Those who have been in internet marketing for a while realize that search engines are constantly changing. It’s part of the game of staying ahead of the competition to understand these changes and move with them appropriately. Despite this constant state, it’s nothing compared to the changes that happen on Facebook. From a business perspective, the only real winning strategy is to constantly be adjusting the practices, processes, and procedures used to find success.

On Facebook, even the goals are often changed. Unlike search where the goal is almost entirely about driving relevant traffic to a website, social media in general and Facebook in particular often see shifts in the goals for each individual strategy and the overarching strategy as a whole. Between traffic, branding, communications, and messaging, the major components of Facebook marketing remain the same on the surface but digging a little deeper reveals a need to shift with not only the changes that are constantly happening on the platform itself but also those that are happening within the community and the sentiment of the social media world.

One of our biggest focuses on Facebook is helping local car dealers make the most of Facebook. Just in the last month we’ve made adjustments to style, form, and techniques that are in response to the changes. This is an absolute must – a static Facebook strategy is not effective. What worked yesterday may not work today but may work again tomorrow. That’s the nature of the beast.

The most important thing to remember on Facebook is that there are two things to constantly monitor: changes in strategies that are posted on the various blogs (be careful here – more below) and changes in the results of the various campaigns that you run. It’s not just about watching likes and comments. It’s about watching reach (the truly important number in Facebook analytics) and following the sentiment through in a way that can guide future posts.

We must test. We must see what’s working today and make sure it’s still working tomorrow. We have to watch for fatigue; it’s easy to post great images of Mustangs on a Ford dealer’s Facebook page but eventually even the mighty stallion can get old and turn off fans.

We also need a willingness to try new things. Events, Offers, Questions – these can be effective depending on what you’re willing to offer for your business. Landing pages, video styles, advertising styles – all of these play important roles as well.

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide nor is it meant to be a scare tactic. Facebook is not hard and it doesn’t have to be that time consuming, either. It does require attention and a system through which the changes and efforts can be tracked for true ROI.

Now, about those blog posts on strategies – take note but be skeptical. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what to do on social media to be successful and these opinions are often contradictory. There are very few overall strategies that have ever made me think, “Wow, that’s the one!” There are plenty of blog posts that make me think, “Hmmm, let’s give that a try and monitor the results.”

That’s the key. Take advice but don’t set anything in stone until you test it thoroughly yourself. Facebook can be fickle, especially when the organic algorithm itself can punish pages for making the wrong moves, but you shouldn’t be too fearful of making a mistake or taking a step backwards. The benefits of a strong campaign or strategy greatly outweigh the potential negatives associated with mistakes, so by fearless but monitor and adjust accordingly. Anything short of regular monitoring and a willingness to change can result in the wrong results.

If you ever want a crash course on the latest social media studies but don’t want to spend the money to do them yourself, just watch the Super Bowl. You have to assume that if companies are spending millions to produce and distribute 30 second spots for the big game, they’re going to research what’s working today.

This year’s big takeaway was a shift in the way that companies were presenting their social media. As described here, there’s even a debate about the winners and losers. The results of the research were easy to spot. Many advertisers decided that hashtags were the way to go social this year.

If you think about it, nothing could be simpler to understand. Hashtags are social network agnostic with the glaring exception of Facebook. Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and countless other social networks apply hashtags to their streams to allow for tagging and easier searching. Popular hashtags often get featured on these sites. It’s a way to win bigger than simply posting a Twitter handle or Facebook page URL.

You should apply the same concept to your campaigns, particularly when interaction is a part of it (and it should be). It’s no longer about sending people to your profiles through your advertising. They won’t go. If they want to interact with you on social media, they’ll find you (at least they should be able to if you’re doing it right in search and on your website). They will, however, be willing to take part in a conversation. The best way to group conversations on every venue other than Facebook is through hashtags.

For Facebook, things are different and that deserves a blog post of its own, but for now if you focus on hashtags to spread your campaign messages in your advertising (print, television, and just about everywhere else), you’ll find that your social media interactions can improve. If you’re still posting your profile handle next to a blue bird, you’re probably not getting anything out of it and simply wasting space.

