterans Day, November 11, 2011 or 11.11.11 - our country once again honors and thanks the military for their service in upholding, protecting and fighting for our democracy. Facebook released new services to support and salute these men and women for their courage, dedication and sacrifice.

Technology has provided a means for military members to stay in touch with family during long deployments and time apart. A military network has slowly grown into a strong community offering support and guidance.

US Military on Facebook was launched earlier this week and has amassed over 35,000 fans with numbers growing. The fan page hopes to support members of the military as well as veterans and their families by sharing information and staying connected.

A new application on the U.S. Military on Facebook page was created to give thanks to military personnel in your life. "A Nation Gives Thanks" currently has 17,566 total thanks. Sharing with users a list of friends that are connected to the military and allowing you to thank them directly.

Military families came together to create a nonprofit organization, Blue Star Families, to empower and support one another and other families with loved ones and relatives in the military. Blue Star Families understands the priceless comfort of being able to communicate with loved ones miles away. Because of this they have teamed up with Facebook to create a social media guide so soldiers, marines, airmen, and seamen can get the most out of these resources.

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 11 Nov 2011 15:56:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/321-facebook-salutes-the-military-for-veterans-day.aspxGoogle+ is Now Open for Businesshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/320-google-is-now-open-for-business.aspxIt’s been several months since Google+ burst onto the social media scene and businesses have been patiently waiting to see how they can connect with users. Their wait has ended and Google+ is opening of businesses to join and promote their brand.

According to the company blog, several large companies such as Macy’s, the Dallas Cowboys and the Muppets (which coincides with a new movie that comes out this month) have pages. Companies can create a page at https://plus.google.com/pages/create. Those who connected with the Muppets could participate in their ‘Google hangout’ on Monday. Hangouts are available for Google+ business pages, which gives companies the opportunity to hold virtual meetings with customers. The page allows companies to choose a category:

Product or brand
Company, institution or organization
Arts, entertainment or sports
Other

However the top choice is local business/place is great for small businesses who want to connect with their neighbors. You will have to add a valid telephone number.

Businesses, just like social users, will have circles, which is a great way to create categories like customers, potential customers, etc… You can create a different message to each circle.

Google officials also announced Direct Connect, a way for users to directly go to a company’s Google page from the search engine. All you have to do is put + and the company or brand you are searching for in the search engine box and you will be taken directly to the Google+ page. Toyota, Angry Birds and Pepsi can be found using direct connect, according to the Google blog.

Google+ got off to a fast start but has slowed in the past few weeks. Opening the social media sites up to companies and brands may generate more interest. And Google officials promised they are not done making improvements and changes, quoting Robert Frost (and providing a direct link to his poetry) saying they have “miles to go before we sleep.”

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 09 Nov 2011 15:56:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/320-google-is-now-open-for-business.aspxMC Hammer to Google – You Can’t Touch This!http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/319-mc-hammer-to-google-you-cant-touch-this.aspxMC Hammer, the early 90’s rapper who helped bring hip-hop mainstream, has announced he is launching a new search engine to compete with the likes of Google and Bing.

The new search engine, called WireDoo, has been in development for over two years. Hammer said, “What will make his search tool better than Google will be its deep search ability”. He also mentioned that a search would not just deliver direct results, but also more in depth information about related topics. WireDoo’s tagline is: “Search once and see what’s related”. Our initial thought was that they should rethink their tagline to something like: “Search once and see why we’re too legit to quit”.

While the search engine is still under development, they are currently allowing users to sign up to test the new service when a beta release is ready.

The once rapper hit hard times in the late 90’s and early 2000’s when he couldn’t continue to support his lavish lifestyle. Hammer eventually filed for Bankruptcy and later became an Entrepreneur. What do you think about this latest venture into search?


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 08 Nov 2011 21:20:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/319-mc-hammer-to-google-you-cant-touch-this.aspxBe Careful What You Post!http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/318-be-careful-what-you-post.aspxIn the past when you were upset about your job or just mad at your boss, you got together in a corner of the office or with some co-workers after your day was over to vent. Social media has created a whole new way for people to express their displeasure about anything. Not only have workers badmouthed bosses on social media sites, religious and political debates get heated over people who are strangers.

The anonymity of the Internet has given people a false sense of security. And that can lead to big trouble. This week Miami Heat owner Micky Arison set an example not to follow. He responded to an acrimonious tweet from a fan about the NBA lockout, telling the fan he was ‘barking at the wrong owner.’ That tweet, that may have been sent as a knee-jerk reaction, cost Arison half a million dollars when NBA officials fined him. NBA officials have barred coaches and owners from talking about the lockout publicly.

You may not make half a million dollars but if you have vented on a social media site, beware. Even if your profile is private, one of your friends could share your comment and it would then possibly show up for someone else that you didn’t want to see it. How can you exercise your freedom of speech and stay out of hot water with your postings?

First, find out if your company has a social media policy and if it does, learn the rules. Don’t break them, even if you think your comment is private.
Think before you post anything, especially if you are angry.
Proofread your posts. A misspelling can change the entire meaning of your comment.
Remember that anything you post online can be archived and saved. That co-worker who wants your position in the company could use it to get you fired, even if you have deleted the post.
And finally, don’t assume everything is private. If you put it on the Internet and someone wants to find it, they can find it if they try hard enough.

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 02 Nov 2011 15:53:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/318-be-careful-what-you-post.aspxEstablishing the Brand of YOUhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/317-establishing-the-brand-of-you.aspxYou are a brand. What you put out as your persona creates perception from others of what you are to them, or, in other words your "perceived value". We choose friends that way, but more importantly for job seekers, companies seek the best employees by assessing your brand.

There is a real opportunity for us as ‘brands' to create disproportionate value against our competition. If you are young and just starting to realize who you are, here is what it takes to prevail in these finicky times where social networking can be your biggest blessing or your biggest curse.

Much like an organization is judged by its logo, its offices, and other physical manifestations, you are judged by your looks; just as an organization lives by a credo, or a mission you live by your morals and values; and just as an organization strategizes about the company they keep so too must you with the people you surround yourself with, or your "partners."

We may not like the idea that people "judge a book by its cover", but we all do this all the time. And, it is more simple today with social media. If you are out on a weekday wearing a Nike shirt and windbreaker pants it's safe to say what you represent. The sunglasses you're wearing will tell passerby's a lot about what you stand for, just as the watch on your wrist explains your taste. But in today's world, where we spend more time online creating pieces of information about what drives us, people are just as quick to judge you about your words than your appearance.

You are searchable. Yes on Google, but there are other tools that are much more personal these days. Of course owning domains that carry your name is a first step. From your blog, to your Google profile all the way to your Facebook page, consistency is a key to delineating yourself from any other John Smith out there. But it goes way beyond this. Education is the key to knowing what to publish and what not to publish. Today's younger generations are not yet aware this.

Mobile connectivity makes it hard for us not to post anything and everything online. As I've said before the Internet is an egomaniacal place, and we eat it up. "I'm frustrated with this", or "screw that" can help start a social movement. Or depending on how it's framed, it can make you look like an arrogant, pompous asshole. Remember that racial rant you had when you were a teenager on Facebook? It's still there. Remember when you wrote a blog about how awful your former girlfriend was and why females are less superior to men? Yup, still there.

My father, who beyond founding B&R is Clinical Professor & Executive Director for Corporate Reputation Management at Drexel University. In one of his courses he asks his students to analyze themselves as a brand and present themselves to the class, telling the class why they are different and more relevant to employers than others. Students find this very hard. but also really worthwhile. By seeing yourself as a brand, you are being realistic and also setting yourself up for success.

So, given the heavy use of social media by those under 35-years of age, here are 10 questions to think about when branding yourself online:

1. If I publish something who will see it, not now, but later?
2. Am I going to feel the same way about this in one year's time?
3. Have I done a good enough job promoting my expertise, and not just showcasing opinion?
4. Do I want to promote myself as much as I think I should or should I pump the breaks?
5. Am I consistent with my messaging?
6. Have I done a sufficient job searching myself online to know what's being said about me, or what I've said in the past?
7. Do I have real value to add to a subject?
8. Have I done my research on the topics I discuss?
9. What types of photos are public and are they offensive?
10. Have I quadruple checked my grammar?

There may be other questions and suggestions others have, and we'd love to hear them. What are some suggestions you have for people who are becoming aware of their personal brand?

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 31 Oct 2011 16:28:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/317-establishing-the-brand-of-you.aspx10 Ways to Get More Fans on Facebookhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/316-10-ways-to-get-more-fans-on-facebook.aspxHave you created a Fan Page, but now you’re wondering – “How Do I Get People to ‘Like’ my Page? If so, you’re not alone. Many people struggle with getting Fans. Here are 10 ways to get more Fans.

Create A Customized Welcome Page – Creating a Customized Welcome Page is an excellent way to increase your number of fans. Statistics show that it will help you turn 72% of your visitors into fans.

To create a custom page, you can use the Facebook application, Static HTML iframe tabs.

If you’re not familiar with HTML code, then you can go to Pagemodo.com. Pagemodo is free, and they have ready-made templates that you can use. So, all you have to do is just pick a template.

There’s also a website, Woobox.com, where you can add sweepstakes, coupons, and more to your Fan page.

Email your current customer list & invite them to your new Fan page – You can send a nice email out to your current list letting them know about your new page, and you could say something like – I would be honored if you would click ‘like’ to become a fan of my new page (and make sure to include a link to your page).

Post Links on your Social Media Profiles like Twitter, LinkedIn, & Your Personal Profile on Facebook – For example, in your Bio on your Facebook Personal Profile, you could include something like: Come hang out with me on my Fan page at: http://facebook.com/______________. In your Twitter or LinkedIn Bio, you could type: Connect with me on FB at: http://facebook.com/____________.

Use Facebook as Your Page – When you login to Facebook, you can click the down arrow in the upper right-hand corner next to “Home”, then click “Use Facebook as Page”. When you click on this, you will now be interacting with people as your Page (NOT as you personally). So, a strategy that will help you get more fans is to click “Use Facebook as Page” and then comment on other Fan Pages as Your Page.

Use Facebook Ads – You can always purchase ads on Facebook to drive traffic to your Fan page. If you use this strategy, make sure to target your ads appropriately and start out small. Start out by only spending a few dollars a day and testing out different ads, so you can determine which ads work best for you (before you spend a lot of money).

Add the Facebook “Like” Box to your Website – When you add this to your website, then people can click “like” and become a fan of your Page (directly from your website). When people come to your website and they see that you have a large following on your Fan page, that also helps build up your credibility.

Ask Friends to Share your Page – All Fan pages have a “Share” link on the left-hand side of the page. You can always ask your friends to come to your page & click on the “Share” link. This way, your friends can share your page with their followers.

Add Your Fan Page Link to your Email Signature – If you do this, then everytime you send an email to someone, they’ll see your Fan Page link in your signature. So, they can easily click on the link to go to your Fan Page.

Invite Friends – On the right-hand side of every Fan page, there’s an “Invite Friends” link. Simply click on that link in order to invite your friends to become a Fan of your Page.

Create an Event Launching your Page – You can create an Event called something like: “Launch of the _______ Page”. When creating the Event, in the More Info section, you could type 1 sentence about your Fan page and then type: I would be honored if you could click ‘like’ to become a fan of my new page http://facebook.com/____________ (Always include a link to your page. If you don’t include the link, then people may not know where to go to access the page).

When you’re Selecting the Guests to invite to your Event, you’ll see a link to “Add a Personal Message”. I recommend clicking on that link & typing the same thing again: I would be honored if you could click ‘like’ to become a fan of my new page http://facebook.com/____________

If you have your Fan page Link in 2 places, there’s a better chance that your friends will click on it in order to become a fan.

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 28 Oct 2011 16:16:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/316-10-ways-to-get-more-fans-on-facebook.aspxThinking of a Website Redesign? Here are a few Things to Consider.http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/315-thinking-of-a-website-redesign-here-are-a-few-things-to-consider.aspxRedesigning a website is a pretty demanding task, so it is important to plan accordingly and consider all of the factors that you will encounter during the redesign. Below are some factors you could be faced with.

1. What is the goal of the redesign?

What do you hope to accomplish? It’s always important to have a clear understanding of your reasons and motivations as they should impact the decisions that you make along the way. Without knowing these goals the project will lack direction and you will likely wind up with a website that still doesn’t meet your needs.

2. Is this going to be just a minor upgrade or a complete overhaul?

A redesign could be anything from a minor facelift to an entirely new site. Obviously the time, effort, and cost involved will vary, but first you should determine what types of changes are required for you to meet your goals with the design. If a complete redesign is done you will also want to consider to what extent the new design should resemble the old design. If visitors are coming back to the site, chances are you will want them to notice the new design without feeling like they’ve never been to your site before.

3. What aspects of the current design are most effective?

Most likely there are some things about the current design that work very well, and these may be aspects that you would like to keep or incorporate into the new design. It’s a good idea to make a simple list of your likes and dislikes to help with decisions on the new design.

4. What aspects of the current design are not effective?

Building on point #3, if you are redesigning the site you are bound to want to get rid of some specific aspects of the website or the design. Are there some characteristics of the design that do not accurately portray your business to new visitors?

5. Who is your target audience?

During any design process you never want to lose focus on the visitors. By knowing who you are targeting and how you can meet their needs, you will be on your way to building an effective website. What style of design are your users going to like?

6. How can the website be more user-friendly?

Improving the functionality and usability of a website is always a good thing. It’s pointless to spend time and money on a redesign that looks great but simply isn’t user-friendly.

7. Does the logo/branding need to be changed or updated?

Most likely the website will include some form of a logo or branding. Are these items still up-to-date and will they function effectively with a new design? If your logo is out-of-date and not attractive, a new design may not do much good if it is still using the same old logo.

8. Should the color scheme change or remain the same?

In point #2 I mentioned that most of the time you will want to keep the website at least looking familiar to repeat visitors. Using a similar color scheme is one of the best ways to accomplish this. A lot of times it can be a good idea to make some minor changes to the color scheme, such as changing shades of colors or adding a few new colors, just to give the site a fresh look.

9. What should be the focal points of the design?

Every design is going to draw attention to certain parts of the page in one way or another. By knowing what you want to emphasize you will have more control over what gets attention from visitors.

10. How can the navigation be made more effective?

Navigation is one of the most critical elements of a site’s usability. If a significant amount of content and/or pages have been added to the site since the last design, it is possible that navigation is no longer optimal. Before designing think about how visitors will want to move through the site, and make it as easy as possible for them.

11. What will visitors want from the website?

Meeting the needs of visitors is important to the success of any website. Will visitors be coming to the site looking for information? If so, make it easy to find the information and make it a prominent part of the design. Will they be coming to the site to find products? Will they be coming for some other reason? Anticipate what your visitors will want and do your best to give it to them.

12. Who will be doing the maintenance/updates?

Will you be the one doing routine maintenance and updates? Will someone else be doing them? If multiple people will be using the website commenting the code becomes even more important. Code should always be kept as clean as possible, but when others will be doing work on the site has a bigger impact.

13. How can SEO be improved?

Any time a website is being designed, search engines should be considered. The current design may or may not be search engine-friendly, but the new one certainly should be. Should the current page titles be kept, or could they be done more effectively? How can internal linking be improved? Where can headers be used? This list could obviously go on for a while.

14. What pages and search terms are currently driving traffic?

If there are pages on the site that are currently doing very well with search engines, you’ll probably not want to make major changes to the content of those pages. This can easily be overlooked during a redesign, but making excessive changes to pages that are ranking well can kill the rankings. Likewise, what search terms are currently producing traffic? Be sure that they are used in the new design.

15. What will make visitors want to come back?

Most likely you’ve considered how the new design can make a solid first impression, but what is it about the website that will keep visitors coming back for more?

I hope this helps when thinking about your next redesign. If you have questions or are interested in having us look at your current site to provide feedback shoot us an email.

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 26 Oct 2011 14:47:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/315-thinking-of-a-website-redesign-here-are-a-few-things-to-consider.aspxWhat do You Get When You Mix Google and Yahoo?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/314-what-do-you-get-when-you-mix-google-and-yahoo.aspxThe Internet has been buzzing this weekend about an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal that states Google may have some interest in purchasing Yahoo. The article states that officials from Google have asked financial firms to help them with the deal. This report comes just a couple of days after reports that Microsoft as also interested in buying Yahoo and that Chinese Internet company Alibaba also had an interest.

While Google may be interested in purchasing Yahoo, company officials will have many hoops to jump through with the federal regulators because of potential antitrust violations. However, let’s look at what could happen and how it could change the Internet if it finds financing and the deal is approved.

Will Google keep Yahoo as a separate search engine or absorb it into Google?

If Yahoo keeps its identity, will Google continue to offer pay-per-click advertising on the site or will it be operated through Google?

Will Google try to “go social” with Yahoo. Like Google, Yahoo has made several attempts to get users to come to the site and interact with their friends. Yahoo Messenger was once a popular way to have instant chats with friends and family. Now Facebook and Skype have cornered much of that market with Google+ hoping to get more of it with the ‘hangout’ feature on its site.

Will Google still be as vigilante about giving its users great search engine results? How will this change the search engine algorithms?

Will we still call it googling or something else like “googleyahoong?”

Many of Yahoo’s challenges have not come from Google, but from social networks like Facebook and Twitter who can get information to millions of people with a post and click. Google has also struggled to compete with social media. Whoever purchases Yahoo will have to consider social media when building a new plan for success. No matter what happens with Yahoo, it’s likely to change the Internet.



This article has been republished from www.highervisibility.com to www.ixlstudios.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 25 Oct 2011 15:02:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/314-what-do-you-get-when-you-mix-google-and-yahoo.aspxStop Talking to Everyone – Spend Valuable Social Media Time on Influencershttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/313-stop-talking-to-everyone-spend-valuable-social-media-time-on-influencers.aspxEveryone is not equal. We’re told we can be whatever we want, but we don’t all get to be astronauts when we grow up. It’s unfortunate for egalitarians to hear, but some people are a more valuable use of your resource than others, especially when marketing to them.

When brands first start to market themselves with Social Media, they falsely believe that “likes,” “follows” and “impressions” are great indicators of success. Although that can be useful data, it’s only as useful as it is to say “one million people drive by this billboard every day.” It’s not indicative of success, just views. Let me test you to illustrate my point with a made up restaurant brand called Badass Barbeque.

Which of these two scenarios is more valuable?

Badass Barbeque opens with a general admission Grand Opening Party, inviting 300 potential customers excited to try the restaurant.
Badass Barbeque opens with a closed event, inviting 50 of the most read BBQ food bloggers, Yelp! reviewers with Elite Status, and a couple of popular writers from the local newspapers.

Which one did you choose?

In scenario 1, the restaurant is exposed to 300 customers as opposed to only 50 in scenario 2 – more eyeballs means more exposure, right? Well, consider this: the 50 influencers you invited in scenario 2 may each have over 100,000 people that read their blogs, reviews or articles. These people create content that dedicated audiences depend on. They hang on their every review or article. They make decisions to go out to eat based on what these critics or reviewers say about the restaurant.

In other words, they have a huge voice, one that reverberates through their audience like an intense echo, spreading your message farther than 300 people randomly picked with an average of 27 “followers” on Twitter and 130 friends on Facebook.

That doesn’t sound like a lot of opportunity for your message to spread. You’re going to hit an average of 8,100 users on Twitter and 39,000 on Facebook, if every person who came in shared their experience online. Only one of the 50 invites from scenario 1 will have at least 100,000 people on Twitter reading their posts. On Yelp!, you have the potential to reach anyone searching for a new restaurant by review or even through Google.

The point is stop wasting your Social Media time on reaching everyone. Having 10,000 people like your Facebook page has no impact in comparison to having your product reviewed by Dr. Oz. Klout is a great tool to identify who you should reach out to based on their audience, their influence over that audience, and the topics they are influential about.

Unless, of course, you like wasting time......

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 20 Oct 2011 16:23:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/313-stop-talking-to-everyone-spend-valuable-social-media-time-on-influencers.aspxIs Your Company Brand a Homebody?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/312-is-your-company-brand-a-homebody.aspxRemember the good old days when you could curl up on your company home page and wait for customers to drop by? Sure, you may have had to buy a few Google Adwords here and there, but with the right SEO and enough keyword-stuffed copy, you could get by just fine. Just point everything and everyone to the home page. Make the customer come to you.

Times have changed.

With the recent Panda update, it’s apparent that Google hates hermits. From all accounts, their new metrics include a good dose of engagement factors, (e.g. the amount of time spent on site, the number of pages viewed, the number of comments posted, the amount of social interaction, your company’s web “footprint” etc.) In short, your brand’s ranking is an overall measure of actual human activity, involvement and interest – both on and off site.

So what does that mean for brand marketers?

