Vital Tips For Successful Social Media Marketing

As a professional SEO consultant, I need to constantly monitor all the changes and updates in the various search engine algorithms. Organic marketing tactics on the web are constantly evolving – and at my SEOcompany in Kolkata, I organize regular training sessions, to familiarize my employees with the latest strategies and methods for effective internet marketing. Social media optimization (SMO) has, over the last couple of years, emerged in a big way as an integral part of SEO campaigns. In what follows, I have provided some useful tips for efficient social media marketing:

1. Choose the right social channels – Orkut is nearly obsolete, MySpace is making a comeback, and Google Plus does not allow creation of dedicated business profiles/pages. Keep all such factors in mind while selecting the social networking websites through which you should promote your business. For dynamic social media optimization, you should ideally have business pages on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (MySpace is optional), as well as a personal page on Google Plus. Create accounts on Pinterest (for pictures) and Tumblr (for infographics) too.
2. Make social sharing easy – I have often come across corporate profiles on Facebook, where the individual posts cannot be ‘shared’ easily. This, in turn, hampers the virality of the posts – and the process of generating a buzz about your business, in the long-run. Any good SEO company in India will ensure that the social media posts of its clients can be ‘shared’ (on Facebook), ‘retweeted’ (on Twitter) and ‘+1ed’ (on Google Plus).
3. Create short, crisp, interesting social media content – The posts on your social media profiles should be interesting enough to capture the attention of the viewers. The latter should be likely to share your stories on their personal profiles – providing your business the much-needed exposure, in the process. Professional SEO services in India include writing crisp and engaging content for social media channels. The posts should not have a hardcore promotional tone.
4. Think beyond Facebook ads – The amount of money that many of my clients tend to waste on paid Facebook ads irritates me. I mean, why bother getting into pay-per-click advertising on FB, when you can publicize your special offers, deals, discounts and other company-related information in your posts? Include the URL of the relevant page of your website with such posts – and get the same leverage as through paid ads, but without spending extra money!
5. Pay attention to brand-consistency – Everyone looks for smart and sophisticated social media pages – and more often than not, the profiles on the various networking sites end up looking vastly different from each other. If you manage to hire the services of the best SEO company in Kolkata, you will be spared from this mistake – which can weaken your brand presence on the web. It is important to use the same visual marketing elements (logos, pictures, taglines, colors, etc.) on your main website, and the social media channels.
6. Make sure that the landing pages do not have errors – It’s all very well to promote your social media posts, but are they leading to properly optimized landing pages? At all contemporary search engine marketing companies, SMO executives ensure that there are no broken links, and the on-page content is engaging, consistent and easily scannable – before putting any URL in the posts. Page errors reek of insincerity and amateurishness.
7. Encourage two-way communication – Create polls, ask questions to the readers, and seek feedback from users on your recently launched products/services. Social media marketing gives you the scope of actively interacting with your prospective customers – and to use their inputs to create customized offerings, which would have high chances of being successful. Invite ‘comments’ and ‘replies’ to your social media posts.
8. Keep an eye out on the social media page metrics – At our company for SEO service India, we consciously stay away from offering clients the option to ‘buy’ Facebook ‘likes’ or Twitter ‘followers’. Manage your social media pages in a way that the number of your followers keeps increasing in a natural manner. Monitor the virality of each of the posts as well – and consider repeating the ones (maybe one or two times) that have become really popular.

Do not place the details of any discount deals or offers on the cover photo of your Facebook page (keep such details in the posts). Make sure that the social media widgets on your website are functioning properly, and people can engage in ‘social sharing’, even without having to visit your social media pages. There is no way to gloss over the importance of SMO in contemporary search engine marketing strategies – and you need to be smart enough to get full benefits from it!

Top 9 Website Designing Errors You Should Never Commit

Does your business have a robust online presence? If your response is in the negative, you are probably passing up the chance to connect with a large number of qualified, prospective buyers. Most (if not all) of your business rivals are present on the web, and you need to follow suit, to stay in the competition. There are certain basic errors that you should steer clear of, while designing your professional website. We will focus our attention on some such crucial errors in this article:

• Making your website ‘top-heavy’ – A large number of heavy animated banners and flash content in the top-section of your web pages can make the overall site notoriously slow to load. Avail of the services of any good SEO company Kolkata, to find out how ads should be positioned on your website. Stay away from all elements which can adversely affect your website’s speed and performance.
• Not having a proper sitemap – In addition to a search box, you should also have a HTML sitemap in your website, to enhance user convenience. People on the web are not likely to be patient, and the sitemap will be able to guide them to the pages/sections of your website they are interested in – quickly. You also need to have a XML sitemap, for the search engine bots.
• Having complicated navigation features – Don’t try to show off your mastery over advanced web designing, by having a host of hidden tabs and animated menus on your website. Visitors would not stay on your pages, if they find the navigation scheme confusing. Have properly defined menu bars, links and buttons – and clearly indicate where each of them leads to.
• Not choosing the right theme – If you are planning to launch an ecommerce portal, trying to use a Wordpress theme for it would be a folly. Wordpress is suitable for blog websites (mainly), and you should be looking to use either the Drupal, or the Joomla theme. Don’t simply assume that, the more expensive a website theme, the better it is likely to be. Avail of the services of a good SEO company in India, to help you determine the best theme and layout for your business website.
•  Not having a blog section – Websites with regularly updated content are viewed to be of ‘high-quality’ by Google – and having a dedicated blog section significantly helps in this regard. Refresh the general text content on the other pages as well (except the static pages). To become popular, your website should have a dynamic air about it!
• Choosing wrong font colors/styles/sizes – Make sure that visitors never have to strain their eyes, while trying to go through the stuff present on your website. Find out from the SEO company in Kolkata you have hired, about the ideal font styles and color schemes for your pages. You can take a look at your competitors’ websites, for reference.
• Not putting ALT tags for images – You should have appropriate, engaging pictures and videos on your website, to retain visitor interest. However, such media content cannot be ‘read’ by the search engine crawlers. This makes it essential for the SEO company India to prepare keyword-focused ALT tags, for all such images and videos.
• Not having social media widgets – Inclusion of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and other social media widgets should also feature in your overall web designing plans. Of course, you also need to prepare and maintain engaging, regularly updated social media profiles for your business.
• Not having a responsive design structure – For connecting with the increasing number of mobile internet users, you need to make your website designs fluid and device-responsive. Make a list of the popular mobile handset models, tablets and other portable objects that are used for accessing the internet, and make sure that your web pages are properly accessible on each of them.

Availing of the services of a proficient SEO company in India would be instrumental in ensuring that your website design plans are in keeping with the latest search engine algorithms. Don’t commit the above mistakes, fix broken links (if any) – and make your website really attractive, informative, and user-friendly!