Having some sort of online community surrounding your business is just a part of today’s commerce model. Online communities help spread your business message throughout their networks creating a nice stream of inbound traffic and eyeballs surrounding your company and its website. Everything has grown into a social level online and, depending on the nature of your business, you could very well require that word of mouth type of exposure to help grow your brand or company.

Here are some ways to grow your online community:

Be Friendly To Your Peers
Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, or somewhere else, be as friendly as possibly with others in your space. Nobody wants to join the community of a “Debbie Downer”. Make an effort to be very nice to others even if they are not nice to you. Your audience is watching. Remember that everything you do online pretty much stays online, so be nice.

Help Others Answer Questions
Take the time to answer questions that others post online in the various social spaces. Eventually over time people will pay attention to your answers, which causes them to pay closer attention to you.

Launch A Blog
Launch a blog and include all of the social bells and whistles so that others can be a part of the sharing, commenting, and communicating on your website. In order to build a social community, your website or blog needs to become interactive so that others are able to communicate with your online community.

Launch A Forum
To do this the right way you typically have to have some nice traffic coming to your website. When you do, it could work out very well in your favor to help you build the community that you are trying to build. Sometimes all you need to do is provide the platform for that community to grow on, and after that you just need to water that seed from time to time.

Building a community is not easy, but with the right frame of mind and approach that community will flourish. You just need to be patient and give it time. Provide the tools needed to build the community and approach it like a business and over time you will see it grow.

Making sticky blog posts that really gain some traction online is not always easy. You have to have some sort of plan and process in your head about topics that are really going to stick out in front of your audience. People want to read something that is going to make them think or smile and not possess an expressionless face after reading. How are you going to make your blog post create that reaction from your audience?

Here are some blog writing techniques that can engage your readers:

Write Something Fresh
Try writing something that hasn’t been written before in your industry. If you want to get people coming back to your blog, give them something new and fresh to read. Don’t copy the approach of another blog, but rather, create your own spin and process to writing your posts because your audience will recognize this.

Make Them Smile Or Even Laugh
Is there something in your industry that nobody has wanted to write about yet but you know that it would make your audience smile? Just write it because someone eventually will and you will probably wish that you did once you read it.

Think About Your Title
Give your title some real serious thought because it is what’s going to get your audience to click through and read. You should always have a portion of your title for attention and some portion for rankings. Getting your visitors attention from having the cute factor is important, but so is having that post rank for the long term so that it can really work for you in the way that it should.

Show Them A Video
People love to watch videos and if you give them the right video they will share your information throughout their networks for others to see. Text and reading is important, but once in a while a nice video will also help you.

Give Them Something To Share
I know that this is easier said than done, but give your audience a reason to share something. Make those share buttons as visible as possible while providing content that just makes them want to run and tell everyone about your blog.

Having a brainstorming session with your approach is a great idea before you start really writing on a daily basis. Think about what you are doing to satisfy some very important voids in your audience and your blog will become successful over time.

Meshing with your online competition is not always a bad thing. If you are the new kid on the block don’t expect to take over your industry veterans anytime soon unless you are bringing some serious fire power to the table. Your competitors most likely own some of the online space naturally. Be respectful and mesh with them in order to leverage their strengths in your direction. You want to be a good marketer? Try finding a way to get on some of your competitors radars because it could cause you to become visible in front of an even larger audience.

Write A Product Review
Write a product review of a competitor’s product. Perhaps they have a handful of products that are popular in the industry. Writing a review on a product or even some company news might allow your blog post to rank for their name which could cause you to be visible in front of their audience.

Retweet Their Tweets
I wouldn’t re-tweet every single tweet but a few here and there will show that you are respectful of their position and that you are trying to play nice. Remember that being active in the social space requires pushing around the message of other organizations which could lead to people paying closer attention to you that didn’t in the past.

Leave Comments On Their Blog
Don’t be scared to leave comments on their blog with a link back to your website. That’s what the comment section is there for. Leaving comments on blogs is a part of social media regardless if whether is a competitor or not.

