Emphasis On Cross Platform Compatibility

While Facebook provides support for native mobile app developments, its emphasis is on cross-platform compatibility. This offers mobile users convenient, seamless connection with their friends across platforms and devices, as well as the ability to immediately access third-party apps whenever they see a notification, or a story, or other activity in their News Feed or Ticker.

For developers, cross-platform compatibility provides the most effective way to distribute their apps across the vast Facebook mobile network. It is not only the number of Facebook mobile users that is appealing, but also that the apps are socially shared between users who are in their target market.

Frictionless Sharing & Location Tagging for Mobile Users

The ability to seamlessly share and get instant updates is further enhanced through “frictionless sharing” which allows Facebook mobile users to update their online activity, without the need to click on a “like” or “share” button. Users simply give the app permission – one time – to share information. Updates are then automatically posted on their profile and friends are immediately notified.

Facebook recently rolled-out APIs that allow users to tag locations and friends on updates, photos, or links from third-party apps, and is currently testing RingMark, a mobile payment service, that enables users to charge web app transactions to their monthly wireless bill. These features provide an enriched user experience and make it more attractive for developers to write apps for the Facebook mobile platform.

This social mobile trend shows no signs of slowing down. Industry analysts expect mobile Internet usage to surpass desktop usage as soon as 2014, propelled by the apps that users love. Facebook sends 60 million mobile users to third-party apps and games every month, for a total of 320 million visits. Those 60 million users represent only 14 percent of Facebook’s current total mobile audience, offering an enticing glimpse into the future growth opportunities the social mobile market offers.

Social media is changing the way that content connections are calculated, adding a human touch to the computer-generated methods that have ruled search results for the past two decades. Search engine rankings for the most part are still based on mathematical indexes of the number of hyperlinks between pages, frequency of keywords within content, and other quantifiable metrics, to measure relevance and usefulness. Social index rankings are based on user interaction, and Google and the other search engines are adjusting their algorithms to include content shared across social networks.

The social index will not completely replace the traditional mathematical index, and the extent to which it will gain in importance remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that social influence adds to your authority, extends your reach, and helps improve your organic search engine rankings. Which means that social media marketing is absolutely essential for your business.

Social Media Marketing Strategies

Develop a strategy that harnesses the power of your customers’ social interaction, as they share their experiences about your brand across their networks.

Integrate your social media marketing initiatives into your overall SEO strategy. Social interaction with your articles, blog postings, and other webpage contents via mentions, re-tweets, shares, likes, and links, extends your reach to users beyond the social networks.

Enhance your social influence by developing a reputation for expertise in your field and offering fresh, original content that helps people find the information they need. This also builds trust, as your audience continues to recognize your content as being high quality and useful, which will expand your following and increase your social shares.

Building Relationships with Customers

The ability to choose which friends, colleagues and social influencers to follow enables people to develop more direct, personalized connections through their social networks. Social media presents businesses with the very unique opportunity to build relationships with their customers rather than sell to them, by delivering a personalized experience according to the individual interests and preferences they’ve shared on their social networks.

Social media enables users to define their own context, which drives engagement and interaction across their networks. These candid conversations offer valuable insights into how people are talking about your brand, and are an excellent source for identifying strong keywords and popular trends. Use this information to create relevant, influential content that is optimized to improve your search engine rankings and extend your influence across the social networks.

No longer held captive to our computers, we are entering a great new era of mobile search. Led by consumers who find the convenience of accessing the Internet from their smartphone or tablet rather than the desktop irresistible, this shift in behavior shows no signs of slowing down. As this trend continues to grow in popularity, businesses are beginning to increase their mobile marketing initiatives.

Your Customers Are On Mobile Devices

Businesses need to reach their customers where they are, and where they are is on their mobile device.

Successful mobile web development must address both marketing and technical issues.  A mobile SEO strategy is vital. Context changes with location, and mobile users search differently than they do when they are sitting at their desks. Keywords and content must be developed that help mobile users find answers to questions in real-world situations. A mobile SEO strategy with a focus on identifying keywords associated with the location of the device will improve your search visibility.

Your mobile website should always include the core information a user needs to find, including hours of operation, contact information, a map and directions, and a click-to-call number for the nearest location. Businesses can also take advantage of additional mobile marketing opportunities such as offering discount coupons or a mobile message special, to drive traffic to the closest location, or allow users to download a QR code to extend engagement and interaction.

