Google’s recent study on Valentine’s Day has shown that mobile search has yet again come into the limelight. 62% of restaurant searches on the day were executed through a mobile device. This gives brands a clear indication that mobile SEO is an important facet of their marketing plan that they definitely cannot afford to miss out on. With nearly 2/3rds of the restaurant customers using their mobile phones to search and book, brands who chose to stay a step ahead definitely registered higher sales. Smartphones have changed the way is which we consume the internet. Searching and using social media was previously common through the desktop or laptop devices. With the boom in Smartphones and tablets, users are relying on the convenience and location awareness of these devices to use the internet for a variety of purposes. Last minute searches for flowers and other gift items too grew multiple folds. Directions to the nearest florist shops grew by a whopping 514%!

More specifically, searches through tablet devices also grew by a large margin. The weekend before Valentine’s Day most of the searches were conducted through a tablet device. It is commonly noticed that tablet queries are higher during the weekend while last minute queries happen majorly through a Smartphone. It seems like the power of mobile technology has definitely helped last minute planners make the most of their romantic day! Brands have to take this into consideration and create an effective web analytics strategy in order to understand user trends & leverage the potential of the growing market.

There are various ways in which brands use social media platforms in order to run their contests and other user engagement activity. Pinterest provides a brand new playing ground with a vast variety of opportunities to get users to engage with the brands and pin their products on their boards.

On the surface it may seem like the site isn’t ideal for brand marketing. However, the whole concept of Pinterest is building relationships through mutual interest. While using this site it is important not to think only about sales. Think about it this way: Would users put up promotional material on their fridge or on their pinboards at home? The key to good usage of Pinterest is to share interests with users and give them a subtle incentive to put up your pins on their virtual pinboards. There are certain things you must keep in mind before you use the site. The first thing to remember is that your brand needs to have some sort of physical or visual product to begin with. For e.g. A cosmetics or a fashion brand will do exceptionally well on the site as they have appealing products that users would like to show off.

Secondly it is important for brands to stick to a certain rules. Avoid excessive self-promotion as this can turn-off users from the brand altogether. Share things that are interesting and will attract attention rather than just promoting what you sell.

Lastly, don’t make the mistake of assuming that Pinterest only targets a limited demographic. The website is attracting users by the droves and it is important to keep researching to find various avenues of growth.

Online brand monitoring is steadily becoming the need of the hour. Most brands make the mistake of considering brand monitoring tools as a waste of resources and ignore the need to constantly keep a check on the brand’s online progress. There are a number of amazing apps that can add tons of value to your brand monitoring efforts:

One of the recent online brand monitoring tools that works well  is IFTTT or simply put, “If This Then That”. Using this site, users can create a “Recipe” that will help them effectively monitor their brand online. If you are beginning to monitor your brand online you need to keep a few points in mind. Use Twitter brand monitoring by mentioning your brand name and get a report of every time your brand is mentioned on the site. Another interesting recipe is one which will help you thank your followers every time they mention your brand name. This will save a lot of time you would otherwise spend on thanking users individually. Using the follow back option you can automatically follow users who follow your brand and thereby build your Twitter profile.

Using Google Alerts you can get timely reports on what content is being presented to the users. This is an apt way to monitor your online content and make any changes in time if necessary.

Once you are aware of any negative mentions regarding your brand it is important to create an effective strategy to create a positive image for your brand. Ignoring a negative mention can backfire and result in even bigger issues that might get difficult to handle. It is important to remember that the best form of marketing happens when the customers are happy with the brand. Make it a point to genuinely solve any grievances in order to foster brand loyalty.

One of the most important tools in social media engagement is the “Contest”! Well designed and cleverly articulated contests can help increase a brand’s visibility on social channels, increase engagement with target audience and help reinforce loyalty and interest towards the brand. Even though a large number of people choose Facebook when it comes to executing campaigns, the choice of a medium depends greatly on what you wish to achieve with your contest and the kind of your audience you wish to target. With brands coming up with social media contests regularly, it can become quite difficult to create something that will help you stand out. Here are a few tips that will help you get started and reach towards that one great idea:

The most important thing you need to do is set up a goal for your campaign. What kind of interaction and ROI do you seek at the end of the contest? Do you want to attract new fans or do you wish to engage the existing ones? These and similar questions will help you narrow down on the various possibilities and aim for an idea that meets your goals.

