Twitter Experimenting with New aspect

 Twitter is reportedly experimenting with a new feature that would show users how many people viewed their creature tweets. The view count would be shown underneath each tweet, parallel to how Facebook shows the amount of views underneath each Page post.

Advertisers have long had access to these kinds of analytics on Twitter, being able to see how many views their tweets receive while successively an advertising campaign. If this experiment is finally rolled out to all users it would mark the first time Twitter has made those statistics available to everyone.

Twitter has explained before that they work on experiments all the time. They say “it’s rare for a day to go by when we’re not releasing at least one experiment.” 

Not all of those experiments get released across the whole platform, “We also experiment with features that may never be released to everyone who uses Twitter. Those experiments are perhaps even more valuable because they help us decide what not to do.”

It’s significant for us not to get our hopes up about tweet views just yet, but it sure is worth noting they’re at least testing it. Tweet views would be an very useful way for individuals and businesses to measure the true reach of their tweets, something they’ve never been able to do without being a paying advertiser.

Even though the feature hasn’t been unconfined yet, there are mixed feelings about it already. On one hand some are saying it would help cheer others to tweet more if they can see how many people are seeing their tweets. On the other hand, some are saying it could put off people from using the service if they have hundreds of followers but only a few dozen people really see what they’re tweeting.
 

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Why It’s essential to identify Your Promoted Social Media viewers

 Often times, a company might focus on a few ads, and then distribute those across all social networks with the same messaging and graphics.  But all networks are not shaped equally.  There are things that work on Facebook that just don’t float on Linkedin. 

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer their business users the ability to promote their posts or create whole ad campaigns to promote transversely the network.  But all three networks have different demographics and ways that people digest their information.  Therefore, a silver bullet ad just won’t work across all three. Here are the differences, with advice for each.
 

Twitter
 

Keep it short, funny, and contextual.  People respond on Twitter to tweets that are attractive and evoke emotion.  I’ve seen tweets from companies that have been hilarious, touching, and anger-inducing.  However, when companies pay to have a tweet promoted, their skill to evoke emotion seems to fall to the wayside.  When a company is looking to get revelation with their organic tweets, they work hard to make the tweet engaging.  

But when the tweet is guaranteed to receive that exposure, they get lazy and just cram an ad into the tweet. Don’t succumb to this shortcut.  Regardless of whether a tweet is promoted or organic, it should engage your audience and induce some type of emotional response from your followers or target demographic.  Tweets that evoke passion or create ties to what the user is experiencing at that moment are much more likely to be shared or retweeted.

 LinkedIn
 

If you’re advertising for a B2B product, then LinkedIn is the way to go in many cases.  However, also appreciate that the people you’re targeting on Linkedin are being solicited by many dissimilar sources.  Whether it’s the salesperson, recruiter, or service provider that is trying to earn their business, Linkedin can often feel like the floor of a sales convention to some of its users.  So avoid being too promotional with your ad. 

Linkedin users digest a lot of news stories from their news feeds.  With the purchase of Pulse earlier this year, Linkedin has thrown their hat into the news sharing business.  This provides an opportunity for businesses to attract attention to their offerings by positioning the promotional material as a news story.  

Write a thought maddening story that really works to promote your offering in a natural and newsworthy way.  Then, post an update to the story and promote that update.  If the title is engaging and the story has value, you’ll find a great conversion rate with this method.

Example of a LinkedIn Pulse article that is both informative and promotional.
 

Facebook 

If you want to really take full advantage of Facebook ads, then you have to look to the newsfeed.  Facebook recently opened up the prime real estate of the newsfeed to advertisers, and the results have been remarkable.  Previously, click through rates on left sidebar ads were in the low single digit percentiles… if you were lucky.  However, with the larger images and message that is allowed in the newsfeed, CTRs of double digits are possible

Take advantage of the space that Facebook gives you.  Design a gorgeous ad and write great copy to go along with it.  What’s great about ads on Facebook is that if your targeted audience likes or shares the ad, it’s then disseminated through their network and you receive extra advertising for free.
 

