#it's an algorithm taking a noisy image and feeding it over and over through a complex algorithm

[3-aem]

AI art is not art. I don't understand the debate around this I really don't.

[yodaebusiness]

The 25 Best Ways to Increase Your Online Presence in 2021 (+ Free Tools) | Online Sales Guide Tips

Kristen McCormick May 21, 2021

Guys, we spend eight hours a day doing digital activities. That’s more than half the day. More than most of us sleep. And we have different identities online—we’re hobbyists (gaming), alter egos (Reddit), social butterflies (Facebook), professionals (LinkedIn), and consumers (what we’re focusing on in this post).

So whether you’re a service-based, brick-and-mortar, or online business, a strong online presence is everything today. And this does not pertain to just ecommerce. While ecommerce growth has been accelerated by the pandemic, so, too has support for local businesses. And the fact remains that 97% of consumers go online to find and research local businesses.

But as the internet evolves, so, too, does the definition of a strong online presence. In this definitive, data-backed guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know, including:

By the end, you’ll be ready to fill every nook and cranny on the internet.

How do you define online presence?

Online presence is, and isn’t, exactly what you may think. You can very well exist online, but that doesn’t equate to having a presence. Your presence is a deeper layer that paints the full picture of your business, according to:

So while an online existence may get you on the map, an online presence is tied to your visibility, credibility, and reputation.

Without a strong online presence, you really don’t have one at all. It’s all or nothing in the noisy world of cyberspace.

But before we get into the tactics and strategies, let’s back up that bold statement.

Why you need a strong online presence

The more ways you can place your business in front of your target audience with quality experiences, the more opportunities you have to build brand awareness and improve your reputation. But there are other ways a strong online presence benefits your business.

Finally, flock mentality. Each of your online assets and identities gives power to one another. Each channel performs better in concert with the others than it would on its own.

How to increase your online presence with your website

No matter how someone finds out about your business—whether through social media, an ad, a listing, direct mail, a friend, or even seeing it in their travels—their first inclination is to go to your website. Going into the business or calling is far less appealing than browsing your site on their own terms and gathering the information they want, quickly. Which is why 30% of consumers won’t consider a business without a website.

30% of consumers won’t consider a business without a website.

And that’s a stat from 2017, so the percentage has most likely grown and been further accelerated by the pandemic.

So with that being said, here’s how to use your website for an optimal online presence.

1. Get a modern, attractive site

Consumers have high expectations these days—to the point where if you don’t have a good website, you’re almost better off not having one at all. In fact, 75% of consumers have admitted to judging a company’s credibility based on their website design.

And truth be told, I would highly suggest hiring an expert to set up your site. DIY builders are awesome in theory, but in my own experience, people end up spending hours on them and experiencing endless glitches—oftentimes to the point of eventually spending more to hire someone. Having a lead-generating website that looks and functions exactly the way you want it to without losing hours of your time or hairs on your head is, to me, worth every penny

2. Perform SEO with the latest updates in mind

Did you know that only 49% of small businesses invest in SEO? Or that only 18% of small businesses do not plan to ever pursue targeted SEO efforts like link building, content creation, or keyword research?

SEO is a free way to get on the first page of Google—the hallmark of online presence.

It takes time, but when done right, it is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Here’s how to use SEO to increase your online presence:

3. Target more keywords with a business blog

The core pages of your website (homepage, about, pricing, products/services, contact) are relatively limited in terms of optimizing for keywords other than your service and location. You don’t have much text to work with and the goal is to distill the information down to the essentials visitors are looking for.

With a business blog, each post you publish can dive deep into a relevant keyword and be individually optimized to rank for that keyword, allowing you the opportunity to appear in search results for tons of searches your target customers are performing at various stages in their journey. More first-page appearances doesn’t just mean stronger web presence; it also equates to more traffic to your conversion-optimized site and greater credibility. In fact, businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t.

Plus, this is where you can demonstrate your expertise and let your brand personality shine through—both of which play into the reputation component of your online presence.

When blogging for online presence, make sure to:

How to increase online presence with social media

Using social media to increase your online presence is a no-brainer, as its vast user bases and sharing capabilities make it an amplification tool. Plus, according to Sprout Social, after following a brand on social media, 91% of consumers will visit its website, 89% will buy from the brand, and 85% will recommend the brand to a family or friend.

Here’s how to improve your social media presence.

4. Limit the number of platforms to only what you can handle

Online presence is about quality, not quantity. Choose the platforms that your audience is using, and limit the number you choose based on your bandwidth. Having just one or two accounts with solid engagement is better than having several accounts with weak activity.

Platforms to consider include:

5. Think audience, not followers

Your online presence doesn’t improve with more followers. Rather, your following improves with a stronger presence. So work on cultivating a quality, niche audience of individuals who are interested in and can benefit from what you have to offer. This will translate into more likes and comments with your posts and more user-generated content. And if you didn’t already know, marketing campaigns with user-generated content result in 29% higher conversions than campaigns or without it.

It’s better to have fewer followers with a vibrant page than to have lots of followers and not much value to offer.

6. Post with emotion for shareability

Quality posts that get engagement are important if you want social algorithms to display your posts in users’ feeds. But quality isn’t really enough. You want your followers to feel something when they consume your content—so much so, that they feel compelled to share it with others. Use emotional words and phrases in your captions. Add emojis. Use compelling stats and evocative images.

And speaking of shareability, pay attention to small nuances in your captions to see if you can find any patterns. We recently found that leading off with a key stat in the caption resulted in more shares. Another approach is to create link-free posts that followers can consume quickly. They don’t always want to read a long post or go to a link, and they’re more likely to share something that isn’t a big ask for their followers either.

7. Perform social media SEO

Facebook receives over 2 billion searches per day. And in 2020, Instagram announced that it now supports general keyword searches (as opposed to just accounts, hashtags, and people). So just like with your website, you should include popular keywords in your profiles and posts. You can use many of the same keywords as you do with your site, but perhaps with a bias toward idea-oriented and lighter-hearted queries. Social media platforms are more of the browsing and inspirational types. But it all depends on your business. The first result for the query “how to clean a sink” on Facebook is a video with almost a million views.

You should also still be using hashtags in your posts to improve your social media presence, but treat them as you would keywords. Use broad hashtags sparingly and focus more on location-based and niche terms so that you can increase your visibility to the right audience.

8. Be active (duh)

You’ve heard this a million times, and now, for the million-and-oneth time: If you’re going to make social media a part of your online presence, you need to have an active account. So that means publishing quality posts regularly, responding to likes and comments on those posts, liking and commenting on your followers’ posts, answering direct messages, sharing content from other sources, and more. And it means doing this consistently. This is the difference between a profile and a presence.

If being able to have this type of engagement means only having one profile, then so be it. Better to have one vibrant profile than to have three that are subpar. And precisely why it’s important to only take on the number of profiles you can manage.

Plus, if you want to find and connect with influencers, you need to be active in your niche so you can identify who is realistic to reach out to and gradually build your relationship with them.

How to improve your online presence with listings

With thousands of online directories out there, creating listings for your business can help you show up in more places online. In addition, links to your site from popular directories serve as citations for your business, which Google takes into consideration when ranking your site. Finally, curated “Top 10” lists from popular directories can dominate the SERP, so if you’re ranking in their top 10, you can achieve that much more exposure.

But reaping these benefits takes more than just throwing your NAP out there and then kicking back. Let’s cover the steps for using online listings to properly boost your online presence.

9. Start with the heavy hitters

Many of the smaller directories out there aggregate information from the biggest ones. So take the time to perfect your listings on the following sites:

Google My Business (If you only do one of the suggestions in this post, let it be this one!)

Your Google My Business Profile is arguably the new homepage for your business. It provides all of the essential details of your business, directly in the SERP for Search and Maps.

Change the category on your business page to “Local business or place” so you can then add your location and collect reviews. Also, get listed on Facebook Places by attempting to check in at your location and then adding your business there.

The fact that an HVAC business can show up on a Facebook search speaks to its validity as a directory.

We know that Google is the leading search engine, by far. But that doesn’t mean Bing is to be ignored. Here are some stats that prove it’s worth being present on:

Small businesses, in particular, can benefit from a presence on Bing because there is less competition and the older audience may be ideal.

Foursquare has fizzled out as a social platform, but its Places technology powers location data for Apple, Uber, Twitter, Microsoft, Samsung, and 120,000 other developers. When your business is listed on Foursquare, it’s automatically included in thousands of local apps and services.

For a more complete list of listing sites, check out LOCALiQ’s 10 Best Free Business Listing Sites.