More than ever it pays to treat your brand like the person that it is – dress it up, take it out, introduce it, network, say hello, return a gesture — smile! In essence, if you want to be treated like a relevant business, you have to act like one. You can’t “stay at home,” shut off the lights and expect customers to knock the doors down. Seems sensible enough, yet a good many companies remain complacent with static web sites, little to no social media presence and stale, outdated blogs. And if the company welcome mat is not out, Google is a lot less likely to drop by often. And that’s one visitor you want to have over as frequently as possibly.

What to do?

1. Make an effort to get out more

No one says you have to be all things to all people. So pick the social site(s) that would help your company most. For B2B companies, that would most likely involve a committed presence on LinkedIn and Quora. Join industry groups there and add to the discussion. For B2C businesses, both Twitter and Facebook deserve custom branded pages to match your brand's look and feel. Consider a simple e-newsletter to your loyal fans. MailChimp provides a fun and easy service for just that purpose.

2. Integrate social elements into your web site

Consider a YouTube video on your home page for demonstrating a product or service. Include a newsletter sign up for easy updates. Enable comments on your company blog that you can moderate and respond to, as well as social media icons to easily follow your company and share your content. Consider a Twitter stream on the bottom of your page to demonstrate activity and display conversations about your company brand. Keep your conversations current and relevant. For material, create a Google email alert for topics in your industry so you can easily tweet, blog and post in real time.

3. Invite people over more often

It’s not enough to offer the home page basics, e.g. an about us page, a list of services and a contact form. Add informative articles that you would want to read. Make sure to add compelling photos, adequate spacing and bulleted items to make them easy to read, forward and share. Bolden key points and summarize often. Keep the conversations short, simple and engaging. Link your awesome articles to related posts on your site to increase time spent on site. Keep the readers interest and be the perfect party host.

4. Put some action in interaction

As search engines evolve and become more intuitive and human-like in their results, company brands will need to keep pace with their message, media and momentum. They will need to behave, act and respond in a more three dimensional manner. This means meeting, greeting and engaging customers with fresh information that passes the “sniff” test. No stale sales copy. No tired mission statements. Be sure to make full use of sight, sound and emotion to connect with customers in a meaningful way.

With so many disruptive technologies in marketing, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, pull down up the shades and stuff your head under the pillow. But now is not the time to put on your feety pajamas and climb into bed. Making the effort to reach out and connect in new ways will pay big dividends as web marketing becomes more integrated and intertwined. Those who adapt to these opportunities will find fresh alternatives to connect with customers, and discover new “neighbors” they never knew they had. Those who chose to do nothing will most likely find themselves “home alone.”

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 19 Oct 2011 15:40:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/312-is-your-company-brand-a-homebody.aspxThe Human Factor and Social Mediahttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/311-the-human-factor-and-social-media.aspxDo you get surprised or even excited when you phone a company and a REAL person answers the phone? It seems ridiculous that we’ve come to this point of total disconnection, while our basic human need is to connect and relate to each other. Want a competitive advantage? Here it is:


What marketers often get wrong.


Go to almost any brand’s twitter account and you’ll see exactly what most marketers get wrong. There is little more then business updates. No conversation, no relationship building, no questions being asked or answered. Just another “blast post”, a sad remnant of traditional one-way thinking.

You’ll often find another fail… a personification of the brand as this larger-then-life entity. This big… thing that has no personality, that is comprised of some alien materials… spitting out offers and LOOK AT ME!!!! self-promotional materials. Who cares? Stop it.

Here’s an easy test. Log out of your own twitter / facebook / blog / whatever account, open a new browser window and go back. Read it the same way a new visitor would. How does what you see or read come across? Can you REALLY relate to what you’ve read in any way? If not… time to go back to the drawing table and rethink some things… such as:


Why are we even here.


Some businesses often forget why they’re even online. It’s as if a radio salesperson came in the door and you decided to run an ad campaign which was completely independent of everything else in your marketing mix. Pulling in it’s own direction. It’s time to reign those loose ends back in.

“Our competition is on Facebook / Twitter / Foursquare / etc…” is NOT a good enough reason for you to jump on as well. Each channel needs to have a clear reason why it exists and what purpose it serves. A good question to ask right after “We need to be on Facebook” is WHY? If there is no clear connection back to your business objectives… it’s a waste of time and money.

Clarifying the purpose of any specific channel helps define strategic objectives, measurements and tactics you may use (eg: what you should actually post or tweet, in what tone). Are you there to educate, reach new audiences, spread your ideas, provide customer service or something else entirely…? Each one of these will sound, read & feel differently. Furthermore, you would track different points to measure success. For example: RTs or Likes for spreading ideas, Views and impressions for education, number of followers or likes for reach…

Think about it. Ask WHY.

People first. Brand later.


I recently came across an interesting Twitter account by accident. Someone had mentioned Arlene Dickinson’s new book “Persuasion” to which I replied saying I’d pick it up in the afternoon. Not even 10 minutes later, there was a tweet from Harper Collins, the publisher, saying how they believe it will be a great read.

That, in and of itself, is not anything groundbreaking. However, my interest was peaked since I am planning to publish soon. I thought, how great would it be to connect with someone at a well respected publishing house.

Clicking over to their Twitter account was a pleasant experience. Most companies would have some hacked together selling proposition and a website in their bio, however Harper Collins has a simple bio with a listing of employees manning their social media presence. Immediately, it was easier to relate and converse. Because I was not speaking with a shapeless corporation, I was in fact speaking with either @corybeatty or @shanparsons. Real people! How innovative and wonderful.

As much as we as marketers like to think that audiences have some sort of an emotional connection with a brand… you must remember that a brand is composed of people behind it. This is even more important in social media marketing. It’s hard to have a conversation with a Ford… yet it’s much easier and more natural while knowing that Scott Monty or Craig Daitch is behind the keyboard on the other end.

What is the lesson here? Listen, converse and be human. That’s all. It’s not crazy social media voodoo guru ninja BS… just personal relationships and common sense…

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 18 Oct 2011 18:21:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/311-the-human-factor-and-social-media.aspxThe SEO Waiting Gamehttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/310-the-seo-waiting-game.aspxDon’t believe these SEO companies promising to wave a magic wand and produce quick results for you. Making gains in the search engine rankings takes time. If you have trusted your SEO efforts to an SEO company, here are some signs that you should hang in there if you are still waiting to be on the first page of Google.

Are you consistently seeing an increase in traffic? There are many ways to track traffic depending on the site. The most popular and well-known way is with Google Analytics, which measures your traffic and gives you key demographics and information about your visitors. If you are getting traffic, but it’s not the demographic you are seeking, you may need to have a talk with your SEO specialist.

Are your visitors staying on your site and which pages are the most popular? You can also measure what is called the “bounce rate.” You don’t want visitors to take one look at your page and then return to the search results and go to your competitor’s site. Work to make your pages interesting and informative so that visitors will want to stay on your site and explore your product and service. This can be done with interesting, relevant content and an aesthetically pleasing site.

Are you working with someone who is responsive? If you trust someone with an important part of your business, they should communicate with you within a reasonable time frame. Are your calls not being returned? Are you not receiving reports measuring your progress? This should be a red flag.

SEO is a complicated process and as we have said many times before, the search engines don’t make it any easier. Algorithms are changed and sometimes it’s not always clear as to what weight the search engines give to back links and other search engine techniques. But if you are working with an SEO specialist who is knowledgeable, who keeps up with the latest changes and is responsive, you should see results.

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 17 Oct 2011 16:06:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/310-the-seo-waiting-game.aspxHow Social Share Buttons Impact Your SEOhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/309-how-social-share-buttons-impact-your-seo.aspxIf you look  above this post  you’ll see a row of widgets (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email and ShareThis). These little social share buttons are actually a critical component of my content promotion campaign, and they should be part of yours! Social share buttons allow your readers to submit your content to their favorite social networking or social bookmarking site without ever having to leave your blog. Essentially, social share buttons allow your readers to promote your content for you. However, a recent BrightEdge report shows that about half of the largest 10,000 sites don’t display any kind of social sharing link or buttons at all.

If you are one of those sites without social share buttons, are you aware of what you’re missing out on?


Social Signals
The search engines have freely admitted that social signals are being included in their ranking algorithm. This means that the more times a piece of content is shared/Tweeted/Liked/posted etc. the more value it has in the eyes of the search engines. If you don’t have social share buttons on your site, you’re not getting all the social signals you could be. The BrightEdge report I mentioned earlier also found that pages that show Twitter share buttons get 7 times the social media mentions than sites that don’t!

Reaching a Wider Audience
It may be a hard pill to swallow, but not everyone has heard of your company. Your social network doesn’t include everyone in your target audience, but that doesn’t mean your content can reach beyond those you are connected with. Social share buttons allow your readers to share your content on their social profiles, which means everyone in their network now has access to it. You never know exactly how far a Facebook post or Tweet may reach and how many potential customers will be exposed to it. Even if you don’t get new social connections or customers right away, you are building more touch points with a broader audience.

Makes Your Content User-Friendly
Adding social share buttons to your site is one small thing you can do to improve the overall user-experience of your site. Social share buttons allow your readers to post content they find interesting to their social networks right then and there, and they don’t have to leave your site to do it. It may not seem like a lot (to have them leave your site, login to their social network of choice and then submit your content) but that’s three extra steps you are asking your readers to take. Not to mention that it drives traffic AWAY from your site. Social share buttons let your visitors post your content to as many social networking sites as they want AND keep them on your site for longer, increasing your chance of conversion.

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 14 Oct 2011 14:38:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/309-how-social-share-buttons-impact-your-seo.aspxAnother Epic Fail for Google+?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/308-another-epic-fail-for-google.aspxLess than a month after Google released its social media site, Google+ to the public traffic has declined significantly, according to a Massachusetts research firm. A study by Chitika, an analytics company, showed that traffic on the site has declined 60 percent since the site opened up to all users on Sept. 20.

There is much talk online about why the site may have dropped so significantly. When Google+ was first introduced by invitation only, people were clamoring for invitations and its growth spurt was reported to be faster than Facebook’s initial growth spurt. Here are some of the reasons being given for the decline:

Failing to be different—from the International Business Times: “Google+ needs to underscore the ways in which it differs from Facebook. Currently, Google+’s key differentiating feature is its group video chat offering called Hangouts. On Google+, users can “start a hangout” and invite other friends to join.”

Failing to keep people engaged on the site—from Business Week:” I can see a lot of dabbling in Google’s service—and the occasional flare-up around a specific post, usually a strong opinion or a photo—but not much sustained usage…”

Is there a social media overload? From Kristin Burnham of CIO-“… the supply of users for social media sites is limited, especially when some have become entrenched in one or two social networks already. Switching from one to another must have significant benefits, the report says, and users complained at the start that Google+ looked and felt like a repackaged Facebook…”

Many technology writers have pointed out that the numbers do not spell doom for Google+. The dip could be attributed to a normal “cooling off” period after the initial excitement. However, Facebook has made strides to imitate some of Google+’s features, like the popular “Circles” that let you control what you share. Facebook still has an edge on Google+ when it comes to engaging companies, but Google officials have promised to introduce a way for brands to use their social media site.

Google officials have not responded to the report. What do think? Have you used Google+?

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 13 Oct 2011 17:45:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/308-another-epic-fail-for-google.aspxTop Five Link Research Toolshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/307-top-five-link-research-tools.aspxYahoo Site Explorer has long been one of the most popular tools for webmasters and website owners who wanted to measure the health of their website. One of the best things about the tool is that it measures an important piece of information that was often overlooked—links to your site. Links play an important role in your search engine ranking—some say it’s possibly even more important to keywords. But if you are a “layman” when it comes to SEO, you may have not known how to find out how well your site is linked.

A link is viewed as a recommendation or vote of confidence towards your site. Thus the more you have the better opportunity to have to rank, assuming they are of high quality. Yahoo Site Explorer, which is the main tool for link research, is expected to be shut down later this year, so webmasters and others are looking for other ways to check their links. Here are the top five link tools to start getting used to:

Open Site Explorer. This site is a free tool from SEOMOZ, which produces SEO software.

Majestic SEO. This is a free site from Majestic SEO that helps you track links. The company also offers presentations and seminars.

Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing offers users a way see their site as the search engine does. It also offers information about who is linking to your site. You do have to sign up with a Windows Live ID.

Google Webmaster Tools. Of course, Google offers webmaster tools as well. You have to sign in with a Google ID.

Ontolo. This is a fairly new tool that has come with rave reviews. Ontolo allows you to perform in-depth analysis and prospecting of backlinks.

Here’s a word to the wise—you may get different results on each of the sites. Look at these results together and analyze them, noting the differences and the similarities. But make sure you don’t base everything on what you see from just one tool.

In the meantime, Yahoo Site Explorer is still in business. Yahoo officials have not given an exact date as to when it will be shut down. But we know it will be soon!

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 12 Oct 2011 14:24:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/307-top-five-link-research-tools.aspxGoogle Expands Its Blocking Featurehttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/306-google-expands-its-blocking-feature.aspxInternet searches can be frustrating. You type in “Home Furnishings” and you get a lot of spam and maybe even some illicit sites in your results. It can be frustrating if you research the same or similar terms often and those results keep appearing.

When Google unveiled its new Panda algorithms, this year, a separate feature was a method to block certain results from your search engine results. According to an announcement from Google officials last week, that feature is now available worldwide.

Here’s how it works: First, you enter your search term. If you click on one of the results and you find it is spam or not related to your search, click the back button. You will notice that next to the search term, you now have the option to block all results from that site. That way if you need to search for the term again, you won’t see the same result. You can manage your blocked sites from the ‘search settings’ tab on your dashboards.

While this is great for users, website owners need to be aware that Google is looking at these blocked sites very closely. According to a recent posting by the company they have “started incorporating data about sites people have blocked into our general search ranking algorithms to help users find more high quality sites.” So what do website owners need to do to make sure their sites are not blocked?

It all goes back to great SEO techniques. Provide quality content, not just keyword stuffed copy or you may get blocked for having a spammy site. Use the right keywords for your business or subject matter. Users get frustrated when they search for Home Furnishings” and get a different kind of business simply because a company is hoping to get in the search engine results.

Google has not mentioned the possibility of abuse of the blocking feature but it is possible. There are no safeguards that keep competitors from blocking sites in hopes that Google will notice and penalize the site in the search engine. It will be interesting to see if this feature will have any effect on SEO.



This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 11 Oct 2011 13:35:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/306-google-expands-its-blocking-feature.aspx$150k for Google Analytics?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/305-150k-for-google-analytics.aspxEarlier today, Google launched a premium version of Google Analytics that is supposed to be able to handle higher volumes of traffic and provides 24/7 support.

The cost for this service depends on the region you are in: $150,000 USD (US), $150,000 CAN (Canada), or GBP 90,000 (UK) per year (billed in monthly increments).Obviously this new version is aimed at the enterprise audience which requires more support/uptime/and data collection.

However, what is interesting is that for the most part the general feature set and user experience will stay the same. Wouldn’t you expect there to be some significantly new and robust features for that type of price?

Here is a brief product description of the new Google Analytics Premium:

Processing Power

Guaranteed processing for up to 1 billion hits per month (vs. the 10 million a month for standard accounts). This applies to a single business or enterprise, but can include multiple web properties. In other words, if a company owns several sites, but the combined volume is under the 1 billion limit, all can be part of one premium instance, but if each site may reach the 1 billion limit separately, then the company would need to pay separately for each site.
Faster, intra-day processing
Service Level Agreement around data collection, reporting, and processing
99.9% on Collection up-time
99% on Reporting up-time
98% on on-time Data Freshness (within 4 hours)

Advanced Analysis Tools

Up to 50 Custom Variable slots (the standard version provides 5)
Unsampled report downloads for custom report requests
Unaggregated report downloads for large report requests (up to 1 million rows per download)
Dedicated Support

Dedicated Account Management

Phone & Email support 10 hours per day, 5 days per week (relevant to the time zone in which the contract was signed)
Implementation Consultation & Tagging Audit
Live & Webinar Training
24/7 Product Emergency Escalation Support, if the product is ever outside of the SLA

So what are your thoughts? Do you think the premium version of Google Aanlytics is really that much more robust than Omniture, Unica, Webtrends, etc?


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 07 Oct 2011 15:55:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/305-150k-for-google-analytics.aspxWhy You May Be Disappointed in Your SEO Resultshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/304-why-you-may-be-disappointed-in-your-seo-results.aspxIt’s great to see your traffic increase because of your SEO efforts but that does not always guarantee you will see return on your investment. Many people give up and some even go back to traditional advertising. Employing good SEO techniques can bring you new customers. You could be making fatal mistakes that are keeping them away. Here are three common SEO mistakes you could be making:

1. You are targeting the wrong keywords. If you don’t have the right keywords, you are never going to get the results you want. Start off with a very targeted set of keywords and slowly expand to a broader set overtime. If you happen to be an online store that sells dresses don’t target the term dresses. It is too broad and will likely take a long time to see the results. Instead go after something more targeted like “women’s dresses online”. With this you will see results much quicker. After you see results from that you can start to slowly expand out to a broader keyword.

2. There are technical problems with your site. Run your site through the W3C Validator. While this doesn’t ensure you will rank high it does allow the search engines to better access the site.

3. You’re not creating compelling content. This is the number one way to drive traffic to your site. If you write content that is compelling people will naturally link to it which will improve your chances of ranking.

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 06 Oct 2011 17:22:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/304-why-you-may-be-disappointed-in-your-seo-results.aspxWhat is a Great User Experience?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/303-what-is-a-great-user-experience.aspxIf you are having problems getting users to stay on your site and if your Google ranking is not what you want it to be, there a simple reason—your users are not having a “great experience” on your site. Not only is a great user experience important to those who visit, but Google tends to put more trust into websites that are of high quality. Here are a few things to think about when it comes to user experience:

 1. How long does it take your page to load? A fast page load speed is not only important to users, but to Google, too. Think about the last time you went to a page that loaded slowly. Did you wait on it or did you go back to the search results?

2. Are you updating your content? If your site contains a report from 2000, for example, users are not going to give your site much credibility. They will look for a site with newer information. You should always make sure your content is timely.
Speaking of credibility, you can lose it very quickly if you have a lot of grammatical errors and misspellings on your site. If you don’t have someone you can trust to proofread your site, hire a professional.

3. Does your site look professional overall? A site that is not aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate and read will not hold a user’s attention. Evaluate your website at least once a year and make changes if they are necessary.

How can you determine if users are having a great experience? You could do a survey, either on your site or of your friends and colleagues. But you can also use analytical tools to give you an idea if your site is doing the job you want it to do. If your “bounce rate” is high and if your sales are down, it may be time to make some changes so that users can have a great experience on your website.

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 29 Sep 2011 15:14:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/303-what-is-a-great-user-experience.aspxGoogle Turns 13!http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/302-google-turns-13.aspxIf you have used Google’s search engine today, (and the majority of searches are) you may have noticed the birthday cake. It’s not for someone else, but for the search engine itself, which celebrates today as its official birthday. Google has outlasted many of its competitors and has overtaken others to become the top search engine. While it’s obvious that the Internet landscape has changed since 1998, here’s a reminder of just how much it has changed.

The obvious. Social media changes the way we communicate forever. Back when Google began in 1998, the focus was providing users with the best search engine available. Now that Google is the number one search engine, the focus now includes social media with the new Google+. Who could have guessed in 1998 that people would not only use the Internet to research and shop but to also share information with friends and family?

The departed. Many search engines that were popular when Google began are out of business. Magellan and InfoSeek were closed in 2001, just three years after Google began.

The defeated. Yahoo is still a popular search engine but it was very dominate before Google came along. While it is the oldest search engine, it is no longer the most popular. AOL, another popular search engine and site, couldn’t find an audience. While AOL is still around, it’s powered by Google.

The new guys. Bing had joined the search engine wars in 2009 and thanks to an aggressive advertising campaign, has been able to garner about 30 percent of web searchers. Bing was formally known as Live Search and MSN Search, but the new name and better search features have helped attract users.

With Google trying to get into what seems like everything, it will be interesting to see where Google is in the next 13 years. What do you foresee for Google in 2024? Will they continue to try and take over the world?

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 27 Sep 2011 16:58:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/302-google-turns-13.aspxFacebook Changes are Here----What Do You Think?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/301-facebook-changes-are-here-what-do-you-think.aspxThe much anticipated changes to Facebook where introduced on Thursday amid a lot of complaining from users about a few of the changes. The changes unveiled at the f8 Developers Conference included:

Timeline. This seems to be the least controversial of the changes and it hasn’t been introduced to the general Facebook population yet. Currently in beta testing, Timeline gives you a history of your life that includes pictures and your past status updates.

