There has been a lot of discussion about staying relevant on social media, rightfully so. Too many businesses are trying to "fit in" on Facebook and Google+ by posting funny images that they found on any of the various funny picture resources out there. They are not the right venues for such activities from a business perspective. Twitter, however, is.

On Twitter, there is less of a differentiation between businesses and individuals. Facebook and Google+ both have pages for businesses that are handled differently from individual profiles. On Twitter, a profile is a profile whether it's a person, a business, or a anything else. An update is an update and most users could care less where it comes from as long as it's interesting. Whoever you are, person or entity, you can attract views and social media capital by posting things that are often too irrelevant to post on Facebook or Google+.

You never know when something's going to blow up and go viral.

Case in point, while I was at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas this week, an image struck me as funny and I posted it. Somewhere along the line it was seen by a "power account" and retweeted, starting a nice string of retweets that has kept my phone blowing up for the past couple of days. It didn't matter who I was. I could have been a business for all they cared. The content worked and it spread across Twitter.

The point is that businesses can be a little more risky, a little less relevant, and a little more fun on Twitter than they can on the other major social networks. The same holds true for Pinterest, but that's another story altogether. Here's the Tweet.

I think a bird fell in the snow and walked away. I think. twitter.com/louiebaur/stat…

— Louie Baur(@louiebaur) January 7, 2013

Feel free to retweet it if you like!

There has been a lot of discussion about staying relevant on social media, rightfully so. Too many businesses are trying to "fit in" on Facebook and Google+ by posting funny images that they found on any of the various funny picture resources out there. They are not the right venues for such activities from a business perspective. Twitter, however, is.

On Twitter, there is less of a differentiation between businesses and individuals. Facebook and Google+ both have pages for businesses that are handled differently from individual profiles. On Twitter, a profile is a profile whether it's a person, a business, or a anything else. An update is an update and most users could care less where it comes from as long as it's interesting. Whoever you are, person or entity, you can attract views and social media capital by posting things that are often too irrelevant to post on Facebook or Google+.

You never know when something's going to blow up and go viral.

Case in point, while I was at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas this week, an image struck me as funny and I posted it. Somewhere along the line it was seen by a "power account" and retweeted, starting a nice string of retweets that has kept my phone blowing up for the past couple of days. It didn't matter who I was. I could have been a business for all they cared. The content worked and it spread across Twitter.

The point is that businesses can be a little more risky, a little less relevant, and a little more fun on Twitter than they can on the other major social networks. The same holds true for Pinterest, but that's another story altogether. Here's the Tweet.

I think a bird fell in the snow and walked away. I think. twitter.com/louiebaur/stat…

— Louie Baur(@louiebaur) January 7, 2013

Feel free to retweet it if you like!

The last time I was involved with search engine optimization, Alta Vista was a player. I was working on my own sites and making a killing by taking advantage of the new world of search engines. Yahoo was making its move to the top. Google wasn’t even a word at the time.

Flash forward to 2007 and social media became my thing. I was able to drive great traffic with the social news sites and started really getting involved the marketing components in 2008. That’s when JD Rucker and I hooked up and started working the various social angles for clients, but he would always handle the search engine components. At the time, I never thought I would get back into SEO, but things have changed since before the Penguin update. We knew it was coming – listening to Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester at the first SXSW I’d ever attended made us realize that the things I was doing in social would soon apply to search.

Fast forward to today. Social signals are a big thing. Many websites are able to make exceptional moves up in the search rankings through social signals alone. Now, rumors are spreading about a social-focused update called Zebra. Chances are good that it’s just a rumor, but the data that we’ve seen shows spikes in social signal influence over search when the signals are real. Those who are buying fake +1s, getting retweets from spam accounts, or inflating their Facebook likes are not seeing the same results that we are.

Social signals are the easiest way for the search engines to get human interaction with pages that they can monitor and utilize in rankings. There is no reason to believe that the usefulness will slow down. What will happen is that they will figure out more ways to sniff out the spammers. They’re already doing it with reviews; those who create accounts and write reviews with no past or future activity end up getting removed.

The point is that the rumors that social signals are losing value in search are being spread by those who are not putting out strong content that is able to get real social shares. Social signals simply make sense. They’ll be effective for the foreseeable future.

