Don’t Let The #Hashtag Scare You!

What is a hashtag? If you can explain this to your grandmother, then you have a pretty good understanding as to what a hashtag actually is. If not, a hashtag is a keyword or phrase without spaces strung together with the “#” symbol at the beginning of the watchword(s).

Chris Messina used the first hashtag back in 2007 on social media outlet Twitter. Messina sought to gather discussion and online exchanges by deploying this new concept that took over. His first ‘tweet’: “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamps [msg]?”

First and foremost, using capitalized or low-case letters with hashtags has no affect on your search results. Some networks like Google+ will sometimes automatically hashtag your posts if keywords are obvious in your verbiage.

The main thing to remember when using this new search method is to not overdue hashtags! Using an odd number of hashtags has the best results on every social media outlet, 30 hashtags has the best results when it comes to Instagram. Remember not to overburden your posts with hashtags on Facebook though; using 5 hashtags is visually pleasing and still meets the odd number count.

Keep in mind that your brand exists in the real world. Make sure a brand campaign is quick and easy to understand or it will be ignored immediately. Use hashtags that are trending or that people are previously familiar with. Sometimes creating your own hashtags will be catchy, but probably not unless you are a celebrity or social media guru.

Use hashtags to interact with people. Reward regular activity by taking a hashtag and creating a photo from that hashtag to repost. Videos are also great and viewers love videos because they are more personable. Hashtag interaction is especially useful when creating a new product, service, brand or image. Ask people what they think, what is not attractive, and how to improve in the design process.

Social media is not about getting out there in terms of sharing, but for the cause of actually literally interacting with people. Hashtags are the modern day voice of the people.

Foursquare Reinvents Its Application - Swarm Is Created

Foursquare has split its application (app) into two entities: the redesign of Foursquare and the original creation of Swarm. Foursquare is seeking to monopolize the market, making Foursquare, and now Swarm, the most popular check-in apps currently available on the market.

Some things such as mayorships and badges have been eliminated completely. The app on Swarm will still track your ‘streak’ of how many weeks in a row you have been to the gym for instance. However, Swarm is geared more towards togetherness (finding out where groups of people are, hence the name “Swarm”).

In regards to mayorships, if you were formerly a mayor, the user will hold this position and move towards mayors 2.0 version.  This is a 60-day window where all previous mayors coexist and fight for spot to be the superior mayor against other mayors in the 2.0 version. What Swarm should do is just make this mayor competition a contest with a hierarchy that mirrors our political system now … we will call this Swarm Government Competition.

Badges have also been replaced in Swarm with stickers that can be attached to any place where you check-in helping to describe the mood or thoughts regarding a particular place. All of these stickers are indeed free!

The main focus of the newly redesigned Foursquare is to replace the geolocation-based social attributes of the New York City start-up’s original app. Since Foursquare will be focusing on discovering new places and Swarm for social and tracking aspects, this will dominate the market for this category of apps.

With Foursquare, a user can search a place, person, or even a type of place and then Swarm will showcase relevant results. User reviews are not so appreciative that the user must use two different apps to manage all actions. This proposes the question why is Foursquare trying to help users find places when the Yelp app exists to do exactly this?

Swarm is featuring a new feature called “Neighborhood sharing”. When you turn this feature on, your friends that also have this feature turned on can see when you enter his or her neighborhood and the same goes for when your friends enter your neighborhood. This was enabled to create more meet-ups between friends. To turn this feature off, tap on either of the two left hand tabs located at the bottom of the navigation bar and then swipe right at the top of the screen.

Foursquare and Swarm might increase in popularity once again if people can get a handle on the separation of the app’s features. At least checking in is still available.

Falling Rocks Ahead!

The Perseus constellation showers down upon us. Have your umbrella up and ready to take on falling rocks from the sky! Another meteor shower strikes again!

Best time to see the meteor shower is at 2 a.m. August 13th. This meteor shower is the result of space debris coming off the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet striking.

The great part about seeing this shower is you don’t need a telescope! Simple binoculars will do the trick but your eyes will also work just fine.

#meteorshower #perseuscluster #meteor #stars #space #starwars #startrek #thinkagency #robinwilliams #PerseidMeteorShower  

How Not to Do SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) concepts are pertinent to the success of businesses in today’s technology forefront. Even though technology has such a huge influence, it is important to still be recognized as a human being.  Make things personable. Here’s what you shouldn’t be doing instead:

1.     Tons of spammy backlinks.

If you are still paying for links then you are doing more harm than good. Google assesses penalties for this kind of system gaming, and they don’t take to kindly to it. Instead of asking for bogus links, following our suggestions in our last blog detailing how to get mutually beneficial links with relevant sites that will help both your audience and you!

2.     Write for Google and not for people.

Keyword stuffed content just isn’t going to cut it anymore. If you are writing for Google’s bots instead of your target audience then you are missing the mark. Write interesting and engaging content that will hook your readers. If your readers like it then Google will catch on and reward you accordingly.

3.     Shamelessly self-promote on social media.

Blasting out self-promotion on social media is a good way to alienate your audience and get flagged for spam. Social media is for connection and conversation. Do it the right way or not at all!

4.     Quit early.

Good SEO isn’t a one-stop shop. It is a continual practice that needs to be adjusted, tweaked, and continually grown. Reputation and a captive audience won’t happen over night. If you don’t dedicate the right amount of time you will waste money and see little results!

Remember, keep you subject light; relate to the topic and then expand using personal stories and relations that would intrigue the reader. If the reader isn’t interested then why would Google be?