10. Populate every field, meticulously

Like social media feeds and search engine results pages, listing results are determined by an algorithm. This means that the quality of your listing matters. Make sure that for each listing, you populate every section available, such as:

As much as possible, make sure the information you provide is identical across listing sites. We’re talking St vs street, [Business name] vs [Business name], LLC, and other tiny details. This is because Google looks at consistency of information about you across the web when determining your credibility and ranking; and also because auto-populated listings risk inaccuracies, so you can keep deviations to a minimum with identical listings to begin with.

11. Have a proactive review strategy

Reviews have perhaps the most powerful influence over how high you show up in directory results. Not to mention the fact that they are one of the top ranking factors for Google local search. Simply providing review-worthy service will not do it. You need to have a proactive strategy in place to keep a steady stream of reviews coming in. Here are some ways to obtain and ask for reviews:

12. Maintain and monitor your listings

With the thousands of directories across the web that pull information from one another, your listings can develop inconsistencies or inaccuracies over time. And 80% of consumers lose trust in local businesses if they see incorrect or inconsistent information. You don’t have control over all of these profiles, but take the time to keep the ones you do have control over updated and consistent. Another option is to use a listing service provider who can stay on top of everything for you.

Monitoring your reviews on these directories is also crucial, for obvious reasons.

How to improve your online presence with advertising

Paid advertising is a fast way to show up prominently on search engines, social media feeds, and websites your ideal customers frequent. With SEO, you can really only target your audience with keywords, but with PPC, you can layer audiences onto your targeting based on a number of criteria. Here are some of many the different ad options you can use to increase your online presence.

13. Search ads

It’s worth investing in paid search ads because not only do they land you at the top of the SERP, but they also reach your target customers when they have the highest intent. And if you can get your site to rank in both organic and paid results for a keyword, the chances of getting a click on one or the other are higher.

And although Google is the most popular search engine, there are still many advantages of advertising on Bing.

14. Social ads

Social media ads can be used to improve your online presence because ads have higher reach and engagement rates than organic posts. And while social media users have less intent than on search engines, social ads come with stronger targeting capabilities and more creative freedom. Plus, you can leverage the power of video ads.

15. Display ads

Display ads put your business in front of custom audiences based on their interests, behaviors, types of websites and apps they frequent, and even places they’ve visited. Though display ads have lower engagement rates than search ads, they will earn you lots of impressions and like social media ads, you have more options for branding, color, and creative.

16. Retargeting ads

Retargeting ads appear in front of users who have previously expressed interest in your business, such as by interacting with a previous ad or visiting your website. This is a great way to maintain a presence with prospects as they engage elsewhere on the web.

17. Google Local Service Ads

Google Local Service Ads also show up at the top of the SERP in card form. If you go through the application process, you can appear with a green “Google Guaranteed” badge under your name, which makes for a stronger presence in this section of results.

This is, by no means, an exhaustive list. There’s podcast advertising, Google Shopping Ads, Reddit ads, and more.

More ways to increase your online presence

Your online presence isn’t just limited to your website, social media profiles, online listings, and ads. Here are eight more ways to increase your visibility online.

18. Have a presence in the inbox with email marketing

The advantage that email marketing has over other channels is that your recipients have opted in to receive your emails. Yes, your social media followers have opted to follow you, but feeds are infinitely more crowded and competitive than email inboxes. Plus, while 79% of Facebook users check Facebook once a day, 99% of email users check their email every day, some as much as 20 times a day. Lots of opportunity to get exposure.

99% of email users check their email every day, some as much as 20 times a day

The email marketing best practices are pretty evergreen, but if there’s three to focus on with regard to your online presence, it would be these:

19. Use guest posting to reach more potential customers

Do you know of any complementary businesses or local media outlets that have a strong online presence? See if they’ll accept a guest post from you. Not only can you get your business in front of their audience, but a link to your site from theirs can help to improve your SEO.

You can also accept guest posts on your own blog. Writers are always eager to share their publications with their audiences.

20. Leverage the power of video for more shares and memorability

There are tons of video marketing stats that highlight the importance of this medium for growing your business, but in terms of online presence, you should know these three:

Here are some ways to use video to improve your online presence:

21. Encourage your employees to share your content with their networks

According to Linkedin, employees have a network that is 10X larger than its company’s follower base. And Social Media Today tells us that content shared by employees receives 8X more engagement than content shared by brand channels.

Take advantage of this! Share your blog posts with your company employees and encourage them to share it on their networks. The added bonus is that your sales and support teams can stay on top of content that can be of use to them.

And don’t forget that your online presence is also made up of what others say about you online. Get listed on Glassdoor, treat your employees well, and let them play a part in building your reputation.

22. Build relationships with lots of different people

Building your online presence is a lot of work. But who says you have to do it alone? Those with whom you have a strong relationship can help you in a number of ways.

Plus, these immediate connections can introduce you to their connections. Maybe you connect with a developer that can help you with your website, or a young videographer offering inexpensive work to gain experience. But as always, networking and building relationships should not be self-seeking. The goal is to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships from which organic opportunities can arise.

23. Make your content accessible to all

Make your website pages and emails accessible to people with disabilities. Not only does one in four adults have a disability in the US, but also, the assistive technology industry is growing. With those with disabilities having more access to online content, you have the opportunity to expand your online presence to the 61 million adults in the US who have one—not to mention demonstrating values that matter to consumers today.

With the antiracisim and inclusivity movement that began in 2020, incorporating diversity into your workplace and marketing material is more important than ever. Plus, people are attracted to material—whether visual or written—that represents them. This is partly due to the familiarity principle (more on marketing psychology here), but also because it conveys to them the message that they are heard and seen. By representing the diverse range of people within your audience in your online assets, you can get noticed by more people while also demonstrating social responsibility.

25. Use mobile-specific marketing strategies

As mentioned earlier, Google is now using mobile-first indexing for all sites on the web, so having a responsive site and enhancing performance with tactics like lazy loading is essential. Plus, with more than half (60%) of internet searches being performed on mobile devices, you really do need to prioritize your mobile online presence. This means making sure your website pages and emails render properly on tablets and phones, but also leveraging mobile-specific strategies, such as:

And for local businesses in particular, local SEO is crucial for mobile marketing. According to Google, 76% of consumers who search for a local business on their smartphone end up visiting the business within a day, and 28% of them make a purchase.

Free tools for online presence management

With so many online channels, building and maintaining your online presence is a big undertaking, but with big returns. Here are some free tools that can help you with your efforts.

1. LOCALiQ’s Digital Marketing Healthcheck

With LOCALiQ’s free presence checker, enter your business name and address and get a report showing you which of your business listings are complete, which ones are missing information, and which ones are missing entirely.

Here’s how missing or incomplete listings show up:

2. Google search

Google yourself. See what shows up on the SERP. Hopefully your website is the first result and your Google My Business profile appears on the right. It’s likely that the rest of the results will be directory sites that have you in their database. Take a gander through them to make sure each listing is complete and accurate, and that reviews are accounted for.

3. Google’s Page Speed Insights

When you plug your website into the Page Speed Insights tool, you’ll get a score for both mobile and desktop as well as recommendations to improve page speed.

4. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

Simply Google “mobile friendly test” and enter your website into the search result.

Hopefully you won’t get the dreaded red text…

5. Google Alerts

Set up Google Alerts so you can be notified when new results for a topic show up in Google Search—i.e. your business.

6. WordStream’s Google My Business Grader

BrightLocal’s research has found that businesses with more than 100 images in their Google My Business listing get 520% more calls, 2,717% more direction requests, and 1,065% more website clicks than the average business. This is just one of the many small tweaks you can make to your profile to get big results. WordStream’s free Google My Business Grader identifies what’s missing in your profile and exactly what you need to do to improve it.

7. WordStream’s Google and Facebook Ads Graders

Our free Google Ads Grader and Facebook Ads Grader tools perform a thorough audit of your accounts and provide a detailed report on optimizations you can make to increase the visibility of your ads, prevent wasted spend, and get more conversions.

Use these strategies and tools to increase your online presence (and ultimately, your revenue)

You can only exist in one place in the physical world, but with the internet, you can be in multiple places at once, places your current and potential customers are spending most of their time. Having a strong online presence allows your business to get discovered by new customers, and the more touchpoints you have with your audience, the more you can build your reputation, increase brand awareness, make data-driven optimizations, and ultimately increase revenue.

There were many strategies mentioned in this post for improving your online presence, so let’s recap:

This content was originally published here.

[waqasblog2]

Do Links Still Matter for SEO in 2017?

By Eric Enge

In today’s post, I’ll show you data from three different dates over the past year that illustrate why links remain a powerful ranking factor. I’ll also discuss in detail why Google still uses them, and why they are likely to remain a powerful ranking factor for some time to come.

