Tag Archives: Social Media Strategy

Like It or Not, Vertical Video is Here to Stay: How Marketers, Brands Can Adjust

This entry was posted on February 29, 2016 by Team Eminent SEO.

Trying to watch an entire video that was shot vertically might be like nails on a chalkboard to a design expert or videographer. However, much to their chagrin, vertical video has expanded well beyond Snapchat and isn’t going away anytime soon.

It seems to fly in the face common of sense, but a market has emerged for vertical video. Just a few years ago, most of us were making the switch from 4:3 monitors and television sets to widescreen versions. Now, a significant amount of the media we watch and interact with is being presented vertically, not horizontally.

How did this happen? You can credit (or blame) mobile devices for this movement. As our smartphones have gotten more powerful and as most families own at least one tablet device, we are quickly moving toward a mobile-first world.

Let’s take a look at the arguments for vertical video, why the format will likely be around for years to come, and how advertising and marketing departments can capitalize on the movement. But, before we do that, let’s look at why vertical video gets the goat of so many who claim to be experts in the aesthetics of moving imagery.

Why Vertical Video Sucks

You may have thought we’re living in a widescreen world, but the vertical video movement is pushing back at that notion.

How did this happen? A common complaint about trying to watch a video in this format goes to the effect of, “My eyes aren’t stacked vertically on my head!”

Yes, we naturally see the world horizontally. We generally like to see the full context and background of whatever subject on which we happen to currently have our focus. This explains why television screens and computer monitors have evolved to replicate, as closely as possible, our natural field of vision.

Yet, more and more people are serving up video in a vertical format. You can thank apps like Snapchat and Periscope for this phenomenon, or maybe just blame the orientation of smartphones and perhaps sheer laziness by their owners.

Vertical video has been getting on consumers’ nerves for several years now. Some even claim that the format is evidence of a rise of narcissism in society, since it’s usually one person filming themselves. In 2012, a popular video was released that claims to be a public service announcement on “Vertical Video Syndrome.”

“Vertical videos happen when you hold your camera the wrong way,” the lighthearted, humorous video says. “Your video will end up looking like crap,” it adds.

This so-called PSA came out about a year after the creation of Snapchat. Even then, its creators recognized that too many smartphone users were forgoing turning their devices sideways when shooting video. Today, vertical video is even more prominent, and many former horizontal advocates are finally giving in.

Perhaps the reason vertical video gets on the nerves of so many is quite a few of us think in terms of YouTube when consuming and producing visual content. A vertical video might play well on a phone, but once if it gets uploaded to YouTube, an excessive amount of pillarboxing (empty, black bars on the left and right) accompanies the footage inside the video player.

Why Vertical Video Does Not Suck

Let’s put aside any personal distaste for vertical video for a moment and take a level-headed look at why the format is excelling and why it legitimately has a place in today’s digital world.

Cellphones are getting larger and larger, and they’re getting harder to hold steadily in one hand, even for those of us with large hands. Turning the phone sideways to shoot video almost always takes two hands to operate the device, and there are certain times where that’s a luxury some users just don’t have. Shooting a video with the phone held upright can usually be accomplished with one hand, so there’s little reason to fault people for not being gung-ho about turning the phone horizontally.

Also, sometimes framing a video vertically just makes sense. It works for certain photos, after all. If you really want to get a tight focus on a single subject – a person or an object – then a vertical orientation could work really well. And it’s not just that it can work really well, it is working really well in the current smartphone- and tablet-laden environment, as more and more users are feeling comfortable with watching and shooting such videos.

This tweet sums up the best situations in which to shoot a vertical video:

Best uses for vertical video. #verticalvideo #filmmaking #womeninfilm pic.twitter.com/aQgwEMhoUu

— Suzette Mariel (@suzettemariel) February 26, 2016

Several Signs that Vertical Video Is a Legit Movement

You don’t have to look too far to see that vertical video is a viable movement and isn’t going away any time soon. Here are a few examples that extend beyond the realms of Snapchat, Periscope, Meerkat, etc.:

Vervid

Vervid is a website and iPhone app that allows users to create and share short videos with an aspect ratio of 9:16 (as opposed to the widescreen dimensions of 16:9). This company appears to be on a mission to make vertical video a mainstay.

Verly

Verly is an online marketplace for stock vertical imagery, with video clips available across 30 different categories and ranging in price from $15 to $79.