From a marketing and advertising perspective, Facebook is a game. It may not be very fun for businesses, but just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that you don’t have to play along to be successful. On the other hand, some businesses have plenty of fun on Facebook. Whether you do or not makes absolutely no difference, though some will say that if you’re having fun with it that you’ll be more successful. I contend that fun or no fun, you still play the same way if you’re doing it right.

The “game” aspect of Facebook is affinity. It’s the component of Facebook marketing that a business has the most control over while simultaneously having not true control at all. It’s not a conundrum. It’s not double talk. It’s just the way it is.

You see, affinity is a measurement of the engagement you’re receiving on each post. If you’re getting more engagement because of the quality and strategic placement of your content, the affinity portion of your EdgeRank will be higher. It’s for this reason that you do have control. Technically speaking, there really is no true “EdgeRank” anymore. It’s an antiquated algorithm that has been replaced without a name given to the replacement, and since there aren’t a ton of differences in the factors applied to the new algorithm, the name has stuck. Regardless of the name, you have the ability to affect how popular your posts will be based upon the weighted factors attached to affinity.

Facebook really started playing around with how posts from pages appear in the news feeds around the middle of last year. It became noticeable around September. Those who were popular before were seeing dips in their exposure. Things have leveled out now, so wherever you stand currently is a good starting point, particularly if you’re trying to correct errors from the past or reviving a dormant or semi-dormant page.

Your fans and friends of fans are the ones who have the real control over how your posts show in the news feeds, which is why affinity is still the most controllable without giving you any actual control. If your posts are getting ignored or reported as spam, your posts will not show up as well on news feeds. It’s that simple. It’s the reason that you have to play the game whether you like it or not. You can control your own content but you can’t control how people will react to it. All you can really do is learn what works and try to improve.

By improving the quality and focus of what you post, you’ll be able to have the most positive influence on your affinity. Here’s how:

Make Every Post Count

We keep mentioning it here and on other publications, but it definitely cannot be overstated. You cannot waste Facebook posts. You do more harm by posting weak content than if you didn’t post content at all.

Regardless of what you’re running as your strategy, be sure to identify the content that is resonating with your audience. A car dealer should post pictures of cars and the local area, for example. The pictures should be extremely interesting, not just boring pictures of people smiling in front of the car they just bought.

Part of playing the affinity game is making sure that every time your posts appear in front of people, that there’s a chance they’ll like, comment, or share the post. Content that might bring value to you but that brings nothing to the table for the Facebook audience is worthless. In other words, links to your inventory will hurt your efforts. Images of important and interesting parts of your inventory with an accompanying link is better.

Source and Type Matter a Lot

One of the parts that many businesses don’t understand about the way the Facebook algorithm works is that it affects different posts from different sources… well, differently. Let’s say you have an amazing image that you post. It gets a lot of comments, shares, and likes. That popularity will affect all of your posts a little, but it will affect your image posts by far the most.

Sources are another indicator that Facebook doesn’t talk much about but that have an affect on news feed placement. If you post something from Buffer that does well, it will affect future Buffer posts more than it will affect Hootsuite or direct Facebook.com posts, for example.

Keep in mind that the opposite is true as well. If posts of a particular type or from a particular source perform poorly, the algorithm will stop trusting your posts from those sources. They will be presented lower on the news feed.

The Two Things to Avoid

There are a couple of things that hurt you when you post. The first is obvious: spam reports. Every business will get reported for spam from time to time regardless of the content, particularly if the posts are promoted through Facebook advertising. Users in general do not understand how sponsored posts work (or they may understand them too well) and will try to keep your promoted message about the big sale this weekend from ever popping up ahead of pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base by reporting your posts as spam. That’s fine. It happens. Facebook knows this.