The online space is large and vast and the reality is that if you approach it in a smart way there are many areas that you can leverage to further your reach and appearance. Don’t shun all of your competition because they might have some great platforms for you as a business to be able to leverage in order to pull in steady streams of website traffic. Keep your eyes open for all of the opportunities that are available to you. You might be surprised at what you will find.

At some point in time you might find yourself building up quite a bit of chatter in the online space and it might make sense to start keeping track of what people are saying about you or your business. Regardless of whether it is good or bad, you might want to leave some comments behind to strengthen the overall conversation online.

Here are some tools that can help monitor your online brand:

Google Alerts
Google alerts are free and easy to use. All you need to have is a Google account where the alerts can be emailed to. They will patrol virtually all organic material like articles, press releases, and blog posts to see what others are saying and send you a link so that you can view things in greater detail.

Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is a tool where you can organize all of your Twitter communication and also track everything while it is happening. With an extensive dashboard and easy to use features you can quickly track whether someone is saying anything bad about you or your company online.

Social Mention
Social Mention is another great tool to use to monitor your online brand within the social space. If you are a social butterfly and you find yourself constantly moving around and conversing in the social space you might at some point want to patrol the chatter with a slightly greater force than just physical looking. There is so much going on in the social space that it is very easy to overlook negative or even positive chatter in the search space.

Social media marketing is an area that is growing more and more in strength as time goes on, which makes monitoring it that much more important. The need for constant monitoring is growing and it is going to grow even more in the very near future as more people are eager to enter the social space and start communicating with their audience. Catch any negative chatter now before it really turns into a problem down the road by monitoring your brand at all times. If you have ever used or tested any other online brand monitoring tools that are worth mentioning here, please feel free to leave a comment and share it with our readers.

Below you will find our favorite blog posts that are related to SEO, search engine marketing and social media marketing from this past week. Please feel free to visit each, we hope you find them as helpful as we do!

Why You Need an SEO and Internet Marketing Consultant
This post lists six reasons that you should hire an SEO consultant. Reasons like “to find out what you are wasting money on” and “having someone to run ideas by” top the list.
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Why a Link Analysis is Anything But a Waste of Time
This post explains why a thorough competitive link analysis is important. Before starting a campaign it’s important to be aware of your surroundings.
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How to Increase Traffic to Blog
This post outlines three ways to increase traffic to your blog. It discusses RSS feeds, ping blog services, and building links.
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Social Media Jobs in Demand
This post discusses the need to create jobs in social media due to the monumental growth in the industry.
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Should Facebook Ads Replace Your AdWords Campaign?
Despite Facebook’s success, marketers are skeptical of the ad performance that it can deliver. This post discusses a case study in which Facebook ads provide a lower cost per click and cost per conversion than Google.
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SEO Mistakes Small Businesses Make
This post is geared towards someone with a small SEO budget. It outlines mistakes like getting trapped inside industry jargon, cutting corners, and overdoing it.
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30 Ways to Use Social Media for Business People
This post states that 94% of businesses do not use social media and provides a list of 30 ways for them to start getting involved.
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Facebook & Twitter Links May Help SEO
It’s official- Google uses Twitter and Facebook links as ranking signals. Of course, reputation and relevancy are key.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

The Implied Participation of Social Media
This post questions why it has taken some so long to get involved in social media.
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Small Business Blogging Content Strategies
This post outlines the importance of blogging and provides useful tips for those just starting out.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

These were the our favorite SEO, SEM and Social Media blog posts this week. Check back next week for more top posts!

Anyone who owns a blog and continues to maintain and write in it on a daily basis is always seeking new ways to deliver consistent amounts of new unique traffic in order to build up their name in an area of business online. Being included in Google News could bring heaping amounts of new steady traffic but there are some steps that need to be taken prior to even trying to be included.