Because of this, you should try to make your ads as “viral” as possible.In summary, examine the demographics of each social network and the way that their users digest information.  Then make a marketing strategy that focuses on each network individually. 

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Make Links to Your Social Profiles

Why Build Links to Social Profiles?

Most people, businesses, and brands wish for the information that appears first in search to be positive and, preferably, controlled by them. Another great explanation to build links to your social profiles – especially internal links from the social network itself – is to boost the authority of the profile or page.

There's no ultimate answer on how social networks like Facebook choose to rank pages in Graph Search, or how Twitter chooses to rank profiles in their search. But one could assume that the number of mentions a profile or page gets, particularly high authority ones, could have an impact on their rankings.

How to Build Links to Social Profiles

Now that you know a few reasons why, let's look at a few ways you can build links to your social profiles.

Website Links to Social Profiles
If you don't already, you should definitely link to your major social profiles from your website. There are tons of different ways to do it:

•    easy text links in author bios on your blog.
•    Links by small social icons in the header, footer, or sidebar of your website.
•    Official follow, like, circle, and connect badges .

Not only will these help boost your social following, they will create official links linking your main online platform to your social networks.

Also, don't forget about other opportunities to link to your social profiles, such as in author bios on sites you add to, forums that ask for your social profile usernames, local review sites that have the choice to add your social profiles, and pretty much any other chance you get to link to your social profiles.

Twitter Bio Links

While they are nofollow links, one way to create backlinks from multiple personal profiles to one main company profile is to talk about the company profile in other profile bios.
If you judge the authority of each Twitter user and number of followers they have combined, those could easily be considered some high authority backlinks to the HubSpot profile.
Want to make this work for you? Simply ask your employees who are dynamic Twitter users to include your company's @username in their profile bio!

Facebook Page Links on Profiles
 

Similar to linking a company's Twitter handle to employee's individual Twitter profiles, you can also link a company Facebook page to employee's personal Facebook profiles. Unlike Twitter profile links, these links are do follow.
 

Again, you're talking about getting a link to a company page on Facebook profiles with elevated authority and, in many cases, lots of followers.
Want to make this work for you? Simply ask your workers to add their current job information to the Work and Education section of their profile's About information. Make sure they hover over the company name to make sure it is actually linked to the Facebook page and not an empty Facebook places page .
 

 Cross-Promotion among Profiles
 

Another way to build some high authority links to your social sites is to do a slight cross promotion. Google+, for example, asks you for your profile links on the about tab for your profile or page. Take benefit of these to create dofollow links to your social profiles and pages.
Pinterest allows you to attach to Twitter and Facebook, thus adding a nofollow link to each on your Pinterest individual or business profile.
Any time one social network asks you to link to another, take benefit of it as a way to interlink them all together.
 

Link Research
 

Just like you research back links to competitor’s websites, you can research links to their social profiles as well.
The Instant Backlink Explorer from CognitiveSEO allows you simply go through a URL of a social profile and review the pertinent data about your  social profile backlinks, such as link growth:
 

An extra advantage of Building Links to Your Social Profiles
 

Do you know what the best part of these  strategies is? Each will help you boost exposure for your company, which means more followers, fans, and leads.
Even if you don't consider in the power of building links to your social profiles for rankings or other reasons, do it for the sheer boost in exposure. It's worth it.

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How Social Media Monitoring influence Reputation Management

It’s remarkable, bearing in mind that most of bloggers in which the financial company isn’t even offering a product. But this company is doing something really modern: It’s using social media  monitoring in order to decide a user’s credit scores. This could signal a huge change in the way reputation management, and social media attack, works in the future. Here’s what’s happening.

