Google Chrome officially announced the browser is saying goodbye forever to Flash Players in December of 2020. What does this mean to you? If your website is still using Flash to play videos, animation and Flash supported functions  at first Google will “ask” viewers permission to run Flash (which will confuse them), and eventually disabling Flash by default. Google stated, “We will remove Flash completely from Chrome toward the end of 2020. Three years ago, 80 percent of desktop Chrome users visited a site with Flash each day. Today usage is only 17 percent and continues to decline.” That is a staggering large number of Flash supported functions considering Dec is only 10 months away. So website owners, you’ve been officially warned, update your Flash to Open Web technology… December 2020 is coming quick.

To read the full article on Google click here… https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye-flash-chrome/

Facebook  offers many audience types based on your objective. Audience types vary based on how you want to convert your leads into sales.

A cold audience is people who have never heard of your brand before.

As you take good care of them and nurture them with high-quality content and other perks, their ice-cold hearts start to gradually melt down…

Ok, let’s not get too dramatic here.

But you get the idea: the more you nurture a cold audience and familiarize them with your brand, the warmer they’ll get.

And that’s when the right advertising channels and ad messages come to play.

You need to match the conversion intent and advertising channels to target potential customers at the right moment.

ppc 600x338

There’s a right time for each advertising channel.

As you can see, social media advertising’s somewhere in between the two extremes: people indifferent of your product vs. diehard fans.

Your Facebook ad messages need to match the temperature of the audience.

If you’re asking a cold lead to buy your product… Why would they do that? (Unless you offer an irresistible discount, which will sooner or later bankrupt you.)

ppc expert 600x338

Not all your offers are ???

In the Facebook advertising land, ice cubes are usually the people you’re targeting with a Saved Audience (the one composed of interests, demographics, etc) – they’re likely to never have heard of you  before.

By using Facebook Custom Audiences, you’ll be able to reach the audience on the warmer side of the scale.

These people have visited your website or engaged with your branded content, and have a high potential to sign up for an offer or buy your product.

Which makes them a lot more likely to click on your ad and complete the conversion on the landing page.

The reason we saw a huge increase in our ad campaigns’ conversion rate was that we started targeting warm audiences instead of cold ones.

We had previously relied on Facebook Saved Audiences to deliver our ads to potential buyers. But switching to smaller, yet super targeted Custom Audiences, made all the difference.

There are multiple types of Facebook Custom Audiences, and it’s up to you to find the most suitable ones for reaching your goals.

Here are all the types of Custom Audiences that you can select based on your advertising goals.

Types of Facebook Custom Audiences

There are four different options to create a Custom Audience:

  1. Customer file
  2. Website traffic (specific website visitors, converters, non-converters)
  3. App activity
  4. Engagement on Facebook

There are 15 different identifiers to choose from, the most frequently used ones being:

  1. Email
  2. Phone number
  3. Mobile advertiser ID
Create custom audience from customer file

Creating Facebook Custom Audiences from past website traffic

Want to target people who have previously visited your website? If so, this Custom Audience is the one to use.

To create audiences based on your website traffic, you first need to install Facebook Pixel. You also need the Pixel for tracking conversions, so there’s a good chance you’ve got it set up already.

The average CTR of retargeting ads is 10x higher than that of regular display ads.

If you want to increase your Social Media ROI and have a custom audience created for you,

please call Social Butterfly Marketing today 239-290-8681

Instagram recently launched “Instagram Business Profiles”, previously there was no separation between business and personal profiles.

Pros:
1. Analytics
Converting your Instagram account to a “Business Profile” will allow you to have access to analytics on your Instagram account. Analytics will show you
Impressions: Total number of times your post was seen
Reach: Number of unique accounts who saw your post
Website Clicks: Number of accounts that have tapped the website link on your Business Profile.
Follower Activity: Average times your followers are on Instagram on a typical day

2. Additional Contact Info
Business Profiles will have the option to add a phone number, an email address and your business’s physical address. When you add contact information, a Contact button will appear near the top of your profile. When people click that button, they’ll see options like Get Directions, Call and Email, depending on the contact information you provided.

