Top 5 Ways Your Business Can Leverage Instagram

Any business can utilize Instagram when it comes to adding photos to a blog post, but it will take a bit of work. Instagram is all about people taking pictures on their mobile phones, and sometimes your company simply doesn’t have the time or energy to do take photos. Therefore, Instagram is probably better utilized in one of the following ways:

1. Contests – This is probably the number one way businesses are utilizing the tool. If your company sells a product, ask customers to take photos of themselves using the product and then upload the photo to win some sort of prize. You can also add an element of interaction by allowing people to vote on their favorite photo.


2. Event Marketing – Asking people to take photos of an event you’re holding is a great way to leverage the tool. This will get people excited about the event and give people a layer of interaction.


3. Social Media – Always share photos of your company or your product/service via social media. Instagram allows a company to add a hashtag to the photo which will help you keep tabs on any pictures of your business via Twitter or another social network.


4. Connection – Your customers are most likely on Instagram, so this is another avenue to form connections. Even if you can’t find value in posting pictures for your particular business, urge your employees to connect with customers via this avenue.


5. Location – Instagram allows a company to add location to an image. If you can add the location of your small business, you increase the likelihood that someone will see your photos if they are new to the area. This works best for restaurants and entertainment joints.

Using Instagram along with hashtags is a great way to make sure you are getting the most out of the photos on your website. Instagram is currently all the buzz, so there is no better time than to get started now.

[tooltip text="Right now, you can only create an Instagram account using their app on your iOS (ex: iPhone) or Android device. To sign up for an Instagram account: Download the Instagram app in the App Store for your iPhone/iPad, or in Google Play for an Android device. Then Once the app is installed, tap the Instagram icon to open it. Tap Register then create a username and password and fill out your profile info (ex: email, name) Tap Done! " placement="top"]How do I sign up for Instagram?[/tooltip]

Using Tumblr for Generating Organic SEO

 

[caption id="attachment_579" align="aligncenter" width="665"] Using Tumblr for SEO[/caption]

Tumblr is a social networking and reblogging site with over 50 million users and 20 billion posts. Tumblr is basically the middle child of the social networking universe—it doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves. In addition to having many SEO-friendly features, Tumblr can also round out a thorough content marketing plan by helping you promote your content and bulk up your backlinks.

What Is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a micro-blogging site that contains many of the characteristics of social networking sites. Tumblr allows users to add content in a variety of forms such as text & html, images, videos, links, and quotes, and then makes the content easy to share through “post tags” and “reblog capability”.

Why Should I Have A Tumblr Account?

While Tumblr was originally mostly popular among younger internet users and photographers because of it’s “photo-focused” content, it’s platform is rapidly becoming one of the most widespread networking sites.

Why?

Tumblr Is Pretty SEO-Friendly And Promotion Friendly By Default

Tumblr takes a little bit of code hacking to create custom meta tags, so as far as ranking youractual Tumblr account, you don’t have as much control, by default, as you do of your own website. But what Tumblr IS great for, by default, is using it as a complimentary blog that sends optimized links back to your main site, and expands your business’s reach into new traffic.

Tumblr SEO Features:

1. You can customize your account URL.


2. You have the option of posting in actual custom HTML.


3. You can define your individual post URLs.


4. Links in your Tumblr posts are DOFOLLOW.


5. You can optimize ‘Alt Attributes’ and ‘Title Attributes’ of your post content.


6. You can add ‘Keyword Tags’ to all of your posts.

Tumblr Promotion Features:

1. Each post has a ‘Reblog Option’ that encourages others to share your content on Tumblr.


2. The ‘Keyword Tags’ you can add to each post are how other Tumblr users find you. ‘Keyword Tags’ are what people use to search Tumblr’s content, and the tags you add to each post put your posts into the search mix by keyword or keyword phrase.


3. You have the ability to ‘Like’ other people’s content – which puts a note with a link to your account on their post.

How To Use Tumblr For SEO

First remember one main rule… don’t just spam. Don’t just fill your Tumblr account full of “Visit My Website!!” links. Create legitimate content posts, and use your post content to appropriately refer people to your main site.

