Jelly, a new app backed by a clump of sparkly celebrities) including Jack Dorsey, Al Gore and even Bono) is enjoying its 15 minutes of fame. Jelly, launched on January 7th of this year is a crowd-sourced service that has been bombarded with Twitter Followers, broken (mundane) news and earned the participation of the Facebook man himself, Mark Zuckerberg, who used it to determine if the spider found in his shower was deadly or not.
Image Courtesy: The Daily Mail
Jelly may not be a new concept but it is a pretty one backed my famous people. The app is meant to act as a mobile social network in which you a snap a photo of something and ask a related question. Then people from, or somewhat connected to, your social networks will provide you with an answer.
There is also some second functionality where users can recommend other answers, or forward questions via e-mail or social media, and askers can send people who answer their questions thank-you notes. But at its core, Jelly is basically just a platform for asking questions of the vast, Internet hive-mind.
Unlike Quora, the online question and answer service was supposed to be the next great way to get an answer about something, Jelly was created to be mobile-first, and much more interested in the wisdom of crowds. Users are restricted to leaving short answers and there isn’t any preamble about who a user is, or why they might be qualified to answer a question.
Put Simply, Jelly is the Instagram of Asking Questions
Given its photo-plus-question composition, Jelly is clearly positioned as a good place to identify mystery objects (a plant or graffiti mural you pass on the street, for example.) After a while, though, you will have started to see that much of Jelly’s potential lies in its ability to quickly gather a chorus of opinions on tons of topics-from the more stimulating like music and shopping to the more mundane like pet and plant care. As users figure this out, expect the ratio of silly to earnest questions to improve, and Jelly’s ability to climb.
The app is decently designed and there are some thoughtful touches. If you think a non-Jelly-using friend would be a good person to answer a question, you can forward them a link to the question so they can see and answer it on the web. And if you are simply curious about the responses people will post to others’ questions, you can “star” a question and then flick it away; then you’ll be notified when others answer it.
Few of the prominent features lacking from Jelly include, no categorization system for questions, no way to search and no “back” button within the app. There also doesn’t seem to be an organized way to see only the questions you’ve asked or provided answers for; all your activity is shown in a long, chronological list that can be a pain to scroll through.
Perhaps most importantly, Jelly needs to improve its ability to determine which questions you should see, so It can make it more likely that you’ll offer helpful answers and contribute your own questions. The app already uses an algorithm for this, but it could take some time before there’s a significant volume of data for it to learn from. In the meantime, don’t expect to stop seeing questions about football teams, iPhone app organizing, and almond butter anytime soon.
Despite its relative simplicity, Jelly has become a great took for receiving quick advice or answers from your social network whether you are shopping, wandering through a museum or planted on your couch. With some tweaks, Jelly could really stick.
Before we take this article any further let’s get a few facts straightened out first. Last week Matt Cutts, head of Google\’s Webspam Team, put out a post regarding why you shouldn’t use guest posting to build links. Here is a quick snippet from the post:
Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.
Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your book. It’s not that way any more.
The real point is actually pretty clear for everyone who took the time to decipherer the message behind Cutts post. Guest posting done with the interest of the community and readers in mind still have value. But attempts at getting guest posts published in a manipulative manner, purely or primarily for the SEO benefit of the backlink, are no longer going to be effective (and by implication, may even lead to penalties or ranking degradation).
The gray area isn’t even that large; it’s generally fairly easy to separate legitimate guest post requests from the spammy ones.
Sender: legitimate guest post requests will generally come from people you know, or have at least heard of, or even have somewhat of a reputable online presence and can tell you directly why they want to write for your blog while also going beyond the overly used “Hey, OMG I love your blog, best I’ve ever seen, I want to write for you!
Images: Budding Geek
Tip: If you are going to send out emails asking for guest post opportunities make sure you read the sites guest post guidelines, read a few of the host blogs posts to get a feel for their writing style, send the email to the right person (nobody in sales cares about your article on how a girls blueberry muffin looks like her dog-true story btw)
Relevance: A legitimate request will generally focus on one specific post, suitable for your audience and relevant to your typical topics and style. For example, this post on fascinating social media facts and statistics was a great fit for Jeff Bullas’ blog, because it meshes well both topically and stylistically with the kinds of posts Jeff often writes. But this style would not have worked as well on a site like Social Media Examiner.
Another thing about spammy guest posters– they miraculously are able to write on any topic under the sun. Need a article about a dog grooming service, you got it! Need a article about the sun\’s energy, you got that too, or any custom topic that you prefer (;
Compensation: Matt specifically calls out in his post, that email offering money to get links that pass PageRank (are) a clear violation of Google’s quality guidelines. A legitimate guest blogger offers a post that has value to your blog in and of itself, and so would not propose monetary compensation.
Backlinks: virtually all guest posts will include backlinks. Now, not saying this is a bad thing all together. The difference between a actual legitimate and spammy request is:
1. The purpose of the links: do they appear to be there to guide the reader to additional, relevant information- or are they actually placing them trying to sell something or link back to a page that shows no relevance to the post.
2. The author\’s approach to the link itself; if the author is comfortable with you changing or deleting any of the links then the guest post is clearly not just a spammy attempt at link building.
Comfort level: this can be a little more vague and will vary among individuals, but essentially; based on what you know about the person who is proposing the guest post to you, would you be open to connecting with him or her on various social media platforms? Possibly even to under the right circumstances-write your own guest post for that person\’s blog?
Motivation: Matt later noted in a addition to his original post quoted above, \”There are still many good reasons to do guest blogging.It can increase brand awareness, provides the opportunity to connect with a new audience, and it help increase overall web presence for a brand or product.
Another point to consider: Matt never actually makes the point that no type of guest posting still provides some SEO benefit- only that guest-blogging is no longer effective as a large scale link-building strategy and that Matt would recommend skepticism when someone reaches out and offers a guest blog article.
But let\’s take a moment and be honest, Google cannot truly look into the heart of a blogger and determine their true motivation, maybe a inexperienced blogger is not trying to actually spam you, they just have yet to learn the tricks of the trade and may come across as a spam bot with their overload of links and cheesy email proposals. But what Google will continue to do is look at characteristics like a site\’s overall link profile (do guest post links make up an inordinate share of all backlinks?) and the quality of linking sites in determining rankings.
So everyone sit back down in your seat because guest blogging is not dead but actually alive and thriving. The only thing that has died is the practice of generating large numbers of backlinks through spammy email outreach for guest posts.
I realize that preaching about the importance of social media to businesses is pretty redundant. By now, buy-in to social media marketing is near ubiquitous, but I still have found that many companies struggle when quantifying the value they can achieve through the strategic use of social media.
I may not have a silver bullet response to help everyone understand the actual quantitative value of social media marketing, but what I do have is incredibly compelling stats to give you a better understanding on how just important social platforms can be to your business.
1. 91% Of People Have Gone Into A Store Because Of An Online Experience (Source: Marketing Land)
This sounds like a crazy statistic, but think about it, it intuitively makes sense. Think about your own behavior as a consumer, you most likely spend a great deal of time researching the products and services you’re interested in online before making any purchase decision. And really, why wouldn’t you? With a whole world of information at your fingertips you would be a fool to not research purchases online, read reviews, look up prices and get a sense of the company you would be doing business with.
A website and social media that is up to date and provides all the information your current and prospective consumers are looking for you are going to attract buyers compared to a site where a consumer can find little to no information.
2. 78% Of Consumers Say That The Posts Made By Companies On Social Media Influence Their Purchases (Source: Forbes)
What this statistic shows us is that you truly have opportunity to sway consumer purchase decisions through the content your business creates and publishes on social media.
This mean that’s it is absolutely critical that your business consistently publishes killer content. A result of the inherently fleeting nature of social media content is that you need to be refreshing your content streams on a regular and ongoing basis.
This does not mean go out and publish anything. Your content should still be highly valuable by your existing and prospective consumers to ensure that when they decide to check out your business online, that they are presented with the absolute best you have to offer.
3. 80% Of Business Are Not Passionate (Source: Invesp Blog)
Business is built on relationships. The more people feel they know and like you, the more you will succeed. Your web presence must show you are passionate. It’s the brands that are the most human, add value and care about their customers that succeed.
4. 89% Of Consumers Conduct Their Research Using Search Engines (Source: PR Newswire)
What ranks incredibly high in search engine results? Well, it’s pretty obvious, social media platforms including, Facebook, Twitter, and of course Google+ and YouTube. On a side note, it is worth adding that properly written blog posts tend to rank quite highly as well.
Social media properties often land on the first page of search results for businesses and brands of all sizes. You have a tremendous oppurtinity to impress information seeking consumers on your social media properties when they are conducting research for a purchase, so take advantage of this and ensure that you’re putting your best foot forward.
5. 72% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations (Source: Search Engine Journal)
This stat shows that 72% of consumers trust a complete stranger online just as much as people they know when it comes to making a purchase decision. Apply this knowledge and create a strategy to encourage consumers to leave reviews on your social media properties.
When a biz sends out a post regarding a product or new service those who actually view the post and/or like are actually a large part of the consumers who actually go onto buy the product or service.
So next time you go to post, keep the thought that the next ten people who view this post, four of them are going to make a purchase. So before you go and just post just anything, create a post that will capture a consumers attention and leave them feeling that they must have the product or service your biz is offering.
These stats are absolutely amazing, if they don’t get your enthusiasm jumpstarted and dedication to creating killer content and having a meaningful dialogue with your social media audience, you need to check your pulse.
Seriously, are you alive in there?
Today’s world is run with social media and all these savvy consumers are looking to make informed purchase decisions, which means they’re tapping into all their available resources.
It is so important to continue as a business to adapt to the needs of your consumers. This means finding new ways to enhance value propositions, develop dialogues, forge real relationship and build and sustain levels of trust that will ultimately influence their purchase decisions.
Can you attribute sales to your business’ social media activity?What value have you experienced through social media marketing?What value does your brand offer your social media audience? Leave your answers in the comments below
Let me put this as simply as I can for you, if you aren’t taking Google+ seriously yet, you’re missing out on an enormous opportunity.
Don’t believe me? Well let me tell you exactly why your business needs to jump on the Google+ bandwagon TODAY! It is becoming difficult to deny that Google+ is important as a social networking arena. Research suggests its well on its way to surpassing Facebook in terms of social sharing activity. It has a direct and significant impact on numerous other Google services, including search. Can you say SEO people?!
Besides all of the measurements, those of us who have embraced Google+ have found a thriving and active community of passionate tech enthusiast who regularly comment on posts, follow links and reshare material- a presence that is very valuable for both personal and professional interaction.
I myself am among the satisfied pack that’s tapped into Google+’s potential. With only starting my own Google+ account several months ago, I have already created valuable relationships and a stellar amount of interaction. The level of engagement and quality of discussion I see on G+ are vastly superior to what I see on other social networks (especially Facebook).
So what does it take to even get noticed and expand your influence on Google+? Once you have learned the basics of the services, you can start applying these helpful strategies that Google+ subscribers have found to be helpful:
1. Find your crowd
Any social network has the potential to seem quiet when you first arrive. While Google+ may not be the platform for gathering all your aunts, uncles and old high school acquaintances, it is ideal environment for finding people who actually share your professional and person interests.
“The amount of effort required to fill your stream with interesting conversation is minimal, says Fraser Cain, a space enthusiast who runs the Universe Today blog and has amassed over 800,000 followers on Google+. “Your first step is to follow people you\’re interested in hearing from, then after a while it seems busier and busier.”
Google+ gives you a helping hand by suggesting groups of people who post about topics you like as well as people with whom you have a connection (TIP: you can always access those suggestions by navigating to the People section of the site). Another good way to find some folks include using the G+ search function to look for people posting about your area of interest and browsing through the site’s “What’s Hot” section to find users who are actively sharing interesting content.. Be aware that there will be a lot of posts unrelated to your niche but always provide for a pretty good chuckle or two.
Then of course there is always the option to search for specific experts and industry leaders, even small tech writers, who write and discuss about your favorite subjects. Commentaries aside they are going to be your key to reshared content from other users that’ll be relevant to you and this also helps you encounter other interesting people that comment on their posts.
