For years, the social media landscape has remained largely unchanged. Sure, you have things like Pinterest and Instagram popping up, but the big things for business have consistently been Marketing with Twitter and Facebook. Google+ was designed to be the Facebook killer, but it hasn’t accomplished that, not by a long-shot. What Google’s social network HAS done, just this week, is take one step up the podium.

The new Global Web Index results are out, and Google+ has more users than Twitter. Not surprisingly, both networks are still far, far behind Facebook. The numbers break down like this: Twitter has 21% of global internet users using their service, Google+ has 25%, and Facebook has a mighty 51%.

What does this mean for your marketing? Honestly, not a lot. You should be sure you have your Google+ page set up, and that your local listing is accurate, but there just isn’t a vibrant community of real users on the service. The numbers are deceptive due to Google’s integrated services model, where you need a Google+ account to do other things on the web. The Google+ network itself is actually still bordering on a ghost-town, especially when compared to the furious activity on both Facebook and Twitter.

Google does have plans to change this in the future. YouTube is currently the third largest network, tied with Twitter. It’s been suggested that Google will make a Google+ account mandatory for anyone who wants to use YouTube. If they actually enforce that, you can bet Google+ will suddenly be a real rival to Facebook in terms of sheer user volume, if not in user activity.

Original article about Social Media Marketing can be found on Wikimotive's blog titled, "Google+ Slides into Second Place!" by Dan Hinds. 

Currently, the biggest problem with using Bing for SEM and Business SEO is the lack of search volume. Sure, they came in with roughly 20 percent of the total U.S. searches by the end of last year, but Google is still dominating them, essentially getting the rest of the market share (ignoring the pittance of Yahoo, AOL, and ASK.com). Optimizing for Bing hasn't been on the top of many to do lists, it has simply made more sense to optimize for Google and then (maybe) perform a few small tweaks to appease Bing. That could all be changing though.

We wrote about how the Graph Search partnership of Facebook and Bing would be a boon to the search engine, but now there is speculation that it could be more important than previously thought. Here is a quote from Derrick Connell, Corporate Vice President of Search for Bing.

"Now when you do a web search on Facebook, the new search results page features a two-column layout with Bing-powered web results appearing on the left-hand side overlaid with social information from Facebook including how many people like a given result. On the right hand side, you will see content from Facebook Pages and apps that are related to your search."

Mr. Connell also included a picture of what he's talking about. Notice anything interesting?

What should leap out is the presence of the sponsored ad. If that part of the page is dedicated to Bing results as Connell says, that means that the ads you pay to sponsor on Bing may also be available on Facebook. The combination of the information from both Bing and Facebook would essentially be the best of both worlds, traditional search and social cues. This is something Google has been trying to do in-house with Google+, but so far they've been failing.

It's all still speculative at this point, but it looks very promising for Bing moving forward. If Facebook's Graph Search catches on, it could mean a major market share swing away from Google dominance.

Original post about Facebook and Bing can be found on Wikimotive's blog titled, "Bing Ads on Facebook?" 

How many of you have tried out the paid Facebook ads? Whether you’re looking to grow your audience, promote your posts, or just spread your brand awareness, Facebook ads can be a great tool. Obviously it’s always better to advertise organically, but that’s not always necessarily possible or effective. For instance, when you’re starting out with a brand new page, getting those first couple hundred likes for momentum can be absolutely crucial. Nothing tells a story like the numbers though, so here’s an infographic we found that lays out some of the figures involved in Marketing Using Facebook.

​We’ve been writing a lot about writing lately, and for a good reason. In the brave new world of content-first SEO, the ability to reliably and effectively produce unique, quality copy is becoming a valuable commodity. This can be dangerous for many marketers though, because “quality” is a subjective thing…or at least in was in the past. Today, every smart Digital Marketing Company knows that quality is defined by Google, and most half-measures will no longer suffice.