Cons: The only downfall is I know they will start limiting businesses ability to get organic views and they’ll force all clicks and views to be paid. That’s exactly what happened over time with Facebook Business Profiles. So for now until they start enforcing that all business have to use the business profile I recommend staying with the regular profile.

Can I try it and switch back? For now it looks like they will let you switch back to a personal Instagram Account if you try it out and change your mind.

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1717693135113805

There are four categories for the amount of text allowed on a Facebook ad. Your image text can be considered “OK”, “Low”, “Medium”, or “High.” The amount of text on your ad will determine the reach that it could potentially have. For example, an image that has the following text would be considered “Medium,” which may cause your ad to reach fewer people.

Facebook Text Ad Images Guide

As you can see in the image above, Facebook is recommending that you “try” to use as little text in your ad images as possible. They recommend focusing your text in copy rather than in the image. And they even suggest limiting font size.

Here’s an important tidbit:

Facebook ads that contain images with little to no text tend to cost less and have better delivery than ads with image text.

From the start, Facebook is telling you that you can use text, but as you increase the amount of text that you use you can expect the reach to drop and costs to increase.

To provide further context, Facebook breaks down text density into four categories:

  • OK
  • Low
  • Medium
  • High

Facebook also provides examples of each and what to expect regarding distribution.

Image Text: OK

Facebook prefers little or no text in an image…

Facebook Text Images Guide OK

And here are three examples…

Facebook Text Ad Images Guide Preferred

Facebook wants us to keep copy within the text box and off of ad images.

Image Text: LOW

But you may want to include some text. Here’s an example with a “low” amount of text in it, similar to what we may see in current ads…

Facebook Text Images Guide Low

Of course, if you also include the logo (which Facebook says they include), that would be more than 20%.

Here are three more examples of “low” text…

Facebook Text Ad Images Guide Low

In each case, Facebook says you can expect reach of your ads to be at least slightly limited.

Image Text: MEDIUM

Add even more text (in this case, some next to the logo), and it will be classified as “medium.”

Facebook Text Images Guide Medium

Here are some examples…

Facebook Text Ad Images Guide Medium

While Facebook labels it as “medium,” the examples they give have “heavy” text and they say that reach will be “severely limited.”

Image Text: HIGH

Then there’s a matter of really pushing the limits and using “too much” text…

Facebook Text Images Guide High

Even in this case, Facebook won’t reject your ad. You just may not get it shown.

Here are some examples…

Facebook Text Ad Images Guide High

Yeah, so don’t do this. You’ll get it approved, but it won’t reach anyone.

Some Exceptions

Facebook also notes that these guidelines don’t apply to the following:

  • Movie posters
  • Book covers
  • Album covers
  • Product images: Where an entire product can be seen, and not just a zoomed in image of the product
  • Posters for concerts/music festivals, comedy shows or sporting events
  • Text-based businesses: Calligraphy, cartoon/comic strips, etc.
  • App and game screenshots
  • Legal text
  • Infographics

Most of this isn’t new. For the rest of us, there has always been a product exception.

However, I find a couple of these particularly interesting. The infographic exception, in particular. I’ve wanted to promote infographics in the past, but didn’t due to the rule.

Legal text and text-based businesses also get the exception, which I believe is new.

What This Really Means: Not Much

I’ve seen way too much excitement over this change — or test, depending on how you look at it. While the 20% text rule may be going away for some — and potentially for all if it moves beyond a test — it impacts our approach to text very little.

As Facebook said, users don’t react well to ads with a high text concentration in images. And while they won’t be rejected, your distribution will suffer and the costs could be high.

Is it really worth it?

You’ll need to determine if lower reach and higher costs are worth the additional text. For me, I plan to approach text in the way I always have — less is better. Be a minimalist.

Even if there is no “rule,” act as if there is one.

The cutthroat inbox of your standard consumer roils with marketing messages, competitive subject lines, and scores of attention-seeking emails. With over 144 billion emails sent each and every day, email marketing remains one of the elite channels for business communication. So how does the signal separate itself from the noise?

