Let’s Be Honest, Size Matters

There’s a big white elephant in the room (or sometimes a tiny white elephant in the room) and that is size. You keep hearing people say that size doesn’t matter- in business, in social media, sometime in boxer briefs- but let’s call it like it is- it’s not really true. When you get to the debate of quantity vs. quality, the real answer is that both matter.

Anyone who purely says that size doesn’t matter is lying or gravely misinformed.

Typically, if you look at the people who say that size doesn’t matter, they usually fall into one of two categories

1- They have size. It is easy to patronize everyone else with the “size doesn’t matter speech” when you are in the “big” category.

2- They don’t have any size. On the other end of the spectrum, if you aren’t well endowed (in business or otherwise), you want to create a justification for being small and start believing your own delusions.

In social media, people say that size doesn’t matter- it is better to have a few loyal fans than 20,000 or more. I call bullshit. You want to have both. The big number, although perhaps not truly indicative of your following, establishes credibility that helps you secure partnerships, other followers and more. Of course, you want the quality fans too, but that doesn’t mean you should favor one over the other. Three loyal fans, unless they have a lot of influence (and money) are not the be-all-end-all to your business.

The same is true with business. Scale establishes credibility, which in turn helps you to secure better clients, vendor terms and relationships, service provider relationships and more. This doesn’t mean that you have to be the biggest company in your geographic region, but being teeny-tiny is going to have disadvantages, plain and simple.

And in other areas where you hear that the motion of the ocean is more important than the size of the boat, well that may be true, unless the boat is so small that you have no idea when it is in the harbor.

The point is that size does matter. You don’t have to be the biggest participant, but you have to have some critical mass to establish credibility in your selected domain.

10 Types of Social Proof to Turbo Charge Your Blog, Business and Brand

So you are in a new city, town or village and you are looking for somewhere to eat. You have walked past empty cafes and others that are busy and almost bursting at the seams with noisy diners.

Which one do you eat at?

You are browsing at a book store and you pick up a book with a catchy title and you check the flyer and you see the words “best seller” and more than 1 million copies sold! You also notice that it has been endorsed by other well known authors or celebrities.

Are you now more temped to buy it?

As you browse and search the web you find some blogs on the topic area of choice, one has no evidence of  how many readers subscribe or share but the other has retweet buttons with hundreds of tweets and dozens of Facebook shares.

Which blog is bookmarked first?

Why Social Proof  Matters

The reality is that most people are followers and providing social proof of popularity as provided by others can make people stop, engage and buy.

Social proof can make people comment on or “Like” your Facebook page. This again adds more social proof and encourages others to become engaged.

Newspapers include how many of its papers are read every day. Magazines list their subscriber count.

Why do they do that? …because it provides social proof and it draws in more readers and it sells more newspapers and magazines.

Movies that have won Oscars shout it out in their advertising and posters.

10 Types of Social Proof

So how do you incorporate social proof into your blog? Consider placing widgets and banners in your blog.

This includes:

1. Facebook Shares
2. Numbers of Blog or RSS subscribers
3. Facebook Likes or Fans
4. Number of ReTweets
5. Quantity of Email Subscribers
6. Awards or Rankings
7. Total of LinkedIn Shares
8. The Number of Google +1′s
9. The Number of Page views per Month
10. Twitter Follower Count

Remember numbers are persuasive and providing social proof and validating  your credentials publicly will help take your blog to the next level.

Has this worked for you? Look forward to hearing your stories.

The basics of Social Media as an online visibility and SEO tool for marketing.

The basics of Social Media as an online visibility and SEO tool for marketing.

Everything you do on social sites has this ultimate goal, the Holy Grail: online visibility boost! This is the whole point of the Internet marketing game.  And what is this goal about, ultimately? It’s about being found before the competition.

Many professionals ask “How can I use Social Media for SEO?” Thing is, most of us take the question from the wrong end. Social Media is not SEO, Social Media is a SEO tool. Probably one of the most important and powerful ones, but it’s just another tool.