Here are some tips that could help you when submitting your blog to
Google News:

Unique Content
Your content on your blog should always be unique and never duplicated. If you are writing about other news related sources online that is fine but you need to be able to include some of your own stories and news as well.

Show Personality
How is your blog going to stand out? If you are in a category that is very congested you could find yourself in line with many other like-minded blogs trying to be included into the news stream. Write with some personality so you really stick out from your crowd of competitors.

Have Multiple Authors
This seems to be a big sticking point when trying to be included into Google News. Your blog or news source should have multiple authors writing every single day. Any news source online always has more than one reporter or writer so Google must be looking at it from a standpoint of quality and diversification. If you have multiple authors or writers you are going to have a much more diverse approach to your reporting’s creating good journalism over time.

Website & SEO
Your website needs to look professional and be well optimized. Google is not going to let a news source in that is sloppy and poorly built. Keep your design clean and always search engine friendly. Look at your content and URL structures and ask yourself is there enough search engine optimization elements or too much? Google is not going to take a blog that has more links than content on each post.

Google News is an amazing way to bring in heaping amounts of newly found traffic but there are some steps you need to take prior. Try and follow these guidelines and eventually Google might let you in.

As the social media marketing space grows larger and larger the communities grow a bit more sensitive to what they like and what they don’t so it is important to be careful how you attempt to communicate with your online social audience. If you want to be in the good graces of your online social audience you are going to have to play by the rules.

Here are some sure fire ways to piss of people online:

Misleading Links
Don’t put a sneaky snippet of content that looks like a great title to an article and have it link to a service page or even an affiliate page. This will quickly anger your social community and trust me they will let others know what you are up to. Be truthful and honest to where that link is connected to. You get more bees with honey than with vinegar.

Blatant Self Promotion
The social space was created for more than self-promotion. It is a space where groups of people can communicate on like-minded subjects and topics. Of course the social space can be leveraged to build business as well but there needs to be a happy medium.

Not Scratching Others Backs
It’s only common practice that if someone re-tweets or moves around your content you do the same. The social space is all about sharing and it is important to not be a selfish social media user and never help out a fellow colleague or social media fan. The social space will reward you if you also share your findings with your community even though it might not drive traffic directly to your website it is a great way to get onto the radar screen of important figures in your industry.

Social media marketing is an amazing way to pull in highly targeted and quality traffic but you have to have a plan in place so you don’t anger any communities. Social media is not just about spreading your own message but also about helping others spread their message as well.

Wow, how far the SEO industry has come in just a short time! Years ago on-site optimization would allow your website to be visible almost immediately and now some industries truly have to spend a great deal of time and energy to become visible in their search categories but don’t let that scare you. Over time what will happen is that all the bad apples will get weeded out of the system and the businesses and website looking to do it right will be left behind.

If you are not happy with your search engine optimization or marketing let’s take a look as to why things are happening?

Technology Changing
The search engines are changing and so are their algorithms keeping the SEO industry on their toes at all times. What might have worked last year might not work next year. The technology of what we do is rapidly evolving to the point where many business owners are simply having a hard time just keeping up with everything. You have to roll with the punches of the industry otherwise you will be left behind. Education is key to what we do.

More Distraction
There are continuously more and more websites, web pages, content and social platforms creating more and more distractions online in the search results causing more clutter to cloud a website visitor’s vision. Some people are under the impression that they need to put out more in order to stay competitive and that thought process is what is bogging down our online space.

Buying Behaviors
Plain and simple people are changing also. The way people shop around and make purchases have evolved into something much different than it was 3 years ago. People and business mindsets are in a cost cutting mode and have been for a while so it is not entirely your lack of visibility in the search space that might be causing problems for you.

You have to be able to change with our industry otherwise you are going to have a hard time keeping up with all the advancements. Don’t get left behind and start educating yourself on everything that is occurring in our search marketing industry.

You see it and read all over the web how important it is to continuously put out great content but what about making it stand out and count? It is more than just writing and article or a press release but now you have to be able to draw some attention to that writing piece.

