Guest Bloggers

AI in Workflow: Brand Analytics, Influencer Insights, and Journalist Discovery #AIg

July 15, 2024 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

What Happened
In June 2024, Meltwater rolled out a series of AI-powered updates designed to accelerate brand monitoring, improve outreach targeting, and enhance campaign planning. Key additions include AI-generated Brand Analytics Tabs that compile real-time brand health reports, an AI Journalist Search tool to help PR teams identify relevant media contacts faster, and enhanced influencer campaign insights for optimizing creator partnerships. These features embed directly into Meltwater’s platform, allowing marketing, PR, and brand teams to act on insights without switching tools or relying on manual data aggregation.

Who’s Impacted
B2B – Marketing agencies, PR firms, and brand teams gain faster reporting cycles, more precise journalist targeting, and improved influencer ROI measurement.
B2C – Consumers benefit indirectly from more timely, relevant campaigns and better-aligned influencer collaborations.
Nonprofits – Advocacy groups and cause-based organizations can track brand sentiment around campaigns in real time, identify aligned journalists for earned media, and optimize influencer outreach for donor or supporter engagement.

Why It Matters Now
Fact: Meltwater’s AI-generated Brand Analytics Tabs compile brand health metrics in minutes instead of days.
Tactic: Brand managers should use these dashboards for weekly performance reviews, enabling faster pivots when sentiment shifts.

Fact: AI Journalist Search matches topics and coverage patterns to relevant media contacts automatically.
Tactic: PR teams can reduce research time and improve outreach conversion rates by targeting journalists most likely to engage.

Fact: Enhanced influencer campaign insights reveal engagement patterns, audience overlap, and ROI trends.
Tactic: Social media teams should use these analytics to refine influencer selections and negotiate data-driven contracts.

KPIs Impacted: Brand sentiment score, journalist outreach response rate, influencer campaign ROI, time-to-report delivery, campaign optimization cycle time.

Action Steps

Integrate Meltwater’s AI-generated Brand Analytics Tabs into brand monitoring workflows for faster insights.
Use AI Journalist Search to build targeted media lists based on coverage relevance.
Analyze influencer campaign insights to improve creator partnerships and audience targeting.
Schedule regular performance reviews to act quickly on emerging brand opportunities or risks.

“AI-driven brand monitoring doesn’t just track sentiment—it shortens the time from signal to action, making every response sharper and more strategic.” – Basil Puglisi

References
Meltwater. (2024, June). AI-generated Brand Analytics Tabs, AI Journalist Search, and Influencer Campaign Insights. Retrieved from https://www.meltwater.com/en/product-updates-year-end-2024

Disclosure:
This article is #AIgenerated with minimal human assistance. Sources are provided as found by AI systems and have not undergone full human fact-checking. Original articles by Basil Puglisi undergo comprehensive source verification.

