There are those who have been spreading (indefinitely, it seems) the thought that SEO is dead. It never ends, the thought (hope?) that search engine optimization has reached its conclusion. The main reason for these calls is, of course, when “experts” in search marketing start to find that their techniques don’t work anymore. Nothing will make someone believe a practice is dead more than finding out that they’re processes aren’t working.

Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for the rest of us), SEO is alive and well and growing in importance every day. The reasons are many, but here’s a quick breakdown:

• Mobile visibility is driving clicks on the go. Many people are no longer doing the majority of their searches on desktop computers. The computers in our pockets are doing just fine (sometimes better) at delivering the information we need. Mobile’s continuous onslaught on our time and eyeball share means that SEO today must maintain a “mobile-first” mentality. If you can make it rank well on mobile, you can make it rank well on desktops.
• The vision is pretty much set for the near future. Google and Bing are known for frequent updates and since 2011, Google has sent out some big ones. We will see a slow down on the major updates and a focus on tweaks for quality and adjustments to fight spammers. The gameplan is right there in front of us, which means that those who are good at SEO can duck their shoulders down and start barreling through the line.
• Competitors are increasing but true competitors are diminishing. Everyone is getting into the SEO game, but there’s only a handful that truly get it. By focusing on quality of content, links, and social signals, SEOs are able to succeed. Once you introduce shortcuts (and the majority of them do) you lose the effect. This is a benefit to those doing true SEO because it allows them to rise to the top more easily.

Don’t get trapped in the SEO-is-Dead mentality. SEO is alive and well in its purest form. Bad SEO is dying. This is a good thing.

There's a rule when it comes to handling complaints and bad reviews on social media. The same rule applies for compliments and good reviews, but those are easy. Handling the complaints can be challenging and you may not want to do it, but as a rule you must reply to everyone who is talking to you publicly whether it's good or bad.

This is an absolute rule. There are a couple of extreme situations when you don't reply, but they are so rare that I hesitate to mention them for fear that it could downplay the message that you should reply to everyone.

There's another rule that is unfortunately getting broken just about every day by many social media and reputation management companies. Canned responses should never be used. Every response should be personal, written by an actual human and not repeated. It's better to make a short, sincere response than anything that came out of an automated system. People can tell. You will never appear more insincere as a company than when you reply to someone talking to you on social media with a form letter.

In this infographic by Pardot, we have a chance to take a look at five of the most prominent "complainer types" on social media. If you can identify the category that a complainer falls into, you'll have a better opportunity to handle it appropriated. One does not have to be a psychologist to understand personality types. You just have to open your eyes and ears before opening your mouth.

There have been and always will be right and wrong ways to go about marketing on Facebook. The only things that change are the ways to go about doing the “right” things. While some would say there are no rules on social media, there are definitely best practices to do and poor practices to avoid.

In this infographic by Vertical Response, they do a great job at breaking down some of the rules that can help to generate a successful social media presence on Facebook. It’s not all about the numbers, though they are important. As cliche as it sounds, the rules on Facebook really are there to help you gain true engagement.

There’s a fundamental psychology behind visualizations that make them work. Reading is fine. Audio and video are often the best. When data must be seen and engulfed in order to make an impact, this is where infographics have their niche in our attentions.

In this very simple infographic from Hubshout, they explore the reasons that people like infographics, the types of infographics that people prefer, and give us hints about the direction of the infographic history.

If you're reading this, you're probably failing at social media image marketing. That's not me being cynical. By examining dozens of business social media presences every week, I get to see what so many are doing and the unfortunate fact is that 9 out of 10 are doing it wrong or not doing it at all. I'm being conservative with that estimate.

The "unfortunate" fact really isn't that unfortunate, especially for those who are reading this. You see, you can actually do it right, which means that you're going to have a leg-up on the competition. When things are too easy or too well known, they have a tendency to become universally good. When they're universally good, that means that everyone is average.

Image marketing on social media is not about taking advertisements and posting them as images. It's not about talking about your big sale next week in the form of a banner that you post to Twitter or Instagram (though there's a way to do that which I'll demonstrate below). It's not even about taking pictures of happy customers in front of their latest purchase jumping in the air with the caption, "Oh what a feeling!"

Proper image marketing should accomplish some of the following goals listed in no particular order:

1. Improve branding
2. Promote an upcoming event
3. Demonstrate a lifestyle advantage associated with your product
4. Connect with the community
5. Make a statement
6. Drive traffic to a landing page

It doesn't have to do all of these. It can do one of them really well, a couple of them very well, or knock out three or four of them with a single post. To highlight this, I'll use examples that I found in my Twitter feed just in the last couple of hours. This does not only apply to Twitter; Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, and Facebook can all work nicely here.

It should be noted that size and aspect ratio are extremely important and arguably the biggest miss by most. Twitter has an aspect ratio of 2:1 while Instagram is 1:1. Small images don't do as well. on any of the platforms. Pinterest is the only platform that does vertical images well. Appearance on mobile is more important than appearance on desktop. These and other technical aspects of image marketing will be covered in a future post. For now, let's just look at the content...