Vimeo

You will see pillarboxing around a vertically-shot video on the desktop version of Vimeo, but the video controls actually fit inside the narrow frame with the actual footage, rather than spread across the entire media player, as seen on YouTube.

Vertical Film Festival

The Vertical Film Festival takes place in Austrailia and features short, 9:16 submissions. The festival is actually coming up on its second annual celebration, which will take place on May 21, 2016.

Photo from the 1st annual Vertical Film Festival in Australia. (Facebook Photo/Vertical Film Festival)

Vertical Video Trailers

A YouTube account named “Vertical Video Trailers” has emerged, where it appears the account creator has just taken the traditional trailers of movies and cropped them to fit a vertically oriented device. These clips will have pillarboxing when viewed on a desktop, but if you take them full screen on your phone, they will fill out the available space.

The Stats Back it Up

If the above examples are a little too anecdotal to convince you of vertical video’s newfound prominence, let take a look at a few statistics provided by Snapchat and Verly:

Vertical video ads are watched all the way through 9 times more than horizontal video ads on Snapchat.
Smartphone users hold their phones vertically about 94 percent of the time.
Brands that are producing vertical video are seeing a 73 percent average completion rate.
Viewing of vertical content has jumped 600 percent over the last five years.
More than 7 billion video clips are viewed daily on Snapchat, a majority of which are vertically filmed.
Consumers use vertically oriented devices 30 percent of the time, up from just 5 percent in 2010. This means desktop, laptop and television screens aren’t dominating consumers’ attention the way they used to.

What About YouTube?

Last year, a Business Insider video producer created a vertical video about vertical video and embedded the YouTube version on his company’s website without any pillarbox showing.

However, if you click to see the video directly in YouTube, a significant amount of pillarboxing fills the widescreen frame.

This indicates that Business Insider must have adjusted the video embed code so the clip shows up perfectly on the page with its accompanying article. In fact, if I dig into the source code of the page, it looks like the width of the video player was changed to 400 pixels and the height changed to 711.

So, while you can manipulate the code of a vertical YouTube video to display correctly on your own site, it won’t look all too great on the popular video platform itself unless you’re viewing it on a phone and you make it full screen. If vertical video creators can eventually convince YouTube to fully cater to their 9:16 content, there’s no telling how far the format will continue to go. But, so far, YouTube is still a little behind the curve, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

How Advertisers, Marketers Can Capitalize on Vertical Video’s Success

Although you can certainly find examples of vertically-shot video and content pre-2010, the format’s viability is currently undeniable in today’s digital climate.

It’s still a rather fresh trend, so brands are still trying to figure out how to capitalize on the format’s success. If you’re in advertising or marketing, keep reading for a few ideas on how to get you started with creating and leveraging vertical video.

Leveraging Snapchat

Many media companies are on Snapchat Discover to provide video and photo content for users on this platform. Your company can try to get on Snapchat Discover, or if you’re a smaller business, you’ll just make a pleas for your Facebook or Twitter followers to find your Snapchat business account. Be sure to hide your phone number, as it will likely be one person whose personal phone will be logged in as the business.

However, make sure your business’s Snapchat Stories can be viewed by the public, not just “friends” of the company. If you can see Stories and individual snaps by users who have friended the company, feel free to interact appropriately and keep your brand on the mind of these users.

Shooting Other Vertical Content

Perhaps, your company periodically shares video to its social accounts, just maybe not vertically oriented clips. You can start changing that today.

Videos shot vertically will play well in Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram. You don’t always have to shoot such videos with a phone, either. You can use a higher-powered camcorder and just turn the device 90 degrees, or find a tripod where the camera mount can tilt and still hold the device sideways.

Better yet, use your camcorder to shoot a video with a landscape orientation. And when you have a single subject within a certain shot, just keep it in the focal point in the middle of the frame. This way, you can always crop the footage to a vertical orientation using video-editing software.

You can then share that video to Facebook, Twitter and such, but you have options if you want to use the widescreen version for other platforms, such as YouTube. Companies like Mashable, Vox and National Geographic are known for shooting videos horizontally but cropping some of them down to appear vertically on certain platforms.

Video Length

Vertical video seems to work best for brands when clips are short – as in 1 minute or less. If you look at the submissions to last year’s Vertical Film Festival, most of those “films” didn’t even linger past 3 minutes. While more content consumers are opening up to vertical video, the clips are still difficult for the average viewer to watch for long periods of time.

