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SEO isn’t the same as what it used to be. You can’t just popup an ugly website, throw up mediocre content, and build a few links and expect to rank well. These days you actually have to build a good website, write high quality content that solves peoples’ problems, build thousands of links, and get thousands of social shares.

• Detailed content – short blog posts tend to get less links than detailed content that is thorough. Don’t try to replicate what Huffington post does by producing hundreds of new pieces of content each day… focus on quality.
• Digestible infographics – if you can make complex data easy to understand in a visual format, you can get millions of visitors to your website.
• Social profiles – a key requirement to a successful content marketing strategy is owning powerful social profiles. Make sure you build up your Twitter and Facebook profiles. You’ll need them to spread your content.
• Collect emails – make sure you have email opt-in forms in your sidebar and potentially leverage popups to collect even more emails. If you have a solid email list you can always email them every time you publish a new blog post or content piece. This is an easy way to kick start the virality process.
• Be consistent – if you can’t publish content on a regular basis, no matter how good your content is, it will be tough to get a good ROI out of your content marketing. Make sure you publish content on a regular basis.
• Headlines matter – no matter how good your content is, if you can’t write attractive headlines, no one will read your content. Learn how to write good headlines.

(Via Quick Sprout)

Excellent point of view.

A slim 36% of social media users trust brands that have a social media presence more than brands that don’t. Facebook recently began testing private messages for pages, which would give brands the opportunity to actually respond to consumers in a private message rather than a public wall post. How you talk to consumers and customers on social media is just as important as your overall social media marketing strategy.

If there is one point that I try to hammer home to my clients it’s that social media is a conversation and much of that conversation revolves around the needs of one person who may have a problem, comment or question about your product or brand.   The worst thing that brands can do is to respond with “corporate speak, usually prepared by their PR department.   Consumers are tired of being ignored and want to have more input into brands they allow in their lives.  Is this true for all brands ? Of course not.  I mean take a quick look in your pantry and tell me how many of those brands you want to have a relationship with ?

As an article in Inc. recently said “Just because you don’t understand social media doesn’t mean you should forfeit all common sense and hire your niece, nephew, or any other recent college grad (say, your best friend’s sister-in-law’s kid) because “they’re really good on Facebook.”  

You need a social media community manager who is a people person, can solve problems, listens well and knows how to talk to people as the voice of your brand.  That’s person is not easy to find yet way too many brands will spend a lot of money on a great looking facebook page only to put someone in charge who doesn’t know or understand how to talk to consumers.

 

(Via New Media and Marketing)