Create A Better Mobile Experience

Mobile sites must be designed for the user experience. Mobile access means a small screen display. When you have a smaller screen, you must prioritize content and limit the features and functions to those that matter most to the mobile user. The goal is to present mobile-friendly content to the widest possible audience, viewable on both smartphones and tablets.

Mobile users are often in a hurry, so downloads must be fast and fluid, navigation must be simple, and screen orientation must be able to change according to user needs. Touchscreens and keyboards on mobile devices are also small, so it is important to make it easy for the user to go directly to the information they are looking for, through minimal input. Some key features include keeping your URL as short as possible, offering a list of options from which to select rather than requiring data entry, and when necessary, limiting  user input to essential fields.

Google continually works to refine its search engine algorithm, which consists of more than 200 “signals” or ranking factors, with the goal of delivering interesting, relevant results, and continually improving the user experience. As the web continues to expand, Google’s search engine algorithm continues to evolve and grow in complexity, calculating not only the weighted importance of each of the ranking factors, but their connection to, and impact on, each other as well.

Keeping Pace With Google

SEO is constantly changing to try to keep pace with Google. Companies carefully assess their search engine rankings after each update is rolled out, to determine if their strategies have been affected, and what modifications, if any, need to be made. Google’s latest search algorithm update was introduced on February 26, 2012, and is the 13th in the Panda series, which was launched in February of 2011. Effective SEO techniques are designed to achieve high ranking, but Google hates to be manipulated, and in order to maintain system integrity, removed a long-standing link evaluation method in the most recent update.

Emphasis On Personalized Search Results

Google ranking factors for 2012 include improved freshness and responsiveness to web changes, more accurate official page detection, and most important, an emphasis on context and location, which delivers increasingly personalized search results. Google can now better determine when queries and documents are local to users, based on their city.

The emphasis on personalization also encompasses social buzz and sharing, across all content forms – text, audio, images, and video. This emerging “social search” element is expected to gain in importance in the ranking factors, and so it is vital that social metrics are part of your SEO strategy. Make sure your website includes social sharing buttons, so that it is easy for visitors to distribute your content across their social networks.

Great Content Still Rules

Social search does not eliminate the need for a solid, traditional SEO program. Fresh, quality content that drives traffic, increases repeat visits, generates comments and shares, and builds links, is still king.  It is extremely important to regularly update your website with interesting, dynamic content that keeps the search crawlers coming back, and visitors returning.

Google search is shifting from matching content and query to building a specific context for each user, based on history, social sharing, and location. To achieve a high Google search rank, it is essential that your website content and SEO strategies embrace the personalization of results.

Must Have Original Content

Your website content should be search-engine friendly and user-focused, and must be original, not copied from another website. As search engines crawl your website and find freshly-generated content, it shows the site is regularly updated. Original content and the amount of change that takes place on your website are crucial for achieving a high ranking. Keywords are still important, but write for the search-engine user, with an emphasis on quality, not quantity, when creating website content.

Always Changing Search Algorithms

Search engines are dynamic, because the algorithms used to determine rankings are frequently updated. Algorithm adjustments can slightly alter, or have a major impact on search results. As social media continues to gain in popularity, the search engine algorithms are being calibrated to more closely gauge the user experience and measure human reaction to website content. Engaged and motivated users want to share useful information, through link building, social networks, and making comments, all of which are considered “likeability signals” by the search engines. Distribution through social media can also go viral, enhancing your brand, increasing traffic, adding back links to your website, and improving your ranking.

Better Rankings With Blogs

Fresh content that delivers value is the decisive factor in the success of a website, and blogs are the ideal delivery vehicle. Blogs can help rankings and establish authority, and also offer a powerful platform for engaging visitors, generating interaction, and creating networks through social media channels. Effective blog writing provides commentary on trending topics and insight into current industry issues, which positions your company as a thought leader and builds credibility.

The ultimate value of fresh and original content is that it is a key factor in achieving strong SEO results, through the right combination of user interaction, keywords and relevant back links.

Clickbrand is full service internet marketing agency providing search engine optimization, pay-per-click, and social media campaigns tailored to the individual needs of each business. Contact Clickbrand today for a FREE quote tailored to fit your social media marketing needs.

Why Facebook?

