The 9 Best Facebook and Twitter Management Tools

One of the biggest challenges people face with Twitter and Facebook is time management. With the flurry of tweets and posts floating around on any given day, it’s difficult to keep track of everything. Which is why we’ve compiled a list of the top tools you can use to manage your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

These are just some of the tools that are included in our free e-book called 83 Top Social Media and Mobile Marketing Tools for Small- to Mid-Sized Business, so if you haven’t had a chance to download the e-book, feel free to do so now.
To kick things off, let’s start with the list of the top Facebook management tools:

• Facebook Insights: This may seem a little obvious, but if you are managing a Facebook fan page, before you begin looking for more in-depth tools, make sure you check out your Facebook insights page to see how many people are participating, liking stories or leaving comments.
• Sysomos Facebook Page Central: Facebook Page Central offers auto-moderation, email notifications of posts, a dashboard monitoring key metrics and sentiment, and identification of top fans and themes.
• Vitrue: Vitrue helps you moderate the comments on your Facebook page, send targeted messages to people who have “liked” your company and more.
• mediafeedia: This free service helps you schedule posts,  manage multiple accounts, set admins, create custom tabs and notifies you by email of activity on your fan page.
• NorthSocial: Interested in supercharging your Facebook page with apps and promotions that help drive more traffic? Then you’ll want to check out NorthSocial, a powerful tool that can take your Facebook promotions to the next level.

And here are the tools you’ll want to investigate for your Twitter account:

• Backtweets: A tool dedicated solely to Twitter, BackTweets provides reach and impressions stats, alerts you whenever someone tweets a link to your website, identifies influencers and integrates with Google Analytics to see how Twitter activity is affecting your website traffic.
• BrandChirp: This service makes it easy to find the people you should be following. You can search for new followers by location, who they are following and keywords that they have recently tweeted about.
• Buffer: Have you seen the Buffer sharing tool at the bottom of the 60 Second Marketer blog posts? Their tool allows you to schedule Tweets far out in advance. So, if you do a lot of your reading in the morning, but want to share with your followers throughout the day, you’d schedule your Tweets using Buffer.
• SocialOomph: Social Oomph may not have the sexiest interface, but it allows you to automatically follow those who follow you and allows you to send direct messages automatically to new followers. Though this is essentially a Twitter tool, it works with Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms as well.

http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2013/02/14/the-9-best-facebook-and-twitter-management-tools/

The Art of Making Customers Happy on Social Media. [Part 2]

 Continued from last post...

3. Make a connection

From a high level view, this strategy comes down to your perspective with social media.
It’s an honor and a privilege for someone to reach out to you on social media, amid the millions of other profiles and accounts to connect with.
When someone chooses to chat with you, be grateful, and respond.
Zappos, well known for its awesome customer service over the phone and online, has the following response numbers:

• Response Time:  < 20 min
• Response Rate: 100 percent

Yes, they reply to everyone!
In the book Traction, Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares talk about 19 traction channels to help gain more customers. One of these channels is unconventional PR, which includes customer service.
You can be so great at customer service that it becomes free, unconventional PR for your brand!

Consider: The average top brands worldwide tweet at least 12 times a day, and 54 percent of these brands are sending less than one @-reply per day.

There’s a lot of room to improve (and stand out) amid those numbers.

What this might look like in practice

When possible, connect 24/7 with your audience.
When not possible—and totally understandable if you’re a small business or a one-person team—communicate your availability.

Zappos does the 24/7 thing in a cool way by having their Twitter support team say hello and good-bye as they change shifts.

American Express gives us a good example of how to communicate when you turn off for the night.
Another way to make a one-to-one connection or conversation is through Direct Message.
Our co-founder Leo wrote a great article on Social Media Examiner about Twitter and customer service, and he laid out this quick 3-step guide for what to do when you’re communicating with your many people in your audience about a similar topic or bug.

Send one public tweet explaining the situation. Anyone who finds your Twitter profile will see that tweet first.
Then, reply to any @mentions with a DM. First, you won’t clutter your business’s Twitter stream with @replies for other customers looking for what is going on. Second, you can go into more detail explaining how you can help each customer.
Switch back to sending @replies if there is no acute problem anymore, but only regular questions and support requests.
DMs are also extremely useful when a simple @reply doesn’t give all of the information the customer needs.

DMs are also a great alternative to the “please send an email to name@company.com” line. You make a connection with your customer without sending them elsewhere to talk to you and dragging out the process unnecessarily.

What happens if you don’t

Not only do you risk alienating your community by not responding, you can also create harmful reactions to your brand. A research study in the Academy of Management found that companies who accepted responsibility for a problem saw favorable responses. Those who were slow in responding to complaints did not. It’s all a quite intuitive conclusion, though interesting to see backed by research in addition to intuition.

4. Be specific

This strategy is one borrowed from email marketing, where specificity—often seen in the form of segmentation and personalization—is a key driver of higher open rates and clickthrough rates.
A study by Jupiter Research found that relevant emails drove 18 times more revenue than general, broadcast emails.

Shane Snow and Jon YouShaei tested specificity in a series of cold emails, changing things like the subject line and the thank you message to see what worked best. Of the cold emails, sent in impersonal batches, only 1.7% of people replies, 12 out of 700.
Following the study, Shane cold emailed a single contact with a highly personalized email. He got a reply.

Here’s the email Shane sent:

Subject: Shook your hand at NextJump, would love your advice
Adam,
Fantastic presentation at NextJump yesterday! I was thrilled to shake your hand and say “thanks” right before you ran out. I was also happy to see your book hit the Print+Ebook bestseller list in the Times Book Review last week. The world needs this message.
I feel apprehensive asking you this, since I know you have plenty of opportunities to give already, but I wanted to know if, when the frenzy dissipates, you would be willing to coach me a bit on the work I’m doing for my first book? I just signed an exciting deal with HarperCollins (my editor, Hollis Heimbouch, works with Clayton Christensen and Jim Collins) for a book that I’m hoping will help a LOT of people. (It’s inspired, in fact, by XXXpersonal storyXXX.)
I’d love to tell you more about the book, which is provisionally titled Smartcuts, and pick your brain for one of my chapters. But most of all, I’d be delighted to get your advice on managing the whole process as well as you have. Perhaps we can grab a few minutes at your office or here in New York sometime?
Best wishes,
Shane

 

What this might look like in practice

Replying with specificity to your customers is a wonderfully smart and simple habit to get into. All it takes is a bit of notice.
When someone mentions you on Twitter, you can click on their username to see a popover with their bio and information.



What you might get from here:

• Location – “Hope the weather’s great in Boston!”
• Website – “Love the design on your site. :)”
• Favorite teams – “How’re the Red Sox doing?”
• School or alma mater – “Go ‘Cats!”
• Interests/passions – (attach a picture or gif)
• Work – “Hope all’s going great at CompanyX!”

From the above bio of Todd’s, I can tell with just a bit of Google searching and Twitter clicking that he’s based in Boston, he does content for a consulting company, he teaches at Bryant University (“Go Bulldogs!”), and he loves running and dogs.

