jeudi 5 décembre 2013

How Changes in Social Media Will Help Bloggers In 2014

Guest Post - Our host is Ben Taylor, Ben is taking a look at the changes we can expect to social media in 2014.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

October was a big month for social media. Twitter finally ousted HootSuite and other third-parties by introducing its own Scheduled Tweet program. It also added the option of allowing people who follow you to send you direct messages (you used to need to be following them first). Facebook, meanwhile, has added the ability to edit posts. Google+ is also creeping into other Google properties, requiring the use of real names in comments and posts.

So what do these changes mean for bloggers? Will they need to change their social media tactics to benefit from these newest steps? Let’s look at each platform and examine how a blogger’s day-to-day might change.

Twitter

First, the addition of Scheduled Tweets to Twitter will simply make it easier to schedule Tweets concerning articles and webcasts for those who already do so via HootSuite. For those who haven’t been using HootSuite, of course, this can be a golden opportunity to begin scheduling Tweets to increase their blog’s visibility. Take care when scheduling Tweets, however- if you make a blunder or Tweet in poor context, you’ll find yourself under fire faster than you can delete the offending message.

Guest posting has become important for both marketers and for bloggers. The influx of fresh content, sometimes quality and sometimes not, is a good way to make sure that your blog is always up-to-date. Twitter’s move to optionally allow followers to be able to direct message you could be a godsend for bloggers who want to encourage easily filtered guest post offers, especially around the holidays when time to post is scarce. This new feature, paired with an announcement on your contact page, could make for very easy perusing of guest post ideas- all people must do to pitch is follow you and send a direct message to you with a short pitch and their email.



Facebook

Obviously, the ability to edit statuses will cause a good amount of havoc. Once a post has been changed, any replies to it won’t make sense anymore. However, bloggers can use this ability to their benefit. This is good for bloggers because nothing hurts traffic worse than misinformation. Adding hashtags or adding a note about a significant reblog or comment can also increase your traffic without needing to make a new post altogether.

Also, if you’re posting a snippet of an article onto your Facebook page to increase prominence, it’s comforting to know that you can edit that snippet if you need to improve the grammar or change the URL. Especially if you need to change something for accuracy in an article, it’s important to be able to edit your Facebook post as easily as you can edit the article, itself.

Google+ and YouTube

Also in the social media news, there has been much nay saying concerning Google’s ambition to connect all of its services and force users to post everything under their real name, notably YouTube comments. Google has been trying to boost its social media platform, Google+, to little success in the past 2 years. The incorporation of YouTube into this network is a calculated way of ensuring that Google+ gets traffic and becomes more heavily used.

For the average person, this is not a welcome change. For the blogger, however, this can be exceedingly useful. Your most valuable asset when blogging is your reputation and especially your name. Having your name attached to your activities should be a positive when trying to gain traffic to your site. The downside might be a loss of privacy and a need to take more care in what you post. But as successful bloggers are people who manage their online reputations fastidiously, these things shouldn’t be intimidating.

The bottom line is that social media is evolving in ways that benefit bloggers. That is, if you’re willing to put in just a little extra effort.

AuthorBy Guest Author - Ben Taylor is a social media studying, coffee drinking, hat wearing child of the digital age. He currently writes for social media optimization company, Eloqua.

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lundi 13 mai 2013

Google+ Authorship: Where You Become The Link

Guest Post - Our host is Shannon Williams.

You may have noticed the last time that you searched any newsworthy topic on Google—whether it be a recap of the Academy Awards or new developments on the latest iProduct—that some of the search results have a small picture of a smiling individual beside them.



That picture is likely the result of what is known as Author Rank. Sites with regularly updated content can add a specialized link onto each author’s name (a link that connects with the individual’s Google+ account), so Google crawlers recognize that this person wrote the content for the page. The more that author publishes, the higher their Author Rank.
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vendredi 1 mars 2013

Google+ Today For Tomorrow’s SEO

Cool Google+ SEOOver the last few years, the significance of social media in SEO has increased manifolds. If you are really serious about obtaining the top positions in search engine results, you should devote adequate time building your social media influence. Search engines like Google have taken several big steps to integrate social media with search engine optimization. Google’s social network Google+ (or Plus) is, therefore, one of those social networks that you can never ignore. The kind of influence you build on Google+ will play a vital role in ranking your site in SERPs.

But do you know how to boost your site’s SEO with Google+ ?


Though the roll out of Google+ has also led to a lot of debate as to whether it has the potential to last, it’s quite evident now that the social network is making its present felt quite strongly in Google search results.

