Internet trolls have become unavoidable, no matter what kind of website you have or what industry you’re in. Trolling is basically making a comment that’s designed to make people upset and get a reaction out of them. Most of the trolls I’ve noticed make anonymous posts and comments, but they sometimes make their identity known.  As a businessperson, you don’t want to come across as being aggressive with anyone, customers and non-customers alike.

No matter how much an online troll can frustrate you, you always have to keep your composure and take the higher ground when dealing with them, otherwise you risk ruining your brand and your online reputation. So what else should you do when dealing with trolls?

Remember What They Want

Just like your customers, you have to remember that trolls want something, and that something is a reaction. Trolls will use any means necessary to elicit a reaction either from you or your customers or your readers if you have an online blog. The limits they can go to to stir the pot can be quite shocking, but don’t give them what they want.

While you can ban them or delete their comments, who’s to say that they won’t make up a new profile just so they can continue with their malicious attack? This is why it’s important that you learn to properly deal with them rather than simply delete their harmful comments or ban them.

Ignore Them

Instead of deleting troll comments or banning them, you can simply ignore them and tell your other readers or customers to do the same thing. The moment you engage with them is the moment they really start to set their sights on you. While it’s always a good policy to always respond to comments about your products or services, be they good or bad, online trolls are the exception. Don’t give them the reaction or attention that they’re aiming for and they’re sure to move on.

Don’t Take Things Personally

While it might not seem like it, Internet trolls aren’t attacking you personally. I don’t know what makes people want to scour the Internet in search of innocent prey that they can use to unleash hateful and rude comments on, but I do know that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. Should you ever encounter trolls on social media, never think that their comments mean that something is wrong with your products or services. Again, it has everything to do with them and nothing to do with you or your business.

Report Them

Even if you do ban a troll you should still report them so that they don’t keep up with their foolish behavior with other individuals on the same social media site. You should also report them if you’re ever unable to ban them from your social media platform. Make it difficult enough for them to engage anyone in conversation and eventually they’ll move on from the social media site entirely, making things better for you and everyone else.

Laugh About It

Instead of getting angry or frustrated whenever you encounter a troll, have a good laugh about it. Here you are trying to better your life and run a business while other individuals have nothing better to do than make nasty comments. Which of you is actually making something of your life? In fact, maybe you should be flattered that out of all of the other businesses out there they decided to leave a rude comment on yours. You must be doing something right to receive such an honor.

No matter how big or how small your business is, there’s always a chance that you’ll become the next victim of trolling. Learn how to deal with them now so that you can make all of the right moves when/if it happens and so that you can get back to your business as soon as possible.

Source

There was a cry that was heard amongst many in the search engine optimization world on April 24th, 2012, as if thousands of SEOs suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. It was the day that Google Penguin broke link-building…

…or at least that’s what many thought. Some of us, the ones who were focused on quality rather than quantity, the ones who would work a couple of hours to get one strong, contextual, organic link rather than building tens of thousands of bulk links in the same period of time – we came out better off than we were before the algorithm change.

Google reiterated the importance of inbound links at this year’s SXSW convention and those who survived the SEOpocalypse have found that the right types of links are more powerful than they ever were in the past. Link-building has, in many ways, been replaced by link-earning. You don’t generate links anymore. You generate and expose the content that is worthy of being linked to by other websites (not to mention being shared by individuals, but that’s an entirely other body part to discuss later).

If we’re going to treat search, social, and content marketing strategy as a living organism, then inbound links would be the food that fuels the body. From a purely SEO perspective, it’s what generates the authority that Google and Bing holds so high on their ranking algorithms. As long as it’s done organically and there are no nefarious tactics used in the process, there’s very little risk involved. The upside is huge.

From a social perspective, links can drive the traffic that is necessary to get people in front of your content. Assuming the content is good enough to get links, it’s probably deserving of social media shares as well. Those shares continue to help with search engine rankings but they also help with the purely social marketing area as well.

Last but not least, it does give your website credibility in the eyes of consumers. When your website is featured in a respected website, your potential customers who see the link will be impressed. It’s subtle, but it’s also very powerful.

In the near future, I’ll be going over each of the other parts of the marketing body. In the meantime, take a look at your content and inbound link “earning” strategy and ask yourself a question:

“If I were a website visitor and came across this content, is it valuable enough for me to want to link to it from my site?”

The merging of search, social, and content marketing into a single digital marketing strategy has been happening for years. Intuitively, many of us have been guided by this fact to create the type of strategies that bring the disciplines together appropriately. As the evolution of the three reach a tipping point that is breaking down a good chunk of the practices of the past, it has become paramount to gain an understanding of how everything works together and why the flow of data between each has such a tremendous effect on digital marketing as a whole.

