Small businesses, especially ones that operate locally or regionally, need to be on social media. I don’t think anyone disputes this anymore; it is so true that it has become axiomatic. The problem comes from businesses not knowing what to do once they’re on social media. We’ve published guides here and you can find hundreds (heck, probably thousands) of others all over the web. Still, even when you’re doing everything right, it can be hard to gain that initial inertia. Getting to 100 likes is eminently achievable, but getting from 100 to 500 (or god forbid 1,000) can seem utterly insurmountable. Today, I want to share with you one simple technique to jump start your social media that many businesses ignore.

The tip? Use your employees. Most small businesses have anywhere from a handful to fifty employees depending on the industry. These employees should be incentivized to share your brand. Think about how you got your first 100 likes (followers, +1s, yadda yadda yadda), you probably got them by asking people on your personal social media account to friend your new business page. If your employees do the same thing, you’ll experience easy growth.

This may seem obvious to some, but it’s not done often enough. Understand that I’m not advocating for you to FORCE your employees to share the business page on their personal page, that’s unethical and they have a right to their privacy if they desire. Honestly, you should start by asking nicely. If you’re a good boss (you are, right? RIGHT?) then they most likely won’t have any issue sharing the page. If they won’t do it for the asking, don’t push too hard. They have a right to keep business and pleasure separate.

The ones that do share it though, will likely drastically improve your audience. This is amazingly powerful for small businesses that operate locally or regionally. You likely employ people from the area, and their friends are likely also from the area. That means every new like is a real person who is in your targeted zone for marketing. It’s not a lot to ask your employees, especially if you already have a good relationship, so give it a shot. The results may surprise you.

Original post about Social Media and Employees can be found on Wikimotive's blog, titled, "Small Business Employees and Social Media."

Most companies are paying to rank for some keywords, but many ignore their own brand name when setting up their pay per click (PPC) system. On the surface, this makes perfect sense. Why would you pay to rank for the one term you’re pretty much guaranteed results for? If your company name is fairly unique, you are going to be on the first page for a search of it, right? While that is true, there are still a few good reasons why you should consider bidding on your own name in your PPC internet marketing efforts.

–It’s cheap:  PPC rates are usually decided by the amount of competition for the term. It’s difficult for other companies to justify paying to rank for your name when there is very little they can legally do with it. This means you should be able to succeed with very little cost per click.

–Brand Management: Using PPC will, at worst, give you an extra link on the page of results. If your company is having any kind of PR trouble, your organic results can be bumped downwards in a floor of news stories. Paying for your own name will ensure you have a good result high on the page.

–Competition: One time when you absolutely have to bid on your own brand name is if your competitors are. It doesn’t happen often, but every now and again some immoral black-hatter will try and bid on your name and funnel the traffic to their own site…or maybe just smear your good name.

–Ambiguity: If your brand name is a fairly common word or phrase, it’s probably a good idea to use PPC for it. Even if you are well optimized, some seemingly innocuous terms can be very competitive.

These are just a few of the reasons you should look into bidding on your on brand. In the end, it’s a pretty simple risk/return proposition. Do a simple test by paying for month and then stopping, it should be clear how effective it is going to be for your business.

Original post about brand PPC can be found on Wikimotive's blog, titled, "Should You PPC For Your Own Brand Name?"

There is a privacy notice that seems to surface from time to time on Facebook, usually when a new security update is rolled-out.  I’ve been seeing it all over the place the last few days, and while it seems that most people are posting it just to be safe, others seem to believe that this will truly protect their content. Facebook users, especially businesses, should know that these status post declarations actually don’t do anything to protect their content. Marketing using Facebook isn’t without its inherent risks, and Facebook using your content without your permission is one of those risks, no matter what legal mumbo-jumbo you try and invoke.

In case you haven’t seen these posts, they usually begin with some variation of the following:

“In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, graphics, comics, paintings, photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!”

