As SEO grows more complex and the size of the sites you work on continue to grow, it’s more important than ever to have a set of high-quality tools that both give you a competitive edge and save you time. Tools can help with all of the vital aspects of SEO, including content creation, distribution…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
As the pace of content creation increases, our attention spans seem to be decreasing. This is requiring creators to adapt and consider ways in which people can consume content in a timely manner. The result is a movement towards highly visual content. While you may not have the resources to hire a designer or visual [...]
The post 5 Ways to Turn Existing Content into High Touch Visuals appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Is it finally feeling like Spring where you live? I sure hope so, otherwise you may wish to consider moving!
If you were to move to New Jersey, you may find a new best friend in Michael Streko, co-founder of KnowEm and one of the easiest guys to get along with that you’ll meet. I managed to take away his focus from growing KnowEm for just enough time to answer six questions.
I think you’ll enjoy his answers!
Q1. OK, let’s clear this up. Streko, Michael, Mike, “Mikey Mike & the Jersey Shore Bunch?” What’s your preference?
Haha! Honestly, as long as I can remember I have always been called “Streko”. There are just too many Michael/Mike’s out there. I will always introduce myself as Michael, but at the end of the day everyone ends up calling me “Streko”, so I have given up and just go with the fact that in life I feel like I am constantly on a football team.
Q2. KnowEm has become the go to site for securing social media profiles, what’s next?
We have a lot of stuff in the works.
The second big product that we are very excited about is our Publish Platform.
The two largest projects that Barry Wise (My partner on the site and co-founder of KnowEm) has been working on is our streamlined white label Enterprise Solution. Besides offering all our comprehensive services it also offers a mobile-optimized platform. This provides any agency or organization the ability to white label all of KnowEm’s product offerings (Including Trademark Registrations) to look like their own brand with a client login, admin panel, and a bunch of awesome features with an easily skinned look and feel. **Shameless Plug** If anyone is interested in seeing a demo, feel free to contact me here http://enterprise.knowem.com.
The second big product
Brands understand the importance of content marketing, yet most have not yet addressed their content needs on either a strategic or tactical level, according to Altimeter’s Rebecca Lieb.
Researchers for the company conducted interviews with executives actively engaged in content strategy or marketing; their findings were the basis of a new report, Organizing for Content: Models to Incorporate Content Strategy and Content Marketing in the Enterprise. Lieb and report co-authors guide brand marketers through a variety of organizational models for content, with recommendations to help companies execute an effective content strategy. Read the full report on SlideShare.
Buyers are overwhelmed by the amount of content available to them, making the content marketer’s challenge greater than ever, according to a new study from Demand Gen Report. Content plays an increasingly important role in B2B purchase decision making, with 68% of survey respondents indicating they rely more on content than they did last year. Variety is key: five out of nine content formats gained in popularity, while only podcasts and interactive presentations lost traction. Researchers found that three specific content formats stand out in 2013: white papers, E-books and webinars.
Sales messages are a huge turnoff for buyers, 61% of whom said sales-heavy content has been a problem for them in the past year. Survey respondents indicated they would like B2B marketers to focus on making content more readable, adding value, and showing their research to their audience.
The customer journey is complex, with engagement happening across platforms, devices and possible over a period of time, says Google. Their new tool on the Think Insights website aims to
The stock market had a flash crash today after someone hacked the AP account & made a fake announcement about bombs going off at the White House. Recently Twitter’s search functionality has grown so inundated with spam that I don’t even look at the brand related searches much anymore. While you can block individual users, it doesn’t block them from showing up in search results, so there are various affiliate bots that spam just about any semi-branded search.
Of course, for as spammy as the service is now, it was worse during the explosive growth period, when Twitter had fewer than 10 employees fighting spam:
Twitter says its “spammy” tweet rate of 1.5% in 2010 was down from 11% in 2009.
If you want to show growth by any means necessary, engagement by a spam bot is still engagement & still lifts the valuation of the company.
