Creating and sharing visual content has been a marketing trend for several years now and it’s not about to fade anytime soon. In fact, it has now become a MUST for any businesses that wants to be noticed on the internet. These statistics testify to the power of visual content, especially when properly utilized as part of your social media strategy. [Read more…]
How Partnerships Expand Capabilities and Benefit Everyone
Panoptic Online Marketing celebrates a very special anniversary this month: it’s been one year since we teamed up with Kathy Estadt of Fresh Focus Group, our sales and marketing partner agency based in Daphne, Alabama. With a background in strategic planning, new product development, brand management and advertising, Kathy rounded out Panoptic’s capabilities nicely, providing insights that give our technical SEO and PPC staff a richer, more informed foundation on which to build online marketing strategies and execute plans for Kathy’s local clients. [Read more…]
The Beginner’s Guide to Visual Content
In 2015, visual content creation became one of the hottest trends in online marketing, especially with the rise in popularity of visually-inclined social networks such as Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat and Vine. Popular social networks (like Facebook and Twitter) have also started putting visuals in the center stage and all for a good reason: visual content, if done correctly, helps increase brand awareness, engagement and website traffic.
Why Visual Content?
You might have heard it a hundred times: 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. And not just that, studies and data have shown how effective visual content in grabbing your audience’s attention. [Read more…]
Friendlier Facebook and Twitter – Your “Reaction?”
Over the last few months Facebook and Twitter have been rolling out changes and new features in an effort to improve the user experience (something everybody running a website should strive to do). But are these changes having the desired effect? It might still be too early to say, but here’s a look at what’s new and our thoughts on whether these changes actually improve our experience.
Facebook “Reactions”
Facebook users have long been pleading for a “Dislike” button so when Facebook announced that there were going to be including new ways to “Like” posts many thought that the time for giving a thumbs-down had finally come. Nope, sorry! Instead of this simple extra option Facebook introduced “Reactions.” Now we have six different ways to express our feelings regarding a post: “Like,” “Love,” “Ha,” “Wow,” “Sad,” or “Angry.” Depending on how they’re applied and interpreted, these emoticons can convey a sort of dislike, but it seems that Facebook is trying to keep the level of negativity — already rampant on social media — to a minimum. Smart, maybe – but not what we wanted.
The problem for Facebook is that so far Reactions are barely being used. In Quintly‘s recent study analyzing Facebook interactions Likes still get the lion’s share with over 75%; Reactions comprise only 3%. The feature is still fairly new and may gain traction, but so far it hasn’t made much of an impact with Facebook users.
However, Reactions might prove more useful to marketers. Knowing a little more about how readers interact with your business content can help you refine your marketing message. Business website owners and marketers may want to think about creating content that is designed to induce a Reaction,” like videos, which have been shown to elicit more reactions than other types of posts, including images.
Beyond the Twitter Limits
Since its launch Twitter has been adamant about not expanding its 140 character limit, but that’s about to change… sort of. In the coming months links and images will no longer count towards Twitter’s 140 character limit. The change is a long time coming, and Twitter admins that including links and images in the total character count winds up being and headache and impediment to its users. It also isn’t really necessary anymore since Twitter is no longer an SMS (text message) platform.
Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter, explained it best when he said that if you’re thinking about character limits and URLs “then you’re just thinking a lot about Twitter instead of what you’re saying. We shouldn’t make you think about Twitter.”
Another thing you won’t have to think about is usernames (aka Twitter handles). Handles included in replies will no longer count towards the character limit, and, better yet, you won’t have to put a period before them. The aim here is to simplify the way we view replies. Before the change, if a period wasn’t placed before the Twitter handle then it would not appear in a follower’s’ feed unless the reader also followed the user/handle cited in the tweet. Clearly this was an unnecessary complication that Twitter was wise to do away with.
All in all, these recent changes make both Facebook and Twitter a bit friendlier — and certainly a more expressive environment.
The Social Side of SEO
Too often, SEO consultants fail to consider how sharing your original content across channels like Twitter, G+ and LinkedIn can influence your site’s rankings in search results; but social media marketing can improve SEO and plays an important role in any comprehensive online marketing plan.
It’s an established fact that if you want to draw traffic to your website you need to offer useful (and hopefully engaging) content that will attract your target audience and provide the search engines with more robust information by which to assess your website’s value to searchers. Content is still king, but social media marketing is an extremely useful tool for distributing your content to the right people – that is, those most likely to be interested in your products or services.
Social Media Cover Photos 101 (Updated for 2016)
Social media is fueled by the sharing of visual content. Some platforms, like Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr are built almost exclusively around visual content. So, if you’re seeking to gain visibility for your business via social media networks it’s important to know how to use images to their best effect.
There are a plethora of social media channels and all of them have different optimal dimensions for images. Below we’ve provided a “cheat sheet” that sums it all up.
Case Study: SEO for Ecommerce Website
Late last summer, a manufacturing client came to us for help with their e-commerce website, which they believed to be underperforming. With over 20 years in the hair care products business, our client was generating over a million dollars in revenue annually and was hoping to expand into online sales — a natural next step for any manufacturer. After all, selling products via the website is almost a no-brainer – it requires no additional sale force and has the potential to bring in as much, if not more, income than offline sales. [Read more…]
Social Media Readiness: Three Points to Consider
So you want to start promoting your business on social media – great idea! The benefits of social media marketing should be fairly obvious by now: greater exposure for your products and services, a chance to interact directly with customers and potential customers – there are even SEO benefits as Google, Bing and other search engines increasingly include social factors when assigning ranking values to web pages. [Read more…]
Live Streaming Facebook
Facebook is going live…for everyone! Similar to what Meerkat and Periscope have done to enable Twitter users to live stream events, Facebook now allows all “verified users” (so far that’s public figures and big brands) to invite any or all Facebook users to view their live broadcasts. The feature is currently in testing for the general public, though it’s not clear exactly when it will be rolled out more broadly. [Read more…]
Using Hashtag to Optimize Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns
When it comes to social media marketing, using hashtags is a must if you want to increase your chances of having your posts found outside your existing network to be seen by a wider audience.
Introduced in Twitter in 2007 as a way of tagging and grouping tweets, the famous hash (pound) symbol has made its way into almost all major social media channels. The word hashtag became so popular in 2009-2010 that it was even added to the Oxford Dictionary. [Read more…]