What happens if you don’t

There aren’t too many downsides to an impersonal Twitter response. A response, any response, is better than none.
Personalization is what can help take your conversations from everyday to extraordinary. If you aim to delight your customers at every turn, then personalization in your social media replies is a great route to consider.

 

5. Say their name

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” ~ Dale Carnegie

A Ball State study found that addressing customers by their real name is considered a best practice of brands on social media.

And certainly, the psychology backs it up.
“You” or your name is considered to be one of the five most persuasive words in the English language.

Some of the biggest brands in the world rely on this personal touch with their interaction. In the book High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service, Micah Solomon shares an acronym used by Apple to help inform its customer conversations.
Apple takes the overall goal to … “Present a solution for the customer to take home today.” 
And they seek to achieve this with the following acronym:

A – Approach customers with a personalized, warm welcome
P – Probe politely to understand all the customer’s needs
P – Present a solution for the customer to take home today
L – Listen for and resolve any issues or concerns
E – End with a fond farewell and an invitation to return

 

What this might look like in practice

In most cases, the customer’s first name will be easy enough to find on their profile. Twitter bios, for instance, allow for a username (the @-handle the person chooses) and for a first and last name.



Take a quick peek at the name before replying, and you can easily add it in to your tweet or comment.

What happens if you don’t

Like personalized messages, adding someone’s name is neither a deal-maker nor a deal-breaker. It’s just another nice touch. And all these nice touches could very well add up to something quite meaningful over time.

Over to you

What strategies have you found most helpful in replying to people on social media?
I’d love to learn any of your tips on the subject. Feel free to leave any thoughts at all here in the comments!




https://blog.bufferapp.com/happy-customers-social-media?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bufferapp+%28Updates+and+tips+from+Buffer%29

The Art of Making Customers Happy on Social Media (Part 1)

If you sell something online or if you run a business with an online presence—even if you’re just having a good time growing your personal brand—you’ll have the honor and the privilege of chatting directly with customers. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week.

This always-on mentality is an amazing privilege, and at the same time it can provide some challenges for small businesses. How can you best respond when conversations are happening constantly? And what if they’re not all positive?

How do you manage to make customers happy on social media?
I discovered a few tips that might help out here, some strategies and insights that are backed by a fair bit of research. There’s an art to making customers happy on social media, and the good news: There’s also a recipe.
Here’s what’s involved.

The 5-part recipe for making customers happy on social media

These are the five parts I’ve encountered in my research on customer happiness. It’s interesting to note also that the order here is somewhat important: Listen before you respond, for instance.
1. Listen carefully
2. Respond quickly
3. Make a connection
4. Be specific
5. Say their name

1. Listen carefully

You focus on listening rather than responding

Among the 10 Buffer values, seldom is there crossover between the specific phrasing of a value and the naming of a social media marketing strategy. We’re grateful for the overlap with listening.
Social listening is the process of finding the meaningful conversations and insights from all your mentions on social media.

In particular, these elements from our Buffer value seem to really resonate when it comes to successful social listening.

You seek first to understand, then to be understood
You focus on listening rather than responding

I really love the way that Lolly Daskall outlines the importance of listening as it relates to business and leadership. I think her description rings true for social media as well.

We listen to learn.
We listen to stay informed.
We listen to understand.
We listen to gain information.
We listen to acquire knowledge.
We listen to obtain wisdom.

Listening carefully comes in a couple of phases:

1. Finding the conversations
2. Pausing to listen to what’s being said

In terms of finding the conversations, there was some really neat research done by Mention, who analyzed over one billion brand mentions tracked through their tool.
They found that 92 percent of people talking to brands have fewer than 500 followers. So you should listen for more than just big influencers.
They also saw that 30 percent of tweets containing company names don’t use the company’s twitter handle. So you should listen for multiple keywords and variations beyond just your username.

 

What this might look like in practice

There are a number of useful tools you can put together into a social listening dashboard.
Mention is one of our favorites, as it’s able to track just about any variation of you or your brand name, as well as keywords, phrases, and hashtags. One cool tip is to sync up Mention with Feedly to build a listening dashboard, alongside your RSS consumption.

Additionally, you can dive quite deep into Twitter using Twitter’s built-in Advanced Search. You can drill down into specific accounts or hashtags or keywords, including going way back into the archives if needed.

What happens if you don’t

When conversations happen about your brand on social media, you have the chance to get involved and make a positive impression on those talking about you.
If you miss those opportunities, you miss the chance to make an impression. You miss the chance to provide answers or solutions or to steer the conversation in a meaningful direction.
And to go a step further, people might not think you listen or care. Brands that never respond not only fail to make a positive impression, they can sometimes make a poor one with their silence.

2. Respond quickly

Customers expect a response on Twitter within 60 minutes

Twitter is perhaps the most real-time of the major social networks, with the half-life ot tweets measured in minutes.
Consumers expect this rapidity to extend to their conversations with you, too.
Research by Lithium Technologies found that 53 percent of users who tweet at a brand expect a response within the hour. The percentage increases to 72 percent for those with a complaint.



If you can pull of this quick feat (tips on this are below), you’ll go a long ways toward setting yourself apart. Few companies are able to answer so speedily.
A study done by Simply Measured found that nearly all brands—99% of them—are on Twitter and 30% have a dedicated customer service handle. Still, the average response time was 5.1 hours with only 1 out of 10 companies answering within an hour.

What this might look like in practice

Monitoring and listening with the tools mentioned above will be a great start for replying fast.
Additionally, tools like Must Be Present can help you track your response time on Twitter, or you can invest in software like Spark Central to stay on top of your customer support tweets.
If you’ve got a big team of support heroes, then a third-party tool like Spark Central is a great route to go.

If it’s just you, then you might look into the notification settings for your social network. For instance, with Twitter, you can sign up for Twitter email alerts and customize them so that you only receive the messages that you’d like—for instance, @-replies or new follows.

What happens if you don’t

Mark Granovetter in the American Journal of Sociology presented his social network theory that visualizes people as nodes. Those who are connected through a relationship are a single link away, while distant relationships are only a few links away.

Granovetter’s theory came out in 1973, well before the advent of social media (or the modern Internet, even), yet it still applies directly to the power of networking on Twitter, Facebook, and the rest. As a follow-up to Granovetter’s theory, a trio of UK researchers observed that most people are no more than six links away from any other person.

Put another way, word of a poor Twitter experience can spread far and fast. 
Jeremy Waite found that a tweet can spread from one person to 2.7 million within four generations—which is great for the amazing content you produce and share, and good to keep in mind for the conversations you have as well.



https://blog.bufferapp.com/happy-customers-social-media?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bufferapp+%28Updates+and+tips+from+Buffer%29

2 Tools to Better Follow-up with Social Media Conversation (Minimal Style)

Social media is more than just a lot of fun. It has literally changed the way we communicate, giving us a new platform with its own set of etiquette, limitations and overall conduct. We can meet people we never would have known, speak to friends and family in an instant from anywhere in the world and even connect to entertainment or commercial brands we would not have known about. The applications for small businesses and independent projects have been especially intense.