The crash of Friends 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Usually, banks rely on a few key indicators in order to calculate a person’s creditworthiness. The amount of money a person makes, the amount of money a person owes, and the person’s previous history of attending to financial obligations were the three key points banks took into thought when choosing to give or withhold money to a needy person.

A company like Lenddo, on the other hand, computes praise scores based on social media factors. The theory is that people who socialize together tend to have the same income and spending habits, so finding people who have friends who are responsible means finding people who are likely to pay back their loans on time.

In order to determine this social credit score, Lenddo asks applicants to offer information regarding their social media accounts, such as their screen names on:

•    LinkedIn

 •    Facebook

•    Twitter

•    Google+

The higher the social media presence, and the more high-quality friends a person has, the advanced score the person might receive. In addition, applicants are also asked to designate a few choice people as their “Trusted Connections.” Linking up with people who have already borrowed from Lenddo and paid back the loans on time is just one way to game the system and make sure that the loan is approved.

Broader Applications for Reputation Management

On the surface, it seems gratuitous to understand how a small bank works. After all, few Americans or Europeans will travel to the Philippines just to take out a loan, and those who do might want to work with a reputable bank rather than an online startup. But for those of us who 

 work in reputation management, this is a bit of an alarming trend.

Naturally, when clients ask for help with reputation management, experts look at the events that person has performed online. Snarky news articles, raunchy blog posts, nasty photographs, and unlucky press releases are typically the focus of the effort, and SEO techniques are used to either remove these disgusting items or drive them down in search results.

However, if the online industry as a whole is moving toward a more comprehensive view of a person’s reputation, this traditional method may not be effective. Specifically, if a person’s status is dependent, in part, on the other people a person knows, comprehensive reputation management might mean digging into the details of the connections a person makes in the online world.

At this point, ethics become a little sketchy. While clients might provide acquiescence for technicians to delve into their lives and amend details that aren’t quite ready for prime time, random friends may not be grateful for the added attention. It might also be difficult to determine how truthful or helpful a friend is without really digging too deep into that person’s life and crossing privacy lines.

Moreover, people with reputation difficulties might be astonished to find out how long such a cleanup might take, and the costs might be far too extensive for them to bear. People with hundreds of connections might need hundreds of hours of help, and that could be prohibitive for some.

Takeaway Points

As mentioned, there doesn’t seem to be a need for widespread panic at this point. The company given that  service only operates in a few choice countries, and the methods they use may never catch on in the wider world.

But, anyone who works with reputation issues should keep in mind that client connections may very well play a role in cleanup efforts in the future. It’s a message we can, and should, be 

 sharing widely, so our customers can make good choices now.

And we can also lead by example, by ensuring that our own social media associates are with real people we’ve met in real time in a real place. We should also feel free to split ties with people who are acting up (and acting out) in ways that might cast us in an unfavorable light. Just keeping tabs, and ensuring that our friends make us look good, could help us get ready to the next wave of social media monitoring that sites like Lenddo seem to be ushering in.

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FREE Tools for Measuring Social Media achievement

One of the most demanding tasks in selling digital marketing to the C-Suite is defining the return on investment (ROI). It can be mainly challenging when justifying the budget for social media marketing (SMM).

Marketing ROI has usually been measured like this:
Return on Investment (%) = (Net profit / Marketing Costs) × 100.

Sometimes, cost per customer gaining is the measure. As recently as 2010, the dawn of social media marketing, those in the C-Suite attempted to apply the tried and true transactional ROI model to SMM. The CMO review, as reported by Forbes, lists the most common metrics used to measure social media investment.
 

 1. HootSuite
 

HootSuite is a good all around tool to use for management and metrics tracking. You can plan posts from multiple social media channels as well as create over 30 individual reports. The free metrics are somewhat limited, but for basic it's all you will need.
 

2. SocialMention

SocialMention is an collective tool similar to Google Alerts, but for social media, only. This will give you insight into not only what is being said, but who is saying it and what the universal sentiment is.
You can set an RSS feed, email alerts, or even add a real-time widget to your website. You can also download a CSV/Excel file for further assessment.
 

