Treating Social Media Like You Treat Your Content - #seopodcast 181

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. And I'm Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Thank you guys for tuning in. This is podcast number 181. Of course, that's the one that follows 180. The one before is 182. Yeah, I think we got that covered. We have a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip says, in subfolders and file names, use dashes, not underscores. Yeah, you want to, Google has already put it out there that in regards to URL structure, dashes are more effective than underscores. So, for example, if yours is example.com slash the sub hyphen folder, that's a dash, instead of slash underscore folder, then another backslash, and then your file name as well. Your file name could be, you know, Chuck hyphen Chris hyphen awesome dot JPEG, right? And so, you want to use those hyphens instead of underscore. Makes sense. It separates the keywords, and Google appreciates it more. Remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Yes. Where our mantra is. Don't be a douche. If you are in a position to, please tweet now. You can see Charles if you're watching the video. Charles is doing it. If you get it, you'll have to be patient. This is exactly what he's tweeting. What are you tweeting? Hashtag SEO podcast. This is number 181. Make sure you tag us in it at eWebStyle that we can link up and network and retweet and share and follow and all of that great social stuff. Speaking of link up and share and follow, you can actually follow us on facebook.com slash eWebStyle. Twitter.com slash eWebStyle. YouTube.com slash eWebStyle. And you can also email us podcast at e-WebStyle.com You can do us just a small favor. There's three steps to one of the favors and really two steps to the other favor. First step is go on to iTunes. Second step is create an account. Third step is write a review on iTunes. We are the most popular internet

marketing and SEO podcast on iTunes. And we've got... Because all y'all. Because all y'all. We are broadcasting live from Houston, Texas. It's just if you... I wonder why we say y'all. If all y'all didn't make that clear. So the other thing that you could do for us... And if you do write a review on iTunes, go ahead and hit us up. Podcast at e-WebStyle.com And let us know. We'll give you a punch in the face. Patoof. And the other thing that you could do is you could go to our G Plus account. Now, I could give you a whole string of numbers and you could try and type that. Or I could just tell you go to e-WebStyle.com slash... G Plus. Or. Yeah. It's not... You're not keeping the vampires away? Maybe. I didn't think about it that way. But, yeah. I'm coming with some garlic and... Yeah. After the show. After the show. Go on to our... All of those will take you to our Google Plus page. And there you can write a review. Please and thank you. And remember, we do have a referral program. If you're an SEOer and want to continue to make money and not have all of the headache, let us take care of some of your clients and we can continue to pay you. Give me a little kickback now. Yeah. That works out good. Hey. No tears. I actually have a couple reviews to read. And let me start off with this one because it's really good. This is a... Email. A huge... Shins hurting just thinking about it. Yeah. This is from Bert Van Ketz. Van Ketz dot com. V-A-N-K-E-T-S. I didn't actually check his website. We really appreciate this feedback. He's kicking us in the shin for the continuous lack of audio quality. He contacted us before. We think we've got better. We keep thinking we get better. And then we have a bad episode. So it sucks. That's not his email. That's me. The two biggest problems are the levels between you two

are way off, making one loud and the other two quiet. Too much noise. Where is this noise coming from? I have no idea where the noise... It's coming from a mouth. At least that's what I thought. We did turn off a fan that was sitting under our laptop. And we've closed our server door. So hopefully that helps. He says we may need to invest in some decent USB microphones. We actually have lapel mics. Yeah. We were using the USB first. And it actually, according to some people, had a better quality. Yeah. We're probably going to... The next investment will be just in better lapel mics. Is probably what we're going to do. And then he says... But pushing the recording through a good levelator would help a lot. The levelator. The levelator. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. That's a... What's his name? Marvin the Martian. Marvin, yeah. The levelator. He says, I heard about Auphonic on the Floss Weekly Podcast. I haven't heard of it. It's a free service that normalizes audio and removes noise. We already have... I already assigned a task to one of our guys here at the office to work on that. So, hopefully, that'll do better. He makes the point... English is his second language. He's pretty fluent. But he does have to concentrate a little bit more in the bad audio. Well, good audio really is necessary for him to pick up, for non-native English speakers to pick it up. So, that's a great point. That's a great point. Especially since we get so much international viewers and listeners of the podcast. Yep. So, punch in the face and... Punch in the face for your kick in the chin. Yeah. I don't know how that works. Burt Van Ketz, thank you so much for your feedback. All right. Let's get to a... I was about to try it. I didn't want to hurt you, though. Oh. Punch in the face for your kick in the chin. And, Chris, thank you for tuning in. Chris will be awake next podcast.