But has anyone else noticed how annoying notifications are? It doesn’t matter if you are using Facebook, Twitter or Google+, the system never seems to work exactly right. I know that I miss a lot of responses and feedback, simply because the notifications don’t read on certain pages. Making me miss out on what could have been a really interesting conversation.

The good news is that there are apps out there that allow you to catch those comments and read them all in one place. Which means no more going from platform to platform and hunting down your replies in giant threads to figure out if anyone spoke back to you. Isn’t that cool?
While I have heard of multiple programs that do this, I have only ever used two myself.

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Fanmix

The best way I can describe the interface of this program is a Gmail inbox. It isn’t exactly the same, but it has a lot of similarities that remind me of one. The overall layout is very close to that email service, and so is the way it opens. It will even bunch multiple comments from one person together, with a mention of how many replies are located before you open it up.

As for organization, the folders work in the same way. You have the main inbox, and then priority and an important folder, respectively. Then starred, sent, archive and a contacts page for managing who you know from each social media site.
In addition to reading messages that connect from different social media services, you can compose messages, as well. All from your inbox, which is a pretty cool feature.

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Engagio

What I love most about this program is that they have a Gmail extension for Chrome. Otherwise, the many compatible programs (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Flickr, Gmail, ect) is a great benefit to using Engagio.
Rather than an inbox, is functions like a social media dashboard. Though it does have an inbox section as well, used for notifications whenever you have a new message or activity somewhere on your accounts. You can compose messages and contact people through this inbox.

Otherwise, go to your dashboard to see the social media feeds of everyone you have followed. It should show them all, from each platform. The only annoying thing about this is that when you sign up, they will immediately add you to the follow list of nine people. Which you will have to manually remove if you don’t want them.

Some other cool features are the engagement portions of the dashboard. There is one box for websites where your friends are engaging. Then another one for articles where they are engaging. So you get to see where they have communicated around the web using their different social media sign ons. It is an interesting way to both find content to interest you, and to get a look into their own enjoyment, without the limitations of them having to like a Facebook page or post a link on Twitter.

The Tool		FanMix	Engagio
Supports	Twitter	Yes (multiple Twitter accounts)	Yes(multiple Twitter accounts)
	Facebook	Yes	Yes
	Facebook Pages	Yes	Yes
	Linkedin	Yes	Yes
	Google Plus	Not yet	Yes
	Youtube	Not yet	Yes
	Hacker News	Not yet	Yes
	Foursquire	Not yet	Yes
	Gmail	Not yet	Yes
	Disqus	Yes	Yes
Reputation management		Tracker (add any keyword and see new results each time you log in)	Search social inbox and enable instant search alserts!
Prioritizing features		Priority inbox (both manually starred messages and automatically deemed as important go there)	Priority filter

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Conclusion

Maybe in time the notification systems for different social media sites will be improved. Maybe they will even further link the different platforms for better cross-site communication between users. But until that day, these two helpful services can really get you past the little annoyances involved.




http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/social-media-conversation/

Social Media and SEO

I often hear business owners claiming “I don’t have time for Social Networking”. I also hear “Facebook is for kids”.

The point that these business owners fail to see is that Social Media and Social Networking sites have a great impact on their search results.

Both Google and Bing have publicly admitted that shares on Facebook and Twitter (and now Google+) have a direct impact on ranking results.

Example: You share something relevant to your business on your Facebook Page and Twitter profile.

• User 1 comes along and “likes” your post
• User 2 comes along and shares your post (reposts it on their wall and/or re-tweets it on the Twitter profile)
• User 3 re-tweets user 2’s post
• Users 4 – 20 see the Facebook post that user 2 shared and visits, likes and reads your Facebook Page.
• Users 13 – 19 share that same post on their Facebook page

You get the idea. By sharing in the social sphere, you generated a bunch of inbound links and introduced your business to a number of potential buyers who had no prior knowledge of you.
But what about consistency? Does participating in social networking increase your odds of being consistently found at the top of the search engines? Yes it does. Make no mistake, inbound links, authoritative user status (gained by likes and +1 clicks) and content all factor into your rank result.

Once these items are posted, liked, and shared online, they are there forever. Searches garner much more than just web site results. A search result includes pictures, videos, news items, and results from social media sites. So, by simply participating in social media sites, your odds of being found in search have increased exponentially. Google also pays attention to who shares your information. If someone is deemed to be an authoritative user and they like, +1, re-tweet and share your post, your rank just got upped too!

To be truly successful in the social media realm, you have to practice reciprocity. In other words, don’t be there to just post about you. Make sure you share relevant content from other people in your networks. Consider the difference between a link farm (low quality) web site and a content rich, authoritative (high quality) site. Sharing other people’s information in your social networks shows the search engines you are there to provide a rich, authoritative experience to your community and not just tossing out links to generate link bait to your site.

Social Marketing is something every business owner needs to make time for and work. The bottom line is, your SEO plan is incomplete without including a Social
Element.http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/social-media-and-seo/

8 Awesome FREE Social Media Guides to Download

Social media is a helpful tool (some would say a crucial one), but getting a handle on its use can be tricky. We all know how to use it in a social context, but what about in a professional one? Where do you draw the line between social and inappropriate? How do you find the correct tone for your own page? How do you hook followers?

All of these are common questions I hear asked, and there are dozens more. No guide is perfect in explaining everything there is to know about the topic. It is not only a rather large one, after all, but it is also always adapting and evolving into new forms with new uses we had not anticipated. So a basic understanding of the varied foundation principles are necessary to master it.
I usually recommend these eight free guides on social media to anyone who is serious about learning the skill.

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1. Your Guide To Social Media Marketing

Mike Nichols of YourZulu wrote this informative ebook for MakeUseOf, which is one of the primary sources for technology related how-to’s. In it, he shows how businesses of any size and age can get into the social media game. Largely based on Facebook (which is probably always going to be the first social media site for any budding campaign), it also lets you know the primary uses of other sites from Twitter to Pinterest.

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2. Hubspot Social Media Marketing Kit

This is actually three different guides in one. The Social Media Marketing Kit contains Step-By-Step Guide to New Facebook Business Page Timelines, How to Attract Customers With Twitter, and Learning LinkedIn From The Experts: How To Build a Powerful Business Presence On LinkedIn. While it isn’t comprehensive, it covers three very useful topics that are often overlooked in other guides. All but the Twitter ebook, which is a common subject.

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3. Social Media Posting Guide

Craig Van Korlaar focuses his attention on social media powerhouses Facebook and Twitter as he explains the process of posting properly on both site. As he says, there is more to it than just posting content, and there is also more than just self promotion. He shows you how to listen to customers/users, plan your content accordingly, and optimize your posts on both Facebook and Twitter.

