Are you aware that Youtube has 1 billion monthly active users and online video now accounts for 50 percent of all mobile traffic and up to 69 percent of traffic on certain networks? This is a massive number of content hungry web visitors that love to watch and share great videos.

Creating video content is certainly more challenging than simply tweeting or posting on your Facebook wall, however, I believe its effect is greater. Humans are visuals by nature and videos are a magnificent way to make them stick to your brand.

Need prove? See Psy who came pretty much out of nowhere and within few months his video was the most watched ever on Youtube.

Here is an infographic (Brafton team) that shows you how to use Youtube for business, tips and a step-by-step guide to get you started. Points 2 and 8 are the most important, make no mistake, if your content is not great then you have no chances of succeeding, there is no shortcut in this.

Here are few types of videos that tend to work very well, however, again the only way to find out what works best is to try and measure.

• Something I had never seen before (a dog driving a car)
• Something I learned how to do (how cook a new dish)
• Something that affects me emotionally (love, pain, terror, fear, humor)
• Something I love doing in my free time (watch soccer games, flying planes)

I have been a great advocate of responsive web design and one of the reasons is the seamless brand experience you get across various devices, this just rocks. Thewebcitizen.com has been running on responsive design since late January 2013 with a great increase in user engagement.

So, do all websites need to run on responsive design? As long as you decide to go mobile then this is the way to go, I believe that creating a separate mobile site looses the brand harmony you get on responsive. Although many argue that the cost to run on responsive design is high, this will eventually go down, so, if you plan a website redesign go responsive.

Who does it great? Here are 5 examples of great responsive design.

1. Nuts.com

2. Techinasia.com

3. Thewebcitizen.com

4. Starbucks.com

5. Skinnyties.com

I do not believe that Search Engine Optimization is changing, rather it is adjusting to today’s challenges, risks and way people interact online. Here is a very good infographic by the CognitiveSEO team that presents the various SEO techniques used by many of us, however, do you really know that what you do is a white hat or black hat practice? Black hat are methods that are not acceptable, in other words illegal.

If I had to sum up all these into few sentences I would say, create content that your visitors learn something out of it and they love to share it with their friends, optimize it for humans who use search engines and distribute it via social media. Oh yeah, and be patient, it takes time to see some serious results from your SEO strategy.

Get a blog and be a content producer, search engines (basically Google) start to give more weight on quality content, do your visitors share it with their friends? If they do, then what you create has some value and Google will reward you for this.

Work on your social media profiles; build a reliable and trustworthy source of information, by creating great content you are positioning yourself on Google magic algorithm as an expert in your industry.

Here are few great SEO tools to optimize your content, I have used both and highly recommend:

- SEOmoz – My favorite SEO tool with tons of features, there is a 30 Days Free Trial
- SEO Yoast wordpress plugin – Best wordpress SEO plugin by far, very easy to use

So, here is black hat vs white hat SEO battle

Traffic means the world to any blogger, whether they are keeping a blog for business or as a hobby. However, it can be very difficult for a brand new blog to build a large and loyal audience, especially considering how many blogs are out there today.

So, here are 6 steps to increase traffic to your blog:

Create Your Blog Using WordPress

There is a reason that thousands of people start a new WordPress blog every week, and it is not only because the software is free. This content management system is preferred by bloggers because it is simple and easy to use, there are many innovative and creative WordPress themes available, and knowledge of HTML is not required. Anyone can launch a WordPress blog in no time at all.

Choosing the Right SEO Plugins for Your Blog

WordPress blogs generally receive higher search engine rankings than other blogging platforms anyway, but there are plugins available that can further increase search engine optimization. There are premium and free SEO plugins available that will help you optimize the content within your website. One of the most highly recommended SEO plugins currently is Yoast, but there are many other great options as well.

Include Share Buttons on Every Blog Post

The easier it is for readers to share blog posts, the more frequently they will do so. There are many WordPress Themes and social media plugins that make it possible to add social media sharing buttons to every post. In order to avoid making your posts seem too cluttered, and to make the buttons more noticeable, it is best to include sharing buttons for the most popular social media platforms only. Having readers share your information not only exposes your content to new readers, but can also significantly improve your search engine rankings.