This review, the title is SEO Podcast Unknown Secrets by bestdesigncoach.com. When I listen to the podcast, it is refreshingly easy to understand eWebStyle's suggestions for tweaking your website, etc. They have a variety of podcasts in their iTunes library on just about any topic that pertains to internet marketing's SEO best practices. Bestdesigncoach.com. Yeah. Punch in the face. Thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in. Hit us up. Let us know which ones you listen to. Yeah. Which ones do you like best? Which ones did you get the most value out of? Next one. Awesome podcast. Five stars. Maximus de Meritus. That's a... Maximus? When you're talking about Maximus, you know what that means. Maximus. Yeah. You're just the shit. You're Maximus. Maximus. And de Meritus. Meridius. That's awesome. I own a small business and wanted to get a higher rank on Google. I hired a company to do my SEO. Good job. But wanted to understand it better myself. I started listening. Yeah. I started listening. Yeah. Necessary. I started listening to this podcast and I was so impressed I've gone back and started listening from the beginning. You got a long way to go. Yes, sir. This has helped me so much in understanding what needs to be done with my website and it helps me give tips to my SEO guys to help them focus on my goals. I love this podcast. I stopped listening to music altogether while driving. I only listen to eWebStyle's podcast. Awesome job, guys. And this is from Spencer. By the way, wesavebees.com is just... That's just a really cool... And it was a great site. Let me tell you what's interesting about that because we have clients like that who will come in and we're doing an SEO and they'll tell you, dude, make sure you do this, this, this, this, this, and that, right? And unfortunately, they almost suck as clients because I know how to do my job while you hired them, right? Right. So great job on getting to know your information, Mr. Maximus.

But if indeed they are a good agency that's doing the SEO, all the tips you've given them, they probably already know and they probably listen to us. And so... Or tell them to listen to us. Yeah, tell them to listen to us. You know, but be leery of sometimes giving out instructions to... That's too low. All right, keep going. Be leery of giving instructions to somebody who's doing the SEO only because it may be in their scope of the project. You don't want to kind of get things off hand. All right. Hopefully our levels are a little bit better now. The other thing is... Yeah, you may have covered this. I was a little distracted. If you're giving them too many tips, consider a change. Yeah, consider a change. That's also... Yeah, if you're giving them tips and they're not doing it or haven't done it or haven't told you something like, yeah, we plan on doing that at this time, then yeah, you may want to consider hollering at you, boy. Tell them to use us. They can still get a kickback. They can join our referral program and we'll take care of your account. A little bit of news. Bing falls to fifth in global searches as a global search engine. It's now behind Yandex. Man, that just sucks. When you come behind the name of Yandex, it rhymes with spandex. That just means... Yeah. Yeah. So, every now and then, I'm on a different client's computer and they've got a different search engine. And literally, I'll try it. I'll plug in my search. Yesterday, Yahoo search came up. I was like, wow, this is impressively useless. And I pull up Google, same search terms, like, bing, one or... Not bing. Yeah. Ding. Whoa. Ding. Or something like... Rawr. It's the Google monsters, right? Position one... I'm still convinced that's a pirate, but go ahead. Position one... And that's the noise that stuffed animal makes when he makes noise. Rawr. Position one and position two are actually good results. They're what I need.