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4. Social Media Etiquette Guide

Natalie of The Suitcase Entrepreneur has developed her own six week system that she calls Sculpted Social Media. While the program is not free, the guide to social media etiquette she released at the same time is. You simply have to “pay” with a tweet or Facebook mention. The ebook itself is a handy list of do’s and don’ts that will show you how to properly interact with others on the sites.

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5. Content

One of the biggest problems in social media is copyright. The law is still ambiguous when it comes to fair use and ownership on the web, especially where websites like Facebook, YouTube and especially Pinterest are involved. Cory Doctorow is an authority on all things online, and is a respected maven in the world of technology. He covers the topic of social media and the implications it has on copyright law. He even proves that he believes in his own principles by publishing the work under Creative Commons licensing for free use.

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6. The Future of Reputation

Professor Daniel J Solove of George Washington University Law School wrote this book to address an increasing problem in our technology reliant society: privacy and reputation. We have all heard stories of people who have had their entire lives ruined thanks to a single incident on the web. Teenagers who are tormented by strangers, adults who have their careers shredded thanks to a mistake, businesses that are badly damaged..it is all part of the changing way our world is shared and assessed. His fascinating work looks at both the societal and legal effects of this change.

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7. Free Culture

Harvard University’s Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics Lawrence Lessig has written several incredible books on the topic of social media. I was unsure of which one to post here, as I find all of them must read’s. But my favorite was probably Free Culture, where he looks at big business and how they are using technology to stifle the creative promise once possible on the internet for the sake of their own financial interests. If you want another amazing book, check out his The Future Of Ideas.

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8. The Wealth of Networks

Harvard’s Professor Yochai Benkler is probably best known by many for his appearance in Steal This Film, which is a film series in two parts with one special addressing piracy and the freedom to share content. His book The Wealth of Networks is a dry but brilliant academic look at the connection between social networks, and the internet as a whole.








http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/8-awesome-free-social-media-guides-to-download/

How Can Social Media Help Your Business?

It is hard to believe that anyone isn’t really on board with social media, but a lot of businesses haven’t quite managed to settle of a solid strategy. Small or local businesses in particular tend to create a page, and never come up with a cohesive way to work it to their advantage.

Hiring an expert is a worthwhile investment with a lot of return. But not all business owners are convinced. What does social media really do for a brand, especially when that brand isn’t one of the well established names that permeate the global market?

A lot, actually. While the success of social media campaign from huge corporations aren’t able to be directly replicated on a small scale, you can learn a lot about what to incorporate into your own strategy.
For example, look at these recent cases of social success for big businesses, and what they can teach you:
#MumbaiInANewLight Promotes Phillips And Tourism In One Sweeping Campaign



The Gateway of India is one of the biggest monuments in the tourist-friendly city of Mumbai. Phillips, in cooperation with the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation decided to take advantage of the visibility and popularity of the site to help boost brand recognition and tourism in the region.

Using their new LED lights, they created a brightly colored spectacle. Then they released an app that let people create their own lighting, and share it for the chance to win prizes. The campaign was huge on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook as people flocked to the app to show off their own lighting scheme.

What You Can Take From It: People love the chance to play around creatively, and share it with others. Give them a chance, and they will take it.
American Express Releases OPEN Forum, Targeting Small Businesses With Combined Social and Content Strategies



In the world of B2B marketing, it is important to target your audience correctly. Because AMEX was aiming for small businesses, they decided to give their potential (and current) customers what they could really use. So they created OPEN Forum.

Instead of going for something glitzy and trendy like many brands may have tried, AMEX kept it simple and focused on content. They created a place to read articles by industry experts on topics important to small businesses, then connect with a community and ask questions. They provided quizzes and panels. They paved the way for dialogue.

The Twitter page has more than 203,000 followers for the OPEN Forum alone.
What You Can Take From It: Consider what your audience really wants and needs, not what follows the current trends and popular tactics.
A1 Rebrands Their Sauce For The First Time In Decades, Fails At Pinterest But Becomes A Hit On YouTube





A1 is a steak sauce, but they didn’t want to be a steak sauce any longer. They wanted people to think of their brand as associated with any kind of food that could use a bit of a kick. So they implemented a seemingly good idea, and created a Pinterest page that contained recipes and attractive food photos for users to try something new with A1.

This was a huge flop, as there are only 15 followers to their account at the time of this writing. However, what did take off was a video on YouTube where you see A1 on their Facebook page taking a step away from their long term relationship with steak, and exploring new avenues with lobster, pork, meatballs, chicken, and other foods.

Cheesy? Yes, but it has had more than 1,300,000 views, and counting.
What You Can Take From It: Sometimes your first idea doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean your campaign won’t have an impact.

 

How Social Media Can Help Your Personal Business

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Now that we have seen some examples of businesses really taking advantage of social media, here are some other reasons to get on board.

• Turn your customers into believers: I love it when brands reply me on Twitter. As a customer, I feel much more willing to recommend a brand to my friends if I am somehow connected to the brand on social media
• Build trust: We are in a world now where companies are expected to offer customers a personal touch. That means one on one engagement, and nothing makes that easier than social media. Not having an active account can actually damage your brand’s reputation.
• Build other sources of awareness and traffic: Don’t depend on search engine traffic! Build a more reliable online presence by diversifying your sources
• Learn about your customers: Customer statistics are easy to learn over sites like Facebook and Twitter. From basic demographics, to preferences, interests and potential tie ins to other businesses (collaboration hot right now), social media makes a great data gathering tool.
• Monitor and influence social media sentiment around your business: It is never nice to hear an insult about your business. But not even knowing it is out there is even worse. Social media gives you a chance to monitor your own reputation, and address issues the moment they creep up.
• Generate leads: The most successful call-to-action on Twitter is “Download”: Use this tip to promote your eBooks and build leads!
• Keep your eye on the competition: Don’t just monitor your own reputation, also look at the other guys. The competition (and their customers) are on social media, and you can learn a lot by watching them.

http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/can-social-media-help-business/

5 Social Media Management Tools and Services You May Not Know About Yet (But Should)

If you follow my writing, you know that I love introducing people to new things. There’s nothing I enjoy more than getting comments from readers on how they had never heard of something, but can’t wait to try it. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to five social media tools and services I have mentioned in posts this year that have elicited that reaction and what you can (and should) be doing with them.

Be sure to click to enlarge the images for a better preview!

1. KnowEm

Have you ever visited @Apple on Twitter? While the account has 31.9k followers, it doesn’t actually belong to the Apple that we know and love.

If you’re in the process of creating a brand, don’t make the mistake of creating one that you can’t claim on social media. KnowEm is a free tool you can use to check and see if your name, business name, product name, etc. is available on social media.



Not only will you be able to quickly see which networks you can establish your name upon, but you will also discover over 500 social networks. They are broken into categories including blogging, bookmarking, business, community, design, entertainment, health, information, microblogging, music, news, photo, tech, travel, and video.

2. $99 Social

You know you need a social media presence, but if you’re time-starved like many of us, even the best tools won’t help you keep things under control. Especially considering there are so many social networks that you “must” be a part of to reach your audience.