To be sure, finding the key to a stand-out message is critical to your bottom line—whether that bottom line is cold, hard cash or community engagement or anything in between. What follows are eight inbox-tested email marketing strategies that successful senders have used to get their emails clicked.

1. Personalize your email without using the recipient’s name

No more “Dear [INSERT NAME HERE]”.

The practice of personalized email greetings is not nearly as effective as it may seem. In fact, research by Temple’s Fox School of Business suggests that this particular kind of personalization could be harmful.

Given the high level of cyber security concerns about phishing, identity theft, and credit card fraud, many consumers would be wary of emails, particularly those with personal greetings.

A significant element of email marketing is relationship. Does a recipient trust you? Does a recipient even know who you are? When an email jumps the gun by forcing familiarity too soon, the personalization comes across as skeevy. Intimacy is earned in real life, and it would appear to be the same way with email. Take this example from my inbox; no one has called me lowercase kevan l lee in years.

Amazon personalization, email strategies

 

Faking familiarity with the subscriber turns many wary email readers off. But this isn’t to say that all forms of personalization are off-limits. In fact, a particular brand of personalization can pay off big time: Sending email that acknowledges a subscriber’s individuality (e.g., purchase history or demographic).

(The study) also found that product personalization, in which customers are directed to products that their past purchasing patterns suggest they will like, triggered positive responses in 98 percent of customers.

The takeaway here is that if you are to use personalization as an email strategy, do so in a meaningful way. It takes little knowledge or relationship to place someone’s name in your greeting. It shows far greater care to send personalized email that is specific to a recipient’s needs and history. Again, an example from my inbox, this email from Rdio dispenses with the formalities and simply provides an update on music I actually listen to.

email strategies, Rdio personalization

2. The long and short of subject lines

When it comes to deciding how to craft that perfect subject line, there appears to be really only one area to avoid: the subject line of 60 to 70 characters. Marketers refer to this as the “dead zone” of subject length. According to research by Adestra, which tracked over 900 million emails for its report, there is no increase in either open rate or clickthroughs at this 60-to-70 character length of subject line.

Conversely, subject lines 70 characters and up tested to be most beneficial to engage readers in clicking through to the content, and subject lines 49 characters and below tested well with open rate.

In fact, Adestra found that subject lines fewer than 10 characters long had an open rate of 58%.

Short subjects came in vogue with the success of President Barack Obama’s email fundraising. He saw incredible engagement with subjects like “Hey” and “Wow.”

email strategies, Obama Hey email

So the question becomes: Do you want to boost clicks (response) or opens (awareness)? Go long for clickthroughs; keep it short for opens.

Either way, a helpful email strategy is to squeeze out more words or cut back just a bit to avoid that 60 to 70 character dead zone.

3. 8:00 p.m. to midnight is the prime time to send your email

While many a quality email may be built during business hours, the ones with the best open rates aren’t being sent from 9 to 5. The top email strategy is to send at night.

In their quarterly email report for 2012’s fourth quarter, Experian Marketing Services found that the time of day that received the best open rate was 8:00 p.m. to midnight. This block not only performed better for open rate (a respectable 22 percent) but also for clickthrough and sales.

email strategies, Time of Day email study

The chart above shows that the 8:00 to midnight window is also the least used—a key factor in helping those late night emails outperform the rest. From Experian:

Optimal mailing time often depends upon your customers’ behaviors, inbox crowding, and the deployment times of other marketers.

Inbox crowding and the deployment times of other marketers go hand-in-hand; if your email goes out when few others do, it stands a greater chance of getting noticed (so quick, start sending between 8:00 and midnight before everyone else catches on).

Optimal mailing for your customers’ needs will be up to you. Test, test, and test some more to find out how your customer ticks and when he/she opens email.

4. The best content is free content: Give something away

Consumers love a free lunch—or a free template.

In a study on their email list of 6,300 subscribers, Bluewire Media tested various types of content to see what led to the highest rates for opens and clicks. The winner was templates and tools, just the kind of freebies that email readers want.

