As social media continues to have a greater and greater impact on search results and audience reach, even the last holdouts are beginning to jump on board the social wagon and integrate social media marketing within their brand strategy. If you don’t have the budget to hire a marketing firm or an in-house social media manager but would still like to get your company on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or another social platform, you absolutely can manage your company’s social profile on your own! Just make sure to avoid these common mistakes:

1. Engaging in social media without researching it first.

Many businesses attempt to reach out to the younger generation by latching on to as many trends as they can. The younger generation can see right through this and usually reacts with skepticism. Be sincere and intelligent (or at least maintain the appearance of such) when aiming to capture the web savvy consumer. Simply joining a social network and starting to post promotional content without understanding how it works is a surefire path to failure. For example, if you want to post a link on Reddit, but do so in an overtly self-promotional way that adds little value to the average Redditor’s experience, you will be blacklisted. To use social media successfully, make sure you understand the intricacies of each social network, whether Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr, and the rest.

2. Over-marketing to social followers.

If you try to constantly market your company through social networking, you’ll only serve to alienate and irritate the people who are following you. Businesses need to maintain a good balance between marketing themselves and providing useful information to their customers. If the information that the business provides is not valuable then most customers will see no reason to keep watching them for news and information. A good rule of thumb when using social media marketing for your business is to stick to the 80/20 rule, where 80% of the time you post non-promotional content that you readers find valuable and only 20% of the time post self-promotional content about your business. If you ignore the rule and bombard your social followers with self-serving ads, you will lose those followers, your audience will shrink and your social efforts will be wasted.

3. Inconsistent use of social media.

When interacting with social networks, you need to be consistent with your business’ social strategy. Too often a business will start their social networking off with a bang and then forget it exists. Consistent updates are the key to keeping people interested and keeping people talking about the business. Without consistent updates most people will forget about the company and some may even stop following the company entirely.

4. Unprofessional or thoughtless posts.

Just because social media is informal does not mean that you should break down to posting cat memes and what the newest intern ate for lunch. Have fun with your social media accounts (social media is, after all, the place to interact informally with your target market) but also remember to remain professional at all times. Many businesses have come under fire by letting members of their staff post opinions or comments that reflects badly on the company’s image. Business owners can even get in trouble by posting controversial opinions that later lead to problems in the market. Before you post anything on behalf of your business, consider whether the post might offend or irritate your users and whether or not it adds value to your followers’ experience.

5. Not using the proper tools to monetize and analyze social media.

Many businesses find themselves with hugely successful media accounts but no actual way to monetize it or to track how it is helping their company. A proper social strategy will help you turn your social followers into a source of financial benefit to your company, through thoughtfully designed calls-to-action which will increase your social media ROI. Don’t just jump into using social media without a solid marketing plan and analytics tools – make sure you have those tools set up so you can see how beneficial your social efforts are, analyze results and modify your strategy to perform even more successfully.

Feel like you’re in over your head? Thrive Internet Marketing can help!

If you’d like to start a social media marketing campaign for your business but aren’t sure how to get started, we’d love to help you out! We offer highly effective social media marketing strategies that can have a strong impact on your company’s online marketing efforts, so don’t hesitate to give us a call!

Photographers face unique challenges promoting their business online but the Internet is the first place most people turn to when the want to hire a local photographer. Assuming you do much of your photography work locally, your search engine optimization efforts should focus on Google+ Local, your geographic location and your photography specialties. For example, using “wedding photographer in your town” as a keyword will bring traffic to your website from people looking to hire a local wedding photographer.

Local is King

Be sure to optimize your Google+ Local listing, (formerly Google places) with accurate, detailed information. Customers can leave reviews on Google+ Local, encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews since this helps other people make the decision to hire you. Be sure you stay on top on your online reputation, answering any negative reviews promptly and offering to rectify the situation.

Spend some time on Content

Good SEO for photographers starts with a website design that incorporates a decent volume of text in addition to photographs. Since you’ll want to display high-resolution photos, be sure to avoid slow loading times which would frustrate website visitors with slow Internet connections who are looking to hire a photographer. Caching and careful use of Google’s free page speed tools can help with this. A responsive website design that lets mobile users easily view your website is also important. More and more people are using smartphones and tablets to find local businesses in their community.

Optimize your Images

Make sure every photograph on your website has an alt tag with your important keywords. Your descriptive alt tag should be a keyword-rich short sentence that is different from the file name of the photograph. When you save photographs to your computer, always use keyword-rich file names, not PIC001, since search engines can also read file names on your website. Captions are another way let search engines know what your pictures are about, adding to your search engine optimization efforts.

