According to comScore, Microsoft sites saw their share of searches increase 0.4 percentage points to 9.3 percent in August. Meanwhile, Google saw its share of the market dip slightly with a 0.1 point drop to 64.6 percent.

Read more from Brafton.com.

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Eventually, though, should one decide to take a vacation there comes the question about what to do about your social profiles, especially if you use them to promote your business. Will people stop following your Twitter if you don’t post for a few days? Will the ranking results of your blog be affected if you don’t update as regularly while you’re gone? Perhaps worse yet, will anybody notice you’ve been gone at all?

When taking a break from work, should weaning off Twitter and Facebook and other profiles apply as well? A long weekend, for example, shouldn’t merit too much concern – you may miss a few gems from favorite “Tweeters”, but depending on the regularity of their posts it may not take too long to catch up on their news. Facebook allows you to parse friends into different lists, so if there are people you wish to follow more closely you can set that up easily and check the site sporadically if the urge to log in to the Net usurps the call of your destination’s amenities.

If you plan a lengthy break from work, which may include time in places where the Internet is not accessible, you may consider preparing advance promotion tactics to keep visitors and readers informed of your business. Blogs provide the ability to queue posts to release on scheduled dates, allowing you the flexibility to map out future material. Twitter widgets such as TweetLater works on a similar model, assuming you have not imported an RSS feed into your account.

If you work alone, you may also wish to consider hiring a temporary “ghost Twitterer” to handle keeping your online persona alive while you enjoy your vacation. It’s not uncommon for celebrities to have people tweet in their stead, and a quick glance through an online freelance database will reveal hundred of freelance writers and SEO agents ready to bid on your work.

Depending on the length of your absence from the office, smart advanced planning can keep you socially active on the Internet even if you aren’t logged in. Take advantage of the tools available to you to keep your social status thriving.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on social media optimization and Virginia web design.

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That said, one might think relaying news and information in 140 character increments is simple and guaranteed to drive traffic to your Web site, but Twitter is a bit more sophisticated than that. Twitter users, too, tend to be choosy about whom they follow and what they relay to the world. Like other social platforms, Twitter is not immune to spam tactics, and as people grow wise to dubious practices, it’s important to know what to do to keep users interested in reading what you have to “tweet.”

How to Lose Followers

In reviewing comments by Twitters users, there are a few ways to easily cause followers to drop off the radar. They include:

Sending an automated message upon following: Not everybody wants to be hit with the hard sell immediately. Many people now regard the automated message as the first sign of a spam user, and may not stick around to read further messages.

Constant sales pitches: Take a look at a typical day of tweets. Do you tend to push more products than actually socialize? Especially for an account designed to look more personal than professional, this can be a turn-off for followers, especially those who aren’t tracking many Twitter users. Somebody reading the same message every two hours is going to give you a message by unfollowing you.

SEO spam posts: “I just landed five thousand Twitters followers, you can, too!” We’re starting to see these crop up – viral optimization posts that lead to links for various programs and books. In truth, you might visit the originator of the message to find he/she doesn’t have the alleged five thousand at all. As Twitter grows in popularity, so will attempts to monetize it, and if somebody receives enough of these messages they may say enough.

In short, use Twitter to communicate with followers, not to pressure them, and you may find you can grow readership and loyalty with this popular media platform.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on local PPC advertising and professional SEO writing services.

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Depending on your skill level and knowledge of the site’s purpose, writing the content may be the simplest or most challenging task in achieving your promotion goals. Once you have the information written and made live on your site, exposing it through social media is perhaps the easiest thing to do, and it doesn’t take long to generate a buzz. Here are four ways you can help light the fire.

Add links to social media sites on your Web pages – If you make use of a blog program through Blogger or WordPress to supplement your site content, you’ll know there are widgets available to help you advertise content for social media. Icons and links implore readers to add the content to Facebook or Twitter, all you have to do is click a link to make it happen. If you know a bit of HTML code, though, you can set up links on static Web pages for people to use to add your content to social networks. Decide which social sites you want to focus on the most, then get the code to create the links.