If you don’t shoot video too often, you can get started by purchasing vertical content from the aforementioned Verly and then adding graphics or a few seconds of your own footage to the mix. Producing high-quality vertical video can help your company succeed on mobile and open itself up to new audiences.

It’s Good to Have Options

Personally, I find vertical video hard to take in, other than on Snapchat and maybe Twitter. However, after digging deeper into the trend, it’s not hard to see the value and the opportunity the format provides, even though it does take some getting used to.

Are we going to start seeing tall, narrow movie theater screens, desktop monitors and TVs? Not likely, although monitors that can rotate 90 degrees may start gaining popularity.

Now that we know vertical video is viable, it’s just another tool in the arsenal when it comes to how to shoot and produce footage that can be used on social media, a company’s website, a presentation, etc. Whether a video needs to be vertical comes down to:

The device you’re using,
The type and number of subjects you’re recording, and
How you want users to view the final product.

A general design rule applies here: If it’s the right format for the right context, it’s usually a success. User experience can go well beyond a website and now apply to the format of videos as well. Whether you personally like vertically filmed video, as marketers and video creators, it’s time to adapt or get left out of the frame.

Team Eminent SEO

Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.

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This entry was posted in Content & Blogging, Social Media and tagged Social Media Strategy, Video.

How To Use Twitter For Your Business Without Sounding Spammy

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This entry was posted on June 8, 2015 by Team Eminent SEO.

You’ve wanted to use Twitter for your company, or maybe you’ve already established an account, but if you’re a small- or medium-sized business, you’re probably having trouble gaining interaction or any ROI on the social media platform.

Heck, even many large corporations have trouble getting many Twitter users to care about what they’re tweeting. But if you are trying to use Twitter to generate sales, leads, or interest in your brand, there is some light at the end of the tunnel: Research shows there are reasons why your company should be active on Twitter, and that the proper strategy can help you succeed on the platform.

Why Should My Business Be On Twitter?

You might think of LinkedIn as the place to put on your proverbial sport coat and start making a sales pitch, but a recent Forbes study found there’s a better place to do it. Twitter has emerged as the No. 1 platform for sales prospecting, edging out LinkedIn and Facebook, respectively, according to Forbes’ research. Jill Rowley, a startup adviser, told Forbes she learns more about a buyer on Twitter than LinkedIn – whom they follow, who follows them and what they tweet about and retweet.

How A Business Should Tweet

First and foremost, businesses should aim to be engaging on Twitter and ready to interact with any user who shows genuine interest. Small Business Trends advises companies to be personable on the micro-blogging platform. For example, if one of your colleagues is celebrating a birthday, or if your team is gathered at a recognizable venue, a tweet or two with photos of the event goes a long way in peeling back the curtain to your company and showing Twitter users you’re relatable.

However, don’t be too personal on your Twitter timeline. The Twitterverse is sort of a buttoned-down place where business can be conducted, but sharing a little TMI will almost always have an adverse effect.

As far as volume of tweets, a new Hootsuite blog post recommended not to tweet too much, and not to tweet too little. Posting several tweets subsequently that don’t build on each other is a great way to turn some of your followers off. Conversely, tweeting too little will make users bored with your brand and will reflect how little commitment you have to the platform.

It is okay to send the same tweet more than once, particularly if you have an ongoing campaign you’re trying to draw attention to, but tweak the copy or attach a different picture so it looks different each time, and don’t post the same idea more than once or twice day. Also, make sure to post a variety of tweets in between the ongoing message you’re trying to deliver. And for the best times to tweet, a Hootsuite blog post last year said many studies point to 9 a.m., 12 p.m., and 3 p.m., but it may be beneficial for your company to post in the evening, as well. Just consider whether your business goes for a national or local audience, and if it’s the latter.

What A Business Should Tweet

Your business Twitter account should reflect your expertise in your field. Apart from the tips and industry knowledge you possess that can be shared on the platform, feel free to share links to recent publications on topics related to your field. Your Twitter followers will appreciate the insight, even if it didn’t come from in house.

A recent Twitter blog post recommended adding value to the products you offer, such as how to use the items in ways consumers probably never thought of before. Also, invite Twitter followers into a community; tell them what you tweet about, what customers you serve and what kind of incentives they might expect. That leads us to highlighting exclusive prizes and giveaways. There’s no greater way to draw in some potential customers than to tweet about giveaways, promotions, deals and contests you’re running. Additionally, remember to include a call to action in several of your tweets. Simply saying “follow us” and including a compelling reason why can go a long way.