In July of 2016, we published our first study on Links as a Ranking Factor. Today’s post updates that data with a fresh analysis of links as a ranking factor, to see if there is any indication of a decline in their importance. In fact, we have analyzed the power of links as a ranking factor on three different dates, as follows:

May 2016

August 2016

May 2017

The Results

Let’s dig right in and look at the results across all three data sets that we pulled:

Note that the same 6,000 queries were used in all three data sets, and we see that the value stays steady and strong throughout the time period. Some movement back and forth is natural. We used 6,000 queries because that is what we did with the original study on this topic. With the Study Two and Study Three data sets, we also pulled data samples for 16,000 queries. Here are the correlation scores for those two data sets of 16K queries:

Once again, both data sets show strong results. Note: See the methodology section below for an explanation of what a “Quadratic Mean Spearman Correlation Score” value actually means.

In the first study, we also took a view in which we aggregated the normalized link counts (see the methodology section below for an explanation of what that is) by ranking position. The purpose of this approach was to help adjust for the fact that the relevancy and quality of the content are such significant ranking factors, and to help us further evaluate how links might matter. Here is what we saw:

In this data, there is some apparent erosion, but the story is quite different if you look at the results for the two 16K query sets:

For this data set, we see a lift between Study Two and Study Three, which is in contrast to the 6K data set. As a result, my belief is that this is simply normal movement of the rankings from a variety of factors.

Why Aren’t the Non-Aggregated Correlation Values Higher?

There are two major reasons, as follows:

1. Relevance and Content Quality are Big Factors: In its simplest form, if a web page is not relevant to a query, it shouldn’t rank. That is, of course, obvious, but the discussion is much more nuanced than that. To illustrate, let’s say we’ve got 10 pieces of content that are relevant enough to be considered for ranking for a query. Let’s further say that they have “relevance scores” (RS) like this:

This looks like it could be a pretty good ranking algo on the surface. We’re ranking the most relevant content on top. You’ll notice too that I set my relevance scores in a really narrow range, and that makes sense. If you’re not relevant, you shouldn’t rank.

The problem is that it’s pretty easy to make pieces of content look highly relevant just by stuffing the right words in it, and the most relevant content may in fact be giving very poor information to users. So let’s add a new score called quality score (QS) (not the Adwords version of this term, but an actual organic evaluation of a page’s quality instead), and let’s see how that impacts our algorithm:

This appears to be an improvement, and it probably is. The problem here is that, as with measuring relevance, measuring quality is a difficult thing to do. So let’s add one more element to the mix, that of a Link Score (LS), and leverage that to let the “marketplace at large” give us an indication on what content is the best on this topic. Here is what that looks like:

You see how the rankings shifted around between the three scenarios? Pretty substantially. In this mock-up of the Google algorithm, it’s pretty clear that links are VERY important. Want to know the Spearman score for links as a ranking factor in the third scenario shown? It’s 0.28.

While this is a major simplification of the Google algorithm, but even based on this, you can see why very high Spearman scores are hard to achieve.

2. Other Algorithms Come Into Play: Examples of the type of algorithms I’m talking about include:

Local search results

Image results

Video results

Query Deserves Diversity results

These might impact 15 percent of our results. Let’s imagine that it changes only one of them, and one high scoring result is replaced with a single item (result number 3).

In our example, I’ve replaced the third result with something that came in from another algorithm, such as Query Deserves Diversity. Know what this does to the Spearman score for links as a ranking factor for this result? It drops to 0.03. Ouch!

Hopefully, this will give you some intuition as to why a score in the 0.3 range is an indication that links are a very material factor in ranking.

Google’s Progress in Fighting Link Spam

Those who say that links are on the decline as a ranking factor often point to the efforts by spammers to use illegitimate practices to acquire links and earn rankings that their sites don’t deserve. This certainly was a huge problem for Google in the 2002 to 2013 time range. However, the tide in this battle started to turn in 2012.

What happened first during that year was that a wave of manual penalties started to get assessed by Google. By themselves, these already sent a shockwave through the SEO industry. The next major step was the release of the first version of Penguin on April 24, 2012. This was a huge step forward for Google.

As the next few years unfolded, Google invested heavily in a mix of approaches to use new versions of Penguin and manual penalties to refine their approach to dealing with people that use illegitimate approaches to obtaining links. This culminated with the release of Penguin 4.0 on September 23, 2016.

With the release of Penguin 4.0, Google’s confidence in their approach to links had become so high that the Penguin algorithm was no longer punishing sites for obtaining bad links. As of Penguin 4.0, the algorithm simply identifies those links and ignores them (causes them to have no ranking value).

This shift from penalizing sites with bad links to simply discounting those links reflects Google’s confidence that Penguin is finding a very large percentage of the bad links that it’s designed to find.

Of course, they still use manual penalties to address types of illegitimate link-building practices that people use that Penguin is not targeted at addressing.

How much progress has Google actually made? I still remember the Black Hat / White Hat panel I sat on in December of 2008 at SES Chicago. With me were Dave Naylor, Todd Friesen and Doug Heil. A couple of the panel members argued that buying links at the beginning of campaigning for a website was a requirement, and it was irresponsible for an SEO pro to not do so.

How a decade changes things! It has been many years since any SEO in any venue has argued that buying links represents a smart practice. In fact, you can’t find anyone making public recommendations about methods for obtaining links that violate Google’s Webmaster guidelines. The entire industry for doing those type of things has been driven underground.

Driven underground is not the same as “gone,” but it does show that Google’s ability to find and detect problems has become quite effective.

One last point, and it’s an important one. Ask yourself, why does Google have the Penguin algorithm, and why do they assess manual link penalties?” The answer is simple: Because links ARE a major ranking factor, and schemes to obtain links that don’t fit their guidelines are things that they want to proactively address.

Why Are Links a Valuable Signal?

Why is Google still using links? Why don’t they simply switch to user engagement signals and social media signals? I won’t develop the entire reason why these signals are problematic here, but will share one point about each:

User Engagement Signals: Google probably finds some way to use these signals in one scenario or another, but there are limitations to what they can do. Here is what the head of their machine learning team, Jeff Dean, said about them: “An example of a messier reinforcement learning problem is perhaps trying to use it in what search results should I show. There’s a much broader set of search results I can show in response to different queries, and the reward signal is a little noisy. If a user looks at a search result and likes it or doesn’t like it, that’s not that obvious.”

But now, let’s get to the core of the issue: Why are links such a great signal? It comes down to three major points:

Implementing links requires a material investment to be made by you. You must own a website and you must take the time to implement the link on a web page. This may not be a huge investment, but it’s significantly more effort than it is to implement a link in a social media post.

When you implement a link, you are making a public endorsement identifying your brand with the web page that you’re linking to. In addition, it’s static. It sits there in an enduring manner. In contrast, with a link in a social media post, it’s gone from people’s feeds quickly, sometimes only in minutes.

Now, here is the big one: When you implement a link on a page on your site, people might click on it and leave your site.

Think about that last one for a few seconds more. A (non-advertisement) link on your site is an indication by you (as the publisher of the page with the links) that you think the link has enough value to your visitors, and will do enough to enhance your relationship with those visitors, that you’re willing to have people leave your site.

That’s what makes links an incredibly valuable signal.

Basic Methodology

After consulting with a couple of experts on the best approach (Paul Berger and Per Enge), I performed a calculation of the Spearman Correlation on the results for all the queries in our study, and then took the Quadratic Mean of those scores. The reason for doing this is that it leverages the square of the correlation variables (where the correlation value is R, the quadratic mean uses R squared).

It’s actually the R squared value that has some meaning in statistics. For example, if R is 0.8, then R squared is 0.64, and you can say about that 64 percent of the variability in Y is explained by X. As Paul Berger explained it to me, there is no meaningful sentence involving the correlation variable R, but R squared gives you something meaningful to say about the correlated relationship.

Here is a visual on how this calculation process works:

In addition to the different calculation approach, I also used a mix of different query types. We tested commercial head terms, commercial long tail terms and also informational queries. In fact, two-thirds of our queries were informational in nature.

Additional Approaches

I think that both the Mean of the Individual Correlations and Quadratic Mean approaches are valid, but one of the limits with these approaches is that other factors can dominate the ranking algorithm, and make it hard to see the strength of the signal.

For that reason, I chose to take some other approaches to the analysis as well. The first of these was to measure the links in a more aggregated manner. To do this, we normalized the quantity of links for each result. What I mean by this is that we took the link counts for each ranking position for a given query, and then divided it by the largest number of links for that given query.

As a result, the largest link score for each query would have a weight of “1”. The reason for doing this is to prevent a few queries that have some results with huge numbers of links from having excessive influence on the resulting calculations.

