To get work in the social media industry, an individual can take a few measures:

1. Stay informed-this is simple.  Social Media and SEO are constantly evolving fields, so staying up to date on your knowledge is important and will be taken seriously in your job search and interviews.
2. Get an internship. There are countless places that offer internships for social media work.   Like any internship, this will serve as a nice stepping stone and resume builder to gain knowledge and experience.  Starting with an internship can open many doors in the future and is often the best place to start your search, if you don’t have prior experience.  This will also be an eye-opener for working on a social media strategy.
3. College Degrees-Getting a degree in a related field will assist in the job and internship process.  Many places are now offering certificates in social media or master’s programs in Integrated Marketing Communications.  In fact, Pittsburgh’s own Duquesne University offers a master’s in IMC.
4. Engage with social media marketers-Use your social media platforms to show off your knowledge and skills. In addition, connecting with folks who already work in social media will help expose your skills and abilities, as well as give you an option to connect with potential employers.  As an added bonus, these individuals will probably be posting things that can be learning tools for you, such as tips or blog posts.
5. Don’t Just Use Twitter and Facebook . If you want to be seen as a social media expert you’ll need experience in every active social network beyond just the big ones like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIN, etc. Research what’s new and set up a profile as soon as you can.
6. Create an online portfolio – An even better way to showcase your skill set is having your own portfolio website.  Keep an active blog and link to your various social media accounts.

As with any career field, it won’t happen overnight, so do not get discouraged.  Social Media is an exciting path to choose, but it takes practice and patience!

If you’re a local to Pittsburgh then you should check out some social media events like these.

• Visit Pittsburgh Social Media Day
• Pod Camp Pittsburgh
• The Pittsburgh Social Exchange
• Pittsburgh Bloggers

1. Start your email with a greeting.

Setting the tone of your email with a polite and courteous greeting helps you get off on the right foot. Whether you are emailing a new client or an old friend, the use of greeting is a good idea.

2. You can be informal without being sloppy.

An email can be written in an informal tone, but should still be grammatically correct. Your email should be written using correct capitalization and punctuation. It is best to limit the use of exclamation points in order to keep a professional aspect.

3. Write a clear message.

An easy to understand message starts with a clear and concise subject. The body of the email should correspond to the title. It is best not to cover too many topics in an email, as jumping topics can get confusing and it makes replying a more difficult task when there are many different parts of an email to answer.

4. Respond in a timely fashion.

Your response to an email should occur in a timely manner. If there is something that will take longer than a 24 hour period for you to find the answer to, it is best to reply to the sender so they know you are working on a response for them. You may notice that at times a phone call is the best response to an email. Do not be afraid to pick up the phone – it can save you from a lot of confusion and necessary back and forth.

5. Use a closing and email signature.

Equally important as starting your email off with a greeting, it makes an email complete to end your email with a closing and your email signature. By including your signature you prevent someone from having to look up your contact information. By adding in your company’s logo and a link to your website, you can also take advantage of some easy website promotion.

By following these few simple tips, your emails with come across as easy to read and understand, the end result being an enhanced experience for the reader and you!

Strengths:

• Reaches a wide range of users
• Boards can be made to suit everyone’s likes and needs. For this reason, the site appeals to folks with a wide variety of interests.
• Pictures are eye-catching.
• Innovative environment: Pinterest offers its users unique products and where they are available.
• The unique format and function of Pinterest appeals to customers and therefore creates a loyal fan-base.

Weaknesses:

• Considered a site for women, whereas other sites are more popular with both genders.
• While folks of many ages can find it enjoyable, it has a larger adult population than competitive sites.
• Because ANYONE can pin ANYTHING, it can be filled with spam, which may be deceiving or tough to filter through.
• There are currently no paid advertisements on Pinterest. To some, this may a good thing, however businesses may disagree.

Opportunities:

• Pinterest is ever-growing and expanding their business, making it have a wider audience.
• Drive traffic to sites-by pinning links to your site, businesses are able to expand and grow, as well as create bonds with customers.
• Because the Pinterest login is through Facebook or twitter, many times, users have their
  accounts linked together, expanding the Pinterest business even more because content is
  now appearing on Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook pages.

Threats:

• Because many businesses have products on Pinterest, it allows for copycats to appear and therefore to hurt the business users the site has.
• Pinterest is extremely focused, which is great, however, it allows for copycat sites, such as Gentlemint.com, the “pinterest for men.”
• Some pins are scams or spam. This threatens the reputation and credibility of the site.

While a bad SEO company can cause serious harm to a client’s website, a legitimate firm can provide invaluable service. Every website has different strengths and weaknesses, and SEO firms should provide customized service based on a client’s particular needs. Legitimate firms also recognize changes that have taken place online and evolve and adjust service offerings to stay ahead of the shifting landscape. This also means that a good SEO firm will not engage in shady practices that may penalize a company’s site or lose value after a short period of time.

