The Article Perusing Solution is Going Well

I devised a solution at work to attempt to read as many of the articles that we cover as possible. It's not a perfect solution, as it heavily depends on the writers taking the time to put their sources on the documents, but so far it has been working very well. I can get through two verticals in about 90 minutes. When I started testing the solution earlier this week, 90 minutes for two vertical might've been too much time. However, I discovered an AWESOME social media management tool called MeetEdgar that helps tremendously.

What is MeetEdgar?

MeetEdgar is different from other social media management tools in that it allows you to build up a queue for your accounts. So, instead of just scheduling five posts over the next five days, MeetEdgar will cycle through those five posts until you tell it to stop. The tool comes with a default schedule as well, so you don't even have to spend time arranging when you want each post to go live. Just upload the content and MeetEdgar will take care of the rest.

Oddly enough, I discovered MeetEdgar on Twitter after someone I followed tweeted that they just signed up. The tweet said something about "making sure your social media posts don't go to waste," or something to that effect. I was intrigued so I clicked the MeetEdgar handle to ultimately go their website. I watched their two-minute demo video and I was hooked. This was EXACTLY what I needed! And not just for this solution, but also for my job in general. Posting to our various social media accounts is a huge time suck for me. Although I only do two or three accounts per day, I have to spend the time finding something good to post, then crafting the post and then scheduling the post. All of that doesn't include checking for comments, following people, inviting people to the page etc.

MeetEdgar is instrumental to my solution because after I spend time initially uploading a ton of content to the Twitter and Facebook accounts for each of the verticals, I only need to spend about an hour or 90 minutes every day or every other day removing old content and uploading a couple of new posts. Besides that, each account will have 10 or 15 posts to cycle through over the course of the week. I don't have to worry so much about getting new content onto the Facebook page or the Twitter feed. Instead, I can spend that time perusing the content for the weekly newsletter, or looking for ideas for blog posts, infographics and other original content.

The Next Step is to Devote the Time

Besides the writers not doing their share and forgetting to put their stories on the doc, the other big hurdle that I have is to make the time to peruse articles every day. Every day doesn't easily lend itself to having 90 minutes to set aside. Meetings come up. Emergencies need to get taken care of. My boss prioritizes another project that requires my attention. I think if I make an effort to set aside time to read these articles, then my next steps would involve documenting ideas, creating the content, and possibly looking to automate other aspects of this system. But, for right now, the goals are to make perusing articles daily a habit and to stock MeetEdgar with lots of content for all of the accounts. Once MeetEdgar is taking care of and I have a really good grasp of the stories we're covering each day, I can then move onto other initiatives and figuring out how to make time for those initiatives.

How Many Articles Can I Peruse in a Workday?

And Can I Finish This Blog Post Before My Fiance Goes to Bed?

It seriously freaks me out when my fiance goes to bed before me. I have no idea why. He's just going to the next room and won't even completely close the day because the cat needs to be able to go in and out. But, I can't stand the notion of him asleep before me, with all of the lights out in the rest of the apartment. It's too much. I don't like it. When he shuts the light off by desk and I hear that 'click,' I start winding down as quickly as possible (not the right way to wind down, I know) so I can go to bed as soon as I can. It just feels late when he goes to bed before me and it feels like a sign I just shouldn't be up too much longer or else bad things will happen.

Anyway... Articles!

So, my first step to hustling is to get a record outside of our app and CMS of every article that we cover. We easily cover 400 stories a day: 20 to 30 stories per vertical plus another 100 or so for top news. No, I'm not going to read all 400 of those articles each day. That's not possible. But, a Google Sheet for each vertical with an easy glance at that day's 20 or 30 stories is much more digestible. With an easy glance of the source link and the description, I can pick out a couple of stories that look extra interesting or that look like they may have excellent facts, quotes or statistics that would make great social media content.

To build social media communities and, ultimately, fuel growth and get installs, our channels needs to present more online than what we're doing now. Our Twitter handles need to offer more than the lede sentence and the link to the update. The main handle needs to do more than tweet a lede and the original source link with the author tagged. All of that content is great, but because it's not much different from what's offered in the apps, there's little value in both downloading the app(s) and in following us on social media. Sure, someone may miss the story on the app and then catch on Twitter, or vice versa, but even that's kind of a poor value proposition. A major factor in making social media work for you is to have content tailored to the platform, where even though we're sharing the same story across Facebook, Twitter on our app, it should not look identical across the three platforms.

Separate Content for Our Newsletter

With the stories in a Google Sheet, I can avoid looking at the updates directly to have a fresh interpretation of the articles. A fresh interpretation is needed for our upcoming newsletter, although I do not know exactly the contents of this newsletter. I sent a survey to our mailing list since we haven't emailed them in over a year (hey, it wasn't my list to begin with, so I didn't have any idea who was on this list or why they were there). This survey asked how often they'd like the newsletter, what they would like it in and why they signed up in the first place. From the responses I've received, it's looking like this will be a weekly email that features summaries of our top stories. To be able to put such a newsletter together, I need to know everything we've covered for the week and then decide our top drones story, our top video games and a couple of our top breaking stories etc.

Getting this done shouldn't be a problem. The next step now is learning first-hand how many articles I can peruse in a given amount of time. Today, I'm going to give myself one hour and see how many articles I can get through. The day afterward, I may do 90 minutes or two hours, depending on my schedule and how well today goes. The goal is to see if this is a viable solution to a) finding great social media content in the stories we already cover and b) useful in finding ideas to cover for the upcoming newsletter.

If it doesn't work, then I'm not sure what I would do. At the moment, I need to be able to do this on my own.

