Benefits of Electronic Cigarettes

Benefits of Electronic Cigarettes
http://bit.ly/S8ZdoN

An Electronic cig would be the electronic version of the conventional cigarette. The results of e-cigarettes will be an alternative to the conventional cig since it doesn't trigger any sort of alarming health concerns. When it comes to the visual appeal, the electronic cig is compared with a normal cigarette, except which has a nicotine capsule triggered by the heating unit in the smoking device. With the particular heating product, vaporization is produced to give a nicotine taste that's comparable utilizing  standard smoke, minus its unsafe outcomes. Many individuals who have tried the  electronic cig don't go back to smoking standard cigarettes. 

The electronic cig is just one of the greatest ways to stop smoking. Not entirely that, the e-cigarette is a much better alternative in order to avoid falling inside the trap connected with nicotine reliance. Well, smokers are a form of skeptics as well as doubtful at first to feel that electronic cig is the 'answer' to conserve them through smoking connected conditions. 

Before purchasing an electronic cigarette, its a good idea to find out more. The electronic cig e-cigarette will be the latest battery operated smoking product. The e-cigarette is intended for smokers to have the smoking experience without the ash, flame, carbon monoxide, tar or stinky smell they get with using the traditional cigarettes.

The electronic cigarette smoking device has lots of benefits. To start with, e-cigarettes don't include any type of tobacco. And due to this, smoking is free of hazardous and also unsafe malignant carcinogens that are typically found tobacco items. In addition, the e-cigarette will not contain any type of poison. 

Without doubt, the electronic cig is a much better alternative smoking unit to cut back the health harmful diseases by traditional smoking cigarettes. Nevertheless you could find factors to consider to be purely followed with all the smoking cigarettes gizmo. It isn't really advised for those that have high blood pressure, threat of cardiovascular disease, diabetic issues, high blood pressure, taking drugs for asthma and also depression to make use of e-cigarettes. It is also not appropriate for pregnant women or to nursing mothers not unless instructed by a doctor to do so. 

StumbleUpon Gets Another Big Makeover

StumbleUpon Gets Another Big Makeover
http://bit.ly/NGc3OW

StumbleUpon has just launched a new app for iOS, which brings some features to the StumbleUpon experience still absent from the desktop and Android versions. But that’s not to say they won’t be coming.

“We made the app a lot more fun,” StumbleUpon’s new VP, Product, Cody Simms, tells WebProNews.

The app brings some new user identity-related features to the table, as well as a faster way of stumbling and some new recommendation elements.

The Homepage

Let’s start with the homepage. It now consists of “Content For You,” “Trending” content, “Interest” and “Activity” (as well as “StumbleDNA,” but more on that later).

New StumbleUpon Homepage on iOS

Content For You is essentially the basic StumbleUpon experience that you’re used to – content based on your interests. Trending is new, and allows you to stumble through content that is trending throughout the StumbleUpon universe. This should put the most popular content literally front and center on StumbleUpon (it’s the center section on the homepage). The Activity feature is content that people you know or who are “like minded” to you have liked. Specifically, it includes two things: content people you follow have liked and content from “Experts”. Experts are determined by how much content they have shared in a particular subject area that has resonated with the larger StumbleUpon community.

The Interest feature lets you select from a list of your preferred topics (as well as the usual photos, videos, news, and “following”). It’s essentially the previous homepage experience rolled up into the smallest box on the screen in the bottom corner.

Disappointingly absent is the Explore Box StumbleUpon introduced last year, which added a nice search-like feature to the service, enabling you to easily stumble through content related to nearly any topic you happen to find yourself interested in, in the moment. In my opinion, this is one of the best features StumbleUpon has ever added, and I would not be happy to see it go away from the greater StumbleUpon experience. Luckily, it seems that will not be the case.

Simms tells us, “The Explore Box will be available in a future release. It’s still an important feature for our community.”

Last year, StumbleUpon also introduced channels. For example, you can follow the WebProNews channel, and stumble specifically through our stuff, and perhaps get more from us in your content mix. Channels are not highlighted in the new app, but may be more in a future update.

“You can see the Channels you follow on your profile, but this version of the app does not include the ability to see and opt into new Channels,” Simms explains. “In the future you will be able to manage Channels through the mobile app. Content from Channels you already subscribe to will be included in your Stumble stream on the app.”