Create Customized 404 Error Pages for Your Blog

This often-overlooked step can make a huge difference in terms of web traffic. If readers encounter the dreaded 404 error page when browsing your website, there is a good chance that they will become frustrated leave your website altogether. If the 404 page is customized with a personal message from the administrator of the website, this can be much more welcoming and reassuring for the visitor.

On the custom 404 page, there should of course be an apology, but there should also be links to other pages within the website. Instead of losing the reader to competing blogs, you simply guide them to a functioning webpage and retain that traffic.

Get Involved With Guest Posting

Guest posting is when you write material for other blogs, and have guest bloggers submit material for your blog. This is a beneficial relationship for both bloggers because the guest posts will include links to the other blog, which can increase traffic and is an effective SEO method. When guest blogging on other websites, do not submit the same post to multiple blogs; each of your guest blogs should be unique and original.

Use Google Analytics to Track Your Progress

Google Analytics can easily be installed to any WordPress blog, and is used in order to monitor a website’s traffic and activity. These reports can help you understand which blog topics are generating the most traffic, and where that traffic is coming from. This information can provide great value as you determine which topics should be covered in the future, and which of your online marketing campaigns are effectively driving new traffic to your website. Your online marketing efforts can be better allocated to the strategies that have been proven to work.

This is a great presentation you need to share with your fellow marketers and sales teams. IBM reaches customers today by creating and sharing great content, so if you do the same thing then you are probably on the right path, in other words, embracing Inbound Marketing, what strategies and tools shall we use to be found online?

If you do not do it already, then you need to seriously start thinking about it, Inbound Marketing costs 62% less to reach potential customers as opposed to traditional marketing mediums such as newspapers, TV ads and cold calls.

The formula remains simple, what it requires however is, clear direction, long term thinking, patience and persistence.

{Create superb content, optimize it for humans who use search engines and distribute it via social media.}

Feel free to pass it around

Social media black hat practices start to become very popular among web marketers who either do not get it or do it intentionally. In any way, do not take any chances, go by the rules and focus in the long run. For those who are new to it, black hat are practices that MUST be avoided as they are against ethical and legal norms, in other ways, cheating to get better results.

Before you even decide doing any form of black hat marketing, ask yourself, does it really worth risking my business and personal reputation for quick results? It has never worked and it never will, what it will bring to the long run is careful planning and fanatic social media execution.

So, here are 5 Black hat social media practices every marketer must avoid

1. Buy followers and fans
Unfortunately, this practice becomes very common, there is a misconception that by buying Likes, Fans or Followers will be able to reach a greater audience, hence increase the chances of success. This is way far from truth; you will end up with thousands of fans that have no connection to your brand, quality is more important and quantity. Furthermore, what if one of these purchased fans posts to your Facebook page “ Hey thanks for paying me to follow you “ how would you handle such cases?
Getting fans without putting any effort at all does not help your team build new social media skills, productivity reduces and you end up with a lousy social media presence.

2. Create fake messages/posts
It is easier than you think to spot fake comments or posts, so do not try to do that, you will end up making things worse than better. Let the discussions run naturally, it is acceptable to have bad comments since you are just a live entity, a business that can make mistakes. As with buying followers and fans, if you do not see actual comments you will not be able to improve on what you do.

3. Comment on other pages just to get links and traffic
It is normal to visit other social media pages and groups only to share great content but otherwise do not do it. You will be spotted as spammer and be banned. The only reason you can create a meaningful linking strategy is if you post content people love to share with their friends. This way you not only bring in traffic to your own pages, you also have higher chances of increasing your fan base.

4. Use promo messages on cover photos
Facebook has made this very clear, no promo messages or call to actions are allowed on the time line cover photos. Play by the rules and avoid shortcuts, they just do not work. Use images that represent your brand experience, how does it feel if I use your product or what kinds of experience do I get? Do not be stingy with your cover photos, if needed; buy quality stock photos that represent what your brand stands for in your customers’ mind. Do not forget, Internet is all about visuals.

5. Copying others content/images
Another practice seeing quite often, it is usual to go around and see what your competitors do, however, do not just copy them, instead use others’ content as a base to create yours. Take the parts you really like and adjust them to your own brand and audience. It makes no sense to do something because your competitors do it, unless, it can really add value to your brand online.