Natural Disaster Preparation in Your Pocket

February 7, 2013 by Basil Puglisi 1 Comment

Most of us are familiar with how convenient apps can make our lives these days. Do you need to map out your daily caloric intake? You’ve got it. Want one-button access to local movie showings? There’s no problem there either. What you may not know is that there are apps designed to even save your life during an emergency. Most U.S. Regions are susceptible to one form or another of natural disaster. Here are some ways your smart phone or tablet can help you get out of them safely:
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross apps: Hurricane App, Shelter Finder App, First Aid App, Earthquake App, and Wildfire App provide an easy-to-use toolkit designed to help you during a weather emergency. Information on these apps can be found at http://www.redcross.org/prepare/mobile-apps and accessed at the iTunes App Store and Google Play. You can broadcast your safety status to social networks like Facebook or Twitter with the touch of a button, create a family emergency plan using steps and checklists, monitor weather alerts for your location (or the locations of friends and family), or find an open ARC shelter.
Plerts
Plerts for the iPhone, iPod Touch (formerly BuddyGuard) is a free app platform with a plethora of useful tools to stay connected during a natural disaster or emergency. You can set up Plerts interface to connect to social media outlets like Facebook, sharing your condition with your personal network. The app includes the Lifelink program, which backs up recorded activities on your phone (real-time) during an emergency and stores them on a temporary cloud website. Plerts is also equipped with an impact detection function which uses the hardware in modern smartphones to recognize when the user has fallen or been involved in an impact over a certain degree of force. Find more information at https://plerts.com/. It is available on the iTunes App Store, and soon to Google Play.
iMAPWeather Radio
The iMapWeather Radio app accesses the GPS capabilities on your phone to monitor your location and safety, provides you with local weather information, and activates your phone’s alarm automatically in the event of an emergency. Find this app at http://imapweatherradio.com/ or Google Play and the iPhone App Store.
Disaster Readiness
Disaster Readiness is a preparation app that comes preloaded with 175,000+ resources on how to survive any given natural disaster. Its biggest highlight is that these resources are inherent to the app.In other words, should you be without service, you don’t need the internet to access them. Topics include: emergency planning, sheltering, evacuation in addition to specific emergencies like terrorism, fire, wildfires, chemical emergencies and more. Find the full list at http://www.phoneflips.com/2011/disaster-readiness-guide/. This app is available at iTunes, Google Play and Amazon.
FEMA
Frequently, the primary concern involved with communication during a natural disaster is power outages. Cell phone airways may be under a lot of pressure, taxed by thousands of worried people trying to contact their families. In contrast, text messages leave a very small footprint, requiring little service and are a reliable way to send as well as receive information. FEMA, along with its standard natural disaster app featuring many of the benefits of the other apps listed above, offers a text messaging program. By texting the FEMA number (43362), including a command in the body of the text, you can receive monthly alerts. These include preparedness tips, shelter locations and open disaster recovery centers. For more information on how to use FEMA’s text messaging program, visit www.fema.gov/text-messages.
Don’t be caught off guard during an emergency. In our digitally-connected world, the solution is as simple as your smartphone. Be prepared by putting all the tools requires, listed above, to safely emerge from a natural disaster as close to you as your pocket.
Jay Acker leads a production team at safetyservicescompany.com that creates safety training materials. SSC offers contractor certification assistance for ISNetworld®, PICS®, and other contractor verification servicers.

Making the Social Connection an Emotional Connection

February 5, 2013 by Basil Puglisi 14 Comments

Marketers know that the best way to reach their audience is to drive an emotional connection between the brand and the end user. With the advent of social media and mobile marketing, we have an exceptional advantage to driving that connection.
Customers are no longer sharing their experiences of your brand between the hours of nine to five, Monday to Friday via the 800 number they were traditionally pushed through. Their experiences have become part of your brand’s story, online, for the world to see, 24 hours a day. So how are you telling your story?
Consider the 4 E’s: Engage, Educate, Excite, Evangelize. Here are five tips all marketers should consider when crafting the story for their brand.
Engage:
Identify your target audience. Decide what the key words are for your industry. Embrace the opportunity to engage with your community in two-way conversation daily. Trust and loyalty are built over time, as with any good relationship. Remember, if you suck offline, you suck online!
Educate:
Your customers don’t know what they don’t know. By engaging in communities where your customers are, you are raising awareness about what it is your business does, and adding value to the relationship. Joining the conversation could be as simple as answering questions they may have, ie. friendsourcing. This allows an opportunity to learn from each other; you educate them and they educate you. Then you’re on your way to positioning yourself as an influencer and industry leader.
Excite:
Be authentic, be positive, be transparent. I align my business with leaders: are forward-thinking, action-oriented risk-takers, who maintain a positive outlook. There will always be those who are not (ie. twankers). By engaging positively, you’re able to insert your unique value proposition into the relationship, and instill excitement around your product/service.
Evangelize:
Identify the influencers within each community: hashtags are an effective method of organizing tweets around a particular topic. They are created around an event or an existing community. Use them! Once you have an engaged, educated, excited community, the evangelizing will happen naturally.
Make this a priority!
Don’t be left behind, the conversations are going on with or without you. And remember, incorporating a social media policy is vital when your team is representing your business.
Guest Post by:
Jeffrey Hayzlett, Bestselling Author, Global Business Celebrity & Sometime Cowboy
JEFFREY HAYZLETT is a global business celebrity and former Fortune 100 c-suite executive. From small business to international corporations, he has put his creativity and extraordinary entrepreneurial skills into play, launching ventures blending his leadership perspectives, insights into professional development, mass marketing prowess and affinity for social media. He is a well-traveled public speaker, the author of the bestselling business books, The Mirror Test and Running the Gauntlet, and one of the most compelling figures in global business.
Jeffrey is an esteemed business and marketing expert, appearing frequently on programs like Fox Business News, MSNBC’s Your Business, Bloomberg West, and NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump. Drawing upon an eclectic background in business, buoyed by a stellar track record of keynote speaking, and deeply rooted in cowboy lore, Jeffrey energizes his role driving and delivering change. He is a turnaround architect of the highest order, a maverick marketer who delivers scalable campaigns, embraces traditional modes of customer engagement, and possesses a remarkable cachet of mentorship, corporate governance and brand building.