Stumbling

Perhaps the biggest improvement to the app in terms of user experience, is the new “Slide” feature. It’s a preview feature, which lets you slide/swipe through quick previews of the pages StumbleUpon is serving you without having to actually wait for the pages to load, enabling you to browse through content much more quickly. You do this while the page loads in the background. Once the page is fully loaded, the preview disappears (or you can simply tap on the page itself to go to it and close the preview).

This does not replace the swipe-to-Stumble feature that was already a part of the mobile StumbleUpon experience. It simply adds another layer over top of it.

Slide and Stumbling

It’s one of those things you just have to use yourself to appreciate. It really does save a lot of time in the content discovery process, and I doubt we’ll see many complaints from users who will no longer have to sit and wait just to see what a page is even about.

Simms tells us that since he’s been using the app, he finds himself wanting to use similar functionality in other unrelated apps, such as email. “That’s when I knew we were onto something,” he says.

What That Means For Content Providers

Unfortunately, this feature may come with a negative side effect for content providers, who could face a decrease in StumbleUpon referrals as Stumble-happy users quickly browse through previews, sidestepping the actual pages. This seemingly makes the title and visuals of your content more important than ever for StumbleUpon success. You’ll need to give users some reason to stop and actually let your page load as they’re quickly breezing through previews. Granted, these things have pretty much always been major factors in the success of a piece of content on StumbleUpon, but perhaps they are even more so now.

As far as what image StumbleUpon displays in the preview, Sims says, “We use an algorithm to determine the best image/thumbnail to display. If there isn’t a quality image we generate a screenshot of the page. Content providers have no control of this.”

You better make them all good.

StumbleUpon has shown time and time again that it can be a major driver of traffic to websites. While there is still plenty of potential for that, I have to wonder how much this feature will affect it, especially if it makes its way throughout the rest of StumbleUpon’s offerings.

“The page needs to fully load for it to count as a page view (and the page starts to load the instant the Slide appears),” Simms says. “We believe that Slide helps ensure users have intent to view the page they clicked on and could potentially result in higher engagement.”

This is definitely a valid point, as some have questioned the quality of StumbleUpon referrals in the past, given the semi-randomness of content (I say “semi” because content is targeted based on users’ interests, sometimes more specifically than others, depending on what exactly the user is stumbling through).

You can still thumb up/down content based on the preview, without having to wait for the actual page to load. It’s worth noting that occasionally, you may have to wait for the preview itself to load.

Identity

One of the new focuses for StumbleUpon is user identity, and the cornerstone of this is a new feature called StumbleDNA. Every user has their own StumbleDNA based on the content they like. The thinking is that this can help users find other users to gravitate towards, based on the StumbleDNA they carry. Find someone whose StumbleDNA is similar to yours? Why not be friends?

StumbleUpon has always been social to some extent, but for many users (myself included), these features have likely taken a backseat to personal discovery. This seems to be a way for StumbleUpon to thrust the social elements a bit more into the forefront and encourage interaction among users.

StumbleDNA is represented by a colored bar. Your personal StumbleDNA can be seen across the top of the page on the homepage and throughout the StumbleUpon experience (you can see it in the first image above). It’s basically a spectrum-like graphic. Colors represent categories of interest.

“We took our 500+ interests and rolled them into 12 master interest categories,” says Simms. “The design team then picked colors for the 12 categories that were bright and bold and some of the colors were loosely linked to the interest category (ex. green and ecommerce). The placement of the interests/colors is consistent in order across every individuals’ StumbleDNA so people can compare themselves against others.”

“It’s important to note that this is just the beginning of our work on identity and StumbleDNA,” he adds. “This feature and other features that help bring identity into the StumbleUpon experience will evolve across future mobile and desktop releases.”

“In the future, we plan to include a dedicated page outlining interest colors and how they relate to StumbleDNA,” he notes. “For now, you can go to filter interests (in the top right hand nav bar) and see colors that correspond to each Interest.”

Location-Based Stumbling On The Horizon?

The app now utilizes location information (if you let it). When you first open the new app, it asks to user your location data. Don’t expect that to translate into more local content, however. At least not just yet.

“Location is important but is not currently something we factor into recommendations other than international geography,” Simms tells us. It’s more about device specific recommendations, he says, adding, “Geo location is a great use case for us in the future.”