Here is a freebie example from Help Scout:

email strategies, Help Scout free ebook offer
Many a consumer will ask, “What’s in it for me?” When it comes to resources, Bluewire Media’s test results say that templates and tools outweigh ebooks, expert interviews, brain teasers, and even photo albums. You will want to test with your own list, but certainly use Bluewire’s research as a head start.

5. Mobile opens accounts for 47 percent of all email opens

Mobile opens accounted for 47 percent of all email opens in June, according to numbers provided by email marketing firm Litmus. If your email list accounts for $100,000 in sales each month, could you afford to wave bye-bye to $44,000 just because your email looks funky on a mobile phone?

Design responsively to ensure that your email looks great no matter where it’s read. Here are some quick mobile design tips:

  • Convert your email to a one column template for an easy mobile fix.
  • Bump up the font size for improved readability on smart phones.
  • Follow the iOS guideline of buttons at least 44 pixels wide by 44 pixels tall.
  • Make the call-to-action obvious and easy to tap. Above the fold is preferable.
  • Consider ergonomics. Many users tap and scroll with their thumb, so keep important tappable elements in the middle of the screen.

emaili strategies, mobile email

 

6. Email still reigns over Facebook and Twitter

Social media may be the young whippersnapper nipping at email’s heels, but the content king of the inbox still holds sway in social influence, according to a study by SocialTwist. Over an 18-month period, SocialTwist monitored 119 referral campaigns from leading brands and companies. The results showed a significant advantage to email’s ability to convert new customers compared to Facebook and Twitter.

Of the 300,000 referrals who became new customers, 50.8 percent were reached by email, compared to 26.8 percent for Twitter and 22 percent for Facebook.

Email ruled supreme, by almost double.

 

7. Send email on the weekends

While not as overwhelming a winner as the 8:00 p.m. to midnight time of day, Saturday and Sunday did outperform their weekday counterparts in Experian’s study of day-of-week performance.

email strategies, Day of Week email study

Again, the volume of email sent on the weekends is low, just like the volume for evening emails, which could help those messages stand out more. The margins for clickthrough, open, and sales rates were not substantial, but in email marketing, every little bit counts.

 

8. Re-engage an inactive group of subscribers

Your list is huge. Great! The only problem is that two-thirds of it may be inactive.

Research has found that the average inactivity for a list is 63 percent, meaning that once someone joins they are less likely to ever follow-up with your follow-up emails. Email marketing firm Listrak goes so far as to identify the first 90 days as the window for turning a sign-up into a devotee (and they lay out a plan for doing so).

What’s to become of that inactive 63 percent? Re-engagement campaigns are an excellent place to start.

Recently, a re-engagement campaign from Digg wound up in my inbox. The subject was catchy (“This Is Not An Email From 2006″), and the content helpfully explained what the email was all about.

email strategies, Digg email

As with everything that we call science, it’s all about doing experiments. Very likely, if you are doing your own experiments, you might actually have found different results. What are your best email strategies and email marketing tips? Tell us in the comments below!

 

New Options for Real Estate IDX Solutions– iHomefinder
iHomefinder is an IDX company based out of California that provides IDX coverage across the United States. For months we researched IDX options (IDX Broker,  Diverse Solutions etc) and decided without a doubt iHomefinder was the best new technology available. iHomefinder is providing a seamless integration with WordPress and has the best searchable map available and the property listing pages are awesome!
It’s easy to implement, manage and the end result is fabulous!

Check out this example of a Map Search.

Check out this property listing page.

Your current and potential clients will love searching for real estate on your website and they’ll never turn to Trulia, Realtor.com or Zillow again.

For More Information about iHomefinder check out their website…
www.ihomefinder.com

Every small business should have a basic knowledge of search engine optimization. In fact, you should almost be exhausted by the term “SEO” at this point, as you’ve been undoubtedly told time and time again just how important it is. But unlike many trending industry buzzwords, SEO is here to stay. Why? In our web-facing world, the (already) dominant search engines are becoming the cornerstone of the internet. Standard procedure for individuals looking for information is to search first.