One thing that you should always remember is that Google+ should not be treated in the same way as Facebook or Twitter. In order to improve the SEO of your web properties, you should treat Google+ as an indispensable web marketing tool. And it’s just the right time (as the competition is yet to build) to increase your Google+ usage and create an online presence that supports your website’s SEO.

Here are some of the best tips to follow.
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dimanche 30 décembre 2012

How To Use Google + Ripples To Find Influential Bloggers In Your Niche

Google Plus Cut LogoWell, the first thing we should probably do is explain what Google+ Ripples are. For those of you who have not come across this useful tool before, it’s essentially an interactive graph of those who have publically shared one of your Google+ posts.

This visual representation of your publically shared posts by others provides fantastic insights into the natural flow of viral content within your niche, and can help you to identify and connect with industry influencers.

Of course, other social media sites provide this sort of data, but it’s usually only available via third party plug-ins. Ripples is Google’s own effort at conveying this sort of info, and it does so in visually friendly and intuitive way.

Using Ripples

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mercredi 1 août 2012

What The New Google+ Tab Means To Blogger Users

Connect Your Blog And Google+Google are really playing for keeps with their latest venture into social networking; Google+.From using it to break news for their various products, making it an integral part of their search results, +1 on AdSense units and a real push to integrate it into blogs hosted on Blogger.

After adding the option to use you Google+ profile as your Blogger profile and providing Google+ gadgets for Blogger they have now added a tab to the Blogger dashboard dedicated to Google+.

To be honest the Google+ tab on blogger looks pretty bare at the moment so what options does it provide ?

Connect Google+ And Blogger Blogs With New Google+ Tab

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samedi 14 juillet 2012

Google+ Authorship - Profile On Search Results For Wordpress And Blogger

Google+ Steel Logo IconGoogle are working astonishingly hard to push their new(ish) social network Google+.One of the features they have implemented is the option to connect your Google+ Profile to your blog.This will in turn verify you as the author of the blog which has some advantages.Possibly the main advantages is your Google+ profile will be displayed beside your blogs on search results.

If you look at the screenshot below you can see By Paul Crowe with My Google+ profile Picture.Pretty cool and it's easy to do the same for your blog.

Search Results With Google+ Profile

Connect Your Google+ Profile To Your Blog


On Wordpress.

Wordpress users can have their Google+ Profile connected to their site using this new plugin.

On Blogger

Blogger do the work for you on this, you just need to use Google+ as your Blogger profile.Check out the video below for further instructions.


Easy as that !

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

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mercredi 4 avril 2012

New Google +1 Button And Google+ Badge For Blogger

Google Plus Logo Icon
Blogger today added two new options to the gadget gallery, the gadget gallery is a collection of gadgets you can add to your blog via the "Add A Gadget" option on your blog layout page.The two new options are for the new Google +, Firstly a Google +1 button for readers to recommend your blog, and secondly a Google + badge for readers to follow your Google+ updates.

Imagine being able to share your blog with like-minded people across the web. Today we’ve made doing that easier with the introduction of two Google+ gadgets, the +1 button and Google+ Badge.Unlike the +1 button that can appear below a post, this gadget is specific to your blog. Displaying it on your blog will allow visitors to endorse your blog and share it with their friends.

Google+ gadgets for Blogger

As stated above you can add these new gadgets to your blogs sidebar, footer or anywhere that accepts gadget.Simply go to your blog layout page, click Add A Gadget and choose the gadget you want.For the +1 button you have options for the style while to add the Google Plus badge you will need your profile or page ID (A link to instructions is provided).

Have you added Spice Up Your Blog to your circles, also check out the official Blogger post here.

Drop your comments and questions below.

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mardi 22 novembre 2011

Google Plus - Create A Facebook Style Fan Page On Google+

Google Plus has been live online since the end of June 2011, while it started growing at the speed of a runaway train questions are being asked as to it's future.Recently however Google have added a Google Plus Pages option for Business, Bands and products.Google Plus Pages are not just like Facebook Pages they have almost the exact same format.So for us Bloggers, we can as on Facebook create a page for our blog on Google Plus.Creating the page is quick and easy and in this post i will walk you through he steps.

Create A Google Plus Fan Page For Your Blog


Step 1. Go to the Google Plus Pages : Create Google Plus Page.

Step 2. Pick a category in on the left of the page, Click "Product Or Band".

Step 3. Add your page name (The Name Of Your Blog), and blog address in the website field.

Step 4. Agree to the terms and click create, that's it.

Check out the Spice Up Your Blog Google Plus Page.

Drop your comments and questions below.

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