Benjamin Beck » Social Media

Make The Most of 2012 With the Top SEO & Social Media Articles and People

beckjamin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:42:28 +0000

2012 is here! What does the next year hold for us in search marketing and social media? I don’t have a crystal ball that works, but I have collected some of the top articles from the experts on what 2012 will be like for SEO and Social Media Marketers.

I also included some of the best people to follow on Twitter to stay on top of SEO and Social Media trends through this year.

2012 SEO Predictions

18 SEO Experts On How To Do SEO in 2012 – Edgy SEO

2012 SEO Tips For Google Instant – Search Engine Round Table

Key SEO 2012 Trends in North Asia – Search Engine Watch

MarketingSherpa 2012 SEO Benchmark Report – Top Rank Blog

SEO Playbook For 2012 – Search Engine Land

2012 Will Divide SEO Practitioners Into Two Camps – Business 2 Community

My Top SEO Experts To Follow in 2012

These are in no particular order, they are all awesome. Who am I missing? Let me know in the comments

2012 Social Media Predictions

What 2012 holds for Social Media - The Next Web

30 Social Media Predictions for 2012 From the Pros – Social Media Examiner

Top 5 Trends for Search & Social Media Marketing 2012 – Search Engine Watch

What Will 2012 Mean for Social Media ? – Time

My Top Social Media Experts To Follow in 2012

Again these are are not in any particular order, they are all awesome. Who else in the Social Media space should I follow? Let me know in the comments

What Do You See For 2012

I’m excited for 2012, its going to be a huge year! Do you have a idea of what’s going to happen in 2012 or of great people I should follow on Twitter in the space of SEO or Social Media? Let me know in the comments, I look forward to your input. Have a great 2012!

LinkedIn’s Holiday Card Easter Egg

beckjamin — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:21:57 +0000

I woke up this morning and was checking the usual social networks before I head into work. I did a double take this morning when I came across this interesting character who viewed my LinkedIn Profile.

This is definitely not the typical person that views my account and I was curious of course to find out more about Snow E. Mann’s resume. When I clicked on it to open it up instead of a resume it was a simple holiday greeting card from Linkedin.com.

Holiday Easter Eggs

I don’t know if this is something they did to everyone or if I stumbled into some Linkedin holiday easter egg. If your confused at what an “easter egg” is you need to check out eeggs.com. You can thank me later. Another popular easter egg this holiday season is googling “let it snow”. I won’t ruin the surprise by telling you.

Check out your Linkedin profile and let me know if you got a holiday card as well. Also if you know of any other holiday easter eggs out there please leave them in the comments.

Is Social The Future Of SEO? Interview with Jesse Stay

beckjamin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:00:03 +0000

I had the pleasure of talking with Jesse Stay of SocialToo and author of Google+ For Dummies and Facebook Application Development For Dummies. It was such an amazing conversation that I wish I would have skyped and recorded it to be able to share with everyone instead of my bullet point notes. He is a truly amazing author and knowledgeable social media pro that I had the pleasure of speaking with. ( You can tell by my picture how excited I was to talk with him)

What makes someone stand out to you in this industry?
There are a lot of “Self Proclaimed Experts”

* People who have truly based decisions off of research or what other people have accomplished

* Someone who has a lot of clients and experience to back up what they are saying

* They look at the whole picture. Not just getting people to the site, or to follow or like, but rather the full experience of the user

* Mass following is easy, but the questions is whats the goal? Whats a conversion? Its not always just money

With SERP’s getting so personalized where do you see SEO’s playing a role?

* Social is the new SEO
* SEO still has a place, don’t give it up, and make sure to optimize your pages. But look towards Social
* Trusted friendships and an identity tells you a lot more than keywords and links, which is why I see Social becoming more valuable

Worth it for small biz owners to be on FB, Twitter, G+?

* Prioritize (audience = which network) then decide
* Embrace social media, you can get alot of feed back from your visitors
* Allow people to see and identify with your company (who the CEO is, how you work, pre-views of what your working)

Who do you look upto?

* Jeremiah Owyang of web-strategist.com
* Scott Monty director of Ford Social Media
* Brian Solis author of Engage and The End Of Business As Usual

Your Comments, Where’s The Future Of SEO?