Understanding the basic tenets of SEO will keep your business relevant and searchable, which will amount to added business and web traffic. There will be hoards of digital marketers that will tell you your organization needs a professional (and oftentimes expensive) SEO strategy, but understanding a few basics will keep your business in the conversation.

Here’s what you need to know:

What is SEO?

For starters, don’t be intimidated by ‘SEO’ – it sounds much more complicated than it actually is! The acronym stands for ‘search engine optimization’ and it’s the process of aligning your website to the standards and recommendations of search engines in order to get increased traffic and visibility from search engine results.

Web pages, videos, listings, etc. are shown based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. “Relevancy” is determined by search engine algorithms. The exact algorithms are not made publicly available, but in attempt to create a stronger, safer, more legitimate user experience, search engines are pretty open about what will help or hurt rankings.

What is SERP?

The lesser known but equally important term “SERP” or Search Engine Results Page describes the actual listing or ranking order that an end user is presented with after a search. This is closely connected with SEO because if you’re practicing good SEO practices, your SERP score should also be considerably strong. Small businesses should be especially focused on SERP and aim to be as high as possible on various search engine results pages.

What role do ‘keywords’ play in SEO?

While keywords remain a prominent component of SEO, their importance is waning. It used to be you could simply slap up a page and jam it with the terms users commonly search for, but search engines are growing smarter. Keywords and phrases are still important, but they must be surrounded by impactful content and placed intelligently with end usability in mind.

How does social media impact SEO?

Your business should cultivate a strong social media presence and create a profile on all channels that are appropriate for your industry. Promoting web content on Twitter, Facebook, Vine or other social media avenues will help your business rise through the search engine ranks.

What is the importance of quality content?

At this point, you should know that producing high-quality content is the essence of SEO. Create pages with end users in mind and avoid tricks intended to fool search engine algorithms (keyword jamming). Focus on creating content that is valuable and engaging, and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Search standards are ever evolving. While this can cause headaches, it’s ultimately to the benefit of us all. Continue to stay up to date with the latest search engine principles and their suggestions on how to maintain a strong organic search presence.

1. Profile

Your LinkedIn profile should be compelling and clear so that potential clients, recruits or business relationships are able to quickly recognize your area of expertise.
 
Keep in mind, LinkedIn members did nearly 4.2 billion professionally oriented searches on the platform in 2011 and are on pace to surpass 5.3 billion in 2012. Don’t get overlooked in that overwhelming number of searches because your profile wasn’t complete.

  Tips to a Perfect LinkedIn Real Estate Profile

  • Take your time when preparing your content. Just as your blog is a direct reflection on the professional nature of your business, so is your LinkedIn profile. You wouldn’t post an article to your blog without double-checking grammar, dates and spelling.  Put the same effort into your LinkedIn profile. Grammatical errors send a message you don’t want associated with your professional reputation.
  • Add all relevant skills and training you’ve earned throughout your career. Remember, buyers and sellers will research online, digging for details about you and your business long before they ever connect with you offline. Make sure their question of “what’s in it for me” is easily answered.
  • Let your unique personality and abilities to shine through. While this is a professional network, you do want to inject character into your profile. This will create differentiation from the other real estate professionals in your area.
  • Update your professional headline, which acts as your short bio. It should be attention grabbing and include words that spark excitement and position you as a leader within the real estate industry. To be found when peers or potential clients search for “real estate” or “realtor” within your area, use words related to your industry, niche and area. (See below for more details on optimization)
  • Optimize your LinkedIn profile with keywords specific to your expertise and location.  For example, if you specialize in short sales in Lexington, KY, your keywords would be “Short Sale Specialist Lexington Kentucky.”  These are searchable terms that allow people to quickly find you when searching real estate professionals in your area.
  • Optimize your profile image when uploading your professional headshot. This means using your identified keyword (including your name) in the saved title of your image. Since this is a professional community, make sure your image is a high-resolution headshot that makes you easily identifiable.
  • Customize your profile URL with your name (first and last) making it easier to locate and market your profile. By default, LinkedIn ascribes an arbitrary URL when you initially set up your profile. For branding and marketing purposes, you will want to customize this link and create your unique LinkedIn destination.

