You've heard us talk about social media campaigns, as well as content marketing. We maintain that both are essential pieces to a complete Internet Marketing Campaign. Click here to read an article written by Heidi Cohen which not only backs up our process, but also offers an excellent chart to help explain the similarities & differences between social media & content marketing. Heidi is a great resource for us at Branches PSP. Give her blog & twitter feed a good look through to help boost your marketing plan.

SEO - Creating Sites For Users or the Engines?
By Larry McCullough
Published 11/26/2008 (!!! 3 years is like 30 in the SEO world, but these principles remain true)


What’s more important? Creating sites for users or the engines? The answer is both. 

Your favorite thing about having a blog may soon be this - they naturally attract search engine traffic. Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages. They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked. 

Primarily a site should be designed for the user, with search engines in mind. Google tends to talk out both sides of their mouth when they say, “Don’t do anything special for the engines”. Yet, they create a webmaster tool center where you can submit a sitemap, and get information about how the engines see your site, errors and what key phrases your site ranks for. That gives new site owners a little bit of confusion. 

I like sites that are easy to navigate, pleasing to the eye and that help sell whatever it is you need to. Pages should be set up as landing pages. The great thing about your blog is that it can get so well-indexed that you have the potential to show up for any number of four word phrases that are relevant to your industry. This way you can give the visitor everything they need to make a purchase or fill out a form. At the same time you can optimize these pages for the engines and use the pages for your PPC campaigns. I believe in doing sites this way. It brings the visitor a much better experience. 

The perfect site is not only user friendly, but optimized for the engines. You need to target where people go to in order to provide them with the information or product they need. There is nothing worse than having people landing on a page that is optimized for a phrase but offers no information about it... It brings the user a bad experience and you a missed sale or lead. You have a choice. You can target a general high traffic keyword you have little chance of ranking well for and get barely any traffic. 

Once you have a page optimized, you can streamline the transition from viewing what you have to offer to facilitate a purchase. You can also provide related content and links. This, in turn, will help with you PPC because Google is now checking to see how relevant your landing pages are to the keywords you buy. 

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Sometimes a site's structure (the relationships between its content) must be altered too. Because of this it is, from a client's perspective, always better to incorporate Search Engine Optimization when a website is being developed than to try and retroactively apply it. 

In the grand scheme of things, you do need to optimize your site. However, if you do not have usability for the user, your traffic won’t convert. Non-converting traffic is worse than having no traffic at all. It’s a webmasters nightmare. Make a good quality site that will attract natural links to it in order to obtain any form of long term presence within the search engine results page.

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HERE IS WHAT WE HAVE TO SAY : 
Google search algorithms have changed DRASTICALLY since this first was published. Google Panda, Google Fresh, Google Plus - have all FORCED SEO gurus like  Larry and like our very own Jen Cochran to change the content of blog posts and where links lead to (more hyper-local, geo-specific considerations). But, indeed, the broad strokes contained in this article remain the same. Good stuff.

- SHAWN COCHRAN 
Branches PSP

January's eBook from Hubspot is out ... and it rocks!

Branches is in the process of setting up our G+ page. Actually, we're so busy in the process of setting up our clients' pages, we barely have time to post up here!!

SO - give it a look-see and tell us whether *you* agree that it's one of the best HubSpot joints in a long while.

BY LILACH 109 
The rising popularity of social media has led to growing recognition of its use to companies and the need to incorporate social media into business plans. But businesses often have little experience with this new medium. 

Consequently, there is a growing demand for people with expertise in social media. But unfortunately there is not enough supply of real experts. There has been an increasing number of people claiming to be experts. Gary Vaynerchu even commented that 99.5% of social media experts are clowns. 

Not everyone who claims to be a social media expert truly is one. There are a lot of fakes around who claim they are experts but in fact know little about social media or business. It’s important to be able to identify the fakes so you can avoid being a victim of a fake expert. But how do you distinguish the ‘real deal’ from the ‘fakes’? Let’s look at some key indicators…

• An expert should be an active user of social media. They will have updated profiles, regular updates, and maintain a regular blog.
• The fakes often have a narrow view of social media. So you should consider: Have they moved beyond the generic channels of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? Are they engaging in the right channels for their niche? Social media experts move beyond the obvious and are well-attuned to where their niche hangs out.
• They are an experienced and active user of social media. They have been using the medium for some time and have lots of practical experience using it.
• They are up to date with the latest social media trends and are using the latest tools. i.e. they have got a Google+ account.  As social media is constantly evolving, one cannot be an expert unless they are up to date. People who claim to be experts without reading the latest blogs, researching upcoming trends whilst engaging with the latest  news are not real experts.
• Fakes often have lots connections but lack quality connections. An expert will go for quality over quantity. Whilst the fake might have lots of Facebook likes orTwitter followers, they lack relevant followers and actual customers.
• Fakes use social media primarily to promote a company’s services/main messages without engaging with users. Experts will interact with their followers, commenters, etc.
• Fakes claim to be general social media experts and lack a specialist area of expertise. Social media is a broad area; it’s not possible to be an expert of it all.
• Fakes lack real business sense and have little or real evidence of their previous business success. They don’t know how to turn fans into customers. They lack insight into their customers and lack any drive to meet customer needs.
• Fakes often adopt an over-optimistic position without any careful consideration of the specific company’s circumstances. You should be wary of people claiming social media is the only strategy – It’s not – it should always be complemented by other elements of marketing. Social media doesn’t replace solid marketing strategy; rather it is used to enhance it. You should also be wary of those claiming it is essential for every business – Whilst using social media effectively is becoming evermore important for business success, employing social media is not necessarily the right strategy for every company. Determining whether it’s the right strategy requires careful analysis of the company and the context in which it operates.

