Half of Aussies Don’t Use Social Media/Google Goes Thai

A new report says while Australia has made great strides in developing rural Internet, almost half of the businesses there still don’t use social media as a way to sell their goods and services. KPMG Australia says only 42% of those polled admitted using social media techniques like Twitter and Facebook to increase brand presence.

Social networking is a big hit with Australians and another poll suggests one in every 5 minutes spent online in the Land Down Under is dedicated to social networking. It’s possible these numbers are suggesting a new trend, or uncovering the social media myth as a viable business tool. Everything including video was first touted as a new way Internet marketing was headed, and one by one they all found their rightful place among all the other techniques like article marketing, blogs and the like. That’s not to say that social media like Twitter and Facebook isn’t an important part of Internet advertising, but it’s only one tentacle stretching out from the foundation which is the website.

Here’s some news from the already overstated category concerning mobile shopping. L.E.K. Consulting is reporting two thirds of the smart phone owners polled have made at least one purchase with that device, and at least 40% are using a smart phone to do their shopping on a monthly basis. The report also indicates shoppers are heavily connected to their social networks and any online company needs to include as many reviews and other information as possible on their social networks to land new customers.

Google has opened an office in Thailand. The move is all about a new dual focus on the Thai market and patents with mobile applications. The effort is all about trying to get businesses in that country to spend more on Internet advertising and to raise the bar so that economy will be more in line with places like the United States when it comes to online advertising.

Finally, PCMag.com has a great piece about Tim Cook and how he was featured in a magazine article in Fortune magazine a few years back as the most likely successor to Steve Jobs. It has quotes from an Apple employee who said on the condition of anonymity that Cook was the person who really ran the company. He’s been looking after the CEO duties at Apple since January and insiders say more than likely even before that.

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White-Hat SEO + Social Media = Link Bait Magic

This guest post is by Ben Jackson of SEODiscovery.org.

You’re a blogger.

You want traffic.

You know between nothing and a lot about SEO?

Perfect.

Most people are intimidated by SEO and just as many have no clue what it’s all about. This is exactly why corporations waste thousands upon thousands of dollars every year on useless SEO practices that produce lackluster results—they don’t understand what is happening! Well here is my proposition:

Whether you already understand SEO or know nothing about it, I am going to present a strategy to you right now that will have you getting lots of links and traffic to your site, and here’s the kicker…

You won’t even realize you’re building links! You can follow this process, concerning yourself only with creating great content and establishing a great reputation in your niche, and the links and rankings will follow.

Enough talk. Let’s get to it!

One of the only SEO tactics that is actually considered to be white-hat is link bait. Link Bait is a piece of content or feature on a site that is especially appealing and worthy of attention. Visitors like what you’ve shared so much that they link back to you, thus “link bait”. You do the work upfront creating something awesome and then sit back as the links pour in for you. This is also referred to as natural link building and is 100% white-hat.

We are just getting into the entire promotional/SEO campaign we’re going to be developing and this is by far the most important part. You need to have something really great to share and you need to use the magic word—it needs to be FREE (always capitalize FREE). I’m sure we all know already that people love posts with lists: Top 10 Article Directories, Best 5 Tips for Weight Loss, and so on.

You want to create really usable and exciting content for your niche. Compile a few lists together into one comprehensive directory, create a list with an angle that hasn’t been done, share a secret actionable tip you have been waiting to share—something that your viewers will want to come back to and share with others. You can get creative and provide value however you want (I did it with a free software program you can see here: FREE OnlyWire Account Creator).

Bonus tip: If you really want to kick it up a notch, think of something people never give away for free, and give it away for free. Software or an ebook without an opt-in can work well, and you can also put affiliate links and links back to your site in your product.

The Internet and how we share online has changed a lot over the last few years. We don’t get so many forwarded emails with jokes in them anymore (that is so 90’s). These days, social media has become the analogy for word of mouth on the Web, and we want to let the people talk!