This could certainly present some new opportunities for local businesses. Users might also like to see StumbleUpon launch an actual feature that lets you tap into location – perhaps a “Stumble Nearby” feature, similar to Google+’s “Nearby” feature (but likely more interesting).

While, all of these new features are iOS only (both iPad and iPhone), StumbleUpon will incorporate, at least some of them into the desktop and Andro

LinkedIn Looks At The Professional Vs. Personal Social Network Mindset [Infographic]

LinkedIn Looks At The Professional Vs. Personal Social Network Mindset [Infographic]
http://bit.ly/NGc59B

LinkedIn and TNS teamed up to release a study called The Mindset Divide, looking at the mindset of global social network users.

“On professional networks, the consumer mindset revolves around ‘investing time,” a LinkedIn spokesperson tells WebProNews. “For example, they are three times more likely to use such networks to keep up to date with their career over personal networks. While in such a mindset, they expect to hear from brands 26% more on professional networks.”

“Consumers are as driven by a deep well of less obvious, but equally powerful, emotions when engaging on professional networking sites related to desires like ambition, security, achievement, progress, and happiness,” he adds. “This provides a fertile ground for marketers looking to build meaningful relationships with them.”

You can find the full study here, but the company has also produced the following video and infographic highlighting the takeaways:

LinkedIn Study on Social Media mindset

In a blog post, LinkedIn’s Alison Lange Engel offers up a few tips for “optimizing marketing with mindset”:

WebProNews » Social Media

Rock Salt and Its Users

Rock Salt and Its Users
http://bit.ly/S6YOmN

Most of us are familiar with the use of rock salt to de-ice a location and offer some traction to make it less slippery however have you ever wondered where the rock salt stems from, how it works and how to use it efficiently? Right here is some background info about rock salt and exactly how best to keep and disperse it so you can stay safe during the winter months.

Rock salt used for de-icing is generally sourced in the UK from salt mines in North West England. The clinical term for rock salt is halite and this certain salt differs from other kinds of salt due to the fact that it is classed as a rock instead of a mineral. The salt is formed when big bodies of water that contain salt evaporate leaving the rock salt behind. The salt then becomes buried over time, which is why it should be extracted in order to retrieve it. In fact the salt that is extracted in Britain dates back some 250 million years ago when the waters were surrounded by desert!

Salt thaws ice by lowering its freezing point. When you add salt grains to water the freezing point will certainly continue to lower until the salt can easily no longer liquefy. In a lab this happens at around -21 degrees Celsius but when used out on the streets to thaw ice this freezing point is much greater at around -9 degrees Celsius. If temperatures fall below this then the salt itself will certainly begin to freeze becoming inadequate. As soon as the rock salt has actually been dispersed on the ice and thawed it the freezing point of the water will stay much reduced so offered temperatures do not fall too reasonable it will additionally prevent the ice from re-forming.

When saving salt it is very important to remember that the salt will freeze strong at temps below -7 degrees Celsius so it may be best to keep it indoors or in a garage that will not be too cold. A grit container is generally the safest means to store salt because it is specifically produced from non-corrosive polyethylene. A big handful of rock salt per square metre should provide some traction although for areas of a high footfall you could require a little more. Attempt to make sure that the salt is dispersed evenly using a shovel or spreader and ensure the snow and ice has actually been cleared as much as feasible prior to dispersing.

What Does The New StumbleUpon Mean For Your Referrals?

What Does The New StumbleUpon Mean For Your Referrals?
http://bit.ly/NGbYLb

This week, StumbleUpon launched a new iOS app with some big changes to the homepage and how users stumble through content, among other things (see our full review and interview with the company here). While the changes have only come to the iOS app so far, some, if not all of them will come to the other mobile versions and the desktop version in time. We don’t know how long it will be, but the company tells us that features will make their way to the greater StumbleUpon experience. They just wanted to start with iOS as the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 launches are generating a great deal of consumer interest right now. One feature in particular could have an impact on the traffic StumbleUpon sends to your site.

Do you consider StumbleUpon to be an important source of traffic? Let us know in the comments.

This feature also happens to be, in my opinion, the best part of the new StumbleUpon in terms of user experience. It’s called “Slide”. StumbleUpon’s description of the feature is as follows: “An innovative new feature that adds another dimension to the Stumbling experience. Every time you Stumble, you’ll see a small preview ‘slide’ of the full Stumble that loads in the background. You can decide to immerse yourself in a Stumble longer or swipe through multiple Slides to quickly browse content recommended for you.”

