4 Social Analytics Tips to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

Would you like to find out when your social media followers are most active?

Do you want to know which social network drives the most leads to your website?

There are many social media statistics you can track, but it’s important to track the data specific to your business’s use of social media.

Track the right metrics for your community and you’ll better understand how and when to share information, as well as what type of content drives the most traffic to your website.

In this article, you’ll learn how to track and measure four important social media metrics to help you improve your social media marketing.

#1: Determine the Best Times to Post Updates on Twitter and Facebook

Twitter

Because Twitter moves at such a rapid pace, tweets get buried quickly. Knowing when your followers are online plays a crucial part in your tweet’s visibility and success.

Luckily there are some great tools to analyze the activity of your followers.

Tweriod looks at the recent tweets of your followers and provides you with analytics and data that show when your followers are the most active.

Once you connect your Twitter account to Tweriod, it runs an analysis and summarizes the best hours of each day for you to reach your followers with your tweets. The report is delivered to you by email or a DM when the results are ready.


Tweriod results show the optimal times for you to tweet.
Besides recommending the best hours of each day to tweet, Tweriod also gives you an overall analysis you can review to get a sense of your community’s most active days.


Tweriod analytics show your followers' daily activity.
Tweriod also gives you the ability to synchronize this data with your Buffer account to automatically update your auto-scheduling hours.

Tweriod is free for accounts with up to 1000 followers and offers a monthly subscription if you have more followers or are interested in premium features.

Use the data from Tweriod to adjust the days and times you post on Twitter.

Facebook

With Story Bump, EdgeRank and the sheer volume of posts that roll through the general news feed, it’s getting difficult to make sure your fans see your page posts. To maximize the lifespan of your posts, you need to know when your fans are most likely to see them.

Facebook Insights offers a simple way to find out when your fans are most likely to be active on Facebook.

To find the best hours to share updates on your Facebook page, pull up the Insights dashboard, click on the Posts tab, and choose “When Your Fans Are Online.”


The Posts tab in Insights shows when your fans are most often online.

Here, Facebook shows you easy-to-read graphs of your fans’ diversity, including the average number of fans who saw your post in any given hour.


Insights has easily readable graphs.

That’s it. Now, you just have to post during your strong hours and highlight your most important posts during your peak exposure times.

#2: Find the Magic Number of Facebook Posts per Day

Many studies show the average brand should post about 1-2 times a day on Facebook. You need to know if that’s true for your page.

Find the magic number of posts to share on your page, and you’ll dramatically affect your engagement and community growth.

Facebook’s new Insights dashboard gives you information about your recent posts and the frequency of engagement. To view the information, click on “See All” from your page to reveal the Overview tab.


Access your Insights dashboard.
Now, export the Overview data into a spreadsheet file directly from the dashboard by selecting “Data Type: Post-Level Data.”


A view of the Facebook Insights dashboard Overview tab.
In the spreadsheet, group the posts by day and compare the average Lifetime Post Total Impressions and Lifetime Engaged Users columns.

For each day, look for the lower engagement numbers to discover which post count is decreasing the average metrics you measure.

That is your magic number of posts to share each day.

#3: Measure the Click-through Rate

If you’re active on social media, you’re likely to share a lot of content from your blog, website, YouTube channel or other media platforms.

When you share a link to your various platforms, your goal is to have people click on your link. The click-through rate (CTR) your links receive is most likely your primary metric for measuring success.

To measure your CTR, you need a URL shortener to track clicks.

Bitly is a free URL shortener with a set of tools to create shortened links, share your links and measure the CTR on your links.

You can shorten links from within the Bitly dashboard or use an extension for Firefox or Chrome to automatically shorten and share links straight from your browser.

After you’ve shortened a link with Bitly, click on it from the library at any time to get detailed information on its CTR, click sources, geographic distribution of clicks and more.


This Bitly dashboard shows a CTR of 44 and other data on platforms and demographics.

This map shows where the clicks on a Bitly link originate.

On the Bitly stats dashboard, you get both aggregated and individual statistics about the links you share from Bitly. Aggregated stats show complete global activity on a link and individual stats show activity specific to your shares of the link.

There are other tools to measure your CTR, but Bitly’s analytics give you more detail than most, for free.


Bitly shows you click-through rates on every link you shorten.
Spend some time analyzing the data behind your Bitly links to find trends in CTRs and shares that will help you deliver content suited to the needs and interests of your community.

#4: Compare Lead Sources and Conversion Rates

Most brands’ social media strategies use more than one social media platform to drive traffic to their websites and generate new leads.

Although each platform has its place in your strategy, you won’t receive an equal ROI from each one. You’ll want to find out which platform generates the best ROI so you can put more effort into your marketing on that platform.

UTM Link Building and Google Analytics can help you track the leads and conversions from each social network. UTMs are tags you add to a URL that make it easy to track and monitor in Google Analytics.

Use the Google URL builder to create a measurable URL that Google Analytics can segregate into campaigns.


Google's URL Builder.