Facebook Gestures. Many users have been asking for an unlike button and Facebook has taken it a step beyond. Facebook Gestures, which will be rolling out soon, allows users to use other verbs to express what they feel about status updates, links, etc…

Ticker. Many people have grown tired of seeing updates from their friends who play Mafia Wars or Farmville. Those updates often clogged up the news feed and user could miss important information like the birth of a child. Facebook has implemented a “ticker” to the right of the news feed that displays a lot of these ‘meaningless’ post. You don’t have to look at it unless you want to know who cultivated their fake crops or what your friends are saying on other people’s pages.

App sharing. For users who didn’t want their bosses to know they were playing Bejeweled Blitz or tending to their farm at work need may not like the new Application sharing module. If you have given the application permission once to share your information, it won’t ask you again and will continue to post your activity. You can change this but controlling what you share with which users. However, many people may forget to block their news feed.
Music, movies and news. Partnerships with Hulu, Yahoo News and Spotify will allow users to watch movies or television shows, listen to music or check out the latest news from their Facebook account.

Facebook users have been complaining about the changes but they have made complaints every time that the company has announced changes. What do you think about the changes?


This article has been reposted to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 23 Sep 2011 15:36:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/301-facebook-changes-are-here-what-do-you-think.aspxIs Google+ Stealing Facebook's Thunder?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/300-is-google-stealing-facebooks-thunder.aspxWith Facebook announcing some major changes for its 750 million users at the f8 Developers Conference in San Francisco, Google is not sitting idly by this week. On Tuesday, Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering for Google, announced new changes on the company’s blog, bringing the total number of changes to the social media site to 100 in just three months.

On the blog, the search engine giant announced its latest social media offering, Google+ is now available to everyone.

“For the past 12 weeks we’ve been in field trial, and during that time we’ve listened and learned a great deal,” Gundotra said. “We’re nowhere near done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups.”

Since the site was introduced in June, the only way to become a member was to be invited by someone else. Despite the limitations, the site still grew to 10 million members.

But that’s not the only feature Google announced in hopes of achieving social media dominance. For those who see something about a topic in a circle and want to know more about it, the search box will include results from the web as well as who else in your circles is talking about the subject.. This is a feature already available in results when you search for a topic on Facebook and is provided by Bing, Google search engine competitor.

Google+ Hangouts are also seeing some changes that are good news for those with smart phones or tablets. The video chat will soon be available to all mobile devices but currently is only available for Android. And for users who want to tell the world where they are, a new feature, called ‘On Air’ allows them to broadcast their hangouts to anyone. Nine users can participate.

Google officials still have not announced when they will be introducing a way for businesses to connect with consumers on the site. With pages, groups and ads, Facebook has set a high standard for brand pages. While the new features are great for those who use the site socially, business owners are waiting to hear how they can use Google+.

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 21 Sep 2011 14:06:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/300-is-google-stealing-facebooks-thunder.aspxBig Changes Coming to Facebookhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/299-big-changes-coming-to-facebook.aspxFacebook developers are expected to announce some more changes to the site at the f8 conference later this week. Company officials have not made any formal announcements about the changes, but speculation from technology media indicates that users may see some changes to their profiles in the near future.

It is being reported that redesign is “major” and may be an attempt by the company to strengthen its ecommerce platforms. Users can purchase Facebook credits on their debit or credit card, through PayPal or by using their mobile phone to enhance their game playing experiences on the site. For example, users can purchase coins on the popular game Bejeweled Blitz that will allow them to purchase boost to help increase their score. There is talk that Facebook will introduce Apps at the f8 conference, but that has not been confirmed. In fact, everyone at Facebook has been very quiet about any changes that may be announced at the conference on Thursday.

What has been confirmed is that the company is expected to add media platform that includes music. While the details of the plan have not been revealed, the premise is that users will be able to share what they are listening to with other users. Facebook is said to be partnering with other sites that provide music and video. YouTube is likely not to be one of those partners, since it is a subsidiary of Google.

Facebook has unveiled many changes since Google+ launched earlier this year. One of the changes, subscriptions, became available to users this week. To allow people who are not your friend to subscribe to your news feed, you must go to your profile and click on the subscriptions tab to the left. You must then click “allow subscriptions.” Only public postings will be made visible to subscribers. As we mentioned earlier this week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg led the way by allowing subscriptions to his public news feed.

What do you think about the upcoming changes to Facebook? Do you think they should have left things the way they were or were the changes needed?

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 20 Sep 2011 15:44:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/299-big-changes-coming-to-facebook.aspxWill We Yahoo Again?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/298-will-we-yahoo-again.aspxJust a decade ago, Yahoo was a powerful player in the battle for the search engine market. Google was doing well but the saying “I’ll google it” was not a common part of our vernacular as it is now. In hopes of being more competitive, Yahoo search is now powered by Bing, the Microsoft search engine that is just a few years old but is already giving Google a run for its money.

On Tuesday, Yahoo officials fired CEO Carol Bartz, who had served at the helm since 2009. During her tenure, Google has introduced many new features that have kept Yahoo the bridesmaid and not the bride of search engines. Google has recognized the importance of social media and after the failed “Buzz,” has introduced Google + which has grown tremendously in its first few months. Yahoo has provided links from the mail inbox to Facebook but the ‘groups’ feature never really went anywhere.

Yahoo has also lagged behind in mobile applications. While Bing and Google have fought to be the primary search engine on the latest smart phones, little has been heard from Yahoo. Actually, Yahoo has had little to announce or brag about in the past two years while Google and Bing have been making regular announcements about new features and partnerships.

While Yahoo’s performance over the past two and a half years is probably not entirely Bartz’s fault, that seems to be the perception based on the stock performance on Wednesday. Early reports show that Yahoo gained at least 5% the day after the news of Bartz’s firing was reported. A new CEO may breathe some new life into the company, but what will happen with the company is a mystery. Will they try to do more in social media and mobile applications? Will people check out the site more in light of the changes? All of that remains to be seen but it should be an interesting few months for the company.


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from  www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 08 Sep 2011 17:00:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/298-will-we-yahoo-again.aspxWhen It May Not Be a Good Thing to Be Likedhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/297-when-it-may-not-be-a-good-thing-to-be-liked.aspxLink farms have long been a popular way for some SEO’s to try to improve their search engine rankings. In the past year, “like” farms have been on the rise. A “like” farm is when you pay a company to acquire a mass amount of “likes” to a post or company on Facebook, Google, or any social network site. The hope is that by getting a lot of likes, the search engine rankings for the site will increase.

But a recent post by officials from Bing, the search engine that hopes to give Google a run for its money, indicates that likes are being largely ignored by the search engines. “In most cases, if we spot like farm activity, we simply ignore the signal,” said Duane Forrester in his post. “Again, you may have paid for a service which is bringing you no value in boosting your search results.”

And don’t think the search engines can’t find the ‘like farms.’ Those farms have a pattern, Forrester writes. “Anyone could suddenly “go viral” and accumulate a lot of likes very quickly, so we look beyond just like/time to find patterns,” Forrester writes. “And if there is one thing a search engine is good at, it’s seeing patterns online. Like farms tend to be built around a core network of accounts. You pay someone to like your site, content or whatever, and they go out across their network and like you. Its artificial and we know it.”

Does this mean that you shouldn’t tell your friends not to like your site or content? No. If someone really likes you, by all means they should click the “like” button. But don’t count on those hundreds of likes to get you to page one of the search engine rankings.

As Forrester said at the close of his blog, quality wins every time. “Quality links, from quality websites,” Forrester said. “Quality social signals from a quality program. You may think you’re saving time with short cuts such as link farms and like farms, but be assured, our short cuts are much faster. We simply ignore the results of spammy tactics. Invest your time and money in a quality-centric approach and you’ll have much more success.”

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.morevisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 06 Sep 2011 15:10:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/297-when-it-may-not-be-a-good-thing-to-be-liked.aspxHow to Manage Social Media Firestormshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/296-how-to-manage-social-media-firestorms.aspxWhat would you do if one of your employees created a firestorm on Facebook that made your company look bad? Or what if an innocent misspelling changed the entire meaning of a Tweet? According to new study published by the Altimeter Group released, there are about 10 incidents that qualify as a crisis each year. The study goes on to say that most of those could have been averted. Here are some tips as to how you can avoid being embarrassed online.

* Do you have a social media policy for your employees? You don’t want to dictate their personal life, but you also don’t want them posting everything that is going on in your office or embarrassing your company. Domino’s Pizza had to deal with a video posted by two employees in 2009 that showed, among other things, an employee sticking cheese in their nose. Have you talked to your employees about how to represent your company online?

* Do you or someone else monitor what is being said about your company online and in social media? Twitter allows content to be posted in real time so if someone feels as if they didn’t get great customer service, they may Tweet about it immediately. Do you want a negative Tweet about your company online for several days? You can keep a close eye on what is being said about your company in several ways. Set up a Google alert so that information posted about your company will show up in your inbox. Or you can do a simple search in Twitter, Facebook and in the search engines.

* Do you have someone who is responsible for your social media? You need accountability so that when there is a crisis, you will know who to turn to for answers. Whoever is responsible for your social media should have some training either through seminars or experience as to how to handle a crisis.

If you have a mistake or misstep that results in a crisis, handle it immediately. Avoiding the issue won’t make it go away.

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 01 Sep 2011 14:49:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/296-how-to-manage-social-media-firestorms.aspxSocial Media is More than Just Posting on Facebookhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/295-social-media-is-more-than-just-posting-on-facebook.aspxIf you are a business owner who is developing a social media strategy or if you just want to improve what you are doing now, congratulations! You obviously know that using social media for your business is more than just joining Facebook or Twitter and posting some clever sayings every once in a while. And you know that social media is a great way to market your business. You should plan your social media strategy just like you did your business plan when you first opened. Here are a few tips to get you started.

• Decide who is going to be responsible for your social media. Not only is social media time consuming, it’s constantly changing because it is competitive. Last year both Facebook and Twitter made changes to their site. If you don’t have someone in your company who has the time to keep up with managing the sites and the changes, consider hiring a consultant who is an expert in social media.

• Research. The Internet has a plethora of advice about social media management and how to use it to benefit your company. Take advantage of these resources when creating your strategy.

• Look beyond Facebook and Twitter. It’s easy to think of the two social media giants when creating your plan. But there is so much more to social media.

Here are just a few suggestions:

1. Blogs. Share information and news about your company. Blogs are easy to create in programs such as WordPress.
2. Video sharing. Thanks to advances in technology, it’s easy to create videos to share online. YouTube is a great place to add these videos to showcase your company.
3. Other social networking sites. There are many other sites that allow you to network with customers and colleagues. These include Plaxo, LinkedIn and Yammer. Consider adding these to your social media plan.

•Plan to be consistent. Many companies start off with a bang then fade away on their sites. The key to keeping people engaged on your sites is to constantly provide great content. This is why it is very important to have someone responsible for keeping up the social media sites and making sure they are current.

Many people become frustrated when their social media is not bringing in customers or generating much response. Often this frustration is because there is no strategy in place. If you are not sure as to how to create a strategy, seek help from a social media specialist.

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 29 Aug 2011 14:25:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/295-social-media-is-more-than-just-posting-on-facebook.aspxWhere Would We Be Without Steve Jobs?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/294-where-would-we-be-without-steve-jobs.aspxThursday’s resignation of Steve Jobs sent the technological world back in time to when the prolific Apple CEO changed the face of technology. Under his leadership, some of the most important products were created. Here’s a nostalgic look at Jobs’ accomplishments and what they have meant.

* The home computer. Those who could afford them and many high school computer labs across the country were using the infamous TR-S 80 computers (sometimes called “Trash 80) introduced by Radio Shack in 1977. The 12-inch monitors were black and white and not very exciting. Then bow-tie wearing Jobs introduced the world to the first Macintosh computer in 1984, one that had bright graphics and that even spoke to the crowd gathered. We all remember Macintosh but who remembers the TR-S 80?

* The iPod. It was obvious that Jobs and the Apple Corporation changed the way we computed but after the turn of the century, they changed the way we listened to music. The iPod allowed you to download a variety of songs into a small hand held device. While many Mp3 players have tried to emulate the iPod, it still remains the most popular music player on the market.

* The iPhone. Today’s generation will never remember when phones were simply used to carry on conversations. The iPhone gave us phones that could send messages, view videos and do a host other things we couldn’t even do with our computers just 27 years ago. As the first smart phone, it changed mobile technology.

* The iPad is barely over a year old but it’s quickly becoming one of the most popular products on the market. With the ability to take pictures, send information and even play games, it’s the perfect cross between the smart phone and the computer. It’s still too soon to tell all of the ways the iPad will impact technology.

With so many products, it’s hard to say which of Jobs’ inventions has left a bigger mark on society. What do you think Jobs’ biggest contribution has been?

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 25 Aug 2011 15:57:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/294-where-would-we-be-without-steve-jobs.aspxMore Friends and Followers Don’t Always Equal Saleshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/292-more-friends-and-followers-dont-always-equal-sales.aspxSome so-called social media ‘experts’ use the number of followers or friends on a site as bragging rights. With 2,000 followers, surely you can expect 200 (about 10 percent) of them to purchase your product or service at some time in the future, right? NO! This is one of the biggest fallacies of social media. Let’s look at why inflated numbers don’t always equal sales.

* The friends or followers are just other friends, family and colleagues of the person managing the account. In other words, they get their friends to like your page. Now one of two of those friends may see your product or service and want to purchase your product or service but many of them just like your page as a favor to someone else. You can grow followers quickly this way but that doesn’t mean sales will grow quickly.
* You can purchase a list and get people to like or follow you. But these people are only there to inflate your numbers on your social media site, not to get sales.

If you want to get real followers who are interested in you and your product, there are some methods you can use.

* Use SEO techniques that will direct people to your social media sites. For example, if you have the right keywords and great content, they will find you naturally.

* Have a link to your social media sites on your website. Chances are a potential customer may find your website first and link to your social media from your site.

* Produce great content and social media only sales or specials. Word will spread about your sites and followers will come naturally.

* Make sure your social media links are on all of your marketing materials such as business cards and advertisements.

There is nothing wrong with having your mother or your best friend like or follow your website and a few followers, even if they are friends or family, are better than none. Just make sure you don’t settle for a large number of followers who will never convert into customers.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibity.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 23 Aug 2011 15:47:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/292-more-friends-and-followers-dont-always-equal-sales.aspx3 Tips for Starting Your Social Media Marketinghttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/291-3-tips-for-starting-your-social-media-marketing.aspxIf you are still “testing the waters” when it comes to social media marketing, you are behind the times. Social media marketing has matured passed the trial-and-error phase and has become a critical component of any online marketing campaign. Some web marketing experts have even said they would be willing to give up their website over their social profiles if they had to choose (not something I would recommend doing, for the record). The point is that just about everyone knows they need to get a social media marketing campaign under way, but many are still a little fuzzy on the hard details.
Here are 3 tips to better manage your social media marketing campaign:

1. Create bios first
Every social network, big or small, lets users create a profile description about themselves. However, each network has a very different idea about the kind of information you get to share and how much space you have to do it in. Look at Facebook and Twitter, for instance. Facebook gives you a practically limitless amount of space to introduce your company and your brand. Twitter gives you about two sentences. To both streamline the process of creating social networking profiles and guarantee that the information and messaging are consistent, develop several different profiles of varying lengths before you begin your campaign.

2. Decide who will be your “voice”
Just about every marketing department has a viable claim as to why they should manage your social media marketing campaign. PR claims they should be in charge because they are used to being the public voice of your company. The SEO expert says he should be in charge because he knows how to use social media to create a strong link portfolio and online brand presence. The creative team, brand manager and so forth all have similar reasons. It doesn’t matter who you decide to hand the reigns to, just make sure you make someone in charge of and accountable for goes out through your social profiles. Having one person in charge will make sure your branding stays intact and your messaging consistent.

3. Branch out from the Big 3
You have to be on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but that doesn’t mean you only have to be on those networks. There are literally hundreds of smaller, niche networks for you to develop a community. Just because they are small, that doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable! There might even be a social network that directly appeals to your audience, potentially making it more powerful than any other network you could join. Just remember that if you join a network, there is much more value in taking the time to actually build a community around your brand. If you just are creating profiles to get a link, you aren’t doing much to add real value to your campaign.

These 3 tips are just to get the ball rolling on your social media marketing campaign. Obviously it takes a lot of work and time to manage a successful social media campaign. But that is a blog post for another day

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 22 Aug 2011 16:04:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/291-3-tips-for-starting-your-social-media-marketing.aspxOxford Updates Dictionary to Include Tweet, Sexthttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/290-oxford-updates-dictionary-to-include-tweet-sext.aspxTwenty years ago, if you told someone you will tweet them, they probably would have thought you were doing an impression of that yellow cartoon bird or that you had maybe had too much to drink the night before and didn’t know what you were saying. Technology has brought some new words and phrases into our vocabulary and the Oxford Dictionary announced this week they are adding a few of them to their dictionary. In a blog post, they noted how language has changed over the years. Here are some of the new words and new meanings to old words related to technology that you will find in the new version of the dictionary.

* Retweet: Apparently we talk about Twitter enough that the researchers with the Oxford Dictionary thought ‘retweet’ should be in the dictionary. However, some people think Google+ will overtake Twitter in the next few years, making Twitter a social media dinosaur (a bit like MySpace). Will we still be “retweeting” ten years from now?

* Cyberbullying: Sadly, technology provided a new way for bullies to pick on their victims.

* Friend: Oxford has expanded the definition to say “a contact on a social networking website.”

* Following: Like “friend,” following got an updated meaning to say “someone who is tracking a particular person, group, etc. on a social networking site.”

* Sexting: Yes, the folks at the Oxford Dictionary have recognized that some people use their cell phones to send naughty pictures and texts.

* Cloud computing: This is a term that can be confusing to some but the Oxford Dictionary clears up its meaning: “the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.”

Interestingly, the dictionary now contains a word that was had absolutely no meaning 10 years ago.

“woot (especially in electronic communication) used to express elation, enthusiasm, or triumph: I can’t wait for the weekend, woot!”

What words do you think will be added to the dictionary in the next few years?


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from morevisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 19 Aug 2011 15:39:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/290-oxford-updates-dictionary-to-include-tweet-sext.aspxBig News Headlines in Internet & Technologyhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/289-big-news-headlines-in-internet-technology.aspxToday is a busy news day for those who follow Internet and technology news. Here are a few of the highlights and what they may mean to you.

* Google has finally made a move into mobile phone technology with an announcement from company officials on Monday of the purchase of Motorola Mobility. This acquisition makes sense because Google has an Android operating system. In the announcement, Google seems to be saying that they will be making changes (their exact words were “supercharging the Android system). For consumers hooked on their Android phones, look for more Google apps and if Google does what it seem to be promising, look for some upgrades. Google has said that Motorola will be operated as a separate division.

* Do you want to own a piece of Facebook? You may get a chance. Interpublic, one of the first investors in Facebook announced on Monday that it was selling off half of its shares. There are rumors that Facebook may make the shares available to the public, a first for the company.

* Those who want to remember what they may have said on Facebook during a drunken or angry posting a year ago will get their chance. The feature is rolling out slowly, but it can be found on the right hand side of the page near the ads.

* The hacker group Anonymous, which has said it will destroy Facebook by November, is claiming responsibility for hacking into the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) website. The transit system had blocked cell phones because of a possible protest and Anonymous said their actions were a reaction. Not only did the company hack into the website, they also released the personal information of some of the users.

* Finally, for those who use Firefox and have been waiting for the upgrade to Firefox 6 on Tuesday, you don’t have to wait. Firefox officials have made the files available on an FTP server. The biggest improvement to Firefox seems to be speed—officials have said it is 20 percent faster.


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibilty.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 17 Aug 2011 13:59:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/289-big-news-headlines-in-internet-technology.aspxGoogle+ Adds New Featureshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/288-google-adds-new-features.aspxSince its debut in June, Google+ has been adding features to make it more competitive with its rivals. In the past few days, two new features were announced.

* If you love your imaginary farm on Facebook or competing with your friends in games, then you will like Google’s announcement that they will be bringing your favorite games to their social network soon. And with the Google+ circles, you can share your scores (or farm equipment) with your friends without broadcasting to your co-workers that you were playing games while at work. It’s not clear which games will be available, but a picture on the blog shows popular ones such as Angry Birds, Bejeweled Blitz and a Zynga version of poker. The games are rolling out slowly, so you may have to wait to see your favorite one. Since gaming is very popular on Facebook, this may lure new users to the site who are looking to challenge their friends.

* If you share a link on Google, your Google+ friends will know if they are searching for a similar topic. Company officials announced that Google+ posts are not appearing in Google search results. For example, you post a link to a news story about your favorite football team to your Google+ feed. A friend conducts a search for news on that team. In their results, they may see the article and your posting. Google officials have been open about their efforts to link their social media efforts with their search results so this is no surprise.