While we are creating “link” bait and we want to get links from webpages, we cannot ignore the fact that most people will opt for a tweet instead. Many people don’t have a real online presence or won’t write a relevant blog post in order to share your link, so they’ll just tweet it or like it on facebook instead.

This is why it’s very important that we place sharing buttons prominently on our page with our link bait and also refer people to them. Every tweet will expose your link bait page to more people who may also retweet or link to your page. Basically, you have an opportunity to greatly expand your popularity and potentially go viral off this process.

SEO reminder: getting a lot of links to this one page on your site will give it a lot more authority and this link juice will spread through your internal links and help other pages on you blog rank higher as well.

At this point you’ve got your awesome link bait setup on your site, catered towards your niche, and ready to explode. The sad truth is that if you build it, they will not come: you still have to promote this page to get the ball rolling. If you have a big Twitter following or an email list, you can contact these people about it to get things started.

A lot of us don’t have those assets built up yet, but thankfully there is a lot you can do to ignite the fire on your link bait. We are going to accomplish three different things all at the same time:

Build dofollow backlinks to your site.Build links to your link bait.Establish/build a positive and professional reputation in your niche.

This is all done through blog comments. Here’s how:

Go to www.dropmylink.com.Enter a very broad keyword for your niche like “seo” or “cars”.Choose to search for “KeywordLuv” blogs.Click Search. Drop my link

This will help you find tons of blogs in your niche that use KeywordLuv on their comments. In case you’re not familiar, KeywordLuv blogs are “dofollow” which means they pass link juice, they allow you to use your keyword to link back to your site, and a lot of the time they link back to your most recent post too. Your goal is to first amass a list of popular KeywordLuv blogs in your niche.

It’s time to reveal how this all comes together now. You’re going to visit each of these blogs one-by-one and leave a comment on their most recent blog post. You want to comment on the most recent blog post because it will have the most activity which means the most potential for people to click through your links and find your link bait.

Also, these pages are linked right off the homepage so they should have some PR (No you can’t see the PR because “Toolbar PR” isn’t updated often, but the page does have PR). When you comment, you can leave a link with anchor text to any page of your site you want to rank. I know you don’t have all page #1 rankings, so choose a keyword you have been working on and leave an anchor text link to the corresponding page (there’s the link building part).

When you leave a comment you will also automatically get a link to your most recent post. The idea is that you make your link bait your most recent post. This way, you get an anchor text link to a page you want to rank and you get a link promoting your link bait. These “most recent post” links stand-out and get clicked on more often as well.

Most recent post

When blog commenting, take the time to read the post (you might learn something from it) or at least skim it so you can leave a comment that adds value to the page. If you leave stupid comments like, “Wow, great share thanks!!” you will fail in two ways:

Your comment won’t get approved.You won’t look authoritative and won’t build a solid reputation in your niche.

Make a meaningful comment because this will cause discussion around your comment and it will make people want to click through your link. To recap, you will visit a popular blog in your niche with KeywordLuv enabled and leave a comment on their most recent blog post. You are not spamming, you are adding value to their page and sharing your links.

This way, you can establish yourself as an authority in you niche, build “dofollow” anchor text links to your website, and promote your link bait so that it catches on and gets links to your website on autopilot.

Bonus tip: When someone in your niche comments on your site, follow their link back to their site and comment on it too and even tweet a post of theirs. This goes a long way for building strong relationships and networking with relevant web masters.

SEO is becoming less and less about traditional link building, and spamming becomes a dumber idea every day. If you focus on sharing quality content, creating a great user experience, and integrating social media, you are bound to grow your traffic and increase your rankings. You can repeat the above strategy over and over again for repeat results. Instead of worrying about the newest link building schemes or paying for an expensive new SEO program, you can focus entirely on creating great content and building your reputation—every blogger’s dream.

Master the SEO basics for FREE with Ben Jackson’s SEO Course (No opt-in) and be sure to follow Ben on Twitter and “like” the FB page too!