Google’s URL Builder page has some helpful hints on how to use each of the UTM parameters:

• Campaign Source. This helps Google Analytics identify the source of your traffic as a search engine, newsletter or other referrer.
• Campaign Medium. This specifies whether the link is used in an email, a CPC ad or another method of sharing.
• Campaign Name. This associates your URL with a specific product promotion or strategic campaign such as a spring sale or other promotion.

Build unique URLs for any landing page on each of the social networks used in your strategy. You’ll be able to differentiate among leads that come from your Twitter bio, your tweets or Facebook.

If this seems too complicated, you’ll want to get the help of someone with the appropriate technical skills.

To see which social network provides the most leads or conversions for a specific campaign, go to your Google Analytics dashboard and check out your campaigns.


Google Analytics Campaigns overview.

Set up your goals, then look under Traffic Sources > Campaigns to see which source and medium drives more leads to your various landing pages and the conversion rate from each of them. Eventually, you’ll see which source (social network) brings you more leads or more signups or sales (conversions).

Anytime you share an inbound link on social media, measure it with custom UTM parameters to get full ROI information on leads and conversions.

Summary

You can track many metrics on social media, but the metrics you choose to measure should reflect your business goals.

I recommend tracking these social media metrics because they give you the information you need to better market your business and products.

What do you think? What metrics do you track to measure the success of your social media efforts? Are there tools you have found to be helpful? Join the conversation below and let me hear your thoughts!


Author: Lior Degani
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/learn-about-your-community/

How to Drive More Facebook Traffic to Your Website

Are you using Facebook ads to drive traffic to your website?

Did you know that when people share your website content on Facebook, you can turn that shared content into a Facebook ad?

You can do that with Domain Sponsored Stories.

Domain Sponsored Stories are inexpensive and easy to run, and you don’t need a Facebook Page to start a campaign.

In this blog post, you’ll learn what Domain Sponsored Stories are and how you can create your own today.

What Are Domain Sponsored Stories?

A domain is a website that you control.

A Sponsored Story is a Facebook ad that promotes the action performed by a Page or user’s friend, follower or fan.

A Domain Sponsored Story, then, is a Facebook ad that will promote a Facebook user’s interaction with a website that is under your control.

What Do Domain Sponsored Stories Look Like?

As you can see, the only difference between this Domain Sponsored Story and a typical post is the “Sponsored” tag at the end.

Why Create a Domain Sponsored Story?
Domain Sponsored Stories are low-maintenance ad units and you can run
them in the background to constantly drive traffic to your website. Here are a few reasons to use them:

• Increase the reach of your blog posts.
• Increase traffic to product Pages and impact revenues.
• Reach users who missed content the first time. Hopefully you understand why you should promote your Page content to reach fans who may have missed it the first time. Only half of your fans are on Facebook every day and even then, they’re active during a small window. The same holds true for users catching their friends’ content. Promote a user’s interaction with your website and more of their connections are likely to see it.

Privacy Clarification

Advertising through Domain Sponsored Stories does not override your privacy settings.

If you share a post from ABC.com and that share is turned into an ad, only the people who were already eligible to see the original share will see it in an ad.

The Limitations of Domain Sponsored Stories

• Someone may share a post using an unflattering comment. You may spend money to help promote that post because you cannot choose which share to promote or not promote.
• If you have a low-traffic website that gets very few shares, Facebook has little share activity to turn into ads. Whether you reach your daily budget or not is partially dependent upon the volume of daily share activity from your website. You need users who are already sharing your website content.
• Domain Sponsored Story ads do not lead to increased Page likes. Depending on what’s shared, they may not lead to sales or conversions. They only lead to increased website traffic.

You’ll need to determine whether the benefits of Domain Sponsored Stories outweigh the limitations. As someone who owns a website that turns traffic into revenue, I find them extremely useful.

Results of Domain Sponsored Stories

Back in November, Brendan Irvine-Broque shared how PageLever used a Domain Sponsored Story to get nearly a 10% CTR. That means that one of every 10 users who saw the ad clicked on it. That’s insane!

How did it work?

• PageLever started a Domain Sponsored Story campaign.
• They wrote a controversial blog post called Fact Check: Why Mark Cuban is wrong about Facebook.
• Sean Parker, who had 540,000 followers at the time, shared that blog post on Facebook.
• Parker’s share was turned into a Domain Sponsored Story ad that surfaced to his friends and followers.

The trick, of course, is to get an influencer like Sean Parker to share your content. That’s not always possible, but when it happens, the share can make your promotion infinitely more effective.

Create Your Own Domain Sponsored Story

#1: Claim Your Domain

From your Insights Dashboard, click the green Insights for your Website button at the top right.

Facebook Insights dashboard.

That will bring up a pop-up that looks like this:

Fill in this pop-up to generate the meta tag to paste into your website.

Enter your website’s domain (no www) and link it with either your personal profile or your Facebook Page. If you are the only person who will need to access any Facebook Insights associated with your website, choose yourself. Otherwise, you can select a Page so that all admins of that Page have access.