While these features are interesting, business owners and big businesses are still waiting to hear details on how they can brand themselves on Google+. For the past few weeks, several features have been announced by there has been no word on the much anticipated Google brands feature. Companies were kicked off the site last month and so far, the only word from Google officials is that they are testing some features with select companies.

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 15 Aug 2011 15:50:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/288-google-adds-new-features.aspxFacebook to Be Destroyed Nov. 5, 2011?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/287-facebook-to-be-destroyed-nov-5-2011.aspxAnonymous, the Hacktivist group that promotes internet freedom and freedom of speech, has targeted and successfully attacked many government and law enforcement agencies.

They now have a new target…..Facebook. On November 5th they plan to take down Facebook because of users’ lack of choice in privacy.

The entire video release can be seen here:



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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 10 Aug 2011 15:31:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/287-facebook-to-be-destroyed-nov-5-2011.aspxHow Much Should You Share Online?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/286-how-much-should-you-share-online.aspxIf you are using social media to promote your business online, sometimes the line between you as a business owner and your personal life blurs. Many business owners create their business pages from their personal Facebook page. But do you want to open up your personal life to your customers and business associates? If you want to promote your business with social media and have separate personal life, here are some ways to do so:

1.  Use Facebook’s privacy settings. You may not want to ignore a friend request from the boss or a valued customer. You can friend them and control what they see on your page. Go to privacy settings under the account tab and click “customize settings.” This will allow you to control who sees what in your Facebook profile.

2.  Use separate accounts for your business and personal social media. While Facebook does not allow you to have two profiles from the same email address, you can create another profile using your business email address. You may find that you “friend” some of the same people under both accounts but you post different information on each.

3.  Have someone else handle the social media strategy for your business. You could hire an outside company or use someone in your office. A third party should not post any personal information about you (unless you request it). And they will likely administer the Facebook pages from a separate account that has nothing to do with you.

Finally, here are some common sense guidelines when promoting your business online. Unless you use your cell phone for business or you don’t mind a lot of interruptions in your personal life don’t put your home phone or personal cell phone number in your social media profile (or on your website). Keep separate emails for work and home. If you are afraid that you will miss an important work email after business hours, have them forwarded to your personal account. You can still be responsive to your customers while retaining a bit of privacy for yourself!


This article has been reposted to www.ixlstudios.com from www.morevisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 09 Aug 2011 15:51:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/286-how-much-should-you-share-online.aspxFive Keys to Online Marketing Successhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/285-five-keys-to-online-marketing-success.aspxOften tips about how to market online focus on just one aspect. But successful online marketers know that all the pieces need to come together before you see results. While the methods may be different, there are some common keys to be successful with all genres.

1. Consistency. If you are here today and gone tomorrow, then back a few weeks later, your competition may have already engaged your customers. Absence may make the heart grow fonder in relationships but in online marketing, it can be a fatal mistake.

2. Professionalism. Does your web site look professional? Are you spell checking your blogs and your social media posts? Having pages that are not attractive and with blatant misspellings can hurt your online reputation.

3. Variety. Social media has gained a lot of attention but don’t forget there are other ways to spread the word about your business. Email marketing, pay-per-click advertising and some offline media can help you reach everyone. Remember, some people may not be on Facebook, as hard as that is to believe, but they may see your ad when searching for you. Another mistake is failing to venture onto marketing avenues just because something has always worked for you. You may be missing some customers who need your services.

4. Keeping up with the Joneses. You need to know what your competitor is doing, and that goes beyond marketing techniques. For example, if your competitor introduces a new product, you need to counteract that with a product of your own or marketing to show why your product is better.

5. Planning. This may be the most important but most often overlooked marketing technique. Without a plan, it is easy to fall prey to every marketing scheme and to say yes to every advertising sales person who calls on you. A plan helps you focus and saves you money. You can always change your plan if you find that it’s not working or if you decide to add another technique.

Marketing can drain your budget and time. But with proper planning and attention, it can bring new customers and revenue to your business.

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 03 Aug 2011 16:28:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/285-five-keys-to-online-marketing-success.aspxStart Uploading Your Life in Google+http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/284-start-uploading-your-life-in-google.aspxGoogle has finally thrown its own hat into the social media ring and the question everyone is asking is "How great is it?" Google+ is still in its trial stages, so it's not yet open for everyone to join. But for those lucky ones who've had the opportunity to start from the ground floor of this new social network, it is shaping up to be an incredible new social media experience.

New features like Sparks and Hangouts are getting a lot of attention from initial users. With so many social networking sites on the scenes these days, it can be difficult to keep up with the status updates and tweets that are constantly coming in. There are some helpful tools out there, though, that can help get you better organized with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and more than likely the same will be said for the new Google+. These tools can take some of the fun out of actually experiencing social media in all its glory, so from time to time, sign on to your accounts and have fun.

For now, the Google Chrome Store offers an extension that allows you to link your Facebook and Twitter streams right into your Google+ account. You can click on the link "Start Google Plus" in Google Chrome's Web Store. According to the features listed on the Web Store, the plugin will allow you to include your Facebook and Twitter streams inside the Google+ stream.

You can turn on the option to have anything you share on Google+ appear on your Facebook and Twitter pages. To keep from leaving your gmail tab open, you can put a gmail inbox notifier in the top bar. This lets you have access to your emails from right inside Google+. You even get to add comments on your Facebook and Twitter streams, retweeting and replying without having to switch out of Google+. Google Chrome extensions are easy to install with just one click.

Time will tell if this new social network is going to rank as well among users as current social media giants Facebook and Twitter. From initial feedback, things are looking very good for Google.

Have you been invited to try out the new Google+? What are your thoughts on it? Is it going to replace all of the current platforms available or just become one of several you use? Tell us what you think and how you see this new social media network affecting your business!

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 02 Aug 2011 14:36:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/284-start-uploading-your-life-in-google.aspxNew Google Service Will Re-Write Your Website to Make it Fasterhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/283-new-google-service-will-re-write-your-website-to-make-it-faster.aspxGoogle has just  launched a new service to a limited set of testers to do their part in speeding up the web.

Google’s Page Speed Service claims to improve the speed of your website load times by 25 to 60 percent. Essentially users will sign up for the service and then point your website’s DNS entry to Google. From there, the tool will access your content from your servers, rewrite your webpages, and then serve them up from Google’s own servers.

A Google representative stated, “Now you don’t have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, gzipping resources”. While this might be true, won’t you be somewhat cautious of giving Google the ability to re-write your webpages?

The service will be offered for free for now to limited testers but will eventually charge for it.

Google has always had great interest in improving the web’s speed. Earlier this year, they announced that website speed is now a ranking factor and also announced the launch of Page Speed Online through your Webmaster Central account. It will be interesting to see how much adoption this new tool will get. I for one am interested to test the service but am also leery of giving Google all that access. What are your thoughts?

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 01 Aug 2011 13:49:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/283-new-google-service-will-re-write-your-website-to-make-it-faster.aspxWhich is better : Facebook or Google+http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/282-which-is-better-facebook-or-google.aspx

SALT LAKE CITY -- Over the years, Google+ will likely go through a lot of changes, just like Facebook has. But if we are to compare the two sites as they are now, which one seems better? That depends on which features you want to focus on.

Finding Friends

In the span of roughly one month, Google+ has gathered and estimated 18 million users. This is a very impressive number, but it pales in comparison to Facebook's membership of roughly 750 million active users. So, considering how many more people are using Facebook, it's almost unfair to compare these two sites on how easy it is to find friends.

But there are other things to consider besides numbers.

"I'm On Facebook, Now What?" co-author Jesse Stay says Google+ is very good at suggesting friends for you, but there's a caveat.

"Those will be pretty accurate, assuming that you have friends on Google+. If you don't have any friends that are on Google+, it's going to be not as good of an experience for you," he said.

On Facebook, once you add information about your work and your schooling, it will show a list of people who might work with the same company or who may have gone to school with you. As I checked the list of friends Google+ was suggesting for me, it seemed like the list was mostly based on my friends' friend list.

"If your close friends and family aren't on Google+, then it may not make sense to get on there," Stay said.

The winner: Facebook

Functionality for Business

Again, this isn't a fair comparison right now. Stay says Google+ isn't allowing businesses to make pages for their company, yet. They will soon, though. But Facebook seems to have a more personal feel to it, which Stay says businesses like better. This stems from the way Google+ uses a system it calls "circles," instead of the "friends list" on Facebook.

"When you ‘circle' them, it's a one-way relationship. I can ‘circle' you and follow your updates. But, you don't have to ‘circle' me and follow me back," Stay explained.

Stay says that's not the only reason businesses prefer Facebook.

"Facebook has an API, which is an interface for programmers to write applications for Facebook. Google+ doesn't have that," he said.

The winner: Facebook.

Integration with Other Software

Stay says this one is no contest. Google+ is far better at integrating all of its other programs, like Gmail, Documents and Calendar. Plus, it allows you to find out more about things that spark your interest, which it calls "sparks." For instance, if you list "BYU football" as one of your sparks, Google's search engine will find the latest news and information about the Cougars.

The Winner: Google+

Security Settings

Changing your privacy settings on Facebook isn't hard to do, but Google+ seems to be a little more "in your face" about it. Stay says, every time you post something on Google+, it will ask you who you want to allow to see that post. With Facebook, once you arrange your privacy settings, it won't ask you if you want your comments, pictures and links to be seen by everyone or just certain people. Stay says this may force some users to go through a learning curve, but others believe it's a very simple process.

The Winner: Google+

There are other things on Google+ that Stay says are really cool. For example, it has created a new kind of chat capability, which it calls "hangouts." This lets up to 10 people at a time join in a video conference and share YouTube videos while chatting.

As many people compare the features between the two sites, Stay thinks Google+ is more a threat to Twitter than it is to Facebook. Google+ lets users do pretty much everything Twitter does, and then some. Also, it doesn't force people to shorten their messages to 140 characters or less.

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 28 Jul 2011 13:59:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/282-which-is-better-facebook-or-google.aspx7 Common SEO Myths Debatedhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/281-7-common-seo-myths-debated.aspx
Ask anyone who thinks they have knowledge about SEO what they think are the key strategies and are you are likely to get a variety of answers. SEO is one of the most debated technology topics on the Internet. While in some cases the differing answers can be attributed to the fact that not all strategies are going to work for every certain business and search engines, particularly Google, change the rules often, some myths are still out there and won’t seem to die. Here are seven SEO myths that seem to come up over and over again:
  1. Metatags with keywords help in search engine rankings. Despite that fact that Google’s Matt Cutts said almost two years ago (and it was widely reported) that Google doesn’t use metatags in SEO, some still think they are important.
  2. Having a PPC campaign can impact your SEO rankings. PPC campaigns are a great way to drive traffic to your site fast, while SEO strategies take some time. But why would Google let your PPC affect your search engine ranking? Do you think they are punishing Amazon, one of the most successful companies with a PPC campaign?
  3. Social media does not help SEO. Some still see social media as a waste of time and it can be if there is no plan in place. Social media can help establish backlinks which help search engine rankings.
  4. I need lots of links. The more links I get the higher rankings I will have. While having links does help it is more about the quality and relevance of links than shear volume. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a website with much fewer links outrank competitors with thousands of links.
  5. It’s all about PageRank. Anyone who performs SEO wishes this were the case because if it were it would make our lives much easier. You can look at practically any niche in Google and perform a search and see low PageRank URL’s outrank high ones all the time.
  6. Once I feel my site is search engine optimized, I am done. Not hardly. SEO is an ongoing process. Competitors are constantly battling for search engine rankings. And as mentioned before, Google can change its algorithms, which it did this year with the new Panda algorithm. To stay on top, you have to be vigilant about SEO.
  7. DMOZ importance factor. If you are listed in DMOZ you will have a high ranking. While at one point that might have been true, Google has gone to many lengths to make sure there are many factors that go into ranking a website high. Being listed in DMOZ isn’t one of those factors.

There are many more myths and debates about the best SEO strategies. What are some that you have heard?

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 27 Jul 2011 14:07:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/281-7-common-seo-myths-debated.aspxFacebook IS NOT the only target for Google +http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/280-facebook-is-not-the-only-target-for-google-.aspx

Because Facebook is the leading social media outlet in the world, many comparisons have been made between it and Google +. But if you look closely,Google + may has a lot in common with Twitter, the number 2 social network.

First, Google + is distributing information in real time. While Facebook does as well, Twitter seems to be more of the go-to social network for people who want real information and not a series of status updates on what their friends had for lunch. An example is how the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden spread. Many people learned about his death on Twitter before hearing about it on a major news source.

Many Twitter users use their feed to link their followers to content or to announce news, whether it is about them and their company or about world affairs. With the backing of its search engine, Google + would appear to make it easier for users to find and share links with their followers.

The relationship between Google and Twitter has been rocky in the past few weeks.  Earlier this month, users may have noticed that the “real time” search engine results from Twitter that would show up in Google searches are no longer there. Google officials said that their agreement had expired on July 2. Google says it will provide real time results from a variety of sources in the future, including Google +.

In the meantime, Twitter officials are negotiation with Bing to continue the live stream on the search engine. Technology pundits are calling these negotiations vital. If they fall through, Twitter’s live search engine results will be missing from two of the top three search engine results. However Bing, has long been partnered with Facebook.

As Google + invitations continue to go out, it will be interesting to see how Twitter fares in a three way race for social media users. Google + is growing faster than Facebook did in its infancy and is a serious threat to both social media sites.

This article has been reposted to www.ixlstudios.com from www.highervisibility.com

 

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 26 Jul 2011 15:04:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/280-facebook-is-not-the-only-target-for-google-.aspxThe Bank of Google?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/279-the-bank-of-google.aspx
Google officials seem to be pulling out all the stops to get customers to continue with their AdWords program. Reuters News Agency reported last week that Google will be offering a credit card to selected users. The MasterCards will have an 8.99 percent interest rate and will be issued by World Financial Capital Bank. Those who are selected can expect to receive an offer sometime in the middle of next week.

Why would Google make this move? The obvious reason is to stay ahead of their competitors. Bing and Yahoo have been partnering on many advertising venues. While it is not even close to Google in popularity yet, Bing is slowly gaining more and more of the market share. By offering customers any kind of incentive, the company is establishing brand loyalty.

And Google is not the only company to offer a credit card to customers, even though it is the first search engine to do so. Department stores have been offering credit cards for decades for either in-store purchases or as MasterCards. Retail giant Walmart has a card that can be used anywhere. Recently the company announced that anyone who used their Walmart credit card (or any of their other financial products) could save 10 cents on gas at Walmart-owned pumps.

Google is a financially sound company and is still the leading search engine. Why would they want to do this? An executive with Google told Reuter’s in the article published last week that the company wanted to help small and medium-sized businesses, which are often struggling in this economy.

“They are resource-constrained and they are often cash flow-strapped,” said Claire Johnson, vice president of global online sales at Google. “Many of them are trying to grow a business without the kind of means that, say, your classic company has.”

While Google may attract some goodwill for their efforts to help small businesses, there are advantages for the company in offering this credit card. Obviously, the company can earn interest income. But they can track the user’s spending habits, which will give them valuable information about small business owners.

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 25 Jul 2011 14:37:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/279-the-bank-of-google.aspxGoogle does not use the keywords meta tag in web rankinghttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/278-google-does-not-use-the-keywords-meta-tag-in-web-ranking.aspx

Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking


Recently we received some questions about how Google uses (or more accurately, doesn't use) the "keywords" meta tag in ranking web search results. Suppose you have two website owners, Alice and Bob. Alice runs a company called AliceCo and Bob runs BobCo. One day while looking at Bob's site, Alice notices that Bob has copied some of the words that she uses in her "keywords" meta tag. Even more interesting, Bob has added the words "AliceCo" to his "keywords" meta tag. Should Alice be concerned?
At least for Google's web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in our web search ranking. This video explains more, or see the questions below.
Q: Does Google ever use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that's an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don't have any effect in our search ranking at present.
Q: Why doesn't Google use the keywords meta tag?
A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called "off-page" factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.
Q: Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags?
A: No, Google does support several other meta tags. This meta tags page documents more info on several meta tags that we do use. For example, we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets, as this screenshot shows:
Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking.
Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?
A: It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 22 Jul 2011 14:15:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/278-google-does-not-use-the-keywords-meta-tag-in-web-ranking.aspxReasons Why Your Content Is Not Speading as Far as it Shouldhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/277-reasons-why-your-content-is-not-speading-as-far-as-it-should.aspx

When you’re creating content for social media campaigns, the distance it spreads and the number of users who share it is likely to be a big measuring stick for its success or failure.  There’s a number of factors that go into why a particular piece spreads farther than others and that usually starts with the quality of the content.  But even if you’ve created something truly remarkable, the job isn’t finished.  You may still wind up asking yourself why it wasn’t as big a success as it should have been?  Here are the 6 most common answers to that very question:

1. Lack of Promotion

Quite often, a lot of time is put into content worth spreading but it just never gets seen, or rather, it never hits that crucial tipping point where the spreading takes over and becomes “viral”.  Certainly some content will need more of a push than others.  And content with a high viral potential needs only a little push, while lower potential content may need a shove…or four.  The fact is: all content needs (at least) a nudge.  Otherwise you’re left with a great piece that too few will ever see.

If you don’t already have a strong enough user-base, you need to do your due diligence and network before you decide to start pushing your content.  Be sure to show a willingness to return the favor, and others will line up to help you spread yours.  If you don’t have the time or patience to get this done (believe me, it requires both), find someone who does.

2. Your Title is Boring…

One of the first things all internet marketers need to learn is the art of writing a compelling title.  Even if you’re writing a boring article like: the mating patterns of Japanese beetles, it benefits you to be a little sensationalist.  Give people a REASON to read your article, and just in case they don’t: give them a reason to spread it.  You’ll find that either way, 90% of your ‘readers’ won’t bother to read the entire thing and their judgment will be based solely on the title.  So if you want your content to spread, even if it’s the most fantastic and interesting article ever written, you’re going to need a fantastic and interesting title.

3. You’re Being Too Commercial

Link bait, blog spam, viral advertising.   These are just some of the “words-of-death” that you might hear when your social marketing piece falls flat.  If you’re hearing them, you’ve done something wrong. Something very specific.   It’s not necessarily that your content isn’t good enough.  But what probably happened is that you were too worried about the marketing benefits of your campaign that you got in the way of your own success.  Perhaps you have too much advertising on your site.  Maybe your revenue generating call-to-action form is too prominent.  Sometimes it might just be that your brand message is too in your face.

Some brands may be able to get away with more than others.  Nike (for example) can probably get away with more than Wal-mart.  Why?  Because their brand is sexier and more fun.  You need to understand the limits of your campaign goals and what you can get away with.  Conversion optimization may work great for your PPC campaign, but in social media you need to keep a balance between your marketing goals and the viral potential of your campaign.

4. Design flaws

Pro tip: If you aren’t a designer, you may want to hire one.  Once users get past the title of your content, they’ll take only 3 seconds before they decide what they’re going to do.  Read or skim, interact or run, spread or bury – and the look and design has everything to do with that first three seconds.

Just to clarify: aesthetics isn’t everything.  You can have a beautiful design that does nothing but send your users running for the next link.  You need to remember why you want them there, what action(s) you want them to take, and be sure the UI and layout is optimized for those actions first.  Then make sure the aesthetics is up-to-par, but more importantly, appropriate for the content and message you’re trying to convey.

The three most important social design features:

  1. Make sure the message or content’s intent is clear, front, and center
  2. Make sure the action(s) you want them to take are clear & prominent enough
  3. Make sure the content is easy to access & read and isn’t too intimidating for your average user who has limited time and a shrinking attention span.

5. You’ve Missed your Target Audience

It’s OK for websites or brands to step out of their normal content comfort zone online.  While I’d never recommend creating content that deliberately alienates your current base, going a bit outside the box can be an interesting exercise in testing the limits of your market.  It can be a great way to expand your audience and spread your brand to new demographics.  The problem is, when you do this, you can’t always rely on your current user/customer base to help spread the word.  And if you go too far outside, before you fail, you might want to consider why you’re doing it in the first place.

If your target audience for your brand is normally, say,  women between 20-40, depending on your brand it’s probably wise to either continue targeting women, or perhaps you might target men of the same age.  Either way, the further outside your normal zone you go, the more challenging it becomes to create content that spreads.  As always: tread carefully.

6. Misuse of social media tools & networks

One of the more common mistakes I see on a daily basis is the misuse of the available social media tools.  Make sure before you start using any particular service, tool, or social media site, that you take the time to get to know the ropes.  More specifically: some of the “unwritten rules” of the service.  Understand the limits to what kind of “push” or promotion is acceptable and what borders on spam.