To do this properly, it’s becoming necessary to break it all down into units. The easiest way to understand this is to compare digital marketing strategy to a living organism. Every action has an effect of some sort on all of the parts. With this comprehension, you’ll be better equipped to make decisions about how to craft the overarching strategy as well as how to organize the individual actions.

A Quick Breakdown

If the model to make this work is like a living, breathing organism, then understanding what the different units are can help you grasp how it all plays together. We’re going to be breaking them down individually then bringing them together as a whole. In preparation, here’s a partial list of the individual units that we’ll be covering.

• Inbound Links
• Business Content
• Useful Content
• Company Blog
• Site UI and Navigation
• Social Media Profiles
• Social Media Shares
• Customers and Visitors

Over the next few weeks we will be breaking down how each of these works individually to support the whole. In the meantime, start thinking along the lines of holistic processes rather than individual tasks. While the tasks themselves are important, how they affect the entire body of marketing processes is the key to finding success.

Someway, somehow, consumers have been led to believe that everything on the Internet is free. Why do you think movie and music piracy are so rampant? Such sense of entitlement extends to the buying of apps. Most consumers would rather have their apps free than paid.

Unless, that is, the apps are designed to get something done. According to app analytics company Distimo, paid apps dominate the top ten in the categories of productivity, medical, business, fitness/healthcare, navigation, catalogues, lifestyle, photo & video, travel, and weather. These apps enables you to work hard, get healthy, find directions, book flights, check weather, and so forth. They make your life easier. Consumers are won to appreciate and buy such apps.

Even so, the utility of an app is no guarantee of its being purchased. The situation is even worse for other app categories, such as games, where ‘free’ is the byword.

Free is understandable, especially if you’re really bereft of money, but paid is ideal. Here are the most compelling reasons why you should buy paid apps:

1. There’s no such thing as a free app.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch or a free app, for that matter. Sure, that nifty social network or cloud storage app comes for free but make no mistake. They will find a way to offset the gazillions they have expended on overhead, etc.

As information technology pundits would have it: “If you don’t buy the product, you are probably the product.” You only have to check out the terms of service on Facebook; they have clauses that virtually let them intrude upon privacy and mine your data, like where you shop, who you’re connected to, etc. Next time you think an app isn’t selling something, think of yourself. It is probably selling you.

2. Rage against the Machine.

Many of us don’t like to buy something because we think we are pawns of the corporations selling them. We believe that our money is not really of benefit to its end producer. With apps, you can rest easy in the knowledge that your hard-won money directly goes to the creators, which brings us to next reason.

3. Put some bread on the developer’s table.

Each sale encourages these small businesses to forge ahead with their offerings. This is not an easy thing, considering the manifold challenges the average developer has to face. For one, he or she has to meet an annual fee set by Google and Apple before submitting an app. After that, the developer is caught between a rock and a hard place: If the developer doesn’t charge customers for the app, Apple/Google will charge yearly fees anyway. If the app comes with a price, customers will be put off. And when the app eventually sells, Google/Apple gets a cut.

These are to say nothing of the expenses, especially in running the app’s website and getting hosting. These expenditures could only skyrocket with more customers, ironically what developers are after.

4. Payment = zero ads

One way developers can market an app as free, and still monetise it, is to offer advertising space. The trade-off is that customers will eventually resent the clutter.

In other words, paid apps give you the minimum incentive of being ad-free. If the paid app still comes with ads, feel free to complain or find a new one.

5. Price of a coffee

Injustice. That’s what it boils down to if you are able to afford a Starbucks but run away from a dollar or two in snapping up an app.

6. Quality is not an excuse.

Granted, there are unscrupulous developers who charge a premium for garbage. You can skirt this problem by reading reviews from top-notch websites. Besides, you can always get trials of paid apps.

Final word

An app shouldn’t really feel like an investment considering how cheap it is compared to what you’ve already been buying. Always remember that ‘free’ comes with a catch.

To ease you into the mindset of paying for apps, try buying them in bulk. This piece of wisdom is especially useful if you’re in business: The utility of many paid apps today are just too remarkable. Also, start by looking for a sale or markdown. Search for coupon codes too.

Have fun app-shopping!

Statistics can be a wonderful thing. They can show us information that can guide our decisions and bring us to see things in better focus. They can distract us, taking us down an incorrect path based upon lack of understanding. They can entertain us.