#2: Add the Meta Tag to Your Site

In the step above, you were presented with a meta tag. Copy and paste it between the < HEAD > tags of the template of your site. This way, the meta tag will appear on every Page shared from your domain.

How you do this will depend on the CMS you use. I use Genesis Framework, and I can edit this area within Theme Settings or Simple Hooks. The All-In-One Webmaster plugin also provides a field for this.

Only shares from Pages containing this meta tag will qualify for Domain Sponsored Stories.

From your Insights Dashboard, your domain will now accumulate stats. Here’s an example.

Track Facebook activity associated with your domain in the Insights Dashboard.

If you don’t see any stats a day later and you know there have been shares to Facebook from your site, re-do steps 1 and 2.

#3: Create Your Domain Sponsored Story

To create a Domain Sponsored Story, you should use Power Editor, a browser plugin. It offers numerous advantages over the self-serve ad tool.

When you create an ad, do the following:

• Select Sponsored Story as the ad type.
• Click About people sharing links to your domain.
• Select your domain in the destination.

Set up a Domain Sponsored Story in Power Editor.

Complete your ad and upload as you normally would (again, read the Power Editor tutorial if you need more help here). Monitor your results within the ad manager during the coming days.

Your Turn

Domain Sponsored Stories offer an inexpensive and low-maintenance option for increasing your website traffic from Facebook. The stories can be optimized and focused to promote specific content based on where you paste the meta tag in your website.

What do you think? Do Domain Sponsored Stories seem worthwhile to you? Have you tried them? What results are you seeing? Let me know in the comments below!



author: Jon Loomer
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-drive-more-facebook-traffic-to-your-website/

5 Creative Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog Posts

Do you want more traffic to your blog?

Are you struggling to catch the attention of more readers?

Does this sound familiar? You write an amazing piece of content. You made sure to craft an attention-grabbing headline. You share the link on Twitter, Facebook, even Google+.

Then you wait in breathless anticipation for your share count to skyrocket. Except it doesn’t.

Never fear, in this article you’ll find fresh ideas to generate buzz and get your posts noticed.


Use a two-pronged approach with a variety of platforms and different types of media to get your post shared. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Promote Your Article Across a “Wider” Variety of Platforms

Everyone is using Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn to promote their content. It’s tempting to focus only on these four networks because they have popularity and community numbers on their side.

However, you get a competitive advantage when you share your content on smaller or less well-known networks. These sites often have active, focused audiences and offer less competition for attention, so your content will stand out.

Here are some examples of smaller networks:

• Quora.com—A question/answer-based website founded by two former Facebook employees. What makes Quora unique is that all content is created, edited and organized by its user community. The user base tends to be more business- and academic-oriented.
• Tumblr—A microblogging site that recently made headlines when Yahoo! acquired it. Its user base tends to be younger and more “hip,” making it the perfect platform to share edgier, niche-based content.
• Empire Avenue—Part social network, part social media marketing tool, Empire Avenue uses gamification to enable users to broadcast content across all of the other social networks. The primary members of EAv are small businesses, social media professionals and bloggers.

Intel on Empire Avenue.

Grab Viewer Interest With Different Types of Media
Sharing a link to your post isn’t enough to guarantee that it gets read. You need to give users a compelling reason to click your link.

Use one or more of these outside-the-box, creative methods to promote your posts with images, audio and video.

#1: Use Dubbler to Give a Short Audio Introduction

Available for iPhone and Android devices, Dubbler offers a simple way to record up to 60 seconds of audio on your phone, and then share it with other Dubbler community members.


Dubbler brings the simplicity and fun of audio to the social world. Record your voice, add a filter or photo and share with your friends.

The app includes voice filters and lets you add a cover image.

Spark interest in your blog post and record an audio message that communicates your excitement and passion about the content in a way that text or static images can’t.

Add an image, enter your blog post URL in the description and you’ve got a ready-made sound bite that can be shared with the Dubbler community, as well as Facebook and Twitter.


Add a link to your blog post. Record your teaser audio and share.

#2: Create a 6-Second Preview of Your Post with Vine

Vine is an iPhone app that lets you create 6-second looping video shorts. A Vine video is a great way to give viewers a 6-second teaser about the blog post contents.

For example, this bicycle blog created a short Vine of one of their bikes and tweeted it with a link to their blog post about its features and availability.

Here is an example with the blog post URL in the video description:


Vine has an active and growing community to share with. Additionally, you can also share to Twitter and Facebook.

Since Vine is owned by Twitter, your video will display automatically when you tweet it, as well as provide a link to the blog post and specific hashtags.

There’s another benefit of using Vine. Tweets with Vine videos are four times more likely to be shared than standard video, according to research by Unruly.

#3: Create a SlideShare Overview of Your Post

SlideShare is more than a just a content-sharing platform.

With 51.6 million monthly visitors, SlideShare is a thriving community with five times as much traffic from business owners than Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

A presentation by Pam Moore, the Marketing Nut, demonstrates the cross-promotional opportunities between SlideShare and her blog. In this example, Pam created an overview of her blog post with the slides and then included a link back to her post in one of the presentation slides.

