Facebook has long been considered the dominant marketing platform as far as social media is concerned, but is that still true? Sure, the numbers are still huge, but the problem stems from who makes up those numbers. An increasingly large amount of parents and grandparents are getting in on the Facebook game, and now, they dominate the platform. Just like in real life, teenagers aren’t really digging their communication being monitored by their elders, so they’re looking to move to greener, less parental pastures. How dramatic is this egress to your social media marketing? Let’s take a look.

First thing’s first, let’s look at the numbers. We have a great graph from Piper Jaffrar Companies that shows exactly the change over time:

So what do you make of this graph?

FACEBOOK: Facebook is the clear loser here with teens. We see a drop-off of almost 50% of the teen userbase. This can be directly attributed to the influx of older family members to the social network, as well as the fairly stringent age requirements (recently lifted) required by Facebook.

TWITTER: Twitter is holding pretty steady. They’re down too, but just a percentage point or two. Twitter doesn’t care how old you are, which is a point in their favor with teens. Anyone can make an account and just start posting without much of the Facebook-style intrusions.

INSTAGRAM: The photo heavy social network is the clear winner here. Teens want to share interesting pictures and videos with their friends, and Instagram lets them do that without all of the parents and frills. I wouldn’t be surprised if this number continued to trend upwards.

So, what does this mean for your Facebook marketing efforts? If your target audience is teens, you may want to start moving towards Instagram, where opportunities are actually pretty readily available. If your target audience is an older crowd, then Facebook is still the social network of choice.

Original post titled "Teens Leaving Facebook" by Zach Billings on Wikimotive's blog.

We’ve waited for a long time, but it’s finally here: the meeting of the digital giants. Until now, these two juggernauts have maneuvered around each other, never committing themselves to a union, but finally, we have Facebook and Google working together in digital marketing bliss.

Kind of.

Google announced that its DoubleClick Bid Manager will offer Facebook ad inventory. In case you don’t speak digital marketing, what this means is that you can use the Google Big Manager to place bids on Facebook advertisement spots.

It’s a win for both parties. Google remains competitive in the paid ad space by offering the very trendy (and profitable) Facebook advertising spots. Facebook gets the advertisers who work through Google, increasing their total volume and likely increasing their adspace bids.

According to Cassandra Caswell-Stirling, Campaign Manager for Display Media:

“Because the Newsfeed ads, while unloved by many Facebook users, are performing so well for many of our advertisers, advertising on the FBX will become a main staple of future media proposals and Google needs to be a part of that to remain competitive.”

As far as what this says about Google’s growth strategy, David Carrillo, Manager of Earned Media, added:

“It’s less about competing with vendors or agencies and more about positioning itself to remain the central cog in the marketing wheel. Google doesn’t want to spend time or resources chasing projects with limited revenue upside. They have a dominant position in search, have a robust footprint in display via the GDN, and practically own the video market in YouTube, but there’s this gaping hole in its repertoire for social. Not being in the Facebook eco-system is almost akin to not being in the Internet at the moment, and that is something Google can’t afford to continue any longer.”

We don’t know the full scope of how the DoubleClick ads will rollout on Facebook, but we’re hopeful that we won’t have to wait too long to find out. Both companies seem eager to get the partnership moving, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was live by the end of the year.

Matt Cutts is back again with another one of his block rocking beats. The Webmaster Help videos that Matt Cutts puts out may not be the most glamorous pieces of SEO news around, but we still honestly feel that they are worth covering. Paying attention to the great, sweeping changes in the SEO field is only a piece of the puzzle. To truly have great SEO success, you need to know the minutea and have it perfected at every level. It’s a tough job, but it’s what separates great SEO companies from not so great SEO companies.

This week, Matt Cutts is asked the following:

“In terms of SEO, what is the difference between <strong> tag and <b> tag for emphasis on certain words of text. From the user perspective, both tags have the same effect (words in bold). Which tags should we use in which circumstances?”

This is actually a question that gets asked a lot, and people have many different theories about what exactly is the right way to do things. When do you use the <strong> or <b> tags? Well, according to Matt Cutts, it just doesn’t matter, so you can stop worrying about it.

Yup, sorry to break it to all of you bold and strong conspiracy theorists out there, but Google treats the tags exactly the same. The only advice we can really give you is to use them as naturally as possible. If you’re writing copy and you want to emphasize a word to make it stand out in the text, that’s where you traditionally use bold. If you want to emphasize a word so that it’s read by screen reading programs and the like differently, then you use the strong tag.