2. Make Connections

After completing your profile, it is time to make connections. Start by reaching out to your friends, existing clients and professional relationships that you have already established. Use LinkedIn’s internal search to explore by name, company or keyword. Choosing “advanced search” will offer a substantial amount of options allowing you to do a deeper dive into keywords, location or industry.
linkedin-advanced-search
One very important note: Do not approach strangers as it can affect your reputation as a real estate professional. It can also get you banned from adding any additional connections if you are marked as a spammer. With that said, it is perfectly acceptable to ask your current connections for recommendations or referrals to someone they are already connected to.

  3. Get Involved

The power of LinkedIn lies in the ability to research, locate, connect and engage all in one location. It is a social network dedicated to boosting your business by working alongside your current offline marketing efforts.

As with any successful marketing endeavor, the true magic is found once you stop lurking and get involved.

  A few ways to start a conversation on LinkedIn:

  • Join groups with a relevant niche or topic. Start a topic around a niche and get a conversation going with that crowd. You can identify the topic you are interested in (e.g. real estate) and provide helpful answers to these questions. Doing so can help establish who you are and allow you to connect with people within that niche and even a particular location.
  • Like or comment on the status of your connections. If they post their latest blog article, make a comment indicating what really resonated with you. What did you like most about it and how will that impact the way you do business? We all love hearing feedback, especially from trusted business connections.
  • Follow companies through LinkedIn’s “Company Follow” where you can identify possible recruits, keep up-to-date with the company through status updates and even receive notifications when an employee makes a move.
  • Research companies (competitors) within your local market through LinkedIn’s Advanced People Search feature.  You can filter your results and save your search parameters so you don’t have to go back through the same search each time.

  4. Don’t Forget Your Links

LinkedIn gives you the ability to link out to your website, blog or any other website you choose. It is a simple set-up process and a  fantastic way to establish your brand while driving traffic to additional online properties.

Once you determine which web sites you will link to, make sure to change the standard “My Website” title that LinkedIn provides. Edit that basic information to give connections a better understanding of your services and the specific information you are offering.

  5. Add Applications

­­

LinkedIn has made some dramatic changes to the look, feel and functionality of the platform. If you are still using the old interface, LinkedIn apps are available and easy to use in an effort to share additional information with your connections. Applications such as WordPress will automatically pull in your latest blog post and eliminate the need to manually publish that post to your profile. However, once you make the switch to the new LinkedIn profile, they may no longer be supported.

The goal with any social media automation tool is to free up your time so you can spend time where it matters most: engaging and networking with other like-minded business professionals and actively marketing to past and potential clients.

  To add applications:

    1. Hover over your name and click on “Settings” to the right of the navigation toolbar.
    2. Scroll to the bottom, left hand side section and click on “Groups, Companies and Applications.”
    3. Choose “Add Applications” for a list of all available applications.

linkedin-applications
As a real estate professional, it is critical that you make LinkedIn a part of your online business building efforts. As you look to gain market share and brain cells, it’s a perfect way for savvy professionals to grow a thriving real estate business!

Let’s face it: you, like everyone else in the world of business and marketing, want your site to become more important in the eyes of the all-mighty Google. There isn’t a magic formula that reveals exactly what search engines are looking for, but in the case of Google, there are plenty of tools you can use to make your site more visible.

A great place to start is to embrace Google+. To many, Google+ seems like a less-used version of Facebook. However, individuals and businesses need to start seeing Google+ for what it really is: a way to control your identity across all of Google’s products. It’s not a social network but a social layer that is integrated across all platforms from Google Places to YouTube. If you have a Google+ profile, it is easier to share and be seen.

Once you have set up a Google+ profile, focus on these other Google products:

 

Mobile SearchMobile search

It has been projected that mobile search will surpass desktop search in the next few years, but one doesn’t need solid statistics to realize that smartphones are everywhere—and that means your company needs to adapt and prepare for your site to be viewed and searched for on a smaller screen.