What you don’t want to happen is for too many of these reports to come in. Facebook gives your posts a little leeway knowing that there will be some reports no matter what, but when your posts get more than what Facebook believes is reasonable, your future posts and your page itself will be affected. This is bad. It’s very difficult to reverse, even with Facebook advertising. In a conversation with Facebook, I was told that if a page has been posting too much spam when I take them over, that it may be easier to build it back up from scratch rather than try to fix the problem.

The other less-known thing to avoid is getting passed over on the news feed. Every time your posts appears on someone’s news feed, it’s your opportunity to shine. You earn trust in the algorithm when people interact with your posts, but there’s a catch. If they see your posts and do not interact with them in some positive way, Facebook registers that as well. It’s not just someone who saw your post and didn’t do anything. It’s an actual negative that gets registered in Facebook’s data. They know when your posts were viewed. If they get viewed but don’t get liked by a user, they are less likely to be presented to that user as well as that user’s friends in the future.

It’s for this reason that we don’t want posts wasted. Regardless of how many times I say it, it just won’t be enough. You must make every post count.

Look at your posts before you make them live. Are they incredible? If the answer is no, work harder to make it incredible. You can’t post for the sake of posting. Not anymore. You have to “bring it” each and every time you post. Don’t damage your account. Make it shine. The difference is extreme.

One last quick note: everything that I just mentioned about Facebook is very similar to how Google+ handles their network. As it continues to rise, playing their game is also a necessity. Thankfully, it’s so similar that if you work the same basic strategy on both, the results will be similar.

I’ve started hearing the second worst advice coming from social media “experts” that I’ve ever heard. It’s just a notch above “buy thousands of fans and followers” on the social media advice scale.

If someone tells you to “be sure to post something X-times a day on social media even if you have to throw something up.”

I know it’s bad advice. I used to give it. Thankfully, I learned my lesson before spreading the advice too far. It blows my mind that it’s still being given to unsuspecting clients today, though, because it has become pretty well-known that on many social media sites, Facebook in particular, a poor and wasteful post can actually do more harm than if you skip a post or two.

Quality is everything. EdgeRank (we’ll use the term for lack of a better word even though Facebook says it’s not reflective of the current algorithm yet they don’t give us a name for the new one – /rant) is extremely fickle, particularly for pages. You get limited opportunities to impress your fans and friends of fans. Any time you blow one of those opportunities through a wasted post, you’re actually harming the chance of future posts to perform.

In other words, every single thing that you post on Facebook should serve a very distinct purpose. Every single thing you post on Facebook should be of the highest possible quality. Every single thing that you post to Facebook must be something that does one of three things:

• It conveys a relevant message that is well crafted, important enough to post to Facebook, and positioned in a way in which fans will not block you or report your post as spam.
• It is entertaining, educational, or acts as a resource. It brings true value to the table for your fans, whether that value is life-saving information or just a quick, hearty chuckle.
• It is a business-imperative message or link such as an event, a special (and I mean a true special such as the yearly Toyotathon, not a discount on your services that goes out every couple of weeks), or new product offering such as the opening of a body shop or the first 2014 Corvettes rolling off the truck.

There should be no filler posts. There should be no RSS feeds. There should be no integration of Tweets that land on your Facebook page (or visa versa). The difference between a page that carefully selects and crafts every single post versus one that tries most of the time but gets lazy sometimes is like night and day. Every single wasted post hurts the exposure of future posts. Conversely, every single outstanding post helps future posts see more daylight.

Our strategy is pretty simple in concept though a little complex in how it is applied. Here is a quick breakdown of each of the three types:

Relevant Message Posts

There’s a mentality that goes into relevant message posts. It doesn’t have to be relevant to you. It definitely has to be relevant to your fans. In the example above, the message was extremely relevant for this Dallas car dealer. It was a couple of days before the make or break game for the Dallas Cowboys. One simple image faded in the background. One simple message. It was a message that was important to the fans, the vast majority of whom resided in the Dallas area.