Today, I specifically wanted to talk about the dangers involved with outsourcing your content creation. Most businesses would never outsource their homepage to a firm overseas, but they don’t think twice about outsourcing their blogs, landing pages, and other ancillary marketing material that helps to truly define an image. Really, it’s hard to blame them, because until recently, you could get away with it.  Google was pretty good at finding out whether or not content was “unique”, but they were a lot less talented at discovering if there was a consistent voice or fundamental grasp of the language. Especially because (give credit where credit is due) a lot of the writers overseas did a heck of a job with English.

The problem a lot of businesses are having now is the same problem that always seems to come up: Google got better. As the Panda algorithm progresses, Google is better than ever at filtering out duplicate content and poorly-written content. Believe it or not, repeated spelling and grammar mistakes will hurt you, and so will inorganic word choice. No matter how well an overseas firm knows English, there is something to be said for cultural perspective. Writers from different countries simply have different ways of phrasing things, they have different idioms and expressions. If you’ve read enough articles online, you’ve probably come across writing that was technically sound, but still felt foreign. When an American company’s copy feels foreign, it makes the company seem disingenuous. Is that the image you want for your business?

With the most recent updates, the main danger with writing from overseas seems to be the duplicate content. The writers there, partially in an effort to shore up their English, will pull information from a myriad of sources and spin it together. This will also happen anytime you have someone writing for you who doesn’t know your industry. They have to do research to complete the job, and the documents they read while researching inevitably leak into their writing. So what you get isn’t strictly a copy, but it’s not wholly original either, and Google is starting to sniff this out.

Am I overestimating Google a little? Probably, but experience has shown it’s not safe to underestimate them. If you’re outsourcing content, look long and hard why. If it’s because you don’t think you’re a good writer, think again. You don’t have to be stellar, you just have to be clear and knowledgable, which pretty much everyone should be able to pull off in their own industry of expertise. If it’s because you don’t have the time to do it yourself, you may want to look at hiring a content creation company in the U.S. There are plenty of Companies (cough Wikimotive cough) in the U.S. who offer affordable, reliable writing, guaranteed to be done by native speakers of American English. If you don’t have the time or the money, well, you may find your site in some trouble. Do yourself a favor and set aside a small amount of time (yours or an employee’s) to review all the content you receive from the fine folks overseas. Don’t just skim it and forget it (all too common), actually go over it like a line-editor and make it as presentable as it can be.

The point of this post isn’t to rag on the workers overseas, we have nothing but respect for them. Personally, we couldn’t write a single word in Devanagari (we even had to look up Devanagari). We also aren’t trying to shame companies that outsource their writing (Wikimotive dabbled in the early days, but we were so young).

The point is that the times they are a-changing, and in a world where content is king, it should be kept as close to the kingdom as possible.

Original blog post about outsourcing content can be found on Wikimotive's blog titled, "Content is King, so Keep it in the Kingdom."

​We talk a lot about the importance of a blog. As Google's updates progress, the old adage "content is king" is becoming ever more true. It's not enough to simply have content though, that content needs to be unique to your site and valuable to the reader. In the rush to keep up with the content volume being demanded by industry best practices, it's too easy to forget the fundamental point of having a blog to begin with. I mean, of course if should help bolster your Business SEO, but the true point behind a blog is for people to read it!

Check out the comic I have with this post (all credit to XKCD.com). How many times have you seen something like this? Heck, how many times have you caught yourself saying something like this? It's an easy hole to fall into, but one that should be avoided at all costs. If you're writing a blog that you hope is read by humans and not just crawled by robots, then you need to (at least while you're writing) not think of it as "content generation", but as sharing. You're sharing your knowledge with an audience who is interested in learning more. If you share openly and have a voice, then hopefully that audience will grow.  All the gimmicks in the world can't replace the act of weaving words into a shape that has inherent value to the reader.

Now listen, I'll be the first to admit you don't have to win the pulitzer with every post. Some topics allow for more humor and heart than others. When you're writing about the newest Facebook advertising model update, you can only be so alluring, but don't give up on it. Some days it comes easy, other days it sticks a little. Some posts you'll be proud of, and others simply exist. The point is to never forget that you aren't just blogging for marketing and SEO.