At the end of her post, she embedded the presentation, which links back to SlideShare and more of her content.


Pam put her links at the end of her presentation on her closing slide.

Your finished presentation will be visible and searchable from within SlideShare and you can extend its reach and share it to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

#4: Pin Your Post to a Pinterest Group Board

Pinterest allows you to pin on individual boards and collaborate by pinning to contributor boards. The benefit of pinning to a contributor board is increased exposure. When you pin to a contributor board, your fellow contributors see the pin and so do their followers. The more members and followers a group board has, the more people will see your pin.

Here are some tips for pinning your post to Pinterest:

• Choose an interesting image from your blog post to pin
• Make sure the title of your blog post is visible on the image you choose
• Add keywords to the description
• Use hashtags, if they’re relevant
• If you mention someone in your blog post, you can @ mention them on Pinterest, too
• Pinterest will add the URL to your blog post

A great way to increase exposure for your blog post.

#5: Instagram an Image From Your Post

Instagram has a constantly updating feed of images that is viewed by over 100 million monthly users. Sharing your main blog image, overlaid with the post title, is a great way to drive organic traffic to your blog. You can leverage the sheer volume of Instagram traffic by using the same blog post image that you shared to Pinterest. Instagram is also very hashtag-friendly! Here’s an easy way to post your picture to the Instagram community and beyond:

• Save your blog image to Dropbox
• Access Dropbox from your mobile device
• Upload the image to Instagram
• Add any relevant hashtags and the URL of your blog post to the caption, using Bitly to shorten and track click-throughs
• Be sure to @ mention anyone you referred to in your post
• Remember to share your Instagram image to Tumblr, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Foursquare

Pro Tip: Twitter no longer displays the actual Instagram. Instead, it links to the image. You can use IFTTT to circumvent this issue. Here’s the recipe and here’s what the tweet will look like using IFTTT.

Get Creative When Promoting Your Blog Posts

There are many other creative ways to promote your blog post. Don’t be afraid to try something new!

Just because no one else is doing it doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. Some tactics will resonate with your readers. Some will not. And that’s ok. The important thing is to keep innovating.

What do you think? Have you used any of these creative alternatives? Do you have another, outside-the-box idea for promoting your blog posts? Please let me know your suggestions in the comments below.

Image from iStockPhoto.

Author: Kimberly Reynolds
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-creative-ways-to-drive-more-traffic-to-your-blog-posts/

5 Ways To Get More Traffic From Pinterest

After all her blogger friends kept telling her how cool it was, Melissa Taylor finally decided to get on Pinterest and managed to obtain 1 million+ followers (now nearly 1.5m) in only 9 months.

How did she do it?

Her advice to brands is simple: Focus on being awesome, not getting followers.

Shortly after she hit the million-plus mark, Melissa published a book called Pinterest Savvy: How I Got 1 Million+ Followers so she definitely has a thing or two to say on the subject.

The most influential people on Pinterest are bloggers and social media influencers – also known as tastemakers. Brands can learn a lot from how they grow and maintain their followers, who’s numbers continue to swell as the platform steadily increases its user-base.

Learning from people like Melissa Taylor, Brittany Cozzens, and Joy Cho (still reining supreme at 14.5m followers) are useful case studies for brands looking to generate sustainable returns from their Pinterest marketing. Here are 5 useful tips from successful bloggers, and brands, on Pinterest:


1. Pin During Peak Times

Studies show most people are on Pinterest in the afternoons (14:00 – 16:00 EST) and evenings (20:00 – 01:00 EST). Aim to schedule content during those peak times, which is easier with publishing tools, like Pinster.

You shouldn’t overwhelm your audience with pins, but at the same time don’t publishv too little. A recommended scheduled number is between 5 and 10 pins at a time. Other times when there are visitor spikes are during breakfast, lunch (increasingly from mobile devices) and dinner.



2. Size Matters
Taller gets more repins. Melissa Taylor, other Pinterest power-users, and social media marketing professionals, have all tested this theory, and it works. Other tricks for increasing repins, likes, followers, and ultimately traffic to your website include using text in the images.

You can manipulate the images to ensure the photo beneath so shows through a text box, or use your branding like a watermark, potentially with a web link. This is good for brand awareness, SEO, and turning Pinterest into a major web traffic pipeline.



3. Make Your Products Pin-Ready

Melissa Taylor has singled out Bergdorf Goodman as a brand that is really on the ball. Their products – from Jimmy Choo shoes to Dolce & Gabbana handbags – benefit massively from Pinterest’s core demographic (85% women, aged between 25 – 44), and they have leveraged this to their advantage.

Melissa is particularly impressed by the Bergforf Goodman approach: “Every single product on their website has a “Pin It” button. The product description plus the company name, Bergdorf Goodman, automatically loads when the “Pin It” button is clicked. It’s perfect.”