And you get it so wrong, Bing. And Google gets it so right. It's continually impressive. It shows... I mean, Bing's trying. They've been trying for years. And they even were stealing Google's results. And they weren't as good as Google. Yeah. You know what that tells you? It tells you how hard the search game is. Right? Because if you've got the kind of money Microsoft has throwing it at a search engine for years and you're still not doing well, you're actually losing market share, the computers that are sold send people to Bing first. You have to do, like, three steps to change the default search. Yeah. So people are either going through those three steps, which technically probably most people aren't, or they're actually, instead of typing in the search part, they're typing Google.com and then doing a search. Yeah. That's two steps every search. Well, and see, then, I think what Google was smart enough to do to kind of caveat that three-step process is make Chrome one of the most powerful browsers. And so now, instead of people using IE, which defaults to Bing, people are automatically in, you know, as soon as they get a new computer, you open up IE and you go download Chrome. Download Chrome. Download Chrome. Yeah. That's step one. And now Google's your default search engine. I'm a Chrome Conver. Oh, man. I'm a Chromey because it's got the ability to log in. So I'm logged in at home. I'm logged in here at the office. What I searched just before I left the office is available at home. I mean, it's crazy. Chromey. Yeah. Let's see. Last thing that I've got here for news. Google touts the benefits of WebP, which is an image format. And I didn't get a chance to read the whole article, but they did something like they just upgraded to WebP format, image format, and saved a ton of bandwidth and didn't have a reduction in quality. On image format? It's an image format. So similar to, like, GIF or JPEG? It's

JPEG, PNG, that kind of image format. And WebP. WebP. And Google made it. So it almost has to be good. Yeah, but, you know, Google's so suspect. WebP probably tracks something that I don't know they're tracking. Where your eyes are looking on the image. On this picture. Yeah. Because they track everything. You pulled up a page of your own profile, right? And like, I do all of this. Yeah. I knew you knew. I just didn't want to see that you knew. Yeah. I didn't need to know that you knew, even though I knew you knew. But, yeah. Who knew? Google knew. All right. That is the potatoes, unless we've got some sort of. Well, I got a punch in the face. Got a punch in the face to Wes Davey. He's at Wes Davey underscore F-R-E-U-N-D. Frowned? Frowned? Yeah. Friend-u-end? Anyway, he was watching. I'm assuming he was watching 176, which would have been the end of the year podcast. Because he said more great tips from 2012. So punch in the face to you, Wes Davey. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for checking it out. And give us a review, man. Appreciate it. Boom. Time for the meet. So I pulled an article from Search Engine Land. Pretty good article called, Why You Need to Treat Your Social Media Strategy Like Your Content Strategy. I thought it was pretty good. I began, he listed several different tips and things you could do to kind of improve your strategy. And I thought this was key because in this day, right now, if you're doing any internet marketing and it's content related and social related, they have to run parallel. They have to really be congruent with each other. They go hand in hand is what I'm saying. And so he had a few things you should do. A couple of, well, one of them in particular, I kind of disagreed with. And so we'll talk about that. So number one, which is key with any campaign, is create a clear social posting schedule and integrate

it with your content schedule. What does that mean? So that means if you have a schedule for creating content, let's say you're a heavy blogger, and so your schedule is every Monday and Friday I'll be blog posting, then make sure your social schedule is in line with that. So Monday and Friday you release a new post, then on Monday and Friday you need to schedule Facebook posts and tweets and other things to share those links. Pre-schedule them, that way they'll go out consistently. What he doesn't talk about, what I want to mention, is that what that does to your audience is creates a sense of anticipation. If I like your articles and you always provide good content, and I know every Monday and Friday I'll probably get a good one, then Monday and Friday I'll also start looking for your tweets. I'll start being more attentive to your Facebook posts so I can get that content when you release it. And when I see that tweet, I know that I need to click that tweet because it's good content. And I'll probably, frankly, after three or four good experiences with it, I'll probably retweet it or share it without even clicking it. Yeah. And then go click it. Yeah. So you want to do that. I like this one. Number two, run your post by another person. It makes sense. Just like with content. You know, if you're going to have, before you post that blog, you're going to have somebody else kind of reread it, maybe double check for errors, maybe grammar errors or spelling issues or whatnot. Do the same with your posts, especially if they're promoted tweets or promotional Facebook posts for a particular product or a post or anything like that. Let somebody else read it. They may give you an idea or a different way to word it or remind you to include something you forgot. So it's always good to have another set of eyes on your posts before you post them. So, I like number three, build anticipation