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6 Social Media Tools for Tracking Weather and Natural Disasters

With all of the natural disasters happening this year, it’s very important to stay up-to-date with your local weather and keep a look out for any warnings or watches. You never know when something disastrous might be coming your way. What better way to keep up with the weather and natural disasters than by using technology? Whether you’re on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, or another mobile device, there are tons of tools and apps available to help you out.

You may already have a tool or app that you’re using for weather, but does it also alert you of natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc? If not then you may want to take a look at one of these 6 tools that are great for tracking all of the above.

This is a simple extension for Chrome that shows you a 15-day weather forecast, which includes: hurricane weather, world weather, and local weather forecasts.

AniWeather is a Firefox addon that animates the 5-day weather forecast right within your browser. Weather conditions are updated in real-time and you can also check out more in-depth reports along with weather alerts, with a single click. There are also iOS apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Whether you have Windows OS, Android, Windows Phone 7, an iPhone or iPad, this tool has you covered when it comes to tracking hurricanes. This is especially useful right now since so many people in the U.S. are being affected by Hurricane IRENE.

You will get the latest NHC real time data from our internet servers including real-time Satellite, Current position, Latest Real Track, Official NHC Prediction Path, Tropical Weather Outlook, Tropical Weather Discussion, Strike Probabilities, Public Advisories and Forecasts directly to Tracking The Eye to be viewed on a colorful map and saved to your computer. You can even setup alerts to your cell phone and email so when a new storm becomes active you will be the first to know.

1-Click Weather for Safari adds a button to your browser that, when clicked, takes you to a page where you can view the current temperature and weather conditions for your area.

Swackett is a “different kind of weather app.” It lets you know whether you need to wear a sweater, jacket, or coat when going outside. It’s the graphics and colorful UI that make it so fun and unique. While it was originally just a Mac app, there is also now a Web app available (which also looks great on the iPad). You can also view weather watches, warnings, and animated maps.

Stormpulse is an advanced tool that tracks hurricanes and other severe weather conditions with detailed maps. Unfortunately, all of the advanced features are only available with a paid subscription. With the subscription you also get access to the iPad app.

If you’re looking for a free alternative, you may prefer MyHurricane, which is specifically for hurricanes and offers alerts, a widget, and a web app (which is also optimized for mobile browsers). It’s an “advanced, full-screen hurricane tracking software platform built on open web standards such as HTML5 and CSS 3.”

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Google+ Project: Get Social Like Never Before [Videos]

Ads by Google | Posted on 29/06/2011

Google+ Project is the latest initiative by Google to connect you with your friends, relatives and coworkers. After the Google buzz fail and a challenge to take on Facebook, Google+ promises a new way to socially interact with your social connections like never before.

Circles lets you  share different things with different people.

Sparks searches for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, and when you are free, it lines them up to watch, read and share. On any topic you want, in over 40 languages.

Hangouts lets your friends know that you’re hanging out, and easily drops by for a face-to-face live multi-person video chat and spend time with your Circles.

Huddle helps in coordinating with friends and family in real-time. Huddle provides a group messaging experience that lets everyone inside the circle know instantly what’s going on.

Instant Upload lets your photos upload themselves, without the hassle of getting photos off your phone and on to the web. Google+ lets you add your location to every post.

Get ready. Google+ will change your life and the way you network socially. Has Google challenged Facebook the right way this time? [The response was so huge, that they have switched to invites now. Get on the waiting list]

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How Social Media is Changing Our Lives [Videos]

Ads by Google | Posted on 28/06/2011

Social Media Revolution has changed our life. We live in the age of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google – strong forces which guide the way we behave, work, have fun and live our lives everyday.

Erik Qualman from Socialnomics has a deep understanding of this social media change and has created some amazing videos which highlight the ongoing social media revolution. Embedded below is the latest social media video from the 3 part series.

Video below was the second video of the series in 2010.

And below was the social media revolution in 2009.

Social media is changing the way we live. Have you embraced Facebook, Twitter, Google into your life…

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