Unfortunately for the fans of both the team and the dealership, the Cowboys lost, but it was still great of the company to show their support for the local team. Relevance is about your fans, your customers. It’s easiest to find relevant things to post about by staying in the local area or state. These messages should never be generic. They cannot be something that everyone else is posting. Put the effort in. In this case, the effort wasn’t a lot – find an image (make sure to credit the original source!) and put the relevant message on top of it. Simple, but effective.

Value Posts

In the instance above, there are two things at play. The image is of a hot rod smoking the tires, but the message is talking about tire maintenance. There’s an opportunity to get two different kinds of likes as a result because it combines a great image with a useful message. The tip itself isn’t extraordinary, but it’s enough to get it a handful of likes even prior to promoting it on Facebook.

Entertain, educate, or both. That’s the mentality with these types of posts, and for many pages the strategy will dictate that these will be the most prevalent. Stick to your expertise and/or industry with these posts. There is a distinct temptation and even a common practice by many to try to revert to whatever is potentially popular. They’ll post funny images of cats. Avoid this practice. As hard as we may try to blend our pages into the whole Facebook mix by posting content that can be shared, when you go off topic you create a potential of missing the expectations of your fans. They may even feel a bit betrayed; if they’re going to follow a car dealer’s Facebook page, they expect to see cars. There are plenty of cats on Facebook already. No need to contribute unless you’re a veterinarian.

Business Message

While it doesn’t always have to be a link, most business-imperative messages should either lead people to a destination or convey a message about the business that can be of interest. These are the posts that carry the most risk as people normally do not want to see marketing messages in their streams. It’s not uncommon for businesses to completely avoid these types of messages. That strategy can be valid, but with a little effort you can avoid the spam reports and unlikes by making sure the message is worthwhile to your fans.

In the case above that we just posted, we combine four different components (a lot in such a small post, I know, but that’s why it’s called “effort”). The car, of course, is stunning. It’s an actual dealership inventory piece rather than a generic image like the ones above. It carries a message or relevance as it was posted early Saturday morning right before most of the local fans wake up. The wording of the text portion of the post doesn’t say a ton but it does contain a link without being considered a link post by Facebook. You can accomplish this by adding the image first, then adding the link within the body of the text. The click-thru rates are always going to be low, but the message is pointed enough so that those who do click the link are there for a clear reason.

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Put in the effort. You don’t want to let your Facebook page go stagnant for more than a day or two (unless you’re using an extremely specialized and advanced strategy that I don’t have time to go into here), but you definitely don’t want to put content into your fans’ feeds that is sub-par. Make every post great. Don’t waste them. Playing the Facebook game is definitely not hard, but it does require a willingness to work within the algorithm and understand the expectations of your fans. Don’t just meet those expectations. Exceed them.

When putting together strategies and making adjustments (and the occasional complete overhaul) of social media pages, processes, and content, there’s nothing better than to get a client truly “plugged in” to the social media world. There’s an excitement that surrounds it, particularly after a couple of weeks when the results start improving and the processes start moving like clockwork.

As John “Hannibal” Smith used to say in every episode of the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

There’s a challenge, though. Every now and then, the system starts to work too well. The plans can be so effective that it’s good to take a quick break from the routine and step into a realm that I like to call Acoustic Social Media. It’s a time when you stop the planned posts, turn off the automation tools, and actually spend a day or two (or five) getting your hands involved and actually play directly with the social media profiles.

The Machine: Playing Songs While Plugged In

You should be using tools. If you’re not, you’re either small enough to stay nimble and effective working everything directly or you’re not being successful with it at all. Management and monitoring tools can allow strong business pages and profiles to maintain a consistently improving social media presence, run timely campaigns when they’re supposed to run, and put together an overarching strategy that goes unnoticed by the casual observer but that is a work of art from the birdseye view.

I’ll use my Twitter account as an example. I check for Twitter replies every hour or two when I’m at the computer. It’s important to me to maintain a strong Twitter presence, so the majority of my direct time on Twitter is seeing the Tweets of the people I follow and responding to direct communications. I could do that all day. Unfortunately, that leaves very little time for actually Tweeting from a business perspective; my account is a combination of business and personal.

