The truth is, marketing your company effectively using social media is far more difficult than it looks. What’s more; get it wrong, and you might lose much more than a handful of Facebook fans.

So, if you want to ensure you don’t make social media suicide, make sure you don’t make this mistake:

Ignoring Your Fans

Yes, ignoring your fans is the number one mistake you can make. Remember, this is social media marketing – not ‘let’s post a message about a new sale once a week and forget about our accounts the rest of the time’ marketing.

You need to be there, responding to messages of both a positive and negative nature as quickly as possible.

If someone complements your business, whether it’s your staff, your service or your products, ensure to thank them for commenting and say you’ll pass on the message.

Similarly, if someone complains, in any way whatsoever, you must acknowledge it. Ignoring them could at best lose you a valued customer, and at worst could go viral and lose you your entire reputation.

Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away:

Customers today expect businesses to be using social media as a secondary customer service line. If you ignore complaints, they won’t disappear. Not only will you rile the customer even more, but your negligence is there for everyone to see.

Couldn’t you just delete the complaints?

No! This is categorically the worst mistake you could ever make. If you go around deleting customer complaints, expect them to take the issue further. You’re only setting yourself up for far more trouble in the near future.

Losing a customer vs. gaining one for life:

If you play badly at the social media game, you will lost customers. They might be one time customers that were unlikely to ever return anyway, or they may have, until they experienced you social media prowess, been regular customers who were happy to sing your praises.

On the other hand, if you play the social media game properly, not only will you secure many lifetime customers, but you’ll secure customers who will talk positively about you to others.

Remember that we all know that everyone makes mistakes – including your customers. It’s how you deal with those mistakes that will seal your fate.

Guest post by Anthony Green.

Anthony Green is an online media specialist. He is Australian and had been in the business for 7 years.  His dexterity in writing as well as his speedy analysis of the current social media trends complements the numerous assignments required in online marketing. When he is not caught up working on social media marketing, he enjoys playing flag football with his friends. Occasionally he sketch or paint to release stress.

How do they get results? Find out the methods they use. Do they carry out in-depth keyword research? Do they optimise the text on their clients websites? What methods of link-building do they use?

Ask to see examples of the content they’ve created – both as link-bait and on-site copy, and check its quality carefully.

How long do they usually work with clients? The longer, the better. A high turnover of clients is a very bad sign that usually means one of three things:

1. They don’t deliver results.
2. Their customer service is terrible.
3. Both of the above.

Ideally you will want to start a relationship with an SEO firm who can boast a stream of long-term clients. Why? Because if clients are choosing to stay with a company beyond their initial contract period, the firm is obviously doing something right.

Are they active within the SEO community? Do they Tweet regularly? Do they ‘follow’ authority figures in SEO? Most importantly – do they blog regularly and are their blog posts worth reading?

An SEO that can write fluently on techniques, theories and industry news is, in most cases, an SEO that knows their stuff.

However, you need to dig further than just checking if the firm’s website includes a blog. Make sure to read the blog. Does it demonstrate poor use of English? Does it cover only the most basic of SEO techniques? If either of these are the case – look elsewhere.

How long is the contractual period? Most SEO companies will require that new clients enter into a fixed contract period – rarely is this less than six months, and for good reason.

Getting results takes time – yet getting clients who know very little about SEO to understand this is far from an easy task. Contracts that are shorter than six months commonly result in the client leaving after their contract period has ended because they believe the firm aren’t doing what they said they would. The knock-on effect of this is that the now ex-client tells others about their dissatisfaction with a company who may well (or may not) have been doing everything by the book.

However, it’s not uncommon for SEO firms to try and tie you into a twelve month contract. While this doesn’t necessarily have to set alarm bells ringing, it may indicate that the firm lacks confidence in their ability to deliver.

If you’re presented with a twelve month contract, either look elsewhere or try to renegotiate the contract length.

What happens after the contract ends? Any company worth their weight will place you on a monthly rolling contract that you can cancel any time – they know they will be getting results by this point and that clients will stay with them through choice rather than contractual obligation.

If, however, upon your contract ending you either have to cancel or be tied into a further contract – run. This is a frighteningly common practice (and not just in the SEO industry) that’s unfair and simply unnecessary.

The price sounds too good to be true – the lower the price, the more wary I’d recommend being. As with most things in life, with SEO you get what you pay for.

Good SEO takes a great deal of time, effort and talent. If you’re paying £100 a month for a firm to work on five keywords – something is very wrong. If you’re paying less than that, something is very, very wrong.

