Social signals? Does it really help increase SEO rank?

Google’s Matt Cutts said that social signals do not affect search rankings. Perhaps. However, if something you posted on social media becomes viral, your page will be talked about, which means that your website gets exposed, which will gather a lot of traffic, which will help you get links.

It may not be a search engine ranking factor but social signals still can have significant effects on your SEO. So how exactly do you get a post viral and on top of the SERP ranks, how do you make people like, share, vote, pin, or view your post? Yeah, you can pay advertisements to market your post, but the best way is through making sure that the content you post is engaging, free, and fun. Lucky for you, I know exactly what to do.

Know Your Audience for Your Audience Knows Best

Make content that targets a specific audience, spy on them if you have to, just make sure that you are aware of their demographic data and understand their interests and preferences, this will allow you to create quality content that they can easily associate with. Understanding where you post is also important. People on Twitter and Facebook would love humorous content, but I doubt that comedy would be appealing on Google+ and LinkedIn.

Be Imaginative with Your Content

Explore the various types of content. Use images, videos, infographics, and memes. Also, consider conjuring up challenges or contests, most people are innately competitive, remember the Ice bucket challenge?

Asking your audience a question and making a poll where they can vote is also an excellent way to engage your audience. Lastly, provide some tips and some incentives. These are highly effective ways to make your post get noticed.

Be in the Moment

You need to make a content that is base on recent news and breakthroughs in your industry. Follow trends that your audience is also following. People long for information that is currently hot, popular, and in demand.

Regularly Connect with Your Audience

Don’t forget to reply to comments and provide feedback on inquiries. Be sure to you let your audience know that you appreciate their participation. Flirt a little by liking-back, sharing, and retweeting some of your audience’s posts. Consistently create high-quality content and make updates so that your audience will easily be familiar with your brand. Familiarity is an excellent way to get followers and make fans.

Don’t Fear Controversy

Create controversial content. Topics that most people have strong opinions about tend to go viral. Don’t provide your personal opinion, rather, be neutral. Let your audience square off their views and don’t take sides.

The post How to Create Engaging Social Media Content That Gets You Higher SERP Rank appeared first on Carl Ocab.

When making videos most people are more worried about the actor/presenter, the scenery, the make-up, the lighting, basically the visual appeal of the video, than the script. Yes, those things are important and necessary. However, before exhausting all your energy on those elements, the first thing you should think of is having a great script. To get the most out of videos you have to start with an engaging script, that once turned into video, could captivate any viewer.

So do you make a great video script? What are the things you should consider? It starts with the right preparation. Know your audience, your message, and your aim, then follow these 5 tactics that top YouTubers use in making a video script that is precise, creative, and compelling.

1. Be Natural and Use Conversational Tone

When writing a script, imagine that you’re just having a conversation with a person or with a group. Don’t be too formal on your script, it’s better to be natural it makes videos more engaging.

2. Keep the Script Short

Short and straight to the point sentences will allow you to emphasize more on certain key points and will enable your audience to grasp your message easily. It will also be easier for the actor to memorize and find the flow and natural cadence of the script.

3. Don’t Overuse Jargons and Try to Use Simple Words

Use simple words. Yes, big words make it look more intelligent, but it also makes it difficult for the audience to understand. If the use of jargon is inevitable, use the most commonly used term that the audience would likely understand

4. Tell a Story

Statistics, facts, and other data are good, but unless you want to bore your viewers to death, I suggest that you put some story into the mix. Lifeless content won’t drive your viewers into action. Tell a story or share an experience, it’s real and more compelling.

5. Get Other’s Opinion

Read your script out loud and ask others to read it to you. Listen and make sure it’s pleasant to the ears and that the key points are easily picked out. Also, ask for other people’s opinion. Other people can provide some additional necessities to include. Sometimes we get too familiar with our words that we overlook our mistakes.

The post 5 Tactics Top YouTubers Use When Writing a Video Script appeared first on Carl Ocab.

Dual Streams – Home + Street

If like most people, you have an account on Facebook, you’re familiar with the term “stream”. Most social networks have one (or the equivalent). On Facebook, your stream shows all the updates of your friends and the various pages you’re connected with and you can choose either “most popular” or “most recent”. Twitter’s main stream is similar. Even G+ has a stream – you can choose to view all your circles or individual circles for the updates you want. Zurker offers something a little different.

Zurker offers a Home stream and a Street stream. They’re quite different and switching between them is easy. On your main page (reached by clicking the Zurker logo), you’ll see a button for each. Home will take you to your home stream and the updates that affect you directly, including comments others have left on your posts and more. Street will take you to updates from contacts and subscriptions.