Get Social!

Use social media marketing to drive traffic to your website. You should at least be on Facebook, Twitter and have a Linkedin account. Make sure your own website has prominent share buttons so visitors can share your content and photographs with their friends. Don’t be spammy in your social media marketing, all you have to do is tweak interest so potential customers in your community will visit your website.

If you’re a photographer and you want to grow your business, Internet marketing is the best way to do this. Creating a compelling website design and marketing your business on social media is time-consuming but you can always get help with these tasks so you can concentrate on running your business. Good social media marketing or search engine optimization firms will bring you more business and ensure you see a good return on your investment. We’d love to be the company you work with!

Get a Quote!

 

At Thrive Internet Marketing we offer a wide variety of services, and we implement a number of different methods to achieve them, but the end goal is always the same:

“We put technology to use to help
grow your business.”

We’re not here to simply create a good looking website or make you rank higher, although those are great achievements. We want your bottom line to improve.

You’re already tracking your finances, and although we can’t always confirm that a sale has been made, we’ll track and report on the metrics available to us. We pass this data on to you in the form of several in depth reports. You may find one report more useful than the others, that’s pretty typical, but since different people tend to gravitate towards different reports, we’ll give you all the options and allow you to pick your favorite!

We have recently undertaken some major changes, and we’re very happy to introduce our new Reporting system. This reporting is available to ALL of our ongoing Search Engine Optimization clients, on either a monthly or bi-monthly basis depending on your budget.

New Client Portal:

We’re proud to offer our clients a new portal that will allow them to log in at their convenience and review several important metrics pertaining to our ongoing Search Engine Optimization work.

Overview of some of our Client Portal’s features:
(Click the image or “Next” to move to the next slide)

If you’re an SEO client of ours, you should receive login information to your very own client portal! Contact us for more information!

Thrive is proud to offer Search Engine Optimization or Inbound Marketing, with the goal being an increase in traffic to your site, and an upturn in business. You can learn all about SEO at our Search Optimization page, but the purpose of this post is to give you information about the type of reports we provide.

Our SEO clients will receive up to 5 reports from us, usually on a monthly basis. We’ll go into more detail below, but here’s the list of reports we send out:

• SEO Progress Report
• Search Leads Report
• Keyword Rankings Report
• Google Analytics Report
• Use of Time Report

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SEO Progress Report (Overview)

Possibly our most thorough all-in-one report, the SEO Overview report begins with fully customized outline of:

• A custom introduction including highlights of the previous month,
• Links to SEO Client Portal and Shared Reports Folders,
• A Google Analytics Overview,
• Keyword Rankings (where available),
• Social Media report detailing activity on our client’s social media profiles.

Here’s a preview:

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Search Leads Report

Obviously the end goal of any marketing endeavor is to see your business thrive. New leads turning into new customers. Well, we challenge you to track the source of any sale, you’ll find it to be a useful set of data before too long. Since we don’t always get to see the end of the transaction, we track every form submission made from your site, find it’s source, and report to you!

This way, you’re aware of who is finding you through Google searches, YP.com, or any other site, and most often, what search they used to find you.

Here’s a preview of our Lead Tracking:

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Keyword Rankings Report

In order to meet our primary goal of helping your business grow, one of our major tasks is increasing traffic to your website by improving your rankings for keywords related to your industry. Early in our work for you we’ll establish a list of targeted keywords with your feedback. The goal is to produce a manageable list of the most important keywords, and actively target them in the content on your website and with an inbound marketing campaign. The fastest way to rapid ranking improvements is to narrow down your targeted list of keywords to a few really important ones. This allows us to focus our energy and see a quicker improvement. After we’re ranking well for those, we can switch to maintenance mode on them, and move on to other keywords.

Here’s what the report looks like:

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Google Analytics Report

Google Analytics is the most popular website traffic tracking tool, and although exact numbers differ, most sources agree that nearly 50% of the most popular websites on the internet are tracking statistics about their website using the free tool from Google. All of our clients (Web Design and SEO) receive automated monthly emails including some excellent data (see example below).

This doesn’t even scratch the surface, however, our clients are able to log in to Analytics and explore mind-boggling amounts of information. Analytics also tracks and reports data on:

• Traffic Sources,
• Keywords used to find the site,
• Browser type,
• Location of visitor: City, State, Country, etc.
• Much more.

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Time Tracking Report

We’ve written in the past about a tool, Freshbooks we use to track, report, and bill our time. Our new Timesheet Reports are generated directly from Freshbooks and will include the name of the staff member, the date, notes from them about the work they did, and the amount of time it took.