It might be tempting to go with the lowest quote you’re given but trust me – there’s only two possible reasons why the price is so low:

• They use shoddy methods that, although might get results initially, in the long run put your site at risk. What’s the point in a number one position if shortly after, Google removes your site from its search engine altogether?
• They simply don’t do the work they promise.

They promise number one positions – many companies are fooled by this and choose to actively avoid SEO firms who don’t promise to get certain keywords to number one on Google.

The reality is that there are no guarantees in SEO. If a company promises such things, one of the following is actually happening:

• They are referring to AdWords – the advertisements down the right hand side of Google for which you can buy yourself a number one position, but will be paying for it each time somebody clicks on it. This isn’t SEO – don’t let ruthless firms confuse you.
• They are going to work on keywords that no-one else is. While this does make it much, much easier to achieve a number one position, you’ll be attaining a number one place for a keyword that no-one is searching for and thus, no-one will actually find your site through.
• They’re simply making empty promises that they know they have a small chance of fulfilling.

They let you choose your keywords – keyword research forms a vital portion of each and every SEO campaign. Ideally you want to work on keywords that aren’t so competitive they’re unattainable but that also have a high enough search volume to be profitable.

Any firm that lets their clients choose their keywords without previously carrying out keyword research has little to no idea what they’re doing and should be avoided.

They don’t return your calls or emails – if their correspondence is poor before you’ve even signed a contract, what do you think will happen once you’re obligated to pay them each month?

They claim to be affiliated with Google – Unless the company you’re talking to is Google (who, needless to say, do not offer SEO services) they are not affiliated with them.

They might be Google certified. This simply means that one of their employees has passed the Google AdWords exam, and has the appropriate knowledge needed to manage a pay-per-click account. It doesn’t mean they have any sort of special relationship with Google.

They refer to keyword density as the ‘key’ to SEO – whilst once upon a time, keyword density was vital, Google has come a long way since then.

Google wants to list quality, user-friendly sites. They don’t want to list websites that are flooded with overly optimised and unreadable text.

While it is still important to optimise your site copy, it’s only a minor factor in how Google decides to rank websites.

Advanced SEO tactics do exist for ecommerce sites, however. Here is a sampler.

1. Site structure and links.

There are so many points to choose from here. I’ll just mention three. Building deep links to pages buried in the navigation structure will help SEs crawl and analyze your site. Separating site maps into sections by product category will create a two to three layer link structure that will bring every product near to the surface of the site, which SEs love. Finally, Google counts only the first of multiple links to the same page. Others are ignored.

2. Unique content.

Relevant content that’s always up to date trumps static content that’s equally optimized. Content at all counts for a lot. Product directory pages should always have a snippet of content per product. Used everywhere as they are, manufacturer’s descriptions will only trigger duplicate content alarms. Even related product descriptions need to be unique, not clones of one another.

3. Fresh content.

All pages should be kept fresh with new content updated regularly, even if it means creating rewriting busywork. Far better, however, is to find ways to bring customer content to the site. Fresh, relevant, LSI keyword-rich reviews are just right for SEO.

4. Keywords.

Customers search for specific keywords, not generic ones. To capture the traffic these searches generate, product descriptions and even titles should reflect customer search behavior. For example, companies think “digital cameras” whereas customers search for “digital camera”. Titles can include both: “Digital cameras: Buy a digital camera at Camerascamerascameras.com”. More generally, marketing departments may set up categories or change product names and lines, making it necessary to monitor and tightly control URLs and product names to prevent 404s or worse. As another example, inclusion of categories in URLs, leading to duplicate URLs, can dilute search value.

This level of SEO is more demanding, but makes a site attractive to search engines directly. Indirectly, the superior user experience will spark conversations, unsolicited links and citations. SEs noticing the buzz will direct even more traffic to the site, and business will boom.

Could this be you? How can you prevent such an embarrassing fiasco?

The trouble was, what Dave thought was important and cool was actually anti-SEO. What he should have been paying attention to, he ignored without even knowing it.

Here are some of the pitfalls he fell into that you can avoid.

1. Choosing a domain name that tickles your fancy without serious keyword research.

Users search for things in particular ways that often are counterintuitive and unpredictable. That’s why we do keyword research. We need to find out what people do, not what we think they do. Then we need to use that knowledge in our domain name as well as our title sections, h1/h2 tags, and so on.

2. Making a Flash intro your home page.

Search engines like Google search the text content in websites and rank the websites partly based on the text found. Flash is not text and is therefore not easily searchable. You want each page on your site to contribute the maximum toward being found and then converting visits into action. If you are a famous TV network’s website, this does not apply to you.

