In your link building efforts, concentrate on sites and content relevant to yours, preferably with abundant traffic. Buying links, which leads to a lot of linking from unrelated websites, is frowned upon and can sink your search performance.

Instead, try maximizing back-links by:

• Creating and promoting your own exciting, viral content - Useful, problem-solving, fresh, audacious, witty, unique, trendy, funny and/or shocking content invites sharing. The best content makes the sharer look good, just for pointing it out to their friends and contacts, and can spread like wildfire, generating back-links galore. With luck, you’ll get a string of back-links that takes on a life of its own, without your having to work for each link individually. Use Google’s Trends tool to learn what’s on the minds of recent searchers or mimic the style of recent popular content that’s been shared with you. Was it a top 10 list?
• Writing guest posts for other sites - This allows you to reach a fresh audience of potential new readers for your blog whose interests overlap with yours. You’ll also gain back-links (at least one!) from the site you’ve written for. Invite the owner of the site to guest blog on your website for a possible traffic bump as his or her fans end up on your site.
• Asking for back-links - When you see a site whose audience should complement yours well, email the site owner or editor and ask for your link to be included. Links within the body of a related blog or other referring content are the most valued and most credible.

Remember, the more links back to your content from naturally related content, the better your site will look to search engines — and the more new readers will discover your website or blog. The highest value links are from well-trafficked websites and  nonprofit, governmental or educational sites.

Need spectacular new link-friendly content? Contact SocialTract.

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Here are a few tips to put your content discovery engine into overdrive:

• Don’t obsess over blockbuster content. Not every blog post you write will go viral. Concentrate on covering your area of expertise completely, with insightful, valuable, helpful or entertaining content. Direct some content toward each major segment of your audience.
• Think long-term. Don’t expect every piece of content to bring lots of sales leads or conversions. Aim for building that interesting overall body of content, or library if you will, by authoring high-value, problem-solving, engaging content. Over time you’ll build a rich mix of content. Aim for decreasing bounce rates and increasing time spent and page views per visit, rather than only tracking and valuing conversions.
• Look at content marketing as a whole. Don’t focus on separate strategies for each individual channel or activity, like Twitter or Facebook or SEO. Each social media interaction and marketing activity is actually part of one overall content marketing plan. Set aside one content marketing budget. Use each of the tactics or channels as larger or smaller parts of that marketing mix, depending on which channels work best for your business.
• Cross-pollinate. Link externally to content that your audience may find interesting. Use social media to share interesting content that complements your own. You’ll bring even more interesting content to the attention of your audience and inspire other businesses to link to and share your content.
• Vary your format. Sharing only blog links or only images and photos or only checklists and guides can get boring. Vary content types over time to create a more vibrant and interesting content feed.
• Get organized. Create a content calendar to schedule the posting and sharing of content you currently have — and topics, titles and content you plan to create.

Contact SocialTract for expert content creation that fuels discovery.

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• How’s their web presence? If they can’t make themselves look good online, how can they perform for your company? Check out their website and search for them on Google. Does the agency show up in search results for obvious key words and phrases? Make sure they’re active on social media with frequent posts, “likes,” followers, fans and friends.
• Can they show results? Ask for concrete examples or case studies of recent successes. Ask what metrics are tracked and how the company defines success. Evaluate their performance for businesses similar in size to yours and in the same industry. Request references — and check them.
• Are they skilled in key content formats? Look at samples of content types that most interest you: e-books, blogs, video, social media posts and more.
• How’s their communication? Are they all about jargon or do they explain their services in a clear manner? Do you like dealing with them? Be wary of yes-men and women. A savvy agency won’t always agree with your content marketing strategies. Choose someone with experience, whose professional opinions you can trust, even though you may get occasional push-back.
• What are their traffic and SEO strategies? How will the agency bring you new visitors and leads? Don’t ask leading questions; it’s like giving out answers to the qualifying test. Let them explain. These strategies may have been mentioned in case study discussions, but asking the same question in different ways can be telling.
• Who are they? Meet principals and individuals who will manage and work daily on your account — at least virtually. Skype video conferences can tell you a lot. If the firm offers one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter service, saying everyone works on or manages your account, move on.