To make sure I remain robust but engaging, the majority of my Tweets that aren’t directed at people are done through tools:

• I use Buffer for a good chunk of them. My formula is relatively simple – image, link, quote or thought, link, quote or though, link, image. Rinse. Repeat. The majority of these Tweets are personal, though I include some business Tweets from time to time if it’s important.
• I use Triberr to find and auto-schedule interesting marketing content. Like Buffer, Triberr does the scheduling for you based upon your settings which determine how often you’re posting. I scan the content on Triberr, open the links that I like, then approve the good ones to be posted into the queue.
• Content that I post on Pinterest, Tumblr, Scoop.it, and my personal WordPress blog go live the moment that I publish on those platforms.
• Important Tweets – those I post directly through Twitter whenever they occur.

By doing it like this, I have a machine of content generation that works very much like a band. Each tool has its purpose and unique sound just as the guitarist, drummer, bass player, and vocalist all have their roles when playing their songs. When looking at my feed, it looks pretty darn random. It’s hard to see the rhyme or reason. In essence, it looks as if I’m just an extremely active Twitter user who posts whenever I see something that strikes my fancy. It also looks like I’m awake 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s not far from the truth, but I do sleep on occasion.

Staying “plugged in” to the machine allows for a consistent flow of content that goes out at the right times. It’s enough to be ever present but not so much that it gets annoying.

Unplugging – Acoustic Social Media

There are some tremendous advantages when popular singers leave the big stage and run some shows in a cozy atmosphere without the assistance of amplifiers. First and foremost, the sound is more pure. Regardless of how amazing the sound is at a large concert, it really doesn’t compare to listening to artists playing an acoustic guitar and a singing into a microphone connected to a couple of small speakers.

The intimacy is palpable. You can see the sweat on their temples, the movement of the fingers over the strings, the emotion in the faces during the tough notes. It’s real. They’re not looking at the crowd as “Cleveland” or “Sydney”. They see the crowd as a group of people who came to hear them bare their souls.

The music isn’t just heard by the audience. It’s felt. It’s raw. This is where artists and audiences can really make a connection.

Social media works in much the same way, only without the sweat. Turning off the automation for a little while allows users to reach out with their business pages. They can respond more quickly to what’s happening in real time. They can have conversations that happen back and forth at a rapid pace rather than replies that are hours apart.

I will likely never be convinced that a “set it and forget it” approach to social media works, but “set it and monitor closely” is the most scalable and effective way to truly use social media for business. If you have the time to skip the “set it” part and work social media in an acoustic manner from time to time, you won’t just be mixing it up with proper engagement and a personal touch. You’ll have an opportunity to roam around in the virtual world and see what’s going on outside of your campaigns and strategies. Just as few artists are able to be successful without the big concerts, few companies can sustain a purely organic social media presence without full time employees dedicated to the process.

If you can unplug from time to time, you’ll find the value within the intimacy.

In an environment with a billion users, millions of business pages, and just about every company in every industry trying to play along, it’s hard to post content to Facebook as a local business that can truly resonate within the venue. Local businesses have it harder than most as their goal should be to stay local but the attitude is one that demands mass acceptance.

How can a business be relevant on Facebook within their local demographic when they are fighting for a fraction of attention in a world that is loaded with noise? There are advertising techniques and promotional tools that can help, but first and foremost it begins with having the right content. The bad news is that most pages are not posting the right content. The good news is that businesses who know what they’re doing are able to stand out because most businesses are not posting the right content.

This needs to be stated up front. The old strategy of posting funny pictures of cats ripped off 9gag are behind us. Many businesses are trying so hard to fit into the Facebook subculture when they should be trying their best to stand out. If you’re trying to promote your brand by posting irrelevant content, stop immediately and post things like…

Industry images

If you’re a realtor, your Facebook page should have images of exceptional homes. It’s that simple. It’s a shame that so many try to post exactly what they don’t do in hopes that people will like their “personality”. On the contrary, businesses should focus on their expertise. They should focus on the things that they have access to that other people do not.