Here’s a preview:

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Stay informed with Diverse, In-Depth Reporting

We hope it’s obvious that these are high-value, actionable reports, we’ve put a lot of thought into them and are glad to be able to provide them to you. Again, this full suite of reporting is available to any of our ongoing SEO clients, our web design clients currently receive an automated Google Analytics report, and are able to explore the vast quantities of data available through Analytics. If you are interested in hearing more about our Search Engine Optimization services, we’d be delighted to talk with you about your particular situation. Read more about SEO here, and feel free to contact us.

Contact Us Today

What is a Rich Snippet?

Rich snippets are designed to summarize the content of a page in a way that makes it even easier for users to understand what the page is about in our search results. If you’re considering taking advantage of rich snippets, think about whether a user would find the information helpful when choosing between search results.

Basically, rich snippets allow for SERP result customization.

Purpose of Rich Snippets

The reason to use Rich Snippets is pretty simple. Instant access to important data from within the SERP, and (hopefully) a dramatically increased click-through-rate (CTR).

In the following example, the first result is utilizing rich snippets to give details about the recipes rating, reviews, preparation time, and even caloric information.

It’s pretty clear which of the two results is more visually interesting, and seems more likely to result in a click-through.

How to implement Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are not an entirely new idea. Search Engines have been using different types of markups for a while, including microdata, microformats and RDFa, as well as the types of categories supported by Google.

Recently, however, Google, Yahoo and Bing all threw their weight behind Shema.org, a collaborative effort to support a set of microdata types – some already in use, and a growing list that were specifically created for this purpose.

Schema.org allows you to define an item type for your content. The first example in their “Getting Started” is:

Even those with rusty to non-existant coding skills might be able to see that the <div> tags encompass information about a single item, (in this case the movie, Avatar), and the snippet <div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Movie”> tells the search engines that the item in question is a Movie.

For a full list of the type hierarchy available through schema.org, visit Schema.org.

Implementing Schema / Rich Snippets on a WordPress site

You’re welcome to look for your own solution, but based on the screenshots available and the reviews I came across the plugin option that seems best to me is the Schema Creator from RavenTools:

This plugin allows you to select the type of markup you’re creating (A review in the example above, or a recipe, person, event, organization and more!)

If you would like to keep looking a good starting point might be a search in the WordPress Plugins database.

Testing and Troubleshooting Rich Snippet Markups

Once you’ve installed the plugin or added the markups to your code there are tools available for testing and troubleshooting your work. For a quick preview of your result as it would appear within the SERP, paste in your URL into Google’s Rich Snippets preview tool.

If the result isn’t displaying correctly, Google offers the following page of rich snippet troubleshooting tips in order to help you locate and correct the problem.

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We can help!

If you have questions, we have answers! Our roots are in Arlington, Texas, but we proudly provide the greater DFW Metro Area and beyond with top notch web design and online marketing. Call it ROI, or anything you like, our primary focus is to use technology to grow your business.

View our services

If you haven’t figured it out from the title, we went on a Thrive field trip to the 2012 State of Search Conference in Dallas, TX! We had a few laughs, learned some new stuff and rubbed shoulders with thought leaders in the search marketing community. We also gathered quite a few tips and interesting facts that will help our online marketing services evolve and progress:

1. Old-school marketing methods are still viable in today’s online world. Sending postcards or cupcakes, setting a chalkboard sign on the sidewalk and mailing handwritten notes can make a favorable impression on current and potential customers.

2. Write about people. They like to hear about themselves. Include pictures where possible because attaching faces to names has greater impact.

4. Pay attention to the startups and companies Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other big names are acquiring. Noting what these companies find valuable keeps us informed on where internet trends are heading.

5. Asking blatantly “Link to me!” will send your request and content straight into editor’s delete box. Submit only quality content for guest posts and be subtle when seeking linkbacks.

6. Wil Reynolds suggests: Do not hit enter. Allow Google to suggest a topic. When searching, type in each letter and see what google suggests and then use those search terms to write content people are already looking for. Helpful alternative tool for this: Ubersuggest.

7. If you work in an industry that isn’t very exciting, you can talk about you or your customers. For example: “I’m a ___ who loves ____.” (Because sometimes talking about business really is boring).

8. If you haven’t figured it out yet, smart phones are the wave of the future! Pardon us for stating the obvious, but it’s true, and many people ignore mobile web users. Over 50% of the US population has smart phones. By 2014 mobile devices will overtake desktops. Mobile traffic is already around 13% of traffic on the web.