Bad Examples of Social Media Image Marketing

These ones are bad. Don't do these. I blocked out the business that posted one but I kept the one posted by Ram only because as a manufacturer, they should know better by now...

The image quality is poor. The car is cut off. There's no visible branding for the dealership in the image. Overall, it's extremely boring. This is not going to get anyone's attention and nobody who sees it in their feed will care.

* * *

It's a nice image of a mountain. Wait. Is that a truck at the bottom peeking up over the edge? It's good that they are getting their fans involved, but the picture should have been edited to appear properly on Twitter before posting it. This is the lazy way out and accomplishes none of the goals.

Decent Examples of Social Media Image Marketing

These aren't bad. They aren't good, either. They're good enough to get listed here just to show the differences between them and the ones further below so you'll know what mistakes to avoid.

The attempt by Nissan is pretty strong. They're trying to do well on Twitter and they're doing an above-average job at it. This particular piece is missing something: impact. The message in the image means nothing other than stating a minor incentive. It gives no reason for people to actually click through to the landing page other than the boring message itself. With image marketing, you need to make a statement in order to get clicks. They should have put more creativity into the messaging rather than state the offer plainly.

More importantly, the offer itself is designed specifically for those who already plan on buying a Rogue, so the incentive is in the reservation itself. At first (and second, and third) glance, this appears to be another rebate offer because it looks like another rebate offer. There are brighter minds than mine that could have fashioned a better message, but it should have been less statement of the facts and a bit more mystery and uniqueness to draw people to click.

• This Rogue wants to be reserved (and it will pay you to reserve it)
• What do reservations and $250 have in common? The 2014 Nissan Rogue.
• Early Bird gets the cash on their Rogue
• No Reservations Necessary (unless you want an extra $250)

* * *

This isn't bad because it does accomplish one goal - making a statement. The only thing keeping this at decent rather than good is that the message is a personal one and should have been delivered in a personal manner. While the picture is cool and the message in the text is strong, it would have been better to have a member or former member of the military (there's probably some working at the dealership right now) by a car or the dealership's sign with an American flag in hand. This is a bit generic but a good attempt - still better than 9 out of 10.

Good Examples of Social Media Image Marketing

Here are some good ones. These are nearly great but are missing a couple of minor components. If you did your marketing like this, you'd be ahead of 99/100 others.

Great aspect ratio. Hot car. Good message and most importantly there's a link to the inventory search for the vehicle itself!

* * *

This one is much like the previous except a different variation for two reasons. First, it uses a stock image, which is only good if the image is as good as this one. The thing that brings it up from "decent" is that the link takes you to a vehicle specific landing page which is more appropriate on Twitter than a straight vehicle search. Remember, if they want to search, they will. Putting them on a page with information about the vehicle is better for higher-funnel customers that you'll get through social media.

Great Examples of Social Media Image Marketing

These are the best that I've seen so far... after searching four hours back in my Twitter feed. There are better ones. There are plenty of worse ones. They aren't perfect but they're pretty darn close.

This one hits goals 1, 5, and 6 nicely but it really nails home #3: Demonstrate a lifestyle advantage associated with your product. It doesn't need to show the whole car. It doesn't need a beautiful background. It has a simple, elegant four word message that can reach the target audience where it hurts.

* * *

Remember, it doesn't have to nail several goals to be effective. This time, it does a wonderful job of branding but keeps it touching the community with the localized weather factor. This is exceptional and if the following is engaged, it'll resonate.

* * *

Simple and powerful. This is what Nissan missed when they promoted their message. Well done, Mr Potratz and Mr Ziegler.

* * *

You don't have to be a professional photographer or a creative genius to get it right with social media image marketing. You just need to have a good strategy, solid execution, and a willingness to know the "rules" well enough to break them ever so slightly.

In the ever-changing world of online marketing, one of the tools that has stayed relatively consistent in its results over the past few years is the infographic. I remember first getting started with building and marketing infographics back in 2008. Things haven't changed a whole lot since then.

Two things that have definitely changed are the saturation and the search value. The industry is so saturated today that it's nearly impossible to get the same type of exposure now that we once saw a few years ago. It was once possible to get a great infographic in front of millions of people by having it published on major blogs and websites. Today, the saturation has made it to where getting one posted to Mashable or the NY Times is extremely challenging.

The search value has changed as well. Google is very well aware of the use of infographics for inbound links and they've taken measures to make sure that this ultimate form of "link baiting" is not overpowered. That's not to say that there's no search value. It's still there and is very strong. The days of "build an infographic and rank higher instantly" are behind us.

Here is a breakdown (in infographic form, of course) of five of the most common forms of infographics. Click to enlarge.

* * *

Originally posted on Soshable.

Some of you are probably seeing the new ad format that Google is testing out. It's not technically new - they've been testing it on mobile devices for some time now - but it's relatively new to desktop searches. The shading in the background to identify ads is gone, replaced by a big yellow "Ad" tag.

This is potentially good for two reasons. First, it highlights the fact that it's an ad (even though some will say that taking away the shading is just another Google ploy for more ad clicks) very nicely, meaning that you have an opportunity to craft an advertising message for your PPC campaigns a little more specifically than before.

