Many savvy businesses are now looking to take social media to the next level by harnessing its power; reaching out to those individuals who have distinguished themselves as online leaders, that is, people who have gained online “authority” and leveraging this social media know-how to persuade the behavior of others. As a result, “Digital Influence” has become the hottest trend in social media today. By studying, and courting, the people who have become prominent thought-leaders (i.e. those who enjoy a large and devoted virtual following), businesses can capitalize on the “social capital” these individuals provide.

Social capital is defined as “the goodwill available to individuals or groups. Its source lies in the structure and content of the actor’s social relations. Its effects flow from the information, influence, and solidarity it makes available to the actor” (Adler and Kwon 2002, p. 23). In other words, people like to do business with companies that others whom they trust (on or offline) recommend. By indentifying these connected vendors- the theory goes- and plying them with perks, discounts, special events, etc, in recognition of their social stature and support, the company will ultimately benefit from the influence these vendors have over the buying behavior of their followers.

Thus a new industry is born.

Companies like Klout, PeerIndex, Kred and others are investing millions of dollars to understand how our social media activity translates into online influence. The outcome of this hefty investment is software that tracks elements of online “social capital” based on proprietary algorithms of how people engage and connect in various social networks and assign the influencer a score. The problem is, the actual impact that these scores have on the good-ole’ bottom line is yet to be determined. Many companies have taken a “ready-fire-aim” approach to managing their social influencers, before developing a thoughtful, strategic approach to managing this outreach effort and ROI expectations, and are throwing real dollars after virtual dollars.

Like any marketing strategy, businesses must first take the time to learn about digital influence, its benefits, and how to connect with influential consumers. Businesses and brands must resist the urge to dive right in, and instead first develop meaningful engagement strategies and thus gain the greatest value from the identified “influence vendors”.

For more information contact our Marketing Department or call (215) 345-5424.

By this point, you have probably heard of Pinterest and “pinning”.  Perhaps you have seen “pins” pop up on your Facebook newsfeed or among your friends’ tweets. Pinterest is a bulletin board style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage themed image collections. Each of these collections is a board. You can make one for Cool Craft Ideas, Philadelphia Phillies, Recipes to Try or anything else you choose. Users can then browse other boards for inspiration. They can comment on a pin, re-pin it to their own board or “like” the pin.

Only a little over a year old, Pinterest has already become the third most popular social network, behind Facebook and Twitter.

According to Mashable.com, Pinterest has already surpassed LinkedIn and Google+ in popularity.

1. Facebook: 7 billion
2. Twitter: 182 million
3. Pinterest: 104 million
4. LinkedIn: 86 million
5. Tagged: 72 million
6. Google+: 61 million

With this incredible growth, it is vital to consider how Pinterest can help your business. The social aspects of Pinterest are what make it especially valuable to businesses. When someone sees a visually appealing item that has been pinned, they can easy repin it. When they click on a pin, it takes them to the website from which it came. This makes Pinterest a great referral tool.

With Pinterest’s skyrocketing popularity, perhaps it is time to add a “Pin It” button to your social media toolbar.

Contact IQnection or more information on a Social Media Strategy for your business – or Call (215) 345-5424.

Recently however, according to Beth Kantor, author of Social Media Whitepaper “How to Centralize Your Social Media Programs for Success”, non-profits have not only adopted the art/science of social media, but has used its unique, organic selling feature (i.e. people helping people) to transform the medium in ways that the for-profit business can only admire from afar.
According to Kantor, non-profits had previously employed a “listen, fail informatively, and evolve approach” that for-profits organizations cannot afford to attempt. Subsequently, non-profits have developed a strategy over time that is uniquely successful in the competitive pursuit of virtual attention, as well as procuring real-life cash.

This unique non-profit approach to social media uses the power of people to connect, in an informal fashion, cost-effectively and across institutional boundaries. Such methods include:

• Deepening Relationships and Engagement – March of Dimes uses this strategy particularly well in their “Tell your Story” Campaign. Supporters of the cause are empowered to come together as a community, with very little assistance from the official organization, and take specific action of their own in the name of the organization. For example, members came out in force to support the Maddie Campaign, raising tens of thousands of dollars in memory of a toddler.
• Individuals & Small Groups Self-Organizing around non-profit Causes – Empowered to create, join and activate groups independently from the official organization, groups such as “Twestival” and the “Facebook Causes” Birthday application have spontaneous strung up. Comedian Stephen Colbert has gotten into the self-organizing arena, lending his participation to DonorsChoose and their “Birthday Give Back” campaign.
• Facilitation, Collaboration and Crowdsourcing – Non-profits organizations pool the passions of their human resources and create new and interesting collaborations. For example “Lights, Camera, Action” Film festival was created by individuals across several different non-profits in effort to promote filmmaking-for-a cause.
• Social Change Behind the Firewall – In an early attempt to simply curb the tide of negative social media presence, many traditional non-profits turned their attention to social media simply as a means to stay on top of, and eliminate, negative comments. As their listening campaigns progressed, they soon realized that many comments were positive and worth cultivating. Although first shared only in-house, these adopters realized that this positive sentiment is a powerful marketing tool. By actively and genuinely participating in social media, they have managed to turn critics into supporters.

Social media has quickly become the dream platform for non-profits — with millions of engaged, passionate, empowered users banding together to do good works and help others on behalf of their cause of choice. As true today as when Margaret Mead (1091 – 1978) first quoted this: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”.
Wouldn’t Ms. Mead be amazed how the truth of her statement is more powerful than ever with the advent of social media?!

IQnection is pleased to announce that its present staff members has grown again, with the addition of Becky Blumenthal to the Web Marketing Department. Becky proudly brings her specialty in social media strategy , social bookmarking, pay-per-click management, online reputation management and search engine optimization to IQnection.

Becky has a background in web marketing in the bridal, museum and music industries. She will be supporting IQnection’s core belief that a website should be an organization’s most valuable asset, by providing personalized care and attention to her clients by translating a business or organization’s goals into an online experience that is appealing, and communicates their message.

In her spare time, Becky can be found in any of the various concert venues around the Philadelphia area, dancing to her favorite music or in her kitchen whipping up a delicious dessert. Becky also enjoys crafts, camping, all things history-related and yoga. Becky will be teaching an American History course this summer at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor, NJ. She resides in Huntingdon Valley, PA.

IQnection was started in 2000 by entrepreneurs Greg Cawood and Bob Campbell, two businessmen committed to developing and maintaining innovative, intelligent ways for clients to grow their businesses online. For over ten years, the company has remained at the forefront of web development, hosting, and marketing; providing designs and technical solutions that set our clients apart from their competition. After launching over 1300 websites, IQnection has been honored as one of the Philadelphia area’s top 100 companies.

Contact our Web Marketing Consultants for more information on how our Results Based Web Marketing can help you.

Dori Corr has accepted the position of Web Marketing Consultant with IQnection, Doylestown, PA. IQnection is a premier boutique web development, marketing and hosting company providing designs and technical solutions that set their clients apart from their competition.

IQnection is pleased to announce that its present staff of sixteen members has grown by one, with the addition of Dori Corr to the Web Marketing and Sales department.

Dori has a background in marketing and sales in the healthcare and web broadcasting industries. She will be supporting IQnection’s core belief that a website should be an organization’s most valuable asset, by providing personalized care and attention to her clients by translating a business or organization’s goals into an online experience that is appealing, and communicates their message.

Furthermore, Dori will be contributing copy and content writing, press release and other marketing expertise, as well as social media proficiency, to IQnection’s menu of services.

In her spare time, Dori enjoys screenwriting, biking, hiking and frequent trips to New York City to visit her daughter Mallory who attends NYU. She resides in Carversville with her husband John, son Dalton, and their dogs PennyLane and Tobey.

IQnection was started in 2000 by entrepreneurs Greg Cawood and Bob Campbell, two businessmen committed to developing and maintaining innovative, intelligent ways for clients to grow their businesses online. For over ten years, the company has remained at the forefront of web development, hosting, and web marketing; providing designs and technical solutions that set our clients apart from their competition. After launching over 1300 websites, IQnection has been honored as one of the Philadelphia area’s top 100 companies.

IQnection specializes in web design and web marketing that converts visitors into customers. Request a free consultation and meet the people behind the pixels.

Dori Corr has accepted the position of Web Marketing Consultant with IQnection, Doylestown, PA. IQnection is a premier boutique web development, marketing and hosting company providing designs and technical solutions that set their clients apart from their competition.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

A way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign obtained by dividing the “number of users who clicked on an ad” by the “number of times the ad was delivered”.

Impressions

A measure of the number of times an ad is displayed – whether clicked on or not.

**The key factor is the number of people that have clicked your ad verses the number of people that have seen it. That CTR percentage is a good indicator of the quality of your ads and keywords.