Also, while it may be tempting to create content and submit it to as many services as you can, the truth is, you might be wasting valuable time.  You may be better off creating content for a specific network and focus on spreading on that one.  For example, some content does better on Twitter than it does on Facebook.   And if you want to do a simple poll, perhaps a Facebook widget is the way to go.  Bottom line: get to know the spaces you’re promoting your content in or (again): find someone who already does.

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 20 Jul 2011 12:50:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/277-reasons-why-your-content-is-not-speading-as-far-as-it-should.aspxGoogle + Project +1 Button Changing Web Marketinghttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/276-google-project-1-button-changing-web-marketing.aspx
I think it is fair to say that Google Plus Project, otherwise known as G+, has exploded onto the web marketing scene in a very short time.  Statistics around the web indicate that in the first week, 35% of all new links shared on Twitter were related to the G+ Project.

At first glance everyone seemed to be declaring that the Google G+ Project would be the end of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Skype.  I cannot imagine that G+ would have the ability to knock these behemoths down.  Certainly not in the short term and long term the other communities fulfill other needs that G+ will not be able to.  What I do believe the critics are missing is the effect on web marketing.  Perhaps these critics are not web marketers, but more likely either seeking attention through competitive propaganda or have an inability to adopt and adapt to new changes within the Internet industry.

Certainly Google’s G+ Project will eventually change the web marketing world.  Since this is Google’s own product, they will prefer social tick marks through the +1 Button over those coming from Twitter, Facebook and social bookmarking.    You cannot help but see that this will impact organic search results.  Web pages that generate many +1′s will probably populate earlier on Google search results than those websites that do not.

I will avoid detailed discussions related to the features offered through the Google G+ Project in this discussion, which include sharing Photos, Chatting, Hangout, Spark, Huddles, and Instant Uploads.  As a web marketer, all of these other features are social community add-ons that mimic the likes of GoToMeeting, Skype, Flickr and others.  None of these will necessarily affect web marketing in terms of search results; only make more features available for Google to allow for Adwords advertising on Google web properties versus on the Google Ad Network.

What Is The Need for Google Plus Project?

First and foremost, if we go back many years when Google got it’s start, part of their objective was to be the world’s information source.  To that end, any information including communications, are fair game to be pooled under one roof for better accessing, interpretation and availability based on content relevancy.  Information from social communities certainly falls into the process of aggregating information and in line with Google’s objectives.

Secondly, a few years ago if you logged into your Google account, you had the option of commenting on web pages in search results.  I think it took one comment to realize that nothing we did would have an effect on website rankings, because the comments were only relative for our own account.  Now why would I comment on web pages if my comments are not shared with anyone?  Exactly!  So, the comment we had on our own website is no longer there and the Google Plus Project seems to have replaced this feature more effectively.  Now, all comments, ticks, etc. are shared with people in our community.  Certainly seems to be more effective for web marketing.

Perhaps not the last reason, but certainly another important reason, would be related to anti-spam.  Google has always sought out ways to reduce spam in the search results.  So much so, that it has made it more difficult and complicated for businesses to rank legitimate information and websites (this is also known as job security for web marketers!).

Spammers have infiltrated social communities and found ways to get their information indexed through these communities and/or impacted search engine results for their websites.  Since most popular social communities are not as good as Google in terms of anti-spam, one would expect Google to take a pro-active role.  Content in the project can be better monitored (aka controlled) to minimize spam, fraud and less reputable websites.

G+ and Web Marketing

The +1 button is available through web search results now and also through other social communities, blogs, etc.  A Google +1 button plugin is available for WordPress blogs and eventually, this will be as wide spread as other sharing tools for Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc.

Since these “social activities” are taking place on Google, it is hard to imagine that the number of +1 button clicks a given page gets would not have an effect on the organic rankings!   Not only is the +1 button included on every post within Google Plus and on content publishers’ websites, but it’s literally sitting next to every single search result that Google returns. Does anyone doubt that this will affect search engine ranking position (SERP) results?!

It would be similar to doubting that star ratings on local business listings won’t affect search engine results that come through the local business listings.  Let’s get realistic.  As of November 2010, Google was able to marry a website with a local business listing and display average star ratings for a website based on the results in the local business listing.  Star ratings are quantitative and therefore mathematical!  Still don’t believe this will affect SERP?

If we believe that the number of +1 clicks will affect SERP and also display accordingly to content relevancy to my G+ community, then the more people in my community, the more people I can effect with +1 clicks.

Yes, I realize if we were to hire a bunch of people from a third world nation for 50 cents per hour clicking away at our client or our own websites, we could affect SERP, but let’s move away from that thought for a moment because that loop hole could get closed very quickly based on geographic IP addressing.

However, it does mean that the more people you have in your G+ community, the more people you can impact.  Rather than thinking about third world nations clicking away, think about indiscriminately creating the largest community you can possibly think of using– every community you already belong to, every email address you have, every connection you can get your hands on.  Now that may have a much bigger impact for anything you +1!

Early Adoption and Adapting To Change

Once again, the Internet shows how quickly a technology can enter the market and how rapidly people will migrate to it.  Early adoption is the name of the game in the world of Internet technologies.  Adapting to the changes in the industry is a must and everyone else will be left behind.  If the past 20 years has not shown us that businesses need to jump on board sooner rather than later, then you will undoubtedly be left behind.

The G+ user population will grow extremely fast, given the interest, Google’s reach and resources, and the need businesses have for their website’s SERP.  Perhaps this will become the “Facebook for Business”!

It will be interesting to learn how well businesses will be able to keep up with all of the changes, given the growing “to do” list.  G+ on the short term will add a host of additional “to do’s” and the number of marketing outlets to manage.  G+ will also be too important to ignore.

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 19 Jul 2011 13:00:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/276-google-project-1-button-changing-web-marketing.aspxGoogle+: Five Things for Marketers to Considerhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/275-google-five-things-for-marketers-to-consider.aspx

With the launch of Google’s latest much-hyped social network, companies lucky to get an invite were quick to jump on the bandwagon, only to find their profiles closed down a week later.

The reason? Google engineers are asking businesses for patience, saying they want to test the waters with individual users before diving into the murky ocean of brand advertising and digital marketing. Fair enough, as long as this means an optimized brand experience in the long run.

With a special brand-oriented Google+ product in the pipeline, Google can certainly not afford to leave out all those companies eager to market via the promising new social network. While all we can do now is sit and wait for Google to open the gates, let’s have a rough look at what it may have in store for SEO and digital marketing.

Information with a human face

Tech pundits have long reiterated that Google’s failed attempts at social media were due to its focus on information, which – they say – isn’t compatible with social interaction. By creating a new social media experience that is scalable, customizable and most importantly – people-centric - Google is certainly proving critics wrong.

All-encompassing and highly interactive, Google+ is sure to get a slice of the Facebook and Twitter dominated social media pie but its size will depend on how quickly the new social network embraces the foreign language internet. As non-English online usage begins to outstrip English, enabling people to create profiles in their preferred language may well be what will convince people to switch over from their existing social networks to Google+.

Power to the people

But let’s have a look at what makes Google+ different from existing social networks. For starters, it integrates the trademark features of all its competitors, albeit under different names. Google+’s circles – its most distinguishing feature – mean you can keep your communication with friends separate from your business contact exchange, while being able to follow people and share quick thoughts Twitter-style.

The power to filter contacts and curate the information flow for relevance will undoubtedly go down well with users who – as marketers know – appreciate being treated as individuals rather than as consumers.

Tackling information overload

Stream – Google’s equivalent to Facebook’s News Feed – lets you filter the updates coming from your different circles so that you don’t get bombarded with irrelevant information. And vice versa – you can direct feeds at people who’ll be interested, without spamming your contacts.

Streams are another example of Google’s people-centric approach, although it’s still too early to say how this could be harnessed for the purposes of digital marketing.

Sparks: the big SEO gold mine

This appears to be Google+’s most promising feature from an SEO point of view. Sparks are streams of regularly updated search results related to users’ interests. A simple comparison test shows that Spark-generated content is different from a traditional Google search, with highly ranked websites, and fresh and visual content receiving – for the time being – the most prominence.

It’ll be interesting to see how Google will fine-tune its new Spark algorithms and what link-building opportunities they will offer. By all means, this is something SEO people should watch out for.

Drawing a line between people and brands

Ever accepted a friend request from a company or a place on Facebook only to be bombarded with special offers and event invitations? Google+ is nipping this annoying trend in the bud. Google’s decision to consign brands to an as yet unidentified place shows just how emphatic the new social network is in its dedication to keep the social experience personal.

Not a good thing for brands which – naturally – like going where consumers are – but with Google+’s brand-oriented product in the pipeline, there’s a sleek new marketing platform to look forward to. Google engineers are, indeed, promising to build a business experience that will exceed that of consumer profiles.

What this means for social media marketers remains to be seen. There is already speculation that once ushered in, business ‘pages’ could be +1’d and followed, thus improving search results, which automatically translates into better brand exposure.

Until then, all you can do is apply to be one of the first brands to test the business accounts in the coming months…and by all means, reserve a slot in your marketing strategy for Google+.


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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 14 Jul 2011 13:36:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/275-google-five-things-for-marketers-to-consider.aspxGoogle Plus vs Facebook – An Overviewhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/274-google-plus-vs-facebook-an-overview.aspx

Google has again entered into the social networking game with new strategies. Google’s new social networking platform Google plus has been released as an “Invite only” release and this is a popular marketing techniques nowadays to intensify the users’ urge to join while doing the beta testing with a limited number of users. I got an invite and explored it for a while and all I can say is Google+ is really cool. However, at this stage it’s very hard to predict if the Google plus vs Facebook competition will make sense. Because, social networking is a market that closely works on peoples’ psychology giving them a virtual world with an environment that they want. Google already has it’s social network Orkut, which has almost been ignored by many and it does not have any potential to grow. It’s still bit popular in India and a few other countries and it speaks all about it. Forget Orkut, even google has forgotten it now.

Facebook is the most successful social network in the internet history, unlike the other social networks facebook’s growth is solid and it keeps the platform changing frequently so as to give the people something new and keeping them busy with them so that they will not feel bored and think of going outside facebook (not for all all but for the majority it works). Moreover facebook started challenging the other Internet giants who are/were not at all into the social networking business. Though google is still the largest Internet company it has been affected a lot by the growth of facebook. How? Because google’s main income is coming from advertising (Google Ads) and after facebook started it’s advertising game (Facebook Ads) the advertisers got another choice and the growth of facebook grabbed some advertising areas from google as the social network allows some kind of unique demographic targeting that a search engine or content network can’t provide. Still Google is bigger than facebook and the Advertising market google has is much higher than Facebook but the things can change in future and it’s likely in come context.

Why google wants to get into the social networking business?

Search engines can’t expand it’s user-base in a bigger way like social networking.  If a person wants to search something on the Internet he will use google – that’s all (forget other search engines since they are too small compared to google). But the social network, on the other hand has a highly expanding user-base. The social networks drag the people into the virtual world and do the necessary things to keep the person inside that virtual world for a long possible time while making him drag some other people too into this virtual world. The more a user spends his time on facebook the greater the money facebook makes. Today facebook has set many new standards to social networking and now facebook’s standards has become the current definitions of social networking. Thus, google can not go away from the current social networking standards and eventually the Google+ looks like a facebook clone. However, one of the nature of the business world is “Copying from other successful businesses”. Facebook copied some core concepts of twitter too in their later releases and those features helped facebook to expand it’s boundaries even more. Due to these issues I don’t see the copying some features of facebook and any other social networks is not going to make google looks bad. It’s just business and as a user what I only want is a social networking environment that gives me the environment I want. Still I don’t want to bring joindiaspora here as it has not proved itself in the real market yet though some features of google+ reminds the joindiaspora (still it’s a beta) too.

The best way to describe an unknown is comparing it with a well known, let me compare Google+ and Facebook!

Google plus vs Facebook – My thoughts :

The pluses of Google+ over Facebook

  1. Google+ provides better privacy and well layered grouping – circles
  2. Google+ does not have annoying applications like facebook (may be yet)
  3. Google+ combines facebook and twitter together when the main features are concerned
  4. Google+ is simple and sweet – May be just because it is new
  5. Google+ uses the google chat for chatting. It is much better than facebook chat

The minuses of Google+ over Facebook

  1. Google+ lacks some features that facebook has (Since it’s new and beta)
  2. Google+ does not have anything special for a typical facebook freak who does not care much about privacy
  3. Google+ does not have the own powerful branding as a social network (It’s a sub-product of google and not a mere social network brand like “facebook”) However, this is how it could be released because a unique branding is too weeker to compete facebook


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This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.faceblogger.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 13 Jul 2011 14:12:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/274-google-plus-vs-facebook-an-overview.aspxHow to Brand Yourself As a Leaderhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/273-how-to-brand-yourself-as-a-leader.aspx

So, now you are in business for yourself. Are you a leader? If not then you will need to become one, and fast.

What is a leader anyway?

According to the ‘Compact Oxford English Dictionary’ a leader is: “A person that leads or is the most successful or advanced in a particular area.” That, to me, is a very drab description of a leader. I think of a leader as someone who is inspirational and motivates others to great achievements.

I like this quote from Ralph Lauren: “A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done”. If you consider for a moment the main reasons that most people get involved with network marketing; it’s because they have a dream.

The dream of a better life for themselves and their families. The dream of financial independence, and the time freedom to enjoy it with their loved ones. Can you inspire someone to achieve their dreams?

If you are new to network marketing, then you might question whether you are up to that lofty goal. If so, consider this. Yes, as a newcomer to the industry, you will be on a very steep learning curve at the moment. However, wherever you are on that curve, there will always be someone behind you, struggling to make their way.

If you can take that person under your wing, and show them how to get to where you are, then you will have had an immense impact on their life.

As you learn, become a teacher. All of the vital lessons that you learn that get you to where you want to be; pass that knowledge and experience on. Pay it forward.

The Internet is a great medium for passing on your acquired wisdom. There are so many resources that you can utilize.

I personally have lots of pages liberally scattered all over the net. In particular I have a few blogs established. I have my own website dedicated to network marketing

As you embark upon your own journey of discovery;  why not do the same? Start blogging about your progress. Start posting in a few forums. As your knowledge increases start publishing articles. Eventually you will have enough content for your own website.

Before you know it you will have gone from pupil to teacher and hardly noticed the transformation, however rest assured , your followers will have noticed. They will have come to recognise you as a source of valuable information and inspiration.

In short you will have ‘branded’ yourself as a leader. Are you ready to step up to the plate

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 12 Jul 2011 13:15:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/273-how-to-brand-yourself-as-a-leader.aspxHow to Brand Yourself in 30 Secondshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/272-how-to-brand-yourself-in-30-seconds.aspx
Did you ever notice how some people stumble when they are asked the defining question? Or some people just go on and on and after 5 minutes of non-stop explanation, you still don’t really understand the purpose of their business?

Well I guess that at some point you were in one of these positions if not both.

How can you introduce yourself and your business in just 30 second, making sure that you deliver your brand and benefit of your services?

Here are the top 3 key elements to brand yourself in 30 Seconds

1. Perfect your Elevator Pitch

If you want to be ready at any time, you need to prepare your answer in advance and rehearse it. The next time somebody asks you “What do you do?” you shouldn’t have to think of an answer.

Start your elevator pitch by mentioning very clearly who is your target market and what their needs are, in other words, Their Problem. In just one or two sentences explain the benefit of your services and how you bring The Solution to this target market.

Please don’t say as I hear too often “Oh my service is for everybody” because it is not. If you don’t have a target market with a common problem that you can solve you grow your business. You won’t be able to grow your business if you don’t know who is your target market. Take a few seconds to explain what makes you different from your competitors. What is you unique selling position? Don’t try to be technical or use the jargon from your industry because this generally causes peoples attention to wander. Use the formula KISS (Keep It Short and Simple).

Be cautious not to tell your whole story. Instead, hook your audience, intrigue them so they will ask you more questions about you and your business. Think as if you were introducing yourself on Twitter, but instead of 140 characters, you have a few paragraphs to work with.
Always finish you elevator pitch with a call to action. Tell people what to do next: go to your website, sign-up for your newsletter for free report, call you for a free consultation, etc…

Practice, practice, practice – Test your elevator pitch with friends or colleagues and get their feedback. Rehearse it until you own it and sound natural and not like reading it. Say it in front of the mirror. Practice and perfect your elevator pitch to get more contacts and clients!

2. Make your Professional Business Card Stand Out

The second step after you deliver your elevator pitch to somebody at a networking events or after any contact is to give your business card.

If you have an effective elevator pitch but then give a crappy business card, you just lost a new potential contact. You need to have a professional image. For example printing your business card on your printer will not give you this image and it will make your business look cheap.

Have a professional business card using color, your logo, your tag-line and your website Remember to use the back of the card to highlight the benefits of using your product or services. This will give you a professional image and help people remember you and your specialty in the future.

Use the same color on your business cards that is on your marketing tools, business card, flyers, post cards, website etc…

As you elevator pitch, put a call to action on your business card. For example, offer a free report or a free consultation and send people to your website to claim it. This action call will direct more traffic to your website and will build your list.

3. Have a Professional Website

Obviously you don’t have time to say everything you want to in 30 seconds. Your business card can’t say everything either. A professional website is your greatest tool to spread effective information about you, your business, your products or services and the benefits of working with you.

To focus on your branding, again use the same color on all of your marketing tools, business card, flyers, post cards, website etc… Having a streamlined look will ensure that people will recognize you as soon as they see your materials. If you use different colors or logos on each material, people can feel lost and as a result they will never contact you.

Now that you attracted them to your website, make sure they don’t leave without taking action. You can have a very nice and flashy website, but without a direct purpose and a call to action the extra money you spend is for nothing. You will need an opt-in box on each and every page of your website; you never know on which page they will decide to sign-up. You will also need an incentive for them to sign-up. Offering a bit of valuable information for free right away is the best option. Just mentioning sign-up for my newsletter won’t do the trick.

The other advantage of having an opt-in box is that you know you are contacting your target market. Who else would sign up for your newsletter? If people are not interested in your services, they won’t give you their information. It’s as simple as that.

Those 3 key elements will help you to build the perfect branding while reaching your target market and building your list. They work as a package, so make sure to not miss one of these important steps to grow your business.

Brand yourself in three easy steps: perfect your elevator pitch; design your business card; and add a call for action on every page of your website.

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 11 Jul 2011 13:32:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/272-how-to-brand-yourself-in-30-seconds.aspxReasons to Hire Someone to Manage a Blog for Your Companyhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/271-reasons-to-hire-someone-to-manage-a-blog-for-your-company.aspx
Have you ever considered joining the business sector of the blogosphere? If so, you might want to find a web development company that offers blog management services. Here’s why.
  1. Blogging is the foundation for a successful social marketing campaign. Social news sites like Reddit and Digg exist to send traffic to good blogs. If you don’t have a blog integrated in your business site, you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic. When you hire a web design company to manage your blog, you put yourself in the position to market to a large audience that would never otherwise see your company name. Why wouldn’t you take full advantage of this?
  2. A blog can be great for building links back to your site. A big piece of the SEO puzzle is building good, strong links back to your site. And what better way to do so than to link from a separate blog? This means your blog needs to be offsite, but on topic for your business. Then throughout the articles, your blog manager can link from relevant keywords to your main web address. The result? Boosted rankings.
  3. You don’t have the time to do it yourself. Running a blog right takes time. And we’re not talking a few minutes a day. More like a few hours a day. Can you really afford to give that much time up? Why not hire someone specifically to take on the task? There time will center on publishing blog entries, replying to comments, and marketing your business blog.
  4. They can blog under your name. Thanks to ghost blogging services, you can post to your blog as often as you want. And you get full author’s credit. Without even lifting a pen (or typing a word). That’s the beauty of ghost blogging. You pay someone to write for you, maybe toss them a few ideas, and they make it happen. Meanwhile, you gain credibility.
  5. Blogging takes skill. Not that you aren’t a good writer. You might be. But blogging is a different beast of its own. And to publish successful entries, you need to know the ins and outs of blogging. For example, what sort of posts to readers prefer? What sort of headline grab an online reader’s attention? What sort of voice should you use? A professional copywriter employed by a web development agency knows how to structure your blog entries to get people to read them.
  6. You stand to benefit from having a business blog. And your best bet is to hire a company that can do the tedious work for you. Meanwhile, you can focus on the services or products you provide.

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 07 Jul 2011 12:49:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/271-reasons-to-hire-someone-to-manage-a-blog-for-your-company.aspxGoogle Plus the New Facebook Killer?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/270-google-plus-the-new-facebook-killer.aspx

Google recently launched their social media site that might become Facebook’s biggest competitor: Google Plus.  Right now it’s invitation-only, so getting a profile there is not easy.