According to Matt Cutts, it doesn’t really matter either way anymore. Modern browsers will display both as bold, so just do what you think is best.

Original post titled "Strong or Bold?" by Andrew Martin on Wikimotive's blog.

SEO isn’t a religion, but it’s definitely pretty close. You have to dedicate yourself to it to succeed, you have leaders and idols, and you have a mysterious entity that deals out rewards and punishments due to only their own strange whims (that’s a shot at Google, not God…don’t write me). Much like religion, SEO has written rules and unwritten rules. There are things that you’re supposed to do that no one really does, things that you’re not supposed to do that pretty much everyone does, and things that people can’t seem to agree on for the life of them. Again, much like religion, there’s so much we’ll never know for sure, but here are 10 solid rules that will help you out in the meantime. They aren’t perfect for every situation, but if you follow them, you’ll be more successful than someone who doesn’t.

Original post on Wikimotive's blog titled "The Ten Commandments of SEO" by Daniel Hinds.

Comments on blogs are a strange beast. On the one hand, comments mean your blog is sparking a conversation, which is one of the major goals of most blogs and can help with SEO. On the other hand, if you’ve ever read the comment section of most blogs on the internet, they can be absolutely disgusting places. How do you decide if your blog should or should not allow comments? Today, I’m going to go through the benefits and downfalls and help you figure out which option is right for you.

 Why You Shouldn’t Allow Comments: 

1. They are only a fraction of your real engagement. No matter how many readers you get, only a small fraction will ever comment. This means that even if you do disable comments, only a tiny percentage of people will even care.

2. Your comments represent your community. This one can be on the good list too, but more often, it’s a negative. People will read your blog and get an impression of you and your blog, but if the comments are full of vitriol and ignorance, they may not want to be part of the community at all and won’t come back and read more. Sure, you can weed out the worst of the comments, but that brings us to the next point…

3. The onus of maintenance and curation falls on you. By allowing comments, you are creating more work for yourself. You’ll suddenly have to spend time daily going through comments on different posts and making sure they aren’t too strange or offensive. Some people will even take offense to you deleting their comment, causing them to leave more comments until you are eventually forced to ban them. All of this takes valuable time where you could be writing new content to share.

4. Part of maintenance is spam. Even if your following is the best in the world, even if you have a great spam filter, you are still going to have to deal with people trying to link to cheap Nikes on your blog. Why make more work for yourself?

5. Most comments are negative. Obviously this isn’t true for every niche, but the combination of human nature and laziness means that people only respond when they do not agree with you and really want to sound off. What makes it even worse is that most comment sections are anonymous, so people aren’t afraid to use offensive language when they voice their disagreement. Over time, you’ll start to worry about offending people when you write, and that’s the downfall of any creative voice.

So there are five valid reasons why allowing comments on your blog can be bad, from seriously detrimental to just a pain in the butt. Of Course, just because you don’t allow commenting doesn’t mean there can’t still be conversation.

Here are Some Comment Alternatives: 

1. You can encourage people to write responses to you on their own blogs. This allows them to address what you wrote point by point and really take their time with a reply. This, in my opinion, is the best method. It creates more content for everyone, more discussion, and just furthers the topic more than anything else. Of course, people don’t always have the time, energy or brainpower to write long replies. For those who prefer to keep brevity intact…

2. You can encourage replied via social media. This is a good option because people Tweeting at you are a lot more easy to manage, and by that I mean you can just ignore them if you want to. They won’t clog up your channels and you still have the ability to reply if you feel like engaging. Facebook doesn’t work quite as well, so try and encourage people to reach out via Twitter if you’re using this method.

3. You can tell people to email you their responses. This one is the easiest if you really just want to ignore the bulk of communication, but it can be difficult to parse out the good replies even when you are looking for them.

Of course, you may have noticed that there are plenty of blogs out there that do allow comments, so they can’t be all bad. Now, we’ll take a look at the other side of the coin and see why you SHOULD allow comments.

Why You Should Allow Comments:

1. Your comments represent your community (remember this one from earlier?) If you have a great commenting community, it can actually  lead to more commenters and more readers. If everyone is welcoming and having interesting discussions, newcomers to the blog will be more inclined to stick around. Of course, you’ll have to invest time in actually building that community, but if you succeed, it’s worth any amount of effort.

2. Comments serve as easy social proof. If people look at a blog and see no sign of interaction, they may be scared off. If they see comments on every post, they know other people are reading. Humans care about what other humans think, so social proof is hugely important.