Facebook Pages Better than the Website? Fans Think So

Every Thursday, I will republish my best articles from Technorati.com. Since Technorati redesigned its website and is under new managements, tens of thousands of articles that were previously published on the site are no longer available. I have been given explicit permission to republish my work on my own website. When talking to 1000 social media users about how they felt about liking brands on Facebook, market research firm Lab42 found that 50% of them said that the Facebook page is more useful than the website. Sure, that statistic can be interpreted to mean that social media users prefer the social media profiles of brands to the website, or that social media users just like them better. However, the key word is 'useful', and no one has yet taken the time to figure out why Facebook pages are considered more useful, or how to make one's website more useful than before.

Lab42 also found in this survey that the biggest motivators for liking a brand on Facebook were promotions/discounts, free giveaways, and customer loyalty, in that order. Brand websites rarely have the first two, and are primarily "brochureware", bland marketing jargon that's meant to sell the visitor on the product or service. Judging from the biggest motivators for liking a brand, most social media users are already sold on the brand and its product or service. On the one hand, this should make it easier for brands to learn about their customer base, since it seems that the Facebook fan base would reflect who's buying the product and service. On the other hand, Facebook fans using the pages in this manner could make it difficult for brands to up sell, or even buy at all, since it seems that most fans are only buying when there's a discount, or are just grabbing the free stuff.

This is further shown in this survey, where almost half of social media users said they liked a brand, but had no intention of buying from that brand. The reason? They only wanted free stuff (52%), or they like the product and can't afford it (46%), or they only liked the brand to help out a friend (24%). Perhaps Facebook pages are best at giving consumers the best of their world; a free product or a great coupon. So, how do brands get the best of their world, whether it be from Facebook or from the website?

The biggest thing that I would recommend is business blogging. Stop all the brochureware on your website, and put something on there that's actually for the customer and about the customer. Consider that over 44% of small businesses don't even have a website! Also consider that even though 60% of businesses have a business blog, 65% of them haven't updated in over a year! No wonder people don't find them useful! There's nothing there for them! And these statistics don't include those that do blog regularly, but only update about new products and company updates. Customers don't care about that. It's no surprise they're going to Facebook to get a free sample or a coupon. At least a free sample or a coupon gets the customer what he or she needs to solve their pain point.

The next thing to do to make your website more useful, after you have the business blog, is to create a resource center. This resource center can include white papers, ebooks, webinars, articles, free content that will actually help prospects and potential customers move through your buying process and actually consider your for something more than a discount.  The best thing about a resource center? It's free, and you can actually learn more about your prospects, what they actually need from you, all while building trust and a customer relationship. After all, the number one thing, from the Lab42 survey, that brands could do to get more likes on Facebook (and retain them)?

More giveaways!

Oh look, you have all this awesome, engaging, relevant content that's for free that you can share, content like buying guides, how-to's, tip sheets, checklists. You know, stuff that will not only help customers, but will go much farther in nabbing and retaining fans than a coupon or a free shirt.

Do those two things, and you can actually improve both your website and your Facebook page. Sounds easy enough.

The Role of Social Media Marketing of Online Marketing

Social Media Optimization is usually considered as a part of online marketing, and is the optimizing of a site and its content to make it worth sharing on various social media sites. In short, we can say, SMO is making use of social media in order to promote a brand or a product or to generate publicity.

The Need for SMO

SMO is optimizing a website on social media. Just like SEO, SMO also plays a vital role in business development and its promotion because social media is one of the most powerful platforms to reach millions of people at once. Social media plays a crucial role in driving huge traffic as it allow your content to flow across the web globally.

The Various Types of SMO Techniques

There exists so many types of social media like RSS Feeds, social news, bookmarking sites, and social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. The main motive behind such SMO techniques is to generate traffic and promote a brand. Here are some SMO techniques you cna use to utilize the different typesof social media wisely.

Develop proper strategies - No goal can be achieved without following a proper strategy, so make a plan, follow it step by step, and includes measurements so you know when you achieved your goal.

Increase your visibility by creating links - You can increase your visibility online by increasing the linkability of your content. Blogs can be helpful in this context as it will enhance your website’s visibility and credibility.

Tags and bookmarking - Additional features like buttons for like, share, tag etc. are the best way to increase the visibility of pages or product. So make sure that such pages include relevant tags, notes, or links, and don’t forget to tag your pages on popular social bookmarking sites.

Inbound links - Quality and high value inbound links serve as the measure of success of your site. Try to make a difference by employing a few SMO activities, which helps you in boosting quality inbound links because it will increase the demand of your products and services.

Let your content flow - Unlike SEO, SMO is all about flow of content and not changes in content. Let your content flow across the web. Share links, files, images etc. as much as possible.

Appreciate visitors and their thoughts - Appreciating others for sharing their views is the best way to leave a good impact on visitors. Answer their queries, appreciate their comments, and ask them for advice, as this will enhance your reputation.

Be creative and experimenting - Social media offers you a great platform to show your creativity and experiment with the changing scenario of the online market. So, be creative and be willing try something new to attract visitors.

The Advantages of SMO

Connect with customers - Social media helps you to get connect with your potential customers so that you can customize your services and products to your customer’s requirements.

Lead generation - Lead generation is an important factor for every business and SMO activities play a crucial role in increasing your return on investment.

Maintain your reputation - Social media is the best and cheapest platform to get an idea of your brand status and feedback of customers. This way, it helps you to maintain your online reputation.

Beat your competitors - Social media helps you to mark your presence in the online market. Thus, you can create your brand awareness by using SMO techniques.

Cost effective - SMO serve as the most cost effective way to advertise and market your business products or services.

Author Bio: Sumeet Gaurav is a web enthusiast and a technical guy who is currently working on the website Adda52.com. Adda52.com is an online gaming website for true game lovers where you can play online poker games, learn how to play poker and know about various poker tips and strategies.