3. Klout
 

Monitoring influence isn't an accurate science, but having a tool that helps you begin to gage someone's online existence can be useful. Klout is a free tool that will allow you to measure influence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and several other channels.
 

4. Facebook Insights

The Facebook insights control panel gives you all of the analytics data for your Facebook page. The insights allow you to understand your audience, what they are reacting to, and adjust your content to meet their needs.
 

5. Twitter Analytics
 

Twitter now has its own analytics control panel. With Twitter Analytics you can track timeline activity, including tweets that were favorited, retweeted, and replied to. The tool also tracks number of mentions, new followers and newly followed. For more information, see "Twitter Analytics: A Beginner's Guide".
 

6. Google Analytics
 

With Google Analytics Campaign Tracking, you can set up links for campaigns with UTM parameters to track the movement. Go here to create the link using Google link shortener for campaigns.
This is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to track success of a specific link within a movement. It's also one of the most overlooked methods of tracking.
 

7. Custom Social Media Reports
 

Google Analytics does a nice job tracking the number of visitors to visit a website from different social channels. These custom reports give you extra insights as to how traffic is being driven to your website.
 

If you aren't blogging or creating new and helpful content to draw people to your website, don't expect these numbers to be high. It requires a content strategy to really work people toward your website. These easy to install one-click reports are invaluable.
 

8. Bitly
 

This link shortener allows you track all you share. This is a great way to see what your audience is interacting with and decide if the content you share is precious.
Bitly also integrates into many third-party software packages, making it a great umbrella tool, as you can track within numerous platforms. For example, you may use Social Sprout, a paid management platform and Buffer both with Bitly then review data in individual platforms or as a whole through Bitly.
 

9. Buffer
 

Buffer is a vast tool for scheduling content. You simply fill up your Buffer account each day and it will automatically post the content to the channels you select.
For metrics, you're able to look at a dashboard inside Buffer to see what posts are receiving the most interaction, or attach it to Bitly to include in your general tracking. You can also join UTM parameters to track traffic in Google Analytics.
 

10. TweetReach
 

TweetReach is a huge tool for tracking a campaign or conversation on Twitter. Simply enter your search term or hashtag and allow TweetReach to search for the tweets to tell you reach, exposure, activity, top contributors, and more. You can look at the past 50 mentions for free.
 

11. Keyhole
 

Keyhole is similar to TweetReach apart from that it also tracks Facebook and Instagram as well as Twitter. This is a vast way to track a hashtag or keyword for a campaign or event.
The free social tracker gives you a example of what the tracker can do. If you signup you can get a three-day free trial, which may be adequate for an event or snapshot view of a campaign. To get a long-term view you can sign up for a monthly paid plan.
 

Summary

Measuring social media ROI isn't always easy. Building a brand and improving your customer service may not show up openly in your analytics, but these "soft" metrics can have a major impact on the bottom line.

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The Importance of Hash Tags on Social media

 In the early days, hashtags were only used by the social media untimely adopters. As understanding grew of how hashtags work, they became widely embraced by the advertising and advertising production. Today, the hashtag is part of pop background.

Search Happens – Everywhere

 
Hashtags are an efficient method to discover content related to specific topics, as well as the people talking about those topics.

Just as searches are conducted on platforms other than Google, Bing, and Yahoo, search also happens on social platforms. People search every day on Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, YouTube, and other social platforms using words and hashtags with achievement.

When you optimize conversations, content, and updates with hashtags, they will be converted into more visible to others on social media platforms and search engines.

Hashtags in Search

 
Recent Google updates have amplified visibility of hashtags in organic search results on Google.com as well as Google+ as established by the results of a Google search inquiry for #milliondollarwebsites used to promote my book and Google+ Community.

 #SocialMediaTips for Using Hashtags

 
Hashtags can be very powerful when you understand how to make them work for you. You can use them on a range of platforms, represented in this graphic by this graphic.