Writing Smart – How To Write For The Robots In A Post-Panda And Penguin World

February 1, 2013 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Back in the day when everyone was keyword stuffing we talked about writing for Google, and how many people would opt to do that over writing for their actual traffic. Thanks to the big changes brought about by Google Panda and Penguin. However, this is something that rarely happens any more, the general consensus being that the best way to please Google is now ironically to actually write for the people.
In other words then not much has changed other than Google’s accuracy and sensitivity. That was always the plan over at Google HQ, but a predictable algorithm that relied on keywords meant that many people started abusing the system.
So sure writing for people is definitely the best way to please Google, the best business sense, and the best way to future proof your marketing. But at the same time it’s also worth noting that for the foreseeable future at least, Google is always going to have to use some kind of algorithm to identify the content of a site and to find new pages to crawl, which means it doesn’t hurt to think about the way Google will view your content.
So how can you write smart and help make your content Google-friendly and good value for your readers?
Synonyms
One thing to bear in mind is that precise keywords are pretty much useless these days. Partly this is to do with the simple fact that Google is coming down hard on sites that stuff keywords into their content (meaning you risk being penalised) but it’s also due to the new semantic search that means Google will second guess what users are looking for anyway. So if someone searches for ‘types of chair’ (I do not know why that was the example that came to mind…) then there’s a good chance that Google will bring up results for ‘kinds of furniture’ anyway.
So if you want to increase your chances of your search coming up, then you should attempt to include some synonyms and some slightly different versions of the same phrases in order to communicate to Google what your site is about with using the same exact line over and over. In this way, Google is almost celebrating a good vocabulary…
Length
The word on the street is that Google prefers longer articles, and reading around various SEO blogs research seems to support this. Partly this is because longer articles tend to mean greater depth/more research and of course more content for them to crawl. On the other hand though, most people find that if an article is too long then it can be a little daunting and off putting for readers. A good compromise then might be a long page, but with lots of headers and sections that readers can dip in and out of or skim over.
Style
While Google won’t be able to analyse style too much, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was biased against poor spelling and grammar so good writing should obviously be a priority. At the same time they also like opinion and reflection, which means a first person style (like this one) with lots of ‘Is’ and ‘we’s’ peppered in for good measure could be another way to get in their good books.

Attached Images:

License Image #1: Creative Commons image source
License Image #2: Creative Commons image source

Today’s guest post was submitted by Todd Ramos, Founder of PenTech Consulting. He is a part of one of the topmost SEO companies in CT. You can read more about PenTech Consulting and the work they do from their website or follow them on twitter @pentechconsult.