4. Think Small, Pin Big

Zina Harrington from Lasso the Moon recommends going off the beaten track for content, if you are re-pinning tastemakers: “Follow everyday people with good taste” Zina recommends this course of action because everyone has already seen their content.

There are so many lists of influential Pinterest users that anyone who wants to try and accelerate their own followers will be busy mining and repinning their content. Don’t bother.

“There are many fish in this creative ocean. Look for smaller friends and your repins will feel fresh,” Zina is quoted in Pinterest Savvy.


5. The Warren Buffett Approach

What does noted investor and billionaire Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway have to do with Pinterest, you might be wondering? Nothing, really…he isn’t an investor.

He is, however, a great example of a man who has built his career not going after the quick buck, but instead one who’s been consistently focused on sustainable long-term growth.

Apply the Buffett investment rules to social media: aim to be sustainable, consistent, and awesome, as Melissa Taylor advises, which is how she now has over 1.5 million followers.

Key Takeaways:

• Pin at the right times
• Size matters
• Make your website “Pin ready”
• Find hidden gems and repin them
• Ensure your content is consistently awesome

Stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before you and put the right tactics in place early on and like Bergdorf Goodman. Like everything in social media, when done right, you will notice a steady and snowballing volume of traffic with Pinterest marketing to your website.

Author:Dominic Tarn
http://topdogsocialmedia.com/pinterest-marketing-traffic/

How to Drive More YouTube Views With Pinterest

Do you want more people to watch your videos?

Have you thought of integrating your YouTube channel with your Pinterest account?

When you combine the power of YouTube with Pinterest, you can boost your business and increase your subscribers.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to add YouTube videos to Pinterest.

This is a great way to leverage the power of both of these platforms.

And this tactic is easy to do and can easily be outsourced.


You don't even need to leave Pinterest to view a video.

Here are 8 steps to add YouTube videos to Pinterest:

#1: Download Google Chrome
You can pin from any browser, but Google Chrome’s Shareaholic for Pinterest plugin makes pinning a very easy process, because you simply need to click on the red Pin button and it will automatically fetch all pertinent details from your YouTube channel.

If you’ve not yet downloaded Google Chrome on your Mac or PC, you can click on this link: Google Chrome Download.

#2: Make Sure Your YouTube Video is Fully Optimized
You want to make sure to leverage the traffic that comes from Pinterest; therefore, you’ll want to fully optimize the YouTube title and description box before you pin your first video.

Don’t forget to start any copy you put into your YouTube description box with a URL/link back to your blog, opt-in page or offer page.

Since that link is active (clickable) and it’s the first thing that viewers see, it’s important to include it.


Optimize your YouTube videos before you post them.

#3: Make Sure Your YouTube Channel is Optimized and Ready to Take Viewers to Your Opt-in Pages
Once viewers land on your videos, they may want to know what else you have to share.

If they click on your YouTube profile name, they’ll be taken to your channel’s landing page.

Make sure you optimize the channel name and description box, add a photo of yourself and that you list links on the right-hand side of your channel that take viewers to your opt-in pages.


Optimize your YouTube channel.
These simple steps go a long way in leveraging the traffic you’ll get from Pinterest.

#4: Select the First YouTube Video You Want to Pin
Once you’ve downloaded Shareaholic for Pinterest and you’ve made sure your YouTube channel is ready for traffic, you’ll simply need to go to your YouTube channel, select the video you want to pin and use the handy one-click button.


Use the Shareaholic Pin button in the Google Chrome navigation bar to share your video on Pinterest.

#5: Create a Board Specifically for Your YouTube Channel
When naming your board, make sure you take SEO (search engine optimization) into consideration. Pinterest can bring you traffic from both inside their community and from Google search.

With that said, you’ll need to take the time to do a bit of research to find the most appropriate keywords to use.


Create your Pinterest board using keywords relevant to your business.
Since I use this Pinterest account to solely feature video content, I’ve created different keyword-rich boards for different types of videos.

#6: Add Keywords in Your Description
When you share your video, don’t leave the description box empty. You’ll want to take advantage of targeted keywords related to your niche.

You have 500 characters to add a complete description.


Add a good description when you share your videos on Pinterest.

#7: Add a Link to Your Blog or Offer Page
If you have a relevant offer page or an email subscription page, you’ll also want to add the complete URL here inside the description box. This not only gives your page a backlink from Pinterest, a trusted source, but it also makes it easy for people to click on your link and land where they can opt into your offer or list.

By making all links active from the description box, Pinterest makes it easy to build a community of loyal followers!


Remember to add the link to your offer page or your subscription page inside the description box when you add your video to Pinterest.

#8: Pin All of Your YouTube Videos
Now that you’ve added your first YouTube video onto Pinterest, make sure you keep a consistent flow.

We add all new videos we upload on YouTube to our Pinterest account as well, as it’s now part of our overall backlink strategy.

When you leverage your YouTube videos on Pinterest, you’re able to take advantage of what I call a double-backlink. When you pin a YouTube video, you automatically create a backlink to your YouTube channel.

This is powerful for SEO because the more backlinks from trusted sources you send to your YouTube channel, the more YouTube will raise your ranking.