Would like to hear from you what you think about the future of SEO. Will on site and off site still be highly relevant compared to social signals or voted on web results?

Hulu Puts Commercials Back In Users Control

beckjamin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:45:54 +0000

What Is the New Hulu Ad Swap

I love Hulu because it keeps me up to date with my comedy staples like The Office, Modern Family, and Community. This week when i was getting caught up I noticed that Hulu has changed how it does commercials. Before I would have to sit through whatever ad they had scheduled and if i got bored i could click on the button that asked “is this ad relevant to you?”

Now Hulu has given viewers the option to “Swap” commercials. So if you are really sick of seeing Viagra or tampon commercials you now have the power to swap it to something else. The picture below shows what Hulu’s new ad swap looks like.

What Hulu’s Ad Swap Means For Viewers

Able to choose commercials/products they actually want to watch
Avoid awkward gender specific products
New variety of commercials, instead of the same one played over and over during the show

What Hulu’s Ad Swap Means For Advertisers

Can have commercials seen across several different shows
Better analytics of which shows that have viewers most interested in there products
Need to produce better commercials that viewers will actually want to view

What Is The Future Of Commercials?

Does this mean that all commercials are going to have to evolve to Super Bowl status so that people will select and watch their commercial over their competitors? Will people be able to find a way around the commercials, like a online Tivo which decreases the effectiveness of the commercials?

Where do you see brands pushing commercials in the future?

What’s In Your RSS Feed?

beckjamin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:34:18 +0000

It definitely feels a lot cooler when you say it like one of those capital one vikings ”Whats In Your RSS Feed?”. These days to stay up with fast moving technology and industries can be hard. Frankly i don’t know how i would do it with out my RSS feeds. The following are a list of the staples that I check each day. Please let me know what your favorites are in the comments below.

Online Marketing Blog Feeds

SEO Blog Feeds

Social Media Blog Feeds

Other Favorites Blog Feeds

Whats In Your RSS Feed?

What did i miss? What are your favorite RSS feeds to follow? I look forward to hearing them in the comments.

How To Do Social Media Like A Rockstar Without Losing Your Day Job

beckjamin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:40:40 +0000

A lot of my clients say that they want to do social media for themselves or their business but don’t know how they can do it with their busy schedule! Other clients say that social media is not a effective way to find leads.

The following are the tools that I’ve found and use to allow me to post to my social media feeds and interact with potential clients while keeping my day job. Once you get in the rhythm of things you can do this effectively in just 30 minutes a day.

1) Morning Reading

Spend the first 20 minutes of your day learning the latest news for your industry.

Reading the daily newspaper or listening to the news on the drive into work is not going to give you the information you need to stay on top of your industry. Having data aggregators make it easy for you to stay upto date on everything in your industry. If you don’t know where to get your data start with sites like Alltop or Smartbrief. If you already know where to get the data for your industry i suggest using the RSS app Feedly, its the best. Google Reader is also a good one to go with.

2) Schedule Great Content

As your reading these articles in the morning or whenever you come across some great content you want to share with your followers. You don’t want to have to go to Twitter or Facebook to most it. Also if you find 3 great articles in the morning you don’t want to bombard your followers with everything at once, instead schedule them out throughout the day.

To solve this problem I use Buffer App which allows you to set a schedule of upto 10 posts that will be tweeted and posted to your Facebook at the times that you decide. Besides being Free this app allows you to simply right click on any page to tweet it then or put it in your buffer to be posted at your next scheduled time.

3) Engage With Potential Clients

Every business can use more leads and users on social networks are often asking for help. During my lunch break I use Inbox Q to find those who have questions that need answers. I set up my Inbox Q to look for tweets that are “seo -rt -http ?” which means a tweet that are a question that contains the phrase “seo”, but is not a RT and doesn’t have a link in it.

The Inbox Q icon stays in your browser head and pops up a number when someone tweets a possible questions that you can answer. Since we’re using twitter they usually have simple questions and i can give them a short answer. Doing this helps me find possible clients, network with new people, and gain recognition as a helpful industry leader.

4) Respond To Fans

Again you don’t have time to be constantly logging into Twitter and Facebook for updates. That’s why I suggest getting a social media dashboard like Hootsuite or TweetDeck. With these dashboards you can easily monitor your social media accounts to see if you get any comments, mentions, or direct messages to respond to.