Using the realtor example, they get to see kitchens, landscapes, back yards, bathrooms, and other interesting things that most people rarely get to see outside of magazines (yes, there are still people who read magazines). Homes can be amazing and many people enjoy getting a taste of other lifestyles through images of their residences.

Keep it as interesting as possible. Every image should be of something that stands out. Every description should highlight those things that stand out. If the marble on a counter top is exceptional in some way, highlight that fact in the description. Ask for opinions – “Is this something you could see yourself cooking on in your home?”

Staying relevant but putting a spotlight on the most interesting components of your day-to-day professional life gives people a reason to be following you. They aren’t following a local business Facebook page because they want to see how off-topic interesting they can be. They’re following them because of the expertise and experiences they bring to the table.

Local images

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the heart of Los Angeles or the outskirts of rural Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. If you spent a day with a camera and a car and started shooting images of the local area in the morning, by mid-afternoon you’d have enough content to post on Facebook to last a month or two.

Local businesses must focus on their local area on Facebook. They shouldn’t be looking for global appeal. They should be shining a bright spotlight on the things that make the local area fantastic. The true targets of Facebook marketing, the local people, are much more interested in things with which they have familiarity rather than far off places. They have the whole internet to find new things. On Facebook, they want the familiar.

Visual reviews

Most review sites have Facebook apps that businesses can use to show what their customers think of them. All of these apps with absolutely no exceptions are worthless. They do not spread the word about your reputation. The only people who see it are those visiting your page, which is likely a very low number.

Since most people never visit a Facebook page again after liking it the first time, the only way to expose your reviews is through the news feed. Since the news feed is driven images, visual reviews are best. We went into detail about this content type here.

Customer testimonial videos

There are many businesses that overuse these, but it’s better to use too many than not at all. They aren’t as effective as other types of content for two reasons: videos get less EdgeRank love and people often do not “like” or care about people they don’t know.

Still, they are an excellent way shake the content stream up a bit and get the community involved. Depending on the Facebook popularity of an individual and the size of the community, they can be more effective for some than others. Again, use them sparingly but work them in at least a little.

Sales promos and marketing material

People don’t want to be spammed by a ton of content that they don’t want to see. They don’t come to Facebook to see ads, but just as they’re willing to tolerate them on television, they’ll tolerate them on Facebook as long as it’s not overdone. Think of your Facebook page like a television show. The best shows with engaging content are able to keep people sitting through the ads. The shows without the same interest-driving content often lose people during commercials.

You don’t want to lose people when posting promotional material, but you also don’t want your Facebook page to be ineffective because you’re too worried about not posting anything beneficial to the company. If you’re posting high-quality content the majority of the time, you “earn” the right to post the occasional marketing message.

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Facebook content isn’t difficult. Finding the right mix of content to post at the right times is the real challenge. Play around with it. See what works and what doesn’t work. Most importantly, remember that Facebook is more of a communication tool than a broadcasting tool. What you hear on Facebook is often more important than what you say.

Make the Owner or General Manager Aware of Risks

Pay Attention to Bad Experiences at Other Dealerships

Give Exceptional Service

Remember that today's consumers are connected, they do research, and they are very aware of their power over businesses. The company culture shines through each employee whether it's a positive one or a negative one. If you are constantly getting bad reviews (and thankfully there aren't a ton of dealers who fall into this category in 2013) than you should take a look at the things that people are saying online. We all know there are reviews that are bad because of misunderstandings or outright ignorance from the consumers, but there are more bad reviews that echo the truth than most are willing to acknowledge. If it's a growing problem, find out what the people are saying and do what you can to improve it.

If there’s one word I hate using in marketing, it’s “engagement”. The term has been so overused and abused since the rise of social media that its meaning has become distorted. It’s defined in different ways and means different things to different people. Thankfully, the moves by search giants like Google and Bing as well as social giants like Facebook and Twitter have brought in at least a little uniformity to we should look for when trying to harness engagement.