This infographic from Yoda London can likely do any of the three. As with any set of numbers, if you torture them long enough, you can make them say anything. For example, seeing that 93% of online experiences begin with search engines can be useful in that it highlights the importance of SEO. It could also be detrimental if misunderstood as “online experiences” could mean just about anything. It entertains (if you’re a search geek like me, at least).

Check out the graphic:

Everyone from new BFFs the Obamas and the Clintons, to Joe Blog and almost every narcissistic celebrity under the sun, has been guilty of pulling a shameless “selfie” at one time or another.

And now the digital self-portrait, taken at varying flattering angles and with varying degrees of success, has been declared word of the year for 2013, according to Britain’s Oxford University Press.

Researchers behind the renowned Oxford Dictionaries pick a prominent word or expression each year that best reflects the mood of the times; meaning 2013 has been officially named the year for ultimate self-gratification.

Previous winners of the prestigious award include “GIF” in the US last year (for those of you who don’t know, GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, or image files that are compressed to reduce transfer time. Not very exciting, I know, which is probably why no-one remembers it.)

“Squeezed middle” was the big winner in 2011, “refudiate” in 2010, the somewhat out of place word that no-one wants to hear – “unfriend” in 2009 – followed by the sign-of-the-times “credit crunch” in 2008, “carbon footprint” in 2007 and “carbon neutral” in 2006, with the big buzzword of 2005 being “Sudoku.” (On a side note, has it really been 8 years since Sudoku boggled our minds? It’s hard to remember a time of putting pen to paper as a means of entertainment.)

Is it just me or does this linguistic map trace the decline of the English language? What newly coined word will it be next year, given that “twerking” came a close second this year. Miley Cyrus and her ass shaking has a lot to answer for.

If you’re curious like I was, the word “selfie” first appeared over ten years ago in 2002 – which is medieval in digital time – in Australia. Ozzie English often adds the suffix “-ie” to words, such as the oft quoted ‘barbie’ for barbeque (from my immigrant experience, it’s a general rule that every Australian impersonation must include the line, “throw some ribs on the barbie” in an attempt to be authentic), or ‘tinnie’ for a can of beer. Luckily, those loveable Ozzies are endearing enough to get away with such made up words, and they’re obviously onto something as selfie beat out an incredible 150 million other words in the running that are in use each month.

In fact, Oxford usually assigns a separate word of the year to the US and to the UK, but it said “selfie” was given a blanket vote as it captured the imagination on both sides of the Atlantic. Selftacular!

Other buzzwords in the running were “showrooming” (the practice of visiting a shop to look at a product before buying it online at a lower price which, I’ll admit, I’ve never heard of although I’m guilty of. At least now I can put a name to my bargain hunting), and “Bitcoin” which is a digital currency that’s gained widespread media attention lately. “Binge-watch” was another, a verb that describes literally binging on your favourite shows in rapid succession, which Netflix can undoubtedly lay claim to. Most of us will have lost entire weekends thanks to this binging syndrome.

Other contenders ranged from “food baby” to “me time” to “f-bomb,” “sexting,” “geek chic,” “emoji,” “vom,” “fauxhawk,” “pixie cut” and “BYOD” which can have a double meaning, depending on if you’re at work or play.

Like, totes OMG.

Thankfully after all this silliness, there is a flipside. A timely new campaign is cashing in on the selfie phenomenon and turning the root of its self-absorption into a charitable endeavour.

David Guerrero, creative chairman of BBDO Guerrero, has created the “#unselfie” or a picture with a sign over your face urging people to support relief aid for the Philippines. The aim is for users to spread the photos through their social networks, while the hashtag makes it easy to see the cumulative effect of the crowdsourcing campaign.

Thankfully, to restore our faith in humanity, the project has taken off, with US Secretary of State John Kerry, activist Mia Farrow and thousands of people all around the world using the former fad for good.

According to Guerrero, who is based in Manila, there have been over 9 million impressions so far. And, he points out modestly, in his eyes it doesn’t matter which charity is promoted in these #unselfies as long as it spreads the word about how to donate in response to one of the worst natural disasters in history.

We here in North America have also put a positive spin on the trend with “UNselfie” pictures of citizens doing good “unselfish” deeds.

December 3, 2013, the first Tuesday following Thanksgiving in the US, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is a day set aside beginning two years ago to remind us to give back, volunteer for a local charity or donate to a local cause.

Over 6,300 charities, corporations, politicians and foundations from around the world have come together on this day to celebrate the idea of a “compassionate movement,” with unselfish social media souls using the #UNselfie and #givingtuesday hashtags to tweet a related message.

