An important part of internet marketing is consistently communicating with a client’s target market.  At Single Throw, we understand the significance of a blog as well as social networking.  A blog needs to engage its readers and be search engine friendly as well, just like the clients actual site.  These tips below can definitely make creating a blog run more effectively.

Source: Mashable

Lots of companies benefit from having a blog. For some, it’s a friendly, accessible way to say hi to devoted fans, curious onlookers and likely a few haters and skeptics. For others, it’s simply the way they communicate important messages. The role of public relations professionals in this chatty puzzle is to help companies build, shape and fine-tune their public voice. In fact, many PR campaigns aren’t complete without a blog strategy. But building a client blog from the ground up can be daunting. So where do you begin?

Start, With Help

When it comes to picking out a blog platform, there are certainly plenty to choose from, but Jeff Davis, who runs the content services team at San Francisco-based PR firm LaunchSquad, generally points clients towards WordPress, a mostly-free, open-source platform. Davis also makes another point: When you’re just starting out, don’t go DIY. “If you’re building something strategic for a client, even if it’s small scale, hire a WordPress developer to handle set up, find the right plugins and design a nice UI. It can be fairly inexpensive and is critical to building a blog that will work the way you need it to quickly and effectively.”

With a bit of help, WordPress’ initial set up process is simple and fast, and yet it offers a huge range of customization and configuration options. And with thousands of plugins, there is one that will satisfy any need that you can think of, often for free. For those who are coordinating blogs for multiple clients, WordPress also offers admin features for easy management across the board.

Optimize, But Not Too Much

According to Rich Brooks, President and “Chief Blogging Officer” at Flyte New Media, your SEO practices should have a very simple goal: rank high in search results for the things that your client’s customers are looking for. He recommends starting with a keyword analysis service like Raventools, WordTracker or Google Adwords’ keyword tool.

You want to pick one keyword topic per post, mentioning it once in the post title and once in the body of the post. Be sure to link important words to past posts as well, but keep it to one or two internal links at most. Beyond that, make sure you’ve got the WordPress SEO plugin installed and place the rest of your focus on working with your client to create engaging content.

Make It Worth Sharing

The company and product news that grace the vast majority of corporate blogs can certainly be both useful and good, but it’s just a tiny snippet of what is possible and inspiring. Arik Hanson, principal at ACH Communications, recommends considering content that is less about your client’s product, and more about the “culture that surrounds” your client’s product.

For the full article & more tips, click here.

At Single Throw, we understand the importance of social media and how it effects businesses.  This article from Entrepreneur has outlined six key points as to why social media marketing is a must for any business.  Single Throw thrives on researching and developing new ways to reach the target market of its clients with social media marketing.

Source: Entrepreneur

If you’re not only the CEO, but also the CMO you may be wondering if all of your social media efforts are panning out. According to a new report, you’re not alone.

While 90 percent of marketers now say that social media-related marketing is important for their business, nearly 25 percent are still in the dark when it comes to measuring its effect, according to the third annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Michael A. Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Although it’s hard to justify plowing resources into something that you’re not sure is working, marketers overall have deemed social media a must. Here are six of the key takeaways from the more than 3,300 marketers from businesses of all sizes who participated in the survey:

1. Social media takes time.

Fifty-eight percent of marketers said they use social media six hours or more a week and another third spend 11 or more hours a week on it. Those with the most years of experience pour more than 20 hours a week into the effort.

2. Have a goal in mind.

Eighty-eight percent of marketers said social media was ideal for generating exposure for their business, while 72 percent claim it has helped increase traffic or subscribers. Sixty two percent of marketers added that social media improves their business’ search rankings. Other benefits of social media marketing include creating new business partnerships, generating qualified leads, reducing marketing expenses and improving sales.

3. Social media isn’t just useful for reaching consumers.

Business to consumer, or B2C, marketers continue to place a high value on social media, with 90 percent saying it is most important for their business. But business to business, or B2B, companies have joined the fray — with more than half saying they’ve been engaged in social media longer than a year. That’s compared to 31 percent in last year’s report.

4. Pick your medium.

Not every social media site will help you accomplish your goals; it’s best to pick according to the sites that your customers use. But if you want to build a presence in front of the most eyeballs, Facebook edged out Twitter for the top spot — a change over last year. With 92 percent of marketers saying they use the tool and 75 percent planning to use it, Facebook once again reigns supreme. Still, 77 percent of respondents say they intend to increase their YouTube and video marketing efforts — making it the top vehicle that marketers want to invest in for 2011.

5. Wade in to new(er) sites.

Less than one third of marketers say they’ll hike their participation in geolocation services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. And a paltry 19 percent of marketers plan to step up their use of Groupon or similar group-shopping sites.

6. Consider getting help.

Twenty-eight percent of businesses plan to outsource part of their social media marketing efforts in 2011. That number has doubled since last year’s report when 14 percent said they outsourced such tasks as design and development, content creation and analytics to others outside the company.

For the full article, click here.

As social marketing evolves, so will search engines.  This article from Search Engine Watch, reviews the new updates Google and Bing will be making by integrating organic search results and social context via Facebook and Twitter.  Single Throw can help your business grow in search engine results and social media marketing with internet marketing strategies and a great team!

Source: Search Engine Watch

Social search updates by Google and Bing have generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks. Instead of separating results from social networks like Twitter and Facebook from organic results, both search engines are streamlining search engine results pages (SERPs) by combining organic results with this social context.

Both Google and Bing have declared that, for some searches, social context will boost the rankings of results higher on the SERP than regular results. These announcements are just further confirmation of the convergence of social and search, and signal the growing importance of social media marketing for businesses.