And most of all, remember: photos, photos, photos. Try to include photos in as many tweets as possible. Mashable reported in 2013 that tweets with photos that can be instantly seen in a user’s newsfeed (e.g. not Instagram links) garner 94 percent more retweets than text-only posts. Food photos tend to do well, as do pictures of recognizable landmarks or destinations. Memes are also acceptable to include in your tweets, provided you can make a relevant connection and not choose something that might offend your followers. As long as you have rights to whichever photos you want to tweet, go ahead and post them and make sure the text of each tweet logically ties into the image.

Closing Thoughts

Don’t sound like a soulless robot in your tweets, and be engaging on the platform and ready to react to your followers or what other leaders in your industry have to say. If you’re mentioned in a tweet or asked a question, be sure to respond to it! Also, try to follow back anyone who has just followed you, as long as their account looks legitimate.

Not every tweet from your business’ account has to make a sales pitch, but such posts will be more effective as long as you are engaging and expanding your audience with a steady stream of compelling content and commentary.

Team Eminent SEO

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This entry was posted in Business Strategy, Social Media and tagged Copywriting, Rehab Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Strategy.

How to Master Pinterest for SEO

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This entry was posted on July 21, 2014 by Team Eminent SEO.

47% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from Pinterest. (source)

Pinterest has been used for marketing since day one, basically. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this as a marketer or business owner? It opens up so many more opportunities for your website to be visible to new consumers, and potentially influence consumers in your niche.

In this segment, we want to talk about how you can use Pinterest specifically to boost your traffic and SEO. Utilizing these tips will help increase the amount of natural links pointing to your site and help your business Pinterest boards get more visibility.

Think of Pinterest as a Search Engine

With 70 million users, Pinterest is thought of as another search engine for those looking for inspiration and ideas. Don’t be blind to the opportunities that this can potentially bring your business. Users would rather search on Pinterest’s search engine for items such as: DIY, recipes, travel, etc. versus Google because they are looking for that visual inspiration. And what better catches someone’s eye than visuals? See for yourself:

Searching “places to see in Italy” on Google:

You see there’s a lot going on here and you get a little bit of everything. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but check out what you get from Pinterest.

Searching “places to see in Italy” on Pinterest:

It really gives you that beautiful, inspiring photos that are attention grabbing.

Needless to say, users are using Pinterest to search for all kinds of inspiration and ideas, not just travel and recipes. Users trust Pinterest as a source for when they are purchasing products and services. When you think of Pinterest as another search engine to optimize for, it can really enhance your SEO because repins are qualified as natural backlinks to your website.

Make Sure Your Pinterest Business Profile is Optimized for Search Engines

Optimization is important because it lets search engines, such as Google, know that you’re business is directly verified with your Pinterest account. If your Pinterest account takes off, you want it to show in the search results when people search for your brand and related brand keywords, right?

Make Sure Your Profile is Verified

First thing you need to do to optimize is you need to make sure your website is verified with your Pinterest profile. Here’s the steps on how to verify your business account and website.

Make Your Boards Visible to Search Engines

There’s a setting where you can either hide or make your Pinterest boards visible in the search results. You want to make sure your boards are visible. This will open up opportunities for your boards to show up in the search results when they are related to specific key phrases in your niche. You can find this in the settings and make sure it’s set to No.

Optimized About Description

Just like most other social networks, Pinterest allows you to have a small description of what your business is what who you are. This has a 200 character limit, so make sure you utilize this section to include focus keywords that represent your business. Also, make sure this information is always accurate.

Create Boards & Pins That Are Keyword-Friendly

Board names, pins, and board descriptions should contain focus keywords. Don’t stuff your keywords if it doesn’t make sense that would look spammy. In my opinion, the more simple, the better. People don’t read, they’re looking for keywords on Pinterest. Make it easy for end user to scan and find what they want.

Board Names Contain Focus Keywords

When creating Pinterest boards, you want to make sure the names are closely related to focus keywords you are also targeting for SEO. You don’t want to limit your boards to ONLY keywords, I’m just saying you need to include your keywords within your boards along with other related topics. Check out Mashable’s Pinterest:

They keep it straight to the point with the names of their boards, which are also focus keywords related to what they represent as a brand.