Tags

How many times have you logged into Facebook or Twitter and groaned in frustration as you have to scroll through page after page of inanities just to find the information you want? It’s frustrating, but what can you do? Actually, Zurker offers a pretty innovative way around this. With Zurker, you can use tags to your advantage for both incoming and outgoing information. Zurker requires that you tag every connection on the network and that’s important. Ever feel like you’re being overloaded with information? Uncheck a few tags (family, friends or whatever tags you’ve decided to use) and you won’t see updates from those people until you turn the tags back on.

Own a Piece of the Network

While tags and the dual Home/Street stream are both pretty cool features, there’s one thing about Zurker that really stands out. The network gives you the chance to own a share (or more than one) of the profits. While other social networks court big investors, sell stocks on Wall Street or make it easy for big business to earn money, Zurker is more about courting you, the user. Buying vShares lets you own a piece of the network, and can be bought with cash or earned by inviting friends to the network using your referral code.

Giving Back to Users

In addition to vShares, Zurker is about giving back to users in other ways as well. While Facebook and Twitter might take your loyalty for granted, Zurker realizes that users make the network’s world go round, and offer rewards for your loyalty in the form of promotions and giveaways. For instance, the New Year Promo for 2013 gives all users the chance to win a free iPad or Microsoft Surface tablet, just for doing what you already do – using the network. By accruing zurks (the Zurker equivalent of a FB “like”), you can earn a chance to win your choice of tablet.

Cons to the Network

While there are a lot of innovative features to Zurker, new users might find that there are a couple of things lacking. For instance, currently, there’s no way to search the network for users. Likewise, there’s no built-in chat feature. All communication with other members has to go through comments on posts and photos.

Try Zurker Today!

In summary, Zurker offers quite a lot of innovation and has the potential to grow enormously. Between vShares, iPad giveaways and the ability to customize the updates you see rather than overloading you with updates, it’s a pretty cool place and one that you should definitely check out.

The post The Social Network YOU Own – Zurker appeared first on Carl Ocab.

2 Ways To Get Facebook Likes

There are actually 2 ways by which you can gather likes on Facebook. The first way is called Organic. It is the hardest and the most promising. It is hard because you either need to be a popular celebrity or an influential business tycoon for people to like your page without the essential marketing. On the other hand, having exceptional content will also compel them to like your page and long for more information you are providing through that page. It is the most promising because it lasts. The authority you build through your Facebook fan page will stick to people’s mind for the longest time. They will remember you for the great content you provide and you will be recognized in your niche of interest.

The second way is the artificial means and this is where we will focus in our discussion. In this way you will somehow manipulate the playing field in a good sense. There are also two ways that you can make people like your page in this method. The first is you can buy likes. It’s like buying votes. This is super expensive. Imagine buying a like for $2, that’s $200 for a hundred likes and for a thousand likes you’ll need $2000. You need to be Richie-rich to have 10,000+ likes on your business’ Facebook fan page.

But there’s still the second way in the artificial means of getting more likes and it is creating the demand. Through this way, you will give the reason why people need to like your page. There are a lot of techniques in doing this. For one, you can run a contest on your fan page where you’ll give away a trip to the Philippines, or you can give away gadgets like an IPAD and other prices you think the people in your niche are interested. Today, there is no better way to gather likes on Facebook other than running a contest that will force or will let people like your page.

Running A Contest On Facebook

Before running a contest, you need to know three things. First is who your target likers are? Running a contest and getting the likes from the people who aren’t on your niche is useless. You’re losing the purpose of getting likes if you target the wrong people. Second is how much are you willing to spend for the likes you will get? Prizes matter in a contest. If you’re just willing to give away just a piece of candy, no one would dare to join your contest. But, if you’re willing and able to give away, let’s say, a free pass to a luxurious resort like Caliraya Recreation Center, people will pour in naturally as participants. You need a competitive prize for your contest before people will engage themselves to it. Next thing you need to consider is the mechanics of your contest. Of course, you need to include that people should like your page as a part of the contest mechanics. It should not be too hard for people to comply before they can have a chance to win. Lastly, you will also need an effective marketing for your contest, so that people will know that you have a contest running. Running a Facebook contest can be very challenging especially if you don’t have a compelling prize for people to join your contest.