First and foremost, websites today must be engaging. That’s not to say that they have to be interactive; heavy websites that make people jump through hoops to find what they want simply don’t work today and may have really never worked. Today, people want to go to websites and find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. To make today’s websites more engaging, one simply has to add content. I’m not talking about the SEO content that is too heavy on many websites or the “share this on Facewitter” buttons that are put on so many pages that nobody would every willingly share. I’m talking about unique content that is interesting, useful, entertaining, or all of the above.

For businesses, it’s often hard to find and produce content that people will find interesting, useful, or entertaining. It’s not that the content doesn’t exist on the internet today or in the minds of a marketing professional. It’s that they don’t always know what kind of content they can find and produce. Here are seven such types of content that can work for your business to make your websites more engaging. There are plenty of articles (some that I have written) that discuss the reasons that you would want your websites to be engaging from a search and social marketing perspective so I won’t go into those reasons here. If you need to be convinced that it will be helpful, start with those articles first, then come back and learn more.

The good ol' image gallery

If there’s one thing that internet is not short on, it’s images. If there’s one thing the real world isn’t short on, it’s cameras thanks to the rise of smartphones. Between the two, finding or taking images that pertain to your industry, your local area, or both is a piece of cake.

With Chevy’s recent release of the 2014 Corvette, the internet is loaded with plenty of pictures. A Chevy dealer could compile some of the best images and load them up on their site. Take note – any time you use an image from somewhere else, you should always link to the original source. Attribution is ever-important when posting content to your website. There will be those who still contact you even when you properly attribute and ask you to remove the images. If it’s taken by someone else, it is has a copyright. Always respect them. There are plenty of sources that love to get links to their content and are willing to let you share.

The written content on a post such as “10 Awesome Angles of the 2014 Chevy Corvette” doesn’t have to be huge. At the minimum, a paragraph or two of unique content at the top is fine. What’s better is a little description of each image below the content as well as the one or two paragraphs at the top.

YouTube video(s) and commentary

The last thing you want to do is post a video by itself on your website. This brings no value and the visitor might as well link to the video itself. What you definitely can do with videos is find one or more of them (again, they must pertain to your industry, your local area, or both) and post them with appropriate commentary. Let’s say you find a great video about the 2014 Corvette. You could write up a couple of paragraphs detailing what led up to this epic new design, show the video, then discuss how this Corvette is dramatically different from your perspective. Unique commentary is extremely important here. You do not want to be posting the words of others. This should be personal. Make sure that the visitors who find this video and commentary get value out of both aspects.

To really add value and make the page engaging, use more than one video. People can share a single video more easily from YouTube itself than from your website, but by making it multiple videos on the same topic, you’ve now compiled something that people will be more willing to share as a link on their own website or through social media.

Link lists

These are great, but be very careful with them. The ideas is that you’ll write a short article – one or two paragraphs – about a particular topic, then offer several links to other websites that are also talking about the subject. If you write up a piece about the Corvette, you could then link to reviews or commentaries from trusted sources such as Car and Driver or Motortrend. The title of these pages could be something such as “How the Internet Responded to the 2014 Corvette Launch”.

The part about being careful – make sure that the links open in a new tab or window. What you don’t want is content that drives people completely away from your site. Linking out is not a bad thing despite what many experts tell you, particularly when you’re working with engagement content. Remember, they aren’t there on that page to buy your products or services right this very moment. They likely landed on the page by clicking on a link in search or social and their interest is learning more about the new Vette. Your benefits (I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about it but I’ll just mention it briefly) are not in the visitors that come to the site but the benefit these pages give you through search and social to drive future traffic to more important pages on your website.

Infographics

The beauty of infographics is that they’re visual. As an internet society, we love to see things more than we love to read about them. Even if the graphics themselves are loaded with words and statistics, they are often done so in a visually stunning manner that is more worthy of being shared. Take a look at this infographic we created for Mashable. There’s tons of data, but it’s easier to share because of the graphic nature of the content.