What’s noteworthy about these changes:

• Both Google and Bing have moved away from showing tweets and sectioned-off “Liked Results” in the SERPs.
• Search engines are now sending users to the correct websites, as well as providing the detail about the origin of the recommendation (i.e., friend’s profile, original recommendation).
• With these social annotations, the search engines are giving users some visibility as to why they’re algorithms are picking certain results over the others.

Google’s Evolution: Twitter Integration

Google’s SERPs have progressed from showing organic results as a website link, to a specific tweet from a user within your social circle who mentions a link, and now to a combination of the two: the website result, a link to the friend’s social network profile (e.g. Twitter account) who did the sharing, and a link to the original recommendation are now combined into one result.

• Classic result: Google’s organic result for a keyword search pointing to a website.
• Tweet result: An link to the actual tweet from friends within your social network, mentioning your search query.
• Combined result: The website result, with additional annotations linking to your friend’s profile and a time stamp that redirects to the original recommendation are all combined in one result.

Bing’s Evolution: Facebook Likes

Bing has primarily focused on the integration of Facebook Like data in their SERPs and algorithm. Their social search features have evolved from showing organic result as a website link to a module within SERPs that’s set apart the organic search results with the header, “Liked by your Facebook friends,” to listing organic results with an added social annotation mentioning friends from your Facebook network who have also Liked the URL.

• Classic result: Bing’s organic result for a keyword search pointing to a website.
• “Liked Results”: A separate module included alongside organic results in the SERP (includes the website result, friend’s profile)
• Combined result: The website result front and center, with social context (friend’s names and profile pictures who have liked the link).

Facebook Uses Bing Search Results

Another development of note is coming from Facebook, which has started providing Bing’s web results as a part of their internal search feature. Twitter isn’t using Google results, just yet, but judging from Facebook’s and Bing’s partnership, it might be a matter of time before we see this unfold.

How Significant is This Change for Marketers?

This is yet again confirmation that social media optimization should be an integral part of any company’s search strategy.

Actions like getting retweets and mentions on Twitter, Likes on Facebook, and mentions on Quora are crucial for today’s online businesses to gain visibility through search engines and social networks.

As search gets more social, the idea of the social footprint which gives you exponential reach into a follower or fan’s social network just from a simple @mention, retweet, Like, or follow will have a whole new large-scale network effect.

When people share your content, it will show up across their social networks and in their friends’ SERPs.

For the full article, click here.

Social media is on the rise and this article by PRWeb discusses the impact that social media has on the importance of decision-making.  Social media can help your business grow with a few key points that were found in the study.  Single Throw Internet Marketing offers social networking as well as other important internet marketing strategies to help your business grow.

Source: PRWeb

The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), a global nonprofit research and education foundation and think tank, announced the results of the 2nd annual New Symbiosis of Professional Networks Study led by SNCR Fellows Donald Bulmer, Vice President, Global Communications, Industry and Influencer Relations, SAP, and Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks. The study — supported by quantitative data gathered from more than 100 senior business professionals and executives — benchmarks the impact of social media on enterprise decision-making.

This study extends the research Bulmer and DiMauro began in 2009 and 2010 focusing on professionals’ use of social media for decision-making. The 2010-2011 study examines the dynamics of trust that professionals have within their social media communities, as well as the value of engagement and collaboration to support decision-making and innovation across company operations for internal and external purposes.

Of the 114 executives who participated in the study, most were key decision makers in their respective companies that ranged in size from under 100 to over 50,000 full time employees.

Key Findings include:

* Social networks have evolved to become knowledge and communication networks, and access to thought leadership content is now the primary reason professionals visit networks and communities. Professionals are collaborating with each other through the thought leadership content they generate, curate or share. No longer is collaboration an experience between a limited number of people.

* While nearly all professionals surveyed (97%) use LinkedIn, the use of smaller (niche) professional networks are actively being used to find peers and content specifically related to the work that they do (by role, industry, geography, etc.). Professionals are finding the right mix of large open networks and private communities to support their learning, networking and decision-making activities.

* Professional communities are being used more frequently to inform business strategy and supporting new products and services (much more than in 2009). A majority (80%) of respondents are able to accelerate decision process and information/strategy development by participating in online communities.

* Endorsement (e.g. like, read, share, retweet) is at the center of collaboration in social media communities. “The Crescendo Effect” in social media environments has great impact on buying decisions. High quality content yields transparency and credibility.

“Business professionals are changing how they collaborate as a result of online professional communities and peer networks,” stated Bulmer about the study.

“Professional collaboration is changing from a small professional exchange into an interaction with content in more public ways,” added DiMauro. “The consequence of sharing content online is enhanced influence.”

To read the full article, click here.

In wake of the recent disaster in Haiti, it’s become evident what a powerful resource social media sites can be in rallying the humanitarian spirit inherent in us all.  Organizations like The American Red Cross and Partner In Health have raised money through the efforts of Facebook Causes.  Similarly, Oxfam America’s Facebook Fan Page has already raised over $33,000.  Fugees singer Wyclef Jean, who is originally from Haiti, utilized his Twitter account to raise relief efforts for his country.  He also created a multi-faceted online effort with his website, Yele Haiti.

There’s no doubt how amazing it has been to see how humanitarian spirit has become infectious through the use of a plethora of social networking sites. Still, as Ben Parr wrote on CNN’s Tech blog today, social media is undoubtedly a resourceful tool, but it is the efforts of the people, themselves, that truly make a difference in situations like these.

What kind of relief efforts have you seen on social media sites?
[Sources: PC Mag]