3. Comments let you directly interact with your readers. They may have questions or comments about what you wrote, and you can answer them right below the post. Not only will this make the reader you reply to feel good, it will encourage other readers to take part, because they see that you care and that you’re willing to engage.

4. Commenters help you with ideas. We’ve all approached the blank page and been stumped about what to write. When you foster regular engagement, your readers can tell you what parts of your writing they are most interested in. This lets you tailor the content to them, resulting in even more engagement, more suggestions, and easier to produce content ideas.

And the Verdict is…

It will be different for everyone. Only you will know if comments are right for your blog or not, and the only way you’ll know for sure is by doing some testing. If you aren’t getting many comments, consider shutting them off for awhile. If your comments have been shutoff, try turning them on and see what kind of response you get.

Let us know which way works better for you!

Original post titled "Should You Have Comments on Your Blog?" By Daniel Hinds on Wikimotive.

People are quite sure how to feel about guest blogging. Some people swear by it, claiming it’s the only new way tobuild links that have value. Others see it as just another way to scam the system that will eventually be penalized. It’s been hard to get a read on guest blogging, but today, Matt Cutts is coming out with some answers to the most common questions. As always, you have to take what the Google mouthpiece says with a grain of salt, but it’s a good framework for operating your guest posting operations.

Basically, you need to be sure that your guest blogging is truly content based, and not part of some paid link scheme. Buying a link and wrapping some pretty content around it still counts as buying a link.

“Usually there is a pretty clear distinction between an occasional press blog versus someone who’s doing a large scale paid link kind of thing,” Cutts said. “If you’re paying for links, it’s more likely that it’s an off-topic or an irrelevant blog post that doesn’t really match the subject of the blog itself. It’s more likely you will see keyword-rich anchor text and that sort of thing.”

So how do you seem legitimate? According to Cutts, the first, most obvious signal is that you’ll be introduced. If you’re someone who is worthy of a guest post, the blog owner will likely do a little bragging that you decided to contribute and they’ll talk you up. If you’re just buying a link, you’ll just be a regular old post mixed in with the other content, maybe even buried a little bit. The other  think that can give you away is the linking strategy you use within the piece. Stick to just one link and make it as organic as possible. If you cram all kinds of links in, it’ll be pretty obvious what your true intentions are.

The other thing you need to pay attention to is how often you guest blog. If you have a guest blog going live on a different site every single day, that will be viewed as spam. Google is looking for guest bloggers to be careful about what they’re writing and who they’re writing it for. Be discerning about where your content ends up.

If you’re looking for a solid guest posting opportunity from a quality blog, you should remember that Wikimotive takes submissions. Just be aware it has to be a unique, quality piece, and send it to us by clicking the “Contribute” link at the top right of our site’s banner.

Original post on Wikimotive's blog titled "How to Guest Blog" by Daniel Hinds. 

Facebook has never been all that mature, but you could at least be sure you weren’t going to run into any little kids that you didn’t have at least a passing relationship too. In fact, for the most part, kids under 17 have been kept off the social network through a combination of parenting and Facebook policies. Those days are over now though. As of today, Facebook is removing the privacy settings that previously kept kids between the ages of 13 and 17 from contacting anyone but their immediate social circles. What will this mean for the social network and your social media marketing? Let’s take a look.

To start, let’s look at the details. Previously, the 13-17 year old group could only contact friends or friends of friends. Now, their privacy policy will default to “friends only,” but it can be changed to the most liberal, adult settings at the discretion of the user, no matter what their age.

Facebook claims they will protect teens by popping up the occasional reminders about their privacy settings, but how effective that really is remains to be seen.

As far as marketing, this is a good move on Facebook’s part. It will likely attract new, more active users, as well as make previous underage users increase their activity. This means a new, large pool of users for marketers to target, and we mean that literally. Using Facebook’s ad targeting system with this new privacy policy means that advertisers can specifically target and interact with users in the 13 to 17 year old age group like never before. Targeting kids has always been big business, especially for certain verticals (toys and sugar cereals) so Facebook can expect an influx of new advertising dollars to the system.

How kids fare with this new privacy policy remains to be seen, but we hope they stay smart and use the optional Facebook privacy settings to their full effect.

Post "Facebook Goes Public with Teens" by Zach Billings originally on Wikimotive's blog. 