Just like with a video, do not simply post an infographic and walk away. You should post at least a little commentary about the graphic itself, what it means to your, your industry, your customers, your local area, or all of the above.

Full articles

This scares many people. For the most part, businesses owners and the marketing people that work for them aren’t journalists by trade. Thankfully, what most business owners do have is an expertise in their industry. Even if you’re not a great writer, you can probably come up with information that can be interesting to the layman and have someone else put it into a proper article format.

With the rise of AuthorRank, this may prove to be the most important overall form of content that we put on our business websites.

You don’t have to post too often, but if you can’t stay at least a little consistent by posting 2 or 3 full articles a month, there’s really no need to post them at all. If time is too scarce, stick to the…

Response articles

It may be hard to come up with original content, but it’s never hard to express opinions. There was a long article yesterday about Les Mis on FoxNews. I really liked what it had to say, so I wrote a response article to it. This response took no time at all – less than 20 minutes – but got the point across in a way that the internet likes without having to do a ton of research other than reading the original article.

As an expert in your industry and/or local area, you’ll find that writing response articles is one of the easiest ways to get a good amount of unique content on your website without having to do a ton of research. In essence, the research is already done by the real journalist. All you have to do is offer your opinions about what they got right, what they got wrong, or expand on what their basic premise was. With practice, these get to the point that you’ll be able to easily post them at your convenience.

* * *

Making websites pop on search and social isn’t as hard as most make it out to be. It starts with great content and continues into proper practices to make the search engines and social media sites love your stuff.

“POP” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

When I first explored Triberr over a year ago, I ran away quickly. It seemed to be an automated tool that took over my social media profiles and posted on my behalf in ways that I absolutely refuse to submit to, even on Twitter where a person’s feed is given a bit more leeway. People would post something and by being in that tribe, I agreed to share their content. This didn’t sit well for me, so I abandoned it.

Things have changed for the better. Much better. Now, I’m somewhat addicted to Triberr. If you’re in standard tribes, you don’t post anything automatically. You don’t have to post anything at all if you don’t want to. What was once something that I refused to do – automate my social media feeds without vetting the content first – turned into something that I absolutely love. It’s now a place to find content written on the topics that I like and schedule posts at whatever pace I want. The forced posting community that I didn’t like at first became the perfect content grooming and vetting system.

By joining the right tribes, I’ve been given the opportunity to discover some great content. There’s awful content in the mix as well, but thankfully I don’t have to share that content. I can ignore it or even “mute” that particular blogger if they demonstrate a tendency towards submitting bad content. When I see something that strikes my fancy, I simply have to approve it. Triberr takes care of the rest and posts on my behalf.

There are plenty of post scheduling tools out there that work better for that individual purpose, but nothing combines post discovery with post scheduling like Triberr. The analytics are simple but useful – they use Google’s URL shortener to track clicks combined with their internal stats to track shares.

The important part from a marketing perspective is that your own content gets shared as well by others in your tribes. They, too, have the ability to like or not like what you’re posting, so it’s a great tool to see which pieces of content are resonating within this particular community and which ones fail miserably. The community itself is strong – the interaction between users is useful and organic.

I’m glad I checked it out again. Many services and social communities lose me from the start and never get an opportunity to get me back. I don’t remember what it was that prompted me to re-examine Triberr but I’m very glad that I did.

When we hear about how social media is growing, we often look at the rest of the world. Americans are all on social media, right? Not so fast.

In this infographic we made for Mashable, we highlight the way that social media is consumed on a global basis. It shows some good and bad trends from a pure business perspective in America – on one hand, there is still an amazing upside to social in the states with more potential popping up left and right. On the other hand, the biggest cities and fastest growing countries on social media are not in North America, making it even more important for businesses in the US to be mindful of who they follow, who is following them, and how the content interacts with the world. It’s not that we want to shut out the world. It’s that we have to stay focused on the local benefits even if the rest of the world is starting to catch on quickly.

Here’s the graphic. Click to enlarge.