$99 Social is a social media management company based in the US in my former hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. For $99 a month, they will post an update to your Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profile or page once a day, seven days a week. In addition, they will also promote your products and services to to your social communities and optimize your profiles to appear in social search.



As a busy freelancer, I know how hard it is to get even one update a week to some of my social profiles. This service will ensure that your main social profiles never go dry again. And of course, the less time you have to spend worrying about keeping your social profiles maintained with quality content, the more you time you can spend simply engaging with people.

3. Oktopost

For those who have time to dedicate to social media, Oktopost is a powerful social media management tool at an affordable price. You can use Oktopost to publish updates to your main social profiles including your Facebook profile, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn company page, Twitter profile, and Google+ page. But what I love in particular about their platform is that you can schedule posts to the Facebook and LinkedIn groups you belong to. They even provide analytics so you can see engagement statistics for each profile, page, and group that you post to.



This tool is an absolute must for content promotion. In the case of Facebook and LinkedIn groups, be sure that you have taken the time to get to know the group to ensure that link sharing posts are welcome. When you do post content to the groups that allow it, be sure to review the analytics for each campaign to make sure your posts are getting published and receiving engagement. Use that data to weed out groups that aren’t engaging with your content, especially if you’re near your group membership limits (300 for Facebook and 50 for LinkedIn).

4. RivalIQ

Competitors can be a great resource when forming your social media strategy. Rival IQ allows you to analyze your competitor’s social media strategy. For example, you can quickly see your social media profile bios compared to your competitors.



You can get insights into how your social media activity, engagement, and audience growth compares to your competitors. You can even get alerted to changes competitor’s make to their social profiles. Soon, they will have a feature that allows you to see the top Twitter mentions for you and your competitors based on total reach.

5. Cyfe

Do you do the rounds across your social media networks to check to see if you have new fans, followers, likes on your posts, and so forth? The more social networks you belong to, the longer it will take. Cyfe simplifies this process by allowing you to create a dashboard with all of your social media analytics on one screen. Click on the below image to get a full view of just a portion of my social media dashboard.



Using this dashboard, I can get all of the data I want to know in a quick glance. If logging into Cyfe is too much to add to your plate, you can simply have your dashboard emailed to you on a regularly scheduled basis. Add in widgets for your website’s Google Analytics, keyword rankings, SEO stats, and other data, and you can monitor your business in one screen or PDF!







http://kikolani.com/5-social-media-management-tools-services-may-know-yet.html

Using Pinterest to Get Customers through the Door

A picture is worth a thousand words. You’ve heard that before, right? But, how often do you profit from it? With Pinterest, you can. A beautiful image is your best friend on the Internet. Pinterest is a website dedicated to beautiful images. It’s almost like a match made in heaven. Here’s how to make use of it, and how to capitalize on a new feature: Place Pins.

Place Pins For Local Business
Place pins are a way for you to tag places you’ve been (or want to visit). But, for businesses, they’re a way to garner free advertising. What you do is pin your business, using images, and tag them to a location – your store.

Think of it as a mix between Foursquare and Yelp. Because users can access pins from their mobile device, they can find you pretty easily when they’re tooling around town.

These pins are like other rich pins in the sense that they will contain things like your phone number, address, and other pertinent details. Why is this important?

Let’s say your customers are out getting groceries. They’re tired from all that shopping and they want a bite to eat. You’re a deli owner and your customers are out there – hungry. They stop in and they love the place. They want to pin your business and so they do. Guess what? Other pinners find your place through Pinterest. They see what their friends pinned and, more importantly, where you are. It’s free advertising.

Arranging Images On Your Site
When you put images up on your site, make sure they are place pins. That way, when users pin them, they pin your business location so that others can see it.

Creating Your Pinterest Board
Create an interesting board that will resonate with your target audience. This is something you should be doing regardless of whether or not you’re using place pins, but it’s more important if you are. Think locally.

According to marketing firm Yodle, Inc., things like a “things to do” list for out-of-town travelers or a local guide that includes your store location work well. You could even make a game out of it. If you’re a larger store, create a scavenger hunt.

Outreach
Reach out to other bloggers in your niche, or those who write about your industry, and let them know what you’re doing. Create a news story out of it, if at all possible. That will make it very easy to write about, and it will also give the blogger or reporter a motivation to write about you.

Signage In your Store
If you want to encourage users (customers) to pin your store (and you do), hang signs inside and out that encourage people to pin you. Give them some kind of incentive to do so too. You can offer them a discount on their next purchase or a freebie of some kind.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a promotional offer from your store. You could also enter them into a contest to win something – a “VIP” prize of sorts.

(Flickr / mkhmarketing)

http://socialbarrel.com/using-pinterest-get-customers-door/55475/?utm_source=CustomerSure&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=100%20blog%20list 

7 Steps to Becoming a Rockstar at Social Media Marketing

Writers of fiction and indeed all artists are creative but most importantly, they are natural born leaders.  If they were not leaders, they would not start creating in the first place.  The mark of a great artist is that he or she continuously improves and gains vitality with each new creation.
A true artist never stops exploring new ground with their art.

Artists are open to feedback (and feedback is often negative), are resilient in the face of adversity and use all that happens in their lives to improve their self-expression.  They balance the challenges of staying true to their vision with commercial viability.

If you’ve been working in social media for a while, chances are, you relate to the plight of artists.  Like great artists, the best social media marketers are creative and are natural born leaders.  Inspired artists express themselves without the presence of a manager or any sort of supervisor.  They just simply do what comes naturally.

Be willing to experiment

You probably jumped on social media marketing without any manager or boss telling you to use social media as a marketing channel.  As a marketer, you have the innate curiosity to find out how you can shape the new social media channels and like all great artists, you’re not afraid to experiment.  You don’t allow trolls to deter you and you keep pushing for your vision for your business or career.

Maybe you’re already inspired by a mentor, a manager or a business person and are seeking to become more like him or her.  You have a vision for the life you’d like to create for yourself.  You are focused on self-actualization and insist on delivering the best of your abilities no matter what you do.  You are in a way, an artist.

The habits

So what are the seven habits of artists who end up enjoying success in their careers?  By the way, success can have different meaning to different people.  It does not always mean fame, fortune, you know the trappings.  It could be the mastery of a particular style, a mentorship or acceptance by a group of people whom one respects highly.

1. Be inspired

Follow those who inspire you.  Observe what they’re doing.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.   For beginners, visionaries like Steve Jobs, Sir Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington all have biographies that you can read.  Once you’ve started there, find out the people they worked with and start following them on social media.  Observe very carefully what they talk about, what they share, read, read and read.

2. Connect with others

As you go on reading about those who’ve made a huge impact on our lives, you’ll also observe some of the people they’re inspired by and some people they collaborate with.  By all means, connect with these people on social media.  Make an attempt to find out what they’re working on.  At this stage, start forming a strong idea of how your strengths (you know your personality type, your strengths, skills, weaknesses and what you love to do) can contribute to projects that you’re finding yourself getting excited about.