The three basic SEO elements

The art of SEO is about optimizing your online presence in order to rank higher in search engines (Google, Bing , Yahoo…) when a given research is done on those search engines. They use complex algorithms for their rankings and I won’t bore you with technical details but here are, basically, the three fundamentals elements you need to take into account for SEO :  keywords, traffic and activity level.

-  Keywords: identify what keywords a potential client would use to search you, and use these keywords in your website and online profiles (LinkedIn, Xing, ProZ.com, TranslatorsCafé, etc.) etc.

- Traffic: the more traffic a given page gets, the higher Google ranks it. So far, so good.

- Activity: a profile / page that gets regularly updated keeps its current Google rank. Google will detect if it has been inactive for a few weeks and will immediately throw it way back in the search results.

How does Social Media help?

Social Media can become your best SEO ally.

First, the biggest Social and Networking sites already have a very high Google ranking. For example, Facebook is the second most visited website worldwide after Google according to Alexa due to its massive daily traffic – so a Facebook Profile or Page automatically gets a very high Google ranking from the start. 

This applies to LinkedIn and Twitter as well, it obviously applies to Google+ for Google ranking optimization only – since it’s a Google product. That works for Xing, Viadeo, ProZ.com, TranslatorsCafé and others as well. So, just having a profile on high-ranked sites already boosts your ranking and increases your online visibility - but that is not enough.

Another aspect, often underestimated, is the traffic generated by Social Media – remember that the more traffic a Web page gets, the higher it ranks in a search.

What are keywords and how to use them?

Your various profiles across social & networking sites must be what we call “SEO-friendly”, that is filled with your keywords (translator/interpreter/localizer, languages, specialty, etc.). Basically, the more you repeat a keyword, the more you increase your search engine ranking.

Everything that makes you different from the competition is a keyword and should be there. Those of you whose headline on LinkedIn says “Freelance Analyst” or “Specialized Freelance Analyst”, raise your hands! There. Guys, that headline is not SEO optimized at all. You are so much more than just a “freelance Analyst”, each Analyst has unique skills and is different from the next. So say it! Use your online profiles to tell what makes you different: languages, background, field of expertise, specialty, etc. Remember that the goal is to be found, so enter all your keywords on your online business profiles for Google to rank you on Page 1 in search results. Because, who goes beyond page 2 when doing a Google search? I rarely do. Page 3? Forget it.

Let’s take LinkedIn for example: don’t be afraid to put that you are a “Social Media Analyst with 10 years of experience in communication and PR” in your headline, and write it again in your “Summary” section and then again in your “Specialties” and/or “Skills” and obviously in the job description of your current Job “Social Media Analyst or Manager”. That’s the idea!

Your updates should also be SEO friendly – your Tweets, Status updates or any content you share on Social platforms should also contain your keywords as much as possible.

So you’re a social media analyst and localizer specialized in IT? Make sure you have a fair amount of tweets, LinkedIn status updates, etc. related to IT (share articles, tech news, etc.) – in English and in all your working languages.

Last tip but certainly not the least: don’t make your updates private, and this applies particularly to Twitter; what’s the point of having a profile on Twitter that you are using to interact with fellow translators (so, not so much of a personal profile), if you hide your tweets from people who are not following you? Private tweets are not indexed by search engines.

Conclusion

- Identify your keywords and the keywords an agency could use to find you on in Google search – and do the search yourself! See where you appear, or if you appear at all. If you don’t, then you need to update those keywords quickly!
- Monitor your keywords by checking out which ones your competitors are using.
- Make all your online profiles SEO-friendly by adding all your keywords, and repeat them when possible. If you have a website, do the same – the more keywords, the better.
Note that Google can take up to a few days to update after you update keywords.
- Don’t forget to use your contents to boost your ranking and visibility.

My best advice is that you do a Google search with your keywords once every two weeks to see where you and your competitors rank. Your SEO strategy should not be inactive – if you constantly feel that you need to adapt and make changes to your keywords, then it’s a good sign – do it!