Unfortunately these ‘fakes’ can give social media a bad name. It’s so easy for people to jump on the band wagon and say they’re a “social media expert”.

But remember social media is a great tool but only when in the hands of someone with the understanding and experience of how to use these tools and successfully implement social media strategies. There is a need for real social media experts who know how to use these new communication tools effectively.


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Original Post about Social Media Experts

Jill Whalen (c) 2012
              
Have you heard of Google's Authorship program yet? 

Whether you've heard of it or not, you've likely seen its fruits in the search results. You know those listings that have a photo of the author next to them? Most likely they get that extra cool stuff because they're using Rel=Author correctly and Google has accepted them to participate. 

Unfortunately, it's been a bit hit-or-miss as to whether your content gets accepted or not. I saw mine accepted for a day or two many months ago, and then *poof!* it was gone. I reviewed their new guidelines recently, however, made a few changes, and sure enough, within a week or so, my content started showing up... yay!

While you may or may not get your content into the program, the only way to know is to try, and persistence is definitely a key.

If you're thinking it's just not worth the trouble, here are 5 reasons why it's super important:

1. It's Kinda Sorta Easy to Implement.

While it is a bit confusing to figure out exactly how to enable authorship based on Google's directions(which seem to keep changing), in reality their latest criteria have made it easier than ever to implement.

I'm not going into the specifics on how to do it, because you can follow Google's directions. Suffice it to say that the main things you need are a Google Profile page that links to the website where you have author status, and a link back from your website's home page to your Google Profile page.

You can also have an "author page," such as the About Us page on your website, as long as your Google profile page links to that page.

Once you've got that all implemented, every time you write an article, simply link your name in your byline to either your Google Profile page or your author page with the Rel=Author code, as I have here:

By <a href="http://www.highrankings.com/jill-whalen" rel="author">Jill Whalen</a> 

- Example Page 

Be sure to add the Rel=Author tag to as many of your old content articles as well, especially ones that you know show up well in the search results.

While Google has moved toward having you link directly to your Google Profile page in your Rel=Author links (as opposed to your author page) to make things less confusing, I still link to my author page, and it works fine.

If you go this route, be sure to follow their older, more confusing instructions as well.

2. It Makes Your Content Stand Out.

Imagine if you could put big stars around your content listings in Google's search results that everyone would see. Rel=Author does exactly that! Only it's not stars, but your name and photo.

Before Rel=Author became widespread, only logged-in users and those who participated in socialmedia might see a little profile photo of you if they happened to search on something that you had tweeted about. But with Rel=Author implemented correctly, even users who aren't logged into their Google accounts or their social media accounts will still see the rich author information and photo .

This is huge, folks, and this reason alone makes it worth figuring out the implementation.

3. Provides Credibility And More Exposure.

Beyond just seeing my smiling face in the listings for my content, as you can see in this screenshot, Google is also showing how many people have circled me on Google+ as well as a "More by Jill Whalen" link. Clicking that link shows more information about me from my Google Profile, plus posts I've made on Google+ related to the search query, and all the other articles that I've written on the subject. 

I've also seen them show articles others have written on the subject that reference me in one way or another. 

4. Higher Clickthrough Rate.

I'd say this one goes without saying, due to all of the above factors. It would be difficult to *not* click on the listing that Google is screaming for you to click on. Time will tell on this one, but so far it appears that since my authorship status started to show up in the Google results (it's less than 2 weeks now), I've been getting more traffic for certain articles. 

5. Additional Metrics in Webmaster Tools.

As if all of the above weren't enough, once you have your authorship up and running and showing up in Google results, you'll also see new author stats in your Webmaster Tools account . (Look under "Labs.") The information there shows you approximately how many times each of your content pages showed up in the search results (impressions) and approximately how many times it was clicked on, along with other interesting details that you can't really get elsewhere. 


Of course, Google has their own selfish reasons for giving us all of this awesomeness. Their number-one priority this year is Google+ and all that surrounds it. Rel=Author provides anyone who creates online content with a darn good reason (make that 5!) to create a Google Profile. And the more people who do that, the more who might start using Google+, especially if they want to get those circle numbers up as mentioned in #3 above.

Pin Etiquette(Original Post :  https://pinterest.com/about/etiquette/ )
Pinterest is special because of the people who use it.The guidelines below are based on collective input from people using Pinterest. These are suggestions to help keep our community positive and to ensure that every pin is useful to other people.

Be NicePinterest is a community of people. We know that tastes are personal, but be respectful in your comments and conversations.

Credit Your SourcesPins are the most useful when they have links back to the original source. If you notice that a pin is not sourced correctly, leave a comment so the original pinner can update the source. Finding the original source is always preferable to a secondary source such as Google Image Search or a blog entry.

Avoid Self PromotionPinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.

Report Objectionable ContentWe do not allow nudity or hateful content. If you find content that is objectionable or violates our Terms of Service can submit the content for review by pushing the “Report Content” link.

Tell Us How to Make Pinterest BetterWe're just getting started, so there are going to be bumps here and there. Let us know what's working, what's not. We take your input seriously. You can get in touch with us anytime:

• Suggestions: hi@pinterest.com
• Bugs: bugs@pinterest.com
• Help: help@pinterest.com