Contact SocialTract. Learn what we can do for you.

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You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to provide new, thought-provoking content to help you gain traffic and sales leads.

For a reliable source of new web content ideas, revisit your old content. Your library of previous blogs, videos and e-newsletters can be repurposed, regrouped, refurbished, expanded upon or published in a different format.

Here’s how:

• Shrink and expand, combine and cut up - Repurpose your newsletter or e-book, expanding it so that each chapter or section becomes one of a series of blog posts. Have you ever ended your blog with a question or asked one on a social media site? Publish selected answers as part of a new blog post or discuss the answers as results of a survey — “60 percent of commenters responded that they don’t use snow tires….” Divide up your list of “Top 10 ways to get ready for summer,” turning it into 10 separate Tweets. Or combine a series of Tweets into a checklist or blog post.
• Reformat – Turn a popular how-to blog post into a new how-to video. Turn a couple of your onsite client testimonials into video versions with the cooperation of your customers. Did you blog about your company’s 10th anniversary party? Publish several event photos as a slide show.
• Invigorate and refresh – Give old content a basic rewrite or edit, especially topics that attracted attention the first time around. Revive seasonal content that’s relevant every year or basic advice that’s always good to keep in mind. Current news items may inspire you to republish on a particular topic or write something new and refer and link to your older post. A super storm’s aftermath (like Sandy’s) might be a good time to bring an emergency preparedness or insurance post back to the top of your blog.

Stumped for new blog ideas? Running out of time? Let SocialTract handle it.

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If you’re in a business, hair salon or restaurant/bar for instance that lends itself to the visual, these Instagram ideas will come quite naturally. If your business is in the industrial line, the connection may not be obvious. Still, companies such as HVAC contractors, appliance dealers and pool cleaners can make creative use of Instagram’s social media photo-sharing to engage and entertain their followers, too.

• New products or services - Are you selling appliances? Your latest clothes washer or oven looks like a rocket ship or classic car? Post an image of that red, metallic or stainless steel item, shown in the parking lot next to a same-color 1950s convertible and/or in a real customer’s kitchen. The first image is humorous. The second shows how the item can transform a room — both quite memorable.
• Target audience/persona or employees using products - Show family member(s) using a new oven to bake cookies. Show the happy family and share the well-loved recipe. It’s entertaining and helps clients picture themselves using the product. Do you sell or rent gowns and tuxedos? Show satisfied clients at a prom in your special-occasion wardrobe. Picture a family relaxing in cool air from their new A/C or swimming in the pool you installed.
• Backstage access or event images - Build deep connections with customers and prospects using Instagram by allowing them behind-the-scenes access. Show how your business works behind the counter, at the home office or at the factory. Post shots from your company’s anniversary or customer appreciation party. Show an employee driving a snow plow, illustrating how you come to the rescue for clients.
• Hashtagging (#) - Tagging and categorizing content, popularized on Twitter, allows others to refer to hashtagged content and photos and connect comments and other content with it. Hashtags are community-building tools that allow viewers to participate, posting their own images, comments and responses. Show your kid’s lemonade stand with the caption: “Wish selling water heaters was this easy!” #youthful optimism.

Need creative content or a new plan for using Instagram? Just too tired to blog? Contact SocialTract.

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In recent years, business owners have been inundated with advice about the need to publish new content online daily. This has inspired a veritable flood of blogs, videos, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and more. Businesses of all types and sizes are frantically allocating budget to pay for words without regard to quality. Many obsess over keywords at the expense of meaningful, enlightening information. Why waste your valuable time and money struggling to keep up with the word-generating velocity of the next guy?