Many of the social sites make no effort to police spam & only combat it after users flag it. Consider Eric Schmidt’s interview with Julian Assange, where Eric Schmidt stated:
We would post editorial content more often, but we are sort of debating opening up a social platform so that we can focus on the user without having to bear any editorial costs until after the fact. Profit margins are apparently better that way.
As Google drives smaller sites out of the index & ranks junk content based on no factor other than it being on a trusted site, they create the incentive for spammers to ride on the social platforms.
All aboard. And try not to
Local business owners have a new tool for managing their Google Places For Business listing: a dedicated app that works on the iPhone and iPod Touch. There’s no official announcement that I can find about the app, and as best I can tell, the iClarified blog was first to report on it. The…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
At its core engagement boils down to one key idea. You have to remember that there is a human being on the other end of every tweet, status update, blog post, email or video. If we can view all these things as connection tools first and communication tools second that will make a huge [...]
The post How to Increase Engagement with Your Audience appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Google made a splash in May of 2012 when they announced the Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph is a key component of Semantic Search. Semantic Search aims to get at the real intent of the query, rather than simply matching a page to a search string. A good analogy is that of a headhunter or [...]
The post Semantic Web: Are You Taking Advantage of Semantic Search? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
The Beal Deal is back!
I’m not quite sure where to start with the introduction for my next guest. Jennifer Cario (aka Jennifer Laycock) and I go way back–if I recall correctly, she had to proof read my posts back when I started writing for Search Engine Guide….a LONG time ago. Over the years, Jen has found lots of ways to stay ahead of her competition–turning a C&D letter from the Pork Council into an amazing publicity opportunity! These days, Jennifer is focusing on Pinterest marketing–when not chicken farming or baking delicious treats!
Here’s your bento box of Jennifer Cario!
Q1. Let’s start with your rebrand. You “merged” with Matthew Cario back in 2011 and changed your name from Jennifer Evans to Jennifer Cario. What challenges have you faced building a new name for yourself?
It’s a reminder of just how much work you really do have to put in to establishing that presence and brand recognition.
Merged…good word choice there Andy. 
You know for a good portion of my career in the industry, I’ve had a habit of launching test projects for the sake of experiencing things from the perspective of my customers. A lot of old timers will remember my “Lactivist” blog from back in the early 2000′s that I launched to write about building a start-up on a shoestring. Others will remember the bento blog I launched and blocked from search engines to see if I could build up a strong site using only social media.
It seems a bit funny to consider that I walked into this one without really thinking about it, but in many ways it’s given me a lot of perspective on what it is to rebrand, or even originally brand a name. After fifteen years in the industry, most
What adjectives would you use to describe Google as a company? Maybe cool, inventive, forward-thinking, a fun place to work. How about Yahoo? I’d go for old fashioned, stale, boring, strict.
That’s why Yahoo hired former Google exec Marissa Mayer last summer. They want Yahoo to sound more like Google, but Mayer’s first few weeks in the office did little to improve the company’s image. Nine months later, she’s still known as the woman who rescinded Yahoo’s telecommuting policy but she’s working to change that, too.
Speaking at the Great Place to Work Conference, Mayer defended her decision saying,
“. . people are more productive when they’re alone but they’re more collaborative and innovative when they’re together. Some of the best ideas come from pulling two different ideas together.”
Two of those ideas hit the market this week – newly designed mobile apps meant to prove that Yahoo is still a contender.
First is the new weather app for iOS. Weather apps are extremely popular. I don’t understand why but maybe that’s because I live in Southern California where weather conditions only effect us a few times a year. Like all weather apps, Yahoo’s will tell you the temperature and the forecast for the coming week. But what sets it apart are the graphics.
Yahoo’s new weather app uses photos from Flickr to illustrate the weather conditions in whatever city you happen to be standing in. Whether its raining in Paris or sunny in St. Louis (they don’t have graphics for every city in the world, but you get the idea), day or night, and I love the big, bold text. You can add multiple cities if you’re traveling or if you just like knowing what the temperature is in your old home town.
The Yahoo weather app is as simple as can be and