Research

Want to know what your customers are talking about, what your competitors are doing, or how the media is treating a specific theme related to your product or service? Hashtags are extremely useful in identifying the frequency and reach of topics, discussions, and tapping into audience feeling.

Facilitate chat

 
Hashtags are a great way to get people talking, and let them jump into the debate. Hashtags are often among the most accepted topics on various social platforms. Google+ calls them 'Hot Topics', and Twitter displays Trending.

 This is an easy way to identify all the rage streams of conversation that may be relevant to your goals, offering a way for you to insert yourself into the conversation and expand your social network.

Keep in mind that Facebook isn't as clear with hashtag activity, and LinkedIn doesn't yet recognize hashtags.

Deal out Breaking News, Emergency Instructions and Information Related to Natural Disasters
For years, hashtags have been used to modernize communication around situations where other mediums of communication such as television, radio and print are not accessible or effective in reaching audiences.

Support an Event or Conference

 
This is maybe one of the greatest tools for event planners to pre-promote an event, promote the conference during the event and keep people connected after the event. 

Use Hashtags to make Consumers

 
Hashtags are also a great way to current special offers, anchor campaigns, and help customers promote the brand. Deciding which hashtags to use, or finding hashtags related to conversations you wish to join requires a little bit of research, as trending hashtags can change quite frequently.

Hashtags are valuable when used properly. Below are a few resources to get you started in identifying and using hashtags to enlarge your reach and visibility online.

Summary

The hashtag more than a collection of typescript – it is a tool to be used to reach new audiences, connect like-minded people, and facilitate streams of conversation.

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Amazing Uses That build Twitter Special

Most folks use Twitter to keep up with friends or rant about whatever’s now rubbing them the wrong way. But, there are so many other ways to use the social media platform outside of microblogging. These nine inspired uses for Twitter aren’t just for those in online marketing, but for anyone who is looking for a little assistance in their daily lives.

Contests

Hopefully, some of you out there have run a contest via Twitter. If not, give it a try. Contests are always a solid method to attract and connect customers and Twitter makes it pretty easy. There are many simple contests that you can create on Twitter counting photo contests, question and answer, retweet to win, or a follower landmark.

Find a Job

While most of us may lean towards LinkedIn for job searching, Twitter can also be a job in search of assistant. Keep your Twitter account professional with an appropriate avatar, offer a link to your resume, and try to follow key people in your field. You can also receive targeted job tweets on your feed or find opportunities at TweetMyJobs.

keep away from Traffic Jams

No one likes getting trapped in a traffic jam, and Twitter can help! Many local news stations, such as WTOPtraffic, provide constant traffic news on Twitter so you know when to avoid certain roadways. Check with your local news channels to see if they offer a similar feature.

Get fit

We can all use a little extra inspiration to get healthy, whether it’s eating better or getting in shape. There are several health correlated features you can take advantage of on Twitter

Take a Poll

Offering a poll or study on your Twitter feed is not only attractive for your visitors, but also beneficial if you’re looking to find out how users feel about your main site. For non-marketing folks, a poll can help settle good natured disputes on where to go for dinner or drinks after work. 

Set Alarms/Reminders

 

We’re all busy people, and Twitter makes it easy to stay prepared.

Read, Write, and Discuss

Show how talented and astute you are by participating in literary projects.

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Twitter Acquires Trenderr; Updates Conversation vision

From the look of it, Twitter is focusing on long-lasting to improve its interface through acquisitions and interface updates.

Today, it was announced that Twitter has acquired Trendrr, which focuses on given that real-time social media experiences and data to companies. Trendrr’s flagship Twitter product, Curatorr, allows marketers to manage their Twitter existence and events through a single interface, will be its sole focus going forward.

Twitter also announced via its blog today that it has made a chronological alteration to conversation view on the web and both the iOS and Android apps. This change allows users to view conversations in the order they were tweeted, instead of before showing the most recent first.

