Tasha Harrison

This fantastic video by vm-people, based in Berlin, is a great little animation showing how viral marketing works and explaining what it is.

Meta data is information that sits in the code of your site. You don’t actually see it on your page, but it is how search engines display your pages in their results and how they judge what your site is about.

There are two important parts of meta data:

1. Page Title
2. Meta Description

There are also meta keywords, but these are no longer regarded by Google since it became too easy to cheat. See Google’s reasons for why on the Google Webmaster blog.

Below is an example of how the information is displayed on Google.

Note how the meta description ends with ‘…’. This is because the meta description is too long, it is 37 words or 228 characters, but should actually be nearer 150 characters.

The description is an opportunity for you to sell your site and increase your click through rate from Google. If it is appealing to your audience then they will be more likely to click through to your site than to your competitors.

The page title also appears on the browser.

The page title is a good indicator for Google to tell what your site is about, so make sure you include your main keywords in it. The ideal length is between 60 – 65 characters.

And remember that it is used by real humans as well as the bots, so make it people friendly.

With any social networking you’re doing it isn’t enough to just talk at your followers and fans. They’ll quickly turn off to your incessent stream of links. The reason people join social networks is to talk to their friends and make new ones, so the most effective social media strategy will look for ways to join in the conversation.

Tips for how to engage and become part of the conversation:

1. Talk to people - watch what your followers are saying by following them back. Then reply to comments, questions and articles.
2. Retweet people – if someone posts an interesting article that you think your followers will appreciate, retweet them. See Retweeting made easy for tips on how to retweet.
3. Monitor what people are saying about your brand using Twilert. Then follow them and talk to them. If their comments are positive you can thank them, if they’re negative it is an opportunity to respond.
4. Always follow people back – if someone follows you and you follow them back they will instantly feel more positive about your brand. Don’t become like the celebrities who follow a select 50 or so people, Twitter is not a one way stream. (The only occasion when I’d recommend you don’t follow someone back is if they are obviously a spammer or a bot.)
5. Use an application like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. These are both great services that help you organise your followers, making it possible to follow hundreds of people. By organising your followers into groups it is far easier to sort through the thousands of tweets in your Twitter stream.
6. Write a good description of your business and what you’re going to be tweeting about in your Bio. Try and identify the person who will be tweeting or the team, so that people know who they are talking to.
7. Always use an image, either your logo or a picture of the person who is tweeting. If there are a team of people tweeting from different accounts then each person should have a personal picture.

Something lovely and heartwarming came into my life today through Twitter, this wonderful video of a busker on the London Underground. Isn’t social media brilliant!

via @richardpeacock

Have you ever wondered where e-commerce started? Check out the founder of the Boston Computer Exchange: