9 Reasons Why Your Content Is Not Shared on Social Networks: New Research
Do you wonder how to get your content seen amidst a sea of information?
What if you could understand why your audience shares some information and not other? That would make your content stand out from the competition.
The Science of Sharing
30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month, including blog posts, links, news stories and photo albums.
HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella has found that three things must happen to get your content shared.
First, people must be exposed to your content (be a fan on Facebook or follow you on Twitter). Second, they must be aware of your content (meaning they actually see it). Finally, they must be motivated by something in your content to share it.
Many articles have been written on how to increase your audience size and make people aware of your content, including these by Mari Smith and Denise Wakeman. This article will focus on the motivations for sharing. 
7 Ways to Improve Your Blog SEO with Inbound Links
Are you looking for innovative ways to improve your search engine rankings?
In an earlier post I talked about the need to fully optimize your website and blog posts for search engines.
However, content optimization will only take you so far. For a website to really take off in the search engine rankings, it needs to generate incoming links from relevant and reputable websites. And you have little control of incoming links.
To increase the likelihood of obtaining high-quality incoming links, here are seven things you can do:
How to Use StumbleUpon: Your Comprehensive Guide
You’ve likely heard of StumbleUpon. But do you really understand how to use its full power?
StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking and rating site where people can “Stumble” their favorite web pages, write reviews and share their discoveries with their followers.
This network is like Delicious, but with a more enhanced social platform and sharing system.
Why Use StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon can be a great site to organize your favorite bookmarks, although it isn’t quite as advanced as Delicious in organization. You can easily save items by giving them the thumbs-up using the “I like it” buttons on the StumbleUpon toolbars for Firefox or Chrome.
4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its Impact on Your Brand
Do you know how social media is helping your business? Want to find out how Twitter, Facebook and other sites are impacting your brand awareness?
The good news is social media has finally made it to the grand stage of “accountability.” A place where there are lots of people who want to measure it. The bad news is there isn’t a single clear-cut answer.
However, with a few simple steps, you can build a measurement strategy that accomplishes your goals.
Defining Terms
To start, let’s agree that brand awareness is a measure of how recognizable your brand is to your target audience. For those looking to get ahead of the curve on social media measurement, the first step is to align your social media metrics with metrics your company is already comfortable with.
How to Boost Your Personal Brand With Social Media
Want to build your personal brand? There are few tools as powerful as social media for quickly building a positive personal brand. Whether you’re focusing on a global audience or a local one, social media can help you get visibility and help you forge connections.
In this article, I’ll share some tips to help you leverage social media to gain more exposure.
#1: Reap What You Sow
What are you aiming for? What is your goal?
If you want to get yourself known, social media is a great way to build visibility and a platform. Getting known might be your goal or it might be a means to an end. Again, social media can help you build connections that pay off in terms of opportunities and offers.
7 Essential Design Elements for Great Business Blogs
When people hear the word design, they sometimes think only of making something look good, using colors and graphics to add interest. But on the web, and especially on a blog, design has a purpose: to grab readers when they arrive, make it easy for them to get what they want, and create trust through a consistent and professional look.
A well-designed business blog:
- Uses visual interest to make posts easy to read
- Brands your business in a consistent way
- Places useful information in places where it is easy to find
- Isn’t cluttered with things that aren’t helping you promote your business
- Makes it easy for readers to do what you want them to do
Facebook Marketing: Everything You Need to Know
I’m guessing many of you are still sitting on the fence when it comes to putting your business on Facebook.
“Let me get this straight,” you may say. “You want me to use Facebook to market my business? Are you crazy?”
Not if you provide products or services to postmenopausal women. Women over the age of 55 make up the fastest-growing Facebook segment, according to Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger, authors of Facebook Marketing for Dummies.
Would your product or service appeal to anyone over 35? “The fastest-growing demographic is the 35- to 54-year-olds… the next fastest-growing demographic is the over-55 crowd.”
7 Ways Posterous Improves Your Social Media Presence
Posterous is a social media platform where it’s very easy to post just about anything—photos, videos and words. You can set up your account and publish content simply by sending an email. Yes it’s that simple!
Posterous is known as the most “social” networking place of social media. It’s also the ideal solution for sharing content that’s too long for a tweet and too short for a blog post.
There are many different reasons and motivations to create a free Posterous account. Let’s have a look at the 7 most common reasons for businesses to use Posterous.