Simple Shopping Carts For Small Businesses

January 29, 2013 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

With a world of potential customers scouring the internet to purchase goods, introducing a fully functional e-commerce site allows even the smallest businesses to advance beyond their immediate local market. Transforming a simple business site into a strong source of revenue, shopping cart software (or a hosted e-commerce site, as below) allows sites to have online product catalogues, to interact with consumers through a seamless interface, supervise ordering procedures, and provide the intermediate interactive component between the main business site, back-end inventory and the payment gateway.
In order to create an e-commerce site for a small business, dependent upon technological experience and prowess, businesses have two main options. One choice is to use a hosted e-commerce software. A fully featured hosting platform from one service provider includes a comprehensive service solution. It covers aspects from initial domain registration to supplying the tools needed to easily build a fully functioning and secure e-commerce site. Though largely comprehensive and simple, this option does not allow businesses much freedom or control.
For more technologically advanced business owners who would prefer an extensive degree of control over the intricacies of their site and cart components, there is an integrated approach. This involves adding stand-alone shopping cart software to an existing secure business site as a preferred way of moving into the world of e-commerce. But this should only be considered if some form of in-house technological expertise can be accessed.
Therefore the question arises, which shopping cart is right for a small business? The choice will vary depending on the business itself and of course budget. Some options include:
Cube Cart
Protected by McAfee security, and offering an initial 14 day trial for free, Cube Cart provides a combination of reporting features (generating and exporting), customer management, SEO benefits, development potential and plugins. It may be best suited to businesses planning to grow in the near future.
As an overview, feature availability differs between the free Cube Cart Lite, and Cube Cart Pro (a £120 one off payment for full access to the code) with Pro supplying unlimited features, mobile optimised storefront, and technical support among other aspects. Both are compatible with most of the major payment gateways such as PayPal and SagePay.
Cube Cart features an intuitive control panel which allows for real-time statistics, order and stock notification, and Cube Cart Pro has no limits on number of store administrators, orders or customers.
Open Cart
Designed with visual interface appeal and clarity, SEO benefit, rich features and of course small business budget in mind, Open Cart is open source and free to download. Like Cube Cart, a demo is available, and Open Cart is compatible with 22 payment gateways, including SagePay, PayPal and WorldPay. Unlike Cube Cart however, a client account is not required at checkout which may not be of benefit to marketing strategies, but could encourage customer purchasing.
Available in 18 languages, and with multiple currencies and multiple tax rate application features, OpenCart has three different reporting options: Sales report, Products Viewed, and Products Purchased, but while still secure, does not have the same high profile security which Cube Cart boasts. Extended functionality via modules and a template base mean Open Cart is easily personalised, configured and adapted. Shipping methods, especially for the UK are extensive, and regarding support, community forums are free. Regarding commercial support, a list of professional, multi-country technical partner details are provided, but this service is not included.
VirtueMart
Compatible with Joomla!, VirtueMart is a complete e-commerce solution offering an unlimited number of products and categories, multiple currencies, compatibility with payment gateways such as PayPal and SystemPay, category meta tags for integrated SEO benefits, and other features such as the ability to sell downloadable products. VirtueMart also offers a straight ‘catalogue mode’ where the shopping cart feature can be switched off.
Like Open Cart, VirtueMart is open source, is free and customisable which may suit smaller business budgets. This compatibility with small businesses can also be seen in that VirtueMart is best used on low to medium traffic sites. Anonymous checkout is also available, and for those businesses owners considering the possibility of m-commerce in the future, VirtueMart has a supporting iPhone app – iVMStore. A demo version, plus user support manuals and user community forum are available, but any other technical support is not included.
Magento
Offering a combination of the above, Magento is not only open source and free at its most basic level, but has more extensive annual subscription options available (Magento Enterprise, and Enterprise Premium) which range in cost from approximately £9000 to £31000.
Feature rich, completely scaleable and secure, Magento suits a vast range of businesses, boasting extensive customer management, marketing benefits, search engine optimisation, multiple payment and shipping compatibility, plus allows merchant flexibility and control over the look, and functionality of their e-commerce stores.
Mobile optimisation is available and allows for administrative tasks (such as branded storefront creation) in addition to enabling useable cart m-commerce capabilities. Themes and extensions (such as payment integration or shipping features) are available, as is forum support for Magento’s Community Edition. For Magento Enterprise, full support is available, and Magento Enterprise Premium offers user training, multiple licensing, further round the clock support, and consulting reviews.
Alastair Kane is a freelance writer who works for 2touch a leading provider of fulfilment services including ecommerce fulfilment

Well I Never, Five Tech Developments We Didn’t See Coming

January 22, 2013 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

The world of modern technology moves so very quickly. It is difficult to keep abreast from week to week as scientists, computer experts and programmers come up with so many new and exciting developments.
Some innovations – such as the useful and fun Google Goggles – have come right out of nowhere in so far as the consciousness of the majority of the public is concerned.
Even mobile telephones with MMS capability, camera integration and web access are something which the public could never have imagined 15 years ago but which have become a necessity now. Other advances such as digital photo frames, mobile phone payments which work with scanners and online gaming with voice chat were hard to predict yet seemed likely with the way in which technology was headed for so long.
Here are just five of the most interesting developments in technology so far – we definitely didn’t see these ones coming!
iPod: The iPod is one of the iconic gadgets of our modern generation. Considering that the predecessor was the personal stereo CD player then this compact little machine really did amaze the general public. The gadget has come a very long way since the original came out and now boasts a touch screen, internet access, video capability, and an incredible amount of storage for games, music and apps.
Reverse image search: The reverse image search sites were a real innovation in themselves. To think that one could upload a photo and that software would find that item and all its relevant details on the internet was incredible.
Google Goggles has taken this technology mobile and through taking a simple photograph with a mobile phone you can find all manner of results on your chosen subject.
Cloud: Cloud computing is something which many in the know could have predicted. However, the way in which it has changed how we work forever is remarkable. By storing information and software on the internet, we now have access to our data in a way like never before.
Touch screens: We now take mobile phones with touch screens for granted and these can be purchased for a reasonable amount of money. However, when these first were introduced they were an incredible innovation.
Google Glass: Google Glass takes us into the realms of science fiction with its “augmented reality”. These streamlined glasses with a small screen above the right eye will give you information on your next appointment, the weather up ahead – and potentially so much more. This is one innovation which – if it caught on – would change the face of the world as we know it.

