There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks, about probable changes to the way that Google ranks search engine results. The general belief is that mentions (links) to your site from social media sites are starting to play a bigger role in where Google ranks you.

Because of the secrecy that surrounds Google’s algorithm, it’s not possible to say definitively what kind of additional influence this is having on search results.  However, it now seems increasingly likely that links from places like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Linkedin etc may be carrying influence with Google.  This post on Mike Moran’s SEO blog by Chris Angus, explains the impact of social networks on SEO nicely and in plain English too (Kudos Mike.)

Whilst the number of pages / sites linking to you is still the key factor in your overall visibility, it seems that mentions on social media sites are starting to be used as a form of additional verification.  It has been clear for some time that Google understands the importance of the communications shared across social networks.  This is why they added Tweets and shares from other networks, in their search results some months ago.

Failings with the current system are obvious.  A good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) provider can get a site of average value thousands of places above a poorly optimised site, with great value content.  This is why so much superb content goes undiscovered and why we often find results for searches that are disappointing.  Clearly, Google is keen to try and address this issue, though I can’t see their latest initiative changing things much.

Why?

Good SEO providers are already adapting their strategies and incorporating social media as part of their SEO mix.  As soon as Google changes their algorithm (or it is believed they have), the SEO guys change too.  These SEO’s are masters of testing and measuring.  If they see that incorporating social media or social bookmarking is boosting search rankings, they simply add it to their SEO tool kit .

Bottom line: Today AND for the foreseeable future, great content backed up with solid SEO are a vital part of gaining visibility for your site.  High value content will keep people coming back for more and encourage them to recommend you, but they need to find you in the first place.  Embracing social media has always been a good idea, but perhaps even more so now.

Photo: Danny Sullivan

Related posts:

1. Twitter junkies and social media addicts
2. Why Google means so little to me (and you mean so much!)

How would you like to create a massive, positive impact in your marketplace?

Simple: Do some small things every day!

Over the years, I have found that success is seldom the result of a single, enormous action.  Instead, it comes from doing small things every day.  Each day, I make sure that as well as my regular workload, I take some time out to help others in small ways.

For example:

• If I see someone on Twitter, who has a problem that I can help them with, I will often give them a quick call.  I usually limit the call to 15 minutes and I don’t do this every day, but you would be amazed at the kind of response this simple act creates.
• If I use a photographer’s work here on the blog, I give them a name credit and link to their Flickr account, so others can check them out.  Many have thanked me and a few have even blogged about it.
• I have had many blog comments, tweets and emails from people, simply because I ask people to join me on Twitter – not follow me on Twitter.  In my opinion, the idea of  social media rockstars is not only wrong, it makes me cringe!
• When you leave a comment on this blog, if your name is included in your comment, I use your name as part of my reply.  I would use your name if we met, so why not use it when we meet here on the blog?  Again, this is commented on often

Each of the things listed above are just typical parts of my working week.  I’m sure there are others, which I do on auto-pilot and am not even consciously aware of.  These things are not deliberately done simply for effect, but from a career long belief I have had about the importance of making a positive contribution.

What do YOU do in order to make a difference within your marketplace?  Let us know!

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Has Twitter helped you attract new clients or customers?

Some business owners and entrepreneurs, who use Twitter as part of their marketing strategy, do extremely well.  Others seem unable to transform their tweeting time, into tangible, commercial results.

I would like to hear from you, if you use Twitter as part of your marketing efforts and have achieved bankable results, which can be traced back to connections you made on Twitter.

What tips or advice do you have for others, who would like to transform their Tweeting time into commercial success?

Please include your Twitter @username in your comments, so your fellow readers can follow you.  My user name is @JimConnolly

Related posts:

1. Giving oxygen to your marketing
2. Twitter junkies and social media addicts
3. How to discover what your prospective customers want

With marketing and business development, it’s all too easy to focus only on the BIG issues. However, small things can make a massive difference and totally change how people think about us.

