How would the social media department ever take over for HR, well I was thinking about this the other day and the answer is relatively simple.  LinkedIn and Skype can turn any company small or big, into a player on the global market.  Companies can go after the exact employee they want and then do an online face to face interview within a couple of hours or days depending on everyone’s schedule.  LinkedIn has over 160 million members, and professionals are joining the network at a rate of 2 per second.  That’s 170,000 professionals every 24 hours joining a professional network.

These people joining are from every industry and many times are the best in their industry.  Other times they are new college graduates looking for a fresh start in their respective industry.   Still today 50% of people say they were hired from a personal connection and through networking.  We need to look at LinkedIn as a personal connection at a distance.  One cool feature of LinkedIn is it will tell you how many degrees of separation you are from that person.  You can almost always find someone who knows that person, and get a personal reference right away.

As of January of 2012 Skype had 31 Million users, but of course I simply used Skype as an example.  The interview could be conducted on several different platforms, such as Google+, or even face time on an iPhone or iPad.  This gives the social media department the ability to overstep the HR department, creating a one-to-one personal connection with virtually anyone.  Again this will give basically any business the ability to operate nationally or globally.

Maybe I am wrong and we will always need an HR department and I was just having a moment thinking how cool it would be for social media to take over another part of the world.  But, I do think there is something to be said for the power of LinkedIn when it comes to finding new talent and even new business.  It is personal connections and networking 2.0, but added together with a platform like Skype, I do believe some really great things could happen.

The post Could LinkedIn plus Skype Mean no More HR Department? appeared first on Clix.

So your site was hit and you have no idea why, it could be that you paid for text links matching an exact anchor text, maybe you engaged in comment spam, or did some guest blog posts on questionable sites.  Did you do some work on article marketing sites, or even link back to your site from “dangerous” sites?  In reality these are all things that Google has always said is a big no-no, but Mr. Penguin is more likely to catch up to these tactics.  If you did partake in these tactics, then shame on you and it’s probably best that the penguin caught you.

My question is pretty simple: Why did some sites get hit while others are perfectly fine?  I am hearing from person after person that they had almost the exact marketing plan for different websites, yet some are doing better than ever and others are wiped off the map.  Is this just an indication that the new update is taking a while to catch up with certain sites, or is it an indication that this new update is not as good as we are lead to believe.   Could it even be the topic that the website is about, maybe Google looks at certain sites with more leniency depending on the subject matter?  Of course this is just speculation, but if that is the case, is that fair?

It seems like everyone is confused and caught in the vicious circle that is the ever-changing Google algorithm.  So what are you supposed to do to get your rankings back if you were affected by the penguin update?  The short answer is who knows.  It’s obviously time to go in and clean up your website, go out there and clean up your links, make sure you don’t have any spammy links pointing back to you, start creating fresh content, make sure you don’t have too many ads, and without a doubt make sure your business is on Google+.  Again these are guesses on my part and I have no idea if they will help you regain your rankings.

I believe it’s time to devise a strategy that doesn’t rely so heavily on Google, this way your not going to take a major hit or have to worry about a hit every time Google changes their algorithm.  Which seems to be very often these days, did you know there was a Panda update just 7 days before the Penguin came splashing through the web world?

How do you devise a plan that doesn’t rely on Google?  You can start with a solid e-mail marketing campaign; try to partner with other companies that will send e-mails on your behalf.  Look towards Google’s competitors such as Bing and new search engines such as Blekko or DuckDuckGo.  And please diversify your tactics; don’t just focus on one blog network or backlink building tool.  Use videos, social networks, e-mails, and guest blogging, all with good unique content.  The last thing I would say is to be patient, let Google work things out with their algorithm and your rankings might just come back naturally.

I know this blog seems a little schizophrenic, however that’s how I feel about Google right now.  I guess the good thing is that all of us so called SEO experts are on this rollercoaster ride together.  All we can do is hold on tight and wait for the big drop that hopefully never comes!

The post Life after the Google Penguin. appeared first on Clix.