The truth is, you agreed to Facebook’s terms (thus giving them permissions) when you joined the service. The only way to limit what they can use is through your privacy settings or by removing the content entirely. You don’t have to take my word for it though. Here is the text straight from Facebook’s own legal page:

“For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.”

Original article about Facebook's IP Terms posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title The Truth About The Viral Facebook Copyright Notice. 

If you listen to the SEO experts, then you know that the industry is ALWAYS about to experience a significant shift. Usually this is just an algorithm update from Google, but sometimes it’s bigger than that. Sometimes, people predict changes that will truly alter the fundamental techniques that we have traditionally used to do business.

The newest predicted trend in the ever shifting field of search engine optimization is co-occurrence. This topic has been heavily debated lately by several SEO experts and the conclusions drawn from these discussions could have a major impact on the (perceived) future of the industry.

Some are saying that anchor text, the traditional SEO staple, is dying. An insightful post on seomoz.com about the topic jump started this theory. Basically, Google is always looking for more efficient ways to deliver users relevant results, so instead of just looking at links (which can be easily abused and faked) they are going to start looking at co-occurrence.

Co-occurrence is when sites rank for terms despite not optimizing for them. This happens when the name of their site co-occurs often with the relevant keywords.  This appears to be a more organic way to do things and follows with Google’s love of quality content. It’s easy to spread backlinks and anchor-text; it’s harder to write pages of original, unique copy that surround the brand name with relevant keywords. It can be done, heck it IS being done, but it’s a little early to declare anchor-text dead. More likely, co-occurrence will just be another weighting factor Google uses to supply results.

Original article about Co-occurrence posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Google Rankings and Co-occurrence.

Over the last couple of days, a major controversy has been brewing regarding a specific Facebook post made by a woman by the name of Lindsey Stone, and the online reputation management of the company that employs her. If you haven’t heard this story yet, no doubt you will soon find it hard to ignore. The controversy surrounding Lindsey started when she posted a picture of herself on Facebook. In the photo Lindsey is standing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, she is pretending to yell and flipping off the camera, in front of a sign which reads “Silence and Respect.” The photo was taken by a coworker of hers while the two were on a work-paid trip in October, and has since gone viral as concerned citizens and veterans alike have criticized her for her insensitivity.

Lindsey attempted to stem the tide by posting an explanation of sorts: “Whoa whoa whoa… wait,” she wrote, “This is just us, being the douchebags that we are, challenging authority in general. Much like the pic posted the night before, of me smoking right next to a no smoking sign. OBVIOUSLY we meant NO disrespect to people that serve or have served our country.” Since then a Facebook page entitled “Fire Lindsey Stone” has gathered more than 12,000 likes to its cause and is growing exponentially every day. Lindsey and her coworker are (were?) employed by LIFE (Living Independently For Everyone, Inc.) a non-profit organization that assists people with disabilities, and the company that funded their trip to Arlington. They have since been placed on unpaid leave, and LIFE has issued a lengthy statement, part of which is detailed here:

“This photograph in no way reflects the opinions or values of the LIFE organization, which holds our nation’s veterans in the highest regard. We are proud to have veterans serving on our staff and board of trustees, and we value their service. The men and women who have selflessly fought and sacrificed their lives to protect the rights and lives of Americans deserve our utmost respect and gratitude. We are acutely aware that this photo has done a disservice to veterans and we are deeply saddened that it was taken and shared in a public medium.”

It’s hard to argue that this photo was taken in poor taste. There is a level of disrespect and insensibility here that frankly astounds me, however the photo itself and Stone’s right to express herself that way, is expressly protected by our nation’s constitution. Luckily for her, speech and expression of opinion, no matter how unpopular they may be, are protected, and therefore she is safe from lawful prosecution by our government or any government official. Unfortunately for her, that is the extent of the first amendment’s reach. The first amendment does not defend against negative reputation or perception, and it certainly doesn’t state that anyone can say or do anything without facing the consequences of their actions.