Then we took the total of the links for all the search results by each ranking position. The equations for this look more like this:

The value of this is that it smooths out the impact of the negative correlations in a different way. Think of it as smoothing out the impact of other ranking factors, as illustrated above (relevance score, content score, and the impact of other algos). This is the calculation that is shown in the “Aggregate Link Correlation by Ranking Position” data above.

I also looked at this one more way. In this view, I continued to use the normalized totals of the links, but grouped them in ranking groups of 10. I.e., I summed the normalized link totals for the top 10, did the same for ranking positions 11 to 20, 21 to 30, and so forth. I then calculated the correlations to see how they looked in terms of what it would take to rank in each 10 position block.

Those calculations looked more like this:

This gives us a bit more granular approach than simply aggregating all the ranking positions into the SERP positions, but still smooths out some of the limitations of the Mean of Individual Correlations method. That is what is shown in the “Aggregate Link Correlation in Blocks of 10” data above.

Cementing the Point with Case Studies

We do a lot of high-end content marketing campaigns with our clients, many of which are Fortune 500 companies. Here is a sampling of the results across many of our clients:

The sample results shown here have been repeated hundreds of times by us. However, we don’t find that links can rescue poor quality content, or cause low relevance content to rank. Also, all of our efforts focus on getting recognition from, or content published on, very high authority sites.

Doing this well requires a focus on how you implement your marketing and PR to get in front of the audiences that matter to your business the most. This will naturally drive high value links back to your site, and help you earn rankings that you deserve.

This content was originally published here.

[lindyhunt]

How to Learn Social Media Marketing: 31 Resources for Beginners

Social media is no longer an optional marketing channel -- it's a necessary one.

But that doesn't mean results are a given. When it comes to social media, you'll either have a lot of success interacting with your customers, or you'll see little results -- and that depends on the level of effort you put into it.

For every business that has found success in social media marketing, there are at least two more spinning their social wheels with no tangible results. It's time to change that trend.

For many, social media is simply a place to post links to content they've created in hopes that thousands will see it, click through, and share with their followers. So they have profiles on every network, and every network looks exactly the same; line after line of self-promotion.

This is not going to bring results. In fact, Facebook's algorithm now penalizes link-based content, and Instagram has made it all-but-impossible to share a link.

Half-heartedly sharing your content on social media is not social media marketing. It's spamming.

Social marketing is a lot of work, and it takes time listening and responding. After all, it's social, and anything social takes an investment of effort and skill.

To hone these skills, check out these resources that will help you develop the skills needed to be effective on social media. (You may want to bookmark this post so you can easily refer to it again later.)

How to Learn Social Media Marketing: 31 Free Resources

Social Media Marketing Blogs

Social marketing is a science involving special communication skills. And the landscape changes constantly.

One of the best ways to develop your social media prowess and to stay up-to-date is to follow experts in the field. These blogs are always fresh with actionable information you can use to improve your marketing:

1. Social Media Explorer

SME is both a strategic services agency and a blog with a bevy of social media and marketing experts. The SME blog is consistently considered one of the most insightful in the industry, and several of its authors have written popular books on several aspects of digital and social marketing.

2. Scott Monty

Monty is a marketing guru who covers a ton of subjects. However, his social media articles are always eye-opening. If you haven't heard of him yet, check out his "this week in digital" posts -- these will keep you up-to-date with all the news on social, and every other aspect of digital marketing as well.

3. Social Media Examiner

Not to be confused with Social Media Explorer, the Examiner is one of the top blogs in the world for social media. Its social media reports are filled with all the important data social marketers want, and the blog posts are filled with valuable tips, as well. If I had to pick just one social media blog to follow, this is the one I would choose.

4. HubSpot Marketing Blog

Right here on the HubSpot Marketing Blog, you can find breaking news and actionable how-to guides on every social network there is.

Ebooks About Social Media

These ebooks will provide deeper information on specific networks and topics.

6. How to Use Instagram for Business

This step-by-step guide explains the reasons to create a business Instagram account and how to execute on Instagram to drive results.

7. A Visual Guide to Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Company Page

If you're building a company page for the first time, or trying to upgrade your page, this guide will show you exactly how to do everything from crafting an engaging company description to creating an eye-catching banner image.

8. How to Attract Customers with Facebook

This multi-page ebook will show you how to use Facebook to drive real business results for your organization.

9. How to Get More Twitter Followers

HubSpot partnered with the experts at Twitter to provide actionable tips for social media managers starting new accounts to build a following, and fast.

10. The Beginner's Guide to Social Media

Last, but definitely not least, is this amazing guide from Moz. The 12 chapters in this book are filled with valuable information that every marketer absolutely needs to know. Bookmark this guide, you'll refer to it more than once.

Videos About Social Media

Videos are my second favorite medium to learn, behind books. Being able to glean from the brightest minds on any subject as if you're face-to-face is powerful. These videos will give you valuable insights, just how to do social media, but you'll get insights into the why and what as well.

11. The #AskGaryVee Show

You can't talk about social media without talking about the speaker, author, and social expert Gary Vaynerchuk. On the Gary Vee Show, he takes questions from his audience and answers them as only he can. If you have a burning question on social media marketing, send it to him.

12. TED Talks: Social Media Marketing

If you aren't in love with TED, you might want to check your pulse. This is a playlist of videos from TED Talks on social media. There may not be that much actionable advice in these videos, but if you want to become an expert on social media, these videos will give you insight into the deeper subject like "the hidden influence of social networks."

13. Learn Social Media Marketing

If you're really new to social media, and you want to learn through a structured lesson experience, consider Lynda's massive library on social marketing courses.

14. Free Social Media Certification

HubSpot Academy has a breadth of video courses across inbound and digital marketing. Their free social media course is an eight-step video curriculum that teaches you the fundamentals of managing a social media campaign for your business. It also earns you a fresh Social Media Certification.

Podcasts on Social Media

If you like to learn while you chill, work out, or commute to and from work, podcasts are one of the best ways to do it. And these podcasts will help you develop your social media expertise.

15. Social Media Marketing Podcast

Michael Stelzner, from Social Media Examiner, brings you success stories and expert interviews from leading social media marketing pros.

16. The Social Media Examiner Show

Rather than deep dives, the SME Show gives you small, bite-sized content for social media every day. This is a great podcast to get actionable quick-tips on a daily basis. It'll keep you motivated while you develop your skills.

17. The Social Toolkit

If you like to stay up-to-date on digital tools, apps, and software for social media marketing, this is the podcast for you.

18. The Social Pros Podcast

Every episode of the Social Pros Podcast shines the light on real pros doing real work for real companies. You'll get insights from Jay Baer of Convince and Convert when you tune in.

Slideshows and Infographics About Social Media

If you're a visual learner, these slide decks and infographics provide great ways to learn social media.

19. The B2B Social Media Palette

This SlideShare walks you through the channels and tools you'll need to be most effective at B2B social media marketing. Sometimes, success can be found by using the right tools and channels for the right audience.

20. The Complete Guide to the Best Times to Post on Social Media

Timing is very important when it comes to social media. Post it the wrong time, and your update can go completely unnoticed because of the flood of updates in your audience's feeds. Being able to master the timing of social media is critical to effective marketing.

21. 58 Social Media Tips for Content Marketers

This slideshow is from the folks at Content Marketing Institute. This deck shows the proper methods for promoting your content over social media. This is a must-read for any social marketer who wants to use those channels to promote content.

22. The Best and Worst Times to Post on Social Media

Again, timing is everything. This infographic lays out the best and worst times to post on each major network. You should save this infographic for referencing when you schedule your social media posts.

Best Social Media Books

Books are my favorite way to learn. Many experts agree that if you read a book a week, on your area of expertise, for 5 years, you will have the equivalent of a Ph.D. on the subject. That may or may not be true, but reading books from the experts definitely doesn't make you a worse marketer. Here are some books to get you started.

23. The B2B Social Media Book

This book covers the specific application of social marketing to B2B companies, to leverage social media to drive leads and revenue.

24. The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users

You've got to read this book by the legendary former Chief Evangelist of Apple, Guy Kawasaki. He's one of the pioneers of social and content marketing, and this book is filled with expert advice from one of the best.

25. The Tao of Twitter

This book is supposed to be for busy marketers who need to get the basics of Twitter down quickly. It shows you how to connect and start creating meaningful connections in less than two hours.

26. The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising

Facebook is one of the most effective advertising and PPC platforms available. You can target a plethora of metrics, allowing you to drill down and advertise to a very specific audience. This book will show you how to optimize your Facebook ads.

27. Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

Gary Vaynerchuk gives insight into how he uses a conversational, reactionary approach to engaging his audience. He gives concrete, visual examples of great social marketing, as well as not-so-great ones.

28. The New Rules of Marketing and PR

David Meerman Scott's book on digital marketing is an international bestseller, and worth every penny. Some argue that it should be required reading for any marketer -- and in this marketer's opinion, "Just read it."