StumbleUpon Slide Feature

It really does make using StumbleUpon more enjoyable. It speeds up the whole experience, as you don’t have to wait for a page to load before determining whether or not you want to read it or look at it longer. At the same time, that’s where things might get a little trickier for content providers hoping to get some traffic from StumbleUpon.

It’s possible that this feature could decrease StumbleUpon referrals for publishers, as Stumble-happy users quickly browse through previews, sidestepping the actual pages.

“The page needs to fully load for it to count as a page view (and the page starts to load the instant the Slide appears),” StumbleUpon’s new VP, Product, Cody Simms, tells WebProNews.

The page does start to load with the preview, but it’s quite easy to “slide” away from a page well before it’s fully loaded. To me, this means publishers hoping to maintain or acquire traffic from StumbleUpon will need to pay more attention to their titles and imagery than ever before.

That’s exactly what the preview consists of – an image and a title (and the category to which the page has been submitted). Titles and images have always been key factors in StumbleUpon success. Not the only key factors, and not necessarily factors in all cases, but let’s put it this way: having a really catchy title and a really visual page is usually not something that has hurt content on StumbleUpon in the past. It’s just that now, these elements are pretty much the only way to grab the user’s attention from the preview slide.

Still, the title’s the only part you’ll really have full control over, when it comes to the preview (unless you submit the article to StumbleUpon yourself – then I suppose you have control over the category as well). As for the image, Simms tells us, “We use an algorithm to determine the best image/thumbnail to display. If there isn’t a quality image we generate a screenshot of the page. Content providers have no control of this.”

It’s hard to say how StumbleUpon’s algorithm determines which picture is the best, but some guesses would be actual image quality, relevance to the title, and perhaps alt/title text. Again, these are just guesses, as they are obvious elements that can be applied to images. In general, it’s good to implement these elements into your content anyway. Still, if your content has multiple pictures, it’s anybody’s guess which StumbleUpon might choose to display.

So that leaves the title. Having a compelling title has always been important in grabbing users’ attention regardless of the channel from which the audience is consuming the content. It just happens to be more important to the StumbleUpon channel now. In the past, you could actually get a way without having an obvious title on your page, as long as the page was interesting enough to catch the user’s eye. Now, it’s one of the only things you have to catch the user’s eye before they swipe on to something else.

Now, if all of that sounds like StumbleUpon is going to become less useful to publishers as a traffic generator, I’m not going to go that far. There’s still plenty of traffic-driving potential here.

On our previous article on the new StumbleUpon, a reader commented, “Stumbleupon used to be a big traffic driver that has become less relevant over time. This new page preview feature will make them even less relevant to online publishers. I think stumbleupon is forgetting that publishers are one of their core constituencies as well. They can help promote StumbleUpon. Do I want StumbleUpon buttons on my web pages? Not sure if I do anymore.”

My response to that was that I disagree that StumbleUpon is less relevant, as plenty of sites are still getting a great deal of traffic from it. While I do wonder what impact the preview feature will have, I don’t think it will render StumbleUpon irrelevant. As long as StumbleUpon can keep users around, sites generating good content will benefit, and StumbleUpon has actually improved the user experience in this case (granted, there are other elements missing from the new app, such as the Explore Box, but the company assures us that it will be back in a future update).

Simms makes a great point about StumbleUpon referrals as related to the new preview feature.

“We believe that Slide helps ensure users have intent to view the page they clicked on and could potentially result in higher engagement,” he says.

StumbleUpon referrals have faced criticism in the past regarding the quality of the page views, due to the semi-randomness of StumbleUpon. For example, if you’re serving ads or selling something, how many of these random viewers are actually going to convert?

This was already debatable. I say “semi-randomness” because content is targeted based on users’ interests, sometimes more specifically than others, depending on what exactly the user is stumbling through). We had a discussion about the quality of StumbleUpon traffic with social media consultant Brent Csutoras from Kairay Media a few weeks ago. Here’s an excerpt from what he had to say:

“You have to remember that the way StumbleUpon’s system works, when your content gets traction, it will get waves of traffic for years to come,” says Csutoras. “For instance, if one of your articles gets a 15,000 visitor spike, you will see that the trail off on that traffic never really goes away. This is because as your content gets popular in StumbleUpon, it queues up for the people who have subscribed to the category applied to your content. Users are only shown the content one time each, but some users may not be that active or their queue is really full.”