Board Descriptions Contain Focus Keywords

Each board allows you space for a brief description of what that board includes. In your description, include your focus keyword for that board in the description. Think like your consumer and how they would be searching for items or services related to your board. Include that in your description.

Pins Should Contain Keywords and Hashtags

Each individual pin should represent something related to your business. This opens up opportunity to use your keywords in the descriptions. Especially when directly pinning your blog posts and other web pages, you want to make sure you utilize the description to have focus keywords. Don’t neglect the use of hashtags either, this will give your pin more opportunities to show in the Pinterest search results when users are searching that keyword.

Pin Your Website Content

This may seem pretty obvious, but so many forget to pin their blog posts and landing pages. Pinterest is full of blog posts and people are using it as a resource to gain knowledge and educate themselves in different niches.

Every time a blog post is written on your site, it should include an image that directly represents what the blog is about, then pinned on your company’s Pinterest board that’s related to the post. This opens up so many opportunities for your content to rank high and here’s why:

Repins Are Considered Natural Nofollow Backlinks

This is a great technique for SEO because again, repins = backlinks. Even though these backlinks are nofollow, Google will still consider them a natural backlink which is needed in your backlink profile. Every time your pin is repined onto other boards, it creates a separate link. Each link will point to your website because your content is the source.

Increased Social Signals

Another SEO benefit, is the fact that this will increase the amount of social signals for your content. Since search engines are using social signals to rank content higher, you want to make sure your content is maximizing this opportunity for going viral. The more repins and other social shares your content has, the higher it will show in search results because search engines feel that your content serves value to others.

Utilize Pinterest Analytics

If you have a verified website on your Pinterest account, you will have access to view analytics. You want to closely watch these metrics to make adjustments to current content marketing efforts. The metrics Pinterest supplies you with are: pins from your website, repins from your website, website visitors, reach, most repined content, and most clicked content.

To analyze this data, look at the content that’s providing the most clicks to your website and most repins. This is a strong indication that this type of content, is providing your website with the most visibility. Customize your content marketing strategy to include more content that’s related. Track it. Did it provide you with the same range of results? If so, it should be included in your on-going content marketing campaign.

Closing Thoughts

Now that you understand what it takes to master Pinterest for SEO, start fulfilling! Pinterest and the content marketing side of SEO go hand in hand and should not be neglected in your overall SEO strategy. Follow this rule: Create, Test, Measure. Create your content, test it by sharing it on Pinterest, and measure the results with Pinterest analytics.

Do you need expert SEO advice? We can help. We provide results driven solutions for marketing and SEO. Give us a call today to speak with one of our specialists: (800) 871.4130

Team Eminent SEO

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This entry was posted in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media and tagged Social Media Strategy.

Social Media Is Going To Help Accelerate Your Business Priorities

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This entry was posted on May 31, 2013 by Team Eminent SEO.

Stop talking about social media if you want to get bigger budgets and teams. It’s about a digital experience with a brand, company and/or personality. Social media isn’t just a form of marketing, it’s essentially an extension of a business strategy.

Think about your constraints and business objectives – This is how Social media is going to help accelerate those business priorities.

Social Media has to be an enabler of the business case. Make the business case- rather than saying, “That’s what everyone’s doing”. Brian Solis, a prominent digital analyst in the industry stresses for us to “stop talking about social media and start thinking about how social media becomes a means of triggering meaningful activities or outcomes that align with business priorities or objectives and customer expectations.”

How many times have you approached an executive in your company and stressed the importance of getting your company “more social media dollars?” And what’s the bet your executive had an instant response of, “No.” Chances are, your basis for the argument of, “everyone’s doing it” won’t go far.

Scrap your Social Media Strategies – and reapply business objectives around them and then you will learn to improve the business overall. You will then see your roll to be that more valuable when you are more business and customer focused on the digital experience.

Some Basics to Get Your Company Started:

Listen

How are YOUR customers using the different social platforms. Just because there’s a new kid or social platform on the block, that doesn’t mean you need to be on it too. If it makes sense then yes, by all means join the conversation, otherwise prioritize strategic goals where your social engagement can have the most impact, and then expand out.

Brand

You’re now personalizing your brand/corporation through a social voice, thus creating opportunities that will bring exposure to your company.