29. Likeable Social Media

Dave Kerpen claims the secret to viral social marketing is to be likable. When someone likes you, they'll recommend you. But being likable on social networks is easier said than done. This book will help you crack that code.

30. Social Media Marketing for Dummies

One of my mentors taught me to read children's books on a subject if I just couldn't grasp a concept. That principle gave way to movements like "Explain It Like I'm 5." And, sometimes you just need it broken down like you're, well, less than an expert on the topic, to put it gently. If that's you, this book is valuable. Go ahead and buy it -- we won't call you dummy.

31. Contagious: Why Things Catch On

This book by Jonah Berger provides a strong foundation to understand how content goes viral -- and how to create ideas on social media that are so catchy, your audience won't be able to help but click them.

The Secret to Social Media Success

No matter how many social networks you set out to master, or how long you work in the social marketing field, there is one secret that will ensure you're successful: Never stop learning.

This list is massive, I know, and there's no way to consume all these resources in the next week. But if you set yourself to learning every day, every week, every month, every year, you'll eventually be the one writing the books that help others learn social marketing.

It all begins with learning.

10 Things I've Learned About Social Media:

Social marketing requires listening.

Conversations should be the goal of social marketing.

Team #Followback is a waste of time.

Social marketing isn't broadcasting, it's communicating.

Never auto-post your content to your social profiles.

Never copy/paste the same message into every social profile.

Social marketing requires time. It's relationship-building on a massive scale.

Be helpful. Period.

Social support is faster than live chat, email, or phone calls. Embrace it.

You don't have to be on every network. Go where your customers are.

[connecticut-seo-adwords]

Do Links Still Matter for SEO in 2017?

By Eric Enge

In today's post, I'll show you information from three different dates over the past year that highlight why links remain an effective ranking aspect. I'll also go over in detail why Google still utilizes them, and why they are most likely to remain a powerful ranking element for some time to come.In July of 2016, we published our very first research study on Links as a Ranking Factor. Today's post updates that information with a fresh analysis of links as a ranking element, to see if there is any indication of a decline in their importance. In fact, we have actually analyzed the power of links as a ranking factor on three different dates, as follows:

May 2016

August 2016

May 2017

The Results

Let's dig right in and look at the results throughout all 3 data sets that we pulled:

Note that the same 6,000 inquiries were used in all three data sets, and we see that the value stays steady and strong throughout the time period. Some motion backward and forward is natural. We used 6,000 inquiries since that is what we made with the initial study on this subject. With the Research Study 2 and Research study 3 information sets, we likewise pulled data samples for 16,000 questions. Here are the connection scores for those two information sets of 16K inquiries:

When again, both information sets reveal strong outcomes. Note: See the methodology area listed below for a description of exactly what a "Quadratic Mean Spearman Correlation Score" worth actually means.In the first study, we likewise took a view where we aggregated the normalized link counts (see the approach area listed below for an explanation of exactly what that is) by ranking position. The function of this technique was to help change for that the significance and quality of the content are such considerable ranking elements, and to assist us even more examine how links might matter. Here is exactly what we saw:

In this data, there is some obvious erosion, but the story is rather various if

you look at the outcomes for the 2 16K inquiry sets: For this information set, we see a lift in between Research study 2 and Study 3, which remains in contrast to the 6K information set. As an outcome, my belief is that this is simply normal movement of the rankings from a range of factors.Why Aren't the Non-Aggregated Connection Worths Higher?There are 2 significant factors, as follows:1. Importance and Material Quality huge Elements:

In its most basic form, if a web page is not appropriate to an inquiry, it shouldn't rank. That is, obviously, obvious, however the discussion is far more nuanced than that. To show, let's say we have actually got 10 pieces of content that are pertinent sufficient to be considered for ranking for a question. Let's further state that they have"importance ratings "(RS) like this: This appears like it might be a quite great ranking algo on the surface area. We

're ranking the most relevant material on top. You'll see too that I set my significance ratings in a truly narrow variety, which makes sense. If you're not pertinent, you should not rank.The problem is that it's pretty easy to make pieces of content look highly appropriate just by packing the best words in it, and the most relevant material might in reality be offering very poor info to users. So let's include a new score called quality rating(QS )(not the Adwords version of this term, but an actual natural assessment of a page's quality instead), and let's see how that affects our algorithm: This seems an enhancement, and it most likely is. The issue here is that, similar to determining significance

, measuring quality is a difficult thing to do. Let's add one more element to the mix, that of a Link Score(LS), and utilize that to let the "market at big "provide us an indicator on exactly what material is the finest on this subject. Here is exactly what that looks like: You see how the rankings moved around in between the three scenarios? Pretty substantially. In this mock-up

of the Google algorithm, it's quite clear that links are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Need to know the Spearman rating for links as a ranking consider the third scenario revealed? It's 0.28. While this is a significant simplification of the Google algorithm, but even based upon this, you can see why extremely high Spearman scores are tough to achieve.2. Other Algorithms Come Into Play: Examples of the kind of algorithms I'm speaking about consist of: Local search engine result Image results Video results Inquiry Deserves Diversity outcomes These might affect 15 percent of our outcomes. Let's envision that it changes just one of them, and one high scoring result is replaced with a single item(result number

3). In our example, I have actually changed the

3rd result with something that was available in from another algorithm, such as Question Deserves Diversity. Know exactly what this does to the Spearman score for links as a ranking factor for this result? It

drops to 0.03. Ouch!Hopefully, this will provide you some instinct regarding why a score in the 0.3 range is a sign that links are an extremely material consider ranking.Google's Progress in Battling Link Spam Those who state that links are on the decrease as a ranking element often point to the

efforts by spammers to utilize illegitimate practices to get links and earn rankings that their websites don't deserve. This certainly was a substantial issue for Google in the 2002 to 2013 time

range. The tide in this fight began to turn in 2012. What took place initially during that year was that a wave of manual charges began to get evaluated by Google. On their own, these already sent a shockwave through the SEO industry. The next major step was the release of the first version of Penguin on April 24, 2012. This was a huge action forward for Google.As the next few years unfolded, Google invested greatly in a mix of methods to use new versions of Penguin and manual charges to fine-tune their technique to handling people that use invalid approaches to acquiring links. This culminated with the release of Penguin 4.0 on September 23, 2016. With the release of Penguin 4.0, Google's self-confidence in their technique to links had actually ended up being so high that the Penguin algorithm was no longer penalizing sites for acquiring bad links. Since Penguin 4.0, the algorithm simply recognizes those links and ignores them(triggers them to have no ranking value ). This shift from punishing sites with bad links to just discounting those links shows Google's self-confidence that Penguin is discovering a large percentage of the bad links that it's created to find.Of course, they still use manual charges to resolve kinds of

invalid link-building practices that individuals use that Penguin is not targeted at addressing.How much progress has Google in fact made? I still remember the Black Hat/ White Hat panel I rested on in December of 2008 at SES Chicago.

With me were Dave Naylor, Todd Friesen and Doug Heil. A couple of the panel members argued that buying links at the start of campaigning for a website was a requirement, and it was careless for an SEO pro to not do so.How a decade changes things! It has actually been several years given that any SEO in any location has actually argued that buying links represents a smart practice. In truth, you cannot discover anybody making public suggestions about techniques for obtaining links that break Google's Webmaster standards. The whole market for doing those kind of things has been driven underground.Driven underground is not the like

"gone,"however it does reveal that Google's ability to discover and spot issues has actually become quite effective.One last point, and it's a crucial one. Ask yourself, why does Google have the Penguin algorithm, and why do they evaluate manual link penalties?"The answer is easy: Due to the fact that links ARE a major ranking aspect, and plans to get links that do not fit their standards are things that they want to proactively address.Why Are Links a Belongings Signal?Why is Google still utilizing links? Why do not they just change to user engagement signals and social networks signals? I won't

establish the whole reason that these signals are problematic here, but will share one point about each: User Engagement Signals: Google most likely finds some method to use these signals in one circumstance or another, but there are restrictions to what they can do. Here is exactly what the head of their maker learning group, Jeff Dean, stated about them:"An example of a messier support knowing problem is perhaps

attempting to utilize it in exactly what search engine result ought to I show. There's a much wider set of search engine result I can display in response to various questions, and the benefit signal is a little noisy. If a user takes a look at a search results page and likes it or doesn't like it, that's not that apparent."However now, let's get to the core of the concern: Why are links such a great signal? It comes down to 3 major points: Implementing links needs a product financial investment to be made by you. You must own a site and you need to make the effort to carry out the link on a web page. This might not be a big financial investment, however it's considerably more effort than it is to execute a link in a social media post.When you execute a link, you are making a public recommendation recognizing your brand with the web page that you're connecting to. In addition, it's fixed. It sits

there in an enduring manner. On the other hand, with a link in a social media post, it's gone from individuals's feeds quickly