for your content. So if we're going to do like, let's say, an interview of a pretty big name person, then let's build some anticipation for that. Maybe take some pictures with them and post them earlier and, you know, interview coming soon sort of deal or maybe even run some sort of games that people can kind of figure out who you're going to be talking to to kind of create that anticipation for the content that you're about to release. I thought that was great. That's a good way to also build links. People begin wanting to be the first source to show this information. And so if you kind of leave a link or this content will be available here at this time, people will begin linking to that place because the content will be there soon. You know, one comment I would make to that is don't be afraid of oversaturating the audience when you're building up to something. Like in general, we don't tweet twice a day. We don't Facebook twice a day. But if we were going to have, say, an interview of somebody, actually twice a day, we would do that for the week leading up to it. Yeah, probably three or four times a day. Yeah. So don't worry about oversaturating your audience because it's going to be a one-time event. So they're like, oh, this is kind of exciting. It's building up. By the time they might even think about, okay, I'm getting tired of this, the event happens and great. They're aware of it and hopefully tuning in. Definitely. Number four, know and write for your audience. I think this is key. Sometimes a lot of companies we come in who come to us for social media help or SEO help, they don't have a good idea of who their audience is. And so they, in turn, write for themselves. And we use AC repair as a kind of example here. You know, know your audience. If you're targeting homeowners who need their AC fixed, then write for them. You

know, HVAC, vent, blah, blah, blah, is not a term they're going to use. They're going to use AC repair. They're going to use heating repair. And so use the terms and the language that they're familiar with. Write to them. Don't write for yourself. Number five, respond to every question. This is one of the things I'm proud of because we try to do this here. You know, when people post, when people comment, when people ask questions, respond to them. You know, just like on a blog post. When somebody makes a comment, you know, you try to respond to it to continue that user-generated content. So same concept here. Respond, and frankly, I like what he said here, which is kind of true. Different social networks require a different level of response, right? Maybe a faster response. People are used to getting stuff quick on Twitter, right? Yeah. There's only 140 characters. So if somebody tweets you a quick question, retweet them and get back at them real quick. Even if it's a I'll get back to you later sort of deal. But at least respond because it's Twitter. People expect that. If it's Facebook, then go into a little bit more detail, right? Maybe share it or tag somebody who can be of more assistance to it. So respond to every question, but make sure you take advantage of the tools you're using. I'm going to check into that. Number six, make your promotional posts social. And so this is kind of cool right here. So if you're sharing content on social media or Facebook or Google+, include a tie-in. I like to say ask a question, right? So at the end of the post, you know, let's say you're doing a favorite list of something, the top 10 list of hats Chuck likes to wear, right? You know, what should have made the list? It's a great question to include at the end of that post. Or who did we miss? Or what hat should he have? And what these questions do is encourage people

who read the post to leave comments, to engage in that conversation. And then you go back up to the previous one and respond to all of their comments. And that's how you keep that engaging conversation going. So this is one I didn't agree with. He says, no original content to share, then curate. And he goes on to say, you know, find popular posts and things like that and maybe just create a post that kind of summarizes all this stuff, link to it and share it, and this and that. I think that's okay. But there's a lot of that going on already. What my take would be is if you have a different outlook or a different opinion about something that's been posted and pretty popular, then use that to create your content, right? So if it's Chuck always wears the black shirt on Friday and that's what we do, then if you have a different take on that, then take that original content, link to it, give them the proper citation. By the way, they'll probably link back, hint. But more importantly, then take the next few sections to explain your concept on it, your thoughts about it. Why Chuck should be wearing a white shirt. Exactly. And that way you're not kind of duping their content. That way the reader who does find it, who probably also read the other article you're referencing, you give them a different viewpoint, a different opinion, some different logic about the same sort of material. So, yeah, don't curate. Just use it to kind of create your own. I like this one. Don't be afraid to optimize. He called Facebook a walled garden. With the exception of walled garden sites like Facebook, your social posts can and will show up in web searches. So, yeah, you know, you want to do things like include your main key phrase in your Twitter bio, right? And then when you're posting and you're sharing, if applicable, include that key phrase there. Again, don't do it just for the sake of doing