Here are some ideas to help make your content stand out:

Your Title
Your title is everything when it comes to writing. The title is the trigger to get your audience to click and read and if you can’t grab them with the title people are going to tune out very quickly. There is a thin line between too much SEO and not enough enticement when it comes to writing out your titles so make sure they are catchy for your audience and the search engines.

Unique Stance
Don’t beat a dead horse with your content, meaning that if an approach has been written about many times in your industry already try taking a different stance on a subject. Approach the writing from an angle nobody has taken yet. Nobody is going to link to your article and spread your word if it has already been spread many times online.

Writing Structure
Formatting is very important when it comes to getting others to not only spread your content but also to read it. It has to be easy on the eyes and a reader has to be able to scan across the content to pick out what they want to read. They might only want to read a certain section so make it easy for them. Images, charts, graphs and lists also make it easy to read. Breaking up the writing with visuals is a nice way to keep a reader interested and moving down the page.

Content is a very important part of marketing a business online and over time with practice most writers will figure out a style of their own that works. Writing good content for yourself or someone else does not happen overnight and eventually you will truly grasp what it takes to get others to spread your message for you.

Search engine optimization is one of those things that has created many different opinions on every single effort that is associated with the practice. Over the years there have been lots of different ideas and feeling surrounding the way people conduct search engine optimization but the reality is that there is more than one way to do.

Here is a list of 10 SEO facts that could blow your mind!

1. It is not invisible: You might not be able to put your hands on it right away but there are ways to physically see and feel movement. A search engine marketing company should be able to identify exactly what it is that they are doing each month. You should be able to physically see the efforts that have been conducted. If they tell you that it is their own secret recipe I would be very wary about this because there is no secret recipe when it comes to search engine marketing.

2. It takes time: Regardless of what you do or how much money you pour into your SEO efforts your rankings are not going to grow over night. Things take time and if you are in a competitive space things might take even longer. You will see some movement fairly soon but cold hard rankings really don’t happen right away. You need to be patient and wait your turn.

3. Trickery does not work: Try to get the idea of performing any trickery on your website out of your head because you could end up just landing yourself a penalty in the search engines. Black hat SEO only creates short winded rankings that never really stick around for the long term.

4. PPC does not help you rankings: If you are wondering if PPC advertising helps your organic rankings at all it doesn’t in any way. Even if you received a penalty on your website you can opt in to Google Adwords and fire of a PPC account.

5. You need millions of links: False, you need good solid one way links pointing to your website that occur naturally. The ones that occur naturally are usually telling the search engines that you are an awesome source of information and for that you will be rewarded…overtime.

6. Pagerank is everything: Another false here. Pagerank was created by Google to give a webpage power. That power does not mean you are going to rank or be successful. All it means is that you have received a high number in your toolbar for that particular page which ultimately really doesn’t mean anything to the outside world.

7. Nobody is partnered with Google: If anyone ever tells you over the phone that they have a direct relationship with Google they are most likely lying to get the business in through the door. Nobody has a relationship with Google and if they tell you they do I would run far away.

8. Buying links is bad: People out there still seem to think it is ok to purchase a link for their website. The search engines have come out repeatedly to let the industry know that buying a link is very frowned upon. Sometimes however you can’t avoid it. For example you want to be in the Business.com directory and that costs $299 per/year. In situations like this it is ok but going through a text broker is not good and should be avoided at all costs.

9. Google analytics gives Google too much info: Who cares if they know how many people clicked on your site? Google doesn’t care and they only use it to strengthen their search tool. If you are worried about them spying don’t be cutting corners on your website and everything will be hunky dory.

10. SEO is one time: SEO is a journey through the valleys and over mountains through the depths of the forests! No seriously it never stops. SEO is something that is constantly moving because it is the process of marketing your business online proactively.

There are many myths and legends about search engine optimization out there but you have to understand that not all of them are true or false. Your best bet is to read through credible sources online that are trusted and educate yourself as much as possible before you enter the world of SEO.