, sometimes only in minutes.Now, here is the huge one: When you implement a link on a page on your site, individuals may click on it and leave your site.Think about that last one for a few seconds more. A( non-advertisement) link on your site is a sign by you (as the publisher of the page with the links )that you think the link has

adequate value to your visitors, and will do enough to boost your relationship with those visitors, that you want to have people leave your site.That's exactly what makes links an exceptionally important signal.Basic Methodology After seeking advice from a couple of specialists on the very best technique ( Paul Berger and Per Enge), I carried out a calculation of the Spearman Correlation on the results for all the questions in our study, then took the Quadratic Mean of those ratings. The reason for doing this is that it leverages the square of the connection variables (where the connection value is R, the quadratic mean utilizes R squared ). It's actually the R squared value that has some meaning in data. If R is 0.8

, then R squared is 0.64, and you can state about that 64 percent of the variability in Y is described by

X. As Paul Berger explained it to me, there is no significant sentence including the correlation variable R, however R squared provides you something meaningful to state about the associated relationship.Here is a visual on how this estimation procedure works: In addition to the various estimation approach, I also utilized a mix of different inquiry types. We evaluated commercial head terms, business long tail terms and likewise informational queries. Two-thirds of our queries were informative in nature.Additional Approaches I believe that both the Mean of the Specific Connections and Quadratic Mean techniques are legitimate, however one of the limitations with these methods is that other aspects can control the ranking algorithm, and make it tough to see the strength of the signal.For that reason, I picked to take some other approaches to the analysis. The first of these was to measure the links in a more aggregated way. To do this, we normalized the amount of links for each outcome. Exactly what I suggest by this is that we took the link counts for each ranking position for a provided question, then divided it by the biggest number of

links for that given query.As an outcome, the largest link score for each inquiry would weigh"1". The factor for doing this is to prevent a few questions that have some outcomes with huge varieties of links from having extreme influence on the resulting calculations.Then we took

the overall of the links for all the search engine result by each ranking position. The equations for this appearance more like this: The value of this is that it ravels the effect of the unfavorable connections in a different method. Think of it as smoothing out the effect of other ranking elements, as shown above(significance score, content rating, and the impact of other algos). This is the calculation that is revealed in the "Aggregate Link Correlation by Ranking Position "data above.I also looked at this one more way. In this view, I continued to utilize the stabilized overalls of the links, but organized them in ranking groups of 10. I.e., I summed the stabilized link overalls for the leading 10, did the exact same for ranking positions 11 to 20, 21 to 30, and so forth. I then determined the connections to see how they looked in terms of what it would take to rank in each 10 position block.Those calculations looked more like this: This provides us a bit more granular technique than just aggregating all the ranking positions into the SERP positions, but still smooths out a few of the limitations of the Mean of Individual Connections technique. That is exactly what is displayed in the"Aggregate Link Connection in Blocks of 10 "information above.Cementing the Point with Case Research Studies We do a great deal of high-end content marketing projects with our customers, a lot of which are Fortune 500 companies. Here is a sampling of the outcomes across many of our clients: The sample results revealed here have been duplicated numerous times by us. Nevertheless, we do not find that links can save bad quality content, or cause low relevance material to rank. All of our efforts focus on getting recognition from, or content published on, really high authority sites.Doing this well requires a focus on how you execute your marketing and PR to get in front of the audiences that matter to your business the most. This will naturally drive

high value links back to your website, and assist you earn rankings that you are worthy of.

Source

https://www.stonetemple.com/link-as-a-ranking-factor/

[martechadvisor-blog]

Let the Machines Make Your Social Interactions More Human

Artificial Intelligence has received a lot of interest in the past few years, particularly when it comes to how it will impact businesses and their connection to customers. While it’s hard to argue against the doors AI opens, in social media marketing, it’s only part of the equation.

Unquestionably, AI and machine-driven social automation are disrupting marketing and will continue to do so as the sophistication of AI grows. Companies are scaling social media efforts to new heights, reaching more customers and ingraining social in every corner of the organization. The support of social media management tools like Hootsuite help increases efficiency and scale of tasks like scheduling and publishing content, monitoring social feeds, delivering intelligent reporting and more. Beyond social, AI is becoming so pervasive that by 2020, Gartner says customers will manage 85% of their relationship with a company without interacting with a human.

Yet, the human element has always been social media’s strength and differentiator. Contrary to the general consensus that AI will remove the human-to-human element, I believe that the best AI will power our ability to scale human connections like never before.

In our Hootsuite Social Trends report, we noted that as AI technologies rise up, brands must make sure their strategies stay focused on being human, helpful, and relevant at scale. It’s crucial to keep investments grounded in the needs of humans – making sure you stay focused on solving real customer problems and enhancing their experience with your brand, such as making personalized recommendations tailored to their needs.

Whether your organization is currently investing in AI or not, know that this is a trend that is quickly changing how brands and consumers communicate on social channels – and it’s just getting started. I believe AI will be table stakes for all businesses by 2020.

With that in mind here are three ways AI will help brands become more human:

Giving us even smarter listening

Noisy, bustling networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are tickets to a global focus group in real-time. But data is raw, unfiltered and can be overwhelming to sort through. The newest smart social listening tools can help – by analyzing sentiment, identifying trends, and surfacing important conversations automatically. These tools are advancing quickly and can help organizations large and small take a quick pulse check on what their social following is saying and why – then bringing humans in the loop to forge stronger connections.

SYKES Latin America faced fierce competition in attracting English-speaking customer support talent in Latin America. By taking a dedicated approach at expanding its social reach, SYKES utilized a combination of social listening and engagement to increase their brand awareness. By tracking specific keywords being used in relevant conversations, the team was able to find and engage in conversations faster, in addition to gaining insight into how their brand was perceived in their industry. In just over a year, SYKES Latin America vastly increased their brand awareness and social media engagement, averaging an 83 percent increase across their digital channels. The approach has also reduced hiring costs, to 41 percent less per hire compared to traditional recruiting methods.

Helping customers get to a solution faster

People often associate AI with chatbots and think that they’re less human, but you can use the technology to get customers to a solution faster and free up live people so they can spend more time engaging with customers in person and/or over the phone. Take for example how TGI Fridays is utilizing chatbots to make social more personal; through Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Amazon Alexa chatbots customers can quickly find reservation times at the nearest restaurant, browse and order their favorite food, and even ask common questions. Data from the interactions then can make the experience more personal, with suggestions and one-click order of items a customer purchases frequently.

Similarly, Georgia State University was looking to help newly accepted students successfully transition to college. A chatbot it developed with the AdmitHub mobile messaging platform uses conversational AI to personalize support as students wade through completion of financial aid and housing forms, registering for classes and other daunting tasks. The "Pounce" bot is named for the GSU Panthers' mascot and can answer thousands of student questions about Georgia State, student life, campus services, financial aid, and more. It helped the school decrease "summer melt" (graduating high schoolers who accept enrollment but fail to matriculate) by 21.4% – and increase enrollment by nearly 4 percent.

Streamlining the creative process

Content is still king in social. Logistics such as scheduling and distributing social media content are good targets for automation and AI, freeing you to invest in great content that your audience truly wants to consume and share. Increasingly, it’s not just when to post but what to post that’s being automated. A human touch is still important to vet suggestions, but the grunt work of surfacing relevant content can be handled by machine. Once you understand your audience's interests, algorithm-driven tools automatically identify trending articles, blog posts, images, and more based around specific keywords. Personalizing that content with a human touch will drive more meaningful engagement.

One-on-one interactions can feel like a hard-to-afford luxury. Done right, automation and AI can empower your organization to be even more customer-centric by building stronger relationships at scale, but that retain a human touch.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

[rocketsocialmediamarketing-blog]

How to Learn Social Media Marketing: 30 Resources for Beginners

Social media is no longer an optional marketing channel -- it's a necessary one.

But that doesn't mean results are a given. When it comes to social media, you'll either have a lot of success interacting with your customers, or you'll see little results -- and that depends on the level of effort you put into it.

Few brands do social media really well, and those who do, see great things come from it. But for everyone who does social media well, there are hundreds of others seemingly spinning their social wheels with no tangible results.

For many, social media is simply a place to post links to content they've created in hopes that thousands will see it, click through, and share with their followers. So they have profiles on every network, and every network looks exactly the same; line after line of self-promotion.

This is not going to bring results. In fact, Facebook's algorithm now penalizes link-based content, and Instagram has made it all-but-impossible to share a link.

Half-heartedly sharing your content on social media is not social media marketing. It's spamming.

Social marketing is a lot of work, and it takes time listening and responding. After all, it's social, and anything social takes an investment of effort and skill.