You're blogging for humans.

Original post on Blogging can be found on Wikimotive's blog titled "Blogging for Humans" by Dan Hinds.

​We’ve covered a lot of the bigger issues surrounding social media marketing and Business SEO, but it’s not always the bigger things that hurt you the most. Sometimes, it’s the simple stuff that comes back to bite you. Here are three things you can fix in an afternoon that may save you from slipping in the rankings.

-Broken links. If your website has broken links, it indicates a lack of quality. Some people will say it’s okay to have a couple broken links, and they’re right, a couple won’t kill you, by why let that happen? Check your links once a month or so (plenty of free toolsonline) and ensure that they all still point at active sources. It’s also worth noting that they should be pointing to reputable sites, as linking bad-neighbors reflects poorly on you. All of this goes double for internal links, which should never be broken.

-Missing images. This is a big red flag, but also easy to spot. If your site is missing images on main pages, it’s a clear indication of apathy. Fix it.

-Spelling. Spelling matters, everyone. No one is perfect; if you read enough content from anyone, you’ll find mistakes (the fact that I’m writing about it means there will be at least one in this blog, Murphy’s law). The trick is to keep the mistakes to a minimum. Google wizard Matt Cutts has said himself that spelling matters, and an abundance of mistakes will get you penalized. Do yourself a favor and have someone proof your work, or even just run it through an MS Word spellcheck to catch anything flagrant.

Take a little time today and look over your site for these three easy-to-check (and solve) problems. I know we’ll be doing the same!

Original post about Simple SEO Fixes can be found on Wikimotive's blog under the title, "Three Things That Hurt Your Rank (That You Can Fix Today)"

​When it comes to Marketing with Twitter and Facebook, nothing is more important than the knowledge of how users interact with those services. Twitter hasn’t been making many major changes, but Facebook is constantly implementing new things and letting (forcing) users to deal with them. Their newest feature is an updated search called “Graph Search.”

Graph Search represents Facebook’s aim for the future. It appears that they really do want to compete with search engines like Google, at least for some subjects. It’s not a web search per se, it’s a little more finely honed. You would use Graph Search to find things that already exist on Facebook’s network. Mostly, you can search for people, photos, places and interests, which actually covers a lot of what people use search engines for in the first place.

As an example, you could search for TV shows that are watched by fans of Chevrolet. You could search for the favorite pages of friends of friends. You could search for pictures of cars from a particular city. You can also go by social cues, and look for restaurants in your area that are liked by your friends. Basically, any way you can think of combining the data available to Facebook, you can search that way.

If your search absolutely stumps Facebook, then you’ll be given results from Bing instead. This will do a lot to bolster Bings slow rise out of obscurity, but won’t damage Google too much, at least in the short run.

This will have a lot of implications for both users and businesses. As a business owner, you’ll be able to perform clever searches and find prospective customers. As a customer, you’ll be able to comb through the grit and find the businesses that have strong, positive social cues and fit your needs.

We’ll keep on top of the updates (Graph Search is still in beta) and figure out all the things that Graph Search will ultimately be capable of. In the meantime, Google probably isn’t afraid, but you can bet they’re taking notice.

Original blog about Facebook's search posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title, "Facebook's New Search...Google Killer?" 

​We haven’t talked about Pinterest on the blog for awhile, so we wanted to revisit the budding social network. Recently they’ve made some pretty major moves by cutting out fake users and allowing business accounts to authenticate themselves, and they just keep progressing into “necessary for Automotive Marketing” territory.

No one outside of Google is sure exactly how much weight the search engine is giving pins and boards, but we do know that it’s the third largest social network, and that it’s uniquely suited for marketing with visual content. You can set up an effective Pinterest page in just a few hours, and we strongly recommend that you do. Here are a few things to consider while you’re getting set up.