Much of this content does nothing for small businesses. Yes, you’ll get a traffic bump if you do publish daily. But once you get that click-through to your blog or Facebook page, if the content doesn’t deliver for the reader, you’ve gained nothing. You might actually have lost quite a bit. If the reader never returns to your site, never contracts your services or even spreads his or her negative opinion, you’ve done yourself a disservice, wasting your time and the reader’s.

As customers become more sophisticated and look for truly valuable, trustworthy information online, it’s the prime time to bring quality to the forefront. By all means, continue sharing professional knowledge and advice, your unique insights and perspective. Blog, tweet, send out newsletters and more, but only when you’re inspired to share something your audience needs — something enriching, informative, unique or useful.

Make no mistake, volume still matters. You’ll lose readers and potential customers, brand recognition and momentum by publishing erratically. For best results, adjust your HVAC content marketing focus. Publish only content you’re proud of, even if you can’t publish every day or if you need to go out-of-house to get a dedicated expert working on your content.

Ready to give up on more and go for better? Get creative, expert content that performs — contact SocialTract.

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Your title shouldn’t be an afterthought. It’s the make-or-break attribute of your blog. If the title on its own provokes sharing or gets conversions, it’s still a big success. The content of the blog post must follow through on the promise of the title, otherwise you can expect a backlash from readers who feel you’ve been dishonest and wasted their time.

When crafting blog titles, give careful thought to each word used, the order of words, length of title, subject matter of the associated post and its tone. The tone of the title should mesh with your brand. Irreverent and funny are attention-getting, but you have less latitude if you’re blogging for a bank rather than a bar.

Attributes of blockbuster blog titles

• Solution-oriented – Sales and conversions come easier if you’re selling solutions, rather than products, services or blogs. Promise to solve your audience’s problems and they’ll click to read. Click-magnet phrases include “How to,” “in 10 Easy Steps” and “Tips For…”.
• Succinct - Economizing on title length (about eight words maximum) makes social sharing easier and therefore more likely.
• Clear - Blog post titles should clearly convey what the post is about, without ambiguity. Be creative, but avoid a bait and switch.
• Wacky or humorous - Sensationalism and outrageousness have their place, appealing to our natural curiosity and earning clicks.
• Keyword-loaded - The better your title matches target search terms and phrases, the higher it can appear in those SERPs. Your SEO-friendly title will likely become a part of the URL of your post, attracting even more search engine attention. Since skimming is a way of life today, including the most relevant keywords up-front in the title yields maximum clickability.
• Provocative or shocking - Go ahead — create a stir. Go against the grain. Besides active social sharing, you may get a rise out of people. Controversial topics may gain you blog comments, responses and back-and-forth dialogue with and among readers. These discussions themselves can make effective, dramatic content.

Get killer blog titles by the dozen — contact SocialTract.

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It’s the double-edged sword of today’s smaller, more transparent, Internet-fueled world — you reach more people and you have to deal with more opinions. It’s crucial to manage your online reputation with an active social media strategy and take positive countermeasures when negatives arise.

If left unaddressed, one negative can unfortunately outweigh much of the good word-of-mouth about you on the web. To maintain or even improve your online reputation when faced with a challenge to your good name, take these key steps ASAP.

• Respond immediately to any negatives, otherwise they may spread or balloon out of control.
• Handle with care. Adopt a positive attitude about negative feedback. Don’t respond in anger or appear overly defensive. Keep in mind that it’s good for you to know what people like and don’t like about your services.
• Take the discussion private/offline if there’s no simple fix or you need more detail.
• Consider having social media/reputation management handled by a pro. Allow an expert consultant with a sense of professional distance deal with criticisms and gather/manage feedback while making sure you’re always informed.