Using social media as an internet marketing strategy is an effective way to increase “word-of mouth,” or friend to friend recommendation, of a brand while also building valuable links to the brand’s website.

Currently, Facebook leads social media sites with over 800 million users. About 75% of Facebook users “like” brands on Facebook, and 30% of Facebook users use it as a platform to share reviews and news of the companies. People are more likely to buy a product or recommend it to a friend after becoming a Facebook fan of the brand.

Facebook has recently made changes that could help small businesses to gain customers and leads through social media interaction on Facebook. Changes applied in September to the Newsfeed have positively impacted the visibility of posts and shared material. The latest newsfeed is a hybrid combining “Top News” with “Recent Stories”.

Implications of Newsfeed Changes

This hybrid Newsfeed has changed the way the users interact with posts. In the month since these updates were made, impressions per posts have gone down, while amount of “likes” and comments have increased. This is because the newsfeed prioritizes pages that are most interacted with; posts that are the most engaging with the most “likes” and comments have gone to the top of the list while less engaging content goes to bottom. Posts are also spending less time on the newsfeed. The more engaging a post, the more people will see it. However, most people will see a post only once in their newsfeed. This means that status updates, even the most engaging and shareable, are spending less time on an individual newsfeed.

Pointers to Increase Visibility

In light of the changes with the Facebook newsfeed, there are two strategies you can use to increase interactions of users with your brand.

First, create engaging and shareable content to promote friend recommendations and word-of-mouth advertising. One way to achieve this is by giving incentives for interactions. Examples of this is creating contests or discounts for “likes” of a product or brand. This has been shown to increase repeated engagements from individual users and increase “fans” of a page.

Second, to compensate for the decrease in total visibility of posts, increase the amount and frequency of posts. This includes increased responses and interaction with users posting on your page.

Finally, reap the rewards of your efforts. Remember, Facebook’s achievement of over 800 million active users really speaks volumes about how people are using the internet and the vital role social media sites are playing. Social media marketing presents a golden opportunity to grow brand recognition and loyalty in a way never before possible. Take advantage of this opportunity!

Most analysts agree that 2010 was the year that social media finally became a force in the business world. Now in 2011, it is fast becoming the “must do” on the list of marketing strategies in order for a company to avoid getting left behind in the online world. And, when you consider that most people no longer use the yellow pages to find a business, getting left behind in the online world can just mean your business is left behind period.

Social Media Marketing Basics

Put in simple terms, social media marketing is the act of creating a page for your brand on social media networking sites to promote your website, services, and products. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn allow individuals to create personal or business pages to connect with friends or customers online. Through building a presence on social media sites, your business is positioned in the light of “friend” rather than just another “ad” that is quickly ignored.

Social media marketing is, above all, about the soft sell. This is extremely important to understand when building a social media campaign. Blatant advertising mixed with a constant stream of links straight back to your site can be viewed as spam in a social media environment and cause you to lose followers. Successful social media marketing is more the art of creating interest and conversation which then leads potential clients into completing a desired action.

A successful social media campaign must strike the right balance between conversation and advertising.

Create Interest & Trust In Your Brand

Reports show that people are much more likely to trust a friend’s recommendation when choosing products or services. This holds true online as well. An effective social media campaign results in followers linking back to your website and sharing your site with their “friends” through their social media accounts. The links gained through social media also provide an added bonus in how search engines value and rank your website. The links gained through social media are akin to votes in favor of your website and send a strong signal to search engines that your website is trusted.

One of the best ways to drum up sales is to get people to recommend your services or products to their their social network. Effective social media campaigns create the online version of “word-of-mouth” advertising while providing a convenient central hub to spark interest in products, services, and other topics related to your business.

Social Media & Viral Marketing

The hot words in advertising today are “gone viral.” If an advertisement or promotion has “gone viral,” it means that people are talking about it all around the web, all around the world. Social media facilitates this “viral” process because people can share links to your company’s videos, articles, pictures, or promotions with their social network. If you create something that strikes a chord in people, they will likely forward it on to their friends, who forward it on to their friends, and so on.

While the concept of social media marketing is very easy to grasp, actually launching and managing a successful social media campaign can prove to be a difficult and time consuming task. Effective social media marketing requires strategic planning, the right tools, the right voice and an understanding of the nature of the market.

Clickbrand is full service internet marketing agency providing search engine optimization, pay-per-click, and social media campaigns tailored to the individual needs of each business. Contact Clickbrand today for a FREE quote tailored to fit your social media marketing needs.