9. Use social media for communication, even before emailing. Tweet, friend or follow first to get acquainted, then start emailing. Otherwise your email might just get sent straight to junk mail.

10. Research a potential contact before reaching out to them. Helpful tools for this: Zerply, About.me, Mentionmapp, Knowem, and Rapportive for Gmail.

11. Build a detailed persona that represents your target market and use it to focus and personalize your marketing efforts. When you find a new potential client/link-source/whatever, use the previously mentioned research tools to tailor your communication to their preferences.

We found the online search marketing community to be willing to share secrets and eager to help fellow marketers. Whether asking Kerry Dean questions about Google Authorship or discussing link building with Wil Reynolds, the response was warm and open. It’s a great community to be a part of and those of us at Thrive greatly appreciated the event. Many thanks to the host of the event, the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association.

The City of Arlington, TX is poised for unimaginable growth. Nestled between two of the fastest growing business centers in the country, Arlington is the geographical heart of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Home to the Rangers, the Cowboys, Six Flags, Hurricane Harbor and the University of Texas at Arlington, this city is an essential piece to the success of the DFW Metroplex. The centerpiece of this growth, and the focus for future plans, is a small area between Division and Abram streets known as Downtown Arlington.

A New Site For A New Downtown Arlington

It is difficult to do anything in our culture without a web presence. In response to this, the Downtown Arlington Management Corp. has worked with Thrive to develop an informative website (http://downtownarlington.org) to provide citizens and visitors with the most up-to-date information in order to maximize their experience in this rapidly expanding city.

Tony Rutigliano, of the Downtown Arlington Management Corp, said “We are so excited to launch the new website. It really captures and highlights the wonderful amenities and events in downtown. Thrive did a fabulous job taking our ideas and concepts, and turning them into reality.  Our old site primarily focused on the organization, but the new site really showcases Downtown Arlington as a unique destination for those seeking music, food, culture or shopping.”

Great Features for Arlington Residents and Visitors

The new site is visually pleasing, while allowing the visitor increased efficiency in navigating Arlingtons attractions. There is an easy-to-use directory that allows visitors to the site to find any restaurant, entertainment venue, or any other business relevant to their need of the moment. The event calendar keeps the visitor informed on upcoming events at the various venues around town, including the new, and rather popular, Levitt Pavilion. Users can opt for email updates to keep them abreast of all the information pertinent to their needs, and solid mobile optimization allows the savviest of users to check in on whatever plans they may have in this bustling suburban city. This is all put together in the frame of a pleasant and fun design that meshes perfectly with the character of Arlington.

While the site has been launched and already, there are plans for phase two of the project to add even more great features. The future holds a new interactive map to provide users with a  simple (and to be honest, fun) way of planning their time in the Downtown Arlington area. Familiar features from common interactive maps, with a little Arlington flare, will allow the visitor to find exactly where they’re going.

Proud to be an Arlington Based Business

Thrive is proud to call Arlington, Texas home. We love our community and are excited to contribute to the growth of our city by using our web design talents.

“As a lifelong resident of Arlington and a downtown business owner I am really excited about this new web site. It is a great resource for anyone that wants to know what is going on downtown. The team at Thrive was honored to work with the great people at the Downtown Arlington Management Corporation on this project.”  - Matt Bowman, Owner, Thrive Internet Marketing

It can get complicated tracking hours, projects and invoices for a company, but we’ve found a tool that makes those business details simple to manage. Freshbooks is an online accounting service that makes project management and billing simple and has become one of the most trusted cloud accounting tools available. It is especially useful for small businesses that need accounting services but don’t have the budget for an in-house accountant. While Freshbooks’ extensive range of features cover a lot of tasks, here are some that we believe are especially worth mentioning:

Time Tracking for Business

Do you need to track and accurately report time on projects? You probably do and Freshbooks makes that easy with an online timer that opens in a separate window and allows you to convert your work into an invoice at the touch of a button.

Easy Invoice Creation

Track work on multiple clients, multiple projects and even incorporate other members of your team. Team invoices can be created easily and projects can be shared and delegated with built in email notifications.

Staff and Contractor Options

New staff members and independent contractors can be added to your Freshbooks account and collaboration between projects is simple.

Securely Accessible From All Devices

No matter where you work or whether you prefer to use a laptop, phone, tablet etc., Freshbooks is available online or as an app. This allows for a high level of flexibility and security, as Freshbooks backs up your data automatically and protects it with 256-bit encryption.

Try Freshbooks Free for 30 Days

Find out more about Freshbooks or try it out with a free 30 day trial by following this link (full disclosure: this is our referral link): https://thrivenetmarketing.freshbooks.com/refer/www

We love Freshbooks and find it extremely useful within the accounting and time tracking side of our web marketing business. Have you used it before? What did you think about it? Love to hear your feedback in the comments below!