Engage

Ready to form a relationship? At this stage, you are now serving as a direct lifeline; utilizing social platforms as digital tools to participate in conversations to build up communities and provide direct support through engagement. This is your persona, one on one communication with your consumers.

Analyze

It’s important to understand what’s actually working and quite frankly what’s failing. If utilized appropriately, social media should improve web traffic and you should be able to understand your ROI when you apply your business objectives around the digital and social strategy. Learn that things may have to be altered, content might have to change direction and that some relationships have break-ups (loss of fans)- Pay attention and alter your strategy accordingly.

What has social media done for your company? We’d love to hear what platforms have worked for you! And if you’re still a rusty and could use some help, feel free to shoot us an email and one of our social media strategists will get back to you stat! hello@eminentseo.com

Team Eminent SEO

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This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged Social Media Strategy.

3 Ways Social Media Impacts SEO

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This entry was posted on May 9, 2013 by Jenny Weatherall.

You know that everything on the web is social. The phrase “let’s get social” appears on just about everyone’s website. But, until the last couple years or so, social media had very little, if any, impact on your search rankings. It still had value, no doubt, as companies able to garner huge followings were able to drive followers to their websites and increase brand awareness and sales, among other things.

But now, social has a lot to do with your search engine optimization strategy. We’ll show 3 concrete ways in which it does.

Examples of how Social Media directly impacts SEO

Personalized Results

If there’s one big trend on the web, it’s relevancy, and personalized search is always more relevant to the searcher. You see that icon with the circle around it? If you search in Google and see that icon, it means it’s a personal search result you’re more likely to see when signed in to Google.

When you sign in to Google, it examines people who are in your Google+ circles, and whenever you type in a search term, you’re more likely to see a result from someone in your circles than any other search result. For now, Google only does this for its own social network, but other social media websites are lobbying to be included.

This is also true for Bing. Because Bing is integrated with Facebook, when you are signed in to Facebook and you search Bing, guess what shows up? Social Results:

Follower Count/Social Shares

Google takes these two important metrics into account when deciding which content is more authoritative. Follower count isn’t emphasized nearly as much as the number of social shares (retweets, Facebook shares, LinkedIn shares etc…) because it can be easily manipulated, but both metrics play a role in determining your search engine rankings.

Think of it this way: say your content gets 100 social shares on average each time you promote it on a social network, but say your competitor’s only gets 5. All other factors being equal, who’s more likely the trustworthy source of information?

Searching Directly on Social Sites

Facebook recently introduced its new “Graph Search.” It’s slightly different from Google in that it searches your friends, places, interest, and photos to help you immediately find an answer to your question, rather than providing a link to a website. Practically speaking, you might use Graph Search to look for “Chinese restaurants.” Then, you can see which of your friends went to a Chinese restaurant near you.

Which are you more likely to trust: a highly rated restaurant that people you don’t know on Google say is popular, or a Chinese restaurant your best friend recommends, whose tastes you know you like?

And the interesting part is SEO has almost no place in this type of search.

Build Your Social Media Following!

The most important takeaway from all of this is that being active on social media is essential to your search visibility now, and in the future. At a basic level, develop a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest, and give away interesting content you think will benefit your target audience. It takes a ton of hard work to build and maintain your social media profiles, but it definitely helps increase your marketing ROI. If managing your social media accounts is too much for you, remember you can always contact Eminent SEO for help. We offer a full array of social media services from banner designs to fully managed solutions.

Jenny Weatherall

CEO, Business Consultant, Researcher and Marketing Strategist

Jenny Weatherall is the co-owner and CEO of Eminent SEO, a design and marketing agency founded in 2009. She has worked in the industry since 2005, when she fell in love with digital marketing… and her now husband and partner, Chris. Together they have 6 children and 3 granddaughters.

Jenny has a passion for learning and sharing what she learns. She has researched, written and published hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics, including: SEO, design, marketing, ethics, business management, sustainability, inclusion, behavioral health, wellness and work-life balance.

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This entry was posted in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media and tagged SEO, Social Media Strategy.

Why You Need Social Media For your Business

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This entry was posted on October 4, 2012 by Jenny Weatherall.

Social Media is imperative for businesses online. You need to be where your audience is. And where are they? On your website? Maybe. Maybe not. But you know they ARE on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, Typepad, Posterous, LinkedIn, YouTube or some other social site.