The same applies to your website, because you’re creating backlinks to subpages from Pinterest (which is the 38th most-viewed website on the Internet and the 15th most-viewed website in the U.S.), and we all know as marketers that Google loves high-quality backlinks from reputable sites.

Another advantage of this tactic is that you can send Pinterest traffic to your YouTube channel. If you’ve taken time to optimize your channel and videos, you’re able to increase your YouTube subscriber base.

In time, as you continuously produce high-quality video content, you can migrate that original Pinterest traffic to any of your opt-in pages and get those viewers to your email list.

And of course it’s the same scenario when you send Pinterest traffic to your blog or website. As long as you include a strong call to action and obvious opt-in boxes on each page of your blog, you’re able to direct traffic to a place where they can opt into your list.

Combine Your YouTube and Pinterest Strategies for Better Results
When you follow these steps and share your YouTube videos on Pinterest, you’ll multiply your marketing results.

By posting your YouTube videos on Pinterest, you’ll give your Pinterest followers easy-to-click links to your YouTube channel. This means you’re likely to also grow the subscribers to your YouTube channel.

By including links to strategic pages in the pin descriptions, you’ll create useful backlinks to your site. This will likely increase the visibility for your site in Google search results.

Give this tactic a try and combine the power of YouTube and Pinterest to boost your marketing almost effortlessly.

What do you think? Do you use YouTube? Have you posted videos on Pinterest? Has this worked well for you? Please share you comments below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-youtube-to-leverage-pinterest/
author:Krizia de Verdier

23 Sure Fire Ways To Increase Your Traffic

I came across this great blog article about interesting ways to increase traffic to your site which I am sure you will find useful.

We all want more traffic to our websites and blogs, and it can be hard to get it, especially for a newer site. Traffic is so important to an online business. If you double traffic then you can double your earnings, assuming the quality of the traffic is the same. Here are some simple ways to help you increase the traffic to your site.




 Write a humorous post

You can be as clever and as useful as you want, but nothing is more appealing on the internet than a little humour (well expect porn maybe!). At the time of writing, my eighth most popular post on this blog is a humorous look at bad jobs. Posts such as this share well on social network sites, and get eyes on your site. Lots of pictures and a quick punchy style often work. Also make sure you remember to share it at various social networks.

Of course it may not be the most targeted traffic in the world, but sometimes it’s good to get a load of people on your site. A certain percentage will be interested in other things you have to say, especially if your funny content is at least vaguely related to your niche.

Write a huge post
If you write a huge informational post (like this one), then you are likely to attract some natural links to it – hint, hint! Good blog owners know the value of pointing their visitors to great content. They didn’t need to spend ages writing it, yet they have provided it for their visitors, who will be extremely grateful. It is good practice in the blogosphere to link out to great content. If you give your visitors a good experience, then you are going to be more popular yourself. Also some people believe that search engines rewards sites that link out to quality content. Google want their users to be satisfied with their search results. A site that has its own great content AND links to other great content is a real asset, and the search engines probably recognise this and rank them higher.

People also like to share huge informational posts on social networks. You can find that one really great post with loads of work and info can really get the visitors in, who will hopefully also take the time to look at your other content, and perhaps even sign up as a regular visitor.

Facebook fanpage
Here is a great little tip. Create a Facebook fan page, but not strictly about your site or product. Make it related to your niche, and something that a lot of people will click on. For example if you have a site about cars then you might have a fan page called ”I love Ferrari”.

Submit to blog carnivals
I have written a post exclusively on blog carnivals which will provide more information than I possibly can here. In a nutshell, blog carnivals are a collection of links about a certain topic, that are published on someone else’s blog. You just need to submit the link to your blog post with a brief description. If you are accepted you get a one way link to your post, and sometimes to your home page as well. Best of all its free! Click here for more information on blog carnivals, and where to find them.

Hold a competition
Holding a competition with a decent prize can really get the visitors in. $50 is often enough to get people interested. You can even contact other bloggers in your niche who might share the details of your comp with their visitors. The competition might be asking them to do something, such as “like” your Facebook page and Tweet your homepage. A winner can then be drawn out of those who email you with proof they have acted. You can then gain traffic from all the people who have socially bookmarked you, plus the attention from other bloggers. Also visitors might tell their friends to enter as well, although some might be reluctant as it reduces their chances of winning!

Build links to your blog
Getting other sites to link to you is still the best way to rank high in the search engines. Also you benefit from traffic that click through these links directly. There are many ways to attract backlinks. Check out my post Link Building Strategies for more information.

Reduce the amount of adverts and products you sell
Many people are put off by excessive advertising and selling. Of course you’ve got to make some cash, but think about whether you are overdoing it. Other blog owners are far more likely to link to a blog post that isn’t full of adverts and products.

Get A New Banner
Updating and improving your banner is probably the quickest way to give your blog a better look and feel. This does help get the people in as they see your content and opinion as being more trustworthy and professional. Unless you are particularly talented in graphic design, it is usually better to outsource this to someone who does know what they are doing. Sites such as Odesk contain loads of banner designers who will work for a very fair price.