-Make sure you have a business page and verify your website. This ensures other users that you are authentic, and will give you access to other business-only features as Pinterest releases them.

-Create new boards. Everyone starts with the same boring few, and that will never get you noticed. Instead, try and create boards based on your business, but with the most unique name you can think of. “Chevy Cars” won’t make you stand out, but “2014 Chevrolet Corvette” currently has no existing boards.

-Edit your image descriptions to include links. Content may be the new SEO, but links will always have a place in your marketing strategy. Even if Google eventually doesn’t count them at all, other Pinterest users can still find the links. You get 500 characters total, so be sure to include some relevant keywords in your description, just don’t make them too spammy.

-Add your Pinterest buttons to all your other sites. Just like you have sharing buttons for Facebook and Twitter, it’s really time to add Pinterest into the mix if you haven’t already. Enabling people to easily share your content is a big part of what social media is all about!

Original blog about Pinterest Marketing can be found on Wikimotive's blog titled, "Pinterest Rudiments" by Andrew Martin.
 

The new MySpace is in the testing phases as we speak. People are exploring in the wilderness of Beta-version social media, but are they liking what they find? It it something your dealership or your Digital Marketing Company should be paying much attention to?

So far, the outlook is fairly bleak. Our limited time playing with the new network showed a lot of fun, glitzy features, but are they enough to make people abandon ship from their current social networks? The interesting part is that the new MySpace combines the best features of other sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora and others, and tries to mesh them all together. This is a solid idea on paper, but in practice it’s confusing and borderline redundant. Unless MySpace is able to make something special happen when it’s suddenly open to the public, their second coming will be very short lived.

Here’s our favorite review from someone who got to spend a full couple days exploring the new MySpace:

There’s too much to do on the New MySpace It’s a chintzy web carnival. Spotify-style music streaming, YouTube-style video streaming, pseudo-tweets, a Faux Facebook News Feed, all swirled together. But unlike the services it copies and attempts to blend, there’s no clear way to use New MySpace. It goes in too many directions at once. When you sit down in front of it for the first time, you’re lost…unless you’re some sort of necrophile. New MySpace offers nothing but a brief “Huh, this still exists” moment of perverse gawking. If you want the friend stuff, keep using Facebook. If you want the music stuff, use Spotify or Rdio. It’s just not any better than what you already have. Not even close.   - Sam Biddle

Other reviews have some more positive things to say, but none of the appraisals are really what you’d call glowing. Personally, I believe that even if MySpace is every inch as good as Facebook it won’t be enough to cause a major user shift. No, for MySpace to take any substantial portion of the Facebook user base, it needs to be lightyears ahead, and I’m just not sure that it’s there yet.

Original post about MySpace can be found on Wikimotive's blog titled, "Reviews of the New MySpace."

Is your business on Instagram yet? We aren’t going to say it’s a must, but it’s a pretty simple thing that can add some value to your businesses efforts when Marketing Using Facebook or Twitter. The artsy little photos are still really popular, especially among the younger crowds, so get the app and start snapping!

The first things you should photograph are your business location and products. Showing people what you make or sell is always a good move. For instance, if you’re an automotive dealer, you can post stylized shots of your cars and the interiors, presenting the coolest angles with stylized filters for maximum effect.

If you have an interesting process or facility, make sure to document that too! These kind of photo shoots are like little reality-show style peeks into your industry, and people love to see them. Get creative and tell a little story about what it is you do. Once it’s posted, you can always later collect them into an album and reuse the content!

Some companies have been offering small contests and campaigns with great success. Suggest a theme and invite your followers to submit variations on that theme. Collect the best ones and share them! Of course, you need to have a good amount of fans for this to work, so try and get the followers you already have on Facebook and Twitter to add you on Instagram!

Some people are saying Instagram is a must have for marketing, others are saying it’s worthless. I believe that the jury is still out, and in the meantime, it should be used as a nice little supplement to your existing marketing efforts.

Original blog about Instagram marketing can be found on Wikimotive's blog titled "Quick Tips for Instagram."