Did you know that as of September 2012 Facebook has 955 million users, over 42 million pages and 9 million apps? YouTube has over 4 billion views per day. Google + now has over 250 million registered users! LinkedIn has 175 million. Twitter 140 million.

Whoa.

Here at Eminent SEO we understand the value in involving social media as part of a larger scaled on-line marketing plan. Although we specialize in SEO, we believe that SEO without social is… well, dead.

Social drives direct, targeted traffic to your site.
Social helps you directly engage with your clients.
Social increases your product and brand awareness.
Social allows you to share your day to day specials, events, office updates and fun, more candid aspects of your business.
Social encourages people to share your posts, content and links – making your outreaches more viral.
Social increases your search engine visibility, helping your website rank higher in the organic search engine results.

In a nutshell: Social rules.

For years every online marketer has muttered these 3 words at least once, “Content is king”.

Is it still? Yes, more than ever! And what better way to share that content then socially for millions to see? Content can be a number of different forms of digital media from text to animated videos. Some common sharable content ideas:

Articles
Press Releases
Blog Posts
Newsletters
Images
Memes
Videos
Infographics
Audio Clips
Custom Apps

A properly optimized social media platform is a perfect place to house your digital content and give Google and the other engines another way to get to your site. By integrating your SEO strategy into your social media optimization your platforms have the opportunity of ranking on their own for your target keyword strategy. Why give Google only one website to rank for your brand and keywords when you could give them 100’s?

Here at Eminent SEO we believe in customizing your marketing strategy to incorporate social where it most benefits your business. We do research before making suggestions so we can recommend developing social profiles on platforms your demographic is already using. We then design, optimize, manage, network and boost your branded profiles for increased awareness. Social requires daily management in order to be effective. If you don’t have the time to manage your social media, don’t worry, we do! If you want to do the bulk of your social networking, but need advice, we can do that too. If you are interested in learning more about our social media marketing services – then click this link to visit Eminent Social Media and how we can help take your social media marketing strategies to the next level… or you know, just call us: 1.800.871.4130

Jenny Weatherall

CEO, Business Consultant, Researcher and Marketing Strategist

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This entry was posted in Content & Blogging, Social Media and tagged Business Marketing, Social Media Strategy.

EminentSEO.com Monthly Newsletter Vol 10

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This entry was posted on July 5, 2012 by Team Eminent SEO.

Happy Independence Day from Team ESEO!

Here’s a few fun 4th of July facts for you:

Independence Day was first celebrated in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776.
The word ‘patriotism’ comes from the Latin patria, which means ‘homeland’ or ‘fatherland.’
The first public Fourth of July event at the White House occurred in 1804.

How will you celebrate this 4^th of July? Fireworks, a backyard BBQ… a fun family trip? Eminent SEO offices will be closes so that we can spend the day celebrating our freedom and independence with our loved ones!

Eminent SEO Company Announcements

Have you met the team? Check us out on Facebook… Meet Your Eminent SEO Team!

Wondering Where in the World is the Eminent SEO Monster? Take a peek here…

Where will he be next?

Want to submit your own Monster picture? Just email us a request for a Monster Business Card @ hello@eminentseo.com with your name and physical address, and we will send you one for endless hours of picture taking fun! (Have a picture to submit, just email it to the same address and we will post on the Facebook account for you).

From the Eminent SEO Blog

Google vs. Yahoo: Choose Your Side

Search engine giants have had quite a summer thus far. While Yahoo has been busy unveiling its mobile-specific web browser Yahoo Axis, and publicly announcing that it was moving back to its original roots in ad-based strategies, Google – it seems – has taken the approach of: ‘let’s buy everything we can and make it ours.’ Read more here: Google vs. Yahoo: Choose Your Side

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From the Eminent SEO Social Media Blog

Star always has a great new tip on how to use your social media accounts, and keeps you up to date with changes and updates. Here’s a little gem for you Facebook users:

Edit Past Comments on Facebook

Facebook users now have the ability to edit their comments at any time, as opposed to before when you had to make the effort to change the comment within seconds of posting. Along with this change comes an edit history. Facebook will indicate comments that have been edited to alleviate the “I never said that” scenarios. Read more here: Edit Past Comments on Facebook

Subscribe to the Eminent Social Media blog here so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay in the know on SEO!