3. Get Personal

You will get rejected and you will have good and bad interactions with others in your pursuit of strengthening your personal or business brand on social media.  Let all of these interactions be a lesson to you.  Do not be afraid to be vulnerable.  Reveal any weaknesses you felt and how you could improve for next time.  Think and express these thoughts on social media in a way that can help others express themselves and objectives better.

4. Get over yourself

I love to throw in the random Prince reference.  If you haven’t seen Purple Rain, check it out ASAP.  In the movie, Prince is a real dickhead.  He bullies his band mates and refuses to look at the songs they write (even though they’ve just written Purple Rain).  He strokes his own ego by literally jerking off on stage with his guitar.  Don’t be that guy.  Write stuff that will be meaningful to others and that also brings me to my next point.

5. Seek collaboration

There are people out there who are possibly doing a better job than you are.  Acknowledge and seek collaboration opportunities with them.  You will learn so much by working within a team.  Yeah, yeah, creating and being an artist is a solitary profession, but consider this, David Bowie is known to have brought out the best in the musician he’s worked with, so seek people who have a knack for bringing out the best in you, and do great work together.

6. Accept that sometimes your less inspired work will be rewarded

I will throw in another David Bowie reference here, my apologies.  I’m somewhat obsessed with his career.  You will also find that sometimes your most inspired work will not be the one that gets the most amount of attention or attracts the most funding.  Ziggy Stardust was truly inspired stuff, as was Thin White Duke, but when we talk about David Bowie’s commercial success, that peaked with Let’s Dance, an album that David Bowie does not consider to be his most inspired work.  Such is life.

7. Never stop exploring

No matter how many goals you’ve kicked, how many followers you’ve got, who you know, etc… there’s always got to be something you’re striving for, otherwise you might be on your way out.  Find some way to always have something to look forward to.  You can.
Take these tips, apply them liberally and see where it takes you.  I look forward to connecting.



Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/#mgimKxxEoF7D5Dc4.99

Pinterest: Not Just Interior Design & Cats - There’s Real Money To Be Had

This month’s guest post on all things social comes from Marketing Insights Analyst, Natalie Meehan. Natalie has worked in marketing for almost a decade, and forms part of Brandwatch’s marketing insights team - writing reports and other content about all things social. She keeps a big, well-stocked tin of sweets on her desk at all times.
 

Think Pinterest, and you might think it’s just a platform for perving over rainbow layered cakes, or watching people try and fail at recreating hairstyles that require scaffolding and a week off work to achieve.

The thing is, Pinterest is a whole lot more than that.

Bringing in the mega bucks

It’s a money spinner, and one that’s crazily underutilised by businesses. Want to see some facts and figures and some unnecessary caps lock? OF COURSE, YOU DO.

The average order placed by Pinterest shoppers at $169, nearly $100 more than orders placed from Facebook and Twitter adverts.

• Pinterest users are high earners, with 28% earning more than $100,000 a year
• Pinterest drives 7.10% of web traffic that sites receive, more than Reddit or Twitter
• 69% of online consumers who visit Pinterest have found an item that they’ve then purchased, or intended to.

source

It’s clear to see that Pinterest is not just kittens and cupcakes. With Pinterest being a far more open landscape than Facebook or Twitter, it’s much easier to see what exactly people — your potential customers — are interested in, and savvy businesses are using this data in a myriad of ways, including to ‘reverse showroom’, or use secret boards to drive sales.

 

Using the right tools for the job

Community Managers in all sectors will likely be well-versed in using social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. These platforms enable you to make the most of a lot of your social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all mostly pretty easy to manage and report on. But I’m not going to teach granny to suck eggs here. You’ll know this already.

What you may not know is that there are a number of analytics tools that enable you to manage your Pinterest accounts in the same way.

These lesser-known tools are perhaps a step into the unknown, a leap of faith. Do you pick a free tool, and hope for the best, or shell out for a paid option and cross your fingers that you’re going to get at least some return on investment?

We decided to delve into the murky world of Pinterest analytics  tools mainly out of curiosity. We were trying to decide what would  work best for us as a company, and we realised that there wasn’t all that much information out there.What we wanted was a simple report that rated everything out there in a clear and simple manner - one that would help us make the best business decision for us.

We couldn’t find one, so we made one.

Making the right choice just got a little easier

We’ve evaluated Pinterest’s top tools, giving marketers an insightful overview of the industry which stretches far beyond Pinterest’s basic web offering.

For each tool we’ve isolated five key areas to most simply describe the functionality -

• Competitor Analysis: How can you use the tool to track competitors profiles and benchmark your brand’s performance against others?
• Historical Data: How far back can the data be retrieved from Pinterest prior to the date of your initial subscription?
• Scheduling: Does the tool have the feature to schedule the publication of pins, and is it any good?
• Website Traffic: How about metrics that show traffic data relating to your website and different pins?
• Pin Metrics: How does the tool display native Pinterest engagement metrics such as likes, repins and comments?

We’ve also included a detailed index for these metrics and criteria, because buzzwords can get pretty buzzwordy, if you know what I’m saying.

 https://www.distilled.net/resources/pinterest-not-just-interior-design-cats-theres-real-money-to-be-had/#comment-47069

37 SEO Experts You Should Be Following on Twitter

I've been speaking at search conferences since 2001 and have spent a ton of time getting to know who is who in the industry. In fact, I look forward to seeing some of you at SES Chicago to discuss Buyer Legends. Every day it seems that there are another dozen experts to follow on SEO. But, who should you really be paying attention to in 2014?

For starters, solid SEOs need to have a proven track record in the ever-changing world of search - remember, search engines like Google frequently update their algorithms. Another criterion is the ability to master everything from creating content for social media accounts to establishing PPC campaigns to turning profits for their clients. After all, it is about delivering the results.
With all those factors that in mind, here is a selection of 37 SEO experts you should know about in 2014, in no particular order. Some you may have heard of, others not so much. Regardless, these experts have the chops to deserve your attention.