Optimizing Your Tumblr Account And Posts:

1. Customize your account URL.


2. Add a solid description of your business in the ‘About Section’. Then in that ‘About Section Content’ add an optimized link(with keywords in the anchor text), back to your website.


3. Create custom HTML posts with optimized links(with keywords in the anchor text) back to your main site content.


4. Optimize the ‘Alt Attributes’ of your images, and the ‘Title Attributes’ of your links in all of your posts.


5. Customize each ‘Post Url’.


6. Add relevant ‘Keyword Tags’ to every post.

Promoting And Bringing Exposure To Your Tumblr Account:

1. Follow other Tumblr Accounts.


2. When other Tumblr accounts follow you, follow them back.


3. ‘Reblog’ the content of others.


4. ‘Like’ the content of others.


5. Add relevant ‘Keyword Tags’ to every post.


6. Have variety in your posts. Don’t just post promotional content about your business or website. To generate traffic to your Tumblr, you need to mix in posts of interesting content with widespread appeal. If you want people to ‘Reblog’ your content and follow you, post exciting photos, inspirational quotes, your favorite music, and fun videos.

So open your Tumblr Account and get busy promoting!

The Best SEO Widget For WordPress Goes to...

Yoast SEO!!

Guys, there’s no denying the fact that (SEO) Search Engine Optimization is complicated. There are a lot of places within your blog post that you need to put your keywords if you want your post to rank well in the search engines.Trying to keep track of it all and making sure you do it right can be both daunting and overwhelming. Luckily there are a lot of wonderful plugins out there that can help make our lives as bloggers much easier.

The best SEO plugin that I have ever used, and I would recommend to every WordPress blogger, is the Yoast SEO plugin.

What Is The Yoast SEO Plugin?

The WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast is the answer to all of your SEO struggles.This plugin tells you exactly where you need to add your keywords and then it will give you a rank to let you know whether you have optimized your keywords or not. It will also give you an analyzed breakdown of the page to let you know if you are hitting all of the SEO points.

How Do You Use It?

Using it is a breeze. Once you have installed the plugin it will show up on your post pages in WordPress, so any time you want to write a new post the plugin will be there.  It contains four different pages, but you most likely will just focus on the first two.

The first page, and the one that the plugin automatically displays, is the “General” page.  On this page you can type in the keyword(s) that you want your post to rank for.  You do this by typing them into the “Focus Keywords” box.  When you do that the plugin will even give you suggestions based on what you start typing in.  Once entered the plugin will search your article for those keywords.  On the same screen you can also modify your SEO title and write your meta description.  The meta description is what people will see as the description of your post if your post comes up them on a search using a search engine.  The one other thing you’ll see on this page is a list of where your keywords are found.  To get the best SEO results you want all of the items on the list to be green.



The second page is for “Page Analysis.”  This page will break down the different parts of your page and give you SEO pointers on it.  The bullet points can be red, yellow, or green.  Red means that you haven’t hit the point at all and yellow means you’re doing OK, but you could do better.  The goal is to get all of the bullet points to all be green although you don’t have to have to hit them all for your page to rank well.  These things can help, but it’s not always possible to get them to all green.



The other two pages are “Advanced” and “Social.”  You really don’t need to worry about advanced at all.  The social page is if you want to write a different description to appear when you post about your blog post on certain social media sites.

The one other important thing you want to know about the plugin is that, once installed, there is an SEO check box that gets put into your “Publish” box.  It contains a dot that will be red, different shades of yellow, and green.  If it’s green than it means that your post is SEO ready.  If it’s not green than you likely won’t be getting good search traffic from it.  Next to the dot there is a link titled “Check.”  You can click on that and it will give you a break down of what all of the colored dots mean to try and help you figure out why your post may not rank well.

How Do I Get the Yoast SEO Plugin?

Installing the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast is easy.  All you need to do is go to the “Plugins” box on the left when you’re logged into WordPress.  Click on “Add New.”  Then in the search box type in “WordPress SEO by Yoast.”  The first plugin displayed from the search should be the right one.  Then click on “Install Now,” and follow any steps needed.  After that it should be ready to go!