Import your RSS feed into Facebook – Whether you have a personal Facebook account or a fan page related to your Web site, you can use your profile to promote your work. Facebook’s Notes application allows users to import the RSS or XML feed of a blog or site, and will upload the content of the feed into your profile. Then, every time you add to the feed, it’s updated on Facebook and your friends are alerted. If you don’t use a blog for your site, you can create one just for use of the RSS capability for social media, then track referrals from Facebook and Twitter to see how effective it is.

Bookmark your content – Every time you write an article for your blog or site, add it to your social bookmark collection. Whether you prefer Delicious or Digg or any of the myriad of competitors, generating that buzz can help bring more attention to the rest of your site. Get friends and employees to set up similar accounts and help promote the links.

Write more content – For an author, the best way to promote a book is to write the next one. This tip applies to just about anyone using article or blog marketing to optimize Web sites…keep on writing! The more content you offer, the better the opportunity for showing up in search. A visitor may catch one article and come back to read more, and buy more.

Maximize your content through social media – writing, linking, and bookmarking. It’s a great way to maximize your business and your profits.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on SEO writing services and local PPC advertising.

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For novices in the PPC game, there are several Web sites available for detailed instructions on launching an eye-catching campaign. Ultimately, though, most advise on good paid marketing boils down to these five important tips to ensure you get the most out of your money.

Maintain focus on Google’s search network – To attract the people you know are searching for your relevant keywords, you want to be sure you place your ads where the search happens. Buying space through Adsense, where ads are placed on similar Web sites, can increase visibility and awareness of your brand, but ultimately the bulk of your referrals are going to come from where people are actively searching for information. Concentrate on the search network to build your audience.

Know your target audiences and how to sell to them – Think about your business: do you cater mainly to the people in your immediate geographic area, or do you serve a broader base that extends throughout the country? If the latter, more than likely you create different ads for print campaign to attract different demographics. The same practice should apply to your PPC ads. Campaigns for local, regional, and national audiences should be created separately because you will use different keywords to attract customers and clients.

Separate Ad Groups for maximum performance – If your business deals in multiple services, for example a restaurant that also caters events and retails food products, you will want to separate each facet of your company into its own ad group on Adwords. Each group should focus on one aspect, and perhaps further split the available services – a group for dining in, a group for catering weddings, a group for catering reunions, and so forth – to better draw in traffic from paid search. Be sure, too, to have a proper landing page prepared for each group to increase the quality of your ads.

Generate keywords! As you prepare your campaigns, you may have a specific number in mind. Here is where you can have some fun and take advantage of Google’s keyword tool to help you generate multitudes of probable searches. Don’t limit yourself when you make your bids, for even the most obvious search phrases may not bring in the traffic you’d expect. The more keywords you use for an ad group, the better you can test what works and what doesn’t for your advertising.

Test different ads for effective marketing – You wouldn’t use the same ad over and again for different print campaigns, so the same rings true for Adwords. Create at least two different ads per group and study their performances, tweaking as necessary to build click-throughs.

Take note of these tips as you begin your PPC advertising, and make good use of the free tools available through Google Adwords to help with your success. You just may find online advertising will quickly pay for itself.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on local PPC advertising and professional SEO writing services.

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For larger companies, branding is important – it’s no secret that some brands have become practically synonymous with the products they promote. We don’t always ask for a “soda,” but may refer to every carbonated beverage as a “Coke.” If you’re feeling a sneeze coming on, you might request, “pass me a Kleenex,” rather than the generic “tissue.” In a previous post, we touched briefly on choosing a domain name for your company for SEO purposes. The same rules should apply when considering the suffixed name of your social network profiles as well. As more people utilize Twitter for news and search, so people may be more inclined to follow your posts if you not only provide relevant information, but are presented in a manner that brands your expertise. As individual Twitter profiles gain momentum in traditional search, having a vanity URL closely describing yourself or your business could be helpful in catching the attention of visitors.

Say you operate a local staffing firm. You could use the name of your firm after twitter.com to showcase your actual brand, but if people are searching under more generic terms that could work for you as well.

http://www.twitter.com/virginia_jobs

http://www.twitter.com/atlanta_cars

http://www.twitter.com/jacksonville_apartments

Showing people what you do, rather than telling them who you are up front, could be beneficial in search.