I decided to write this quick post, after receiving the comment below from one of my readers, Joni Mueller. Here’s what Joni said:

Excellent article and excellent case study. I also like the little subtleties on your web site. For example, I’ve never seen anyone invite me to “join” them on Twitter, it’s always follow me or find me. “Join” me implies there will be a two-way interaction. That’s great. Glad I stumbled onto this site from Twitter.

One small word

A marketing professional knows there’s a massive difference between the phrase ‘join me’ and the phrase “follow me.” By changing just one word in that phrase, you dramatically change the meaning of the phrase.  Asking someone to follow you sounds incredibly arrogant!  It suggests you are referring to your readers as if they are fans.

Pop stars, movie stars and professional sportspeople have followers / fans – not people like you and me.

We have friends and contacts. People don’t follow us, they join us.

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It’s sad, but the time has come for me to leave Twitter.  At the time of writing this, the three most followed people in England are; John Cleese, Stephen Fry and then me.  I have made some great connections because of Twitter and met a lot of interesting people too.  Twitter has been a great experience for me – BUT it’s time for me to go!

Twitter’s technical problems highlighted one of my own

My Twitter account was one of many to have recently suffered from the dreaded caching error. After 5 days, it was manually fixed by Crystal in Twitter’s tech support team.  This was a blessing in disguise!

For 5 days, whilst my account was waiting to be fixed, I was unable to follow anyone or see who had followed me.  I noticed that I suddenly had lots more extra time each day, so I decided to do some Twitter research! I wanted to know just how long I actually spent using Twitter each day.

I was amazed to see that even during a fairly quiet period, I was investing an average of 2 and a half hours each day!

Even more amazingly, less than half of that time was spent actually ‘tweeting’ with people!

The rest of my Twitter time was spent dealing with the hundreds of Direct Messages I get each day and filtering through the hundreds of people who follow me each day; to see from their profile whether or not to follow them back.  This is an increasingly time consuming problem, as so many people are now doing that follow / unfollow trick, to attract auto follows and make it look like they have lots of followers.

Most of the Direct Messages I get on Twitter are people asking me; ‘please share this link with your followers Jim’ or asking me to look at their blog / website and give them some tips.  I’m also getting stacks of spam sent to me via Twitter’s Direct Message.  This all takes time to review, answer or delete. Yes, almost all of these Direct Messages are from people, who have never tweeted with me or commented here!

The 1000 people on Twitter who connect with me

Although I have over 23,000 people following me on Twitter, I found that only around 800 / 1000 or so are in regular contact with me.  These are the people you see in my Twitter stream and commenting here on the blog.  These are the people, who I built this blog and my Twitter network for.  These are the kind of people, who make Twitter the best social media site / app on the Internet (In my opinion.)

The reason I am leaving Twitter, is that it’s the other 22,000 people, who never connect with me, who require the vast majority of my time!

The sensible thing to do, was for me to find a way to focus all my energy on the people who actually ‘connect with me’  – And that’s what I will now be able to do!

How I solved my Twitter problem

One of my options, was to delete 22,250 people from my Twitter account.  This would take forever and it still wouldn’t stop the flow of new people every day; who follow my account and require filtering. Yes, I could just set up an auto-follow, so every spammer on Twitter could target me, knowing they will get an automatic follow back – but that’s not why I invested my time in Twitter and it would only help with part of the problem.

FriendFeed and Twitter

Thankfully, I have found an excellent way to communicate with everyone, who wants to keep in touch with me – WITHOUT me having to waste all those hours each week on those who don’t!

I have decided to replace what I have been doing on Twitter, with FriendFeed.

Whilst FriendFeed is not as instantly usable as Twitter, it doesn’t come with the same insane focus on followers / following either.  Just like Twitter, you can interact with people without following / subscribing to them.  However, unlike Twitter – on FriendFeed the follower / subscriber thing is far less of a big deal!  There are also no issue with Direct Messages, which ate into so much of my time each day.

This means I can focus massively more of my time on the ‘social’ side of social media.

FriendFeed will allow me to have proper, threaded conversations with all of those who want to join in or share their content with me. 

I hope to see as many of my regular Twitter pals on FriendFeed as possible; so we can continue the conversation.