Having more Facebook likes on your business’ fan page can do a lot of favor to your company. One, it will give people the impression that you have the reputation in your business niche. Two, It’s an automatic customer list. Most probably, the people who liked your page are possible customers for your business. Three, since a lot liked your page you can use that as another channel of marketing for your business. You can use it to promote new products or services, promotions or discounts, and to let your customers know about company events and activities. These are some of the things you can do with a viable Facebook fan page for your company. There’s a lot more benefits in having 10000+ likes on your business’ fan page, all you have to do is to get the likes and discover the power it has in store for your company.

The post How To Get 10,000+ Likes On Your Business’ Facebook Fan Page appeared first on Carl Ocab.

It was just another sunny afternoon, slacking around, browsing nonsense websites, hanging out on Twitter – let’s just say, my unproductive time of the day, when suddenly this rad idea popped up in my mind…

What if I do an interview on Twitter LIVE – people are hooked on Twitter, it’s not time consuming (No scheduling, no fancy audio recording, etc.), it’s VERY candid, and it’s fun (Doing an interview in 140 characters or less is something!)

No time to waste, I skimmed my friend’s updates to see who’s Twittering and it so happen to be John was on. Fortunately, John was also online on gTalk so I told him about my idea and I told him that I’d like to do it with him.

“That could be cool!” John said.

So be it, without further ado…

The Twitterview With John Chow

kidblogger: @JohnChow John, welcome to the FIRST Twitter interview, all questions and answers are less than 140 characters. Think you can handle?

JohnChow: @ Sure! But I’m heading home right now so just shoot the question over and I’ll answer them either on the road of when I get home!

kidblogger: @JohnChow No probs, that’s the good thing about this Twitter interview, you can do it wherever, whenever ;-)
kidblogger: @JohnChow So first question: If people ask, who is John Chow, what would you say?

JohnChow: @kidblogger John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales

kidblogger: @JohnChow What’s the main reason you started JohnChow.com?

JohnChow: @kidblogger I got tired of staring at my photo that was on the site for the past five years when it was just a site and not a blog.

kidblogger: @JohnChow LOL You didn’t change http://tinyurl.com/cuputm in years!
kidblogger: @JohnChow Can you tell us a “little” snippet on how you turned your personal blog into this huge celebrity blog? You’re a celebrity now ;-)

JohnChow: @kidblogger I would say by being myself and not pretending to be someone I’m not. With me, what you see is what you get.

kidblogger: @JohnChow I totally agree. Now let’s go a bit technical: Your top 3 ways to generate traffic to a blog?

JohnChow: @kidblogger 1 – hold a viral contest. 2 – Make a guest post on the biggest blog in your niche. 3 – Capture all leads coming to your blog.

kidblogger: @JohnChow Shweet! So one of your relatives just started his own blog and he would like to make money, what tip would you give him?

JohnChow: @kidblogger I tell him to forgot about the money and just blog. The money will come later.

kidblogger: @JohnChow What’s the biggest mistake you did on your blog that still haunts you now?

JohnChow: @kidblogger It may not be the biggest but it is the most costly. I used my own name for the blog. I should have used a more business name.

kidblogger: @JohnChow You hit tons of people with that one (including me LOL). Other than blogging, what do you do online?

JohnChow: @kidblogger I have other sites and I have an ad network. Other stuff I do online is the same as everyone else. chat, email, twitter, etc.

kidblogger: @JohnChow Tell us more about your ad network and what it serves :-)

JohnChow: @kidblogger The ad network, www.ttzmedia.com serve product ads for shopping and tech related sites and blogs. Payout is CPC based.

kidblogger: @JohnChow That’s great! So I think this is enough to set the record of the world’s FIRST Twitter interview aye? Any final words of wisdom?

JohnChow: @kidblogger If you can make something for a little less than your competition and sell it for a little more, you’re doing OK!

kidblogger: @JohnChow Alright! So that’s it John, thanks for doing the interview. Are you going to post about this on your blog after I compile it? :-P

JohnChow: @kidblogger Sure! I’ll link you up.

kidblogger: @JohnChow Haha, you’re the man! I’ll just twit the link later on. Talk to you soon John :-)

What Do You Think

First of all, kudos to John Chow for doing the Twitterview with me.

Expect more of this from me in the next couple of weeks as I really get the hang of it, heh – but I would LOVE to hear your opinions to improve my next Twitterviews. The comment form below is open for business aye!

Update 2/9/09 10:24PM – It looks like other people have already been doing Twitterviews (Some call it Twinterviews) before. Like I said, it was just a rad idea so I implemented it right way. I would like to leave this quote from my favorite guy, Tony Robbins, “You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.”

The post What Is Twitterview And How I Exploited It appeared first on Carl Ocab.