“Fast forward a few months when there might be another 10,000 people who have signed up for that category,” he adds. “As those inactive users log in over time and vote up your content, it will again start to gain traction again and potentially go popular showing to all those active members who have signed up since the last time it was popular. So you might see another 7,000 visitor spike months later.”

“This cycle has the potential to repeat for all your content forever,” Csutoras says. “In addition, if enough people tag the content with another category, it can cross over and become visible to a whole different segment of people. This is the beauty of StumbleUpon and why people who have been using it regularly love it.”

“Lastly, StumbleUpon has done a great job over the last year in defining associated categories, allowing more people who might likely appreciate your content see it, even if they are not subscribed to the exact match category.”

As far as the Slide feature goes, you can still thumb up/down content based on the preview, without having to wait for the actual page to load. So, even if you don’t get a page view out of it, its still possible that the user can give it a thumbs up (presumably based on your title/imagery), and give it a chance to be shown to more users, which could actually lead to more page views.

By the way, while the new StumbleUpon is only on iOS so far, consider that Apple just broke its own record for iPhone pre-orders.

Do you think the Slide feature will have a negative or positive effect on your StumbleUpon traffic? Share your thoughts here.

WebProNews » Social Media

People Are Increasingly Turning To Social Over Search

People Are Increasingly Turning To Social Over Search
http://bit.ly/NG9LQ1

To be clear, people are still turning mostly to search for seeking the answers to their questions. However, the gap between search and social networks is narrowing.

There are plenty of sites out there that are getting more traffic from social media sites than they are from search engines. In fact, Google’s constantly changing algorithm almost demands that sites diversify their traffic sources and rely less on Google (the clearly dominant search engine) for the bulk of their traffic.

Doing great in Google now? There’s no guarantee that will last. You’re relying on an algorithm, and algorithms don’t care whether or not they have a substantial impact on your business.

Social media, on the other hand, is much more about people, and regardless of where they share it, people will always share good content, and are not necessarily influenced by over 200 mysterious signals when they share it with their own networks of friends and followers.

With that in mind, it might be good news that social media is apparently gaining ground against search in terms of the traffic it can drive to websites.

Paid Content’s Robert Andrews has a short, but interesting piece on the subject, citing UK Experian Hitwise data indicating that UK visits to major search engines dropped by 100 million through the month of August to 2.21 billion, and dropped by 40 million year-over-year. He shares the following comentary from one of Hitewise:

“The key thing here is the growing significance of social networks as a source of traffic to websites. Search is the still the number-one source of traffic, but social networks are growing as people increasingly navigate around the web via recommendations from Twitter, Facebook etc.”

This bodes well for Facebook, should it launch its own search offering in the near future, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hinted at.

“We’re basically doing 1 billion queries a day and we’re not even trying,” he’s quoted as saying, adding that “Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. At some point we’ll do it. We have a team working on it,” and “Search engines are really evolving to give you a set of answers, ‘I have a specific question, answer this question for me.’”

As Andrews notes, people are increasingly finding answers to their questions in social networks. This is why a Facebook search engine could be worth something to users. It’s why the search engines like Google and Bing have added more social content to search results, and it’s why Google is now failing in its mission to index the world’s information and make it universally accessible.

A recent survey from Greenlight Digital suggested that a Facebook search engine could instantly grab 22% of the market share.

WebProNews » Social Media

Facebook Is At Least Trying To Make The Android Experience Better

Facebook Is At Least Trying To Make The Android Experience Better
http://bit.ly/NG9A7l

The Facebook experience on Android devices is notoriously bad. A little too often, things just don’t work like you’d want them to. Facebook realizes this. Last month, reports came out that Facebook began forcing employees to use the Android app, so they can work on making it better.

Earlier this month, Facebook improved the Android SDK.