Google Local (AKA Google “Maps” or “Place Pages” for your business) are now Google + Local. Have you claimed your page? Are you fully optimized? We have been reading and testing and we are ready to help you optimize and market to your NEW Google + Local Business page for better local traffic to your website AND your place of business. Call us for help: 800.871.4130 ext. 1

Connect with us!

You can pretty much find us everywhere (right now we are SUPER excited about Pinterest), so be sure to connect with us on your favorite social media site… Let’s get social, it’s fun!

Team Eminent SEO

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This entry was posted in Newsletter and tagged Holiday, Social Media Strategy.

Monetizing Pinterest

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This entry was posted on June 25, 2012 by Team Eminent SEO.

Interesting topics were discussed over the weekend at the “AngelHack – Hackathon” in Palo Alto, CA. Part convention – part trade expo, AngelHack brings developers from all around the country into one arena, allowing developers to showcase their products and ideas, while hoping for seed capital from prospective investors.

While some of the ideas were hits, and some were misses, the future of one idea wasn’t up for debate. Francisco Guerrero, CEO of Pintics (an analytics tool built specifically to track trends and statistics related to the social media site “Pinterest”), unveiled Shopinterest.co – described as a “Shopify” for Pinterest.

Shopinterest will allow users to utilize their “boards” and “pins” as product thumbnails for a salable product. “Our Pinterest analytics service targets large e-commerce companies,” said Guerrero, “but after we saw the large volume of sales generated via Pinterest, we decided to help regular users join in the fun and profits.”While Guerrero was very excited about this project, he was also careful to not divulge all of the details of it. The public only has a snapshot of what Shopinterest will eventually be, at this point, but it promises to be ground-breaking.

However, it remains to be seen how users will react to the monetization of Pinterest. As the majority of social networking sites are making the move into the “profit” sector, these sites also must carefully balance the relationship between e-commerce and free entertainment; otherwise their viewers/users could easily turn on them and make the site obsolete. (cough) Myspace.

Shopinterest is expected to continue its initial development for the next few months and begin linking shopping carts to Pinterest within the year. While no one can foresee if this project will be a success or a failure, it IS an interesting concept and – if done right – could draw even more users to Pinterest.com

Team Eminent SEO

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This entry was posted in Content & Blogging, Industry News & Events, Social Media and tagged Social Media Strategy.

Into The Portal – YouTube Optimization

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This entry was posted on April 6, 2012 by Team Eminent SEO.

These days, it’s not so much what you say, but the way you choose to market it. Whether you own a small business, play in a band or are looking to be the next big viral internet sensation, having a basic understanding in regard to best YouTube practices is imperative in getting your brand the recognition it deserves. Not only will proper use of these tactics place your content at a higher view count, but ultimately serve to broaden your potential web traffic overall. For the purpose of this entry, we will focus on YouTube video title and tagging optimization.

Title

Let’s say you own a small electronics supply company and have a new video describing how to wire a new light switch. In order to ensure your message is heard by your target audience, you must first determine which keywords will best serve your title.

Head on over to Google Adwords (adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal) and input some relevant keywords into the search bar to gain a basic understanding of your available options. With the information provided in this search, you will be best able to determine a proper title. Next, head over to YouTube and use suggested search with your keyword options to figure out which searches are most popular. Check out a few of the results of your suggested search to determine whether they are actually relevant to your video topic.

Once you’ve finished researching, it’s time to decide on your title. The process is quite experimental, but with a little time and data, you’ll be able to figure out which ideas work best. Keep in mind that you can always alter your video’s title down the road.

Team Eminent SEO

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This entry was posted in Content & Blogging, Search Engine Optimization and tagged Social Media Strategy.

Why Vertical Video Sucks

Why Vertical Video Does Not Suck

Several Signs that Vertical Video Is a Legit Movement

The Stats Back it Up

What About YouTube?

How Advertisers, Marketers Can Capitalize on Vertical Video’s Success

Leveraging Snapchat

Shooting Other Vertical Content

Video Length

It’s Good to Have Options

Why Should My Business Be On Twitter?

How A Business Should Tweet

What A Business Should Tweet

Closing Thoughts

Think of Pinterest as a Search Engine

Make Sure Your Pinterest Business Profile is Optimized for Search Engines

Create Boards & Pins That Are Keyword-Friendly

Pin Your Website Content

Utilize Pinterest Analytics

Closing Thoughts

Happy Independence Day from Team ESEO!

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