Lindsey will have to live with repercussions of this for a long long time if not for the rest of her life, and the impact doesn’t end there. Remember that Lindsay was on a paid company trip at the time of the incident and therefore, intentionally or not, was representing LIFE inc. as well as herself when she posted this photo. LIFE is playing it cool and has only thus far put Lindsey and her coworker on unpaid leave, but there is a great deal of vitriol surrounding this issue and specifically people calling for LIFE to terminate her employment. In the age of social media and viral exposure, companies of any size or persuasion can ill afford to be linked to a story with this kind of negative momentum. We’ve seen it time and time again whether it’s something local like the Clay Nissan story or the more recent incident with American Apparel, Social media can heap a mountain of bad press on you before you can blink an eye. Some of the articles I’ve read from earlier on Tuesday report that the page “Fire Lindsey Stone” had 5000 likes, it now has well more than 12,000.

Social media does have the power to positively influence your brand image with unparalleled success, but the slightest wrong move or a hint of bad luck with an employee, and it can all turn against you. Staying vigilant and therefore ahead of this kind of story can mean the difference between your company being stormed by an angry mob and a controversial story being written about a former employee. That being said I don’t recommend monitoring employees social media habits, there are other ways of ensuring that your employees don’t have these kind of issues—such as training employees on the dangers of ill-conceived social media posts. In light of the exponential exposure this story is getting and the fact that the two involved persons were on company time when the incident occurred LIFE would be more than justified in terminating both employees.

What do you think? Would LIFE be justified in firing Lindsay and her coworker?

Original article about Lindsey Stone posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Lindsey Stone Inspires Facebook Rage With Distasteful Arlington National Cemetary Photo

Bing remains slightly inscrutable to many people. Due to Google’s overwhelming domination in the search engine market, Bing is often forgotten about entirely. Don’t let Microsoft’s brainchild remain a mystery to you though, because there is help! This week, Microsoft has (finally) released a list of Bing Webmaster Guidelines, “intended to help your content be found and indexed within Bing.” If you want a well rounded automotive SEO campaign, optimizing for Bing along with Google might be a good idea.

The guidelines aren’t as in depth as Google’s, but you’ll find everything you need to hone your strategy (probably aimed at pleasing Google) and reconcile the demands of both engines. Even if you aren’t concerned with Bing, you should give their checklist a read. Ultimately, you’ll find they’re looking for most of the same things as Google and it wouldn’t be too hard to use your Google ranking strategy in a way that is amicable to Bing too.

I can’t stress enough that Bing, like Google, is very focused on content. Make sure you are producing quality, original content! I’ll leave you with the first section of their webmaster guidelines:

“Content is what Bing seeks.  By providing clear, deep, easy to find content on your website, we are more likely to index and show your content in search results.  Websites that are thin on content, showing mostly ads, or otherwise redirect visitors away from themselves to other sites quickly tend to not rank well.  Your content should be easy to navigate to, rich enough to engage the visitor and provide them the information they seek and as fresh as possible.  In many cases, content produced today will still be relevant years from now.  In some cases, however, content produced today will go out of date quickly.”

Original article about Bing's new guidelines posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Bing Webmaster Guidelines

Recently I wrote about scheduling your posts across blogs and social media. I maintain that you SHOULD still schedule if you are able, but in light of recent incidents, I think it’s important to add an addendum to this social media marketing rule:

Always be aware of significant current events.

I’m not talking about your everyday news.Hurricane Sandy is a good example of an event that needed special attention. There were places all over the eastern seaboard that had posts scheduled that maybe weren’t the best idea when they knew the super- storm was coming. The day after it hit, when most businesses were closed, many scheduled posts encouraging people to “come on down!” were broadcast out.

There are a couple problems with this. The first is that the customer may realize it’s a scheduled, automated post. They probably won’t be mad, but your social presence may lose that human touch. The second problem is if they don’t realize it’s automated and try to come down. That WILL make them angry and understandably so!