Add a share button
Many novice bloggers and site owners reason that if someone wants to share your content, then they will do so whether there is a share button or not. This is true to some extent, but certainly not entirely. The easier you make it to do something on the internet, the more likely it is that people will do it. Visitors are usually on some sort of time budget, even if it is just psychologically self imposed. They do not like to waste time. If say 100 people click on your great article without a share button, then maybe 1 person will share it. With a share button, that one person will still share it, plus a few more because it is so much easier to do. Then you might also enjoy the knock on effects of when people pass this on again.

Also if a person has to go on a social network to share your content, they could very well get distracted whilst there, and not return to your site.

On this blog I use the pluggin called Add This.

Write Intriguing Headlines
You can go through your old posts and change your headings to make them more intriguing. The secret is to compel people to click on your articles because the title makes them curious. There are several tried and tested techniques that will help you achieve this at my article about writing better headlines.

Link to your own posts
If you have an article or two that is getting a lot, or even some, traffic for a particular keyphrase, then take advantage of this. Do a Google search and if it ranks anywhere less then number one, then it is worth linking to it contextually from some of your other posts with the anchor text of that keyphrase. Hopefully this will move you up a notch or two and give you even more traffic.

Get to know other bloggers in your niche
Visit their blogs regularly and make valuable comments on their articles. You will find that some will eventually visit your blog and also comment. After a while they are far more likely to link trade or link to some of your blog posts, or do other deals with you. You may also attract some of their traffic to your blog if these targeted readers like your thoughts and opinions.

There are also forums and social networks where you can meet other bloggers. This can also help with trading advice and ideas to help each others blogs.

Write a guest post
Find a very popular blog in your niche that is accepting guest posts and write as good an article as you can and submit it. It is better to get published on 1 or 2 top blogs than it is several small ones. A big popular blog will usually be more picky about what they will publish, but you can get far better SEO benefits and direct visitors from the link in your bio. Go for quality over quantity.

Don’t have loud audio or video automatically play
I have talked to many people about this and nearly everyone agrees that when they click on a site and loud audio kicks in, they quickly hit the back button and never return. If you have this on your site, then remove it, or give them the option of pressing play when they are ready. Test this for a week or 2 and I bet your visitor time increases quite a bit.

Pay per click
If you have some great content then you could take a risk and spend some cash on a pay per click campaign. If people like your content enough, they might become regular visitors.

Encourage regular visitors
Encourage visitors to subscribe to you. This may be RSS feeds, newsletters, or email updates. Regular visitors are the lifeblood of a successful blog. Regulars are more likely to comment, contribute, buy products, and recommend you to others. As well as offering ways for people to follow you, also keep reminding them in places such as at the end of a blog post and in your side bar. Of course great content is the key for success here, but making it easier and providing a reminder here and there can really help.

Write about something in the news
There are always hot topics in the news, and a great way to get some traffic is to write about it. With some creative thought, even if it is nothing to do with your niche, you can make it relevant to your blog. A classic example is comparing something with something else. This doesn’t make sense I know! I’ll clarify. During a Presidential election, you could compare running for President with blogging. You could discuss issues such as marketing yourself, mission statements, image etc. The article could be called something like “Why Running For President Is Like Blogging”. This would take advantage of increased searches for the topic round a popular time, plus the headline would arouse curiosity. Many people would want to know why this is so.

Another idea is say Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in the news for some reason, and you run a blog about investment. You can write about all his investments and what you would advise him to invest in, given his circumstances, and why.

Pay for hosting
If you use free hosting, then many people will never take you seriously. It is well worth paying a little bit for your own hosting. It also outs you in control of your business, rather than being at the mercy of these free providers who may change terms and conditions in the future,

Be controversial
You don’t have to criticise people or things needlessly, but a bit of controversy can get eyes pointing your way. Since I advocate ethical affiliate marketing I prefer the approach of holding a view that flies in the face of “conventional wisdom”. So a good weight loss title might be “Why Eating Breakfast Hampers Your Weight Loss”, since it is generally accepted that eating breakfast actually helps with weight loss. If you do want to go down the line of criticising someone who is known and popular, then at least be constructive with it. Give your reasons why they don’t agree with them, rather than just calling them an ass face for no reason!

Sort out tags and keywords
Spend a day going through your past posts and check for popular keyphrases on Google’s keyword tool. You can then update your tags and sprinkle the phrase 2 or 3 times within your article body. This should help your individual posts rise in the search rankings for more popular search terms, and gain more visitors.

Offer freebies
Freebies can create a nice goodwill feeling on your blog, and can attract natural links when people tell other people about them. Also your free gifts can often contain reminders about your website. For instance I give away free hypnotherapy audios, and at the start of each one I remind them of my web address. If you give away a free e book, then there’s nothing to stop you from mentioning and linking to some of your online resources.

Yahoo Answers
You can answer some questions on Yahoo Answers and if relevant, you can point them to some of your resources for further information. Please don’t be spammy with this method. It won’t do you or anyone else any good.

