If you’ve explored Google+, whether from your personal account or the one you are using for your business, you’ve probably noticed the “What’s hot” button in the left-hand navigation. What is “What’s hot?” It’s another Google algorithm at work – selecting the most popular posts from across Google+ and compiling them into one place.

Currently, the “What’s hot” algorithm doesn’t take any personalization into account when displaying results. Although many of the posts may not be relevant to you, there are still the benefits of discovering new, interesting things and seeing what types of content are drawing everyone’s attention around the net.

That second point is important. The marketing benefits of getting your content featured as “hot” are great. You gain the potential of having your content seen, shared, and interacted with by the entire social network – even people who don’t have you in a circle. Being featured can definitely be considered a viral success. So, to appear in the feed, you must cater to user interests.

Google does not divulge what specific factors can push a piece of content into the “What’s hot” feed. However, a little observation and common sense indicate the piece has to have the makings of popularity. Nearly every single piece of hot content has an accompanying image and several comments. They also have lots of +1’s, as well as shares (although, these amounts may be skewed by appearing in the “What’s hot” feed – which will dramatically increase +1’s and shares just from sheer visibility).

By creating image based content that engages your users and invites a rapport with them, you increase your chances of appearing in the “What’s hot” feed. Monitor popular trends, and give your spin on it. As with all things SEO, quality content that considers the end user will win the day.

Twitter has exploded onto the social media circuit in recent years. More and more companies are creating accounts and establishing a Twitter presence – to the point where it’s become a standard marketing practice. But, just like any other social media account you initiate, a Twitter account is not something you just create and forget about. To reap any benefit, it should be cultivated properly, starting with these basics:

• Optimize your page and tweets – Just as you would use optimized copy for your website, do so for your Twitter account by posting keyword rich tweets and profile information. Use target keywords on your profile page and make sure to use keywords in your Tweets.
• Optimize your Twitter Bio – This is an extension of the above rule. In search results, the bio section of your Twitter profile acts as the description metadata. You will want to make sure it is optimized to increase click-through rates.
• Link – You will responsible for most of your initial Twitter traffic when you first create your profile. Help your Twitter presence become popular by posting links to it on your main website and other social media channels. You should also include a link to your Twitter account in any new content you create. This will help your new account catch on with users.
• Link Back – This is an important part of having a Twitter account: it’s an avenue to build links to your other content. Make sure the URL to your main site is posted in your profile and tweet about any new articles or content you produce.

Most importantly, don’t lose site of Twitter’s real purpose: to act as a medium of interaction with your customers. Build up your Twitter account keeping the user experience in mind. When you create content for search engines and not for people, it will inevitably lose out.

All too often, beginners in social media marketing treat their corporate accounts like a dumping ground for links. Of course, link building is an important part of any social media campaign. However, the concept of “too much of a good thing” certainly applies. Posting as many links as you can to your social media profiles can backfire quickly and cost you the attention of your audience.

In general, you have to be very careful to avoid being overly self promotional and focus on providing innovative and informative content to your social media channels. Excessive self promotion, advertising, and linking can undermine your company’s credibility and make your content seem “spammy.”

Your company website, product pages, and SEM efforts can handle your advertising. Successful social media campaigns are ones that engage users. Get others to talk to your brand and interact with your posts. By encouraging this interaction, you get the chance to learn about the thoughts and preferences of your consumers – which is invaluable marketing data. If you are having trouble creating content, have a look at our list of content ideas.

As you establish authority and gain more followers, self promoting or linking to your site’s other content is advisable in moderation – so long as it is relevant to the topic and/or channel to do so. Try to think like your consumer. If you think a status update is going to look like spam in a newsfeed – you’re probably right.

Here’s a trend you’ve probably participated in: you “like” a company’s page on Facebook, then you never return to that company page again. Unfortunately, it’s a common trend that likely happens on your own company page. If these users never visit your page again, how can you interact with them?

The answer is to increase your EdgeRank. Facebook users rely on their newsfeed to supply them with new content. EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to prioritize posts in a user’s newsfeed.

Every piece of content you produce on your company page is assigned a score in EdgeRank. The higher the score, the more likely you are to appear in users’ newsfeeds, which in turn increases the chance that users will interact with your company’s page. EdgeRank scores are determined by three factors:

Affinity – measures how often a user and his/her friends interact with the content your company’s Facebook page produces. Your Affinity score will naturally increase as your page collects more likes and users interact with your content. To increase Affinty faster, post updates to your company pages that request comments or interaction from your users.

Time – measures the age of your posted content. The freshest content receives the highest time score.

Weight – measures the type of content you’ve posted. Different content types each receive different Weight scores – which are even further narrowed based on user behavior (e.g. for a user who interacts with a lot of pictures, EdgeRank assigns higher Weight scores to picture posts, which in turn appear more frequently in said user’s news feed). In light of that, Weight score will always vary, so it’s a good idea to produce a variety of different types of content.

Knowing how Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm works is fundamental for getting your content in front of users, and in turn, getting them to interact with it.

A quick look at several of the corporate pages on Facebook can reveal a number of sparse, even abandoned looking pages. Maintaining your corporate Facebook page with interesting content can be tough. But if you have good ideas, content will flow naturally. Here are a few tips you can use to liven up your Facebook page and connect with your users.