The Importance of Google Authorship – Creating a Name for Yourself!

Google Authorship is a solution Google came up with to connect a piece of content with the Google Plus profile of its’ author. The modern online landscape is virtually flooded with content due to the (fairly accurate) belief that as far as SEO is concerned, “content is king”. Many sites have multiple authors writing great web content, and you may find that you really enjoy one of the author’s work. Wouldn’t it be great if the author’s body of work and profile was easy to find in search engine results pages? You know… something like this:

That way you could easily spot a post by someone whose work you enjoy, right in the search engine results. Enter Google Authorship!

3 ways Google Authorship Benefits You

So, along with assisting the reader, what are the advantages of Google Authorship for authors?

1- SEO Benefits of Authorship

Authorship will probably never carry the same weight in Search Engine Optimization as a good link profile and overall domain authority, but most SEO thought leaders are predicting an increase in importance. What this means is that when an author is proven to have written quality content that has generated a good amount of traffic and social buzz, he or she will develop an “Author Ranking” that will lend a ranking boost to any content they create. This program is in its infancy still, and will probably undergo a rollercoaster ride of significant shifts over the next few months/years.

2- Name Awareness / Industry Authority

In every industry there are people who are recognized as thought-leaders or trend-setters. These people are known for their expertise and industry knowledge. For some reason (usually dedication and hard work!) they are ahead of the game, and most people can only hope to follow their lead. How do you go about becoming one of those people? Produce high quality content, and stay on the cutting edge; Be sure to get your name out there, building your personal authority by making sure you are referenced and credited whenever you have participated in or created anything. Google Authorship is a great way to build this accreditation right into the search results page.

3- Increased Connection / Engagement Between an Author and Their Audience

Recently, a growing portion of the SEO community has begun making an argument for replacing the adage “Content is King” with a new motto: “Connection is King”. This is of course referring to the growing importance of social media, comments and the like – creating a general online buzz between yourself and your target market. One way Google Authorship helps with this is by assigning each piece of content to a human author, giving a personal air, and making both the content and the author seem a little more personable. This encourages interaction and is more likely to promote sharing or comments from the reader.

How Do You Set Up Authorship on Your Site or Blog?

1- Do it yourself
There are several ways to go about the process of getting your site ready for authorship and they vary based on what CMS your site is built in, how many authors contribute, and whether or not there are any plugins that can take care of the process for you. If you use one of the more popular CMSs, (our clients use WordPress) a quick plugin search for “Google Authorship” will lead you down the right track. No matter which method you use, the end result is the same: An html snippet on your page linking to your Google+ profile which looks like this:

<a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Link Text</a>

Replace [profile_url] with your Google plus profile URL. The anchor text is unimportant, you can change it or modify an existing link to your Google+ profile (maybe a +1 button), what matters is the rel=author tag.

2- Get Professional Help
Sound complicated? Maybe you should get your webmaster involved… They should have no trouble following these official instructions from Google. Or contact Thrive and we can help you get this setup on your web site.

Now sit back and enjoy your new-found notoriety!

I’m willing to bet you’re one of two types of people:

Type 1: Uses the same password for everything

While this makes for less stress, there are obvious security risks to this approach. If your login information for one account is jeopardized, everything is. Unfortunately, even those who implement this method will still find themselves dealing with multiple passwords because different sites require different formats, for example, “Must be longer than x characters”, or “Alphanumeric characters only”.

Type 2: Uses several different passwords

This method provides a greater level of security, but also more headaches in the form of misremembered passwords, reset requests, and being locked out when your first 3 attempts  weren’t the correct passwords.

The Solution? LastPass!

Regardless of which type you fall into, there’s a tool that will help. LastPass is a browser extension available in all major browsers and Operating Systems, that will generate secure passwords and remember them for you, automatically entering them whenever you return to the site. This way, you only have to remember the one password, but you’ll still be using a strong, unique password on each page.

Another great feature is the “Fill Forms” option, which allows you to store the information commonly found on most forms “Name”, “Email”, “Phone”, “Address” etc. This allows you to fill out several fields with the click of a mouse. This is great for repeat tasks, such as filling out local listing reports for Search Engine Optimization purposes.

Just FYI: We haven’t been paid or incentivized for the creation of this article in any way. LastPass is a tool we use ourselves; it saves us time, and we think it could do the same for you! This is another part of the way we strive to be the best Web Design Company Arlington has to offer.