Creating an Online Watercooler

This allows for readers to get a better context of the conversations happening around tweets. Along with this change and Trendrr’s acquisition, Twitter is making it easier for users to use its stage as a way to have an online conversation. Users will see up to three conversation tweets in their timeline and can click on the originating tweet to view the entire conversation, even if it includes content from users that aren’t followed by the signed-in description.

By combining this with Curatorr, which focuses on organizing and making the most of real-time conversations enchanting place on Twitter, users will continue to see Twitter as a place to talk about everything from the Breaking Bad premiere to what’s happening next in Egypt.
Many news stories have broken first on Twitter and other social media platforms before major news networks. Twitter has become one of the first places people look to get the latest updates on present events and entertainment.

Additionally, as major news and entertainment television networks maintain to utilize Twitter to increase their online presence (via custom hashtags, promotions, and additional engagement), the social network will continue to become a mainstay in the way many people get their news and information, as well as a way to engage with others around the world.

How to successfully make Your Site Social Media-Friendly

Having a website has become something of a requirement for businesses these days, due to the global paradigm shift where more and more people are integrating online activities with their lives. Besides this fundamental reason of going where the market goes, there are also great benefits to having an official site for your business.

Starting a website is much cheaper than building and maintaining a brick-and-mortar store. There is no need to look for an excellent location, pay the lease, take into account overhead expenses, etc.

You can reach a much wider audience not partial by time or any borders, making market expansion much easier and opening up more room for growth. You also get to showcase your products, as well as significant information about your business to customers, establishing your credibility while making it suitable for your target audience.

Social Media as a Conduit

Of course, there are still some truths in promoting an “offline” business that relate to the online world. Merely having a website does not guarantee effectiveness. You need to be able to show your proficiency and uniqueness in the industry, and you need to begin a good relationship with your customers. The best way of pursuing these goals is through leveraging the power of social media.

Creating accounts for your business for social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is good, but these are just channels to your major website. Social media is simply a way for people to connect to your website to consume your content and ultimately make purchases. You just have to make sure that your website has excellent social media integration.

Here are five ways to seamlessly fit in both assets:

• Killer Content

“Content is king” is a phrase that will never get old because content is accurately what people are looking for online, especially in social media. People are constantly sharing with their huge networks of family and friends all sorts of content that they consider interesting, whether it’s a news article, an opinion piece, a funny picture, or an inspiring video. Their connections, in turn, share it with their own networks, and so on. The amount of people you can reach with killer content is astounding.

Therefore, you need to generate content that will make the rounds within these social media channels through shares, retweets, pins, etc., and you need to be talented to do it in a regular fashion. There is no guaranteed way to achieve this, but the best way is to merely create great content.

• Social Content

Social media platforms are built with connecting people in mind, but you can follow their template with your website by allowing for some level of communication with your website’s visitors. This can be done through a blog with a comments section, a forum where they can discuss your products/services, or a customer review feature where you let people send in their critiques of your business’ offerings. You can even let visitors leave comments on your content using their Facebook accounts for fuller integration.

By giving your customers a way to express their opinions, you also give them a sense of belonging with your company. They will feel that you care about what your customers think, establishing a stronger connection in the process.

• Eye-Catching Titles and Images

Some truly great content doesn’t reach its full potential, because of poor titles that don’t right away grab people’s attention when browsing through their feeds. Other great content that tackles technical and/or multiple subjects are not being read, because of the lack of compelling pictures that break up the repetitiveness of text.

• For titles, you want something that addresses a concern while being straight to the point. It has to fix your target audience’s gaze when they’re quickly scanning on their Smartphones or computers.

• For images, you want something that explains your points in a clearer fashion while maintaining the tone of your content, and more prominently, your brand is known for. You can really just focus on creating content that is purely image-based (e.g. infographics) to simplify complex concepts and highlight important facts.