Kris Jones
Kristopher B. Jones is an industry leading SEO expert, entrepreneur, and author of the best-selling book Search-Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint to Effective Internet Marketing. Kris is the former president and chief executive (CEO) of the Pepperjam Affiliate network and is currently an advisor to our friends at Internet Marketing Ninjas.
"Get your most supportive customers to write reviews about your business and submit them to Google+." - Kris @ SEM Rush

Marcus Tober
Marcus got his start in search after developing the SEO tool linkvendor.com, which led to him becoming a pioneer in search analytics software. He founded Searchmetrics in 2007. His clients include very well-known brands like Siemens, T-Mobile, and Symantec.
"The cool thing about search is the way it just keeps changing and growing, meaning website owners and marketers are constantly needing to adapt and exploit new opportunities to maximize their search presence." - Marcus @ Econsultancy

Bruce Clay
Bruce has been involved in search since its infancy, having founded Bruce Clay, Inc all the way back in 1996. Bruce has been at the forefront of the SEO industry ever since. He is a popular speaker at industry conferences, and is also the author of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One for Dummies.
"Too many companies think SEO is easy, cheap, and that you can successfully fool Google. Clearly Google is fighting deceptive tactics, and the penalties are severe. Take a shortcut to save time and money and you will be hurt by Google." - Bruce @ Delaware, Inc 

Murray Newlands
Murray Newlands a well-respected online marketer and professional who manages SEO PR at Influence People. Murray is deputy editor of Search Engine Journal, and is a frequent contributor to well-known business brands Inc., Entreprenuer.com, and VentureBeat. He wrote Content Marketing Strategy for Professionals with Bruce Clay.
"It's not enough to just produce content. Your content must educate, inspire, or entertain your audience." - Murray @ Entrepreneur

Mikkel deMib Svendsen
Mikkel has been working around search engines since 1997. He is the host of the Strike Point radio show and is now publishing shorter and more focused books on one specific topic rather than the traditional textbook, which tries to cover too much information and gets outdated quickly in this industry. The first two books are good examples of how specific the topics will be: Search Engine Reputation Management and Digital Marketing for Healthcare.
"I published this idea about 10 years ago. It is a very effective strategy...I'd call it the best SEO strategy ever, and it's very, very simple. DO NOT OPTIMIZE FOR SEARCH ENGINES. Focus on users to stay ahead of the engines, this is the best SEO strategy I can offer you today and tomorrow." - deMib 

Marty Weintraub
With a "Search Personality of the Year" award under his belt, Marty is a very successful innovator in search. He is the founder of AimClear, serving large clients like Intel and Firestone, and is often found speaking at industry events all over the world.
"The coolest SEO practitioners test their keywords, messages, landing pages, and funnels with PPC and then apply what they know to SEO." - Marty @ SEOCopywrtiting.com

Pierre Zarokian
Mr. Zarokian is an industry veteran with three distinct company foundations under his belt. He started by founding his search engine marketing company Submit Express in 1998, followed by social media firm iClimber in 2008, and most recently Reputation Fighters in 2013.
"SEO [enables] businesses to push down negative pages [to] the second page or lower, where they will be 'buried' and attract less attention." - Pierre @ SEJ

John Rampton
John is sometimes referred to as a "start-up addict." He is the founder of Adogy, a Palo Alto-based advertising agency, is a frequent contributor to Search Engine Journal and The Examiner, and has twice been named in the top 10 of the "Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts" by Hannapin Marketing.
"Put up amazing content that their customers want. Build products they want to use. Be a company people have to talk about." - John @ Reputation.com

Brent Csutoras
Brent is the CMO of Pixel Road Designs and founder of Kairay Media, which specializes in content marketing and viral content creation. You can find him speaking on the search and social marketing conference circuit or being mentioned in leading publications such as Forbes and Wired.
"[The] secret sauce is just hard work and dedication. Those are the keys to success with social media, or actually just about anything in life." - Brent @ SEJ

Cynthia Johnson
Cynthia "The Social Media Girl" is the director of social media marketing for RankLab. She's been involved with major corporate social media campaigns including clients like Chevrolet and Levis. She has also been a keynote speaker for PubCon.
"Social media as it is now is not here to stay and we should hope that it isn't. The concept and idea of social media will remain, however, and it will evolve and change just as anything in life should." - Cynthia @ CytnthaLive.com

Travis Wright
Travis is a self-described "eternal smartass" who got his start as a standup comedian. He's spent the last 15 years developing and optimizing hundreds of business websites and can be found the speaking at industry conferences like SMX and SXSW.
"Success and fortune are a fickle bitch, so you have to keep moving forward, learning, growing, and evolving in this business world. Eventually, one of these ideas will bust through." - Travis @ traviswright.com

Duane Forrester
Duane is known as "the online marketing guy" whose current role is a senior product manager for Bing and their Webmaster Outreach Program. He is also staff at Search Engine Forums and speaks at search conferences like SES and Pubcon.
"If it's me and it's my budget and I'm spending the money, I'm putting the money into usability before I'm putting the money into SEO." - Duane @ Stone Temple Consulting

Jayson DeMers
Jason is the founder and CEO of Seattle-based marketing agency AudienceBloom. He is a very frequent contributor to popular sites and blogs like Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Search Engine Watch. Jason is very passionate about demystifying SEO for small business owners.
"[More] content results in higher quality, and that's good for everyone. Lower-quality content will be buried in the noise and won't yield any ROI." - Jayson @ Oktopost 

Heidi Cohen
Heidi is president of Riverside Marketing Strategies and has held top marketing positions at well-known content brands including The Economist and DoubleDay. She has also taught marketing at a variety of universities including New York University and Rutgers.
"You always need to keep tabs on what's happening around you. Keep up with changes in the environment (including styles, politics, and economics), transformations in technology, and the evolution of competitors." - Heidi @ TopRankBlog

Aki Libo-on
Aki is the author of a beginners guide to blogging called How to Start a Blog and Earn From It. She also is a regular contributor on topics such as content marketing and blogging at Search Engine Journal.
"Every action must have a goal - and not just any ordinary or broad objective, but something that is clear, specific, reasonable and actionable." - Aki @ SEJ

Drew Hendricks
Drew is the president of AudienceBloom and also serves as a freelance social media strategist and freelance writer. He has several years of experience creating tons of successful social media campaigns for his clients. Drew is also a frequent contributor to publications including The Huffington Post, Technorati, and Forbes.
"The best writers have their favorite authors, so read a few favorite blog posts before sitting down to write. Imitation really is the best form of flattery." - Drew @ The Huffington Post

Loren Baker
Loren Baker is founder of SEJ and Foundation Digital, his digital marketing agency. Loren has been on the SEO scene for more than 15 years, working with some large fortune 500 companies like General Motors and Disney, and is a bona fide legend of the industry.
"It may sound counter-productive, but focusing less on link building can actually gain more links." - Loren @ SEW 

Mitchell Stoker
For the last five years Mitchell has used his online strategy skill-set to help more than 40 national and local businesses thrive online. He is currently the owner of Red Barn Ventures and contributes content to Mashable and the Wall Street Journal.
"The solution to this is to build your brand and business on sound principles that will earn trust over time. It takes quite a while to earn 'real' trust, but is well worth it." - Mitchell @ Maple North

Stuart Draper
Stuarts's mom refers to him as a "social butterfly" but he's also the founder of Get Found First, a pay-per-click advertising agency founded in 2008, as well as a cutting-edge Internet marketing simulator and course Stukent.
"I would argue that the number one reason all agencies lose business is lack of strong and effective communication." - Stu @ Get Found First

Greg Boser
Greg has been involved in search engine optimization since what feels like the beginning of time! He is currently the president and co-founder of Foundation Digital, located in the Greater Los Angeles area. You can usually find Greg at leading search engine industry conferences like SMX and the Affiliate Summit.
"I look at [SEO] like I'm a weather man. I think I'm a really good weather man, but there are times when you say it's going to be 75 degrees and sunny and somebody's party got rained on. That's because we don't control everything." - Greg @ The History of SEO