However, even if you don’t want to join with me on FriendFeed, you can still find out what I am doing via Twitter!

You will still see me on Twitter, via FriendFeed

Even if you don’t have or want a FriendFeed account – you will still be able to see what I post via Twitter anyway! I am going to keep my Twitter account active; so people who want to, can still follow my stream without having to do anything. One of the great things about FriendFeed, is that it will automatically send all my updates direct via my Twitter account – so anyone following me on Twitter will be able to see them.

This is not one of those; “which is best Twitter or FriendFeed?” arguments. It’s just that FriendFeed is the best option for me right now.

UPDATE:

Over the past 48 hours, I have found that most of the people who were regularly tweeting with me, have now found me on FriendFeed; with others introducing themselves all the time! Thus, I shall not be sending my FriendFeed updates through my Twitter account.

I don’t want to just broadcast via Twitter – Twitter’s supposed to be about communicating NOT broadcasting!

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As this morning saw me attract my 8,000th ‘follower’ on Twitter, I thought it was a good time to share with you, how I have built my network of Twitter Associates thus far, (I don’t like the word ‘followers’.)

Some background

Whilst a few social media / marketing people have more followers than me, I have attracted almost all of my followers in just 14 weeks – NOT 12 months or 2 years!  I also did this without the benefit of thousands of blog readers, legions of ‘fans’ or famous blogging friends. 

I have also managed to build a targeted network of Twitter Associates, not just NUMBERS!  My network on twitter is composed primarily of; business owners, entrepreneurs, bloggers and those linked to marketing, PR or social media. (The exact same people who use my marketing services.)

I believe building a network of Twitter Associates is not just about attracting numbers!  It’s about attracting people, who are in your target group and then earning their trust.

The three key words here are people, attract and trust.

People

The people I associate with on Twitter are NOT my followers; they are my equals.  We are part of the same online network.  I refer to them as my Twitter Associates, because we associate with each other on a level playing field, using Twitter.  The only time I use the term ‘follower’ is (like in the title of this post), when I need to give people a quick point of reference.

You see, this is a two way deal with me, I follow all those who follow me, unless they are spamming me of course. With me there’s no tribes and no leaders – just people who want to connect!

Does an equality-focused approach actually work on Twitter?  Well, there’s anywhere between 1 and 3 million people using Twitter, (apparently).  As I write this, I am high in the top 1% of all Twitter users, based on ‘followers.’  I don’t say this to impress you, but to impress upon you the effectiveness of treating people as equals and with respect!

This means communicating rather than dictating.  It means engaging people and listening to what they say. It means taking time to help people no matter how many followers they have, just because you like their work.  It means becoming part of a network or community, without feeling the need to lead it!

Think of the people YOU buy from, enjoy the company of and recommend to people.  These will tend to be people you trust, people you like and people you value – NOT people who treat you like some dumb ass follower!

Attract

There’s been a lot said about the power of attraction, with some referring to it as the law of attraction. Whatever your thoughts on the subject, we know that cause and effect play a major role in every area of our lives.

If we want to attract people, we first need to make ourselves attractive to them!

On Twitter, the most attractive people are those who share – rather than just self-promote.  They are the people who take time to answer questions and engage people in dialogue.  They are the people who look for ways to connect others and help them thrive.

One of the fastest ways to attract the interest of another human being, is to show your interest in them first!  We all like to feel valued and when another person takes time to notice us, it makes US feel good!  Don’t wait for people to follow you – develop your network of Twitter Associates by looking for great people and FOLLOW THEM FIRST!

This means that you not only attract more people, you ALSO get to develop a network of associates who are the kind of people most suited to you and your business.

Use the Twitter Search facility to identify people who ‘tweet’ about things you are interested in, and follow them. Then, introduce yourself and add something of value to the conversation!

Trust

We live in an age where; diets promise we can lose 20lbs in a month, we can have rock-hard abs with just 3 minutes exercise a day and where we can become rich in weeks (if we just buy that $29 ebook!)

We expect results immediately, yet developing trust takes time!