Last year, donations tracked on #givingtuesday increased by 50% from the prior year, while average gifts increased by 25%, so maybe the world is ready for the #unselfie to be word of the year 2014.

Which one will you be sharing?

Content marketing is hard. It requires your business to take up the role of a publisher. Now, that’s not something businesses or brands are used to doing traditionally. Most of the marketing now focuses on the “inbound marketing” phenomenon and that requires patience, extreme focus on generosity, establishing trust, and providing value. It also calls for the need for thought leadership and an ever-demanding presence over the web (including blogs and social media).

All of that is hard work.

Is there a way this can be made easy for you as a business owner? They say technology is a savior, so do tools exist that help to pump up your content marketing efforts?

Here are some web-based tools you can use to accelerate, streamline, and organize your content marketing efforts:

Content Aggregator Tools

To develop content, you’ll need an influx of incoming content. You’d basically need to read a lot to write as much as you ought to. How do you practically crawl over the web to consume so much information that’s spewed out everyday? You get smart and use an aggregator tool!

You can start with LinkedIn’s Pulse, move on to Flipboard for your mobile, TrapIt (claimed to be the world’s most advanced content curation app), set up good sources through Feedly (an alternative for Google’s now-dead RSS reader), and finally wade through Reddit manually.

By working with these tools, you make content available to you at all times. Read, repurpose, develop content on your own string of ideas, or gather information from other content on the web to make your own brand of valuable content. Curation is a pill for content creation and aggregator tools help you do just that.

Content Creation, Organization and Management

Organized efforts are a must for content marketing and there are plenty of tools starting from project management to content organization. Google Drive is ubiquitous and plugs well into the workflows that most small businesses have. You might also want to check out Trello, Asana and Basecamp for organizing projects, content, and teams. To actually create content, you could use tools such as one of the ubiquitous meme generators, Visual.ly, Issuu or UberFlip.

If you are a business owner, you can use Evernote in a million different ways. Note ideas as you get them or jot down facts you can later repurpose as full-blown resource pages or social media updates. You might also use the web-clipper for content curation.

If you work with a team of social media managers and content developers or freelancers, you could bring your team aboard using Evernote for business and collaborate on ideas, content planning, blog posts, and a host of other things.

Plugging into a Hot Spot

Most of the popular publications now have tons of content already as “pillar content” or “resource pages.” You could visit Social Media Today for syndicated posts and resources. HootSuite has a special section with tons of resources too.

In addition to that, many other websites provide on-site tools for helping you to create even more content.

Further, you could literally create an endless flow of content based on ideas from comments, reviews and user-generated posts on communities, forums or rating sites. If you have anything to do with food and restaurants, for instance, you could use reviews from Yelp for first-hand information and then turn it into list blog posts. For technical niches such as hosting solutions or servers, you could make use of information from comparison engines such as Who Is Hosting This and cite them as sources for your blog posts.

Content from Social Media

Social media is big and it’s a huge resource by itself. Using a tool like Storify, for instance, you can create stories using social media data. Use Swayy to get some of the best content to share with your audience based on their interests and engagement behavior. You might also want to consider a tool such as Curata that can help you find trustworthy content quickly and curate this content to fuel your content marketing efforts.

Even without any of these tools, you can still use the dripping content off social media updates and quickly whip up posts relevant to your business niche or industry. It’s quick, it can be credited, and it works for you in multiple ways. Don’t just create content for social media; make your content attract attention off social media too.

Tools for Other Types of Content

While writing posts and creating content based on text is easier, it’s not the end of the road. There are videos, slide decks, podcasts, magazines, and tons of other forms of content that you should create. There are tools for you to develop this kind of content too. Animoto or GoAnimator are ideal for creating short videos. Using Jing or Camtasia, you can create screen casts to show off your products or provide courses.

You can use Blip for video podcasting or launch audio tours with iAudioGuide. If you are into audio podcasts, you may consider tools such as BlogTalkRadio or Libsyn.

While it could be a daunting task to create so many forms of content and pump up your content marketing efforts, you also have a mind-boggling and never-ending list of tools to help you create content. Most of the tools are affordable and you can also pick the tools that fit your purpose or budget.

The question is: the tools exist and the list will continue to grow. How are you going to use them? If you are in business, which of these tools are you using currently? Which of these could turn you into a full-fledged business content publisher?