• Social Buttons

Due to the fast-paced nature of today’s Information Age, people now wait for a good level of convenience when surfing the Web. They want to be able to share things they like through their multiple social media accounts without having to deal with the relative hassle of opening up new windows or tabs and copying and pasting URLs. Social buttons are the answer to that problem, making it much easier for people to show their interest in a piece of content to the rest of the world.

These social buttons can also work in your favor, because they usually show the number of people who have expressed positive sentiments about particular content. Once these numbers climb, it can be even easier for people to take in, because they will think the content is worth checking out, attributing it to the number of people who previously did.

• RSS Feeds

Rich Site Summary or RSS is nothing new, but it is a tool that has found even more use now that there is so much more content being produced and shared throughout the Internet. Use it to syndicate relevant content you have on your main website to micro sites targeting more concentrated niches. This way, you don’t have to be publishing the same content on multiple sites.

• Conclusion

While an official website serves as a foundation for creating an online presence, social media allows for even wider coverage for your business, and gets you even closer to your target viewers. By integrating it with your website, you understand the full potential of doing business online.

3 Tips for Better SEO and Social Media Time Management

Commit to one link a day but don’t waste too much time

Link building is one of the most time-consuming processes when it comes to SEO, mainly if you’ve been at it for a year or two and the link building opportunities aren’t quite as forthcoming as they used to be. It’s so simple to get lost in the hundreds of competitors links you’ve downloaded, looking for that diamond-in-the rough opportunity, that you might spend all day link building and only come up with a handful of quality links. Unless you’ve got the in-house talent where you can allot one person to do nothing but link building all day, chances are you can’t devote 8 hours a day to finding one link. My advice to site owners that get overwhelmed by their link building approach is to aim for at least one link a day (that way it doesn’t get pushed to the reverse burner), but set a time limit. Give yourself an hour or two first things in the morning to hunt for links. If you find one (or five) that’s great and go for it! But if you don’t find anything worthwhile once your time is up then move onto to something else.

Block out time to write.

In my belief, content is the thing that is going to push your SEO to the next level. But so many site owners struggle with finding the moment to write (not to mention coming up with topics) that their content creation efforts often get stuck in the pipeline; a lot of great ideas but nothing in fact gets produced. I find the only way I can make sure my own content marketing campaign happens is I have to block out at least one hour each day for writing—no meetings, no phone calls, no checking emails or social updates—unless the sky falls leave me alone! I may not always walk away at the end of my writing time with a totally finished product but at least I have something to keep the process moving. I also like to use any additional time at the end of my day for writing as well so I can get a little ahead. Even 30-45 minutes is enough to get at least a first draft of a new article or blog ready to go.

Check-in and check-out with social media.

When my phone is buzzing off the hook or I’m getting a dozen emails about comments on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook it’s very tempting to dive headfirst into social media, only to reemerge three hours later having accomplished very little. Instead, I prefer to check-in every few hours with my social accounts and do a variety of actions in bulk. This might not work for every business, especially if you are dealing with a customer service issue, but for the most part your social network is okay with waiting an hour or two to hear from you. If you don’t/can’t reply instantly it’s not the end of the world! Unless your company is large enough to have a full time social media manager, chances are a few employees might have access to a variety of social accounts so if something does need to be addressed right away but you just can’t knob it yourself a trusted employee could at least take the first step.

The thing to remember about SEO and social media time management is that it’s very simple to get lost in the nitty gritty. You could exactly spend hours combing through Google Analytics every day but save your hours for when you really need to look “under the hood.” I have lost whole afternoons looking for one quality link when my time could have been better spent writing fresh content for the company blog, working on a guest blog post (or finding a new opportunity), or even been on a view call with a potential client. And I think we all know how easy it is to get lost in the depths of Facebook when we start clicking around. Set a daily plan for yourself (flexibility is still okay though) and try to reduce how much time one activity takes you every day when possible.