Sarah Paige is a writer with a keen interest in telecommunications. Sarah currently has her eye on cloud computing companies such as the Macquarie Telecom Group (ASX:MAQ). Follow her on twitter @sarahleepaige.

Social Marketing With Photos

January 21, 2013 by Basil Puglisi 1 Comment

They say a picture is worth a thousand words—a concept advertisers and marketers have practiced for years. As marketers switched to social media, though, photos were temporarily sidelined in favor of short snippets of text.
But the photo is coming back. Tweens and teens have flooded Instagram with photos of new outfits and artistic nail polish. As these all-too-impressionable young consumers browse through thousands of photos on various social media sites, marketers are learning that if you want to reach younger generations, a picture is worth morethan a thousand words.
Whether your marketing campaign is targeted to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or a combination of all of the above, there are a few tips to keep in mind.
Keep It Interesting
Consumers log into social media sites for a variety of reasons, many of which revolve around being entertained. Pinterest and Instagram have become so successful because they provide a way for users to share concepts in one simple image, engaging them and inciting them to post comments.
But it’s important to come across as though you’re sharing interesting ideas rather than simply pushing a product. A sofa company, for instance, would do better to post photos of a uniquely-decorated room featuring their sofas rather than simply posting a photo of a sofa. A service-oriented business like a pest control company could post humorous photos of their workers, either on the job or hanging around the office. These photos humanize the business, making customers feel as though they are part of the family.
Run Contests
Several restaurant chains have invited customers to upload a picture of themselves dining in the restaurant to a social media site. For major chains, sometimes the promise of fifteen minutes of fame on a prominent social media site may be enough incentive to participate. However, smaller businesses may have to offer a large monetary prize. Customers will have fun and businesses will see their social media pages filled with interesting photos.
Pay Attention
The great thing about social media is that you’ll usually know instantly whether a photo is a hit with followers or not. Pay attention to your likes, shares, and retweets and note what time of day they happen. If some photos are more popular than others, stick with those types of photos in the future. You’ll begin to get a feel for your demographic in order to be able to better appeal to them after only a short time.
Remember, photos are only a part of social media marketing. Hashtags are still important, as are regular text updates. Don’t discount yourself as a personality in your social media campaigns. Some of the most successful social media campaigns involve the face of the company updating followers on their adventures as they travel, hang out with clients, and enjoy their own products.

Guest Blogger:
During 2003, John Lessnau popularized Text Link Advertising when he founded LinkAdage.com John is working at doing the same thing 10 years later with social media links at his new website SocialLinkMart.com. Social Link Mart is an open Social Media Link Marketplace for SEOs, website owners, and social media enthusiasts to buy Facebook likes or buy and sell Facebook Shares, Google Plus Shares, and Twitter Tweets. Social link sellers are ranked by social media authority which keeps the bots and spammers out and real people in.

A Place in the SEO Industry for Creative Majors!