My immediate response to that is nope, Google+ is here to stay and it will be a big deal in the SEO world.  So you should stop ignoring it and give this “fad” the time it deserves.  When I say give it the time it deserves, I don’t mean to just sign up for an account and then let it sit there assuming you will see positive results.  Like any other SEO technique, you will have to put work into your Google+ account.  I’m sure you’ve heard the term a million times “OPTIMIZE” and it applies to your Google+ account too.

I bet you have done Google searches recently and seen the results showing up on the right sidebar labeled “ People and Pages on Google+” related to whatever search term it is your searching for.   For example I just did a search for “Social Media” and this is the image that came up on my sidebar.  What is the common denominator here?  All of these people or companies are using Google+ and have optimized their account with the words social media somewhere in their account.  If you see just under that there is a link saying “learn how you could appear here too”, that link leads you to sign up for Google+.

Like I said before you have to put in actual hard work for this to give you results, nothing in the SEO world comes easy or overnight.  This is something you have to optimize like you would your webpage or your blog.  You need to do several things such as:

• Optimize your Google+ profile
• Optimizing your Circles
• Format your posts headlines
• Create compelling content
• Share compelling content
• Optimize the +1 button
• Confirm ownership of your site/account
• Confirm authorship

You want to make sure you are connected to influential people inside of your industry and make sure that you are optimizing at least your Introduction, Employment, Education, and places.  This seems to be where the SEO value is being taken from Google+ at the moment.  So put social media in those sections, meaning you’re optimizing for that word, and be sure to make large quality circles that will link back to you.

I’m not going to tell you how to get high-quality people in your circles, but it’s pretty basic and if you want to optimize your Google+ profile correctly, then you need to have high-quality people connecting to your circles.  Once you start to get these high-quality people in your circles you better start engaging them too.

After you have your profile optimized, and are starting to build good circles and engaging them, it’s time to start putting high quality compelling content onto Google+.  Use it as you would your blog, share videos, share photos, this stuff can rank very quickly.

Of course you need to have your +1 button in the correct places, it seems as though Google is giving more weight to the +1’s you get from your actual site than the +1’s you get from Google+.  But, the one thing that is obvious is that Google is putting weight on the number of +1’s you receive.

The next few things you need to do is go through Google+ and confirm ownership of you website of blog.  You can do this by linking your Google+ account to your blog or website.  You can find these instructions in your Google + account.  You can also get a Google+ badge for your website and submit a Google+ page verification request.  At this point in time, nobody but Google is sure what this can do for your SEO, but you might as well take the time to get it done.  One other thing that is slightly more advanced would be to confirm authorship of your content through authorship markup.

In the end if you’re not on Google+ then it’s money that your business is missing out on.  It is obvious to me that at least with Google+ there is a thin line between SEO and social media.  Actually I would say they are becoming blurred into one Internet strategy.

The post Does Google+ add SEO Value? appeared first on Clix.

You’ve started your new blog, made a couple of posts and made it look all flashy and stuff.  Now what?  How do you get people to interact with you on social media?  The first tip seems rather obvious, but might be overlooked if you’re new to blogging.  Display your social media icons prominently near the top of your blog.  This will make it easy for your readers to connect with you on your social networks.  I say this is a great idea.  Next you will want to create a Facebook page for your blog specifically, this isn’t the first thing I would do, but it makes sense, it might drive your blog readers to be your fan on Facebook, which ultimately creates more interaction.

Some of the other tips included generating traffic with StumbleUpon, which is a recommendation engine; again this should be good for your blog as long as you tag things appropriately for random people to find your niche.  Using the same concept there are a few tips about using things you might already be using to promote yourself, such as sending your RSS feed to your LinkedIn account and using Pinterest.  You can even add a pin it button to your blog, to make it easy for your users to share your content.  If you can get people you already engage with to interact with your new blog, then others might join in.