To hone these skills, check out these resources that will help you develop the skills needed to be effective on social media. (You may want to bookmark this post so you can easily refer to it again later.)

How to Learn Social Media Marketing: 30 Free Resources Blogs About Social Media Social marketing is a science involving special communication skills. And the landscape changes constantly.

One of the best ways to develop your social media prowess and to stay up-to-date is to follow experts in the field. These blogs are always fresh with actionable information you can use to improve your marketing:

1) Social Media Explorer SME is both a strategic services agency and a blog with a bevy of social media and marketing experts. The SME blog is consistently considered one of the most insightful in the industry, and several of its authors have written popular books on several aspects of digital and social marketing.

2) Scott Monty Monty is a marketing guru who covers a ton of subjects. However, his social media articles are always eye-opening. If you haven't heard of him yet, check out his "this week in digital" posts -- these will keep you up-to-date with all the news on social, and every other aspect of digital marketing as well.

3) Social Media Examiner Not to be confused with Social Media Explorer, the Examiner is one of the top blogs in the world for social media. Its social media reports are filled with all the important data social marketers want, and the blog posts are filled with valuable tips, as well. If I had to pick just one social media blog to follow, this is the one I would choose.

4) HubSpot Marketing Blog Right here on the HubSpot Marketing Blog, you can find breaking news and actionable how-to guides on every social network there is.

Ebooks About Social Media These ebooks will provide deeper information on specific networks and topics.

6) How to Use Instagram for Business This step-by-step guide explains the reasons to create a business Instagram account and how to execute on Instagram to drive results.

7) A Visual Guide to Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Company Page If you're building a company page for the first time, or trying to upgrade your page, this guide will show you exactly how to do everything from crafting an engaging company description to creating an eye-catching banner image.

8) How to Attract Customers with Facebook This multi-page ebook will show you how to use Facebook to drive real business results for your organization.

9) How to Get More Twitter Followers HubSpot partnered with the experts at Twitter to provide actionable tips for social media managers starting new accounts to build a following, and fast.

10) The Beginner's Guide to Social Media Last, but definitely not least, is this amazing guide from Moz. The 12 chapters in this book are filled with valuable information that every marketer absolutely needs to know. Bookmark this guide, you'll refer to it more than once.

Videos About Social Media Videos are my second favorite medium to learn, behind books. Being able to glean from the brightest minds on any subject as if you're face-to-face is powerful. These videos will give you valuable insights, just how to do social media, but you'll get insights into the why and what as well.

11) The #AskGaryVee Show You can't talk about social media without talking about the speaker, author, and social expert Gary Vaynerchuk. On the Gary Vee Show, he takes questions from his audience and answers them as only he can. If you have a burning question on social media marketing, send it to him.

12) TED Talks: Social Media Marketing If you aren't in love with TED, you might want to check your pulse. This is a playlist of videos from TED Talks on social media. There may not be that much actionable advice in these videos, but if you want to become an expert on social media, these videos will give you insight into the deeper subject like "the hidden influence of social networks."

13) Learn Social Media Marketing If you're really new to social media, and you want to learn through a structured lesson experience, consider Lynda's massive library on social marketing classes.

Podcasts on Social Media If you like to learn while you chill, work out, or commute to and from work, podcasts are one of the best ways to do it. And these podcasts will help you develop your social media expertise.

14) Social Media Marketing Podcast Michael Stelzner, from Social Media Examiner, brings you success stories and expert interviews from leading social media marketing pros.

15) The Social Media Examiner Show Rather than deep dives, the SME Show gives you small, bite-sized content for social media every day. This is a great podcast to get actionable quick-tips on a daily basis. It'll keep you motivated while you develop your skills.

16) The Social Toolkit If you like to stay up-to-date on digital tools, apps, and software for social media marketing, this is the podcast for you.

17) The Social Pros Podcast Every episode of the Social Pros Podcast shines the light on real pros doing real work for real companies. You'll get insights from Jay Baer of Convince and Convert when you tune in.

Slideshows and Infographics About Social Media If you're a visual learner, these slide decks and infographics provide great ways to learn social media.

18) The B2B Social Media Palette This SlideShare walks you through the channels and tools you'll need to be most effective at B2B social media marketing. Sometimes, success can be found by using the right tools and channels for the right audience.

19) The Complete Guide to the Best Times to Post on Social Media Timing is very important when it comes to social media. Post it the wrong time, and your update can go completely unnoticed because of the flood of updates in your audience's feeds. Being able to master the timing of social media is critical to effective marketing.

20) 58 Social Media Tips for Content Marketers This slideshow is from the folks at Content Marketing Institute. This deck shows the proper methods for promoting your content over social media. This is a must-read for any social marketer who wants to use those channels to promote content.

21) The Best and Worst Times to Post on Social Media Again, timing is everything. This infographic lays out the best and worst times to post on each major network. You should save this infographic for referencing when you schedule your social media posts.

Books About Social Media Books are my favorite way to learn. Many experts agree that if you read a book a week, on your area of expertise, for 5 years, you will have the equivalent of a Ph.D. on the subject. That may or may not be true, but reading books from the experts definitely doesn't make you a worse marketer. Here are some books to get you started.

22) The B2B Social Media Book This book covers the specific application of social marketing to B2B companies, to leverage social media to drive leads and revenue.

23) The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users You've got to read this book by the legendary former Chief Evangelist of Apple, Guy Kawasaki. He's one of the pioneers of social and content marketing, and this book is filled with expert advice from one of the best.

24) The Tao of Twitter This book is supposed to be for busy marketers who need to get the basics of Twitter down quickly. It shows you how to connect and start creating meaningful connections in less than two hours.

25) The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising Facebook is one of the most effective advertising and PPC platforms available. You can target a plethora of metrics, allowing you to drill down and advertise to a very specific audience. This book will show you how to optimize your Facebook ads.

26) Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World Gary Vaynerchuk gives insight into how he uses a conversational, reactionary approach to engaging his audience. He gives concrete, visual examples of great social marketing, as well as not-so-great ones.

27) The New Rules of Marketing and PR David Meerman Scott's book on digital marketing is an international bestseller, and worth every penny. Some argue that it should be required reading for any marketer -- and in this marketer's opinion, "Just read it."

28) Likeable Social Media Dave Kerpen claims the secret to viral social marketing is to be likable. When someone likes you, they'll recommend you. But being likable on social networks is easier said than done. This book will help you crack that code.

29) Social Media Marketing for Dummies One of my mentors taught me to read children's books on a subject if I just couldn't grasp a concept. That principle gave way to movements like "Explain It Like I'm 5." And, sometimes you just need it broken down like you're, well, less than an expert on the topic, to put it gently. If that's you, this book is valuable. Go ahead and buy it -- we won't call you dummy.

30) Contagious: Why Things Catch On This book by Jonah Berger provides a strong foundation to understand how content goes viral -- and how to create ideas on social media that are so catchy, your audience won't be able to help but click them.

The Secret to Social Media Success No matter how many social networks you set out to master, or how long you work in the social marketing field, there is one secret that will ensure you're successful: Never stop learning.

This list is massive, I know, and there's no way to consume all these resources in the next week. But if you set yourself to learning every day, every week, every month, every year, you'll eventually be the one writing the books that help others learn social marketing.

It all begins with learning.

10 Things I've Learned About Social Media: Social marketing requires listening. Conversations should be the goal of social marketing. Team #Followback is a waste of time. Social marketing isn't broadcasting, it's communicating. Never auto-post your content to your social profiles. Never copy/paste the same message into every social profile. Social marketing requires time. It's relationship-building on a massive scale. Be helpful. Period. Social support is faster than live chat, email, or phone calls. Embrace it. You don't have to be on every network. Go where your customers are.

Original article here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-marketing-resources

[mthrynn]

Deep learning is enjoying unprecedented success in a variety of commercial applications, but it is also beginning to find its footing in science. Just a decade ago, few practitioners could have predicted that deep learning-powered systems would surpass human-level performance in computer vision and speech recognition tasks.

These tools are now poised to help scientists contend with some of the most challenging data analytics problems in a number of domains. For example, extreme weather events pose great potential risk on ecosystem, infrastructure and human health. Analyzing extreme weather data from satellites and weather stations and characterizing changes in extremes in simulations is an important task. Similarly, upcoming astronomical sky surveys will obtain measurements of tens of billions of galaxies, enabling precision measurements of the parameters that describe the nature of dark energy. But in each case, analyzing the mountains of resulting data poses a daunting challenge.