Giveaways: These are perhaps one of the most common types of consumer engagement for companies on Facebook. However, there are all sorts of twists you can add to them to stand out in people’s news feeds. Invite users to try and come up with creative captions to pictures you post, or have them submit a story about using your products. By asking your users to answer a call to action to be eligible for the giveaway, you have the opportunity to learn more about them and how to market to them.

A Company Exposé: Loyal customers will be keen to learn more about your company. Post “behind-the-scenes” photos and videos, share comments from employees, or talk about the founding of the company. Use your posts to tell a story. This will humanize your brand – making your company trustworthy, authentic, and relatable.

Industry Specific Updates: Being able to comment on developments in your industry helps establish you as a trustworthy authority. You can post:

• How-to guides
• Trivia about your company/industry
• Breaking news
• Third-party content (when relevant)
• Guest experts to speak about your company/industry
• Industry specific advice

Keeping a lively Facebook page is all about posting content that gets your fans to interact with you. By maintaining this type of engagement, you’ll have your finger on the pulse of what your target audience thinks of your brand and its products.

Nearly every large and successful company employs a number of SEO initiatives to stay successful. However, in many cases they can get a large number of conversions simply because of their brand name. On a deeper level, this is symbolic of the fact that these companies have authority – they are leaders in their industry.

You can do a lot to establish trust and authority for your business through the right kind of engagement on almost any social media site. LinkedIn, in particular, is a stellar example that often gets overlooked. Many professionals view the site as a way to keep tabs on their colleagues, but it is probably the best website you can use to increase your clout and authority in your given field.

Obviously, one of the best ways to establish yourself and your business as an authority is to answer the pressing questions in your industry. LinkedIn has the perfect venue for this with their Answers page. On Answers, members can post questions related to any given field of expertise. When you answer a question, your answer may be selected as a “Best Answer,” which is noted on your profile. By consistently answering questions related to your field, you can quickly build authority in your field among your target demographic.

In addition to Answers, you should also be interacting with your profile page by posting relevant company updates. If you author any blogs or press releases for your company, post them to your profile to get them to spread around. If you write prolifically enough on behalf of your industry, you may be able to become a Source on LinkedIn. If LinkedIn selects you to be a source, your writing will appear in LinkedIn Today – which has the potential to vastly multiply your traffic. If you’re interested in being a source, you must contact LinkedIn.

These efforts to build authority require a significant time investment on your part, so they may not be a fit for every company. However, the payoff can be significant.

You can use your LinkedIn profile for much more than managing your professional connections. By starting a LinkedIn Group and engaging your professional community, you can also have a small but solid link building campaign.

LinkedIn Groups are special pages that anyone can set up on LinkedIn. They gather like-minded professionals to discuss their respective industries. LinkedIn Groups foster a lot of interaction among professionals and are a good starting approach to link building.

When you are starting your own group, you must keep in mind that LinkedIn hosts hundreds of thousands of groups. If you want yours to stand out and gain members, you should try to target a niche theme or audience. If your group is too similar to the others pertaining to your business, you may not gain much traction.

When you start a new group, you become the group’s manager – allowing you to do things such as moderating discussion posts or approving new members. More importantly, you also have more control for displaying your links. There are a lot of link building options you have when you’ve started the group, including:

• Putting your website link in the “about this group” section
• Sending a weekly message to the group with a relevant link
• Adding your site to the RSS feed in the News Section
• Creating a discussion and including your link (as the group manager, you have some automatic credibility so you can post your links a little more frequently).

By maintaining an active group that contributes to the professional community, your posted links can get a lot of traffic. Furthermore, if you’ve developed your group to target a specific audience or demographic, you’ll be getting meaningful traffic – and hopefully, higher conversion rates.

About a year ago, comprehensive social media campaigns seemed like risky territory for many companies. Now that they’ve shown great ROI for several business, they are growing like wildfire with companies scrambling to get a Facebook page up and running.

However, rushing into any marketing strategy – whether SEO, SEM, or Social – without a plan is not going to yield stellar results. All too often, businesses rush off to claim their company name on Facebook without really taking advantage of the site. Here are some common errors companies make on their Facebook pages:

They don’t leverage SEO: Facebook pages can be indexed and show up in search results. As such, many of the SEO techniques that work on a webpage also work on a Facebook page. For example, keywords matter and need to be utilized. Titles, custom URLs, and even bolded font on a Facebook page get extra attention from search engines, so be sure to construct your page accordingly. In addition, don’t forget to collect inbound links to your Facebook page. Just as with your webpage, inbound links will help your Facebook page rank higher.

They hide their content: Companies may choose to hide content behind gateways in their custom tabs that are only accessible to subscribers or Facebook fans. Search engines have no way to access this content, so it can’t get indexed. While making exclusive content can increase your number of fans, it can cause your brand to lose out on some valuable visibility. Before opting for exclusive content, weigh the impact carefully.

They don’t stay active: Most of all, you will want to stay constantly active with your Facebook page because customer interaction is the central tenant of any Social Media campaign. Users view active Facebook pages as positive reflections of their respective companies. Also, updated pages have added SEO value because wall posts are indexed by search engines.