* * *

“Like” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

The last time I was involved with search engine optimization, Alta Vista was a player. I was working on my own sites and making a killing by taking advantage of the new world of search engines. Yahoo was making its move to the top. Google wasn’t even a word at the time.

Flash forward to 2007 and social media became my thing. I was able to drive great traffic with the social news sites and started really getting involved the marketing components in 2008. That’s when JD Rucker and I hooked up and started working the various social angles for clients, but he would always handle the search engine components. At the time, I never thought I would get back into SEO, but things have changed since before the Penguin update. We knew it was coming – listening to Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester at the first SXSW I’d ever attended made us realize that the things I was doing in social would soon apply to search.

Fast forward to today. Social signals are a big thing. Many websites are able to make exceptional moves up in the search rankings through social signals alone. Now, rumors are spreading about a social-focused update called Zebra. Chances are good that it’s just a rumor, but the data that we’ve seen shows spikes in social signal influence over search when the signals are real. Those who are buying fake +1s, getting retweets from spam accounts, or inflating their Facebook likes are not seeing the same results that we are.

Social signals are the easiest way for the search engines to get human interaction with pages that they can monitor and utilize in rankings. There is no reason to believe that the usefulness will slow down. What will happen is that they will figure out more ways to sniff out the spammers. They’re already doing it with reviews; those who create accounts and write reviews with no past or future activity end up getting removed.

The point is that the rumors that social signals are losing value in search are being spread by those who are not putting out strong content that is able to get real social shares. Social signals simply make sense. They’ll be effective for the foreseeable future.

* * *

“Like” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

The normal order of business is to ensure that every department has a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) however, with the addition of Social Media in recent years; some companies may find it hard to create or unify their team members in keeping it not only followed but updated.

This has become a struggle with many companies that have added Social Media to the mix and since it too needs some order, the question often asked is “Does Social Media need an SOP?”

Merging a newer form of media as a part of your Internet Marketing plan is clearly important to remain relevant within your industry and as Social Media has not only gained trust and power, its influence for your brand can be significant, and in fact for some companies it has now become the majority of their marketing efforts. With that said Social Media changes fast and drastically unlike anything else that happens within a business so applying the same methods as you are used to when running your business may become a tad bit frustrating.

Social Media is a real-time Industry and changes sometimes overnight. Not only does it change with new social networks and social booking marking sites, but existing social sites often add new features regularly that if your business wants to remain in charge of their online presence need to test and try to see if the latest features are applicable to your brand.

This can often cause conflict to an existing SOP, or means that you need to constantly keep your SOP updated, which many businesses fail to do. Of course you need order, some sort of system to know where you begin and end your day and promotional needs. However, this does not mean that you should have an SOP that applies to more stable aspects of your business nor does it mean you need to spend time panicking that your team members understand what is expected of them.

What you need is to create a solid foundation that is strategized based on its core being flexible. A system that shares where to start and end when referring to social sites and blogs is a great way to start and adding what to do on those sites is a great way to remain organized, but you cannot make it solid, you need to leave room for change and to stay on top of what the changes are that occur within Social Media and it needs to become a part of your job (or for your vendor).

When a new feature is added, assign some team members to collectively try it and present their results to you with they’re pros and cons of how and why it would be of any benefit to your brand and if it targets any of your local area. Once a decision has been made then you need to figure where within the SOP it would fit best or make the most sense as you certainly want to ensure there is a path that keeps moving smoothly.

Yes, Social Media needs an SOP for your business, but remember that it needs to be flexible, you need to try features before adding them and you need to remain informed as well has informing your team of any and all changes. An SOP is important, but it is not going to be the one you are used to and be prepared for it to change in an instant.

[SOP image via redhillconsultinggroup]

The normal order of business is to ensure that every department has a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) however, with the addition of Social Media in recent years; some companies may find it hard to create or unify their team members in keeping it not only followed but updated.

This has become a struggle with many companies that have added Social Media to the mix and since it too needs some order, the question often asked is “Does Social Media need an SOP?”

Merging a newer form of media as a part of your Internet Marketing plan is clearly important to remain relevant within your industry and as Social Media has not only gained trust and power, its influence for your brand can be significant, and in fact for some companies it has now become the majority of their marketing efforts. With that said Social Media changes fast and drastically unlike anything else that happens within a business so applying the same methods as you are used to when running your business may become a tad bit frustrating.