Prabhat, NERSC

A growing number of scientists are already employing HPC systems for data analytics, and many are now beginning to apply deep learning and other types of machine learning to their large datasets. Toward this end, in 2016 the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) expanded its support for deep learning and began forming hands-on collaborations with scientists and industry. NERSC users from science domains such as geosciences, high energy physics, earth systems modeling, fusion and astrophysics are now working with NERSC staff, software tools and services to explore how deep learning can improve their ability to solve challenging science problems.

In this Q&A with Prabhat, who leads the Data and Analytics Services Group at NERSC, he talks about the history of deep learning and machine learning and the unique challenges of applying these data analytics tools to science. Prabhat is also an author on two related technical papers being presented at SC17, “Deep Learning at 15PF: Supervised and Semi-Supervised Classification for Scientific Data” and “Galactos: Computing the 3-pt Anisotropic Correlation for 2 Billion Galaxies,” and is conducting two deep learning roundtables in the DOE Booth (#613) at SC17. He is also giving a plenary talk on deep learning for science on Sunday, November 12 at the Intel HPC Developer Conference held in conjunction with SC17.

How do you define deep learning, and how does it differ from machine learning?

At the Department of Energy, we tackle inference problems across numerous domains. Given a noisy observation, you would like to infer properties of the object of interest. The discipline of statistics is ideally suited to solve inference problems. The discipline of Machine Learning lies at the intersection of statistics and computer science, wherein core statistical methods were employed by computer scientists to solve applied problems in computer vision and speech recognition. Machine learning has been around for more than 40 years, and there have been a number of different techniques that have fallen in and out of favor: linear regression, k-means, support vector machines and random forests. Neural networks have always been part of machine learning – they were developed at MIT starting in the 1960s – there was the major development of the back-propagation algorithm in the mid-1980s, but they never really picked up until 2012. That is when the new flavor of neural networks – that is, deep learning – really gained prominence and finally started working. So the way I think of deep learning is as a subset of machine learning, which in turn is closely related to the field of statistics, and all of them have to do with solving inference problems of one kind or another.

What technological changes occurred that enabled deep learning to finally start working?

Three important trends have happened over the last 20 years or so. First, thanks to the internet, “big Data,” or large archives of labeled and unlabeled datasets, has become readily accessible. Second, thanks to Moore’s Law, computers have become extremely powerful. A laptop featuring a GPU and a CPU is more capable than supercomputers from previous decades. These two trends were prerequisites for enabling the third wave of modern neural nets, deep learning, to take off. The basic machinery and algorithms have been in existence for three decades, but it is only the unique confluence of large datasets and massive computational horsepower that enabled us to explore the expressive capabilities of Deep Networks.

What are some of the leading types of deep learning methods used today for scientific applications?

As we’ve gone about systematically exploring the application of deep learning to scientific problems over the last four years, what we have found is that there are two dominant architectures that are relevant to science problems. The first is called the convolutional network. This architecture is widely applicable because a lot of the data that we obtain from experimental and observational sources (telescopes and microscopes) and simulations – tend to be in the form of a grid or an image. Similar to commodity cameras, we have 2D images, but we also typically deal with 3D, 4D and multi-channel images. Supervised pattern classification is a common task shared across commercial and scientific use cases; applications include face detection, face recognition, object detection and object classification.

The second approach is more sophisticated and has to do with the recurrent neural network: the long short-term memory (LSTM) architecture. In commercial applications, LSTMs are used for translating speech by learning the sequence-to-sequence mapping between one language and another. In our science cases, we also have sequence-to-sequence mapping problems, such as gene sequencing, for example, or in earth systems modeling, where you are tracking storms in space and time. There are also problems in neuroscience that take recordings from the brain and use LSTM to predict speech. So broadly those two flavors of architectures – convolutional networks and LSTMs – are the dominant deep learning methodologies for science today.

In recent years, we have also explored auto-encoder architectures, which can be used for unsupervised clustering of datasets. We have had some success in applying such methods for analysis of galaxy images in astronomy, and Data Bay sensor data for neutrino discovery. The latest trend in deep learning is the generative adversarial network (GAN). This architecture can be used for creating synthetic data. You can feed in examples from a certain domain, say cosmology images or Large Hadron Collider (LHC) images, and the network will essentially learn a process that can explain these images. Then you can ask that same network to produce more synthetic data that is consistent with other images it has seen. We have empirical evidence that you can use GANs to produce synthetic cosmology or synthetic LHC data without resorting to expensive computational simulations.

What is driving NERSC’s growing deep learning efforts, and how did you come to lead these efforts?

I have a long-standing interest in image processing and computer vision. During my undergrad at IIT Delhi, and grad studies at Brown, I was intrigued by object recognition problems, which seemed to be fairly hard to solve. There was incremental progress in the field through the 1990s and 2000s, and then suddenly in 2012 and 2013 you see this breakthrough performance in solving real problems on real datasets. At that point, the MANTISSA collaboration – a research project originally begun when I was part of Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division – was exploring similar pattern detection problems, and it was natural for us to explore whether deep learning could be applied to science problems. We spent the next three to four years exploring applications in earth systems modeling, neuroscience, astronomy and high energy physics.

When a new method/technology comes along, one has to make a judgment call on how long you want to wait before investing time and energy in exploring the possibilities. I think the DAS group at NERSC was one of the early adopters. We recognized the importance of this technique and demonstrated that it could work for science. In the experimental and observational data community, there are a lot of examples of domain scientists who have been struggling with pattern recognition problems for a long time. And now the broader science community is waking up to the possibilities of machine learning to help them solve these problems.

What is NERSC’s current strategy for bringing deep learning capabilities to its users?

Since NERSC is a DOE Office of Science national user facility, we listen to our users, track their emerging requirements and respond to their needs. Our users are telling us that they would like to explore machine learning/deep learning and see what it can do for them. We currently have about 70 users who are actively using deep learning software at NERSC, and we want to make sure that our software, hardware, policies and documentation are all up to speed. Over the past two years, we have worked with the vendor community and identified a few popular deep learning frameworks (TensorFlow, Caffe, Theano and Torch) and have deployed them on Cori. In addition to making the software available, we have documentation and case studies in place. We also have in-depth collaborations in about a dozen areas where NERSC staff, mostly from the DAS group, have worked with scientists to help them explore the application of deep learning. And we are forming strategic relationships with commercial vendors and other research partners in the community to explore the frontier of deep learning for science.

Do certain areas of scientific research lend themselves more than others to applying deep learning?

Right now our success stories span research sponsored by several DOE Office of Science program offices, including BER, HEP and NP. In earth systems modeling, we have shown that convolutional architectures can extract extreme weather patterns in large simulations datasets. In cosmology, we have shown that CNNs can predict cosmological constants, and GANs can be potentially used to supplement existing cosmology simulations.  In astronomy, the Celeste project has effectively used auto-encoders for modeling galaxy shapes. In high energy physics, we are using convolutional architectures for discriminating between different models of particle physics, exploring LSTM architectures for particle tracking. We’ve also shown that deep learning can be used for clustering and classifying various event types at the Daya Bay experiment.

So the big takeaway here is that for the tasks involving pattern classification, regression and creating fast simulators, deep learning seems to do a good job – IF you can find training data. That’s the big catch – if you have labeled data, you can employ deep learning. But it can be a challenge to find training data in some domain sciences.

Looking ahead, what are some of the challenges in developing deep learning tools for science and applying them to research projects at NERSC and other scientific supercomputing facilities?

We can see a range of short-term and long-term challenges in deep learning for science. The short-term challenges are mostly pragmatic issues pertaining to development, enhancement and deployment of tools. These include handling complex data; scientific data tends to be very diverse (compared to images and speech), we are working with 2D, 3D, even 4D data and the datasets can be sparse or dense and defined over a regular, or irregular grid. Deep learning frameworks will need to account for this diversity going forward. Performance and scaling are also barriers. Our current networks can take several days to converge on O(10) GB datasets, but several scientific domains would like to apply deep learning to 10TB-100TB datasets. Thankfully, this problem is right up our alley at HPC centers.

Another important challenge faced by domain scientists is hyper-parameter tuning: Which network architecture do you start with? How do you choose an optimization algorithm? How do you get the network to converge? Unfortunately, only a few deep learning experts know how to address this problem; we need automated strategies/tools. Finally, once scientific communities realize that deep learning can work for them, and access to labeled datasets is the key barrier to entry, they will need to self-organize and conduct labeling campaigns.

The longer-term challenges for deep learning in science are harder, by definition, and include a lack of theory, interpretability, uncertainty quantification and the need for a formal protocol. I believe it’s very early days in the application of deep learning to scientific problems. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in publishing easy papers that demonstrate state-of-the-art accuracy for classification, regression and clustering problems. But in order to ensure that the domain science community truly embraces the power of deep learning methods, we have to keep the longer term, harder challenges in mind.

About the Author

Kathy Kincade is a science & technology writer and editor with the Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences Communications Group.

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