The second potential positive is that it may reduce wasted clicks and irrelevant visitors to your site. Psychologically, people are more careful about what they click on when they're clearly tagged. This is a minor point, not enough to make anyone worry about drops in traffic, but enough to make a minor dent in conversion rates on those visitors.

If you aren't seeing it yet, I posted a quick tutorial on how to adjust your settings to see them.

One thing is certain. You should use this as a reason to increase the personalization and relevant messaging in your ads. The tag means that more people will at least look at the ads. So many skip right passed the shaded sponsor area. This change (any change, really) will draw eyeballs back to it.

Now, it's time to adjust. Make the message resonate against the search rather than just focus on the keyword itself. Give them something to read and a reason to want to click on yours rather than a different ad. In the example above, the 2nd listing from the top is almost certainly getting the most clicks because the message resonates much better than the other choices.

Things are getting more competitive in search marketing. Going into 2014, the old bulk methodology behind most PPC services are becoming less effective. If you really want to improve your ROI on PPC, your best bet is to get creative. It's more work but the results are definitely worth it.

I know the feeling. Despite having worked every weekend for the last two years, I know the desire to let it all go and just focus on the important things in life like faith and family. I'll get there, someday, but you can get there now and still be strong at social media management.

See, the challenge is that social media for business is ever-so important. The weekends can be, for many pages and social media profiles, have the highest potential for engagement and interaction. A good chunk of people check social media more regularly on weekends than during the week. It's also a time when money is spent in different ways so having the right engagement to go after the weekend dollars or the dollars that will be spent in the coming week can be achieved more readily on the weekends.

Unfortunately, you probably don't have a weekend team watching and controlling everything for you. You're stuck with it, even if you have weekends off. This translates into one of two most likely scenarios: you either spend time on the weekends using social media or you let your business social media accounts go on the weekends. Either way is bad.

There's an alternative. You can have your weekends (mostly) and still stay on top of social media as a result. Here's how:

1. Set up your mobile alerts. If you have a heavily-trafficked social media presence, you're probably monitoring manually through the week, so you can turn it off then. For the weekends, yes, it means your phone will be blowing up, but you can still stay on top of it and make a decision about replying or waiting until Monday based upon the urgency. Thankfully, if it's a casual communication, there's nothing wrong with waiting until Monday. However, there will be important business communications and you don't want to make those wait.
2. Schedule. When I see businesses that post 5-days a week, it annoys me. Social media doesn't take weekends off and your presence shouldn't, either. If it makes it easier, set up a theme for the weekends. Don't ask questions if you're not ready to answer the responses. There's nothing sillier than blowing a weekend with a question that brings in 500 responses blowing up your phone. Save those for the week.
3. Get creative help. A part-time employee or contractor that you can trust can cover the weekends for you at a very affordable rate. Students and stay-at-home parents come in handy here. Give them tasks that can help during the week as well such as creating content that will be posted later, scheduling up Mondays that are often meeting-heavy, or vetting the new likes and followers from the week.

Social media might not rest, but that doesn't mean you can't. Do it the right way and either minimize or eliminate the need to be omnipresent all week while still maintaining a strong presence.

Many of us who have been doing the hybrid search/social game for long enough remember what it was like to discover Tumblr. I got in pretty early and was able to get Social News as one of my Tumblogs, a pretty decent subdomain that is (unfortunately) completely underutilized and really just focuses on my Instagram pictures. That doesn't mean that you have to sit around and let Tumblr not work well for you.

SocialMediaToday community contributor Mark Scott posted an interesting piece about using Tumblr as an SEO tool. While there are things in there that aren't 100% correct such as the concept that all "links you add to all posts on your Tumblr blog are do-follow links" (some are nofollow), but otherwise he gives very sound advice about how to use the platform for something that it's frankly not very good at for its own self: SEO.

Yes, it's a great SEO tool and yes, it's possible to optimize a Tumblog to do well in search, but it's the benefits that it can bring to other websites where the real juice can come into play. As a supporting site, it's great for search as long as the content is strong and you're able to build up a decent following.

Here's what he said on Social Media Today:

Tumblr essentially functions as a secondary blog you can use solely for the purpose of SEO. You can send optimized links back to the main website, allowing your website's reach to expand and incoming traffic to multiply. What makes Tumblr great for SEO is the inbuilt promotion and SEO-friendly features that it comes packed with by default.

Read More: Social Media Today

In an ideal world, you’re the social media and content manager for your company. You spend eight hours a day harnessing the power of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ while developing content for your blog and YouTube channels. It’s tough, but you’re making it happen.

In the real world, you’re probably responsible for a ton of different things and social media was tossed onto your pile of work. How can you cope? Is it possible to have a strong social media presence without devoting a ton of time to it? Yes and no. Yes, you can have a pretty decent one, but 30-minutes as detailed below is the bare minimum to be considered truly active. I’ve seen people do it in about 2 hours a day and have a super strong presence.

For those of you who are having to hold it together until help (or more time) arrives, here’s a great infographic that can work as a daily checklist of activities that you need to accomplish to maintain the minimum level of social media power, courtesy of Pardot.