How to Take Care of Social Media for Your Business

First off, I think I'm going to actually write this up as a guide, so stay tuned. There's a lot to say about social media. If you haven't already done so, read my article about Ben & Jerry's dropping email marketing in favor of only using social media to interface with their customers online.

Using social media is easy for a company like Ben & Jerry's. All they have to do is hire someone...like me ;). But what if you're a small or even a medium-sized business? Do you really want to run your business and deal with Facebook, Twitter, your blog (I hope you have one), checking your buzz with Google News and Google Alerts, etc, etc, etc? I don't think so. If I didn't do this stuff for a vocation, I'm sure that I wouldn't spend nearly as much time as I do online--I wouldn't have the time.

So, what do you do if you recognize the value of social media? Well, you could just keep on writing those checks to the Yellow Pages, but we all know how much that's doing for you. Or...you could hire a social media manager. Someone like me who lives, eats, and breathes this stuff.

Interested in finding out more? Just leave me a comment and we'll set up something.

Should You Ditch Email Marketing?

Recently, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream decided to drop their email marketing campaign in favor of social media marketing via Facebook and Twitter. You can read an informative article about this, here.

So, since B&J did it, you should too, right?

Hold on, Hoss! Not so fast.

Apparently, B&J's customers indicated to the company that they didn't like email marketing and preferred social media instead. I can see why. Despite the double opt-in thingy, email is still somewhat intrusive. Every few weeks, I go through my InBox and clean out subscriptions to stuff that I don't really want anymore. You can quickly clog your InBox with junk, making the important emails difficult to see. (I have several email addresses for this very problem, but it's still a headache.)

I never subscribed to B&J's email list, but I can imagine a scenario where I might have wanted a coupon or something for a container of Chubby Hubby (or whatever), but now I'm just tired of all the other emails for things I'm not interested in.

Like Internet marketing in general, at least when done properly, social media like Facebook puts the power in the customer's hands, not in the company's hands. So, I can certainly understand B&J's customers opting for Facebook and Twitter, rather than email.

Is this a trend?

I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up as a trend in online marketing, but right now, I don't think you should ditch your email marketing efforts for social media. Like B&J, you'll be smarter if you let your customers make that decision for you.

Backlinks, More Important Than Ever!

I was corresponding with a well-known Internet writer a few weeks ago. Believe me, this "girl" really knows her stuff when it comes to how to game the Internet to create not only traffic, but more importantly a sense of authority when it comes to content. We exchanged a few emails, and I realized, however, that she and I have completely different opinions about one very important part of search engine optimization, or SEO. We differed greatly about the importance of backlinks.

Just in case, let's define "backlink." A backlink is a text link coming from another site that points to a page on your site. For instance, let's suppose you own Site A. A backlink is a link on Site B that sends the visitor to a page on Site A, when clicked.

The importance of backlinks is huge! They are one of the main ways that it seems Google decides how important your content is. The more links coming in, the more important your content, the more worthy of being ranked highly.

My writer friend seemed to downplay the importance of backlinks, however. Because she sees the Internet as more of a network of links that are followed by humans. Someone reads a post on a blog they like, it links to your site, and they click on that link, thus becoming traffic for your site. That's great! But if you can get specific pages on your site ranked highly for various keyword phrases, then you get the "human" traffic, but you also get the traffic from searches.

It seems that Google is in agreement with me, also. (Or at least I'll just assume they are! :) ) With the recent MayDay algorithm change, it seems that Google is relying more on off-page factors than on on-page factors for ranking. That might mean that backlinks are now more important than ever before!

Backlinks are a tricky subject, though. I don't have the time to write a treatise on them right now, but I promise you I'll write a few more posts about the nuances of proper backlinking.