 

The Features:

1. Circles – you can organize your friends in circles.  You can have a circle for work friends, a different circle for family etc.

2. Sparks – videos and articles that you might be interested in when you have time to look at them.  So when you’re bored, you can just read or watch something from there.

3. Hangouts – this feature will probably give Skype some serious competition. You can hang out and chat via video with your friends.  According to most articles about Google Plus, this is their biggest and strongest feature that differs from other social media sites.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this!  Request your invitation today at http://plus.google.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 06 Jul 2011 14:27:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/270-google-plus-the-new-facebook-killer.aspxArticle Writing Tipshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/269-article-writing-tips.aspx

Great writing skills are one of those things that just takes time to acquire. With repetition over time your article writing skills will get better but in the interim try some of these approaches to strengthen your talents.

Here is a list of article writing tips that I recommend that you consider using:

Article Writing Tip#1 – Be Edgy

Great articles sometimes push the boundaries on what society thinks is too much. Don’t worry about offending anyone with your writing. Some of the best pieces of literature where not created to appeal to everyone but rather a certain group. Even if it is too edgy and some people feel it might be offensive they might still push it around because great writing is often times respected even if the readers don’t agree with the concepts or thoughts.

Article Writing Tip#2 – Use Keywords Tastefully

I know it sounds very cliché to say to use keywords in your article but the key component is using them with taste. I often times see articles being written where it is evident that the keywords are the focus of the article. The article should be the focus of the article and keywords should be used as an ingredient to make that a great piece of literature to read for any industry veteran.

Article Writing Tip#3 – Layout

Your article should be easy to read. If it is difficult to read than people are going to zone out real quickly. The layout should be chunked into segments with labeled H1 tags so people can skip to what they want to read. Most people in today’s society will scan quickly through the content and pick out bits and pieces of what they want to read.

Article Writing Tip#4 – Answer The Question

Post articles have some sort of view point they are trying to convey, make sure yours conveys that message otherwise you can find yourself running out of steam in your article. Your article needs to entice other readers to question your theory or agree with it, thus leaving behind comments and creating a social aspect.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com
Article writing is something that will get better as long as you stick with it and give it the attention it deserves.

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 05 Jul 2011 15:27:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/269-article-writing-tips.aspxVocabulary (and the Social Quagmire)http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/268-vocabulary-and-the-social-quagmire.aspx

OK, I am only going to write about this one time, and then I am going to let it go. I start every presentation I give on social technologies with the same slide, and each time I review it, the audience nods their heads as if to say, “now I get it…” This slide is a simple vocabulary lesson to try and bring some coherence and sense to the jumble of terms people are now using in the social space. It seems that each new day brings some new variation on an activity with the word social pasted in front of it. This is much like the late 90’s when people put the letter “e” in front of just about everything in order to try and signify that it was Web enabled.

Here is my take on what we should all be doing… The umbrella term needs to be Social Technologies. This is a general enough term that it covers the various branches of the discipline. To use the term social networking or social media as the umbrella is a misnomer because these are simply branches that I will discuss in a minute. Since Social Technologies (or technology) is a little long, we could shorten it in most cases to Social Tech. With this as an general term, let’s look at what falls underneath it and why…

Social Networking is clearly the right name for the branch of this field that speaks to any application or platform that is used to connect people through live, or delayed written communication. This includes eCommunities, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc. Any service that seeks to connect people one to one, many to many, or one to many for the purposes of communication or community falls within this branch.

Social Media is the branch that refers to any application or platform that uses a form a media to allow people to share information one to many. Media in this case means video, documents, presentations, or pictures. Or said another way, YouTube, Scribd, SlideShare, and Flickr. The word media is a specific term that refers to a specific method for leveraging social communications or information sharing and the key thought here is that it is done through a media file.

Social Relevancy is the branch that speaks to online reputation, or online credentials. This includes all of the concepts and applications that help build, monitor and measure what your visibility is on the Internet. This includes all of the social networking and social media sites. Whether we are talking about an organization, a person, or a product, all are starting to have online reputations, and a measurable amount of social relevancy.

There is now a fourth branch I will call the catch all branch. This is for any activity that now has the word “social” pasted in front of it to denote the fact the social tools are now being used to improve performance. For example, Social CRM, and Social Recruiting. I suspect we will see many more examples of nomenclature like this over the next five years, then we will drop putting social in front of terms when everything has a social tech element within it.

If people cannot discern the difference between these terms, they will never be able to actually be good at using them. Vocabulary can be powerful in that way. So please help me get the popular press, and the various commenters to start using this paradigm. It makes much more sense to delineate these terms into branches that make sense, and to use an umbrella term that is intuitive. By the way, it starts with you using these terms correctly… My next stop is Webster’s Dictionary. I intend to put the full court press on for them to define things this way!!!



This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.technologystory.com

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 01 Jul 2011 12:22:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/268-vocabulary-and-the-social-quagmire.aspxIf You Don’t like Change, You Will Hate Extinctionhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/267-if-you-dont-like-change-you-will-hate-extinction.aspx

This is actually a quote my friend Ross Shaffer uses on stage when he speaks, and it is aimed at leaders…

I normally get up on stage and berate the leaders in the audience to wake up and get the picture that technology strategy is now a critical piece of their organization, and an element they cannot just outsource to others. I harangue them about the fact they often are very slow to use new technologies with their own hands, and that they rarely understand the value of concepts like cloud computing, mobile, or social tech. My intentions are good, but I think I am offending many leaders and I don’t really mean to do that. So instead of berating, I am going to work on motivating from this day forward. Instead of telling them they are failing to do a critical element of their job, I am going to point out the great opportunity they have to make a difference…

In fact, this might be a time in history that leaders have the greatest opportunity to reach into a magical toolbox and do creative and innovative things to prosper. Never before has there been a toolbox full of free tools, inexpensive tools, and extremely powerful tools, with more tools coming every day. The marketplace provides a worldwide piece of property and people provide the raw materials. We are seeing growth and innovation like we have never seen before in the economy. It is not just the explosive growth of companies like Google or Facebook, it is also the examples of small companies that now use Internet technologies to expand their customer base around the world. Or, to leverage workers from around the world to help them produce products or services for less money and with more creativity.

It is tragic that with this magical toolbox of social, mobile, cloud, integrated, virtualized, and intelligent technology, many leaders focus more on details that provide less value. I have come to observe that there are three reasons why they fail to take action:

  1. They don’t see the value so do not feel there is a good return on investment for them to spend any time understanding new technologies. Of course, how would they ever equate value if they won’t invest a little time to learn how a new concept even works. You can never actually be wrong if you just remain ignorant I suppose.
  2. They are comfortable with the way things are going now, and they believe that their current success will go on forever. Intellectually they will agree that dynamics change, but in their behavior, they do not seek to invest any energy in changing their current methods unless they are forced to through negative consequences. For example, they won’t do anything new unless they start losing money, then they thrash around trying to find new ways to operate. As opposed to finding new ways to operate BEFORE they are forced into it.
  3. They feel it is someone else’s job to figure out how to apply new technologies. They have convinced themselves that they have outsourced these decisions to other leaders, or vendors, and if there was something important enough to change in the organization, someone will bring it up. Of course this defeats much of the purpose of a leader being a leader. The very definition of the word leader means that you have a point of view on where to go and you are leading others.

So I will be on a mission from this point forward to motivate leaders to be willing to take personal responsibility to open up the technology toolbox and drive change into the organization where change might have value. I want them to know that they have the opportunity to do great things if they will just invest a little mindshare into learning about the new tools. Extinction is a painful consequence for the failure to open the toolbox…


This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from technologystory.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 30 Jun 2011 14:54:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/267-if-you-dont-like-change-you-will-hate-extinction.aspxSocial Media Marketing Plan - Your Plan To Success.http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/266-social-media-marketing-plan-your-plan-to-success.aspx

One of the most important things you should online is your social media marketing plan. When I started out a few years ago I didn't have a plan when working online so I would end up spending many hours in the social networks not really doing anything.

I knew the importance of social media I just didn't understand the importance of not spending too much time on each site. I know from experience that it is very easy to spend 6 hours in Facebook and before you know it the day is gone and you have not achieved anything.

In this post I will break down for you my social media marketing plan so you can use it as a guide to plan you day and be more productive. Using these sites is great for social media branding but they are only a part of the whole process.

In the list below I will be explaining how you can break you time up to get massive results.

• Have your entire social media content ready for the day before you even open any of your accounts. That way you are not tempted to take a look and see who is online.

• Set yourself a time limit to spend in each account, say 30 minutes each. You will get a lot of work done within 30 minutes.

• Break your time down even further by posting content for the first 30 minutes then checking messages responding to friend request etc in the next 30 minutes.

• Once you are done in your social networking sites log off so you are not tempted to go back in and answer a message.

• Set yourself a time frame to do your keyword research and writing for the next day. If you get everything ready to publish and you have time that when you should go back and check messages etc.

I like to setup my social media marketing plan like this as I like to have everything ready first thing in the morning to hit the publish button and do the syndication. Some people like to do things the other way round and you know what that is absolutely fine.

This method works best for me as I do a lot of my work in the afternoon anyway, and to be honest if you are syndicating and posting content the best time is in the late afternoon or early evening. Its whatever works best for you.

The point is to have a system in place and remove the distractions like Facebook or Twitter. If you have them switched off the temptation is removed, the same goes for your email and Skype. Get your content done first and then switch it back on.

What took me 8 hours in the past now takes 3 hours, plus I get more productive work done in that time. I always want to try and do everything all at once but if you do one thing at a time and set yourself time limits on each task you will have a great social media marketing plan.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.goarticles.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 29 Jun 2011 12:43:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/266-social-media-marketing-plan-your-plan-to-success.aspxBlack Hat SEO Techniques to Stay Away Fromhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/265-black-hat-seo-techniques-to-stay-away-from.aspx

At some point you might be enticed to try and venture out into the black hat SEO area but do it with great caution. It might sound great to achieve results quickly but you run the risk of having your website simply disappear overnight. What will you do when the website you have been trying to build up for many years simply disappears?

Black hat SEO techniques that I recommend STAYING FAR AWAY FROM:

Buying Links: The search engines hate this and they have already said that it is not allowed yet people still try and do it. It might sound nice to buy a link but if it gets traced back to you and how you acquired that link you could quickly see a penalty appear on your website.

Link Exchanges: Link exchanges where very popular years ago but they are very frowned upon at this point. If they happen naturally they are fine but once they are forced that is when you run into problems. For example, you do a write up regarding a viral marketing campaign occurring from company XYZ that you like and in return a week later company XYZ is so flattered you decided to write about them that they write in their blog how you wrote about them leaving a link behind to your website. This is a natural pathway for exchanging links.

Article Spinning: Taking an article and re-writing it 47 times is just bad practice. Actually re-writing it a few times and taking a different approach or stance on a subject is one thing but submitting essentially the same content numerous times is just a blatant attempt to really spam the search engines.

Try to avoid any type of black hat SEO attempts if at all possible. Black hat techniques almost always lead to something bad at one point or another. Plus if you follow guidelines and search engines change their practice you don’t run the risk of receiving any future penalties from search engines.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 28 Jun 2011 12:50:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/265-black-hat-seo-techniques-to-stay-away-from.aspxThe Dos and Don’ts of Blog Commentinghttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/264-the-dos-and-donts-of-blog-commenting.aspx

Blog commenting is an incredibly useful link building activity for multiple reasons. First off, it’s a good way to build up the amount of quality, one-way links pointing to your site. Secondly, commenting on industry and related blogs helps establish your company as an expert. Blog commenting is also the first step in building a strong relationship with influential bloggers in your industry, a partnership that can have long lasting benefits. But none of these benefits of blog commenting will come if you don’t go about it in the right way.

Here are a few dos and don’ts of blog commenting:

Do
Use a real name whenever possible. People like to talk to other people, not nameless and faceless corporations. Using a real name also makes it harder to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, which can go a long way in building trust with the blogger and the blog’s readers.

Don’t
Include sales pitches in your blog comments. A blog comment box is not the place to take about your company or products. A blog is a place for discussion, not advertising.

Do
Add value to the conversation. While comments like “great post” or “awesome tips” might make a blogger feel all warm and fuzzy inside (then again, maybe not), they don’t do anything for helping establish you as an expert. If you are going to comment on the blog, then actually comment! Pick a point or two that you found particularly interesting and build upon them.

Don’t
Include anchor text in your comments. Some blogs allow you to include links in the comment fields. Unless you have a really good reason to be linking to another site (like a reference or related story) you shouldn’t be targeting keywords. The link back to your site is going to be attached to whatever name you used to leave the comment. Don’t try to stuff extra in the comment itself.

Do
Shoot for a minimum of three sentences. This shows the blogger that you took the time to actually read the post and put some time and effort into leaving a comment.

Don’t
Comment on unrelated blogs. If you own a tax preparation services site, don’t leave comments on sites about dog grooming or wind-surfing. If those sites do happen to have a blog post about tax preparation, then you can consider leaving a comment on that post and that post only.

If you run afoul of any bloggers by leaving irrelevant, sales-pitchy or spammy comments, you risk being labeled a spammer and banned from that blog from all time. Many blog hosting services automatically filter out comments left by users that have been marked as spam. Even if you wrote a fantastic and interesting comment, the blog owner would never even see it. There is little to no chance of redemption once you anger a blogger.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 27 Jun 2011 13:35:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/264-the-dos-and-donts-of-blog-commenting.aspx20,000 Followers Won’t Pay the Billshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/263-20000-followers-wont-pay-the-bills.aspx

Social media has earned a lot of attention in the past year for being the latest “must-have” of any integrated marketing campaign. While social media marketing is extremely valuable and can be tailored to work for almost any company in any industry, it is not the magic bullet that some businesses seem to think it is. Having a strong social presence is just one part of a well-rounded marketing strategy. If you’re focusing the majority of your efforts and budget on social media marketing, you could be limiting your chance for success.

I’ll admit that I use social media marketing on behalf of my own company, and I find it useful in its own way.  Twitter is a great place to link to great content, both blogs and articles that I write and to those that I find interesting/useful. I post the latest SEO video lessons to Facebook and am a member of Internet marketing, SEO and social media marketing groups on LinkedIn. All three social networking sites are a great place to build the Brick Marketing brand, but I don’t expect to get any real leads from my time spent on these sites.

When it comes to establishing connections, I consider getting social media followers/Fans to be of secondary importance. My primary goal is to get website traffic to convert; I want them to fill out a proposal form or sign up for the iXL Studios Newsletter. All my social media marketing efforts are designed to drive traffic to the iXL Studios site, not the other way around. That’s why I always recommend that clients place their “Connect with Us” buttons in the footer of their website. Why would you want to encourage someone to leave your site and Like you on Facebook? Isn’t it better if you encourage them to stay and get them to do business with you right then and there?

I’m not saying that having those relationships on social networking sites isn’t important. You never know what kind of affect your presence there is going to have on a potential customer. Think of it this way, say someone sees a one of your Tweets and follows it over to your blog. They read through a few posts and are impressed by your content, so they sign up for your RSS feed. After a while they connect with you on LinkedIn. They find out you’re going to be appearing at an upcoming tradeshow from a press release you sent out, so they make sure to stop by your booth. There, you get them to opt-in to your bi-weekly newsletter. Somewhere down the line they visit your site and finally fill out your proposal form. Which touch point do you attribute that lead to? They never followed you on Twitter or Liked you on Facebook, but you eventually converted them. Isn’t that the real goal?

Having 30,000 fans/followers is certainly impressive, but you have to look at the quality of those social networking connections. Did you run a Facebook promotion where consumers had to Like your page to get the special deal? How many un-Liked your page when the promotion was over? How many of your Twitter followers actually reTweet your posts? How many of those accounts are even active?

At the end of the day, your social networking activities need to help you build your brand, drive traffic to your site and help you convert visitors into purchasers. Having 30,000 fans/followers doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t help you achieve those goals.

This aricle has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 23 Jun 2011 14:31:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/263-20000-followers-wont-pay-the-bills.aspxRecycle Your Old Blog Postshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/262-recycle-your-old-blog-posts.aspx

Everyone who has been writing in a blog for some period of time probably has some blog posts from way back that are a bit outdate, sloppy or just plain boring. There is good news though because there are some things you can do to those pesky old blog posts to pump some vital life back into them so they can serve some sort of purpose on your blog.

Here are some helpful recommendations to consider about how to recycle your old blog posts:

Re-Optimize
Go back and locate some of those old blog posts that might have not been optimized like they should and tweak them out. Maybe you have an older blog and some important search engine optimization efforts were not in the limelight yet so now you can go back and apply some of those techniques to your current search engine marketing efforts. Adjust paragraphs, add images and tweak titles if the post is clearly not ranking anywhere and you will get some nice new energy out of them.

Social Media
Maybe you have a few really great older blog posts that receive some good search engine attention on their own. Take those older stronger blog posts and slowly re-funnel them through your social networks and try to get a little more out of them. Your social networks are probably much larger than they were when you wrote those posts and there is a good possibility your audience might respond very well to them now.

Add Content
Possibly they haven’t received the attention they deserve due to a lack of content. Try adding some new content to your older blog posts that have been hovering under the radar. Add a video or even extend that list if some of your older posts that might have been set up as lists identifying a specific area of your industry.

Older blog posts have a huge advantage in the search engines because they are sitting on nicely aged domains. Sometimes they just need a little bit of attention so they can start moving around a bit. Try lighting a fire under them in some sort of way and you will see the posts rejuvenate.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 22 Jun 2011 14:37:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/262-recycle-your-old-blog-posts.aspxTotal Or Unique Visitors, What Is the Difference?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/260-total-or-unique-visitors-what-is-the-difference.aspx

New webmasters might be confused about the difference between visitors and unique visitors in your analytics program. If you’re not sure which metric is the more important of the two then perhaps you need to spend a little more time analyzing your traffic. Your Visitor count is the total number of visitors in the reporting period you are observing. Unique visitors is the number of visitors who have visited your site for the first time. Which is the more important metric for your site depends a lot on your site’s mission and your goals, but for most website owners, both metrics tell a story. Total visitor count is an important metric because it tells you precisely how many people who have been on your website. That’s important for determining your conversion rate. 1,000 visitors resulting in 100 sales equals a 10% conversion rate. You can build from that.

Unique visitors are important too, however. Most visitors will not purchase on the first visit. If you have a high unique visitor count relative to your total visitors then that means you are not getting many repeat visitors. That could be a telling sign that your content is not compelling enough. It could also mean that you are losing opportunities to convert traffic and close sales. Maybe your calls to action need work or you are losing visitors somewhere else within your sales pitch. Whatever the case, a high unique visitor count relative to your total visitor count means that most of your site visitors are not returning.

Measuring traffic is not all about raw numbers. It’s about reaching the right target market. And if you have a high unique visitor count relative to your total visitor count, it could be because you are not reaching the right target market. Maybe you need to target other keywords as part or your search engine optimization efforts or create better, stickier content to engage your visitors better to keep them coming back to your website.

Hopefully this will give you some helpful tips into the relationship between your total visitors and unique visitors. Knowing how to analyze your traffic numbers can go a long way to knowing how to solve your online problems and can help you craft a long term strategy for future success.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 21 Jun 2011 15:06:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/260-total-or-unique-visitors-what-is-the-difference.aspxHow to Avoid a Social Media Nightmarehttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/259-how-to-avoid-a-social-media-nightmare.aspx

An online picture that claims McDonald’s restaurants were charging African Americans an extra $1.50 because of a recent string of robberies was a hoax but the damage could have been devastating if the company had not handled the situation the way it did.

The picture had been around for a while but resurfaced earlier the month on Twitter with the hashtag, #seriouslyMcDonalds. The 800 number on the picture actually led callers to Yum Foods, a rival of the fast food chain. It is not believed that Yum Foods had anything to do with the hoax.

So what can business owners learn from McDonalds? First, the company monitors social media and was aware almost immediately that the picture was online. If you are not keeping up with what is being said about you online, you are in danger of letting rumors, or even some truths, get out of hand. You can monitor what is being said about you in two ways:

  • Set up Google alerts for your company name. That way you will know immediately if something has been posted online.
  • Periodically conduct searches on social media sites for your company name. Sometimes a complaint is not picked up by the search engines.

Clearly the McDonald’s picture was a hoax but what if you or someone in your company makes a mistake and it is posted in someone’s Twitter feed. If you want an example of what not to do, look at the Anthony Weiner scandal. Rather than admit he sent sexually charged tweets and messages, Weiner lied and said his account was hacked. How long do you think it took Twitter officials (or any IT expert) to figure out that was not true?  It will never be known if his career could be salvaged if he had told the truth immediately, but the story would probably not have had the shelf-life that it did.