it because then you will look stupid and it won't read right. But if it fits, by all means, take advantage of it and put it in. Don't not do it because you don't want to be over-optimizing. I like number nine, and this is the last one. Create clear goals and track your progress. So, if your objective is to put out this social post and that post is about a different product and you're hoping to get traffic from that post to maybe, let's say, your e-comm site where that product is and then lead to a purchase, track that. Set that funnel. Set that whole goal path in analytics or whatever, you know, tracking software you're using and track it. Track it from the referral basis. How many places did you post it? I put this post on Twitter, on Facebook, on G+, and I did a YouTube video about it. And all of those link to the post that links to the e-comm site or eventually to a checkout page. You know, track that path that people are taking and then come back and look at your data. And then, you know, depending on which one works, rinse and repeat with a different product. So, I think that's key with anything, whether it's a post, whether it's something social, whether it's a service you provide, definitely track your stuff. So, a cool article I'll post on Facebook, and you guys check it out. And I'm going to take advantage of number six, what would you do, right? What would you do to track your social, to make your content strategy and your social strategy run more parallel and be more effective? Hey, I thought this was pretty cool. Super Bowl, blackout, right? Mm-hmm. Did you see the Oreo tweet? Mm-mm. So, it went viral. They said, the lights are out or, you know, hashtag blackout. There's a blackout, but you can still dunk your cookies, something like that. And, you know, just a picture of an Oreo. And the way they had to do it is,

they actually had a team, including Oreo executives, because everything they do has to get approval. They had to have the executives there so that they could come up with a concept, get it approved, and go live with it. And luckily, it worked. Luckily, yeah, it went viral. I don't remember how many retweets it got, but it did really well. The other thing I wanted to mention, this was kind of pretty cool. We went to a sales meeting this week, and Charles got there before me. What did the guy say? I walked in. Dude says, dude, you're the SEO rapper, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that was me. I'm here to talk about your SEO, so. Very cool. And you did a little rap afterwards. Yeah, I freestyled it. Yeah, I freestyled the rap afterwards, so that was cool. What got me, though, was that he wasn't listening. He was dancing. I could have been like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He wasn't listening. But it was pretty cool. It was also good to just realize when people find your work and recognize you when they see it, it was just a good feeling. Yeah, that's great. Any blank stare? Oh, yes. Blank stare. Big blank stare. Yeah, that was all the way blank. This blank stare goes to Yahoo. So, yeah, after what you said about it. So, Yahoo apparently signed a deal where on their sites, on their distributors' sites that share Yahoo content, they're going to include AdSense. Google AdSense? Yes. Wow. So, even though they have Bing, right? Results. Bing results. They're tied in with Bing AdCenter for paid ads rather than. Do their own. Yeah. They're just going to tie in to Google AdSense. Wow. Yeah. Have you done any research, Yahoo? Yeah. So, what will likely happen is Google will probably start running display remarketing ads on their sites. Like, you should go to Google and read the same article. Yeah. Use the Google blog. It's better. Yeah. So, come on, Yahoo. I'm a little disappointed

in Ms. Meyer. She's been making some suspect decisions that she's taking over. Just another in a line of suspect decision makers. All right. This has been podcast number 181. You guys have been tuned in to the most popular SEO and internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of all y'all. We really appreciate you. That is 7,000 downloads a week and we've been downloaded in 76 different countries. Thank you guys so much. You can tune in to the next. And remember, there are all the ways you can find us and haunt us and stalk us. Hit us up on Facebook. We'll give you a punch in the face. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. I'm Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now.