If you are new to online marketing or you need a good wrap up on where you should focus your efforts, then you need to save the following infographic created by the Synecore team. I can tell you from personal experience that these 5 core elements of online content marketing work well, as long as your key component, that is content, adds value to your fans, customers and visitors. Give a reason to your website visitors, your fans and your customers to spread the word about your brand and these 5 elements can help do that.

Video seems to be the hardest to create, since it does require some sort of technical equipment and editing to be made, nevertheless, see this as a challenge that will position your brand ahead of competition.

These elements are good for both B2B and B2C engagements, as long as the content is adjusted accordingly, for instance, do not try to teach a married to be couple how to use social media for business, instead, create a white paper on wedding day checklist.

Which of these 5 elements do you currently use? Do you see any results?

Have fun and make sure you share the wealth

So, here is how we increased mobile engagement by 84% in just 1 month. Thewebcitizen was running for the past year on a mobile wordpress plugin called wptouch. The plugin offers a basic mobile setup for any blog, it is free to get, the interface is clean and easy to navigate. Well known blogs run on this plugin, therefore, the choice was certainly a good one.

However, since Mashable called 2013 the year of responsive design, we decided to give it a try (just kidding) do these guys have any idea what are they talking about? Apparently they do, so after careful planning with our design team, we moved on and launched Thewebcitizen.com on a responsive mode end of January 2013.

So, here are the results, the time users stay on the website now has nearly doubled, visitors view more pages per session and the bounce rate dropped as well. We did not take into account the 4x times increase on visit duration from a non mobile site to a responsive design because we could not compare apples with oranges, although, the growth on visits duration from non mobile site to a mobile site was just 17%

What is the verdict? In our case, responsive design works great, its seamless experience make visitors stick to it and spend more time navigating around, however, we still need to see a consistent trend for at least another three months to make this statement conclusive; however, I believe that would be the case. Click here to see how Thewebcitizen.com looks great across all devices.

Make sure you do not miss our latest post 10 tips about responsive website design, a great guide to help you get started.

So, will you give it a try and move on a responsive design? What are your plans?

One of the reasons majority of blogs fail is due to lack of great content, well, blogging and social media are built on the foundation of great content, therefore without it you have no chance of succeeding. Unfortunately, there are still only few businesses that realize the power of blogging when it comes to social media as well.

Create great blog posts – Optimize them for humans who search on search engines (not simply for search engines) – Distribute content via social media.

Furthermore, optimized content will help you rank higher on search engines, as they love fresh content that humans share on social media.

Although there is no such thing as a magic recipe to create a successful blog but creating great content and letting the word know about it, experience has shown me that there are 15 types of content that work really well.

No such thing as one size fits all, so you just try, evaluate and retry. All 15 types of blog content cost you close to no money to create; therefore, you have nothing to lose but to gain something.

1.     Share your successes

Let the world know about your achievements, it helps you build your personal brand.

2.     Share your failures

Do not be shy to share the mistakes you made, help others to avoid them

3.     Invite guest bloggers

Build relationships with other bloggers in your industry, create a network, and expand your horizons

4.     Interview someone

Allow other companies to share their experiences with your audience

5.     Review something

Give your opinion ONLY on products/services you used, I believe you should never review just 1 product, because it will be perceived as an advertisement and will affect your credibility

6.     Create awards

Create new standards in your industry; awards will help you build awareness and backlinks “ Best food blog award “

7.     Best case studies

Share best practices, the reasons a particular campaign or strategy was successful

8.     Worst case studies

Share bad practices, the reasons a particular campaign or strategy failed

9.     Infographics

A great way to present data with graphics, it also helps you build backlinks and create awareness

10.  Videos – Photos

Great videos and photos go viral very fast; just make sure they are relevant to your audience

11.  Trends

Share research statistics about your industry, trends, challenges and what lies in the future; make sure your resources are reliable

12.  Create a contest

Allow visitors to vote for the best app in your industry and reward them for that; it helps you build backlinks and awareness

13.  Presentations

Great presentations can go viral as long as you teach people something new; they also help you build backlinks and brand awareness

14.  How to guides

Tell me “ How to “ to do something, show me a step by step “ How to create a contest on Facebook “

15.  Lists

Show a list of best tools to solve a problem, such as apps to create Facebook contests

Which of these types of content do you use?