Zac Johnson
If you're looking for super affiliates tips, Zach will tell you how he has made millions of dollars over the last 10 years in affiliate marketing. Be sure to check out his podcast titled "Rise of the Entrepreneur," which can be found on iTunes.
"Anyone can write an article, but actually being able to write something that people can relate with and makes them want to take action immediately... now that's powerful!" - Zac @ Agile Leverage

Matt Southern 
Matt Southern is a freelance writer who simplifies search engine and content marketing with a self-proclaimed "uncanny talent" for breaking down the complex subjects into digestible bits of information.
"A solid strategy is like a road map for success. Without one you're just navigating through the Web aimlessly."- Matt @ mattsouthern.com

Ania Dziadon
Ania is the CEO and chief strategist of Add Optimization, as well as the CEO of EasyFinance.com. With more than 10 years experience in inbound marketing, her insights have made her a pioneer in the search technology field.
"There is a big connection between lead generation and SEO due to the fact that the majority of quality leads come from the [search] space." - Ania @ LeadsCon

Bob Rains
Bob's "official" job title is "SEO Nerd" at CBS Interactive. Bob is known internationally as a "SEO of the Stars" and you can usually find him sharing his knowledge of creating and implementing innovative digital strategies at SEOktoberfest.
"SEO isn't purely a link game, so why should negative SEO be purely a link game?" - Bob @ SEJ

AJ Ghergich
AJ is this founder of Ghergich & Co. and has been involved in SEO since 2004. His boutique agency creates and promotes visual assets such as infographics, blog posts, and other forms of kick-ass content marketing.
"When you are learning SEO it can be easy to just get into the habit of reading best practices and assuming they are true. The best knowledge you can give yourself is by doing." - AJ @ Powered by Search

Ann Smarty
Ann Smarty is indeed very, *ahem* smart-y when it comes to SEO and content marketing. She is currently a blogger and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas and founder of MyBlogU and ViralContentBuzz.com
"I never offer a guest post unless I am 100% satisfied with it and unless I am 99% sure (you can never be 100% sure) that it's a useful one." - Ann @ Brick Marketing

Eric Siu
Eric is the CEO of Single Grain, a Southern California-based digital marketing agency who works with both Fortune 500 companies and up-and-coming start-ups. Eric is also a frequent contributor to Entrepreneur.com.
"The number-one cardinal sin most new social media marketers commit is not sticking to a regular posting schedule." - Eric @ Entrepreneur.com

Marcela De Vivo
Marcela has been involved in SEO for the last 15 years and is the founder of Griffin Media, which serves many internationally recognized clients. She wants you to know if you are interested in learning more about SEO she is absolutely your girl!
"To know what your audience craves, you have to get into their heads. Building marketing personas goes a long way in helping you create content targeted to their interests." - Marcela @ Social Media Explorer

Pratik Dholakiya
Pratik prides himself in the providing his clients with real, tangible results. He's been doing just that within the digital marketing space for more than seven years. You may have seen Pratik featured in such publications as Forbes, Moz, and SEW.
"Estimates and correlations might not count as proof of ROI, but when you tie your strategy to numbers, your actions become harder to ignore." - Pratik @ Crazy Egg

Brian Honigman
Brian's byline is "Smart. Social. Storytelling." He's a marketing consultant, freelance writer, and also a professional speaker - Brian has spoken at NYU, UNICEF, and for The American Advertising Federation. He has also contributed to such publications as The New York Times and The Next Web.
"People tend to trust other people more than they do the idea of a brand, which is why it's important to occasionally focus on the key individuals that have built your business in order to help build trust as your team explains its story to others." - Brian @ The Next Web

Andrew Pincock
Andrew is currently the CEO of Traffico, a content marketing, digital strategy, and PPC management firm. Andrew has worked for major players like AOL, as well as several start-up Internet technology companies.
"Metrics are essentially a way for decision making to be easier. At a glance, you can see how much traffic your website is getting, whether your pages are performing as intended, and see ways you can improve your sales." - Andrew @ SmallBizTechnology

Peter Daisyme
Since 2010, Peter has been the director of search at Pixloo, which helps people sell their properties online. When he's not busy with Pixloo, Peter shares his love for SEO and online marketing on publications like Search Engine Journal.
"Online reputation management is no longer just about being the most popular. It also has to do with security of a financial asset, personal assets, personal safety and well-being."- Peter @ SEJ

Joost de Valk
Joost is the CEO and founder of Yoast, which he started in 2010. Yoast consults clients on SEO, online marketing, and WordPress. In fact, you've probably used - or are currently using - one of his powerful WordPress themes. Prior to founding Yoast, Joost launched the biggest CSS3 resource on the Web, CSS3.info, and the extension Quix.
"There is a lot of snake oil and a lot of people selling weird stuff around SEO that either does, or doesn't work, or just works temporarily, which is why the trade has a bit of a bad name. But in the end, today good SEO means getting your site in order technically, then writing awesome content, and have people link to that awesome content so you can get found, which is a bit of a three stage rocket." - Joost @ Zerply

Eric Hebert
Eric has been working behind-the-scenes in the SEO world for more than 10 years. In 2006 he founded evolvor.com to help those in the music and entertainment industries, and has turned it into a boutique marketing and advertising agency. He recently took on an additional role as director of marketing for DineAbility.com
"Stop reading articles about SEO. Stop reading articles about 'How Facebook is Going to BLAH BLAH BLAH' your business. Start caring about your customers, about your service, about being the best damn business owner you can be." - Eric @ evolvor.com

Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Dr. Pete is a marketing scientist at Moz. Because he's a cognitive psychologist, he is able to use his knowledge to make "data cool." He specializes in SEO, online marketing, and data science. He was previously president of User Effect.
"Be curious - about how things work, about what makes people tick, about anything, really. Curiosity is probably the driving force behind data science, and it leads to the kind of passion that can also make you a good marketer. Connect with people early and often - don't wait until you're between jobs to network. Building up relationships takes years, and it's vital to your long-term career opportunities." - Dr. Pete @ Job Shadow 

Rae Hoffman 
Rae Hoffman, aka Sugarrae, is an outspoken blogger who covers everything in the SEO, social media, and affiliate marketing field on her blog. She's also the co-owner and CEO of PushFire, a Texas-based Internet marketing agency.
"You and you alone determine whether or not you'll be successful in your business goals. There are no acceptable excuses in life. There's only action and inaction-and your choice of which road you decide to take." - Rae @ Flippa Blog

Avinash Kaushik
Avinash is the best-selling author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. He's also the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, co-founder of Market Motive, and runs the website Occam's Razor.
"I love SEO. It is such a fascinating science and the rewards are awesome. The thing that appeals to me personally is that there are, mostly, a clear set of logical things we have to do in order to rank high for relevant keywords. It is fun to do those things at a system or marketing level." - Avinash @ Moz



http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2374336/37-SEO-Experts-You-Should-Be-Following-on-Twitter