3. Using javascript menus without either html alternatives or good site maps.

Google as yet can’t read javascript very well. You have to design your website for both human visitors and search engines. Leave one of them out of the equation and the visitor counts may not add up for you.

4. Stuffing keywords into your pages to make the search engines think you’re relevant.

You may be relevant, don’t get me wrong, but search engines are getting smarter by the day. They outwitted linkwheels and roboblogs. If they see too many keywords in your site’s pages, they may jump to the unwarranted conclusion that those keywords are spam. That would be counter-productive for your site.

5. Leaving the same old anchor text in links.

Gone are the days when you could simply say “Click here” for a link. Now, human readers expect better and the search engines also use that anchor text as a clue to the relevance of your links. If they spot a redundant mismatch like “Click here”, no one may ever find your site in order to “Click there”!

Now you know more than a still-large percentage of the website designing population. Use this knowledge to rise above your competition and share your message with the world.

When people search for what you are offering, most of the time they will find it through a search engine. Most of that search goes through Google, which is and will be the dominant force in search for the foreseeable future. A few other search engines including Yahoo and Bing round out the nearly the entire search spectrum. Any website that aims to attract traffic had better take search logic into account.

The search results on Google and other SEs include both natural and paid results. On Google, the natural results occupy the main white area of the results page, while the paid results show up as the few highlighted results at the top of the list and the ads running down the right side of the page. Most people assume that the natural results are more trustworthy. That’s where our focus is going to be.

The search results lead searchers back to your site. They expect you to have a site, so that’s what they look for. Since most of them will find your site by going through Google, we have to play by Google’s rules. Other search engines also figure into the strategy, but they are similar to Google.

Google’s rules are very sensible. Google wants to provide the most relevant and reliable results to searchers. You need to design your strategy and your site around Google and the way people use it. This behavior is captured through keywords, and what is captured is search psychology.

The basis of Google’s algorithm reflects this human dimension of search. Google determines a page’s ranking in the results mostly by combining three factors: the number of backlinks and their relevance plus the site content’s relevance.

To understand what you’re up against in making your mark on the Web, compare the number of searches per month with the number of competing pages for a keyword. Design your pages around the keywords that reflect how people search for your topic. From these keywords select the ones giving you the best odds of standing out in the crowd. Focus your optimization effort only on the pages on your site that convert a visit into the action you’re hoping for.

Once that’s done, update your content often and continue to build it around keywords. Content needs to be fresh to be noticed. Along with your site, your online presence and its freshness comes from channels like blogs, press releases, white papers, and editorial pieces. Distribute content as widely as possible through directories, search engines, and RSS feeds.

These techniques will generate more traffic that may build slowly or fast. This is real SEO. It works but it’s work – and if you do the work, you’ll reap the rewards.

So a local business clearly needs a web presence, one or more (preferably all) of the primary types of virtual real estate. The best type of VRE and the one most under the business’s control is a website with a carefully-crafted purpose and message. This message needs to be projected through other channels, too, like Facebook and Twitter accounts which are regularly updated, a LinkedIn account, and other forms like Hubpages and specialty and local directories.

Having virtual real estate is not enough, however. It also needs to be found, and for that to happen it must present itself so that the search engines, primarily Google, take notice of it. The main ways to accomplish that are through on-site and off-site SEO (search-engine optimization).

On-site SEO includes things like a keyword-rich domain name, a meaningful description meta-tag, the right kind of site structure, and well-designed and formatted keyword-rich content.

Off-site SEO means maximizing the flow from the main traffic sources. This calls for optimizing Google Places to attract traffic, as well as non-Google sources like Yahoo Local, Best of the Web, Mapquest, Hotfrog, Bing Local, Yelp, and many more.

Finally, SEO must incorporate a social media strategy, because the search engines are incorporating social media in the search results. Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus are increasingly powerful players in how people find things online. Citations mentioning the business site plus reviews and genuine backlinks in the context of real discussion, are all crucial for success now and in the future.

With social sites becoming extremely popular among all generations, you can hardly be in business or even keep up with the competition if you don’t have a rock solid business profile on Facebook. This is one web application where you can be sure to reach out to a very large number of potential clients from all corners of the earth.

Internet marketing though could be a wasted effort if not properly approached. Many businesses spend a lot of hard earned money to advertise and promote their business on Facebook, but they hardly see any returns. Creating a profile for your business is just the first of many steps in this quest. To make the best of this leading social site, one must invoke the best tactics to ensure the highest ROIs.

