Stock photos are basically an Internet scam. You can tell this because it is so difficult to find articles on how much a scam they are, and there are so many things wrong once a little analysis is done.
The basic idea is not a bad one, save money and time on creating images for use in websites and marketing collateral. The outcomes are horrible.
Viral Videos and Video SEO is extremely important in the age of short attention span theatre. The basic point is that people on a website will watch a video a significant amount of the time (70%+). Make sure it is a video that will be linked to, shared, etc. Make a great video. But also, there are a variety of tactics involved.
The same goes for images, and not just pretty pictures, which are of course important, but the geeks among us also love a great infographic. These are both engaging and informative, and link-and-share-worthy.
A lot of the viral video and guerilla marketing is not a whole lot more than social hacking, spam, linkbait/viewbait and of course, hopefully, an engaging video. The classic post on the topic of viral videos from 2007 was pretty much a tell-all in tactics, some illegal and many ethically challenged.
A much less interesting post from 2010 gives a few clues for SEO and Video but they really only amount to:
A fantastic set of comments on Flickr interestingness was posted as part of the description of the interesting photo of haybales above. The main aspects has to do with timing, comments, sharing, linking and liking behavior.
The photographer and writer Kevin Dooley also discused subsequent changes to the interestingness algorithm that took place 18 months after the original posting.
Infographics can be extremely effective in communication of complexity and especially for processes, comparisons or things which change over time. The notorious author of the video virality post from 2007 mentioned above has created a company that focuses on virality of information, rather than the virality of ads. He has some useful links and examples of viral infographics which are making an impact for the authors and brands being depicted.
Of course the SEO and sharing/linking behaviors also apply.
The advantages to using Markdown and shortcodes instead of a rich text editor cannot be underestimated. Add to that the practice of hosting media outside of a website, e.g., Flickr for images and YouTube for video. Together these create a fantastic best practice for content management. We use WordPress and associated plugins but it is highly likely this same system can be adopted for many other platforms.
We’ve recently taken a look at two sets of data for website traffic with a combined 230,000 visits, 48,000 of that was from 12-24 months ago. In sum, the message is that a diversity of browsers and screen resolutions is the current and future reality. As well, we can thankfully forget about supporting IE6.
Competition doesn’t stand still in competitive markets and the same applies to SEO. There are usually fluctuations in keyword performance, traffic, etc., based on what others do, as well as Google algorithm changes. For example, current trends for 2011 appear to place more emphasis on brands and discount of low-quality content. What follows is a brief overview for the manager in terms of important metrics to consider.
A recent information graphic posted on the GetSatisfaction blog portrays the mind of a community manager. This is quite useful. Below we summarize the ten aspects presented into six characteristics and functions of a Community Manager Job Description (plus a seventh other category).
There are several key components of Facebook Page Management Best Practices:
Due to the ongoing hacking of accounts and passwords on popular web services, it is a good time to consider the following suggested security practices. If you feel you do not have the time to deal with this, think again.
Back in April, the SEMPO 2011 state of search marketing report came out. While this is a paid report, some of the relevant findings have been summarized on various sites. What this means for our clients is as follows:
Never, ever, never use SEO Host. They are the absolute worst hosting service I have experienced in my 15+ years in IT. How bad are they?
I really don’t understand how these people are in business. For me it is a matter of how much time it would take to move hosts, vs. trying to schedule a migration. I’ve learned that bad hosts won’t give you the luxury of scheduling a migration so simply do it immediately.
Never use SEO Host they are the worst hosting company.
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