Conducting a social media campaign of your own that is honest and timely can quell any firestorm that surrounds a hoax or a company blunder. If you don’t have someone monitoring social media and the Internet, don’t wait until your reputation has been attacked to find someone.


This article has been reposted to www.ixlstudios.com from highervisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 20 Jun 2011 15:23:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/259-how-to-avoid-a-social-media-nightmare.aspx5 SEO Mistakes to Avoidhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/258-5-seo-mistakes-to-avoid.aspx
It is impossible to be perfect. There is no one right way to do search engine optimization, but there are plenty of ways to derail your efforts and keep you from ranking on your coveted keywords.  No one wants to have their SEO efforts wasted, so here are the Top 5 SEO mistakes I have come across that I aim to help you avoid.

1) URL Confusion

Sending mixed signals regarding your URL is a common mistake and can create the appearance of duplicate content. If you allow your website to display with and without a www (http://www.notarealsite.com or http://notarealsite.com), then you could be confusing the search engines.  You should setup within your hosting account to automatically forward to one version or the other. Another way to create URL confusion is to link internally within your website back to the homepage using a URL containing the index page (http://www.notarealsite.com/index.php).  When linking back to your homepage, always use the base URL (http://www.notarealsite.com).

2) Duplicate Meta Titles

Many people forget to change some of the basics such as the Meta title of their pages. I see numerous websites using the same page title throughout the majority of their website. Every page should have a distinct identity. It is better to help the search engines out and provide a clear theme to each and every one of your pages. You might have some great content, but the search engines won’t give you all the relevancy credit that you deserve if you don’t give them a little help.

3) Inadequate Keyword Research

Everyone wants to hit a homerun and rank for the top searched for keywords in their niche. That all takes time and is a good long-term goal. A wiser strategy would be to find some keywords that you have a better chance of ranking for in the short-term and yet still structure your pages so that you can still achieve your longer term goals. When you do your research, I recommend putting your keywords into SEOmoz’s keyword difficulty tool. It will tell you how much effort may be needed to rank for specific keywords based on certain metrics they use.

4) Content Linking Confusion

Another common issue is interlinking within your website through the content that you write. When you write an article or blog post, it is normal to want to link a keyword within the content back to another page on your website. That is great and you should do that, as it does help build relevancy back to certain pages of your website. The problem that a lot of people have is that they aren’t consistent when using specific keywords. In one article they will link that word to “misc-keyword-page1.html” and in another article link that same keyword to “misc-keyword-page2.html”. The problem that it creates is that by not being consistent, you aren’t doing the search engines or yourself any favors by not clearly showing which page is the most relevant to that specific keyword.

5) Search Friendly URLs

Do you have page URLs that look like this: “showcategories.php?showcat=widgets”? These URLs are sometimes harder for the search engines to crawl, as they are basically database search queries. There are numerous articles on the topic of “Mod rewrite” which can help you make your URLs look more like this: “/my-awesome-widgets-page/”. The additional benefit is that these nice and pretty URLs can be shaped to contain some nice keywords and help you get ranked higher in the SERPS.



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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 17 Jun 2011 14:06:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/258-5-seo-mistakes-to-avoid.aspxIncrease Your Facebook Likes in 10 Easy Stepshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/257-increase-your-facebook-likes-in-10-easy-steps.aspx
So you have a Facebook Page and you are wondering how do I get more likes? This is the most common question asked by all Facebook Page owners.

When talking about Facebook Pages, the famous line from “The Field of Dreams” comes to mind: “If you build it they will come.” This is the hope of many businesses or fan pages when they create their Facebook Page. However, “likes” do not appear magically.

You must take certain steps to lure Fans to come to your page. There are many ways you can go about doing this; some good and some bad. However, we are going to share with you 10 easy steps to dramatically increase your current Facebook Likes in a good way!

  1. Provide Quality Updates – Although this may be a given, when you provide high quality updates that are informative our current Fans will respond with comments and other updates. All of the commenting will eventually spread to other users which then create a viral marketing campaign that increases “likes”.
  2. Ask Questions – When you ask questions from your Facebook page it encourages your existing fan base to respond and once again comment. This as we mentioned above creates a viral waterfall for you.
  3. Integrate Social Sharing – Add social bookmarking buttons to your website, email signature, or blog. Incorporating this will just bring more presence to your page and allow people that wouldn’t have otherwise known you had a Facebook Page. Check out Add This or Share This for more information on social bookmarking buttons.
  4. Run a Contest – One of the most effective ways to dramatically increase your Facebook Likes quickly is to have a contest with a great giveaway. For example, everyone that likes your page in the next 10 days will be entered into a drawing for a gift certificate for your business. Make your goal public. Such as getting to 1k fans in 5 days.
  5. Videos – Post short videos on your Facebook page that fans can watch and engage through commenting. The videos should be funny or promotional that sells your company or product.
  6. Create a Compelling Welcome Page – Send all prospective fans to a welcome page that compels them to “like” your page. See this great page by RedBull.
  7.  Place Facebook Ads – You can really boost your Facebook Likes by placing an ad. Even with a smaller weekly/monthly budget you should see a dramatic increase in your like count.
  8. Suggest to Friends – While this isn’t the greatest way to dramatically increase your Facebook Likes, you will most likely see a positive engagement, especially if you have a lot of friends.
  9. Embed Widgets on your Website – Facebook offers many different plugins for you to place on your website. The Fan Box widget is one of the most popular and works well to display your current fans and stream of updates.
  10. Encourage Shares and Likes - For each of your Facebook Fan Page updates, people can either “Share” or “Like” the update.  Whenever someone “Shares” or “Likes” your updates, that action is then spread throughout their Facebook news stream, letting all of their friends know about what that person “Shared” or “Liked”.
This article has been republished to http://www.ixlstudios.com from www.morevisibility.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 16 Jun 2011 16:22:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/257-increase-your-facebook-likes-in-10-easy-steps.aspxIs Facebook Losing Popularity in the US and Canada?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/256-is-facebook-losing-popularity-in-the-us-and-canada.aspx

Facebook is denying reports that it is losing customers.

On Monday, it was reported by numerous media outlets including Global News that Facebook lost 6 million users in the US and 1.5 million users in Canada in May.

The figures were originally reported by an independent news service, Inside Facebook. Inside Facebook obtained May’s active user figures from a tracking service that is based on data provided by Facebook in its advertising tool.

The social networking giant, which typically does not comment on third party statistics, released a statement Tuesday questioning the figures published Monday on InsideFacebook.com.

“From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook. We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50 per cent of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day,” said the company in a statement.

After Monday’s report, Facebook clarified to media outlets that data obtained in its advertising tool is not meant to measure traffic.

Inside Facebook published a follow up article Tuesday, stating that figures published on the website are obtained after comparing their data against leading third party tracking services, such as Compete, comScore, Google Ad Planner, and Quantcast.

 Despite Facebook’s statement that its advertising tool is not meant to be used as a measure of traffic, Inside Facebook writer Eric Eldon replied, “We use it anyway because it seems to be the most specific, and directionally accurate, despite the questions.”

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from http://www.globalnews.ca/ with credit given to original author.

 

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 15 Jun 2011 13:37:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/256-is-facebook-losing-popularity-in-the-us-and-canada.aspxTips for Conducting a Link Audithttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/255-tips-for-conducting-a-link-audit.aspx

A link audit is the first step in developing any link building strategy. Before you can start doing any new link building, you need to have a clear picture of what has been done. Even if you have never engaged in any intentional link building before now, chances are you still have some amount of one-way links pointing to your site. These natural links develop over time as other sites link to your. A blog review of one of your products, for instance. Or an article quoting your VP of Marketing from an interview they gave to an online industry publication. These natural links just happen, regardless of whether you intended for them to occur or not.

A link audit is going to give you a baseline of where your site is in terms of link building. You need to know what kind of links are passing on their link juice to your site. A link audit is going to find almost every link that is pointing to your site—the good, the bad and the ugly ones.

Everyone should sign up for a Google Webmaster Tools account, if you haven’t already. This free tool allows you to see a list of internal and external webpages that link to your site. This is going to be one of the most accurate link audits you’ll find for your site. If you don’t use Google Webmaster tools, you can also use Link Diagnosis to run the link audit. Another free tool, Link Diagnosis is also a great way to run a link audit on the competition.

Once you have your set of links, you need to visit every single one that points to your site. Depending how much link building you’ve done, this could be hundreds or thousands of links. It’s time consuming and not at all glamorous, but it needs to be done at least once a year. You have to visit every link because you need to determine what kind of link it is. You also need to know if there are any unacceptable links pointing to your site that could end up hurting your SEO efforts (i.e. links from pornography or gambling sites).

If this is the first time you’ve run a link audit and you haven’t done any previous link building, don’t be surprised to see a lot of the same types of links—link exchanges from partner sites is probably the most common. However, if you have done link building before, you should be seeing a variety of many different sources of links including: blog comments, directory listings, business profiles, articles, news stories and blogs, press releases, video marketing, social media sites and more. Search engines like to see a diversified approach to link building and a link audit is going to help you see where you’ve been concentrating your efforts.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 14 Jun 2011 15:00:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/255-tips-for-conducting-a-link-audit.aspxTurn Your Website Into a Social Machinehttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/254-turn-your-website-into-a-social-machine.aspx

Being social online is the new cool but for many entering the social media space online it is a daunting task. Many businesses still think they are very susceptible to a reputation issue if they say one wrong thing and the reality is you really have to screw up in the social space to tarnish your image if you are not a mainstream brand.

Some ways to turn your website into a social machine:
Share Buttons
By adding share buttons to your website you give your audience the opportunity to share your content and information on a variety of other social networks. Many buttons have the ability to share your information through a large network of social platforms giving you extra coverage. Some good share buttons are the Share This and Add This buttons.

Facebook Like Box
A Facebook Like Box is a great way to start building up your Facebook fan page for your business. If you receive a generous amount of traffic or even just a few visitors a Facebook like box will allow your visitors to become part of your little community. Overtime that Facebook community will grow and expand leaving you with a new area to leverage for your business.

Twitter Feed
Incorporate a Twitter feed into your website so your visitors can see that you communicate on Twitter. Chances are some of them are there as well and they will want to follow you and see what you have to say.

Launch A Blog
Launch a blog on your website and leave the ability for others to comment on blog posts. If your blog posts have some stickiness to them you will see nice discussions start to build on some of them over time.

Turning your website into a social machine really just comes down to putting yourself out there a bit. The social space can be scary for entrepreneurs who are not use to the web marketing space but the reality is that there is not much to be scared about.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 13 Jun 2011 12:41:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/254-turn-your-website-into-a-social-machine.aspxMisunderstood SEO Conceptshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/253-misunderstood-seo-concepts.aspx

Search engine optimization is not a straight forward approach and oftentimes requires experience and knowledge in order to get it right. Over the years some key important optimization techniques have been seriously misunderstood and completely butchered.

Here is a list of common misunderstood SEO concepts that I came up with:

Website Meta Info
You shouldn’t have 100 keywords stuffed into your keyword section of each page of your site. There should be no more than 5-7 keywords in this space strategic to the material on that web page.

Internal Linking
Your web pages should not have more links than content. This is going to cause a horrible user experience and could even cause a penalty if really abused.

Footer Links
Years ago it was a popular measure to stuff many different links into your footer with the hopes of misleading the search engines. If you did it years ago the algorithm might allow it but if you try it with a new website today you might have some troubles on your hands.

Directory Submissions
Directory submissions can generate nice link power when you are listed in strategic niche directories surrounding your area of business. Purchasing a directory submission package promising 1,000 links is not strategic and oftentimes abused.

Article Marketing
Article marketing is all about positioning yourself as an expert in your field by writing a few key pieces of literature. Paying someone overseas to re-write the same article 500 times is not going to help your business in any way.

One Way Linking
If you are a plumbing company and you are seeking out links on a florist directory you have the concept of one way link building all wrong. It is all about creating targeted one way links from either news or niche sources. Completely irrelevant links such as this could actually hurt your search engine optimization efforts.

Content Writing
Yes, content is important but that doesn’t mean that your local dentist practice in Sheboygan, WI needs 2,000 pages of content so that you can dominate the search results. This is an old school approach that really doesn’t work.

If you are going to conduct search engine optimization for your company business you need to be able to get it right. Things are always changing and it is important to roll with the punches so that you don’t find your website on the wrong side of the search engine space.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 10 Jun 2011 13:07:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/253-misunderstood-seo-concepts.aspxSay NO to the Status Quo and YES! to Achievementhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/252-say-no-to-the-status-quo-and-yes-to-achievement.aspx

You may not realize it, but you are making choices every day that affect your overall success and achievement. Those small choices that you make without much thought are the very choices that can undermine you if you are unaware of them. It is a natural, human tendency to disregard the importance of our everyday choices because the consequences of those choices are delayed. This is why a systems approach to achievement is absolutely essential.

This system should be based on your dreams and goals but separated from the self-imposed limitations of your natural, human instincts. The no-change, status-quo of life is instinctively interpreted as security. We instinctively seek a comfort zone in life where nothing will ever change. The reality is that, although we may desire achievement, we instinctively run from change. An achievement system will actually bypass your natural instincts, thereby making real change possible.

As we touched on earlier, your choices have amazing power to shape your future. Achievement can be defined as simply the result of doing the "right things" consistently over a sustained period of time. Doing the "right things" is a direct result of your personal choice. Your future is built on the choices you make, day by day, moment by moment.

What effective choices should I focus on to start on a path to achievement?

Choose to Manage your Attitude

An attitude can best be defined as a habit of thought. If you do not assume personal responsibility for developing your own effective, positive attitudes, the world around you will shape your attitudes with average thinking, which is usually negative and unproductive. As a result, you become a victim of your own ineffective thinking patterns.

On the other hand, positive attitude is simply a predetermined habit of thought dominated by faith, hope, and positive expectancy. Intentionally choosing to maintain an effective, positive attitude will be your most significant lesson in life. Your daily management of the choice of attitude, on a moment-by-moment basis, is a key element in your future achievement.

Choose Effective Actions

Just like the choice of attitude, action is a choice, and the choices regarding your effective actions require your consistent, daily management. Every day you choose your activities. Those activities will either be effective or ineffective.

Effective actions are those predetermined activities that support the accomplishment of your goals. Ineffective actions, on the other hand, are those activities that tend to fill up the daily schedule but are not related to your goals. They are usually things that need to be done but are not directly related to your achievement. If you are ever unsure if an action is effective or ineffective, simply look at the product of that action. Effective actions always deliver desirable results!

Choose to Be Accountable

First, don't think of accountability as doing something that you do not want to do or reporting to someone you do not respect. That is a negative connotation, and doesn't apply here. From now on, I want you to think of accountability as a motivational force that will push you beyond your self-imposed limitations, and that is a very good thing!

It is important to seek an "outside-in" perspective to bring about the kind of change you need for sustainable achievement and growth. This perspective can come from a mentor or group of people with like-minded interests to whom you choose to be accountable for your goals.

Achievement is about moving to the next level of life, about doing things you never dreamed possible. To achieve, you must use all of your creative gifts of imagination, intuition, and choose to counterbalance your instinctive responses to change. You can do this - you just have to CHOOSE to do the work it takes to get there. Start by making the choice to have a positive attitude, complete effective actions, and embrace accountability. Achievement is within reach!

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.goarticles.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 09 Jun 2011 14:37:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/252-say-no-to-the-status-quo-and-yes-to-achievement.aspxOnline Reputation – Slow to Build, Fast to Ruinhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/251-online-reputation-slow-to-build-fast-to-ruin.aspx

Your business’s online reputation may be one of the most important things affecting your long term success. The more trust consumers and search engines have in your brand and your company, the better you are going to rank, the more traffic you should see and the higher your conversion rate will be. Building a strong online reputation is no easy task, and it doesn’t happen overnight. Everything you do for your SEO; link building, article marketing, blog commenting, social networking and more, all affect your online reputation. One misstep could send your carefully managed reputation crashing down.

One of the main components of building a strong online reputation is gaining the loyalty and trust of the online public. Any company who has created a business blog knows that earning a steady stream of loyal readers doesn’t happen right away. It only comes after you spend the time publishing quality, relevant content on a constant basis. Your readers need to learn that your blog is a good place for information and that your blog is worth coming back to. This only happens over time.

But for as long as it takes to build up an online reputation and subsequent base of loyal readers/fans/follows, it can just as quickly be destroyed. One of the quickest ways to damage your online reputation is to stray from your core beliefs. If you diverge from what you’ve traditionally practiced, you could lose a lot of credibility.

For instance, I am a white hat SEO professional all the way. That is the model I’ve built my business on and it is something I don’t waiver on when I handle clients’ SEO. But let’s say I started to dip my toe in the grey hat sandbox by engaging in link exchanges. I create a “links” page on my site that links to a multitude of unrelated sites in exchange for a link back, or even some sort of payment for any traffic I send over. If you look back through the SEO Journal, you’ll see plenty of blog posts where I talk about black hat SEO and what a bad practice it is. All the sudden I’m doing it? What does that say about me and my business practices? If I am willing to do that with my own company, what other grey hat tactics might I be employing on behalf of my clients?

The advent of social media means that news, good and bad, travels around the world and back in a matter of moments. One complaint or pieces of negative press can snowball and turn into a disastrous, reputation destroying avalanche. Don’t give online trolls any ammunition to bring down your brand! Practice what you preach and build a strong reputation that can withstand negative attacks.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 08 Jun 2011 16:27:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/251-online-reputation-slow-to-build-fast-to-ruin.aspxSocial Media For Lawyers and Law Firmshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/250-social-media-for-lawyers-and-law-firms.aspx

There are many good reasons why lawyers and law firms should be using social media marketing. It is inexpensive. It adds to your client list. It drives traffic to your website and it is an ideal way to brand your practice and interact with prospective clients. Many law firms are already engaged in it. If you are not part of this dynamic marketing tool yet, here is a short list that will help you get started.

Open a Facebook account. Facebook is the world’s biggest social media site. It claims to have 700 million active users – and 50% of them log onto it everyday. Facebook has become a digital business card for many attorneys. It allows you to network with old friends and create new ones. All of the people that you meet or reconnect with on Facebook are potential clients. Your primary purpose on Facebook is to connect with as many people as you can.

LinkedIn is another great networking tool for law firms. Set up a LinkedIn profile. This allows you to list your current and former affiliations. There are also communities and networking groups you can join. Become a visible part of any community that you join by contributing information and adding to discussions.

Twitter is the third big site for law firms. It asks the question, “What are you doing?” Write short one-liners announcing new services or post links to your website. Twitter is a public forum and it offers some beneficial advertising opportunities for your firm but you don’t want to “tweet” anything that is too personal. Information about family, friends or subjects that are not relevant to your law firm should be avoided. Any information about cases you are working on should be avoided as well, although you can mention the kind of cases that your firm specializes in.

Create a blog on your website. Blogs provide information about important cases, rulings, current legal news or news about your law firm. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs and web pages. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Blogs are also a good way to drive traffic to your website.

It is important for one person to be in charge of social networking responsibilities for the firm. This makes managing your efforts easier and eliminates any kind of confusion. All associates should be aware of social media rules and responsibilities. If you do not have company guidelines regarding social media and social media marketing, it is time to create them.

The verdict is in – social media marketing is vital for a lawyer or law firm. Find out more about social media marketing and how IntelBuilder Social Media Platform can help you attract more clients today.

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 07 Jun 2011 13:21:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/250-social-media-for-lawyers-and-law-firms.aspxWhat is Web 2.0?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/249-what-is-web-20.aspx

What Exactly is Web 2.0?

Network marketing and online businesses and websites are everywhere on the World Wide Web and a big part of their success is due to the valuable platform called Web2.0. However, for as many people that are using Web 2.0, there are an equal number of people that don't truly understand what Web 2.0 is and the possibilities and opportunities it can open for them. Many individuals are already using Web 2.0 on the internet in different ways without even realizing it. Some of the more popular internet applications that are using Web 2.0 include Flickr, YouTube as well as many different Yahoo sites. So, as you can see, you are already using Web 2.0 without even being aware of it. But, do you really know what Web 2.0 is?

Web 2.0 consists of different parts, which when all put together, give the user a fantastic web experience in which they can integrate many different functions and applications. One part of Web 2.0 is RIA or rich internet applications. Two examples of RIA are Ajax or Flash, which are interrelated web development techniques which allow you to retrieve data from another site without it interfering or affecting the current page you're working on. RIA allows you to bring something from your desktop into your browser such as data, graphics, etc by means of "copy and paste", "drag and drop" or whichever method you prefer.

Another part of Web 2.0 is ROA or service oriented architecture. Some examples of ROA that may be familiar to you or you may have heard of include RSS (really simple syndication), feeds, mash-ups and web servers. The best and easiest way to describe what ROA does is that it takes web applications along with their different functions and allows them to be easily integrated in such a way that their functions can all work together with other applications to develop one dynamic website with various functions.