Paradoxically, I believe one of the reasons my network grew quickly, is because I took my time!  I am simply not influential enough to develop a network that big, that quick, all by myself!  I rely massively on the help and co-operation of others and that only comes after people trust me enough to recommend me to their Twitter Associates.

I see people using auto-responders when I follow them, with links to sales pitches – because they come to twitter expecting immediate results! Who is going to recommend someone like that to their Twitter Associates?

I get people I have never heard of, telling me to send a message to my Twitter Associates, recommending they follow them or visit their website/blog!  Who is going to recommend a person like that to their Twitter Associates?

I mentioned earlier, the importance of treating people with respect, as equals.  This is a great way to earn people’s trust and their good will.

When this happens:
- People will recommend you to their Twitter Associates.

Also…
- People will go and visit your site or blog.
- People will enquire about your products or services.
- And people will buy from you. I’ve recently sold over $30,000 in services / products via people I met on twitter.

Your tips, ideas and suggestions!

This post is based on my experiences and observations as a twitter user.  I’m certain there are many, many more ways to develop a valuable network via twitter…

AND this is where YOU come in!
What kind of things make you more, (or less), inclined to press someone’s follow button?  Share them here and please feel free to include your twitter username, if you would like new people to discover you!

…. and if you found this useful, don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed!

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It’s almost 2 weeks since I started an experiment on jimsmarketingblog.com.  I wanted to see what REALLY happens when a blog offers a valuable, ‘do-follow link’ to everyone who comments there.

What does ‘do-follow’ mean?

In brief, every time you comment on my blog, you will receive a special kind of link back to your website or blog.  This link actually tells Google and Co to visit your website or blog – which can really help your Search Engine Optimisation.

Sadly, the vast majority of blogs (over 99% apparently), offer ‘no-follow links’; which tell Google and Co NOT to follow the link to your website or blog. They do this to stop the mighty Google penalising them with a lower page rank and also to stop spammers targeting their blogs.  Links from do-follow blogs like mine are a lot more valuable, so spammers apparently target them more (or do they? – Read on!)

Here’s what’s happened thus far!

Comment numbers are about the same

This surprised me.  The percentage of people commenting here is, surprisingly, no higher than it was BEFORE I gave do-follow links!  The original post, where I announced I was offering do-follow links, has now had well over 200 comments.  However, the number of comments on my posts since then, have only grown at the same rate as my readership.

Links have doubled in 12 days

There has been one amazing, immediate improvement, since offering do-follow links!  You can call it the power of attraction, karma, sewing and reaping – but the number of people linking to this blog has literally doubled in just 12 days!

No increase in Spam

Another surprise is that I have not seen any increase in the amount of spam I get, not yet anyway.  I am getting the odd idiot try to use the comments section of various posts, to advertise their latest wonder product – but that’s nothing to do with the do-follow links – that’s just what some misguided people do on any well read blog.  These are deleted immediately.  Everything else has been caught by my spam filter.  I use the Akismet plugin for WordPress.

Google isn’t happy with me

Google traffic here had been increasing until I started offering do-follow links.  Now, it has stopped increasing and has actually dropped slightly.  That said, all search engine traffic combined accounts for less than 1% of the people who come here.

In case you were wondering, the 4 biggest sources of people to this blog are:
1. Direct traffic
2. Twitter
3. StumbleUpon
4. Links from other blogs and websites

Conclusion

It’s still very early days, but I have seen nothing to stop me offering do-follow links.  The readership is growing extremely well and I have attracted over a thousand new links; since offering do-follow links to my readers.

The lesson thus far, has been that the Internet is actually about PEOPLE and not about Google or any other company!  If people like your website or blog, and you market it correctly, they are going to share it with their friends and contacts.  If the people at Google are as smart as I think they are, they will catch onto this and stop trying to punish blogs that, like mine, are committed to helping others.

So, the experiment continues!

What do you think?

If you have any ideas or opinions regarding what I am doing I would love to know!

Equally, what have YOUR experiences been with linking, Google or blogging in general – share them with my readers and myself in the comments section.

If you are a Twitter user, please leave your user name in your comment, so people can follow you – I’m @jimconnolly by the way!
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