Here are a few simple tips to help you get the best out of Facebook and leave your competitors trailing way behind:

1. Select only the best photos for your Facebook page. On the internet, you get small opportunities to convince a potential client. First impressions need emphasis; they are actually at times more important than what lies beneath. Ensure that you put up the most attractive photos of your products and services, or of your premises. These serve to show the visitor of your page that your business is doing well and offering attractive products or services.
2. Ensure that you feature a number of pages that your business ‘likes’ as well. Do not give your visitors the impression that you are a stand-alone player in the industry. By having a link to a page a visitor is familiar with, they will be convinced that you are indeed what they are looking for. In addition, these links will depict you as a thought leader, one who actually welcomes (and is not scared of) competition.
3. Always keep your Facebook page updated. Do not keep a single profile picture for months; neither does it help to have your most recent events half a year old. Give your fans the impression that your business is ‘awake’ by keeping them posted with new events, activities and developments in the industry.
4. Advertise your page. This sounds obvious but relying on the ‘if you create they will come’ hardly works when using Facebook for a business. Take advantage of badges, banners and blog posts to show your page to people so they can like it.
5. Stalk your competitors. Find out what pages with many fans are doing to direct traffic there and learn from this. Do the same for your page and the results will be impressive.

It’s a large world we live in, with hardly any one method to do something. However, if you seek to leverage Facebook for your business, the above tips won’t disappoint. And one last tip – when you start devising plans to promote on Facebook, don’t spend your time and money to make a couple of sales. Instead, create a brand. Over a period of time, you might just generate that loyal following.

Freelancers that both live and work by themselves are even more prone to becoming hopelessly lonely. There are several practical things that you can do to avoid feeling sullen, withdrawn and alone, but it might take some time before you get the full benefits. If you don’t like the idea of living in doom and gloom for any period of time, you’ll need to fight the telltale signs of freelancer loneliness as soon as they become apparent

Stay Connected and Take Regular Breaks

Freelancers usually work solo, but that doesn’t mean that they should forget about having social lives. Even if you work long hours and live miles away from your closest friends, a quick phone call to your loved ones will make you to feel completely refreshed. Establish set times in which you plan to reach out to your friends, and then do it. Whether you need to reconnect or simply need to keep the lines of communication open, you can ward off loneliness by keeping your social calendar full.

Improve Your Mood by Getting Active

If you’ve been feeling tired, depressed and sluggish lately, it may be because of a lack of physical activity. As a freelancer, you’ll be endlessly tempted to eat microwave dinners instead of healthy meals, but it is important that you keep your overall health in mind. Not only will being more active stave off feelings of loneliness, it can also help you to complete your work faster and more efficiently.

Joining a gym isn’t necessary, but you should strive to get outside of the house as much as possible. If jogging outdoors during the winter months just isn’t your forte, find out if there are any fitness groups at your local community center.

Checkout Cooperative Workspaces

When healthy living and chatting with friends isn’t enough, a complete change in your freelance work setup may be necessary. Welcome to the age of cooperative workspace facilities. Originally designed to give entrepreneurs and small business owners access to affordable offices space, the world of freelancing was quick to catch onto this growing trend.

For no more than a couple of hundred dollars a month, freelancers can have unlimited access to their very own cooperative workspace, complete with answering services, receptionists and access to private conference rooms. What’s more is that you will be able to socialize and network with likeminded individuals. For those that live in rural areas or live in cities where cooperative workspaces aren’t yet plentiful, there’s always the option of joining local freelancers groups that host live monthly events.

Even with all of these preventative measures in place, you’ll probably still feel lonely from time to time. Figure out which methods help you to snap out of your ‘funk’ the quickest, then implement them as quickly as possible. For most freelancers, dealing with occasional feelings of loneliness still beats going back to a regular 9-to-5.

The thing is that I had been playing various iterations of Tetris. I started out with the brick games, and then moved on to the old Gameboy with the pea soup green screen. I always fancied myself as someone who was good at the game and ‘Tetris Battle!” enabled me to prove that belief.

When I first booted it up in facebook, I immediately breezed through the competition. I was defeating enemies left and right, and dominating them easily. I thought that this Win streak validated my belief that I was a pretty good Tetris Player.

What I didn’t immediately realize was that Tetris Battle! had a scale for their players. You started out with the new guys and then progressed to the better ones as you win. When I was placed in the higher ranks due to my win streak, I suddenly suffered defeats. The defeats were not even of the close variety as I was thoroughly outplayed and dominated by the competition.

I guess Tetris Battle! just proved that I am not as good in Tetris as I thought to be. While I may be good in my little corner of the world, there is also that Taiwanese or Korean kid who plays Tetris everyday and also thinks that they are the best player in this game.