January 18, 2013 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Having been a career counselor for several years to students pursuing their bachelor’s and master’s degrees, many of them were completely indifferent to how their creative major could lead to a successful career, even those who were as close as 2 semesters away from graduation. These students who have pursued degrees in the arts or creative field will need to make very careful decisions in the several months before graduation as they will need to decide to continue their education, find work in the competitive programs in art studios or teaching positions, or look for work in the business world and use their talents to enhance a company’s profile and marketing strategies.
While designing and creative positions are few and far between in most companies and usually require years of experience before you’ll even get a phone interview, Search Engine Optimization industry is exploding and SEO companies are terrific places for recent college graduates to bust into the world of business, marketing, design, and public relations. Many current students are wondering how their more artistic degree can be an equal competition to the more standard business degrees after putting on the cap and gown and diving head first into the workforce.
The great thing about SEO services from Toronto, New York, California and all across the US is that they normally cater to recent college graduates, or those nearly finished with their degree. These entry-level positions offered are in exciting and fun fields that are perfect for those with an education in the liberal arts, creative writing or design.
Some of these creative positions include:
Web and Software Designer
These designer are the true creative geniuses, they understand a little bit of HTLM and CSS coding, but they’re much more creative, innovative and ready to enhance the look of a company in mere hours or days through their work in Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Illustrator. These positions can pay a great starting wage, as the expertise and artistic skills needed are something that take time to hone and perfect for the business world.
Web/Software Coder
Coders speak a language that is unintelligible to most of us, and work with the designers to bring their conceptions to life on websites and in the company’s software. The complicated HTLM and CSS coding languages require more extensive training than a designer would get in regular art courses, and will provide you with a terrific paycheck just out of college.
Content Writer
This is where your humanities classes and your love of the home decorating and discovery channels will come in handy! Content writing for websites and blogs to enhance the link backs to a client’s site is a terrific position for the creative writing, literature, and even art history majors. You’ll write about everything from shoe polish to construction techniques, to SEO itself and research dozens of topics each day to provide quality content for the SEO company’s clients.
Fulfillment
Fulfillment specialists are definitely a package deal and are a great way to use nearly all of the capacities in one position. While other positions are rushing to get their work done for the clients, you will be busy double checking their work, enhancing the quality of the content, and making sure that all the promises and contracts are fulfilled.
Social Media Specialist
This is perfect for those who spent more time on twitter while in their university’s library than they did on actual assignments. Social media is a terrific tool for marketing and promoting that most SEO companies have taken advantage of in recent years. As a Social Media Specialist you’ll understand the importance of linking items to other websites, and spreading the word through Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, and of course, Twitter.
Get the use you want out of your creative degree and look into the thriving SEO industry after your graduation in 2013!

Lucy Markham worked as a career and academic counselor for several years and the University of Florida and is currently pursuing her degree in Education from the University of Utah.

5 WordPress Plugins To Optimise, Secure & Promote Your Site

January 15, 2013 by Basil Puglisi 1 Comment

Wordpress now powers over 17.5% of all websites on the net, if you work in the online marketing industry, you’d be hard pressed not to have stumbled across a site that uses it as not just a blogging tool, but as a fully functional CMS.
“With great power comes great responsibility”
I personally run nearly all my websites on WordPress as a free platform it’s incredibly versatile and thanks to a very active development community, there are a number of mods, themes and plugins that can turn your site into a living breathing behemoth.
Unfortunately the barebones package of WordPress leaves something to be desired when it comes to optimisation, security and promotion. Fear not however as today I’m going to talk you through 5 WP plugins that your site shouldn’t be without!
Promotion & Optimisation
WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast
This plugin is an absolute godsend; it has multiple features that make multiple plugins redundant offering users the ability to customise post / category / tag titles and meta descriptions, robots meta configuration, canonical tags, breadcrumbs, cleaning up permalinks, generation of XML sitemaps + pinging and much more.
As a previous user of the “All in one SEO” plugin I can say that Yoast’s equivalent is vastly superior offering much more flexibility and it’s incredibly user friendly, meaning most users who aren’t familiar with WordPress should be able to use it without too much of a struggle.
– http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
Social Author Bio (or Equivalent)
Author Rank is hotly tipped to be an increasingly important ranking metric within the SERP’s. If you haven’t enabled the rel=author tag on your website, I’d highly recommend you do so immediately!
The Social Author Bio plugin is particularly helpful for wordpress sites that have multiple contributors and it ensures that each post is correctly attributed. I personally have a sitewide link pointing to my profile, but this isn’t always the best approach!
If you’re unfamiliar with Author Rank you can read up on the patent here or read more about it over at SEOmoz.
There are numerous benefits that come from implementing the rel=author tag including increased real estate within organic results.

The ability to see rough stats of your posts on external sites within Google Webmaster Tools:

I also believe there’s a cumulative effect on all of your content that has been published, so the more active you are and the more popular your posts are, the higher you’ll rank!
– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social-autho-bio/
W3 Total Cache
Matt Cutts announced back in April 2010 that page speed incorporates page speed as a ranking factor. By default wordpress stores most of its data within a MySQL database, so every time you visit a page, it’ll make a call to that database and then output the data. For sites that have limited visitors this won’t have much of an effect on page load speeds, but when you’re on a server that’s being shared and start to see a significant uplift in traffic, page load times start to dwindle.
Thanks to the W3 Total Cache plugin you can reduce server load, increase page speed and ultimately increase user satisfaction as they don’t spend all day waiting for your page to load, which may result in a lower bounce rate and increased organic visibility!
All this from a plugin that takes just a few seconds to install.
– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/
Backup & Security
Wordpress isn’t perfect and there have been many noted cases of security holes within many popular plugins and within WordPress itself. One of the most noted cases happened back in August 2011 where a serious vulnerability was discovered within TimThumb a popular image resizing script that was used by a number of theme developers.
Thankfully there are a few options available to WP users that can help you backup and safeguard your site from any hacking attempts and should the worst happen, at least you’ll have an up to date backup to restore!
WordPress Backup to Dropbox
I’m a big fan of cloud based backups, as the backups that you store on your personal computer have a tendency of getting lost, or people get lazy. With external backups you’ve got peace of mind, knowing that there will always be a copy available to you should you need it!
– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-backup-to-dropbox/
Better WP Security
Prevention is better than cure – however it usually takes a hacking attempt or a site loss before we realise this!
The better WP security plugin hides a number of known vulnerabilities within WordPress and offers users some basic tips and advice on how to prevent your login details from getting into the wrong hands.
– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/better-wp-security/
Your Favourite Plugins
These are my top 5 recommended plugins; do you have a tweak or plugin that you just couldn’t live without? If so please let me know within the comments or let me know via G+ or Twitter!
Sebastian Cowie is the managing director and SEO consultant for SC Digital LTD. When he’s not exploring backlink profiles or increasing organic visibility and ROI for his clients he likes to unwind with a game of chess or by playing extreme death metal on his signature KKV BC Rich.

7 Reasons Why You Should Use YouTube for Marketing

January 14, 2013 by Basil Puglisi 4 Comments

Let’s just pretend that you want to find out how to tie a bow. Do a Google search and, besides a few top-rated articles, you will be served some instructional videos. You will be more likely to click on a video than on an article because in your case the former will be more helpful than the latter. After all, it’s easier to watch than to read. Now there’s a good chance that the video you’ve chosen comes from YouTube.
All online marketers use Facebook and Twitter, but many don’t use YouTube at all, or do it only marginally. That can prove to be a big mistake, as YouTube marketing has some significant benefits that no other social media sites have – not even Facebook and Twitter.

YouTube Is Free

It’s true that making videos and uploading them will take time, but it’s time well-invested. The video-uploading process is simple and convenient, and can be done across operating systems and devices. Probably no other video site is as optimized for mobile devices as YouTube is – uploading videos on the go is really, really easy. Once a video is uploaded it’s there forever, for everyone to view.

Search Engines Love Video Content

Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines rank highly websites featuring video content. Many big brands, including Coca-Cola, tend to embed YouTube videos into their homepages and other primary pages. You can upload videos to your YouTube channel and then embed them in your web pages. Search engines will love you for it.

Reaches to a Global Audience

YouTube videos can help your business attract customers from all over the world. Using adequate keywords is important to target the right customers. But if you have a small local business, you can also target only local customers. YouTube, with hundreds of millions of users, is in the end one of the world’s largest and most visited sites, and it can propel your content into the global spotlight. If you want to build a YouTube audience faster, you might want to buy YouTube views, while it’s a conterversal subject and practice, the bottom line is its eyeballs on your content, after all is it so bad that budlight buys views during the superbowl?

Improves Your Reputation

Web users love helpful videos that solve their problems and give them practical tips, and they form a favorable opinion of those who create them. By showcasing your expertise through YouTube videos you gain the trust of customers, who will be more likely to buy your products or services. Not every business has the time or energy to create and distribute free content that helps customers though. Those that do stand out.

Builds Trust

A customer is more likely to make a purchase from a brand they trust. Social media marketing via YouTube is a highly effective way of building trust. By creating insider videos, you give faces to the people who run your business. If the faces are honest and friendly, you will be liked. Showing the location of your business is also a good idea.

Spreads Your Content Across the Web

YouTube videos are one of the most shared types of content on the Web. Video content that goes viral can bring you hundreds or even thousands of viewers to your site, and that means many new customers. A video with only 10,000 viewers can bring you a huge exposure. And when that video mentions or promotes a product, it always means increased sales.
The conclusion is that YouTube marketing has many advantages that simply cannot be ignored. Use it to your advantage.
Aishwarya Vohra is a blogger and an SEO expert. She writes on topics as different as internet marketing and parenting.