Photo by brewbooks

Mashable has called 2013 the year of responsive design and with the mobile internet usage to be taking off, their prediction is probably correct. But what is a responsive design? A change in the design CSS code allows it to be view able at a desktop/laptop, mobile and tablet devices. You do not need a mobile site anymore; all you need is a responsive website design.

Responsive design provides seamless branding experience across all devices and costs much less to implement than a mobile site.

Thewebcitizen.com runs on a responsive design, so here is a sample on how it looks in different devices.

Does that mean that mobile apps will become extinct? Nope, but their usage will be focused on heavy applications such as SaaS (Software as a service) platforms, for instance Dropbox or Instagram.

This infographic created by the Splio team provides 10 good responsive design tips to help you get started, feel free to share it.

I come across many blogs on a weekly basis, trying to read as much valuable content as possible, however, I realize that many so called well known blogs, have very few of their visitors share the content on social media. You would rather have 1000 visitors a month and all of them share the content you produce with their friends, than 100,000 visitors and none of them spread the word on what you do, active visitors are key to promoting your content and growing your blog.

The world has moved from a passive audience, who just reads, to a very active, who shares content that makes difference in their lives. A piece of content, blog post or social media post, with no Likes, Tweets, Pins shows that no one really cared about it, it was not interesting at all.

Have you ever wondered why is this happening? With my two years of blogging experience I came up with 9 reasons none is sharing your blog content:

1. Not interesting title – Title is the first thing that catches reader’s attention, with so much information flow coming on a daily basis, without an interesting title none will even visit your blog posts.
2. Irrelevant content – Do you run a blog about online marketing and you keep posting food recipes? Well, then you are producing the wrong content for the wrong audience.
3. Does not solve a problem – Did the post help your readers solve a problem? If not then, why should they share it with their friends? Help your audience learn something new and solve a problem. If you run an online marketing blog then teach your readers how to perform specific tasks such as “ How to increase your twitter followers “ or “ 10 ways to increase your Facebook likes “
4. Use language hard to understand – Unless your blog is targeting Phd Graduates in Astronomy then you better write in a manner that everyone understands. Use plain language that even elementary school students understand.
5. Too long posts – People just scan online, they do not read too long posts, so keep it relatively short, I would say max 1000 words and use bullet points, it helps the eye focus on the main content.
6. No social sharing buttons – It is perfectly acceptable to use big bubble social media buttons at your posts, make it clear to everyone what you want them to do, SHARE IT BABE!
7. You proved wrong in the past – Well, make sure you know what you write, because if you keep producing false content none will take the risk and share it with their friends, would you share a tip with your friends if you knew information is not credible? Probably not. It affects your credibility.
8. Do not promote the posts – Did you spread the word about your new posts? Posted on Facebook and Linkedin groups? Shared it with your email list? Your twitter followers? How do you expect people to know about your new post?
9. You just started blogging – It is normal that none shares your content when you start blogging; it takes time to build trust, be patient, persistent and have a clear plan in mind. Have a look at one of Thewebcitizen.com early post, it sucks.

What are the reasons you do not share a blog post?

There is no doubt that Search Engine Optimization has changed a lot in the past few years. Google’s Panda and Penguin updates show a clear direction into giving more emphasis on the social aspect of a website, in other words, how do actual humans view your website content? Do they Like it, Re tweet or Google plus it? Do they share it with their friends? Quality content is not determined by the number of visits a piece of content receives but by its viewers’ actions, if I share a great blog posts with my friends then Google will give it greater SEO weight.

This infographic by the Fuzz One Media team sums up all you need to know about the new face of SEO.

Does this mean that we need to forget about SEO basics? Certainly now, however, they will not be as important as they used to be. The key is to create great content, on a regular basis that your fans love to share it with their friends. If this happens often then Google puts you on higher search results because you denote authority to influence others. You need to adopt a long-term planning to see actual results from Search engine optimization strategy.