Now, with a new Android update, Facebook has improved its Messenger app with a new design making it easier to quickly see who’s available, changing the design of the conversation flow, and enabling users to text contacts directly from Messenger (the update will come to iOS soon, the company says). Here’s what it looks like:

New Messenger

Facebook Messenger

New Messenger App

The messaging changes also apply to the regular Facebook For Android app. Here’s what’s new in that:

The company is also reportedly testing a photo sync feature on Android, which would work similar to the Google+ Instant Upload feature. If (most likely when) this becomes an actual feature, Facebook users that haven’t dabbled with the Google+ counterpart will probably love it (provided the privacy settings are handled right). Instant Upload was one of the best features of Google+ from the beginning, in my opinion.

Facebook Messenger for Android 2.0 and Android 1.9.10 will be available in the Google Play store today. The new version of the Facebook for Android app also hits Google Play today.

WebProNews » Social Media

Rock Salt and Its Users

Rock Salt and Its Users
http://bit.ly/S6YOmN
Most of us are familiar with the use of rock salt to de-ice a location and offer some traction to make it less slippery however have you ever wondered where the rock salt stems from, how it works and how to use it efficiently? Right here is some background info about rock salt and exactly how best to keep and disperse it so you can stay safe during the winter months.
Rock salt used for de-icing is generally sourced in the UK from salt mines in North West England. The clinical term for rock salt is halite and this certain salt differs from other kinds of salt due to the fact that it is classed as a rock instead of a mineral. The salt is formed when big bodies of water that contain salt evaporate leaving the rock salt behind. The salt then becomes buried over time, which is why it should be extracted in order to retrieve it. In fact the salt that is extracted in Britain dates back some 250 million years ago when the waters were surrounded by desert!

Salt thaws ice by lowering its freezing point. When you add salt grains to water the freezing point will certainly continue to lower until the salt can easily no longer liquefy. In a lab this happens at around -21 degrees Celsius but when used out on the streets to thaw ice this freezing point is much greater at around -9 degrees Celsius. If temperatures fall below this then the salt itself will certainly begin to freeze becoming inadequate. As soon as the rock salt has actually been dispersed on the ice and thawed it the freezing point of the water will stay much reduced so offered temperatures do not fall too reasonable it will additionally prevent the ice from re-forming.

When saving salt it is very important to remember that the salt will freeze strong at temps below -7 degrees Celsius so it may be best to keep it indoors or in a garage that will not be too cold. A grit container is generally the safest means to store salt because it is specifically produced from non-corrosive polyethylene. A big handful of rock salt per square metre should provide some traction although for areas of a high footfall you could require a little more. Attempt to make sure that the salt is dispersed evenly using a shovel or spreader and ensure the snow and ice has actually been cleared as much as feasible prior to dispersing.

Rock Your SEO with Structured Social Sharing - #MozCon Presentation

Rock Your SEO with Structured Social Sharing - #MozCon Presentation
http://bit.ly/P02Qyk

Posted by Dana Lookadoo

During my MozCon 2012 talk, attendees learned about the Structured Social Sharing Formula (SSSF) - 10 steps to optimize and track social share snippets on Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter. The formula includes use of microdata and best practices for controlling the snippet that displays on Facebook and Google+ as well as how to automatically tag URLs with campaign variables for analytics.

PRO TIP: This structured markup makes a difference for SEO! 

I'm sharing the process, my MozCon presentation, and a free worksheet with you below. Oh! La! La!

You can also view my Whiteboard Friday on SSSF where I give a bird's-eye view of through the process.

Why are social snippets important?

You put your heart and soul into creating a piece of great content or a killer blog post. It looks good, reads well, is attractive, and maybe even authoritative. You're hoping for links and social engagement. Then you share it online... OUCH! The wrong image displays, or worse, maybe no image displays. Your share doesn't look as good as you hoped and fizzles.

If you don't optimize your page with the right code, your dreams of going viral may flop. That killer content most likely won't get as many reshares, likes, or retweets as you thought it would.

Example: Great content without structured markup

Rand Fishkin put together an absolutely stellar Whiteboard Friday: 8 Rules for Exceptional Slide Presentations

The video rocked! He included a SlideShare presentation along with transcripts. There were some fantastic images in the presntation and nice visuals in Rand's video.

However, when shared on Facebook and Google+, the share snippet image didn't work in both cases:

Social Share Snippet - Directives

Facebook grabbed Rand's avatar for the post image correctly, but Google+ found no image on the page large enough to pull.

Publishers beware: Most CMS are not set up to allow an editor to control the <head> where the structured markup to control a share snippet needs to be placed. (There are a couple references below for WordPress users.) Amazingly, major news publishers such as the Reuters and the LA Times don't even have it right. Often, a sponsor's ad on the page is the default image that displays. OOPS!