Fortunately, even if you haven’t brushed up on the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, there are still ways of identifying scammers and genuine SEO professionals. Most importantly, an online marketing company should be transparent about their methods. Successful SEO campaigns rely on effort, not trade secrets and connections. If a company is unwilling to tell you their methods or success stories, start looking somewhere else.

For more advice on choosing the right SEO firm, read Laboon’s full post: http://www.corpmagazine.com/technology/digital/itemid/10307/when-it-comes-to-seo-legit-it-or-quit-it.

1. Pin your own pages – In addition to pinning existing content, by pinning your own things, such as blog posts or web pages, is a great way to get exposure to your Pinterest profile as well as web pages or your home page.
2. Create Specific Boards -The more specific your boards are, the easier it will be for you to pin, but more importantly, honing in on a specific topic will make it much simpler for your followers to find pins.
3. This one is important: To get started on Pinterest, you need an invite.  Getting an invite is super simple: You can request one here or ask an existing user to send you one.
4. Add the “pin it” button to your bookmark bar here.  This will allow you to pin any image you find on other websites, not just repinning on Pinterest.
5. Follow! One of the great things about Pinterest is that you can choose to follow all of a user’s boards, or you can opt to only follow an individual board.  Following many users is a great idea and will help break up your homepage, but it’s great if you are interested in interior design, so you want to follow a user with a great “home appliances” board, but aren’t as interested in that user’s “favorite recipes”  board.
6. Use the “like” button -The “like” button marks another user’s pin for you, but it doesn’t become categorized on a board.  Instead, it is filed under your “likes” and you can do further investigating at a later point, or you can simply pin it when you get the chance.

Pinterest can be useful for so many things, and it can definitely be addicting.  Let’s hope you can use these tips in your new pinning journey.  We would love to hear anymore that you have!

Be reachable:

Half of the importance of being on LinkedIn is to be reachable. In order to be reachable and searchable, you may have to take a few steps to get there. A huge way to do this is to join groups that pertain to your desired career. Join a lot of groups! They give your profile easier access to employers and allow you to do better networking within your field of expertise.

Add specifics:

Your basic profile should be as detailed as possible. This is often the first impression of you that a potential employer will see-you should make sure it is detailed, especially with job history as well as degrees and certificates you may hold.

Be recent:

Your picture should be professional and clear, as well as up to date. Including a professional photograph of you from many years ago is not a good idea because it is almost misleading anyone who views your profile. It is also important to have a photo that isn’t grainy or has been altered (except for minor cropping).

Be active:

Update frequently, network often, and be active in groups you are a part of. LinkedIn is a two way street.

Get and Give Recommendations:

Offer recommendations to colleagues and folks you know and aim to get as many as you give. These are important because they help offer you credibility to anyone viewing your profile.
There are many other things you can alter about your LinkedIn profile to help it stand out to the LinkedIn world. What steps have you taken to improve your LinkedIn profile?

Eyeflow’s Position on SEO for Businesses

In his segment, Phil offers readers a more positive interpretation of the notorious Penguin and Panda updates. While many people are worried about having to change their approach to SEO, Phil says that the changes reward content that adds value to the Internet. Instead of stressing over the inability to use former Internet advertising solutions, people should focus on producing high-quality content, such as white papers, infographics, and educational videos, that users would be excited to share. This type of content should be a core component of a business’ SEO campaign. This builds up links naturally opposed to relying on low-quality directory and article links often used solely for online optimization purposes.

Website owners can also take advantage of the many free online SEO tools to analyze their website. These tools can help owners see what areas of the site can be improved to further boost website performance and SEO rankings. Phil created SEOzio so users could get a snapshot of their site’s “SEO vitals” and take a look at some of the factors that search engines look for when “grading” a website.

More SEO Perspectives

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz recommends utilizing a broad inbound marketing strategy. Users are able to arrive organically at a website through more than just the search engine results pages. Email, social media platforms, RSS feeds, blogs, and a number of other sources help direct users to web pages, so SEO campaigns should take these various elements into account.

Stephan Arstol of Tower Paddle Boards insists that SEO development can contribute to a company’s reputation as an industry leader, a position that may attract investors, media attention, business development deals, and more.

For more thoughts on SEO, click the following link to read the full article, What Every Leader Needs to Know about SEO.

How Does SEOzio Work?

Using the same principles as the former tool, the new SEOzio uses data collected from Google, free SEO analysis tools, and the site’s own information to put together a comprehensive report with an overall score for the site’s status. Users can look at individual areas, grouped into the categories Link Analysis, Branding, Crawlability, and Site Code, for a better idea of what factors contribute to their score. Summaries and definitions of terms are also available to help users better understand and interpret the information they are viewing.