Brands often believe that engagement can only happen if an expensive reward is offered. While this may be true to a certain extent, you want to target people who are genuinely interested in your brand rather than a one-off gratification.

Social Media has a large number of tools that go beyond the traditional Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. In order to make the most of the medium it is important to explore the various tools available and use them to your advantage. If possible it is best to aim for online-offline integration to give the content more leverage. When a contest ends it provides ample material that can be used at a later stage to create a buzz. Make sure you plan effective contests to increase visibility of your brand on social media.

Twitter is an amazing source for finding the right deals at the right time. To begin with you need start off by following your favorite airlines in order to be the first one to hear about any deals or amazing offers. There are various twitter handles such as @airfarewatchdog and @cheapestairfare that will help you get hold of tempting and profitable deals.

If you are sure about a destination you can make your plan even more specific. For e.g. If you are planning a visit to Scotland you can find local tourism authorities, airlines and other accounts that will help you get good deals. Remember that pick on interesting deals quickly! Deals that will get retweeted by many users will be snagged before you know it.

‘Fare Compare’ is a great website to help US residents find any twitter deal that concerns the airport closest to them. By entering their closest airport Twitter users can keep up-to-date on all deals in real time. Great way to enviably priced flight tickets!

Another similar site is Trip Twit which will find all travel deal related mentions for you once you sign up.

Getting recommendations and advice from friends is a great way to see what your social circle is saying about your next destination or your travel plans. It has been noticed that users are more open to taking advice from close friends rather than websites that they are not familiar with. Apps like Trippy can help you create a travel plan and get suggestions and opinions on it from friends.

 
Let’s not forget forums which are the best platforms to find information about any topic no matter how niche it is. For e.g. The “World Travel Forum” on Virtual Tourist, is a platform where you can post discussions about any location in the world and get information from other travelers.

If you are one of the “last minute planners” like most of us you can find scores of apps that will help you make instant bookings and get some discount while you are at it!

The first step that needs to be taken is to create a social media management team that will help in developing a well rounded policy that will work for everyone. This will also help you develop steps in case of a crisis regarding your brand that needs to be averted in time. Once you have a team in place you can decide who handles what kind of issues.

When it comes to social media it should be more than just an exercise; it should be a culture! When you create a policy for your social activities try to ensure that you learn from it and implement changes as you go along.

Make sure you do not have a generic policy that applies to all sites. While it is important to create an overall policy, ensure that you have site specific policies that will ensure that there is a better chance of having a better social media experience.

When you create policies it is important to have two separate policies: The first one for those who want to use social media for the company and the others who want to use it for their personal work. In both cases it is important to clearly articulate what can and cannot be said about the company and what activity will be helpful to the brand.

Lastly make sure you stay updated about the dynamic nature of social media and update your policies as you move ahead.

Previously in a two-part series we have explained ways in which you can improve the usability of your website. However designing a proper site is not enough. It is important to test the website usability in order to continue to maintain the effectiveness of your site.

Once the website is ready you should get hold of a few people who haven’t worked on the website to give you an unbiased review. Make sure you ask them questions related to the ease of use, aesthetic appeal and other factors that are important for your website to be effective. Make a note of important points and try to make changes wherever possible.

There are various testing tools that will come in handy when you want to test your site. One such tool is ‘Google Optimizer’. This is a free software that will enable you to test every aspect of your site such as images, buttons, texts etc.  Google Optimizer is also known as a multivariate testing tool.

Another important tool is the ‘Five Second Test’. While the website is free, you will need to register in order to make the most of it.