Mobile will also play a more important role on SEO rankings, is your website design responsive? Oh yeah, the new trend that will shake the mobile industry once more. I will be doing a separate post about responsive web design.

Feel free to share the infographic and spread the wealth

Have you ever thought why some businesses experienced tremendous success on their social media strategies? All it takes is creating great content that makes people crazy to share it with their friends. There is no magic formula but hard and consistent work. Think yourself as a standalone newspaper that needs to find or create content that everyone wants to SHARE.

Instead of trying to find out what type of content your fans want; put yourself in their shoes, would you share the piece of content you created? Would it make you go crazy and spread the word about it? If yes, then you are on the right track.

Here are 5 types of content that have proved to help businesses increase engagement on social networks:

1. Photos – Internet is all about visuals, therefore having a lot of photos at your social media profiles on a daily basis is essential. It does not mean that any photos will work, make sure they are relevant to your content and most importantly are worth taking a look at them. Invest in a good camera and build your photography skills, look around for ideas and be willing to learn. You will be surprised the difference to the level of engagement a great photo makes compared to an average one. Avoid copying photos, you can either buy royalty free ones or simply go out and create content yourself. For example, if you run a hotel, go around your city, take a lot of photos from your city’s traveler’s hot spots, watermark them and publish them. Do not forget, the more photos your show the more time your visitors will stay at your pages.

2. Videos – Similarly to the photos are videos, they work great because it is human nature to just sit and watch a great video. Again, content must be great and worth taking the time to watch. On the contrary to photos, it is harder to produce high quality videos because it requires more time and resources. You do not need quantity but quality. Invest in a good video camera, write the script yourself and start shooting. Make sure you add your logo and play around with the animations.

3. Voting Polls – Voting polls are viral by nature; it is just human nature to answer a question and most importantly wanting to see what others think about it as well. They can be as simple as “how did you spend your weekend “and does not require a lot of critical thinking. Do not forget, the hardest your content is to be understood the easiest to be ignored. Furthermore, people feel good when someone is asking them about their daily activities; they feel that someone cares about them, so this someone better be you and not your competitors. There are many voting polls apps for all social media networks, just stick to the simplest ones.

4. Contests – Social media contents are also another great tool to increase engagement with your fans and followers. However, it requires planning and most importantly a prize hard to resist. There are plenty of apps out there to create contents. It can be linked to a local event e.g F1 race or just a standalone competition. Create great visuals and build as much publicity as you can around it. Photo contests are great examples of successful social media contests as they viral by nature e.g vote for your favorite place in your city, or favorite Halloween costume.

5. Exclusive content – If you want to increase engagement for a special social media network advocates, create content available only for them. Exclusive videos, photos, special discounts, or celebrity interviews are great means to achieve that. Make sure the content is appealing to your audience, it is not distributed anywhere else and it is difficult for the mass to get access to it.

Example: Exclusive photos of the F1 Race in Monaco; Planning & Executing (There is a high chance that only few will be able to attend such an event as opposed to a Halloween party, so here comes exclusivity and difficulty for the mass to get access to it)
1. Assign your team to take hundreds (the more the better) of photos before, during and after the event.
2. Send out a newsletter and let everyone know about this exclusive content.
3. Create a new tab at your Facebook page and require for visitors to like your page before viewing the content.
4. Promote the posts at the social network (Facebook promoted posts have 10x higher click through and engagement rate)

Finding out what content works the best for your audience requires a lot of trial and error events, collect data and based on it decide where to focus.

Which of these 5 types of content do you use?

Mobile marketing apps are in great demand these days. Smartphones like iPhone5, Samsung galaxy S3, HTC droid, Google nexus, LG Optimus etc. have numerous apps related to business, fitness, health, finance; marketing etc. App developers are increasing the functionality of these applications which do multiple tasks. These apps made marketer’s life easy and improved their productivity.

Here are some successful apps that help marketer boost their business sales.

Evernote: As a marketer, you need to think about different ideas to boost your sales. Now you can store your ideas at any point of time using Evernote tool. Capture your ideas while on the go. Once you create an account, you can access the information any time. It will automatically synchronise and update your notes so that you can go through the latest information. This acts as a virtual notepad which is an important tool that keeps you up-to-date with market news.