Prevention

• Monitor your reputation. Create Google Alerts for company and principal name(s),  as well as product and service names if proprietary.
• Learn about negatives and positives early. Ask after service is rendered or send follow-up “How’d we do?” email.
• Add a feedback link on your site. Include feedback requests on receipts and leave-behinds.
• Provide your own support forum for customer communication. This shows that you’re open to hearing what customers have to say, giving them a centralized place within your purview to raise concerns and ask questions.
• Go for volume. Actively seek and encourage online reviews, without specifying good reviews. The good should outnumber the bad exponentially, but they must be real. Make reviews easy, providing links to the review site you’re targeting on your contact form.
• Ask best customers for testimonials and permission to quote or publish.

Make sure you always look good online. Contact SocialTract for professional help with social media and online content.

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Creating quality content won’t get you anywhere unless you’re prepared to promote the information and advice you’re publishing using channel content marketing. You must draw attention to and distribute your content via appropriate channels to reach your audience of current and repeat customers, as well as prospects.

To be effective in your content marketing efforts, you need a strategy that factors in the following information:

• Analyze where you are and identify your business goals - Do you need to sell more of a certain service or product, collect more email sign-ups or increase social media traffic? Create a unique strategy to achieve each goal, tailored to channel attributes and limitations.
• Personas addressed - Which demographic or customer type are you aiming for to achieve this goal? Your content must interest the target persona(s), reaching them through channels they use most.
• Channel objectives - Which communication channels will help attain your goal? Don’t waste time on media that don’t fit. Don’t force yourself to include LinkedIn as one of your key channels, for example, when your current goal is to sell a consumer product.
• Channel content marketing strategy – Structuring your content and message is crucial. Amend, edit, excerpt or adjust your content so that it resonates with each channel’s audience. When promoting your latest blog post, you wouldn’t reprint the entire text on Twitter, phrase by phrase, of course. A better use of your Twitter channel is tweeting, announcing or linking to your new post. You might promote the sale you’re currently running on the new service offering covered in that blog post. Your strategy may include creating a purpose-specific landing page for those responding to your content outreach message or those coming through specific channels.
• Content management tools/procedures – Will you personally track responses and contact leads? Will you assign staff to compose social media posts or are you considering hiring an experienced firm to manage the entire channel content marketing process for you?
• Calendar - Start with a general outline of communication channel plans. For instance, Facebook: 2 posts daily. Style: Humorous, irreverent, casual. Channel goal: Click-through to landing page or blog post. Create detailed calendars with dates, times and content titles based upon this general overview calendar.

Contact SocialTract for expert channel content marketing solutions.

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Developing an editorial calendar is easy to tackle. Here are some tips:

• Identify and target your audience. Survey clients about their needs and interests, use demographic information like age, gender and income bracket and segment similar folks into groups of customers and likely prospects to target.
• Create personas of your specific customers and audience segments. Personas represent or embody the qualities of part of your audience. For hair salons, one persona might be Jeff, a graphic designer, about age 30 and Anna, corporate attorney, about 40. Would Jeff want deluxe, bells-and-whistles service and lots of discussion during a consultation? Would Anna want quick, efficient service to fit a busy schedule? Would one like to experiment with his haircut and color and the other prefer a business-like cut?
• Plan to write to a segment of your audience in each content piece when developing an editorial calendar. Also plan some content and titles appealing to your whole audience. Create content tailored to each persona’s unique needs, providing solutions to problems. That’s what you’re selling after all — no matter what business you’re in.
• Make a general schedule and follow it. Will you publish blogs on Tuesday and Friday? Send e-newsletters at month’s end? You can assign tasks to staff or guest experts here as well.
• Identify seasonal and event-based content needs. Say your slow season is spring and fall. In HVAC businesses for example, note titles and content ideas about heating and A/C maintenance services leading up to and during these seasons. Schedule advance teasers and announcement content, then launch content. Allow flexibility to add ultra-current content when necessary.
• Include themed content. Target top customer concerns, holiday content and other themed posts.
• Add social media/marketing support for your content to the calendar. You might promote on Facebook each Friday and Tweet daily during sale week, for example. Figure out the schedule that works best for you.

Get expert help developing an editorial calendar. Contact SocialTract.

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