So, today we're going to talk about Fiverr. Recently, I've been seeing a lot of articles popping up that list different ways to build links and boost your SEO using the service. In case you don't know, Fiverr is elance for stupid people a site where people offer services (known as gigs) and they all cost five dollars. Now, these services can range from singing you happy birthday in German, to adding 10,000 likes to your Facebook page. The trouble is, only one of these things is valuable. Can you guess which it is?

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag baby.

There are a lot of digital marketing services offered up on Fiverr, and as crazy as it may seem, real live SEO professionals are actually purchasing them. The main culprits seem to be:

1. Custom (yeah, right) articles written for your business blog (by people who learned all of their english by reading bathroom stalls.)

2. Links to your website (from digital wastelands) with your anchor text of choice (now with 100% more Google penalties!)

3. Thousands of social followers (all of whom are bound by Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics.)

Quite a lineup, am I right? Let's go down the list and point out the obvious flaws:

1. You will never get a quality article for five dollars. It just won't happen. It will either be ripped off, poorly written, or too short to do you any good. The reality is that decent writing will cost you. Not necessarily a ton more, but I believe $10 for about 300 words is the minimum you can pay and expect any kind of quality.

2. Google penalizes purchased links 100% of the time. That's all there is too it. You think the person setting up the link for five bucks cares about you or your business? That link is going to be put up on a site with hundreds or thousands of others, none of them related, and you're going to be the one who has to deal with the fallout. Meanwhile, the linker is buying themselves lunch on your stupidity.

3. Buying social followers is an attractive proposition. Full disclosure, it's something Wikimotive dabbled in buying fans when the social frontier was still wild. We've learned our lesson though, and so has everyone else who takes social seriously. If you buy fans and followers, there just isn't any value. They will all be bots and fake profiles. Maybe you look impressive for a second, but most people these days can spot inflated numbers. It will be especially obvious when you have 20 thousand fans but only 1 like per post. If you want to buy likes, run Facebook ads, but even those are sketchy with more than the occasional bot slipping in. Your best bet is to put in the work and build your audience the slower, more organic way: by putting out quality, shareable content.

So that's my take on Fiverr, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. Have any of you found a realistic way to use the service to your advantage? If so, I'd love to hear it.

Original post by Daniel Hinds titled "Low Five(rr)". 

The SEO industry is a strange one. It's extremely niche when you get really into it, and like any super focused niche, strange celebrities begin to emerge. It's kinda like when you start getting really into backgammon and all of a sudden you find yourself wearing Paul David Magriel Jr. jerseys around town, talking about the infamous World Backgammon Championship game of '78. To people that aren't in the know, you sound a little like a nut, but to those who are in your world, you know the touch that Pauly Mags had on the game. Extended backgammon references aside, SEO is a similar situation, and if you want to break into the SEO elite, you need to know the players. Let's take a look at the current all-pro roster.

To best illustrate who is known in the show, we have an infographic from the fine folks at Wildfire Digital. It's by no means an exhaustive list (they left me off, but I'm sure it was only an oversight. When the next version of this bad boy comes around, you know who is going to be occupying the center square) but they cover all of the biggest names in the industry. For our money, the big two right now are Matt Cutts and Rand Fishkin, but that is the subject of fairly intense debate.

Take a look at the roster and then go add anyone you don't already have to your social media accounts. Their advice may not always be perfect, but following the experts and interacting with them when you have something useful to say is a great way to establish yourself in the game.

(due to the size limit of Driving Sales, we were unable to attach the full roster. To see it in its proper size, visit the blog Major SEO Players by Tim Martell. )

So you've just created a new blog. It's an exciting feeling isn't it? To me, a new blog looks like opportunity. You have the ability to reach people like humans have never had before. With just a few keystrokes, you can make your thoughts and feelings heard by the world. The hard part is making sure that the world is listening. You need to be better, faster, smarter, and louder than the next guy if you're going to stand out in the crowd, and we have some digital marketing tips to help your new blog raise its voice.

Design

The design of your blog is one of the most important factors. If your blog is slapped together, it's like going out in public wearing dirty, mustard-stained pajamas. Sure, they're comfy. Yeah, they smell like mustard (which is a plus in my book) but people aren't going to want to interact with you. In fact (and this is from personal experience) they'll even cross the street to avoid you.

Make sure your blog is well designed. That doesn't mean it needs flashy graphics. Minimalism is a perfectly valid design choice. Just, whatever you do, make sure it looks visually appealing for your audience.

Speaking of design, here are a few simple design features you want to be sure to include for promotion:

Social Sharing

There are a million plugins that do this on pretty much any platform, find the one that works best for you. If you're creating great content, people are going to want to share it. The problem is that people are lazy, so you need to make it as simple as possible to share...we're talking one click simple. Try the addthis or flare plugins if you're on Wordpress, those are a couple of our favorites.