- Synchronise your files

- Create to-do lists, task lists

- Prioritise your notes

- Save or bookmark important notes

- Email notes and tweets to EverNote account.

Dropbox: This is an amazing tool for collecting and sharing the files with different clients. Download Dropbox and share your files whenever required. The best feature of this tool is that you can send large files through emails or can inform your business partner to access the data.

- Keep a track of your ideas

- Share your documents

- Edit your documents

- Can save important email attachments

- Share photos and videos to Dropbox

Hoot suite: Measure your social media tools using hoot suite. You can post, monitor and can check your progress on social networks. You can post important contents on popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. It gives detailed analytics which help you to identify the number of followers, traffic and organic clicks. By using this app, you can interact with followers at any time and can solve their queries.

- Manage your social network account at one location using this app

- Supports multiple accounts.

- You can upload photos, receive notifications, view status of the website etc.

- Program your twitter schedules while on the go

- Comment on your status.

Eventbrite: Book your events in advance using Eventbrite. You can track your customer details and can make backend reports. So, you can keep track of upcoming events on your Smartphone in an easy manner.

- Determine the events happening in your niche

- Find upcoming events

- Get the details of event information

- Promote your event data

- Sell your event tickets.

Statigram:  As a marketer you need to measure your social media progress. Now you can track this information using Statigram. This app is getting popular in the present days. This feature is attained by Facebook and it also used by different marketing campaigns. It gives information regarding famous photos and notifies to post new photos when required. It displays the statistical date related to number of likes, traffic, no of visitors etc.

- Gives statistics of instagram accounts.

- You can get the customer rating with filters.

- Manage your conversations

- Analyse your activities

- Engage your customers in contents.

About the Author:

This guest post is contributed by Zara,financial guest blogger. At present she is focusing on ppi claims . catch her @financeport

This post was originally posted at Jeff Bullas blog, thanks @jeffbullas

It has been one year since you launched your Facebook page and you still have a very low number of likes but most importantly none of your fans are talking about your brand.

Before I move on, you need to understand that it takes time for your social media investment to realize any return; this is why I intentionally said, one year. Investing in social media, as in any other field, requires patience and long term thinking. Anything that is worthwhile takes time to build and growing tribes and followers on social networks and creating community takes focused effort.

One way to think of it is like building a house…”one brick at a time“. In the case of social media it is one piece of content at a time.

So, in other words, your Facebook page sucks and there are many out there that really do.

So, here are 4 reasons why your Facebook page sucks:

1. No social media strategy

What is the goal of your Facebook page? Get more likes? Increase brand awareness? Increase sales? Actually, it can consist of all these goals; however, you need to be very clear. This will help you determine the tools and tactics you need to use in order to achieve your goals. Do not just launch a Facebook page because your competitors have one. A key factor to a successful social media strategy is having the right resources available, so make sure you have everything you need to make things happen.

2. No updated content

Make no mistake here, the only reason people visit a Facebook page is because of its content. If you do not post anything, none will visit your Facebook page. We live in a very fast moving world where yesterday’s news is outdated content. Post content very often, if possible once a day. In fact 3-4 times per day is better.

There is no short cut on this.

3. Your content is boring

When you own a restaurant, make sure you post content related to food, drinks and entertainment and not only your latest promotions. When people come to your page, they are looking for interesting and fun content:

• They want to see what your new menu is
• New dishes you recommend
• Teach them how to cook one of your dishes
• Tell them where to find other great food within your city
• Ask for customers to leave a review
• Show them a video on how you prepare your flag dish

In other words, the content must be relevant to your business and most importantly engaging and exciting. This does not mean that you should never post any special promotions or deals, however, do it moderately and collect feedback on what your fans really want to see.

4. You do not post any photos

The Facebook timeline is focusing entirely on visual content; hence, if you decide to keep posting long text messages, none will read them. Invest in getting high quality pictures that attract attention, it is human nature to stumble upon great visual content. There are plenty of tools available to help you edit your pictures and make them look appealing.

If you are doing any of these 4 mistakes, you need to take immediate action. Decide what you social media goals are, format a plan and execute.