The majority of people have made one of the “big three” search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) their main portal to search for products and services on the Web. And, people who are not using one of the “big three” search engines, are still likely carrying out their searches online via another search engine.

The search engines use algorithms to determine the value of a website which determines where the site will show in search results. For this reason, any seasoned veteran of online marketing will tell you the first step in creating a successful website is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This consists of a variety of techniques applied to your website to help ensure the site is indexed by search engines and ranks well in organic search results.

SEO Technique #1: Keyword Optimization

An important SEO technique involves making sure you use “the right” keywords in your website. Keywords are defined as the terms people enter into the search box on search engines to find products or services.

The best keywords to use in content on a website are:

a) Keywords relating to products or services offered on the website.

b) Keywords that have a favorable search volume to competition ratio.

The search to competition ratio can be determined through a comprehensive keyword analysis. Once the optimal keywords have been identified, they are then implemented into URLs, meta tags, titles, content, and links throughout the website. Keep in mind that it is important to use keywords appropriately. Over-use of keywords, or “keyword stuffing”, is frowned upon and can negatively impact search rankings.

SEO Technique #2: Meta tags

Meta tags include the meta title, meta keywords, meta description, and alt tags. Meta tags need to be filled out correctly and placed in the source code for each page of your website. Search engines “read” your site differently from human beings. Properly filled out meta tags tell search engines what each page is about and provides the title and description that normally appears in the organic search results for an individual page.

If these tags are not filled out properly, you are taking a gamble that the search engines will “know” what each page is about, which search terms are most relevant, and will provide a good description of your site’s page in the organic search results. Leaving these tags blank often means fewer pages are properly indexed with poor descriptions showing in search results.

SEO Technique #3: Quality Links

Search engine optimization is, in some ways, a popularity contest. Search engines place a fair amount of weight on high quality links back to your website. High quality links are links coming from trusted sites as determined by search engines. It is important to implement a good link building strategy for your website as these links are similar to votes for your site to the search engines. The more votes your site has from other trusted sites, the more trusted your site will be. This affects how your site ranks in search engine results.

Gain Online Success

The above three techniques are really just the basics, there are many SEO tools to help you gain an edge in your online marketing efforts. The Web is an ever-growing and ever-changing landscape. Unless you know how to get your site on the coveted first page, someone else will take that spot right out from under you. Implementing strategic SEO techniques is just one of many important steps to achieving online success.

Clickbrand is full service internet marketing agency providing search engine optimization, pay per click, and social media services tailored to the individual needs of each business. Contact Clickbrand today for a free custom quote to fit your SEO needs.

Browse through some websites currently out there and you might notice that photography dominates as the main artwork on many website designs. As a web designer, it would be great to hire a professional photographer and get exactly what is wanted and needed for a web design. In reality however, this scenario is not very likely. Fortunately, there are some great alternatives and resources to turn to.

Here is a quick summary of the different factors that influence what, where, and how to choose photography for a web design project.

One of the first things to think about is accessibility. Can a photoshoot be arranged or will the art be found through stock images or provided by the client? With non-local clients, it is much more difficult to arrange photo shoots. Scheduling and time constraints also weigh heavily on the decision of dealing with photographers or not.

For those reasons, the majority of projects will use stock photography and art. It is easily and readily available to anyone. There are tons of photography resources online – iStockphoto, Veer, and Corbis, just to name a few. You perform a search and once you find something you like, the photo could be yours with a click of a download.

As the saying goes, “You get what you paid for!” The budget limitation of a project can greatly influence where and what type of photography you can use.

Custom photography and working with professional photographers can be quite expensive. There are photography fees, equipment fees… etc. that factors into a custom photoshoot. Since this is most likely the most expensive method, it is often a huge limitation to go through this route as a resource for images and art.

While stock images rate high in accessibility, the allotted budget of a project can narrow down the choices greatly. Take the resources I’ve mentioned above for example. Between Veer and iStockphoto, Veer would be a great resource to look into if the client has a bigger budget, as images typically price around the hundreds range. iStockphoto on the other hand, is a popular resource for projects with a tighter budget. Images can start as low as $1, and typically stays within the $1-$20 range.