2. Become the core of your niche
Since there is no fairy dust that you can sprinkle to gain Google+ followers, you are going to have to be an active participant in your niche, whatever it may be. Do your best to follow people who talk about topics relevant to what you are also discussing or sharing and then of course interact on their posts as much as possible. Discussion value aside, you’d be surprised how many people will circle you when you leave insightful, interesting or funny comments in the right places.
With actively participating it can also lead to your inclusion in shared circles-personal recommendation lists that people pass along on Google+, as well as within the site’s own internal recommendations.
Another area of Google+ you want to strongly consider when finding followers is in Google+’s growing collection of communities, which is in simple terms a organized discussion forums that revolve around targeted topics. In these forums it is also true that a little bit of effort can go a long way.
3. Make yourself discoverable
I know, I know, this should be fairly obvious, but you would be surprised how many skip this crucial step. It is important to take the couple extra minutes and fill out your Google+ profile, including a somewhat professional photo of yourself, remember to smile!
“When people search for others who are passionate about a certain subject, if you don\’t have [the relevant terms] in your profile, Google doesn\’t know to include you,says, Sarah Hill, a reporter with the Veterans United Network who’s assembled 2.7 million G+ followers.
A consistent identity across social networks can also be helpful, especially if you’ve already built a following in other places. Google+ allows you to create professional pages for organizations that can be managed by multiple users. It helps if your company’s Google+ page is immediately recognizable and consistent with the rest of your business’s online presence.
4. Share the right stuff
When you create your Google+ account, you have to decide what your goal is for setting up this social media platform. Will you be using your profile professionally or personally? If you are using Google+ as a professional social media platform then posting and sharing content should be directly related to your niche. The more you focus on your niche, the more focus others will have on your site and understanding to what you’re all about.
You want to post information that’s relevant to the kind of audience you want to have interacting with you.
By no means do this mean you have to be the single-note sharer; sprinkling in the occasional “just because” post, whether it be a behind the scene glimpse at your work, a funny photo relevant to your area of discussion or an amusing anecdote, this can broaden your appeal and help establish you as a real person worth following. Some of the most popular Google+ posts have been random images or off-the-cuff quips that tie into my favorite geeky subjects but have no direct connection to any stories I’ve written. Add a little bit of dessert to your vegetables and remember not to talk about yourself all the time.
5. Take advantage of the technology
Last but not least, take full advantage of the technology Google+ has provided you. The Hangouts element of Google+ is arguably the service’s killer feature and it can be a powerful weapon for anyone looking to build a following of like-minded individuals.
Hangouts let you have one on one or group conversations via video and if you’re so inclined, share the video to your stream live or even after the broadcast. Sarah Hill uses Hangout to host interviews with people relevant to her field as well as to hold A&A style discussions with her followers.
We’re interacting with people face to face, not just chatting with their avatars, Hill says.It’s a deeper level of real-time engagement.
With the basics of Google+ covered, now it is your turn to jump in and start swimming. Tell us about your Google+ experience in the comments; I would love to hear what worked for you and what didn’t work.
There is an increasing trend towards using social media management tools that allow marketers to search, track, and analyze conversation on the web about their brand or other topics of interest. This can be useful in PR management and campaign tracking, allowing the user to measure return on investment, competitor-auditing, and general public engagement. Tools range from free, basic applications to subscription-based, more in-depth tools.
There are thousands of articles already there talking about Buffer features, but this article serves a different purpose. This article is not about all the features and all about how Buffer works but rather how this small company, has mastered the Twitter game and has become one the most successful social media management tools out there.
Tweet With Buffer.
Fun Fact: Using Buffer’s social sharing scheduler which works with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and recently added Google+ you can time your updates to post throughout the day. Buffer was launched on November 30th 2010 and it started with 0 users and has grown to over 1 million as of September 2013!
1. You are provided with seamless automation
We all know that when it comes to social media marketing, “Content is king”. So Buffer keeps your content in mind to provide consistent quality content at the perfect time your audience is online.
Buffer also offers a variety of ways to access the app, you can add updates via a browser extension and you can share any page in seconds! Through a phone or tablet, Buffer is there for you to share your content super quick and easy. Via these channels, Buffer gives you the opportunity to invite team members so they can manage the app via a different portal you choose from. Buffer will share your content with just a click of a button.