Other tips were to use link shorteners, even when you don’t need to; this is so you can gain access to metrics.  Metrics are always good; this way you know who is clicking and when they are doing it.  Other things you can do is to use your blog name as your username, this will promote your personal brand.  On top of that you should join many blogger groups on Facebook, this will hopefully lead other bloggers to link to you, if you have good content, which ultimately builds social awareness of your blog.

On that same note, you should show some love to other bloggers as well, retweet them, share their content on Facebook, or repin their stuff, and hopefully they will return the favor.  The last thing you should remember is to stay on Social Media, continue to post and read everything you can.  This will help you make and maintain relationships and get new ideas for your upcoming blog posts.

The post Socially Interacting with your Blog Readers appeared first on Clix.

1. Facebook isn’t going anywhere, so you better buy stock now. Facebook is only going to continue to grow and evolve, and if you think its just a “fad”, you would be mistaken.  February 4th is Facebook’s 8th birthday, and look how much has changed in those 8 years. I can’t even imagine what its going to look like and be able to do in 8 years from now, in the year 2020. As we’ve seen with other companies, such as Apple and Microsoft, the stocks fluctuate, but if you get in early your chances are much higher for making a significant amount of money when you do decide to sell, whether its 5 years from now or 50 years. The stocks prices are only going to rise, yes they may fall every once in awhile, but the likely hood of them being lower then where they were when they first went public, isn’t very likely, especially with this company. I personally think we have another Apple on our hands here. When Apple registered for their IPO they created over 300 millionaires, the most in history at the time. And since then, people who bought stock early are still reaping the benefits.

2. It’s continuing to grow and expand. Facebook is expected to reach 800 million users in 2012. Almost half of all American’s are on Facebook, and 90% of social media users in the US are on Facebook. Businesses use it, famous brands use it, my grandmother uses it. The cost of having advertisements on Facebook is going up significantly, which means that the demand is high. If you’re a company, and you want to be in front of your consumers, the best place to do that is on Facebook, and everyone knows that. Now sites such as Facebook and Google+ are going to be affecting SEO and where companies rank, more and more companies are going to have large presences on Facebook, which means paying more money for advertising to Facebook. Check out Paul’s blog post on Social Media and SEO, its very informative and has some great stats!

3. You invest your time already, why not invest your money too? Maybe we’re all a little too invested in Facebook, I’m sure we could all use a Facebook time out every now and then. Seriously, how many times in a day do I have to see what articles my cousin Kristen is reading?? But thats not the point. The majority of us (me included) spend hours each day on Facebook. We’re so invested in what our friends are doing, where they are doing it, and who they’re with, that honestly, we would probably be lost without it. We gotta believe in the company and the website if we spend so much time on it, right? So if we’re already spending hours upon hours on the site, why not invest money into it too? And then you’ll at least feel like all of your wasted hours will be worth something, someday. (At least that’s what I keep telling myself.)

If Facebook does register for their IPO on Wednesday, the smartest move you can make is to buy stock as soon as you’re able too.

The post 3 Reason’s Why You Should Buy Facebook Stock appeared first on Clix.

A few of the Features that IBM lists for Connections are:

• Exchange ideas with, and benefit from the expertise of other people using Forums and Blogs
• Expand your professional network through social analytics based recommendations for people to connect with, and communities to join
• Build vibrant communities that encourage participation with sub-communities focused on key topics of interest to the members
• Access profile information, search for expertise, and view status quickly
• Access your social data while on the go via the micro-browser or the device specific application

The thing thats great about IBM Connections is its range of capabilities, which includes the option to access your company email, calendar and business tasks from inside the Connections platform. This sort of social network software is going to change the way people and companies use social media. Companies will now have real-time access to data that will highlight certain patterns, and show how customers feel about certain products and topics.

It will help businesses react much quicker to the market shifts that occur, but also help in predicting the effects of future campaigns within certain social networks, by analyzing all of the data Connections collects. Connections is a social network that reacts to what other social networks are doing and saying. Given the ability to create a social network to react to insight with one simple click, companies can respond to consumers much quicker. As social media networks continue to evolve and expand we are going to be seeing more and more of this type of software.

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