Anatomy of a Share Snippet

Let's review the elements of a share snippet before we get to the SSSF and steps. Every share snippet contains, at least, the following elements:

Anatomy of a Social Share Snippet

The code on your page controls how the share snippet displays:

  1. Share Blurb - your explanation about the content.
  2. Title - page Title
  3. Description - brief description of the page
  4. Image -  a thumbnail image
  5. URL - links the Title to the page

When you don't use microdata to specify what to display for these elements, Facebook and Google+ determine it for you. You can make your social snippets look good and know if your social media engagement is working for you by implementing the steps below! 

Formula for Optimized Social Engagement

Here's the all-in-one Structured Social Sharing Formula to optimize your social engagement:

Structured Social Sharing Formula - 10 Steps

Five of the 10 steps include placing additional <meta> in the <head> of each Web page using Open Graph Protocol (OG).

PRO TIP:
You don’t have to create two sets of tags - Open Graph and Schema.org. OG works for both Google and Facebook for social sharing! (Save Schema for other microdata markup.)

10 Steps With Microdata & Analytics

Four of the five Open Graph tags are required, marked with an asterisk (*) below. Let's break each step down:

  1. OG: Title*
    <meta property="og:title" content="
    Share Snippet Title Goes Here" />
    The title becomes anchor text to the page. Follow best practices for writing OG titles the same way you would write captivating and explanatory text for your meta title tag. (OG title overrides meta title tag.)

    Size? You're not limited by 60 or 70 characters as with the meta title tag. I've seen up to 134 characters in a Google+ snippet title, but that's just too long. (Personally, long titles are not preferred, and they are not quickly readable.)
     

  2. OG: Description
    <meta property="og:description" content="Your descriptive content goes here, probably similar to your meta description." />
    This markup acts like a meta description, but you are not so limited by the number of characters as with the equivalent meta. I recommend up to 188 characters for your text to display without the ellipsis. (OG description overrides meta description tag.)

    Best practice is to write it like an ad, summarizing the first paragraph of the page copy and/or include benefit statements. 

    Caveat: I’m still testing character length. I saw 453 characters in a Google+ description. It was pulled from a page without markup, and that page had short one-sentence paragraphs. Google may have been testing how much they display for the description.
     

  3. OG: Image*
    <meta property="og:image" content="
    " />
    Enter the URL of the thumbnail image. If you don't have an image, Facebook and Google+ will look for another image on your page, e.g. avatars, images for related posts, and worst of all...sponsored ad graphics.

    150x150 square is the best size for both Facebook and Google+. The height must be at least 120px. (If the width is less than 100px, then the aspect ratio must be no greater than 3:1.) 

    Important: Size overrides code. Images that are too small or not square enough are not included in a Google+ snippet, even if the images are explicitly referenced by schema.org microdata or Open Graph markup.
     

  4. OG: Type*
    <meta property="og:type" content="website" />
    Specify the type of content (object) being shared. Any non-marked up webpage will be treated as og:type website. Other type values include article, book, profilevideo.movie, music.song.

    Read more about Open Graph Object Types.
     

  5. OG: URL*
    <meta property="og:url" content="http://www.domain.com/file-namespanspanspanspanspan

Content Marketing - Think Campaigns Not Just Links, Your Guide to TOFU

Content Marketing - Think Campaigns Not Just Links, Your Guide to TOFU
http://bit.ly/S5HvrO

Posted by searchbrat

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Content Marketing is without doubt the most popular member of buzzword bingo at the moment. With updates like Panda and Penguin (easily track all this with SEOMoz's Algorithm Tracker) and the devaluation of low quality links, the role of content in SEO has never been greater. Many of the large SEO agencies are doubling down on their efforts to sell themselves as content strategists, not just SEO consultants, and where the big agencies go, usually everyone else follows. With the next Google Penguin update (dependent on when this post is published, it may have already been released) touted to be "jarring and jolting" for a lot of webmasters, we can expect content marketing's shine to get even greater.