How Can I Use SEOzio to Help Me?

SEOzio provides users with information about items and practices valued by search engines. Through the analysis report, users can see how well their site matches up with industry best practices. Some of the information may even lead them to make simple optimization changes to their existing site so that they may improve online visibility on their own without external help. Users may also use SEOzio to check the progress of their website by routinely visiting the tool to reexamine their score.

What If I Need More Help?

If users know they need extra help making necessary changes to their site, they should contact Eyeflow for more information. A team of SEO professionals will provide further analysis of the website as well as a proposal for an SEO campaign.

To give it a try yourself, visit SEOzio now.

1. Twitter is NOT Facebook! Unless you make your account private, your tweets are in the
   public eye. They are able to be re-tweeted, favorited, and shared, as well as found in
   searches. I’m not suggesting you lock your account, but you should be aware that twitter is
   an open, public social media site. Twitter is also a one-way street. For example, if you are
   friends with someone on Facebook, it is a mutual agreement between the two. On Twitter,
   however, just because someone follow you does not mean you have to return the favor.
2. 140 Characters or Less: Twitter has a character limit-no more than 140 characters. Aim for
   your tweets to be around 120 characters, so other users are able to RT you if they so choose.
3. Gaining Followers: Gaining followers may be intimidating at first, especially when you see
   celebrities or public figures with 1,000,000+ followers, but it is actually simple. There are
   five basic things you should remember: be respectful, be interesting, be purposeful, be
   yourself, and ENGAGE!
4. Hashtags: This is a term created by twitter. Twitter defines hashtag as “used to mark
   keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to
   categorize messages.” It is identified by the “#” symbol, so for example, it would be written
   like, “#pittsburgh.”
5. Twitter Lists: You can create your own lists of users that fall into the same categories, such
   as “Great Bloggers,” or “Athletes.” This will help you filter accounts.
6. Twitter Jail: Twitter Jail is a metaphorical jail that your account is placed in if you reach
   100 tweets/hour or 1,000 tweets/day. You are able to access your account, but you are not
   able to post from it. You remain in Twitter Jail for a short period of time, usually anywhere
   between half an hour and three hours.
7. Shrink Your Links: Because of the character limit, you may have to shrink your URL to allow
   the remaining text fit into one tweet.
8. Trends: Trends are located on the bottom, left hand side of your computer screen. These
   are the popular topics being tweeted about it. It changes often. You can filter your trends to
   from “worldwide” to a specific country or to a major city in the country you have selected.
9. Mentions and Replies: To mention or reply to someone, all you do is @theirusername and
   follow with what you want to say. The tweet will then appear in that user’s interactions tab.
10. Participate in #FollowFriday: This is a weekly ritual amongst twitter users to simply
    thank new followers or recommend useful accounts to follow. It is simply done by saying
    something simple such as, “Thanks for the support! @newfollower1 @newfollower2
    @newfollower3 #FollowFriday.” This will help you gain presence on twitter and it is also a
    respectful thing to do.

Hopefully these ten tips are useful for you as you start your Twitter journey! You can follow
Eyeflow Internet Marketing at @eyeflow.

New Features

One reason Google+ may strongly launch this year is because it has two unique features.  The first of those features is the Communities feature.  This is a place where you are able to meet and connect with folks who have similar interests.  You are able to start a community yourself (or for your business) or you can join an existing community.  The idea of communities is a new light for the site, one that Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or LinkedIn do not offer to their users.  This idea allows for you to connect with brands and individuals that you may not otherwise get the opportunity to.  The second of the features, which is also unique to Google+ is the Hangout option.  With this feature, you are able to video chat with up to nine other users.  This is a nice breakthrough for businesses who would like to run meetings or video conferences, as well as individuals who have long distance friends and families.  This is a unique feature to the site because no other social media site, including Skype allows users to do this, especially for free. (Note: Skype allows users to pay a monthly fee for additional features, although many only take advantage of the free features).

Is it Really Failing?

To say that Google+ is a failed site, or will be a failed site, is not a new comment.  Many people have been saying that for quite some time.  Why might Google+ be a failing site? This can be attributed to a few different points.  The first is simply the layout of the site.  It has been proposed that the layout of the profile is a bit less user-friendly than that of the competition (Facebook and Twitter).  In addition, it has been said that Google+ will fail because of the “circles.”  This idea is backed up because users claim the circles make the entire using process more complicated than and not as straightforward as the competition.  All in all, many people believe Google+ is just too advanced for the standard social media user and therefore is failing to catch on.

Some experts predict this is the year the site will take off, others believe no such thing.  We are curious-what are your thoughts on Google+? Share your experiences with Eyeflow!