Social Media is a real-time Industry and changes sometimes overnight. Not only does it change with new social networks and social booking marking sites, but existing social sites often add new features regularly that if your business wants to remain in charge of their online presence need to test and try to see if the latest features are applicable to your brand.

This can often cause conflict to an existing SOP, or means that you need to constantly keep your SOP updated, which many businesses fail to do. Of course you need order, some sort of system to know where you begin and end your day and promotional needs. However, this does not mean that you should have an SOP that applies to more stable aspects of your business nor does it mean you need to spend time panicking that your team members understand what is expected of them.

What you need is to create a solid foundation that is strategized based on its core being flexible. A system that shares where to start and end when referring to social sites and blogs is a great way to start and adding what to do on those sites is a great way to remain organized, but you cannot make it solid, you need to leave room for change and to stay on top of what the changes are that occur within Social Media and it needs to become a part of your job (or for your vendor).

When a new feature is added, assign some team members to collectively try it and present their results to you with they’re pros and cons of how and why it would be of any benefit to your brand and if it targets any of your local area. Once a decision has been made then you need to figure where within the SOP it would fit best or make the most sense as you certainly want to ensure there is a path that keeps moving smoothly.

Yes, Social Media needs an SOP for your business, but remember that it needs to be flexible, you need to try features before adding them and you need to remain informed as well has informing your team of any and all changes. An SOP is important, but it is not going to be the one you are used to and be prepared for it to change in an instant.

[SOP image via redhillconsultinggroup]

While learning incredible things and meeting equally incredible people at the New Media Expo in Vegas, I ran into Triberr founder Dino Dogan. I was using Triberr a while back but stopped because it became too hard. The site used to be automated – set it and forget it. They turned it into more of a curation site and I fell of the radar as a result. Recently, I’ve rejuvenated my activity and found that if anything the curation component actually makes it better, which is why it was perfect timing to meet Dogan.

For those who are not familiar, Triberr is designed to group like-minded people into “Tribes”. These tribes fall into many different categories such as marketing, technology, and automotive. It is a “blog amplification platform”, which means that users within the tribes share some of each others’ posts on social media. Once you’re in a tribe, you’re given a stream of content that you can select to share on Twitter, Facebook, and/or LinkedIn. Your own content from your blog is fed into this stream so that other members can share your content as well.

The engine driving the site is elegant. You select how often you want content shared to your profiles – once every two hours, for example – then you go through and select the content you want added to the queue. It can hold up to 100 items in your queue, making it easy to go through and select the content in one sitting that will populate your social media profiles over time.

It’s very much a back-scratching environment – the more you share of others, the more they will share of yours. Unlike other platforms, however, the user has the ability to “mute” other users. This is extremely important for those who do not want to be bombarded by spam or articles that are off-topic. If you only want the best people’s content to show on your stream, so be it. By not sharing spam, you probably won’t get your content shared by them, either, but that’s perfectly fine by me. For my feed, I focus on high-quality bloggers. They are the ones that are also sharing the content I post, which makes it much more useful anyway. The traffic from the initial tests have shown to be much higher than I would have expected or even remember from when I was first using it and the social signals for search rankings are top-notch.

Check out Triberr. If your blog falls into one of the niches and your social profiles are good for sharing content in your area of expertise, it’s probably a perfect fit.

While learning incredible things and meeting equally incredible people at the New Media Expo in Vegas, I ran into Triberr founder Dino Dogan. I was using Triberr a while back but stopped because it became too hard. The site used to be automated – set it and forget it. They turned it into more of a curation site and I fell of the radar as a result. Recently, I’ve rejuvenated my activity and found that if anything the curation component actually makes it better, which is why it was perfect timing to meet Dogan.

For those who are not familiar, Triberr is designed to group like-minded people into “Tribes”. These tribes fall into many different categories such as marketing, technology, and automotive. It is a “blog amplification platform”, which means that users within the tribes share some of each others’ posts on social media. Once you’re in a tribe, you’re given a stream of content that you can select to share on Twitter, Facebook, and/or LinkedIn. Your own content from your blog is fed into this stream so that other members can share your content as well.