Social Links

Have bright icons that link to your blogs page on all of the relevant social networks. Your blog does have pages on all of the relevant social networks...right?

Blogrolls

A blogroll is a list of links to other blogs in your social network. This needs to be done tactfully. Reach out to just a few, as in five or less, other blogs that are highly relevant to your blog and exchange a link on blogrolls. If this is done well then it's mutually beneficial and great for readers who are interested in that content. The key here is discretion. Link to bad blogs and you'll get penalized. Link to too many blogs and you'll get penalized. A blogroll is an intimate thing, and you want to curate yours carefully.

RSS 

Do people still use RSS feeds? They sure do! Make sure you have a feed set up and in an easy to find place, linked from your homepage with the traditional icon. If you build it, they will follow.

Social Media

Social media should be a no brainer at this point, but people still resist it. The reality is, if you have a blog, you should make your blog a social media account on all of the relevant platforms. It helps alert people to new posts, spread posts they love, and increases your personality as an author and public figure. Make no mistake about it, all of the best blogs are very active on social media.

Facebook 

This is the most important one. The first thing to do is make sure you have those social icons on your blog's homepage linking to your Facebook page. On your blog's Facebook page, you have the opportunity to expand your personality. Share posts, of course, but also engage fans and share funny pictures and articles that are relevant to your niche. Pay attention to the robust Facebook analytics and learn what times and what content get the best reception, and then tailor your posts accordingly. One viral hit on Facebook can boost your blog readership dramatically.

Twitter

Twitter is more work than Facebook, but it can pay off more too. Tweet out new posts, but do more engaging than ever. Follow other people who are popular in your niche and try to strike up conversations. Also, use relevant hashtags to try and get your blog-related posts noticed by the right people. Finally, don't be afraid to jump on whatever is trending if you have that perfect quip.

Pinterest

Make sure every blog post has a great image and then pin those images to Pinterest. For most blogs, that will be enough. If you have a blog that would appeal to the Pinterest crowd, like one about crafts or cooking, it's definitely worth your time to cook up some custom graphics containing snippets of your best project or recipe.

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is similar to Pinterest in that it's very much about your niche. What crafts and cooking are to Pinterest, business is to LinkedIn. If you write about anything even tangentially related to business or marketing, you should share those posts to LinkedIn. You get bonus points if you can find a relevant group, join it, and share your content there as well.

Multimedia

Just because you have a written blog doesn't mean you can't include other mediums. The most successful blogs in the world all have branched out as they've grown, and that's something you can emulate right away.

Videos 

Videos are a great addition to your content, as they humanize you like nothing else. When people read your writing, they get a certain image in their mind, but videos show them a much more real version of yourself. If your uncomfortable being in front of the camera, you can always recruit a friend and just speak over footage. What your videos are about will depend on your niche, but there is always video content to be found.

Podcasts 

Like videos, podcasts are a way to build your voice and your personal brand. The best podcasts have more than one person, so get a cohost or take callers. You can talk about the same things you write about, only in the podcast format, it's more of a dialogue. For the best results, grab the person that you always laugh with the most. Humor comes through strong in the podcast format and most of the highly rated podcasts are funny.

Syndicate

The common advice used to be that you should syndicate your blog to any reputable place that will take it, but what Google considers to be reputable is always changing, so you need to be extremely conservative. Only syndicate places that are high-quality with good PageRank and always make sure you make your original post on your blog canonical. To syndicate socially, here are a couple of the best places:

Reddit

Reddit is the single biggest driver of traffic, but it needs to be used sparingly. If you post every blog you write on Reddit, you'll get banned and your blog will be viewed as spam. Only post sporadically, on an account that also posts a lot of other material, and make sure you're posting to a relevant Subreddit. If you do it right, you can double your traffic overnight with a single successful Reddit post. Just be sure to provide value to the Reddit community.

Stumbleupon 

Stumbleupon is different than Reddit. You should add everything you write to Stumbleupon as soon as it's published. If it's good, people will share and upvote it and it will quickly garner thousands of posts. If it's bad, or more likely boring, it won't get upvoted and it will just disappear, but you won't be penalized for taking the chance. The more content you can add to Stumbleupon, the better your chances of success.

​

Original post titled "4 Ways to Promote Your New Blog" by Daniel Hinds can be found at Wikimotive.