There are those who have been spreading (indefinitely, it seems) the thought that SEO is dead. It never ends, the thought (hope?) that search engine optimization has reached its conclusion. The main reason for these calls is, of course, when “experts” in search marketing start to find that their techniques don’t work anymore. Nothing will make someone believe a practice is dead more than finding out that they’re processes aren’t working.

Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for the rest of us), SEO is alive and well and growing in importance every day. The reasons are many, but here’s a quick breakdown:

• Mobile visibility is driving clicks on the go. Many people are no longer doing the majority of their searches on desktop computers. The computers in our pockets are doing just fine (sometimes better) at delivering the information we need. Mobile’s continuous onslaught on our time and eyeball share means that SEO today must maintain a “mobile-first” mentality. If you can make it rank well on mobile, you can make it rank well on desktops.
• The vision is pretty much set for the near future. Google and Bing are known for frequent updates and since 2011, Google has sent out some big ones. We will see a slow down on the major updates and a focus on tweaks for quality and adjustments to fight spammers. The gameplan is right there in front of us, which means that those who are good at SEO can duck their shoulders down and start barreling through the line.
• Competitors are increasing but true competitors are diminishing. Everyone is getting into the SEO game, but there’s only a handful that truly get it. By focusing on quality of content, links, and social signals, SEOs are able to succeed. Once you introduce shortcuts (and the majority of them do) you lose the effect. This is a benefit to those doing true SEO because it allows them to rise to the top more easily.

Don’t get trapped in the SEO-is-Dead mentality. SEO is alive and well in its purest form. Bad SEO is dying. This is a good thing.

You already know that LinkedIn has become a solid, go-to resource for researching companies and getting good background information on business execs.

But it’s also a prospecting tool, and a more powerful one than you might think. Here are six ways you can use LinkedIn to gain a competitive edge and leverage the time you spend prospecting:

1. Dig for decision makers

At most companies, the admin staff is trained to keep pesky sales people at bay. You can use the advanced search function in LinkedIn to identify both the decision maker with the sign-off authority and the influencers – the lower-level directors or managers most likely to benefit from your solution. That will make it much easier when you’re “warm calling” later.

2. Surprise opportunities

Try searching for companies in the “people” field. This will yield a list of everyone who works there – or has worked there in the past. You can then narrow your search by location or job description.

A related idea: Look where people have worked before their current position. You will find companies you did not know existed, and they can turn into customers.

3. Watch competitors

It’s always good to know what the competition is up to. You can “follow” companies by name, to see who they are connecting with.

Another angle is to check out specific reps who are chasing accounts on your turf. Watching what they are saying online or posting can give you an edge.

4. Track ‘endorsements’

LinkedIn recently added an “endorsement” feature, where people connected to a prospect will endorse them for various capabilities, ranging from financial modeling to publishing.

The number and type of endorsements can reveal a lot about the prospect, of course. But the real payoff can come from connecting with the endorsers.

5. Follow both prospects and customers

It’s a good idea to follow prospects and customers and track their LinkedIn activity. One good reason: You can spot situations where customers are connecting with attorneys, consultants or vendors – a pretty good bet that something’s in the wind.

Move quickly on this intel and you can get in ahead of the competition. When you participate in the planning stages you become an asset, develop a deeper relationship and land more business.

6. Join industry groups

There are thousands of industry groups on LinkedIn, which can yield fertile ground when cultivated with care.

Joining groups that your target prospects belong to will automatically give you a large audience of searchable contacts, and potential new business to develop.

But be careful how you go about it.

When you participate in discussions, make sure what you say adds value. Blatant sales efforts can get you booted. And simply posting links to your own website will be seen as self-serving.

There’s a rule when it comes to handling complaints and bad reviews on social media. The same rule applies for compliments and good reviews, but those are easy. Handling the complaints can be challenging and you may not want to do it, but as a rule you must reply to everyone who is talking to you publicly whether it’s good or bad.

This is an absolute rule. There are a couple of extreme situations when you don’t reply, but they are so rare that I hesitate to mention them for fear that it could downplay the message that you should reply to everyone.

There’s another rule that is unfortunately getting broken just about every day by many social media and reputation management companies. Canned responses should never be used. Every response should be personal, written by an actual human and not repeated. It’s better to make a short, sincere response than anything that came out of an automated system. People can tell. You will never appear more insincere as a company than when you reply to someone talking to you on social media with a form letter.

In this infographic by Pardot, we have a chance to take a look at five of the most prominent “complainer types” on social media. If you can identify the category that a complainer falls into, you’ll have a better opportunity to handle it appropriated. One does not have to be a psychologist to understand personality types. You just have to open your eyes and ears before opening your mouth.