I check them in the morning after I get done with my morning reading and then again at lunch

What Helps You Do Social Media?

These are some of the tips, apps, and tricks that I use to help me do social media without losing my day job as an SEO. Would like to hear what you do to make Social Media work for you?

The Voice Leads Engaging Reality TV

beckjamin — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 07:05:11 +0000

It has been interesting to watch the Voice unfold on NBC. I was interested to see how this show was going to try and surpass the extremely popular American Idol. One of the biggest ways that I see The Voice improving the reality show concept is how they are leveraging social media to improve the viewer experience and thus the viral sharing which increases the popularity of the show.

Integrated Social Media Into Every Part Of The Show

The Voice planned from the beginning to make social interaction a big part of the program. On the main website they created a bio for each contestant which included prominent Twitter and Facebook icons for viewers to follow them.

Giving the Artist Their Own Social Platforms

Up until now on reality tv shows it have been really one-sided. The contestant pleads for votes with those big puppy dog eyes peering into the camera after their performance, and that was it. Having each contestant create a Facebook and Twitter now gives them a platform to really interact and win over fans.

These contestants bio’s are not a stagnant story of who they were and where they came from, but instead they give the audience a real time feed of what they are thinking, feeling, and experiencing. This is the perfect recipe to allow viewers to get to know the artist and make them want to vote for them.

Encouraging Contestant and Fan Engagement Live

Now most people wouldn’t know that The Voice was doing all of this social interaction and probably wouldn’t care much except that they frequently take precious air time to go to the social media room during the show.

What do they do in the Social Room? They answer fans questions and highlight fans comments and tweets. Which inspires more people to ask questions, and the viral marketing effect continued to grow for The Voice.

Where does it go from here?

What else can shows do to engage with viewers?
Will be get overloaded and stop caring and interacting?

Look forward to your comments!

Want A Social Workplace? Make A Klout List!

beckjamin — Thu, 05 May 2011 04:50:13 +0000

If you didn’t read my last post “Klout, the Swag of Social” it explains in more detail how Klout gives you a social influence rating and how to improve that rating. Well today Klout introduced its new beta. I really like the new layout and design, and now you can compare your social swag score to others!

What better way to encourage your people in your company to embrace social media then to make a big list that compares them all. That is what Anthony at my work thought when he created our Team Anchor Wave Twitter List. I didn’t mind because I’m on top (pictured below), but i got to step up my game cause Anthony is on my tails.

So what do you do to enhance your Klout score?

Whatever you do don’t side with my Nemesis @Ant1832, don’t let his good looks and charm suck you in.

Social Media Bag Of Tricks Thats Free

beckjamin — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:00:48 +0000

So a lot of people ask me what tools I use for social media and how much they cost. So I thought I’d give you a glimipse into my little bag of tricks, and the best part is that all of these tools are FREE!

Hootsuite – I can spend a post just on what I do with this application and how great this social media dashboard is! I use it a lot, heres a quick video on how its set up.

Commun.it – This is still in beta and constantly improving. I use it to better monitor those who follow with me and engage with those in my field on twitter. Get ahold @SharelOmer and he will take care of you like he’s done for me!

Triberr - I’ve heard great things about Triberr and how it can really expand your reach and impact! I’m glad that Chief @chicagodesign let me into his Triberr.

Feedly – This is the best RSS reader i’ve found yet! Makes it so easy to find great content, post it, and move on. Found out about this from @tacanderson, a great person to follow!

What Social Tools Do You Use?

Would like to hear what social tools you are using and why they are so great. Let me know in the comments.

Peek Into Hootsuite

beckjamin — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 22:06:52 +0000

Their is some big debates on which Social Media Dashboard is best out there. The big 3 that come to mind are TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Hootsuite.

I personally like Hootsuite, and instead of going through the ordeal of writing and taking screen shots I thought I’d save us all sometime by doing a short on the fly video.

Yes I know I didn’t cover all the great things Hootsuite can do like reports, analytics, etc but I did this just to give people a feel of how Hootsuite works.

Which Social Media Dashboard Do You Use? Why?

Would like to hear what works and why from you in the comments.