The engine driving the site is elegant. You select how often you want content shared to your profiles – once every two hours, for example – then you go through and select the content you want added to the queue. It can hold up to 100 items in your queue, making it easy to go through and select the content in one sitting that will populate your social media profiles over time.

It’s very much a back-scratching environment – the more you share of others, the more they will share of yours. Unlike other platforms, however, the user has the ability to “mute” other users. This is extremely important for those who do not want to be bombarded by spam or articles that are off-topic. If you only want the best people’s content to show on your stream, so be it. By not sharing spam, you probably won’t get your content shared by them, either, but that’s perfectly fine by me. For my feed, I focus on high-quality bloggers. They are the ones that are also sharing the content I post, which makes it much more useful anyway. The traffic from the initial tests have shown to be much higher than I would have expected or even remember from when I was first using it and the social signals for search rankings are top-notch.

Check out Triberr. If your blog falls into one of the niches and your social profiles are good for sharing content in your area of expertise, it’s probably a perfect fit.

If you have a business page setup on Facebook and looking to gain more local people on your page as well as spread your brand further within your community, Facebook Nearby is a new mobile location based feature that has been helping profiles thus far but as of last month, Facebook decided to add a global update to their feature and include “Nearby” for businesses as well.

What is Facebook Nearby?

Facebook Nearby is a mobile feature that is now both on Android and iOS phones that becomes a mobile discovery dependent on friends for searching consumers. The feature will allow consumers to find local businesses through their connections on Facebook by browsing or searching via Facebook categories or by connecting directly from their phone; which includes check-in’s, getting directions, and allowing consumers to rate and share recommendations.

How do Facebook Users see Nearby Facebook Businesses?

The curated list that shows on your Facebook Nearby is dependent on friends’ recommendations, ratings, check-ins, and likes.

How-to have your physical business get discovered on Facebook Nearby

Firstly, you must have a physical location for your business in order to become discoverable on Facebook Nearby. To ensure that your business does get found is simple and you may already have the following information added to your Facebook page, if not or to double-check, here is what you need to have included on your Facebook page:

Update your Page to include basic information, such as your address, store hours, phone number, and details about your business in the “About section”.

Update your category. Ex: if you are a sushi restaurant, you will not appear if you do not have the correct category listed.

Encourage connections from customers: likes, check-ins, ratings, and recommendations.

Facebook Nearby is a feature that is a part of Facebook Locations and is intended to help your business not only get discovered online but to encourage people to come in-store, therefore you need to make sure that you are in the proper category and that all of your information is filled out. Take part in creating check-in deals to up the ante and most importantly, make sure that you are actively interacting with your online community to give your possible in-store community a preview of the excellent service they will receive by choosing your business.

If you have a business page setup on Facebook and looking to gain more local people on your page as well as spread your brand further within your community, Facebook Nearby is a new mobile location based feature that has been helping profiles thus far but as of last month, Facebook decided to add a global update to their feature and include “Nearby” for businesses as well.

What is Facebook Nearby?

Facebook Nearby is a mobile feature that is now both on Android and iOS phones that becomes a mobile discovery dependent on friends for searching consumers. The feature will allow consumers to find local businesses through their connections on Facebook by browsing or searching via Facebook categories or by connecting directly from their phone; which includes check-in’s, getting directions, and allowing consumers to rate and share recommendations.

How do Facebook Users see Nearby Facebook Businesses?

The curated list that shows on your Facebook Nearby is dependent on friends’ recommendations, ratings, check-ins, and likes.

How-to have your physical business get discovered on Facebook Nearby

Firstly, you must have a physical location for your business in order to become discoverable on Facebook Nearby. To ensure that your business does get found is simple and you may already have the following information added to your Facebook page, if not or to double-check, here is what you need to have included on your Facebook page:

Update your Page to include basic information, such as your address, store hours, phone number, and details about your business in the “About section”.

Update your category. Ex: if you are a sushi restaurant, you will not appear if you do not have the correct category listed.

Encourage connections from customers: likes, check-ins, ratings, and recommendations.

Facebook Nearby is a feature that is a part of Facebook Locations and is intended to help your business not only get discovered online but to encourage people to come in-store, therefore you need to make sure that you are in the proper category and that all of your information is filled out. Take part in creating check-in deals to up the ante and most importantly, make sure that you are actively interacting with your online community to give your possible in-store community a preview of the excellent service they will receive by choosing your business.