The Usertesting tool is a highly valuable tool for those who want a detailed testing method. It offers different voice and on-screen recordings of individuals making their way through your site. Usabilla is a tool that can be used to test your website in every stage of its development.

While website usability testing might seem like a tedious and time consuming process it is in fact a highly crucial step for your site. As your brand progresses and customer bases rises it is important to keep developing your site to meet the growing demand. With a website that has higher usability you can ensure that your customers continue to engage with your site.

Optimizing a website effectively can often become a daunting task and leave website owners confused. The best thing to do is to take inspiration from several websites that have optimized successfully and have gained popularity. Follow some simple search engine optimization tips to help your website stand a better chance at gaining popularity in the search engines.

Great ways to display content about current events is by creating a category page and ask external sites to link directly to that. Since this page will have the most relevant and up-to-date articles, it will help you get high page rank instead of diluting links by creating individual articles.

While seeking backlinks it is important to ensure that you do not ignore your readers.  It is these readers who will adopt and share your content, thereby driving traffic to it. Hence concentrate on building a good rapport with your audience and provide incentives to them for continuing to view your content. If you have websites that you can trade content with, you will dramatically increase your backlinks. This is also a great way to generate fresh content on your site.

In Google SEO, your chances of having a popular website are really high if you have more backlinks. This would ensure better visibility for your site on search engines. When you put up an article just ensure that you add a link that goes back to your business site.

You can put up your blog posts on various directories which will greatly help generate links. Don’t forget the most important element of any content: Keywords! These words need to be used creatively within your content and should avoid looking like spam.

There are various optimization tips that will help you enhance your website and its content. All you need to do is find the tools that are most relevant to your site and use them wisely.

The most popular website in the world, Facebook, just turned 8! That’s 8 years of connecting the world and bringing people on a common platform. The website currently has about 845 million users all over the world and the numbers continue to rise daily. Started in February 2004, the website is expected to reach a user base of 1 billion in 2012. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populated in the world!

What started off in a Harvard Dorm room as a website to connect university students, soon expanded to other colleges and later for users all over the globe. Before the website went public it was known as “thefacebook” and later came to be called “Facebook”. Not only has Facebook brought Mark Zuckerberg into the lime light into the list of young billionaires, it has provided brands with a highly profitable marketing platform.  Marketing via social media has grown into a large industry and has helped brands connect directly with their audience; something that was extremely difficult before websites like Facebook came into the picture. There are several landmark moments in the history of the website that have changed the way we use the site. Did you know? The Facebook ‘Like’ feature was added in 2009, 5 years after the launch of the site. This feature is of great value to any brand marketing campaign and has contributed greatly towards the use of Facebook for marketing purposes. While the website has seen many changes over the years, the most dramatic one took place in September 2011: The Facebook Timeline. With the launch of this feature user’s profiles were converted into a chronological collection of activity.

On 1^st February 2012, Facebook filed for IPO with a valuation of $100 billion. This cash infusion in the company is expected to result into further innovation and exceptional growth of an already popular website.

Twitter will allow its users to set their current location and then determine which content needs to be blocked. Users and social media agencies made their displeasure known by threatening to deactivate their accounts. Censorship for an open platform like Twitter greatly curbs people’s ability to express their viewpoint.

However, it looks like this development was prompted by Twitter’s interest in entering China; a country that was yet too stringent for Twitter’s “open platform” structure. The site had been blocked in China since 2009 and will now stand a better chance in the country if it will be able to block all tweets that will be considered sensitive in China. Region specific blocking which was earlier implemented by YouTube and Hulu for its video content is now being adopted by Twitter for its 140-character Tweets.

What is left to be seen is whether Twitter will be able to maintain its brand image even after moving away from its core value of “free expression”.  The only consolation here is that Twitter is not attempting to delete the Tweet or the user entirely. As long as the Tweet exists on the website’s servers, users in some parts of the world will still be able to view it. The future of the internet remains a mystery. Will we need to watch our backs before we put up content or will we continue to enjoy the freedom to express ourselves?