First, it is important to prepare your site for mobile search, whether it is with a responsive design or by serving dynamically. If you want people to stay on your site once they find it, you have to give them a site that is easy to view and use.

While designing a mobile version of your site, consider what you want the customer to do. For example, if you want people to be able to call your company, you should add a “click to call” button. Whatever your goal is for the customer, make that action easy to perform on a smaller screen.

 

 

Google Maps

Google Maps/Google Places

Here’s a statistic for you: according to Google, 50% of mobile searches are local. People want to find companies within their area, and being on Google Maps is a great way to ensure that you have a presence within your community.

If you have a physical location, add and verify your business using Google Places. Google is in the process of rolling out a new dashboard for Google Places, which is currently available to new or newly verified profiles. Among the changes include easier, faster updates to your Google+ Local page and the ability for service area businesses (without an exact location) to claim a page.

Whether you are working from the old or new platform, you should fill out all of the available categories: contact information, category, hours, photos, etc. You want to include any data that could be helpful to your customer. Think of that data as additional keywords for you as well. If someone is searching specifically for a Chinese restaurant in the area, and you haven’t mentioned that your restaurant sells Chinese food, you won’t be the most relevant (i.e. the top) result.

 

 

Google+Google+ Business Page

Along with completing your Google+ Local listing, you will want to complete a Google+ Business page and update it with regular posts.

A main goal of Google+ is to make the Google experience more social and personal for every individual. Therefore, Google will use the data shared on Google+ to give users the information they want while searching or using other applications.

For example, there are +1 buttons on posts and pages within Google+ (and on many websites outside of Google+). If you like a company or a specific post, you can add a +1. This data will factor into your searches based on where you and others in your network have added a +1. If you are looking for a place to eat and 10 of your friends have +1’d a specific restaurant, that restaurant will likely rank higher because of the social influence.

In addition, Google+ pages may be more convenient for targeting a certain audience. You can create different circles for each type of follower, such as “Employees,” “Customers,” etc. That way, you can direct the right content to the right people.

 

 

Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics

With Google Analytics, the company provides you with a ton of data that will increase your rankings if you know how to use it. It would take an entire article (and then some) to explain all of the things you can do using these analytics, but here is the basic idea: this service will measure sales and conversions, and it will also show you how people are finding your company online and how those people are using the site.

Are you wondering whether you get more traffic organically or from referrals? Do you want to know what countries your visitors live in? What is the percentage of people who actually complete an order? Which pages do people view the most while visiting the site? These are the types of questions that these tools will answer. Google Analytics now does social reports as well to help you navigate the possibly daunting, but very important, world of social media.

 

YouTube

YouTube

Since YouTube was acquired by Google, we have been able to see more video results in the search engine. Therefore, creating an account and uploading videos might be another—and potentially more exciting—way to be visible on Google.

YouTube isn’t just for cat videos: you can find anything from the absurd (Harlem Shake, anyone?) to the genuinely informative. You could record a tutorial on something related to your field or add video from a company event. Something goofy, as long as it’s still appropriate, will humanize your business and its employees. Whatever you choose to capture, make sure to complete and be specific in your title, description, and tags. Just like anything else, those keywords will help people find your video.

And if you needed more incentive to get a Google+ account, Google recently announced that YouTube accounts and channels can be linked to a Google+ page. This will make it easier for users to share video and give people the chance to do live broadcasts using Google Hangouts.

If there is one thing to know about Google, it’s that the company and its products are always growing and changing. If you truly want your brand to be visible, keep up to date with all of Google’s developments. The more involved you are, the better chance you have of someone coming across your business.

 

Shannon Williams

Shannon Williams is a team lead for Boostability’s SEO department, specializing in guest blogging and content strategy. She graduated from BYU with a degree in English and Editing, and she’s thrilled to have found a job where she can actually use her writing skills. In her free time, Shannon works on her own novels and watches more movies and TV shows than she cares to admit.

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