The third important part of Web 2.0 is the Social Web. In Web 2.0, the end user will interact with the different web applications with methods such as blogging, tagging, using podcasts, etc. In actuality, the end user is also the participant in Web 2.0 by using these different social web methods. By the use all three of these important parts of Web 2.0, you web application is going to be very "user-friendly" with many functions.

Do you remember when you first began using the internet and were trying to navigate through a page only to have it disappear as soon as you clicked on one of their links? If it didn't disappear, it would freeze or lock up, making it inoperable and almost the only way to get out of it was to reboot. Good News! Web 2.0 allows you the opportunity to use many websites by integrating the many functionalities they each have.

With each new number added after an application or software (e.g. Web1.0, Web 2.0), the world is being given a new and upgraded version of a software. Web 2.0 is offering a new and better version of the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 offers us functions and features we never thought possible in the past.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.goarticles.com

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 06 Jun 2011 13:44:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/249-what-is-web-20.aspxSocial Media is More than Just Posting on Facebook and Twitterhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/248-social-media-is-more-than-just-posting-on-facebook-and-twitter.aspx

If you are a business owner who is developing a social media strategy or if you just want to improve what you are doing now, congratulations! You obviously know that using social media for your business is more than just joining Facebook or Twitter and posting some clever sayings every once in a while. And you know that social media is a great way to market your business. You should plan your social media strategy just like you did your business plan when you first opened. Here are a few tips to get you started.

• Decide who is going to be responsible for your social media. Not only is social media time consuming, it’s constantly changing because it is competitive. Last year both Facebook and Twitter made changes to their site. If you don’t have someone in your company who has the time to keep up with managing the sites and the changes, consider hiring a consultant who is an expert in social media.

• Research. The Internet has a plethora of advice about social media management and how to use it to benefit your company. Take advantage of these resources when creating your strategy.

• Look beyond Facebook and Twitter. It’s easy to think of the two social media giants when creating your plan. But there is so much more to social media.

Here are just a few suggestions:
1. Blogs. Share information and news about your company. Blogs are easy to create in programs such as WordPress.
2. Video sharing. Thanks to advances in technology, it’s easy to create videos to share online. YouTube is a great place to add these videos to showcase your company.
3. Other social networking sites. There are many other sites that allow you to network with customers and colleagues. These include Plaxo, LinkedIn and Yammer. Consider adding these to your social media plan.

•Plan to be consistent. Many companies start off with a bang then fade away on their sites. The key to keeping people engaged on your sites is to constantly provide great content. This is why it is very important to have someone responsible for keeping up the social media sites and making sure they are current.

Many people become frustrated when their social media is not bringing in customers or generating much response. Often this frustration is because there is no strategy in place. If you are not sure as to how to create a strategy, seek help from a social media specialist.

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 03 Jun 2011 16:29:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/248-social-media-is-more-than-just-posting-on-facebook-and-twitter.aspxSEO Tip of the Dayhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/247-seo-tip-of-the-day.aspx

Here’s a quick SEO tip:

If you are a local company and you do business on the local level more than through cyberspace or by long distance, optimize your site for local business. You can do that with just a few simple techniques:

  • Find an optimal location somewhere on your page and put your physical address on each page of your website
  • If your mailing address is different than your physical address, include that on every page of your website as well
  • In the body of your copy include the names of local towns, cities, counties, parishes, or townships; you’ll want this to sound natural when people read it so don’t just stuff them in there to impress the search engines
  • On the home page, About Us page, and on each service or product page have a “We serve the following areas: and include well-known neighborhoods, cities, towns, etc. in your area of service
  • Put your phone number on every page of your website as well; if searchers are looking for a specific phone number but don’t know it entirely they may search for an area code plus the three digit local extension and guess who they’ll find?
  • You’ll also want to put your zip code and the name of your county, township, or city in the keywords meta tag, but don’t put too many place names here
  • Of course, title, headlines and h2 and h3 tags that include local place names are effective as well

These tips have been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 02 Jun 2011 15:25:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/247-seo-tip-of-the-day.aspxDo Not Blame Your SEO for Slow Businesshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/246-do-not-blame-your-seo-for-slow-business.aspx

I see it many times, things get slow for a certain business and they quickly blame their search marketing campaign or SEO. How about you look at a few different things that could be triggering your lack of revenues?

Products/Services
Just because you think your products/services are the cat’s bag doesn’t mean everyone else does too. You have to realize that search engine optimization is the process of creating traffic and visibility. Once the visitor arrives it is up to your business and your brand to really take care of the rest.

Poor Website
In today’s business world a website needs to be running like a well-oiled machine especially if you have an e-commerce website. A visitor needs to have the euphoric feeling when they arrive at your site, that feeling that makes them want to navigate through pages and buy products from you. Make sure your website is updated regularly in order to keep things fresh and up to date.

Lack Of Brand
Does your business lack any branding ability? Or do you have a branding message that is the wrong one for your audience. Branding is a strong motivating factor as to why people do what they do on any website. Whether it is just hanging out on your website and reading through all your blog posts, submitting information through a lead form or just going to straight to your products page and making a purchase.

Lack Of Conversion Aspects
Conversion aspects on a website are also a large component to slow down any sort of website conversions, actions or sales. You have to have things in place to correctly funnel website traffic down to its ultimate goal. Never assume that people are going to understand what they need to do when they arrive to your website. You have to lay it out for them. All the search engine optimization in the world will not help you if this is not correctly put in place.

Don’t be quick to blame your search engine optimization for lack of business. Start by taking a good hard look at your website and business model first.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 01 Jun 2011 13:22:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/246-do-not-blame-your-seo-for-slow-business.aspxHow to Have a Cool Facebook Pagehttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/245-how-to-have-a-cool-facebook-page.aspx

Is having a robust and user friendly Facebook fan page the new cool when it comes to web marketing? Since Facebook announced their fan pages years ago, businesses have been trying to figure out the secret sauce to building up a fun and successful fan page in order to build and grow a community. There are a number of ways that you can build up your page and get people talking but it is going to take a little bit of work. This doesn’t just happen overnight.

Facebook “Like” Box
For starters, you will want to incorporate a Facebook “like” box into your site somewhere so that your community can start growing. You need to find a way for people to become a member first. Showing your website traffic that a Facebook fan page exists is really the first step.

Entice People to Become Fans
Give your website traffic an actual reason to become a fan. Unless you are a heavily branded business it might take some work to get people to “like” your fan page, so you have to give them a reason. Offer special Facebook promotions to fan members along with discounts and news.

Custom Facebook Page Design
If you take a look around you will notice that some of the more popular Facebook fan pages have their own custom design for when traffic first sets eyes on it. After that the traffic is free to navigate around through the other tabs including the wall where everyone is hanging out.

Engage Your Facebook Community
The main purpose of the fan page is to build a community, grow a brand, and trigger a following; so make sure to engage your community in a number of ways. Start discussions and ask questions on your wall so that your fans can get involved in discussing various industry topics.

If you want to have a nice robust and active Facebook fan page you are going to have to treat it like a community and entice your audience to perform an action on it, otherwise it could just sit there building up dust and that is not conducive to building an online brand.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 31 May 2011 12:42:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/245-how-to-have-a-cool-facebook-page.aspxTop Tips For Keeping Clients Happyhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/244-top-tips-for-keeping-clients-happy.aspxYou've probably heard the saying "It's easier to keep an existing
customer than to get a new one."

Well, it's more than just a saying, it's true.

That's why you want to take very good care of your current
clients or customers and do whatever you can to give them
lots of reasons and opportunity to buy from you over and over again.

Who wants to constantly be out there pounding the pavement
looking for new clients and customers? That's a lot of work. It's much
easier to up-sell or cross-sell to people who already
know and love you.

Here are  tips you can use to put a successful Relationship
Marketing program into place so you can reap the benefits for
years to come.

#1 Create a customer database or file

Whether you have many clients or customers or just a few,
make sure you keep records with important details about them.
These details may vary depending on your line of business,
but they may include their purchase history, special dates
such as their birthday or anniversary, family member names
or their favorite restaurant or leisure activity.

#2 Never take your customers for granted

Your customers are the reason you are in business.
Never assume they will always be there. Continue to earn
their trust and show them you care and value their business.

#3 Show your appreciation

Do little things to show how much you appreciate having
them as a client. Send them a thank you card or token of appreciation.
Do something nice for them. Sometimes its even as simple
as just saying "thank you."

#4 Stay in touch

Find ways to stay in touch with your clients. Send out a regular
newsletter. Clip and send them news articles about their
industry or issues they are concerned about. Make regular
telephone calls or send email. Send holiday cards. Use these
tools to remind them you're still around and that you still care.

#5 Take an interest in them and their business

Ask questions. Find out what their challenges are and see
if you can help them. Show them you understand their business
or their issues and you're interested in more than just their
last purchase.

#6 Serve them

Make it a priority to go out of your way to provide services that
truly deliver and make your customers' lives or their businesses
better. Provide great customer service. Do whatever you can
to help them achieve their goals.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.goarticles.com

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 27 May 2011 14:36:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/244-top-tips-for-keeping-clients-happy.aspxShould You Ask Permission Before Scraping Content?http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/243-should-you-ask-permission-before-scraping-content.aspx

Content scraping has a bad reputation, but it isn’t necessarily bad ALL the time. Before you decide to use a blog post or content from and RSS feed for your own website you should first think about the implications. Not every webmaster will appreciate it.

RSS feeds were established to allow for easier content distribution. The idea is to distribute your content to readers without those readers having to visit your website to do so. Therefore, it seems, you should be able to use content from an RSS feed on your own website without asking permission. Right?

Actually, that is technically correct. But there are some courtesies that you might extend. First, never, please, NEVER, use someone else’s content, even if from an RSS feed or article distribution site, without giving them attribution (usually done with a link back to their website). If you use someone else’s content without permission and without giving attribution then that is content theft. Shame on you.

However, scraping content from an RSS feed to use on your website is OK if you are linking back to the site from which the content originated. You must give the author and the publisher credit for using their work. But should you ask for permission.

Understand that I’m no lawyer so this is not legal advice. You should speak to your own legal counsel, but the way I see it is like this: If content exists in the form of an RSS feed, there is an implied consent to use it. You can run the feed through your own website as long as it links back to the source. No permission needed. But it would be a professional courtesy to send an e-mail to the content’s publisher and author asking for their permission to do so. You might technically be on sound legal ground if you don’t (again, speak to your attorney), but what will the social effects be? Some webmasters do frown on others using their content without express permission. So it will always work to your benefit to seek permission first.

Before you send an e-mail asking for permission to use content from an RSS feed, look on the website for terms of use. Some publishers will publish their terms on their site so it’s worth a few extra minutes to look and see if you find them.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 26 May 2011 15:54:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/243-should-you-ask-permission-before-scraping-content.aspxMisunderstood SEO Conceptshttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/242-misunderstood-seo-concepts.aspx

Search engine optimization is not a straight forward approach and oftentimes requires experience and knowledge in order to get it right. Over the years some key important optimization techniques have been seriously misunderstood and completely butchered.

Here is a list of common misunderstood SEO concepts that I came up with:

Website Meta Info
You shouldn’t have 100 keywords stuffed into your keyword section of each page of your site. There should be no more than 5-7 keywords in this space strategic to the material on that web page.

Internal Linking
Your web pages should not have more links than content. This is going to cause a horrible user experience and could even cause a penalty if really abused.

Footer Links
Years ago it was a popular measure to stuff many different links into your footer with the hopes of misleading the search engines. If you did it years ago the algorithm might allow it but if you try it with a new website today you might have some troubles on your hands.

Directory Submissions
Directory submissions can generate nice link power when you are listed in strategic niche directories surrounding your area of business. Purchasing a directory submission package promising 1,000 links is not strategic and oftentimes abused.

Article Marketing
Article marketing is all about positioning yourself as an expert in your field by writing a few key pieces of literature. Paying someone overseas to re-write the same article 500 times is not going to help your business in any way.

One Way Linking
If you are a plumbing company and you are seeking out links on a florist directory you have the concept of one way link building all wrong. It is all about creating targeted one way links from either news or niche sources. Completely irrelevant links such as this could actually hurt your search engine optimization efforts.

Content Writing
Yes, content is important but that doesn’t mean that your local dentist practice in Sheboygan, WI needs 2,000 pages of content so that you can dominate the search results. This is an old school approach that really doesn’t work.

If you are going to conduct search engine optimization for your company business you need to be able to get it right. Things are always changing and it is important to roll with the punches so that you don’t find your website on the wrong side of the search engine space.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterWed, 25 May 2011 12:39:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/242-misunderstood-seo-concepts.aspxAsking for Referrals Is Not a Dirty Deedhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/241-asking-for-referrals-is-not-a-dirty-deed.aspx

Asking for Referrals Is Not A Dirty Deed

Why is asking for referrals so hard to do sometimes? After all, word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising, so why do we jeopardize our own efforts by hesitating to talk about referrals? Asking for referrals is almost like a dirty deed that we fear will make us look like aggressive salespeople rather than seasoned professionals.

Asking For Referrals Shows Your Level of Confident Professionalism

The opposite is actually the truth. By not asking for referrals, you are not showing the level of confidence required to build a successful business. While some people will be so impressed with what you do they will feel compelled to tell others, there are people that won't be sure if you are receptive to new clients. How will they know you are open to referrals unless you start asking for referrals?

Asking for Referrals Because People Like to Do Business With People They Know

The fact of the matter is that most people prefer to do business with people they know or have heard about through friends as opposed to total strangers. That makes the process of asking for referrals easier and more beneficial than cold canvassing. So the bottom line is that you can build you business based on referrals or keep cold canvassing your whole career which do you really prefer?

Asking For Referrals is Easier Than Cold Canvassing

Clearly, it is easier to take advantage of expanding the network you already have than adding completely new members. Cold canvassing is hard work and doesn't always yield results. Your current business is actually a web of relationships with unlimited possibilities to connect with the people your clients know. To reach these important relationships, you need to pursue them. It is essential to change the way you think when it comes to referrals. There is nothing pushy about asking for referrals and it's a natural part of doing business that people expect. Remember, they don't know how busy you are and whether you want referrals unless you are actively asking for referrals.

Asking For Referrals Should Become a Habit

They key to asking for referrals is to make it a habit. During your initial conversations with a client, let them know you always strive to deliver your best because you want them to tell everyone they know about your business. Post a sign in your office and add a line to your business cards and stationery that you welcome referrals. If a client compliments the work you are doing, let them know you are pleased and ask if they know anyone else who would benefit from your services. Your clients will be impressed with your desire to serve and your dedication, which is sure to bring in viable referrals.

Referrals are one of the most powerful sales tools you have so don't minimize their relevancy because you feel it's a dirty deed to start asking for referrals. When you make asking for referrals a part of your everyday routine, it will become easier and easier. As your network begins to effortlessly grow based on positive word of mouth, asking for referrals will become second nature.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.goarticles.com

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]]>Chet SlaterTue, 24 May 2011 13:52:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/241-asking-for-referrals-is-not-a-dirty-deed.aspxBeing Realistic With SEO Is Step 1http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/240-being-realistic-with-seo-is-step-1.aspx

I come across some crazy things sometimes in this industry and I wonder how and why sometimes people feel they deserve to be successful online after one month when other businesses have spent years putting in hard work to build up their brands in the online space. If you are getting involved in the internet marketing space you really need to be realistic with everything surrounding you online.

I hear people say things like I want 500 quality links in the next 2 weeks. Or I need 1000 unique visitors daily fast. Seriously? Come on you need to be realistic. First of all why is it that you deserve these numbers? Have you put in the leg work in your industry to get these types of numbers? Or did you read how search engine optimization helps you with inbound traffic and you assumed you can leap frog the important part of building a business, time.

Being realistic with yourself should be the very first thing you do when you venture into the online space with any business. The reality is that the industry is something different than what it once was and whether you remember how it was back in the day or if you just started, things take time. I think it is crazy when I hear these types of requests because it really takes time and effort to create a business online. If someone got you 500 links in 2 weeks I would worry about the health of your website because that would most likely be a black hat SEO approach which you don’t want.

Search engine marketing takes time and patience and most importantly a realistic approach. Take the time to learn what it really requires to increase traffic flow before you throw out crazy requests in the industry. One thing you don’t want to happen is to be disappointed when your requests are not satisfied and your feelings towards the SEO industry make you feel like it is a scam. You just have to take a step back and realize that it takes time to rank and build traffic in almost any niche out there.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterMon, 23 May 2011 14:03:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/240-being-realistic-with-seo-is-step-1.aspxWhy is Nobody Reading Your Blog?!http://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/239-why-is-nobody-reading-your-blog.aspx

A business blog can be a very useful tool in your online marketing arsenal. They are a great way to promote your business as an authority in the industry, start conversations with you consumer and other industry professionals, post company news and help with online branding and presence. Since a business blog is produced in-house, you and your marketing department (or whoever is writing the blog) have complete control over the information being produced, the writing style and tone and who the blog is trying to connect with.

So why isn’t the blog doing its job?

Here are few of the most common reasons a business blog is failing to connect with your audience:

1. You missed the mark while defining your target audience

Say you’re a B2B company that sells wholesale school supplies. It wouldn’t be odd to assume that your target audience is teachers. After all, aren’t they the ones who use school supplies? But are teachers the ones actually buying those supplies? You’re target audience is more likely those who work in the administrative side of education, those responsible for the day-to-day operations of schools, and less those who run the classrooms.

2. You’re not writing about current topics

It’s important to stay, if not ahead of the curve, at least with the rest of the pack when it comes to choosing blog topics. If there is serious buzz regarding something in your industry, it’s best to write about it while it’s still a hot topic. Even if there are a lot of other blogs writing about the same situation, you can take a new spin on it to make your blog stand out. The last thing you want to do is write about old news.

3. You’re not giving the readers what they want

In theory, if you write the blog, you should be able to write about anything you want. But if you want people to read it, you have to write about what they want. Look at some of your older blog posts and see which ones got the most attention (page views, comments, shared on social networks) and try to incorporate a few more posts that focus on that topic or use that format/tone. Something about that particular post clicked with your readers, so give them more.

These are just a few of the reasons that your blog isn’t getting the attention that you think it should. But businesses also have to remember that blog writing is a long-term commitment. You have to give the blog time to age, so that old posts get indexed by the search engines and start showing up in the results. You also have to allow for time to pass so that you’re blog earns loyal readers who will always come back for new posts and help spread the word about your blog. Neither or those things are going to happen overnight.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterFri, 20 May 2011 12:57:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/239-why-is-nobody-reading-your-blog.aspxURL Tips for SEOhttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/238-url-tips-for-seo.aspx

The first things that we tend to think about when optimizing a web page are the meta tags and the content on the page. While those are important aspects, we can’t forget about the URL. The search engine spiders and our website visitors look at those, too. When developing a website it’s important to follow URL structure best practice guidelines. For usability and SEO purposes URL’s should:

Be descriptive
A URL structure mimics your file folders in your root directory, so it’s important for them to be organized and have descriptive names. URL’s titled “page2.html” and “page3.html” contribute to a bad user experience and don’t provide the search engines with any relevant information. URL’s should accurately depict the information that is on the page so that the user has an idea of what to expect.

Include Keywords
Keywords explain the content on the page to the visitor, but they also have SEO benefits. Be sure to incorporate one or two keywords in the URL, and preferably at the beginning of the URL for maximum SEO exposure. A URL shows up on a search engine result page along with the meta title and description. If the keyword was searched for specifically, it will appear bolded, which is proof that the page is relevant. A few keywords in a URL is plenty because any more than that looks spammy.

Be Concise
A URL that is too long looks bad and people will be less likely to link to it. If a URL is short and memorable it increases the chances that a user will go directly to the page by typing the address into their browser. Typically, a URL should be no more than 3-5 words. It is best practice to use all lowercase letters in a URL. If a URL contains capital letters it might confuse the user, since it’s not what they are used to seeing. For SEO purposes, it’s also better to use dashes between words instead of underscores.

Be Singular
There should only be one URL per page of content. If you have multiple URLs that have the same content you essentially have a duplicate content problem. This is viewed negatively by the search engines, so it’s important to avoid the issue entirely. Try not to change URL’s once they are set, but if it’s necessary be sure to use 301 redirects.

Following and implementing these URL guidelines will help for SEO purposes and will create a better user experience for your website visitors, who will then be more likely to return.

This article has been republished to www.ixlstudios.com from www.brickmarketing.com

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]]>Chet SlaterThu, 19 May 2011 13:31:00 GMThttp://www.ixlstudios.com/blog-40/238-url-tips-for-seo.aspx