Another example is the terrible shootings in Aurora, Colorado. No one with an ounce of human decency would joke about such an event, but it happened to some businesses by accident. It’s easy to see how. They knew Batman was coming out, so they scheduled a post involving the Joker to coincide. After the attack, they appeared to be making light of it.

No one can see the future, so you just have to be vigilant. Schedule your posts, but always keep in mind that what’s benign on Monday might be offensive on Friday.

Original article about being careful when scheduling posts was published on Wikimotive's blog under the title Scheduling Posts--What to Watch out For

It’s common to spend so much time trying to get pages to rank that we overlook the images we use on said pages. Sometimes, it’s just as important for a search engine optimization strategy to focus on a single image as it is to rank an entire page. So let’s go back to some SEO fundamentals and review what it takes to rank an image efficiently.

There are three main reasons to rank an image: you want the image to be high on Google (Bing, Yahoo, Etc.) image results, you want the image to lend some juice to the page it’s on, and  they serve as great link bait. So how do you rank them? Here’s a short list of the most important aspects.

-Filename: Your filename should always be relevant, never use an ugly string of numbers and underscores. For instance, SEO_LOGO is a world better than A1210432.

-Alt text: Good alt text should describe what the picture is about as succinctly as possible. You want to include the keyword you’re trying to rank for, but don’t go crazy with it. Just one, relevant keyword in your descriptive alt text will do you fine.

-Surroundings: If you want your image to rank well, surround it with relevant copy. Search engines will look to the writing around an image to get a feel for what the image is about. Basically, if a page ranks well for a term, the relevant image on that page has a good chance to also rank well for that same term.

-File specs: Search engines measure your pages load time, so keep images trim. If anything takes more than a couple seconds to load, it’s probably too big. As a rule of thumb, use GIFs for graphs and charts and JPEGs for pretty much anything else. PNGs  are slightly larger and have traditionally been advised against, but internet speeds are getting to the point where it is almost a non-issue, especially for smaller navigation elements.

Original article about image SEO posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Image SEO Overview.

The value of having one of your videos go viral is hard to measure accurately but there’s no doubt it’s a huge boon for your brand. To get that kind of spread is hard to achieve though, you could make hundreds of videos all designed to go viral and get nowhere. On the other hand, you can make one video where your star accidentally injures himself and end up going viral overnight. The problem is that you rarely can fake it. The internet has a good nose for the authenticity and can smell someone trying too hard from a mile away. But what if you could pay to go viral? Would it be worth the boost to your automotive marketing efforts?

A new company, aptly named Buyral, is offering to make your videos go viral for pennies a view. Check out their promo below.

Did you watch the video? Great. It seems reasonable enough for the first minute or so, but it becomes quickly apparent that the company is just a joke. It does carry a lesson for us though.

It’s too easy to get caught up in raw numbers and start valuing them over substance. Say you have a new car video up and pay for a million views; it would be incredibly tempting to do so. In the end, you’d have something impressive to show off to the boss or client, but no actual value. Without real people enjoying the video, talking about the video, and sharing the video, viral is nothin’ but a number baby.

This is similar to what we’ve seen on social media with people buying likes or followers or +1s or whatever other metric of popularity you want to cite. Getting a thousand extra fans overnight is great on paper, but it’s nothing without community engagement. Unless you’re using those purchased fans as a springboard to foster a REAL audience, you’re just wasting your time.

So watch the video. It truly does a great job at illustrating just how empty purchased engagement can be. Not to mention it’s pretty funny!

Original article about Buyral can be found at Wikimotive's Blog titled Paying to go Viral.

Sometimes great SEO techniques aren’t invented, they are discovered accidentally. In that vein, today I want to take a look at a new linkbuilding technique for local internet marketing that a few different experts have been kicking around lately. It may be a surprise, but the idea is focused entirely around Groupon.