Another route to mention is client provided imagery. This happens most often with redesign projects and the client already has photos from a previous design or photo shoot. Clients prefer this as it saves them from spending extra budget on photo art. This could work in your favor, as it also saves you the time and effort from searching for new images and allows more time for design, but could also work against you, because of the limited flexibility in getting the images to fit with the rest of the design.

When thinking about “photo quality,” the first to come to mind would be: pixilation, graininess, sharp vs. blurry… etc. In this case though, photo quality is all about the aesthetic quality that a person would perceive when they see the photo. A high-quality photo will feel unique and has a certain emotion or personality attached to it. A low-quality photo is the opposite; it is generic, cheesy and can come off forced. The quality of photos can vary greatly between one resource to the next. As most would agree, images found on Veer have a much nicer quality, while iStockphoto may appear as more “stock” or generic.

Custom/Professional Photographers: Low accessibility, high budget, high quality, high flexibility for creativity.

Stock Images (High-Quality): High accessibility, med-high budget, high quality, flexibility for creativity varies.

Stock Images (Low-Quality): High accessibility, low budget, low-med quality, flexibility for creativity varies.

Regardless of where the photos come from, it is most important to think about how you will integrate the images with the rest of the designs. Whether it is thinking about a simple crop and place or doing some heavy photoshop work to piece together something really creative, it is up to you as a designer to transform the photography and turn it into art.

Most web designers start out creating a photoshop document with the size intended to fit universally with all screen dimensions. However, print designers, literally design on a whole other scale. Photoshop is a program that shares compatibility useful for both the Web and Print documents. The two are unique forms of design that cross paths every now and then, but definitely have their distinguished members of the family.  Below I am going to illustrate the main attributes of both and point out their differences.

Audience

The experience of your audience becomes important when creating a project for both Web and Print design. In print design, the attention of your audience is important, such as getting the audience to sit on a page of a magazine long enough to get the main concept and message across. The main limitation of this particular area is quantity. It is expensive to put an Ad in a magazine, therefore your company only has the budget for a one page ad. In this ad, you have to design it using textures, shapes and imagery to sell your product and/or services.

In web design, you really have no limitations as far as quantity. Your website can consist of as much interactivity and links as you would like (within reason). Your main challenge is to get the user to stay on your website. What keeps them interested? What drives them away? For example, as far as a standard sky scraper ad on a website page, you have the ability to have that ad link to another site and so on and so forth.

Layout

The experience of your audience becomes important when creating a project for both Web and Print design. In Print Design, the attention of your audience is important, such as getting the audience to sit on a page of a magazine long enough to get the main concept and message across. The main limitation of this particular area is quantity. It is expensive to put an Ad in a magazine, therefore your company only has the budget for a one page ad. In this ad, you have to design it using textures, shapes and imagery to sell your product and/or services.

As far as layout in Web Design, you are working in pixels instead of inches. More than likely, your design is multiple pages, designing a website for instance. In this circumstance, you need to keep consistency throughout. Another challenge in web design, is to design your site to look the best on all monitors and monitor resolutions. This is where color partakes in the difference between print and web.

Color

It’s important to know the difference between colors in Web and Print design. You are viewing colors either on paper or on a monitor. You have a choice between RGB (Red Green Blue) and CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). In Print Design, You need to use CMYK for print design in order for the colors to match better with your chosen printer. These are colors you choose from a palette and identify with a code that you provide to your printer.

In Web Design, you need to use RGB, which gives you the colors that will show up best on a monitor. Consider the difference from monitor to monitor (brightness vs. contrast). Colors are represented by “hexadecimal values”, which are in a 6-digit format. Followed by Color, you get quality, and that is what I’m going to hit on next.

Quality

There is a difference between printer quality and web quality. For instance, with Print Design, you want the best given quality for print. Pixels are highly important in this case. For a high quality print, you are going to want to set your image at 300 dpi (digital pixels per inch). This will make your illustration, photograph and/or graphic look at it’s tip top best.

For Web Design, putting documents at 300 dpi is completely unnecessary. If you begin to design a website in such a large formatted document, you better have the patience for it to load on the web! No websites are designed (or should be designed) in 300 dpi. In fact, the resolution used to design anything for the web is 72dpi, whether it be as little as a tiny button, to as big as a half page web ad. There you have it–some insight on the difference between web and print.

Now, here is a fun video I found in vimeo — pretty sweet!

Digital Art Triptych: Web Design from Tyler Joynt on Vimeo.