Quality Score

Quality Score is a variable used by Google that can influence both the rank and cost per click of ads. The exact weight of Quality Score has not been revealed by any of the major search engines, and each company has stated that they reserve the right to continually adjust their ranking methodologies.

Conversions

These are pre-determined actions taken by your visitors. Conversions can include different events including – page views, sign-ups, catalogue requests, download, lead generation, inquiries, white papers, and E-commerce sales.

With this change, brand-focused business pages will be getting the large cover photos previously available only on personal profiles. Photos, likes and other ‘apps’ (maps, events, calendar) will be featured at the top of the page, just to the right of the profile photo. Businesses will now be able to make any post appear larger by ‘starring’ or ‘pin’ a new post to the top of their page. In addition, business pages get other new features including messaging capabilities – previously not available for businesses.

The new layout, however, will do away with the ‘landing tabs’ that asked users to like their pages. Now all visitors to a page will see the timeline view by default.

Here is a list of changes to make to improve your brand communications on the new Facebook look:

1. Brand Value – As communicated through the Cover Photo, This ‘signature’ feature can be used for a popular item, artwork or picture of people using your product. You are NOT allowed to use promotional campaign purchase information, call-to-action or reference Facebook interface elements such as ‘Like or Share”.
2. Brand Identification – The profile image will be shown as a box on the left atop your cover photo. The dimensions of this have changed, profile images used previously may be ‘cut off’ with the new format.
3. Page Summary Box – It is important to explain your offerings in this summary, since you are unable to add text to the main images. You can edit this information, but are unable to choose from which fields the information will be populated. The type of information that appears in the summary is specific to your Page’s Category.
4. Direct Link to your Website – By adding your domain in the description summary (www.domain.com) can add a direct link to visit your site.
5. Customer Passage – Access to other content is available through ‘views and apps’ that appears on the right, just below the cover photo. Here is where you can find access to your ‘fan page’, photo albums, video directories, events. This area can be expanded to show all areas available.
6. Pinned Posts – This feature allows featuring a post in a prominent position.
7. Starred Posts – Starring a post will allow it to appear across the complete width.

If you are ready to make the change to the Facebook Timeline for your business, we can help.  Contact our Marketing Department for more information.

Courtesy of National Positions

http://nationalpositions.com/

Google has been very busy with updates over the past year. There have been multiple panda updates to clean up the search results and last year’s caffeine update to speed up indexing of new content. The freshness update will work with these recent updates to help provide the most relevant and up to date information possible.

“We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.”

Degrees of Freshness:

Recent Events or Hot Topics – For events that recently happened or hot topics that are trending online, i.e- NBA Lockout, Conrad Murray Trial, Occupy Oakland Protest. Some of these results may only be  just a few minutes old.

Regularly Recurring Events – Searching for events like the Presidential Election, NFL Scores, and Television Shows (i.e The Walking Dead Recap) will show the most up to date results on the first page. Unless specified otherwise, Google’s freshness update will display the most recent results from around the web with this type of query.

Frequent Updates – This is for searches that do not fall into the hot topic or recurring events categories but are still updated frequently. An example of this would be product reviews (i.e Honda Civic Reviews, Amazon Kindle Reviews).

SEO Firms, like IQnection, adapt to these algorithm changes quickly and efficiently. This helps our clients stay on top of the search engines and receive high quality web traffic. If you are interested in having fresh SEO Copywriting from our expert SEO’s, please contact us for a free evaluation. Our SEO services can help your website stay relevant on Google and other search engines.

The Linux Forum community was started in 2002. Since then, it has grown to be one of the Internet’s premier Linux resources bringing together Linux users from all backgrounds and experience levels.

Greg Cawood, IQnection’s President, is excited about the acquisition. “One of the great things about Linux is the multitude of users out there willing to share their knowledge” he states. “Without Linux, IQnection wouldn’t be where it is today. I see this as a way to give back to the community that has helped us over the years”.

“IQnection is dedicated to rebuilding LinuxForum.com from the ground up to become the Internet’s number one resource for those looking for assistance. Our hosting team is on the site constantly posting helpful articles and answering questions that other Linux users may have.”

About IQnection: IQnection is a web hosting, design, and advertising company located in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia. IQnection began in 2000 developed by entrepreneurs Greg Cawood and Bob Campbell, two businessmen committed to developing and maintaining innovative, intelligent connections for clients to the Internet.