Changing from "build" to "attract"

From an SEO viewpoint, the interest in great content is to attract links, where as a lot of what Google is looking to eliminate are examples of where content is used to build links: articles, spun articles spammed across thousands of directories, blog posts spun across networks, networks that dragged in content form places like Youtube, Yahoo Answers and article directories to create mashup posts, blog comments, spun blog comments using scrapebox so you can hit thousands of sites at a time, web2.0 link wheels made from spun content, reclaiming tumblr blogs with PR and adding posts with links to your site, buying up dropped domains and using archive.org to re-add the previous content so you can link to your site, finding squidoo len's to comment on, the list could go on and on and on. It's a lot easier to build links with subpar content, as you don't expect anyone to read it.

What's being sold as "Content Marketing" - is truly great content that people want to share and link to = hey presto ... you're #Number1inGoogleB*tches.

The problem with a lot of SEO's evolution into "Content Marketing" is they are really just thinking about links/shares - it's a blackbox approach, with content going in and links and social shares coming out:

There is more to Content than Links

The reality is true content marketing isn't just about links and shares. In the words of copyblogger:

"Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.” CopyBlogger

Content Marketing is so much more than getting links. It's the glue that holds your funnel together. It's the reason a prospect visits your site, it's the reason they choose to move further down the purchase path, buy a product and return to your site time and again. Real content marketing is complex; it's not just building a great infographic and notifying some bloggers about it. If you are purchasing a "Content Marketing" strategy from an SEO agency where the sole objective is to acquire links - you are going to waste money in the long run. Sure links can be a metric, but real content marketing is expensive, as a link building strategy - it's very difficult to make a decent return on.

If you are investing in content marketing, why not put together campaigns that drive goals across your funnel and have links and shares as a metric, but not the sole objective. Let's start with TOFU (Top of Funnel) content marketing campaigns ....

Top of Funnel - Joining the Dots

Your approach to content marketing will differ slightly dependent on where the campaign resides within the funnel. For example, the following is a snapshot of what may be involved in a TOFU (Top of Funnel) campaign.

# Objective

Anything successful in life starts with a clear and concise objective/goal. For example, a goal could be structured as:

Core Objective: Our content campaign is aimed at people who love to camp and are looking for the latest pair of hiking boots from brand X. We want to attract X amount of new visits, rank for keyword “X” on first page of Google, attract 15 links from PR2+ sites and drive X% of these new visits into our product page (which converts at X%) - of course that X% can be improved upon by MOFU (Mid of Funnel Campaigns) via A/B Testing etc

Secondary Goal: We want X amount of these new visits to turn into Facebook Fans and X to turn into new Twitter Followers

The more specific you can be about the goal of your content campaign the better. When asked to explain what you are doing to a VP of marketing, having a well-structured campaign mapped against core business goals will get you a far bigger budget than "I'm trying to get links".

Your Twitter Highlight: Your Content Marketing Strategy Should be aligned to Business Goals

I have purposely left out revenue in the above goal as I am splitting campaigns into Top of Funnel and Mid of Funnel to show the importance of content throughout the purchase path. If you're running a content campaign across the funnel - you should have revenue as a metric. You will need to quantify your own metrics to establish the ROI on your campaign e.g. how do you value Cost Per Link.

1. Persona Development

Persona development is a crucial part of any successful content marketing strategy. There are a number of ways to develop personas:

  • Using your Analytics
  • Social listening (this is hard, I’ve done it)
  • Interviews with prospects
  • Interviews with customers
  • Interviews with people you want to become customers
  • Customer surveys (if you have a big enough Email DB)
  • Google consumer surveys (http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home)
  • Even running an internal workshop with different teams provides great insights. You would be amazed how much valuable information is stored within the customer support team, example of a previous one I ran with the help of iqcontent.com

Something that’s really important to keep in mind is your content campaign may touch multiple personas. For example, in the objectives mapped out above, the persona we are targeting for new visits isn’t necessary the same persona who is going to link to you. Unlike online marketing, where most people have blogs, it’s highly likely in other industries the people who you can get links from and potential customers are not the same person.

Your Twitter Highlight: If Links are your core goal; you need to target the personas who actually have the power to link to you.

2. Strategy

Once you have personas in place, you can build out your content campaign framework. This should be broken into what I call The VP Strategy and The Actual Strategy.

But What's my VP Strategy?

This is for that moment in a meeting when you are asked, "Hey what are you spending my 100k on?" They don’t need your life story, just an overview that makes sense.

We are building an interactive map of the globe where users can click around and learn about the best camping desti