The Buffer web extensions are the reason alone for this tool being seamless and effective; it’s available for Chrome, Safari and Firefox. Once installed, scheduling posts is as easy as clicking the button “Add to buffer”, it automatically will shorten your link. Buffer provides you with apps for iPhone and Android by making it convenient and giving an opportunity to users to use the services from wherever they are. This tool being user-friendly is an understatement. They have 16,204 paying customers and 87, 798,149 posts shared!
2. External integration
Buffer has already and gone ahead to integrate with the best social media networks including Facebook, which has 1.15+billion users, Twitter, has 600+million users and Google+ has 500+million users.
Buffer provides a simple button that can be easily integrated into your RSS readers, Twitter, Chrome, SocialBro, WordPress, and 50+ other tools that are used to discover awesome content. If your favorite app isn’t integrated with Buffer yet, you can definitely get around this. Buffer authorizes IFTTT access to your Buffer account so that you can link lots of apps together in different ways, making for nonstop content workflow
3. Transparency
What would happen if everybody in your company knew everything about your business-your revenue, everyone’s salaries, how the company pitches itself to investors, even how much you slept last night? That’s right, Buffer believes in complete transparency with their employees as well as their users.
Below I have included Buffer\’s view on being a transparent company and what it means:
List provided from Buffer Blog: http://buff.ly/LdHAsW
Complete openness about our revenues and user numbers: Every month we publish the investor update here on the Open blog.
Every internal email sent between any 2 people on the team has a certain list cc’ed that is accessible for everyone: For example if 2 engineers email with each other, they cc the engineers list, if it’s people on our customer support team they have a support email list cc’ed. Stripe was a great inspiration for this. (More about this)
By Buffer making the decision to become a transparent organization it sent out a message to the stakeholders, employees and users a sign of commitment and trust. Not money companies would follow the rule of transparency. With Buffer providing transparent they have built a brand of trust and have fostered a long term relationship with its users.
The users of Buffer are 98% free users. Buffer believes in providing great customer service out of their 10 employee team, 3 ½ people are working full time for customer service alone. Buffer considers their customer response as the marketing team. It seems to be working because for a free service when a customer receives a response for their queries it creates a “WOW’ effect and thus they spread the word.
4. Blogging
A blog about productivity, life hacks, writing, user experience, customer happiness and business.” – Buffer Blog
The most original of company blogs are no different than brochures as they on about their products. Buffer, on the other hand, talks about experiences and interesting content which makes it a good read. They give out great tips through how they behave by being strong personal brands, great storytelling, and embracing blogging, talking about experiences in a way of connecting with peers and lastly they have stellar customer service where they go out of their way to answer questions, be helpful or troubleshoot any issue you are having. Like one of the articles on their blog “8 common thinking mistakes our brain makes every day and how to prevent them” has a lot of shares, likes and comments even though not relating to their product/service, it makes a great read and personal by sharing with their users.
Tweets with images received 150% more retweets + 9 platform changes you need to know.
Buffer has increased their credibility by continually writing guest post for other trusted brand sites. Leo Widrich, co-founder and CMO of buffer, provides great content on social media platforms and specifically Twitter featuring how Buffer can make all social media activities easy and simple. Here are some links from various sources around the world:
lifehack.org
12most.com
bloggodown.com
michaelhyatt.com
5. Last but not least, Buffer provides you with easy analytics
When any company is running their social media platforms one of the most important measurements is their analytics, to check and see if they even receiving the measurements they had in mind for traffic or to see who is clicking on their posts. Well, Buffer already has that all figured out for you, giving you the whole pie, not just the slice.
“Understanding social media analytics lets businesses can take control of myriad of online user data and information to make smarter decisions regarding customer needs, attitude, opinions, latest trends and various factors that influence the same”
Buffer gives you an Analytic Dashboard where you can see how effective a particular post/update was, broken down by network. How does this make them the masters of Twitter? Simple, with providing you with these analytics they are giving you all the tools to perfect your tweet times, mentions or posts. They will even highlight your “Top Post” or “Top Tweet” so you can quickly see where all your engagement is at.
Buffer’s Analytical Dashboard
How has Buffer perfected your Twitter game? Leave your experiences in the comments below.
Image Courtesy: The Daily Mail