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While it may appear to be a good idea in theory, let’s look at the result: if you were to blindly select a thousand people on Twitter to follow, chances are a good-sized percentage will follow back. Sounds good, huh? In theory, you might think you can convert all these followers into customers or clients, but consider why many people are on Twitter in the first place: to market their own products. What is more likely to happen is that a thousand people will follow you with the intent of converting you to purchase their goods. A top turn-off for some who choose to follow Twitter users is receiving that initial automated greeting message – you know the one, there’s usually a URL and a pitch. You haven’t read one of the person’s “tweets” yet and already they’re on the hard sell.

In order to get the most out of social networks as a means of promotion, a few things you’ll want to bear in mind are:

It isn’t necessary to follow everybody who follows you. If you follow too many Twitter folks the chain of messages received becomes diluted. Posts from people you truly want to follow may get lost in the shuffle of numerous advertisements. True, you want people to follow you, so it’s important to set your profile up as one that contains pertinent content, yet doesn’t appear to constantly hustle readers. If, however, you are set on using Twitter to promote your business, set up a separate account for personal use.

To become attractive to Twitter users, be an expert. “Socialization” is the key to succeeding in any social media network. Not only should you use your Facebook and Twitter accounts to relay information on your favorite subjects, but you should interact with users as well. If you sell sporting goods, ask followers and friends what brand baseball bat or glove is the best, or who they think will win the Series this year. Put a personality behind the avatar and you may find people will recommend their friends to follow you.

Don’t be afraid to promote other things. If you see a news item related to your line of business, share it. Never feel as though you are helping “the competition” in any way. In fact, sharing this information could help you in a way, as it might inspire followers to “re-tweet” your findings and credit you. This in turn could lead to more followers, and perhaps more business.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Virginia web design.

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Read the full article at CNet.com.

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In short, if you blog, does it make sense to feed the blog’s RSS into Twitter and Facebook, and anywhere else it may fit? Is there the risk that somebody who follows all three of your profiles will become bored or irritated by the repetition and drop you altogether?

The answer is hard to determine, as one can’t truly determine how social media optimization will work for everybody. What works for Company A could backfire for Company B. However, there are pros and cons to repetitive content that can be explored and considered by those interested in getting the most out of their social media profiles.

Duplicating Content: Advantages

Tools exist that allow you to feed your blog posts into your Facebook profile and your Twitter account. Though there is no discernable way to feed a blog into MySpace’s blog, widgets can be set up to present an RSS version on your material on your profile. The main advantage to having everything connected is that you can create content at one source and distribute it easily to several places with the click of a mouse. There’s no need to log into several profiles. With the addition of bookmarking tools on your browser menu bars – for social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg – you can reach diverse audiences with your content.

Also, optimizing specific keywords to link back to your main site can be helpful in boosting your search rank.

Duplicating Content: Disadvantages

If you spend enough time in the Twitter and Facebook worlds, you may tend to read from other users of their dissatisfaction of some profiles. While it’s a given that anybody who sets up a social profile is advertising to some degree, to simply set something up as a droning feed may be a turnoff to some users. “Social” is optimal word in social media, so if you do have these profile it is encourage to use them beyond their RSS functionality and converse with the people who choose to follow your exploits.

It may take some experimentation to find the perfect balance between your content and the way it is presented. Study how you use social media, and learn what works and what doesn’t.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Virginia web design.

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If your primary function for the Internet is promote your business, it is imperative to have a web blog connected to your site. Whether you host the blog software on your domain or use a third-party host like WordPress or Blogger, regular use of the blog to optimize keywords for your main site can be of some help in boosting your search rankings.

What should you write? Regardless of the purpose of your website or business, the blog should have a down-to-earth, friendly appeal. Though it is to be utilized for promotion, perhaps alerts on sales and new services, it shouldn’t be constantly used as a means to hard sell visitors every time they come to read, lest they be turned off altogether. Keep a good mix of blog posts active; talk about what you do and what you offer, but take the time to hold an online conversation with visitors. Post about local happenings, use pictures or embedded links to related videos, and try to stimulate feedback from visitors.

Combining these efforts with social media networking can improve traffic to your blog as well. Open accounts with Facebook and Twitter, for two, and use them to refer people to new articles on your blog. Sign up for social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg, and save the URLs of specific articles and posts you feel have a wider appeal. The more “word of mouth” enthusiasm you can generate, the better for your stats, and business. You just may find that blogging can bring you a decent income as it leads people to your main site.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Virginia web design.

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