Ask your readers to share
At the end of each post, you could add something that asks if your readers liked the article, they would share on Facebook, Twitter etc. By giving a reminder, you greatly increase your chances of people doing so, which could help drive more traffic your way. So, hint hint, please consider sharing this article if you found it of use!

Do you have any quick and simple tips you can add that will help increase traffic to a blog? If you have, please share them in the comments bellow.

http://www.affiliatehelp.info/2012/10/01/23-sure-fire-ways-to-increase-your-traffic/
author:Jon Rhodes

Video Marketing Tips For Smart Bloggers - Drive Massive Traffic Plus Income!

Are you the one who has got strong visualizations? Do you find visualizing your thoughts more interesting as compared to articulating them? Are you the one who is more into background color, music and other video effects while watching a movie? To wrap up, are you a video freak? If yes, how many times have you thought to turn your freakiness into cash? If you have not given it a thought before; do it now! Because we are going to tell you the right ways that could satisfy your passion and drive you massive traffic and finally massive income through overwhelming ad impressions. All you need is to create videos and upload them smartly!

We would highly recommend that you read these tutorials parallel to this one:

• How come video Blogging is the way to drive traffic?
• How To Make a video popular in YouTube?
  
  
  
  

Become a VideoGrapher:

You can think of turning your passion into profession. Just like any other career, you need to pay attention and work hard for it. Since, it is not easy to produce competitive videos without proper knowledge. As the very first step, you need to determine the type of services you will be providing i.e. will you be filming weddings only or do you plan to offer extensive editing and professional commercial videos. You may prefer to take some video editing courses to learn film aesthetics, web compression, DVD compression, adding after effects, mixing of soundtracks and the use of film-making programs etc..
Of course, you need some equipment as well such as digital video camcorder camera, lots of storage, editing software, audio equipment etc..
You can then sell your videos online, as there are many sites waiting for your creativity. You can sell your videos to istockvideo, rever or can make on demand videos at Google; just to name a few.

-Promote on Video Sharing Sites:

YouTube is the largest video sharing network and people are earning lots of money by uploading videos there. You can even make a channel of your own, just like bloggers prefer having their own blog, to generate handsome living. But, do not stick to one site only. Make your videos viral by sharing them on top 10 video sharing sites.
1) YouTube
2) Metacafe
3) Dailymotion
4) Blip.tv
5) Veoh
6) VideoEgg
7) Grouper
8) Jumpcut
9) AOL
10) Eyespot
You must be thinking now that we should have described “how you can make your videos popular at such sites?” Of course, we are aware of your queries and to answer them we have got a complete post; http://www.mybloggertricks.com/2011/05/how-to-make-video-popular-in-youtube.html

-Promote on Pinterest

Here comes your stunning showcase; Pinterest! You can pin your photos to feel the taste of flicker and can re-pin or comment on it, if you are addicted to facebook. Missing the video giant? You don’t need to miss it anymore because pinterest lets you upload your videos as well. So now you have your videos besides your photos on the same wall. If anyone is following your pins, he/she would definitely have a look at your videos unintentionally. It is just like that you entered to buy a showpiece but you came out with a painting, because it won your appreciation. Hence, do not forget to pin your videos at pinterest and make full use of it. It can gain drive traffic more than your imagination.

-Video Blogging—broadcast your blog:

If you are running a blog but unable to drive enough traffic; you can use video making skills to attract the crowd. Make videos relevant to the posts you publish. If you are writing tutorials; it would be a great idea to show all the steps in the video with audio recording as per needed. You can then upload these videos on video sharing networks such YouTube, MetaCafe and DailyMotion. Don’t forget to mention your blog link in the video. Promote some of your other post topics in the end so that people follow you on your blog to find out what you have got. This would result in creating two different traffic sources for same content; search robots would crawl the text and the videos will gain traffic from video networks.

5 Smart Tips To Make a Better Video:

We will quickly share some of the fundamental tips that you need to consider while making videos.

1-Your video should be easily understandable with subtitles, if required.

2-Present quality tutorials with easy to follow steps. Don’t make fast moves while teaching someone.

3-Do not speak too fast even if you are fluent enough with English because many people find it difficult to grab. Use simple language and speak as if you are talking to a naïve.

4-Apply all the SEO tips and tricks for selecting the title, adding the description and tag it properly.

5-Do not try to make video for nothing. Create one when its need is properly justified.

Your Say:

Today’s post was a bit different and did not focus our blogger fellows. Still, our blogger friends should give thought to video blogging because if you are not good at making video; you still have an option to embed one from YouTube that will add spice to your post. You can also make simple tutorials which consist of desktop recording using camtasia or camstudio. All this will add up to your current blog and website traffic and increase the number of your daily unique visitors and page impressions.  How did you find our post? Was it informative enough or did we miss something?We are waiting for your positive criticism.
Cheers!

source:
http://www.mybloggertricks.com/2012/04/video-marketing-tips-for-smart-bloggers.html